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GOD’S METHOD OF GOVERNMENT.
A DIALOGUE.
BY THE LATE
BEV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��<GOD’S METHOD OF GOVERNMENT.
PROPOSE discoursing this evening upon certain
evangelical or Calvinistical views of God’s method
•of government. And I think I shall be able to treat
the subject more fairly if I throw it into the form of a
supposed dialogue, held between three gentlemen in one
of the private rooms of an Edinburgh hotel. The
gentlemen were comparatively strangers to each other,
and knew nothing of each other’s religious creed. But
they had met in a tour through the Highlands, and
being pleased with each other’s company, they had kept
together, and on their way homewards had stopped in
Edinburgh, to see what sights therein may be seen.
Amongst other places, they had been to John Knox’s
house, and had looked out of the window whence he
had frequently addressed the people. In the course of
some remarks upon the house, the conversation which
I am now to relate to you arose. The three gentlemen
will be distinguished by the names, Orthodoxies, Mysticus, and Dubitans, each expressive of their respective
stand-points. Orthodoxies, a Calvinist of the old ortho
dox school; Mysticus, one of those semi-mystical theo
logians of the present day, who attempt by metaphysics
to explain away or make appear rational and consistent
with modern thought, the essential principles of the old
system; and Dubitans, who has discarded all belief in
a supernatural revelation, and finds his God revealed in
the whole course of nature.
Orthodoxus had just said he thought something
more ought to be done by the civil authorities for the
preservation of the house, and laying open to the public
I
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God’s Method of Government.
so precious a memorial of the Reformation, when Dubitans rejoined that as a relic of the Reformation it had
some interest; hut, for his part, that interest became
wholly lost when it became associated with the name
of Knox, the least learned, the least gifted, and there
fore the most narrow and bigotted of all the reformers.
Orthodox'us. I am surprised to hear you say so. To
me it seems all that is free and religious in this land
must be ascribed to Knox and those who were associ
ated with him.
Dubitans. With regard to the freedom, I think that
a great mistake. The leaders of the movement did
nothing but give to it the definite form which it as
sumed. The people were the real source of the living,
free spirit which established the Reformation and the
political revolution which followed it; and had Knox
and the other leaders never existed, the freedom would
have been created in other, and possibly better, forms.
And then, with regard to the religion, what Knox
really did was to narrow the views of Calvin, and rivet
his system upon the nation in harsher and more repul
sive forms.
0. I fear by what you say you do not accept the
doctrines of Calvinism, and have slipped away from
that sure -ground of anchorage for some one of the new
fangled systems which have sprung up in the present
day. If such be the case, I trust you are looking well
to the ground on which you stand, and are not trusting
your precious, immortal soul to the uncertain results of
mere idle speculation.
D. It is because I have renounced idle speculation,
and am resting all my beliefs upon pure and simple
facts, that I have rejected Calvinism and all other forms
of supernaturalism.
0. My dear sir, you surely mistake. Calvinism rests
upon the most indubitable facts in existence. It appeals
to the experience of all mankind in confirmation of its
truths, and is derived from a revelation established by
�A Dialogue.
5
the most certain evidence. If you rested your beliefs
upon facts, you would most assuredly accept the Calvinistical- system.
D. Will you kindly mention to me one or two of
those facts which lie at the foundation of the system 1
0. Readily. And first, and most important of all,,
is the doctrine, or fact rather, of human depravity..
No one can doubt that human nature is depraved.
The evidence of it appears wherever we turn. The
policeman in the streets is a walking testimony to the
sad truth. Our gaols, our gallows, our laws, our judges,
all proclaim it aloud. The little infant just born, by
its cries of angry passion, bears witness. And we all
go astray from our birth, speaking lies. What sadder
proof could we have of the all-important scriptural doc
trine of human depravity ?
D. In conversations upon such subjects it is
absolutely necessary to have clear definitions of the
terms we employ. Will you therefore be kind enough
to explain to me what you mean by human depravity1?
0. By human depravity I mean that state of sin and
wickedness into which we have come by Adam’s trans
gression, in virtue of which all men at all times commit
sin or tend to the commission of sin.
D. And do you mean to say then that our gaols,
policemen, and laws, and the passions of infants, prove
that our nature became corrupted through Adam’s
transgression ?
0. No. They do not exactly prove that; but they
prove that our nature is corrupt.
D. Then you have given me in your definition two
factors, an alleged fact and an opinion.’ The alleged
fact is that all men universally sin. The opinion is
that this fact of sin arises out of the corruption of
men’s original nature through the sin of Adam. Ex
perience establishes the fact, you say. The opinion is
not derived from experience, but from the Bible.
0. You hardly state the fact of experience strong
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enough. Facts show not only that men universally
sin, hut also that their nature itself is sinful and
corrupt.
D. How so ?
0. Why, you must suppose that the nature which
always produces sin is in itself sinful and corrupt.
D. You must suppose—z.e., you must infer, conclude
by reason. So that again I remind you of my former
statement, experience merely gives the fact of universal
sin. The rest is inference, supposition, reasoning,
opinion, grafted upon the fact. Mow, to a certain
extent I admit the fact that men universally sin; but
I altogether contest the opinion that the sin proves a
sinful and corrupt nature.
0. Not prove a sinful and corrupt nature ! Then,
in the name of common sense, what does it prove ?
Does the vine produce thistles ? or the olive, brambles ?
D. The sins which men commit are transgressions
of some one or the other of the laws of their nature,
and they commit them through the want of knowledge
or sufficient self-discipline and control to act according
to the knowledge. They prove, therefore, not depravity,
but imperfection.
M. I do not accept our friend’s full system of
Calvinism, with its doctrine of universal depravity,
but there is the fact of sin existing in the world, the
darkest and most terrible evil, cursing man’s whole
existence.
D. I must confess I do not feel sin to be this dark
and terrible thing you represent it. You orthodox
people always seem to me to speak of it as though it
were a something of a distinct existence poured into
man’s heart and overwhelming his whole being in
ceaseless and unmitigated misery and wretchedness.
It is nothing of the kind. Sin is doing something
which does not lead to happiness. upon the whole and
in the long run. It is neither more nor less than that.
Now the great amount of happiness men enjoy shews
�A Dialogue.
7
me pretty conclusively that after all is said and done,
their wickedness is anything but of the character you
orthodox people make out. Upon the whole, the sum
of their happiness is much greater than the sum of
their miseries.
0. You have very greatly underrated the true
character of sin. Sin is the transgression of, or want
of conformity with, God’s holy and righteous law,
and the soul which sinneth shall die. It involves,
therefore, the eternal death of the soul, whatever
amount of happiness the sinner in his ignorance may
enjoy.
D. Observe, you are now again bringing in specula
tive opinions, and I thought we had agreed to rest our
beliefs upon facts. I have said that sin is trangression
of law, and by that I mean physical and intellectual,
as well as moral laws. As to the effects of sin, we
know them by experience. Whenever we violate a
law, it leads to suffering of some kind. But still,
experience proves that the suffering is much less than
the happiness in the world, and therefore, I say the
sin cannot exist to anything like the extent, or be
anything like so great an evil as you make out.
M. My conviction is, the real character and evil of
sin can only be seen in the incarnation and sacrifice of
the Son of God. When we see God giving up unto
the accursed death of the cross his only begotten Son,
and the Son voluntarily surrendering himself to death
that he may redeem men from sin, it is then that sin
comes out in its true character. And I do not mean
by this merely that it cost the Son of God so much
suffering to redeem men from it, but that its evil
character is seen in its contrast and antagonism to the
pure and holy love of God manifested in the sacrifice
of his Son.
0. I must just put in one word. I think our friend
Mysticus does not sufficiently bring out the infinite
sufferings the Son of God endured on the Cross to
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God's Method of Government.
atone for the transgressions of his elect. Those
infinite sufferings show above all things the exceedingly
dreadful and evil character of sin.
D. Of course, gentlemen so thoroughly versed in the
theology of your Church as you appear to be, will be
able to explain a point or two I never could understand
even when I myself was orthodox, but which are
essential to the whole system. Will you tell me in
what sense God made a sacrifice when he gave up his
Son ? and in what sense the Son of God made a sacri
fice when he gave himself up, as you call it 1
0. In what sense God made a sacrifice ? Why, he
sent forth his co-equal and co-eternal son as the infant
of the Virgin Mary, in the humiliating form of sinful
flesh, to live a life of ignominy and reproach, to endure
persecution and suffering, and at last to die the shame
ful death of the Cross, laden with the sins and guilt of
his elect. Surely that was a sacrifice, if ever there was
one !
D. You spoke of the Son as co-equal and co-eternal
with the Father 1 You give him all the infinite perfec
tions of God 1
0. Most certainly.
D. And these infinite perfections belong to him by
reason and necessity of his own proper nature, and are
not conferred or bestowed upon him ?
0. Certainly.
D. Then, of course, these perfections are unchange
able and indestructible.
0. Of course.
D. It is also the property of God not to suffer ; he
is impassible, as the theologians call it ?
0. It is the essential glory of God to live in the en
joyment of his own absolutely perfect being, inde
pendently of all things without himself. Were the
whole universe to perish, he would still be as glorious
and as blessed—rejoicing in his own absolute per
fection.
�A Dialogue.
9
D. Precisely, and the Son being God, possesses the
same self-sufficiency, independence, and unchangeable
glory and blessedness 1
0. Most assuredly.
D. Then when he became incarnate through the
Virgin Mary, his real and true glory and blessedness
remained unchanged; he continued as perfect and as
happy as he had been through all the past eternity ?
0. That is the doctrine of the church.
D. Then I return my 'former question, Wherein was
the sacrifice made by the incarnation ? Sacrifice is the
giving up of something; what did the Son of God
give up 1 Not his own true and proper glory and
blessedness, you say ; that he could not do as God.
0. He did not give them up, but he veiled them in
the garment of flesh—the infinite condescended and
humiliated himself to appear as the finite.
D. To whom were his perfections veiled ? To the
Father and himself?
0. Of course not.
D. To angels ?
0. No; for even the devils saw his glory and dis
cerned him to be the Son of God.
D. How then was his glory veiled ?
0. Men did not see it. There was no form or
comeliness that they should desire him.
D. Had they seen it before his incarnation 1
0. That depends upon whether we are to consider
the manifestations of God under the Old Testament as
made by the Son.
D. However, that is a critical point you cannot
solve. And at all events, they did not know it was
the Son as distinct from the Father. So that it is
perfectly correct to say the glory or perfections of
the Son as the Son were not discerned before his
incarnation.
0. It seems so.
D. Then how can you call the incarnation a veiling
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God's Method of Government.
of his perfections—a hiding of them ? These werediscerned by God the Father, by himself, by angels, by
devils, by all who had ever discerned them before
they only continued to be undiscerned by those who
had never discerned them. I cannot see what humilia
tion or lowering himself there is in that. Nay, I must
go further; according to your theory, the incarnation
became a means through which the perfections of the
Son of God were manifested to men—not at the time
being, but afterwards, when the Spirit enabled the
disciples to discern the meaning of all that he did and
suffered. So that upon your own showing the incar
nation, instead of humiliating, glorified him. And
therefore, I ask again, where was the sacrifice ?
0. You are forgetting all that he suffered on the
Cross.
D. All that who suffered ?
0. The Son of God.
D. The Son of God suffer ! Dreadful! I thought
you told me a little time ago that he possessed the
infinite perfections of God, inalienable and unchange
able. How then could he suffer ?
0. Well, it was not exactly the Son of God who
suffered, but the man Christ Jesus; but in virtue of
the mystical union of the divine and human in his
person, it is counted and is as though the divine
suffered.
D. It is counted and is as though the divine suffered !.
But did the divine nature suffer or not 1
0. The divine nature cannot suffer.
D. Then the Son of God did not suffer, and the
sufferings of the Cross were only the finite sufferings of
the man Christ Jesus. Again, I ask, where is the
sacrifice ?
M. I think our friend Orthodoxus has given you an
undue advantage by adhering to the old Calvinistical
system too closely. I regard the incarnation and death
of Christ as a pure and simple manifestation of God’s
�A Dialogue.
11
love. You will surely admit that it was an act of
infinite condescension upon the part of God when he
took upon himself our nature, and in the person of the
son lived amongst us, teaching, healing all manner of
disease and sickness, enduring the opposition of man,
and at last laying down his life upon the Cross. All
this was done to shew men the evil of sin, and to win
them hack into the paths of holiness. It was the outcoming of God’s infinite pity and grace to us ; and
therefore, I say, “Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the sons of God.”
D. You have spoken of all this as being done and
endured by the Son of God. Of course you mean it
was done by Christ Jesus. The Son of God, as has
been admitted, could not in himself suffer, &c. Taking
that for granted, the Son of God merely inspires,
animates, or moves the man Jesus to do these things.
They are still finite actions, although done by a divine
impulse.
M. I admit that; but it was infinite love and con
descension of God to so enter into union with the
human nature as to become its impulse and animating
principle.
D. But you must now admit that it does not differ
from other manifestations of God’s love and condescen
sion, except in degree. All excellent men, all the
saints, are manifestations of God’s love in that way.
He animates their good actions and is the impulse of
them. And they are precisely of the same outward
form and character. It is human goodness, kindness,
truthfulness, love, and endurance which we see, although
of a divine impulse.
M. Yes ; but they possess divine dignity and glory
because of the union of the divine and human in his
person.
D. You give me an opinion superinduced upon the
fact. You do not see the divine dignity and glory in
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God's Method of Government.
the acts ; you merely see what is human. Afterwards,
the theological dogma about the union of the natures
leads you to infer the dignity and glory. But that can
have no practical influence whatsoever. The influence
is derived directly from the facts. So that it seems to
me this modern theory which you seem to have embraced
is the weakest of all the theories. You admittedly have
none but human love, goodness, purity, and truthful
ness manifested in Christ. You then add on, to give
effect to these things, the doctrine of the incarnation,
by which you suppose the human actions obtain a
divine glory. You call the Son of God’s being thus
connected with and animating the man Christ Jesus an
act of infinite love and self-sacrifice, and yet you have
to admit the Son of God gives up no single item of
his perfections, glory, and blessedness in the act. You
give up the old doctrine of the atonement.
M. I beg pardon, I do not. I hold it in a modified
form.
D. What form ?
M. Why, I think that Christ, by offering himself
a victim in obedience to the Father’s will, performed
the highest act of sacrifice, and all those who believe
in him have such fellowship with him in the sacrifice,
that it becomes their own, whereby they are delivered
from sin and made to partake of the blessedness of
eternal life.
I). Your terms are very vague. But at all events,
the sacrifice is not the endurance of suffering in lieu
of suffering; it is simply the exertion of a moral
influence which saves from suffering merely by purify
ing and bringing the mind of the saved into sympathy
with the mind of the Saviour. Now this is an abandon
ment of the old ideas of atonement and sacrifice, and,
disguise it as you will, the substituting for them of
merely the influence of a holy example. I admit that
is more rational, but it is less scriptural; and the
nationality is all merged by the introduction of the
�A Dialogue.
*
13
incarnation, in order to enforce the example which is
just as efficacious without it.
0. I perfectly agree with you. If I gave up my
Calvinism, I would give up the whole system of revela
tion which falls to pieces without it. But let me
remind you that, notwithstanding all you have said,
there remains the grand doctrine of the atonement
wherein Christ endured for his elect the infinite suffer
ings due to their sins.
D. You mean the man Christ Jesus endured them.
How could a being who is necessarily finite endure
what is infinite ?
0. By reason of his connection with Deity.
D. But you cannot infuse infinite properties into a
finite nature, else that would be making a man into a
Cod. Whatever that mysterious union you talk of in
the person of Jesus Christ of the divine and human,
the divine nature could not suffer at all; and the
human nature could not suffer what is infinite. So
that, after all, your infinite sacrifice for the elect
becomes a mere finite sacrifice offered by a man.
Orthodoxus—who had lately shown considerable signs
of uneasiness, here gathered himself up in his chair
with great dignity, and looking upon his companion
very gravely, begged, in the most pompous manner, to
say-—My dear sir, you and I have enjoyed many pleasant
days together in our recent tour, and to-morrow we
separate, perhaps never to meet again in this lower
world; but we shall meet hereafter at the judgment
bar of God. At the risk of even offending you, which
I should be unwilling to do, I must deliver myself from
the blood of your soul. You seem to me to be entirely
lost in a maze of carnal reasonings, which the Evil One
is always ready to lead self-sufficient intellects into. As
a friend, I therefore warn you of the danger in which
you stand. My brother, your precious soul is in jeo
pardy ! Yes ! your precious, never-dying, immortal
soul. There is only one name given under heaven
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God's Method of Government.
whereby men. can be saved, and yon are rejecting that
name. In yonr pride of intellect, you say, I will not
have this man to reign over me. What must be your
doom ? Ah ! already I seem to see the events of the
last great day. There sits the Judge, no longer the
meek and lowly Saviour you despise, but the righteous
and holy One, with eyes like a flame of fire, piercing
through and through you. Around him stand ten
thousand times ten thousand angels, ready to conduct
his elect to the joys of Paradise, and thrust down the
unbelievers to Hell. There, my friend, must you
stand and pass your last solemn trial. You reject
Christ, you put from you his precious sacrifice.
Nothing, therefore, can save you from the sentence,
which already methinks I hear pronounced—“Depart
from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for
the Devil and his angels.” Then will you realize the
woes in the hymn of that devout servant of God, Dr
Bonar:—
“ Descend, 0 sinner, to the woe!
Thy day of hope is done;
Light shall revisit thee no more,
Life, with its sanguine dream, is o’er,
Love reaches not yon awful shore;
For ever sets thy sun.
“ Call upon God, he hears no more;
Call upon death, ’tis dead;
Ask the live lightnings in their flight,
Seek for some sword of hell and night,
The worm that never dies, to smite,
No weapon strikes its head.
“Descend, 0 sinner, to the gloom!
Hear the deep judgment knell
Send forth its terror-shrieking sound
These walls of adamant around,
And filling to its utmost bound
The woful, woful hell!
“ Depart, 0 sinner, to the chain!
Enter the eternal cell;
, To all that’s good, and true, and right,
To all that’s fond, and fair, and bright,
To all of holiness and light,
Bid thou thy last farewell! ”
�A Dialogue.
J5
Alas 1 my friend, there shall he weeping, and wailing.,
and gnashing of teeth. Already I seem to hear the
despairing cry of your soul—I am lost, I am lost for
ever.
Orthodoxus had delivered his speech with great ex
citement, rising out of his chair in the midst of it,
waving his hand about in the air, and using most
vehement gesture. He sat down bathed in perspira
tion. When a minute’s silence had followed, Mysticus
turned towards Dubitans, and said : I cannot concur
with those denunciatory terms our friend has used, and
I think they misrepresent the character of God’s govern
ment. I have hope that at last the worst will be
rescued and saved. But, my dear sir, I am not less
■concerned about your soul than is he. I would rather,
however, draw you by the tender love and grace of our
God. I can hardly believe that you have ever fairly
looked at that grace as manifested in his beloved Son,
nr surely your heart would have long ago been melted
and won. Think, my dear sir, of all he has done for
you. See him born in poverty, a tiny infant in the
manger of Bethlehem. See him toiling along the lanes
of Palestine, and through the hot sun-scorched streets
of its cities, during the whole of a weary life, to do
good to men. Oh, precious Jesus 1 how he endures so
meekly the stupidity of his disciples, the treachery of
false friends, the sneers of the self-righteous Pharisees,
the contempt of infidel Sadducees, the brutality of the
mob ! How he hungers and thirsts, and has not where
to lay his head ! How ready he is to forget himself in
the service of others! Then, come to the last sad
scenes. Ah! see through shadows of the trees of
Olives that prostrate form in prayer. Hear what in his
agony he cries : “ Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou
wilt.” Ah! what is that which bedews his forehead, his
cheeks, and falls upon the ground 1 It is the sweat of
agony in great drops of blood ! Follow him to Pilate’s
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God's Method of Government.
judgment-hall. See him there spit upoD, and crowned
with thorns. Stand now on Calvary : behold the
victim of man’s sin and the gift of God’s love. Oh,
dark hour of sorrow ! What agonies the sinless One
endures, and how lovingly he bears it all! Not the
nails, not the laceration of the flesh, produce that dole
ful agony, but a deeper sorrow, poured forth in those
memorable words, “Eli, Eli, lama sabacbthani,” &c.
And now, let earth be clothed in darkness, for the
Son of God bows his head, and gives up the ghost!
And why ? Why all this sorrow ? Ah ! my friend,
for you, for you, for you he dies, that you may be won
to God, and be blessed for ever. Oh ! turn, turn unto
him, and yield your heart in recompence for such love,.
“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my heart, my life, my all.”
During both these addresses Duhitans had sat very
quietly, resting his head upon his hand, and listening
with great, though apparently amused, attention.
When Mysticus had done, he quietly moved round
his chair, facing them more directly, and said: I
suppose I ought to be grateful to you both for the
deep anxiety you have shown for the salvation of my
soul. I am afraid my gratitude is not so deep as it
ought to be, but I will prove it to the full extent in my
power, by making a speech to you in return for your
own. Bear with me, then, while I say I think, Orthodoxus, the whole system of Calvinism, with its doc
trines of human depravity, predestination, atonement,
and punishment, one of the most grossly immoral and
degrading systems that ever was propounded by man.
It represents God as an omnipotent fiend, without the
sense of common justice, and much less of goodness
and love. Here he creates and sends into this world
millions upon millions of wretched beings, with natures
�A Dialogue.
<7
so depraved that they cannot but sin. Amongst them
he has a select few, for whom he made his Son endure
the sufferings due to the sins they could not help; these
he changes into saints by a supernatural power called
grace, and at last brings to blessedness. The rest—the
millions upon millions, being denied the grace, without
which they could not be changed into saints—perish,
and perish everlastingly. Hopelessly they are thrust
into eternal torments, and that for crimes they could
not possibly avoid, since Adam fell. Such a system is
perfectly fiendish; and a god who could so govern the
world would be a monster of iniquity, deserving to be
scouted out of the universe by all the creatures he has
made. Bor my part, if I were the creature of such a
god, all the torments he could inflict upon me by his
omnipotence should not make me cease to look upon
him with loathing and disgust. And as for your
system, Mysticus, it has but few more charms in my
eyes than that of Orthodoxus. You deny, indeed, the
iniquitous doctrine of eternal punishment, but you have
no right to do so. It is the doctrine of the New Testa
ment. To deny that seems to me a disgraceful tamper
ing with words to suit a necessity created by your
false position. You endeavour, by the help of your
moral and spiritual instincts, to get a system of religion
out of the Bible consistent with the thought and spirit
of the present day. Your attempt is in vain. The
system of the New Testament is an embodiment of
thought and spirit of the second century, not of the
nineteenth. I have read all that your leaders, Maurice,
Robertson, and the rest, have to say. It is vague,
illogical, and will not bear the test of analysis for one
moment. Your words are full of mysticism, which,
as soon as explained, throws you back on the old
Calvinism, or reduces your system to merely human
elements. The truth of it is, my friends, you are both
of you leaning on a broken reed. You are resting upon
the infallible inspiration of the Bible, the one of you
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God’s Method of Government.
endeavouring to sustain by it the theology of the six
teenth and seventeenth centuries, and the other a
mongrel system you have devised in the nineteenth,
out of a patchwork of modern metaphysics and old
theologies. But for that infallibility you have not the
shadow of a proof. The evidence altogether breaks
down when it is thoroughly examined. The books you
rest upon mostly belong to the second century. Their
statement of facts is mingled with myths; and most
•certainly they are directly opposed to all the conceptions
of modern science and the whole spirit and thinking of
this age. I exhort you, therefore, in return for the ex
hortations you have addressed to me, to throw off these
terrible superstitions by which your reason is enthralled.
Look the facts fairly and fully in the face, and then you
will learn that these notions of yours are only the con
ceptions of ignorant and barbarous times, and that by
far higher and better laws than you have dreamed of
God governs the world.
Here the waiter brought in their supper, soon after
which they retired to bed. Next morning they break
fasted separately, in order to suit the time of their re
spective trains, and went their way each one to his own
home. Which of them upheld the truth in their dis
cussion, I shall leave you all to judge.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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God's method of government: a dialogue
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Cranbrook, James
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Collation: 18 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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HUMAN DEPRAVITY.
BY
EEV. JAMES CEANBEOOK.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO 11, THE TERRAGE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�I
......... . .
H I.
1
�HUMAN DEPRAVITY.
PROPOSE to discourse to you this evening upon
the subject of Human Depravity. The notion
lies at the base of the whole structure of orthodox
doctrine. If the notion be false, the whole structure
falls to the ground. I believe it is entirely false.
Human nature is not depraved, but imperfect. This
difference is a vital one. It affects the whole question
of education, of the treatment of the ignorant and of
criminals. It is not for the sake of the dogmatical
notion, but for the sake of the practical application,
that I discuss it. You may consider the text to be
Acts xvii. 29—“Forasmuch then as we are the off
spring of G-od.” I purpose examining some of the
phenomena of this so-called depravity, and pointing
out their real character. First, however, it will be
desirable briefly to glance at the development of the
doctrine in some of its early stages.
The doctrine of Human Depravity is not a doctrine
of the Old Testament. The oldest passage generally
quoted to prove it is the 51st Psalm, 5th verse. But
that verse proves nothing of the kind. It is the pas
sionate language of penitence done into a rhythmical or
poetical form; and no one who comprehends criticism
would quote such language to prove a doctrine. There
are many passages, indeed, which confess to universal
sinfulness; but universal sinfulness is not the same
thing as universal depravity. Universal sinfulness
I
�4
Human Depravity.
merely implies that none have attained to absolute
perfection of nature, that the laws of God are only im
perfectly comprehended hy us, and that present inter
ests often overpower the thought of higher and future
good. But universal depravity means “ the corruption
of man’s nature, whereby he is utterly indisposed,
disabled, and made opposite unto all that is spiritually
good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continu
ally.” And such a state the Old Testament does not
recognise ; it only recognises the fact we all admit—universal imperfection or sinfulness. Thus in 1st
Kings viii. 46, it is said “ If any man sin against thee,
for there is no man that sinneth not; ” and in Psalm
cxliii. 2—‘‘Enter not into judgment, for in thy sight
shall no flesh living be justified,”—both of these pas
sages confessing what we would all confess, but neither
of them supporting what I strenuously deny, the doc
trine of Human Depravity. And that will be found
to be the case with all the passages found in the Old
Testament bearing upon the subject. Nor is there the
least foundation for the doctrine in the narrative of
the third chapter of Genesis as it stands alone. At
whatever period that narrative was written, and from
whatever source it was derived, it says nothing about
the race becoming depraved. It does not even say
that by eating of the fruit Adam and his wife learned to
know good and evil. The serpent promised them that
if they ate of the fruit they should be as gods, knowing
good and evil, but the promise was merely a bait held
out to induce them to disobey the alleged divine com
mand. The penalty threatened was death, but, as the
serpent foretold, they did not die, at least until many
years after. The only curse pronounced upon them
was physical • the serpent was henceforth to crawl on
the ground and eat dust; the woman was to suffer as
she entered upon the greatest joy of a woman’s life,
and to be subject to her husband; and the man was to
find work a toil and a sorrow until he died. That is
�Human Depravity.
5
all that the narrative says, and out of that 1 defy any
one to construct the doctrine of universal depravity.
But after the Babylonian captivity a great change
took place in Jewish theology and speculation.
During the captivity, and afterwards, they came into
contact with a much more advanced culture than
their own, and it began to tell upon their thinking.
The Persians, as we know, had long speculated
upon the origin of evil. The Jews entered into the
speculation, and in a mystical interpretation of their
sacred books sought to solve the alleged mystery.
Accordingly it is in the 2d book of Esdras that we
have the first distinct notice of the doctrine—iii. 5-8,
—“And gavest a body unto Adam, without soul, which
was the workmanship of thine hands, and didst breathe
into him the breath of life, and he was made living be
fore thee ; and thou leddest him into Paradise, which
thy right hand had planted before ever the earth came
forward; and unto him thou gavest a commandment to
love thy way, which he transgressed, and immediately
thou appointedst death unto him and in his genera
tions ;
. and every people walked after their
own way and did wonderful things before thee, and
despised thy commandments.” And again in the 21st
verse—“ Eor the first Adam, bearing a wicked heart,
transgressed and was overcome, and so are all they who
are born of him. Thus infirmity was made permanent,
and the law (also), in the heart of the people, with the
malignity of the root, so that the good departed away
and the evil abode still.” And once more in iv. 30—
“For the grain of evil seed hath been sown in the heart
of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodli
ness it hath brought up unto this time ? and how much
shall it yet bring forth until the time of the threshing
come ? ” But you will observe that in both these pas
sages there is the very unorthodox supposition that
Adam fell because the seed of evil had previously been
sown in his heart, so that the question of the origin of
evil is not in the least solved by them.
�6
Human Depravity.
These speculations concerning the origin and nature
of evil thus originated amongst the Jews continued
through several centuries, and were debated with
great zest. About the time of Job they were especially
connected with certain philosophical notions respect
ing spirit and body, and the prevalent idea—or what
soon after became the prevalent idea—was, that all
sin arises from or is due to our material bodies, to
“ the flesh,” as it is called. The flesh is essentially
evil, corrupts and holds the spirit in subjection, and
needs to be subdued, conquered, and triumphed over
by all who would rise to their true relations to God.
To be “in the flesh,” to “ walk after the flesh,” to be
“born of the flesh,” was considered as constituting a
state of sin and helpless depravity. To become the
Sons of God we must be “in the spirit,” “walk after
the spirit,” and “ be born of the spirit ”—in other
words, the spirit must rise out of her depressed and
degraded state and rule the body. These notions very
early passed into the Christian church, and the discus
sion of them greatly agitated the various parties into
which it was divided. Especially were they pressed
with great vigour and logical consistency by the Gnos
tics. At first the so-called Orthodox party resisted
them, and seem to have endeavoured to hold by the
simple practical teaching of Christ as it maybe gathered
from the synoptical gospels. But they could not re
sist the spirit of the times—they themselves entered
into it, the doctrine became more and more fully
elaborated, until at last the defining mind of Augus
tine gave it the form which has since been held as
essentially correct and orthodox.
Of course this was not done without protest.
Amongst others, Pelagius stood up to vindicate human
nature against the aspersions of a philosophy falsely so
called. But he had no chance in fighting against the
whole tendency of the thinking of the times, and in
fighting, too, whilst he himself was unconsciously
�Human Depravity.
7
hampered by that tendency. Many have risen up
against it since; but it is only now that men have
learned to bring all doctrines to the test of facts, and
to receive nothing but what can be verified by
experience and observation, that they generally have
become strong enough and free enough to throw off
the incubus of a doctrine which is as practically mis
chievous in matters of education as it is misrepresenta
tive of the moral government of God. Let u§ enquire
then into the alleged Depravity of Human Nature, and
ascertain upon what facts it rests. The statement of it
is very clear. Our first parents “ became dead in sin
and wholly defiled in all the faculties of and parts of
soul and body. They being the root of all mankind,
the same death in sin and corrupted nature were con
veyed to all their posterity. From this original corrup
tion, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and
made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all
evil, do proceed all actual transgression.—“ Confession
of Faith,” chap. vi.
Now, without argument, I ask you as a plain matter
of fact, Is that true 1 I ask you parents if it be true
of your bright and lovely little children 1 I ask you
to look upon their merry and happy faces as they are
playing around you, and say—Do they show by word
or deed, that they are defiled in all the faculties or
parts of soul and body 1 If they be utterly indisposed,
disabled and opposed to all good and wholly inclined
to all evil;—That is what the doctrine says they are.
In the name of the tender caresses they bestow upon
yourselves : in the name of the love and fondness
they show for each other: in the name of the intelli
gence and comprehension of good and evil often ap
pearing at very early periods: in the name of all
that is lovely about childhood, and which led the
glorious Christ to make it the type of the spirit which
belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven ? I answer those
questions for you with all indignant negation. They
�8
Human Depravity.
utterly indisposed, disabled and opposite to all good !
Some of the most beautiful forms of goodness may be
seen in the child’s life. Oh what would many a one
give who has been led far wrong by the temptations
of the world, if it were possible to return to the sweet
innocency of their childhood !
But let us become more special. This depravity
must be shown in two forms of action especially—the
religious and the moral. The words of the definition
I have quoted include more, they include also physical
actions. I may have occasion to refer to that by and
by.; but for the present I confine our attention to the
religious and the moral. First, then, in religion do
men universally show themselves utterly indisposed,
disabled, and opposite to all good ? I maintain that
when religion is understood in its true sense, on the
contrary they are inclined to, able for, and naturally
on the side of religion; that the feeling of religion
springs up spontaneously in every human heart; that
it has ever been one of the most powerful and moving
forces of mankind; and that it is only when other
and sinister influences have been brought to bear upon
a man that he ceases, if he ever cease, to be the sub
ject of religion. For I am not going to allow any one
to hash up a compound of speculations in philosophy,
of dogmas in theology, of pseudo-facts in history,
mingled in definite or indefinite proportions with
sickly sentiments and unnatural emotions, and call the
belief of and surrender of one’s spirit to that the only
true religion. That with me is not religion at all.
Religion is the feeling of deep reverence, awe, wonder,
and worship, which the manifestation of God to the
soul through anything which seems to us practically
infinite excites within us. And such manifestations
are being continually made to every human being from
the early days of childhood, and almost as frequently
find the responsive feeling. For it is not necessary to
the existence of the feeling of religion that the great
�Human Depravity.
9
Being whose manifestation of himself awakens it
should he named or even thought of by the soul, and
much less that he should be thought of correctly. It
is enough that when, in the darkness of the night, or
in the rolling thunder of the clouds, or in the beautiful
face of the clear sky, or in whatever form He makes
the awful mysterious presence of His power and glory
felt, the soul respond in reverence, awe, and worship.
