APPENDED NOTES

NOTE A. See vol. i. p. 59.

THE MEANINGS OF THE WORD 'FAITH.'

The history of the original Hebrew and Greek words for believing or faith, is very interesting. The Hebrew verb ('aman') means 'to prop' or 'support'[1]. Now (1) a form of this verb means 'to be supported,' hence 'to be firm,' hence 'to be trustworthy'; (2) another form of the verb means 'to support oneself on,' and hence 'to trust,' 'to believe.' From (1) comes the Hebrew substantive ('emunah') meaning 'faithfulness,' 'trustworthiness,' which is used, as elsewhere, so also in Habakkuk ii. 4. In that passage it is revealed to the prophet, that, while the apparently overwhelming wave of Chaldaean barbarism rolls over him and passes away, 'the just man shall live (or save his life) by his faithfulness.' But this faithfulness of the righteous Israelite means a faithful holding on through the dark days to the word of God as to a secure ground of confidence; and thus the substantive used in this place in the Greek Bible ('pistis') tends to pass into the meaning which it mostly, though not always[2], has in the New Testament—a meaning derived not from form (1) but from form (2) of the Hebrew verb mentioned above (which however had no corresponding substantive)—trust or faith in the word and promise of another, especially God or Christ; or, still more characteristically, trust in the person of Christ and so of God.

Even under this heading of belief or trust the range of the word's meaning is considerable. In one passage of St. James' Epistle it is a bare intellectual recognition of the truth of things, without any moral value ('the devils also believe' that God is one, James ii. 19). More often it is that confidence in the divine word or promise, by which the good man, in lack of present evidence, sustains his courage or his prayer and wins his victory over the world: so especially in Hebr. xi, Luke xviii. 8, James ii. 23, 2 Cor. v. 7, 1 John v. 4. But its most characteristic use, as said above, is what first appears in the Gospels. The person of Jesus is there represented as eliciting from men a supreme trust in His power to heal diseases, and also to satisfy that deeper human need of which the disease is an outward symbol. And this power of Jesus to heal men in body and soul is seen in the Gospels to depend upon the extent of their faith: 'Thy faith hath saved thee;' 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' Thus Jesus Christ appears constantly as inspiring, requiring, and rewarding faith in Himself, and that as the manifested Son of God, e.g. John xiv. 1. This is 'the faith which is through Him,' i.e. which He produces; and which as 'faith in His name' remains the characteristic Christian quality when He is gone from sight (Acts iii. 16). 'The faith' in the Acts (vi. 7, xiii. 8, xiv. 22, &c.) means this Christian attitude towards the unseen but living and energizing Christ.

Thus when St. Paul came to believe in Jesus Christ, 'faith in Jesus,'—as meaning not merely acceptance of His claim or of His word or of His grace, but whole-hearted devotion to His person, entire self-surrender or self-committal to Christ or God in Christ—became the dominant note of his new state: 'I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day' (2 Tim. i. 12[3]). And this same devotion to Christ becomes, in St. Paul's theology, in its various stages, the only ground of man's acceptance with God. And though he uses 'faith' in a morally lower sense, as distinct from love—the faith which qualifies for miracles (1 Cor. xiii. 2)—yet in his characteristic sense of the term it involves the deepest love towards its divine object[4].

Naturally, as faith is thus the characteristic of Christianity, and this faith in a person involves a belief about Him—His divine sonship, His resurrection, His mission of the Spirit—so 'the faith' comes to mean (objectively) that which the Christian believes, or his creed; and this sense of the word appears almost in the Acts, in Gal. i. 23, and in Eph. iv. 5, and certainly in the Pastoral Epistles frequently (see Dr. Bernard in Camb. Gr. Test. on 1 Tim. i. 19) and St. Jude's Epistle, verse 2.

NOTE B. See vol. i. p. 103.

THE USE OF THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE.'

There is no word for conscience in the Old Testament. 'The conception,' says Delitzsch (Bibl. Psychology, Clark's trans., p. 160), 'is not yet impressed upon it.' And he accounts for this by quoting, 'The positive law took away its significance from the natural moral consciousness.' The Jews, that is—like other nations at certain stages of their history—lived so constantly under the detailed guidance of a law believed to be divine, that there was not much room for reflection as to the right and wrong of things. For the idea of conscience to develop, the will of God must be less clearly and decisively pronounced as to the details of conduct. There was, however, of course among the Jews, in proportion to their belief in a clear divine law, the consciousness of having done wrong; and on this account a man's 'heart' is described as 'privy to' an offence, and as 'reproaching' or 'smiting' him: see 1 Kings ii. 44, Job xxvii. 6[1], 1 Sam. xxiv. 5, xxv. 31, 2 Sam. xxiv. 10. Here is the root of the idea of conscience, i.e. of something in the man behind his surface self, reflecting upon what he has done, a self behind himself acquitting or condemning him, and so anticipating the divine judgement. For, as stated above[2], this was in the main the Stoic doctrine of conscience, and it was among them that the idea was first developed. Conscience was conceived of as that in man which lay behind his working self and reflected on his actions after they were done, bringing them into the light of the 'law of nature' or universal divine law for man. There is thus, as it were, in each man a double self, or double consciousness (conscientia), so that one can reflect upon himself, and pass judgement on his own actions.

It is in this sense of a self-judging faculty in all men reflecting on what they have done, anticipating a divine judgement, that the idea of conscience was acclimatized among the Jews. Thus, in Wisdom xvii. 11, we read, 'For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a coward thing, and being pressed hard by conscience, always forecasteth the worst lot.' In St. John viii. 9, according to one reading, the Jews are 'convicted by their own conscience.' So St. Paul, in the passage discussed above (ii. 15), seems to distinguish the subsequent reflective 'conscience' from the previous informing reason, 'the effect (equivalent) of the law written in their hearts.' And in most of the passages of the New Testament, this meaning of conscience—the faculty by which we sit in judgement on what we have already done—is sufficient. But sometimes, as also among the Stoics[3], the word passes into meaning the positive directing faculty, as when (1 Cor. viii. 10) a man's 'conscience' is said to be 'emboldened' to adopt a new practice, or (Hebr. ix. 14) to be cleansed for positive service. Moreover, though it is an individual faculty (see Rom. ii. 15), and exists primarily to pass judgement on one's own actions only, yet perforce it must also look without and condemn or approve the actions of others (2 Cor. iv. 2, v. 11).

