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VIA CATHOLICA:
OR,
PASSAGES FROM THE 'AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A COUNTRY PARSON,
PAST I.
'
’E7T& ovy 'api) io v ou8e floa-pv
Apvv<r9pv, & tA 7ro<r<rlv aeGXia ylverai avSpwv,
’AXXci irepl
‘Aeov "E/CTopos lirTo8dpu>io.
II. xxii. 159.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One Shilling and Threepence.
��VIA CATHOLICA.
HE important difference between the views main
tained in this work by the dlergyman, a portion
of whose biography it gives to the public, respecting
the nature of Jesus, and those which I entertain on
the same subject, seems to call for some statement
from me, of my reasons for circulating the work not
withstanding. They are as follows :—
1st. It appears to me to present the arguments
against the so-called orthodox Christian doctrines, as
well as those in their support, in a pithy form, with
great fairness, and therefore may help honest inquirers
to judge for themselves, which is my great desire, and
the main end and aim of my work.
2nd. The tone of thought prevalent throughout
it, is well adapted to encourage in all classes, and
especially in the clergy, the disposition to inquire
thoroughly into the real origin and meaning of the
Bible Now I regard the want of this disposition as
the most crying religious evil of our day.
To promote the correct knowledge of Facts in
religious matters is what I have ever most earnestly
striven to do. If this is effected, I am willing to
leave opinions to justify themselves, being perfectly
T
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Via Catholica.
sure that the Truth can take care of itself, when it is
honestly sought for.
An extract from a letter, written to me by the
author of this work, will aid in making my own
position with regard, to its publication more clear.
“ I am gratified that you like the MS., barring my
Christ, whom I never expected that you would like.
Indeed, I am afraid that at present, very few will like
him out of my parish. If He attracts any notice at all,
He will be crucified afresh, between the two thieves of
Preternaturalism, and simple Humanitarianism, of
whom each has stolen one side of His supernatural
nature, and declared it to be the whole, thus raising
it into absurdity, or lowering it to a nullity; an
example which no one imitates, and an authority which
every one sets aside at pleasure.
“ But I do not despair—if my conception embodies
the Truth, as I of course hold, it will rise again to
find a new Paul and another John, while you may
fill the part of a nobler Thomas, who, from the pure
love of truth, entertained the Lord unawares.”
The author takes the intermediate position of dis
tinguishing the Catholic ideas from their supposed
historical proofs, and strives to show, that the failure
of the last does not necessarily involve the abandonment
of the first. He thinks that in many cases, as is
proved by his own, the greatest obstacle to free inquiry,
now existing, namely the fear of its consequences, may
thus be removed.
I have only further to add a few observations on
the contents of the three chapters “ On the Incarnate
Deity,” to be published in Part II.; for to my mind,
the clever and subtle reasoning of the author in this
portion of his work, does not rest on stable ground.
We may justly argue that the intellectual and
�Via Catholica.
5
moral faculties with which our Creator has endowed
us, though imperfect and fallible, are not false and de
ceptive, and that therefore truth and goodness, as im
perfectly recognised by us, are identical in kind with
the perfect forms of truth and goodness as existing
in him.
If divine truth and goodness differ radically and in
kind from human truth and goodness, then, we have
no capacities to know anything of God, and faith in
him and what we call his attributes has no foundation.
Morally and intellectually, we claim to bear a real
likeness to him whose offspring we are, but here the
likeness ends. We can affirm no analogy between
created mental structure, and self-existent being.
No analysis of the will, emotions, and rational
powers in man, can yield one ray of trustworthy light
respecting the essential form, inner relations, and
economy of the divine nature. The modes and inter
actings of finite created capacities furnish neithei’
measures nor resemblances for the region of infinite
uncreated spirits.
Thomas Scott.
11, The Terrace,
Farquhar Road,
Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
��VTA CATHOLICA.
PART I.
�PAGE
Preface
•
Chapter I.
99
99
99
99
99
99
99
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
........................................
•
A Lecture and its Consequences,
Standing Ground,
The Dean’s Visit,
Agnes,
The Children,
Evidences,
Prayer,
Spiritual Being.
.
ix
.
.
.
.
11
21
36
43
•
.
.
.
51
58
72
83
�PREFACE.
HIS little book will, I hope, help to supply an answer
to three questions—three questions which appear
to call pressingly for an answer at the present time,—
1st. What religious teaching can a clergyman, who
frankly accepts as true the results of the scientific
study of nature and the critical study of the Scripture,
give to his people 1 2d. Can this teaching be conscien
tiously given by a clergyman of the Church of England
while he retains his position as one of her ministers ?
3d. Can a clergyman utter his convictions freely with
out running his head against the legal fences raised
round the doctrines of the Church of England ?
To these questions the following pages endeavour
to give a practical answer; and in each case this answer
consists not in a statement applicable only to a par
ticular case, but in the exhibition of a method ap
plicable to many different cases. The mode of recon
ciling the frank statement of opinions opposed to the
current orthodoxy of the Church with the restraints
legally imposed upon her ministers, illustrated in the
concluding chapter, would apply to opinions diverging
from the popular standard to an extent far exceeding
the divergence of the opinions maintained by myself.
And the principle applied throughout the book, as a
means of reconciling in foro conscientice the position of
a religious teacher belonging to a particular section of
T
�X
the Christian community with the freedom of religious
thought admits of adaptation to a great variety of
particular conclusions, while it holds out a promise of
an ultimate unity of faith, to be brought about by its
consistent employment. On this ground, not because
I am vain enough to suppose that I have uttered the
sesame of religious truth, I ask for the calm considera
tion of my views alike by the clergy and the laity of
all Christian churches, especially the members of the
Church of England.
E. P.
�CHAPTER I.
A LECTURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
UR first winter evening reading. All went off very
well. C------ delivered his recitations from Burns
with great effect. Our people seemed to enter, more
than I thought they would, into the genial humour of
Addison’s descriptions of Old Sir Roger in his parish,
which G------ had chosen for his contribution to the
evening’s entertainment; and my attempt to initiate
them into some of the secrets of the past history of the
earth, unravelled for us by modern research, appeared
particularly to excite their attention. My large coloured
chart of the succession of strata, and sketches of the
huge giants and strange forms of the old animal and
vegetable world, which dear Agnes’ ready brush had
dashed in with grand transparent effects, lit up beauti
fully, and made the rustic eyes open. They appeared to
apprehend fully the story of Time, written in the cut
ting out of the channel of Niagara, and the six hundred
feet of alluvial deposits, stored up in the valley of the
Mississippi, with its growth of cypress forests, each
marking a fresh floor in this palace of Nature, separated
from the floor beneath by all the time required for the
growth of the tree, and all the time required for cover
ing up its remains, so that another tree might grow on
the top of it; and were startled, as every one who real
izes what is meant by the words must be, at the thought
that the 100,000 years which, on the most moderate
computation, must have been consumed in these opera
tions, are but the beginning of the entrance upon those
O
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ages of geological succession, to which the human
imagination can fix no definite bound. I hope I have
done something, and, by popularizing scientific teaching,
may in time do more to lift the thick mist of material
istic prepossessions which hangs over their minds, and
raise them a little into the free air of spiritual beliefs.
Where rolls the deep, there grew a tree.
Oh Earth ! what changes hast thou seen !
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
Rather a curious conversation this morning, with my
odd scientific neighbour, Mr N------ , who did me the
honour to patronize our reading, though I could not per
suade him to show at it. I met him at the style, just
as I was turning across the meadows to pay a visit to
Margaret B------ . “ Well, Rector,” he began, with one
of his sarcastic smiles, “ So you have not thrown off
your gown yet. I almost thought when I heard you
speak out so freely on Friday evening, that I had seen
you in your pulpit for the last time.”
“ Why so ?/’ I asked.
“ Why ? What is to become of the six days of crea
tion, and the seventh, when the Elohim rested and
cried bravo, if your geological epochs are true. Your
‘ inspired word of God,’ and scientific discovery, will
never run together.”
“I-cannot follow you there. Surely the Bible may
teach us truths of the highest importance, though it
does not teach us geology.”
“ Yes ; on condition that we are not required to take
them for granted, 'because they are in the Bible. Else,
Falsus in uno, suspectus in omnibus You can’t get
*
away from the geological blunders of the Bible by the
excuse of condescension to popular impressions, by
whose help you have hobbled away, lamely enough,
heaven knows, from its astronomical blunders. ‘ In six
* False in one case, suspicious in all.
�A Lecture and its Consequences.
ij
days Jehovah created the heavens and the earth, and
all that therein is, and rested on the seventh day.’
There it stands in words uttered, as you tell us, when
Jehovah condescended to talk Hebrew from the top of
Mount Sinai. For details, see the first chapter of Gen
esis ; and this happened some 6000 years ago, says the
Bible. The valley of the Mississippi tells of 100,000
years spent in the last operations of creative evolution,
when the plains of North America were occupied by the
races which live there now : so says geology. And
these two steeds I mean to drive together in one team :
SO says our Rector. Take- care, I say; take care, or
you will overturn the coach.”
° My dear Mr N------ , you are a deep thinker, I
know; have you ever considered how we obtain the
notion of Time. What is Time ?”
“ Oh ! if you plunge into metaphysics, I have done.
I have no faith in anything but science. But see, we
are close home. I am afraid I have taken you out of
your way. Won’t you turn in ? No.—Then good bye.”
I had walked with N------ so far during this con
versation, that I had scarcely time left to pay a visit
tn Margaret B------ , and look in afterwards at the
school, which I wished to do. So I bent my steps to
the latter, and was just crossing the green to reach it,
when I spied good Miss T------ rustling out of her
garden gate, obviously intent on stopping me, and
turned aside to meet her. She was so full of her
subject that she could not wait till we met before speak
ing, but began, when I was scarcely well within hearing
distance, “ Oh! Mr. P------ do come in to speak with
me. I want to talk with you so much.”
“ By all means, my dear Miss T------ ,” I replied, so I
tamed back with her to her pretty garden, and thence
to her drawing-room, where she first carefully shut the
door, and then throwing herself on the sofa, and almost
bursting into tears, exclaimed, “ Oh 1 Mr P____ such a
dreadful thing ! I am sure it has made my poor heart
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Via Catholica.
beat so, that I thought it would burst, that you, whom
we have all so loved and trusted, should go and say
such things.”
“What things, my dear madam?”
“ Why, that the Bible is not true, and that God did
not make the world as it says He did.”
“ My dear Miss T------ , who has been so egregiously
hoaxing you ? I am certain that I never said a word
of the sort.”
“Well, it’s all over the place that you did,”—this,
by the way, I found afterwards was a great exaggera
tion—“ or at all events, what -comes to the same thing,
at that reading that you have been and set up. I never
knew any good come out of these new fangled schemes.
I am sure it was never so in my dear father’s days.
‘ Let the poor people learn their Catechism,’ he used
to say, ‘ and read their Bibles, if they have learned to
read, or come to church and hear them if they have not,
that’s learning enough for them !’ and so say I too.”
“ My dear Miss T------ I thought you were a true
friend to the education of the poor. I am sure you
have given me most useful help in the school, both with
girls and boys.”
“ Well! I have tried to do my duty to the poor ; that
I may say, and I won’t deny that the learning music,
and history, and geography, and such things, has made
the lads and lasses much brighter than they used to be,
but I never did think it would come to this, that I should
hear God’s word called in question ; and by one of my
own class too, or who was one at least, and that through
what he had learned of the Rector.”
“ But my dear Miss T------ , who has called God’s
word in question ?”
“ Tom B------ .”
“ And how do I come in as his authority in this
matter ? ”
“ Why, he says you told them last Friday, and proved
it to them downright in figures, that the valley of,—
what do you call that great river in North America ? ”
�A Lecture and its Consequences.
15
“ The Mississippi.”
“Yes, the Mississippi. Well, that this valley is
coll—all—”
“ Alluvial.”
“Alluvial. Yes, that’s what he said; and that it
must have taken at least 100,000 years to make it;
and that this was only just the least little bit of the
time that it must have taken to make the whole earth ;
and ‘ then you know, madam,’ says he, 1 it’s as clear as
that two and two make four, that the earth never could
have been made in six days, as is said in the Book of
Genesis, let alone the sun and the stars, which are all
suns themselves, only a very long way off.’ Well,
Tom, I said, I don’t know much about these things,
tut I am sure that what the Bible says must be true,
because it is God’s word, and God cannot tell lies.”
“ And what did Tom say to that? ”
“Oh, Mr P------ , that is the worst of all; that’s what
shocked me so much. ‘I don’t wish to say anything
contrary to you, madam,’ he said, ‘but if I may be so
bold as to ask, how am I to know that the Bible is God’s
word?’ ‘Why, surely Tom you don’t mean to say
that it is not God’s word?’ said I. ‘Well, madam,
you say that God cannot say what is not true,’ he
replied; ‘ so, if the Bible tells us what is not true, it
cannot be God’s word, and that is what Mr N-----thinks too.’ Oh, dear! oh, dear! that it should come
to this; and that too with Tom B------ , who has always
been such a good boy, and so regular in his place at
school, and one of our choristers too.”
“ My dear Miss T------ , you are worrying yourself, I
suspect, a great deal more than there is any need for
your doing. I am sure Tom did not mean to say that
the world made itself, without God.”
“ No, Mr P------ , indeed ! I am certain he did not
mean to say anything so wicked.”
“ Well, then, after all, is not the main thing that the
Bible tells us about the world simply that it was made
by God ? You recollect the civ. Psalm ? ”
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Via Catholica.
“ Certainly.”
“ There you have the whole story of God’s works in
the world, and with the creatures to whom he gives life
in it. Did it ever occur to you that there was any
deficiency in this description, because nothing is said
about the time taken up in producing them ? ”
“ No, I never thought anything about the time.”
“ Suppose, then, that in the first chapter of Genesis
all mention of the time taken up in bringing the earth
to be what we find it now had been left out, and that
the chapter had read simply: God said let there be
light, and there was light; and God divided the light
from the darkness; and God said let there be a firma
ment in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the
waters from the waters, and it was so; and so on all
through the chapter, without any mention of evenings
or mornings, would not the chapter seem to you just as
much part of the Divine teaching as it does now 1 ”
“ But, Mr P------ , if God tells us in His word that He
made the earth, and the sun, and all the stars, in six
days, what business have we to say that He did not ? ”.
“ I am afraid I must ask with Tom how do we know
that this saying about the six days is really a part of
1 God’s word ? ’’’
“ Why, are not the words in the Bible ? ”
“ No doubt they are in the Book of Genesis. But
that book was written by a man whose name is not
mentioned in it, nor yet the time when he lived, nor
how he came to believe that the world was made in six
days. What right then have we to assert that this
saying as to the six days is really ‘God’s word’ to us?”
“ But, Mr P------ , what is to become of us if we are
to pick the Bible to pieces, and settle for ourselves
what we choose to call ‘ God’s word,’ and what not?”
“ My dear Miss T------ , remember what the Epistle
to the Hebrews tells us about God’s word. ‘ The word
of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
�A Lecture and its Consequences.
*7
of soul and spirit, and of bones and marrow, and is a
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’ Is
not the Bible full of such words—words which testify
for themselves that they are ‘ God’s word ’ to us ? Why
place all its words on the same level? You have your
favourite chapters in the Bible, no doubt ? ”
“ Well, I can’t say but what I have; and so has
everybody, I suppose, who reads their Bible. But I
am sure, Mr P------, I have heard you over and over
again preach against picking texts out of the Bible just
because they suit our own fancies, and say that the
Bible must be taken altogether.”
“ And so I say still. What we call the Bible is a
collection of many books, written by different persons,
who lived at different times, during a long course of
ages. It contains the history of the growth of religious
beliefs and thoughts among the Jewish nation, and the
preparation thus made for the teaching of Christ and
the spread of the gospel. We cannot understand this
preparation rightly if we do not look at it by the light
of what followed on it, nor yet the gospel, if we do not
look at it in connexion with the preparation for it. But
this is a very different thing from treating every word
in all this set of books as if it came to us directly from
God. To do that is to turn the Bible from ‘God’s
word ’ into ‘ God’s words.’ ”
“ I do not understand what you mean.”
“ I will try to explain myself more fully. What I
have said to you to-day is my word to you, is it not ?
And what you have said to me is your word to me 1 ”
“ No doubt.”
“ And this word of yours or mine has been made up
of all the words we have used ? ”
“ Certainly.”
“ But these words are not yours or mine, but part of
the English language, which neither of us made, but
found ready made to our hands, and have used to com
municate our thoughts to each other,”
B
�Via Catholica.
“Well?”
“ And, to let these thoughts be known, all the words
we have used must be taken note of in their connexion.
For our part in them really consists entirely in this
connexion, in the way we have joined the words
together. This is our word; not the words taken
separately, which are not yours or mine, but the
common property of the English people ; so, I say,
‘ God’s word ’ to us in the Bible is the meaning which
comes out from considering all its parts in their con
nexion, not from any of its statements taken separately;
though any of these statements may become to us
1 God’s word,’ in so far as we feel it to be true.”
“ I’m sure I don’t know what to make of that,” said
Miss T------ . “ I am getting quite into a maze, and I
am afraid if I go on talking I shall get one of my
bad headaches. But, Mr P------ , will you promise to
tell Tom not to say such shocking things.”
I promised to take an early opportunity of speaking
to Tom, and took my leave of my good, pious, fussy
friend, and her quaint drawing-room, and pleasant
garden, bright even now with pompons and chry
santhemums, with a sigh.
Yes—a sigh. For is it not sad to see how the wor
ship of the letter of the Bible,—the putting the human
medium, with all imperfections inherent in it, in place
of the Divine Spirit which has manifested itself through
this medium,—is forcing piety and knowledge apart,
and turning theology from a true science of the Divine
into a miserable system of apologetic sophistry ? Which
of the many answers to Colenso should we tolerate for
an instant, if it had been published in justification of
statements in the Koran, or any other book where we
cared for the truth of our judgments rather than for the
defence of our preconceived opinions ? Is there one
among them, except perhaps that attributed to a young
chemist at York, which does not show that its author
came to the subject he professed to investigate with a
�A Lecture and its Consequences.
19
mind completely made up as to the results of his
alleged investigation before he entered upon it? Now,
granting that this tenacity of opinion is excusable—nay,
to some extent praiseworthy, in those who feel that the
opinions called in question are associated in their minds
with. profound religious truths—how are those who do
not entertain the opinions to be convinced of these
truths, if their teachers do not place them upon grounds
admitting of an impartial investigation? How is the
knowledge of Christ to be spread among the nations
who have never received it ?—how is it to gain a hold
upon the myriads in professedly Christian countries to
whom it is only a name, if it is to be inseparably asso
ciated with the maintenance of notions about the
universe, which the very men who proclaim these reli
gious truths, reject as mistakes whenever they are not
‘ talking shop ’ ?
It is easy to chatter about ££ science falsely so called.”
The very men who use the words know that, in their
own judgments, the science, with which they come into
collision in defending the statements of the Bible, is not
false, but true. Does any .educated European of the
present century doubt the teachings of astronomy, that
the earth is a ball of what we call matter, always
turning on its own axis, utterly insignificant in com
parison with the sun round which it revolves, and with
which it is borne along through the practically limitless
expanse of space, or rather through the aether filling it,
in the journey of its sovereign luminary among the sister
suns which we call stars ? Does any such person deny
that the notion of above and below, of a heaven as
opposed to the earth, is devoid of any meaning when
applied to such a ball—that the earth is itself one of
the heavenly bodies thus opposed to it? But can any
one read the Bible with open eyes, and not see that,
from beginning to end, it is built upon the notion of an
earth beloio, opposed to a heaven above, where Grod
dwells; separated from this earth by a firmament, to
�20
Via Catholica.
which the stars are supposed to be fixed, while sun and
moon run about in it ? The conflict of the astronomy
of the Bible and the astronomy of science, in its notions
of space, is as complete and radical as that conflict
between the geology of the Bible and the geology
of science in its notion of time, which has recently
caused so much trouble to religious faith.
“ The heaven is God’s throne, and the earth is his
footstool,” is the key-note of the scriptures. Grand
image to the eye of sense ! but shrivelling into insigni
ficant absurdity to the eye of imagination, sciencetaught. The heavens, God’s throne, and the earth, His
footstool !—say rather, “ the earth a grain of dust,
carried about in those heavens of which you speak—an
invisible speck in a universe of suns,” cries astronomy.
“ In six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth,
and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the
seventh day.” Six days ! say rather millions of years ;
made and rested! say rather is making always, in
unresting development, cries Geology. Here is the
true “word of God” in respect of these physical acts.
Fully do I admit that, to the eye of a spiritual philo
sophy, this vast extent and unlimited duration is irrele
vant to religious trust, neither adding to it nor taking
from it—that religion consists in the recognition of the
Eternal, the ever-present gracious Being, on whom our
spirits can rest, with whom they can hold communion,
and thus press forward to attain that “ kingdom of
heaven within,”.the peace which passethunderstanding.
And the fact that in the Bible we find an effective
instrument for aiding us in this progress, makes it truly
“ God’s word ” in the deepest sense ; full of His Spirit,
however imperfect the conceptions of the universe or its
origin, formed by the various writers through whom
this “ living word ” has been made known to us, may
have been. There is a rock beneath on which is firm
standing-ground, unaffected by the shifting mass of
unscientific conceptions, and this rock “is Christ.’’
�Standing-Ground.
21
But how am I to get my flock to realise this, while yet
I let them see that to stick fast to the letter of the
Bible, as they have been trained to do, and fight for all
its statements as if they were unerring truths, is simply
to build a wall against which to knock their own faith.
This is my difficulty. There is firm standing-ground,
I am satisfied, within the limits of the Catholic belief.
But how to prevent their floundering off it, if I urge
them not to lean any more on the broken reed of scrip
tural infallibility ? God grant me power and wisdom for
this difficult task.
CHAPTER II.
STANDING-GROUND.
Aeter all the task may not be so difficult as I had
feared. Beati pauperes. It is easy to attach too much
importance to the want of intellectual culture in the
poor, and too little to that spiritual insight, which those
who are earnestly striving to serve God while living in
close contact with the hardships of existence, gain,
through the purifying and strengthening influences of
His spirit, into the deepest principles of spiritual life.
My favourite, Margaret B------ , has opened my eyes.
I meant to have gone to her the day after my talk
with Miss T------ , but I shrunk back, coward as I was,
from the path to her cottage, dreading a look of re
proach in her mild eyes, if she had heard any rumour
of her son Tom’s delinquencies. To-day I forced
myself to go, and saw, as I approached, Miss T------ ,
with the tail of her gown in her hand, picking her way
carefully over the stones, along the path by the brook
�'LL
Via Catholica.
which bounds one side of Margaret’s little garden. I
doubt whether she saw me; at all events she was de
termined to seem not to see me if she did; for she
kept her head steadily looking before her till she had
crossed the slope of the hill, and was lost in the copse
beyond. I knew when I saw her that what I dreaded
had happened. I did not divine how little cause I had
to dread it.
As I raised the latch of the cottage door, my eyes
fell on Margaret sitting, not in her usual place, but
close to the window, through which the sloping rays of
the winter sun shone into her scrupulously clean dwell
ing, lighting up its well polished furniture, and bringing
out, in a charming intermixture of colours and shadows,
a nosegay composed of a late rose, a few chrysanthe
mums, a geranium, and some sprigs of verbena, which,
placed in a glass on the window sill, gave an air of
refinement to the scene. The love of flowers, the love
of neatness, and the love of goodness, I have generally
found associated in the poor. They are so pre
eminently in Margaret B------ . A curtain, partly
drawn across the window, shaded her pale, delicate
features; and her face was raised towards that of her
son, round whom she had passed one thin hand, while the
other kept open a Bible which lay upon her lap. Tom
was standing by her side, with eyes cast down, and
cheeks flushed, apparently rather excited and a little
ashamed. At the noise of my entrance Margaret let
fall the hand which encircled Tom’s waist, as she rose
from her seat, and motioned to her son to bring me a
chair.
“ You’re very welcome, sir,” she began, “ to a poor
widow woman, who has been sadly beat about by the
storms of the world, and would fain not lose hold of the
stay that’s left her. I’m thinking that Miss T-----and Tom doesn’t rightly understand what you have been
saying about the Bible-book,—leastways it’s not like
you to go and say anything against ‘ God’s word.’
�Standing-Ground.
23
But Tom is young, and there are a many things in the
Bible which it wants God’s teaching to see into, and
God’s teaching takes time. And mayhap Tom’s been
looking only at the joinings of the threads, when, just
because there are joinings, we may feel sure that there
is a pattern on the other side.”
Tom smiled at his mother’s simile. “ Well, mother,”
he replied, “ but Miss T------ will have it that there are
no joinings at all in the Bible, but a pattern without
join, made by God’s own hands ; and that’s what I
can’t believe; and what’s more, I am sure Mr P-----doesn’t want me to.”
“My dear boy,” I said, “I want you to believe
nothing but what is true. But there is more than one
kind of truth; there are truths about that which is out
side us, what we see or touch, for instance, and there are
truths about that which is inside us, what we feel in our
selves. Now in the Bible there are sayings as to both
these kinds of truths. May it not be that what the
Bible says about the outside world shows the joins of
the threads as your mother suggests, while what it says
about the inside world shows the true pattern.”
“ Yes, sir, I don’t deny that this may be so; but
then if some of what the Bible tells us is not true, how
can everything that is in it be God’s own word, as Miss
T------ says we ought to think.”
Before I could answer this question, I heard Mar
garet’s gentle voice say, “ Perhaps, sir, if it is not too
bold of me to ask, you would let me talk with Tom a
bit first, before you speaks, and tell us, if you thinks I
says anything as is not just what it should be. For,
you know, sir, Tom will be a coming to me when you
are gone, to talk of all that’s in his mind with me, God
be thanked, he do do that always ; and if you speak
together, may be I shan’t quite understand all you
says ; for I’m no great hand at learning, and Tom,”
she added, looking at him with a smile full of maternal
pride, “ knows a deal more than I do, thanks to the
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good teaching he’s had, and the many wise books you
lends him to read. But if it is I myself who speak, what’s
said can’t be above my knowing, anyhow.”
££ Nothing would please me better, my dear Mrs
B------ , than to listen to such a conversation ; and I am
sure of one thing, that whatever knowledge may be
wanting to it, it will not be deficient in mother wit.”
“ I am afraid, sir, you praise me more than I
deserve,” Margaret replied, with a slight blush; then,
turning a little towards Tom, she began : “ Well, now,
let us put it that some of the words as is between the
boards of the Bible isn’t true, as for certain the Bible
do say that the sun runs from one end of the heaven to
the other every day, as it seem to do; and you say
that it don’t run at all, but only seem to run, because
the earth turns round, and we on it, and that there
isn’t properly any heavens at all different from the
earth, only what we ourselves is part of on the earth,
what comes next ? ”
“ Only, mother, that we oughtn’t to call all the Bible
‘ God’s word,’ but only so much of it as is true; and
then it’s we who must judge the Bible, not the Bible
which can guide us; so that, after all, we must rest
on ourselves to know what is right and wrong, and
what is true or false. And so Mr N------ says we
must.”
“ But if when we judge the Bible we do find that
there are there a many things which we do judge to be
true, and they great and precious things to our souls,
why should we be hindered from using the Bible to
help us in these things, because there are other things
in which, may be, it cannot help us at all? Our
Maggie, now, is very useful if you drive her in the
cart, but if you was to put a saddle on her old back,
and go out a hunting on her, no doubt she’d tumble
over the first hedge she came to, and maybe break
your neck.”
££ Yes, mother; but then you see it is I who must
�Standing-Ground.
25
choose the road for Maggie, and settle that she is not
fit to go out hunting, but only fit to draw the cart.”
“ But it’s she as must draw it. You’re not strong
enough for that, for all you are a well-grown lad of
your age. And the Bible do draw our hearts, and lift
us over the ruts, and out of the mire, as no other book
do—leastways, none I know of.”
“ Only then, mother, if the Bible is like Maggie, who
cannot be trusted to go quite alone, but it’s we who
must hold the reins and guide her, we must trust to our
own judgment after all.”
“ And why should not God have us trust our own
judgments? What do he give us a judgment for
else ? ”
“ But, mother, if the Bible can only help us to judge
for ourselves, what does it do for us more than any
other books, that we should call it ‘ God’s word,’ and
all other books only ‘ men’s words.’ ”
“ I must e’en go back to Maggie. Why do you put
her in the cart and not Duke ? ”
Duke hearing his name, as he lay dozing before the
fire, looked up and wagged his tail.
“ I suppose, because he’s not fit to draw it,” Tom
said with a little laugh.
“But for all that he’s one of God’s creatures.”
“ So, I say, all books are written by men, and the
Bible, like any other book. Why should we call it
only ‘ God’s word ? ’ ”
“ Don’t we give a name of its own to every kind of
thing. There’s Duke; don’t we call him a dog, and
Maggie a mare. And don’t we give names of their
own to different sorts of books ? Isn’t there books of
history, and books of ’rithmetic, and books of the stars,
and books of Gol—”
“ Geology.”
“ Yes, that’s books of the earth, you says, and I
don’t know how many more sorts of books. Why
shouldn’t we call the Bible by a name of its own, if so
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Via Catholica.
be we feel that there is that in it which makes it not
like any other book.”
“ And what is that ? ”
“ That we feel God do speak to us in it as he do not
in any others.”
££ But how can we be sure it is G-od who speaks to us
out of the Bible, and not only other men ? ”
“ No doubt it is other men who speak to us. But
why may not God speak to us through other men?
Does he not speak to us through the trees, and the
flowers, and the beautiful sun, and the stars, and all his
works ? Why not through other men ? Are not they
his work too 1 ”
“Yes, mother; but then all men are God’s work,
and yet you don’t say he speaks to you through all
men.”
“ Ay, but I do. Only not with the same words. By
some he says, £ take care,’ and by some he says, ‘ hope,’
and by some he says, £ learn what are my ways, and how
I make the world, and all that therein is,’ and by some
he says, £ hear what great things God will do for the
souls of them who put their trust in him; ’ and if these
are they as wrote the Bible, why shouldn’t I listen to
what he tells me by them, though mayhap it is not by
them that he tells me how he makes the world, or least
ways what is known about it?” Tom making no imme
diate reply, she continued, after a little pause, “ And is
it not a grand thing to think of, that they who lived
and died so many hundreds and thousands of years
afore I was born, as I am told, and in quite another
country, with quite different ways of living, and quite
another tongue to what we uses, should tell me words
about their own souls, and what they thought and felt,
that do speak to my soul, as perhaps no one can do
now, though they live in my land, and are of my own
kith and kin. Oh ! it’s a noble book, is the Bible, for
showing us that God’s spirit is always the same, and
doesn’t change as we often do, nor get tired of being
with us men, for all we do so much to weary him.”
�Standing-Ground.
27
“ Well! mother, to hear you put the matter, it can’t
make much difference who wrote the books of the Bible,
nor whether they were written at one time or another,
any more than whether all that is in them is true or
not; yet Mr N------ , when he lent me those books of
Bishop Colenso about the Pentateuch, which I showed
you the other day, told me that the great folks in Lon
don, and the other bishops are making ever such a
pother about his books, because he argues that the Pen
tateuch was not written by Moses at all, and some of it
not till the time of King Josiah, and that a great many
of the stories in it cannot have happened as they
are written; and they have declared that, if such
opinions are allowed to be taught about the Bible, the
end must be that the Christian religion will come to
nothing. And they have tried to get him put out of
his bishopric, only as yet, they have not managed to
get this done.”
“Well, Tom, I can only speak as I feel, and I am
not able to judge between them as is scholars, who’s
right and- who’s wrong on such questions : but for the
matter of that, put it that all that’s in the Bible is true, if
so be it is rightly understood, and that nothing is called
Bible which is not the real Bible; for you know there’s
a many different books in what we calls the Bible, and,
for certain, it’s not said in any of they books, what books
do make the Bible ; how am I, poor ignorant woman
that I am, to tell whether what men call the Bible nowa-days is the real Bible, as is all true; or whether the
interpretation that is give to this Bible, if so be we
have it, is what they as wrote it first meant to say, or
no ? You remember the volumes of commentators as
your poor father was so fond of reading.”
“Don’t I indeed : most of them are up-stairs in my
room.”
“ Well, I recollect, poor dear man, he would use to
impanel, that was his word, a jury of as many of the
most famous he could get hold of, as he would say,
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Via Catholica.
to sit upon the texts which most has been written about;
and he would read them to me of an evening sometimes
when I could sit working and listen to them; and it
was mighty curious, to be sure, to hear how they did
differ among themselves, for all they were such great
scholars, about what the Bible does really mean. I
used to say to father, that it seemed to me very hard
lines on us poor folk, if we was bound to believe all
that’s written in the Bible just as it was meant, and us
not able even to read the tongues it was written in,
when they as knew them best couldn’t agree among
themselves about the true meaning. For you see Tom,
I was young and light-hearted then, and hadn’t had the
help of God’s messengers to teach me with what a
power the Bible can speak to them as is ready to hear.”
Tom stooped over his mother, and kissed her up
turned face tenderly—as she uttered these words. He
knew well what 1 messengers’ those had been, to whom
she alluded ; the deaths of his brothers and sisters, and
father, the long years of nursing and struggle during his
earlier boyhood, which had changed the light-hearted
young wife into the gentle, grave, though cheerful
widowed mother, who now found a solace for her de
clining years in his affection.
There was something, however, in his face which
made me sure that he had not yet used up his quiver of
objections, but was afraid of wounding his mother’s
feelings by producing them. Divining where the diffi
culty lay, and wishing to take this opportunity of
testing to the utmost the power of faith to overcome
historical perplexities, I said, “ My dear Mrs B------ , I
heartily thank you, and so, I am sure, Tom will, for a
very instructive lesson on the true standing-ground of
religious trust. But there is, I suspect, something
behind in Tom’s mind which I may do good by lend
ing words to. You have dealt with the Bible generally,
but our Bibles consist of two parts, the New Testament,
and the Old Testament, which concerns us less closely
�Standing-Ground.
than the New. Do you include both these parts equally
in what you say? I mean, would you be as ready to
admit that there are errors in the New Testament,
without feeling your trust disturbed by them, as seems
to be the case with the Old Testament.”
“ Well sir,” she replied, “ I am apt to think it must
be with God’s word, as it seems to be with His works,
it must be all of one piece. If so be, that in the Old
Testament, God teaches us through men’s words, and
we can feel His Spirit to be in them, though men’s
errors are there too, why shouldn’t we expect the same
thing to happen in the New Testament 1 ”
“ Only, mother, if Jesus tells us anything that is not
quite true, how can we believe Him to be the Son of
God?”
“ But Jesus Christ didn’t leave us any book written
with His own hand, like Mahomet, as I’ve heard say,
and, I am told, He didn’t even speak in the tongue as
the gospels is written in. So if there is anything in
them as seems not true, as for certain there is a saying
about His coming in the clouds before that generation
should pass away, how can we tell that the words is
just what the Lord did say, and hasn’t been altered ?
But there’s sayings of His there as goes straight to our
hearts, like the true 1 word of God,’ 1 piercing even to
the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and the
bones and marrow.’ There’s no need of proof that
they’s not been altered.”
“ But what do you say to the stories about Christ,”
I asked; “about His Birth and Infancy, for instance,
or about His Resurrection and Ascension ? ”
“Well, sir, if it’s not being too bold to say so, I’m
apt to think you parsons makes too much of these
stories, as if the gospel was all in them, when to my
thinking they’s more a sort of garnish than the true
dish. No doubt, there’s many a one as would be greatly
troubled to be told so much; but you see, sir, I’m not
altogether strange to such questions. Many’s the time,
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when I have talked over the story of Christ’s resurrec
tion with my man. For he used to lay great stress on
it, and examined the witnesses, as he said; and some
times he would make me take the contrary part, to
cross-examine them, and I cannot say I was ever quite
satisfied with what came of it; nor he either, I think,
for the matter of that. It’s so hard to bring Matthew
and Luke into one; and then again John is different
from both; and as for Mark, my man used to say that,
in the oldest and best copies of his gospel, the last
twelve verses is not found; so that in these copies
there’s no mention of any one having ever seen Christ
again at all.”
“ But there’s the testimony of St. Paul in his first
epistle to the Corinthians.”
“No doubt there is, sir. And it’s reason to think
that he had talked about it with the other apostles; and
what’s more, as my man used to say, he puts all that
beautiful chapter of his in Corinthians upon the resur
rection of Christ from the dead. But it do seem to me,
after all, that what he meant is only, if Christ is not
really alive, then our faith in Him would be vain. You
see, sir, it’s so curious that he speaks of himself as
having seen Christ, just as he do of Cephas, or James,
or the other apostles; and yet he couldn’t well have
seen Him with his bodily eyes, if so be he was blinded,
as the Acts says he was; and then it’s so puzzling
about they, “ Five hundred brethren at once,” that
there should not be a word said about them in any of
the gospels, nor yet in the Acts, if so be they actually
saw Christ as I see you now. Well, many’s the time
my man and I have talked over all this, and it rankled
in his mind more than I thought for, till, one day not
long afore he died, he took my hand as I was standing
by the side of the bed, and said, ‘ Margie, my love, do
you remember how we used to talk about the proofs of
Christ’s resurrection, and puzzle ourselves to think how
the stories should fit so ill together, if so be that the
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31
fact is the corner stone of the Christian faith, as I
have heard it called times without number? Well, I
have found out what was the matter. We were seeking
to know Christ after the flesh, when the only way to
know the risen Lord is after the spirit.’ I didn’t scarce
understand him then, but often and often has his words
come into my mind since then, till I feel sure that he
was right. What use could a body of flesh and blood
have been of to the Lord after He was crucified ?
Could it make it more easy for Him to get into our
hearts, and lift them up by love to Himself? No ; it
is in us that he must rise; and if He is risen in our
hearts by faith in Him as our living Lord, it matters
very little what became of His body which was nailed
to the Cross in Palestine.”
“And as to the stories about the birth of Jesus’
mother, did you talk with Lather about them, too ?”
“ No doubt we did, and sore puzzled we were to
think how how the story in Matthew can fit in with the
story in Luke ; or how Jesus could be said to be of the
seed of 'David at all, if he was not the son of Joseph,
but only of Mary, who was not anyways related to
David, for anything that’s said in the gospels; let alone
the many other strange things in the stories themselves,
as, for certain, it is mighty strange to think how anyone
could find out one house from another by a star stand
ing over it, if so be the star was anything like what’s
called stars commonly; but, for that matter, Father
did find a way of looking at it which satisfied him and
me too.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“ Why, you see, sir, he thought we, who live now-adays, had no call to trouble ourselves about matters of
which St Paul knew nothing. I mind well his saying
to me, ‘ What was enough for the great Apostle of the
Gentiles to know about the Lord, must surely be enough
for you and me, Margie.’ Now, you see, sir, St Paul
never in any of his epistles, so much as once hints at
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the stories about the birth of Christ; but says quite
simply that he was 1 of the seed of David after the
fleshso my man says to me, ‘ Margie, you and I had
best leave those stories alone, and let the gospel begin
for us where it begins in Mark and John.”
“ But then, mother, what is to become of the hymns
of the Virgin, and of Zacharias, and of Simeon, which
we sing in church, if they are not part of the true
gospel?”
“ What is to become of the Te Deum, and the other
hymns which is sung in church, that are not in the
gospel at all, for the matter of that? Put it, they
hymns were made by some Christian who had heard
some such story about the birth of Christ, and about
what happened before it, as is written in Luke, and
thought to himself what might Zacharias, or Mary, or
Simeon say, that is what was fitting for them to say,
and that it is fitting for us to say now, why shouldn’t
we say it? Suppose it had been written now-a-days by
Mr Keble, we might use his words, I suppose, and
thank God that gave him the will and the power to
write them. So why should we not use them, when we
find them in Luke’s gospel, and thank God for them
too ? ”
“ Only, mother, if the stories in the gospels about
which these hymns are made are not true, can it be
right to thank God for that which is false ?”
“ Why not, if the thoughts about them are true ?”
“ How do you mean, mother ?”
“ I mean that they hymns have true thoughts,—
leastways for me, very true thoughts about the Lord;
though, may be, the things which is said in the gospels
to have made the hymns be said, never happened, as is
told there. Is it not true that, through Him, ‘ God has
done great things for us,’ and ‘ shown forth His mercy
from generation to generation,’ if so be He came among
us as a man, to let us see how great His love towards
us really is; and has He not thus, indeed, ‘ scattered
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33
the proud in the imagination of their hearts,’ and
‘ put down the mighty from their seat,’ and 1 exalted
the humble and meek ;’ if the son of a carpenter, a man
who ‘had not where to lay His head,’ who lived among
the ‘ publicans and sinners,’ for all He was so pure and
holy, has come to be worshipped by the kings and
rulers of the greatest and mightiest nations of the
earth, as the Lord of all; who yet says to you and I,
and all other who love Him, poor and lowly, and des
pised of men as they may be, I am your brother, who
was no ruler on earth any more than you are ; and you,
if you are minded like me, may come to share what
I am.”
“But, Margaret,” I asked, “do you suppose this is
what the writers of those hymns really meant ? Mr
N------- would tell you that the pious Christians, at least
such of them as were Jews, looked for a Christ to make
of them a great people, who should govern all the
earth, and be what the Romans had been, only not
through their own strength, but by the power, of God,
who should ‘ scatter their enemies.’ Would it make
any difference in your feelings about these hymns, if
Mr N------ could be proved to be in the right, and this
was what the writers meant? ”
“ Well, sir,” she replied, with a smile, “ I cannot say
that it would; for, to tell you the truth, this is the
opinion that I have myself. You see, sir, it seems to
me that it wanted the coming of Christ to wean men
from such dreams, and teach them what the true great
ness is. It’s so hard for us to believe that, in the race
after the ‘ things eternal, all may run, and every one
receive the prize.’ It takes such a deal of schooling
before men get to learn that God is ‘ no respecter of
persons; ’ and it seems to me that even now, with all
the lessons that Christ give us, and all the sermons
that we hear,—no offence to you, sir,—we have learnt
it so ill, that it’h no wonder if they as lived in the days
afore the Lord came, stumbled over it a little. To my
c
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Via Catholica.
thinking we has more reason to thank God that they
who made those beautiful hymns mixed up so little of
that which was only true to their fancyings with that
which is true for them and for us too. So you see,
Tom,” she continued, turning to him, ££ I can hear you
sing they hymns—and you do sing them very nicely,
that I must say—and sing them myself, too, after my
power, without being troubled in my mind by any
questionings about them, which must come to us, if we
won’t shut our eyes, when we asks ourselves whether
what is said to have happened to Zacharias, and Eliza
beth, and Mary did happen, as is said, or whether they
as made the words put the same sense on them which
God has taught us now to put.”
£‘1 see, mother, you would have me take the bread
and eat it, if it is good, without bothering myself as to
what oven it was baked in, or where the fuel came
from. Is it not so, mother ? ”
She only laughed gently, and clasped his hand in
reply.
“ Your mother is not far wrong in that,” I added,
and so the conversation ended.
Sancta simplicttas ! Here am I tormenting myself
with questions how I can save the eternal truths of the
gospel,—the faith in the reality of spiritual things, of
all that concerns the inner life of man,—from being
disturbed in the minds of the poor committed to my
charge, by the questionings as to the historical truth of
the Bible stories which arise in my own mind; lest
they should cease to value the Bible as a guide and
support; and now I find one of the best of my own
flock, the one of them all who knows, and studies, and
prizes the Scriptures most thoroughly, to whom these
questionings have long been familiar; who, without
blindly putting them aside, and without any assistance
from her spiritual teacher and pastor, for I am very
certain my worthy predecessor’s hair would have stood
�Standing-Ground.
35
on end, “ like quills upon the fretful porcupine,” at the
bare mention of them, but solely by clinging to her own
inward sense of spiritual realities, and by letting that
drop as immaterial which does not directly affect them,
has discovered for herself a standing ground, apparently
incapable of being disturbed by any of the doubts with
which modern inquiry surrounds the ancient traditions.
Why not seek to spread among my people this child
like, trustful, peace-giving feeling? Yet how to elicit
it where it does not spring up spontaneously? That is
the difficulty. Am I to begin by sowing doubt that I
may reap faith ? Am I to cultivate distrust as the pre
liminary to conviction ? Is the Bible to be resolved
for my parishioners into a series of legendary or semi
legendary tales, that they may learn to separate the
husk from the spiritual food which it encloses, and sift
out the pure farina for themselves? Must I refer them
to the teaching of God’s spirit within their own minds,
as their true guide in this process, and say, seek for
yourselves among that which the Bible offers for what
speaks to your own consciences, and take that as “ God’s
word” to you?
It is tempting. Yet, what if they come to me for
assistance in the selection ? What if they make a false
choice in my judgment?-—fix on that which to me is an
element of human error, destined to be swept away by
time and thought, and neglect that which to me is the
eternal truth associated with it ? Surely, as their
appointed spiritual teacher, I am bound to try if I
cannot guide their choice rightly. And then to what
rule should I refer them ? That there is sure footing
across the bog my conversation with Margaret to-day
doubly assures me ; but how can I bring my people to
see the stepping-stones, and tread firmly upon them ?
Oh! thou who knowest our feebleness, and canst
sympathise with our perplexities, enable me, by the
light of thy good spirit, to point out truly through the
dim mist the path which leads to thee.
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Via Catholica.
CHAPTER III.
THE DEAN’S VISIT.
Hurrah ! A letter to day from my old college
friend the Dean of C------ , to ask me whether we can
receive him for his long promised visit. He can give
us a week. Charming ! I know of no one to whom I can
open my mind more freely ; no one better fitted to help
me in solving the doubts which weigh upon me than he
is. Calm, clear-headed, learned, candid.—I recollect
well the pleasure of our college conversations : and his
life, spent mostly in the college circles, from which a
longing for active pastoral work took me early away,
must have made him familiar with all the turns and
windings of the controversies, into which I have only
been able to peep, in the intervals of parish cares, and
converted him into just such a counsellor as I want.
Well 1 The Dean is gone, and I must own that I
have been a little, perhaps, I should say, not a little
disappointed in my friend. His mind seems to me to
have stiffened in the stays of accepted opinions, since I
last met him ; and scarcely to be alive to the pressing
nature of the doubts which weigh on us teachers, and
our need of feeling firm ground under our feet. He
builds so much on mere probabilities, I may almost say
possibilities, and would have them treated as certainties.
One thing he confirmed me in, that is, the doubts I
have entertained as to the historical evidence for some
of the books of the Scriptures, on which theologians are
wont to rely most: the fourth gospel for example, which
we talked over thoroughly, balancing the pros and cons
for its composition by St John on all sides, with a result
which he owned to be anything but satisfactory, as a
foundation for the Paley style of argument. But then,
he gets over the difficulty by 3, subtle chain of reasoning.
�The Dean's Visit.
37
His plan is to work backwards ; begin, he says, with
that which is certain and see if we cannot discover there
a clue which will serve to guide our path among that
which is more questionable. There is the Church, say
in the third century, full of spiritual energy; coming
forth, with the strength of a giant, to do battle with the
gross vices and manifold superstitions of the Roman
world; nerving the poor, timid, despised members of
society, slaves and women, with a force which could
defy the might of the Caesars; swaying the minds of
men by a new principle of unity, an unexampled all-per
vading influence. Whence came this society ? What
was the source of its strength? You say the history of
its earlier years is dark and doubtful; full of ill-attested
legends, and contradictory accounts. Well! assume
that to be true; allow, that full, clear, well-attested
narratives of the formation of the Christian faith are
wanting ; yet some origin it must have had, and that an
origin sufficient to account for what it did and was,
when we do get trustworthy accounts of it. Now we
'have histories preserved by this body, of its own origin ;
in books held sacred by its members at this epoch.
Assume them to be substantially true, and you do
account sufficiently for the phenomena which we know
to have happened. Then why not make this assump
tion? The books are not infallible, no doubt. No
doubt they are only human compositions ; and if we try
them by the standard of absolute correctness and entire
consistency, we must make them rub each other to
pieces, as Strauss has done with the Gospels. But why
impose such a test ? May they not be substantially
truthful memorials of a great spiritual manifestation;
inaugurated by physical events entirely out of the
common course, wrought by means of which we know
nothing, but needed to introduce this great spiritual
principle to human notice; to accredit it, at its first
appearance, and start it on its course of blessing in the
world ?
�Via Catholica.
And, if we have thus worked our way back to Christ,
and the miracles of His life, and the wonders of its be
ginning and close, may we not carry the same process
further back to the Old Testament ? Assume Christ to
have been, what by our first chain of reasoning we have
concluded that He is, then, does not the belief of the New
Testament writers, that the Old Testament and Mosaic
Law was prophetical or symbolical of Christ, raise a
probability that they are really thus prophetical and
symbolical ? And do not the wonders of the New
Testament, in matters connected with Christ, if we
accept them as probably true, give probability to the
wonders of the Old Testament, which in their turn con
firm the later wonders, as parts of the same system.
And, in this way, does not the whole of the Old Testa
ment acquire a probability of its substantial truth, which
morally justifies us in treating its statements as sub
stantially true, wherever they cannot be demonstrated
to be false ? And how is such a demonstration possible,
unless we had a different account of the same transac
tions, of which we were certain that it was true?
It is a very pretty building, but can it stand ? Will
it bear the winds and rains of critical research ? the un
compromising truthfulness of the scientific spirit, dis
played in every branch of modern knowledge ? Is it
not confusing every sound principle of evidence to place
possibilities on a level with well ascertained facts,
simply because I may think these possibilities not im
probable? On what can I base my judgment of pro
bability, if the facts alleged to be thus probable are out of
the common course, unless it be upon positive testimony?
and this, my friend the Dean allows to be, in the case
in question, in itself, and apart from the argument of
possibility, by which he seeks to set it up, quite unsatis
factory. ‘ The alleged facts cannot be disproved,’ he
says. But can they be thereby proved ? Can I, as
one who would minister to divine truth in the matters of
�The Deans Visit.
39
the deepest concern to the human soul, my own no less
than the souls of those committed to my charge, teach
them as proved, what I feel to be not proved, only
because it is not disproved ? because, not knowing the
limits of the possible, I cannot say such and such things
never could have happened ? Surely if religion is not
altogether a delusion, Grod must have provided for us
some better method of dealing with it than this ? But
what ?
What do I want ? and why do I ask for more than
Grod has clearly given me. I have the Bible. What is
it ? A set of books of various ages, in different lan
guages, by various authors—in great part anonymous ;
a great part highly poetical and imaginative ; scarcely
any portion, except a few letters of St. Paul, and a
fragment or two of narrative interspersed among the
prophetical writings of the Old Testament, contempo
raneous with the events noticed in them; as evidence
of those events most unsatisfactory; as evidence in
what way pious men of the Jewish nation looked on
their national history, on its connection with the general
history of mankind, and on the part destined for it in
the future, clear and conclusive. There is no question
for critical doubt here. Without dispute we have in the
Old Testament, the surviving literature of a nation,
marked by characters of its own most distinctive; by a
profound trust, reverence, and love in, and for, the one
author and governor of the world, whom, with pardon
able national prejudice, they looked upon as their Grod
specially, and yet not exclusively; for other nations
are to share the beliefs, and partake in the blessings of
the Divine favour which the reign of the Messiah, de
scended from Jewish origin, should diffuse over the
world. And then one came who claimed to be this
Messiah—one very unlike what the prophets, even the
most evangelical, expected, no doubt; for it is clear
that only post eventum did the idea of their having pre
dicted a suffering Messiah grow up : no one dreamt of
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it beforehand. St. Paul’s letters show that even he
could see no evidence of this sort, or assuredly he would
have made more use of it than he has done. And St.