Nor is it necessary that the worship, the reverence and
awe find for themselves an utterance. The deeply
moved spirit, wondering and feeling itself humbled
before a power it does not, perhaps cannot, compre
hend, has in itself the very essence of religion,—the
life of all that has been grandest, noblest, and most
devout in all the services which ever were offered unto
God. And will any one tell me that children, savages,
heathen, Jews, and Mohammedans, as well as the
purest and most cultivated or most evangelical of
Christians, are not the subjects of this feeling ? They
would be contradicting the most patent facts if they
did. Nay, more, will any one tell me that even men
whose lives we all condemn—that outcasts of all kinds,
that the most abject and the most debased—are not
sometimes the subjects of it? They would be assert
ing what they could not prove if they did. The great
God is nearer all His children than men’s theories would
allow us to imagine. And many and many is the time
that the lowest and most debased are momentarily
warmed into a higher life as His glory passeth by.
But even tried by the false standard of attendance in
placesofworship, the race, as such, proves itself religious.
Men are never found absenting themselves from such
places, whether they be enclosed by a circle of Druidical
stones or by a Gothic pile, until they have intellec
tually outgrown the forms of belief associated with the
worship, or, according to the anomaly of the world’s
history presented by Protestant countries alone, have
been wickedly thrust out by neglect and supercilious
�10
Human Depravity.
ness, as have the very poor in. these countries. Save
in these exceptional cases, men and women everywhere
crowd the worship where worship is offered. We in
our gross ignorance and silly pride may call all such
worship false, and the religion utterly worthless ; but
the loving Father of us all never despises the simplest
offering of the heart. I say, then, that when the facts
are examined they prove that, so far as religion is con
cerned, man is not utterly indisposed, disabled, and
made opposite to all good. From the early periods of
his childhood to his dying hour he is ever susceptible
of the profoundest religious feeling when brought
unto the presence of the infinite. And it is only be
cause the feeling loses its bloom under the dust of the
world, or gets sickened by the false notions of God
thrust upon us, or sometimes, alas! gets corrupted
through evil practices, that all do not rise to the higher
and more perfect expression of it as life wears away.
The higher and more perfect expression of it! But
who shall say what that is ? Possibly it is murmured
in the heart, where none but God can hear.
Let us pass on now to the second class of actions
wherein man’s depravity is supposed to be shown,—
the Moral. He is “utterly indisposed, disabled, and
made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all
evil.” In the larger Catechism the word spiritual is
inserted before good, though not before evil. It is
evident, however, that moral action is included in the
term, because many of the texts quoted to prove it
refer to moral actions,—such as deceit, venom, slander,
and a disposition to murder. Our inquiry now then
is this—in moral actions does every man show himself
to be wholly bad and inclined to all evil ? I need not
answer the question in that form; and yet that is the
only form in which it strictly comprehends all that is
stated in the doctrine. It would be a waste of time
to show how utterly untrue that is, because all of you
at once must feel it to be so. Let us rather spend a
�Human Depravity.
11
minute or two in answering what is a fair question
from the other side. “ If men are not wholly depraved,
how do you account for it that all men sin, and sin
from the early periods of life ? Does not the uni
versality of sin prove that there must be a universal
depravity or taint of nature ? ” Now, a recollection of
what sin is makes the answer to this supposed difficulty
very simple indeed. Sin is simply a violation of law—■
a doing of something not in accordance with, or a not
doing of something required by, the laws or conditions
of our well-being and happiness. That is virtually the
definition of sin given by the New Testament itself.
And most certainly it is the only definition which is
clear and comprehensive of all that is required. Well,
then, if sin be this—a transgression of the laws of our
well-being and happiness—it is not difficult to explain
the fact of universal sinfulness. Tor, 1st, these laws
are numerous, complicated, and sometimes difficult of
apprehension. They are by no means all settled and
determined yet. As we have been twice told lately
by two most gifted lecturers in the Philosophical In
stitution, when we come to apply the historical method
to questions of morals we shall be astonished to find
how many received axioms have been handed down to
us by traditions from east and west which have no
basis of rational authority whatsoever. And if this be
still our state, it is not wonderful that men who lived
before Justinian, in the childhood of the world, should
have lived in the violation of laws unknown to or
misunderstood by them, but of which we see the
existence and action more clearly. And as with the
race, so with the individual; all controversy about
innate ideas apart, as a matter of fact we know that it
is only slowly children learn what the moral laws are,
and that the larger number of their sins is committed
through pure ignorance. But this ignorance, however,
is due not to depravity, hut simply from want of capa
city to comprehend, or time to learn. Wait, and the
�12
Human Depravity.
evil will correct itself. But then there is also another
consideration to he taken into account. I mean cases
where the law is known, but where conflicting motives
lead to its violation.
Now, perhaps we shall best be able to comprehend
these cases by taking our instance, first of all, from a
case where the evil is purely physical. To remain
long in a badly ventilated room, crowded with persons,
is most mischievous in its tendency to health : some
times persons have laid the foundation of permanent
disease by it—disease which has hastened their death.
People know this, and yet are constantly doing it.
The interest of a popular sermon or lecture, of some
extraordinary exhibition, or a dinner-party or a ball,
will be quite sufficient to tempt them to remain on and
on, notwithstanding the mischief they know they are
doing to themselves. Now, I suppose you would not
say their doing so shows the depravity of their nature,
but rather that it indicates the want of training and
discipline which would compel them to give the
rational motives at all times the sway over their
actions. They are yielding to a present gratification
at the expense of an inquiry which, not being pressing
and immediately apparent, they do not feel. A man
whose intellectual and moral nature is thoroughly
trained, always yields to that which is best upon the
whole and in the long-run. He, therefore, would not
hesitate a moment as to what his action in such a case
should be.
Now this principle explains, I think,
nearly the whole of the cases of conscious moral
wrong-doing. Men, for the sake of the present satis
faction, forego the higher good—they do so not because
they are innately depraved but because they have not
been trained to live as rational and moral beings. I
said the principle explains nearly the whole of the
cases. It does not explain the whole. Por there are
some conditions of mind no training, no discipline,
would correct of their tendencies to special evils—
�Human Depravity.
13
at least no training that our imperfect knowledge of
Ethology or the science of the formation of character
makes us acquainted with. But these are abnormal
cases—cases of disease we need now scarcely take into
account. As a general rule, give the knowledge of the
law, and the training which leads a man habitually to
act upon rational and moral motives, and he will do
right. The want of the knowledge, or of the training,
or of both, is a sufficient explanation of the evil in the
world without a resort to the degrading doctrine of
human depravity.
But now, as I said, I have discussed this question,
not for the sake of the theological questions, but for
the sake of the practical question of p'opular education
and the reformation of the pauper and criminal classes
of the community. I believe the dogma of human
depravity has done unspeakable mischief in these
matters. It has induced all sorts of false and injurious
methods in the treatment of these classes. Men might
go on for ever discussing such dogmas so far as I am
concerned, and if they felt happy in it I would never
say one word to disturb them. But when I see them
bringing these dogmas into practical action, and ruling
education by them, ruling the treatment of the de
graded and criminal classes by them, I must not, dare
not withhold my protest. If the principles I have
expounded to-night be correct, then these classes are
not to be educated, reformed, civilized, Christianised
by some air breathed from heaven upon their darkened
souls—by some semi-miraculous, mysterious operation
superinduced by theological exhortations, but by
quietly and patiently teaching them how God’s estab
lished laws are affecting their whole life ; by showing
them how all their happiness is dependent upon their
obedience to these laws; and by encouraging them,
helping them, strengthening them to form those habits
of obedience which will lift them above present temp
tations to go astray. What we have to deal with is
�14
Human Depravity.
not a mass of seething putrescence which none but the
re-creative power of God can reform, but ignorance
which needs to be instructed, and habits of self-indul
gence, and of yielding up everything to an immediate
gratification, which need to be replaced by habits of
self-control, prudence, and the higher virtues. And
this is a work within the range of human intelligence
and perseverance, and which, if rightly carried on, will
prove effective in the worst cases. None are com
pletely beyond its reach. The old may not have time
left in life to learn all that would make the remainder
of their days bright as sunlight, and they may be
beyond the power of much reformation of habits,—
although even with them something may be done,—
but there is no reason but what is found in our ignor
ance, our apathy and indifference, why the young
should not be rescued out of that slough of despond
circumstances have sunk them in, and made thought
ful, virtuous, useful members of society.
It is upon this point, therefore, I wish all that I
have been saying to-night to be made to concentrate.
There can be no doubt about the degradation of the
classes to which I am referring. But it is a degrada
tion which arises from ignorance, from ill-formed
habits, and from physical as much as from moral
causes. Civilization, knowledge, purer and more re
fined manners and modes of life, have been acting upon
the classes above them for generations, and removing
these classes into regions of life not only where they
have lost all sympathy for them, but where the be
trayal of ignorance in uncouth expressions and the
habits retained amongst the lowest classes are felt to
be perfectly disgusting.
These last are degraded
because the others have been elevated. But what is it
that at this moment makes the real difference between
the one and the other ? It is simply the larger know
ledge and the better-formed habits of the higher
classes. Let the knowledge be communicated, and the
�Human Depravity.
15
better habits formed, and they will be raised to the
level on which these higher classes stand. If men be
left to their ignorance, how can they do otherwise than
wander in all sorts of errors ? And if no care be taken
in teaching habits of rational self-government and con
trol, how can they be expected to become otherwise
than the creatures of impulse, carried away by appe
tites, passions, and every passing desire ? And yet
people cry out about the evidence such things give of
the depravity of human nature, and the evils into
which it runs!
The depravity of human nature ! Remember this,
all evil is nothing but the negation and absence of
some special good. Supply the good and the evil of
itself ceases, as does space when it becomes occupied
with matter. Give light, and darkness disappears.
Teach, expound, unfold the truth, the whole facts of
life, the laws of rational, moral, and religious well
being ; lead men to act according to what their know
ledge tells them will be the best and most happy upon
the whole, and by so doing you will conquer their “ de
pravity,” and make that future we all so long for
speedily dawn, when all our fellow-countrymen, at
least, shall live rational, virtuous, and Christian lives.
I hope we here shall be able to attempt something
of this work, and shall not be satisfied merely our
selves to enjoy the blessing of light God sends us.
For myself I fully believe that if we went amongst
the most degraded of these classes and told them of
God’s great goodness and love, and how he has placed
all men under conditions of life in which happiness
is only to be had by conformity with his laws, and
that it is possible for them and all men to conform
with these laws, calling upon them earnestly and re
verentially to rise and take possession of the great inheri
tance of good within their reach, we should not preach
in vain. But certainly, however little or much success
we might meet with thus, the children must be rescued,
�16
Human Depravity.
taught and trained aright. No sectarianism, no theo
logical dogmas, no notions about political, social, or
parental rights, must stand in the way of that. Their
future wholly depends upon their education, (in the
wide sense of the term) and educated they must be.
I call upon you all therefore to join your voices in
swelling the cry which is beginning to rise from diffe
rent parts of the land, that some wise, liberal, compre
hensive measure of education shall be formed which
shall render it impossible for any child with in these
realms to be left a prey to the ignorance and vicious
habits which constitute the only depravity we have to
dread.
But I cannot close without saying that especially
those who are parents should with gladsome steps re
turn to their homes under the influence of these
truths we have been considering. It shows them that
they will meet there around their hearths—not mourn
ful objects the sight of whom will make their hearts
bleed, “ the children of wrath and of the devil; ”•—but
bright angels of the house, the offspring of God, sent
in the buoyancy of their innocency to make their
parents’ hearts young again ; and who only need wise
and judicious training and instruction in order to have
opened before them a course through life glorious in
its intelligence, its virtue, its nobleness, its divineness.
Yes, we are all the offspring of God—hold fast by and
be true to that fact, and it will set us on the right
track to be blessed ourselves, and to be made whereso
ever we go a blessing.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Human depravity
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Cranbrook, James
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A lecture by James Cranbrook on human nature as being imperfect, as opposed to depraved. He reviews the presentation of the concept in early doctrine and protests against its use in reference to criminals and the poor.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16, [4] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from KVK.
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Thomas Scott
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1876
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RA1596
G5511
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Christianity
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Human depravity), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Original Sin
-
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Text
THOMAS LUMISDEN STRANGE,
LATE A JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF MADRAS,
.
AND AUTHOR OF “ THE BIBLE ; IS IT THE WORD OF GOD ?" ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
.
��THE BENNETT JUDGMENT.
HE condition to which the Established Church is
gradually tending, necessarily awakens deep
anxieties in those who are interested in upholding it.
The safeguards provided to maintain its integrity, as
successively proved, are found absolutely wanting in
cohesion and strength. The great desideratum for
mankind is to bring the soul into conscious contact
with its maker, to realise the sense of his presence and
action on the mind and spirit, for the governing our
selves in the paths of rectitude and holiness. The
Church recognises a change to be wrought in man from
nature to grace, which is ecclesiastically termed regene
ration. The question of how this was to be effected
was in a manner tried in the Gorham case, and the
issue was that it is quite uncertain whether the regene
ration can be produced by applying water, in baptism,
to an infant, or has to be wrought out otherwise by influ
encing the conscience at some later period. Then,
being brought to God, it had to be judged what guid
ance he might have provided to give man an insight
into his mind and will, whereby man might direct his
ways in conformity to the divine purposes. The Bible
was offered as the all-sufficient medium. But upon in
vestigation, in the instance of the Essayists and Re
viewers, the judgment was, that it should be left to
each to decide for himself how much of the book came
from God and was indubitably true, and how much
came from man and was questionable. Furthermore
T
�4
The Bennett Judgment.
Christ being apprehended to be the medium between
God and man, it had to be ascertained in what manner
the communion between Christ and man is to be kept up.
A special service is appointed for that end, the true import
of which had to be declared. In some sense Christ
was held to be fed upon by the believer when partak
ing of the bread and wine in the Eucharistic rite. The
point raised was, whether he is only presented to him
on the occasion spiritually, or, as Mr Bennett holds, is
actually incorporated in the elements taken into his sys
tem by the recipient. The judicial result arrived at, not
so much in words as in fact, is, that however much Mr
Bennett’s doctrine is to be discountenanced, in point of
actuality, he, or any likeminded to him, is at liberty to
promulgate it in terms such as lie has employed in ex
plaining himself.
At every turn, then, of the inquiry what the views
of the Church of England really may be on any mate
rial subject, so far as depends upon judicial guidance,
the end to which we are brought is confusion. And
the reason of this is self-evident. In corning out of
Home, she carried with her so much that belonged to
Rome, that those whose sympathies are in this direction
have little difficulty in fastening the doctrines of Rome
upon her.
The Evangelical body, with folded hands and half
closed eyes, endeavour complacently to flatter them
selves that there is no such unsoundness at the core of
their beloved institution. The Record, an organ of
this party, has teemed with editorial notices and cleri
cal correspondence on the matter of the Bennett Judg
ment, but in no one instance has the essential link be
tween Rome and the Church, in the constitution of the
Eucharistic service, been touched upon. Mr Bennett’s
views are loudly denounced and repudiated, but with
out an attempt to dislocate them from those foundations
with which the Church herselfhas obviously provided him.
I hazarded a letter on this subject to the Record, in
the hope that possibly it might find admission, and
�The Bennett Judgment.
5
bring before its readers the difficulties with which the
administration of the Eucharist, as appointed in the
Church of England, is assuredly environed.. This I
now give as describing the features of the service which
X desire to bring under consideration.
To the Editor of the Record.
“ Sir,—The Bennett judgment has naturally attracted
much attention from yourself and your clerical correspond
ents. Mr Bennett had committed himself in his discourses,
to the full measure of the Popish doctrine of the divine
presence in the sacramental elements, from the moment of
their consecration. The object of his prosecution was to
disconnect the Church of England from such doctrine. The
issue, however, leaves Mr Bennett at liberty to continue
enunciating it. You and your correspondents are dissatis
fied with such a result, and consider it perilous to the
interests of the Church. Mr Ryle’s letter, in your issue
of the 28th instant, is particularly candid on this head. I
do not however see,in the efforts made through your columns
to free the Church of England of the imputed obnoxious
doctrine, that the question of what the Church’s design in
the sacramental service really may be, is fairly approached.
Permit me, therefore, to put a few propositions in your
paper, in order to elicit such explanation of this abstruse
matter as it may be considered susceptible of.
“ Some presence in the elements, beyond what belongs to
them naturally, is apparently expressed. The Catechism
declares that the partaking thereof, at ‘ the supper of the
Lord,’ is ‘ generally necessary to salvation,’ which amounts
to saying, that, in some way or other, the act ministers to
the ‘ salvation ’ of the recipient; and the explanation pro
vided is, that it affords a ‘ means whereby’ ‘an inward and
spiritual grace ’ is ‘ given,’ ‘ the body and blood of Christ ’
being, it is said, ‘ verily and indeed taken and received by
the faithful ’ through this channel. Mr Horace Noel, in
your said issue of the 28th, insists that as the body and
blood are received ‘ by a bare act of faith,’ which is ‘ an
act, not of the body, but the soul,’ there can be no question
of any such divine presence as Mr Bennett alleges in the
bodily nourishing materials. But in disallowing the possible
effect of faith as altering the conditions of matter, is Mr
Noel true to the scriptural account of the power of faith ?
�6
The Bennett Judgment.
We hear that 1 the prayer of faith shall save the sick,’ that
Elias, by earnest prayer, stayed the rain, ‘ so that it rained
not on the earth by the space of three years and six months,’
and that if there be ‘ faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ one
may ‘ remove ’ a ‘ mountain ’ ‘ hence to yonder place.’ In all
these instances faith acts upon matter, affecting the physical
circumstances of the sick man, arresting the rain clouds, and
transposing the mountain. And why may it not take effect
upon the bread and wine, as when bread was multiplied out
of nothing, and water changed to wine ?
“ The services of the Church of England seem to lead up to
such an idea. The ‘ Priest ’ has ‘ to lay his hand upon all
the bread,’ and, ‘ upon every vessel, (be it chalice or flagon,)
in which there is any wine to be consecrated ;’ ‘if the con
secrated Bread or Wine be all spent before all have com
municated, the Priest is to consecrate more; ’ ‘ when all
have communicated,’ he has to ‘reverently place upon the
Lord’s table what remaineth of the consecrated elements,
covering the same with a fair linen cloth ; ’ and, ‘ if any of
the Bread and Wine remain unconsecrated, the curate shall
have it in his own use ; but if any remain of that which was
consecrated, it shall not be carried out of the church, but
the Priest and such other of the communicants as he shall
then call unto him, shall, immediately after the blessing,
reverently eat and drink the same.’ There is evidently here
some work seen to have been wrought upon the elements,
making them to differ from what is unconsecrated. The
question is in what the difference consists, if not in the
association of the body and blood of Christ therewith.
“ It is at what is called an ‘ altar,’ or ‘ the Lord’s table,’
that the bread and wine are to be taken, and not elsewhere;
they must be dispensed by the ‘ priest ’ or ‘ minister ’ alone;
and his hand must first have carefully been passed over
them ; and when received, it must be in the posture of ‘ all
meekly kneeling.’ There is a disclaimer at the close of the
service introduced by you in your issue under notice,
in which it is disavowed that this kneeling involves an
adoration of the elements. But why the appointed altar,
the intervention of the priest, and the meek kneeling are all
enjoined, together with the ‘reverent’ replacing of the re
sidue, and the ‘reverent’ consumption thereof, on the spot,
by the communicants only, after the service is over, has in
some way to be explained, if there is no special significance
of a change wrought divinely at the time in these elements.
�The Bennett Judgment.
7
‘ ‘ I have noticed the efficacy attaching to the reception of
the bread and wine in the Catechism. The same appears in
the Communion Service itself. It is therein declared that
the communicants ‘ then spiritually eat the flesh of Christ
and drink his blood;’ that ‘then' they ‘dwell in Christ,
and Christ in them ; ’ and, contrary to Mr Noel’s theory, it
is expressly asked that their ‘sinful bodies may-be made
clean by his body,’ and their ‘souls washed through his
most precious blood.’ It is evident that the ’•then’ attaches
to the act some participation at the time of Christ, secured
to the recipient, such as does not belong to the Christian
ordinarily, and at all times ; and that his ‘ body,’ through
the material ingredient introduced into it, as well as his
soul, undergoes some actual beneficial operation. How are
the elements thus effectual if not by an incorporation of
Christ therein ; and if the Eucharistic act is simply one of
commemoration, why is the process, more than once, de
scribed as involving a ‘holy mystery’?—-I am, Sir, yours
obediently,
T. L. Strange.
Great Malvern, June 1872.”
The Editor has not lent himself to the sifting of the
question by himself or readers, which it has been
my object to promote. A feeling for truth in the
abstract can scarcely consist with the sense of truth
apprehended only in some cherished system. My
investigation must therefore be conducted independ
ently from my own point of view.
The account of the last supper in the synoptic
gospels certainly does not place the eating of the bread
and the drinking of the wine in any higher light than
that of a commemorative act. Neither was the distri
bution associated with any ceremonial. The injunction
to the disciples to use these elements in memory of
their master’s death was given in the course of conver
sation relating to various disconnected matters which
both preceded and followed it. The bread which stood
for the body given for them, and the wine which stood
for the blood shed for them, could have so stood in the
way of representation merely, and not of actuality, at
a time when, as yet, the body had not been given, and
�8
The Bennett "Judgment.
the blood had not been shed. The bread appears to
have been given to the disciples collectively, and not
to each separately and formally, as obtaining at the
dispensation of the Eucharist. That the wine was
given thus informally is evident from Luke’s phrase—
“Take this and divide it among yourselves.” There
was no exhibition of a priest dealing severally with
each participant, as if there was virtue in the reception
of the elements direct from his hand. The reprobate
Judas was present on the occasion, and there is no
note that he was excepted at this distribution. If,
after the action was over, he could dip his hand in
the dish with Jesus, as is plainly said to have been
the case, his part in the then passing sociabilities had,
it is clear, not been disturbed. There was then no
mysterious dispensation enacted from which the trans
gressors were to be carefully excluded. It is evident
that the type of the ceremonial in use in the Church of
England is not to be found in the representations of
the synoptics. It is equally evident that the model
followed is that supplied by Home. In adopting this
model, has the church avoided the significancy attach
ing to the forms as employed by Pome ? Has she
adjusted them to a mere commemorative observance ?
If so, she has been guilty of empty mummeries for
which no other object can be conceived than a delu
sive one.
Eome is not without warrant for the meaning she
has attached to the observance. The teaching of John
affords her ample support in the declaration that
Christ had to be fed upon for the sustenance of the
life of his people. “I am the bread of life,” he makes
him declare. ‘‘ Except ye eat the flesh of the son of
man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,
dwelleth in me, and I in him.” And Paul completes
the instruction. According to him, it was an essential
�The Bennett Judgment.
9
constituent that “ the Lord’s body ” should be 11 dis
cerned” on the occasion, failing which the “unworthy”
recipient became “ guilty of the body and blood of the
Lord;” here calling up, as does Rome, the association
of a continually-recurring sacrifice in the rite ; and,
as a consequence, the guilty one became liable at once
to sickness, and even death. Putting these matters
together, we have the awe-striking dispensation in all
the purport and power attributed to it by Rome, whose
meaning ritual is unmeaningly followed by the Angli
can community.
The warranty of Rome becomes significantly strength
ened when wrn trace back the idea upon which she
works to its true parent germ. The Christian faith,
professing to be exercised on “ things not seen,” is
truly, in all its essentials, materialistic. There is the
necessity that “God” should have been made “manifest
in the flesh;” that the genius of evil should have an out
ward form, which atone time is to be bound in chains and
at another cast into the flames of hell; and that physical
blood should be provided to wash out spiritual sin. Then
the eating and drinking the flesh and the blood of
Jesus readily present themselves as absolute realities.
The feature here associated with the sacrifice of
Jesus has ever belonged to the practice of sacrifices.
In those of the Jews a portion was burnt on the altar
and went up as “ a sweet savour unto the Lord,” and
the residue was consumed by the priests, who repre
sented the people. God and man partook of the same
material feast. “The Hindu gods,” says Professor
Monier Williams, “are represented as living on the
sacrifices offered to them by human beings, and at
every sacrificial ceremonial assemble in troops eager
for their shares. In fact, sacrifice with the Hindus is
not merely expiatory or placatory; it is necessary for
the actual support of the gods” (Indian Epic Poetry,
52, note). At the Bacchanalian rites, in old times,
Mr Baring-Gould informs us, they killed a man and
partook of his flesh. This was put an end to by the
�io
The Bennett Judgment.
Senate in b.c. 186. In sacrifice, he adds, the victim
is held to be united with God. Hence sacramental
eating almost invariably accompanies the act (Origin
and Development of Religious Belief, I. 407, 411).
Positive virtue is considered to be inherent in what is
thus received into the system, as when in India tiger’s
flesh is eaten to obtain the courage of the tiger, and in
New Zealand the body of an adversary, in the belief
that all his martial valour may be thus secured to him
who eats him. John’s idea of participation in Christ
by eating his flesh and drinking his blood carries out
this superstition most completely.
The tree of life, in the garden of Eden, capable of
imparting life, represents the same sentiment that
spiritual advantages can be materialistically conveyed.
The belief is traceable to the Egyptians, who pourtray
the goddess Neith in the branches of this tree, pouring
out the water of life into the mouths of departed souls
(Sharpe’s Egypt. Myth. 66 ; Barlow on Symbols, 59).
The real source of the idea is the Soma of the Hindus,
becoming the Haoma of the Persians. This was the
juice of a plant producing, when drank, an exhilarating
effect. The gods drank this beverage. It was “ the
water of life, giving health and immortality, and pre
paring the way to heaven.” The Persians say that the
“ Haoma is the first of trees, planted by Ahura Mazda
in the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice
never dies!” It “imparts life at the resurrection”
(Muir’s Sanskrit Texts II., 471, citing Dr Windischmann). The plant haoma is “ the symbol of the Deity
in the Zoroastrian creed.” “ It is spoken of in the
Zend-Avesta as the Word of Life, the Tree of Life, and
the source of the living water of life.” “ When con
secrated, it is regarded as the mythical body of God;
and when partaken of as a sacrament, is received as the
veritable food of eternal life. . . . The Hom (liaomd),
when consecrated to God, was regarded as God himself,
and was supposed to give life, being the person of God
eaten by man ” (Barlow on Symbols, 115-117.) The
�The Bennett ’ udgment.
J
11
Haoma-drink was the sacrament of the Zoroastrian reli
gion ; nay, more, it was the medium through which
the Deity manifested itself. It gave health and im
parted life in the resurrection. Men received the white
sap and became immortal (Dollinger’s Jew and Gentile,
I, 401, 411). The intoxicating Soma juice is an early
Aryan divinity. It was the- beverage of the gods, and
made men like them immortal (Muir’s Sansk. Texts, V.
258, 262). Soma is addressed as the god giving future
felicity. “Place me, 0 purified god, in that everlasting
and imperishable world where there is eternal light and
glory. . . . make me immortal in the world where king
Vaivasvata(Yama, the king of death, the son of Vivasvat)
lives, when in the innermost sphere of the sky” (Muir
in Journal of As. Soc. Pew Ser. I. 138). Soma, says
Dr Muir, was the Indian Bacchus (Idem, I. 135). Its
worship may be identified with that of the Greek god
Dionysus (Bacchus), who discovered and introduced to
mankind the juice of the grape for the alleviation of
their sorrows (Muir’s Sansk. Texts, V. 259, 260).
In the remarkable incident of Melchizedek meeting
Abraham and bringing him bread and wine, we have
the sacramental elements associated together. This has
the appearance of legendary matter, derived probably
from a Phoenician source, and it is introduced with no
very apparent purpose. The personage in question
comes from we know not where, and reappears no more.
He is seemingly the Sydyk of Sanchoniatho. The name
signifies “ the just man,” the adjunct Melik meaning
king. Accordingly in Hebrews ,Melchizedek is declared
to be, “ by interpretation,” the “ king of righteousness.”
Noah, it is said, “ was a just man,” whence Baber iden
tifies him with Sydyk (Mysteries of the Cabiri, 55).
Noah’s planting a vineyard, and drinking of the wine
thereof, has possibly a mythological purport. Wine
figures at the outset of the ministerial career of Jesus,
his miracle in producing it being, according to John,
the manner in which he first “ manifested his glory
and it is emblematical of his final glory. “ I will not
�12
The Bennett Judgment.
drink henceforth,” he said at his last supper, “ of this
fruit of the vine, until that day when 1 drink it new
with you in my Father’s kingdom.” The hlood is the
life of the animal. The wine, therefore, would appro
priately represent his hlood, and it is an animating or
life giving substance. The follower of Christ, as we
have seen, has “ no life in him” unless he drink it. We
appear to have in all these figures and practices the
re-embodiment of Soma, and by consequence of Bacchus.
It is singular, moreover, that the monogram of Bacchus,
which is THS or IHS, should have been adopted for
Christ (Higgin’s Celtic Druids, 128).
The other element, the bread, also bears its part in the
older mythologies. Cakes are among the offerings made
to theHindu gods from the earliest Vedic times (Taiboy’s
Wheeler’s Hist, of India from the Earliest Times, I. 11).
Rice cakes are also used at the sraddhas, or funeral
ceremonies, of the Hindus (Monier Williams’ Epic
Poetry, 38, note). The mourners offer it to the dead
and eat thereof themselves. “ Offering cakes and water,”
says the legislator of the Hindus, is “ the sacrament of
the Manes” (Institutes of Manu, iii. 70). The partak
ing of the bread and wine were connected with the
death of Jesus, which was thus to be shown forth till
he comes. In this there is some approximation to the
sraddhas. The Brahman has to present cakes of bread
to the progenitors of mankind (Manu i. 94). After
making his offerings to the household gods, the offerer
may eat what remains untouched (Manu iii. 117).
Just so the Christian priest and the communicants are
to consume the residue of the consecrated eucharistic
elements. The efficacy of the heavenly bread in gener
ating life, or creating immortal souls, is instanced in
the Ramayna, one of the great Indian epic poems.
Raja Dasaratha performed a sacrifice to obtain a son.
On this the pdya-^a, or food of the gods, was divinely
conferred upon his three wives, who, on partaking
thereof, conceived and bore four god-born sons, one of
whom was the illustrious incarnation Rama (Taiboy’s
�The Bennett Judgment.
13
Wheeler II. 20, 21; Monier Williams, 64). The early
Greeks, from so far back as the times of Cecrops, had.
consecrated loaves and cakes which were sold at the
entrance of the temples and offered to the gods (Bryant’s
Ancient Mythology, I. 371-373). Jeremiah (vii. 18;
xliv. 19), tells of cakes and drink offerings presented to
the queen of heaven. The Homeric gods had their food
as well as their liquor—their ambrosia and their nectar.
So the Israelites in the wilderness were fed with “ the
.corn of heaven,” constituting “ angels’ food” (Ps. lxxviii.
24, 25).
The doctrine of Home, maintained in the eucharistic
service, belongs thus to an ancient and very wide-spread
mythology. It has the authority of India, Persia,
Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece. It is based upon mate
rialism—the sense that spirit can be built up with that
which nourishes the body. It is founded also upon
belief in the visible manifestation of the Deity. If
clothed upon with flesh, why not also with bread and
wine ? The Evangelicals, such as the Record represents,
clirg to the one form of the manifestation, and revolt
at the other. They ape the ceremonials of the eucharist, while disallowing what the ceremonials can alone
signify. In the conflict between truth and error they
belong to neither side. They bear a testimony against
the error, and yet foster it. With very remarkable pre
science, and much descriptive power, Dr Newman,
thirty-three years ago, has pointed to the forces between
whom the great issue has to be decided, whether reason
is to govern the human race, or superstition ; in which
struggle the Evangelicals, unfortunately, are nowhere.
“ Of Evangelical religion,” he said,—
“ we have no dread at all. ... It does not stand on en
trenched ground, or make any pretence to a position; it does
but occupy the space between contending powers, Catholic
f ruth and' Rationalism. Then, indeed, will be the stern en
counter, when two real and living principles, simple, entire,
and consistent, one in the Church, the other out of it, at
length rush upon each other, contending not for names and
�14
The Bennett Judgment.
words or half views, but for elementary notions and dis
tinctive moral characters. ... In the present day mistiness
is the mother of wisdom. A man who can set down half-adozen propositions, v’hich escape from destroying one
another only by being diluted into truisms, who can hold
the balance between opposites so skilfully as to do without
fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth without
guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the con
tradictory,—who holds that Scripture is the only authority,
yet that the Church is to be deferred to, that faith only
justifies, yet that it does not justify without works, that
grace does not depend on sacraments, yet is not given with
out them,that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those who
have them not are in the same religious condition as those
who have,—this is your safe man, and the hope of the
Church; this is what the Church is said to want, not party
men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons to
guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the
Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No (The Manchester Friend,
33, 34).”
From the day that this was written to the present
time, the progress of the two opposed bodies has been
very manifest. On the one side Romanism has become
rampant, introduced into the Church of England through
the many channels which her hollow’ unguarded system
allows of. On the other, the advocates of free thought
have been advancing rapidly in knowledge, in courage,
and in numbers. Their tread is now firmly on the
ground, never to be disturbed; and in the process of
time, vre may hope and believe, the human race will be
released from the bondage of error in which dark days,
rooted in Paganism, have involved them, to recognise
in simplicity, in fulness, and in truth, the Being who
has made them, as revealed to them daily in all his un
disputed works and ways.
Great Malvern,
July, 1872.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The Bennett judgement
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Date of publication from KVK. Reprinted from the 'Literary Churchman' and 'The Edinburgh Review', Vol. 136, No. 277. William James Early Bennett was an Anglican priest. Bennett is celebrated for having provoked the decision that the doctrine of the Real Presence is a dogma not inconsistent with the creed of the Church of England. This followed the publication of his pamphlet 'A Plea for Toleration' in the Church of England (1867) in the form of a letter to Edward Bouverie Pusey.
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Thomas Scott
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[1872]
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Church of England-Doctrines
Conway Tracts
Eucharist
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Text
CONSEQUENCES.
BY
MONCURE. D. CONWAY, M.A.