St. Paul also brings into notice that our conscience is a faculty for the condition of which we are responsible. It is not the voice of God, but a faculty capable of reflecting His voice, if it be well guarded. Thus you may have a 'weak' or a 'strong,' i.e. a more or less enlightened, conscience (1 Cor. viii). And a man may 'defile' his 'mind and conscience,' i.e. he may corrupt his moral reason and powers of moral self-judgement (Tit. i. 15). Then the 'conscience' may become hardened and 'seared' (1 Tim. iv. 2), so that 'the light that is in' men becomes itself 'darkness' according to our Lord's warning (St. Matt. vi. 23). And there is nothing which is more necessary at the present day than to remind men that they are not 'safe' because they are not acting against their conscience, unless they are also constantly at pains to enlighten their conscience and keep it in the light, by the help of the best moral thought of their time, the guidance of the Church and the word of God. Our conscience, if it is rightly to reassure us by its witness, must, like St. Paul's conscience, bear its witness 'in the Holy Ghost' (Rom. ix. 1).

With us moderns 'conscience' has generally the wider meaning of the whole practical moral consciousness. It enjoins as well as judges, and is occupied with the present and the future, as well as with the past.

NOTE C. See vol. i. p. 129.

RECENT REACTIONS FROM THE TEACHING ABOUT HELL.

There is no doubt that there has been within the last forty years a great, and in large measure legitimate, reaction from the old—mediaeval and Calvinist—teaching about hell. But one who reads the early chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, or the Gospels, or other parts of the New Testament, in view of this reaction, will probably feel an uncomfortable sense that it has gone too far. It is worth while then to try and discriminate.

To put the matter in as brief a summary as befits a note, I should hold that the reaction has been legitimate so far as it has involved a repudiation of—

(1) the Calvinist doctrine that God has created some men, no matter whether many or few, inevitably doomed to everlasting misery. This doctrine is flat contrary to some particular statements of the New Testament (as to its general spirit) and is only a misunderstanding of others (see above, pp. 8, 29).

(2) any such crude idea of the divine judgement as that God condemns men for merely external reasons, e.g. because in fact, apart from any question of will, they were not baptized, or remained pagans or heretics. Such a conception is quite inadequate, for the divine judgement penetrates to the heart. God is a father: He is absolutely equitable: He judges men in the light of their opportunities. He will reject none whose will is not set to evil. 'This is the judgement that ... men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil' (John iii. 19).

(3) the tendency to exaggerate what is revealed to us, and what, therefore, we can say we know about the state of man after death. Thus (a) there is nothing really revealed to us as to the relative proportions of saved and lost. (b) It is certain that we only know of a probation for man here and now—'Now is the accepted time—now is the day of salvation.' And the absolutely equitable Father may see the conditions of an adequate probation equally in every man's earthly lot. It is therefore foolish to entertain, or encourage any one else to entertain, an expectation of any other state of probation except that which we certainly have here in this world. 'It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgement.' But if St. Peter could speak (as of a familiar subject) of the 'gospel' as having been 'preached' by our Lord's human spirit in Hades 'to the dead,' i.e. to those who had perished in their wickedness under the divine judgement of the flood: and preached with the intention that the judgement might be turned into a blessing and means of spiritual life—and he certainly does speak thus (1 Peter iv. 6, cf. iii. 19): I do not see how we can deny the possibility at any period, or in the case of any person, of an unfulfilled probation being accomplished beyond death. (c) Careful attention to the origin of the doctrine of the necessary immortality or indestructibility of each human soul, as stated for instance by Augustine and Aquinas[1], will probably convince us that it was no part of the original Christian message, or of really catholic doctrine[2]. It was rather a speculation of Platonism taking possession of the Church. And this consideration leaves open possibilities of the ultimate extinction of personal consciousness in the lost, which Augustinianism somewhat rudely, closed.

But to have convicted our forefathers of going, in certain parts of their teaching, beyond what was certainly revealed, affords no justification for doing the same ourselves in an opposite extreme; by asserting for example positively (a) that almost all men will be 'saved'; or (b) that there is probation to be looked for beyond death; or (c) that the souls of 'the lost' will be at the last extinguished. These positive positions are no more justified than those of our forefathers which we have deprecated. We must recognize the limits of positive knowledge.

And when we have come to the end of what a legitimate reaction from the teaching of our forefathers restores to us, in the direction of a 'larger hope,' we are still face to face with the fact of 'eternal judgement.' Men, as far as their individual destinies are concerned, are passing towards one of two ends, not towards one only—a divine judgement of approval or of condemnation; and both judgements are represented as final and irreversible; and they are the inevitable outcome of the moral law by which our probation is realized—that voluntary acts form habits, and habits stereotype into a fixed character. It is foolish to look to the process or moment of death for redemption from sin; for death, as far as we know, only transplants us with the character we have made for ourselves, and with continuous consciousness, into the unknown world; so that if in this life we have unfitted ourselves for God, we must find it out beyond death, and know there the full meaning of our awful miscalculation here. And the awakening of the 'lost' to what they have cast away—to the meaning of irreversible self-exclusion from the presence of God—is imaged as unspeakably awful; and their state is pictured in metaphors and phrases descriptive both of torment and finality—'outer darkness,' 'gnawing worm,' 'unquenchable fire,' 'eternal punishment,' 'eternal sin,' 'sin which shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come,' eternal 'death,' or exclusion from eternal life, 'eternal ruin,' 'wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish.'

In face of all these sayings, it seems to me indisputable that 'universalism'—the teaching that there are to be none finally lost—is an instance of wilfulness. To speak of that which lies beyond death, even in the case of the worst and most impenitent criminal, as a place

is, I cannot but feel, in flat contradiction to the whole tone of the New Testament.