John’s Apocalyptic vision proves how completely the
suffering Messiah melted, in the vision of the Christian
community, into the triumphant king, who should trample
his enemies under his feet, in the wine-press of Divine
wrath. But what then? Jesus was not a Messiah
such as the ancient prophets expected; but was He not
the Messiah in a much deeper and truer sense ? He
did not give to His ancestral nation dominion over all
the nations of the earth : but has He not given to His
true followers the dominion over themselves ? He did
not give political freedom : but is not spiritual freedom,
the freedom open to all men in the love of God, a far
more precious gift? Nay, is it not a gift which,
sooner or later, includes the lower freedom ? He has
not fulfilled the confident anticipations of His first dis
ciples, by ‘ sitting on the throne of His glory,’ to judge
all peoples assembled before him: but has not His
spirit been present on the earth £ taking one from the
mill, and another from the field ?’ clearing away the
lifeless corpses of dead faiths and false judgments, as
‘ the vultures clear away the decaying carcase ? ’ reveal
ing the secrets of men’s hearts as by a lightning flash ?
and thus 1 discerning between the evil and the good,’
and guiding the course of events in the path leading to
the universal reception of that kingdom £ which cometh
not with observation,’ but is set up within men ?
What more do I want than the testimony of history
in its great facts, to the part which, in the counsels of
God, has been allotted to the work of Christ ? Is this
not enough to give to the Catholic faith ‘in His nature
that guarantee of conformity to truth and fact, through
which hypothesis becomes science ? Is it not far better,
far more worthy of my profession as a minister of the
Gospel, to take my stand on this rock of unquestionable
reality on the one hand, and the response of the con
�The Dean’s Visit.
4i
science of man to the declarations of the Gospel on the
other, and leave the details of the sacred story to show
themselves for what they are—legend or history, as the
fact may be—rather than to load the faith of my people
and myself, with a long chain of bare possibilities, that
I may still talk to them of the Bible as all historically
true ?
And if theyask what are weto believe about the Bible,
if it is not all true ? can I not answer, Believe it to be
the record of the faith and hopes of those through
whom God prepared the way for the coming of Christ,
and for the diffusion of trust in Him among mankind ;
and use it to confirm your own faith, and kindle your
own hopes by the communication of theirs ? Try to
understand what its writers really did mean; that you
may compare their convictions with your own fairly;
and see whether and where they differ from you, if they
do differ ; and thus be the better able to judge whether
you are right. Let the books speak for themselves.
Do not endeavour to make out of them anything which
they are not. Trust in their declaration that God’s
truth can never perish, and for all besides, why care at
ali?
“ But would you teach men to sit in judgment on
‘ God’s Word ?’” Pious nonsense ! as if the persons who
utter it were not the foremost to sit in judgment on
this word themselves, only an unjust judgment; a judg
ment which, instead of striving honestly to understand
it, twists its sayings to suit the theologies of the judges,
and gratify the inborn ‘ pride of our hearts,’ the love of
dictating to other men, under the pretext of urging
them to submit their feeble reason to the ‘inspired word,’
that is to the self-confident assertions of its self-consti
tuted interpreters. Who among Bible worshippers is
ready to look with equal eyes on the texts which con
flict with his favourite dogmas, and those which support
them ? Does the Sabbatarian ever dwell on St Paul’s,
1 Let no man judge you in meat, or drink, or of a holi
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day, or the new moon, or the Sabbath,’ or the Calvin
ist on the £ work out your own salvation,’* or the Pro
testant controversialist on the pun upon Peter’s name
in the Petros and Petra. What are our systems,
propped up by selected texts £ for edification, or doc
trine, or reproof;’ our pleas in justification of a senti
ment or a command which violates our moral sense ;
our so-called reconciliations of Scriptural assertions and
scientific discoveries, attained by forcing the Bible to
say what we have found out for ourselves that it ought
to have said, but snares set for men’s consciences ; pre
texts for preferring our own fancies to the teachings of
our Maker, addressed to the sense of truth within us—
the living offspring and fruitful seed of unbelief?
“ Wer darf das Kind beym rechten Namen neunen?”+
Who, if not the minister of the God of Truth ? Let us
dare to look God’s teachings in the face; to take them
as they are. ££ He who spared not His own Son, but
gave Him up for us all,” how can He require us to
believe falsehoods in His name ? Gracious Lord, who
hast offered up Thyself to bring us to the knowledge of
the truth, teach me to see and feel what is true. Open
to me more fully those Divine things whereof I am
ordained a minister to Thee. Guide and strengthen
me, never wilfully to be false to my own convictions,
but, at whatever cost of perplexity and difficulty, to fol
low the leading of that light which Thou dost vouchsafe
to me.
* Colos. ii. 26 ; Phil. ii. 12.
t “ Who dares to call the child by its right name.”
�Agnes.
43
CHAPTER IV.
AGNES.
“But what are we to rely upon, if all that you tell
me about the Bible is true ? If nearly all Genesis, and
the story of the Exodus, and the wanderings in the
desert, and most of the conquest of Canaan, are only
stories about the Fathers which grew up in the days of
Samuel, or David, or Solomon; and the book of Deu
teronomy was not written till the time of Josiah ; and
the book of Daniel not till the days of the Maccabees ;
and none of the gospels, not even that of St John, were
the work of apostles or companions of apostles ; and
this one was not even heard of till 150 years after the
birth of Christ. I declare to you, Edward, it puts my
poor head into such a whirl to think of it all, that I
almost feel as if I should go mad. The world seems
turned upside down, and all its foundations out of
joint.”
Such were my dear wife’s words to-night, as we sat
on the bench at the bottom of our lawn, under the boughs
of the great chestnut, now covered with the glory of its
pyramidal flowers, while near us a nightingale poured
forth its thrilling melodies to the warm May night.
They were the outcome of a long conversation, in which
she had drawn out from me, nearly against my will,
the conclusions to which much anxious, and I trust im
partial, inquiry has reluctantly led me, as to the author
ship and historical claims of some of the most important
sacred books.
“ My dearest Agnes,” I replied, while I pressed her
closely to my heart, “trust in God. Rely on Him. Pray
to Him. His presence with us in the earth cannot depend
upon the dates or authorship of any books. Was He less
our Father when Christ taught, before any gospels were
written, than He has been since ; or would He cease to
be our Father if every copy of them was lost ?”
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“ But should we equally know Him to be our Father
without them ? ”
Cl I do not say we should; but having had this blessed
truth once brought to our souls—having found by our
own experience, as I trust we may truly say we have
both found, that God is indeed a loving Father to those
who trust in Him—why disquiet ourselves ? If we feel
ground, why worry ourselves about the stepping-stones?”
“ But it seems to me as if God had cheated men, in
leading them to place so much trust in the Bible
histories as they have done, if after all they are not to
be trusted.”
“ Dearest, may we not say the same thing of the
church? To confine ourselves to its western branch.
Think of the Virgin mother, of the millions to whom her
immaculate conception and all-prevailing intercession
are as certainly part of God’s teaching as any Bible
story is to you; think of transubstantiation, and the
litanies to the saints, and the supremacy of the Pope;
think of the learning, the piety, the self-sacrifice, the
unfailing trust and hope clustered round these faiths ;
think of all the institutions to which they have given
rise—hospitals, schools, colleges, abbeys, nunneries,
churches, cathedrals; place yourself at the Reforma
tion, with the links of tradition, the long line of faith
unbroken, the dogmas of the church affirmed to common
belief by countless miracles; might we not far more
justly say, if this is not true, God must have purposely
cheated men into a delusion, than this can be said now
of our faith in the dates and authorship of our canonical
books? ”
“ But when the Reformers rejected the teaching of
the church, they did it in the name of ‘ God’s word,’
which the church had herself put at the bottom of all
her own teachings. They said, when we compare your
dogmas with the sacred books, we find that they do not
agree. So they stood, after all, upon the old founda
tion. But if our faith in the Bible is taken away, the
ioundation itself goes.”
�.Agnes.
45
11 The foundation of what, dearest?”
She paused a moment, and then replied, “ Of our
faith that God has given us a revelation of Himself,
besides thatgiyen in nature.”
“ Including in ‘nature’ the thoughts and feelings
of men ? ”
“ I do not quite understand what you mean.”
“ Consider, my love; the Bible is a collection of
books of very different kinds—histories, laws, poems,
patriotic or moral exhortations, letters, written during a
long course of years, and expressing the thoughts and
emotions of many different persons.”
“ But persons inspired by God.”
“ Persons filled with the Spirit of God, if by that is
meant the love of justice, peace, and truth, and an
unfaltering trust in a righteous, merciful, and all-power
ful Being, ever-present with them, but still human
creatures, feeling, perceiving, imagining, thinking,
acting as true men and women.”
“No doubt, they were not blind machines.”
“Well, then, what they wrote must have been what
they felt, believed, or thought.”
“ I suppose it must. But surely, Edward, the church
has always held that in what they wrote they were
supernaturally preserved from error.”
“ Then of what consequence could it be at what
time, or by whom the books were written ? If we were
quite certain that everything which the fourth gospel
records about Christ is absolutely true, what matters it
whether the book was written by John the apostle or
any one else—in the first century or in the second? ”
“ But, if it was not written by the apostle, or at least
by some one who was a companion of Christ, how can
we feel sure that Jesus really did do and say what is
there stated ? ”
“ In no way that I know of, unless it could be proved
that the gospel was written, as is alleged of the Koran,
at the dictation of an angel. But, my dearest love,
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do you not see that your objection gives up the faith in
the infallibility of the scriptures altogether? If our
confidence in the truth of any gospel narrative rests
simply on the trust which we naturally place in a wit
ness, of whom we believe that he does not mean to
deceive us, it must be open to all questions affecting
the credit we give to such witnesses—imperfect infor
mation, prepossession, credulity, forgetfulness, &c.”
“ But is not great weight due to the way in which the
stories are told—to the truthfulness and sincerity
apparent on the face of them ? ”
“ Great weight, if the question be, did the witness
intend to deceive us ; but what other weight? Would
you trust dame G------ ’s stories about what happened
in the campaigns where she was present in the Crimean
war, because she tells them with such thorough personal
belief, and such an overwhelming minuteness of detail?”
As Agnes made no answer, I continued: “ But we
have travelled away from the question whether men’s
feelings and thoughts may not have been the means
which God has used to give us a revelation of himself,
besides that given by what we commonly call nature.
Now, I say, those who look to the Bible for such a
revelation of God, and I am one of them, really answer
‘ yes ’ to this question. What they have to rely on, as
embodying this revelation, is simply the thoughts and
beliefs of the men who wrote the books which compose
the Bible.”
“But I have always been used to think that the
wonderful actions, the miracles of which they tell us,
gave a Divine sanction to what they said; and now
you take away this sanction, because, if these writers
did. not themselves see the wonders, how can we feel
sure that they really happened ? ”
“ And if this sanction fails, and yet the Bible is to
keep its place in your mind as a trustworthy source of
religious truth, you want some other sanction. Is it
not so ? Well, I think there is another, and a much
more solid sanction.”
�Agnes.
47
“ I-n what ? ”
“ In the connection of these stories with each other,
and their place in the history of mankind. If the
Bible had been, like the Koran, the work of one man
only, who claimed to be God-inspired, any doubt cast
upon the truth of any part would have destroyed our
confidence in it altogether. But the growth of a nation
which evolves a literature of its own, developing thus a
characteristic mode of thought, carries us beyond the
human action into that which underlies it; and where,
as is the case with the Jews, this history passes out of
its special national sphere into the wide circle of
humanity; when we have, as we have in the connection
of Judaism with Christianity, ‘first the blade, then the
ear, then the full corn in the ear,’ the beliefs through
which this result has been brought about are trans
formed, by their connection with each other, from
indifferent phenomena into abiding facts, on which we
can rest, as a true manifestation of the Divine action.”
“ That is very beautiful, I am sure, as well as very
profound.
Just like you. But after, all, dearest
Edward, does it not all depend on the importance
which you attach to the coming of Christ and our
faith in Him ? And yet your doubts as to the Bible
histories extend even to those about Jesus.”
“ Certainly, my love. God does not change His
hand. If the means which He has generally employed
for the more profound revelation of Himself to man
have been, as I hold, the imaginations and beliefs of
man about God, guided by the insensible action of His
providence, I should expect to find the same means
employed to lead men to appreciate aright the great
manifestation of himself in Christ; and most strikingly,
as appears to me, is this expectation fulfilled in the
New Testament. Consider first that Jesus left us
absolutely nothing in writing, not a word of which we
can feel certain that it is His, just as He uttered it.
How strange 1 if He meant to put fetters on the free
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creations of human thought, and not rather to stimulate
them.”
a Very strange, certainly. I never reflected on that
before.”
e< Then, consider again that the man who had the
greatest influence over the first teachings of Christianity
is St Paul, who did not personally know any of the
details in the life of Jesus, and was therefore free to
form his conceptions of Him according to his own
imagination, under the influence of a few great facts;
and that the Apocalypse, the only part of the New
Testament of which we can feel reasonably certain
that it proceeds from one of the Twelve, is wholly
occupied with imaginations about a future never
realised. Does not this imply that the human imagi
nation really is the instrument employed by God as
the agent of his deepest revelations.”
“ It looks as if this were the case, only the notion is
so very startling.”
11 Then, again, remember the belief in the coming of
Christ to judge the world before the generation among
whom He had lived should have passed away—a belief
with which the New Testament overflows. What could
be better adapted at once to sustain the first disciples
against the difficulties and dangers attending the first
preaching of the gospel, and to prevent their writing
histories of their Master ? For what would be the use
of them, if the time was so short before the Lord came
again ? ”
“ Do you suppose that is the reason why St Paul
says so little about the life of Jesus in his Epistles,
never mentioning any fact but the resurrection and the
institution of the Lord’s supper ; and only two or three
times quoting a saying of Christ ? ”
“ I have little doubt but that it is the true reason.
He says little, because he had so little to say on these
matters. What St Paul conceived Jesus to have been
in the flesh, he shows us clearly enough by his enume
�. Agnes.
49
ration of the fruits of the Spirit, and his pictures of the
love of Christ. But the proof seems to have been
implied for him in the idea of the Messiah, and the one
all-sufficient evidence that Jesus was the true Messiah,
was furnished for him by the belief that ‘he had been
declared to be the Son of G-od, with power, according
to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead.’”
“ But that he looked on as a fact ascertained by the
testimony of numerous witnesses, whom he counts up
in the 15th of Corinthians; though I must say it has
often puzzled me to see how his list of the appearances
of Christ can fit in with the story in the gospels.”
“ You remind me of what Margaret B------ told me
last autumn as to the perplexity which the same ques
tion, and the conflicting stories of the resurrection in
the Evangelists, had caused to her and her husband, and
of the light which came to him about it on his death
bed. Did I never mention it to you ? ”
“No.”
“ Margie, he said, taking her affectionately by the
hand, as she was standing at his bedside, I think I have
found out the cause of our puzzles. We have been
seeking to know Christ after the flesh, when it is only
after the spirit that the risen Lord can be known to
us.”
Agnes sat still for a minute or two, apparently ab
sorbed in thought; at length she said, “ Well! I think
that gives me light too. There’s a wonderful depth in
those words. We look for help from without, when it is
only from the Bather of light, the God of our spirits,
that help can really come.”
“ And we lose the help which we may gain from
without, when we look for it in balancing the accounts
of past phenomena, incidents lost for ever in the gulph
of time, to construct what we call evidences of our
faith, instead of seeking evidence where it can always
be found, in the records which tell us what their faith
D
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was who have preserved these accounts, and show us
the same spirit working in the past which we can trace
at work now.”
“ It is,” I continued, after a moment’s pause, “ with
the sacred records, I think, as with geology. To un
derstand the jjast we must begin with the present. To
reconstruct the life of the fossil we must study the life of
the living creature, but then the remains of the dead
may help us greatly to clear up our ideas as to the true
relations of the living to each other, and to the universe.
So to appreciate the old religious story aright, we must
study carefully the voice of our own consciences, distin
guishing that to which they naturally respond from that
which finds in them no response, but must rest, if it
has any foundation at all, only on some external autho
rity. Then if we turn to the past, we may perceive, I
think, that this authoritative element has varied from
age to age, and country to country, making its asser
tions in every case with equal positiveness, but growing
only more and more perplexingly contradictory and
obscure, as time advances. While that to which the
conscience responds has been in a continuous state of
growth; faintly traceable at first; seen differently in
different nations; yet as time advances ever seen more
clearly; asserting its hold on men with renovated force,
if it has seemed for a time to decay; and drawing un
der its influence a perpetually widening circle of be
lievers. If we see this, can we doubt to what issue the
Divine teaching would lead us ? ‘ Except ye become
as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven ?’ What should you say the virtues of a child
are, to which Christ attached so much weight ?”
“ I should say trust, love, and the joy that springs
from them.”
“ And what, if the true office of the Bible is only to
bring us to act in this spirit, and all the conceptions
about G-od and his acts to be gathered from it are but
the dress in which men have clothed the tendencies
�The Children.
51
conducive to this end, 1 at divers times and in divers
manners, 1 each as best they might in their own day;
according to the insight into the Divine idea attained
by them filling more or less consciously a part in the
Revelation of G-od made through a providential action,
which stretches in an unbroken series from, the earliest
ages to our own day.”
“ It is a new conception of God’s word ; but I don’t
know that it is not much better than the old one : at all
events it puts an end to any conflict between Science
and Religion.”
“ And to all danger from any possible result of
Biblical criticism,” I added. So our conversation ended,
and we went in both much happier than when it began.
CHAPTER V.
THE CHILDREN.
I copy a passage from my wife’s journal, adding that
the children referred to are respectively aged, Constance
nine years, and John ten.
I have tried to-day how Edward’s new ideas about
the Bible will work, when one comes to use them
practically in teaching young people. The result was
very satisfactory. It seemed so horrible to say anything
which might unsettle the faith of my own children, that
I could not make up my mind to begin for a long time,
and let them read on as usual in our ordinary course,
without making any remark indicating any doubt as to
the truth of what we read. But then, again, it was so
terrible to be always wearing a mask, and seeming to
make believe, to believe what I did not really believe,
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that I had pretty well determined to speak out plainly,
trusting the result to God, and going simply straight
forward in the path of truthfulness, which Edward says
is always the best course, though up to the present time
I have kept him from saying as much as he would have
liked to do to the servants and children, when the whole
matter was settled this morning by a question of Con
stance ; not the first remark of the same nature she has
made, though I suspect now, it was the first time she
got an answer which satisfied her.
We were reading the third chapter of Genesis, when
suddenly she said, “ Mama, I don’t like that story at all.
It seems so unkind of God to punish all the men and
women who ever were to be, just because Adam and
Eve ate an apple which they were told not to eat. Why
could not God make them not like to eat it?”
“ My dear girl,” I replied, “ there are a great many
things in the world that we do not fully understand, and
we must not be in a hurry to settle that God is unkind
on account of them; but Papa thinks that this story
tells us only what the people -who wrote it, and who
must have lived a very long time after Adam and Eve,
thought about the reason why men do so many wrong
things, and are often so unhappy, and why they all die ;
and that what really happened may have been very
different.”
“ But did they write what was not true, Mama ?”
“ My dear, no doubt they thought it was true; but
we cannot tell whether they had any better means of
knowing what actually took place so many years before
they lived, than we have.”
“But, Mama,” said Johnnie, “was not the story of
Genesis written by Moses ? and did not God tell Moses
all that had happened, just as it did happen ?”
“My dear boy, I used to think so, formerly, because
I was taught that it was so when I was young; but Papa
says that the most learned men who are able, to read
this book in the Hebrew in which it was written, and
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53
who have taken a great deal of pains to find out when
it was written, are quite satisfied, as Papa, is himself,
that the book of Genesis was not written till long after
Moses was dead, and that there are in it stories written
by several different persons, which often do not agree,
with each other, so that it is certain they cannot all be
true.”
“ But, Mama, why were these stories put together
into the same book, if they are so different ?”
“ Papa says, we cannot be quite sure how this hap
pened, my dear girl; very likely, those who put the
stories together did not see the differences as clearly as
we see them now, when we come to compare them to
gether. Or, if some of the stories were written a long
time before the others, as seems to have been the case,
perhaps those who wrote the last did not like to leave
the old stories out, but put in their own stories only
as an addition to them.”
“ Oh ! Mama, do you think that’s why, after the story
of the making of the heaven and the earth, and men
and women seems to be all finished in the first chapter
of Genesis, it begins over again in the second chapter.”
“ Papa thinks so, my boy, and he has shown me a
great many differences between the two accounts, and
the way of writing used in them, which prove that they
come from different authors : one which you can very
easily see for yourself is, that while the first chapter
speaks only of God, which in the Hebrew is Elohim,
the second chapter always speaks of the Lord God,
which in the Hebrew is Jehovah-Elohim.”
“ But, Mama, why did God teach the man who wrote
the first chapter of Genesis differently from the man
who wrote the second chapter ? ”
“ My dear girl, God’s teaching is not of what we
ought to think, but of what we ought to be. Goffs
spirit makes men contented, and loving, and humble,
and truthful; and this is the truest wisdom ; but it does
not make them know what happened before th.ey were
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born, or in places where they never have been. We
see that the best men may make mistakes as to such
things, as easily as the worst. And, since God is the
same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, as the Bible
itself says, we must suppose that so it has been always.”
“ But then, Mama, why is the Bible called God’s
word ? and why should Miss T------ be so angry with
Tom B------ , and scold him so, as I heard her do last
Sunday afternoon, because she said he doubted the truth
of what God’s word told us ?”
“ My dear boy, Miss T------ is a very good, kind lady,
and no doubt she says only what she believes to be
right; but about what ‘ God’s word ’ really means, Papa
thinks she makes great mistakes.”
“ But, Mama, what does Papa think ‘ God’s word ’
really does mean ? ”
“ My dear girl, Papa thinks the Bible is properly
called ‘God’s word,’ because from it we can learn,
better and more clearly than from any other book, what
God really is in Himself, and what kind of persons we
must be in order to please Him.”
“ That’s what Tom B------ said to Miss T------- , but
then she asked him how are we to learn from the Bible
what God really is, and how are we to please Him, if
all that is in the Bible is not quite true ?”
“ And did Tom say anything in reply to that ?”
“ Oh ! yes, he said a great many things, but I can’t
quite remember what; only I recollect it was some
thing about the light getting brighter and brighter, as
the world went on, till at last the ‘ Sun of Righteous
ness arose—that’s our Lord, you know,—and then the
day came, and men could see clearly; and then, oh ! I
remember now, he said, if we hadn’t eyes in us, how
could we tell light from darkness ?”
“ And what did Miss T------ say to that ?”
cc She was angry, I think, and told Tom he was very
uppish and conceited to think he knew so much better
than his elders; and then she said something half to
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55
herself about this being the fruit of Papa’s having put
nonsense about science into his head ; but I am sure
she was wrong there, for Papa never says any nonsense,
except it is as a bit of fun, and I know he never would
make fun of the Bible.”
“ That you may be quite certain of, my dear boy.
Nothing gives Papa more pleasure than to see people
earnest in reading the Bible, and trying to the best of
their power to understand it; and so getting out of it
all the good which they can for themselves. But then
Papa says that if we are to get this good in the way in
which God would have us get it, we must take pains to
see the Bible as it is, and not begin by fancying it to
be different from what it is, and then being angry with
those who show us that we are mistaken.”
“ But, Mama, do you think, like Papa, that the
Bible can do us good if it is not all true ? ”
“ Yes, my dear boy, I do, because I feel that it does
do me good, although Papa has shown me that a great
many things in it cannot be true.”
“ Mama, I think I know what some of those things
are. For in the Bible it says that God made the
heavens and the earth in six days, and I read the other
day, in one of Papa’s books, that the earth has taken—
oh ! I don’t know how many millions of years, before it
became fit for men to live on it.' Is not that one of the
things, Mama?”
“ Yes, my dear boy, one of the things which showed
me that the Bible cannot be a sort of letter dictated by
God, as I had been taught to think that it was; but I
do not find that I trust in God a bit the less, or feel
less sure that man is truly made in His image, as the
book of Genesis says, because I believe that He has
formed the earth a great deal more slowly and gradu
ally than the writer of the first chapter of Genesis
supposed.”
“ But then, Mama, if the earth took so many years
to make, as brother says, it can’t be true what is said
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in the book of Exodus, that God himself told the Jews
from the top of Mount Sinai that it was made in six
days ? ”
“ That’s one thing that I remember Miss T------ said
to Tom, and what do you think Tom answered?”
“ Oh ! brother, do tell me.”
“ Well, he asked her why, if God said these words
from the top of Mount Sinai, as part of the fourth
commandment, they are left out in the book of Deuter
onomy, and other words put in their place; and why in
that book it is said expressly that God spoke the words
written in it, and no more, and that these were the very
words that were written on the stone tables ?”
“ And what did Miss T------ say to that?” I asked.
“ Oh, she only scolded Tom, and told him it was
very presumptuous and wicked of him to say that
‘ God’s word ’ could contradict itself.”
“ Which could do him very little good, I added, half
to myself, “ and, indeed, would be just the way to make
an infidel of him, if he had not had better teaching.”
“ Mama ! will you tell me what is an infidel ? ”
“ My dear girl, ‘ an infidel,’ properly speaking, is a
man who does not believe in anything greater and
better than himself; who has no faith in anything for
which he would give up what is immediately pleasant
to him. And so an infidel is one who has no faith, in
God; because by God we mean all that is perfectly
good, and noble, and unselfish. But men often call
other persons infidels, although they have faith in God,
only because they differ from them in what they believe
about Him. You remember, I daresay, what we read
a few days ago, that the Mahometans call the Christians
‘ infidels,’ because they do not believe that Mahomet
was the prophet of God, and that God taught him to
write the Koran.”
“ But, Mama, is not that very wrong ? ”
“ Yes, my dear boy, it is very wrong, I think,
though, unhappily, a great many Christians follow
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57
this bad example, and call numbers of persons ‘ infidels ’
whom our Lord Jesus Christ never would have so
called.”
“ Mama, do you believe that what is said in the
Bible about God coming down to the earth and talking
with men, and walking about among them, is really
true, or is it one of those things which men thought
were true, but which were not ? ”
“ Well, my dear Constance, I think these stories are
most likely only one of the things that men thought
were true, but which were not so really. You know
the Greeks had the same notion, as we read a little
while ago in the stories about their gods; and so many
other nations have had, but we do not think that they
were right.”
“ Oh ! Mama, I am so glad.”
“ Why, my love ?”
“ Because it seems so unkind of God to have come
to people who lived a long time ago, and not to come to
us now.”
“ Oh! Constance, don’t you remember what is said
in Jeremiah, that ‘ God will dwell with them that are of
a humble and contrite spirit; ’ and what is said in St
Paul’s Epistles about the spirit of God dwelling in our
hearts ? ”
“Yes, brother, I remember that quite well, only I
think it would be nicer if God would come to talk with
us. But if he never did do so I don’t care. Only it
seemed so unkind of Him to do it once, and then leave
off.”
“ My dearest girl, as you grow older, I trust you will
feel that the presence of God in your heart is all that
you can ask, and much more to be wished for than that
He should come to talk to us.
That would be for
God to make himself into the likeness of men, while
God grants us that His Spirit should make us into the
likeness of Himself.”
“ Well 1 I am sure it will be a great deal nicer to
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read the Bible, if I may think, when any thing in it
seems very odd, that perhaps it is not all true, but only
what people believed to be true, because they did not
know any better.”
“ Or, perhaps, that my little girl does not quite
understand what the writers really did mean; and that
it will seem less ‘ odd ’ to her by-and-by, than it does
now,” I added. “ But I think we have had talk enough
for to-day, and sister must be quite ready to go out.
So put on your things and take a run in the garden.”
“ Among God’s flowers ; yes, I like to think that He
is there.”
So the dreaded disclosure is over, and instead of the
mischief I feared, it seems as if the knowledge of the
truth about the Bible would take away a serious hind
rance to its action on the souls of my dear ones, which
I had never suspected. I long for Edward to come in,
that I may tell him how rightly he counselled me to put
my trust simply in God, and go on fearlessly in the way
of truth, and plain speaking on the matters which con
cern our spiritual welfare.
The conversation will
interest him, I am sure, as much as it has done me, and
that was so much that I think I can rely on recording
it faithfully.
CHAPTER VI.
EVIDENCES.
“ Mv dear friend, you must excuse my saying that,
in spite of your great ability, you seem to be leaving the
road of common-sense, and getting lost in unreal
subtleties, and German metaphysics. Depend upon it,
there is nothing like the old sound method of Paley and
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59
Leslie ; the argument—here we have the testimony of
eye-witnesses, who could not be deceived in what they
saw, and whom every thing shows were not deceivers, to
that which demonstrates, if every principle of reason is
not a delusion, that God did communicate His will to
men of old, in a way in which He does not communi
cate it to us now; and, that we clergy are the keepers
and interpreters of this sacred message, appointed to
that office by God in His providential government.
Here is solid ground on which we can take our stand,
and feel ourselves commissioned to teach in God’s name
what He has thus revealed.
But once get off this
ground, and where are we ? ”
So said to me to-day my excellent brother clergy
man and neighbour L------ , who, with his wife, has come
over on a visit to us, and has been spending the last two
or three days in our house; with whom I had got into a
serious talk on the foundation of our teaching as minis
ters of the Gospel. I put down the conversation which
followed, as I have done in other cases to the best of my
recollection, on which, I may say, en passant, that I
rather pride myself.
“ Doubtless, my dear L------ , the ground seems solid
enough if we can feel sure that it exists; but can we
feel sure of this ? Where have we the testimony of the
eye-witnesses ? ”
“In the gospels, to confine ourselves to the New
Testament.”
“ Well, no doubt they speak of eye-witnesses, and
two of the gospels are commonly attributed to two such
witnesses, and the two others to persons who are sup
posed to have conversed with them. But all the gospels
are anonymous; there is not one of which we find any
mention before the beginning of the second century, and
then only of Matthew and Mark; and
are men
tioned in a way which makes it very questionable
whether our Matthew and Mark are the same books as
those mentioned, though they may very likely have
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been the foundation of what we possess. It is not till
the middle of the second century, through the quotations
of Justin Martyr, that we can feel at all sure of gospels
substantially the same with those which we now possess
having been in use ; and then only as to the Synoptics.
For the fourth gospel, anything that can be called
evidence begins a quarter of a century later.
*
To
build on the gospels, as the testimony of eye witnesses,
under such circumstances, seems to me to be building
on a very sandy foundation.”
“ But, if the gospels were not really written by the
persons to whom they are attributed, how came they
to be attributed to these persons ? You do not suppose
that the Christians designedly bore false witness about
them?”
“No, I suppose only that they were, like the mass of
all human beings, more ready to accept as true what
* The passages supposed to be quotations from the fourth
gospel in Justin Martyr, are cited at length and fully dis
cussed in Mr J. J. Taylor’s work on that gospel, whose
judgment, which appears to me a very fair one, I quote.
P. 62. “If there be reason to believe, on independent grounds,
that the fourth gospel was generally received as an autho
ritative and apostolic work before the year 138 a.d., it
would not be an unfair inference, that familiar acquaintance
with the gospel had occasioned the general similarity of
thought and expression, which I have pointed out in several
passages between the Martyr and the Evangelist. But the
similarity in no one instance amounts to a quotation ; and the
conformity to the supposed original is much less close than
what it is, in innumerable passages, to the gospels of Matthew
and Luke, which are cited every where so copiously and so
verbally, that it has been often remarked, a very complete
history of the life and teachings of Jesus might be made up,
in the language of the Synoptists, from the writings of Justin
alone. ” ‘ ‘ Only once, adds Mr Taylor, is reference made to
a circumstance, the calling of the sons of Zebedee, Boanerges,
mentioned by Mark alone, (Dial. c. Try., c. 106), and in this
passage the reading of all the MSS. would seem most naturally
to ascribe the statement to certain ‘records of Peter,’ from
whose teaching, according to the tradition of the church,
confirmed by Papias, Mark derived the materials of his
gospel. ”
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61
fell in with their wishes and wants, than to criticize it
calmly. When the gospels acquired authority, the
orthodox wanted something definite to which they could
appeal in controversy with the rising bodies of heretics.
The canonical gospels supplied this want, and conse
quently, were commonly received ; and, being received,
must have been attributed to some body.”
“ But why should these bodies be the wrong bodies?”
“Because if they had been the bodies ultimately se
lected, and you know even Justin Martyr, though he
quotes the Synoptics so fully, never mentions their names,
the gospels must have been known much sooner than
they actually were, and must have modified early opinion
in a way which they have not done.”
“ For example ?”
“ If St. Paul had known that Jesus had predicted the
total destruction of the temple as a sign to precede His
second coming, which he must have done, if he had the
gospel according to Luke in his hands, when he wrote
his second epistle to the Corinthians, and refers to Luke
by the words ‘ the brother whose praise is in all the
churches,’* as the defenders of the traditional doctrine
maintain, how could he have lived under the continual
expectation of the coming of the Lord, as his epistles
show us that he did, while the temple was still standing,
with no sign of its overthrow approaching ? Or if St.
John had been one of those who obtained this declara
tion from Christ, as Mark tells us, how could he, in his
Apocalypse, have excepted the temple from the destruc
tion which he foretells for the city of Jerusalem, and
raised it into heaven?” +
“ Take care. Your objections affect the very founda
tions of the faith. If we are to pick such holes in the
testimony of the first ages, on what can we rely ?”
“ On the eternal, ever-present witness of the spirit,
affirmed as that is by the religious history of mankind.”
“ So be it. I say Amen to that. The historical
* 2 Cor. viii. 18.
f Rev. xi. 1, 2, 13, 19; xvi. 1.
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affirmation is just what I want; but your criticism of the
historical record takes it away. It seems to me non
sense to talk of history affirming anything, when you
call in question the truth of the story narrated.”
“ But not the fact that it was believed; and that this
belief has swayed the religious life of mankind with a
mighty influence.”
“ But if this influence rested on false notions of fact,
of what value is it ?”
“The allegedfacts may be questioned, or even disproved,
and yet the influence remain. How much does there
not perish in every organized being, while the being
survives ? The sheaf of leaves round the young plant
is indispensable to its early growth, though they fall off
afterwards ; but the plant continues. It does not need
them for its future nourishment. May not an analogous
process take place in God's moral government ?”
“ I like to feel something solid under me. I want
facts; facts which prove the reality of spiritual life ;
facts which prove that God will forgive the repentant
sinner, while he punishes the hardened unbeliever.”
“ Can any thing prove the reality of spiritual life but
its actual manifestation ? and if it is manifested, what
more proof of its reality do we want ?”
“ But then what becomes of your historical argu
ment?”
“ It is the evidence that the manifestation is no acci
dent, but belongs to the nature of things. I am not an
isolated being, but one member of a great human family.
What I prize, as part of my own nature, I desire to see
manifested as part of theirs ; especially if it bears upon
the relation between myself and the Author of my
being. I want to see this not only in the present, but
in the past. Hence the value of a history which shows
me the traces of a Divine action, in the belief of a long
succession of generations.”
“ But, if these beliefs are, and have been, in every
case associated with grievous errors and mistakes, of
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63
what help can they be to us as evidences of this Divine
action ? ”
“ None, if we assume that the Divine action must dis
play itself, if it appear at all, by superseding the natural
action of our minds, so as to free them from error ;
much, if we regard it as leading men to truth gradually,
through the natural action of their own minds ; acting
always, in fact, as we trust that it acts now in our own
case.”
“ Well! I admit there is something satisfactory in
that notion. God seems brought closer to us, if the ex
traordinary operations of His Spirit merge into the
ordinary, the exceptional into the universal. But then
the whole current of what I must look upon as Revela
tion seems to me to run the other way—an especial
family, called away from its ancestral home, to be the
forefathers of a peculiar people ; separated from the rest
of mankind by a remarkable set of institutions, which
their history refers to a cause wholly exceptional—the expectation of a Messiah through whom the bless
ings specially promised to them, should be extended to
all nations, who would merge their nationality in that of
the chosen race. A Messiah who appears, and does
break through this national exclusiveness, by founding
a body open to all, indeed, yet confining its blessings
to those only who, by becoming members of it, claim
a part in the special promises made to the Jews.”
“But did this exclusive element, in the Jewish and
Christian bodies, truly express the Divine idea? Was
it not rather a manifestation of human imperfection ;
a doctrine inevitable, ‘ necessary for those times/ but
now giving place to a truer conception ? ”
Think
of what this system of exclusiveness has led to—
the ruin of the Jews as a people; and of the church
as a body capable of fulfilling its avowed aim—to bring
all men into its fold—from the deep rooted, mutually
repellent, internal divisions springing out of this
principle. ”
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“ But is not this exclusiveness inseparable from a
belief in the fallen condition of man, and the one ap
pointed way of restoration ? ”
“ Yes, if the notion of this fallen condition is not
itself a misapprehension of a profound spiritual truth ;
namely, ‘ that the flesh and the Spirit are contrary one
to the other,’ so ‘ that we cannot do the things that we
would ; ’ the one claiming to rule, while the other re
fuses to obey ; and that there is but one way of deliver
ance from the ‘body of this death;’ through faith in
the Love of God, which comes to meet us, pardoning
our offences; strengthening our weakness; purifying
our defilement; transforming us from stage to stage
into the likeness of itself.”
“ But what part is left for the Redeemer in this pro
cess ? You seem to omit Him altogether.”
“ On the contrary ; if the spiritual nature of man is
my vou Gru Christ is to me the lever, the moving force,
*
the determining agent in that action of the soul, by
which men can pass from faith in God as their national
protector, to faith in Him as the universal Father;
from faith in Him as the mighty sustainer of nature, to
faith in Him as the source of all spiritual life. That
the will of man may open to the Divine influence, it
needs to sun itself in the warmth of the Divine love.
The belief that in Christ the Divine being had appeared
under the form of a man ; and, by sharing in all the
worst miseries of human existence, had manifested its
profound sympathy with mankind, cleared the atmos
phere, and let the warming rays pass.”
“ So that, the objective necessity for Christ’s coming
lies, according to you, in the nature of man, rather than
in that of God.”
“ Certainly. The reconciliation of justice and mercy,
about which so much has been said, takes place, as I
conceive, not in God, where they could never be
opposed, but in man; who learns, from a true appre* Standing point.
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hension of the Divine character, that he has not to buy
God’s mercy by satisfying his justice; and that his one
only way of fulfilling the demands of the law, is by the
love which unites him to the lawgiver.”
“ But, assuming that to be the vera ratio of redemp
tion, yet surely, the belief in the Love of God, mani
fested in Christ, is as necessary for us now, as it was for
men in the first Christian ages ? ”
“ I think so.”
“ Then do we not get back to the old difficulty ? How
is this belief to be sustained without evidence of the
Divine nature of Christ ? ”
“ Evidence, no doubt; but what sort of evidence ?
What better evidence do we want of the Divinity of
Christ than the place occupied by this belief in the his
tory of man’s religious progress ? Take for granted
that all the wonders recorded about Him in the gospels
are literally true, what does it all amount to, but a few
unaccountable phenomena, which might raise an expec
tation that the person with whom they were connected,
had some great part allotted to Him in the history of
mankind ? But, when eighteen-hundred years’ experi
ence has shown how great a part this person has filled in
human history; when we know that this place has de
pended mainly on the idea of His nature, which began
to show itself as soon as men began seriously to ask them
selves, who He was who had lived among them as the
‘ carpenter s son ’—to put aside this mighty outcome of
the idea as immaterial, and fix our eyes on the handful
of unaccountable phenomena which may have led to its
original formation, seems to me an act of utter unreason.’’
“But, if these ‘ unaccountable phenomena’ manifest
that the person whose greatness is attested by the reli
gious history of mankind, exercised over all nature a
controlling influence ; commanded the issues of life
and death; had in his hands the sources of food and
health; could govern the mysterious powers which
affect the will of man; surely the appropriateness of
E
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this action on nature to His Divine character, must
greatly strengthen the faith to which it appears to have
given rise.”
“ I question the 1 giving rise.’ The acts of power
attributed in the gospels to Christ, are only what the
imaginations of His countrymen were ready to ascribe
to any one whom they believed to be the Messiah. All
have their parallel in the Old Testament. And as to
the argument that they prove Him who possessed such
powers to be a Divine Being, what are we to say to
these ancient wonders ? The sea divides before an act
of Moses. Fire comes down from Heaven, and ‘ the
earth opens her mouth,’ and swallows up Korah and all
his company, at his bidding. The earth ceases to
rotate ‘ for about the space of a day,’ at the order of
Joshua, though addressed by mistake to the sun and
moon ; a miracle, by the bye, which, in the enormous
multitude of objects affected by it, according to our
modern knowledge of the universe, and the magnitude
of the force exerted to produce it, reduces all the stories
of Christ’s command over nature to insignificance.
Elisha again, multiplies food ; entails and cures dis
ease ; and restores the dead to life; yet you do not
consider these facts to prove the Divine nature of
Moses, or Joshua, or Elisha, supposing them to be facts.”
“ But Christ worked His miracles in His own name;
they only in the name of Jehovah.”
“I beg your pardon. Joshua speaks directly to the
sun and moon ; and Elisha multiplies the oil in the pot
of ‘ a woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets,’*
without any reference to Jehovah; and declares to
Gehazi, ‘ the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to thee
and thy seed for everand Christ, at the raising of
Lazarus, according to the Fourth gospel, prays first
to the Father
and, throughout that gospel, disclaims
acting in His own name. Besides, if He had worked
wonders in His own name, without any apparent re* 2 K. iv. 1-6.
+ 2 K. v. 25.
J John xi. 41-43.
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67
ference to God, while other teachers had always made
such a reference, might not this be a distinction belong
ing to Him as the Messiah ? How then can it prove
His Divine nature ? ”
“ I do not say that it proves, but only that it accords
with this belief.”
“Yes, if the working miracles is consistent, with the
Divine perfection; but to me the case is quite the
reverse.”
“ What ? surely you do not hold that nonsensical, socalled scientific, heresy, of the unchangeableness of
the laws of nature ? ”
“ I hold the whole conception of laws of nature to be
a mistake.”
“ What do you mean ? ”
“ I mean that, to speak of laws imposed by God on
nature, is to put nature over against God; as if she
existed apart from Him, but was subject to His orders,
like a conquered nation, subject to the will of the con
queror ; while nature is, to me, only the vesture of the
omnipresent Deity; ever changing in her forms, but
eternally the same in her substance ; the primal utter
ance of the Divine reason : the adequate means, through
which God works out His beneficent will. Now a
miracle I take to be, essentially a work supposed t j be
effected without means, i.e., in opposition to the Divine
reason.”
“ But, may not miracles be only acts performed by
means beyond our knowledge?”
“ I think not. Import the notion of means into the
narrative of any miracle ; you will find that the notion
of the miraculous disappears. Take, for instance, the
turning of water into wine. The phenomenon happens
every year, by means of the vine and its fruit, and the
process of fermentation ; we understand very imper
fectly how; but no one calls the change miraculous.
What then is the miracle in the act ascribed .to Christ ?
Simply that the change is supposed to have taken place
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by the bare wish, even the unuttered wish of Jesus,
without the use of any means/’
“ But suppose He worked the change by the use of
subtle means; latent forces, accessible to .Him, though
not to men generally.”
°
“ Then the miracle becomes a case of ‘knowledge is
power ? The. electrician, who flashes a message across
the Atlantic, in scarcely more time than is needed to
write it down, employs subtle means, incomprehensible
to the mass of mankind, and quite beyond their power
to use ; yet we do not call the act a miracle, be it said
pace the writer in the Edinburgh Review, who, not
long since, attempted to illustrate the miraculous by
appealing to it.”
“ But, what if the means were produced at the moment
of the act ? Surely the case would be different?”
“ Certainly: because then the means would not be
really means, but a thin disguise for will effecting its
ends without means. Don’t let us cheat ourselves by
empty words. The means used by God must be as eternal
as the unit which uses them. They may admit of infi
nite variety in combination; they may even be en
tirely latent, when circumstances do not allow their
action to display itself, as seems to be the case with
the power displayed in organization; but to suppose
them produced pro re nata, is to make the idea of
them absurd.”
But, to conceive that God works always through
means, and is limited in his action by that which he
sustains, seems to me to be subjecting God to a fate
stronger than himself. ‘He speaks and it is done,’
is far grander.”
’
Grander, perhaps, as Louis le Grand was grander
than Queen Victoria. But whether greater, query ? Ab
solute will is imposing : but is not all true greatness self
limiting ?”
“ Self-limiting ? yes, but not self-limited: not limited
by its own utterances.”
�Evidences.
6g
“ Why not, if these utterances are the true expres
sion of this will ? Assume the Divine essence to be
pure reason with the philosopher, or perfect love with
the writer of the First epistle ascribed to St. John, the
result is the same. Neither in the one case nor in the
other can God be conceived to change in Himself. How
then can he change in the utterances of Himself.”
“ But does not this view of the Divine action, how
ever difficult it may be to escape from it, as a logical
conclusion from the notion of Divine perfection, run
counter to the whole current of scriptural teaching ? ” '
“Formally, I admit it does, but I think not essen
tially. The unchangeableness of God is a cardinal
point of the old Jewish faith in Him.”
“ Unchangeableness in His ends, no doubt; but
with entire freedom as to the means of effecting them.”
“True. The Jews were a profoundly unscientific
people. They were no logicians ; and did not see that,
if the end remains unchanged, change of means can
arise only from trial and failure; in a word, that it
would imply a God who grew wiser as He grew older.
Now, this ground of change is excluded by their own
conceptions of the Divine wisdom. It follows that,
according to their own teaching, the Divine action
must be as unchangeable in regard to its means as in
regard to its ends. But, in truth, the notion of means
is essentially a scientific one. It arises when we ask,
How is such and such an effect produced ? And this
question the Jews, being a nation thoroughly unscien
tific, never seriously asked. Enough for them that
God so willed.”
“ Well, I allow their standing formula, ‘ He said and
it was done,’ does not explain at all how it was done.
Yet there is to me a charm in its simplicity. It seems
to go directly to the root of the matter, and to carry
with it, to my intelligence, the conviction that such
must be at bottom the real character of the Divine
action, however little light may be thus cast on the
channels which it makes for itself.”
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“ The formula is attractive, I conceive, because it
affirms of God, effectually though indirectly, that per
sonality of which we are conscious. The God who
speaks appears to be truly a living God, who as He
speaks so also must hear ; and thus is one in whom we
may trust; and that is the essence of religion, the soul
of spiritual life.”
“ There seems to me more in the formula than you
state; there is also the conviction of unlimited power,
when He hears, to act as He will.”
“ Yes. There is the affirmation of man’s ineffaceable
persuasion that the intelligent, free, moral being of
which he is conscious is the true governing power of
the universe—an affirmation clothed in language bor
rowed from that act in which our spiritual being most
thoroughly expresses itself, the act of speech—where
our will seems to emancipate itself completely from
the fetters of nature, and can create at pleasure what
ever its imagination can suggest. But to convert this
power into the Divine essence appears to me to be an
abandonment of the deepest lessons which we learn
from Christ; that out of weakness comes forth strength,
and that love is mightier than might.”
!£ Yet, surely, the rationale of prayer, which is the life
of conscious love between man and God, depends on
the faith that He hears and answers; and does not the
notion of an answer to prayer involve at bottom the
assumption on which the belief in miracle rests ? that
God can and will modify the course of Nature in con
formity with our requests, not in the startling manner
exhibited in miracle, yet not less truly because more
secretly,
‘ Moving in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.’ ”
“ Granted, as to prayers directed to outward objects,
to all that is truly comprised in the course of Nature.
But are these the proper objects of prayer ? Is not
�Evidences.
7'
Carlyle right when he says of all that labour can do,
£ Laborare est orare ? ’ ’’
“ No doubt we must use the appointed means, but
without God’s blessing what can they effect ? ”
“ Nothing, if the Divine blessing, that is the result
desired, is not always attached to the use of the ap
pointed, that is, suitable means, in a suitable way.
But if it is so attached in every case which we can dis
tinctly test, it seems to me self-delusion to assume that
it is not so attached, precisely in those cases which we
cannot thus test. Is not the true humility to accept the
lessons concerning the character of the Divine action,
in the use of means given us by the growth of natural
science, as part of God’s revelation of Himself, in which
each age has its peculiar share.”
“ But surely you do not mean to deny the reality of
any answers to prayer ? ”
“ Certainly not, if they are looked for in their proper
sphere—within our own minds. Prayer I consider to
be the appointed means by which we may learn that
‘ the service ’ of God is £ perfect freedom.’ And that
is the greatest of all lessons.”
“No doubt, the highest object of prayer is to bring
the will of man into conformity with the will of God.
But, to shut out from it all that your theory requires
us to exclude, We must place ourselves in profound
opposition to the teaching of the Church in all ages,
nay, to the general instincts of humanity. When have
men prayed at all, and yet not prayed for the relief of
their outward necessities, and the supply of their bodily
wants ? £ Give us day by day the bread we need ’ is
a petition of the Lord’s prayer. Are we wrong in
expanding it ? ”
“Perhaps not, if we keep the same proportion in
our prayers between the material and the spiritual which
we find in our model; very much so if, as is commonly
done, the expansion takes place all on the side of the
outward. The functions of prayer, in all that does not
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directly concern our own wills, is, I think, to keep before
us the consciousness that all ultimately proceeds from
that Being with whom our wills can enter into com
munion, and to lead us to make such a use of the out
ward world as is in accordance with His will. This
appears to me to be the main object of the petition you
quote. If we ask only for sufficient bread from day to
day, what is this but to say, as for ourselves we limit
our desires to the necessities of existence ? And how
much do we not stand in need of such a check in the
present age ? Time is bringing into striking light the
profound significance of Christ’s teaching.”
“ Your views seem to hang well together in them
selves ; and certainly you turn the flank of a vast body
of perplexing difficulties by your trust in the continuity
of Revelation, if it does not end in improving away
altogether the faith once delivered to the saints.”
“ My dear friend, I must end as I began. No true
faith can be ‘ improved away” by honest inquiry. The
evidence of the true becomes more and more strong the
more it is examined. ‘Prove all things, hold fast’ that
which on proving you find ‘good,’ is an unfailing note.
And it is a rule which the Church herself tried to apply
in her general councils. She erred, I think, only in
not having faith enough in it.”
But by this time we had got to the house, and so our
conversation terminated.
CHAPTER
VII.
PRAYER.
To-day Agnes and I took a walk together to pay a visit
to Margaret B------ , whom I hope the readers of these
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73
pages have not forgotten. It was a lovely summer
evening, and we found her sitting in her pretty little
garden in front of the door of her cottage, with her eyes
fixed on the bright glory of crimson and violet tints
which followed the departing traces of the king of day.
Her refined features, seen in profile, upon a background
of light, seemed surrounded by a halo, though their ex
pression scarcely had all its usual serenity, and a tear
glistened in her eyelid, as if she had recently been
crying. Her knitting had fallen on her lap, and her
folded hands, and the moving of her lips, showed that
she was engaged in prayer. She was so absorbed that
she did not notice our approach, and we stopped a
minute or two at the garden-gate, unwilling to disturb
her, and hesitating whether to go in or try to retreat
unnoticed, when a slight noise which I accidentally
made in touching the latch handle, led her to turn her
head in the direction in which we stood. She coloured
a little, but immediately got up and invited us to
come in.