“ The destroyer of all successes is ill-timed apprehension of danger. ”
Hitopadesa.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��CONSEQUENCES.
N eminent writer has lately caused some agitation
by warning the country that there are certain
“ rocks ahead ” on the track of its present course. He
sees danger to the wealth, the greatness, and even the
stability of the nation in every direction. The rocks
concerning which he is most apprehensive are, first,
that the coal will give out, and with it all the manu
facturing and railway enterprises which make the com
mercial supremacy of England ; and secondly, that the
intelligence of the country is alienated from its religion,
which renders it certain that the masses of the people
will presently be also alienated from it; and since they
will be without the restraints of culture, the downfall
of creeds will involve the downfall of social and politi
cal institutions which have grown up along with the
creeds. It will require, he thinks, a culture and refined
thought, which the masses do not possess, to detach
the social organism from the dogmatic parasite which
has grown around it; and when the scepticism of the
educated has filtered down into them, they will make
a rude, indiscriminate sweep of good and evil alike.
It is not within the scope of this essay to consider
the particular “ rocks ahead ” pointed out by our
“ Cassandra.” I merely refer to his warnings as illus
trative of apprehensions felt by many in another direc
tion, namely, the effect of religious inquiry on human
happiness and character. And I do so because his
apprehensions appear to me to rest upon fallacies quite
A
�4
Consequences.
similar to those treacherous fears of the results of free
inquiry which I propose to consider. His main fallacy
is the fear that the same intelligence which has adapted
man to his present condition is to remain standing still
while everything else changes. Our coal mines, it may
be, are gradually to diminish, possibly to fail; but wifi,
that intellect which has invented steam engines, and
other machinery, lose its power of invention, and for
the first time show itself inadequate to meet emer
gencies as they arise ? Is the future to have all our
problems, and to be without brains of its own ? So
also in the case of the violent revolution apprehended,
when the masses share the scepticism of the educated.
Our prophet of evil forgets, apparently, that such a
change as that cannot be an isolated one. He forgets
that in the same length of time a thousand other
changes will also occur; that, for instance, the masses
must acquire some of the calmness and self-control of
the cultivated along with their scepticism; and, on the
other hand, that the social fabric will improve, that the
state will become nobler, and all classes possess too
much interest in both to handle rashly any real and
healthy institution.
This whole method of apprehension is treacherous.
When Jesus said, “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof; to-morrow will take care of to-morrow’s
affairs,” he uttered a thought as pregnant with philo
sophy as with faith. The plan of prognosticating prac
tical evil has now become a favourite method of trying
to intimidate free thought and free speech. This plan
has been carried to its extreme by the Bishop of Peter
borough, who lately said that he would not stop to
inquire whether the tidings of science were true or not;
he only asked whether they were glad tidings. Not
finding them glad tidings—and they certainly are not
promising for bishops — his lordship unhesitatingly
rejects them, irrespective of their truth or untruth.
This Bishop only caricatures a way of dealing with new
�Consequences.
5
truth which is being more plausibly used by many
others than by this bishop, who has so well merited
the thanks of scientific men by his naive utterance.
Most of us, whose memories run back towards the
beginning of this generation, must recognise a marked
change in the tone of orthodoxy towards rationalism.
In place of the old intolerance, we now find a tone of
apology, and meet with numbers of people who are
eager to persuade us that they are not so orthodox as
they seem. Again, we are as often appealed to to
exercise charity as we have had, in earlier times, to
appeal for it ourselves. It is to be hoped we shall all
cultivate that virtue, but heretics cannot shut their
eyes to the novelty of the situation. When cremation
was lately proposed, and was bitterly denounced by the
Catholic clergy in Belgium, a paper in that country
remarked that it was a pity the Church which so
opposed burning the bodies of the dead had not always
manifested an equal repugnance to burn the bodies
of the living ; similarly, it is an instance of the irony of
history that the religionists who so long ruled England
by reign of terror should now appeal for charity. Even
Protestantism, when it succeeded Romanism in power,
did not break its terrible weapons; it used them until
they became dull. Reduced at last to battle in an
Age of Reason, and to answer argument with argu
ment instead of with prisons and persecutions, it calls
for the toleration it so long denied. Very well, let
us have it,—charity for all! We may doubt whether
we should have heard so much about it had Supersti
tion continued as strong as of old,—but still the high
rule of reason is to speak the truth in love.
At the same time, long experience should make us
prudent. The more valuable a coin is the more dan
gerous is its counterfeit, and the more attractive a
virtue the more necessary is it that its garb shall not
be conceded to its opposite. Charity is due to every
sincere man, but not to proven error. If a man be in
�6
Consequences.
error, the more I love him the more will I hate the
falsity that misleads him. When the wolf pleaded for
compassion, the shepherd replied, “ Mercy to you were
cruelty to the lamb.” It is difficult to see how it can
be consistent with love to our fellow-beings that we
should be tender to the errors that afflict them, or the
superstition that devours them. Clemency becomes
cruelty when it parts from common sense.
All this is too plain to require argument. But of
late its force has been escaped by another plea. We
are now told that in the progress of the world the old
beliefs have lost their darker features. The old talons
of persecution have been pared away; fanaticism has
become unfashionable; hell has been spiritualised;
and creeds that once roused agony, fear, and consequent
intolerance are now softened into unrealised words or
mystical meanings. Superstitions may remain, but
they are now pretty superstitions, like a child’s belief
in fairies. And we are asked, Is it not unnecessary, nay
cruel, to take away such sweet illusions, when they are
so harmless ? A gentleman who takes his family to
church regularly, said to me, “ I know as well as any
one that the clergyman preaches fables, but I do not
care to worry my children by telling them so. When
I take them to the pantomime, I don’t tell them, All
that scenery is only daubed pasteboard, the fairy there
is merely a painted woman, and her jewels only glass,
bought for a penny. Whether at church or theatre I
prefer to humour their pleasant illusions, and let them
remain happy in them as long as they can.” It ap
peared to me strange that this gentleman should not
see the great difference between transient illusion and
permanent delusion. He humours the illusions of the
pantomime, because he knows very well that his child
will outgrow them. It would distress him very much
if he thought that, when his child grew to be twenty
years of age, it would still believe in the reality of
fairies. But, in encouraging the pulpit fables, he is
�Consequences.
7
fostering things that, from being the illusions of child
hood, harden into the delusions of the whole life.
Mr Tennyson has put this common notion into
rhyme, and his verses are the favourite quotation of the
school we are considering. They were recently offered
by the Athenaeum as a rebuke to Mr Morley for his
excellent work “ On Compromise,” and again by a
plausible writer in censure of the plain-speaking of
certain pulpits. The verses run thus :
“ 0 thou that after toil and storm
May’st seem to have reach’d a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views,
Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.”
These verses are nearly the only ones which the poet
and his friends might wish obliterated from his fair
pages, as representing (one must believe) his first
timorous and unsteady step on a path which we may
hope has since lead to heights that shame their faithless
fears. Passing their undertone of contempt for the
female intellect, of which the poet was probably uncon
scious, let us consider what our duty is to that praying
sister, or brother either, whose illusions we are called
upon to spare. If our sister is praying in earnest, if
doubt has not crept into her heart—we must not call it
her intellect, I suppose—then her faith does not merely
include
“ Her early heaven, her happy views,”
but also her early hell, and some most unhappy views.
If her prayer be not a mere attitude, she is probably
imploring an angry God not to send her children,
brothers, or friends into everlasting anguish and despair.
If that be her creed, she can hardly be leading such
melodious days that it should be cruel to hint that her
apprehensions may be unfounded.
�8
Consequences.
But the poet might remind us that he asks us to
leave her the pleasing side of her creed only—to
remove her fears, hut humour her hopes though they
be false. Our sister must be feeble indeed if this be
possible; her powers must be very weak if she does
not perceive that her Bible and her Prayer-book tell
her as much of God’s wrath as of his love, corre
late hell and heaven, and that she has no better
authority for her hopes than for her fears. But grant
ing that the process be possible, and that we find her
living in an atmosphere of rosy delusions, the question
arises, ought we to avoid disturbing them ? Do not
let us confuse that question with any other. It is not
whether we should obtrude our opinions on others, but
whether we should sanction their opinions when we
believe them false; it is not whether we should be
rude, but whether we should be sincere. One who
loves truth will not need exhortation to try and make
it attractive instead of repulsive. The danger is the
other way, that truth will be so smooth and polite as
not to be recognized for what it really is. The real
question is whether truth should be concealed and
suppressed out of consideration for any one’s pleasant
prejudices.
It is perfectly easy to show on general principles
that such tampering with truth is disloyal and more
dangerous than honest error itself. It is easy to show
that to suppress truth is to suggest falsehood; that it
is to foster a malarious atmosphere which brings forth
not only pretty superstitions but ugly ones, and leaves
the mind to be overgrown not only with gay weeds but
rank poisons; that where a pleasant fiction finds
shelter a dangerous error may nestle at its side; and
that if the great souls of history had smoothed over
falsehood because it was agreeable, and remained silent
before the pet prejudices of weak minds, we should all
be worshipping to-day the painted fetish dolls of the
world’s infancy.
�Consequences.
9
But I propose at present to look at the matter from
another and somewhat lower point of view. This
theory of suppression is not only immoral, hut rests
upon an essential delusion. That delusion is that
truth is hard, cold, unlovely, and that all the beauty
rests with the illusions. The prevalence of this notion
is easily explained. It is the natural tendency of an
existing dogmatic system, when it finds some of its
points coming into collision with common sentiment,
to smooth and explain them away, cover them with
velvet, so as to make itself as attractive as possible; and
one of the oldest tricks of dogmatic art is to paint the
opposing view in as dark colours as possible to make
itself more pleasing by the contrast. The early Chris
tians painted their own saints with beautiful tints on
church windows, but the saints of other religions they
painted as demons with terrible horns and flaming
eyes; and the descendants of those early Christians
have not lost their art. We know their skill in paint
ing the infidel on his death-bed surrounded with
horrors, the materialist given up to sensuality, the man
of science living in an Arctic sea of negation, perishing
without hope. It is no wonder that with these for
bidding pictures in the distance so many are frightened
back from the search for truth, and beg that the realm
of delusions may be spared.
But there is one suspicious circumstance about all
these pictures of the results of beliefs so invested with
horrors; they are depicted by those who have never
held those beliefs, who have no experience of their real
bearings, and who must therefore have drawn upon
their imagination for their facts. We do not hear the
actual materialists complaining that their belief is hope
less, nor the real heretic crying out that he is in icy
despair. They seem about as hearty and cheerful as
other people. In one of our popular dramas, a rigidly
righteous old lady is troubled because a certain blind
youth is constantly cheerful; regarding blindness as
�io
Consequences.
sent by an afflicting providence she shakes her head at
the young man’s happiness, and says that when tribu
lation is sent to us we ought to tribulate. This old
lady, who, never having been blind knew nothing of
its resources, seems to have written a good deal of
modern theology. I do not deny that there is a
certain naturalness about her inferences concerning
things she knows nothing about. When she appears
in the guise of a popular preacher or a doctor of
divinity, he sits down to consider what he would be
and do if he (otherwise, of course, retaining his present
views) were a materialist, or a sceptic, and how Paine
and Voltaire must have died—if they died logically.
But having never tried it, he is compelled to evolve
each result out of his inner consciousness. The image
so evolved must sooner or later be brought face to face
with the fact, and the contrast between the two is
sometimes astonishing. Let us review a few examples.
In former times, theologians could not (imagine that
any man could have an actual and conscientious dis
belief of their dogmas. They attributed all scepticism
to an evil heart, or to a desire to forget and hide the
truth lest it might check their evil propensities. This
being their premiss, it was but a natural inference that
all sceptics must be wicked men. Thus Thomas Paine
was branded as a drunkard—a pure fabrication—and
Voltaire stigmatised for immoralities of which he was
innocent. But there was another inference. These
men being only pretended unbelievers, it was but
natural that when the hour of death arrived, the dis
guise should fall, the truth come out, and the terrors
it was impossible really to disbelieve then come so
close that they would cry for mercy and die in the
agonies of remorse. To suit that theory, fictitious
scenes were invented for the deathbed of Paine, who
died most peacefully, and that of Voltaire, whose only
trouble in his closing hours was that the priests hung
about him like vultures.
�Consequences.
11
But that old theory broke down. The upright lives
of such men as Hume, and Herbert, and Bolingbroke,
and Franklin, and their peaceful deaths, reduced it to
absurdity. There has succeeded to it another, which
is, that unless a man believe in immortality, his life
must be selfish, and he must have an excessive horror
of death. While, on the other hand, the believer
in heaven sacrifices present for future happiness,
and dies with joyful hope. But this theory breaks
down under the facts just like the other. The scep
tical philosophers around us are apparently no more
selfish than other people. If they were devoted to
self, they would take care first of all not to express
their scepticism. There are eminent men of science
around us, disbelievers in Animism, whose abilities
might have made them bishops, but whose self-sacri
ficing devotion to what they believe true, causes them
to live in poverty, and under the denunciation of the
comfortable souls who find godliness to be great gain.
Nor do we find that heretics have any greater dread of
death than believers in a future life. The orthodox
man for whom the grave is a gate to Paradise, sends
for the doctor just as fast as the sceptic, and never
seems in any hurry to enjoy his future bliss. On the
other hand, no martyrs have ever marched more fear
lessly to death than the revolutionists of France and
Germany, who, in nine cases out of ten were unbe
lievers in any future life. The unbeliever in a future
life has not, indeed, much reason for the gloom com
monly ascribed to him. If he has lost expectation of
future joys, he has equally lost all apprehension of
future woes; and, so far as the natural desire for con
tinued existence is concerned, he knows that, if it is to
be, he will attain it just as much as any believer in it,
with the advantage that it will not have for a part of
it the torture of some of his friends.
Let us take another case,—the common idea of what
it is to be a fatalist or necessitarian. The believer in
�12
Consequences.
Free-Will sits down and evolves from his inner con
sciousness, the typical believer in necessity. As the
fatalist believes that what will be will be; that nothing
can be altered by the will of man; so, he must assuredly
be a man who sits passive and allows things to take
their own course. If he be a Calvinist, and believes
that God has predestined from before the foundation
of the world those who are to be saved and those who
are to be lost, he will not fail to give himself up to
sensual pleasures, knowing well that if he is one of the
elect, self-indulgence cannot harm him, and if not, he
will at least enjoy this life while it lasts. But when
our speculative believer in free-will comes to examine
the facts, he finds that the most active figures in his
tory have been those same believers in fate. They
are such men as the heroes of Greece; as Paul and
Mahomet; Luther, Calvin, and John Knox; as Crom
well and his soldiers ; as the Puritans who founded
the American Commonwealth ; men, aggressive, power
ful, irresistible, who have left their impress on the
world in epochs; men, too, who, instead of finding in
their election to divine favour, a reason for self-indul
gence, felt in it an inspiration to surrender their every
power to what they conceived to be the will of God.
As a final example, we have before us the ordinary
conception of a materialist. Very few people are com
petent to pursue those philosophical studies which
underlie the various conclusions called nominalism,
realism, intuitionalism, utilitarianism, idealism, material
ism. But the latter word has a familiar sound:
materialism is related to matter, and matter plainly
means the earth, and flesh and blood,.food and drink;
consequently a materialist must mean a gross, fleshly
character, a man who believes in nothing he cannot
bite, and, as opposed to the idealist, he must be a man
without ideas. This popular notion of a materialist
recalls the sad fate of one of our artists, who made a
sea-side picture, and among the common objects of the
�Consequences.
13
sea-side which, he painted on the sands was a blood-red
lobster. He had never seen a lobster, except as boiled
for the table, and he supposed it had the same colour
when washed up from the sea. He painted in accord
ance with his experience; and his surprising work so
added to his experience, that he is now, I believe, a
respectable merchant. And so the average orthodox
man bestows on the materialist his own experience of
matter, and boils him in the hot water of his theologic
consciousness very red. But when we come to consider
the materialists as they are, we find them quite the
reverse. It would be difficult—I might almost say
impossible—to find in the long list of eminent material
ists a single gross or sensual character. English
materialists have been known to us as men especially
consecrated to ideas. They have been such men as
Shelley, in whose poems of Mature Robert Browning
found a high correspondency with the divine; or
Robert Owen, and his fellow-socialists, giving up life
and fortune in the pursuit of an ideal society; and
such men are fairly followed to-day by the men of
science, and the positivists, and the secularists—men
of plain living and high thinking, almost ascetic in
their self-denial, and ever dreaming of higher education,
of co-operation, and of other schemes for the moral,
intellectual, or social advancement of mankind. Such
are the men for whom Christians in their palaces sigh,
deploring, amid their luxury, the gross materialism of
the times!
Now, let me not be misunderstood. The fact that
believers in these several doctrines have contradicted
by their lives and characters the d, priori theories
formed about them, does not prove their doctrines
true. The fact that Paine, when the American Con
gress voted him money for his writings, refused to take
it, poor as he was, but devoted it to the cause of liberty,
refutes the idea that an infidel must be selfish; but it
does not prove Paine’s belief to be true. Nor does the
�14
Consequences.
life of Paul prove the truth of predestination, nor that
of Shelley the truth of materialism. As little do such
facts show that there is no connection between intellec
tual convictions and practical life. What such facts do
show, is just this : that the implied method of dealing
with questions is treacherous. Truth is not to be
tested by anyone’s speculative apprehensions as to its
results. It is as if a painter should sit down at the
base of a hill he has never ascended to sketch the
landscape which he supposes to be seen from its
summit. The height may command out-looks he can
not imagine until he has climbed it. If the orthodox
believer really occupied the point of view reached by
the thinker seen only from his own, he might find
him surrounded by prospects, forces, influences, which
alter the case materially. Every liberal thinker’s ex
perience must confirm this. The free-thinker knows
well that it is the sign of an embryonic phase of in
quiry, to dread its consequences upon the character or
happiness of any man, woman, or child. It has not
brought gloom to himself, nor demoralization; he does
not find his life a discord in contrast with any
“melodious days” when he believed in a jealous God
and a yawning hell; he knows that truthfulness is the
sustaining thing, and the ardent pursuit of truth able
to fill heart and brain with enthusiasm and hope.
Why should he imagine that what has brought to
himself liberation and light should bring a shadow on
the life of his “ praying sister,” whom he can only re
gard as a victim on whom Superstition, like a ghoul, is
preying 1
The free inquirer will discover full soon that the
only “ saving faith ” is a perfect trust in truth, and
that the only real infidelity is the belief that a lie can
do better work than truth. He will take to heart
Montaigne’s advice, and fear only Fear. No alarms
about the consequences of the diffusion of truth can
shake his nerves or cause the balance to tremble in his
�Consequences.
15
hand. Truth has ever justified herself. She can look
back to fair results, to the noblest triumphs, and in
their light see the chains that bind all the lions on her
path. We pursue our inquiries, not without experience,
not in the infancy of the world, but amid the mighty
shades of heroic forerunners; amid a cloud of brave
witnesses, who knew that the children of Truth have
nothing to fear, living or dying ; whose fidelities have
built up the temples of Science and Civilization amid
the clamours of cowards; and they all cry shame on
the fears that would betray our reason and sap our
strength; they cry Onward ! to the heart that aban
dons the flesh-pots of falsehood, even for a wilder
ness where leads the pillar of truth—be it fire, be it
cloud.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS. EDINBURGH.
��INDEX TO ME SCOTT’S PUBLICATIONS,
ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr THOMAS
SCOTT, No. 11, The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
Price
ABBOTT, FRANCIS E., Editor of ‘ Index,’ Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.
S'
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Truths for the Times
_
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Nine Years a Curate .
_
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One Hundred and One Questions to which the Orthodox, &c Per dozen
On Public Worship
Our First Century
------2
Primitive Church History
Sacred History as a Branch of Elementary Education. Part I.__ Its Influence
on the Intellect. Part II.—Its Influence on the Development of the Con
science. 6d each Part
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Notes on Bishop Magee’s Pleadings
Orthodox Theories of Prayer
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Natural Religion, versus Revealed Religion
On Etbbnal Torture ----__
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BRAY, CHARLES.
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u?A”.*™01116 Eemarks on Professor Tyndall’s Address at Belfast,
wsus Authority .
BROWN, GAMALIEL.
An Appeal to the Preachers of all the Creeds
Sunday Lyrics The New Doxology
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BENTHAM, JEREMY.
BERNSTEIN, A.
d.
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�List of Publications—continued.
CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
An examination oe Liddon’s Rampton Lecture
Dr Farrar’s “ Life of Christ.” A Letter to Thomas Scott
Letter and Spirit
--------The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil .
The Question of Method, as affecting Religious Thought .
Rational Piety and Prayers for Fair Weather Spiritual Gambling; or, The Calculation of Probabilities in Religion,
0 6
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0 3
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CONWAY, MONCURE, D.
Consequences, ---------- 0
The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity. With Portrait
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The Voysey Case
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COUNTRY PARSON, A
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense.
Parts I., IL. and III. 6d. each Part
------
COUNTRY VICAR, A.
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
Review of a paper by Dr Lang
CRANBROOK, The late Rev. JAMES.
1
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On the Existence of Evil
------0
On the Formation of Religious Opinions 0
On the Hindrances to Progress in Theology
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The Tendencies of Modern ReligiousThought
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God’s Method of Government,
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On Responsibility,
----0
Positive Religion—Four Lectures, each 0 3
DEAN, PETER. The ImposSIBILITY OF KNOWING WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 0 3
Dr CARPENTER at Sion College ; or
The View of Miracles Taken by Men of Science 0 6
DUBLIN DIVINITY STUDENT—Christianity and its Evidences—No.. I.
0 6
DUPUIS. Christianity a form of the great Solar Myth 0 9
F. H. I. Spiritual Pantheism 0 6
FOREIGN CHAPLAIN.
The Efficacy of Prayer, a Letter to Thomas Scott
Everlasting Punishment. A Letter to Thomas Scott,
On Religion
0 3
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0 6
0 3
On Faith ---------Cruelty and Christianity : A Lecture,
-
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FORMER ELDER IN A SCOTCH CHURCH.
GELDART, Rev E. M. The Living God
GRAHAM, A. D.
HANSON, Sir R- D., Chief-Justice of South Australia.
Science
and
Theology --------
HARE, The Right Rev FRANCIS, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester.
The
Difficulties
Scriptures
0
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HENNELL, SARA S.
On The Need
of
Dogmas
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Religion.
A letter to Thos. Scott
-
HINDS, SAMUEL, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich.
Another Reply
to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we
CANNOT RELY ON THE BlBLE ? ”
to the Question, “Apart from Supernatural Revelation, What
is the Prospect of Man’s Living after Death?”
A Reply to the Question—“Shall I seek Ordination in the Church of
England ?”
--------The Nature and Origin of Evil. A Letter to a Friend
-
A Reply
HOPPS, Rev J. PAGE.
Thirty-nine Questions
on the
Thirty-nine Articles. With Portrait
HUTCHISON, THOMAS DANCER—The Free-Will Controversy,
JEVONS, WILLIAM.
-
0
0
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6
6
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The Book of Common Prayer Examined in the Light of the Present Age.
Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
- 1
Claims ok Christianity to the Character of a Divine Revelation, Considered 0
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The Prayer Book Adapted to the Age
-
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KALISCH, M. Ph.D.,
Theology of the Past and the Future. Reprinted from Part I. of his Commen
1
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KIRKMAN. The Rev THOMAS F., Rector of Croft, Warrington.
Church Cursing and Atheism
-
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- 1 0
- 1 6
-
On Church Pedigrees. Parts I. and II. With Portrait. 6d. each Part
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- 1
LAKE, J. W.
Plato, Philo, and Paul; or, The Pagan Conception of a “Divine Logos,” shewn
to have been the basis of the Christian Dogma of the Deity of Christ, - 1
LA TOUCHE, J. D., Vicar of Stokesay, Salop.
The Judgment of the Committee
of
Council in the Case of Mr. Voysey
-
LAYMAN, A, and M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin.
Law and the Creeds Thoughts on Religion and the Bible
Cremation
-
LEWIS, TERESA.
MACFIE, MATT.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience to the Laws of the Universe
The Religious Faculty : Its Relation to the other Faculties, and its Perils,
The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism traced to their origin, -
M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pleas for Free Inquiry.
Parts I., II., III. and IV.
Mackay, Charles, ll.d.
6d. each Part
the souls of the children
MACLEOD, JOHN
Recent Theological Addresses. A Lecture
MAITLAND, EDWARD.
-
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Jewish Literature and Modern Education: or, the Use and Abuse of the
Bible in the Schoolroom
. -16
How to Complete the Reformation. With Portrait
- 0 6
The Utilization of the Church Establishment - 0 6
MUIR, J., D.O.L.
Religious and Moral Sentiments. Freely translated from Indian Writers, - - 0
Three Notices of the “ Speaker’s Commentary,” translated from the Dutch
of Dr. A. Kuenen,
---0
M.P., Letter by. The Dean of Canterbury on Science and Revelation
- 0
6
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NEALE, EDWARD VANSITTART.
Does Morality depend on Longevity ?
-06
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory
Remarks
-10
Reason, Religion, and Revelation, -10
The Mythical Element in Christianity
-10
The New Bible Commentary and the Ten Commandments
- 0 3
NEWMAN, Professor F. W.
Against Hero-Making in Religion Jambs and Paul
On the Causes of Atheism.
With Portrait
On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism ; and On the Galla Religion
On the Historical Depravation of Christianity On this World and the other World,
Reply’ to a Letter from an Evangelical Lay Preacher The Controversy about Prayer
--The Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline Doctrine
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism
The True Temptation of Jesus. With Portrait
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil The Two Theisms
Ancient Sacrifice,
OLD GRADUATE. Remarks on Paley’s Evidences
OXLEE, The Rev JOHN. a Confutation of the Diabolarchy -
PADRE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.
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PARENT AND TEACHER, A. Is Death the end of all things for Man? - 0 6
PHYSICIAN, A.
A Dialogue by way of Catechism,—Religious, Moral, and Philosophical
Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
-10
The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of our Age
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Part IV.—Numbers, Is. Part V.—Deuteronomy, Is. Part VI.—Joshua, 6d., - 6 0
PRESBYTER ANGLIOANUS.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of
the Church of England
-06
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- 0 6
�List of Publications—continued.
ROBERTSON, JOHN, Coupar-Angus.
INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY
The Finding of the Book
s. d.
-
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SCOTT, THOMAS.
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Basis of a New Reformation _
Commentators and Hierophants; or, The Hones tv nf
m Two Parts. 6d. each Part
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Practical Remarks on “The Lord’s Prayer” '
Ihe Dean of Ripon on the Physical Resurrectth^
tU
on the Truth of Christianity
I°1' 0F ^ESUS>
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The English Life of Jesus. A New Edition
'
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1HK Iactics and Defeat of the C!wptqt«taxt
~
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SHAEN, MISS—Prayer and Love to God
S°CIETY
’
STRANGE, T. LUMISDEN, late Judge of the HioL L i f
T. L. Strange
An Address to all Earnest Christians
Clerical Integrity
_
Communion with God
'
The Bennett Judgment
”
The Bible; Is it “The Word of God’”
The Speaker’s Commentary Reviewed
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The Exercise of Prayer
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Church’ Croya°n'
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“ E?INBUI1gh Review” and Dr Strauss
Ihree Letters on the Voysey Judgment
Society’s Lectures,
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WORTHINGTON, The Rev W. R.
ZERFFI,E G^G-t Ph.d°PINI0K IN Maiters of religion
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SCOTT’S “ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.”
In One Volume, 8vo, bound in cloth, post free, 4s. 4rf.,
jSECOND EDITION OF
THE ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Noucb —Poj
a%ders*° be made payable to Thomas Scott,
___________ IPestow Hill Office, Upper Norwood, London, S.E.
Friends to the cause of “ Free Inquiry and Free Expression! are
earnestly requested to give aid in the wide dissemination of these
publuahons.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Consequences
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: Edinburgh
Collation: 15, [4] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4 and the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end. Tentative date of publication from British Library catalogue. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[1875?]
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G4863
N177
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Unitarianism
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Morris Tracts
NSS
Unitarianism
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Text
1
CRITICISM
THE
RESTORATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
A LETTER TO MR. THOS. SCOTT REVIEWING A
PAPER BY DR. LANG.
BY
•
A COUNTRY VICAR.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.,
Price Sixpence.
��CRITICISM THE RESTORATION OF
CHRISTIANITY.
My Dear Mr Scott,—-I have been reading the
notice of your “English Life of Jesus/’ in Theological
Review of Oct. ’72. In it Mr Wright says, “But
surely the suggestion of difficulties should be accom
panied by the solution, if one can be found, and for
this purpose some notice of the steps by which the
synoptical gospels were produced would have been most
useful.” Now, I have also lately read with much in
terest the remarkable paper by Dr. Heinrich Lang of
Zurich, which you sent me; and this seems to supply
to a certain extent what is stated by Mr Wright to be
wanting in your book.
Dr Heinrich Lang’s paper presents in a short form
the latest results of criticism on many questions of
supreme importance ; and more than this, it shows how
a practical use may be made of them in the reconstruc
tion of the religious teaching of Jesus himself, without
the miraculous superstructure of a later age. The
Church has been very confident for many centuries,
that the doctrines she has taught, and the religious
views she has held, are the authentic doctrines and
views of Jesus and his first disciples. It is indeed well
known that the entire system was not formulated for
some centuries after his death, almost every doctrine of
importance was assailed by the fire and steel of persecu
tion, and watered with the blood of martyrs. There
was in the earliest period of Christianity, considerable
difference, not only between the Jewish and Christian
religions, but between opposing parties in the Christian
Church. Nevertheless, it was assumed that before
�4
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
these differences arose, there was a time of entire agree
ment in' a form of doctrine and discipline, directlygiven by Jesus himself to his apostles, and by them to
‘•his Church. Whence, then, all our difficulties and all
our differences ? This divine unity of faith given to
man must set them all at rest for ever. But where are
we to find it ? Each sect will say,—It is preserved
pure and entire in the religion we profess, and so the
real influence which the divine teaching of the gospels
ought to have upon the world is lost, because we can
not agree what it is. The substantial value of a
religion influencing all mankind for good is sacrificed to
the maintenance of different forms of other worldliness;
and after all we get no clear ideas of that other world,
and that future state, which would be so precious to us
if we could. This being the case, it is a consolation to
find that the assumption of the unity of the faith in
the apostolic age is a dream, and the pretension of any
system of religion delivered by Jesus to his apostles,
and by them to the Church, and by the Church to us,
is a delusion. There was no unity of the faith in the
apostolic age, and there is none in the writings of the
New Testament taken as a whole. The miraculous
religion of the Church was unknown to Jesus and his
disciples. There was no substantial agreement about
the Christ himself. The Jesus of the fourth Gospel is
a different person from the Jesus of Matthew, of Luke,
and of the apocalypse, especially from that Jesus Christ
the Son of God, whom the great apostle Paul preached
with such marvellous devotion and success to the
world.
The New Testament has been erroneously supposed
for many centuries to be the original authority for
orthodox doctrines, whereas, in truth, the opposing
orthodoxies of the first century gave rise to much of
the Testament. Words which he never spoke, and
deeds which he never did, have been ascribed to Jesus,
as well as to his apostles. A later age was able to in-
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
5
troduce as original documents the narratives which we
now have, and which are shown in this paper to have .
been, in part at least, arbitrarily constructed for particu
lar purposes. A better text, and a more reverent and'
faithful use of the New Testament, has opened the way
for these discoveries. It cannot be right to profess to
derive the articles of the faith of Jesus from those
parts of the New Testament, which can be shown as in
this paper, to be the work of opposing parties in the
next generation, written for the purpose of giving a
supposed divine authority to their own divergent views.
If our religion is to be the religion of Jesus, it is of
paramount importance to ascertain how much of it be
longs to his age and was taught by himself. It begins
to be possible now to know something of the real Jesus,
who taught in Galilee and suffered at Jerusalem, and
to have a much more real appreciation of the actual
doctrine which he taught.
We cannot indeed assume the right of deciding veith
certainty how much of the discourses of Jesus. has
come down to us in his own words, and how much has
been put into his mouth by later writers for definite
purposes of their own. But when we find two different
versions of the same discourse, we are justified in
maintaining that both cannot be faithful reports of the
actual words. We see how the writers of the New
Testament habitually quote the Old Testament: we
know that there was in existence a book of the oracles
of Jesus, which the synoptical evangelists appear to
have manipulated, each in their own manner : we have
a vast store-house of Jewish tradition, showing how
carefully the Jews treasured up the sayings of their rab
bin, in which, for instance, almost every sentence of the
Lord’s prayer may be found; while the way in which the
words of ancient speakers and the doctrines of ancient
philosophers were handed down to posterity, is “abun
dantly shown in the works of classical writers still ex
tant. So, while we have reason to believe in the
�6
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
general faithfulness of the reports of the sayings of
Jesus, we are by no means compelled to accept every
word of the Gospels as of divine authority; and to
allow that the most difficult questions of religion and
morality, about our present and future state, are to be
decided for ever by one or two detached sentences, of
which we know not whence they came.
A summary of the contents of Dr. Heinrich Lang’s
remarkable paper will show that love of the Bible and
not enmity against it, is the characteristic of modern
theological criticism. Strauss began the work in the
year 1835. He took his stand upon the four Gospels,
and set to work with such resources as he had to hand :
no great advance however was made, because the
ground on which he stood was not firm enough under
his feet. This defect in foundation was recognized by
Baur. He sought for a firmer standing ground, and
found it in the four unquestioned epistles of Paul,
Galatians, I. and II. Corinthians, and Romans. True,
these epistles were not written until about twenty years
after the death of Jesus, nevertheless, they are the
genuine works of a man, who had been a contemporary
of the master, and afterwards became the foremost
champion of Christianity. These epistles faithfully
represent the character of the writer, and throw a
stream of light upon the controversies of their day.
Here there is firm ground for the feet : Niebuhr had no
such guide to help him in his researches into Roman
History: with such a clue we ought to find our way
through the labyrinth of early Christendom. These
writings disclose to our view a scene of perpetual strife.