It is no doubt true that there is in the New Testament an expectation of a final unity of the whole universe in God, and that we find it hard to conceive the relation of lost souls in hell to this final unity. Certainly all legitimate avenues of dim conjecture that a very limited revelation allows to be kept open, ought to be kept open. Certainly we know in part—the partialness of our knowledge can hardly be exaggerated. But we must be true to both elements in what is disclosed to us; and Dr. Martineau has reminded us[3] how deeply 'the belief in a separate heaven and hell, and a corresponding distribution of men into only two classes of good and bad, friends and enemies of God,' though 'at first sight nothing can appear more unnatural and defiant of all fact,' is yet bound up with 'the inward look' of moral evil and the fundamental reality of moral choice. In fact it seems to be true to say that a really Christian Theism, and a really Christian doctrine of human freedom, are inseparable from the belief in the possibility of wilful sin leading to final ruin.

'It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgement'; and this judgement in the case of those of us who have wilfully hardened themselves, or remained loveless and love-rejecters, in face of the real offer of God to man in Christ Jesus, is a divine condemnation which takes effect in an eternal punishment, the bitterness as well as the justice of which the soul realizes, and which—if it does not necessarily mean an everlasting continuance of personal consciousness—is yet final and irreversible, and unspeakably awful[4].

NOTE D. See vol. i. pp. 143 ff.

DIFFICULTIES ABOUT THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.

I have endeavoured above to sketch the positive conception of the Atonement, as St. Paul seems to put it before us. Christ inaugurates the church of the new covenant, the new life of union with God. He lays its basis in a great act of reparation to the righteousness of God, which 'the old Adam' had continually outraged. This act of reparation lies in a moral sacrifice of obedience, carried to the extreme point by the shedding of His blood. This is the great propitiation in virtue of which God is enabled, without moral misunderstanding, to forgive freely the sins of any one who comes in faith to unite himself to Christ, and set him free to begin the new life.

The subject is a divine 'mystery,' and we shall never adequately probe it. Nay more, one man's thought will rightly seem inadequate to another, who has gained, or thinks he has gained, some special avenue of insight into the divine depths. But when we pass from special points of view, which are necessarily more or less individual, and can never become certainties for men in general—when we pass on to the ground of what should be the common church belief, the statement of the original revelation, it is not, it seems to me, liable to any of the familiar moral objections, or indeed a subject of any special difficulty. The difficulties experienced by the moral consciousness of our age have been due to gross and unnecessary misunderstandings, of which the following are, perhaps, the most considerable.

(1) The propitiation has become separated from the new life, for which it merely prepares the way. It has been elevated, with disastrous moral results, from a means to an end. Christ's work for us has been treated apart from His work in us, in which alone it is realized. He alone can act for all men, because He only can be their new life within. But on this see vol. i. pp. 141 f, and Ephes. pp. 54 ff.

(2) The idea of injustice has been introduced into the 'transaction' of the Atonement, and has been the most fruitful source of difficulty;—but quite unnecessarily. There is a story that when Edward VI was a child, and deserved punishment, another boy was taken and whipped in his place. This monstrously unjust transaction has been taken by Christian teachers as an illustration of the Atonement; and it is truly an illustration of the Atonement as they misconceived it. But the misconception is gratuitous: there is no real resemblance in the two cases. For first, what is represented to us in the New Testament is not that Jesus Christ, an innocent person, was punished, without reference to His own will, by a God who thus showed Himself indifferent as to whom He punished so long as some one suffered. But He, being Himself very God, the Son of the Father, the administrator of the moral law and judge of the world, of His own will became man, and suffered what the sin of the world laid upon Him, in order that He might lift the world out of sin. Voluntary self-sacrifice for others is at least not to be described as injustice. At least we rejoice to recognize that God accepts such self-sacrifice. It is to vicarious self-sacrifice like our Lord's that the human race owes the greater part of whatever moral progress it has hitherto made.

Secondly, God is not represented as imposing any specially devised punishment on His only Son in our nature. As the matter is stated in the New Testament, He required of Him obedience, the obedience proper to man; and, if we regard sympathy with our fellow men as a part of our duty to God, we may say obedience only. Thus, 'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God' is the one cry of the Christ. In His simple acceptance of the whole of human duty lies the moral essence and value of His sacrifice. All the physical and mental sufferings of Christ came out of His fulfilment of the human ideal, Godward and manward, and were involved in it. He died because obedience to the terms of His mission—'the word of truth, and meekness, and righteousness'—in a world of sin such as this is, involved dying. 'He was obedient' without reserve—'unto death, even the death of the cross[1].' The value of the bloodshedding lies in this, so far as Scripture enables us to judge—that it represents utter obedience under conditions which human sin, the sin of Jews and Gentiles, laid upon Him: and it was in this sense, which does not leave out of consideration the mental torment caused to His sinless spirit by contact with sin[2], that He 'bare our sins in his body on the tree,' and that 'the Lord made to light on him the iniquity of us all.' What is ascribed to the Father is that He 'spared not' His only Son by miraculously exempting Him from the consequences of His mission; and that He foresaw, overruled, and used for His own wise and loving purposes the sin of men[3].

Thirdly and lastly, the Christ (as represented in the New Testament) did not suffer in order that we might be let off the punishment for our own sins, but in order to bring us to God. 'By his stripes we are'—not excused punishment, but—'healed.' In fact, there are two distinguishable punishments for sin. There is the spiritual punishment, which is involved in being morally alienated from God, which may become irreversible and eternal, but which is gone when the moral alienation is gone. From this Christ delivers us in making us at one again with the Father, but He Himself did not endure it. God forbid that we should imagine such a thing! Besides this there is the temporal penalty which our sins bring as inevitable consequences upon ourselves and upon the race. All these consequences of human sin the sinless Christ bore for us, but not that we might be let off bearing them. We must bear them too—both the death of the body and the chastisement of particular sins. Christ bore the punishment of sins that were not His own, in order that in our case the punishments of sins which are our own might, through His bringing us back to God, be converted into healing chastisements and gracious penances. The record of God's dealings with His saints is still, as in Ps. xcix. 8, that they are heard, forgiven and punished.