“I fear, Margaret, we have disturbed you,” said
Agnes.
“ Oh 1 no, madam, you are very welcome, and so is
your husband, and the more that he is a friend whom I
always like to see when I’m in anyways troubled in my
mind ; the best of friends he have been to me and Tom,
barring Him as never leaves us,” she said, looking up
with a sweet smile.
“What is the matter, my dear Margaret?” asked
Agnes. “Nothing bad has happened to Tom? he’s
quite well, I hope ? ”
“ Nothing as to his body, ma’am, God be praised, nor
nothing as to his mind, to call wrong, leastways as to
anything he have done; but I do fear lest he be turning
into a dangerous path. You know, ma’am, my Tom
will always be a thinking, and asking, and learning, and
God forbid that he shouldn’t think, and learn, and ask
—and question, too, what he have been taught—for
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doesn’t the Scripture say we are to 1 prove all things,’
even that we may 1 hold fast that which is good.’ But
then, you see, ina’am, Tom’s young and hasn’t no expe
rience, so to speak; leastways none of what trial and
sorrow is, and what prayer is to them as are in sorrow
and trial, when we learn that best. And Mr N------ has
such notions about prayer as seems almost to take away
the wish to pray from them as minds them seriously.
And he, and a friend of his, has put such doubts and
difficulties into Tom’s head, that it does puzzle my poor
brains sadly to see to the way to the end of them,
when he comes to talk with me about them, and I
have been hoping that you would be coming soon, for I
was wishful that he should have a talk over them with
you.”
“ Well, Margaret, if you can tell me what they are,
I can at least try whether I may be able to help you.”
“ I don’t know, sir, that I can repeat them all quite
accurate, but they turns mostly on two points : first, on
the goodness and wisdom of God, and then on what’s
called the laws of nature. And I may say that it is
mainly the last matter which is a puzzle to me; for as
to the first difficulty, that we hadn’t ought to pray to
God, because He’s so wise that He doesn’t need us to
tell Him what we requires, and so good that He will
always give us what we want, without our asking Him
for it, that’s a matter which I and my William have
talked over many a time.”
“ And how did you settle it?” asked Agnes.
“ Well, madam, you see we concluded that if so be
God would have us pray to Him, as the Scriptures say,
it was not for us to refuse to do His will, because so far
as we can tell, He had no need of us to put Him in
mind ; for it might be for our sakes that He would have
us pray, that we might not forget Him. And Tom too,
he don’t deny but what that’s a good answer to what Mr
N----- says, as far as that, but then the question about
the laws of nature is much harder. For sure, if there
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75
be laws of nature, and I mind, sir, that in the books you
lends to Tom there’s a mighty deal about they laws ;
and how wise and regular, and unchangeable like they
are; and how they regulates the smallest matters, as
well as the biggest; they laws must be God’s true will.
And then it do seem as if all our praying couldn’t be
of no use, leastways as to the matters which these laws
regulates, and that’s nearly all that we are used to pray
to God for, except for the gifts of His Spirit in our
hearts.”
“Butthat is a very important exception, Margaret,
is it not ?”
“ Well, sir, I don’t say but what it is, and so I have
told Tom. Put it, that what Mr H------ says about
they laws of nature is all true, and that all they regulates
will happen just as they fixes, whether we pray or not,
as Mr N------ says, it’s all stuff to pray for rain, or fine
weather, or against the cholera, or the cattle plague,
and the like ; let it be that they as wrote the Bible mis
took as to these things, because they didn’t know as
much about God’s ways in the world, as He has taught
us, who live so much later; yet that don’t make any
difference as to what’s inside us, where we have no call
for book-learning to tell us what is, but God Himself
speaks direct to our hearts by His Spirit, when we call
upon Him.”
“ And what does Tom say to that ?”
“ Well, ma’am, he doesn’t justly deny but that it’s
true, only, you see, he hasn’t got the experience yet of
what it lies in prayer to do for our souls. And, besides,
there’s a friend of Mr N------ , who often comes to stay
with him, and who has got a talking with Tom, and he
will have it that to pray at all is a mistake, because, he
says, men put outside themselves, up above the clouds,
what really is only inside them ; the incarnation of God
in man, as he calls it: so that when we pray we are
really only a talking to ourselves, and hadn’t ought to
pray at all, but only to meditate. And Tom do seem to
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take to that notion mightily. But here he is,” she ex
claimed, “ well, that is lucky,” as she turned towards the
path on which her quick ear had caught the sound of his
approaching footsteps ; and a moment after he appeared
with his bat over his shoulder, flushed by the excitement
of a game at cricket. He began immediately to tell
his mother the story of the cricket field ; then catching
sight of Agnes and myself, stopped abruptly, and came
to shake hands with us.
“ It is hardly fair, Tom,” I said, “ to hinder your
chat with your mother, and bring you in to our talk,
while your head is running on your game.”
“ For the matter of that, sir, when the game is over,
perhaps the less said about it the better; only mother
always likes to hear of every thing that I have been
doing.”
“We have been talking about you, Tom,” said Mar
garet, “ I have been telling the Rector about the laws
of nature, and what you told me last night that Mr
D----- had said about the divine in man.”
“Well, sir, and what do you say to that?” asked
Tom rather eagerly.
“ It is like many other things, Tom, in my judgment.
It has a right side, and a wrong side. The will in man,
that principle of moral will which one of the greatest
German philosophers, Kant, used to say filled him with
admiration, when he thought of it, equal only to that
produced in him by the sight of the starry heavens, is
indeed divine ; the deepest manifestation of God that
we know of. But Mr B------ , I suspect, makes of it
not only a divine power, but the Deity; and that I can
not agree to. Worship of the unseen is to me the
noblest function of man, shared by no animal known to
us ; which has called forth the grandest efforts of human
genius. But if man is God, worship must change into
self-admiration. I cannot accept that conception as an
explanation of the sentiment of reverence.”
“ But then, sir, Mr D------ showed me a book by some
Herman philosopher, Feurbach, I think he called him.”
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77
“I dare say, Feuerbach’s Wesen des Christenthums.”
“ Yes, sir, it had some such name. Well, sir, he read
to me out of it, and showed how curiously everything
that men supposed God to be and to do, when they
worshipped Him, is just what they found in themselves;
what they thought or wished for.”
“ And why should it not be so ? Where are men to
get their conceptions of what God is from, except from
themselves, or from what they imagine about that which
they perceive out of themselves? You remember, I
dare say, what I showed you not long since, that we
know nothing about the world without us except through
our own imaginations, which have an instinct that makes
them refer to some object outside ourselves what we are
conscious of inside ourselves. Yet we do not doubt
that the world is different from ourselves, because we
have found out this instinct. Then if we discover a
similar instinct leading us to throw out of ourselves the
moral will which we find in ourselves, and worship it,
why should we refuse to follow this instinct as a safe
guide ?”
“Well, sir, it seems very different, as you put it,
from what it does at first.”
“ Audi alteram partem my boy; that is a lesson we
*
all have to learn, and very slow a great many people
are in learning it.”
“ But, sir, do you think it can be right in men to
have made of God a person who will always do whatever
they earnestly wish and ask for, as Mr Feuerbach says
they have done.”
“ By no means, my boy, I allow to Feuerbach and
Mr D------ , that the ideas which men have formed of
God as the hearer of prayer, have been as much mis
taken as the notions which they formed about the earth,
when they thought of it as the centre of the universe,
flat and round like a shilling; or of the sun, when they
imagined it to be set in a firmament above the earth,
* Hear both sides.
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and to run from one end of the heavens to the other.
Yet they were not wrong in thinking that the earth,
their home, had a solid foundation or that the sun is the
1 ruler of the day,’ the source of light and heat to us;
and so they may have been quite right in their faith in
a God ‘ who heareth prayer,’ and wrong only as to the
objects for which prayer should be made.”
“You mean, sir, I suppose, that we should pray to
God only about that which is inside us, and not about that
which is outside us at all; and that the mistake which
men made was to think that these outside things could
be changed by their prayers.”
I nodded assent.
“ Only, sir,” interposed Margaret, “ if I may be so
bold as to interrupt, they outside things has so much
to do with us, and takes up so much of what is in
our hearts, that it’s hard lines if we have to take them
out of our prayers. There’s Tom now, he’s outside of
me; but if I hadn’t ought to come to God with my
wishes, and fears, and hopes, and griefs about him, and
to pray that he may be kept well in health of mind and
body too; and may grow up a true child of God, and
be happy and blessed, and a blessing to those as come
after him, when I am dead and buried, I shouldn’t half
feel as if I was really praying to God.”
“ But, my dear Margaret,” said Agnes, “ as to all
of your prayer which is about Tom’s health, and happi
ness, and prosperity, I am sure you would always put
in, ‘ nevertheless, Thy will be done and if this will is
expressed by what are called the laws of nature, which
seem to be in themselves so wise, and reasonable,
are we to be the less resigned to it on that
account? ”
“No, madam ; I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be
resigned to God’s will, even if so be that it takes so
little note of us as they laws seem to do. Only it do
appear to me less loving and harder to bear. You see,
ma’am, I used to think that when we prayed to God for
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79
anything we very much wished for, G-od would give it
to us if it weren’t altogether best for us not to have it,
of which, no doubt, He could judge better than us ; and
then we had to bear with it, and put our trust in Him
who knew best. But now it seems as if our prayers
must always ‘ return into our own bosom,’ and weren’t
of no avail at all to get any outward blessing, or to keep
away any ill, either for ourselves or for any one we
loves, which is worst of all.”
“ I know what you feel, for I have felt it often my
self,” replied Agnes. “ But we may trust, Margaret,
where we cannot see. I do not believe that God would
have put into man’s heart such a desire to pray for
others, if these prayers were altogether contrary to His
will, and of no use except to deceive ourselves into
imagining that we can do what is quite beyond our
reach.”
“ Besides,” I added, “ although the more we know of
the universe the less ground we have for thinking that
our prayers can alter its profoundly wise order, we
must remember that we are ourselves a part of this
order, and that whatever affects our wills does or may
affect the outward course of events according to their
natural constitution. So that our prayers may really
help our wishes through their action on our characters.
How often has not the vicious son of pious parents been
checked in a career of evil by the recollections of a
mother’s gentle voice and tender love. Get to the
bottom of the charm which beautifies the memory of
her, and you will find the influence shed over her own
spirit by her communion with God. How often have
not the sick been recalled from the brink of the grave
by the calm patience, the unwearied watchfulness of
those who, around the couch of almost hopeless suffering,
drew their own strength from the unfailing Source of
spiritual power. How much of physical and moral evil
is there not perpetually arrested or diminished by the
benevolent effort which the habit of intercourse with
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God first awakens and then sustains against the rubs of
the world. If the unbiassed study of God’s action in
nature forbids our attributing to our prayers that direct
influence on events which pious faith is apt to ascribe
to them, it leaves untouched that wide field of indirect
influence, influence on outward events reflected from
ourselves, where an attentive observer may find what
he requires to encourage him in the belief that his prayers
are not fruitless, even when we leave the region where
their effect is certain.”
“Well, sir, God’s ways is apt to be wiser than ours,
and maybe it’s better for us that our prayers should
work, as you say, obliquely like through us rather than
direct. And no doubt that thought do take away a deal
of conceit which it’s hard to get rid of, if one supposes
that God can be got to do what we wishes only by our
asking for it.”
“ Indeed,” said Agnes, “ I am afraid if we lived in
the Palace of Truth, of which a French story tells us,
where what people said turned without their knowing it
into what they were really thinking of, ‘ Thy will be
done’ would very often change into ‘our wills be done;’
and against this malady there can be no remedy so good
as the conviction that our prayers can really aid others
than ourselves only by strengthening us to aid them.”
“There is another consideration, however,” I added,
“ which we have not noticed yet, but which I think will
remove a good deal of Margaret’s difficulties : and that
is, the large part that should be given to the feeling of
sympathy in considering the office of prayer. We come
to each other, with our griefs, and fears, and hopes, and
wishes, not because we expect those to whom we come
to be often able to help us, but because it is so sweet to
the affectionate heart to have the assurance of a fellowfeeling. Keble tells us that
‘ If one heart in perfect sympathy
Beat with another, answering love for love,
Weak mortals all entranced on earth would be.’
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81
Well, tills sympathy, so hard to find in other mortals,
we may find in the eternal Spirit; and, through it, we
may learn to bear with cheerfulness the heavy burdens
that life sometimes lays upon us, as well as its little
bothers, which are often more .worrying, and thus attain
that tender, calm, joyous serenity which, so far as we
can judge from the little we know about our Divine
Master, seems to have been one of His most striking
characteristics.”
“ So then, sir, you don’t think it at all again God’s
will that we should pour out our hearts to Him just as
they are, without troubling ourselves as to whether the
things that we speak about are such things as can be
altered by our prayers or not, but going to Him as a
friend, who, if He cannot help us outwardly, can and
will help us inwardly.”
“ Certainly, Margaret, that is my belief. 1 Out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,’ and should
speak. God, I think, would have us come to Him as
to a father, who can and will make flowers bloom and
waters flow for us in the desert, if, in the course of
events, which expresses His wisdom and goodness, our
path should lie through it; and teach us, in every con
dition of life, how much greater the inward and spiritual
is than the outward and material.”
“Well, sir,” said Tom, “I think lean understand
what you mean, and how our prayers may do us a great
deal of good, though they do not alter anything in
nature directly. Only don’t the Church prayers speak
as if we ought to think that they did make a difference
in these things.”
“ No doubt they do, my boy, in a great many places;
though, in other places, more especially in many of the
collects, which are often taken, as I have shown you,
from the oldest Christian services, they carry us into the
pure atmosphere of spiritual communion. I should
think our litany a great deal more perfect, if it made
us ask God to dispose us to do justice and mercy, and
F
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promote peace and good will, and succour, help, and
comfort all that are in danger, need, and tribulation,
and provide for the fatherless children and widows, and
forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and
so on, instead of making us pray that it would please Him,
to do all these things, as if the wish to do good came
from us, and had to be put into God’s will by our
reminding Him of what should be done. And it is in
this sense, as a summary of what I ought to try to do
by His help, that I use these prayers, which you know
I have no right to alter.”
“ Ah ! sir, I am sure it would do a deal of good, if
you would only say from the pulpit some of they things
that you has been saying to us to day. For, from what
folks tells me now and then, and still more from what
I learns of their sayings through Tom, I am thinking
that this question of what is the use of prayer, and
what should be prayed for, and what shouldn’t, is begin
ning to stir mightily the minds of many a one, may be
to scoffs, and may be to doubts and misgivings, which
ask for a wise word in season.”
“ It is a matter I have often thought of, I assure you,
Margaret; but in speaking to a mixed congregation
there is need of a great deal of care, not c to pull up the
wheat with the tares ’; still, I believe, I must soon try to
grapple publicly with this, and some other similar ques
tions, where the eternal truth needs to be distinguished
from grave though venerable errors, on which I trust
that my people are now growing ripe for the harvest.”
�Spiritual Being.
83
CHAPTER VIIL
SPIRITUAL BEING.*
“ Well, Rector, you have begun to speak out pretty
boldly ; you grappled with a toughish bit last Sunday
morning, and I must say you didn’t shirk it. D------ ,
whom I think you have met before, and I were talking
over your notions when you were announced.”
Such was my greeting from my neighbour N------ ,
who, by the way, has been a much more frequent atten
dant at church, of late, than he used to be, when I called
on him this morning, wishing rather to find out what
he thought of my sermon.
“ I hope not to shirk any matter fit for pulpit discus
sion, which you will, no doubt, admit, all subjects that
a clergyman may have to study for his own satisfaction,
are not.”
“ I think there can be no doubt of the fitness of your
subject last Sunday, if you clergymen mean to deal
with the thoughts which stir men’s minds now-a-days.
There’s nothing where science and religion come more
directly into collision, than on that question of prayer ;
how a universe of unchangeable, natural laws, is to be
fitted on to a universe of perpetual miracle ? For
though you Protestant divines tell us the age of
miracles is past, the special providences which you dish
up, are nothing but miracles disguised in a rational
istic sauce.”
“Is not the conflict of science rather with certain
notions commonly embodied in theological systems,
than with religion ? What is religion but the thought
of the omnipresent, eternal power manifested in the
universe, embodied into a principle of human action?
And what is science but the investigation of the way
* Readers who dislike metaphysical speculations, had better
pass over this chapter.
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in which this power acts ? What necessary conflict is
there between them?”
Pardon me, interposed Mr D----- , “but religion is,
I conceive, the putting our own personal being over
against, and outside ourselves, and then falling down
and worshipping it. While science is, at bottom, the
perception that the power which acts in us, and the
power which acts on us, is the same power, at once
subject and object.”
“ So that the reverence which the religious man
shows to God, you would say he ought to show to
himself?”
“ That is to say, to the idea of which his individual
self is only a passing form. Self worship is idolatry.
But what else is religion at bottom ? What are the
gods whom men worship, but glorified images of their
own selves, gifted with the will and the power to fulfil
all the wishes of their adorers ? ”
“ But how are we to form the conception of this ideal,
except from the study of our own nature?”
“ Our own nature, that is human nature, certainly :
but not our individual nature : nor even human nature
exclusively. All that is great and noble in man, and
all that is majestic, or beautiful, or wise in the universe
as it presents itself to us, gives its contribution to the
idea of true humanity, the subjective embodiment of
the universal being.”
“But what is to hinder us from taking all that is
great, and noble, or loveable in man, as well as all that
is majestic or beautiful or wise in nature, for the mate
rials whence to construct our idea of God ? If, after all,
we have to build up for ourselves an idea of humanity,
to which we are to bow our heads in philosophic sub
mission, and conform our individual wills to its dictates,
why not add to the ingredients the conception of perso
nal consciousness, and yield duty as reverence, instead
of as mere submission.”
“Because you pass, in doing that, from the con
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85
ceivable to the inconceivable, and from freedom to
slavery.”
“ Is love slavery ?”
“ Willing slavery I allow, but love is not for the
unseen.”
“ You mean, I presume, the essentially invisible,
that which never can be seen ? For the unseen, we
find countless instances of passionate love.”
“ I admit the correction. My remark related to the
formless, the invisible in itself, the all-embracing, all
penetrating, all-constituting power which we call God.
Of this I say, it may be the subject of contemplation,
may call forth admiring wonder, and devotion, but
not love, in any other sense than this, which is Spinoza’s
Amor intellectualis Dei.
*
Love is for the personal, the
concrete, for that which can love again, and busy itself
with the beloved object; but to ascribe to the all-up
holder this special attention is to individualise him
into a man; and a man torn by endless conflicting
claims, from the opposing wishes in the supposed objects
of his love.”
“ I agree to that, if His answer to their requests is
supposed to apply to outward things, where the gain of
one is usually the loss of another, yet even here, the
opposition concerns the operations of man rather than
those of nature ; wealth, for instance, rather than health.”
“ Ay,” interposed Mr N------ , “but health no less than
wealth is controlled by laws of nature, which you must
allow to be God’s will; and to change them in order to
satisfy man’s requests would be the action of a very
foolish God.”
“ But man must have strength enough to work under
these laws, or he could not exist at all. The wind
may not be tempered to the shorn lamb, but if the
lamb’s constitution is not tough enough to bear the
blast, it will die. The question is, whence is this
strength derived ? Is it with the inward, as it
* The intellectual love of God.
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clearly is with the outward, where we possess only a
certain measure of strength belonging to us at any one
time by our nature, which we must continually keep up
by proper food ? Is there no food for the soul ? no
meals by which it can renew its strength ?”
“Yes,” said Mr D------ , “by meditation, by with
drawal from the distractions of the external, to bathe
in the contemplation of the eternal idea.”
“ Eternal moonshine ! You must excuse me, D------ ,
but I can’t, for the life of me, enter into your idealism.
What are our ploughmen and carters to make of bathing
in the ideal ? If they would bathe in the river, it would
be of more use. No ; man’s business is to work, not to
dream ; work with his brains, if he has the luck to be
well provided in that way ; and work with his hands if
he has not; but any how work, and do something useful
in the world where he finds himself.”
“ Useful—full of use—very good,” said D------ , “ but
of use for what?”
“ Eood, clothes, fire, knowledge, which means all
these.”
“ And law, art, truth, morality, do these count for
nothing in your unideal world ? ”
“ No ! these are included in the useful things.”
“ Again I ask, useful for what? ”
“ To make it more easy to get food, clothes and fire,”
replied N------ , with a slight smile.
“ Come, N——,” I interposed, “ I cannot let you
belie yourself so grossly. I have known you too long
for a straightforward, truth-loving, kind-hearted, neigh
bourly man to believe for a moment, that you do not
prize truth, honesty, justice, and kindness, far more
highly than food, clothes, and fire, though I allow, there
can be no place on the earth for the last, at least in
this climate, among those who do not possess the first;
yet I agree with you that to refer our ploughmen and
carters, and I may add, the great mass of our popula
tion, to the contemplation of the ideal, as the source of
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87
moral strength, would be, as you phrase it, mere moon
shine, a little light perhaps, but no perceptible warmth.
But my expectations would be very different, if I could
say of the ploughman or carter, as the story in the Acts
says of Saul, £ Behold he prays.’ Can you honestly say
you think my expectations would be unfounded ? ”
“ That depends on what they are. If you expect
rational, sober goodness, I should say, yes.”
“ Is not that to ask more than a rational, sober philo
sopher should ask ? You take a man who has never
exercised what you would call thought at all, whose
whole mind has been occupied with the objects of
immediate sensation—you appeal to a sentiment of
reverence, of dependence, of love to the Author of his
being, latent within him—you succeed in awakening it
to activity. It brings him to his knees to seek for
pardon of past offences, for strength to resist the selfish
impulses which he finds in himself, for guidance in the
new life he wishes to lead. He finds peace, strength,
light, too, though a light modified by his power of per
ception. Is it reasonable to demand that he shall see all
that this light can reveal as clearly as if he had been long
accustomed to it ? Is it not much, if he begins to
realize the fact that there is a light within him besides
the light which affects his eyes ? ”
“But,” said Mr I)------ , “why has such a man as
you adduce never learned to think? Why are the
notions of moral duty, of love, of a life nobler than the
life of sense, so strange to him, but because he has
never been educated to look beneath the sensible—
because he has been left to grow up, not only in igno
rance of all speculative thought, but with no acquain
tance with the examples of the noble and loveable,
with which the history of mankind is crowded ? ”
“ There is too much truth, I fear, in what you say.
Our ordinary education, especially of the poor, is very
far from dealing as it should do with the most effective
of all moral teaching—the teaching by the history of
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great and good men. But if we are to present these
true noblemen of our race as they really were, with the
motives by which they were habitually actuated set
forth truly, 1 without fear and without favour,’ in how
many cases would not religion, the reverence for an
unseen Being, the desire to please Him, the habit of
worship, be a prominent trait in their characters ? ”
“No doubt, religion is the philosophy of childhood;
and the past is the childhood of humanity, speaking
collectively. But, in citing the actions of the heroes of
our race as models, we might present them without
noticing the errors of conception which disfigure them.”
“And so write false history like Hume,” interposed
Mr N------ . “ No, let us have the genuine article. If
you want mere moral tales after your own fancy, write
good story books, if you are not sick of them; but
don’t turn live men and women into puppets, dressed
up to suit your fancies.”
“ And suppose we tried your plan, Mr D------ ,” I
said, “ and endeavoured to translate the actual motives
of our heroes or heroines into the form which you think
they would have assumed, if they had possessed an
insight into the nature of the universe as deep as you
suppose to belong to the manhood of our race, would
not the narratives lose their attraction for our living
children? You remember, I daresay, Goethe’s epi
gram :—
‘ Johannis Feuer sei unverwehrt,
Die Freude nie verloren,
Besen werden immer stumpf gekehrt,
Und Jungens immer geboren.’ ”*
* See Eckerman’s Conversations, I. 298, for interesting re
marks on this sentiment, which may be paraphrased :—
Never mind, if the young ones jump,
When St John’s fires shine on the hill;
Brooms will be brushed to a stump,
And men born babies still.
“I need only to look out of my window,” says Goethe, “t°
have before my eyes, in the brooms which sweep the streets
�Spiritual Being.
89
“ Yes, I believe you are right. Childhood will have
its proper food. No doubt this is the reason of the
strong hold which these stories out of the childhood of
mankind, with their personal deities, have upon suc
ceeding generations who should have outgrown them.
They present the ideal to the child in the form in
which the child can grasp it; and the hold once taken,
is not easily lost. Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit
odorem Testa diu.” *
“ Are you quite sure that the grasp ought to be lost ?
You hold, I presume, that whatever is, is in some sense
right ? Why should not this general tendency in man
to ascribe personality to God be regarded as the spon
taneous, instinctive testimony of Nature to the fact
that the assumption is rightly made ? ”
“ How can that be possible ? What do we mean by
G-od but the Infinite, the Limitless, the Universal ?—
and what by a person but a limited, finite, individual ?
How can these conceptions be combined in the same
being ? ”
“ Are not you yourself personifying the infinite in
that objection, treating it as a something set over
against the finite, which it shuts out ? Take the infinite
in the sense of that on which the finite rests—that
which utters itself in the finite—and where is the
absurdity of attributing to it personality more than
attributing to it force.”
“ Force is essentially unlimited in its idea?’
“ No, that it is not,” interposed Mr N------ ■. “ your
‘ ideas,’ are quite out there. Science knows nothing of any
and the children who run about in them, the symbols of the
ever wearing out and ever fresh renewing world. Thus
children’s sports and the enjoyments of youth preserve them
selves, and are handed on from century to century. For
absurd as they may appear to our riper age, children always
remain children, and are like themselves in all ages. And so
the St John’s fires should not be forbidden, and the'pleasures
of the dear little ones in them not be spoilt.”
* Long will the cask keep the scent it imbibed when new.
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force but what is limited. All her quantities are fixed;
though no doubt they may be heaped up till they seem
overwhelming. With your unlimited force, you would
plunge us into the miraculous before we knew where we
were.”
“ No doubt,” replied Mr D------ , ££ the manifestations
of force are finite, but not, I conceive, the principle.
But the principle of personality is limited. The idea
of a person is that of an individual consciously distin
guished from other individuals. Therefore, it is neces
sarily inapplicable to the common source of all being.
What can such a universal Being be conscious of, as
distinct from his own Being ?”
££ That which is determined by Him; the limited
existences, as distinguished from the limiting will,” I
replied. ££ You or I can imagine a universe filled with
forms occupying space, and determined by our wills.
All of these would be objects of our consciousness, but
they would not absorb it. We should remain the con
scious individual creators over against our imaginary
creations; why may not God be supposed similarly
conscious of that which He sustains, as distinct from
His sustaining will, and thus find, in His own eternal
action, the perpetual condition of His own person
ality 1”
“ First, because neither you nor I can imagine an
infinite universe.
££ Secondly, because what we thus imagined would not
be living and conscious.
“ Thirdly, because the notion of will is inapplicable to
the all-sustaining power ; which, as it can want nothing,
can wish for nothing, and therefore can rvill nothing.
Will, like ends, purposes, and all the other faculties
which man has borrowed from his own experience and
attributed to God, must be excluded from the philoso
phical conception of the absolute, infinite and eternal.”
“ I can’t say much for your first argument,” observed
Mr N------ , “ How do you know that the universe is
infinite ?”
�Spiritual Being.
91
ct From the idea of infinity,—where will you fix its
limits 1”
“ I don’t undertake to say ; but that does not prove
that there are none.”
“ Are you not mixing the infinity of the possible with
the infinity of the actual,” I asked. “ To the universe
which you or I can imagine, no absolute limit could be
set, beyond that which we might fix, to carry out our
own conceptions. Enlarge its bounds as much as you
please, there must always be an endless possibility of
widening them. Yet somewhere we should certainly
set a limit to our creations. Why should not God
similarly set a limit to His ? ”
“ And beyond this limit there would be V’
“ No-thing.”
“No space ?” asked Mr D.
“ Not, if by space you mean that which is occupied
by real objects. The actual of co-existence, or space,
is limited, as I conceive, on every side by the possible,
compared with which it becomes a vanishing point,
however vast in itself; thus the idea of space becomes
assimilated to that of succession or time ; where the
actual, however long any period of it is assumed to be,
is only a vanishing point between the possible past and
future.”
a You are making the real world very unreal with
your vanishing points,” said Mr N----- , “ Let us keep
to the positive, to what we know.”
“ By all means,” I replied, 11 but what do we posi
tively know, except that we possess conscious wills,
which can exercise force and self-control; and that we
are acted upon by forces of various kinds, not under
our control. The question is what is at the bottom of
these forces which act upon our conscious wills ? Why
should we not suppose them also to be the expression of
conscious will 1 ”
“ Because they exhibit no signs of consciousness.
Science shows us everywhere the reign of law, universal,
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impartial, indifferent to mineral or vegetable, animal or
human ; embracing all, moved by none.”
“ You describe the apparent conditions of the out
ward ; but are these also the conditions of the inward,
of the conscious spirit ? This is just the point at issue.
Is there no inward response to the will of man, when
it throws itself upon the infinite love, from which I
assume all Being to arise ? Pardon me, if I affirm that
there is.”
“ No doubt there is a response,” said Mr D------ .
“ Turn your gaze inward, to the forms of ideal perfection,
the Infinite within you, and you may rise superior to
the struggles of the Finite without. But this brings
me to my second objection. Granting, for a moment,
that the universe of actual existing objects may be
limited by the infinity of the possible, and may thus give
to this infinite a sort of personality, such as we should
retain, over against that which our imaginations might
produce, still this imaginary world would be a world of
dead, unconscious objects, but the actual world culmin
ates in living, conscious objects. So that if we ascribe
consciousness to the power by which they are sustained,
we get it twice over. Your G-od must be conscious of a
consciousness distinct from his own consciousness, and
yet entirely dependent on his conscious will. Surely
this is absurd ? ”
“ To weigh your objection fairly we must first con
sider in what consciousness consists.”
££ If you want to know what the consciousness of the
real world depends on,” interposed Mr N------ , “ science
has pretty well settled that question to be the perception
of the molecular movements of our nerves. All sensa
tions resolve themselves into that.”
££ Add to this perceptive power a constructive, active
will; the capacity of originating and combining move
ments in these nerves, and putting together the move
ments affecting them from without into groups, which
then we can at pleasure pull to pieces, and compare
�Spiritual Being.
93
and rearrange the materials composing them—a variety
of emotions urging the will to act in this or that way
by the stimuli of pleasure or pain—and certain princi
ples, such as the desire for truth, for harmony, and love,
which serve as guides in these acts ; and I think we shall
have a tolerably complete account of consciousness.”
“ I allow that,” said Mr D------ .
££ Then why may we not imagine ourselves to bestow on
any of our imaginary creatures these powers without iden
tifying the consciousness involved in their use with our
consciousness of what the powers are in themselves ?”
“ But where is there left in your description any
room for that intercourse which you assume as possible
between the individual and the Universal Being ? ”
“ In the governing power which guides the complex
machinery of what we call ourselves, and rests, I think,
upon an external power, on whom it may or may not
lean.”
“ But is this governing power distinct from the desire
for truth, harmony, and love?”
££ No, I hold it to be identical with those desires,
which form a sort of inner sense—a channel whereby
the Being by whom we are sustained can act upon us
from within, as He acts upon us from without, through
our senses : disclosing to us His operations in the one
case, and drawing us to Himself in the other.”
££ Something, I suppose, as Aristotle imagined God to
act on the world generally without being acted upon.”
££ Yes, barring the not being acted on.”
££ How acted on ? ” asked Mr N------ .
“.Much as a wise and kind father is acted on by the
sorrows and difficulties of his children if they turn to
him for support and guidance, and who gives to them
his sympathy and counsel.”
££ Ay, there we have it,” exclaimed Mr N------ ; “that’s
just what I feared we should come to at bottom. God
counsel, God-guidance—the root of all fanaticism—
when we take our own likings and dislikings, our fancies,
and impulses for the teachings of God’s wisdom.”
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“ But if this were so, as no doubt has often been the
case, why should the result be worse than if we take our
own likings and dislikings, our fancies and impulses, as
the rules of our conduct ? ”
“ Because you cease to judge them? God’s teaching
is not to be questioned.”
“ And is passion clear-sighted ? are caprice and im
pulse ready to allow themselves to be questioned ? Grant
all you can say of the superstitious folly, the ungrounded
assumption of infallibility, which often disfigures the
opinions of conscientiously pious folk, is it of no value
that they are conscientious ? that they endeavour to
guide their conduct by some rule? nay, that the rule
which they choose is the supposed will of One whom they
think of as perfectly just, good, pure, and unselfish.”
“ No doubt,” said Mr D------ , “ it is of great value.
All excellence depends on the apprehension of the
ideal, and religion is the form under which the reason,
semi-conscious of its own divine nature, presents to itself
the idea of moral goodness—the highest of all ideas.
But the instrument by which we apprehend the ideal is,
thought. To suppose that God will open the world of
ideas to us by any means other than our own meditations,
is to pave the way for every sort of delusion. It is to
make God think for us—a notion which I should have
supposed quite opposed to your views.”
“ You judge me truly there. The aid which I con
ceive that man receives from God is not counsel so
much as force. It resembles the power of seeing rather
than that of correctly interpreting what may be seen ;
it is strength to control impulse, not the decision where
and when that strength shall be employed.”
“ And this strength to control impulse, do you deny
it to man as a natural possession ?”
“By no means; but, like our other natural gifts, it must
grow if it is not to decay ; and for its healthy growth it
needs two things, culture, and an atmosphere suited to
it. We may cultivate it by meditation : but for the
atmosphere we need communion with God.”
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95
‘ But how can men have communion with God,” said
Mr N——, “ if their heads are full of all kinds of false,
nonsensical notions about Him, and the universe ? ”
“ As a child may have communion with a father who
loves it, and whom it trusts and loves, though it may
have very mistaken notions about his fortune, influence,
social position, or plans and objects in life. It is the
property of loving will to penetrate beneath all the
complications of the outer world to its vital principle,
where the mistakes of our intelligence vanish into in
significance.”
“ That is somewhat strange doctrine,” said Mr D-----“ from clerical lips. When has your church ceased to
teach that ‘ whosoever would be saved’ must think aright,
that is, as she teaches?”
“ And when has philosophy ceased to protest against
the intolerance involved in such a doctrine ?”
“ But philosophy has never been indifferent to
truth ?”
“ Nor am I. Indifference to truth is one of the most
fatal of errors, for it is indifference to one of the noblest
principles of our nature; but indifference to truth, and
error in our judgment of what is true are very different
things.”
“ But,” said Mr N------ , li to pray to beings who have
no power to help us, if they exist at all, to angels, and
saints, and the virgin Mary, or to a piece of bread
which the priest declares to be God, must be sheer waste
of breath ; yet the Catholic gets his answers to prayer,
according to his own account, as fully as you do. Nay,
his books of devotion are fuller, I take it, of what you
call ‘ communion with God,’ than Protestant ones.”
“ And, for influence on his life,” added Mr D------ ,
“ his devotion is no way inferior to yours. Are not
your Anglo-Catholics now beginning to walk, with un
equal steps, in the paths which monks and nuns have
trod for centuries before you ? ”
“ Granted,” I replied, li but what then ? If our com
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munion with God depends not on the correctness of our
judgments, but on the action of our wills, these diversi
ties of opinion can not materially tell on it. Angel,
saint, eucharistic sacrifice, virgin-mother, what are they
but words ? If the thing signified beneath them all be
substantially the same, what matters the name ? Prayer
is not incantation. Whether it is addressed to God or
the Lord, Theos, Deus, Jahve, Elohim, or Allah, is im
material to its efficacy.”
“ You seem about to land us,” said Mr N------ , “in
Pope’s—
‘ Father of all, in every age,
By every name adored.
By saint, by savage, or by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.' ”
“Not quite. My position is only, that communion
with God depends on the degree of harmony subsisting
between the will of God, and that of man, and the
sympathy of God with the will which turns to Him ;
and that this sympathy is no more destroyed by the
mistakes which men may make about the Divine nature,
than the sympathy of a father with the love of his
child is destroyed by the mistakes of the child as to his
fortune, influence, or objects in life.”
“But,” said Mr D——, “the Catholic idea of the
intercession of the saints for their favourites is fatal to
morality.”
No doubt it may be, if the saint is looked on as a
good, easy fellow, who will put up with what God would
not tolerate, and use his Court influence to get his fav
ourites into heaven. But, when this is so, the case is
out of my rule. We pass from faults of judgment to
faults of will. The father who smiles at his son’s blun
ders, will whip him if he tells lies.”
“Well, Rector,” interposed Mr N------ , “you have
turned one of the stiffest obstacles in the way of the
belief, in a direct divine intercourse with men—the in
finite quantity of nonsense that men have believed
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97
about God. If God acts only on the wills of men, and
only when they turn to Him, as you suppose, this
nonsense may be carried to the credit of human stupidity,
and that is equal to meeting any amount of drafts
upon it.”
“ To me there is a much greater obstacle,” added Mr
D------- , “ in the untenableness of the conception of a
divine will, distinct from its manifestations in the uni
verse which it sustains. The Christian God, governing
all things from His especial dwelling-place i above,’
whatever that may mean ; directing them by His word,
which orthodox divines please themselves by identifying
with the so-called laws of nature, as if nature were a
conquered province, governed by deputy according to
a set of rules imposed by the conqueror : to me, excuse
my bluntness, this God is the absurdest, and most irra
tional of beings.
‘ Was war, ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Eingejaufen liessetf? ”’*
“ But the Christian faith does not involve the belief
in such a being,” I replied, “ at least I have no such
faith. I admit fully the force of Goethe’s words. God
is to me as essentially immanent in the world upheld by
Him, as He is distinct from it by His consciousness,
and transcendent to every finite manifestation of Him
self in wisdom and moral perfection.”
“ Where can we place such a Deity ? ” asked Mr
D-"~ , “ unless in your region of infinite possibility ?
What room is left for this infinitely perfect will within
the universe of finite beings, without overlaying and
stifling them ? And how are progress and development
conceivable if we begin with perfection ? ”
“ Is it not a principle of all ideal philosophy that the
idea of God transcends space and time ?”
“ The idea certainly; but you are dealing with its
manifestation, with a God who works in and upholds
* Goethe. What sort of God would he be who should only
push from without, should let the All run round his finger ?
a
>,/
'
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the universe. We come to my third objection: the
inapplicability to the Divine Being of those notions
taken from our human nature, of which will is one. You
have likened the Divine action to the process by which
we can produce within our brains geometrical forms.
Now the power of will thus exercised by us may be con
ceived to reside in our brains, and to embrace the sen
sible elements on which it acts, and from which it seems
to be distinct. But how can such a distinction be made .
in the Divine power? Assume it to be within these
sensible elements, how does it differ from them ? As
sume it to be without them, how does it sustain them ?”
“ I imagine literally, by embracing them. Finite
existences are to me like corks—excuse so coarse a like
ness—-each floating in an elemental ocean of power—
each possessing its own measure of force, physical or
spiritual, drawn from the inexhaustible source of Being
around it, and distinguished from that source in two
ways: first, by the specific character assigned to it ;
secondly, by its local boundary.”
“ I think science may help you there,” said Mr N------ .
“ If you want a dwelling-place for this inexhaustible
power she offers you the aether. The notion would make
God literally ‘robe Himself in light.’”
“ Thanks for the suggestion,” I replied. “ It is an
idea which has often occurred to me, especially since I
heard of Professor Challis’ resolution of the force of
attraction, that marvel of marvels, into the reaction of
the pressure of aethereal waves, originating in the cease
less motion of the atoms or centres of material action,
which are thus held together in the endless variety of
combinations disclosed to us by chemistry. Now assume
this notion to be true, does it not give us just such a
transcendant, yet ever present conscious source of all
sensible power, as we want, in order to substitute the
possibility of reasonable theories of the existing pheno
mena, in place of the hopeless mysteriousness of panthe
istic assumptions ?”
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99
“ Mystery,” replied Mr D------ , “ may well hang over
the origin of finite existence. What can you say of it,
after all, more than that it is a mode of the infinite—the
manifestation under the conditions of co-existence, and
succession, of that which is omnipresent and eternal,
and must therefore be essentially different from its
manifestations ? ”
“ We can form no imagination of the origin of an
eternal action, I admit; but it does not follow that we
cannot truly imagine the nature of this action. The
error of modern Pantheism seems to me to lie in over
looking this distinction. Since the breakdown of the
great systems, by which the successors of Kant tried to
show how the Eternal Subject-Object could utter itself
in the actual world, they seem to have taken refuge in
the unfathomable, and build their philosophy on nega
tions. Because eternity and infinity are inconceivable
as positive realities, therefore they assume that we can
form no positive conception about that which is infinite
and eternal, though it is always present with us. Be
cause the self-existent must be essentially different, qua
its. self-existence, from all that exists through its action,
therefore they assert that no qualities predicable of the
latter can in any sense be attributed to the former.
Intelligent will, for instance, they deny to God as dis
tinct from the will and intelligence of the finite creature,
because the will of God cannot be supposed to vary like
that of man, or to limit itself to final ends ; as if reason
were essentially variable, and will could not understand
its own action unless its operations changed; and this
they do without in any way explaining how will and in
telligence can emerge from that which is will-less and
unintelligent. And yet they present to us this incon
ceivable Being as an object of intellectual love and
adoration.”
“ I think you are quite right there, Rector,” said Mr
M------ ; “ I cannot, for the life of me, make out what
my friend D——’s religious philosophy rests on.’ Tell
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us that we can know nothing about essence ; that our
knowledge is limited to phenomena and their laws; you
have an intelligible system at all events. I don’t assert
that it is true. Or deduce the phenomena from your
essence, as Schelling and Hegel, I understand tried to
do, and I can test the value of your deductions. But
to assert that you know what the Deity essentially is,
and attribute to Him all conceivable perfections, pro
vided always that they are taken, one and all, in an
inconceivable sense, which appears to me to be D------ ’s
method, is to give me words instead of things. It is an
insult to common sense.”
“ The question,” replied Mr D------ , “ is whether
there is not a sense higher than eommon sense, which
finds its satisfaction in this process. But, apart from
that, do we not lose the most ennobling conception of
humanity—the idea of development and progress—
while we are seeking for a reasonable explanation of
the processes of life and thought, which after all is not
forthcoming ? ”
“ The ideas of progress and development are not
excluded,” I answered, “ by the reference of all being
to the action of a conscious loving will distinct from
that which is thus developed. The material universe,
within which alone progress and development can be
looked for, is as the ‘ small dust of the balance ’ com
pared with the vastness of its aethereal surroundings.
It lies in them, I conceive, as an ever-moving, changing
deposit, invariable only in its ultimate elementary
forms. Universes may begin in nebulous mist, out of
which suns and planets may aggregate and separate.
Life, on these centres of local existence, may begin by
the formation of ‘protoplasm,’ and build itself up,
through ‘ natural and sexual selection,’ into an endless
diversity of living forms, such as enrich our planet.
Moral consciousness may have sprung from the family
and social instincts, purified and enlarged by imagi
nation and reflection, till they are converted into
�Spiritual Being.
IOI
truths of the reason. But why not suppose, around
and pervading these centres of progressive develop
ment, an eternal reason ever present—a loving, con
scious will which realises its own harmony through the
diversities of force derived from itself, and supplies to
the sense of reverence and instinct of worship inherent
in man an adequate object ?”
“ There is a difficulty in the way of that supposition
which you do not meet,” said Mr I)------ . “ You have
adduced the material universe to make the idea of per
sonality conceivable in respect to God, assuming this
universe to be limited, because you argue that God
may be thought of as a distinct person, inasmuch as
His will is distinguishable from the finite reality willed
by it. But if this reality is such an infinitesimal
feature of the Divine action, as must be assumed on
your present argument, the foundation of your reason
ing in regard to the Divine personality appears to slip
away. Your God would be conscious of himself as
a person only here and there, in minute spots and
patches within the endless vastness of His impersonal
being.”
“ I agree that the foundation of the idea of a Divine
personality must be sought for deeper, where it may, I
think, be found. The world around us displays a
three-fold action. In Nature we find a double mani
festation—of elemental force, and organising wisdom
which uses this force as means to its own ends. Man
has in himself, as I consider, evidence of the presence
of a communicating sympathy and love. Each of these
powers has a distinct species of work, limited by and
limiting the operation of that belonging to the others.
These three hypostases, to use the consecrated expres
sion, carry the notion of personal distinction into the
eternal unity of the Divine essence, far beyond depen
dence on its realization in the local action of any
material bodies.”
“ You talk of an (organizing wisdom,’ said Mr
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D------ , “ displayed in living beings, as if it were
certain that the principle of life is not itself a modifi
cation of the powers with which it seems thus to deal,
mysteriously evolved in the continuous order of changes
which constitute the development of what we call
Nature. We fix limits to the capabilities of these
powers by the extent of our knowledge, in other words,
by the vastness of our ignorance; but have not our
chemists already begun to break down the ‘ hard and
fast line ’ between chemical and organic action ? Have
they not built up themselves, out of the so-called primi
tive elements, a host of substances identical with those
which living beings produce ? Where shall we set a
limit to this action ? Why may not the old dream of
the alchemists come true some day, and life itself, in
some of its lowest forms, appear as the result of some
combination of chemical actions effected in our labora
tories ? ”
“ And if it did do so,” I replied, “would not this be
a result of intelligent wisdom, of a profound knowledge
of the properties of the elemental bodies, applied by a
being who had learnt how to use them as the means to
his consciously determined ends ? How could the
appearance of a living substance under such conditions
be any argument against the position, that these
elemental bodies cannot give rise to organized beings
without some superadded intelligent action?”
“ The Rector has hit you there,” said Mr N------ .
“ You will be driven to your unintelligent intelligence—
the intelligence which is not intelligent of what it
does—and that’s a ground where I beg to be excused
from following you.”
“ We come to mystery, no doubt,” replied Mr D------ ,
“ but does Mr P——’s alleged explanation do anything
more ?”
“Certainly, until we can show how the intelligent
application of such powers as we can distinctly conceive
may give rise to what we find existing, we must remain
�Spiritual Being.
103
in the twilight of mystery. But we have always some
hope of light coming, while I cannot see the slightest
prospect of it, if we set out by denying conscious intel
ligence to the power from which conscious intelligence
arises.”
“ And until you can show how such a result is possi
ble, I don’t see what right you have to call your system
more reasonable than P------’s,” said Mr N
.
“ While unquestionably it is less satisfactory to our
emotional nature,” I added.
“ Well! ” replied Mr D——, “ I own you have the
advantage there, so long as we do not look too closely
into the action of the living power in nature. But what
shall we say to the strife, the pain, the cruelty which
meets us everywhere in her creations ; the creatures
formed to prey upon each other, even to live on other
living nay sensitive creatures, by skill as exquisite,
adaptation of means to ends as perfect, as. any that can
be pointed out among the instrumentalities conducive
to the happiness of their possessors ? Is it not an un
meaning absurdity to call this the action of intelligent
love? Nay, is it not inconsistent with the notion of
intelligent design at all, to form one creature with a set
of faculties specially adapted for its preservation, and
at the same time to form another, with another set of
faculties specially adapted to destroy what constitutes
the first ? ”
££ Yet you admit that the power which acts thus tends
to, and culminates in, the production of intelligent
design, and self-sacrificing love ? ”
££ Yes, in the creatures fitted to embody it.”
<£ And, surely, it cannot give rise to that which is
inconsistent with its own essence ? ”
As Mr D------- did not reply to this remark, I con
tinued, ££ That we should use this action in nature to
qualify the notions of intelligence and love derived only
from ourselves I quite admit. To do so may tend, I
think, to make our love more genuine, by becoming
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Via Catholica.
less sentimental, and our notions of intelligent action
more profound, by seeing ends beyond ends, wheels
within wheels. We may learn to be more modest and
less exacting. But I see no reason in it for denying
that the capacity for sympathy, which we find in the
human has its eternal root in the Divine. Whence does
it come otherwise ? ”
“ Of course, this capacity like every other capacity
must come out of the Infinite,” said Mr D------ . “ The
question is, does it exist as sympathy till it appears in
the Finite ? May it not be like our sensations of colours
and sounds, which certainly do not exist, as colours
or sounds, except in our organisms, whatever sources
of them there may be in the objects which act upon
us?”
“ I much question that theory of the non-existence
of colours or sounds out of ourselves,” interposed Mr
N------ . “ No doubt the perceptions are in our bodies ;
but what is perceived ? Certain molecules vibrating
at certain rates ; that’s all I take it. And what gives
rise to these perceptions ? Certain other molecules
vibrating at similar rates. I call the perception of the
first set of vibrations, by a particular name, say blueness.
Why am I not justified in asserting,—all bodies which
have this rate of vibration possess blueness as an in
herent quality ? ”
“ How can you perceive blueness or any other colour
without light ? ” asked Mr D—
“ My perception is one thing, and the thing to be
perceived is another,” replied Mr N------ . “ But when it
is asserted that that of which I am conscious, and that
which I assume as the cause of my consciousness are
quite unlike, the assertion seems to me opposed to the
ascertained facts : On the contrary we have good reason
for supposing that the two things are as much alike as
it is well possible for two distinct things to be ; namely,
in both cases similar states of molecular movements.
The feeling of pleasure or pain which I may have from
the perception is quite another matter.”
�Spiritual Being.
105
“ And the act of perception requires the intervention
of a medium, I observed, so it is I think with spiritual
action. The Divine love exists all around us, like the
molecular movements which cause colours. But we
cannot perceive these colours without the intervention
of light, which acts through our nervous constitutions
upon our conscious wills. Neither can we perceive the
Divine love except through the spirit of love in us, which
acts upon our wills, and opens them to the source of
spiritual blessings; as the light opens our eyes to the
beauty inherent in nature, and the air makes our ears
susceptible to her harmonies.”
“You apply your analogy very ingeniously,” said
Mr D——-, “ but to return to your theory : The work
of creation is not very equitably apportioned among
your triple hypostases. The sphere of power, which
must be co-equal with material existence, is immeasur
ably vaster than the sphere where organized existence
is possible, and this again comprehends an ocean of
being, within which the objects of communicating love
are scarcely discernible.”
“Rari nantes in gurgite vasto.” *
“You are going rather too fast,” said Mr N------ .
“ Our friend, I take it, will tell you, that the all-per
vading, all-binding power exerted by the aether, is a
manifestation common to all his three hypostases.”
“ You hit my notion exactly,” I replied. “ Observe
also that the importance of the work rises in proportion
to the limitation of the sphere within which it can be
exercised. Finis coronat opus. The end limits the means.
The living rooms of a family may form but a small
portion of a great mansion, but they are the centre to
which all its arrangements point. So the manifesta
tion of physical power in the universe, may be justly
said to have its final cause in the formation of those
spheres of activity upon which organized life can exist:
* Swimming sparsely in the vast whirlpool.
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Via Catholica.
and the far-stretching slow development of organic
life, through its infinitely varied possibilities, must be
regarded as having its true end, in the production of
beings who can respond to the all-sustaining spirit which
communicates with them.”
“ So that your conception,” said Mr D------ , “ comes
■ to this. Each Divine hypostasis is always and every
where present within the limits of realised space, either
as the patent actor or as the latent mover to the patent
action.”
“Or as the common source of power, the aether,”
added Mr N------ .
“ Yes; I ascribe to that threefold conscious Divine
Will, in which I believe, the principle that what comes
out last is essentially first, insisted on by Hegel, if I am
not mistaken, as the rationale of his unconscious devel
opment of consciousness. The fruit is potentially pre
sent in the stem, which may be said to be what it is in
order to produce it.”