The cause of this strife is that Christianity has already
departed from its original principles and become another
gospel. The teachers of this other gospel are the
Church in Jerusalem with its chiefs, James, the Lord’s
brother, and the twro apostles Peter and John. The strife
broke out into open flame when Paul returned to Anti
och from his first missionary circuit in Lesser Asia.
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
7
Certain brethren from Jerusalem stirred up the com
munity of Antioch against Paul. Their enmity was
so great that he determined to go to Jerusalem, and lay
before the authorities there, the doctrine he preached to
the heathen world. He succeeded in making some sort
of reconciliation. They gave him the right hand of
fellowship, and arranged that he and his party should
go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision. But
henceforth there was no substantial unity in the
Church: the gospel of the Gentile and the gospel of
the Jew received each a formal sanction. Soon after
this outward reconciliation at Jerusalem, Paul found
himself obliged to rebuke his fellow apostle Peter at
Antioch. Wherever he went his enemies followed him.
No sooner did he leave his new-born church in Gal
atia in order to preach elsewhere, than the Judaizers
denied that he was an apostle, discredited his gospel,
and tried to bring his converts under the yoke of Juda
ism. In this they had met with considerable success,
when he wrote his epistle to the Galatians. Again, at
Corinth he had built up from the elements of Greek
civilization, a- community full of hope and promise.
Scarcely had he left the city for Ephesus, when a party
rose up calling itself by the name of Cephas. They
employed against him the resources of argument and
intrigue. They disowned him as an apostle, showing
their own authority from Jerusalem.
They said Paul
had never seen the Lord Jesus, whereas Peter knew him
well in the flesh. They scoffed at Paul’s visions, which he
gave as the credentials of his call to the apostolate.
They contrasted unfavourably his personal appearance
and his want of eloquence with the claims set up in his
letters. Where, then, is the unity of the apostolic age
which has been so long assumed in the Church'? Where
is the supernatural halo with which the credulity of
centuries has invested this period V
The Acts of the Apostles are closely connected with
the Pauline Epistles : they give a historical represent^
�8
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
tion of the period with which these letters are con
cerned. Here, however, all is changed. The natural
world of human agents and human agencies, which we
find in the letters of Paul, has given place to the fan
ciful domain of miracle. Heaven interposes visibly in
the affairs of earth. An angel comes down to lead
Peter out of prison through the midst of his frightened
guards. An earthquake breaks the chains from the
hands and feet of Paul at Philippi. Both apostles
scatter miracles on either hand. A supernatural
element pervades the narrative, making it well-nigh
unintelligible. Here, at one time Peter becomes the
apostle of the Gentiles, and under remarkable circum
stances baptizes a Gentile family, an action which he
has to justify before the community at Jerusalem. At
another time, Peter, James, and John, the pillars of the
Epistle to the Galatians, take the gospel of Paul under
their protection at the council, maintaining its complete
harmony with their own. In this way the whole his
tory of the period has been remoulded; and Paul has
been best known to the Church for 1800 years through
the representations of the Acts. Criticism, however,
decides at once that the letters of Paul, as the spon
taneous outpourings of a contemporary writer, deserve
all credit, whereas the Acts are the legendary work of
a later hand. But what could move this unknown
author so thoroughly to change the actual history of
things? His object seems to have been the reconcilia
tion of the Petrine and Pauline factions in the Church.
The Christian community required all its powers for
united effort against Judaism and heathenism, and the
unknown author of the Acts was a mediator between
the two parties towards the end of the first, or about
the beginning of the second century. He passes over
in silence the difference between Paul and Peter at
Antioch, and presents instead a contention between
Paul and Barnabas, in order to withdraw the other
controversy from the recollection of Christians. The
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
g
hostile Judaizers persecuted Paul under every kind of
character and caricature. They represented him under
the person of Simon the Samaritan sorcerer; they
made him employ the collections he raised for the
poor at Jerusalem, for the purpose of bribing Peter
to confer upon him the apostolic privilege of giving
the Holy Ghost by imposition of hands. The Pauline
author of the Acts skilfully represents this Samaritan
sorcerer as a historical personage, who tried to corrupt
Peter, before Paul appears upon the stage of events.
The exact resemblance produced in this book between
Peter and Paul, in teaching as well as in life and
character, is a very effectual method of reconciliation.
Both are made apostles of the Gentiles, Paul by a
vision at Damascus, Peter a short time before by a
heavenly apparition at Joppa. Peter had to suffer the
reproach of the circumcision for eating with Gentiles.
According to Paul’s account, fourteen years after this
time, he exposed himself to censure on this question ;
but, according to the Acts, he makes a brilliant defence
of his Gentile associations after the conversion of Cor
nelius. There is no trace in the speeches of Paul in
the Acts of that peculiar teaching we find in his
epistles. His individuality is suppressed, and he is
made to think and speak just like Peter. So also with
regard to his personal character, the Paul of the Acts
is much more Judaizing than the Paul of history. The
independence of the man is sacrificed ; he is made to
allow himself to be led away to a kind of dissimulation,
of which he was quite incapable; the apostleship of
the Gentiles, which was his own, is given to Peter.
The man who went up to Jerusalem three years after
his conversion, in full consciousness of a. mission from
Christ himself, and saw Peter only, is here made a
dependent and companion of-the other apostles (ix.
27, 28). And when fourteen years after he goes up to
Jerusalem to communicate his gospel to the apostles,
he sits silent at the council in the Acts, while Peter,
�io Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
Janies, and John defend his doctrine. The Paul
of history is an incomparably greater and more com
manding character than the Paul of the Acts.
Every kind of miracle which is assigned to Peter in
the first part of this legendary book is ascribed to Paul
in the second. Peter begins his miracles with the
healing of a man born lame, and so does Paul. The
shadow of Peter falling on the sick works miraculous
cures, so do handkerchiefs or aprons from the body of
Paul. Peter is said to have cast out devils, so the evil
spirit himself testifies at Ephesus and Philippi to the
power of Paul. As an enemy to sorcerers, Paul is not
inferior to the adversary of Simon Magus. Both
apostles occasionally inflicted miraculous punishment.
Peter raises Tabitha from the dead, and Paul Eutyches.
Peter is made an object of divine worship by Cornelius,
and the idolatrous inhabitants of Lystra and of Melita
are ready to offer sacrifice to Paul. Both apostles de
cline the superhuman honours in nearly the same
language. The question before us is not the possibility
of miracles—this has been long settled for thinking
men of the present day—-but the resemblance between
Peter and Paul. Actual history does not repeat itself
in this way; it must be ascribed to the author of the
book. So far from being an actual history of the
apostolic age, it is only the development of Church
ideas down to the second century, represented in the
persons of the two foremost characters.
Soon after the death of Jesus, a clearly defined dif
ference arose in the Church. The contest lay between
works and faith, authority and independence, tradition
and progress, Peter and Paul. Judaism as represented
by Peter prevailed at first, but it was impossible to
ignore the gospel of Paul. While the Jews became
every year more hardened against the gospel, the Gen
tile Churches were daily increasing in numbers and
influence. Jerusalem, the seat of early Christianity,
and the future seat of Christ on his return from
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 11
Heaven, according to the prevailing view, was destroyed
in the year 70. The early Church raised Peter to the
highest place. Afterwards, when the doctrines main
tained by Paul began to prevail, it was necessary to
acknowledge his claims and reconcile them with Peter’s.
This the Pauline author of the Acts undertook to do.
By assigning to Peter in the first part of the work the
apostleship of the Gentiles, and by representing the
Judaizing community at Jerusalem as in full accord
with the principles maintained by Paul, he prepares
the way for his purpose, which was to present Paul to
the eyes of the Church in all the glory of the apostolate,
as united in work and will with Peter, in the unbroken
unity of the Catholic faith.
One fabrication followed quick upon another. Every
important Church like Corinth, Pome, and Antioch
insisted on the honour of being founded by both of
these illustrious apostles; they claimed to have re
ceived their first bishops from the hands of both,
though in the apostolic age bishops were none. In
Antioch, Evodus is said to have been established by
Peter, Ignatius by Paul ; in Rome, Linus by Paul,
Clement by Peter. Both apostles, after founding
churches and sees together, close their career at Rome.
The researches of the last ten years have done much
to show the utter groundlessness of the traditional
legends about Peter and Paul. But let us turn from
these apostles to another figure surrounded also with
mysterious halo.
One more name stands prominently forward in the
original Church, John the Apostle and beloved disciple.
We have in the New Testament three works that bear
his name. The Apocalypse, the Fourth Gospel, and
the three Epistles, and over and above the New Testa
ment a mass of tradition. These writings offer a rich
field of discovery to the scientific enquirer, above all
the Apocalypse, a book dear to the early Church, and
understood by it, though sealed with seven seals
�12 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
against the curiosity of later times. Theologians have
been accustomed to regard this book as a faithful pro
phecy of the history of the world from the time of
Christ to the end of days. Each breaks the seals for
himself, and interprets the book according to his own
■will; but the key to its real meaning may be found.
The city of seven hills, the whore, Babylon, which was
made drunk with the blood of saints during the Neronic
persecution in 64, the woman with seven heads, or
as the author explains with seven hills and seven kings,
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba,
Vespasian, all this points to Rome. The beast also
who was one of the seven heads or kings, wounded to
death but healed of his wound, now no more a king, but
about to return again to the throne, this is Nero
who perished in an insurrection of the people, but
according to a widespread legend was still living in
concealment, and would return again to power. The
number of the beast, 666, is the numerical value of the
Hebrew letters composing Nero Csesar. The num
ber 616 found in some manuscripts supports the view.
The rest of the seals fall away of themselves.
The Apocalypse was written about the year 68, after
the persecution and death of Nero, and before the
reign of Vespasian. The author believes that Nero
already healed of his deadly wound, is living among
the Parthians, and will soon return with an army to
level Rome with the ground. After this Nero, or Anti
christ will march against Jerusalem ; but when he has
already overthrown a great part of the city, Christ will
appear in the clouds of heaven, on a white horse, with
a great sword proceeding from his mouth, and destroy
Antichrist with his army. Now begins upon earth the
millennial reign at Jerusalem : The faithful dead raised
from their graves, keep the marriage feast of the lamb
with the faithful living. But after the thousand years
Satan breaks loose from the chains and darkness in
which he has been held since the fall of Antichrist.
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 13
He appears again upon earth and summons Gog and
Magog, the remnant of the Heathen, to a last attack
upon Christ. Fire and brimstone fall from heaven and
destroy the whole army. Now comes the end of the
world ; God creates a new heaven and a new earth :
Sun and moon and stars vanish away, and the only
light is God: Jerusalem comes down from above
shining with gold and jewels.
Such is the meaning of this strange book : Criticism
has not been deterred by the solemn denunciations of
its author. The fundamental idea of the triumph of
Christianity in the world, has alone been fulfilled.
The prophetic dreams are in strange contrast with the
actual truth. Happily for the world, Nero the anti
christ, who is the chief figure after Christ himself, has
never come back. The real king who reigned in the
place of the resuscitated tyrant, was Titus, the delight
of mankind. The race of Heathens consigned by the
prophet to the abyss of hell, produced from its bosom
Nerva Trajan, and the Antonines, unsurpassed by any
of the Christian emperors. Constantine closed the
list of Heathen emperors by handing down the empire
to Christians. Rome, over whose fall the prophet
triumphs, did not become the habitation of devils,
and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird (xviii. 2). Jerusalem, on
the other hand, the beloved city, that was to be
protected by the angel of God from ruin, and to
become the seat of the millennial kingdom, was
levelled with the ground within a year or two of the
appearance of this book. The Jews did not finally re
ceive Christ, nor the Heathen reject him. Where
Christianity has conquered Heathenism, it has been by
the doctrines of the crucified one, not by miracles and
vials and trumpets.
Nevertheless we have reason enough to value this
book very highly. Next after the Pauline Epistles to
which it is opposed, it is the most ancient and impor
�14 Criticism the Restoration oj- Christianity.
tant document of early Christendom. The four Pauline
Epistles are the memorial of the Gentile Church, the
Apocalypse of the Petrine and Judaizing Christians.
Taken together they furnish us with authentic accounts
of the development of the Christian idea from the death
of Jesus to the end of the Apostolic age. We have
a natural picture of the views of the first Christians,
amongst whom the appearance of Paul caused so much
bitterness. The book is full of real Jewish hatred
against Gentiles. The unbelieving Jews are to be con
verted by the judgments which precede the coming of
Christ: but the Gentiles, in the eyes of the Judaizer,
will find no deliverance. The enmity of the author
against Paul is strongly displayed. The Church of
Ephesus is praised for unmasking and rejecting those
that say they are apostles and are not. The licence
granted by Paul to sit at Gentile tables, and eat meat
from Gentile shambles, and intermarry with Gentiles,
is stigmatized as the doctrine of Balaam and of Jezebel.
Some of the characteristics of Paul are assigned to the
false prophet, who did homage to Nero, and wrought
miracles before him, and was cast with him into the
pit (xix. 26). Paul’s name was not one of those that
were written on the foundations of the walls of the
city (xxi., 14). However, notwithstanding their dif
ferences, there are many points of agreement. Both
Paul and the author of the Apocalypse believe in the
same Christ j and he is not the Jesus of history, but the
supernatural Christ of imagination and faith : he is the
divine king in heaven who will return at the last
trumpet to judge the world. Although Paul does not
mention the millennium, nevertheless his representa
tions of the kingdom to come agree in essential, points
with the Apocalypse. According to him the dead rise
from their graves when Christ comes, to live for ever
upon the earth, and the living are changed by divine
magic into heavenly beings. Christ overcomes all
antagonisms, Satan, death and sin, and at last delivers
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 15
up the sceptre to God, who is then all in all. Both
alike look for their consummation as close at hand,
about to begin in their own lifetime.
The Revelation of John and the Gospel of John can
no more be the work of the same author and the same
age, than the Epistles of Paul and the Acts. The gos
pel is the final development of the ideas introduced by
Paul. Judaism lies behind the author as a thing of
the past; and Christianity has no longer to struggle for
bare existence, as in Paul’s writings. He speaks of the
Jewish law as gone by. He accuses the Jews of ignor
ance and obstinacy—of hatred and wickedness in their
conduct towards Jesus. Jesus himself is no longer a Jew,
but the Eternal Word ; who was with God in heaven
before the foundation of the world; incarnate in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth ; revealing the grace and
truth of the Godhead for a time upon earth, but soon
to return to the glory which he had with the Path er.
The Judo-cnristian dreams which were common to Paul
and his enemies, of an actual return of Jesus, and of a
reign for a thousand years upon earth, are quietly set
aside. Jesus comes again only in the Spirit, which he
left with his disciples to guide them into all truth.
There is no longer any idea of the establishment of the
divine kingdom upon earth. Christ is in heaven ; and
the desires of the faithful follow him thither. No talk
of the waiting of those who have died in faith, for the
hour when Christ is to come, that they may return with
their Lord to this world, and reign with him even over
the angels as Paul thought. They who die in faith go
straight to their Lord in the mansions of his Father’s
house, where he has prepared a place for them, that
they may be with him where he is. My kingdom is
not of this world,—is no saying of the historic Jesus,
nor an idea of early Christianity ; it is rather the word
of a Christian Platonist, in the middle of the second
century.
The author chose the form of a life of Jesus for the
�16 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
representation of his own philosophical ideas.
He
draws his materials to a great extent from the synoptic
gospels before him, but he makes a free use of them.
All that does not suit with his higher views of the per
son of Christ, he discards ; so he passes over the birth
of Jesus, his baptism by John, his temptation in the
wilderness, his agony in Gethsemane, the institution of
the Lord’s supper, and he changes the day of his death.
The sayings of Jesus and of other persons, he constructs
from his own philosophical ideas. He alters the scene
of his ministry : Judea is his country instead of Galilee,
and Jerusalem his chief abode instead of Capernaum.
He adopts in great part the miraculous narratives of
his predecessors, but he produces some that are entirely
new, and exalts the others to the highest pitch of thau
maturgy, in order to bring them down to means of re
presentation of higher ideas reflected in them. From
beginning to end, he wages war against merely out
ward miracles, which close the eyes to the miracles of
the Spirit. As to the great miracle of the bodily resur
rection of Jesus, he expresses his meaning in a striking
sentence,—Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
have believed, i.e., who believe in the spirit and truth
of ideas, without requiring the outward guise of a risen
body, who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth,
and the life, without the need of an outward miracle of
resurrection. The fiat of later German criticism pro
nounces this book to be the work of a Christian of the
Hellenistic school, about the middle of the second cen
tury. With respect to the Apostle John, to whom the
Church has assigned the fourth gospel, and the apoca
lypse, and the three epistles, neither more nor less is
known, than that Jesus called him from his fisher’s net
to the Apostolate ; and that after the death of Jesus,
with Peter and James he became a pillar of the Judochristian community at Jerusalem. So far as regards
opinions, being of the school of Peter, he might have
written the Apocalypse; but the authorities decide
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. I7
with increasing clearness against his authorship. The
fact that the author of the Revelations ascribes his hook
to John, the servant of Jesus, is no proof that John
wrote the book. It was a common custom in those
days to publish works under the name of some impor
tant personage. Cicero justifies his ascription of the
De Amicitia to a great man of a former age, by the
words, Genus hoc sermonum, positum in hominum
veterum auctoritate et eorum illustrium, plus nescio quo
pacto videtur habere gravitatis. The testimony of the
fathers, who represent John as the author, is of no value
without further authority j for as Ritschl says of them,
they knew very little of the apostolic age, and that
little was mostly false. Unsparing criticism has swept
away the mass of tradition about the Apostle John,
preserved by Irenseus and other fathers, as unworthy of
credit. Much of it rose from the assumption that he
wrote the Apocalypse, and from a misunderstanding of a
passage in that book, chap. i. 9. I, John, was in the isle
that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the
testimony of Jesus Christ. The use of the same words
in the second verse plainly shows that he was in the
island for the sake of receiving and recording divine
revelations. The Church tradition erroneously inferred
that he was banished to Patmos by Domitian, and re
turned thence to Asia Minor, because he addresses him
self to the seven Churches.
The same criticism which has done so much to throw
light on the age immediately after Jesus, may be used
with equal effect on the life of Jesus himself. Much
labour has been lost in trying to reconcile the fourth
gospel with the synoptics ; now that the unhistorical
character of the fourth gospel is fully recognized, the
work is greatly simplified. Moreover, the landmarks
which have been discovered for the history of the apos
tolic age, are of great use in ascertaining the history of
the previous age. We find everywhere in the gospels
tokens of the same state of party feeling that we have
�18 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
found in the generation after. Matthew traces back the
genealogy of Jesus to David, Luke to Adam, and both
in sucb a marked way as to show that Jesus is to one—
the Messiah of the Jews, to the other the Messiah of all
mankind. Matthew makes Jesus say to his disciples,
Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city
of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel (chap. x. 5-6): and
again, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine (chap. vii. 6):
and Jesus himself avoids Samaria, going up to Jeru
salem by the pilgrim route through Pereea. Whereas,
Luke leaves out these sayings altogether, and fixes upon
Samaria, as the scene of especial energy on the part of
Jesus. There he rebukes his disciples for wishing to
call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, and
shows by parable their equal fitness for the kingdom of
heaven ; thence he sends out the seventy disciples, one
for every nation of the earth, according to the notion of
those times.
In Matthew and in Luke alike Jesus condemns
certain persons who called him Lord, Lord; but in
Matthew these are Christians, who prided themselves
on prophesying in Christ’s name, and casting out
devils, and doing wonderful works ; and they are con
demned by him for not keeping the J ewish law, as
avo/A/au • whereas in Luke they are
Christians, who have eaten and drunk in his presence,
and heard him teach in their streets, and are condemned
for want of that righteousness which Paul requires
in the Romans from Jew and Gentile alike as epyarai
adixias : the distinction is lost in our translation, but
is none the less important. Now this is the very lan
guage used by the original apostles against Paul; they
said they had seen Jesus and lived with him; that
they had received their distinctive doctrines from his
own mouth ; that they had known him after the flesh,
all which he had not. (1 Cor. i. 5-16; ix.) Paul
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 19
appeals in proof of the equality of his apostleship to
his prophesying, 1 Cor. xiv., to his casting out devils,
i.e., to his great success in converting the Gentile
world, Gal. ii., and chiefly to the signs of an apostle,
which were wrought by him in all patience in signs
and wonders, and mighty deeds, 2 Cor. xii. 12. The
questions and the difficulties of the apostolic age are
described as arising in the lifetime of Jesus, and receiv
ing their solution from his own mouth. He gives his
eleven apostles a positive command, Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he
that believeth not shall be damned, Mark xvi. 15, 16.
This is just the doctrine Paul taught; Paith, not the
works of the law, is the condition of salvation ; Baptism,
not circumcision, is the outward sign of Christians ; and
so salvation is given for all creatures, not for Jews
only. Nevertheless, twenty years after this supposed
command, the twelve confined their ministry to the
circumcision, according to Gal. ii:
The Jesus of our gospels foretells in unmistakable
language the fall of the Jewish people for their obstinate
unbelief; the vineyard is to be taken from the wicked
husbandmen and given to others; men are to come
from the east and west, the north and south, to sit
down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom
of heaven. Whereas, nearly forty years afterwards, the
author of the apocalypse regards Jerusalem as the holy
city, and the Jewish people as the rightful possessors
of gospel privileges ; whilst the converted Gentiles are
the proletariats of the kingdom, and the unconverted
the objects of the endless wrath of God. Eating with
Gentiles was the chief cause of offence with Jews and
Judaizers against Paul. So late as the year 50 eating
even with Gentile Christians was considered an
abomination by James, the chief of the Christian com
munity at Jerusalem, and his adherents; and Peter
had to make amends for his weak compliance in this
�20 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
respect at Antioch. According to the Acts Peter could
not enter into the house of a Gentile and sit at his
table, without an extraordinary revelation from heaven;
and incurred the reproach of the community for so
doing. Nevertheless, according to the gospels Jesus
must have set all questions of this kind at rest for
ever. In Mark ii. 14 Jesus and his disciples are said
to have sat at meat with many publicans and sinners ;
the Jews murmured, but Jesus said, They that are
whole have no need of the physician, but they that are
sick; I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance. Again, in Luke xv. Jesus answers the
reproach of the Pharisees, This man receiveth sinners
and eateth with them, with the three parables of the
lost sheep, the lost shekel, and the prodigal son. And
in Luke xix., in the case of Zaccheus, he answers the
same kind of questioning with the words, This day is
salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a
son of Abraham. Por the Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost. This question which
was scarcely set at rest after the struggles of 50 years,
and such great historical events as the destruction of
Jerusalem, the hardening of the Jews, and the con
version of great masses of the Gentiles, is höre
anticipated and decided by Jesus himself. If this were
the case, what are we to think of the apostolic age ?
It becomes entirely unintelligible, its difficulties quite
unmeaning, and its foremost men incomprehensible.
Criticism at once decides, Jesus did not speak and act
in this way; this Jesus of the gospels is not the Jesus
of history. The same Pauline writer, who paulized in
the Acts the time immediately after Jesus, paulized in
his gospel the life of Jesus himself; in order to defend
the disciple by the influence of the Master.
When the Life of Jesus was first written tradition
had preserved little more than its main features, and
several characteristic events and discourses. The
greatest part of his life was spent in obscurity. His ■
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 21
public ministry was comprised in. one year according
to three gospels, in three according to the other; and
even this time, great as it was in results, had less
interest for the first Christians than we should suppose.
They lived with their thoughts fixed more on the
future than on the past. The return of Christ was
their chief idea. Capernaum by the sea where Jesus
loved to dwell, had less interest for them than the new
Jerusalem. What then was the use of history? That
no apostle or eyewitness had written a Life of Jesus
may be inferred from the preface to Luke’s Gospel.
The want rose in the Pauline circle. They required to
rest their views of Christianity on the authority of
Jesus, no less than their adversaries. Convinced that
they were acting and speaking in the spirit of Jesus,
they reproduced, in his discourses and parables, the
great results which had been achieved in the Gentile
world.
Thus, while the gospels derived one portion of their
material from the experience of the apostolic age, they
found another in the Old Testament. If Jesus was Mes
siah, he must fulfil what was foretold of him by the pro
phets, according to the interpretation of the day. Por
example, there was no record of the circumstances of
the birth of Jesus ; Mark, who was in all probability
the earliest of our evangelists, passes them over in
silence. The later evangelists, Luke and Matthew,
furnish accounts in detail. They are chiefly drawn
from the Old Testament. Jesus was known to be a
Nazarene; but the prophet Micah had said, Thou
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel. This passage
speaks of some powerful prince of the line of David ;
but as it was determined to be Messianic, Jesus must
be born at Bethlehem. There are two ways of harmon
izing these data, that Jesus was a Nazarene, but born
at Bethlehem; first, the parents of Jesus might be
�2 2 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
assumed to have first lived at Bethlehem, and after
wards migrated to Nazareth. But why should they
move 1 Herod issued an edict against Jesus, as
Pharaoh did against Moses. He was informed of his
birth by the eastern Magi, who came with gifts to
worship him, according to Isaiah ix.; and they knew of
it by the star that rose out of Jacob according to
Numbers xxiv. 17. In consequence of the persecution
of Herod, the parents of Jesus went down into Egypt,
with their new-born child, to fulfil Hosea xi. 1 : they
came back when the danger was over, but settled at
Nazareth, being still afraid to live at Bethlehem. This
is the account of Matthew; Luke on the other hand
makes them live originally at Nazareth; but they
came to Bethlehem because of the decree of Augustus,
that all the world should be taxed, which took place
from six to ten years after the birth of Jesus. The
Inns being filled, the child was born in a manger;
but supernatural light, Is. lx. 1, and a choir of angels,
made the manger a palace. The shepherds of Beth
lehem were the first to acknowledge him ; then the
child was publicly recognized as Messiah in the temple
by Simeon and Hannah ; after this his parents returned
with their child in peace to Nazareth. It is unnecesary
to remark that these two accounts exclude each other
on almost every point. In like manner, other passages
from the Psalms and Prophets, and especially the
typical histories of Moses and Elijah, furnish material
for the life of Jesus. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 3-4, and Peter
in his Pentecostal speech, both acknowledge that the
Christians derived their views of the significance of the
death of Jesus, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world,
and of his resurrection from the dead, and ascension
into heaven, from the Old Testament. If, then, the
evangelists have so often mistaken the creations of
the imagination for historic truth, what shall we say
about the real life of Jesus ? It must be confessed
that little is known, even less tJian is thought by many
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 23
who have followed with assent the researches of
criticism. However, this little is enough ; the general
framework of his life is incontrovertible. The home
at Nazareth, the carpenter’s trade, the family of
brothers and sisters, the entrance upon public life in
consequence of the ministry of John, the baptism of
Jesus in Jordan, the commencement of his own ministry
upon the imprisonment and death of the Baptist,
Capernaum as the central point of Messianic agency, the
circle of disciples, the great influence of Jesus over
all classes of the people, the journey to Jerusalem, the
death there upon the cross, all this general framework is
indisputable. We are also able to reproduce many of
the most essential features of his character. No doubt
Jesus declared himself to be Messiah, and his concep
tion of Messiah was that of his own people. No doubt
he thought the Messiah’s kingdom to be, as the prophets
said, a reign of God upon earth, beginning with faithful
Israel, and extending over all nations, in which the
love of God, and the love of man, should remove the
limitations and the sufferings of mortal existence. The
early Christians remained faithful to the thought of
Jesus ; since they all, Paul as well as the writer of the
apocalypse, the authors of the epistles and first three
gospels alike, looked to the second coming of Christ to
accomplish what had been expected from his first
coming, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth,
a state of existence without sin and without death.
Jesus adopted this idea, that he was called of God
to be Messiah, by virtue of remarkable fitness and
peculiar religious gifts. The thought that he was Mes
siah rose in the heart of Jesus from his conception of
God, which made him choose the name of Father from
all his names ; from a trust in God which held all
things possible to him that believeth; from his selfrenunciation which sacrificed all self-interest to the
cause; from his love for man which made him seek
the deliverance of the whole race, and treat the youngest
�24 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
and the lowest with utmost tenderness ; from his moral
purity which enjoined upon his disciples the duty of
being saints, a name adopted by them soon after his
death. He was Messiah by virtue of this peculiar
fitness, and in this lies the personal character of Jesus.
Thus we learn to understand the age which followed
after Jesus. His idea was a Messianic kingdom be
ginning with Israel and embracing all nations; this
also was the idea of his disciples after his death. Now
in the first place this implied the necessity of bringing
all Israel to believe in its Messiah; and so the apostles
felt themselves bound to confine their gospel preaching
to the Jews. But in the second place it involved no
agreement as to the conditions upon which the nonJewish nations should be received into the kingdom ;
whether they should adopt Jewish ordinances or not.
This question had no practical significance in the life
time of Jesus ; it had not yet come into existence as a
problem requiring solution. When Paul brought it
forward the apostles were taken by surprise. Jesus
had lived amongst them as a Jew : he kept the Sab
bath and refrained from forbidden meats, and observed
the law. The life and teaching of Paul were not the
life and teaching of Jesus. They did not see why
Paul should not submit himself to them, as the original
disciples of Jesus who best knew his will. When
after fourteen years of missionary work among the
Gentiles, he communicated to them his gospel and its
success, they reached him the right hand of fellowship;
because the conversion of the Gentile world had also a
place in their programme of the Messianic kingdom. But
the prerogative of Judaism was not surrendered; and the
question whether the Christian should live as Jew or
Gentile, was not decided ; so that afterwards during his
stay at Antioch, Peter might well have been in some
'uncertainty how to act. Paul must have learnt in his
days of persecution, the almost invincible obstacles
to the Gospel in the heart of a Jew; he might well
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 2 5
have had his own feelings towards Gentiles softened by
his early residence amongst them at Tarsus. When
he became a Christian he saw in the cross the downfall
of the law and all Jewish privilege. His resolution
was taken to be the apostle of the Gentiles ; and he so
far changed the earlier Christian programme as to endea
vour to provoke the Jews to emulation by the conver
sion of the Gentiles. Paul set Christendom free ; but
he is not on this account the original founder of
Christianity. The religion of love aDd of freedom, the
consciousness of being the Son of God and of the pos
session of the divine Spirit, he learnt from Jesus.
We have next to enquire what results we have at
the present time from the researches of criticism in
the early history of Christianity. Criticism has dis
covered in the New Testament such a Christianity as
our time requires, such alone as it will receive, a religion
freed from miracles. The obstinacy with which the
Churches have striven to force upon an altered world
the miraculous religion of a byegone age, has done much
to discredit Christianity. Men are weary of long
disputes about the possibility, reality, necessity of
miracles. Criticism has taught us to recognise in the
miracles of the New Testament, the natural and signi
ficant results of the intellectual condition of mankind.
Impartiality forbids us to acknowledge the miracles of
Scripture as actual events, while we refuse similar stories
in other books as idle dreams : especially when we
find upon examination that many of the miraculous
tales of classic literature are so nearly the same as
those of Scripture, that they evidently spring from
the same source. There was at first some disagreement
as to the interpretation of miracles, and the rationale
of their appearance. Men were so entangled with the
ecclesiastical tradition of the apostolic authorship of
the writings in which the miraculous stories are found,
that they took them for truth even while they divested
them of their miraculous character. The events were
�16 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
supposed to have really taken place, but the narrators
being uneducated and credulous persons, more influenced
by imagination than critical discernment, overlooked
natural causes and involved them in a halo of miracle.
They admit that Jesus fed five thousand men with five
loaves, but it was not till he had supplied the deficiency
from the resources of a passing caravan. Jesus rescued
Peter when he leapt into the sea, but he himself was
walking on the shore, and only the darkness of the night
made his disciples think he was walking on the sea.
No doubt he raised up the son of the widow of Nain,
and the daughter of Jairus to life, but this was because
they were only apparently dead. In this way the whole
history of Jesus and his apostles has been rationalized
piecemeal in an arbitrary manner. The narratives are
supposed to be true in the main, but all the heart of
them is cut out, all that gave them value and signifi
cance in the eyes of the writer, as conspicuous instances
of the triumph of the spirit of Christianity over all the
limitations of nature. Many minds are alienated from
the Bible by its miracles; but more are brought into
a state of indifference and depreciation by the rationalistic
explanation of them.
Strauss, in his life of Jesus, pronounces the miracles
to be myths, the half-unconscious result of popular
feeling, which adorned the life of Jesus with images of
the fancy, for which the prevailing Messianic ideas fur
nished the material. Poetry must be understood to be
poetry ; and this explanation is enough to account for
much of the supernatural over-growth of gospel history,
but not for all. Advancing criticism discovered that
the series of parallel miracles, which runs through the
Acts, is due to an intentional purpose of raising Paul to
an equality with Peter, and has found in the fourth
gospel an entire book, to show how men invented mir
aculous stories for themselves, or used those they found
to hand, as emblems of religious ideas and Christian
truths. The following examples will show the way in
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
which this was done. The disciples of John and the
Pharisees accused the disciples of Jesus of neglecting
the customary fasts. Jesus defended them with the two
figures of the presence of the bridegroom, and of new
wine which must not he put into old bottles (Mark ii.
18). The author of the fourth gospel makes out of this
a marriage feast at Cana, where the guests were fasting
for want of wine, until Jesus changed the water (of the
law) into the wine (of the gospel) : thus he expressed
in a figure the excellence of the gospel above the law.
To take another instance (Luke xvi. 27), the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus ends with the petition of the
rich man to Abraham, that he would send Lazarus to
testify to his brethren; and with Abraham’s answer,
If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The
fourth gospel makes out of Lazarus a real personage;
associates with him two sisters, Martha and Mary, and
creates a family circle in which Jesus is at home.