How gratuitously then the idea of injustice has been introduced into the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice for us becomes evident when once it is brought within the scriptural limits. Christ suffered voluntarily. He suffered simply what was involved in becoming man in a world of sin. He suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us back to God, that so we might have grace to bear our own sufferings and share His.

This alone, it seems to me, is what the New Testament certainly teaches. And the matter of most importance is that, ridding our minds of distracting and often needless difficulties, we should drink in, with heart and intelligence alike, the full force of what is certainly part of the Gospel—the doctrine of the one, full, perfect, and sufficient atonement with the Father, won for us by the self-sacrifice of the Christ.

NOTE E. See vol. i. p. 196.

EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE FALL.

There is a wide-spread and popular notion that a marked contradiction exists between the biological theory of evolution and the Christian doctrine of the Fall, which may be stated and examined under several heads:—

I.—'According to the theory of evolution man began his career at the bottom, emerging from purely animal life, and slowly struggled upwards to his present level of attainment. According to the Christian doctrine, on the contrary, he was created perfect, and then subsequently fell into sin and accompanying misery. Thus, according to one theory, man began at the bottom; according to the other, he began at the top.'

Now there is no doubt that when so stated the evidence is all in favour of the scientific point of view, and against the Christian. But such a contrast requires the greatest modification on both sides before it can be taken as truly representing the facts. Thus, it is not the case that the Bible suggests that man was created perfect, i.e. perfectly developed, and that his later course has been simply the effect of the Fall, i.e. a downward course. Leaving first out of account Gen. i-iii, we notice that the Bible is conspicuously, and in marked contrast to the religious books of other nations, the book of development. It looks continuously and systematically forward, not backward, for the perfecting of man. It traces the beginning of civilization in Abel, the keeper of sheep, Cain, the tiller of the ground, in Jabal, 'the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle,' in Jubal, the father of music, 'of all such as handle the harp and pipe,' in Tubal Cain, the first forger of brass and iron work; it indicates the origin of religious worship (in some sense) at the time of Enoch, and the origin of building with the tower of Babel. The names of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, &c., represent stages of advance along the line of a chosen people; and later on it appears also that upon the chosen people centres a hope for all nations, and a purpose is discovered in universal history. The special intellectual qualities of various races or civilizations, as of Egypt and Tyre, are recognized by some of the prophets, and recognized as part of a divine purpose for the world[1]. The Bible then is the book of development; it looks forward, not backward. But it is also true that all this development is represented as having been (we may say) a second-best thing. It has not been according to God's first purpose. There has been a great and continual hindrance, which has consisted in a persistent rebellion or sin on man's part against God; and this again has had its root in a certain perversion of the heart of mankind which is regarded as approximately universal. If we now take into account again the first three chapters of Genesis (which, however, have left much less trace than is commonly supposed in the Old Testament as a whole[2]) we find that they describe an original act of rebellion on the part of the first human pair, which is there spoken of as at least entailing external consequences of a penal sort upon their descendants—that is death, pain, and the loss of Paradise; and that later, especially in the teaching of St. Paul, the universal moral flaw in human nature (original sin) is also represented as having its source in this initial act of rebellion.

Sin is therefore, according to our Christian scriptures, something unnatural to man: the violation of his nature by his rebellion; and it is a continual element of deterioration. But the idea that man was created perfect, i.e. so as not to need development, is not suggested. No doubt theologians, from the age of Augustine down to recent times, have done something more than suggest it. Thus Robert South supposes that 'an Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise'; and Milton implanted the idea in the imagination of Englishmen; but it is in no way suggested by the Bible, and was expressly repudiated by the earliest Christian theologians in east and west. Thus, in answer to the question whether Adam was formed perfect or imperfect, Clement of Alexandria replied, 'They shall learn from us that he was not perfect in respect of his creation, but in a fit condition to receive virtue.' And Irenaeus says that it was in the power of God to make men perfect from the beginning, but that such an initial perfection would be contrary to the law of human nature, which is the law of gradual growth[3]. We must therefore modify the statement of Christian doctrine from which we started, thus:—Man has been slowly led, or has slowly developed, towards the divine ideal of his Creator; but his actual development has been much less rapid and constant than it might have been, owing to the fact of sin from which he might have been free.

Now, can it be fairly said that science can take any legitimate exception to such a statement? The progress of man which anthropological science discloses is very broken, very partial; if development of some sort is universal, progress is very rare, distinct deterioration not uncommon. Science, like poetry and philosophy, must bear witness to the disappointing element in human nature, of which He was so conscious of whom it is said that 'He did not trust himself to man, because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man'—the sad secret of human untrustworthiness and unsatisfactoriness[4].

Again, can science assert that this actual development of man, so thwarted and tainted and partial, has been the only possible development, and that there could not have been a better? If it cannot say this, there is in the general view of human progress and deterioration no antagonism between religion and science.

II.—But it may be said, 'Science certainly does say that the actual development of man has been the only possible development. Science excludes the idea of sin in the sense of something which need not have happened, because it excludes the idea of freedom or contingency altogether. Good and bad characters are like good and bad apples—mere facts of natural growth'; or more suggestively, 'Sin (so called) is only the survival of brute instincts, which, from a higher condition of evolution, men have come to be ashamed of.'

It cannot be made too emphatic that here is the real battle-ground of religion and science to-day, though the fact is often concealed in popular controversy. I do not believe there is any real difficulty in adjusting sufficiently the relations of religion and science as to the Fall when once the idea of sin has been admitted—that is, the idea of free, responsible action, with its correlative, the possibility of wrong action which might have been avoided. Christian and other teachers have, no doubt, often failed to see how limited human freedom is, but they have never been wrong in asserting that the reality of freedom within limits is essential to Christianity and morality. Sin is not a mere fact of nature. It is a perversion which ought not to have been. This subject is not what is directly before us now; but the heart of the controversy is here; and I will make the following very brief remarks upon it.