“We have got into a region of very subtle distinc
tions,” said Mr N------ , “ but there seems more founda
tion for them than I thought possible. Certainly there
are two forms of power, sensibly working together in
the world ; the chemical, and the organising, plastic, of
which the last seems to use the first and yet to depend
upon it. One cannot be less eternal than the other.
And if you have the two acting together at the same
time, there you have two out of the three hypostases at
all events.”
“ And, as you have suggested,” I continued, “ all
three may be conceived to be eternally present in the
aether, which pervades everything, and may be regarded
as the manifestation of their joint Being, the sphere of
their proper personality.”
“ Do you allow, then,” asked Mr D------ , 11 that the
divine action in nature is impersonal ? ”
“ If by c personal’ is meant that which can consciously
control its own action, no doubt no such power shows
�Spiritual Being.
107
itself in chemical forces, nor yet in the lower forms of
organised being. How far they may embody some
elemental phase of consciousness, out of which, in
animals and men, conscious personal life is built up, I
do not undertake to determine. My position is only
that these forces are agents floating in an ocean of con
scious Being, and are not the originators, but only the
local limited manifestations of the eternal spiritual Life.
The impersonal is to me not less divine than the per
sonal, but rests on it. It is, if I may so venture to call
it, the ever-during deposit of an ever-present personality,
which is such in virtue of the threefold modes of action
belonging to the principle of will.”
“ Well, I must allow,” observed Mr D------ , “ that
your theory goes on all fours. And it has the merit of
showing that the universe cannot be the accident of a
divine caprice, but is the necessary result of the relation
borne by each divine hypostasis to the other two, of
which its own action is either the condition or the com
plement. But it wants a good deal of thinking over.”
“And I greatly question,” said Mr N------ , “ whether
it is very orthodox, after all. But luncheon is just
ready. You will stay and take something with us,
won’t you ?”
“ A very orthodox way of ending the discussion at
all events,” I replied, “ but I am not to be frightened
by your thunder. My opinions on this subject have
more to say in defence of their orthodoxy than you may
fancy.”
��VIA CATHOLICA:
A'
r
■
or,.
*
•
PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A COUNTRY PARSON,
PART II.
’Eir^t oi’% leprpov ov8e /3oeiy]P
Apvvadriv, a rt Toaalv aedXca ylverat. dvopQiv,
’AXXa irepl 'j'vxys ^eov "'Ektopos lirro8dp.oio.
II. xxii. 159.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One Shilling and Threepence.
��VIA CATHOLICA.
PART II.
�PAGE
Chapter IX. Free Speech.............................................. 113
The Incarnate Deity .... 125
,,
X.
,,
XI.
„
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XII.
,,
>5
99
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146
99
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164
�CHAPTER IX.
TREE SPEECH.
WO letters this morning; one from my very High
Church friend R------ , the other from the now some
what noted Theist W------ , old university chums, both
of them ; but how differently impelled on the voyage of
life 1
Each offering to come to us for a day or
two, and just at the same time. “ Agnes, my love,” I
said, when she had read the letters, “I suppose we must
accept them both, but I am rather afraid of, either a
very contentious or a very stiff visit, from their widely
differing opinions, on questions which both justly con
sider of the highest importance. With either by himself
I should have no fear ; but, both together ! ”
“ I don’t think, my dear Edward, you need be alarmed,
even at that prospect; I have very great faith in your
powers of keeping the peace,” she replied, smiling. “ I
think you possess a charm for getting people to open
their' hidden stores of thought and belief, without pro
ducing an explosion, even when they conflict.”
“Well! we will try at all events. I know that I
have a true helpmate in you ; and that is half the battle.
Woman’s indifference to serious talk, or dread of having
her cherished idols too roughly handled, are at the
bottom of the wretched seclusion from each other’s
minds, in which so many of us live. But between us,
happily, no such barrier exists.”
“ No, God be thanked for that,” she answered;
T
�114
Via Catholica.
giving me a kiss on the forehead, as she left the room,
to make her domestic arrangements for the expected
guests.
The anticipated trial came on at dinner, through a
question which W------ , in his off-handed manner, asked
R“ Whether he had read Theodore Parker's
Discourses on Religion, and what he thought of
them ?”
6
R------ appeared staggered by this inquiry; but,
after a moment’s silence, said, with a glance at Agnes,
and the parlour-maid who was standing within easy ear
shot, “ I have looked at them, from the noise made
about them; and I suppose you can pretty well
imagine my judgment. But the subject is scarcely fit
for general conversation.”
“ Do you know, I differ from you there Mr R------ ,”
said Agnes. “ If you are afraid of talking on the
questions which Theodore Parker treats, lest you should
annoy me, you may put such fears aside. There is
nothing I enjoy more than to listen to learned and able
men, if they will open their minds to each other on sub
jects which really interest them. And what subject can
be more interesting than that of the foundation and
value of religious belief?”
“ I could readily believe that of you, madam, if the
conversation tended to show the solidity of the founda
tion of our holy religion and the weakness of the attacks
made on it; but, if I am to discuss Parker’s religious
views with my friend W------ , I am afraid our con
versation must be more controversial than edifying.”
“ But what can be more edifying,” I said, “ than
controversy, if it is carried on as I think I may say, we
used to carry it on at Oxford.”
“ When thought lept out to wed with thought,
Ere thought was wedded unto speech.”
“ Ay, those were happy days,” replied R------ with
a sigh, “ when our doubts still rested on a ground of
�Free Speech.
faith, which we all held to be unshakeable, while
now------ ”
“ I, at least, have slipped off, and fallen into deep
waters, I suppose that sigh means, and even our host
is not quite sure-footed, eh, R------ ?”
li I cannot jest on such subjects.”
“ We must not identify jesting with trifling,” I observed,
“ a cheerful spirit is one of God’s greatest and best gifts;
and to a cheerful spirit a jest is always welcome.”
“ You speak of natural impulses,” replied R------ ,
“ and I admit that, to nature, mirth, even on sacred
subjects, is always acceptable—nay, perhaps the more
acceptable, because the subject is sacred. But when
we become alive to the awful magnitude of the interests
involved in the question of religious truth; to the
fearful consequences which a misplaced jest may have,
in disturbing the faith of the ignorant and simpleminded ; children, perhaps, or women; one is more
disposed to weep than to laugh at them.”
“ Well! I am very much of Goldsmith’s mind,” said
W------ , 1‘ that the virtue which always requires a
guard is not worth the guarding. I think the faith
which can be damaged by a jest is not worth having.”
“ I do not like jests on religious matters,” interposed
Agnes, “ they jar on my feelings ; but I cannot agree
with you Mr R——, that our faith is more likely to be
disturbed by them than that of men. I assure you it is
a much tougher plant than you think, if it is allowed
to grow freely. But the thoughts and feelings of women
are so often thrown back on themselves, by the way in
which their spiritual pastors and masters treat religious
matters, as a tabooed ground on which no questions are
to be admitted, that you should rather wonder their
faith can endure at all.”
“ I see, madam, you are quite on your husband’s side.
Free discussion has always been his favourite dogma,’
replied R------ . “ Well! that’s as it should be, in one
way, at all events.”
�116
Via Catholica.
“And, if I could make you aware of how much
benefit free communication with Edward on religious
matters has been to me ; how much more .solid I feel
my faith to be now, than I used to do before I was
accustomed to weigh the objections to it, as well as I
can, and understand its grounds, I am sure you would
say, it is well in every way.”
“ You look at Mrs P------ as if she were some rare
animal/’ said W------ , as R------ did not seem to know
what to say to my wife’s declaration, “ but you may
rely on it she is telling you a home truth, ‘ very necessary
for these times.’ The days when the clergy could maintarn influence by burking discussion are gone, or fast
going.
They must be prepared to have their most
cherished mysteries dragged into daylight, and to stand
up for them like men, in the common melee, with the
weapons of reason and argument, a fair field, and no
favour; or their hold on the minds of men, and even
women, will soon be lost.”
“ To me,” I interposed, “ the denial of the free dis
cussion of religious matters seems to imply, at bottom,
a want of faith in Clod, who cannot wish us not to
employ our reason on subjects which peculiarly call for
the exercise of its highest powers, and it is inconsistent
with the instinct and early habits of the Church. To
‘give a reason for the faith that is in us,’ is a venerable
Christian precept, and involves the right of those to
whom the reason is given to weigh it fairly, otherwise it
would be not a reason but a dictum.”
“In the beginning of the Church,” said R------ ,
“ reasoning was in its proper place. Old errors had to
be confuted, and the true faith established, defined, and
made clear to men’s minds. But when this had been
done, when the questions, at first allowable, and even
necessary, had been settled, what once had been honest
inquiry turned, I conceive, into perverse doubt; the
questioner was transformed into the heretic.”
“ No doubt,” I replied, “when the Church had chosen
�Free Speech.
ii7
an opinion, the position of those who did not accept her
choice, but chose for themselves, was altered, but when
you say ‘ questions were settled,’ by what means do you
consider this settlement to have been effected ?
“ By the decision of the majority of the bishops,
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
“ Is not that something like Napoleon’s Providence,
which is always on the side of the strongest and best
combined battalions ? Why should we suppose any
special guidance to be given to part of a body of men,
of whom, so far as we know, all were equally desirous
of coming to the truth, rather than to another part ?
“ How could it be possible to arrive at any certainty
of decision, if the voice of the majority is not to be
accepted as the true exponent of the revealed Truth ? ’
“ That depends on what ‘ Revelation ’ is. If it is a
collection of statements forming a course of absolute
knowledge, communicated to a few only, but which all
others are bound to accept, I allow that the expedient
of settling any doubts by trials of strength, by the legal
method of majorities, is the most suitable ; but if Reve
lation is a continuous process, the manifestation by God
of His Being and Nature to man, through facts offered
to man’s reason, whence it may form its own judgments,
arriving at truth by continual re-examination, and the
rejection of whatever will not bear this examining, the
notion of £ settling ’ dogmas by votes must be a fatal
mistake, the exclusion of the very means to which God
has attached the discovery of what is true, namely, free
discussion.”
“ But if the teachings of the Church are to be per
petually re-examined afresh, ‘ without fear and without
favour,’ as I suppose you would urge, what progress
could be made ? Orthodoxy would have to take for her
motto the apostolic reproach to the heretics, she would
be ‘ ever learning, and never able to come to a know
ledge of the Truth.’ ”
“-Yet, is not this the usual method of learning, the
�118
Via Catholica.
way m which God teaches us in all that is called
Science ? asked Agnes. “ And have not men got to a
great deal of truth by means of it? And then, is it
not likely that God would have us use the same method
for getting to truth in other things, those which concern
man s spiritual life ? ”
Bravo, Mrs P------ ,” said W------ “ your illustration is excellent. You should really take a lesson from
scientific methods, R------ . Here we are, ‘ ever learnpo doubt, and always ready to allow even first
principles to. be called in question if any defect can be
pointed out in our statement of them, but so far from
‘never coming to a knowledge of the Truth,’ never
reaching any views which appear the more solid the
more they are examined, until they are taken for
granted without further questioning, that we are attain
ing to such conceptions more and more fully and clearly
every year, on every subject fairly submitted to the
method. It is only in your musty, theological apart
ment, where you won’t let the air and light penetrate
freely, that there is such a fungoid growth of hope
lessly conflicting opinions.”
‘• I admit the miserable diversities of error,” R------ ’
replied, with a sigh. “ Afy hen has it not been so ?
There were, I believe, eighteen shades of the Arian
heresy, but the Truth must have been always one and
the same.”
“ No doubt Truth is always one and the same in the
same subject-matter,” I observed, “the question is, how
are we to get at it 1 Are we jura/re in verba magistri
*
taking for granted that the right master has been found ?
or are we not rather to say, ‘ there is none wise but
God, I look to Him to teach me, and his method of
teaching is by leading me to the faithful exercise of the
power of reason which He has given me, in examining
and trying to apprehend the materials which He brings
before me ? ”
To swear by oui’ master’s words.
�Free Speech.
119
11 And yon treat the doctrines of the Church as part
<jf these materials?” asked R------ .
“ Certainly ; the progress of thought in the minds of
men; the beliefs by which they have been swayed from
time’to time ; the forms of conception in which they
have embodied these beliefs ; still more the emotions
which have found utterance in them, constitute a body
of spiritual phenomena, most important to every one
who would attain to something like scientific accuracy
in his notions of religious progress. We must not
assume that all who have been before us were fools or
cheats. If we are to get the fruits of science in re
ligious questions, we must follow her method. If we
are to derive real instruction from the past we must
submit our imaginations to its testimony. We must
honestly let it speak for itself, and carefully watch
against the temptation to make it say our words for us.”
“In short,” interposed W------ , “we must do ex
actly the contrary to that which the so-called orthodox
commentators on the Bible are always doing. Bor these
interpretations consist, almost entirely, in reading be
tween the lines what is not there ; and so making the
writers say, what if they were as orthodox as their in
terpreters they would, or could, or ought to have said.
It is the thing that disgusted me with theology—their
dishonesty of interpretation.”
“ Now, Mr W------ said Agnes, “ I won’t have you
pass uncharitable judgments, not even on.the absent. I
used to be very fond of some of these dishonest inter
preters as you call them ; and, though I can’t take the
same pleasure in them now that my eyes are opened to
see how far they are, in many cases, from giving a
natural interpretation to the words with which they deal,
I am sure they did not intend to put a false meaning on
them. Look at Scott now. I am certain he was as
honest a man as ever lived.”
“ And as self-important,” said W------ , “ always
assuming that his conclusions for the time being, were
�120
Via Catholica.
not only true to him, but due to the 1 Force of Truth’
itself to which every one who did not agree with him
must wilfully shut his eyes.”
“ Scott, no doubt, had far too little reverence for the
Church,” said R------ . “ In fact, he seems scarcely to
have had an inkling of what her true teaching is; but he
was profoundly impressed with a sense of the authority
and Divine inspiration of Scripture, which is the first
step to the Church’s teaching.
And, as for what
W------ calls ‘ reading between the lines,’ can anything
be more reasonable if the Scriptures are all the work of
one Spirit, who has gradually made known to man ‘ the
deep things of God,’ than the supposition that there
would be, in the first unfolding of the mysterious
scheme, obscure intimations of what was to come ? Does
not that favourite dream of modern science, so called,
the doctrine of the development of one animal out of
another, teach us to look for the traces of what was to
come in a past where it was not yet perfected ?”
“ Say rather,” replied W------ , “ to look for an ex
planation of the present, in a growth to be traced in
the past. The modern naturalist does not imagine
that a muscle or a bone existed in some ancient animal,
not because it was of use to that animal, but because
some day or other it would become of use to some more
perfect animal. On the contrary, from finding in a
living creature the traces of some structure of no use to
it, but which apparently was important to the wants of
some earlier creature, he says, here is the explanation
of the useless parts in the living creature ; they are
derived from a remote ancestor to whom they were of
use. Theology may offer illustrations of a parallel cha
racter, but I doubt whether they would be very
acceptable to you.”
“ Perhaps,” I observed, “ it is scarcely possible to
draw a parallel between matters so unlike as are natural
development, and the unfolding of revealed truth, if it
is revealed in the authoritative manner which our friend
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121
R—•—following, I admit, the main current of religious
opinion, supposes. But the important question I take
to be, whether this supposed authoritative method is
God’s method or not ? All truth except mathematical
truths, where we deal only with the creations of our
own minds, is revealed. We learn it by using our
faculties of perception and reflection, to extract the
meaning of materials supplied to us. We do not supply
the materials from within. But to learn what these
materials are able to teach us, we must sift them care
fully ; turn them over thoroughly, and arrange them in
our own minds ; and test our combinations with entire
freedom, until we produce some that will stand this
test without falling to pieces. Now the question is, has
God a different method of revealing to man spiritual
truths from that through which He reveals to them
natural truths ?”
“ Where are your materials for this spiritual reve
lation ? ” asked R------ . “ You seem to want them.”
“ In the spiritual nature of man, his impulses, long
ings, aspirations, conceptions, as I said a little while
since.”
“ Well, if I could assume that man’s emotional
nature is in its natural state, I might allow that it would
furnish materials for a conclusion as to its source. But
assuming, as I must do, that it is corrupted by a fall,
how can I argue from it ?”
“But that,” interposed W------, “is the very ground
of quarrel of rational religion with what you call
orthodoxy. What right have you to assume this fall,
and corruption of man’s spiritual instincts ? ”
“ I rely on the account in Genesis.”
“ That is to say, on an anonymous story of creation,
which contradicts itself.”
“ But is borne out by the results, by the whole
history of man. Byron is but too true a witness when
he says, that ‘history with all her volumes vast, hath
but one page; first, freedom, and then glory; When
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that’s past, wealth; vice, corruption; barbarism, at
last.’ ‘ The whole creation travaileth in pain together,’
as the apostle Paul tells us, ‘ waiting for the redemption,
to wit, the manifestation of the sons of God.’ ”
“ Or, as Schiller words it:—
‘ Im Herzen redet es laut sich an,
Zu was Besser’m sind wir geboren.’ *
said I. “ And undoubtedly the Church has never re
jected that hope. She has always looked forward to
a higher state to which God is leading mankind. She
tells us that the goal is the attainment of a spirit of re
verence and truth, and love. Here, I am confident we
all agree. The question between us is, by what road
would the Father of our spirits lead us to this goal?
Are we to suppose that He educates us to reverence
and love by perpetually thwarting our sense of truth ? ”
(< God forbid that I should teach such a blasphemy,”
replied R------ .
“ Then is it not certain that free thought, and there
fore also free speech, is the very vital air without which
the spirit of truth cannot exist ? So that if God is to
disclose to us His spiritual nature at all, as an object of
conscious thought, this must be by means of the concep
tions to which we come freely, in searching for an ex
planation of man’s spiritual nature and history, as part
of the universe of Being.”
“ That might be the case if God had not himself
given us the explanation.”
“ My dear friend, excuse me, but are you not arguing
in a circle ? The explanation which you say God has
given to man is contained in human words, embodying
human thoughts, which, if we are to benefit by, we
must translate into some conceptions intelligible to our
selves. How can we tell that these conceptions are
true, that is, correspond to the reality of things, except
by freely and honestly trying whether they fit in to all
* The heart says loudly, We are born for something better.
�Free Speech.
123
the facts known to us which bear upon them, and
account for these facts ?”
“ Certainly, we must come to that at bottom. The
authority of the Church, her right to teach, rests upon
the fact that nothing so well explains the known phe
nomena of man’s spiritual nature, as the supposition
that Grod has set up such a divinely guided body, and
would have all men come into it. But upon your view
this authority is to be for ever brought into question.”
“Because, if not, its claims must be self-contradictory.
If the right to teach authoritatively is grounded upon
the satisfaction which the credentials of the teacher
afford to my sense of truth, it follows that, if any part
of the teaching jars with my sense of truth, this must
react upon my faith in the credentials. I shall begin
to doubt whether I was not mistaken in placing so much
confidence in the teacher.”
“ Would you call in question the credentials of an
ambassador, sent to negotiate a peace, because the
terms unfolded by him differed from your expecta
tions ?”
“ No ; but if the terms appeared to me unreasonable,
I might question whether they truly expressed the in
tentions of the sender.”
“ It comes at last to the question of might or right,”
said W------ . “ Believe, because your reason is satis
fied that what is proposed for your belief is true ; or,
disbelieve, and be------ ”
“ Condemned as mistaken,” interposed Agnes, smil
ing.
1‘ But with what consequences ?”
“ Well, Mr R------ , shall we say with the consequence
of the mortification of having to own that we are mis
taken, when we find our errors out ? What other con
sequence would you attribute to mere errors of judg
ment, which do not affect our wills ? ”
“ Mistaken judgments, my dear madam, may easily
lead to wrong acts. St. Paul believed it to be his duty
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at one time in his life to persecute the Church, but that
did not make the act justifiable.”
“But is not that because persecution is always
wrong ? ” asked Agnes, “ as it must be very wrong, if
free thought is the way by which God would bring men
to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Him. Surely
you do not think that it would have been wrong in St.
Paul to argue, ‘ Jesus of Nazareth cannot be the true
Messiah,’ as long as he was convinced that He was not ?
But to try to force a man whom you cannot convince
to say what he does not believe, or to hinder him from
stating his honest convictions, seems to me so very selfimportant a,nd conceited in those who do it; it is such a
setting-up of their own opinions, as if they must be
true, so very unlike St. James’s rule of being ‘ swift to
hear, slow to speak/ or St. Paul’s, 1 that love is greater
than knowledge,’ that I cannot think it can be right.”
“ But, madam, would you leave no doctrine on which
the Church is to insist as unquestionably true ?”
“I think I should wish the Church to teach that ‘ to
love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and
mind, and strength, and to love our neighbour as our
selves,’ includes all essential doctrines, and to let all
other doctrines take care of themselves. Why should
we not believe that so the true ones will come out at
last?”
“ And in the meantime what are we to do ?”
“•I should say, follow what appears to us the most
true, being ready always to listen to any serious objec
tion to it, because, after all, we may not be quite right,
and then the objection may help us to get right.”
“ But if, among the opinions thus questioned, there
should be the question whether the Divine Essence was
truly manifested in the person of our Lord or not, can
those who believe that it was so manifested treat this
belief as indifferent ?”
“ Oh, no ! I do not say they should do that. Of
course such a belief can’t be indifferent to any body
�The Incarnate Deity.
125
who really believes in it. I am sure Edward is not the
least bit indifferent about it. Only, why did our Lord
come ? Was it not just in order that through His
example and our faith in Him, we might learn to love
God thoroughly, and to love our neighbour as our
selves ? And if any persons do that, or are trying
their very best to do it, must we not think that Christ
is pleased with them, and loves them as His true fol
lowers, even though they may make mistakes about His
nature ? And then, ought not we to do the same?”
“ I think Mrs P------ has got the best of you there,”
said W------ , “ she has gone to the root of the matter.
Indifference to truth is one thing, and error of judg
ment is quite another. 1 There is more faith in honest
doubt than lies in half the creeds.’ ”
“ Agreed,” I said, “ if the doubt be free from that
self-importance which my wife has well noted as the
true sin of persecution. We must not forget that it is
as possible for us to pride ourselves on not believing, as
on believing, and that the one pride may be as fatal to
truth as the other. But there’s Jane, who has been
peeping in half-a-dozen times to see if we are ready for
coffee. Suppose we adjourn to the drawing-room,
where Agnes, I dare say, will give us some music.”
CHAPTER X.
THE INCARNATE DEITY.
R------ could stay with us only over the next day, which
was fully occupied in the morning by an expedition to
see------ Abbey, and in the evening by a dinner party of
some of our neighbours. No opportunity occurred for
I
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further conversation upon our respective religious con
victions ; indeed, R------ appeared to avoid the subject.
But there was a marked difference in his manner to me
from what had been the case at our meeting.
His old, affectionate playfulness returned, and quite
thawed the somewhat stiff coldness which he had assumed
the first day. To my dear wife’s remarks he appeared
to listen with peculiar interest, and used the resources
of his varied knowledge to draw out her opinions on a
variety of subjects, with such a mixture of earnestness
and humour that she was quite delighted with him.
And, on taking leave, he said, rather to my surprise, “ I
must put in a claim to a return visit from you and
Mrs P—-—. I cannot tell you how much pleasure this
peep at you has caused me. It has opened to me a new
world of ideas ; but I must make out their latitudes and
. longitudes a little for myself, before I have any more
communication with you about them.”
W------ stopped with us longer, and got several
times into talk with me on various points of Biblical
criticism, seeming, as I saw by his manner, though he
did not say so, not a little surprised at the extent to
which I concurred with him in my judgment as to the
unhistorical character of large sections of the sacred
writings, more especially the fourth Gospel, which he had
supposed that I must defend, with tooth and nail, from
what I had incidentally said about the nature of Christ;
but found, to his astonishment, that I agreed essentially
with the views of C. F. Bauer about it. To-day, as we
were walking up and down in the shade on our lawn,
enjoying the fineness of the summer morning, and chatting
on various topics, his feelings at last found a vent.
“ I want to have a good talk out with you,” he said,
“ for I own you completely mystify me. I really cannot
make out your state of mind. How, with your logical
powers, and thorough-going honesty, you can give
up the premisses of your Christian theology, and yet
stick to its conclusions ?”
�The Incarnate Deity.
127
“ May not this be, because I do not consider that
the premisses, which I give up, by which I suppose
you mean the infallibility of the Bible, and the notion
of any essential difference between the inspiration of its
writers, and that of othei’ men, are the necessary pre
misses of the doctrines about God, and His relations
to man, which are commonly supposed to rest upon
them ? ”
“ No doubt; but the marvel to me is what other pre
misses you can find solid enough to support such con
clusions as you draw. Here you were, this morning,
talking to your family about the Triune Being of God
and the manifestation of the Divine essence in Christ:
while yesterday, you admitted to me that you believe the
great prop and mainstay of both doctrines, the fourth Gos
pel (not that I allow it really teaches what the orthodox
assert, but that’s by the way J), to be, in all probability, _
the work of some unknown writer, not an apostle or com
panion of apostles, in the middle of the second century ;
and that you questioned whether it contains a line of
Christ’s actual words. So that you teach the most
astounding faith about God on the testimony of a
forger.”
“ I cannot allow the justice of that appellative. For
gery essentially consists in passing off a work under a
false name. Now the fourth Gospel is anonymous.
When it was accepted as canonical, no doubt the Church
ascribed it to the Apostle John, and wonderful stories
were told as to how he came to write it; but, set aside
this assumption, of which the first act is the twentyfirst chapter, an anonymous appendix, given up by the
best critics even those who defend the apostolic origin
of the Gospel itself, there is absolutely nothing to point
to John the Apostle as the writer. Nay, the celebrated
6
(jjeiMccpropriKZ 7tai
avrov edriv 7] [/Mprvpia
*
implies, by its change of tense, that the writer relied on
* He who saw hath borne witness, anl his testimony is
true, xix. 35.
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Via Catholica.
other testimony than his own senses, and therefore could
not be the Apostle, if he is supposed to be the witness
appealed to.”
“ Well, well! I give up the forgery, but anyhow, you
allow that the Gospel is a romance, whatever scraps of
historical legend may be woven into it?”
“ Say, rather, a theological treatise in the form of a
biography, the ideal picture of what the life of Christ
must have been, according to the conceptions of the
writer, if he were what the author of it believed him to
be, the Xoyoj, visible in human form, the Ssurepog
*
—drawing, indeed, all power and glory from the eternal
Father, but the instrument through whom the Father
had worked from the beginning; the source of all life,
the light of the world.”
“ But, a Christ essentially drawn from the imagination
of the writer?”
“Yes, as the Adam of ‘Paradise Lost’ is essentially
drawn by Milton from his own imagination of what the
primal man, according to his conceptions, must have
been, and what kind of life he must have led in the
Garden of Eden, and, as these conceptions were
founded upon an intense study of the scriptural story,
so the fourth Gospel is founded, I think, on a most
earnest study of the synoptics.”
“ Whom, yet, the writer has no scruple at all in con
tradicting and supplementing, ad libitum.'”
“ Certainly; because, as I conceive, he was quite
aware that they were only incorporated traditions, and
believed that the narrators did not describe the true
Jesus, as he must have shown himself in acts and dis
courses, of which they contain only hints; one saying
in Matthew and Luke,£ alone preserving tbe single
trace of what Jesus, he thought, had without doubt
unfolded in long discourses; and the simple words of
* Word.
+ Second God.
I Matt, xi., 27 ; Luke x., 22.
�The Incarnate Deity.
129
institution ascribed to the last supper, intimating a doctrine of spiritual relation between the eternal Lamb of
God, and those who feed on His divine body and blood,
which Christ must have fully explained on some appro
priate occasion.”
“Well 1 suppose all that taken for granted, not that
it is not ingenious and interesting, but it turns me away
from the point I am driving at; anyhow, you allow that
we have not got in this Gospel any acts or sayings of
Jesus about himself which can be relied on as histori
cally attested ? ”
££ Yes.”
“And you give up any claim in the writer to
supernatural information ? ”
“ Admitted.”
“Then of what possible value can the Gospel be to you?”
“ As the embodiment, in a form suited to the age
when it was written, of an idea which I conceive that
Christ appeared on earth in order to plant among man
kind.”
“ What I the idea that the infinite, passionless, allembracing, all-powerful, self-existing Deity can be im
prisoned in the finite form of a tender-hearted, excitable,
somewhat pretentious, feeble, mortal ? What but blind
superstition can be produced by the growth of such an
idea? ”
“ There has been produced, first, a society which
swallowed up the religions sustained by the most power
ful of all known civil organizations, and then a group
of states, which have given birth to a race of the most
clear-sighted and least superstitious thinkers whom the
earth has ever beheld; and I conceive very much be
cause they have grown up under the influence of the
great idea embodied in the person of Christ, that power
is less divine than hwe, an idea carrying with it the
faith that the universe arises from the action of a
reasonable, and therefore intelligible, will.”
“ God forbid that I should contest the importance of
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those ideas ; but what they have to do with a belief in
the divine personality of Jesus of Nazareth, passes my
apprehension.” i
“Because you look at them from without, as concep
tions presented to your reflection to be analysed and
traced out in their consequences, rather than from
within, as a working power. To think of God as the
principle of Love is an affair of the Intellect.
1 Nenn es denn was du willst,
Nenn’s Gluck ! Herz ! Liebe ! Gott.
Ich habe keinen Namen
Dafur, Gefuhl ist alles.’ ” *
To be conscious of Him as a loving, purifying,
strengthening will, present with our wills, requires us
to realise God as a person distinct from our own per
sonality, and to do this, we need the faith in a Divine
person manifested among us.
“ I cannot admit that. Look at the Jews. Do not
their psalms glow with an intense trust in, and love to,
God as a personal ruler, guide, and friend of the nation,
and every member of it who trusted in Him? Yet,
they had no notion of the possibility of his living among
them as a man.”
“No doubt that is true; but the Jehovah of the
Jews, though nominally the ruler of the whole earth,
was practically to them the special God of their'
nation, caring for them as He did not care for any
other. The principle of personal distinction was thus
ingrained in their conception of God. The Deity who
cared for the Jews more than for the heathen, who
had no knowledge of his laws, would naturally care for
the Jews who observed those laws more than for the
Jews who did not observe them. They looked up to
Him, therefore, as their special friend and protector,
who would listen to their requests, and shower blessings
on them individually. As men lose this geographical
* “Call it as you will; call it Happiness, Heart, Love,
God. I have no name for it; Feeling is all.”—.Faust.
�The Incarnate Deity.
1 31
and ethnographical limitation to the Divine action ; they
need a wider and deeper foundation for a living faith in
the love of God to them individually. We require to
import the notion of personal limitation into the very
essence of the Deity, if religious trust is not to change
into the conception of moral law. Now, this want the
idea of the Incarnation supplies.”
“ Well, I allow that your Deity is limited enough, if
he can squeeze his infinity into the skull of one man,
but that such a monstrous assumption,—excuse my
outspoken epithet—can be needed as a foundation for
trust in the ‘Love of God;’ His watchful care over
every living creature; His response to the prayer of
those who call on Him earnestly, as the Father of their
spirits,—the notion seems to me like building a pyramid
on a sandbank in order to give it stability.”
“ But build it on as solid a rock as you please, your
pyramid will be unstable if you construct it with its
point downwards.”
“ Your proposition is incontestable; but how is my
pyramid so built ? What broader foundation can you
find for trust in the personal Being of God than our
consciousness of His action on our souls ?”
“ None certainly: but that is the rock, not the build
ing. On this rock you rear, and must rear, a building
of conceptions about the Being in whom you trust, which
will stand the analysis of your intellect. There’s where
I think your Theism fails. It seems to me illogical, in
assuming love to be possible without distinction, and
unscientific, in resting on the subjective internal evidence
of the divine presence alone, to the neglect of the
external, objective, furnished by the spiritual history of
mankind.”
“ You open a wide field for discussion. Let us take
the logical part first. You say love is not conceivable
without distinction,—that is, I take it, if we do not love
some being other than ourselves, our love would be only
self-love, which is not love at all.”
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“ Allowed.”
“ But then you do not identify man with God ? Surely
there is distinction enough.”
“ No doubt, if you assume that the creature stands
over against the Creator, as a universe of objects, which
the external creative essence contemplates while he
sustains them, you get a distinction between the two.
The conscious Creator is limited by the creation of which
he is conscious, and so may be regarded as a person.”
“ And, as a conscious person, may love that of which
He is conscious ? ”
“ Certainly. But if God can thus consciously dis
tinguish His work from Himself, the principle of dis
tinction must belong to His essence. He cannot be
that absolute unity which the Theists assume. You
must either make the matter of the universe an eternal
opposite to God, or you must admit that God is present
in it 1 otherwise ’ than as he is in Himself.”
“ So that you get a God ‘ the other of Himself,’ as
Hegel might say. I suppose this is your Incarnate
Deity ? ”
“ Not quite so fast, if you please. I have got only
as far as this. The conception of an immanent conscious
Creator,—you don’t want a God out of the universe I
suppose ? ”
“ God forbid.”
“ Well, then, the conception of an immanent conscious
Creator, since it excludes duality, else you have at best
only an architect, not a creator, implies the. notion of
‘ otherness ’ as inherent in the Divine Essence. If God is
a conscious will, the universe must be ‘ other ’ than God.”
“ Go on. ”
“ But the universe, if by it we mean only the visible,
tangible, sensible utterances of force, is, with all its
vastness, but a collection of motes in the infinity of
imaginable space, and an ever-changing phantasmagoria
in the infinity of imaginable time. It cannot satisfy
the eternal principle of ‘ otherness ’ which comes out in
�The Incarnate Deity.
133
it. So that this principle must have a deeper root
within the Divine Essence.”
“ I see you are driving me to your theological hypos
tases ; but take care that you do not lose your way in a
mist of unreality. Granting that the unity of the Divine
Being may mysteriously involve a principle of ‘ other
ness,’ manifested in the universe yet not one with this
essence, how are we to penetrate beneath this manifesta
tion to its root in the Eternal?”
“ By the help of that power through which we get the
notion of the Eternal, the power of will. Take will in
the purest expression of it known to us, in the action
of our own imaginations, you will find it essentially
double; first, a will producing means; and secondly, a will
to use these means ‘ for ends distinct from themselves.”’
“ Means ? What means can our imaginative wills
supply to themselves ? Ends, I allow, they can furnish
in abundance, but for the means of accomplishing those
ends we must rely on nature.”
“No doubt, we must, if we want to carry our action
beyond the kingdom of our own brains, but within that
realm, the same distinction exists. Suppose you imagine
a triangle, that is the figure formed by three straight
lines, the tracks left by three moving points, which in
tersect, and so mutually limit each other. Here you
have a primitive conception, an original creation of
your imagination, possessing a number of definite pro
perties, which you can study in themselves without
using them for any purpose whatever. But you need
not stop there. When you have learnt what the pro
perties of your triangle are, you may use them as a
means of making clear to yourself another set of proper
ties arising from their connection with other mental
constructions, squares, circles, &c., &c., till you build
up the science of geometry.”
111 go with you so far.”
“ Now, this double action of our wills is, in us succes
sive. We form our triangle in imagination first, then
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we study its properties; helping ourselves generally by
making a drawing of it, so as to present it to our mind
through our senses; and lastly, we use it by bringing
it into connection with some other creation of our imagi
nations, commonly by a similar help from our senses.
But to the eternal will of God this double action must
be concomitant, as we see it in nature.”
“ In nature ? ”
“ Yes, in the combination within every organized
structure; 1st, of the power expressed in the chemical
elements of which the organic structure consists, and
on which it depends for the possibility of being at all,
and, apparently, for all the peculiar qualities characte
ristic of it; and 2ndly, of an ordering wisdom, which
unites these elemental powers in a way in which they
are incapable of uniting by their own natures only, so
far as we can discover, and so uses them to effect its
own ends, in producing the organizations which without
it would remain mere unrealized possibilities.”
“ And this organizing faculty is your
(Mq!
*
Well, I allow you make out a fair case for its real
existence, but, after all, you have not got over the diffi
culty you have raised. Your organizing power acts
only on the material eiemenu. If this is a partial local
inadequate manifestation of the Divine in itself, can it
change its character by being organized ? ”
“ No ; but it is converted into a mere utterance of
the Divine Being, the outward manifestation of an in
ward personality, but not its condition. The will dis
played in the production of means, and the will dis
played in their use, with the ideas governing their
action, and the common spirit uniting them to each
other exist, according to my conception, in the Deity as
eternal personal relations, independently of the modes
in which they are manifested in the universe. And
these modes may, or may not involve conscious person
* Second God.
�The Incarnate Deity.
135
ality. For the most part, it seems that they do not.
The chemical elements, for instance, marvellous as are
their adaptabilities to varied forms of being, do not
appear to have any consciousness of what they do.
The living principle in the plant seems only to dream,
as Oken says. The will manifested in creation does
not awake to consciousness till we reach the animal, and
then has to rub its eyes for a long time before it begins
to see clearly in man. But the personal principle in
God is wholly unaffected by all this impersonality in its
manifestations, if my theory is true ; and, after all, this
is only what our own conscious action supplies a type
of. Neither our primitive geometrical constructions,
nor any combinations of them, display consciousness.
This is confined to ourselves.”
“ You make out a plausible case for the three in one,
or at least for the second hypostasis, which, I suppose,
involves the third. But I fear that your notions are
not very orthodox.”
1‘ They do not rest on texts or decisions of councils
certainly, but they are more orthodox than you may
fancy. Pante, the pupil of Thomas Aquinas, whose
orthodoxy no one questions, recognizes the same three
fold distinction. You remember, no doubt, the melan
choly grandeur of his—
Pecemi la divina Potestate,
La somma Sapienza, ed il primo Amore. *
There you have Power as the distinguishing attribute of
the Father, Wisdom, as that of the Son, and Love, as
that of the communicating Spirit, though, of course,
neither is the Father supposed to be destitute of wis
dom, nor the Son of power, nor are either power or
wisdom denied to the Spirit; so in Nature there must be
a force belonging to the organizing power, but the
wisdom shown in the organization is what strikes us,
* Inferno III. 5. The Divine power, the Supreme wisdom,
and the Primal love made me [Hell].
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and there must be a profound wisdom latent in the
chemical elements, which makes them adaptable to be
organized, but that which is most striking in them is,
not their wisdom, but the power displayed in their
action, the so-called attractions or repulsions which they
exhibit. Again, in the dealings of God with our
spirits, neither power nor wisdom, but love, is especi
ally manifest: His infinite patience, His sympathy with
every variety of character, so that it be genuine; Hi3
readiness to answer every earnest aspiration of our
hearts to Him, whatever their intellectual standing
point, orthodox or unorthodox, Christian, or Mahome
tan, or Brahmin, or Buddhist, or of whatever other
creed, provided only they come to the Divine Father in
the true spirit of brotherhood yet, doubtless, this
1 primal love ’ is also the £ supremest wisdom ’ and
‘ divinest power.’ ” *
“ And you would have men carry out this universal
sympathy, recognizing, say, Keshub Chunder Sen, or
myself, not only sub specie amici sed sub specie ani* The analogy of the two-fold action of our wills, adduced
here to illustrate the conception of the Triune Being of God,
must not be confused with those of the tripartite nature of
man, as body, soul, and spirit, or of the triple energies of the
human mind, as intelligence, love, and will, or the three-fold
qualities of the sun, its substance, light, and heat, which a
recent critic of Canon Liddon’s Bampton Lectures j ustly pro
nounces to be pointless. Examination of Canon Liddon’s Bamp
ton Lectures, p. 318. In these analogies the illustration is taken
from distinct properties belonging to the same object, in the
action of the will adduced by me, it is drawn from distinct
though concomitant spheres of action belonging to the same
faculty; that faculty being one whose action extends over
the whole range of existence known to us ; the physical, the
intellectual, and the moral; while its whole action is exhausted
by the three-fold division of its activity into—1st, the
original constructive act of conception ; 2nd, the use of that
which is so constructed for further ends ; and, 3rd, the deter
mination of the motive or spirit, by which these energies are
regulated.
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137
malis religiosi as worshippers of the true God, though
*
you cannot call us brethren in Christ?”
“ Yes; I invert the conclusions commonly drawn from,
the fourth Gospel. To me, whoever comes sincerely
to the Father, recognizing Him to be what He really is,
comes to Him through Christ, though he may not know
it, for he comes in that spirit in which Christ would
have him come, and there whither Christ would draw
him. The conception of God as a triune Being, in
whom creative power, organizing wisdom, and commu
nicating love co-exist, as a threefold mode of inter
penetrating will, each with its special sphere of action
dependent on or pointing to that of the other two, is to
me the scientific statement of the Divine Nature. The
conception satisfies my intellect and my affections by
bringing into intelligible harmony with the action dis
cernible in the external universe, that conscious person
ality of relations between man and God, on which
religious trust rests as its datum. But this trust can
exist apart from the theory. So the theory which con
nects summer and winter, and day and night with the
revolution of the earth round the sun, and its rotation
on its own axis, satisfies our intellects by making these
phenomena intelligible, but does not in the slightest
degree affect our sensations of light and heat.”
“Well, let us suppose for a moment that this notion of
a triune Being is the most reasonable conception of the
self-existent that we can form, still it does not furnish
any proof that one member of this Trinity could appear
on the earth as a man distinct from the other members
of it. The difficulties besetting the notion of incarna
tion, the incompatibility of Divine strength with human
feebleness, Divine knowledge with human ignorance ;
Divine unchangeableness with human change; growth,
maturity, decay ; the ‘ death of a God in the flower of
his age,’ which I once heard a clergyman dwell on—
As a friend, but as a religious animal.
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all these are not at all removed by the feat of imagi
native ingenuity displayed in your speculative con
struction of the Trinity.”
“ I allow that they are not, and no doubt the con
ception of a real incarnation is beset on all sides with
the most formidable difficulties, though I think that I
can see my way, for some distance at least, towards the
solution of them. But we reverse the process of scien
tific inquiry, if we begin with the ‘ how,’ and because
we cannot imagine this, shut our eyes to the evidence of
the ‘ that.’ Astronomers would never have discovered
an unobserved planet, by calculating back from the dis
turbed body to the disturbing one, if they had waited to
show how attraction is possible, before dealing with it
as a fact.”
“ Agreed ; but then the fact is patent, that bodies do
act as if they mutually attracted each other. The earth
compels the stone to fall to it. The needle visibly leaps
to the magnet. We may not be able to explain how;
but as we must begin with the phenomena, at all events,
before we can explain them, it would be the height of
absurdity to begin by denying them.”
“ But astronomers have done something more than
merely accept undoubted phenomena. They found their
system upon the assumption, that a force which they can
experimentally test only on the earth, extends to an
unlimited distance from it.”
“ Because no good reason can be assigned why it
should not do so. The difficulty in conceiving one
body to attract another distinct from it, whatever the
relative position of the two bodies may be, depends on
the fact of their being distinct, not on the distance
between them. If we are driven over that difficulty by
direct observation, there is no ground at all for fixing
any limit within which the action of this power, which
we know can act, shall be assumed to be confined. But
where is your evidence for the fact of an incarnate
God ? All that men of your cloth are accustomed to
�Thhe Incarnate Deity.
*39
rely upon, and over which they have fought for ages with
rational theologians, the authority of the Church, the
authority of the Bible, the words of Christ in the fourth
Gospel, the stories about his birth in the synoptics, you
give up as indefensible positions. On what then do
you rest ? What is the evidence which satisfies you
that this idea of incarnation, so beset with difficulties,
as you allow, has been realized as a fact, in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth ?”
“ The place occupied by Him and it in the spiritual
history of man ; the consistency, and unity of develop
ment which the known facts of that history assume
under it.”
“ There is difficulty number one. What do we know
of the facts of man’s spiritual history ? Is not the rise
and progress of every ancient religion shrouded by an
impenetrable mist of myths, and traditions, where all
clear traces of the facts which gave birth to them, if
they ever were more than the order of nature, is lost ? ”
“ No doubt the facts which led to the beliefs that have
constituted man’s religious faith are often obscure
enough; but it is the beliefs themselves, not their external
generating causes, which constitute the facts of man’s
spiritual history, and these are readily ascertainable.
They are contained in documents or monuments in our
hands, or accessible to our observation at this moment.
They furnish the solid basis of facts, on which we can
take our stand for the scientific study of God’s dealings
with our race.”
“ You say that the beliefs of men generally, not
those of any one people, to the exclusion of those of
any other, about God, are a sort of revelation of what
God would have us believe about Himself. Well, there
may be something in that notion. At all events, it is
free from the pretentious self-importance which is so
revolting in the common assumptions of orthodoxy; that
insisting on a private monopoly of the universal Father
for the especial benefit of the orthodox. But then we
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can take only the residuum, the element common to all
these beliefs, as the revealing agent, and to what can
this lead but simple faith in the one Divine Parent, dis
covered more perfectly by some than by others-—imper
fectly by all, but ever leading man through the gradual
clearing-up of the mists of their own raising, to per
ceive His all-pervading love, and mysterious pre
sence ? ”
“ As I read, the facts of man’s religious history, they
show a more complicated evolution, indicative of a
Divine Revelation in which the idea of Fatherhood
assumes a deeper significance. The religious beliefs of
mankind, as they emerged from the primitive stages,
*
where men had either not yet attained to the conception
of any spiritual power, or identified every natural object
with some conscious Being, half-feared and half-despised,
fall, I think, into two great divisions, each remarkable
for its hold on the minds of one of the two great
families with whom man’s religious progress has been
especially associated, the Aryan and the Semitic. By
the races who form the Aryan family of nations, God
has been regarded as a power dwelling in the universe,
informing all its parts, and manifesting itself most com
pletely in Divine men, or beings capable of appearing
under a human form, and often conceived to constitute
a species of Divine state or society into which good
men might be admitted after death. Incarnation is the
normal shape of this mode of religious faith. By the
Semitic race, the Divine has been removed from the
earth, and conceived, either as a supreme governing
power controlling the universe, and reigning down influ
ences from the eelestial bodies, who were often identi
fied with it, or as a Creator, who calls forth and rules
these bodies and the earth, and all that it contains by
His all-mighty will. Now, if we really believe in the
constant presence with us of a living Father, who would
* Since classed by Sir John Lubbock as Atheism, Fetichism,
and Totemism.—Origin of Civilization, p. 119.
�The Incarnate Deity.
Hi
draw all men to Himself, we must see in each of these
great modes of conceiving the Divine, which have
actually moulded the religious faith of mankind, one
side of a Divine teaching, which cannot be complete
except both sides are united.”
“ And, I suppose, you say that is the case in
Christianity?”
“Just so. The Christian religion has carried the
idea of a.Deity, indwelling in the world, and capable
of incarnation in a human form, to a point beyond that
to which even the pure Aryan conception carried it.
For none of the Aryans imagined a Deity who could so
completely identify himself with humanity as to share
human suffering. But Christianity has, at the same
time, insisted, with equal perseverance, on the Semitic
conception of God, as a Being distinguished from the
universe by His unapproachable majesty and per
fection. The phenomenon, so far as I know, is un
equalled in the history of man’s religious beliefs.
*
If I
am to have faith in a Divine guidance of men at all, I
say it appears here.”
“But why insist on associating this union of ideas
with such a special reverence for the person of Jesus ?
May it not be a mere accident that made of him the
point round which beliefs, floating in the atmosphere of
the age when he lived, took the definite shape they
were ready to assume of themselves ? How little was
wanting to have made of Apollonius of Tyana, for
instance, the representative Divine man; prophecy,
miracle, the control of disease, of earthquakes, of human
violence, converse with the departed, the power to
drive out unclean spirits, to raise the dead, to pass
through closed doors, the knowledge of all languages,
* The dualistic systems of Persia, &c., blend, but do not
organically unite the two ideas of the indwelling, and the
supramundane Deity.
K
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a mysterious disappearance from the earth —all these
*
are ascribed to him. So perfect a pendant are the
stories about him to those heaped up round Jesus by
the Christian faith, that it was at one time the fashion
to suppose they had been copied from the gospels,
though the notion seems now to have died out through
more impartial enquiry. + If the Divine reverence,
which Philostratus tells us was paid to Apollonius by
some, as to a God manifested in human form,+ had
taken root, we might have had your argument applied
to a different subject.”
££ But it did not take root, and in scientific reasoning
that is everything. We deal with facts, not with sup
posed possibilities. I believe you are quite right about
Apollonius. His story is, to me, most interesting, as
showing how readily and abundantly the imagination
of men in those days could supply that materialistic
supernatural element, with which the Christian imagi
nation invested Christ. But the true supernatural, the
faith, which has enabled the idea of this Divine
presence to act on the consciences of men and purify
their wills, was wanting. The genuine Semitic element,
the conception of a superhuman love, which we find in
St. Paul’s writings and the fourth Gospel, is not there.
You have only the Aryan belief of the Divine in man,
dashed with a little Turanian mysticism. That was
not the true mixture, it would not work.”
“ I own it did not, and, as you say, from a scien
tific point of view, that is enough. But take the ideas
in themselves. Why should we not place the Divine
* See Dr Wolf Schmidt, Geschichte der Denk und Glauben’s
Freiheit im ersten Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1842, pp. 99,135, 232,
399.
See Schmidt, 48, 185, note 7.
i Philost. I., 2, 4,5.6,19,21 ■ II., 50 ; IV., 1, 44 ■ VI., 16; VII,
10, 11, 20, 21, 31, 38 ; VIII., 5, (7), 12, 13, 15, 21. Ennap.
Vit. Phil, proem 6, p. 3. Hist. Aug. in Aurelian 24, in Alex.
Sev. 29. Schmidt, 186, note 1.
�The Incarnate Deity.
143
guidance in the act of their union, and the conception
of God produced by it? The Jew embodied especially
the notions of power and justice in the idea of his
all-mighty Creator. He raised God so far above men
that they could only crawl at His feet, as the Mahome
tan has done since. The Greek religion, (I take the
Greek as the typical Aryan), brought God too near to
man.
His gods not only sympathised with man’s
shortcomings, but shared man’s weaknesses. The
Christian Church has, in a certain degree, very imper
fectly and unsatisfactorily, I think, united these con
ceptions, and brought in the faith in a Deity close to
man, and yet not lost in him ; one who is at once per
fect in purity, and infinite in love. I am quite ready
to treat this teaching of the Church as a stage in the
progress of mankind to the one true religion, but why
make more than this claim for its conceptions ? You
admit that the notion of the true Divinity of Jesus was
not part of the original Christian faith; that it began
with Paul, who, even if he ever wrote any of the
epistles attributed to him except the four great ones,
does not get beyond an sZzwv too (SzoZ rov aoparov, <irpwToronog vaS7]c, Krisiwi; * that the fourth Gospel gives no
confirmation to the idea by anything really traceable to
Christ himself, and that on it the imagination of man
kind afterwards piled up Pelions on Ossas of absurdity :
why then adhere to it at all ? Why not suppose that
God is teaching us now, by the aid of our scientific
«tudy of nature, the true way in which these Aryan
and Semitic conceptions must unite, to form the solid
foundation of an universal religion for mankind?”
“ Because there would not come out an universal
religion at all, but only a moral philosophy, with here
and there enthusiastic religious sects, who would practi
cally deify their particular prophets. An universal re
* “The image of the invisible God, the first-born of all
creation.”—Coloss. i. 15.
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ligion must trace its roots clearly into the past. It
must grow out of the history of man as a Divine teach
ing, imparted to him through channels not of his own
making, though they may be made of human materials.