Lazarus dies and Jesus raises him from the dead, to the
great astonishment of the Jews ; but instead of believ
ing, from that day forth they took counsel to put
Jesus to death, thus showing the truth of the saying,
That if they believed not Moses and the prophets, they
would not helieve though one rose from the dead : out
of which the fourth Evangelist worked up this touching
narrative. There are also legends of a later time, which
he introduces as scenes in the life of Jesus. We have
only to read chap. xxi. 15-24 to see how he, or the
later hand that wrote this appendix to the gospel, re
produced the legends of the crucifixion of Peter at
Pome, and of the survival of John to the second coming
of Jesus, in a conversation between these disciples and
their risen Lord.
In the fourth evangelist, this rise of miracles, when
once pointed out, is as clear as day—it is equally clear
in the other three, except to determined prejudice. For
instance, Mark relates the call of the first apostles with-
�28 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
out miracle : Jesus took them from their nets with the
promise they should become fishers of men, i. 16. Luke
changes the natural account into a supernatural story.
Peter tells Jesus that they have toiled all night and
taken nothing. Jesus bids him launch out into the
deep and let down his nets for a draught: and now
they enclose so great a multitude of fish that their net
breaks, and believing, in consequence of the miracle,
they receive the call to become fishers of men. The
fourth evangelist places this narrative after the resur
rection, and gives the number of fish one hundred
and fifty-three, and adds, that the net brake not.
The method of gospel narrative is quite plain in
this case : the Pauline author of the gospel that
goes by the name of Luke, wrote at a time when
the results of the preaching of the first apostles
to the Jews were very small, as compared with
the results of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Jesus
bids them launch out (as Paul does) into the deep (the
Gentile world) and become fishers of men, not merely
fishers of Jews. This filled the net until it broke ; and
here is expressed the original schism caused by Paul
in Christendom, when he launched out into the deep.
The fourth evangelist understood the meaning of the
miraculous draught related in Luke; and after the
manner of his day, expresses the name of Peter in the
number of fishes, thus showing the reconciliation in
his time of the former serious division in the Christian
community.
Again, one of the common figures of gospel preach
ing is the bread of life : was this to be given to Jew or
Gentile ? We have seen the diverging opinions on this
point; now we may see how skilfully the evangelists
employ the figure. The rich man of the parable (the
Jew) who fared sumptuously every day, is damned ; the
poor man (the Gentile), content with the crumbs that fell
from his table, is saved. Whereas Jesus, when surrounded
by the multitude in the wilderness, feeds five thou-
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 29
sand with five loaves ; but twelve baskets full are left ;
a significant number, one for each of the tribes of Israel,
that they might not complain of want, when the desert
inhabitants of the Gentile world were filled with
heavenly food. Another time Jesus goes into the land
of the Gentiles, and a Gentile woman prays him for mercy
and help. When Jesus harshly answered her, That it
is not good to cast the children’s bread to dogs, she
meekly replied, That the dogs might eat the crumbs
that fall from the children’s table. These words of
lowly faith prevailed : Jesus grants the mother’s prayer
and heals the daughter from afar, without going to the
house. Now, we understand this story : we know the
Gentile woman ; we know her daughter’s Illness, she
was vexed with devils ; we know who applied those
harsh words in the age after Jesus to the Gentiles, call
ing them dogs and swine before whom pearls are not to
be .cast. We know the Pauline talisman of faith,
which saves the Gentiles ; and the cure by Jesus from
afar, denotes the fact that he did not himself convert the
Gentiles by entering into their houses, but Paul and
his companions worked in his name. Thus rose the
miraculous stories of the gospels. They are the incor
poration of Christian views and Christian experiences
in outward signs, the representation of the work of the
Spirit of Jesus in his community after his death,
referred to events in his lifetime.
The greatest difficulty is the chief miracle—the resur
rection of Jesus himself. It is not enough simply
to deny it, on the ground of the contradictions of the
authorities. It is better to examine closely what Paul,
the foremost champion of this doctrine, really says. In
that crucial passage 1 Cor. xv. 3-9, he reminds his
readers that he had delivered to them that which he
himself received.—1. That Christ died for our sins accor
ding to the Scriptures ; 2. That he was buried and rose
again the third day according to the Scriptures ; 3. That
he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, then of more
�30 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
than five hundred brethren at once, after that he was
seen of James, then of all the Apostles, then of Paul
himself. The early Christians saw certain appearances
of Christ, from which they concluded that he was alive
and so risen from the dead. Of the nature of these ap
pearances we know nothing in the case of the other
Apostles, as we have no written testimony from their
own hand; but we do know from Paul’s own writings,
the way in which Jesus appeared to him. He often
says that he had seen the Lord; he appeals to visions
and revelations of the Lord which were vouchsafed to
him, and he gives an example of one, 2 Cor. xii. He
was caught up into Paradise, and heard there unspeak
able words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
Paul was a visionary ; and the appearances of the Lord
which he saw were visions, that is, mental processes of
such a kind, that the image called up by the entranced
spirit, presented itself to the bodily eye, and became per
ceptible to the bodily ear. It is plain from Paul’s letters,
that the image he saw was the glorified Christ from
heaven in a Spiritual body. He argued with him
self, that God had shown Jesus, whom once he perse
cuted, to be Messiah by raising him from the dead, and
exalting him into heaven; whence he appeared to him
self, and before him to other disciples, as the Lord that
Spirit. This was the case with Paul himself; and
there ought to be no question whether it was the case
with the other disciples also. Paul places the appearances
of Christ to the others, entirely on the same ground as
those to himself, saying, “ last of all he appeared to
me also there is not a word to show that there was
any difference between them. Indeed, in other pas
sages of his epistles, he expressly excludes any such
difference, making himself not a whit behind the very
chiefest Apostles. He answers the question, How are
the dead raised and with what body do they come, by
showing that they did not come in their former material
body, but in a heavenly and spiritual body; for flesh
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 3 1
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption. The bodily resur
rection of Jesus, the coming out of the grave with the
same body that went in, to eat and drink and be touched
once more, to walk with earthly feet from Jerusalem to
Emmaus, and speak human words with a human mouth
—all this which is the groundwork of the later narra
tives of the Evangelists, and of the doctrine of the
Church, Paul most decidedly excludes. Apparently he
bad never heard a word of it. The faith of Paul and
of the early Christians was this : Jesus went down like
all the dead into the under world, out of which he was
raised into heaven by the Almighty power of God, in a
way withdrawn from human ken; where he sits at the
right hand of God, and whence he has appeared in a
glorified form. Accordingly Paul knew nothing of an
ascension of Jesus as distinct from his resurrection.
Both were the same act to him : and the earlier evange
lists originally held nearly the same view, for they
placed the resurrection from the dead and the ascension
into heaven upon the same day. It is passing strange
that the author of the Acts, who places both on the
same day in his gospel, should say that the ascension
was forty days after the resurrection, in his later work.
When once their visions of a glorified Lord from heaven
had degenerated into the carnal idea of a bodily resur
rection, it was natural for the early Christians to say
that he had remained with his disciples for a time upon
earth.
Thus, also, this most difficult question of Christian
history has been solved by criticism. The original
design has been separated from the superstructure ; and
the result is that Christianity, without miracles, is now
presented to the world. Much, indeed, has been taken
away, that for eighteen centuries has been a rich foun
tain of spiritual and intellectual life; but it has been
taken at the right time, at the very moment when
aversion to a miraculous Christianity, was threatening
�32 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
to bring on aversion to Christianity altogether. The
best religion has been given back to us that the world
has ever seen, the religion of Jesus Christ himself.
Lessing asked when Christendom would be reasonable
enough to distinguish between the religion of Jesus,
which is so clearly portrayed in the gospels, and about
which all pious hearts are at one, from that religion
about Jesus which is so obscure and uncertain, that
scarcely two heads agree upon it, and which has filled
the world with wrangling and hatred. Criticism has
given us the means of effecting this distinction with all
requisite certainty. The lofty figure of Jesus stands
forth in fuller grandeur than ever, as the man who felt
himself called of God to be the Christ, and to establish
upon earth a kingdom of God, embracing all mankind.
The New Testament is the record of the impression
which his glorious appearing made upon his disciples.
We hold these books to be inspired, because they are
the testimonies to a great revelation of God, written by
men who tried to reproduce in word and deed, in
poetry and in prose, the effect of the spirit upon them
selves. But we are freed from the bondage of the
letter, while we drink of the spirit; because we see
how freely the writers dealt with the material which
they used. Such a Church as the Church of the past
can never again be built upon these well-known and
carefully criticised books; but a fresh stream of spirit
and freedom will flow into the veins of the Church,
from the proper use of these time-honoured records.
We may call ourselves Christians because we hope by
growing up into the likeness of Christ, to be sons of
God, as he was. We can keep Christmas because we
have recognised in the gospel narrative of the nativity
the fragrant growth of the Spirit given by Christ himself.
We can keep Good-Friday, although we do not believe
in the death of a God, who quenched his own indigna
tion in his own blood, because Jesus taught no such
doctrine as this, but by sacrificing himself for the
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 33
kingdom of God, gave an example of self-devotion
which is the saving of the world, and the supreme law
of human society, and is worthy of everlasting remem
brance. We can keep Easter although we do not be
lieve that a dead body ever came back to life upon
earth, because we do believe, as Paul did and the
earliest Christians, that Jesus, when he had laid aside
the flesh and blood which cannot enter into the king
dom of heaven, was raised from the darkness of death
to the bright heaven of the spiritual world, revealing
himself there to his disciples and working upon
them to the end of time.
Criticism has discovered in the New Testament the
Christianity of Jesus Christ, upon which we may hope
a new church will be founded. The New Testament
is the foundation of the Protestant Church, but the
New Testament which we have now is not the same as
the New Testament which Luther and Zwingli had;
neither is the Jesus of history the God of the Church.
Nevertheless, in the midst of all our social miseries, we
cannot remain cold and indifferent to the Jesus of
history, the man who lived, and died to found a king
dom of God upon earth.
Such are the chief points of the paper before us.
Undoubtedly this criticism is destructive; and there
are many excellent people who blame religious criticism
for destroying much that they once held to be true, and
giving them nothing in exchange. This is a serious
obj ection, especially in the uncertainty which surrounds
the whole question, and seems likely enough to con
tinue. We have no right, it is said, to receive one part
of Scripture as historically true, and dispute another
part. We cannot decide for ourselves what is the word
of God, and what is not. Unless we accept the whole
as it has been handed down to us, we reject the whole.
The religion of the Church either is the religion which
Jesus gave to his disciples, or it is not j if it is, we are
bound to keep each sacred doctrine pure and undefiledc
�34 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
if it is not, we are equally bound to reject the whole.
Such arguments have a great sound of reality about
them; but there is more sound than substance.
Destructive criticism is more conservative and more
reverential than blind credulity. It is the merest
assumption to say we must accept all or none.
Criticism knows of no such canon; truth and fiction
are often interwoven in the same writings. Her office
is to discover the truth, and maintain it wherever it is
found. ' The science of astronomy was not destroyed
when the errors of ancient systems were proven; and
the religion of Christ will suffer no loss, if we can but
find what it is, and what it is not.
The chief reason why the truths of the gospel have
had as yet so little effect for the salvation of the world,
is the fact that they have been overlaid and identified
with so much that men have been unable to believe
and agree upon with an intelligent and practical accep
tance. It has been found impossible to unite the whole
New Testament into one universal system, and repro
duce it in actual life. Our author’s summary of the
results of criticism shows us that we have the best
reasons for believing that the overgrowth of miracles
and other-worldliness that we see before us, was not
the teaching of Jesus, but was imported into his life
and doctrine after his death, for the sake of getting
larger acceptance for the discordant opinions of a later
age. The miracles arethe more serious difficulty ; for
they must be one and all matters of fact, or the reverse.
Nevertheless in our day they are of no kind of use as
proofs of the truth of Christianity. We cannot receive
the Bible on the authority of miracles, and the miracles
on the authority of the Bible. So we do not lose much
if we are compelled to admit that they do not rest on
incontestible evidence, and have been from the first
misunderstood. Even if we are obliged to give up our
early faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus on the
third day; we gain more than we lose in an increased
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 35
appreciation of our union with him in sonship to the
one God and Father of all. For we learn to believe
that he rose just as we shall rise, and that God who
raised him will raise us too. We cannot, as before,
receive the bodily resurrection on the authority of the
apostles and evangelists, and then acknowledge the
apostles and evangelists on the authority of the resur
rection. Our author has shown with remarkable force
the way in which Paul conceived the doctrine of the
Resurrection and Ascension. The whole argument of the
apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 1-28, requires us to understand that
Christ rose from the dead in the same way that his
people rise ; so when we know how his people do not
rise, we know how he did not rise. A miraculous
resurrection of the kind afterwards introduced into
some of the evangelists would destroy the whole force
of the passage. We are taught to believe that Jesus
rose, as we shall rise; and so his resurrection is a
pledge to us of our own; but we are not meant to
understand that our bodies will rise on the third day,
and continue in a spiritualized state for a greater or less
period upon earth. The orthodox doctrine of resurrec
tion breaks up the union between Christ and man, and
leads us rather to question than believe our own resur
rection. The apostle says, Christ rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures, and this may show the
way in which the Gospel narrative grew up. It is no
where said in any Scripture already written when Paul
wrote, that Christ would rise on the third day. But a
wholly irrelevant passage in Hosea vi. 2 (after two
days will he revive'us : in the third day he will raise us
up, and we shall live in his sight) received a Messianic
interpretation and suggested the idea, which is also
supposed to be prefigured and foretold by the three
days and three nights which Jonah is said to have
passed in the whale’s belly. By rightly understanding
this greatest of miracles, we remove it from the extra
ordinary to the ordinary course of Providence; and we
�36 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
do not depart from Scripture authority, but return to
the real doctrine held at first by the greatest preacher
of the resurrection of Christ and man. Nothing is
really lost to the believer, except some cherished delu
sions of early faith ; this is a loss, for faith which has
once been abused and then opened to conviction will
have parted with some of its freshness and fragrance.
But for all that is taken much more is given back. If
the miracles are shown to be poetical fictions, they
become like the parables, each one enshrines some
sacred truth under a figure, and conveys a real spiritual
lesson instead of a doubtful historical verity. If the
bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus are shown to
have been adopted by the Church on insufficient autho
rity, to have been propagated by inconsistent, even
irreconcilable narratives of the same event, and to be
opposed to the most genuine works of the earliest
writer in the New Testament; if this be the case, we
need not over much regret the convictions that are
forced upon us, when we find the sole honour that is
His own given back to God the Father, and the real
unity of man with Jesus established on firmer grounds
than before. The miraculous conception and the bodily
resurrection on the third day separate our Divine
Master from us in this world and in the world to come.
Unless he was born of a human father and mother like
ourselves, he did not take our nature upon him in this
world; and unless he rose from the dead by the power
of God in the same way as his brethren, his resurrec
tion is no pledge to us of our own; we have no part
with him in the resurrection world.
The other-worldliness or supposed spirituality of the
Church system is a far less serious difficulty. None
need complain of much loss to their faith, if they are
obliged to surrender the cloud land, which they think
they hold with such secure possession. It may be a
great consolation to the orthodox Christian to say,
when I die I shall go to heaven, and my unathanasian
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 37
neighbour will go to hellj but it would be no loss to
him to have to consider which of the two is in heaven
now, and which is in hell now. And with regard to
the after-world, it might be enough for the most
orthodox and most catholic Christian to know that
when he and his neighbour, whom he loves so much
according to the command of his Lord, depart this life,
they will both go to Him, who was first fully revealed
as the Father of all in the teaching of Jesus. All the
beautiful imagery with which the truths of the other
world are spoken of in Scripture remains as before
for the devout contemplation of each disciple accord
ing to the measure of his enlightenment. All the
profane and sensual fables about the world to come
may be given up as human conceptions of things
beyond our ken. Jesus brought life and immortality
to light, not by telling us in definite and intelligible
language about a world of which he perhaps knew no
more than ourselves, but by showing us that the know
ledge of God in Christ, that is, as taught by Jesus, is
eternal life, and that whosoever liveth and believeth
in Him shall never die.
When criticism has done its utmost, no real harm can
be done. The same sacred book is before us with a
purer text and larger means of interpretation : and,
more rather than less, is known of the earliest age of
Christianity. The practical use we have to make of it,
is the same as in the paper before us. We hope for the
rise of a Church without miracles, a religion without
superstition, a brotherhood of man with man upon a
foundation acknowledged by all. This is clearly pos
sible, and it seems to be the only hope of the restoration
of happiness to man. The restraints of religion are
even more necessary to society, than the restraints of
law and civilization: besides, religion is a constraining,
not merely a restraining power; it urges what is good
before it condemns what is wrong. False religions have
taken away far more than they have given. It is a
�38 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
cruel and wicked thing to cheat the poor and the igno
rant, out of the share they ought to have of heaven
upon earth, with delusions about another world. The
souls and bodies of men are enslaved with a superstition
which they do not more than half believe. They have
a right to have the full results of criticism communi
cated to them by authority. The learned and capable
men who occupy the highest positions in our Church,
are in a situation of great difficulty; nevertheless, they
seem to me bound by their office, either to establish by
argument the claims of orthodoxy, or to acknowledge
the results of criticism : and, in the meantime, to give
their sanction to a reverential statement of such truths
as are here contained, by such of the clergy as have
conscientiously embraced them, in the pulpit and else
where. Not only might they give their sanction ; they
might themselves take the lead, and by handling such
difficult subjects with the great learning and enlight
ened wisdom they possess, prevent the mischief which
will infallibly be caused, by the truth being forced in,
mixed, with mud from below, instead of being poured
down, well filtered from above. Public opinion in the
Church, and the state of the law would occasionally in
troduce painful complications. No doubt, the bishops
will generally concede to the rank and file of their pro
fession, so far as they can, the liberty which some of
them are now asserting for themselves, in so judicious
and determined a manner. But the office of the bishop
may be promoted against opinions which the bishop
himself does not wholly condemn. The cardinals are
said once to have come to the Pope with a strange sen
tence, according to the words of the old chronicler,
which remain in my memory, though I cannot recal
the names : Judica te cremari, quia hsereticus es, Papa
judicavit se cremari, et crematus est. Surely the bold
unflinching statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
in convocation about the Athanasian creed, is a more
definite and distinct contravention of the VUIth article,
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 39
than Mr Voysey’s doctrine of the atonement, was of the
second. It was made a chief point against him by the
court, of which the primate is so distinguished a mem
ber, that he taught that Christ did not die to reconcile
his Father to us. The article says that he did : so does
the Lord Chancellor; and I suppose the Archbishop
says the same. But the second Testament does not say
so from one end to the other, and in effect does say the
contrary. Neither is the language of the second article
altogether at variance with Mr Voysey’s doctrine, if we
assume that the English idiom at the time, like the
Latin and Greek, makes little or no distinction between reconciling the Father to us, and us to the Father. But
the VUIth article cannot be explained into consistency’
with an authoritative disclaimer of belief in one of the
three creeds. The Archbishop in the privy council
must needs pronounce his own condemnation, if re
quired ; the only escape seems to be in the usual am
biguity of the language : the bishops may know they
ought to believe the creeds, only they don’t. If
martyrs are still necessary, they have always been the’
seed of the Church. Martyrdom, • indeed, no longer
consists in fire and fagot, but in social ostracism, the
forfeiture of valued friendships, and the loss of their
only means of subsistence to men in middle life, this is
quite enough punishment for daring to believe the
truth. Besides, it is an infinite humiliation to go about
the world as the supposed representative of doctrines
which having been shown to be delusions, have lost
their power over mankind, and are only held under
reservations. Let the orthodox religion of the future
establish itself by argument, and the orthodox religion
of the past be no longer upheld by pains and penalties.
It would be far better to abolish preaching for a time
and confine our public worship to prayer and praise and
reading of the Bible, than to go on as we are now doing,
necessarily avoiding most important subjects, for fear of
deposition on the one hand, and on the other of insidi-
�40 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
ously undermining the Church while we eat her bread.
The Church has overlaid Christianity ; but truth must
in the end prevail, and falsehood fall to the ground j
but our lives are passing fast away: the world is suffer
ing for want of the true religion of Jesus; and his
great maxim is forgotten, that we ought to render to
God the things that are God’s, and to man the things
that are man’s.
Yours most truly,
A Country Vicar.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Criticism: the restoration of Christianity: a letter to Mr. Thos. Scott reviewing a paper by Dr. Lang
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 40 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'By A Country Vicar'. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Concerning a letter by Mr Wright writing about Heinrich Lang's 'The English Life of Jesus' in Theological Review, October 1872.
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Thomas Scott
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[1872]
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G5468
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Christianity
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[Unknown]
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English
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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Text
CT(^
A REPLY
TO THE QUESTION,
“SHALL I SEEK ORDINATION IN THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND ?•’
BY
SAMUEL HINDS,
D.D.
(Late Lord Bishop of Norwich.)
“ Never take a first step without considering well what may
be the next you will have to take.”
Maxim attributed to the late Dulce of Wellington.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
1871.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
��A REPLY
TO THE QUESTION,
“SHALL I SEEK ORDINATION IN THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND?”
WILL do what I can to help you in deliberating
on the question whether you shall seek ordi
nation in the Church of England; but I must remind
you that it is a question which you alone ought to
decide. You cannot properly substitute the judgment
of another for yours in determining on a momentous
step for taking which you, not another, will be
responsible.
On one and the most essential view of the question
it is unnecessary for me to offer you any counsel.
You are fully impressed with the high and holy
interests which may be affected by your becoming a
Christian minister, and are resolved to do your duty
honestly and zealously. But although this is the
most essential view of the subject, it is not the only
one, nor the only important one, The clerical pro
fession is a sacred, but it is also a worldly calling.
Whatever other motive may induce you to select it,
one motive, it may be presumed, is, that it will be a
worldly provision for you.
Directing your attention, 'then, more especially to
this phase of the subject, my advice to you is—do not
decide on becoming a candidate for ordination until
you have well weighed a contingency which I will
state plainly and unreservedly. If, after becoming a
I
�4
Shall I Seek Ordination
clergyman of the Church of England, any such change
should take place in your religious convictions as to
oblige you to abandon the office, your worldly pro
spects will be for ever blighted. It is most difficult
for a clergyman to shift from the peculiar habits of
clerical life to those of any other pursuit. In addition
to his inaptitude for any other occupation, he is stig
matised, by friends and strangers, for a change of
views which he could not help, as acrimoniously as if
he had been guilty of some heinous sin, instead of
being compassionated, as he ought to be, for the sad
condition into which his honest conviction, whether
erroneous or not, has brought him. He has to con
tend, moreover, against a feeling—call it superstitious
or what—that he has broken a holy pledge, and is
amenable to the reproach of having put his hand to
the plough and looked back.* In common prudence,
therefore, you ought thoroughly to acquaint yourself
with the requirements of the clerical profession in the
Church of England, and with the conditions under
which you will have to fulfil them, that you may not
discover something in them, when it will be too late,
to which you cannot honestly conform.
If the contingency has never occurred to you, you
will probably, on the first suggestion of it, be dis
posed to think it most unlikely, if not impossible, that
any so serious a change should take place in you.
Can I believe, you may say, that I shall ever forsake
the faith in which I have been brought up, and the
desire to contend for which is the cause of my pro
posing to myself the clerical profession ? that I shall
ever learn to regard as false, or doubtful, sacred truths
now so clearly revealed to my faith, and attested by
their effects on my heart and life ? Withoat pre
suming on my own strength, I trust that, in the
strength of the Lord whom I shall be serving, I shall
be innocent of this great offence.
* Luke ix. 62.
�5
In the Church of England.
All this is natural; and I am not saying that any
such change will come over you ; but I would, never
theless, strongly urge on you the consideration that it
may. There are some—it may not be too much to
say many—in orders in the Church of England, at
this moment, who are* receding further and further
from agreement with its dogmas, with its Articles
and its Prayer-book, and whose conscience is harassed
with the doubt, whether their dissent is, or is not,
beyond the line which may be drawn as permitting
those within it still to officiate as the Church’s
ministers, and who, when they undertook the clerical
office, had no reason to suspect that they would ever
fall into this slough of perplexity. It may be morally
impossible with some; with those, I should say, whose
minds are so constituted as to renounce investigation
of, and reasoning on, the topics which are embraced
in the Church’s formularies; but not with those—
and such I believe to be the case with you—who can
not but investigate and reason on them. These can
never beforehand be sure of the conclusions to which
their inquiry and reasoning may lead them.
Do I mean to suggest, then, that there is a possi
bility of your bringing Christianity itself to the test
of investigation and reasoning, and of finding that,
tried by that test, it must be rejected ? If this be the
rejoinder you make to me, I must call your attention
to an important fact. Christianity and a Christian
Church are not identical. Christianity is the sacred
deposit; a Church, an institution for preserving, dis
seminating, and giving a social form and character to
it. Your immediate concern, in your present delibe
ration, is not with Christianity, but with those provi
sions of the Church of England for enabling its
members to understand and conform to it, which are
embodied in its' formularies. You must not allow
yourself, in your just veneration for the Church of
England, to claim" for those to whom we are indebted
A
�6
Shall I Seek Ordination
for its Articles and Common Prayer-book infallible
■wisdom, and to take for granted that whatever they
have decided on must be a true and perfect exposition
of Christianity. And yet, unless you do this, you can
not be exempt from the contingency -which I am point
ing out. Do not delude yourself with the notion that
it will be in your power to go on, as clergymen did
formerly, in untroubled security in this respect. The
spirit of the age will not permit you. There is abroad
everywhere a fearless searching into the foundation of
the most time-honoured beliefs, and an unscrupulous
scepticism concerning those of which no satisfactory
account can be given. You cannot escape the impulse
of the movement. However well satisfied you may
now be with the Church of England’s doctrines and
rule, there is no saying that you will be of the
same mind as years roll on, and you read and think
more and more on the many subjects on which the
Church has decided, and on the grounds on which
some of those decisions are now canvassed. No pre
caution can altogether secure you against the risk, but
thus much you may do towards diminishing it—you
■may make yourself acquainted with the scruples which
have driven clergymen from the Church of England,
either by their own act, or by the sentence of lawcourts, and determine whether, with the light you now
have, you would or would not entertain any of those
scruples.
You will expect that I should particularise, and I
will do so. But there is one preliminary about which
it is indispensable that you should inform yourself,
before directing your thoughts to this or that doctrine
of the Church of England which has proved a fatal
stumbling-block in the way of certain of its ministers.
What is the test which the Church provides for
enabling a clergyman to judge, on any occasion of
doubt, how he ought to interpret the wording of the
Articles and Common Prayer-book ? At first sight,
�In the Church of England.
7
this would seem to be clearly defined. A solemn
promise is exacted of a minister, at his ordination as
priest, that he will teach nothing as required of
necessity to eternal salvation, but that which he shall
be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the
Scripture ; and this coincides with that which is laid
down, in the sixth of our Thirty-nine Articles, as the rule
of faith. “ Holy Scripture containeth all things neces
sary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein,
nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any
man, that it should be believed as an article of the
faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salva
tion.” Whenever, therefore, anything in the Church’s
formularies strikes the minister as false or question
able, it would seem that he has only to try it by the
test of Scripture ; and, if it does not abide that test,
to conclude either that it is an instance of the
fallibility of the authors and compilers, or else that
their language was meant to be understood in a sense
not the most obvious and natural; this provision of a
Scriptural test being a pious and humble acknow
ledgment, on the part of those from whom we derive
the authoritative documents, that they were but
human interpreters of the Divine mind, and, as such,
desired that their interpretation throughout should be
subjected to appeal from their authority to an
authority higher than theirs. If they were so minded,
as we are bound to presume, their view of the matter
has been long since ignored, and their test reduced
to a nullity as a test. To all intents and purposes,
ecclesiastical courts, and, as supreme, the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council, have superseded the
Scriptural authority, in these cases, and their own
authority is substituted for it. This is no exaggeration,
but a matter of fact that must be patent to all whom
it concerns. In the last trial for heterodoxy, that of
Mr Voysey. how was his heterodoxy determined ? He
had satisfied himself that he was justified in holding
�8
Shall I Seek Ordination
certain views of Christ’s Divine nature, of his atone
ment, &c., although they were notin accordance with
the ordinary interpretation of the Church’s formu
laries, because, testing the formularies by Scripture,
that alone was the meaning which he could assign to
their language. Was any attempt made, in either of
the courts before which he appeared, to show that
this alleged discrepancy between Scripture and the
ordinary interpretation of the formularies did not
exist ? any reference to the Church’s rule of faith ?
None. All that was done, even by the court before
which his final appeal was heard, was to examine
carefully the wording of the formularies, and to
determine, on its own authority, what that wording
did, and what it did not mean ; and, as this meaning
differed essentially from Mr Voysey’s doctrine, to
condemn him. Whether he was right or wrong makes
no difference as to the principle on which the decision
was arrived at. As a minister of the Church of Eng
land, he had pledged himself to take the Scriptures as
his guide and test for doctrine; as a subscriber to the
Thirty-nine Articles, he had further pledged himself
to recognise the Scriptures only as his rule of faith,
and when he is prosecuted for having promulgated,
false doctrines, he finds, to his cost, that the Church of
England’s rule of faith is not the Scriptures, but the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It is a
grave stretch of authority for even the highest
tribunal of the land toAliscard the sacred authority,
and to act on its own independently of it. No
doubt it is; but let us not think that in deciding
what is and what is not Church of England
doctrine, the members of that august tribunal act
either sacrilegiously, or arbitrarily, and without any
fixed principle to guide them. They are, and have
been, I believe, without exception, laymen as well as
clerics, men who have exercised the authority with
which circumstances have invested them, not only
�In the Church of England.
9
honestly and uprightly, but with more or less of a
solemn consciousness that they were dealing with the
things that are of God. The principle on which they
appear to decide may not be defensible, but it is in
telligible and plausible. Whether from their personal
habits of religious thought, or from that acquiescence
in the tyranny of popular and prevailing notions
from which few of us are quite exempt, they come to
the inquiry into an alleged heterodoxy, under the
dominion of what is currently established as ortho
doxy, and with a religious abhorrence of what is cur
rently held to be heterodoxy. The law to which they
bow is no statute or documentary authority, but a
sort of common law in matters of faith—this is ruled
to be the orthodox interpretation of the Church’s
standard, that the heterodox. What if, on all
the subjects which have furnished occasion for
these. prosecutions, some in high and the highest
ecclesiastical stations have differed from orthodoxy in
their interpretation of the Church’s formularies?
That is no plea for the accused. The tribunal asserts
the right of discriminating between the amount of
heterodoxy that is permissible, and that which is not.
It is allowable, for example, to question the authen
ticity of a certain portion of Scripture; but it must
not be a very large portion. Would those of the
judges who preside over secular courts of justice
venture to. maintain that theft is to be determined,
not by the stealing, but by the quantity stolen; or
that coiners of false money ought not to be prosecuted
if they limit their coinage to a moderate amount, but
only those who issue the base coin by the bushel ? It
would be easy to furnish a catena of eminent churchmen
who have thought it no unwarranted interpretation of
the Church’s formularies to take what are called hete
rodox views of the Athanasian Creed, of the Trinity,
of the person of Christ, of his atonement, of the
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, and of
�io
Shall 1 Seek Ordination
other essentials, and who, on the one hand, have
never been prosecuted for those views, and, on
the other hand, are not available when a clergyman
who is prosecuted for doing the like, appeals to their
writings as having been tacitly sanctioned. The
Scriptures, having been deposed from their throne as
the arbiter for the interpretation of the Church’s
formularies, are themselves classed with the Articles
and the Book of CommonPrayer, as all alike documents
concerning which the clergyman must hold orthodox
opinions. He may not appeal to the Scriptures, even to
determine what he ought to believe concerning them ;
whether he may draw a distinction between the autho
rity of this and that portion, or in what sense they may
reasonably be called “ The Word of God.” Hot Scrip
ture itself, but orthodoxy, must instruct him.
I have stated the case plainly and unreservedly.
My purpose in doing so is not that you should see in
the Church of England’s rule of faith, as I have
represented it, an insurmountable obstacle to your
becoming one of its ministers ; but to impress on you
the advisableness of recognising the fact, in all its
bearings, before you do so. Numbers who cannot but
be aware of the fact are not disturbed with the prospect
of its ever causing trouble and difficulty to them.
This may or may not be your case ; but, whilst you
are free to choose, you ought to be forewarned of the
existence of a state of things which causes distress, if
not ruin, to some of the most devoted of the Church’s
ministers, not the less devoted that they have laboured
to ascertain what is true or otherwise in its teaching,
undeterred by the consequences.
I may now proceed briefly to particularise the more
prominent topics on which the decision, or presumed
decision, of the Church has been questioned by them1
and by others. These are, the doctrine that the Deity
is, in theological phraseology, a trinity in unity, the
word unity meaning, not union, but oneness numeri
�In the Church of England.
11
cally, and the word Zrmifc/’the being three; the connec
tion of the second of the three, the Son, with “ the
man Christ Jesus
the personality of the one Christ
with two distinct and perfect natures, that of God and
that of man; original or birth sin; the atonement
for sin, both actual and original; the future punish
ment of wicked men and of unbelievers ; the meaning
and purpose of those of the Thirty-nine Articles
which relate to these subjects, more particularly of the
first five; and of the adoption and sanction of the
three Creeds, more particularly the Athanasian; the
authority and the authorship of the Scriptures, speci
ally as now most controverted, of the Pentateuch and
Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, and of the
fourth Gospel in the New ; the question whether cer
tain statements in the Gospel histories which appear
to be irreconcilable admit of being reconciled, and the
veracity of the writers vindicated.
Now, if you really wish to understand the grounds
on which certain clergymen have been prosecuted
and condemned for their views on any of these sub
jects, you should seek your information, not from the
representation of their opponents, but by candidly
examining what they themselves, and those who have
gone along with them, have said. It is very possible
that, owing to your religious studies and thoughts
having always proceeded in a totally different direc
tion, you will find, in these writings, some things to
startle and even shock you. Not that they are
blasphemous or irreverent, far from it, but because
they may run counter to, and jar with, your custo
mary modes of thinking. Supposing this to be the
case, it ought not to deter you from a candid exami
nation of them. Should the result be that you are
convinced by the arguments on the side of orthodoxy,
you will be less likely to be disturbed by doubts when
doubting cannot extricate you from a false position;
* 1 Tim. ii. 5.