(1) A theory that cannot be put into practice, or a theory that cannot account for the facts, is a false or at least inadequate theory. Now the theory of necessary determinism cannot be put into practice. To believe that our own conduct is not really under our own control—that the idea of responsibility is at bottom an illusion—is to destroy the basis of human life and education. Even the holders of the theory admit that it must be kept out of sight in practice.

Further, it is a theory that cannot account for the facts—viz. for the existence of the universal sense of responsibility; and the application to human action of moral blame and praise, which penetrates the whole of thought and language, and which holds too large a place in human life to be a delusion. We are not ashamed of a physical accident, but we are ashamed of telling a lie. And this difference is fundamental and based on reality.

(2) The Christian assumption may be stated as follows: granted that we cannot increase the sum of force which passes from external sources into our system, and passes out again in manifold forms of human action, yet within certain limits we can direct it for good or evil—i.e. the 'voluntary' part of a man's action may be determined from below, so to speak, by purely animal motives, or by rational and spiritual motives. In the latter case, the action is of the proper human quality, and stamps a rational and spiritual character upon all that falls within its range. In the former case, it may be truly regarded as a survival of the physical instincts of animal progenitors, and no doubt it emerges as a part of the physical order of the world. But, considered as human action, it represents a lapse, a culpable subordination of the higher to the lower in our nature, a violation of the law proper to manhood[5]. This is the point. St. John says, 'All sin is lawlessness,' and (by the exact form of expression which he uses) he implies also that all lawlessness is sin. Here, and here only where voluntary action begins, do you see violation of law, and therefore, within limits, a disturbance of the divine order—something which ought to have been otherwise.

(3) The belief that the moral evil of our nature does not properly belong to our nature but is its violation, and that if once the will be set right it can be remedied, has been the secret of the moral strength of Christianity. Christianity has said to all men, However corrupted your nature, the corruption does not essentially belong to you. Give your wills to God, and, if slowly, yet surely, if not fully in this world, then beyond it, all can be set right. 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' And the practical power of this appeal, shows its agreement with reality.

(4) On the other hand, it cannot be claimed that the theory is contrary to any real scientific knowledge; for biology confesses that it knows very little as to the actual methods by which force is redistributed in human action. It is contrary only to some large and unverifiable assumptions—assumptions which ignore the abstract character of biological psychology, as of other sciences.

Now granted this reality of free voluntary action, it will hardly be denied that history discloses to us a practically universal prevalence of sin[6], in the present and in the past; and we can hardly fail to perceive, lying behind actual sins, a tendency to sin—what Shelley calls 'the ineradicable taint of sin,' a perverse inclination inhering in the stock of our manhood, which is what theology calls original sin.

III.—But here a more modern objection occurs. Christianity assumes that this moral flaw or taint, weakness or grossness, in human nature is the outcome of actual transgressions, in other words that original sin is due to actual sin, whereas the tendency of recent biological science is to deny that acquired characters can be inherited, and therefore to deny that any acts of any man or men could have any effect on the congenital moral nature of their descendants; the taint or fault in human nature, must be a taint or fault in that original substance which what is called man derived from his pre-human ancestry. To this I reply:—This is no doubt the view which Professor Weismann has made more or less prevalent. The substance of heredity ('germ-plasm') is taken to be a substance per se, which has always occupied a special 'sphere' of its own, without any contact with that of 'somatoplasm' further than is required for its lodgement or nutrition; hence it can never be in any degree modified as to its hereditary qualities by use-inheritance. It has been absolutely continuous 'since the first origin of life.'

But this doctrine does not appear yet to have assumed a fixed form[7]; and in its extreme or absolute form it is highly disputable, and rejected by large sections of biologists. Professor Haeckel[8] declares contemptuously that he should feel it more reasonable to accept the Mosaic account of special creations! The late Mr. Romanes, after summing up the evidence on both sides without any contempt, decides: 'No one is thus far entitled to conclude against the possible transmission of acquired characters[9].' Again, 'that this substance of heredity is largely continuous and highly stable, I see many and cogent reasons for believing. But that this substance has been uninterruptedly continuous since the origin of life, or absolutely stable since the origin of sexual propagation, I see even more and better reasons for disbelieving[10].' And he remarks[11], 'I doubt not Weismann himself would be the first to allow that his theory of heredity encounters greater difficulties in the domain of ethics than in any other—unless indeed, it be that of religion.'

I ought to add, in view of the apparently improbable event of the doctrine of Weismann becoming in its absolute form the accepted doctrine of biologists, that of course it only concerns the material organism. No one who is not a materialist would deny the possibility of the character of the parent modifying at its very root that of the child, without even the smallest conceivable modification of the physical organism; because in the origination of a spiritual personality, and in the link which binds it to the antecedent personalities to which it owes its being, there is that which lies outside the purview of biological science. There may be an inheritance of sinful tendencies derived from sinful acts in the region of the spiritual personality, even if no physical transmission is possible.

However it be explained, it appears to be the case that Christianity is bound to maintain the position that in the region of moral character there is, in fact, a solidarity in humanity. We are bound together. Our acts, as they form our own character, do somehow or other, however slightly, modify the characters of our descendants for good or evil. And this modification of the tendencies of the race by the acts of individuals may have been more marked at the beginning than it is to-day.

On the other hand Christianity is not in any way interested in denying that man derives a physical heritage of habits and tendencies from a pre-human ancestry. All I imagine that Christianity is interested in affirming is this—that when the animal organism became the dwelling-place of the human spirit (so to speak) that human spirit might have taken one of two courses. It might have followed the path of the divine will; and in that case human development would have represented a steady and gradual spiritualizing of the animal nature reaching on towards perfection. It might have taken, on the other hand, and did in fact take (more or less), the line of wilful disobedience. And the moral effects of this wilfulness and disobedience from the beginning onwards have been felt from parent to son. So that the springs of human conduct have been weakened and perverted, and no man has started without some bias in the wrong direction which would not have been there if his ancestors for many generations had been true to God.