.But your modern Theism, resting with one leg on nega
tive criticism, and the other on subjective feeling,
cannot show its pedigree continuously. There is a gap
of 1800 years in it. If a simple Theism is to legiti
mate itself as the outcome of Grod’s providential guid
ance of the human race, it should have appeared in the
first Christian century, when the transition from national
to universal religion had to be made, and the foundation
was to be laid for the beliefs of the ancestors of our
modern world, and the birth of Christianity in its stead
was a gigantic mistake. How can we reconcile such a
blunder with any faith in a Divine teaching of man
kind ? and without that faith how can there be any
firm logical foundation for religious trust? Am I to
believe in a God who cares for me individually, but is
indifferent to my kind? An ever-silent G-od, who leaves
men to flounder among Materialistic, or Mono- Polyand Pan-Theistic faiths, with no guiding light—
“ But a dark lantern of the Spirit,
Which none see by, but those who bear it ?”
“ You are rather satirical on us Theists; but I don’t
know that we have any right to complain ; after all,
you are only paying us in our own coin. But, seriously,
is the religious history of man since the appearance of
Christianity reconcileable with the belief in the Divinity
of its founder. Think of Mahometanism, sweeping away
the faith in the Incarnate Deity from the very land
‘trod by his blessed feet,’ to say nothing of other once
Christian countries.
Think of the fact that, only
through the consolidation of the western nations under
the ‘ Vicar of Christ,’ was a point of resistance opposed
to the spread of the faith in Allah and his Prophet in
the west, as well as in the east and south; and then
�The Incarnate Deity.
145
think of the abuses and superstitions that have grown
up under the shadow of the tiara. Surely if Christianity
may look like a legitimate child of God at its birth, its
subsequent story is very much that of a bastard. Or if
we are to insist upon a special Divine guidance shown
in its introduction, must not this bring us to the feet of
his holiness the Pope in sackcloth and ashes?”
(l I should be very much at a loss how to answer that
objection, which you will readily believe is not new to
me, but for one circumstance.”
111 am curious to know what ? ”
“ That the Church from her very beginning, departed
from the example set her by her Divine Master, who laid
down no rules for his followers of which we hear, except one
to secure the sacredness of family life; enjoined no beliefs
beyond trust in Himself; and imposed no ordinance
except the common meal, to be held in memory of Him;
but summed up His whole teaching in ‘ thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and
mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself;’
whereas the Church, as Bauer has well shown, would
have wrecked Christianity at its outset on the rock of
ceremonial observances, but for the energetic opposition
of St. Paul; and from the earliest time to which we
can trace her action historically, began, not merely to
introduce ordinances, and proclaim beliefs, which would
have been her duty, but to impose the one, and enjoin
the other, as conditions of Christian union, under the
claim that 1 what she bound on earth should be bound in
heaven, and what she taught on earth should be taken
for unquestionable truth.’ ”
“ And drew the bond tighter and tighter, till it burst
at the Reformation. I suppose you would go on to say,
the Papacy is the logical fruit of this error, and the
growth of Mahometanism, with all the other endless
“ schisms ’ in the body of Christ’s faithful people, its
visible punishment.”
“ But there’s the luncheon bell; we must not keep
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madam waiting till we have done our talk. Besides, I
should like to think it over quietly a little before we go
any further. So I vote for an adjournment to the dining
room. It’s a blessing, at all events, to be able to speak
so freely with you, old fellow, without riling up the
implacable divine, who, I suppose, must lurk somewhere
beneath your clerical costume. But mind, I am not
going to let you off. We have not got to the hardest
part of the tussle yet.”
“ I assure you I have not the least wish to avoid it;
and trust only that, if I am convinced of being in the
wrong, I may have grace to confess my mistakes
honestly.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE INCARNATE DEITY—II.
True to his promise, W------ resumed our conversation
the next day, though this time in my study; a heavy
thunderstorm during the night having made the lawn
“too wet for a jousting place,” as he told my wife, who
when she heard of the subject of our controversy,
brought her work, and declared her intention of listen
ing to its continuation.
“ Well,” began W------ , “I have lain awake I don’t
know how long this morning, thinking over our talk of
yesterday, and I have come to the conclusion to leave
your theory of the Triune Being of God alone ; not that
I altogether see my way to accepting it; there’s some
thing so startling in the idea of a double, or more
strictly speaking, triple action of the Divine will, as
distinct, and yet one at bottom. Yet, certainly our
�The Incarnate Deity.
147
wills do show three distinct sets of operations, the pro
duction or choice of means, the use of means, and the
determination of ends, which involves the spirit of the
work. All their action seems reducible to one or the
other of these three kinds. 1 What,’ 1 How,’ and ‘ Why,’
sum up our conscious energies apart from ‘ When ’ and
1 Where ? ’ And again, I do not see what solid objec
tion can be taken to your position that, if these opera
tions are carried on simultaneously, as we must assume
them to be in the Divine consciousness, if we ascribe
consciousness to God at all, they must constitute dis
tinct hypostases, to employ the old ecclesiastical word,
not merely nominally but really distinct, within a sub
stance truly one; at least this is the case in the produc
tion of means, and their use in organized beings ; as to
the determination of ends, I am more doubtful. The
determination of the end seems to me directly involved
in the acts which produce or combine the means.”
“No doubt; but you may remember that I placed
the distinctive sphere of action of this Third hypostasis
in its operation on the beings formed by the Primal and
Secondary hypostases when these attain to the condi
tion where, as Hegel says, the Idea comes to the con
sciousness of itself.”
“ True, I had forgotten that. That would com
plete the threefold distinctive action, though it cannot
have an aftertype in ourselves. Certainly, this concep
tion of the Divine nature does get us out of a host of
difficulties which hang round the idea of the conscious
personality of God, so long as we insist on His absolute
unity. But it is ‘a far cry ’ from this Triune mystery
to the faith in the Incarnation of one of these Divine
hypostases, in an individual man.”
“ But you must admit, I think, that the way for the
proof of that proposition is thus prepared. Recollect
that the reference to our wills and their action, as a
means of gaining some conception of the Divine per
sonality was not the process through which the notion
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of a Triune Divine Being grew up in the Church. It
was the belief in the Divinity of Christ which drew
after it the conception of the threefold nature of God,
as a necessary consequence. If we find now that this
conception clears up difficulties which it was not in
tended to meet; which, indeed, do not appear to have
occurred at all to those who formed it; surely that is
a strong indirect confirmation of the truth of the notion
which led originally to this conception.”
“I dispute the ‘strong.’ The coincidence is some
confirmation certainly; but to turn it into a strong con
firmation, you should show—lsi, that the notion of the
Divine Being, to which the faith in the Divinity of
Jesus led, does substantially agree with your physicospiritualistic induction; Zndly, that this conception
of the Divine Being does afford some good ground for
thinking that one member of the triple twist could
detach himself from it without ‘ untwisting the twist.’ ”
“ Let me see how far I can satisfy your requisitions
on these points.”
“ First, then, if the Divine Being has this threefold
character, the three hypostases must be essentially co
eternal, co-substantial, and co-equal, in the sense that
the action of one implies that of the others. But the
action ascribed to Christ in the Church doctrine is
separate from the threefold power, not part of its action.”
“ You must bear in mind that the action of the three
hypostases in nature is not, apparently, co-extensive.
The manifestation of the Divine power is far vaster than
that either of His wisdom or His love. Power is dis
played everywhere. The earth is full of power from
its poles to its centre. Power must have been exhibited
at every stage in its long history of development, before
any organic action was possible at all upon it. And
now, the display of organising wisdom is limited neces
sarily to its surface, and even there is not universal.
It exists only where water is to be found. Still more
limited must be the active sphere of the Divine love.
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149
Love needs response. We may admire and delight in
that which is incapable of loving again, but we cannot
truly love it. Now, we cannot love God till we have a
conception of His Being; and the quality of our love
must vary with the purity of our conceptions.”
“ I fear you leave a very narrow sphere for the proper
action of the Divine Spirit.”
“ Its distinctive special action I allow you, which on
the earth must be limited to the minds of men ; and there
can act only in proportion to the degree in which the
will of man opens to receive it. Yet this principle, of
love is truly the informing spirit of the whole Divine
action, determining the operations both of power and
wisdom, within which it must be always present, as you
argued just now, to form their hidden motive.” .
“ As the beauty and reproductive capacity displayed
in the flower and the fruit, must be conceived to be
latent in the root, branches, and leaves, I suppose?”
“ Yes, that’s what I have often heard Edward say,”
interposed Agnes, and it has always seemed to me
such a good illustration.”
“I am fond of it myself,” I said, “ and it will carry
us on further; for the flower and fruit depend on the
leaves, and through them on the stem, which yet is,
only that it may expand into them. Must we not admit
that, between the relations disclosed by these considera
tions and the conceptions about the Triune Godhead,
of which we see the beginning in the New Testament,
there is a logical connection not unlike that of fruit,
leaf, and stem.”
“I do not quite follow you,” replied W------ .
“Consider what were the conceptions about the Divine
Being, prevalent in Western Asia and Europe before the
coming of Christ. Were they not mainly characterized
by the belief in Him as a mysterious Power, in some
way present with man, but nationally and locally, rather
than universally ? Then, with the rise of the Christian
Church, there grew up the notion of a profound Divine
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Wisdom manifested in the constitution of the Church
as a universal body, for the salvation of mankind. And
has not this belief widely fostered the growth of Love
towards God in men’s minds, with a corresponding
manifestation of those graces of tenderness and purity,
in which the old world was especially wanting ?”
“ I suppose you mean to say, here is an evidence of
organizing wisdom preparing the way for the action of
the. spirit of love in the world, by what at first appears
an insulated act ? ”
.“.No doubt. The way has been prepared by the
Divine Wisdom, through faith in the manifestation of
its own essence in one in whom the spirit of Love dwelt
in perfection. ‘We love God,’ as St. Paul says, ‘ because
He first loved us.’ ”
“ I heartily admit that, but why go beyond the idea?
What do we want more than that ? The whole course
of human progress must spring out of the continuous
action of the organizing Divine Wisdom. Why ascribe
such an exceptional peculiar manifestation of it to one
age ? ”
“ Because the idea of such a manifestation has
gathered historically round the person of one indi
vidual.”
“Butone, of whose real actions, true aims, and genuine
personal character we discover across the disturbing
mists of Messianic traditions and popular superstitions,
how much ? ”
“ Enough to see that He set mankind off upon a new
track, to look for a spiritual Messiah, who should form
a people gathered out of every race, to free them from
their sins, instead of a political Messiah, who should
make his own nation ruler over all others.”
“ But a Messiah who was to come in the clouds
before the generation among whom he had lived was
extinct, to take a crushing vengeance on his enemies
and bestow unbounded joys on his followers.”
“ Add, joys identified with supposed spiritual perfec-
�The Incarnate Deity.
151
tion, and vengeance which embodied the conception of
good eternally triumphing over evil. But it is no part
of my argument that these suppositions were free from
error. They were what the knowledge and character
of those who held them made possible; the cotyledons,
which protected during its early growth the tender
shoot of faith in a Divine presence and love, open to
all men, truly sympathetic with man, since it had mani
fested itself in one who was Himself a man. The
cotyledon might wither up and drop when it had done
its work, while the living power, the underlying, eternal
idea expanded into a lasting tree.’"
“That is to say, the idea of an essential unity
between the Divine and the human; the idea that man
should seek a perfection not inferior to that which he
ascribes to his ‘ Father in heaven ; ’ but this idea needs
to be realized in every man. It cannot be shut up in
one individual.”
“ But Mr W------ ,” remarked Agnes, “ surely, the
Church always taught that Christ is our example as well
as our light. I am sure Edward has read me some
words out of one of the old Greek Fathers, which I can
not recollect exactly, but they meant G od appeared in
the likeness of man, that He might make man into the
likeness of God. And is not that quite different from
teaching that the manifestation of the Divine perfections
was ‘ shut up ’ in Christ ? ”
“ My dear madam, I confess you have caught me
tripping. I have stated my difficulty, for I assure you
it is a difficulty, not a mere objection, badly; but the
difficulty is this. Between the original and the copy,
the Divine perfection assumed to have been displayed
in Christ, and the idea of perfection which we seek to
realize, there is the difference, that, in the first case
perfection is inherent; complete from the first; in
capable of increase or of diminution : in the second it
is of gradual growth; a constant striving after a per
fection never attained. How can the unique pheno
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menon enter into the series of phenomena so different
from itself?”
11 How is more than I can answer, or than you ought
to ask, I said, “ at least, until you can explain how the
individual spirit comes to be what it is, at all. But if
you ask why such a manifestation should take place,
the answer seems to me more possible. Men’s con
ceptions about G-od have commonly oscillated between
two opposite notions. They have thought of God
either as too unlike, or as too like themselves : either
as so unlike that no real relation between Him and
themselves was possible ; as an unlimited, impassive,
all-pervading power ; a fate indifferent to the individuals
who form the subjects of its changeless laws; or
as so like themselves that the idea ceased to have
an ennobling influence on them ; as national, partial,
jealous ; loving those only who loved Him ; honouring
those who honoured Him ; and listening to those who
bribed Him with gifts, or teazed Him enough with
prayers ; a capricious man in fact, and yet clothed with
all that unbounded power after which man is always
longing. To attain the truth we must combine these
views. We must conceive G-od as at once like and
unlike us ; unlike us in His perfect sympathy, and yet
His absolute purity ; like us in that His action is
always limited, conditioned, bounded, and therefore en
tirely reasonable. Such a conception of God, the idea
that the Divine essence was truly incarnate in the man
Jesus gives us.”
“ But the Church has never accepted the gift. From
the days of John’s Apocalyptic vision to our own, on
what has she insisted so much as on the omnipotence,
and omniscience of the Being, whom she imagined to
have hid himself in the humanity of Jesus ? ”
“ And yet she has always insisted with equal earnest
ness on His true humanity. You must remember that
it forms no part of my argument to undertake to
justify all that the Church has taught about Christ and
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God. I hold her to have been essentially right in the
idea that the conscious Divine essence did manifest itself
in the man Jesus. It does not follow that she has been
right in all the qualities which she has ascribed to this
Divine Being. For these, theologians have been in
debted partly to the Old Testament, and partly to the
philosophical theories current in their own days. We
may mend their conceptions by the help of the deeper
knowledge of God’s action derived from our more
accurate acquaintance with nature.”
“ But it is precisely that knowledge, the conception
of the vastness of the Divine action in the universe,
and that 1 nous y sommes pour bien peu de choses,’ as
the Empress Eugenie remarked to Levcrrier, when he
had enlarged the imperial mind with a lesson on the
first doctrines of astronomy, which makes the notion of
such a manifestation of God so inconceivable. With
the old Biblical universe, the heaven above, and the
earth beneath, it might be another thing ; but to asso
ciate our littleness with His greatness as we now appre
hend it—Beason revolts at it.”
“You forget Pope—
‘ To Him no high, no low, no great, no small,
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all. ’ ”
“ But that is the Pantheistic soul of the universe;
we are speaking of a personal God.”
“ Oh ! Mr W------ ,” exclaimed Agnes, “surely you do
not seriously mean to place the God in whom we trust,
to whom we pray, the Spirit with whom our spirits can
have communion, further off from us than Pope’s Soul
of nature. And if He is ‘ not far from any one of us,’ as
St. Paul says, what does it matter how big the world is
outside of us? ”
“ My dear madam, I go with you heartily as to God’s
spiritual presence. It is the visible presence, in one
fragment of the universe, of the universal upholder, or
any hypostasis of his Triune Being, if such be its
nature, which staggers me ; visible, I mean, in any
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other way than through that which He upholds. For a
God who sits above the earth, and looks at it, and gives
orders to it, like the God of the Old Testament, the
notion might pass ; but for the eternal Spirit who sus
tains the wonderfull all of which we begin to see
clearer glimpses—I cannot stomach it.”
“ And yet, Mr W------ ,” said Agnes, was it not the
nation who believed in the Old Testament that reiected
Christ ? ”
“ My dear friend,” I continued, “ as W------ did not
answer this question, are you not letting your
imagination run away with you into that false infinite
of bigness with which Dean Mansel chokes us ; that
*
boundless power, which, no doubt, needs boundless
space and endless time to show itself in, and cannot
possibly be squeezed into an individual? But what
has the true infinite, the infinite of moral perfection, to
do with great or little, in space or time, if there is only
space and time sufficient to allow of its manifestation
at all ? Why should it not be shown in a man as well
as in a world; in one conscious individual as well as
in a host ? ”
“ Don’t suppose that I deny the appearance of the
all-sustaining ordering power in the individual man.
It is the double appearance that I stumble at; that the
sustaining should come out as at the same time con
sciously sustained; the ordering as consciously ordered.”
“ I admit the difficulty fully; for it cost me a great
deal of perplexing thought before I could see my way
out of it.”
“ And you think that you do see your way out of it ? ”
“ It seems to me that, in fact, this double character
belongs to the organising power by its proper nature.
It is at once sustained and sustaining; sustained, in so
far as all that it organises depends upon the properties
* The conversation was before the death of the late Dean of
Sti Paul’s.
�The Incarnate Deity.
15 5
of substances which are produced not by its own will,
but by that of the primitive hypostasis ; sustaining, in
as much as it upholds the action, whatever that is, for
at present it seems very little understood, which, out of
these elementary substances, or their combinations,
builds up organized beings. Therefore, to appear as
an actual finite Son of God, far from being inconsistent
with the Divine nature of the Being whom I call the
Eternal Son, would show precisely what this nature is,
and display his true Divine character.”
££ As a sort of dependent Deity ? But how do you
reconcile that notion with the 4 equal to the Father as
touching His Godhead, and inferior only as touching
His Manhood?’”
££ I am not bound to reconcile my conceptions with
those of the anonymous author of the Athanasian creed.
But you must remember that, if the organizing will is
dependent for the materials organized upon a will other
than its own, and thus, in manifesting the virtues of a
dependent being inferior to that on which it depends—the virtues of a perfect humanity—manifests also its
own essential character, still the production of the
organized existences must be supposed to be the object
for which the Being who provides the materials works;
so that here the primal appears subject to the secondary,
the Divinity of Wisdom in its turn takes precedence
over the Divinity of Power, and therefore must be
recognized as co-equal with it.”
' u I see that in admitting your three hypostases, I
have fallen into an unexpected trap,” said W------ , after
a short pause.
££ Now, Mr W------ , I must scold you for that,” inter
posed Agnes. “ I am sure Edward never sets traps
for any body. I know you don’t believe he wishes for
any thing but to get at the truth, as nearly as we can
get at it, in matters so hard to understand at all. And
I feel certain this is all you wish for Mr W------ .”
“ My dear madam, I beg a thousand pardons for the
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word. I know your husband’s straightforwardness far
too well to suppose for a moment that he seeks for
victory in argument rather than truth, and you do me
only justice, I assure you, in thinking as well of me.
The word ‘ trap ’ really meant nothing but the expres
sion of my own surprise. But, after all,” he continued,
turning to me, “ the great difficulty remains, the local
izing of the Divine. What is to become of the organi
zation manifested in the universe, if the organizing
power is sucked up into one Divine man ? ”
“ It is not the power, but the character of the will
which guides the power, that I conceive the Divine man
to have manifested, the spirit which—
‘ Lives in all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.’
All organized being shows us this will more or less
fully, according to the degree of conscious power which
each displays, without necessitating us to suppose that
the greater manifestation in the one case interferes
with the lesser manifestation in another. Why then
should we feel a difficulty in imagining that some one
being might manifest this Divine essence perfectly ? May
not the difficulty be one of our own creating, because
instead of seeking to ascertain what God is from His
acts, we evolve a notion of Him simply from our own
imagination.”
il Perhaps that may be the case ; and if the gradation
were clear the difficulty would be almost evanescent.
But is any such gradation really discernible? No doubt
organized beings show an increase of complexity, a gra
dation in the variety of functions; but is not the power
shown in them always one, the faculty of adaptation,
the fitting of means to ends, I don’t say final ends, but
needs of the particular being ? The gradation of which
you speak is in the conscious powers, exercised by the
individual creatures. But when we come to these we
seem to lose the Divine in a whirl of conflicting impulses,
�The Incarnate Deity.
till we catch sight of it again in the ideal world, in the
sense of beauty, truth, goodness.”
“But in" the manifestation of this inward ideal ele
ment, there is an immense gradation perceptible.’'
“And,” said Agnes, “may it not be just because the
truly Divine seems to withdraw into obscurity, and
become invisible when we get into the world of conscious
organized creatures, that some special utterance of it
was needed to show men what God really is in Himself,
that they might not lose their way in groping after Him
in the dark ? ”
“ You give a very good reason for such a manifesta
tion, my dear madam,” replied W —. “Your position
then,” he added, turning to me, “ I take to be this:
local action belongs to the organizing power as such.
If we suppose this power to be conscious, its action
must be, consciously, limited differently in each
organism, and thus each organism shows more or less
•fully, according to the range of its capacities, what lies
in this power; when individuals reach the degree of
development where they can act for themselves, there
come to light a host of impulses, which, though they
are excellently adapted to promote the welfare of the
individuals, clash more or less with the universal spirit.
But you contend there is no reason why this universal
spirit, which does manifest itself locally in the produc
tion of all these individuals, should not also locally
manifest its own universal character, of which it has
given manifold glimpses in the ideal
‘ Forms and virtues that we dare
Conceive in boyhood, and pursue as men,
That unreached paradise of our despair,’
as Byron has it. Now, assuming all this to be so, there
certainly seems a good reason why, if such a mani
festation is not impossible, it should have taken place.
But we come back to the old fence, what proof is
there that it has taken place ? ”
L
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“ But we are much more likely to clear the fence,
now that we do not begin by assuming that it is too
stiff to be taken,” I replied.
“ I suppose, my dear madam,” said W------ , who
detected a smile on my wife’s face, “ from your coun
tenance, that P------ has got another surprise in store
for me ? ”
“ I don’t know how far it may be a surprise to you,
Mr W------ ,” Agnes rejoined, “I know only that, when
I thought there was an end of all evidence as to what
the nature of Christ really was, because I could not
trust what is said in the Bible to be all true, Edward
showed me that it was just this notion of its being all
true that made the difficulty ; and that, if we once get
rid of the idea that the proof consists in texts, there
comes into sight another sort of proofs, ever so much
stronger, which the texts have hidden.”
“ Oh, I think I can guess what you mean. It is his
argument from the union.of Semitic and Aryan con
ceptions in Christianity, is it not ? ”
“Yes, just so. True historical proofs, from the
fitting together of what men of different races had
thought about G-od; which Edward says, if we believe
in God at all, we must take as marks of the way in
which we ought to think about Him; for how else
should men come to have such thoughts at all about a
Being whom none of them had ever seen, if the spirit
of God had not led them ? ”
“ But how are we to get over the enormous differ
ences in men’s thoughts about God,—differences so vast
that they give some colour to the argument that the
notion of a God distinct from the nature of things is a
delusion which man’s imagination has foisted on itself?”
As Agnes did not seem quite to know what answer
she should make to this question, I interposed with the
remark—“ We must not confuse conceptions with ten
dencies, otherwise we shall be in danger of losing all
sense of certainty about anything not dependent en
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159
tirely on our own will. Men’s conceptions as to what
the objects which affect our senses are have varied, and
do vary indefinitely, yet we do not therefore doubt that
our instinctive tendency to attribute our sensations to
the action upon ourselves of something outside us is
well founded. So the diversity of men’s conceptions
about the Being whom they place above or behind
nature does not show that the instinctive tendency to
assume such a Being is not rooted in the fact of His
existence.”
<£ Not the general fact, I allow, but in the notion of
an Incarnate Deity we get far beyond the instinctive
assumption of a God, to definite conceptions of His
action.”
££ But, as I argued yesterday, these conceptions fall
of themselves into two opposite modes of apprehending
the self-existent; and these, to me, seem to point to an
instinctive action as much deserving attention as is that
general tendency to project our own being out of our
selves into the universe, to which the faith of mankind
in God seems ultimately due.”
- “ Are these opposite tendencies, after all, anything
more than the old distinction of Polytheism and Mono
theism ? ”
“ I think they are. Polytheistic and monotheistic
conceptions of the Divine are found in connection with
each of these two great tendencies of religious thought.
The Chaldean worship distributed the Divine action
among the stars ; but they still opposed the Divine to
the earthly. The philosophic thought of Greece con
ceived God as one ; but it was the unity of an indwelling
power, one with what it upheld.”
“ But surely we come at bottom to a difference of
conception ? Men see God dwelling in the skies ; they
see Him in the stars; they see Him in all things in earth
and skies. But in each case you have the Divine, and
that which it produces, or in which it shows itself, or
which depends on it.”
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“No doubt, you have either that in which the Divine
is manifested, or that which depends on it; but consider
what a difference there is between the feeling associated
with the Divine in the one case and in the other. It is
the expression of the difference which enters so deeply
into our conscious nature between the power of Will
and that of Reflection. The races in whom the impul
sive, emotional faculty of will predominated over re
flection, where they were capable of forming the con
ception of God at all, have separated Him from nature,
which they made either His offspring or His slave. The
races in whom reflective power predominated over will
and emotion, identified God with the hidden source of
the phenomena which furnished the subject matter of
their reflections. Language bears witness to this. Max
Muller has shown that, in the Semitic tongues the
names of God all resolve themselves into ‘ Mighty
One,’ ‘Lord,’ or ‘King,’* while among the Aryan nations,
the names of God mean the sky, the sea, the sun, the
earth, air, fire, &c. The whole atmosphere of religious
thought was coloured by this difference from the begin
ning.! Now, if both Will and Reflection have thus proved
themselves competent to be the source of religious con
ceptions, of which each presents the Divine action under
an aspect suited to the originating power, the religious
faith which most fully corresponds to the real nature of
its object should embody in its idea of the Divine both
these phases, the transcendant and the immanent. God
should be to it manifested in the world, and therefore
* El, Strong ; Baal, Adonis, Mamas (at Gaza) Lord ; BaalSamin, Lord of Heaven; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King;
El-i-eun, The Highest; Ram, Rimmon, The Exalted—Chips
from a German workshop, 358-361.
t Lienee, a monotheistic religion could arise among the
Semites, while the Aryans produced only monotheistic philo
sophies. The many Lords of the popular faith might easily
pass into the notion of one Supreme Lord of all, but how
could the god Sea, and the god Sky, be identified in the popular
imagination ?
�The Incarnate Deity.
161
in man, as the microcosm, the being in whom the indwel
ling power attains the highest natural expression known
to us; and yet should be conceived to possess a being
distinct from the world, supernatural, transcendant.”
“ And that you say has actually been the case with
the idea of the eternal incarnate in Christ ?”
“Just so: the union of the opposite phases of
religious conception has, historically, taken place in
Christianity, and in no other religion. That is a fact
which, if we do iiot altogether give up the idea of G-od
as a conscious Being present with us, must, I think,
have great weight.”
“ And you see, Mr W------ ,” said Agnes, “ what
makes this idea so delightful, is that it gets us over all
bother about the Bible, and who wrote this book or that,
and whether they thought that the earth was made in
six days, and that the sun ran about the sky or not;
and whether all that is said to have happened about
Jesus did. happen just as is written in the Gospels or
not. For this is not what makes the revelation, but it
is about the character of God; what He is in Himself,
and what He is to us. And this we learn through the
union of two great streams of religious thought, as Ed
ward says, about which there can be no doubt: and
these meet in the faith in our Lord on which the
Catholic Church actually grew up, that He is both God
and man.”
“You sum up the case so well, my dear madam, that
I am almost tempted to lay down my arms to you. And
no doubt what you say as to the freedom from critical
difficulties belonging to this line of argument is most
true; but you must not forget that it has difficulties of
its own. And by the bye, that is one of the points I
want to talk over with your husband more fully.”
“ What difficulties, Mr W------ ?” asked Agnes.
“ The difficulty of judging of the whole course of a
great development from the knowledge of part only.
Granted that the Catholic conception of Christ grew up
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out of the union of the old Jewish faith in a transcen
dental, supernatural God, with the old Greek faith in
Gods dwelling in the world, and capable of appearing
as men. May not some purer religious faith grow up
out of the union of this Catholic belief with scientific
thought ? ”
“ But what kind of religion can science teach us ? ”
said Agnes.
“ It can show us—
‘ Sermons in stones, and good in everything.’
Nature, by the order, beauty, and wisdom which we per
ceive in her, conducts us to the faith in an invisible
intelligence, ever present beneath her powers. Man, by
his aspiration after the beautiful, the true, and the
good, conducts us to faith in a moral perfection asso
ciated with this intelligence : and personal experience
founded on this faith, seals our confidence in our
Father in heaven.”
“ You are well provided,” I said, “with bow, string,
and arrow head, but the shaft of the arrow is wanting.”
“And what is that?”
“ The religious history of man. This ever-present
intelligent, perfect Being with whom you believe it
possible to have personal communion, has He been in
different to the conceptions which the human race has
formed of Him, and made no provision for bringing
them to the knowledge of Himself? ”
As W------ made no answer I continued, “ And if
He has made such a provision where can we look for it
so reasonably as there, where, as Agnes said, the two
great streams of human conceptions about God histori
cally coalesced, to form the notion of a Being transcen
dent by his moral perfections, and yet essentially
immanent in the universe which He transcends, since
He could truly appear in it as a man ? Leave out
either side of the double element, the transcendence or
the immanence, and you condemn one side of man’s
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163
religious development to sterility. United, they pro
duce the faith in which the Catholic church has grown
up.”
“Well! I own there is something very seductive in
the view, that the faith in which the two great-streams
of religious conviction apparent in the history of man
have combined, must be the one true, divinely attested
religion. But this historical proof is a two-edged sword.
It is full of difficulties. We began upon them yester
day, but we could not get half through them. First,
except the fourth Gospel which you give up, there is no
evidence that Christ himself taught the doctrine of his
divinity. Then the Church has not adhered to the
faith in an immanent Deity, but raised her Christ into
the skies, and banished God from creation more
thoroughly than even the Jews had done. Then, again
the Catholic faith has not been able to hold her own.
Mahometanism tore from her the fairest regions of the
East. Schism, or what she calls heresy, has rent her
into a crowd of conflicting sects. Her chance of be
coming the universal guide and teacher of mankind,
seems to grow less and less, as ages roll on; because
she is going to pieces herself. While Theism is rising
up fresh out of her ashes, and can perfectly accept
faith in the combined immanence and transcendence of
the Deity, as the true Revelation; the belief in which
men ought to have grown up, when the energy of Paul
broke through the Jewish fence.”
“ Only that, as an historical fact, the faith in Christ
appeared instead.”
“ I am afraid I must run away,” Agnes here said,
“ to look after my little ones. But, Mr W------ , you
are not going to leave us yet I hope, and I should so
much like to hear what Edward has to urge as to these
‘ difficulties,’ could you put off the discussion till to
morrow ?”
“ By all means, my dear Madam, I should like
nothing better than to enjoy a little more of your
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society, as you kindly ask me to stay, and I have a
day still at my command—so let the debate stand
adjourned.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE INCARNATE DEITY. III.
“Well,” said W------ , the next morning, after break
fast, when we had taken up our quarters in the shade
on the lawn, to which the fine day tempted us, while
my wife’s industrious fingers were busy over a dress for
one of our girls, “ I have been rolling my ‘ difficulties ’
of yesterday about in my brain a good deal since we
talked togethet, and I am afraid they rather grow than
lessen by the process. Your historical argument goes
on beautifully till the foundation stone is laid, but then
I think it breaks down. The history of the Church
is not what it ought to have been if your notions are
true. Instead of spreading over the earth, she lost to
Mahometanism, half the ground she had gained, and her
growth since, has been by the natural increase of
population, in the countries remaining Christian rathef
than by drawing men into her fold. Then, within, her
history has been one succession of schisms or heresies,
turning mainly on that very faith in the Incarnation to
which your argument leads as the essence of the religion,
and its logical consequences ; Maryolatry, Transubstantiation, Papal Authority, Election, Predestination, Bible
worship ; all turning on it, I say, because it is precisely
this dogma that has converted religious faith from the
i’ ' •■rnal to the phenomenal, from that which may be
jted by the conscience to that which can be attested
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165
only by learned research; and this, too, a dogma which
takes away all interest from the Life of Jesus as a man,
and makes a good many of his sayings about his
coming in the clouds absurd ; and to crown all, a dogma
never taught by Jesus himself if we derive our picture
of his teaching from the only source appearing to be at
all trustworthy—the synoptics. I am like David, I
cannot fight for God and His cause under all this heavy
armour, I prefer the ‘ Sling and the Stone.’ ”
“ You have given us a terrible budget of ‘ difficul
ties ’ indeed, Mr. W—-—said Agnes, with a rather
sad smile.
“ But we ought to give him our sincere thanks for
it,” I added. I have never forgotten one of Herder’s
striking sayings, that ‘religious difficulties are like
corks,’ if you try to force them under water they may
drown you, but if you learn to float upon them they
bear you up. W------ ’s difficulties seem to me to have
something of this cork-like nature. They are just
what the character of Christ’s teaching, if we form our
notion of it from the synoptics, and, assuming him to
have been what the Church has believed, compare it
with the character of the teaching of the Church, would
lead me to expect. You look incredulous, but consider :
Christ’s teaching, as the synoptics give it, setting aside
the predictions of His coming in the clouds to judg
ment, which they put into His mouth but which I
think it clear that He never uttered, at least as we read
them, is very authoritative, like that of one who had
no doubt at all on the matters of which he spoke, and
has an essentially personal, or as Mr Renan calls it,
£ femine ’ element, yet it always brings men to God, to
1 the Father who seeth in secret,’ £ who sendeth down
ram on the evil and the good, and maketh His sun to
shine on the just and unjust,’ and £ clothes the lilies of
the field, with beauty.
never puts himself between
man and God; but the Church has continually done
this.”
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“ That is my argument. You ask me to build on
the faith of the Church as a guide to the truth in re
gard to the nature of Christ. I say this faith was a
blunder of the Church, and that he who alone could
have been conscious of his own nature, if it were what
you suppose, does not sanction it. For the ‘ come unto
me ’ tone of his teaching, remarkable as it is, no doubt,
and unsatisfactory as Renan’s explanation is, to me, at
least, though, certainly, it fits in with your hypothesis,
cannot prove it. Then just on account of this blunder,
*
* Miss Hennell, who notices this peculiarity in her “Aids
to Faith,” (34-54), explains it by supposing Jesus to have
been carried away by the Messianic expectations of his age
and nation, which he qualified only by the uncompromising
assertion of the necessity of a thorough reformation as the
indispensable condition of their realization. But this concep
tion is inconsistent with the fact that Jesus claimed to be the
Messiah in a sense strongly opposed to the popular notions of
what the Messiah should be, as is clearly proved by the cir
cumstance, on which Gfrorer dwells at length in his
“ Geschichte des Ur-Christenthums,” § II. 6-14, that of all the
Messiahs who have appeared among the Jew’s, Jesus is the
only one whom his own nation have given up. Now, no one
can be carried away by an idea which he governs. If the
sense in which Jesus claimed to be the Messiah was opposed
to the popular expectations, the explanation of any peculiari
ties attending his conceptions must be sought in his own ideas,
not in those current among the Jewish people ; consequently
the remarkable union of profound devotion to God with the
assumption of personal authority, characteristic of the dis
courses of Jesus in the synoptics, remains a problem unsolved
by any popular belief attaching to the character of the Mes
siah.
It may, perhaps, be contended that Jesus was induced to
adopt this pretentious tone by the fancy that he had been
appointed the future judge of mankind, on condition of sub
mitting to rejection and suffering in the present. In a subse
quent conversation I have assigned reasons for thinking that
no predictions of any such coming to judgment were uttered
by Jesus, and that they prove only how strong the belief of
the common Messianic notions was among the Jews, since
even those who had learned to believe in a suffering Messiah
could not avoid transforming him into one who should even
tually triumph, not through suffering but over it. But, at all
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Christianity, i.e., the worship of Christ, took the place of
the worship of God, taught by Jesus, but only now,
after long centuries of error, and all its lamentable
consequences of schism and disunion, beginning to
exercise its healing and uniting power.”
“I do not differ from your conclusion, though I can
not assent to your premisses. That the Church fell into a
events, such an idea would be fatal to the explanation given
by Miss Hennell, who makes Jesus continue to the last under
the delusion that God would vindicate his title to be the true
Messiah, by a manifestation of almighty power, until he
broke out in despair into the Eli, Eli, Lama sabacthani. Pro
fessor Newman has recently dealt with the same subject in
a tract entitled the True Temptation of Jesus, published as
part of this series. His explanation is ‘ ‘ that the idea
that he was himself the Messiah may not have occurred to
[Jesus] until after he had experienced the zeal of the multi
tude, and was aware that a rumour had gone abroad 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 ques
tion, 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. Previously, he thought only, w'hat
doctrine is true morality ? What are the crying sins of the
day ? 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 supe
riority and be fearfully entangled when entering on literary
interpretations. Wholly to get rid of traditional notions was
impossible, yet enough of distrust would remain to embarass
a fixed belief, and produce vacillation. Nothing is 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 when
Simon Peter declared him to be the Messiah, and should bless
his faith, even if not with the extravagance of giving him the
keys of the kingdom of heaven ; finally should be displeased,
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grievous, though probably inevitable blunder, I allow ;
but it was, I think, not in ascribing true Divinity to
Jesus, but in not ascribing it sufficiently.”
“ What do you mean ? ”
“ Simply, that Christ, as I conceive, came to showusthat
the perplexing tangle of human infirmity, and pain and sor
row, with the great terror, death, which seems to interpose
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 uncer
tainty. After this his course could not be straightforward
and simple,” p. 21-22. But this theory is open to the grave
objection that it has no support from the traditions about
Jesus, beyond that afforded by the statement that Jesus for
bade his apostles from announcing him as the Messiah. All
the synoptics represent him to have spoken in the same
authoritative tone from first to last. There is no trace of any
change in this respect consequent on his recognition as the
Christ by Peter. On the contrary, it is after that recognition
that they place his refusal to be addressed as “good,”—Mat.
xix. 17, Mark x. 14, Luke xviii. 16; or to act as judge,—
Luke xii. 14. Nor is there any trace of his having been
more occupied in the consideration of the predictions relating
to the Messiah after that time than before it. Luke makes
him begin his ministry by applying Isaiah lxi. 1, to himself,
iv. 18. He calls himself the “Son of Man” from a much
earlier date,—Mat. viii. 20, Mark ii, 10. Luke iv. 24. And,
after it, he disclaims descent from David, which was one of
the most unquestionable scriptural signs of the Messiah, Mat.
xxii. 42, Mark xii. 15, Luke xx. 41. That religious teachers
are peculiarly open to the temptation of self-importance may
be admitted. The perplexity is to account for the union in
a character so calm and earnest as that of Jesus appears to
have been, of such high personal claims with such profound
devotion to God and such zeal for the good of man, without
any attempt to secure political influence for himself. This
puzzle the instances adduced by Professor Newman, Luther,
and Zwingle, Calvin and Servetus, the ascetic philosophers
who have become legislators, Bouddha, Confucius and Zoro
aster, (Temptation of Jesus, p. 6), leave unsolved. Bouddha
comes nearest to Jesus. But then, as Baroil Bunsen has said,
Bouddha gives up the actual which Jesus would raise to
Divine purity, Gott in der Geschichte, ii., 4.
�The Incarnate Deity.
169
such a barrier between man and God, that we create Mil
tonic falls to account for it, is no barrier at all; because
He who was essentially God could share them, that the
eternal is ever present beneath the temporal; ready
to give support and rest to those who earnestly seek it
in communion with God : and that this is the true
‘ kingdom of heaven ’ present on earth, into which all
may enter who will. But the Church, as a body, has
never believed in this Divine teaching. Individuals
within her communion have, and have often exagger
ated the sublime lesson of renunciation contained in it,
but the Church has not. Christ in His humanity has
never been to her more than a God in disguise; who
by and by would throw off the mask, and return in His
true shape, attended by all those splendours of power,
and overflowings of pleasure, in which our imaginations
delight to revel.”
“ I see you are, indeed, a root and branch reformer.
What becomes of the golden throne, and the assembled
nations, and Jerusalem descending from above, and the
temple where the sun shall not burn by day nor the
moon by night, and the renovated earth, and the
resurrection bodies; all vanish before this sublime
doctrine of renunciation, whose sublimity I do not
deny: but it is the voice of Spinoza or Goethe that I
hear, not the teachings of Jesus.”
“You hear more than you can learn from Spinoza or
Goethe. You hear the sesame which opens to all man
kind that ‘kingdom of heaven,’ which, to the philosophical
thinker, is the inheritance only of a few—the kingdom
where the individual is truly sovereign, because by the
magic of love, he feels his oneness with the universal,
the eternal.” In Christ’s teaching God is a power pre
sent not only in but with man ; with whom man can
truly enter into communion; and, in so doing, attain a
serenity, not involving indifference to suffering; a capa
city for enjoyment free from indifference to evil; a zeal
for truth free from the self-conceitedness of orthodoxy.
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This side of the Divine, by which the ‘ Eternal Gospel ’
can be preached to the poor you find in Christ, and do
not find in the teachers whom men would substitute for
Him. But I cannot think He is the less Divine for that.”
“ There I quite agree with you. But see what we
come to. Christ you say, did not teach men to worship
himself, He taught men a profoundly simple, and
therefore profoundly philosophical religion, which his
example, so far as we know it, illustrated. This, the
Church converted into the worship of Christ himself, and
thereby lost or dimmed the purity of Christ’s teaching.
Now, that s my position. I want to restore this pro
foundly philosophical religion by getting rid of the
interpolated disturbing element.”
‘‘But in so doing, ‘you root up,’ in my judgment,
‘ the wheat with the tares.’ The element of personal
reverence for Christ on which the Church has laid so
much stress, is only the expansion of that personal
element, that ‘ come unto me and I will give you rest,’
so especially distinctive of Christ’s own teaching.
Reduce Him to a mere human teacher, and it becomes
an offensive assumption. No one man has the right to
*
speak so. At best He must have limited His invitation
to ‘ come and I will show you the better way,’ as St.
Paul does. But take away this personal element from
the teaching of the Church, you take away also the
main spring of its force. It began, during the life of
Jesus, in reverence for one who led men to God in
drawing them to Himself. It has continued, because,
under the Catholic conception about His person, to come
to Him was to come to God. To take away this concep
tion might indeed throw down a great deal of mud suspen
ded in the stream; but it would dry up the water.”
“ Can the waters of trust in God ever dry up?”
“ They cannot fail to satisfy the individual soul
which draws from the living spring ; but they may dry
* As Professor Newman powerfully shows in the tract
cited above, p. 166.
�The Incarnate Deity.
171
up for the many, from doubts as to the existence of
the spring preventing their searching for it.”
“ Religion,” I continued after a moment’s pause,
“ being a universal principle, though it must grow up
within the individual, requires to root itself in some
thing deeper than the individual. A faith growing out
of the remote past by a continuous development, can
fulfil this condition, and yet allow of freedom and
progress. But, on your hypothesis, there would be no
continuity. The passage from the national faith of the
Jew to the faith in a God of all mankind, has been
historically made through the belief in the Divine
nature of Christ. Any further religious development
must take into itself this belief, or it cannot be continuous
with the past, and must thus lose the £ note ’ of a true
revelation. You cannot jump back eighteen hundred
years, and live the first century over again in the
nineteenth.’'’
“ But, surely, the Reformation was founded on the
notion of going back to primitive Christianity, and
throwing off the corruptions of it introduced during
the middle ages ? ”
“No doubt it was. But is not the history of the
Protestant bodies a perpetual witness to the error of
the attempt ? What have Protestant theologians gained
by breaking up the unity of the Latin Church, but the
affirmation of a principle at whose results they tremble,
—the duty of personal conviction, and therefore, the
right of free inquiry ? If we are to attain to any satis
factory issue from the Reformation, we must alter our
conceptions of revelation. Instead of a set of stereotyped
dogmas, we must see in it a living, continuous process.”
££ And then we stumble over the Roman Catholic
Church in the West, to say nothing of the East : a
magnificent development no doubt of the principle of
authority, but with what a result ? What faith can we
place in the Church having revealed to us truths about
the person of Christ, not asserted by himself, when her
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system culminates in a solemn claim of personal in
fallibility for the old gentleman, who sits for the time
being in the Papal Chair, a claim which seems about
to be made in sober earnest.”*
“ None, if the Church had not, in her development,
departed from the free spirit of her Founder; if she
had been content to allow the condition of attachment
to His person to remain the sufficient theoretical bond
of union, and, limiting her censures to moral trans
gressions, had left the progress of thought free------ ”
“ That is to say, pardon my interrupting you, if the
Church had been different from what she has been, she
might have been a trustworthy guide. But we can
deal only with what she has been.”
“ We must deal with the Church, I conceive, as with
all natural growth; look for the idea beneath the phe
nomena. If my conception of revelation is right, what
the Church had principally to do was, to blend effect
ually into one, the two great modes under which man’s
imagination has presented to itself the Divine; as
transcendent to the visible universe and as immanent
in it; and to fix men’s attention on their union in the
point where it had actually taken place—namely, the
person of Christ. This function she had to fulfil under
the common conditions of all human effort. We learn to
go right by the consequences of going wrong. But it is
better to take the wrong path than not to move at all,
for then we never could find the right one. The
Church went wrong, I think, when she relied on the
principle of authority as the guide to truth. The error
was inevitable : it was -inherent in the spirit of the age
when she sprang up. But she fulfilled the primary
purpose of her existence, if not by the best means, yet
in the end. She developed and asserted, with unwaver
ing constancy, the faith in the Divinity of her Lord.”
“ And in his perpetual contra-sensual presence in
the elements of the Eucharist. ”
* As has since actually been done.
�The Incarnate Deity.
173
“ His hidden presence, that is to say, His presence,
not attested by any visible sign, distinct from the
phenomena which we call natural. But is not the
conception of this sort of presence inseparable from the
idea of the immanence of God in the world, with which
you do not quarrel ?”
“Well! no doubt God is really present beneath every
natural phenomenon, but that is not what the Church
taught. The Real Presence of Christ in the Bread and
Wine is to her occasional only; depending on the
magical force of the consecrating words, which draw
Him from the skies, and make Him descend on His
altar, to be offered up as the ever-present bloodless
sacrifice.”
“ But if He is really present there, as He must be if
the conceptions of His inherent Divinity and of the
immanence of God in the universe are true, the Church is
substantially right in her teaching, and wrong only in
taking as partial that which is truly universal; making
the priest produce a presence which it is his proper
office only to declare.”
“ You take me quite aback. Of all doctrines in the
world I never dreamt of finding the dogma of the Real
Presence put forward as a truth of reason. But if
it is only one case of a universal action, what becomes
of the special reverence attached to the Sacred
Symbol ? ”
“ Reverence is the offspring of faith ; faith in the
living God, whose continual presence the symbol
attests ; and faith in the Divinity of Him, of whose love,
manifested on earth, the Sacramental Bread and Wine
are the memorials. We may kneel before the Christian
altar, as we uncover our- heads in church, from motives
entirely free from any magical notions of Divine
action.”
“ And, you see Mr. W------ ,” interposed Agnes,
“if Christ is, as Edward supposes, the Divine. Person
whose power is especially shown in all living things;
M
1
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and His peculiar Divine work is to make them be, and
so to clothe the earth with beauty, and fill it with glad
ness, there could not be better and more fit memorials
of Him, than that ‘ bread ’ which is ‘ the staff of our
life;’ and that great minister to our enjoyment ‘the
wine which maketh glad the heart of man.’ I assure
you I was quite delighted when Edward first made me
understand this. It was so charming to feel that one
could really sympathize with the builders of those grand
old cathedrals, in the reverence they expressed in their
beautiful stonework, for this profound truth, which the
Church has preserved for us, almost without knowing
it.”
“ But where are we to stop in this philosophical
rehabilitation of Catholicism ? Does it include the
Virgin. Mother ?”
“ I think every true lover may answer that question
in the affirmative,” I replied. “ Set aside the physical
absurdities, and can any conception be more profoundly
true than that the spirit of chastity and purity is
enshrined in wedded love, not profaned by it: that it is
the subordination of the spirit to the flesh, not the
union where the body ministers to the deepest impulses
of the soul, in which lies the danger of love.”
“ And as for the invocation of the Saints,” continued
Agnes, smiling, “ you must remember that Mons. Comte
proposes to revive it in his own fashion, only bringing
in certain benefactors of mankind, of whom the Church
ha.s taken no notice, but whom Edward thinks that she
might, in many cases, very properly include in her
commemorations.”
“ To express, I suppose, la solidarity humaine as our
neighbours say ; the feeling that the great and good of
all ages are really one body of workers together with
God; and that the thought of them should be con
tinually present to our memories, as their work is really
present to our lives, which are what they are, in great
part through what our forefathers have been and have
�The Incarnate Deity.
175
done. Well! if you do not insist on their bones
working miracles, I won’t quarrel with that doctrine.”
11 So, Mr W------ , all your long list of stumblingblocks to the faith, in Christ from the history of the
Church, seem to resolve themselves into the Pope. But
then Edward says the whole idea of the Papal power
grew out of the feeling of the unity of all spiritual life,
which is at the very root of our faith, if we believe in
Christ really as a Divine Being, and not, as is the case
with most Protestants, unhappily, only as the head of
a sect. And that the Pope should be at Rome has
a deep significance, too, when we remember that Rome
has been the type of empire. For when Rome became
identified with the visible head of the Church, what
was this but the sign that the ‘ kingdoms of the world ’
were to be transformed into the ‘ kingdom of God and
of His Christ ’ 1 ”
“ You make a very good defence for his Holiness,
my dear madam, but I don’t know that I object to the
head so much as to the body—the priestly order thrust
in between man and God—the whole monastic system,
and the celibate clergy. You cannot have the heart to
defend them, surely ? ”
“ Optimi corruptio pessimum est W------ ,” I said.
*
“ That which is beautiful, and noble, if freely chosen,
may become a villainous burden on men’s souls if it is
enforced. You must not forget that Plato proposed
for his select teachers and guardians of the order of his
commonwealth a body free from the distracting influ
ences of individual homes. I cannot but think there
is a profound truth latent in the notion that, for the
perfect development of human society, we want asso
ciations of men and women, in whom devotion to the
common good, and cultivation of the inner life shall
take the place of the anxieties and pursuits which
usually engross our time.”
The corruption of the best is the worst.
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“At all events, the Church did not solve this problem
of a perfect human society.”
“ No; but she kept it constantly before men’s eyes,
while Protestantism has shelved it, till it is coming
upon us like a £ giant armed ’ in questions of social re
form.”
“We must not get on that topic, or we shall never
get back to our proper one,” said W---- “ But, apart
from the question of celibacy, what is the whole priestly
system but a barrier, where we require a bond ? ”
“And what is to form the bond?” As W------ did
not reply, I continued. “ Look to the origin of the
Christian priesthood. You will see, I think, that in its
idea, it is exactly what you truly say we need, a bond
between God and man, by the witness which it bears,
through the fact of its existence, to the great manifes
tation of God in Christ.”
“Assuming that manifestation to have taken place?”
“Naturally.
Assuming the idea on which the
Church has been built to express a reality, _I say the
conception of a body of teachers who, according to
their original institution, were bound to no enforced
form of doctrine, but were simply linked by the fact of
the laying-on of hands to the Divine Revealer, com
bines, in the happiest union possible, those opposing
phases of faith and freedom, so hard to reconcile by
the methods commonly adopted.”
“ So you see, Mr W------ ,” interposed Agnes, “ it is
just as I said after all, your difficulties about the Church
melt away when we examine them closely, though they
look very formidable at a distance, when you see them
in a mass.”