�J2
Shall 1 Seek Ordination
if, on the other hand, the heterodoxy shall approve
itself to you, as the truth, you will have had a timely
warning against taking a position which would oblige
you to maintain the contrary.
Many, I know, would advise one in your circum
stances to have nothing to do with the publications
that call in question established views of religious
doctrine, and to fortify yourself against them by
reading what safe guides say on the orthodox side.
Advice more unwise, disingenuous, and dangerous
cannot be given. Thus to treat publications which
discuss the truth or falsehood of religious views as
you would indecent and immoral tracts, savours of a
confusion of thought which can only be accounted
for by the habit we so often observe, of dealing with
religious beliefs as if the ordinary laws of thought
were not applicable to them. We keep the immoral
tracts out of the hands of the pure, because they
appeal to the passions of the reader, and, therefore,
tend to corrupt him morally in the very act of perus
ing them; whereas the heterodox tracts to which I
refer, are addressed to the reasoning faculty of the
reader, which they stimulate him to exercise lawfully
and rightly, and in the exercise of which there is no
corrupting process ; the process being one of clearing
away misty conceptions, and of forming a healthy
judgment, whether for or against the views submitted
to it. To aid the investigator by setting before him
what we may think to be specious and false in the
reasoning of an opponent, that is reasonable and
right; but not to blindfold him and persuade him
that he sees.
And what is the natural impression made by adopt
ing this policy ? Is it not that, make what assertions
you may, of sacred truths not requiring investigation
because they are already irrefragably established,
there must be a lurking suspicion that they will not
bear investigation ?
�In the Church of England.
13
The crisis is a trying one for the Church of England,
and, indeed, for all churches and sects. There is a
strong religious movement in a direction the opposite
to church orthodoxy on some of its leading doctrines,
and, indeed, to Christianity itself as commonly em
braced. The aggressive views are making their way,
with more or less acceptance, among all classes. The
movement is not confined to England. It is agitating
Scotland, and, in a less degree, Ireland. Indications
of it may be found in every country of Europe, in the
United States of America, and in the entire range of
our colonial dependencies. Eor counteracting its in
fluence in England, some efforts have recently been
made. A Christian Evidence Society has been or
ganised, and some of the most eminent of our church
men have been charged with the refutation of this or
that heterodox position. In Norwich a series of
cathedral sermons have been preached and circulated,
with the same object. Now, the misfortune is, that
you will altogether fail of your purpose, if you sup
pose that, by studying these publications, you will be
a scholar armed against the assaults of the heterodox.
What appears to be taking place is, that one section
of our Christian world read the Christian evidence
publications, being beforehand convinced that they
are on the right side; whilst another section read the
heterodox publications, and derive all their light on the
subjects from them. There is thus really no common
ground for the controversy. Indeed it may be ques
tioned, whether the authors of the Christian evidence
publications have made themselves sufficiently acquain
ted with the views and arguments which they have
undertaken to refute; for, whatever merit may be ac
corded to the tracts, as compositions, they do not as
yet meet the views and arguments against which they
are directed. Read what proceeds from the Christian
Evidence Society, by all means; but read the hetero
dox tracts too, if you really wish to master the quesA 2
�14
Shall I Seek Ordination
tions which are mooted, and to enable yonrself to
form a correct judgment on them. I will subjoin a
list of some of the publications on both sides which
may be of use to you. Do not be appalled at the
amount of reading and of serious thought which it
supposes. It is something very different, no doubt,
from getting up the books commonly prescribed for
an examination for orders; but the circumstances
under which your ministry will have to be exercised
differ essentially from those even of a few years ago,
and call for a corresponding difference of preparation
on your part. Those who shrink from it, may find
themselves in the condition of an army which, with
the weapons and tactics of other days, has to encounter
an opposing force provided with all the inventions of
modern warfare, and marshalled according to the
strategical science of a more advanced age. What I
am recommending is incumbent on you, not for your
own satisfaction only, but because, in your ministerial
course, you may have, again and again, to deal with
the scruples of those to whom you will be ministering,
whether derived from such publications, or from the
independent working of their own minds.
I may be thought, perhaps, to have said enough in
setting before you the requirements of the Church of
England, and the conditions under which you will
place yourself in becoming one of its ministers. I
cannot, however, forbear from adding some remarks
on a principle on which all existing ecclesiastical
systems are based, and to which it is owing that, not
in the Church of England only, but in all Christian
communities, there is more or less of the risk which
I have described, to one who undertakes the minis
terial office in any of them. Christianity and a
Christian Church are not identical. I have already
called your attention to the fact; and I will now
more fully explain my purpose in doing so, and urge
on you the importance of bearing it in mind. That
�In the Church of England.
15
there is this distinction would be apparent to all of us
were we not so familiarised to the palpable pheno
mena which evidence it, as to overlook this applica
tion of them. Contemplate, for a moment, the
condition of Christendom. Where is the Spiritual
Temple which, according to the Scriptures, was to
supersede its type, the material Temple of God’s old
people, “ built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets,”* its “living stones” cemented to
gether by a holy union, “ Christ himself being the
chief corner stone ?”f That beautiful conception is
nowhere realised. What we have are the scattered
materials of the mystic edifice, living stones in frag
mentary combinations everywhere, but no world-wide
structure ; foundation and chief corner-stone, but not
the Temple. Is this Christianity—the Christianity
of Christ ? The several communities which consti
tute the Christian world are in determined and irre
concilable opposition to one another, exchanging
anathemas; or, if not so, keeping aloof from one
another, as if religious intercommunion would be
pollution. Is this Christianity — the religion of
brotherly love and harmony ? What of any single
church ? What of the Church of England, with its
boasted safeguards for unity and uniformity ? Is it
not notorious that it contains within its pale sections
as bitterly hostile, the one to the other, as any
separate and antagonistic communities ? Is this
Christianity ? With what difficulties and hindrances
our Government and legislature, and not ours alone,
have often to contend, in devising measures of State
policy and civil administration, through the civil
and political aspects of ecclesiasticism. Is that
ecclesiasticism Christianity ? Is it derived from him
whose kingdom was not to be of this world
We
may know it by its fruits. Nor is all this a matter
* Ephesians ii. 20.
t 1 Peter ii. 5.
t John xviii. 36.
�16
Shall I Seek Ordination
of to-day and yesterday. Ecclesiastical history tells
us that, in the worst of these features, such has been
the condition of the Christian world from almost its
earliest date. Indeed the contrast is vastly in favor
of modern and present times. It would almost seem
as if the Christianity of the Church, instead of being
the corrector of the errors and evils of secular life,
has been itself indebted for correction and ameliora
tion to the secular progress of mankind in thinking
and acting. The annals of the past are darkened,
not merely with the existing exhibition of discordant
and hostile religious feeling, but with its develop
ment in bloodshed and atrocious cruelty, in torture,
imprisonment, and the stake, in wars and wholesale
massacres. Is this Christianity ? However callous
we may have become to the spectacle, we cannot
seriously maintain that it is. We cannot but acknow
ledge that there must be something rotten in the
institution to which the name of Christ is affixed,
that unfits it to be the instrument of his all-em
bracing philanthropy, and “ the habitation of God
through the Spirit.”*
Nor is it difficult to perceive in what this fatal
perversion consists. Study the records that have
come down to us of his life and character, of the
kind of influence which they exercised, of the lessons
he taught, of the principles which he inculcated as
the foundation of Christian society. We can hardly
avoid the impression from it all, that the main work
in which he was engaged was, not that of a revealer
of heavenly mysteries, but that of a moral reformer;
that to implant in men purer motives of conduct,
and to provide as a bond of social union for them a
mutual pledge for practising a higher morality than
had been hitherto possible for the world—that this
was his first and dearest aim. Important, no doubt,
were the doctrines which he taught; but, however
* Ephesians ii. 22.
�In the Church of England.
17
important, they were incidental and subordinate to
his moral teaching. The good life stands out first,
the articles of belief second; the moral conduct was
to be the characterising feature ; to doctrinal tenets
was assigned another position.
My reference, I should state, is principally to the
three first Gospels, which alone are strictly biogra
phical. The fourth is not so properly a biography as
an exposition of certain views of our Lord’s nature,
by means of language which he is stated to have used,
and things which he is stated to have done, on
certain occasions; all of which, whether John was
the author or another, appears to have been acknow
ledged as Scripture by the Christians of a very early
period. It is difficult, however, to suppose that the
sanction given to it was given to it as a history of
Jesus, inasmuch as it is historically at variance with
the three genuine biographies. These last do, no
doubt, differ from one another in some of the details
of the history, and this to an extent that has taxed
the ingenuity of commentators to reconcile them;
but the discrepancies of which I speak as between
them and the fourth Gospel affect the main features
of the history, in which they are in perfect agree
ment. To name one or two of these discrepancies.
According to the fourth Gospel Jesus, during the
whole of his ministerial career, was, again and again,
in Judasa and Jerusalem, preaching and performing
miracles; according to the other three his ministry
was confined to Galilee, until quite the close of it,
when the display of it in Judaea and Jerusalem pro
voked the interference of the Jewish authorities, and
was the cause of his death. According to the fourth
Gospel he openly avowed his Messiahship from the
beginning of his ministry; according to the other
three, until nearly the end of it he suppressed the
claim, and strictly forbade its being made • known.
According to the fourth Gospel he partook of his last
�i8
Shall 1 Seek Ordination
supper with his disciples on the day before the
Passover, and was crucified on the day of the
Passover, and before its celebration ; according to
the other three this last supper was the Passover,
which he kept with his disciples on the regular day
for its celebration, and his crucifixion took place on
the day following ; and whilst all mention of the
institution of the Sacrament, at this last supper, is
omitted in the fourth Gospel, a record is substituted
of his washing the feet of his disciples. All this, and
more like this, of historical inaccuracy is explicable
only if we regard the purpose of this Scripture to have
been, as I have said, not that of recording the life of
Jesus, but of establishing certain theological views of
his nature, by recording certain things which he said
or did, without caring to be scrupulously correct as
to the time and place of the occurrences, or as to
the connecting chain of events, that being the pro
vince of the historian or biographer.
Conformity to the view which we derive from the
biographical Gospels of our Lord’s character and
mission does not appear to have been long preserved.
Even in the earliest stage of the Church’s growth,
we perceive the tendency to that which became more
and more prominent in its further progress—the
establishment of a doctrinal, not a moral test, as the
terms of communion for a Christian society. Instead
of moral rules, such, for example, as Pliny represents
the symbolism of the Christian Church in Bithynia
to have been,* creeds became the symbola. The
inevitable result has been, that everywhere there has
been disagreement and disruption—inevitable, I say,
because, as man is constituted, it is impossible that
the members of any community should agree
permanently and throughout successive generations
in their views on religious subjects. They may
acquiesce in the permanent establishment of any
* Plinii Epist., Lib. ix, Epist. 97.
�In the Church of England.
19
amount of doctrine, as, to a certain extent, is the
case with the members of the Romish Church ; but
that is agreement in the acquiescence, not in the
doctrinal decisions, inasmuch as they are not theirs,
but those of an authority to which they have
delegated the right and duty of thinking and
deciding for them. To say that it is, is as gross a
misnomer as if partners in a property about the
management of which they cannot agree, were, by
agreement, to get rid of it, and still call themselves
a partnership in reference to it. Permanent agree
ment amongst those whose religious views are their
own, is, I repeat, impossible. Man’s nature as God
has formed it, makes it impossible. And thus it
happens that that which has been devised throughout
the Christian world, as the means of making the
members of one church of one mind, has been the
prime cause of dissent, and that which was to have
been a bond of brotherly love has been the incentive
to discord, malice, and hatred—hatred so charac
teristic of its origin that an especial term is used to
describe it (o&to theologwuml). We cannot deny
that such has been the effect of our symbola being
doctrinal, not moral. That good moral life is recog
nised as indispensable to the Christian character, in
all churches; that it so far enters into the symbola
of all as to cause the expulsion, in some of a minis
ter, in others of any member, whether minister or
layman, who is scandalously immoral, does not alter
the case. The mischief is done as soon as articles of
belief make any part of the test of communion.
There, is agreement enough among men as to
what is and what is not good conduct, and especially
as to what is a flagrant departure from it, to
secure permanent unanimity so long as the test
is simply and solely the moral one; but as
surely as men agree about this, so surely will they
disagree about what they are to think and believe;
�20
Shall 1 Seek Ordination
and as the disagreement progresses, one effect of the
passions which it excites is to magnify unduly the im
portance of the bone of contention, and to give
greater and greater prominence and weight to the
doctrinal test, so as finally to overlay the moral
element if it co-exists with it. All this would seem
to be undeniable. And yet, so obstinate is the preju
dice in favor of a doctrinal test, gathering strength,
as it has, in its transmission to us through successive
ages, and associated, as it is, with zeal for Christianity
itself, that you will not find many who can conceive
the existence of a church, the terms of union in which
should consist in conformity to moral rules, doctrines
and dogmas being open questions; in which social
worship should not bind those who join' in it to this
or that article of belief; in which inquiry into theo
logical truths should not be impeded by its involving
a question of church membership, and religious dis
cussion should be divested of the arrogance of Church
authority, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
of the fierce antagonism engendered by that arro
gance ; in which religion should be no longer the one
subject of controversy characterised, beyond all others,
by uncharitable feelings and language. And yet
such would seem to be the Church of Christ, as he
projected it, and such the impress of his life and
lessons which ought to be on it. It is remarkable,
too, that notwithstanding the pre-eminence assigned
to doctrine, doctrine itself is, from time to time, sub
jected to the moral test ; so that, whatever may be the
authority of any dogma, there is a revolt against it, if
it offends our moral sense. We cannot altogether
shake off its supremacy, or abandon its application.
It is not, you will observe, that I seek to detract
from the intrinsic value of true Christian doctrine,
or to assign it an inferior place in the Christian
scheme; but to point out that it has been misapplied
in being made the symbolum of Church union, for
�In the Church of England.
21
which it is unsuited, and has therefore produced
results the reverse of Christian fellowship.
Is there any prospect of the Christian world re
forming the ecclesiastical system in this respect ?
The prospect, if any, is distant. Incapable of con
cord in aught besides, on this perversion of the bond of
ecclesiastical union all Christian churches are at one,
Eastern and Western, Greek, Romish, and Protestant,
Episcopal and Congregational. All I would venture
to assert is, that no church reformation will ever be
of much avail until there is one in this direction ;
and although no church or sect is at present ripe for
it, there are growing symptoms of revolt against the
bondage of creeds and articles, as part and parcel of a
tyrannical rule whose day is gone by, and an aspiration
after a free admission of light and truth, which may
bring about the needful change more rapidly than we
think. The steps taken, in some quarters, to tighten
the bondage are more likely to hasten emancipation
from it, than to prevent or retard it. Whether you
shall or shall not be called on to take an active part
in the struggle, you will, I hope, bestow a serious
attention on the signs of its approach, and be pre
pared for it.
I have counselled you, throughout my letter, to the
best of my ability, but I cannot conclude without
impressing on you that which I myself feel deeply,
that mine are the words of a fallible counsellor, and
directing you to seek surer guidance from Him who
alone is infallible. Do I mean to imply that, if you
do this, by some process, manifest or secret, you may
rely on deciding aright ? Not that,—I am fully alive
to much that may be urged, not only against the
reasonableness of such an expectation, but against all
efficacy in prayer. The Divine Ruler of the universe
exercises His rule, it is said, by general laws. Let us
not imagine that He will, at our request, cause those
laws to be violated. Experience is appealed to in
�22
Shall I Seek Ordination, &c.
proof that He does not. Instances apparently to the
contrary are ascribed to accidental coincidence, or to
the delusions of enthusiasm. Still, I say, pray. He
who has made us has implanted in us an instinctive
desire to do so ; why, if we are not to obey it ? And
as for the argument that the Creator cannot be sup
posed to change the established course of His creation
at the bidding of one of His creatures, the reply
that I would make is this :—How do we know that
praying, for which man is formed, may not, according
to one of the general laws of the universe, act on
other general laws to modify them ? The system of
the universe is maintained by the action of one
general law on another. Man, by the exercise of his
intellect and bodily powers, gives this and that
direction and application to the general laws of the
material world. What is there irrational in suppos
ing that praying may be, analogously, the agency of
spirit on established spiritual laws, bending them to
our purpose ? That this is not the invariable result
is true ; but neither is it the invariable result in the
application of intellectual and bodily agency to the
laws of matter. Besides, how much of praying is
really that energy of spirit which alone can be sup
posed to have efficiency ? Pray, then, for guidance
now, and pray whenever you feel the need of more
than human power and human wisdom. Pray in a
rational faith, but still in faith; and let that faith
animate you to use all the other provisions of your
nature, material, intellectual, and moral, which
God has mercifully bestowed on you, for doing that
which shall be most in accordance with His will for
you.
�Publications advocating certain doctrines of the Church
of - England as commonly held.
It is not necessary that I should name any of the
well-known standard works, as you must be already
acquainted with them, if not otherwise, in your
attendance on your University Divinity Lectures.
In every Diocese, too, there is a selection from these
printed for the use of Ordination Candidates. Among
more recent publications, I may specify—
(Hodges, Smith
BYRNE’S DONNELLAN LECTURES.
and Co., Dublin.)
THE SPEAKER’S
London.)
COMMENTARY
(John
Murray,
REPLY TO BISHOP COLENSO. By the Rev. W.
Kay, D.D., Broomfield, Chelmsford.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE LECTURES
Stoughton, Paternoster row).
(Hodder and
BISHOP MAGEE’S SERMONS IN NORWICH
CATHEDRAL (Hamilton and Co., Paternoster row).
LETTER TO THE REV. SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D.,
LL.D., in answer to his Essay on the Johannine Author
ship of the Fourth Gospel. By Kentish Bach
(F. Bowyer Kitto, 5 Bishopsgate street Without).
�Publications questioning certain doctrines of the Church
of England as generally held.
THEODORE PARKER’S
(Triibner and Co.)
THEOLOGICAL
WORKS
CREDIBILIA. By the Rev. James Cranbrook (Tiiibner
and Co.)
THE FOUNDERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
By the Rev. James Cranbrook (Triibner and Co.)
THE SLING AND THE STONE.
Voysey (Triibner and Co.)
By the Rev. C.
DEFENCE BEFORE THE CHANCERY COURT OF
YORK. By the Rev. C. Voysey (Triibner and Co.)
APPEAL TO THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE
PRIVY COUNCIL.
and Co.)
By the Rev. C. Voysey (Tiiibner
BISHOP COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH AND
BOOK OF JOSHUA (Longmans and Co.)
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. By J. James Tayler (Williams
and Norgate).
CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO FREE THOUGHT,
SCEPTICISM, AND FAITH (Austin and Co.)
MR SCOTT OF RAMSGATE’S LIST OF PUBLICA
TIONS contains many more, from which you may make
a selection. I would particularise his Challenge to
the Christian Evidence Society.
�
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xio
nW
A DISCOURSE
ON THE
SERVICE OF GOD,
delivered by
Professor
F. W. NEWMAN,
AT THE
FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, CROYDON, LONDON
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD
LONDON, S.E.
1875.,
Price Threepence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. TV. REYNELL, LITTLE rULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET.
�THE
SERVICE OF GOD.
“ 0 Lord, truly I am thy servant. I am thy servant, and
the son of thy handmaid. Thou hast broken my bonds.”—
Psalm cxvi. 16.
ELIGION has a long history. It is perhaps as
old as human nature. At every time it reflects
’ our moral and intellectual state. It is barbarous in
our barbarism. It is puerile, while our intellects are
immature. It becomes more manly with our manlier
thoughts, pure and tender with our more refined
morals. The rude or savage man, who discovers in
the vast world Powers greater than himself and
older than the solid globe, easily believes that some
gods are kindly and others cruel. The God who
gives genial harvests and healthful seasons is the
good God; but the power who wields the hurricane
and the lightning seems to be a demon. We know,
as a’ fact, particular tribes to have argued frankly,
that it is not necessary to concern ourselves about the
good God, who is sure to be kind. The only matter
of importance (they said) is, to propitiate the evil
demons, and avert their anger. Thus, as a matter of
policy, demon-worship is put forward as the cardinal
task of religion.
But wherein does this worship or service consist ?
It is assumed that the mighty Being who sometimes
crushes feeble man, crushes him through malevolence
and cruelty. Such a Being is likely to be proud,
vain, jealous; easily affronted, but appeased by sub
mission, by gifts and by flattery. Therefore the
service of the god becomes like to that of an earthly
tyrant. Worship paid to one somewhat lower in
R
�6
The Service of God.
morals than ourselves is degrading to the votary and
demoralizing. No one can say into what depths of
cruelty to man such fantastic service may descend, f
once the ceremonies of worship are systematized and
receive traditional sanction from national usages and
law.
' Thus, in order that worship or service to God may
be healthful, rightful, elevating, ennobling, the first
essential condition is, that we believe God to be better
than ourselves ; not merely more powerful, but better,
in every sense in which we can understand goodness.
It needs no high effort of thought, no especial power
of insight, to establish as a sure foundation, that, if
a Supreme God have any moral character at all, his
morality must be nobler than ours. In any case our
petty vices are in him simply impossible. He cannot
be irritable, jealous, thinking of his own honour, ca
pricious, malignant, fickle, fantastic. He does not
need offerings of food or of flowers, roast flesh or
honey-cakes, garlands of leaves, nor crowns of gold.
He needs no house built for his dwelling-place or
sleeping-rooms. He will .not wear robes of State,
though they be woven for him of fine purple and
edged with gold brocade. What then can we do to
serve such a Being, who wants for himself nothing
at our hands ?
It is within the compass of the humblest intellect,
so soon as man or woman thinks freely and defi
nitely, to make sure, that if God desire us to serve
him, it is not for his advantage or comfort or pride,
but for our benefit. We ought to revere him; why?
Because we are the better for revering him. But
again, why so ? Because reverence intrinsically
befits us, if he indeed be supreme in goodness and
wisdom, as well as in duration and power. Bor one
who is still a child to look up with admiration to a
loving father, is always good, because a mature man
is far higher in wisdom and goodness than a child;
�The Service of God.
7
but reverence of one man for another man is not, as
such, intrinsically good, and may be pernicious.
Reverence rightly directed, towards one who unques
tionably deserves it, softens, chastens, and confirms
moral character, and has no element of servility in
it. To have no object whom we revere generally
belongs to self-conceit, flippancy, shallowness of heart.
“ To be Reverent is Wisdom,” says a philosophic
Greek poet; and the voice of mankind classes irre
verence among vices. Yet (as above said) to revere
a God, to whom we attribute mean vices, is evil and
not good. That religion may be beneficial, it must
be pure; that it may be pure, criticism of it must be
•free.; no worship of false gods is endurable to true
piety. If it be possible sincerely to adore a being
.morally below us (which may greatly be doubted),
■such worship is at best a galling slavery. But when
;the worshipper discerns that his God is supremely
good, and deserves to be loved with all the heart and
soul, his chains drop off, and he may justly cry:
“ Thou hast broken my bonds. Thy service is perfect
freedom. Oh tell me what I am to do. Speak,
Lord ! for thy servant heareth. Blessed are they
who do thy commandments. Lord! teach me thy
statutes. Oh that I could hear thy voice ! ”
But no voice from heaven is heard in reply to suoh
aspirations. The wisdom of God draws out our own
powers, and, to do this, never dictates as an earthly
preceptor, but works on our hearts and intellects by
many an inward experience and many an outward
i event. That elementary religion which we call Pagan
•can Jhardly now be recognized by us as religion at all.
We may contemptuously .call .it “earnal ordinances,”
so long as it is external and corporate. But from
•the day that religion is treated as no longer a cor
porate affair to be transacted by a priest or a church,
but a .matter internal to the individual soul,—thence
forward it is nearly true to say that each of us has to
�8
The Service of God.
earn his own religious beliefs. Morals are dictated
to us by the human race in the most critical matters;
but neither mankind nor any individual can profitably
dictate on spiritual religion. At most one may con
fidentially tell to another his inward convictions, and
how his doubts and difficulties were removed; but
different minds are liable to (what may be called)
different diseases, and are relieved by different reme
dies. It is lovely and truly hopeful when, in opening
youth, ardent hearts aspire to dedicate life to the
service of God; yet nothing is commoner than for
the worshipper, after a glow of zealous devotion, to
lament that his earthly heart cannot keep it up.
Then he inquires, “ Is there any means of sustaining
religious affection, so that I may always feel that I
love God, as I did feel for a little while ? Is it a sin
that I am cold and dead, when I know that I ought
to rejoice in his supreme goodness ? ” This is but
one of many ways in which sincere hearts are dis
quieted ; yet a few words may here be in place.
We must not mistake religious emotion for religion.
Reverence implies a definite position of the under
standing and the moral judgment. This ought to be
a permanent state, which shows itself whenever the
thought of the Most High recurs to the mind. But
every emotion is transitory. Each is most healthy
when most spontaneous. To excite feeling artificially
is unhealthful, and tends to increase deadness. It
suffices to have the conviction deep in our under
standings that God deserves to be loved; we cannot
always have love to Him active and sensible. But
to say this is not to say half of what truth seems to
demand. The religious affections are good in their
place; they are right (as above said) because they
intrinsically befit us ; in greater or less intensity they
are necessary to religion. But as we must refuse to
believe that God, like a weak, vain man, is jealous
for his own honour, so must we beware of the stealthy
�The Service of God.
9
idea that he resents coldness or exacts gratitude.
The religious affections are not the service of God.
Religion itself is the true service of God, and it is
exhibited mainly in right conduct towards man. This,
in my apprehension, is the cardinal doctrine which
the Church of the Future has to make prominent,
and, as it were, bear aloft upon her flag. It certainly
has not been duly prominent in the past, and is very
often flatly denied. As the Hebrew prophets repre
sented Jehovah saying, “I need not your sacrifices of
bullocks and rams: if I am hungry, I will not ask
food of you,” so must we now insist that God is not
benefited by our psalms and hymns, nor is less
glorious or less blessed, if defrauded of our praise
and gratitude. On our own account it is good to
draw near to him and worship inwardly ; but to
make the service of God consist in this is, at bottom,
the same error as to identify the useless and selfish
life of a hermit with religious life.
That wise religion has its highest and ultimate goal
in right behaviour towards our fellow-men is not dis
tinctly expressed in the Hebrew or Christian Scrip
tures ; yet (I think) is often implied by Christian
Apostles and by Jesus himself; also'in the celebrated
passage of Micah, which sums up man’s duty to God
in justice and mercy, and humility or sobriety before
God. It seems impossible to find books richer in
urgent exhortations concerning outward conduct than
the Apostolic Epistles and the three first Gospels.
Nevertheless, all the books of the New Testament are
so overlaid with notional matter that the historical
Christian Church was seduced into making doctrines
and creeds paramount. In consequence men, cele
brated as eminent philosophers, have imagined that
in Christianity practical virtue is disesteemed. That
ceremonies may and do choke and bury true religion
is a familiar thought to all who honour the name
Protestant. That theories, doctrines, controversies,
�io
The Service of God.
religious emotion and efforts to kindle emotion may
be mischievous in the same way, many Protestants
are not duly aware. Theology, as science or art, is
but a means; our social perfection is the end which
theology ought to subserve. To attain such perfection
as men and women can attain in their mutual rela
tions is the highest service of God.
A misconception of this statement is more than
possible, and must be carefully guarded against. Mis
conception may arise out of the common distinction
between personal vice and crimes or offences against
society; also between personal virtue and social
virtue. We must not mistake such outward action
as alone the law of the land can command, or even
such as alone society can claim from us, for the sub
stance of religious life. Every personal vice, in truth,
makes us worse citizens, nor do any virtues so redound
in blessing to society as purely spiritual virtues. The
earliest scientific treatise on morals known to the
Western world maintained that justice included all
virtue, for to be defective in any virtue was a fraud
on society. Justice, strictly interpreted, was identical
with righteousness. There is truth in this.
To do an act Of kindness is acceptable to our neigh
bours, but to do it ungraciously may destroy all plea
sure from it and nearly all its value. It is not the
outward act only which kindles gratitude or affection,
but the act as indicating the temper of the doer. The
dullest of us is, after all, a spiritual being; we love
men for their goodness, even more than for their
usefulness to ourselves. If destitute, we covet sup
plies necessary to life; but man does not love for
bread alone. We wish for respect, for good-will, for
friendliness. We are quick to discern when another
is contemptuous, proud, selfish, ungoverned, grasping.All vices, however internal and hidden away, are dis
agreeable to us; and, if they abound in our neigh
bours, lessen our happiness and even our sense of
�•
The Service of God,
11
security. Sensual vice, it need hardly be insisted, is
manifestly pernicious to others as well as to the vicious
person. A drunkard is a bad husband, a bad father,
a bad son, a bad citizen in general. The seducer of
female virtue is pernicious in the highest degree; the
man of impure life is a centre of corruption and a
propagator of misery. Gluttony is the greatest cause
of disease, and variously incapacitates us. Those who
make their gain by encouraging -vice are among the
very worst citizens. To foster hatred within, of that
which would degrade us without, to simplify our habits
so as to be contented with little, may seem at first
purely personal virtues, yet without them we are not
armed against temptation, nor competent for warfare
with social misery. Hence a Christian Apostle re
garded spiritual virtues collectively as the weapons
and armour of God, for battle against the wicked
spirits who domineer in the world. In this noble
combat we need to put on not only tender mercies,
patience, and universal good-will, but also those vir
tues of the soldier—hardihood and self-denial, fru
gality and bravery. Paul is represented (in substance,
I doubt not, correctly) as leaving with the elders of
Ephesus his last solemn charges, and, as it were, his
dying words: “ I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold,
or apparel: yea, ye yourselves know that these hands
have ministered to my necessities and to them that
were with me. I have showed you that so labouring
ye ought to support the weak, and remember those
words of the Lord JesuSj—It is more blessed to give
than to receive.” Some one has said that Jesus
kindled on earth an enthusiasm of humanity. To me
it is clear that through the whole book, which we call
the New Testament, there burns an enthusiasm for
-moral perfection. Our task in this later age is to cull
the noblest flowers of Christian precepts, just as did
the Apostles from the Prophets and Psalmists who had
preceded them, avoiding the errors incident to the
�i2
The Service of God.
•
earlier era, and adding whatever wisdom the long
lapse of time has bequeathed to us.
Is then the service of God, as interpreted by Chris
tian Apostles, quite identical with that to which we
now ought to exhort one another ? Not quite iden
tical, I think. They believed that King Messiah
would return in the clouds of heaven, to set up a
rule of righteousness on earth. They saw the gross
injustices of princely power and institutions founded
on conquest; but to defeat iniquity enthroned in
high station seemed to them far too hard a task for
any one but the Lord from heaven. To behold the
kingdoms of this world under the reign of God and
his Christ was the sight for which their hearts ached;
but the only work for others to which they believed
themselves called, was, to prepare the elect,—a small
remnant of mankind,—for entering into God’s king
dom. We cannot blame them as weak in faith,
because they despaired of overthrowing organized
violence without miraculous intervention. In fact,
the primitive gospel or good news announced, what
long experience has convicted as an error ;—namely,
that the Lord Messiah himself would very shortly
descend from heaven with innumerable angels and a
trumpet sound, to claim his rightful royalty over
earth, and trample down the wicked princes who
ruled by the unseen might of Satan, God’s arch
enemy. Then would come the times of refreshing from
the presence of the Lord ; then righteousness would
flourish, and all the prophecies be gloriously fulfilled.
Reluctantly, slowly, and by necessity, Christians at
length resigned this splendid vision, and learned that
to leave political affairs to the management of bad
men was not the part of wisdom and duty : but
alas! forthwith arose an insatiable ambition to invest
Church Officers with the wealth, power, and prero
gatives of Pagan princes. Out of this has flowed a
total perversion of Christianity, and, for 1500 years,
�The Service of God.
13
incessant conflicts which abounded with misery and
innumerable moral evils; yet probably were inevit
able in some other shape, if they had not come in this
shape. From her more than millennial agony Chris
tendom emerges far stronger and. far wiser. We
now discern what has been the error. True religion
ought to consecrate, all our worldly action, not to dis
parage, to decry, and to desecrate the world. Herein
is the pivot of our new departure. We need to
revert to an older wisdom, which taught* that
“ God hath granted to us on this earth a small plot;
and this is that which we must cultivate and glorify.”
Religious action does not consist in propagating
religious opinions, nor even in cherishing religious
emotions; but in 'being good and doing good. To
desecrate the word secula/r, is akin to desecrating
marriage; each should be ennobled, not disparaged.
This world is not to be abandoned to men selfishly
greedy and ambitious, but is to be defended and
rescued from them by the concordant efforts of God’s
true servants. Unjust and corrupting institutions,
evil laws, reckless government, are not to be left
unmolested. Since bad law is of all bad things most
widely and deeply efficacious for evil, while good law
is of all good influences the mildest and most
effective for good; therefore, to purify laws and
institutions is a primary mode of establishing the
kingdom of God on earth. In no other way can the
roots of moral evil be torn up. It has often been
said, that three days’ drunkenness, fostered by ambi
tion to aid electioneering intrigues, undo the work of
three years’ preaching. This is but one illustration
out of fifty, and not at all the strongest, denoting
how futile is a moral crusade, if it will not attack
political villainies. Hitherto, among Protestants, all
national progress in morals has been retarded, just
'2,‘irApTi)v eAa%es • ratrriiv xotrfier.