It is worth noticing in passing that 'original sin' is not a fixed quantity derived from one lapse of the original man, but is a moral weakness continually reinforced by every actual transgression, and, on the other hand, reduced in force by moral resistance and self-control. Individuals start at very different levels of depravity. Only it would appear that practically in no man but One is there any reason to believe the fundamental nature immaculate.

IV.—But it will be said 'You have not yet touched upon a big central contradiction between religion and science. According to the Christian doctrine mankind is derived from a single specifically human pair, made human by a special inspiration of the Divine Spirit. According to the theory of evolution, a certain species of apes under specially favourable conditions gradually advanced to become what might be called man, though of a very low type.' To this I am inclined to make reply thus: Christianity is really bound up with maintaining four positions—(1) the reality of moral freedom; (2) the fact of sin, properly so called as distinct from imperfection; (3) its practical universality, at least as an inherited tendency; and (4) the unity of the human race in such sense that the same postulates may be made with regard to all men, and the same capacity for moral redemption (more or less) assumed to be in them. Now, as regards the first three of these positions enough has been said already, and the last of them does not appear to be at present in dispute between science and religion. St. Paul says, 'God made of one' (or 'of one blood,' for this reading is possibly right) 'every nation of men' (Acts xvii. 26). And of one blood, if not of one individual, all men are, according to the present conclusions of biological science. A recent work on ethnology, by Mr. Keane (Cambridge Geographical Series), speaks thus:—'The hominidae are not separately evolved in an absolute sense—i.e. from so many different anthropoid precursors, but the present primary divisions are separately evolved from so many different pleistocene precursors, themselves evolved through a single pliocene prototype from a single anthropoid precursor[12].'

It does not seem to me, then, that Christianity is really bound up with anything more than the unity of the human race, which science also strongly asserts. But to pass from these positions, which may be regarded as certain, to something more conjectural (apart from any question of the literary character of Genesis iii), we may argue thus: Sin is a fact having the same character universally in human history, though the sense of sin has varied greatly, reaching back as far as human history extends. This would lead us to suppose that it goes back to the roots of the race. It suggests some original fall, some tainting of the race in its origin. I do not see, then, anything absurd or contrary to evidence in such a hypothesis as this.—The Divine Spirit is assumed to be at work in all the development of the world. The 'laws of nature' are but His methods. At a certain moment a new thing had emerged in the universe hitherto inorganic. It was the fact of life. It was new[13]. But it was in continuity with what had gone before. This principle of life had its great development, vegetable and animal. It had attained a form in certain anthropoid apes such as we are familiar with in men. Suppose then that the Divine Spirit breathes Himself, again in a new way, into one single pair or group of these anthropoid animals. There is lodged in them for the first time a germ of spiritual consciousness, continuous with animal intelligence, and yet distinct from it. From this pair or group humanity has its origin. If they and their offspring had been true to their spiritual capacities the animal nature would have been more rapidly spiritualized in motives and tendencies. Development—physical, moral, spiritual—would have been steady and glorious. Whereas there was a fall at the very root of our humanity; and the fall was repeated and reiterated and renewed, and the development of our manhood was tainted and spoiled. There was a lapse into approximately animal condition, which is dimly known to us as primitive savagery. So that the condition of savage man is a parody of what God intended man in his undeveloped stages to be, just as the condition of civilized man in London and Paris is a parody of what God intended developed man to come to. And there have been long and dreary epochs when men have seemed to lose almost all human ideals and divine aspirations; when, in St. Paul's phrase, they were 'alive without the law,' living a physical life unvisited by the remorse consequent upon any knowledge of better things. And there have been, on the other hand, epochs and special occasions of spiritual opportunity and spiritual restorations. And so, on the whole, side by side with the continually deteriorating effect of sin, has gone on the slow process of redemption, the undoing of the evil of sin and the realization of the divine purpose for man. Such an idea of human history, partly only hypothetical, partly assured, conflicts with no scientific ethnology, and is but a restatement of old-fashioned Christianity in all that has religious importance.

V.—Of course, in all this I am assuming that the doctrine of sin and of the Fall in its true importance has a much securer basis than the supposition that Genesis iii is literal history. The doctrine of the Fall is, as I have said, not separable from the doctrine of sin, or the doctrine of sin from that of moral freedom. It rests upon the broad basis of human experience, especially upon Christian experience, which is bound up with its reality. Most of all it rests, for Christians, on the teaching of Christ. For Christ's teaching and action postulate throughout the doctrine of sin. But that doctrine in its turn goes back upon the Old Testament, which is full of the truth that the evils of human nature are due, not to its essential constitution, but to man's wilfulness and its results; that the disordering force in human nature has been moral, the force of sin; that human history represents in one aspect a fall from a divine purpose, a fall constantly reiterated and renewed in acts of disobedience. These constant acts of disobedience are in part caused by an evil heart in human nature, and this in its turn exhibits the fruits of past sins. Granted this, the story in Genesis iii, whether it be historical or whether (as not only many modern Christians, but some of the greatest of early Christians, have thought) it be not an historical account of a single event, but a generalized account of what is continually happening, has, at any rate, vital spiritual truth. The character of its inspiration is apparent. Teach a child what sin is, first of all on the ground of general Christian experience and the teaching of Christ, and then read to it the story of Genesis iii, and the child must perforce recognize the truth in a form in which it cannot be forgotten. There in that story all the main points of truth as to the meaning of sin are suggested, and the main sources of error precluded. Sin is not our nature, but wilfulness; sin is disobedience to the divine law, the refusal of trust in God; there is such a thing as being tempted to sin, and yielding to it, and then finding that we have been deceived, being conscience-stricken and fearing to face God; and the curse of our manhood springs from nowhere ultimately but our own evil heart. And if our sins lay us under an outward discipline, which is God's punishment, yet in the very discipline lies the hope of our recovery. God the destroyer is also the God who promises redemption. Thus all that we most need to know about God and man, about obedience and disobedience, about temptation, about the blessing and the cursing of human nature, about conscience good and bad, is to be found in the story of Genesis iii, written in language suitable to the childhood of the individual and of the race.