“ But, my dear madam, even if we could quite boil
away all these inner difficulties by the sort of process
to which P------ subjects them, you must not forget that
there is another lot from outside the Church ; there is
that great stumbling-stone, the rise of Mahometanism,
the vast regions where it extinguished the faith in Christ.”
�The Incarnate Deity.
177
“ The ebb of what we believe to be the truth from
lands it once covered must always be perplexing,” I
answered, “ but this perplexity seems to me to attach
to your views as well as to mine. You do not main
tain, I suppose, that Mahometanism contains more
religious truth than Christianity. But if not, how came
it to supplant Christianity ? ”
“ You forget that to me 'both Christianity and Ma
hometanism are imperfect statements of the simple
Theistic religion, the one distorting it into the worship
of a man, the other into blind obedience to ‘ God’s
word ’ delivered to His Prophet. It is conformable to
the general analogy of the Divine order upon earth,
that the various forms of error should perish by external
conflict or internal decay. Men are commonly led to
discover the right road by continual failures in trying
wrong ones.”
“ But to me, too, as I have said more than once, the
Christianity of the Church has been wrong. Sadly
wrong, in substituting the principle of authority em
bodied in her creeds, founded on the writings treated
by her as infallible, for that of personal trust in the
living God manifested in her ever-present Lord. Why
then should she not experience in her contest with
Mahometanism, that necessity of learning the truth
from the bitter consequences of error, which you and I
agree in considering to be the Divine method of in
struction ? ”
“ But the struggle did not teach her this. The ten
dencies you condemn were strengthened rather than
lessened by the conflict of Christendom with the Ma
hometan power.”
“ The struggle did, I conceive, all that mere trials
of strength can do. It braced up the conflicting forces
and made each side put forth its noblest energies.
Hanke traces the great conception of the Papacy in the
ages next preceding the Keformation, in part to the loss
of the grand object of arming Europe against the In
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fidels, which had been continually before the eyes of
the mediaeval Popes. And modern Europe owes, I
imagine, not unimportant elements in her civilization to
the Crusades. But the energy thus developed followed
its own course. It could not do otherwise. The lesson
is for us, who stand at a point in human history where
it can be drawn. We may see in the growth of Ma
hometanism and its decay, God’s continuous protest
outside the Church, against the double error of Catholic
and Protestant orthodoxy inside it, Church worship and
Bible worship.”
“ A sort of pendant, I suppose you would say, to
His protest within the Church against the same tend
encies, in the schisms and sects into which Christianity
has split up, under the vain attempt to rest truth on
authority instead of on conviction.”
“ You put the case very well. And, granting our com
mon assumption that God works always through natural
means, the history of Mahometanism ceases to be so
puzzling. Rather the puzzle would have been, if the
Church had gone on ‘conquering, and to conquer,’ while
she carried within her frame such a formidable disease.
How can we expect that she should draw mankind
generally into her fold, when she presents herself as the
bearer of a message requiring to be supported by
learned apologies, instead of as the proclaimer of
living truths responded to by the conscience of man.”
“ And what can those be but the simple affirmations
of Theism?”
“ None else. But in teaching them as that to which
God has borne witness in the history of man, by showing
Himself to be that personal, pure, just, and yet loving
Being whom the noblest imaginings of man have
conceived, she can appeal to men’s consciences with a
power such as teachings addressed only to the witness
of conscience, with no claim to any affirmation by the
concurrent voice of history, could never exercise ? ”
“Well! that is probable, and of course, if you give
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179
up the claim to infallibility either for Church or Bible,
and take your stand on the history of human beliefs,
that is, really on the scientific ground of the interpre
tation of nature, where you place all creeds on the same
level, you get over the grand stumbling stone of partial
conflicting revelations. All become part of one universal
scheme. But suppose me a Hindoo, say Keshub
Chunder Sen, whom I mentioned the other day, of whom
I daresay you have heard, as the leader of the advanced
Brahmoos, to whom you come with your historical
affirmation of Theistic faith, through the Divine person
ality which you attribute to Jesus, may I not justly
urge, 1 You ask me to believe in a self-contradictory
supposition, in an unchangeable being who changes; who
grows up from babyhood to manhood; who as a baby, was
necessarily entirely ignorant, and as a man, according
to the accounts preserved of him, shared in the notions
of his countrymen about their sacred books, and about
the universe, which we now know to have been mis
taken, and entertained entirely unfounded anticipations
of coming in the clouds to judge all mankind, before
the generation who saw him had passed away.’ How
can I believe in such a Deity 1 ”
“ As to the complaint of ‘ unfounded anticipations ’
I should reply, a careful examination of the New
Testament has satisfied me, that in them we hear only
the voice of the early Church, the hopes and fears of
the first generations of Christians, not the words of
Christ. The other difficulty goes much deeper. It
strikes at the root of the idea of Incarnation. Now
this idea is, as we have seen, one of the two great modes
under which the religious instinct of man has presented
to itself the Divine action. What shall I say then ?
Is my knowledge of the Divinity such as to justify me
in condemning the religious sense of the Aryan family
of mankind—the one among whom intellectual power
has achieved its grandest triumphs, to sterility. Yet if
we accept this instinct as a true element in the manifesta
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tion of the Divine, and do not play at bo-peep with our
thoughts, but attach a serious meaning to our words,
it must be consistent with the Divine essence to exhibit
itself, under every phase through which will and intel
ligence can pass in mm.”
“But our ignorance of the Divine nature cannot
justify us in ascribing to it a mode of action incon
sistent with itself.”
“ Agreed, provided you do not call that inconsistent
with ‘ itself,’ which is only inconsistent with some
arbitrary assumption of your own.”
“ purely, the notions of unchangeableness and
growth are opposed by no arbitrary assumption, but by
their own proper conception. Now, if the Divine
essence is to be really manifested in-a man, that which
is so manifested must be unchangeable; but if it is
unchangeable it cannot grow; and if so it cannot be
manifested in any being who, like man, grows.”
“ But what is to hinder us from ascribing the growth
to the vehicle through which the manifestation is made,
not to the essence manifested by it 1 Suppose a glass
capable of expanding from a point visible only with the
aid of a microscope, to the size of a common tumbler, it
might contain water in every stage of its growth, but
we should not discover it to be water till the glass had
grown to a considerable size ; though its qualities would
really be all the while the same, and there would be
change only in the quantity contained. What evi
dence have we that the Divine cannot manifest itself
quantitatively, under all the phases of human growth;
putting forth at each successive stage just so much
inherent power as belongs to the principle of will in
man in that phase; yet always with a consciousness of
its own nature and acts.”
“ I won’t deny the possibility of that. But the will
thus displayed would be essentially different from our
ordinary human will. In-us, to carry on your analogy,
the oxygen and hydrogen have to combine into water.
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181
In the Deity clothed in our shape, the water would be
always formed and indecomposable.”
“ I admit that.”
“ Then you must admit also that there can be no
question of a growth in the mind of Christ to a percep
tion of his Messianic functions. From the first he must
have known who he was.”
“ No doubt 1 And so the Church has always held,
from the time that the idea of the true Divinity of
Christ presented itself in biographical detail, to the
imagination of the author of the fourth Gospel. This is
the very thing that has made this Gospel so dear to the
Christian body. It made Christ say of Himself what
they thought about Him; mistaking very much, I
believe, what such a Divine man would do and say. but
guided by a true instinct to see that He must have
spoken and acted always with the consciousness of His
Divinity.”
“ But then, what is to become of the great example
which you clergy are accustomed to press upon us in
the character of Christ. How can a Being who, from
the first dawn of conscious reason, possessed a will per
fect under every trial to which it could be subject, be a
pattern to a struggling host of imperfect creatures in
their slow and often backsliding efforts to realize in
their own case the ideal of humanity ? ” *
“I should say it is precisely the idea of the true
Divinity, and therefore the inherent perfection of the
will of Christ which makes it possible for Him to be an
* If Christ were a man he is our pattern, the possibility
of our race made real; if He were God, a partaker of God’s
nature, as the orthodox maintain, they are guilty of a cruel
mockery in speaking of Him as a type, a model of human ex
cellence. How can one endowed with the perfection of a god
be an example to beings encumbered with the weaknesses of
humanity?—Greg “ Creed of Christendom,” p. 87also
“ The Problem of the World and the Church Ke-considered,”
145.
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example to mankind, and that the idea of His simple
humanity destroys this example.”
“ You speak in paradoxes.”
“ But the solution is not difficult. Consider. How
can one man be an example to any other man, all the cir
cumstances of whose life are utterly different, let alone
the difference of the sexes ? ”
‘‘ Surely the same spirit may be manifested under all
sorts of circumstances, the spirit of truthfulness, for
instance, of temperance, of justice, of purity ? ”
“ No doubt; but what is the spirit manifested by
Jesus which is of such universal application that He
can be said to be an example to all mankind ? ”
.“.The common voice of Christianity answers, the
spirit of pure unselfishness, of self-sacrificing love,
carried to the supreme point of enduring death on the
cross for the sake of other men.”
“ But if Jesus was only an obscure carpenter’s son,
who claimed to be the Messiah of whose greatness the
long line of Jewish prophets had traced such magnifi
cent anticipations, this self-sacrifice was associated with
an amount of self-importance which quite spoils it as
an example. Socrates seems to me a purer pattern of
simple human earnestness in the search for truth, with
out regard to consequences ; and Paul a more striking
instance of missionary energy in proclaiming what he
conceived to be true, under every difficulty.”
“ To say nothing of Bouddha,” interposed Agnes,
11 who, according to the story about him, was a king’s
son, heir to his throne, who gave up all the luxury of a
court, that he might practise and teach, in a life of the
most self-denying poverty, the true wisdom which over
comes desire.”
“ Yes,” I continued. “ To convert Christ into an
effective example of self-sacrificing love we require the
idea of his voluntary abasement, as it is shadowed forth
in the Philippians; the notion of one “ who being in
�The Incarnate Deity.
183
the form of God, grasped not at equality with God,
*
But took on him the form of a servant, and being found
in the likeness of man, humbled himself to be subject
to death, even the death of the cross.”
£< Well, I admit that the idea of the true Divinity
of. Christ does make him a very effective example of
this spirit, yet the Christians who have most emphati
cally dwelt on the conception of Christ being our
example are the Unitarians, who reject this idea.”
. “ Because, in the Catholic Church the grand old life
giving conception of the Divine example afforded us
by Christ was stifled beneath the notion of mysterious
exclusive blessings purchased through His atoning
blood, for His orthodox followers. When this after
growth was cut down by the Unitarian pruning-hook,
the primitive conception revived. And the old Uni
tarians did not feel that they had really destroyed the
value of the example on which they insisted by aban
doning the Catholic ground, because to them, Jesus,
though only a man, was a man clothed with such ex
ceptional powers, that in noi using them for his own
aggrandisement, but submitting to poverty and reproach
and death, he displayed an amount of self-denial so
great, that it might be justly rewarded by the privilege
of becoming the Christian Minos, the judge of quick
and dead, which they thought that God had bestowed
upon him.”
“ But now that critical enquiry has swept away the
foundation of our belief in these supernatural powers,
I suppose you contend that the old Unitarian concep
tion must fall through. Yet James Martineau, I re
member, says somewhere, ‘Come what may of the criti
cal verification, the Divine image furnished by the life
of Christ is now secured to the soul of Christendom,
* This appears to be the true rendering of
a.p7rayp.t>v
7]yt)craTo to etvai to a 0e<2. The rendering, thought it “not
robbery to be equal with God,” spoils the natural course of
the thought.
�184
Via Catholica.
presides in secret over its moral estimates, directs its
aspirations and inspires its worship.”
“Martineau, I think, deceives himself by his own
genius. He creates the image of an ideally perfect
man, and calls it Christ, influenced by ‘ the scent of
the roses ’ which hangs round the revered form. And
no doubt this ideal is not liable to be destroyed by
critical research, but then it has no firm objective founda
tion. It cannot appeal to the past for its verification as
the Catholic idea can. It is not a datum given us by
man s religious history ; but a modern creation of our
own.minds, to which we give an illusive solidity by
looking at it across the mirage of eighteen centuries.”
“I suppose you make the same sort of objections to
Dean Milman’s dictum, that the words of Jesus will
survive, as a beacon light for mankind, though the faiths
connected with his person should perish.”
“ Yes, if those words are not left to rest upon them
selves ; if any special weight be claimed for them,
because they are ascribed to Jesus, apart from the
witness borne to the Catholic idea of His nature by their
general tone. For, then arise the questions. First,
why attach greater weight to the words of Jesus than to
those of any other man ? Second, are we sure that we
have a faithful report of his words ? And if we seek
to establish this to the satisfaction of a stringent
criticism, one sentence after another will disappear
till there is left only magni nominis umbra.”*
“ I believe you are about right there : so revenons a
nos moutons. I have not half done with the difficulties
involved in the notion of this Divine manifestation.
Surely, you must go further with the fourth gospel as to
his knowledge. How is it possible to separate the con
sciousness of Divinity from the absolute knowledge
belonging to God?”
* The shadow of a great name. Hence the contradictory
estimates of the motives and objects of Jesus formed by
eminent critics of different schools.
�The Incarnate Deity.
185
“ Will you tell me what that absolute knowledge is ?
What knowledge can be suitable to the eternal but a
knowledge of principles ? Each Divine hypostasis
must know the modes, limitations, and purposes, of its
own action. But the knowledge of phenomena appears
to me to belong to the creature, not to the creator.
God is the ever-present doer, and -Divine knowledge
is, I conceive, a knowledge of the present and inward ;
knowledge of the outward, phenomenal, which, in fact,
is always a knowledge of the past, for all such knowledge
arises by reflection and implies the previous being of
that on which we reflect, belongs, I think, to the beings
who are themselves phenomena—to man not to God.”
“ So, that, setting aside the question as to what
Christ’s words on any particular occasion really were,
you would say, it is not inconsistent with the essential
Divinity of Christ that he should have thought about
the phenomenal, as a Jew of his day would think:
supposing, for instance, that Moses wrote Deuteronomy,
or that the earth was made in six days, some 4000 or
5000 years before his birth, for this sort of knowledge
would not belong to his Diving nature.”
“I am disposed to think so. Strange as the notion
may appear at first, from our habits, borrowed from the
Bible, of representing God to ourselves, as a big invisible
man who lives in a place at a distance from the earth,
but near enough to see it, and notice all that goes on
in it; having begun to do so some few thousand years
ago. But the more I meditate on the nature of an
eternal omnipresent Being, the immanent sustainer of
the universe, the more utterly inconceivable the know
ledge of phenomena by such a Being seems to me to
be. What limit are we to put to it ? Once begin, and
you cannot stop short of the movements of each ele
mentary particle of what we call matter, of which there
are probably millions in a pin’s head; and that for end
less time. And does God grow wiser as he grows
older, through all this accumulated knowledge I I see
�186
Via Catbolica.
no way to untie this knot but to cut it clean off, and
assume that the Divine knowledge is limited to that,
into which all knowledge worth the having resolves
itself, the knowledge of ideas.”
“My dear Edward,” said Agnes, “you rather
frighten me with these notions; you have never told
me anything about them before. And I am sure you
have often said that it is best not to puzzle ourselves
with such questions, as to which we cannot know any
thing certain, Besides, how can God judge us, if He
does not know our actions V
11 My dearest love, God’s judgment is of the will, not
of the act, the internal, not the external. If we can be
sure of anything in the teaching of Christ, He taught
that God regards the will which is always present, not
the particular phenomena in which it may have mani
fested itself.”
“ I don’t think you have any need to trouble yourself
about this matter, my dear madam,” said W------ , “I
understand your husband only to answer an assumption
of mine about the Divine nature, which raised a diffi
culty to belief in the Incarnation, by another equally
probable assumption which removes it. The fact so
far as we know it, seems to be that Jesus spoke of
matters of history, and perhaps of physics, as a Jew of
his day would naturally speak, and the question is whe
ther the ignorance implied in his so speaking can be
reconciled with the faith in his Divine nature ? To this
your husband answers, what reason have we for sup
posing that the knowledge of God is like our knowledge a
knowledge of phenomena, whence we slowly and pain
fully feel our way to the knowledge of principles ? Is it
not far more probable that the Divine knowledge is a
knowledge of the principles which are eternal, and not of
the phenomena which are in a state of perpetual flux ?”
“ You state my point very well. The question, how
ever, is the less important, because on the matters
where the then current opinions of the Jews came most
�The Incarnate Deity.
187
into conflict with what we now consider to be true, we
have either no sayings of Jesus at all, or such as do
accord with our present knowledge. For instance, in
dealing with the Sabbath, He quite ignores the notion
of any rest of God after the labour of creation, and
refers to the Ten commandments only as what had been
‘ said by them of old,’ without the least notice of the
story of their having been uttered by Jehovah from
the top of Mount Sinai.”
££ But what do you say to his expulsion of devils ? ”
££ That Christ, possessing natural healing influence
exerciseable over certain diseases., especially diseases of
the nervous system, did, what every wise physician who
has to do with mad persons does; used their delusions
to aid in their cure. His argument with the Pharisees
about these cases is an argumentum ad hominem. If
they could cast out devils, as they asserted, in the name
of God, why should they accuse Him of casting them
out by any other than a Divine power. And then we
find Him spiritualizing the whole question of devil
possession; speaking of the devil who had gone out of
a man £ returning to his home and finding it swept and
garnished.’ But we must not forget, in any of these
cases, how fragmentary our knowledge of Christ’s acts
and sayings really is ; and through how deep a haze of
popular beliefs we see His form.”
“ I cannot deny your right to use the uncertainty
cast over the story of Jesus by the critical examination
of the Gospels, to blunt difficulties, as others have used
it to destroy proofs ; but it is very unsatisfactory to be
indebted to a mist for the removal of doubts on a point
of so much importance to our religious faith as this
doctrine of the Incarnation is.' Why should not Jesus
have had a Xenophon, or a Boswell, as well as Socrates,
or Johnson, that we might see clearly ? ”
££ Or why did He not leave us an autobiography
attested so as to remove all doubt as to its genuineness 1
It seems to me that this is one of those cases, where as
�188
Via Catholica.
St. Paul says, ‘ the foolishness of God is wiser than
man.’ The eyes of mankind, in that age, were too full
of the marvellous to have discerned the Divine where
we, now, should be inclined to seek it; in a Being who
seemed to touch the supernatural on all sides without
leaving the natural. A simple picture of Christ’s life,
as it actually was, would, I believe, appear to us more
truly Divine than the one presented to us ; but it would
have appeared scarcely Divine at all to those to whom
it was first offered. The deification of Jesus began, as
Strauss justly observes, not with the Apostles who had
been His companions, but with St. Paul who had not
known Him after the flesh : and the insensibility of
the first ages would have been fatal to the faith of
their successors. But, left as they were, to shape and
colour the picture of Christ from their own imaginations,
they produced a figure which satisfied them; while to
us, who have before our eyes the long development of
this conception, history can supply the gaps of bio
graphy.” *
“ You meet my difficulties in detail with answers
which seem always to turn them ; yet, somehow, I
cannot get over the feeling of something false in the
whole conception of such a unique manifestation of
* Dean Milman has remarked “that the passages in the
New Testament relating to the marvellous interpositions and
prodigies in the gospels, which do not accord with the more
subtle and fastidious intelligence of the present day, are
precisely those which were dearest to the believers of an
imaginative age, and that the reverential feeling thus excited
most powerfully contributed to the maintenance of the
religion for at least seventeen centuries.” History of Chris
tianity, I. 131. But he does not carry this view as far as it
seems to extend ; and weakens its force by speaking in other
passages of the “necessity of some departure from the pure and
essential spirituality of the Deity in order to communicate
with the human race ” instead of adhering to the position that
the language of poetic incident may be part of the Divine
order. Ib. p. 117. See Note to English Life of Jesus,
I., p. 37. 2nd Edition, p. 39.
�The Incarnate Deity.
189
God. Place yourself where you please, among Brahmins,
Mahometans, Bouddhists, Parsees, as a teacher of pure
Theism : there is a wideness, a universality about the
creed, which seems capable of drawing in all minds
open to religious emotions at all. To the unity of the
Deity all nature, interpreted as she now is, to a wonder
ful degree, by scientific research, bears witness. And
the same research furnishes proofs that, in every special
religion, there is an amount of physical error in the
teachings which its followers have regarded as sacred,
demonstrating that they are not infallible ; yet in every
case their teaching also supplies the proof that ‘ God
has not left Himself without witness ’ among men, but
in every age and race has raised up prophets, who have
drawn men to Him, according to the measure of the
faith and insight possible in that age and people. And
now, when the advance of knowledge has enabled us,
by the comparison of all these teachings, and the
rejection of that in them which will not bear the
criticism of reason and light of science, to sift out the
pure grains of spiritual truth from the husks, now an
universal church may grow up in all lands, of those
who would worship the Father of all ‘ in spirit and in
truth; ’ claiming no exclusive privilege, but only to have
gained, by the teachings of time, a clearer view of that
supreme Being whom all more or less ignoran-tly sought,’
“ And what is to prevent me from presenting this
grand faith which you describe so eloquently and well ?”
11 Why, the special claim to reverence which you set
up for Christ.”
“ But Christ, according to the Catholic faith,
was the manifestation of the one true God, the- proof
of whose three-fold Being, though this was dis
closed to man through the faith in the Divine nature
of Christ, rests, as we have seen, on a basis entirely
independent of the Christian story, namely, on the
scientific fact, that there is in nature a two-fold co
existent action of primitive power, and organizing''
N
�190
Via Catholica.
wisdom, which, if we see in nature the manifesta
tion of conscious will, compels us to ascribe to this will
a double action ; while the religious man, to whom God
is also a loving Being, with whom he can have personal
intercourse, must add to these double hypostases of
power and wisdom, the third hypostasis of a communi
cating love. What is there then to hinder me, I do
not say as a minister of the Church of England, but as
a minister of Christ, from inviting Brahmin, or
Bouddhist, or Parsee, or Mahometan, or any others, to
join in the recognition and worship of this Triune God,
as the true Being whom they have ignorantly worship
ped: ‘baptizing them in the name of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost ? ”
“ Certainly, I do not see what is to hinder you, if
you can satisfy your reverence for Christ, by the
invitation to such a common worship.”
“ I do not say that I should be satisfied by it. On
the contrary, I should use my best powers to argue with
them, as I have argued with you, for the further truth,
that this Being who manifests Himself to our outer
senses in nature, and our inner sense in communion
with Him, has manifested Himself in the history of
mankind, as a personal God, in union with whom all
men may find rest for their souls. But to teach this
faith as my own belief is one thing, to impose its
acceptance as a condition of communion is quite
another. I know of no commission from Christ to His
ministers to bring men to Him apart from the Father.”
“ But would you receive men to the Lord’s Supper
without any profession of their special faith in Christ?”
♦
“ Why not, if they are willing to come ? Why
should I exclude any worshipper of the one true God,
from ‘ breaking the bread ’ and ‘ drinking of the cup,’ in
memory of Jesus, if they are so minded? What right
have I to say to one in whose heart the Father and the
Son' may dwell, by the eternal spirit of love, you shall
not draw near to express your love to God, and your
fellowship to man by an act of affectionate remembrance
�The Incarnate Deity.
191
of one whom you regard as a great revealer of this true
God, because I have notions about His nature different
from yours ? ”
“ But if you do not repel them directly, how could
you help doing so indirectly ? Those who believe in
the Divine Being of Christ would naturally accompany
the act specially connected with the memory of his
death by expressions of their belief repulsive to those
who did not share it.”
“ Even that difficulty might, I think, be overcome.
The ‘ do this in remembrance of me,’ is a formula so
simple and wide, that it may embrace those who believe
the story of Christ to be only the history of a divinely
moved man, as well as those who see in it the manifesta
tion of the self-existing Divine essence. The common
worship might be confined to expressions in which all
could share, supplemented by special devotions for
those to whom the Divinity of Christ was a reality.”
“ An esoteric gathering of the genuine worshippers,
I suppose.”
“ Esoteric, no doubt, yet not exclusive, and associated
with a worship by which they expressed their community
of feeling with all who had faith in a conscious, loving
Being, immanent in the universe, with, whom the spirit
of man can have communion, though they might not
interpret similarly the manifestation of this Being in
the history of mankind.”
“ But then, there is the doctrine of the Trinity in
unity, as a barrier between you and the believers in
the simple Divine unity.”
“ A barrier, if they choose to make it a barrier, but
to me only the scientific expression of the views in
which all agree, who ascribe to God, conscious power
wisdom and love, and regard Him as immanent in the
universe sustained by Him.”
“ Do you mean to say that you would not impose on
your converts even the professed belief in that Triune
character which you have almost talked me into ascrib
ing to the Deity ? ”
�192
Via Catholica.
111 feel no authority to impose my beliefs on other
men, only to propose them. If I look to that pattern of
the earliest Christian devotion, which tradition ascribes
to Christ, I find in it only the expression of pure
Theism—the belief in a Father of all, whose will is
the perfect rule of our conduct; whose goodness is the
source whence our wants are supplied; whose aid can
deliver us when we are tempted; whose forgiveness is
conditioned only by our readiness to forgive; the
promotion of whose kingdom, the extension of whose
power and influence in the sphere of human will, is the
true object of conquering ambition, the proper aim of
human effort—but not the slightest allusion to any
distinctions in the Divine nature. Why should I
narrow the approach to God, by interposing intellectual
limitations on which Christ did not insist ?
11 Certainly, it is not my argument, that you should
do so. But you spoke just now of ‘ baptizing men in
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost: ’ in what position would the baptized stand in
your ideal congregation, to those who did not accept
this creed ? ”
“ Somewhat in that of the ‘ initiated ’ in the ancient
Greek mysteries to the body of 1 uninitiated.’ Only
that, here, the secret would be an open one. They
would have avowed the faith which I hold to be true.
They should, I conceive, declare it publicly by acts of
worship, solemn enough and frequent enough to show
that it was not indifferent to them; but acts from which
none would be excluded in taking part who did not
exclude themselves.”
“Well! the idea is novel, at all events. I should
like to know how you would work in the special devo
tions with your common worship, if you have got to this
point in your speculations.”
“ I am inclined to follow the Lutheran model, and
call in the .aid of musick for the greater part of the
devotions. The prayers I should make short and
simple, and addressed to God only, and combine them
�The Incarnate Deity.
193
with psalms, also confined to the expressions of religious
feeling common to the general instinct of mankind.
Passages selected from various religious writings, ancient
or modern, might be read as lessons.
*
Then should
succeed short hymns expressing the ideas special to the
different religious bodies of which the members were
known to take part in the united worship, chosen by
them out of a selection formed for the purpose of this
worship. Of course the order in which they were to
succeed would be made known, and those persons who
could not join in any of the hymns might withdraw
themselves in the simplest possible way, by sitting
down.”
“ Provided the hymns were not selected by crossgrained Presbyterians, who insist on sitting when they
sing-”
“ They must be invited to give up their crossgrainedness so far as to adopt the common practice of
standing up.”
“ So, after all, you would not offer up prayers to
Christ specially ? ”
“Except in the Christian hymns,” interposed Agnes.
“ No,” I continued, “ I prefer to keep to His own
model, and avoid the risk of dividing in prayer the
feeling which should be one. Distinction should be
admitted, I think, only when the aid of poetry and har
mony is invoked to preserve the sense of unity.
“ Well ! I own the scheme seems to me more prac
ticable than I had thought possible. I should like to
see an attempt made to realize it. London must supply
a sufficient diversity of religious opinion to offer a good
field for such an experiment. Why not get up a society
for introducing united worship. Only what is to be
done as to the teaching.”
“ I should be disposed to adopt Lord Amberley’s
idea, and admit a variety of preachers of various creeds,
* As has since been done by Mr Voysey in the services
conducted by him in St. George’s Hall.
�194
Via Catholica.
under the condition that they would confine them
selves to stating their own positive beliefs, and re
frain from the abuse of those who do not agree with
them.”
“ All approach to the £ without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.’ ”
“ The nature of the proposed" union would probably
exclude men of this stamp of mind from seeking to
take any part in it. If it did not, if any exclusive
teacher, say Archbishop Manning, in his zeal for the
salvation of souls, offered to address the mixed congre
gation whom he. might meet at such gatherings, I would
not prevent him from asserting the claim of his church
to be the £allein-seligmachenche,’ * leaving it so his own
good sense to assert it in the way most likely to influ
ence such hearers.”
“ No doubt the Archbishop would draw, and that
would be a main point. I see what you would exclude
are only controversial sermons.”
“ Just so. I should insist on positive to the exclu
sion of negative teaching, except where it was indispensable to distinguish what was affirmed from what
might be mistaken for it, or to show that no other
affirmation was tenable. The hearers would then have
some chance of judging for themselves which of the
different systems presented to them was the best.”
“ Well, my dear madam,” said W------ , turning to
my wife, ££ I am afraid I must leave you to-day, and
my train is due before long, so I suppose our talk must
end here. But I am very much pleased to have had it,
and can truly say I heartily wish there were more
clergymen in the Church of England who thought as
your husband does.”
With this our conversation terminated. He went in
to pack up his clothes, and left us shortly afterwards.
* The only way of salvation.
�i
*’
*■
’
4#
VIA
CATHOLICA.
w- .
PART TIL.
�PAGE
Chapter XIII. The Gospels .
n
XIV.
99
XV.
99
99
XVI.
.
199
The Church
.
223
The Bible
. 241
Infallibility .
.
XVII. The Bishop
261
. 276
�VIA CATHOLICA:
OR,
PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A COUNTRY PARSON.
PART III.
’E7t£i ov% lep'qtov ouSe j3oliip>
A.pv6<rfh]v, & re iroaoiv aedXia ylverai avSpwv,
’AXXA 7r«/>i
Aeop "Eato/jos i-n-rro3dp.OLO.
II. xxii. 159.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One Shilling and Threepence.
��CHAPTER XIII.
THE GOSPELS.
HE round of my parish visits took me again to-day
to Margaret R------’s cottage. I found her read
ing a book, with which she was so intently occupied,
that she did not perceive my entrance, but laid down
upon my speaking to her, and said, with one of her
pleasant smiles, “ Well, sir, you find me nearly lost like
in a kind of book that does not often be my reading
—a book about the gospels by one as doesn’t half be
lieve in them.”
“ I should not think that was much in your way,
indeed, Margaret,” I replied. “ What book is it?”
She placed in my hands “ The English Life of Jesus.” *
“ So you have got hold of one of my friend ---- ’s
books,” I continued, naming the gentleman whom I
knew to be the author. “ And what do you think of
it?”
“ Maybe I should tell you first how I came to get it.
You see, sir, among my Tom’s friends, or rather I should
say his acquaintances, is one Will S------ , a joiner, I
think, he is by trade. Maybe you knows him, sir, though
he isn’t of the parish.”
“ I have often heard of him-, and a very clever fellow
he is, by all accounts.”
“ Yes, that he is, surely. I don’t know any one that’s
T
* Part of a series of works published by Mr T. Scott of Norwood.
�200
Via Catbolica.
clearer in his head, nor readier with his tongue—that
is among his class, sir, I mean.”
“■ Don’t be afraid of hurting my vanity, if you think
him a cleverer fellow than I am. Natural gifts do not
go with professions.”
“ But I don’t know as I do, sir; leastways, if Will
have the greater natural gifts, your’s has had the more
cultivation. Anyhow, he has fallen on Tom more than
once for believing, as he says, without having facts
behind as the backbone of his belief. So, as Tom told me
of this, I asked him to bring S------ to see me some day.
Well, Will seemed rather pleased with that; so, one
Sunday afternoon he came here to tea, and we had a
long talk together about the gospels, and the differences
and contradictions, and errors that there is in them.
And, to be sure, he did make out a mighty long list,
which I was fain to allow to him was fairly shown, least
ways so far as I could judge. But then I made him an
answer, mainly from something I’ve heard from you,
sir, in the pulpit, which he did say took him quite
aback,” she added, with a smile.
“What was that, Margaret?” I asked, rather curi’ously.
“ Why, sir, you remember, I dare say, when you
were preaching to us they sermons about the Apostle
Paul, last spring, you said to us that, for all his faith
in Jesus was so strong, and his love to Him so great,
as we see'by his letters, there’s no sign in them that he
knew' of the stories in the gospels, how He was born,
or how He was tempted, or of His transfiguration, or of
what wonders He did, or of the darkness and earthquake
at His crucifixion, or of the angels who came to roll
away the stone, or of His going up into heaven, while
the apostles were looking on; and that, to judge from
these letters, all that St Paul knew about the Lord was,
that .He was a very good man, of the family of David,
whom he believed to have been seen alive several times
after His crucifixion, though, for ought that he tells us,
�The Gospels.
201
all they appearances might have, been some sort of
visions, like his own; leastways, you said he uses the
same word for them all, and that a word such as, for
them as wrote the Greek tongue, would have been fit
ting to use in telling of a vision. Well, sir, this come
into my memory as Will was arguing, and indeed it
weren’t the first time as I had heard that idea, when I
heard it from you, for my William had said something
very like it, as I think I once told you, sir, though it
warn’t so fully put as you put it; so, at last, I says to
Will, ‘ Mr S------ , do you think that the Apostle St
Paul’believed in the Lord Jesus, and loved Him truly ?’
‘ There can’t be a doubt of it,’ said he. ‘ Well then,
suppose I know nothing more about the Lord than St
Paul did, why shouldn’t I believe in Him, and love
Him as much?’ He didn’t make no answer to that,
so I went on, ‘ You see, Mr S------ , St Paul don t
say a word in his letters about they matters of which
you have been talking, leastways of none except of theappearances of Christ to His apostles after He had been
crucified, so that, if so be we was to give up all they
other stories altogether, as history, we shouldn’t meddle
with the grounds of his faith, and why shouldn’t we fol
low him?’ ”
“ And what did S------ say to that?”
<£ Well, sir, he says, 11 want time to think about that,
it takes me quite aback, and I cannot tell what to make
of it off hand;’ which, to my thinking, showed that
he meant honestly, and didn’t only try to say some
thing as might puzzle me. So it was settled that he
should come another day, to have our talk out, when
he had time to turn over what I had said.
‘ And
meanwhile I’ll lend you a book about the gospels,’ he
says ; and this is it which I was reading against he
should come, for I’m rather expecting him to-day.
And there he be, I declare,” she. added, looking up
at the sound of the garden gate closing, “ and Tom with
him. Well! this is fortunate, that you, sir,-should be
�202
Via Catholica.
here just at the nick of time. Come in, MrS------ ,”
she continued, “ I’m not busy; this is our rector, whoni
I’ve Just been talking to about you. You may speak
to him quite as freely as you do to me. I mean to
make him my champion. I think that’s the word, isn’t
it, Tom ? ” :
11 Quite right, mother.”
“ I have pleasure in making Mr S-—-b acquaint
ance,” I said, shaking hands with him.
“Well, sir, you must be a rare one of your cloth,
4 to meet me so friendly, when you know what errand
A I have come on,” replied S------ , taking a seat, for at
I
I first, he had looked half inclined to retreat. “ I am
I more used to black faces than shakes of the hand from
-1 the clergy. They seem in general to think that al!
* free thinkers uh religious matters, as jl am known to
uvu uu.iuu.tjiD on icugwuo luuLutiris,
I
Known
1 be, must -be wolves, whom they are bound, as the ^guardians of the sheep, to bark at and worry.”
“ But the dog, if modern naturalists are right, is
closely allied to the wolf,” I said, “ and I claim spiritual
relationship with every one who sincerely seeks for the
truth in religion, as I believe to be your case. It is not
free thought, but the want of thought, the refusal to
think earnestly at all on such matters, that I find reason
. to complain of.”
“Well, I think I may say as much as this in my
own praise, that is not one of my faults,” replied S-----laughing. “ Mrs B----- will have told you, I dare say,
that if I don’t believe all the stories on which you
build your religion, it is not for want of thinking about
them, but just because, the more I think, and consider,
and weigh, the less reason I find for believing in them.”
“Believing what of them ?” I asked.
“ Believing them to be true histories;' believing that
the facts stated in the gospels and the acts, which I
take to be the foundation of Christianity, were what
they are said there to have been; and if you want
arguments to prove that point clearly, and fully, and
ji
id-
*
*•
�The Gospels.
203
shortly "jjut, you should read this book,” he added,
taking up the English Life of Jesus, which Margaret
had laid on the table as he came in.
“ I know it well, and you know the conclusion of
its author, no doubt, the result of his enquiry,” I
replied; and turning to the closing chapter I read
this passage :—“While the traditions, at the beginning
and end of the story, are altogether unhistorical, while
of the nativity, and infancy, and of the events following
the crucifixion, we have no knowledge whatever, there
runs an element of historical truth through the synoptic
narratives of the ministry.
We have before us, in
outlines sufficiently distinct, the picture of one, who in
a highly artificial society, dared to propound truths
unwelcome to a dominant hierarchy, and to condemn
a traditional ceremonial system which placed barriers
between G-od and man. We have every reason to
believe, that the sincerity and boldness with which he
announced the absolute righteousness, and unfailing
love of God, impressed the multitudes who heard him
with the sense of an authority, wholly different from
that of the Scribes and Pharisees ; and that, in the
long series of his discourses, he sought to convince his
hearers that God cared for every one of them, and
willed to bring them all to their highest good. The
very taunt, that he,was the friend of publicans and
sinners, is proof, were other proof wanting, that the
gist of his teaching may be found in the sentence of
Origen, Nihil impossibile omnipotenti, et nihil insariabile
factori suo
.
*
The care with which, in his many
parables, he strove, by the most familiar images, to
kindle, in dull and deadened minds, the faint embers
of a higher life, is evidence that he regarded none as
beyond the healing power of the great Maker. The
gentlenesss with which, while sacrificing no truth and
* There is nothing impossible to the omnipotent, or incapable of
being healed by its maker.
�• 2O4
Vta-Cath'olica.
•weakening no divine law, he treated those whom
a sacerdotal society despised or hated, attests his
sympathy for all,suffering, and his yearning to rescue
all men from moral and spiritual degradation ? ‘For
my part/.^I continued, ‘ I want nothing more as the
.fourrdatioA of my Christianity.’ ”
“Won should not stop there, sir, said S------ ; read
on.”
“ Certainly,”—accordingly I read.
“‘But every
reason which constrains us to admit the substantial
fidelity of this picture, compels us to repel the whole
.. p fourth gospel, as not only unhistorical, but betraying
a set theological and ecclesiastical purpose. If we hold
* that the synoptic narratives have any truth, we cannot
■„ believe that he who in them speaks only to comfort, to
t- teach, and to purify,speaks in the other only to confuse,
perplex, and exasperate. We cannot believe that he
- Vwho throughout the one speaks only of the love of God
for man, speaks in the other only, or chiefly, of the
nature of his own office, and the dignity of his own
person. We .cannot believe that he who in the one
never divulged his Messiahship, even to any of his
disciples, until towards the close of his ministry, had,
• . as the fourth gospel represents him, announced the
fact freely from the beginning, not only to Andrew,
Peter, and Nathanael, but to the whole population of
Samaritan cities, and to crowds of indifferent and even
hostile Jews.’”
. “ Well,.sir, what do you say to that ?” asked S------ ,
with a somewhat triumphant air.
I admit it to be a substantially true, though in my
opinion, a.hard, unsympathising, and so far unjust criti
cism of this gospel.”
“ Admit—it—to be—true !” said S------ , opening
his eyes very wide. “ Why then, you don’t believe in
the. divine nature of Jesus.”
“Nay, Mr S------ , you are reckoning without your
. host there,” interposed Margaret, with one of her quiet
,
»
�smiles ; “ leastways I have, heard the rector tell us he
believed that many a time from the pulpit, and some
times almost in the same breath, I may say, in which
he told us that we must not take the gospels, they three I
mean that you calls------ 1 never can g,et the name right.”
“ The Synoptics, mother,” whispered Tom.' .
“ Yes, the Synoptics. Well, that we must not-fake
them for more than stories about Christ, which were .
collected out of the mouths of the people, as it.were,
more than forty or fifty years after the Lord were cruci
fied. And as for the fourth . gospel, I’m thinking he
takes it for a poem more than a history.”
“ But poetry, you know, Mr S------ ,” said Tom, “ may
be very beautiful and very true in. its own way, though
it is not properly history, as we see in .Shakespeare’s
plays about the history of England?’
'
'
“ Or Scott’s novels,” I added.
, ..
“ But what becomes of the solid foundation of facts'--,
on which writers about the evidences of Christianity,
Paley and others, so much insist; the eye-witnesses-whoweren’t-deceivers-and-couldn’t-be-deceived argument,
which I remembei made such a strong impression on
*
me when I was growing up, till, after a bit,-1 learned,
what the facts are, and that in truth we cannot rely on
having the testimony of one contemporary witness, ex
cept the Apostle Paul, as to what happened to himself ?
Legends and poems are a very shaky foundation for
religion, to my thinking, sir, begging your pardon.”
“ Very,” I replied. “ We are quite agreed there, Mr
S------ . Religion can have but one foundation, the fact
that there is a Being ever present with us, 4 in whom
we live, and move, and have our being,’ whom we can
revere, and love, and worship.”
“ I am not going to dispute that, sir, or if I did, it
would be only as to one word, ‘ worship.’ ”
“ Then suppose that a legend or a poem should awaken
me to the consciousness of this fact, which I might
never have realised before, and that, in consequence, I
�206
>
‘
\_*
■
•
Via Catholica;
began to love and reverence this author and sustainer of
my being, surely you would not say that my religious
feeling rested upon the legend or poem ? ”
“ Certainly not. But the Christian religion does not
stop there. That is natural religion, where you need
2
only to light the fire, because the coals are ready laid.
But the Christian teachers will insist that if you don’t
' ■ use their patent article you can get no heat. I want
the proof of the patent.”
- "
“ Well, Mr S------ ,” said Margaret, “ I should think
*
the best proof was to try the coals; and if they as has
...
tried finds that they give more heat than any other sort,
• why shouldn’t they believe in the trial ? ”
“But have they ever really tried any other? You
say, if I pray to Christ, that gives me. comfort and
strength; but so the Romanists say, if we pray to the
- . \ Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, we get comfort and
. - strength. And that great Brahmoo, Keshub Chunder
, Sen, whom I went to hear only a few days ago, when he
' preached at N------ , says, 1 if I pray to God simply, without any mention of Christ at all, I find comfort and
strength.’ So that your argument from the effect of
‘
' your prayers won’t do instead of proofs from the gospels
of facts, which show that we ought to revere Jesus as if
He were God, more than any other good man.”
“ It does not prove this, no doubt,” I replied ; “ but
'
this universal effect of prayer lays the foundation for
the proof, I think.”
“ How so, sir ? ”
.
“ It shows the universal presence with us of one who
is not indifferent to our prayers, but gives us comfort
and strength when we seek it of Him. Now such a
Being cannot be indifferent to the welfare of man gene
rally. We must suppose that He intends to lead men,
.■
as fast as they can be led, to a knowledge of what He
really is, that they may learn to pray to Him, and so
obtain comfort and strength. But then we ought to
find clear traces of some provision for such a teaching
�- The Gospels.
20J7
z in the history of mankind, after it has gone on for so
many thousand years as we know that it has continued.
Now I think you are well enough acquainted with his
tory for me to ask you whether you can point out any
sign of such a provision except in Christianity. You
would not set up Mahomet against Christ as the true
guide, I presume ? ”
a No, indeed. That would be c out of the frying-pan
into the fire.’ But I suppose, sir, you don’t attribute all
the success of Mahometanism to the sword. As Mr
Carlyle says, the first question is how to get your sword.
There must have been something in Mahomet’s teaching
that made men believe in him before they fought for
him. And from this their imaginations took occasion
to make Mahomet into what he was not—an infallible
teacher of God’s will. Well then, why should not the
divine nature which the Christians have attributed to
Jesus have been simply created by the imagination of
his followers, just as the character ascribed to Mahomet
by the Mahometans was simply created by the imagina
tion of the Mahometans ?”
“ Leave out the ‘ simply,’ and I should say yes. I
hold that the divine nature ascribed to Christ by the
Church has been a creation of the Christian imagination.
But that does not prove this notion to be false. All
our knowledge rests on the conceptions we form about
the sensations which we receive through our senses.
But these conceptions may be true ; that is, they may
correspond to the reality of the things whence the sen
sations may arise. And this I consider to be the case
with the Christian ideas about the person of Christ.”
“ But how can I tell that except from facts ?”
“ No way, certainly. The conformity of ideas to
facts can never be shown except by the study of the
facts. Out of this study comes science.”
“ But if the facts are altogether uncertain, as they
must be, if the gospels are so full of contradictions as
you allow them to be, what is there to study ?”
�Via Catholica.
'
“Two great facts, neither of which appear to me
uncertain, —the character of Jesus,—and the course
of man’s religious history.”
“ But how can the study of such facts as these, show
that the claim set up for Jesus by the Christians is true ?
Excuse me, sir; you seem to me to be forgetting what
you allowed just now, that the gospel of John cannot
be trusted even as a tradition—that we must keep to
the Synoptics in order to know anything about Jesus.
Where does he claim to be God in them?”
“ Suppose it to have been quite certain, that He had
made such a claim, should you have been a bit the
more disposed to believe it on that account 2 Should
you not have been much-more inclined to think Him
mad ? ”
“ Certainly, unless he had proved his right to make
the claim by some astonishing works, some great acts
of Divine power.”
“ Which, if they proved anything, would prove only
that the Divine power is indeed very strong, much
stronger than man’s power, a point neediDg, I think,
no proof, but quite unreasonable.”
“ How, unreasonable ? ”
“ Your astonishing works would be miracles, I sup
pose, and I presume you will not contend for the
reasonableness of miracles?”
“••No sir, you’ve hit me there,” said S------ , laughing,
•“ No doubt-I can’t stand up for miracles.”
“■ Then, see where we are. If Jesus had claimed to
partake of the Divine nature in any special way, then,
since He could not have astonished men by any acts of
power, if such acts-are contrary to the Divine reason,
the result of His making the claim must have been that
He-would have been supposed to be mad. So that,
assuming the claim to have been well founded, to make
it would have defeated the object of His appearing on
the earth, if this 6bj6ct were, as must be supposed, to
teach men what God really is.”
�The 'Gospels.
209
, “ I have nothing to say against that argument. But
then, sir, it seems to me to show that the notion of the
Divine Nature of Jesus must be ‘a mistake; because
God could never have made such a manifestation of
Himself for no use. And of what use would it be, if
it would not be proved ?”
“ To produce what it has produced by the aid of
man’s imagination—the belief that it had taken place;
and, through the results of this belief, to accumulate
proofs of its being well founded, against the time when
the growth of the spirit of inquiry should make men
ask for such proofs.”
“ And do you think that the results of Christianity
can be truly said to furnish such a proof ?”
“ Yes, I do, if we judge them from the scientific point
of view, setting aside the notion of the, so called,
supernatural influences, and holding that God always .
works by natural means, which you must do, if you are
to be consistent with yourself; and I think you will'
come to my opinion, if you examine the facts upon this
hypothesis.
Scientific opponents of Christianity,” -I
continued after a moment’s pause, as S------ made no
reply, “ seem to me to forget that the difficulties on
which they insist depend upon the supernatural action
claimed for it, and vanish if it be regarded only as part
of the system of natural forces.”
“But then, the notion of a revelation made in-it,
must vanish also.”
,
_
“ Why ? What is all nature but a succession of
appearances, which reveal to us the power lying beneath
them, and working through them. I claim for Chris
tianity a share in this great Revelation ?”
“ And why not for Mahometanism?1’
“ I allow it a share ; but consider what it reveals ?
simply the consciousness possessed by man’s imagination
of its own grandeur; which it has embodied in the
conception of an unfathomable, unlimited will, ascribed
to Allah. While the whole progress of science depends
�2 10
Via Catholica.
upon the opposite assumption, that the will of God pro
duces a system of limited forces; a cos-mos, as the
Greeks called it; a universe of reasonable order.”
But that revelation we get from the study of nature
without Christianity. What does Christianity reveal
more ?”
“The very.root and foundation of the principle of
order,—that God is love,—that, not self-asserting power,
nor even self-governing power, as the Stoics thought;
but self-sacrificing power, power which goes out of
itself to benefit that which is not itself, is the essence
of the Divine ; the true idea of humanity. Now what
ever errors may be justly charged against the church,
it cannot be denied that this she has always taught, by
all her acts, and under all her distractions.”
“ Yet, surely, that doctrine could be taught without
encumbering it with the notion of the Divine nature of
Jesus.”
“Yes, as the doctrine of the gravitation of the
planets to the sun might be taught, without encumbering
it with the notion of their perturbing action on each
other’s movements ; but you wish for facts as the solid
foundation of your beliefs,—do you not?”
“ No doubt, I want facts, something real to stand on.”
“ Then here you have a great fact; the intimate
historical connexion of a profound spiritual principle,
the true source of all noble, beneficent action upon
earth, with an idea which adequately embodies it,—the
idea that the Eternal has manifested its essence in the
person of one such as Jesus was, according to the
picture of Him, drawn by the author of the English
Life of Him—and remember that Strauss and Renan
substantially agree with this author there, — who
endured what Jesus endured, to display the sympathy
of God with man, and bring men into spiritual union
with God ? Why not take your stand upon this fact;
at least provisionally, till you find some good reason for
leaving it ? ”
�The Gospels.
21 I
' “ But if I find out that this idea gained its hold on
men’s minds, through their belief in stories which, when
I look into them I find full of inconsistencies, errors,
and contradictions, have not I a good reason for
thinking the idea to be a delusion ? ”
“Perhaps you would, if the idea had been produced
by the stories, and not rather, as seems to have been
the case, the stories by the idea.”
“ Yet that cannot make the stories prove the truth
of the idea.”|
“ No ; but it prevents the collapse of the stories from
disproving it; since it does not rest upon them, it need
not fall with them.”
“Not if it had an independent proof; but what is
that proof ? ”
“ That the idea sums up, as it were, the religious
tendencies of man’s nature, which he certainly did not
give to himself, in the person of an historical individual
whom no human power could produce, and that it was
introduced and spread through a combination of circum
stances which no human penetration or contrivance
could have foreseen or brought about. There are three
independent sets of facts, all coinciding in proving the
truth of this great idea, and each quite unaffected by
any errors in the details of the gospel narratives.”
“ I am very much obliged to you, sir, I am sure, for
calling my attention to these proofs. Can you tell me
where I may learn more about them ? ”
“ I don’t know that I can refer you to any book
where you will find the whole argument put together
for you. But for a picture of the combination of influ
ences which united in preparing the way for the spread
of the faith in Christ, you may take the fifteenth chapter
of Gibbon’s ‘ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’ ”
“ What, his celebrated attack on Christianity?” asked
S------ , in amazement.
“ Just so ; his attack on the notion that its growth
demanded the intervention of a mass of supernatural
�2 r2
.
- "
r
* •
.
Via Catbolica.
influences, by showing what a wide and deep root it
had in the history of mankind. You will find this still
more completely stated in the introduction to Strauss’‘New Life of Jesus.’ This is the first set of facts.
The second is the character of Jesus, which you have
in the ‘ English Life’ of Him, and also in Strauss, who
“ brings out very forcibly the remarkable manner in
which the peculiar characteristics of the Jewish and
the Greek mind appear to have combined in Christ.