�14
z
The Service of God.
in proportion as they have recalled from the first
Christian ages the doctrine that the saint is not a
citizen of this world; that the kingdoms of this
world are incurably wicked ; that the devil and his
angels are to be left in possession of political princi
pality; that Christians have nothing to do with
making the national institutions just, and the law
moral. The doctrine of Geneva, of Scotland and of
the English Puritans, took a course which avoided
this rock of offence, but ran upon' another, nearly as
Rome has done,—a rock which we mis-call Theo
cracy : but the Lutherans, and the Anglican Evan
gelicals, the Moravians, the Quietists, and other sects,
with many estimable persons, in striving to recover
the original position of the Christian Church, over
looked both our vast differences of circumstance, and
the glaring fact that that Church erred in expecting
the speedy overthrow of political wrong by a miracu
lous intervention. Without full self-consciousness or
any clear knowledge of the past, all the Churches of
England are now waking to their duty of purifying
the fountains of our daily life. Herein lies the germ
of a new religion ; new to us, if in some sense old.
There are those who believe that this new religion is
what Jesus meant to teach (but his words, say they,
have been garbled),—that when from human sym
pathy one man relieves another, who is- a captive, or
sick, or hungry, or naked, though he do it without
dreaming to serve God or thinking of God at all, yet
the Supreme Judge recognizes it as service done to
himself. This is neither place nor time for inquiring
into the truth of the interpretation. Suffice it to
say, that goodness is amiable, with or without reli
gious thought; that man needs our services, and
God does not need our love any more than our
flattery, and that in affectionate, dutiful or merciful
acts towards our fellow-men we best become jointwofkers with God. This is the earliest religion
�The Service of God.
15
possible to childhood, the only religion which can
commend itself to the barbarian conscience.
Will any one call it a poetical fiction, that all the
universe, inorganic, brute or barbarian, is doing the
work of God, obeying his command, fulfilling his
service ? alike the suns and planets, the elements and
seasons, the beasts and birds, tribes of savages and
ignorant masses of men? God makes the very
wrath of man to praise him, out of discord bringing
harmony. How much more ought we to recognize
as Tris servants that vast army of mute toilers, the
poor of every nation, prevalently simple and ignorant,
and despised as “ the herd of mankind,” though
often nobly unselfish and gloriously heroic ?• The
same may be said of the patient inventors and perfectors of mechanical and other civilizing art. Let
no man despise man; for we are all of one blood,
though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Adam
acknowledge us not. The love of God embraces us
all; therefore it is very fit, right, and our bounden
duty, to study the benefit of this human family as
our highest service to the common Father. Serving
man we best serve God; he that will be greatest
among us, let him be the servant of all. In that
service is love and joy; love, which is forgetful of
self; joy, in the lofty faith, which is sure that Right
must triumph.
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
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THE
QUESTION OF METHOD
’AS affecting
RELIGIOUS THOU.GHT.
BY
A CLERGYMAN
of the
CHURCH
of
ENGLAND.
OiiK alcrxpbv
3i?ra ret
\eyeiv ;
Owe, et rb trcodrivai ye rb tyevtios ipepei.
To speak untruly—dost not think it shame ?
Not when we fare the better for the same.
Sophocles Philoctetes.
f
PUBLISHED BY 'THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E. '
1873.
Price Threepence.
��THE QUESTION OF METHOD
AS AFFECTING
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
HENCE comes the possibility of that strange
fact,—strange indeed, yet in the present day
by no means unfrequent,—that men having like
opportunities and abilities come to utterly diverse
conclusions on religious subjects? You may note,
say for example, two brothers, each possessed of un
usual talents, starting from the same early training,
each animated by a pure zeal for truth, one of whom,
through whatever wanderings, holds fast at least by
the great doctrines of Christianity, while the other
leaves all orthodox belief far behind him. For—
wonder at the fact if you will—we are constrained
to admit that men do doubt and disbelieve every
Christian dogma, who, whatever judgment may here
after be passed upon them, live, so far as human eye
can see, not less pure or upright lives than the most
strenuous upholders of the faith. How can these
things be ? How can two men, both sane and
sound, affirm of the same fountain, the one that its
waters are sweet, the other that they are bitter ?
Christianity is true or it is false. That is to say,
those occurrences on which all orthodox bodies
■ found their religion have historically happened
or they have not. The issue is a simple one, and one
W
�4
The Question of Method
might suppose that honest men who wished for
nothing but the truth would have little difficulty in
arriving at a similar conclusion one way or other.
Yet we find that men apparently possessed of honesty,
ability and learning, hold contrary opinions on the
subject. The object of the present paper is to point
out the broad beaten road which leads to orthodoxy,
and also the narrow thorny path which ends in un
belief.
Now if in studying the same subject inquirers
arrive at opposite conclusions, either they must start
from different premises, or they must adopt a different
method of inquiry. Obviously, starting from different
premises is a fruitful source of difference in religious
as in other matters. Thus in disputes between a
Christian and an unbeliever the former will often
base his arguments upon biblical texts, forgetting that
the other will by no means accept them as conclusive.
The one starts from the premiss that the Bible affords
an infallible source of information, the truth of which
the other denies. Such an argument often ends in
mere bitterness, as the parties do not see that there is
no common ground between them on which the argu
ment may rest. Or if they consent to go deeper, and
discuss the proposition which to one side formed
the premiss of the previous argument, yet again they
fail to find common ground, and therefore to appear
reasonable to each other. Now the source of the
difference must surely be this, that they approach the
subject in a different spirit: each adopts a different
method of inquiry. I believe the most common
method used by the orthodox party is that of assuming
some one point,—as the authority of the Church, or
of the Bible,—and then arguing from that. This
method, however, labours under the disadvantage
mentioned above. However satisfactory it may be
to the individual who accepts it, it cannot enable him
to convince unbelievers. Such a method may even to
�as Affecting Religious Thought.
5
some extent be open to the charge brought against it
by uncivil persons of being a petitio principii.
To those who endeavour to go to the root of the
Blatter, there are, as far as I can see, but two methods
which they can use as instruments of thought, between
which they must take their choice. I shall call these
the emotional method and the critical method.
These may be briefly characterised as follows :
The former method accepts an explanation simply
as satisfactory to the mind: it does not seek to compars or test further: it rests on intimate conviction.
The critical method, on the contrary, mistrusts every
hypothesis until verified ; if an explanation seem pro
bable in itself, it is not allowed to rest there: it is
brought face to face with other facts and theories, and
questioned as to its agreement with them; it is, in
short, tested in every conceivable way, and not
accepted unless it can endure the trial. The critical
method is based on verification.
I shall now endeavour to show that while the latter
method has its value—perhaps is the only one of any
value—in scientific inquiries, the emotional method
alone can lead to orthodox results in religious inves
tigations.
In ancient times the critical method was almost or
quite unknown. Whatever men wished to explain,
from the genesis of the earth and the human race
to the derivation of a word, was explained out of
hand, and evolved with child-like confidence out of
the mind of the explainer. When Pindar told of the
birth of Ajax (Aias), he derived the name from
aleros (aietos) an eagle. It was enough for him that
the first two letters corresponded in each word, and
that the explanation seemed to him a probable one.
When Eve bare her first-born she called his name
Cain, and said I have gotten (from the verb hanah,
to get) a man. There was a sufficient resemblance
between Kain and kanah ; although, according to the
�6
The Question of Method
critical method, Cain would seem to have been a
smith (pp) by name, although not in trade, and
Cain’s sons were smiths. These two examples will
suffice to show the principle on which names were
anciently derived. But a similar method was em
ployed in other and more important matters. In
order to illustrate this, perhaps the reader will allow
me to tell him a story out of Philo. An animal is
placed on the list of those allowed to be eaten in
Levit. xi. 22, which our translators, for some myste
rious reason, call “ beetle,” and which the Septuagint
version as unaccountably renders ophiomachus, ser
pent-fighter. Now Philo had already proved to his
satisfaction that the Serpent which tempted Eve was
pleasure. Therefore the reason why this ophioma
chus was recommended for the Jewish table was
plain. “For,” says he, “this ophiomachus seems to
me to be nothing else than temperance symbolically,
which wages endless war against intemperance and
pleasure.” I was charmed when I read this passage,
for nothing could more evidently set forth the advan
tages of the emotional method. See how beautifully
the old worthy works it out! The otpiopaxys, which
he lit on in his Septuagint, fitted into the theory he
was constructing, just like a long-sought, queer-cor
nered bit in a child’s puzzle-map. Then what “ uses,”
what edification, proceed from this interpretation ?
What earthly meaning could there be in bidding the
Hebrews eat a particular sort of locust ? But when
you understand how the locust represents asceticism,
what light and interest is shed on the Mosaic com
mand I And to think that Philo and we should have
lost all this had he only been cursed with the very
smallest tincture of the critical method ! Had he
had any notion of verifying his facts, he would have
compared the Septuagint with the Hebrew version,
and thus have found that the name of the creature in
the original language has nothing to do with ser-
�as Affecting Religious thought,
7
penis, but means simply a leap er (chargol), and so
his theory would have fallen to pieces at once. For
tunately he was secure in the strength of his method ;
the inward satisfaction which he felt was ample proof
of the correctness of his position ; and as the Septuagint version suited him, why should he go further to
seek another which might not suit so well ? It would
be easy to multiply instances of the use of the emo
tional method from the writings of authors of all
ages ; but I forbear to quote further from uninspired
writers. To do so would seem to be the more unne
cessary, inasmuch as this method, and no other, was
employed by the writers of the Books contained in
the New Testament.
If this be shown, it will be obvious that those who
wish to hold to the faith which those holy men pro
mulgated must walk in their steps and use their
method. If we attempt to use the critical method in
the exegesis of the Bible, we commence by placing
ourselves at a point of view utterly different from
that at which its authors contemplated their subject;
and shall therefore understand it in a sense alien
from theirs. It is by so doing that so many writers
and others, whose learning and honesty of purpose
are beyond all question, have changed that which
Christians hold to be the Word of God into a collec
tion of more or less curious myths. When the New
Testament writers found a passage of the Hebrew
Scriptures which seemed to them to bear upon the
life of Christ, they assumed at once that it was in its
origin prophetic of him. For example, Matthew re
members the words of Hosea, “ Out of Egypt have
I called my Son.” The critical inquirer remembers
that the prophet was alluding to the Exodus of
Israel. To the Evangelist it is sufficient that these
words, taken apart from their context, serve to illus
trate his narrative. So little did the Evangelists and
Apostles care for such accuracy as is required by the
�8
The Question of Method
critical method, that their quotations from the older
Scriptures are often distortions of the words and
meaning of the originals, at least as these latter have
come down to us. I am not now writing a treatise
on prophecy, and it will be sufficient to request the
reader who may doubt my assertion to compare the
quotations in the New Testament with the prophecies
themselves ; he will often be able to detect the distor
tion, even if he has no knowledge of the original lan
guages. I may observe here that what has been said
holds true of the doctrine of Types. What critical
inquirer could ever believe that the narratives of the
brazen serpent, of David, Jonah, &c., have any refer
ence to Christ ? These stories are complete in them
selves as they stand in the Old Testament, and do not
require any further fulfilment. He alone who proceeds
always on the emotional method can perceive that the
fact that an older narrative may profitably be em
ployed to illustrate the life of Christ, justifies the
assumption that it was intended to do so. So im
pressed, however, were the Apostolic writers with
the truth of this doctrine, that they seemed to have
considered the Hebrew Scriptures as of little impor
tance for any other purpose. Thus Paul cares only
for the story of Isaac and Ishmael in so far as they
typify the Christian and Jewish churches, and for
that of the passage of the Red Sea as exemplifying
the doctrine of Baptism. When he reads the words,
“To Abraham and his seed were the promises made,”
he does not understand “ seed ” to refer to the de
scendants of the patriarch, as any critical student
would, but he insists upon applying it to Christ.
Indeed Paul is perhaps the most consistent of all the
New Testament writers in his exclusion of the critical
spirit. So much so, that he rests entirely on his
emotional convictions. He is far indeed from com
paring critically the accounts of the Resurrection.
He will not confer with flesh and blood. He rejects
�as Affecting Religious ’Thought.
9
all knowledge of Christ “ after the flesh his inner
belief, apart from all comparison with the convictions
of others, or verification from external facts, is suffi
cient for him.
It is impossible within the limits of the present
paper to do more than illustrate the position here
taken up by a few examples. But I feel no doubt
that any candid person who will consider those here
brought forward, and himself search the Scriptures
for others, will be convinced that the writers of the
books composing our Bible had not the very slightest
idea of the critical method, and would, could they
have understood it, have condemned it as unsuited to
their purposes. If this be so, let those who would
continue to think as the evangelists and prophets
thought, beware how they tamper with a method so
alien from their spirit.
At the risk of being tedious I must adduce another
example of the danger of deserting the emotional
method. Many such suggest themselves ; indeed the
adoption of the opposite method breaks up the Bible
in all directions, and leaves, in place of one homoge
neous infallible book, a collection of tales, most of
them of little historical value. I cannot, however, go
into this subject any further at present. The one
instance which follows may be sufficient to serve as a
caution to those who wish to stand in the paths of
orthodoxy in these slippery days.
The apparent contradictions in the Gospel narra
tives have driven our orthodox commentators into
great straits, except when they have got over a diffi
culty by omitting to notice it. They would, however,
find no difficulty at all if they had sufficient faith in
the emotional method, and forebore the attempt to
wield the weapons of their adversaries.
They need not fear lest they should fail to be secure
against doubts and disputations if they will be care
ful to avoid the critical method. When the critical
�io
The Question of Method
inquirer compares the different narratives of the life
of Christ, he finds, among other points of a similar
nature, that Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven
both from Bethany and also from a mountain in Galilee.
According to Matthew,—who is so far confirmed by
the narrative which closes the second Gospel as we
have it,—the disciples met the risen Christ by ap-.
pointment in Galilee. There Mark further informs
us that the Ascension took place, they having first
been charged to go at once (as it appears) and
teach all nations. In Luke, on the contrary, the
Eleven do not quit the immediate neighbourhood of
Jerusalem; nay, they are expressly charged not to do
so until they should be “ endued with power from on
high.” This account agrees with that given in Acts,
while John does not mention the Ascension at all.
Here we see plainly the effect of the comparing or
critical method. To one who adopts it, it seems im
possible that the disciples could both have remained
at Jerusalem for a considerable time, and also during
part of that very time have been in Galilee ; nor less
so that one and the same Ascension should have
taken place at Bethany and on a far distant moun
tain. The emotionalist, on the other hand, feels no
difficulty. To compare the different and differing
accounts in a critical spirit would be foreign to his
nature. Each several account satisfies and edifies
him, and he cares for nothing more. Should such an
one be pressed to the point by an unbeliever, he might
reply that the sojourn of the disciples at Jerusalem is
to be understood in a spiritual sense. They were
commanded to tarry at Jerusalem, that is, not to
break with the Jews and Jewish customs, until the
descent of the Holy Ghost. Eor the double site
assigned to the Ascension I have indeed no explana
tion to suggest; yet I am confident that the holy
ingenuity of a second Philo—who would care nothing
for historic truth and everything for spiritual edifica-
�as Affecting Religious 'Thought.
11
cation—would explain this also as triumphantly as
the first turned the leaping locust into a slayer of
allegorical serpents.
If the reader has done me the honour to follow my
arguments up to this point, it is ten chances to one
that he feels somewhat disposed to quarrel with my
position.
It is likely enough that he will ask whether the
critical method be not that by which all scientific
discoveries have been made, and all our knowledge of
historic truth obtained ; whether, if that be so, it be
not the right method to use in that inquiry which is
of all others most important; and whether in fact
many eminent writers on religious subjects have not
used that method and no other. To the last question
I reply, that I am not acquainted with the works of
any theologian who has successfully used the critical
method and at the same time kept within the confines
of orthodoxy; nor can I conceive it possible that
there should be such. There are, indeed, orthodox
writers who use with more or less success the critical
method throughout the bulk of their work; but, so
far as I know, they always start with one or more
assumptions which are arrived at by the emotional,
not the critical method. They assume the authority
of the Bible or of the Church ; the necessity of a
Divine revelation, and of its miraculous character;
the authenticity of the sacred writings on which they
rely; and other such points. Having made these
assumptions, or some of them, they may proceed to
deduce their conclusions from them by the critical
method. But the propositions on which their whole
subsequent reasoning is based are assumed, not as
critically demonstrated, but as appearing natural and
necessary to the mind of the writer. The super
structure may be critical, but the foundation is
emotional; and it is from the latter, not the former,
that the entire work must take its distinguishino1
character.
°
�12
The Question of Method
With regard to the other question, viz., whether
the critical method be not the better, and therefore
the right one to employ, it should be considered that
either method is an instrument for aiding us to attain
certain ends. We must choose the one best fitted for
our purpose. The critical method is an admirable
instrument for enabling us to ascertain truth of fact.
If we wish to acquaint ourselves with the probability
of a reported occurrence having really taken place or
otherwise, with no care whether we are led to the
affirmative or the negative conclusion, the critical
method will serve our turn. But—I am addressing
myself to those who are predetermined to preserve
their orthodox faith—is this desired ? The critical
method is very exacting. If we adopt it we must
take nothing for granted : we must not say I will
believe this because it satisfies my emotional needs ;
or because it is so conducive to public morality and
the peace of the individual mind. This method
binds us to the pursuit of truth pure and simple, un
influenced by any preconceived wish as to the result.
The emotional method, on the contrary, allows a man’s
feelings to determine his belief. If we adopt it we
shall never need to trouble ourselves with disagreeable
questions, such as, Do we know when and by whom
the Gospels were written ? Do they or do they not
contain numerous contradictory statements ? Are the
accounts therein given of the doings and sayings of
Christ in all cases to be relied upon as matters of
historical certainty ? and the like. These and many
such beset the path of the critical inquirer like im
portunate beggars, who will not be shaken off until
they have their answer. He whose first object is to
continue stedfast in his religious belief should refuse
altogether to enter upon such inquiries. To deal with
them candidly implies a wish to know the truth
rather than to continue orthodox ; and such a wish,
if acted on, is apt to be fatal to orthodoxy. The
�Affecting Religious Thought.
13
importance of inquiry after truth in religious matters
Bas been much overstated. An orthodox believer
should never inquire after truth ; he should assume
that he has it. The word truth is indeed occasionally
used in the Bible, yet always in a sense widely
different from that in which it is used by the modern
critic. Thus the Apostle says : “ We can do nothing
against the truth, but for the truthbut by truth he
means his own system of religious belief, the truth of
which he assumes, and which indeed is the only truth
for which he cares. So, again, Christians are bidden
searc i the Scriptures.” ' But it is implied, as I
have attempted to show, that they are to use a method
of search,—a mode of interpretation,—which certainly
would not lead to such truth as is sought by the man
©f science or modern historian.
I say again, let your wish to know truth always
stand second to your desire to continue orthodox;
otherwise there is much danger that your truth will
not be that of the Church or of the Bible. Should
any one say in reply to this : “ What is orthodoxy to
me ? I desire to know whether or not the religion I
have been taught to profess be really founded on fact.
If it be so, it will stand the severest testing by the
most rigorous method ; if not, I will none of it: ” to
such an one the arguments used in this paper are not
addressed. Let him go on his way, if he is sure he
has strength to follow it out: taking however this
warning with him. I have known those who have
acted as he proposes to act; who, starting with a more
or less orthodox belief, have insisted on subjecting it
to the critical method without fear or favour. The
consequence has been that they have found them
selves in the end stripped of most of those garments
with which their earliest instructors had invested
their minds, and, in some cases, with their worldly
prospects blasted. Let him then count the cost first,
lest having begun he should not dare to finish.
�The Question of Method, &e.
I turn for a concluding word to those who prize
their religious faith above all things : who know that
it brings them peace, comfort, and worldly prosperity;
and are not to be ousted from these solid advantages
by a sneer about honesty. Let such be careful to
abide by the emotional method, to take the satisfaction
which religion and religious books bring to their
minds as the surest—the only—basis of their belief.
The men of science have with their critical method
“ turned the world upside down ” as effectually as did
the Apostles of old. Beware then how you allow
yourselves to inquire on their method into the truth
of sacred narratives. Consider that faith is not as
robust as it was ; it now needs hot-house treatment:
it must be glazed, and warmed artificially, and kept
from rude scientific contact. Guard it from critical
thought as you do your exotic plants from frost.
Consider, a few degrees of cold will consign it to a
grave from which no coming spring can summon it
to resurrection.
�
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The question of method as affecting religious thought
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Thomas Scott
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Bible-Criticism and Interpretation
Conway Tracts
Religious Thought
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Text
THE TRUE TEMPTATION
OF JESUS.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�TURNBULL AND SPEARS; PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
�THE TBUE TEMPTATION OF JESUS.
VERY one who has opened the New Testament is
aware that in the first and third Gospel a
remarkable story is found (alluded to also in the
second Gospel) in which the devil is represented to
have assailed Jesus with three special temptations,
and to have been repelled by quotation of Old Testa
ment texts. That it is impossible to maintain the
literal truth of this account has been reluctantly con
ceded by writers, who, like the author of “ Ecce
Homo,” are wholly unconcerned to ascertain when,
where, by whom, and with what means of knowledge,
these narratives were penned. Those who desire to
save their credit, try to rid them of a damaging burden
by declaring this scene to be allegorical. No spectator
is pretended. The idea that Jesus communicated
such inward trials to his disciples is contrary to
everything which is reported concerning his char
acter: for he is everywhere represented as wholly
uncommunicative, self-contained, more or less
mysterious, and moving in a separate region of
thought and feeling from the disciples. Evidently
this story does but express the opinion of the first
Christians, while Jesus was as yet believed to be only
human, that he, as others, must have had a struggle
against temptations, and therefore, against the devil.
It is not here intended to point out what is plain of
itself, that none of the temptations are worthy of the
acumen attributed to the experienced and wily Satan;
E
�6
The True Temptation of fesus.
and are merely puerile in fiction, whether Jesus be
imagined as the Second Person of the Divine Trinity,
or merely as a great and holy, but human prophet.
Here I intend to give prominence to that which I
believe to be the fundamental trial of a religious
reformer, especially when he attains great ascendancy
and commands high veneration. But first I must
say, I shall be truly sorry, if any Trinitarian read
these pages, and find himself wounded. I do not
address him. I argue on the assumption that Jesus
was subject to human limitations like all the rest of
us, and that it is our duty to criticize him and the
story of him, if it be of sufficient importance.
AV hat are the temptations of the prophet, can be no
secret in the present day: we see them in the
ordinary life of the admired preacher. To be run
after by a multitude, to be ministered to by fascinated
ladies, to see grey-haired men submissively listening
and treasuring up words,—easily puffs a young
preacher into self-conceit. In one who has too much
strong sense to be drawn into light vanity, fresh and
fresh success inspires, first, the not unreasonable hope
or belief that he is fulfilling a great work, and is
chosen for it by God, (not for his own merit, but be
cause, if a work is to be done, some one must be
chosen for it); next, an undue confidence in the truth
and weight of his own utterances, an extravagant
conviction that whoever resists his word, impugns
God’s truth, and makes himself the enemy of God.
In the denunciations of Luther against Zuingle, his
own wiser and more temperate coadjutor, in the
vehemences of John Knox, in the cruelty of Calvin
to Servetus, we see variously developed the same
dangerous tendency. If we cast the eye eastward,
to more illiterate nations, to those accustomed to
revere the hermit and the semi-savage as akin to the
prophet, to peoples whose homage expresses itself by
prostration, we see the tendency of the prophet to
�The True Temptation of Jesus.
7
assume a regal and dictatorial mien even in the garb
of a half naked Bedouin. Many an eastern monk or
prophet, Syrian, Persian, or Indian, has been obeyed
as a prince; some have been attended on by large
armies : to some the native king has paid solemn
obeisance. In ancient Greece, where philosophy
overtopped religion, ascetic philosophers have been
accepted as plenipotentiary legislators; in which, no
doubt, we see portrayed, on a small scale, the legis
lative influence of a Buddha, a Confucius, or a
Zoroaster. When an Indian prophet found it natural
for multitudes to kneel to him or to prostrate them
selves, how hard must it have been to accept such
homage and retain a sense of human equality! how
hard not to think it reasonable that others bow down,
and unreasonable that any stand up and argue with
the prophet as his equal!
In the Gospels and Acts the habit of prostration
among these nations is sufficiently indicated; and we
see how it is resented (according to the narrative) by
Peter. When Cornelius falls at Peter’s feet and does
homage (certainly intending respect only, not divine
worship), Peter regards it. as quite unbecoming from
a man to a man. But Jesus is represented as accept
ing such homage without the least hesitation, and
apparently with approval. The cases are not few,
nor confined to any one narrative. Matt. viii. 2,
“ There came a leper and worshipped him.” Matt,
ix. 18, “There came a certain ruler and worshipped
him.” Matth. xiv. 33, “ They worshipped him, say
ing, Of a truth thou art the [or a] Son of God.”
Matt. xv. 25, “Then came the woman and
worshipped him, saying, Lord! help me.” On this
Jesus comments approvingly, “ 0 woman, great is
thy faith.” Matt. xvii. 14, “There came a certain
man, kneeling down to him and saying, Lord ! have
mercy on my son ! ” Matt. xx. 20, “ There came
the mother of Zebedee’s children, worshipping him,”
�8
The True Temptation of fesus.
Matt, xxviii. 9, “ They held him by the feet and wor
shipped him—this is after the resurrection, thereby
differing in kind from the rest. The same remark
applies to verse 17. We have substantially the same
fact in Mark i. 40; v. 6, 22, 33 ; vii. 25 ; x. 17. In
the last passage the rich young man kneels to Jesus: he
was not so represented in Matt. xix. 6. Luke v. 8,
“ Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees.” Luke v.
12, “A man full of leprosy fell on his face, and be
sought Jesus.” In Luke vii. an account is given,
perhaps not at all authentic. A woman is repre
sented to bathe the feet of Jesus with her tears, and
wipe them dry with her long hair, and after that,
anoint them with ointment and kiss his feet inces
santly. Jesus, according to the narrative, highly
applauds her conduct, and avows that “ therefore,, her
sins, which are many, are forgiven.” Such conduct
on his part is far above criticism, if he was either a
person of the Divine Trinity, or a superhuman being,
who existed before all worlds and all angels, being
himself the beginning of the creation of God. I can
not doubt that the writer, called Luke, believed Jesus
to be superhuman, and therefore found no impro
priety in the conduct here imputed to him; but I
do not understand how any one who regards him as
a human being, can fail to censure him in the
strongest terms, if he believe this account. As I see
special grounds for doubting it, (inasmuch as it looks
like a re-making of the story reported in Matt,
xxvi. 6-13, which it exaggerates), I lay no stress upon
it: but even in that other account there is a selfcomplacency hardly commendable in a mere man.
Again, in Luke viii. 20, we read, “the woman fell
down before him.” She does not fall down in
Matt. ix. 22; therefore, here also the story may
have been “ improved ” by credulity. But it is need
less to follow this topic further. Suffice it to say,
that though we do not know exactly how much to
�The True Temptation of Jesus.
9
believe, though we have frequent reason to suspect
exaggeration, yet the narratives all consistently
represent Jesus to have received complacently an
unmanly and degrading submission from his followers,
such as no apostle would have endured for a moment;
and it is hard to believe that such reports could have
gained currency, with no foundation at all. If, there
fore, we are to criticize Jesus on the belief that he
was man, and not God, nor a superhuman spirit, we
must admit, I think, that a real and dangerous
temptation beset him in this matter. He was prone
to take pleasure in seeing men and women profound
in their obeisance, prostrate in mind and soul before
his superior greatness ;—for prostration of the body
brings satisfaction to pride, only as it denotes
prostration of soul. It is difficult, with these narra
tives before us, to think that Jesus took to himself
that precept which Peter gives to the elders, that
they be not lords over God’s heritage, but be subject
one to another, and clothed with humility, that they
may be ensamples to the flock. Indeed, unless we
utterly throw away all the narratives, it is hardly too
much to say, that this is the very opposite to the
portrait of Jesus. If we will accept the theory that
he was superhuman, we can justify his immeasurable
assumption of superiority; but the fact remains, that
in places, too many to reject, he puts himself forward
as “ lord over God’s heritage.”
Two classes of facts, presented in the narratives,
must be carefully separated. The former is the
general superiority asserted by Jesus for himself;
the latter, is the special assumption of Messianic dig
nity. On the latter, there is notoriously an irrecon
cilable diversity of the fourth gospel from the rest.
The writer of the fourth, unquestionably ascribing to
Jesus pre-existence with God in some mysterious
way, and sonship in a sense perfectly unique, repre
sents his Messiahship as notorious to John the
�io
The True Temptation of^Jesus.
Baptist, to Andrew and Philip, from the very begin
ning, says it was avowed by Nathanael (whoever
this was), and preached by Jesus to Nicodemus
and to the woman of Samaria. All this is in so
flat contradiction to the three first gospels, that
nothing historical can be made out of the account;
and in trying to attain a true picture of Jesus, I
necessarily set aside the fourth gospel as a mischie
vous romance.—Nevertheless, the element which I
call an assumption of general superiority, is as com
plete and persistent in the three first gospels as in
the fourth.
Keshub Chunder Sen entitles it “ a sublime
egotism” in Jesus, to say, “Come unto me, and I
will give you rest: take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in spirit.”
Yet if Luther, or John Knox, or Wesley had said it,
we should adduce it in proof that he was eminently
lacking in that very grace,—lowliness of spirit,—for
which he was commending himself. But is this the
only egotism ascribed to him in Matthew ? Nay,
but in the celebrated beatitudes of the sermon on
the Mount, which some esteem the choice flower and
prime of the precepts of Jesus, he winds up with,
“ Blessed are ye when men shall speak evil against
you falsely for my sake.” He does not say “for
righteousness’ sake,” if the narrative can be trusted.
The discourse continues like itself to the end, for in
the close he says : “ Many shall say to me in that
day, Lord ! Lord ! have we not prophesied in thy
name, .... and then will I profess unto them, I
never knew you : depart from me, ye that work
iniquity.” This is, it may be said, a very energetic
way of declaring, that no pretence of following in his
train as a prophet could compensate for personal
iniquity. As such we may accept it: but it remains
clear, that he is claiming for himself a position
above the human; such as no beauty or truth of teach-
�The True Temptation of fesus.
11
ing could ever commend, as rightful from men to a
man, to the conscience of those reared in the schools
of modern science : while of course, if he claimed to
be higher than man, the first reasonable necessity,
and therefore his first duty, was to exhibit the
proofs of supernatural knowledge and authority.
Undoubtedly, the alternative lies open of disbelieving
the Evangelist. It may be urged, that the text
represents Jesus as also saying that in his name
they will claim to have cast out devils and done
many wonderful works; but that this is an exaggera
tion belonging to a later time, and so therefore
may the pretensions be, with which it is coupled.
Well; so be it: let us then look further.
According to Matt. ix. 6, Jesus claimed power
to forgive sin ; he brought on himself rebuke for it,
but proceeded to justify himself by working a miracle.
Whence did his disciples get the idea of his advancing
such extravagances, if really he did not go farther
than his disciples James and John? Presently after,
he is represented as preaching that he is the bride
groom of the Church, in whose presence the disciples
cannot mourn, and therefore ought not to fast; but
that when he is taken away, then they will fast.
How very peculiar and strange a sentiment to invent
for him, if it was not uttered ! Does it not rather
seem to have the stamp of individualism and truth,
thoroughly as it is in harmony with the tales of his
rejoicing to see men and women kneel before him ?
Next when Jesus sends out twelve disciples to say,
“ The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he is repre
sented to assert, that it shall be more tolerable for
Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than
for the house or city which has not received his
messenger. Surely, if any one were now to knock
at our house door with such a formula of words, and
on the strength of it expect to be accepted with the
honours of a prophet, only the weak-minded would
�12
The True Temptation of Jesus.
give him pleasant reception. Yet no ground what
ever appears for believing that there was anything
•to accredit such messengers then, any more than now :
certainly nothing more appears in the narrative,
which quite consistently everywhere holds, that
Jesus regarded the non-reception of his messengers as
a super-eminent guilt, merely because it was he who
sent them.
When it is added, “ ye shall be hated of all men
for my name's sake," we are perhaps justified in
esteeming that prediction as an after-invention of
popular credulity. But in the same discourse (Matt,
x. 23) we alight for the first time on the remarkable
phrase, “ The Son of Man,” afterwards indisputably
applied by Jesus to himself. “ Ye shall not have
gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man
he come.” No one but Jesus himself ever calls him
the Son of Man. Whatever he then meant, the
book puts into his mouth yet more of sublime
•egotism. “Whosoever shall confess me before men,”
x(says he), “ him will I confess before my Father which
is in heaven : but whosoever shall deny me before
men, him will I also deny before my Father which is
heaven. He that loseth his life for my sake shall
find it. He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he
that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me.”
Certainly, when we begin to pare down these utter
ances, and try to reduce them to something that
would not be highly offensive in James or Paul, we
seem in danger of cutting away so much that is
characteristic, as to impair all confidence in what
remains. But unless we are bound to reject the
pervading colour of the narrative, I feel it not too
much to say, that in a mere man, the self-exaltation
approaches to impiety. What can it concern any
of us, that his brother-man should “deny him” before
our common Father? How suddenly would the
honour which we felt for a preacher be turned into
�The True Temptation of fesus.
13
grief and disappointment, or even indignation, if
we heard him to say, “ Blessed is he, whoever shall
not be offended in me!” He would fall in our
esteem, from the highest pinnacle to a very low
place, nor could any pretence of “ sublime egotism ”
save him.
In the same chapter in which the last words occur
(Matt, xi.) the Evangelist goes on into language not
dissimilar to that of the fourth gospel. “ All things
are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man
knoweth the Son but the Father: neither knoweth
any man the Father save the Son; and he to whom
soever the Son will reveal him.” When it is
considered that, although the nucleus of this gospel
probably existed before the first century was ended,
we have absolutely no guarantee that the text was
finally settled, as we now have it, much before the
time of Irenaeus, toward the close of the second
century; no one has a right to be very confident that
this passage, so strongly smacking of the doctrines
which won ascendancy in that century, was not intro
duced at a later time. Perhaps the more reasonable
course here, is to strike out verse 27, (about the Son
and the Father) as foisted upon Jesus by a later
generation. What then shall be said of the words
which follow, already quoted, “ Come unto me, take
my yoke on you, and I will give you rest?” I can
accept them, if he is God, or a pre-existing Mighty
Spirit. I cannot accept them if he was only man : I
then do not entitle them sublime at all, but some
thing else.