VI.—But once more, and for the last time, the biologist will reply, 'You are not going to get off so easily. The fact of physical death is inextricably interwoven into the structural growth of the world long before men appeared. But Christianity regards it as a mere consequence of human sin.' This is not the case. Long before science had investigated the early history of life on our globe, Christian teachers both in East and in West—St. Augustine as well as St. Athanasius—had taught that death is the law of physical nature, that it had been in the world before man, and that 'man was by nature mortal,' because, as being animal, he was subject to death. How, then, do they interpret the language of Scripture? In this way: They hold that if man had been true to his spiritual nature, the supernatural life, the life in God, would have blunted the forces of corruption, and lifted him into a higher and immortal state.

Certainly, in some sense, death, as we know it, for man, is regarded, especially in the New Testament, as the penalty of sin. But then what do we mean by death? If sin is said to have introduced human death, Christ is constantly said to have abolished it. 'This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.' 'Whosoever believeth on me shall never die.' 'Christ Jesus abolished death.' Sin, then, we may suppose, only introduced death in some sense such as that in which Christ abolished it. Christ has not abolished the physical transition from this world to the invisible world, but He has robbed it of its terror, its sting, its misery. Apart from sin we may suppose man would not have died; that is, he would never have had that horrible experience which he has called death. There would have been only some transition full of a glorious hope from one state of being to another.

We are again in the region of conjecture. All that I am here interested in asserting is that Christianity never has held to the position that human sin first introduced death into the world. What it has taught is that human death, as men have known it, with its horror and its misery, has represented not God's intention for man, but the curse of sin.

VII.—Now I have endeavoured to face and meet the points which are urged in the name of science against the Christian doctrine of the Fall. I have endeavoured to point out that what is essential to Christianity is to believe in the reality of moral freedom, and the consequent reality of sin, as something which need not have been in the individual, or in the race considered as a unity. This is all that Christianity is really pledged to maintain. In maintaining this we are maintaining what is absolutely essential to the moral well-being of the race, and, moreover, what has the deepest roots in man's moral experience and in the teaching of Christ. In holding this we hold the doctrine of the Fall, a doctrine, that is, that man's condition has been throughout a parody of the divine intention, owing to the fact of sin tainting and spoiling his development from the root. But Christianity is not in any kind of way pledged against the doctrine of development, only against the doctrine which no reasonable science can hold, that the actual development of man has been the best or only possible one. Nor, I have urged, can it be reasonably said that the Christian doctrine of sin and of the Fall is bound up with one particular interpretation of Genesis iii. All, then, that we must admit in the way of collision between Christianity and science is, on the one hand, that Christianity is not intended to teach men science, and that when there is any great advance in human knowledge it takes a little while for Christianity to extricate itself from the meshes of the language and ideas belonging to one stage of scientific knowledge, and to assimilate the terms and ideas of the new. But, on the other hand, there is perennial and necessary warfare between Christianity and materialistic science, or a science which denies the reality of moral freedom. And as to Christianity giving up what is proper to its own ground—its teaching about freedom and sin and the Fall, and God's purpose for man, and the love shown in his redemption—to give up this is to give up what is the best and deepest motive of human progress, and what is most surely certificated by the witness of Christ and the spiritual experience of Christendom. Indeed all schemes of human improvement are shallow and inadequate, which do not deal with man as what, in fact, he has been proved to be, a sinful, that is a fallen, being, needing not only education but redemption.

Before leaving this attempt to show that there is no necessary conflict between biological and theological science, it is important to call the attention of the intelligent public to the fact that what formerly appeared to be the solid consistency of the 'Darwinian' creed, has been broken up into a state not far removed from chaos. It has become apparent how very little way has really been made towards showing what have been the actual factors in evolution—how the fact of evolution through variation has actually occurred. Thus Mr. Bateson[14] remarks, 'If the study of variation can serve no other end, it may make us remember that the complexity of the problem of specific difference is hardly less now than it was when Darwin first showed that natural history is a problem, and no vain riddle.' What is the cause of variations occurring? What law do they exhibit in their occurrence? Do variations occur with a certain degree of sudden completeness[15]? Or how are we to explain the maintenance of variations, which in a more developed stage are to be very useful, before they can be shown to be useful at all? What is the place held in evolution by 'natural selection'? What, if any, the place held by use-inheritance? Is the factor of 'mimicry,' supported by Darwin, an important or even real factor in evolution? What is to be the issue of the controversy between the biologist and the physicist on the question of the time required for organic development? Are we to suppose that organic development at the beginning proceeded very much more rapidly than at a later stage? Or even that it exhibited laws of which we have no experience now, such as would admit of a 'natural' development of life out of what is not living? All these, and many more questions, appear to be so completely open that, granted the general theory of continuous evolution as against special creation, hardly anything as regards the factors or causes of evolution can be said to be scientifically settled. Thus on such subjects as the origin of the human race, its exact relation to an animal ancestry, and the right interpretation of the fact of sin, before science can make demands on theology, there must be more agreement in her own camp.

NOTE F. See vol. i. p. 215.

BAPTISM BY IMMERSION AND BY AFFUSION.

The following passage in the Didache, c. 7, is of the plainest importance for the history of this matter: 'If thou have not living [i.e. running] water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. And if thou have not either [in sufficient amount for baptism, i.e. immersion in the water] pour forth water thrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.' Cf. Dr. Taylor, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Cambridge, 1886), p. 52: 'The primitive mode of baptism was by immersion. According to the Jewish rite a ring on the finger, a band confining the hair, or anything that in the least degree broke the continuity of contact with the water, was held to invalidate the act. The Greek word "baptize," like the Hebrew tabol, means to dip: to "baptize" a ship is to sink it. The construction [in the above passage of the Didache] "baptize into other water," points to immersion, as likewise does Hermas, when he writes (Simil. 9): "They go down therefore into the water dead, and come up living;" and Barnabas (chap. xi): "Herein he saith that we go down into the water laden with sins and filthiness, and come up bearing fruit in our heart, and having our fear and our hope towards Jesus in the Spirit." This was still the normal way of administering the rite, but it was no longer insisted upon as necessary: "If thou have not either," not enough of "living" or "other" water for immersion, "pour water thrice upon the head," &c.'