,
*
The third set consists in the religious tendencies of
human nature, that is the conceptions which man is
naturally disposed to form of God. You have one side
of them in the Old Testament, where you will find God
represented as quite separated from the world, though
He knows and governs all that is going on in it. The
other side you will find stated in any recent work on
mythology, say Mr Cox’s ‘ Tales of Gods and Heroes,’
where you have God identified with the powers mani
fested in nature, of which the highest known to us is
seen inman, while in Christ both sides unite. There
are the facts.. • Put them together for yourself. Try if
you can find any conception which reconciles and
accounts for them all better, than the idea that in Christ
the eternal essence of that divine power whose offspring
is m,an, displayed itself to mankind.” ’
' “ Well, sir, I think I see the point of your argument,
and I will do my best to work out the problem as you
advisg me. But you. will excuse my mentioning a diffi
culty which-strikes me at once.”
“Certainly. Whatis.it?”
“ You have said that the Christian teaching recon
ciles the notion that God is distinct from the world,
which we find in the Old Testament, with the other
*
notion that He dwells in us, and in all that we see.
Now I don’t dispute that the Christians have put Christ
* The religious consciousness of Jesus, according to the three
first gospels. ■
�The Gospels.
2J3
in God’s place, up in the sky, as a sort of God-man,
who governs all things; but there’s no proof that this is
true at all; .and if it were, what becomes of the other
side, the faith that God is really present on the earth,
which I take to be the truth. I don’t see how Chris
tianity reconciles them one bit.”
“ No wonder; because the doctrine which expresses
this faith in the. continual presence of Christ in the
world has been almost lost in England -since the Re
formation. But perhaps you know that, according to
the old church teaching, the body and blood of Christ
are truly present in the elements of the sacrament.”
“ But surely, sir, you don’t hold that doctrine ? ”
“I do not hold that the priest can turn the bread
and wine into anything which they are not naturally.
But I do hold that they are, by their proper natures,
what the Church taught that the priest makes them
become—a visible embodiment, of that power who ap
peared as a man in Jesus. The sacrament was intended,
I think, to be a perpetual remembrancer to uS of Hhn
in whom we live. And He, by appearing among yxm
as a man, showed us that this divine Being, which
dwells in all living things, is yet distinct from these things,
as completely as our wills are distinct from the things on
which they act.”'
■*
“And you see, Mr S—---- ,” interposed Margaret,
“ there’s no need to be any heaven over our heads for
the Lord to ascend into visibly, though they as-wrote
the Acts no doubt thought so.- For the- heaven in
which He dwells is the Spirit of Love, into which He
draws us to live with Him, by the story of His blessed
life.”
“ Well I must say, sir, you have a wonderful knack
of getting round difficulties. - You make .my critical
objections to the gospels look very small with all these
world-embracing theories,” said S------ . “But if Jesus .
really was what you take Him to have been, how came .
He to hold the notions common to his countrymen then,
�2 14
Via Catholica.
/
but which we have since found out to be human errors,
ascribing epilepsy or madness to possession by devils,
for instance; and how could he imagine that He was
, to come in the clouds before that generation- had passed
away, to ‘ judge the quick and the dead ? ’ ”
“I think it is for you to. prove first that He did
entertain such notions. When we .find in the gospels
traces of thoughts or feelings unlike those of other men.
it is reasonable to ascribe them to Jesus, since» other
wise we should have no source at all for them. But,
for my part, I am convinced-that we have, in the Synop
tics, an image of Jesus so coloured by the imaginations
of His disciples that I cannot accept anything as cer
tainly belonging to Him which I have reason for be
lieving to have been strongly rooted in their minds.
Take, for example, the prediction of future judgment.
Have you observed that the Synoptics never make
Jesus speak of His going into heaven, though this would
naturally have occupied the first place in the thoughts
of a man actually on the- earth, living under the delu
sion that he had been appointed judge of all mankind,
but always of the matter most important to themselves
—His coming again from heaven ? ”
“ That is true, no doubt, and very curious.”
“ It is still more striking that while there are several'
statements in the gospels of the surprise of those who
heard Jesus at His words, and questions as to their
meaning, there is not the smallest hint of any one
being surprised at the notion of this man, who was
walking about among them on the earth, coming in the
clouds to judge them all. And yet predictions of this
nature are put into His mouth at the very beginning of
His teaching, before even His most chosen followers
had recognised Him to be the Messiah. The Sermon
on the Mount concludes by a prophecy of what ‘ many
would say to Him in that day.’ No one thinks of asking,
What day ? Again, the parable of the Tares describes
the 1 Son of Man ’ sending forth His angels to the ends
�The Gospels.
215
of the earth, to gather the wicked, and cast them into
Hell : and the disciples are made to say that they per
fectly understand this.
*
Yet two chapters afterwards
we find Jesus questioning the Apostles as to whom they
supposed Him to be, greatly praising Peter for acknow
ledging Him to be “ the Christ, the Son of God,” and
strictly charging them not to tell any one of it.f So
that, as the story reads, they were quite aware that He
was the appointed judge of quick and dead, and yet in
doubt whether He was the Messiah or not. Then as to
the time of His coming, this is distinctly stated in all
the Synoptics to follow the destruction of Jerusalem and
the Temple. Yet we find from St Paul's epistles that he
lived under the firm expectation that the coming of the
Lord from Heaven would probably happen in his own
lifetime, and might happen any day, though Jerusalem
was then standing undestroyed, with no sign of its
approaching destruction; so that, if the apostle had
ever heard of such a prediction of Jesus, he must have
known that the time for Hi^coming could not have
arrived.”
“ That is very remarkable, certainly.”
“It is still more remarkable,” I continued, “if, ac
cording to the commonly received opinion, we ascribe
the Epistles to the Thessalonians to St Paul, because
in them he cautions the Thessalonians against supposing
that Christ’s coming would be so immediate that it was
not worth while for men to occupy themselves about
their ordinary business ; and he would therefore natur
ally have said, we have our Lord’s own prophecy that
his coming is to follow the destruction of Jerusalem, so
that while that city remains undestroyed, we know that
we are not to look for it, instead of speaking mys
teriously about something ‘ that kept it back,’ and about
a ‘ man of sin ’ of whom nothing is said in the Gospels,
to be first revealed. But I do not insist on this because
Matt. xiii. 36-51.
f Matt. xvi. 15-20.
�216
Via Catholica.
there are some things in these epistles which make me
doubt whether Bauer is not right in thinking that they
were not written till after St Paul’s death.”*
* These are, 1st. The statement in 1 Thess. ii. 16, that
wrath had come beforehand, %<pf)a.<Te, on the Jews to the
uttermost ei's reXos, which appears to point to the destruction
as a fait accompli. 2d. The reference in 2 Thess. iii. 17 to the
signature in his own hand as a proof of genuineness ; though
these epistles are supposed to be the first that the Apostle
wrote, and it is hard to see why he should anticipate the
probability of forgery. 3d. The injunction in 1 Thess. v. 27,
that the Epistle should be read by all the brethren, which
would seem to be a matter of course with an epistle addressed
to the church by its founder. Bauer enumerates many other
objections, drawn from alleged inconsistencies between the
teaching in these two epistles and other parts of St Paul’s writ
ings. But query whether we know enough of the history of his
mind to affirm that his views did not change in these respects.
On the other hand, a formidable objection to Bauer’s hypothesis
is supplied by the large amount of personal feeling manifested
in the first epistle, and the comparatively insignificant place
occupied in it, even by that anticipation of the speedy coming
of Christ, which, if the epistle is not genuine, must be assigned
as the motive for composing it, and would therefore naturally
have filled a large part of it; while, in fact, it comes in only
incidentally as a ground of consolation under the loss of
friends. Again, the Second Epistle presupposes a great effect
to have been produced by the first, and sets itself to correct
this in some respects. Now both the epistles are obviously
the work of an earnest man, sincerely desirous of promoting
sound religious feelings among those whom he addresses. We
cannot suppose that such a person would have alluded in his
second letter to an effect produced by the first which it had
not really produced. • While it is impossible to suppose that a
letter written years after St Paul’s death in his name, would
have produced any effect at all upon the community to whom
it was specially addressed, who must have known that it was
not genuine.
The difficulty in bringing the letters into agreement with
Acts xvii. may as justly be placed to the account of the im
perfect knowledge of the writer of the Acts as to that of the
writer of the epistle ; and, as has been observed by De Wette,
Einleitung IV., § 127, 128, is a grave objection to the supposi
tion that the writer of the epistles drew his materials from
the Acts.
�The Gospels.
217
' “ That’s the worst of the New Testament,” said S------ .
« One never knows what to rely upon as genuine.”
“ Mind I don’t say that these two epistles are not
genuine. I am disposed to think that they are. But
they are not needed for my argument. The four great
undoubted epistles of St Paul are all that I require. to
show that he lived in the expectation of an approaching
‘ coming of the Lord,’ without connecting it in any way
with Christ’s supposed prediction of the previous de
struction of the Temple and City of Jerusalem. Yet
how is it possible to imagine that such a prophecy would
not have made a deep impression on the Apostles, and
have been generally known to all Jewish Christians, if
it had been uttered as the synoptics state. But even
St John, if he wrote the Apocalypse, as there is very
good reason to think, could have known nothing about
the predicted destruction of the Temple, since he
exempts it from the destruction of the city of Jerusalem,
and transports it into heaven.”*
“ Well, I must admit, that seems to dispose of ‘ the
coming from heaven’ pretty effectually. But what do
you say to the ‘ casting out of devils ?
“ Do you believe the story of their entering into the
herd of the two thousand swine ? ”
“ I think the absurdity of that is sufficiently shown
in the English Life of Jesus.”t
_ „
“Yet this account is in all the synoptics.”
“ Well ! ”
11 If you don’t believe their concurrent testimony to
so remarkable a fact, how is it possible for you to build
any certain conclusions, from the words which they put
into the mouth of Jesus to the persons supposed tobe possessed by devils, as to what He thought of their
state ? ”
“ I can quite understand that Jesus may have
addressed mad men who believed themselves to be
Bev. xi. 1, 2, 13, 19; xvi. 1.
f Pt. iv. 46, 47.
�Via Catbolica.
2,18
possessed by devils, according to their belief, without
having shared it. My difficulty is that there is no
trace in the gospels of his ever having explained to his
disciples that what they took for possession was only
disease.”
J
“ But there are clear traces, I think, of His having
treated spiritually what they treated physically. Shake
speare makes Cassio say—
wrath ?leaSed
devil drunkenness to give place to the devil
The devil who ' returns to the house that he had left,
taking with him seven spirits worse than himself,’ and
finds it ‘swept and garnished,’ can hardly be any'other
sort of devil than Shakespeare’s. Connected as the
. saying is with the parable of ‘ the strong man armed,
who keeps his house in peace till a stronger than he
come, * it points, I think, to some declaration of Jesus,
that it is not enough to drive a devil out of a man if
you do not put some stronger spirit in his place. The
devil will come back to a home ready for him in the
company of kindred spirits, and ‘ the last state of the
man will be worse than the first.’ Again, the ‘ Satan ’
whom Jesus saw ‘ fall like lightning from heaven,’f and
the devil who taketh away that which was sown in the
heart of one who heareth the word of the kingdom and
understandeth it not,’+ must, I should say, have a
similar meaning; they point to internal, not to external
spirits.”
“ Well! sir, I cannot say but that you are entitled to
turn my criticisms against me, and claim for Jesus,
that if he is not to be credited with the ‘ mighty works ’
narrated in the gospels, he must not be debited with
the ignorance of nature shown in them. But if he
were so great a person as you hold him to be, it does
seem to me very strange that so little should be
* Matt. xii. 29,
T Luke x. 18.
Luke xi. 21, 24.
+ Matt. xiii. 19.
�The Gospels.
2 19
certainly known about him. It is a waste of power,
which 1 cannot easily bring myself to impute to God.”
“ May be, Mr S------ ,” said Margaret, 44 God works
in this, as He do seem to do always, behind a veil as it
were; here a veil of nature, and there a veil of men’s
passions, and wants, and sins; and where we might
have thought that all was going to be made clear, and
there wouln’t be no veil at all, then a veil of men’s
imaginings, which we can’t get behind no how. It may
be very puzzling to the like of us to say why it be so;
but there do seem to be what Bishop Butler, I think it
is, sir, calls 4 Analogy ’ in it? ”
44 You are quite right as to your 4 Analogy’, Mar
garet,” I replied; “ and perhaps, if we look closely, we
may discover something of divine wisdom in this. You
see, Mr S------ , it places us all on a level. The sacred
picture has been preserved to us only in outline; dis
tinct enough to show its beauty and majesty, but dimly,
through the haze of early tradition and the pious ima
ginations of the first Christian generations; and each
age and class of minds has thus been left free to fill it
up for themselves. It is the peculiar excellence of the
Catholic idea of Christ to carry a perpetual renovating
and purifying power in itself. Make of Jesus merely a
teacher sent from God; we require to know accurately
what He taught that we may benefit by the teaching.
But if we accept the Catholic faith, that in Him the
Divine Being manifested, its true essence, we have, in
our own conceptions of the Divine perfections, the
materials necessary for deriving from this faith the
spiritual food which we require: as we may see by St
Paul’s letters, which Margaret tells me that she quoted
to you, very appositely, I think.”
44 But if that is so, sir, of what use are the gospels ? ”
44 They assure us that St Paul’s idea of the character
of Jesus was not merely the creation of his own imagin
ation, but expresses the impression left by Christ on
those among whom He lived. Now this knowledge is
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Via Catholica.
indispensable. If we are to derive any spiritual benefit
from the belief that God has manifested His essential
Being in the form of a man, we must know what
of Being it was that was thus manifested, though we do
not require to know by what particular acts this char
acter was displayed.”
“ But that is precisely what I do want to know.”
“There’s many a thing, Mr S------ ,” said Margaret,
“ which we wants to know that’s not given to us, because,
no doubt, it wouldn’t have been for our good that we
should know it. And, may be, this is so here.”
“ You must remember,” I continued, “ that the
knowledge of particulars is never of any importance in
itself, just because they are particulars, which no sooner
emerge from the stream of Time than they sink into it
again, and are lost for ever. It is not the particulars,
but their interpretation, the permanent principles indi
cated by them, which alone is of consequence. Now to
interpret aright a life intended to manifest the Divine
essence, a special frame of mind may be required, such
as was produced in Palestine and Asia Minor, when
Jesus lived, by the religious faith and philosophical con
ceptions then prevalent there, but which may not exist
in the Europe of modern times.”
“ You think, then, that if I could have all the facts
of the life of Jesus before me, just as they were, I
should not be able to interpret them aright ? ”
“ Yes. I take it, that what you, and I, and the men
of this age generally, at least in our western world, can
interpret far better than such details, are the great facts
of the connection between the faith in Jesus and the
religious history of mankind. Our scientific training
and extended knowledge fit us for such a.task. To
divine the God in the man demanded a more childlike
faith, more ardent hopes, greater readiness to believe in
supernatural action than belongs to us, who look for
God in Nature, not above her. To trace His footsteps
in the historical development of religion, and therefore
�The Gospels.
22 1
to accept as true what our forefathers divined, does
belong to our time ; and I think it is well for us that we
are restricted to this field of the permanent and uni
versal, in respect to the story of Christ, and have lost
sight of the particulars which would only bewilder us.”
“ It may be that you are right,” said S------ , “ but I
cannot help wishing the case were otherwise.”
“ I can understand that wish,” I replied. “ There is
always a something gratifying in criticism. To sit in
judgment on the past gives us a feeling of superiority.
But this is a condition of mind to be carefully watched.
It slips so easily into self-conceit. Wordsworth beau
tifully says—
‘ The child, is father of the man ;
And I would wish my days to be
Linked to each other by a natural piety. ’
So it is with the ages. The greatest genius belongs to
those in whom the freshness of childhood can live on
with the sagacity of manhood. If £ they didn’t know
everything down in Judee,’ they may have seen some
things more clearly than we do.”
“ Or, may be,” said Margaret, ££ it wasn’t light so
much as feeling as was needed. And there, Mr S------ ,
you must own that a child, with its soft skin, may easily
beat you, though your hands can do many a thing that
would mightily puzzle the child.”
£i Well, Mrs B------ , I won’t deny but what that’s
true. But I don’t like to go to school to children.”
£‘ Ay, Mr S------ , perhaps none of us does. And yet
it is most true what He said, ‘ Except ye become as
little children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of
heaven.’ The more I sees of the world the more certain
I am of that. And, Mr S------, there’s one other thing
I wants to say, and that is this : if so be the Lord did
speak about many things, as they among whom He
lived spoke, and not as is done now, to my thinking it
brings Him nearer to me than if He had spoke as wise
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Via Catholica.
men, or they as deems themselves such, do speak nowa-days. Not that I want to say anything against know
ledge, God forbid ! For I takes the power of knowing
to be one of God’s greatest gifts to us. But that the
Lord should leave Hisself open to be accused of not
knowing they earthly things as they really are, do seem
to prove that not to know them can’t be no ways a bar
between Him and me. And there’s great comfort in
that thought, Mr S——, though I dare say I may seem
to you a very poor creature for feeling it.”
“ No, Mrs B------ ,” replied S------ , “ I assure you I
have no such feeling. You have taught me a great deal
more than I had to teach you. For I can see that you
knew pretty well already where the weak point of the
* gospel stories lies; but I didn’t half see what is the
- strong point in them as I see it now, thanks to what
you and Mr P------ have said. And I thank you, sir,
too, very heartily,” he continued, “ for showing me how
a clergyman may teach Christianity without being a
hypocrite in what he teaches.”
“ I am sure you may say that without fear of being
wrong, at all events,” said Margaret. “ And now, Mr
S------ , I hope you’ll take a cup of tea before you go.
And if the Rector will join us we shall all take it as an
honour.”
I accepted the invitation willingly, and so ended, in
a pleasant chat, my interview with this
pestilent
infidel,” as I have often heard S------ called by my
clerical brethren.
�CHAPTER XIV.
the church.
“ rpHIS is, indeed, a charming spot, Agnes,” I exI claimed as we turned into the gate of R—— spretty
parsonage, where we proposed to spend a few days on the
visit, half promised when he came to see us, and since
that time warmly pressed on us by him more than once,
though various circumstances had intervened to prevent
our accepting the invitation. “ What a beautiful
church ! and how perfectly it is placed between those
fine trees at the top of the little hill, round which that
clear stream has found its way to - the all-embracing
ocean. I’ll be bound there’s good fishing there.
“ And what a very nicely kept garden,” added Agnes,
as a turn of the road just then showed us the house
across a lawn enclosing beds of many varied flowers in
full bloom. “Well! I felt sure that Mr R
was a
man of excellent taste from what he said when he was
with us, but I did not expect anything so delightful.
What a pity there is no Mrs R---- to help him ! ”
“ Oh ! depend on it that will come in due time, I
replied. “ He is leaving his semi-ascetic moorings, I
suspect.”
_
.
. .
„
“At all events, there is no gloom about his asceticism,
said Agnes ; but by this time we had reached the door,
where R------ stood ready to give us a .cordial welcome.
“ This is truly kind ; I am charmed to see that you
have not left the little folks behind,” was his greeting
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Via Catbolica.
as he lifted my youngest girl out of the carriage, “ but
where’s Johnnie?”
“ Oh ! he is at school,” said Agnes. “ He was getting
beyond me, and his father’s time is too much taken up
by parish work to do justice to a boy’s education.”
“Besides,” I continued, “half the education of a
boy, and I am not sure that it is not the best half, he
gets out of his companions in any school which is under
a good master. There is nothing for keeping mind or
body up to the mark like the struggle for existence.”
“ If there is stamina enough to bear it, perhaps so,”
said R----- , as he led the way into the drawing-room.
Such was our introduction to a very agreeable visit,
which R------ induced us to prolong beyond our original
intentions ; varied by many pleasant walks and drive
**
about his picturesque neighbourhood, and by intercourse
with his neighbours ; and leading to long conversations
on the subjects, as to which his visit to me had opened
the way to a freer communication between us, where
Agnes often took a not inconsiderable part. Of their
result some idea may be formed from the one I am
about to narrate.
Everything at X------ is the perfection of Anglican
ism; flourishing under the auspices of refined taste,
ample means, and unwearied zeal. Noble schools
adjoin the beautiful church, which is reached by a walk
of five minutes across the rectory grounds, and where
R------ had a daily service, with a choir selected from
his schools, and trained under his skilful supervision to
pure and expressive singing.
The churchyard is
bounded on one side by the village green, bordered by
magnificent trees, and surrounded by cottages, which
seemed a model of considerate arrangements on the
part of their proprietor, with a corresponding amount of
care and neatness in the occupiers, almost marvellous
to us, till R------ let us into the secret—that to occupy
these cottages was a reward, to be earned only by this
care and neatness, from a landlord, who, being sole
�The Church.
^5
owner of the parish, and resident there during great
part of the year, had everything his own way ; and who,
under R------’s advice had built a pretty sort of club
house, with reading-rooms and provision for different
amusements in-doors and out of doors, on one side of the
green, as an evening gathering-place for the young
people, and a substitute for the beer-shop or public
house.
“ I do envy you your parish, Mr R------ said Agnes,
when we were sitting on the lawn after dinner, the
evening before the day we were to leave. “ Everything
seems so complete about it. I wish we could get to
something like it at V——
“I don’t despair of that. The singing is getting on
nicely now, under our present master, and 1 think we
may soon look to having a complete choral service.
Then what I see you have been bold enough to do,
R------ , though I could scarcely have believed it of you,
if I had not seen it,” I said laughing, “ takes away one
difficulty.”
“ You mean, I suppose, my short services. I own it
was rather a bold step to set them up; for I dared not
venture to ask the bishop, because though I felt in
wardly certain that he would not say ‘ You shall not,’
he would hardly have ventured to say ‘ You may.’
But the regular service was clearly too long ; scarcely
any one could find time to come to it, except on
Sunday; and I thought it so bad for the people to form
the habit of never taking part in public worship on any
other day ; as if God was a task-master, to whom we
gave one-seventh of our time on condition of having
six-sevenths for ourselves • so as the bishop did not
insist on my saying the daily common prayer in church,
but was quite content that I should have prayers of my
own at home, I saw no reason for not having them in
the church, and inviting the people to pray and sing
psalms or hymns with me.”
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Via Catholica.
11 And so you tried,” said Agnes, “ and I am surprised
-to see how many you get to come, even of the men.”
“ Ours is rather an exceptional case. You see, there
are'a number of labourers employed in the gardens at
the Court, and about the home farm ; and I got £ir
E------ to allow a quarter of an hour’s extension of
,breakfast time to any who desired to come to church;
and then G------ , who has the large farm on the other
side of the Green, did the same, and so a good many
could come if they would ; and Sir E------ and his
family always come when they are here, and it has got
to be rather the fashion. I am afraid there is a large
spice of service to Sir E------ rather than to God in it;
but many do come, even when he is not here, and I
make a rule .of never taking any public notice of who
come and who do not, so that I hope there is something
genuine about it.”
“ I wonder whether that’s why there are always two
bells at the Court in the morning,” whispered my eldest
daughter, between whom and R------ there had grown
up quite a little flirtation, to her mama, by whom she
was standing, playing with the fingers of one hand
which Agnes had abandoned to her.
“Yes, my dear,” said R------ , smiling, “you are
quite right, that is the reason. One bell is for the men
who don’t go to church, to know when breakfast time is
over, and the other is for those who do go. And so,”
he continued to Agnes, “yv-hat with this, and what with
the women and old people, a good many of whom
seem pleased to come, we get on tolerably well, even
without the school children, who are de regie.”
“ We cannot obtain any extra breakfast time, cer
tainly,” I said; “ and perhaps it will be best to try an
evening service. I daresay a good many people would
come to it then, if the music was attractive, and the
whole thing not too long; and though I would rather
make the worship open the day, we must adapt ourselves
to the wants of the people. What Christ said of the
�The Church.
227
Sabbath, according to the gospels, we may say of the
church and her services; they are ‘made for man, and
not man for them.’ ”
“No doubt you are right there ; and theoretically,- of
course, I should always have said so; but I feel it now
more practically, from my intercourse with you. , The
church must go with the age, if she is to lead the age;
she cannot ‘rise and rule,’ as Dr Newman ODce dreamt.' '
The question is, Can she go with the age without losing
her divinely given character?”
“ If she cannot, I should say this inability would dis
prove her claims to a divine origin. What is the age
but one phase of a providentially-ordered development?
If the church really expresses the will of the developing
power, how can she not possess the faculty of adapting
herself to all its phases?”
“ Even to that of the critical questioning of all’autbority, including her own?”
“Yes, even to that. For, go back to her beginning,
and what do we find,- as far as tradition shows us, in her
earliest phase, but the personal attachment to a master
who imposed no condition of faith beyond an act to be
done in remembrance of his death, and summed up his
teaching in the simple, well-known formula of love to
God and man. I question whether there has ever been
an age so ready as is the present age, to accept the
teaching of a body which should really make this motto
its watchword.”
“ But, to return to this earliest phase seems something
like charging the whole historical development of doc
trine, beginning with the fourth, gospel, with falsehood.
“ I should rather say, the imputing to it an inadequate
appreciation of the true relations between those two great
factors of the reason, Will, and Reflection; whence it
has produced ‘servitude,’ where Christ intended ‘liberty;’
till the system threatens to break to pieces, from the
reaction of the compressed forces against it. But it
does not follow that the dogmas in which the church has
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Via Catholica.
embodied her teaching are false, because the attempt to
claim for this teaching the authority belonging only to
that which influences the conscience is vain. It is not
the overthrow of dogma, but its revivification, by appeal
ing to conviction instead of to authority as the test of
truth, that I contend for.”
“ You canonize the principle of individuality; and the
question is, Whether this can possibly be done without
destroying the opposite principle—that principle of uni
versality on which the church has always taken her
stand ? That is my doubt.”
“ Yet the church has always recognised it to be her
function to give peace to the individual conscience?”
“ Yes, the conscience which submitted to her teach
ing ; but not the conscience which questioned it. Though
to be sure the ‘prove all things ’ addresses the individual
judgment.”
“ And the ‘ give a reason for the faith which is in you,’
and that comes from the Petrine side too,” I added.
“ And is it not the fact, that, until the progress of scien
tific inquiry began do make men call in question the
conceptions of the universe, shared by the scriptural
writers with mankind in general, the church always con
tended that her teaching was essentially reasonable, and
therefore had nothing to fear from sound knowledge, and
thorough inquiry ?”
“No doubt all her greatest teachers, Clement Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Augustine,
to say nothing of the Schoolmen, claim reason as on
their side; and make constant appeals to her. But it
was a reason enlightened by faith; while you seem to
appeal to a reason which is to enlighten faith.”
“ But is not that something like what happens in
growth, generall?” asked Agnes. “The child begins
by leaning on its parent; then it learns to go alone.
At last, when it has grown up, the parent may be glad
to lean on it; yet the feeling between them need not
change.”
�The Church.
229
“You have given a very apposite illustration, my
dear madam. And perhaps the alarm I feel at the
notion of the church unreservedly accepting reason as
her guide comes from my having contemplated the
reason principally when she was exercising the power
of going alone, and seemed more disposed to knock her
parents down than to support them.’
“But, is it not that Mr R------ , because the Church
has acted to the reason the part of schoolmistress too
much, and that of parent too little, and so has called
out opposition, where she should have cultivated affec
tion and trust 1 I remember, Mr Strauss, in one of his
books which Edward read to me, amused me by talking
of philosophy ‘ getting on her hind legs,’ and. begin
ning to growl at faith, who would not go on petting her,
as she had begun to do. Now, though petting is^not a
good method of teaching, scolding is a worse one.”
“ Besides,” I continued, “ it is not to reason un
checked—but to reason checked by fact, the facts of
man’s religious history, that the appeal is made : to the
spirit of science, which certainly leaves no assump
tion untested, but tests it, not by her imaginations of
.what ought to be, but by its power of accounting for
what is, or has been. The trial is ‘ by fire ; ’ but the
furnace is not capriciously heated.”
“ But if we submit the dogmatic structure to this
fiery test, who shall say how much will come out unin
jured 1
„
“ Yet does not St Paul contemplate this process,”
asked Agnes, “ when he talks of the fire burning up
‘ the wood, hay, stubble,’ which might be built on the
‘ one foundation,’ while the gold and silver would remain
unhurt ? ”
..
“ I have been accustomed to apply that rather to the
practical result of teaching,” R------ replied, “ but per
haps it ought to be extended to dogma. The ‘ struggle
for existence,’ of which your husband speaks, may be
needed here, too, to keep down the growth which is fit
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Via Catholica.
only to die, and further that which is appointed to live.
If I understand you rightly,” he added, turning to me,
“ it is not the efforts to define the faith that you object
to, so much as the attempt to impose the definition as a
condition of church membership 1 ”
“Yes,” I said. “The Church, I think, should embody
a principle of inclusion, not one of exclusion. She
should resemble those scientific bodies, where the only
condition of entrance is the declaration of being
‘ attached to science.’ I would have her receive all who
profess to believe in the God whom Christ manifested,
leaving all further questions open to free discussion;
to be determined, as all matters thus discussed will be
determined in one way or another, from time to time,
till a body of doctrines might grow up, authoritative as
all science is authoritative; because it is generally
accepted as true ; not because its acceptance is made a
virtue, and its non-acceptance a crime.”
“ So that the Church might properly include among
her members, even among her ministers, men like
*
Colenso, or Voysey, or Martineau?”
“ But, Mr R------ ,” said Agnes, “ are they not actu
ally ministers professing to teach in the name of Christ?
And can we be sure that He would reject them ? And
if not, why should we take upon ourselves to do so ? ”
“ It is the right hand of fellowship produced by a
common feeling, not the bond of a common dogmatic
teaching that I proffer,” I observed.
“ But that, you would not refuse to others, from whom
you differ yet more widely.” said R------, “ Keshub
Chunder Sen, for instance, or Professor Newman.
What perplexes me is, to see on what principle the
Church is to be constituted, so as to include Voysey, or
Colenso, or Martineau, and exclude others, as Theodore
Parker or Francis Newman, who refuse to belong to
her?”
* Who had not then taken up a position of antagonism to
Christianity.
�The Church.
231
“ Have you not yourself answered the question 1
They would be kept out, because they will not come in.
The ministers of the gospel say, We address you in the
name of one through whom we believe that God has
manifested to man His essential nature, in a way which
gives unity to man’s religious history; so that, accord
ing to the old apostolic formula, ‘ at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, and every tongue confess
that He is Christ, to the glory of God the Father,’
those who accept this teaching, and seek to promote the
spread of it, have a community of thought and object,
which others, who may indeed be willing to work for
the glory of God the Father, but 1 on their own hand’
only, not ‘in the name of Jesus,’ cannot share. Why
should not this community of religious aim suffice as
the bond of Church union ? There are wider bonds of
union among men, in the sentiments of reverence, love,
trust, truthfulness, as- there may be narrower and closer
bonds in assent to this or that peculiar system of teach
ing ; but why not recognise this bond of attachment to
Christ as sufficient ? ”
“ Which you propose, not as a compromise of opin
ions, but as an historical fact. It is hard to say why
that should not be sufficient to constitute a Church
union, but I doubt much whether it would prove to be
so. However, happily we need not settle that matter.
The question .for us is, in what spirit ought the claims
of the Church to be advocated, and on what grounds
should they be placed ? ”
“ The old ground, of ‘ Truth authoritatively defined,’
has obviously failed,” I replied. “ That the Church
should realise her ideal of a world-embracing unity,
upon this ground, seems hopeless. Eighteen hundred
years of experience has proved it. But is there not a
good hope that she might realise it, if she takes her
stand firmly on the ground of ‘ Truth based on convic
tion ;’ the common ground of all science applied to the
peculiar subject matter with which she is concerned;
Q
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namely, the development of man’s religious instincts into
opposite modes of conception, which have united round
a central historical figure, so as to associate the deepest
speculations of thought, with the tenderest impulses of
emotion ? ”
“ Yes, no doubt,” said R------ , with a sigh ; “the old
ground has failed. And there is something singularly
attractive in the idea of substituting such a ground as
you suggest, if the change which it must make in our
theological world were not so awfully great. But think
what is involved in the notion of resting our teaching
only on the sort of proofs that will stand the scientific
method. According to the views for which you have
contended so clearly and powerfully, instead of creation
we must have evolution ; instead of a fall and redemp
tion, continuous development; instead of ‘ signs and
wonders,’ acts of the imagination, asserting the freedom
of will against the necessity of nature ; instead of God’s
unerring word, an inspiration stripped of all vestige of
infallibility. The sacraments must become declarations
of a universal divine action and presence, instead of
channels of special grace. And of the efficacy of
prayer, there remains only communion with God.”
“ Which, Mr R----- I am sure, does not esteem to
be its least important office,” said Agnes.
“ No, my dear madam. No; you are quite right
there. But the change is like the alteration in astro
nomy, from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican.”
“ But that was a change from error to truth, was it
not ? ” asked Agnes. “ And, after all, it was only an
alteration in our way of looking at the things, not in the
things themselves.”
“And it grew legitimately out of the old astronomy,”
I added, “ by the same sort of process which leads to
the change that I advocate in our theological system ;
because men had tried every possible way of making
the old conception answer to the facts, and found that
they failed. As we have tried, in the Church, every
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233
possible mode of realising unity by the principle of
authority — councils, the Pope, the Bible, national
creeds, sectarian shibboleths—all failures. Shall we
not take this as God’s lesson, that the method is mis
taken ; and substitute the scientific principle, of unity
produced by conviction, based on the reasonable inter
pretation of facts.”
“ Those facts being, as you say, the religious ten
dencies of man’s nature, and the belief in which they
have been historically embodied; matters about which
we may attain to a certainty sufficient to make the pro
cess possible 1 ”
“Just so. That is what makes me hopeful about
the principle. We get out of that fatal circle of
facts adduced in proof of beliefs which, in turn, are
appealed to to prove the faets, where theology has
been entangled sinee the birth of criticism at the Re
formation. We breathe the free air of investigation ;
and feel ourselves living on a planet, not God-forsaken,
but where God has been present beneath the most
subtle workings of the creative faculty in man’s ima
gination, as truly as beneath the development of organ
ised being, or the mysteries of physical action.”
“ Avaunt thee, Satanas,” said R------laughing.
“You are a skilful angler, and know how to bait the
hook for me with that idea of the possibility of attaining
to religious unity by an untried road.”
“ Untried by theology,” I continued ; “ but yet the
road taken by every other science : the great high road
of Truth attained by Induction.”
“ It is very fascinating, I must own. There seems
such a possibility of reconciling opposites; such a pene
trative, transforming power in the idea, that the
belief, whose diversities form the perplexities of faith,
are themselves the stones out of which God would raise
the temple of belief, by the uniting bond which His own
action, attested by the general voice of the Church, has
supplied. It reminds me of a striking suggestion of
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234
Newman, in one of the ‘ Tracts for the Times,’ * that
the true religion is ‘ the summit and perfection of other
religions, combining in one whatever there is of good
and true in each of them severally, as the Catholic
creed is for the most part,’ he says, ‘ the combination
of separate truths which heretics have erred in divid
ing.’ But it rescues the notion from the imputation,
which mars it as a reconciling principle, that these re
ligions were ‘ false,’ because they were imperfect.”
'“ Yes; what has been called the falsity of religions is
really, I apprehend, only their one-sidedness; they
have seen God in the world, or they have raised Him
out of the world. They require the Catholic faith, that
men may learn to look on Him as at once in it, and
higher than it.”
“ In fact,” said B------ , “ we may say that there
never has been a religion false qua religion, though it
may have become associated with immoral usages; that
which was worshipped did really deserve reverence, only
not the exclusive absorbing devotion paid to it.”
“You remind me,” said Agnes, “of an idea which
charmed me very much, when I first heard of it, that even
the Fetish creed, the worship of an inanimate substance,
which seems the most stupid and unspiritual of all, is
transformed by the Catholic conception of the eucharist
into a symbol of the most spiritual faith; the faith in the
constant presence with us of Him who was manifested in
the flesh as our Lord.”
“ The idea of the growth of the complete faith out of
the union of opposing incomplete ones, resembles,” I
said, “ that grand conception of Hegel and his followers,
which, however, they have not half carried out, that the
various systems of philosophy are nothing but the de
velopment, in successive phases, of the thinking faculty
in man : and that the true philosophy is the statement
of the principle by which the process is explainable ;
No. 35.
See Discussions and Arguments, 200.
�The Church.
*35
namely, an evolution resting on the distinction and
union of contraries.”
“ At the same time,” said R------ , “ the fact of this
religious development having taken place by a series of
acts quite independent of the succession of philosophi
cal systems, is an answer to the theory that religion is
only one phase in man’s spiritual progress, destined
to be transformed ultimately into a philosophical
morality.”
“ No doubt. Morality, I take to be the common result
to which both religion and philosophy lead, by pro
cesses independent of, though harmonising with, each
other. But the question immediately before us is, not
what are the results of the method, but is it not the
true method ? Now the Church has always professed
that her teaching was founded on facts. She agrees
completely with the demands of the scientific thinker on
that point. And if the claim set up for the Bible to be
a perfectly true record of facts could bear the strict
scrutiny of impartial research, I should rely on its
statements. But if we cannot honestly say that this is
the case, and I at least cannot ; if we must admit that
our sacred books, when we apply to them the rules
which we apply to the sacred books of other religions,
such as the Vedas, or the Koran, can no more establish
their freedom from error than these books can, and I
think Dr Newman’s tract, to which you referred just
now, is of itself sufficient to prove that . . . .”
“ To say nothing of Mr Irons,” interposed R----- ,
with a smile.
“ Yes, to say nothing of the perplexities which he has
pointed out in the Bible, if taken as an authoritative
source of faith,” I exclaimed ; “Well, then, what facts
remain but man’s beliefs ? The past history of man
cannot be brought up for re-examination, like the
physical phenomena on which science builds her
theories ; all that exists of it is its records. These are
the facts, the only facts answering to the facts of
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scientific observation, that we possess in this sphere of
inquiry. From them we may learn with sufficient
precision the beliefs of their writers; but as for sitting
in judgment on the phenomena which may have led to
these beliefs, and settling what actually happened, as
the German divines have often tried to do, I think
the task hopeless. At the very best you cannot get
beyond probability, and rarely even to that.”
“ In truth, you would deal with these statements, as
the Church has always dealt with them—accept them
unreservedly as expressing the beliefs of their writers,
without any rationalistic boiling of them down. Only,
while divines have in general assumed that the objective
realities exactly corresponded to these beliefs, and
formed the true revealing facts, you say the. revealing
facts are the beliefs themselves ; which may not represent
any other objective reality, but to us are objective—
that is, the results of a spiritual power independent of
our wills or imaginations, and therefore form an element
in the divine revelation to us.”
“ And, on no view have they been more than an
element of revelation.
Every one who believes in
God at all, must admit nature to be a revelation of
Him • and I can truly say that to me the revelation of
God made through the spirit of man in its religious
history, is the deepest and truest revelation, the one
which shows most fully and clearly what God is in
Himself. Only we must not make God one-sided and
partial, as we do if we confine His spirit to the Jewish
prophets and apostles, and do not recognise its presence
in other men.”
“ That is what delighted me most in this idea, Mr
R------ ,” interposed Agnes, “when I had once made it
out. It was so beautiful to think that God has really
always cared for all men, and has been present with
them all in the same sort of way, though the differences
between their notions and ours have hindered us from
seeing this.”
�The Church.
237
“You express my sentiments exactly, my dear
madam. There is a great charm for me in the idea.
It seems to lift a weight off my mind: and it gives such
meaning to those words of Christ which place the
perfection of God in his goodness to the evil as well as
to the good.”
“ And to the absence of any dogmatical conditions of
belief in the sayings which can be ascribed with any
thing like historical evidence to Jesus himself,” I
added.
“ But,” continued R------ , “ one has got so accus
tomed to look on the exclusive doctrine as a truth to be
accepted, however perplexing, because it was revealed,
that it must be a wrench to pass to the opposite view.”
“ And yet,” I said, “ the change is only a further
progress in the same direction with that out of which
the Church arose originally. We began with national
religions. Then came a system claiming to embrace all
men; breaking down the distinction between ‘ Jew or
Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free,’ but yet
limiting the divine presence and favour to its own
members. God, I think, is now leading us to see that
this barrier of church exclusiveness is as false as was
the old barrier of national exclusiveness; and that the
true function of the church is to make men rub their
eyes, and come out of their caverns to enjoy the light
of the Sun of Righteousness, not to set bounds to His
influence.”
“ True, true,” replied R------ . “ The idea is grand
and continuous when it is grasped as a whole. It is in
the particulars that one feels the change. I have been
so accustomed to contrast man’s imaginations with
God’s revelation, that it seems a sort of profanation of
the word to regard God’s deepest revelations of Him
self as made through the medium of man’s imagination,
exercised in its creative freedom. And yet, no doubt,
man’s imagination has been the revealing agent, accord
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ing to the views we call orthodox. What can be more
imaginative than the Apocalypse ? ”
“ Only you have put the imagination in chains.”
“ Yes, we have put it in chains. But it is nobler to
believe that God has used it in its inherent freedom.
I suppose I shall end in thinking you in the right, if I
can get over the repugnance which I feel at treating
the two most remarkable books of the Old and New
Testaments, Deuteronomy and the fourth Gospel, as
what I cannot but call ‘ forgeries,’ though I know you
won’t admit the name.”
“ Say Poieseis, and I am content, for forged they are, I
own, in that sense. Works fresh from the creative forge
of the-spirit of men full of the most intense faith in that
which they uttered, and to whom the form given to their
teaching was, what the human shape and countenance
given by Phidias to Athene was to him—the expression
most suitable to the manifested Divinity. Forgery, in
our modern sense, is the use of a false name for a bad
purpose, and I object to its application to either of these
books, more especially to the anonymous gospel, because
it associates them with objects entirely foreign to those
of their authors.”
“ But I can quite enter into your feelings, Mr
B.——,” said Agnes, “for it was this very point that
seemed to stick in my throat, as it were, when Edward
first told me what he thought about the Bible. I felt as
if it was making God build up eternal truth upon lies.”
“ And how did you get over the feeling, for I can see
that you have got over it?”
“ Well, Mr R------at last this thought came to me,
that if the imagination of man really is the instrument
which God has used to make us understand what He is
in Himself as far as we can, it is quite likely that the
books from which we can learn most about Him would
be full of the profoundest imagination. And is it not
the fact,” she added, “ that everywhere the greatest
teachers of religion whom men have had, have been
�The Church.
poets. I am sure it was so with the Psalms among the
Jews, and Edward says that it was so among the Greeks,
and the Vedas, I am told, are poems; and there’s Dante
among the Italians; and Milton, and Cowper, and
Wordsworth, and Keble, and Tennyson, have been the
greatest teachers of religion in different ways among us.”
“ You may add Bunyan,” I said, “ and he is an
example the more in point because his work is a poem
in prose. No one, I suppose, would have thought of
calling Deuteronomy, or the fourth Gospel ‘ forgeries,’
if these words had been composed in rhythmical
order.”
“ Probably the association of certain forms with
works of a peculiarly imaginative character, has a good
deal to do with the feeling,” said R------ ; “yet, no
doubt, the fact that a narrative is in prose or in verse
does not affect the question whether it is objectively, or
only subjectively true. The Greeks looked on Homer
as history: and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is written
in verse.”
11 Mama, what does Mr R------ mean by objectively
true?” asked Constance in a whisper of her mother.
“What, are you still there, my love?” said R------ ,
stroking her hair softly, “ Why you have been as quiet
as a little mouse. It means,” he added, “a history, a
story of something that actually happened, and sub
jectively true, means what might have happened, though
perhaps it never actually did so.”
“ But mama,” said Constance, “ Mr R------ doesn’t
think that the stories about Jesus Christ never happened,
does he ? ”
“ My dear girl,” said R------ , “ I have no doubt, but
that our Lord lived such a holy life as the Gospels tell
us, going about doing good; and that He endured to
be crucified for our sakes; and that He is always pre
sent with us now to help us, if we pray to Him ; but it
seems very probable that some of the things told us
about Him in the Gospels, are what the Christians who
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lived when they were written, thought that He had said,
or done, rather than what they really knew that He did
say or do. You know, I might write a story about a little
girl who lived once at the parsonage at Y------ , and was
called Constance, and who had a sister called Helen, and
a brother called John, and how she came with her papa
and mama to pay a visit to me here; and if I wished
to show other people what sort of little girl she was, I
might put in a great many things out of my own head
which she said or did, because I thought them to be
such things as she would be likely to say or do;
although, perhaps, she never had said or done exactly
any of those things. But that would not show that
there never was such a little girl, or that she did not
come with her papa and mama to pay me a visit, or
that she did not say or do things like what were in my
story, though not the very same.”
“And if Mr R------ -were to write such a story about
such a little girl,” I said, taking her in my arms, “I
think he would say that she staid up when she ought to
have been in bed.”
“ And, I think, I should say she was a good little
girl, who had a wise papa and mama, whom she liked
to listen to when they talked of grave matters,” added
R---- .
“Especially if a gentleman called Mr R------ was of
the party. Eh ! is it not so, Conny 1 ”
“Now, papa, you are a very naughty man, and I
have a great mind to box your ears for saying such
things,” exclaimed Constance, blushing,—and making
her way out of my arms, she gave her mother and me a
kiss, which R------ claimed to share, and ran ofi to
the house.
“ She is a sweet creature,” said R—-—, when she
was well out of ear-shot, looking after her as she skipped
across the lawn. “ Well! who knows, if I could find one
like what she promises to be when she grows up, who
would take a fancy for me—perhaps, X------ might see
�The Bible.
241
a mistress at the rectory some day. “ You see P------ ,”
he added, as he offered his arm to Agnes to take her in
to tea, “ whatever may come of your attempts to convert
me to your New Catholicism, your wife has converted
me into thinking that it is good for man not to be alone
if he can find a ‘help ’-meet ‘for him.’ ”
CHAPTER XV.
THE BIBLE.
GNES and I have been much interested during the
A last week, in a young Hindoo, C------ S------ G------ , who has come over to England to study English
law, and qualify himself for practising as a barrister at
Calcutta, and who brought a letter of introduction from
my friend I------ . By it, we found that he had a strong
desire to see something of the interior of an English
family, especially a clergyman’s. As we had no
occupant of our spare room at the time, we were able
to gratify his wishes at once, by asking him to take up
his quarters for a few days with us; and have had our
reward in becoming acquainted with a very amiable
and intelligent man, peculiarly attractive to us. because,
though profoundly religious, he belongs to that “young
India,” who have thought their way out of the super
stitions of their countrymen for themselves, and to
whom, therefore, our missionaries are apt to be antagon
istic rather than helpful, since they cannot get their
own peculiar dogmas to take hold on them. Naturally,
our conversation soon fell upon the question of our
difference or agreement in religious matters, which we
found to have a deep interest for him; especially our
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faith in Christ, whom he owned to feeling sometimes
almost a longing to worship, were it not, as he said, for
an obstinate rationality which drove him away. We
had a good deal of talk about his difficulties. They
involved many of the subjects discussed in conversations
already recorded in these pages ; and appeared gradually
to melt away under the influence of the considerations
now, I hope, familiar to my readers; many of these
being new to him, while others put on a new aspect in
their new associations. But there remained some
resisting element hard to make out; till at last I
discovered that his great stumbling-block was the Bible
histories.
Christianity had been presented to him as a belief,
attested by a set of stories concerning God’s acts
towards the Jewish nation, or mankind in general,
stated in the Bible, and to be accepted as unerringly
true, but which, to him, seemed a strange mixture of
improbabilities, absurdities, and often immoralities.
“ How,” he said to me at last, “ can I believe in the
manifestation of a Divine Being which is connected
with believing such tales as there are in your Bible?”
“ That is a matter,” I replied, “on which I may be
able to give you some help; but that I may do this you
must tell me more fully what you object to in these
stories ? ”
“ I am afraid it is almost everything of much import
ance,” he answered. “ The whole character of them
from beginning to end appears to me so unworthy of
God.”
“ Surely,” said Agnes, “ you do not quarrel with the
statement that ‘ God made man in his own image?’ ”
“ No, madam, that is one of the few things in these
stories that I can admire. But, if you will allow me, I
will read you a few notes I have made about the things
which stagger me in the Bible ; not in all of it, for I
should keep you the whole day to hear that, but only of
the creation, and of Adam and Eve, and down to the
�The Bible.
243
flood of Noah.: they will give you a good idea of all
the rest.”
“ I should like very much to hear these,” I replied ;
and so G------ produced his MSS.
“ I ought to tell you,” he said, before he began,
“that this was written some time ago, when I had not yet
read Bishop Colenso’s books about the Pentateuch; and
perhaps, too, I should ask pardon before-hand for some
things in it at which many of your clergy would be very
angry. But I think you are one of those who like to
know what men’s thoughts really are.”
“ You judge me quite correctly there,” I said.
“ Then I will begin with my notes on Chapter i. of
Genesis.”
‘ There is a noble saying at the end of this chapter,
that Elohim made man in His own image, in the image
of Elohim made He him.’ “You see, madam, I have
not missed that.” ‘ But as to the rest of the chapter,
what can I learn from it? What is the meaning of
God’s saying, Let there be light, and there was light.
No doubt it seems grand ; but what does it tell me
more than if the book had said, it was dark, and then
all at once there was light ? Then, what do I learn
about the sun or the stars, or the earth, that is true; for
as for the six 'days, nobody stands up for them. Even
the stoutest champions of the Bible allow that these
days must mean not days, but immensely long periods
of years ; though why, if so, God should be said to have
rested on the seventh day, and blessed it, and to have
set the sun and the moon to be for days and for years,
I find none who explain. Then, if I cannot learn the
time which the earth has taken to grow up from this
chapter, can I learn the order in which living things
appeared on it ? By no means. If the days of Genesis
mean such days as the geologists want for the accumula
tion of the strata on the earth, then, according to this
chapter, there must have been an enormously long
“ day” when there were only plants alive, before there
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were any “ fish,” or “ creeping things.” But some of
the very earliest remains that the geologists find are
kinds of “ fish,” or “ creeping things,” which lived in
the waters long before the great growth of plants that
made the coal. Again, what do the physicists say to
there having been no sun, till after these coal strata had
been formed, they who tell us that the force which the
coal gives out, is the old heat of the sun stored up for
modern use 1 But here comes in astronomy, to teach
me that the earth is only a quite insignificant ball of
matter, entirely dependent on the movements of this
sun, which Genesis puts on a par with the moon : the
moon that is nearly 100 times less than the earth ;
while it would take more than 100 earths, put side by
side, to stretch across the sun.
*
And I am to suppose
that this sun began to be, myriads and myriads of years
after the earth ! I should like to know what the earth
was doing during all those long ages without any sun
to move round ? But astronomy has not done yet with
this chapter. Will she let me think of a firmament,
set between waters above the earth, and waters beneath
it in the sea ; a firmament in which the sun and moon
are set; she who tells me that the moon is 250,000 miles
distant from the earth, and the sun 92,000,000 of miles;
while the meteorologists tell me that the water, which
comes down on the earth, is all contained in a little film of
air, not five miles thick. I ask, then, what can I learn
from the beginning of this pretended revelation, which,
the missionaries say, was given by God Himself to Moses,
and make so much ado about, and tell us that without
it, we can know nothing at all as to how the earth
and men came to be—except false notions, which, as
soon as I study the European sciences, that these same
missionaries boast of as the great glory of the Christians
to have found out, I have to put aside, as popular ways
* The mass of the moon, the earth being 1, is ’011369, while
the sun is 882,000 miles in diameter, the earth 7926.—See Herschel’s
Astronomy.
�The Bible.