Something or other to the same effect is for ever
cropping up in this narrative of Matthew, which I
purposely take as giving a more human representation
of Jesus than Luke or J ohn. He is presently reported
to say (Matt. xii. 6), “ In this place is one greater
than the temple............... the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath day.” Unless his words have been
�14
The True Temptation of fesus.
monstrously distorted, he intended to assert that he
was himself the Son of Man spoken of by Daniel the
Prophet, that he was personally greater than the
temple, and was Lord even of the Sabbath-day.
Will any one say, that Jesus merely claimed the
right possessed by every man to interpret the law of
the Sabbath by the dictates of good sense, and that
he regarded every pious man as greater than a temple
built of stone; and that the egotistic form of his
utterance was an accident ? In that case it certainly
was a highly unfortunate accident, and we may add, an
accident often repeated, which generated in his dis
ciples a veneration for him too great for humanity.
But accident so systematic is surely no accident at
all. If a good man who makes no pretensions is
worshipped as a god after his death, he is guiltless :
but if a man be worshipped as a god, who has
made enormous personal pretensions,—and if a
decisive weight in the argument for worshipping
him is, that he has left us no choice between
worship and reprobation, can one who regards
the superhuman claims untenable, doubt that self
exaltation and monstrous vanity was a deplorable
foible in the prophet ? I find only two ways of
avoiding the disagreeable inference : (1), by the
theory of Paul, or some higher theory; (2.) by so
rejecting all our accounts of his doctrine and miracles
alike as untrustworthy, that nothing is left us to
trust at all, nothing on which a faithful picture of
Jesus can be founded.
From beginning to end the narrative has but one
colour as regards the self-exaltation of Jesus. Matt,
xii., “Behold! a greater than Solomon is here.”
Matt, xiii., “ Many prophets and righteous men have
desired to see the things which ye see, and hear the
things which ye hear. Blessed are your eyes, for
they see; and your ears, for they hear.” And what
was this so precious instruction ? the Parable of the
�The True Temptation of'Jesus.
15
Sower ! Surely no sober-minded person can esteem
this so highly above all the teaching of Hebrew
sages.
But I pass to a new topic in the sixteenth chapter
of Matthew,—the anger of Jesus, when he is asked
for a sign from heaven. He replies by calling the
persons who asked him hypocrites, when evidently,
according to the notions of that age and nation, it
was a most reasonable and proper request. In fact,
the narratives elsewhere represent him as giving
them miraculous signs, which are signs from heaven,
in abundance; insomuch that, if he had been repre
sented as here appealing to these signs, and alleging
that these very persons had already witnessed them
plentifully, his imputation of hypocrisy might have
seemed natural. But that is not his line of argument.
He says : “ A wicked, and adulterous generation seeketh
after a sign,” as though the desire itself were wicked
ness, “ and there shall no sign be given unto it, but
the sign of the prophet Jonas.” And he left them
and departed. Such words refuse a sign not to the
individual only, but to the generation. Are we then
to believe that he consistently repudiated all pretence
of working miracle ? that he esteemed the desire of
seeing a miracle wrought, in confirmation of his pre
eminent claims, to be such a fatuous absurdity, that
he had a right to heap contumelious epithets on the
head of any one who asked for it ? In favour of
this opinion, appeal may be made to the epistles of
Paul, who does not betray any knowledge whatever
that Jesus had wrought miracles. Let us tentatively
adopt this view. Then, first, what a heap of gross
misrepresentation is put before us in all four narratives
if Jesus not only never affected to work miracles,
but even vehemently flouted the idea itself and
rebuked those who desired it. Next, it will follow
that no justification of his high pretensions was
even attempted by him, and therefore no denuncia-
�16
The True Temptation of Jesus.
tion of men for neglect of him was reasonable. It
follows that those resolved to justify him must cut
out all his denunciations likewise. Who will write
for us an expurgated gospel, to let us know what
was the true Jesus ? Who will convince us, that
a history thus garbled can ever be truly recovered,
or deserves our intent study ?
In the same chapter of Matthew (the sixteenth)
the momentous question is proposed to his disciples,
“ Whom say ye that I am ']'” According to the
narrative, he first gave them the hint, what to reply,
by a leading question, “ Whom do men say that I, the
Son of Man, am ? ” but perhaps that is only a stupid
exaggeration of the narrator, who did not see what
it would imply. Let us then drop this portion of the
words.
He feels his way cautiously with the
disciples, and sounds them. Simon Peter replies,
“ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Again I ask, Is this narrative grossly and delusively
false ? or may we trust a vague outline ? According
to it, Jesus is lifted by the reply into a most exalted
state, “ Blessed art thou, Simon son of Jonas,” says
he, ££ for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
thee, but my Father which is in heaven............... I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven*
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven, .... &c.” After this outburst,
what is it that we read as a consequence ? “ Then
charged he his disciples that they should tell no man
that he was Jesus the Christ.”
It seems utterly irrational and unworthy alike of
* Any one who doubts whether Jesus ever uttered such
words, may fortify the doubt by opining that the words
have got into the gospel from Rev. iii. 7, where nevertheless
Jesus, so far from giving the “power of the keys ” to any
apostle, retains the power strictly in his own hand. The
words in Rev. iii. 7, are borrowed from Isaiah xxii. 22,
which have no reference to Messiah at all, according to any
scientific interpretation,
�The True Temptation of fetus.
17
the most High God and of his specially anointed
Prophet (if one special Prophet was indeed so
promised), that Messiah should come into his
nation,—should expect subjection of mind from all
around,—should haughtily evade, instead of enlight
ening, those who mildly inquired into his claims to
authority; finally, should sedulously preserve his
incognito, and forbid his disciples to tell that he was
Messiah. Men may be either convinced or com
manded. To convince them you must kindly and can
didly answer their difficulties, and allow them to argue
against you; you must meet their questions as plainly
and honestly as possible, not browbeat or threaten
the interrogators, nor marvel over their unbelief and
stupidity. You must descend in the argument on
to a perfect level with the man whom you desire to
convince, and entirely lay aside all airs of authority,
even if you have authority. That is one course of
proceeding; but it is the very opposite of that
imputed to Jesus. But if men are to be commanded,
if submission is to be required of them, you must
make some display of power.* In that case you
seek to convince them, not that a precept is wise, or
a doctrine is true, but that you, its enunciator, have
a special right of dictation, drawing after it in the
hearer a special duty of submission. Of course, those
with whom the idea of miracles is inadmissible, do not
ask for signs from heaven; not the lessmustthey justify
the countrymen of Jesus in requiring from him some
credentials, when he claimed submission and used a
dictatorial tone. If the nation believed miracles to
be the marks of Messiah, and was in error, it
* Men of science appeal to power as an argument why
they should be believed, when want of leisure or talents
forbid the mastering of their arguments : thus Astronomers
appeal to their fore-knowledge of eclipses, and their power of
finding the longitude by their tables ; Electricians appeal to
the telegraph, and so on.
�18
The True Temptation of fesus.
belonged to Messiah to unteach them the error,
and, as one aware of their folly, to take precautions
lest miracles be imputed to him. Surely it was
quite unjustifiable, to require submission from Priests
and Pharisees, yet exhibit to them no credentials what
ever of the mighty function with which he was
invested. If words dropping from the mouth of
Messiah were divine commands, which it was impious
to dispute, nothing could supersede the public an
nunciation of his office, and the display of his
credentials, whatever they might be. No evasions
are here endurable, on the ground of the political
danger to be incurred, or the propriety of giving
insufficient proof in order to try people’s “ faith.”
To say that political danger forbade, is to say that
God sent Messiah insufficiently prepared for his work,
and afraid to assume His functions publicly. As to
trying “ faith ” by insufficient proof, nothing can be
less rightful or more pernicious. If the proof ad
duced be of the right kind and appropriate, it cannot
be excessive, but may be defective; and if defective,
it is a cruel trap, as if designed to lead honesty astray.
The only plausibility in this notion rises from con
fusion of truths which we ought to see by light from
within, with truths which can only be established
from without. No man can know by his inward
faculties that a Messiah is promised from heaven,
nor what will be the external marks of Messiah.
False Messiahs had already come. To accept lightly
any one as Messiah was the height of imprudence, and
certainly could not be commended as pious. Under
such circumstances, to dissemble Messiahship, and
work upon susceptible minds by giving them evidence
necessarily imperfect, was conduct rather to be
imputed to a devil, than to a prophet from God, if
done with serious intent. Those who defend it,
plead that the evidence was moral, and did not need
external proofs. If so, on the one hand full freedom
�The True Temptation of'Jesus.
19
of investigation was needed, not authority and brow
heating ; on the other, this alleges external proof to
be worse than superfluous,—to be in fact misleading;
so that to plead for its “ insufficiency” as a needful
trial of faith is a gross error. If external evidence
was wholly inappropriate, the producing of that
which you concede to be insufficient does but tend to
confuse ■ and mislead the simple-hearted, and cause
unbelief in the strong-headed. But if external evi
dence is admissible and appropriate at all for faith
to rest upon, then it ought to be in quantity and
quality sufficient to make the faith reasonable and
firm. If only internal light is to the purpose of
faith, and external evidence was not wanted for
Messiah, then neither was an authoritative Messiah
wanted at all; that is, a teacher to whom we should
submit without conviction; then it was right to
claim that Messiah would convince by argument and
reply to questions; would invite question or opposi
tion, not dictate and threaten; then we have to
sweep away the greater part of the four Gospels as a
false representation of Messiah. Whatever else may
have been true, one thing is certainly false;—that
God sent a special messenger to teach authoritatively,
and that the messenger thus sent forbade his disciples
to publish his character and claims.
From narratives so disfigured by false representa
tion, as every one is obliged to confess them, who
does not believe the miracles, and seeks to defend
Jesus by remoulding the accounts of Him ; how can
any one be blamed for despairing to arrive at accurate
and sound knowledge concerning his character and
teaching? What right has any one to expect to
recover lost history, or to think worse of his brother
if he regard the effort to be waste time ? Yet if I
were to say, I seem to myself to know nothing of Jesus,
I should speak untruly; for in the midst of the obscurity
and the inconsistencies of the narratives, there are
�20
’The True Temptation of Jesus.
some things unvarying, many things very hard to in
vent, and others unlikely to be invented, yet easily
admitting explanation, if we reason about Jesus as
we do about every other public teacher or reformer.
The details of doctrine are often untrustworthy, but
the current, the broad tendencies, the style and tone
of the teacher, seem to have made too strong an
impression to be lost, though round them has been
gathered a plentiful accretion of mistake and fable.
In outline we must say that the first peculiarity of the
preacher was, that he did not comment upon the law
and prophets, but spoke dictatorially, dogmatically,
as with authority—a thing quite right and proper,
while only moral truth is taught, which makes appeal
to the conscience of the hearer. But the Jews,
accustomed like the modern English to nothing but
comment and deduction from a sacred book, were
apt to enquire of Jesus by what right he spoke so
confidently, and paid so little deference to the learned.
On one occasion he is said to have given a very fair
reply, to the effect that they had listened to the
preaching of John the Baptist, without asking his
authority: “If John might preach to you dogmati
cally, why may not 12 ” was the substance of that
argument. But it is clear that, numbers of honest
sincere Jews, impressed by the moral weight in these
preachings, had begun to inquire whether this was
not a renewal of divine prophecy, whether divine
prophets must not have some recognizable note of
their mission, other than the influence of their doc
trine on the human conscience; whether, in fine,
Jesus might not be the expected Messiah. This was
a very anxious question, especially since delusive
Messiahs had appeared; but it was a question that
Jews were sure to make, and the three narratives
before us, defective as they are, persuade me that it •
was made, both in private talk, and in direct interro
gation to Jesus.
Now if we accept to the full the traditional Jewish
�The True Temptation of fesus.
21
belief of what Messiah was to be, (which falls short
of the dignity ascribed to him by Christians),
it is incredible that after commencing his public
functions he should remain ignorant of his being
Messiah, or need confirmation from his disciples or
from others. But if Jesus had little trust in learned
Rabbis or traditional doctrine, he may have had a
very vague and imperfect belief as to what Messiah
was to be; and the idea that he himself was Messiah
may not have at all occurred to him, until after he
had experienced the zeal of the multitude, and was
aware that a rumour was gone abroad among the
people, that “ a great prophet was arisen,” and that
some said he was the Messiah. Can any one study
his character as that of a man, subject to all human
limitations, and not see, that the question, “ Am I
then possibly the Messiah ?” if at all entertained,
instantly became one of extreme interest and anxiety
to Jesus himself? Indeed from the day that it
fixed itself upon him for permanent rumination his
character could not but lose its simplicity. Pre
viously he thought only, What doctrine is true
morality ? What are the crying sins of the day 2
But now his own personality, his own possible
dignity, became matters of inquiry ; and the inquiry
was a Biblical one. He was brought hereby on to
the area of the learned commentator, who studies
ancient books to find out what has been promised and
predicted about a Messiah. An unlearned carpenter,
however strong and clear-minded while dealing with a
purely moral question, was liable to lose all his super
iority and be hurtfully entangled when entering into
literary interpretation. Wholly to get rid of tradi
tional notions was impossible, yet enough of distrust
would remain, to embarrass fixed belief and produce
vacillation. Nothing is then more natural, than
that the teacher should desire to know what was the
general opinion concerning him, should be pleased
when it confirmed his rising hopes, should be elated
�22
The True Temptation of fetus,
when Simon Peter declared him to be Messiah, and
should bless his faith, even if not with the extrava
gance of giving him the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; finally, should be displeased with himself
-and frightened at his own elation, and, in order to
repair his error, should charge his disciples to tell
no one that he was Messiah; not that he desired to
keep the nation in ignorance, but because he was
himself conscious of uncertainty. After this his
conduct could not be straightforward and simple.
Such is the only reasonable interpretation which
I have ever been able to see, of this perplexed and
perplexing narrative, which is not likely to have
grown out of nothing. Jesus came into a false
position from that day, and of necessity (as I think)
his whole character must have changed for the worse.
Thenceforth, the dogmatism which had been a mere
form of teaching, and had involved arrogance only
in appearance, changed into definite and systematic
personal assumption. It is not likely that he began it
so early, or ever carried it so far, as even the narrative
of Matthew pretends; for as a caricaturist exag
gerates every peculiarity of a face, making its promi
nences more prominent, so does tradition deal with
the popular hero. I pretend not to know how much
is exactly true; but it comes before me as certain
fact, that the true temptation of Jesus was the
whisper made to him, “ Are not you possibly the
Messiah ?” and by it the legendary devil overcame
him. That whisper has cost to Europe an infinite
waste of mind and toil, no end of religious wars,
cruelties, injustices, anathemas, controversies, without
bringing any sure advance of religious truth to man
kind. How much more convulsion of hearts and
entanglement of intellects, how much of violent
political upturnings are inevitable, before European
nations can now become able to learn that to think
freely is a duty, and that religion is spiritual and
rational, not magical and supernatural ?
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The true temptation of Jesus
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897.]
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Place of Publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 22, [2] p. : ill. (port.) ; 18 cm
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Thomas Scott
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[1871]
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Jesus Christ
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Christianity-Controversial Literature
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ-Temptation
Morris Tracts
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THE SPIRITUAL SERFDOM
OF
THE LAITY.
MONCURE D.
CONWAY.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�I g
11‘
�THE SPIRITUAL SERFDOM OF THE LAITY.
-----------4-----------
N view of the interest and sympathy with which
our people have
Itragedy enacted inbeen for some time gazingIon the
a neighbouring country, picture
a time when they will be able to recognise tragedies
at their own doors,—tragedies which, though not
written in blood, are no less appalling than those
that desolate smiling fields and villages.
Our
physical eyes are open, and can recognise terror and
agony; our commercial eyes ate keen to perceive the
ruin of trade and financial distress; our intellectual
eyes are so heavy that the wounded forms of Reason
and Religion writhe before us unheeded. Could the
moral and spiritual condition of England shape itself
in a visible form and physiognomy, it would, I think,
seem too heart-breaking for us to spare overmuch
sorrow or horror for the unhappy condition of Paris.
Those who have eyes to see the realities that are
invisible, have beheld this nation solemnly re
establishing the grossest superstitions of barbarism as
the only lawful and authoritative religion. At the
end of many generations, which have struggled for
liberty and light, a great nation, sitting in her highest
tribunal, orders to be dragged into her presence a
man who has dared to say that God is our Father,
and man our brother; she tries as a criminal one
who has affirmed the truth of Reason and Conscience,
and in his form binds the human spirit itself, hand
and foot, and casts it into outer darkness. “ Go ! ”
it has cried to the religious guides of the people,—
“ declare to the sorrowing world that they are all
born children of Satan; tell them they are tossed
between an angry God and a malignant Devil; tell
�6
The Spiritual Serfdom
them that the laws of Nature do not exist, but only
the caprice of a Giant Mechanic, who built the uni
verse and may knock it to pieces again at his pleasure;
bid them cower, bid them supplicate and whine like
slaves under the lifted lash, bid them deny common
sense, outrage instinct, believe the fables of savage
soothsayers, and put darkness for light, that they
may crawl into heaven by cowardice and save their
miserable little souls ! ”
Such are the glad tidings of great joy which Eng
land sends by its only authorised messengers to us
and to all men ! So does Reason suffer this day
under Pontius Hatherly !
I said the Church has cast the bound human spirit
itself into outer darkness. Well for us were it also a
place of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
But it is not so. The saddest thing by far relating
to the fresh fetters which have been forged and
imposed upon the mind of the country, is, that it has
hardly elicited one groan or protest from the people.
A few plaintive cries have been tortured from the
more earnest and scholarly of the clergy, as the rack
upon which they are stretched gives another wrench ;
but the laity have generally shown only a stupid
servility. When Swedenborg related that in his
pilgrimage through Hell he found a company of
spirits there who fancied they were in Heaven, and
were thankful for that beatitude, I suspect he must
have been reflecting on his residence in London.
The people walk the streets cheerfully with their giltedged prayer-books, and, so far as we hear, sit
serenely in their pews; but though the Church,
unsunned by Reason, be called Jerusalem, it is none
the less Gehenna, and repose in it is more deplorable
than anguish.
We might have supposed that the laity have felt
diffident of their ability to deal with subjects blended
with law and theology; but unfortunately we have
just seen that in their own dealings with religious
�of the Laity.
7
questions in a region particularly their own, they
have shown themselves utterly servile to the besotted
bigotry of the times. The new school-system was
the reply of the governing classes to a demand of
the poor for education too stem to be longer un
heeded. Its establishment was amid a general
blaze of enthusiasm for the liberation of education
from denominationalism, and for universal toleration.
What has all this amounted to when cooled down ?
Simply that each man wished to keep other denom
inations than his own from getting the upper hand.
When the question of toleration, in principle, really
came up; when a party, too weak to find any defence
except in that principle, arose and begged not to be
compelled to help teach the children of the country as
true, biblical legends and dogmas they believed false,
all the denominations made common cause with each
other, to scorn their entreaty and protest. It was
not a convocation of clergy, but a School-board
controlled by the laity which, at the last discussion
on the subject in Guildhall, set before the country
a miserable scene of religious oppression and
triumphant bigotry. The most eminent man on
the London School-board* stood earnestly pleading,
in behalf of the helpless children of the nation, that
they should not be taught what is notoriously false,
and infamously obscene, simply because it is written
in the Bible. Shall little children be taught on the
authority of God that things are true which every
thinker knows to be false ? Shall we pick up poor
children from the gutters only to defile their minds
in the moral gutters of all the crimes, the grossnesses,
committed by a semi-barbarous eastern people ? Is
it educating little children to put into their hands
stories of incest, murder, butchery, anecdotes replete
with every detail of prurience and cruelty, and say,
these are the sacred revelations of God ?
The advocate of the children pleaded to a heart
* Professor Huxley.
�8
The Spiritual Serfdom
of stone, for he pleaded to superstition. The mas
sacre of the innocents under king Herod is a fable;
but the massacre of innocent minds and tender hearts
by the agents of king Bigotry is no fable; that goes
on, and will go on until from the hearts and homes
of the people there shall a cry be heard, as of
mothers weeping for their children, who will not be
comforted so long as the very light in them is turned
to darkness.
Since this event in our chief Parliament of Educa
tion, I have concluded that we have said enough,
if not too much, of the unfaithfulness of the clergy.
They cannot indeed be excused. They are the
beneficiaries of the Church, and owe to the people
truth in payment for their livings. They are the
accredited religious guides of the masses; they
have advantages for knowing, and opportunities for
speaking, which others have not. Nay, they occupy
the position of moral trustees; and as we expect
a banker to be honest in money matters, or a states
man to be faithful to public interests, so we have
a right to demand truth from ministers of truth,
and simple rectitude from the preachers of righteous
ness. But for all this we must remember that the
cultivated clergyman has a vast mass of fetish wor
shippers to deal with. If the very educational repre
sentatives of the people insist that the story of the incest
of Lot, and of the feline treachery and cruelty of Jael
shall be made a national school-book, what must be
the impenetrable hardness of the stratum beneath
them 1 We must remember, too, that the clergyman
who by study has discovered the falsehood of the
popular dogmas, has extraordinary temptations to
suppress his light. When a layman changes his
opinion it does not mean to him or his family a loss
of home, and of the means of livelihood; nay, the
layman in his private position has not even the
popular persecution of evil tongues to face. But if
the clergyman becomes heretical, in that moment
�of the Laity.
9
his whole life and prospect are revolutionized; his
home, his study, crumble around him; his earthly
prospects vanish, and he must begin life anew in
some field for which his 'studies have not prepared
him. The trial may not be so severe with men of
eminent genius, but even with them there remains
the severe trial of the dissolution of the ties and
friendships which have been knit by life and religious
sympathy. Hitherto we have seen this trying posi
tion of the clergyman acting not so much to suppress
his light altogether, as in causing it to be reflected
in indirect ways, investing creeds and formulas with
unreal meanings, and so managing to suggest the
truth he dare not openly and plainly espouse.
I take this to be the reason why great religious
renovations have so rarely in history originated with
members of the priestly class. In ev^ry age it is not
from Jerusalem but from the wilderness that the
voice is more likely to come proclaiming the axe laid
at the root of the evil tree. A Chinese grain-inspector,
Kungfutzee by name,—or Confucius as we call him,—
finds that the people need another kind of bread than
is made of grain. And in recalling his fore-runners
he looks beyond generations of priests to a certain
man of the people named E-Yin.- In times of disorder
E-Yin chose his opportunity for service. He said,
“ Heaven hath given life to this people, and sent
them who are first enlightened to enlighten those
who are last, and hath sent those who are first
aroused to arouse those who are last. These doctrines
which have aroused me will I bear to the people to
arouse them.” He thought that if there was a single
man or woman in the empire who was not benefited
by the higher truth, he was “ guilty of pushing them
in a ditch.” Buddha was a prince who made himself
of no reputation that he might save men, and be
came the poorest of wayside wanderers. Mahomet
was a soldier. Then we have the carpenter’s gospel,
with fishermen for its first disciples, and a lawyer for
�io
The Spiritual Serfdom
its chief apostle. When the priesthood had made it
“more lawful in Athens to do men harm than good,”
they had lost the force of any higher evolution from
their own order, and the next step must he made by
a sculptor, named Socrates, and a travelling scholar,
Plato. Mr Mill advised the young students at St.
Andrews to stay in the Church so long as they could
manage to do so, because an institution can be more
powerfully influenced and reformed from within than
from without. But history seems to show that the
inside reformers—like Savonarola, like Wesley, or,
in our own time, Father Hyacinthe and Dean Stanley
—have never been able to give a complete utterance
or do a rounded and permanent work. So much of a
man as is covered by a surplice must be lost to the
task set by the ideal order, which demands the whole
man. So I fanpy we must look to our philosophers
and poets, our men of letters and of science, to found
the new Church, and, for a long time, to build upon
the foundation. A blind conservatism among the
masses, and the habit of conceding to priests the
keeping of their consciences, and doing their religious
thinking for them, inherited from ages of clerical
domination, constitute the disparaging conditions
under which they have to labour.
I do not think that the apathy of the laity towards
the great works of religious liberation, arises from a pre
ponderant belief among them in the superstitions of the
Churches. Mr Kirkman, in his masterly pamphlet on
“The Infidelity of Orthodoxy,” published in this series,
by Thomas Scott of Ramsgate, tells a pregnant story
of a workman who, receiving his babe after the Vicar
had baptised it, kissed it fondly, and exclaimed, “ I
never kissed it before because I knowed it was not
the child of God; but I kiss it now because I know
it is.” The incident reveals the horrible ignorance
which prevails in the lower classes—a heathenism as
pitiable as any in the lands to which the benighted
workman gives his pennies to send missionaries. But
�of the Laity.
11
it is incredible that the middle and upper classes
believe the dogmas of orthodoxy. Every smile on
their faces contradicts the supposition. The cheerful
crowd on the streets, the gay companies at the theatre
and the concert, do not believe that they or their
children or friends are suspended over everlasting
fires, or live under the threat of an angry God.
Their sneers at Spirit-rappings, their incredulity at
ghost-stories, show them no believers in miracles,
and their laws against fortune-tellers and pretended
witches show that they disbelieve the possibility of
such sorceries as are related on many pages of the
Bible. I imagine that the real attitude of the more
intelligent laity towards the Church which they sup
port is expressed by a story which was vouched for
by the gentleman who related it in my hearing. A
distinguished Unitarian from America was a guest in
in the house of a London merchant, and was pleased
to find that they were in complete harmony in their
religious convictions. Nevertheless, when Sunday
came the merchant made ready to accompany his
family to the Church. The Unitarian said, “I am
astonished that after you have ridiculed the doctrines
of the Church you should still go to it.” The mer
chant replied, “ I go to it because it’s the established
thing, and if you’ll get your damned thing established
I’ll go to that.” The busy layman does not regard it
as within his province to think and examine religious
subjects at any time, and the general broil of the
theological world renders the duty of entering it
particularly uninviting just now. In trade he may
indulge in new stocks, but in religion he prefers to
invest in the old consols. Why does he have his
daughter married by a service coarse enough to call a
protest to her heart and a blush to her cheek ? It is
the established thing. Is it consoling, as he stands
beside the grave of his child to be told by the chap
lain that his darling has been consumed by God’s
anger, or does his heart respond to the thanksgiving
�12
The Spiritual Serfdom
there (so consistently!) offered up that it has been
taken out of this sinful world ? No ; but it is the
established thing.
I may be asked, why all this indignation against a
creed which is not believed ? I answer, that among
a large class of the ignorant it is believed, and on
these the cruel creed sits, a ghoul feeding on the
heart of childhood, despoiling the poor of the cheerful
faith in a divine Father that might light up a lot
which drudgery and superstition too often combine
to make hopelessly dark : (2), That where the creeds
are not believed, but are supported, there is a loss of
sincerity more injurious to character, than to the
mind were the gloom of ignorant credulity: (3),
Whether believed or disbelieved, the establishment
of superstition and falsehood in institutions enables
error to occupy the place where true religion might
be. To those who believe that religion is essentially
a phantom, the sight of false dogmas organised in
powerful churches and priesthoods is far less appalling
than to those whose eyes behold the spirit of Truth
waiting without, waiting ever from age to age, her
voice drowned by the screaming of fanaticism and
the droning of formalism, her drooping wings, appeal
ing eyes, and proffered gifts, all unrecognised. To
eyes that see this vision hovering over every cathedral,
church, or chapel, that has been raised to defend the
phantasms of barbarous ages, such church or chapel,
however ornate its architecture, darkens to a dungeon
unclean and hateful, and to such, the worshippers
walking the aisles, audibly clank their chains.
That woe which of old was pronounced against
those who frame iniquity in law, must be revived in
this generation against those who establish irreligion
on the throne of religion, and make apparent in
fidelity the only real fidelity. It is utterly impos
sible that the true temple can be erected so long
as the whole ground where it must stand is occupied
by the temple of Error.
It is that national
�of the Laity.
*3
establishment of dogmas which every thinker has
abjured inwardly, if not openly,—and of which
all other dogmatic oppressions are copies,—which
must fall. It is that which now plainly blocks the
path. It is that which while we plough and sow and
reap by aid of the advanced knowledge of our own
age, holds us in the field of religious culture toiling
along with the barbaric implements of ancient Syria.
It is that which takes the man wTho for six days has
been travelling by steam, and flashing his thought
ten thousand miles in a moment by the grand device
of science, and consigns him on the seventh to the
religious methods of savage ages. The Englishman
must here mount his donkey of dogma, or his
humped camel of tradition, and journey across the
thirsty deserts of mythology, while all around him
living fountains are playing, and the sunlight waits
to weave around him a religious civilisation corre
sponding to the grandeur of his material progress.
The popular creed contains no.idea won, no discovery
achieved, this thousand years. The Home Secretary,
Mr Bruce, says five thousand. For the defenders of
the Established Church have such faith in the reli
gious petrifaction of the country, that they are ready
to adopt theological unprogressiveness as the next
article of the new Downing Street Creed. Mr Miall,
in the course of the recent debate on Disestablishment,
having drawn a contrast between the scientific and
the religious progress of the country to the disparage
ment of the latter, is promptly put down by Mr Bruce
with the oracular statement—“ The end of science
will never be reached; but theology is in its very
nature and essence stationary.” Whatever confusion
may beset the Home Secretary’s intellect when he is
regulating cabs, he seems to have an easy omniscience
when attending to things divine and eternal. “The
relations of man to God remain now as they were
5000 years ago.” Therefore, argues Mr Bruce, our
knowledge of those relations is at an end. “ Hear,
�14
The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity.
hear,” followed these profound statements; and when
afterwards Sir Roundell Palmer said, “You cannot
make new discoveries in religion,” there were actually
cheers! These gentlemen do not represent Colney
Hatch, and we must assume that in repudiating the
idea of any possible increase of religious enlighten
ment they speak the mind of the average defenders
of their Church. The Church then boasts of being
stationary, and we must sorrowfully accord its claim.
Its thoughts do not widen with the process of the
suns. Religious progress if it occur must be out of
and away from it. Its dogmas of the terrible God,
and the almost equally terrible Devil, of the blood
redemption, and hell, and miracles, did not require
such confessions to make of the proudest cathedral to
the eye of Reason a pre-historic hut, or cavern,
wherein fashionably-dressed men and women are
spiritually clad in the skins of wild beasts. The
magnificent inventions and discoveries of to-day find
our religion untold generations behind them: and there
it will remain, for the masses of the people, until
they themselves shall be seized with a deep dis
content at the anomaly, and from their vigorous
training in the work of the world, bring the sinews
of heart and brain which shall reassure the timid
pulpit and the time-serving press. “ The clock of the
universe has always somewhere an alarm bell,” said
Heber. It sounded for one part of Europe when the
Pope declared his infallibility, and it ere long tolled
the demise of his power. Heavy are our ears if we
cannot hear its ominous strokes in the re-establish
ment of irrational creeds, the imposition of super
stitious tests on the student, and the claim that
religion is the one thing unimprovable, put forth by
the Church of England; and it must surely sound the
knell of the Church or that of the spiritual liberty of
the people.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH*
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr THOMAS
SCOTT, Mount Pleasant, Ramsgate.
A Lay Sermon, for the Benefit of Clergy. Price 6d.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the Church of
England. By “ Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price fid.
Letter and Spirit. By a Clergyman of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Science and Theology. By Richard Davies Hanson, Esq., Chief Justice of South Australia.
Price 4d.
A Few Words on the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Divinity and Incarnation of Jesus.
Price 6d.
Questions to which the Orthodox are earnestly requested to give Answers
Thoughts on Religion and the Bible. By a Layman and M. A. of Trin. Coll., Dublin. Price 6d.
The Opinions of Professor David F Strauss. Price 6d.
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Price Is., free by post.
English Life of Jesus, or Historical and Critical Analysis of the Gospels; complete in Six
Parts, containing about 500 pages. Price 7s. 6d., free by post.
Against Hero-Making in Religion. By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Ritualism in the Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanuf.” Price 6d.
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism. By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 7d., post free.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which attend the Study of the Scriptures.
By
the Right Rev. Francis Hare, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. Price 6d.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation. By a Beneficed Clergy
man of the Church of England. Price Is. Id., post free.
On the Defective Morality of the New Testament. By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
The “ Church and its Reform.” A Reprint. Price Is.
“The Church of England Catechism Examined." By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. A Reprint.
Price Is.
Original Sin. Price 6d.
Redemption, Imputation, Substitution, Forgiveness of Sins, and Grace. Price 6d.
Basis of a New Reformation. Price 9d.
Miracles and Prophecies. Price 6d.
Babylon. By the Rev. P. S. Dbsprez, B.D. Price 6d.
Thoughts on a Free and Comprehensive Christianity. By Prof. P. W. Newman. Price fid.
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Price 6d.
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism. Price fid.
Errors, Discrepancies, and Contradictions of the Gospel Records, with special reference
to the irreconcilable Contradictions between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel. Price Is.
The Gospel of the Kingdom. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church of England.
Price 6d.
“The Meaning of the Age.” By the Author of “ The Pilgrim and the Shrine ” Price 6d.
“Jambs and Paul.” A Tract by Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Law and the Creeds. Price fid.
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory Remarks. By
Ed. Vansittart Neale, M.A. and M.R.I. Price Is.
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy. By Rev. John Oxleb. Price fid.
The Bigot and the Sceptic. By Emer. Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Church Cursing and Atheism. By the Rev. Thomas P. Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S., &c., Rector
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A Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we cannot Rely on the
Bible?” By Professor F. W. Newman.
�List of Publications—Continued.
Another Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we cannot Rely on
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The Utilization of the Church Establishment. By the Author of “The Pilgrim and the
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Tree and Serpent Worship. Price 6d.
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The spiritual serfdom of the laity
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14, [2] p. : ill. (port.) ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from KVK. The portrait is a photo that has been cut out and pasted to the title page. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G4862
Subject
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Church of England
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The spiritual serfdom of the laity), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Church of England
Laity
Morris Tracts