NOTE G. See vol. ii. p. 136.

A PRAYER OF JEREMY TAYLOR.

O holy and almighty God, Father of mercies, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Thy love and eternal mercies, I adore and praise and glorify Thy infinite and unspeakable love and wisdom; who hast sent Thy Son from the bosom of felicities to take upon Him our nature and our misery and our guilt, and hast made the Son of God to become the Son of Man, that we might become the sons of God and partakers of the divine nature; since Thou hast so exalted human nature be pleased also to sanctify my person, that by a conformity to the humility and laws and sufferings of my dearest Saviour I may be united to His Spirit, and be made all one with the most holy Jesus. Amen.

O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying in his blood and sin and misery, and didst choose our sadnesses and sorrows that Thou mightest make us to partake of Thy felicities; Let Thine eyes pity me, Thy hands support me, Thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in my way to heaven; let me dwell in Thy heart, be instructed with Thy wisdom, moved by Thy affections, choose with Thy will, and be clothed with Thy righteousness; that in the day of judgement I may be found having on Thy garments, sealed with Thy impression; and that, bearing upon every faculty and member the character of my elder Brother, I may not be cast out with strangers and unbelievers. Amen.

O holy and ever blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow the Holy Virgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to conceive by a miraculous and mysterious manner; be pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten my spirit, that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear Him in my mind, and may grow up to the fullness of the stature of Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen.

To God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; to the eternal Son that was incarnate and born of a virgin; to the Spirit of the Father and the Son, be all honour and glory, worship and adoration, now and for ever. Amen.—Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living; see his Works, vol. iii. p. 238.

NOTE H. See vol. ii. p. 147.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MAXIM—'IN NECESSARIIS UNITAS, ETC.'

The expression 'In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in omnibus caritas' is cited by Richard Baxter in the dedication of On the True and Only Way of Concord of all Christian Churches, 1679, thus, 'I once more quote you the pacificator's old and despised words.' But the pacificator appears to be no one older than a Protestant who wrote (1620 to 1640), under the name of Rupertus Meldenius, a Paraenesis votiva pro pace ecclesiae ad theologos Augustanae Confessionis. In the Paraenesis occurs the sentence 'si nos servaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non necessariis libertatem, in utrisque caritatem optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.' See A. P. Stanley in Macmillan, Sep., 1875, referring to G. C. F. Lücke, Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die ursprüngliche Fonn und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedensspruchs: 'in necessariis unitas &c.,' Göttingen, 1850.

This information was supplied me in correction of a mistaken attribution of the saying of which I was guilty in a sermon; and has been verified for me by Mr. Arthur Hirtzel. The saying has been commonly attributed to St. Augustine, and indeed the matter of it is thoroughly in his spirit; cf. my Ephesians, p. 272; and see also De Gen. ad litt., viii. 5: 'Melius est dubitare de occultis quam litigare de incertis.' De Civ. Dei, xix. 18: 'qua [i.e. faith in scripture] salva atque certa, de quibusdam rebus quas neque sensu, neque ratione percepimus, neque nobis per Scripturam canonicam claruerunt, nec per testes, quibus non credere absurdum est, in nostram notitiam pervenerunt, sine iusta reprehensione dubitamus.'

NOTE I. See vol. ii. p. 179.

ST. AUGUSTINE'S TEACHING THAT 'THE CHURCH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST OFFERED IN THE EUCHARIST.'

The following passages are full of interest:—De Civ. D. x. 6: 'So that the whole redeemed city, that is the congregation and society of the saints, is offered as a universal sacrifice to God by the High Priest, who offered nothing less than Himself in suffering for us, so that we might become the body of so glorious a head, according to that 'form of a servant' which He had taken. For it was this (our human nature) that He offered, in this that He was offered, because it is in respect of this that He is mediator, priest and sacrifice.' Then after a reference to Rom. xii. 1-6 he continues, 'This is the Christian sacrifice: the "many" become "one body in Christ." And it is this that the Church celebrates by means of the sacrament of the altar, familiar to the faithful, where it is shown to her that in what she offers she herself is offered.' And x. 20: Of Christ's perfect sacrifice of Himself 'He willed the Church's sacrifice to be a daily sacrament. For as she is the body of Him the head, she learns through Him to offer up herself.' Again xix. 23: 'God's most glorious and best sacrifice is we ourselves, that is His city, of which we celebrate the mystery in our oblations, which are known to the faithful.' Cf. xxii. 10: 'The sacrifice itself is the body of Christ, which is not offered to them (the martyrs), for they themselves also are it' (quia hoc sunt et ipsi). Cf. Serm. 227: 'If you have well received (the body of Christ in the sacrament) you are what you have received ... He willed us to be His sacrifice.'

In all this we have a very plain and much forgotten teaching. But we must not misunderstand St. Augustine's use of apparently exclusive language—as if the sacrifice of ourselves was the only sacrifice offered in the eucharist. The sacrifice of the Church is offered up through Christ. Thus he also speaks of the celebration of the eucharist (on the occasion of his mother's death, Conf. ix. 12) in the phrase 'the sacrifice of our ransom (pretii nostri) was offered for her.'

We do well to remember by the way that in De Civ. x. 5, 6, St. Augustine twice over defines what he means by sacrifice thus: 'A true sacrifice is everything that is done in order that we may by a holy fellowship inhere in God.'

OXFORD: HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

A Series of Simple Expositions of Portions of the New Testament

BY THE

REV. CHARLES GORE.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. In Two Vols.

IN CONTEMPLATION.

THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.