245
of speaking; God condescending to talk to men accord
ing to their own blunders, and to tell them lies ; yes, I
must use the word, absolute lies, because He was not
clever enough to find out some way of teaching them,
without puzzling them by speaking of matters about
which they knew nothing. For my part, I am not
willing to turn my God into such a foolish liar.’
‘ But I go on to Chapter the 2d, where the first thing
which surprises me is, that God who calls Himself only
“ Elohim ” in chapter one, begins, all at once in chapter
two, to call Himself Jehovah Elohim, which are the
Hebrew words translated, the Lord. God, without giving any reason for this change. However, let me- pass- on
to the substance of this revelation ! I rub my eyes as
I read. Hullo ! I say, how can this be ? In the first
chapter every thing is finished in six days ; and God
takes a little rest quietly on the seventh, after all his
hard work ; though it is strange, too, how it came to tire
Him so much, since, after all, He did nothing but talk.’
II You will excuse me,” said G------ , looking up, “ my
little jokes, which I know are not in very good taste, but
I read to you just what I have written ; and when I
wrote this I was rather angry with a missionary, who
teased me continually with his Word of God.’”
“ I can enter into your feelings, Mr G------Agnes
replied ; “ pray read on quite freely. We know that
you do not intend to say any thing that might annoy us.
It is very kind of you to let us see into your thoughts
so unreservedly.”
G—-—• resumed,—‘But now, at the end of the seventh
day, all begins over again : first, the earth, which is
quite dry, so that it has to be watered by a mist before
any thing can grow upon it, though only six days before,
according to chapter one, it had been under the waters;
and next, the plants when the water had come, made
over again ; then thirdly, the man, whom Elohim had
made, with the woman, too, only on Saturday afternoon,
JehovahElohim makes over again, without the woman, on
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Monday morning, I suppose “out of the dust of the ground.”
And then the orthodox doctors are very angry with
Mr Darwin, and say he takes away the faith in the
Divine origin of man, by teaching that his great-great
great-grandfather may have been a monkey. Well! for
my part I would rather have a monkey for my grand
father than a lump of dirt. But then, say the mission
aries, is it not true that men do turn into dust when
they die ? Yes, no doubt, part of them ; but a great
deal more is water, and a great deal too is air, nitrogen
gas. Why could not the All-wise Maker reveal to us
a little about this water and air in men, as well as
about the dust ? And, then, what marvels have not
the chemists found out about this water, and air, and
dust. I think, if I had been Jehovah-Elohim, making
a revelation to my children about themselves and
their origin, I would have given them just a little peep
into these wonders of the stuff their bodies are made of,
instead of telling them a falsehood; that they were
made all of dust! But, I go on. I pass over the
curious geography of Eden, with its four great rivers,
which belong to a river system, certainly not found in
Arrowsmith. But then comes some more of the crab
like work of creation, going back from men to animals,
while the first chapter had gone forwards from animals
to men : and so at last we arrive at women; but by
what a strange route! Jehovah-Elohim makes the
animals, and brings them to Adam, to find out if any
of them would be a help-meet for him. One does not see
clearly whether Jehovah-Elohim wished to find this out
for his own information; or whether it was Adam who
was to make the discovery in such a hurry, just by
staring at a creature whom he had never seen before,
whether it would suit him as a help or not, and let God
know. Anyhow, it seems that Adam and JehovahElohim between them concluded that the right thing had
not been hit off; and so Jehovah-Elohim fell upon the
strange notion of making a “ help-meet ” for Adam out
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247
of one of his own ribs: a straight, slender, graceful
female, out of a crooked, ugly bone !. I am almost
ashamed to write such a criticism because the moral of
the story is so tender and true; that the man said to
the woman, 11 thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of
my flesh; for thee I will leave father and mother, and
be joined to thee as my wife, that we two may be one
flesh.” It is so clear to me that, out of this idea, the
fable grew up. But when the Christians will have us
take these old tales to be God’s own word, written down
to teach us what happened to the first man and woman,
this drives us to a strict criticism to prove whether
such is the case : And then we must ask, how could
Adam tell that the woman was made out of one of his
ribs, if he was in a “ deep sleep ” as it is written, when
the rib was taken out, and the flesh closed up in its place?
And what could he have known about father or mother,
or the feelings of children towards them, he who had no
father or mother but God ? But I pass on to the tale on
which the missionaries insist go much, because they say it
clears up the great mystery why there should be sin,
and sorrow, and death, in the world. But what a way
of clearing up such difficulties ! By a story which
begins, in this earth just newly made, where all is said
to be “ very good,” with a serpent so subtle that he could
talk with men, and cheat them into believing him more
than God; and ends with a God who is at once foolish
and unjust; so foolish that he drives the man and
woman out of the garden which he had made on
purpose for them, lest they should eat of a tree He
had put into it, and become immortal in spite of their
creator; instead of simply taking the tree away, or
depriving it of the property of preventing death ; and
so unjust that He punishes all the descendants of Adam
and Eve, and the earth besides, for one offence, for
which it would have been quite punishment enough to
have made the apple give Adam and Eve the stomach
ache. Of course, if it were quite certain that the story
R
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Via Catholica.
was true, there would be nothing more to be said about
it; but there is no proof of this at all, that I can
discover; and, without such a proof, to set it up as an
explanation of the mystery of evil; a revelation clearing
up the perplexity we feel about the tendencies to sin
which seem born with us, is an insult to common sense.
‘I go on to the story of Cain and Abel, which is a little
less unreasonable ; though it is curious that the arts
which make men strong, or which make life pleasant,
are said to be invented by the descendants of wicked
Cain, not of pious Abel. But, here again, I find the
same arbitrariness which there is in the story of Adam
and Eve. Why will not Jehovah accept Cain’s offering
as readily as Abel’s? The missionaries read between
the lines, and tell us, Oh 1 Abel offered a lamb, because
Jehovah had ordained it in foresight of the death of
Christ; but Cain insisted on offering fruits against
God’s order: but the story itself, which they tell us is
God’s own word, says nothing about this. It seems to
have a pleasure in making God act unjustly; and
therefore I cannot think it is a true revelation of Him.
‘ Chapter v., brings us back to Elohim, without
Jehovah, as in chapter i.; while in chapter iv., we
have Jehovah alone without Elohim. It is very strange,
I think, that God should change so often the name that
He gives Himself in “ His Word.” And not only so,
but we get back also to the Adam and Eve who are
made both together, and not one out of the other; and
then we go on with Adam’s descendants, and their
wonderful long lives, just as if nothing had been said
about the garden of Eden, or Cain and Abel. Certainly,
this looks very much as if, in this book of Genesis,
there were two different stories of the creation, instead
of one, as the missionaries pretend. And this seems
to go on in the narrative of the Flood, where the
name of God jumps about strangely, sometimes being
Jehovah, and sometimes Elohim; and the animals
who come into the ark, are first two of each sort,
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without saying any thing about clean or unclean ;
and then, after all that has happened as Elohim
orders in chapter vi., in chapter vii. Jehovah gives
another order to Noah, to take seven males and
seven females of each clean animal; and then again,
a little further on, we come back to Elohim’s order
of two and two creatures out of all flesh, clean or
unclean. And then at the end of chapter viii., Noah
offers a sacrifice out of the clean animals to Jehovah,
who sniffs it up, and finds the smell so pleasant that it
quite softens him, and he declares he will not drown the
earth any more. While in chapter ix. we get back to
Elohim, whom I certainly like a great deal better than
Jehovah, who blesses Noah and his sons without wanting
any sacrifice to tickle his nose, and sets his bow in the
clouds, and gives orders to put murderers to death,
with no allusion at all to Jehovah. And perhaps it is
from some confusion between the two stories that Noah
is made, in chapter viii., to take off the covering of the
ark on the first day of the first month, but yet does not
come out of it till the twenty-seventh day of the second
month; so that he and his family and all the animals
must have lived at the top of Mount Ararat, which I
believe is always covered with snow, for nearly two
months, without any fire, or even a roof. As for the
story itself, I daresay when it was written it did not
seem so strange as it does now; because, no doubt,
men had no idea then how many different sorts of
creatures there really are upon the earth, or how far
they live from each other, or how many different sorts
of food they would want to live for a year, or how high
the mountains are which they supposed to be covered
with water, and how much water would be needed to
cover them. And if they thought, as the first chapter
of Genesis says, that there was a great ocean of water
above the firmament, over their heads, it might seem a
very natural thing to suppose that God let it come
down to cover the earth. But if God, who must know
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Via Catholica.
the truth about all these things, had revealed the
account of what really happened to men, one should
expect that He would have let us have some little peep
into the way in which the flood really could take place,
and the animals could be brought together and kept
alive; and when I find nothing at all of this kind in
the story, it seems to me to show clearly that this tale
is not a revelation made by God at all, but is like those
stories of a great flood found among many other nations,
which no intelligent and well-instructed person now
believes to be true, though, perhaps, they may all have
a foundation in some great flood which did once happen.’
££ Your notes are a very creditable piece of criticism,
indeed, Mr G------ I said, when he stopped reading.
££ It must have been a satisfaction to you to find, when
you read the Bishop of Natal’s work, how well you had
hit off the conclusions to which he has come, from the
most careful analysis of the original, as to the double
story of Creation and the Deluge in Genesis, with that
distinction in the divine names, which, in this case is
almost sufficient of itself to mark out the different
parts.”
“ Yes, I was pleased to find that I had made such
good shots, and of course that settles the question of
revelation, as to this book of the Bible at all events,
for no one can suppose that God would tell two stories
that do not fit into each other, about the same things.”
“ I agree fully with you as to that. But you pro
bably know that the champions of the infallibility of
the Bible do not let themselves be stopped in their ‘ har
monizing,’ as they call it, by any difference short of the
positive denial by one scriptural writer of what another
has positively affirmed. You may see that by the socalled ‘ Harmonies ’ of the gospels.”
“ No, indeed,” said Agnes ; “ and I don’t think they
would be stopped in their £ Harmonies ’ even by such a
contradiction. If one verse of Genesis had declared,
1 God made the earth and the heaven in six days,’ and
�The Bible.
25L
another, ‘ God did not make the earth and the heaven
in six days, but in one/ they would have maintained
that the two statements were perfectly consistent; only
one was to be understood of the unity of the idea, and
the other of the variety in executing it.”
“ You seem to have a high opinion of the ingenuity
of your commentators, madam,” replied G------ laugh
ing ; “ but you must allow me to say that this is rather
at the expense of their honesty.”
“ Oh ! they are not dishonest; they are most sincerely
self-blinded, I assure you. I can speak with confidence
on this, because I have gone through that state of mind
myself. Men mix up their reverence for the Bible with
their reverence and love to God so thoroughly, that it
appears to them as wicked to doubt the truth of any
statement which they find in it as it would be to ques
tion the goodness of God. So they won’t let themselves
be put out in their trust by any difficulties.”
“ It seems to me, madam, that the Bible must be a
very dangerous book if it can produce such an effect on
men’s minds.”
“ I think,” I said, “ that the effect which I agree
with Agnes in admitting to be really produced, and
with you in considering to be ‘ dangerous,’ is due to two
causes; first, the inherent beauty of the sentiments by
which the books called by us the Bible are generally
penetrated; secondly, the grandeur and depth of the
idea which has come out of them, and embodied itself
in the Catholic Church.”
“Well,” replied G------ , “ after the conversations we
have had together about that Catholic idea, I will not
deny its greatness and depth. Only I must say that the
way in which you put it is very different from the way
in which any of your sects do. I suppose because your
way of thinking about it is only just beginning to be
known. But as for the sentiments in the Bible, you
must excuse me for saying that you seem to me to throw
back your own feelings upon it as a colour. What can
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Via Catholica.
you find to delight you, for instance, in the story of
Jehovah Elohim cursing all mankind because the first
man and woman, in their ignorance and simplicity, ate
of a fruit which they had been told not to eat of ? ”
“ The myth embodies a profound moral truth, which
the Proverbs, attributed to Solomon, express for a parti
cular case, in the maxim, 1 the beginning of strife is as
the letting out of water.’ Did you ever read Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress?”
‘‘ I have looked into it, but I do not know it
thoroughly.”
“ You will find there a very instructive story of a
path across the 1 Meadows of Delight,’ into which Chris
tian and his friend were tempted to turn out of the
straight highway; very charming at first, but leading them
by little and little astray, till they fell into the clutches
of a great giant, 1 Despair.’ Take away the clothing in
which the Jewish imagination dressed its notions of sin
and its cause, and the story of the Fall becomes a pro
foundly true picture of the temptations by which the
attractions of the senses induce us to neglect the warn
ings of conscience, and the far-reaching consequences,
extending often to others whom we cannot aid, that
may flow from this neglect.”
“ But that is what you learn now from observing
men and things ; you do not want this old story to reveal
to you that. And all that it tells you more than this
you say yourself is a myth—a clothing which must be
taken off to disclose the naked truth. Why then call it
a revelation at all ? What does it reveal to us ? ”
“ The way in which these moral truths grew up and
found acceptance among men; the mode in which,
thousands of years ago, the Jewish mind conceived
them.”
“ But that appears to me a matter of interest for the
antiquarian rather than for the religious teacher.”
“ Oh no, Mr G------ ,” exclaimed Agnes, “ I am sure
vou are wrong there. It is so delightful to think, when
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one reads in the Bible anything that goes straight to
our own hearts, here is the Spirit of God proving to.us
that it is always the same. It is like hearing a voice
from heaven proclaiming the grand refrain which we
sing at the end of the psalms, 1 Glory to God, as it has
been, is now, and shall be evermore.’ ”
“But then, madam,” said G----- “why should you
confine that feeling to the Bible ? Why not hear God’s
Spirit in all the profound religious or moral sayings
which are to be read in the writings of other nations
besides the Jews ?”
. “ So I do, Mr G------ ; and there is nothing on which
my husband is fonder of dwelling than on this idea of
the proof given by these writings that the Spirit of God
has been present with men, at all times and in all
countries, since there have been real men on the earth
at all. Only the true religious spirit seems to flow more
clearly and fully in the old J ewish writings than in
those Qf any other nation; just as it is with natural
water. We don’t get here the beautiful clear springs
that come out of the chalk hills; but the water is water
for all that.”
. „
“ And comes pure in every case from the skies,’ I
added, “ to take its colour and taste from the soil on
which it falls. What you want, my dear young friend,”
I continued, “ to perfect your religious faith is what, in
my judgment, you cannot obtain without the Bible, and
that is the historical element in religion. By means of
the Bible we can trace the fibres of the great Catholic
idea of a Divine Being, ever present in the world from
which it is yet distinct, in continuous connection down
to the primitive soil out of which the life-giving tree
has sprung. It is a great thing to do that. Religion
thus becomes objective, while otherwise it remains only
subjective ; and that is a real revelation.”
“ And you see, Mr G------ said Agnes, “ the revela
tion depends on the way in which, in history, God has
worked in, as it were, generation after generation, and
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Via Catholica.
different races of men, each with its own thoughts and
feelings, but all helping to bring out a great idea which
none of them completely understood; so that the revela
tion is not affected by the mistakes which any of them
made, any more than the plan of a great piece of
embroidery would be by the imperfect stitches of those
who executed it, to give you a woman’s simile,” she
added smiling.
“It might be taken from men’s work in Bengal,”
replied Gf------ , “ but in either case it is not the less
appropriate ; and I think that I begin a little to see how
the Bible may be called 1 God’s ’ word to man more
than other books, and yet be quite truly made up of men’s
words. Only there seems to me to be some things in
it worse than merely imperfect stitches. Must you not
admit that there is in it some work which cannot enter
into the plan at all ? What shall we say, for instance,
to the belief of Abraham that it could be right for him
to cut his son’s throat, and make of him a burnt-offering
to God,—that such a command could possibly come
from Jehovah, who, in the story, actually praises Abra
ham for having been ready to do this horrible wick
edness ? ”
“ It would be very bad work, indeed,” I said, “ if we
were to take the Bible as teaching us absolute truth by
God’s dictation. But take it as a history of the growth
of religious feeling and thought in the Jewish nation,
and this difficulty disappears. Put yourself back into
the age when the Jews were beginning to emancipate
themselves from the fearful idea, common to many
Semitic people, that God was specially pleased by the
sacrifice on the part of man to Him of what was
dearest to man—his own children ; when the prophets
began to teach, God takes the will for the deed. It is
enough if you are ready to offer up your son, your onlyson, ?/He asks; but He does not ask it; the story is
turned from an appalling blasphemy into a very inter
esting record of religious progress to a deeper insight
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into moral truth; and in this aspect it finds entrance
into the New Testament.”
“ I remember, Bishop Colenso puts it so, only I did
not quite see, in his way of stating the matter, how, in
that case, the story could be called part of a true ‘ re
velation ’ at all. But I think I see this better now. It
is the progress that makes the revelation, is it not ? ”
“ Just so. We trace in the Bible, that is, the records
of the Jewish religious history, the growth of a great
idea which took root and sprang up in that nation more
vigorously than in any other—the idea of one only God,
the loving Father, and yet the just and holy Judge of
all men, on whom all things depend, from whom men
are separated by sin, but who is ever ready to receive
those who turn to Him. Then in the New Testament
we see how this great idea allied itself with the opposite
profound idea which had grown up among the Aryan
race, especially the Greeks, that the one God on whom
the world depends is truly present in it, working beneath
its appearances, not as an arbitrary dictator, such as
the Semitic Deity becomes when it shuts out the Aryan
element, as it did in Mahommedanism, but as a patient
law-maker and upholder. Now since the conception of
God presented to us by this combined idea satisfies at
once the demands of our emotions and our intellects, it
becomes a true revelation, because it contains a prin
ciple which binds together the inside and outside-—the
conscience of the individual with the history of the race.”
“ But then,” said G-—-, “it is not only the history
of the Jews that you want for this revelation ; you must
have the other side also, the Aryan side, to make up
your ‘ word of God.’ ”
“ That is, to trace the process through which the
actual c word of God ’ to me—namely, what I can
accept as true-—has come to take this form in my mind.
No doubt I require both sides.”
“ Then why do you call the Bible exclusively ‘ God’s
word?”’
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Via Catholica.
“ But Edward never does do that,” interposed Agnes ;
“ he always speaks of God’s word in the scriptures; and
he has often told the people from the pulpit how great a
mistake it is to think that God speaks to us only in the
Bible.”
J
“ I cannot tell you,” replied G------ •, ££ how much I
am obliged to you for making me understand better
what the use of the Bible really is. I very much wish
you could a little enlighten your missionaries on that
point. I know something of my countrymen’s way of
thinking, and I assure you that if the missionaries go
on as they do to make out that the Bible is ‘ God’s
word,’ just as the Mahommedans say that the Koran is
the ‘ word of Allah,’ and my countrymen cease to believe
in their own sacred books, they will become Mahom
medans sooner than Christians; and I do not think that
would be a good thing either for them or for you Eng
lish in India.”
£< I have heard before,” I said, ££ from well informed
persons of the fruits which Mahommedanism is gather
ing in from the shaking of the old faiths in Hindostan.
It is a very unexpected result of our missionary
labours.”
“ But it is quite indubitable. You see the Hindoos
might have become Catholics, perhaps, if you English,
when you got the government of India, had believed in
the old religion of all Europe; for my countrymen like
to belong to a religion which is old and great; but you
Protestants come to us with twenty sects all different,
and none of them older than your Reformation, and all
building themselves on your infallible £ word of God,’
which those of us who look into it and know anything,
find full of difficulties that you cannot at all explain, but
bid us gulp down in a lump by what you call ‘ faith.’
Why should we do that ? And then, for those who do
not inquire, or who are too ignorant to see difficulties,
Mahomet’s word is shorter and clearer, and suits their
way of thinking in common things better; and it has
�The Bible.
^57
been the faith of the great Indian emperors who ruled
before you. Why should they not believe it to be
‘ God’s word ’ as readily as the Bible, which does not
even profess to be the word of God at all ? ”
“ And has all the better claim,” I observed, “ to be
a true ‘ word of God,’ because it makes no claim to be
anything but men’s words about God. A friend of
mine, in a poem which one day I hope will see the
light, has well said of the Bible—
‘ It were not scripture then
Unless it wrote the lives of common men ;
Nor written for our health, unless it wrote
Things which were ancient once, but still are new,
Baptized, in our experience ever fresh.’*
To tell us truly of God, it must tell us what men have
really felt, or believed, or hoped of Him who is the
source of all hope, and belief, and feeling. It is a note
of God’s genuine work that it courts inquiry, and makes
no pretences. But we have sacrificed our advantages
by encumbering ourselves with the heavy armour of in
fallibility, of our own forging, instead of trusting to the
‘ sling and stone ’ of simple truth. If we are to convert
the Bible into a mimicry of the Koran, the Hindoo is
right in preferring the original. It should be the glory
of the Christian teacher to say, I alone can offer you a
true revelation, because, while all other alleged revela
tions are nothing if not infallible, God has revealed
himself in Christianity through human infirmity and
error.”
“ And I suppose you will say, it is one proof of this
that the Christian teachers have been so long in finding
out their special privileges.”
“ I am afraid you are rather satirical on us, Mr
G—■—,” said Agnes with a smile.
“ No, madam, I assure you I am quite serious. It
* Glendower, Act V., §5, by the Bev. Rowland. Williams,
published since his death.
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Via Catholica.
was an idea which came into my head that seemed to
clear up a difficulty, why, if Mr P------ ’s notion of the
proper character of Christianity is the right one, so few
Christians should have perceived this?”
Yes, I said, “ the idea of infallibility has a
heavenly mother in Faith, but an earthly father in Self
importance ; and it has a very strong hold upon men’s
minds on.the earthly side. The ‘pride which apes
humility ’ is prone to conceal its true features under the
mask, of reverence for what is called ‘ revealed truth
that is to say, in nine cases out of ten, fancies which
have no support but confident assertion.”
“ I do not know,” observed G------- , “ whether I quite
rightly apprehend how you look upon rival religions,
those which do not enter into your development, such
as Mahommedanism. Do you deny to Mahomet all
right to be a true teacher of ‘ God’s word ? ”
“ By no means,” I replied, “ In so far as he taught
what is true in itself, he must be a true teacher of
‘ God’s word ;’ and I am far from denying that there is
profound religious truth in Mahommedanism. But I
say that it is a one-sided, and therefore imperfect
teaching, which moreover, cannot point to that affirma
tion of the inherent truth of its great doctrines by the
religious history of man, capable of being shown in the
great ideas of Christianity. Hence it cannot claim, as
the Christian ideas can claim, that its subjective asser
tions are objectively sanctioned. Credibile est credenti*
bus is true of it, no doubt; but one cannot say it ought
to be believed, because the belief gives a coherence and
unity, to the divine action in human progress, otherwise
wanting.”
“ No doubt.” said G------ , “ Mahommedanism is a one
sided faith. There is no room for the Vedantic religion
in it at all. If the Hindoo embraces it, this is because
it sweeps away so much superstition which has fettered
It is believable to those who believe it.
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259
him. While its morality, both in what it forbids and in
what it allows—the prohibition of intoxicating drinks,
and the allowance of more than one wife—agrees better
than Christian morals with his notions of what is
desirable.”
“ I have no doubt myself that the church is right in
restricting the last liberty and leaving the first free,” I
answered; “but you are probably aware that if any
Hindoo reformer thought proper to copy Mahommedanism in these respects, there is nothing in the gospels
to stop him. Christ, we are told, forbad very decidedly
the practice of the Jews in putting away their wives,
but we are not told that He said anything about the
taking of them. The Christian doctrine of monogamy
is entirely a church institution. I have no reason for
quarrelling with it,” I added, with a look at Agnes,
“ but to impose its reception as a necessary consequence
of faith in Christ is quite another matter.”
“ To allow such a practice would be a great going
back, I think,” said Agnes.
“ So do I, my love; a going back not to be thought
of, where the purer idea has once taken root. But we
are dealing with nations where it has not taken root.
And when I see what fearful consequences have followed
the tendency of the Christian community to raise barriers
which Christ did not set up, I doubt the propriety of
raising one on this point.”
“ I see,” said G------ , “ the idea of a divine presence
manifested upon the earth is with you the first thing :
the way in which this idea may realise itself among men
to their conceptions, and mould their customs, you would
leave very free.”
“ You divine rightly,” I replied, “ the principle
through which I conceive that God would bring the
human race to a unity of religious faith.”
And thus our conversation ended.
�CHAPTER XVI.
INFALLIBILITY.
I was surprised to-day by receiving a note from Father
F------ , another old college friend, whom the tide of
modern religious opinion has stranded on the ancient
shores of Roman Catholicism, asking whether, as I pro
fess to advocate the free discussion of religious questions,
I would allow him the use of the school-room to deliver a
lecture on the claims of the church to be the guide of man
kind, or else to discuss the question with him publicly.
Finding that he had taken up his quarters at our little
inn, I replied by an invitation to exchange them for a
room in the parsonage that we might renew our acquaint
ance, observing, at the same time, that, great as I felt
the importance of free investigation in religious matters
to be, I was not in favour of public discussions of them,
because such proceedings appeared to me adapted to
foster party spirit, and talking for victory more than
for truth; but that we two might quietly compare our
ideas, and test the strength of the arguments by which
we were mutually influenced without incurring this
danger.
My invitation called forth a reply almost more than
friendly, the outpouring of a tender spirit wounded by
the chilling repulsiveness of many old acquaintances to
the “ pervert,” at finding the cordiality of college friend
ship unaffected in me by his changes of opinion; and
we had in the good Father a pleasant addition to our
family circle during the time he could spare to us. The
great question of his relieving his mind by publicly
�Infallibility.
26
T
advocating the claims of the Roman Church to absolute
obedience was finally settled by his giving two lectures
in the school-room, at which I presided, saying a few
introductory words to explain my own position, and
adding that I proposed soon to treat of the matters on
which Father F------ would dwell, from my own point
of view, either in the pulpit or by way of lectures, as I
have since done. Father F------ ’s lecture was followed
in each case by a conversation with those of the audi
ence who wished to ask any question of the lecturer,
who was rather surprised- by the kind of questions
asked. Hence arose the discussion which I am about
to relate.
“ That seems to be a very clever lad—Tom, I think
you called him,” said Father F------ , as we were sitting
at a tea-supper after his second lecture. ' “ I was
scarcely prepared for the line he took. Now, candidly
hadn’t you been coaching him for the occasion ? ”
“ No, I assure you, I have not said a word to him on
the subject; and to tell you the truth, I was rather sur
prised at him myself. Tom is a lad who reflects a good
deal, and he has a most sensible, excellent mother, to
whom I should much like to introduce you, only I am
afraid you mean to run away from us too soon for that
to be possible; but I did not give him credit for so firm
a grip as he seems to have got of the idea that revela
tion does not imply infallibility, and yet may be a true
‘ revealing.’ ”
“ Anyhow, I suppose by his being so clear upon the
matter that the notion is a favourite one of yours. But
surely it is practically to give up the point in dispute.
When, until now, has there ever been an idea of revela
tion without a backbone of infallibility somewhere, in
the church or in the scriptures?”
“ Or Sybilline Books, or Delphic Oracles, or Vedas,
or Tripataka, or Zendavesta, or Koran, or Book of
Mormon.”
“ What do you mean? Surely you do not place all
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the writings you have mentioned on a level with the
Old and New Testament.”
“Far from it, except in the assumption of infallibility
made for them, in which they are all alike. To me the
Bible is distinguished from these other professed revela
tions, because it reveals, without being or even pretend
ing to be infallible ; while its competitors, if they cannot
tell us absolute truth, have little to say of any present
value to us.”
“ But without infallibility what would be the worth of
the Bible. If it cannot tell us, with unerring certainty,
whence we came and whither we are going; how the
earth became what it is, and what destiny awaits it and
us? What help can it be to us in answering these
questions if we cannot rely on it as absolutely true ? ”
“ None, I admit; and if the proper subject of revela
tion is the past and the future, I own that infallibility
would be an indispensable condition; but past and
future are, after all, only the vanishing factors of that
which is entitled to far greater interest, because in it
the temporal coalesces with the eternal, the ever-present,
and here I conceive revelation is possible without infal
libility.”
“ How so 1”
“ Because we can test the truth of what is alleged to be
revealed by its conformity to our own experience, as
well as by its power of accounting for the past so far as
we are acquainted with it.”
“ But how can our present experience possibly tell us
whether a man who was crucified 1800 years ago was
or was not the eternal Son of God? or whether he did
or did not die as a sacrifice for sin, to deliver His
servants from His Father’s just wrath, and obtain for
them unending happiness in another world?”
“ No more than it can tell us whether Mahomet was
or was not the true prophet of Allah, commissioned to
deliver all who believed in his message from neverending misery, and open to them everlasting happiness
in another world ? ”
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“ That’s just my point.
Our experience cannot
furnish any test of revelation. It requires the aid of
infallibility.”
“So say the Mahommedans. Ergo, they conclude
the Koran must be infallible.”
“ But I admit that, if it is a revelation at all, it must
be infallible; only as I do not allow that it is a revela
tion, I require the Mahommedans to begin by proving
its infallibility. But you do admit Christianity to be a
revelation of God; therefore you are inconsistent in
denying infallibility to its records.”
“ Certainly. I admit Christianity to be a revelation
of God, but not in a sense in which I deny this of
Mahommedanism. Both are to me revelations.”
“ Surely you do not put them both on the same level?
You do not profess to teach Mahommedanism.”
“Nor Christianity, if by Christianity is meant a set
of statements about man’s past history, and God’s
dealings with him, which I require men to believe, or
at least to say that they believe, on a promise of endless
happiness hereafter, if they do so, and a threat of end
less misery if they do not. What I endeavour to teach,
is, what God is in Himself, and what are man’s present
relations to Him. I go to the history of Christianity,
so far as I know it, and to all other facts known to me
which bear on the subject, to discover this. And I profess
to be a teacher of Christianity, because it seems to me
to cast more light on these matters than I obtain any
where else.”
“ But what do you understand by Christianity?”
“ In its widest sense, simply a personal attachment
to Christ as Him through whom the Divine character
has been most fully disclosed to us.”
“ And in its narrower sense ? ”
“ The belief that Christ was essentially that which
He disclosed : that He not only told men truly what
God is, but showed this by His life.”
“ That is, you believe in the true Divinity of Christ?”
s
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“ Just so.”
“But that is a doctrine.”
“ Why should I not believe in a doctrine ? ”
“ Surely, it is an axiom of your school, that revelation
cannot be conveyed by doctrines, or propositions as
they say, about God.”
“ I don’t know precisely what you mean by ‘ my
school.’ I am not aware that I have any scholars, and
am not accustomed myself * Ullius gurare in verba
magistri.’ ”*
“ I mean, of course, the 1 Broad Church ’ generally.
But, anyhow, you, at all events commit yourself to this
doctrine ? ”
“ Certainly.”
“ Then I ask you, how can we possibly be assured of
such a matter, except by an infallible testimony. What
but the positive declarations of those who could not err,
can satisfy our reason, that the eternal, unchangeable,
incomprehensible, invisible, intangible Deity could be
really present in a transitory, variable, limited, human
being, who could be seen and handled ? ”
“Well! let us consider. You will not, I suppose,
contend that any testimony could go beyond that of
Jesus himself on this point.”
“ Certainly not.”
“And you admit the true humanity of Jesus'?”
“ Of course. It is an article of the Catholic faith.”
“ Then suppose yourself to be in the company of any
one at the present day, who, appearing to be a man,
declared himself to be the eternal, unchangeable, in
visible, intangible God, should you believe his assertion ?”
“ That would depend on circumstances. If I could
be certain that He was perfectly good, and He did
works such as no other man could do, I might.”
“ But how could you be certain on either of these
points ? To know that he was perfectly good, you must
yourself be all-knowing.”
* To swear by the words of any master.
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“But if he could multiply food ? ”
“Like Elisha.”
“ Raise the dead ? ”
“ Like Elisha, Peter, and I know not how many
saints, according to the Catholic story. How could
such acts, however unquestionable in themselves, prove
such a proposition as you have just now enunciated?”
“ Yet you profess to believe in it; and I suppose
that you do not do that without some proof, which you
think suffi cient ?”
“No doubt; but the question is, what proof? ”
“ And what proof but an unerring declaration can be
sufficient ? ”
“ But how am I to know that it is unerring? Don’t
you see, we are arguing in a circle ? ”'
“ Just so. It is what led me to give up Anglicanism.
I could get no support for my faith in Christianity at
all, without the infallibility of the Bible ; and no
support for the infallibility of the Bible without the
infallibility of the Church. But the infallibility of the
Bible was Anglican doctrine as much as Catholic. It
was more logical, therefore, as well as far more satis
factory to my feelings, to assume this infallibility of the
Church at once.”
“ And my quarrel with those who reason like you, is
not for making this assumption; you have as good a
right to make it as I have to my assumptions; but that
you will not allow it to be an assumption, which the
reason is entitled to criticise, as it is to criticise every
other assumption.”
“ But that is to object to the principle of Faith,—the
condition of all revelation.”
“ No. It is only to object to the divorce of faith
from reason—to the introduction of the notion of infallibility, with the inevitable result of stifling the faith
which it professes to cherish.”
“ Surely you do not claim more faith for the members
of your church than for those of ours 1 Why the
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standing reproach of the Protestants against us is what
they call our ‘ credulity,’ our excessive readiness to believe.”
“ My dear friend, don’t let us confuse principles with
phenomena. Religious faith, as is admirably stated in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, is simply trust in God,
who is, and is the rewarder of those who diligently seek
Him.
And this principle, as the writer argues, has
been the same in all ages, in the minds of persons who
had, otherwise, very different conceptions in religious
matters. Now I say, that to interpose any authority
whatever between man and God, is to weaken this
principle of faith. In fact it is to transfer religion
from her proper home, in the Will, and the emotions
connected with it, to the Intellect, where she wants a
guide, and not seeing her way clearly falls into the
arms of Master Infallibility.”
“ But what, if Master Infallibility should lead us to
everlasting joys, if we trust his guidance ?”
“ Is not that,” said Agnes, with a little smile, “ very
much like the old nursery exhortation,
‘ Open your lips, and shut your eyes,
And in your mouth you’ll find a prize ? ’ ”
“ Would that those who refuse the offer may not find
the fruit gathered under their own guidance bitter to
their taste, when it is too late to change,” replied
Father F------ , with a melancholy expression.
“ Come, come,” I said, 11 don’t let us spoil our
present by useless forebodings.
We must all act
according to our own consciences, and ‘ stand or fall ’ each
‘ to our own master.’ The question which I want you
to consider is, whether the demand for infallibility does
not arise from a function having been assigned to the
intellect, which properly belongs to the will? 1 Beloved,
if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence
towards God,’ says the author of the first Epistle
attributed to St John. ‘ He that would be saved must
thus think of the Trinity,’ says the author of the
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Athanasian Creed, so called. Here is a great change
in the point of view; inevitable, probably, at the time
it took place, but not the less carrying in itself the
germs of division and decay; a disease fatal to the
fulfilment by the church of her divine mission—to
gather God’s flock in all future ages and nations into
the fold of the Good Shepherd, to whom the quality of
the wool may be far more important than the colour or
texture of the fleece ? ”
“ How can we possibly suppose that the church has
missed the right path, if she had such an origin as you
ascribe to her ? ”
“ But, Father F------ , why is that more difficult to
imagine,” asked Agnes, “ than to suppose that the mass
of the human race have missed the right path, as you
assert them to have done, if the consequences are so
fearful as you intimate ? ”
“ My dear madam, I do not venture to dogmatise on
a matter on which the Church tells me nothing. But
this supposition is no peculiarity of the Catholic faith.
Your Anglican articles limit salvation to ‘those whom
God has by His counsels, secret to us, chosen out of
all mankind,’ whom they declare ‘ to be by nature
children of wrath,’ ‘ that He might deliver them in
Christ from curse and damnation.’ ”
“ But we are considering, not what our articles may
or may not say or imply,” I replied, “ but what is
reasonable; and there you must allow, surely, that if
the church has erred she has shared only the common
lot of mankind.”
“ Only, in sharing this lot, she loses her right to be
a guide.”
“ To be an unerring guide, no doubt, but a guide
may be, on the whole, a good guide, though sometimes
he makes mistakes.”
“ Provided,” added Agnes, “ he has the humility to
keep his eyes open, and, if he finds that he has taken a
wrong path, is ready to turn back, and try another
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road. Else, if he should get us into a bog, there we
must stick; as it seems to me that you Roman Catholics
do, with your personal infallibility. I am quite angry
with Edward sometimes, because he won’t speak out
boldly enough about that absurd old man who has got
together, I don’t know how many bishops at Rome, to
declare that he and his predecessors, the Bishops of Rome
have always been infallible, without knowing it.”
“ It pleases you to be satirical, my dear madam,”
said Father F—-—, “ and to those who look at the
conclusion only, without tracing the steps of the advance
from the original promise of Christ to Peter, to the
present recognition of the function implied in it, this
act of the ‘ old man at Rome,’ and the fathers of the
church who, under the Divine guidance, have been the
instruments in accomplishing it, must appear one of
those ‘ acts of folly,’ which nevertheless may really be
the Divine foolishness of the deepest wisdom.”
“ But, if the infallibility of the church resides in the
Pope, and not in the whole body of the faithful,
according to the grand old ideas for which Dollinger is
fighting, why was that found out now, for the first
time,—more than eighteen hundred years after Chris
tianity began ?”
“ My dear madam, infallibility belongs neither to the
‘ body of the faithful,’ nor to the Bishops, nor to the
Pope, but to the Holy Ghost, who speaks through them.
The question is through what organ He speaks at any
particular time. And this we, who believe that He is
always present with His church, hold that he has now
thought fit to declare, through the mouths of the
bishops assembled at Rome, to be the Pope.”
“ I don’t wish to shock your feelings, Father F------ ,”
said Agnes, “ but when one remembers what sort of
persons some of those Popes were, it seems to me almost
blasphemous to suppose that they have been the special
organs through whom the spirit of God spoke ? ”
“I cannot go into that question, my dear madam,”
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replied Father F------ , “it would take up too much
time ; you must let me follow your husband’s lead, and
confine myself to the present wants of the church ; the
subtle poison to which, in these days, ‘ when many go
to and fro, and knowledge is increased,’ she is exposed;
and the effective nature of the remedy applied by the
self-abnegation of the bishops, who, at the apparent
sacrifice of the privileges which men like Dollinger
declare to belong to them, have acknowledged in the
successor of St Peter, the supreme power to ‘ bind and
loose ’ on earth. No act in the long history of the
church, full as it is of noble acts, seems to me greater ;
none shows more clearly the spirit of holy obedience
springing from that faith, which you, who are familiar
with Dante, will remember is the first of his three
Supernatural virtues.”
“ But what is the ‘ subtle poison,’ to which the
recognition of an infallibility concentrated in the person
of the Pope is to be a remedy?” asked Agnes.
“ The claim of learned men, especially in Germany,
men in our own ranks ; men of whom Dollinger is one
of the most moderate, and therefore not the least
dangerous, to set intellect above faith, and transform
the deepest mysteries of our holy religion, the doctrines
of the Trinity and Incarnation, for instance, into truths
of the reason ; which has indeed been nursed by faith,
but is now grown strong enough to perceive and know
more than poor faith, guided only by the Holy Spirit,
can discern.
There are Forschhammer, Volkmuth,
Scherard, Eberhard, Singler, at different universities,
leaders in this system who in the name of ‘ Free
Science,’ as it is called, are ready to give up Christianity,
bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the
Professors of Theology; and, for their followers, ‘their
name is Legion.’ How could this peril be averted?
It was not a question of any specific novel doctrine;
but the introduction of a new principle ; reason getting
on the shoulders of faith to look over her head. What
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could the Church do to meet this claim so effectual as
the solemn affirmation, in the most definite form, of her
own. principle ; the doctrine of her own supernatural
origin ; by not only formally claiming infallibility, but
designating the visible Head of the Church as him to
whom is committed the office and authority, not only
to sound the alarm against each new assault of our Zion,
but at once to smite the assailant with the keen sword
of the Spirit ?”
u I admit the efficacy of the doctrine, as an instru
ment of church police,” I observed, but that such an
instrument should be wanted for such a purpose ; that
it should be possible for a large body of earnest and
pious men deliberately to deny the congruity of the
revelation which they believe God to have made of
Himself, to the faculties of the beings to whom it has
been. made, is to me one more proof how false the
principle is, which places the object of revelation in an
action on the intellect, instead of an action on the
will.”
“ But I deny that the Church does this,” answered
Father F------ . “ What are the sacraments but channels
of Grace which act on the will ? Only the will must
be enlightened through the intellect, else it could not
apprehend the sacraments aright. Therefore, God has
granted to it an unerring guide; and in so doing He
really magnifies the importance of the will. For what,
after all, is at the bottom of the difficulties of the
intellect in accepting the teachings of the church, but
unwillingness to be guided ?”
“ Unwillingness to be blindfolded, you should say,”
, observed Agnes.
“ You must remember,” I continued, 11 that criticism
is of the essence of the intelligence. We call its opera
tions reflection, a bending back of the mind. On what
does it bend back, but on itself; on its own constructions;
the imaginations, judgments, purposes which it finds
within itself.
To demand of the intellect, not to
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271
criticise, is to require of it that it cease to be intelligence.
Now, if it does criticise it cannot be that passive instru
ment, guided by judgments not its own, which your
theory needs.”
“ And how can we follow St Peter’s direction, to be
always 1 ready to give a reason for the faith that is in
us, with meekness and fear/ if we are not to reason at
all ? ” asked Agnes.
“ My dear madam, Catholics do not call on men not
to reason, but not to rationalise.
Reason has her
proper office in Divine things ; namely, to judge of the
claims of the Church to be her teacher ; that is of the
fact of God having revealed Himself to us through
Christ, as your husband allows that He has done. But
the making such a revelation implies some provision
for making it known, and preserving it in its purity.
This office belongs to the Church. Here reason has no
place except in subordination to the supernatural
guidance vouchsafed to her.”
“Reason, you say, can take us to the door of the
temple by her natural eyesight; but when we enter
it the light becomes supernatural, and the objects can
not be discerned at all in their true shapes, except
through the glasses of faith. That’s a fair description
of your doctrine, is it not ? ” I asked.
Rather F------ bowed assent.
“ You should add,” said Agnes, laughing, “that the
right glasses are to be got only in the Catholic shop ;
else you may be provided with a host of faith spectacles,
each making things look very different from their appear
ance in the infallible ones of his Holiness.”
“ Yes,” I continued, “ we come back to our startingpoint. Is faith a principle belonging to the will, the
principle of trust, which may ally itself to very various
conceptions about God ? or is it an intellectual assent,
either to a certain set of propositions which has been
the notion of Protestant orthodoxy, as to the authority
of a certain teacher, which is the old Catholic notion? ”
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“ And, surely, far the most reasonable notion,” said
Father F------ , “ for the teacher can supply the proposi
tions whenever they are wanted • but the propositions
cannot supply their interpreter, if conclusions about
them differ.”
“ And a committee of the Privy Council is a very
poor expositor of religious truth, though it may be a
very good expounder of ecclesiastical law,” I added.
‘‘Certainly, it is aut C'cesar aut nullus—infallible
supernatural guidance, or no guidance at all; but ‘every
one for himself.’ ”
“ ‘ And G-od for us all.’ You must not leave that out,
if you please, Father F------ ,” said Agnes.
“lam afraid, my dear madam,” replied the Father,
rather sadly, “ you give me very little hope of bringing
you into the Catholic fold.”
“ Indeed, Father F----- , I hope that I am already in
a fold more Catholic than your Roman one. For, as
Edward often says, we can take you in, as true servants
of Christ, after your own notions, though we think them
mistaken; but you cannot take us in, because, inside
God’s fence, built of men’s wills and affections, you have
built up one out of a set of conceptions of your own,
which you won’t let any one touch.”
“ But if the mere breadth of inclusiveness is a test of
truth, the Theists would beat you hollow, my dear
madam, for they include Jews, Mahommedans, Parsees,
and Brahmoos, as well as Christians. Nay, if we put
the adjuncts Mono, Poly, and Pan on a level, they
include every one except Atheists.”
“ And yet,’’ I said, “ the divisions of Protestants
have been a favourite and powerful argument with
Roman Catholics for the truth of their views.”
“ Certainly, truth is one,” replied Father F------ .
“ It does not follow that its adherents are many ; but a
Catholicity which glories in including persons of widely
differing views affirms, not the unity of truth, but its
nullity.”
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273
“ Or the nullity of the differences ; the fact that they
do not really affect the principle of unity,” I answered.
“ Assume for a moment that the real object of Christ in
appearing upon earth was simply to foster the growth
among men of certain dispositions of the will towards
God and towards each other; then, clearly, Christ
would recognize as His every one in whom these dis
positions exist. And we, if we are His disciples, must
follow His example.”
“But, according to that reasoning, you might have
to recognize as true members of Christ persons who
might never even have heard of His name, not to speak
of those who altogether deny His divinity.”
“ And why not ? If the Catholic faith about Christ is
true, are not all these persons sustained by His action?”
“No doubt they are, as natural beings.”
“ Then what right have we to assume that those who
are sustained by His power are excluded from His love,
if they do not exclude themselves by the opposition of
their wills to His perfect will ? ”
“ But what is the use of church membership on this
system ? ”
“What is the use of all education? Self-taught
persons may be found much better informed than many
who have been carefully educated. It does not follow
either that education is useless, or that the knowledge
of these uneducated persons is not real knowledge.”
“Well! if Christianity were only an affirmation of
natural religion, I might agree with you; but the
church has always regarded it as a system of super
natural blessings, purchased by the merits of Christ for
the members of His mystical body, to whom God has
revealed Himself as a Bather, loving them, so to speak,
with an ecstacy of love, a fire of love, burning like a
passion in the heart of God, till it led the Father to
sacrifice His Eternal Son, a willing victim, that He
might have the luxury of pardoning the sinner.”
“ But, surely, Father F------ said Agnes,
“ the
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more intense you suppose this .passion of Divine love to
be, the less reason there must be for supposing its action
to be confined to the members of one church, and the
more reason for thinking that God’s love is always
ready to bless all who do not turn away from it.”
“ Then there would be an end of the supernatural;
it would become part of the natural.”
“ Why should it not be so regarded ? ” I asked.
“ What do you suppose the supernatural to be ? Not
arbitrary power, I hope? ”
“ No, certainly not arbitrary.”
“ Then, if not arbitrary, it must be constant, i.e., it
has what we call a natural constitution, certain definite
characters from which its action might be understood if
we had knowledge enough of it. This nature may be
higher than other natures ; and, in that sense, love is
truly supernatural, above all other natures.
It is
because the principle of love is manifested in the idea
of the Incarnation, on which the Church has been
founded, as it is nowhere else in human history, that
the Church is, to me, a supernatural body. It is
because I look to the spread of the knowledge of this
idea, through the Church, over the earth that I regard
her as destined to form the uniting bond of all mankind.
But this sort of supernaturalism has so little to do with
infallibility that it is precisely the introduction of that
notion which has, I think, prevented the Church from
fulfilling hitherto her proper work.”
“ There we get to my difficulty. How could this
divinely-instituted body have fallen into so great a
mistake ? ”
“ How come men to fall into mistakes about religion
generally ? If the revelation consist, as I contend it
does, in the manifestation of the supernatural power of
love, this manifestation, when it had taken place,
would be dealt with by the human intelligence, accord
ing to its own character, and that character is to attain
to truth through error.”
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175
11 But to what extent does this liability go ? How
can we be sure, if we admit it, that any part of the
faith will remain unaffected ? ”
“ And how can we increase our security by refusing
to admit that our faith may be unfounded ? My dear
friend,” I continued, as Father F------ made no reply,
“ don’t let us rest our confidence in revelation upon
distrust of God. If infallibility is beyond our reach, it
does not follow that truth is denied to us.”
“ Only mingled with error.”
<£ Say, rather, in a continuous process of purification
from error till there remains only what is true.”
“ But how can this be known ? ”
“ By its fruits. By its harmony with itself, with our
nature, and with all other knowledge.”
“ And what is to be the position of the Catholic
theology in your system ? ”
“ It must change.
It does not follow that the
theology must perish. In so far as it has taught
eternal truths, and, in my judgment, it has taught
many, it will remain in substance, though probably a
good deal modified in form.”
“ Yes,” said Agnes, “ Edward is very conservative,
with all his radical notions. He won’t even dismiss
the Pope, but keeps for him a place of pre-eminent
dignity in his renovated church, as the visible centre of
a spiritual organization, extending freely over all the
world, the outward symbol that £ the kingdoms of this
world’ have become ‘the kingdoms of the Lord and
His Christ.’”
Father F------ stood a minute or two, meditating
apparently on these words. At last he raised his eyes
slowly, and said, “ It is a beautiful dream ; too beauti
ful, I fear, to become a reality. And there is still a
great question beyond. If you take away the note of
infallibility from revelation, what becomes of the
future ? ”
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I think we will leave that for the future to settle,”
said Agnes; “ at all events, I am going now to insist
on the claims of the present, and send you both to bed.”
CHAPTER XVII,
THE BISHOP.
ESTERDAY evening, when I entered my church to
prepare for the service, I found the clerk’s wife
standing at the door, with a half-alarmed, half-important
expression on her face, come to meet me with the intelli
gence “ that Lord and Lady M------ , our neighbours in
an adjoining parish, had driven over with the Bishop of
------ , who I had heard was to pay them a visit for a
few days; and that she had just put my Lord and Lady
into my pew, but that the Bishop had gone into the
vestry. His Lordship wouldn’t hear of my sending
anyone over to the parsonage to let you know,” she
added; “ and, to my thinking, he’s come over just of
a-purpose to hear what you preaches like. For yester
day afternoon a servant lad rode over from the Hall to
our house, to ask whether you was a-going to preach
this evening, as there was a gentleman a-staying at my
Lord’s as might like to come over and hear you. But
I never give it a thought that it was the Bishop, nor
my man neither, or you may be sure we would have let
you have a warning.”
“Don’t be frightened, Jane,” I replied; “I am not
at all alarmed at having to preach before my Bishop; ”
and went on to the vestry. Here I found his Lordship,
somewhat reserved and stately-looking, as if he was in
doubt how he ought to receive me. However, he put
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277
out his hand as I came near him, and gave me a friendly
shake, while he said, “ I have heard a good deal about
your teaching, Mr P------ ; I am afraid I must add not
altogether in its praise. So, happening to be in the
neighbourhood to -day, I determined to come over and
judge for myself. I am here now only to express my
wish that you will make no change whatever in conse
quence of my presence.”
“ I trust your Lordship will find nothing in the order
of the service departing from the customs of the Church
of England,” I answered; “ and as for my sermon,
fortunately I was about to preach a written one, which
is not always my practice. So your Lordship can have
my ipsissima verba if you desire it. I am only sorry,
for my wife’s sake, that we did not know of your coming;
for she will be quite put out if you and Lord and Lady
M------ will not stay to have tea with us after the ser
vice, and as much flurried as she can be at not having
more time to make preparations for you.”
“We had not thought of intruding on you,” said the
Bishop; “ but as you press it, I can at least promise
for myself, if my hosts do not insist on carrying me off.”
I was about to reply that I was pretty sure of their
consent to stay, when I was interrupted by a gentle tap
at the vestry door, and, on opening it, found my eldest
girl, who, standing on tiptoe, told me in a confidential
whisper “ that Lord and Lady M------ and Miss M------were going to stop to tea if the Bishop didn’t object;
so I must come to the pew after church to take Lady
M------ ; and Jane is gone to tell cook,” she added
mysteriously in my ear. “And mamma says I am to
say she’s not at all frightened.”
“You are come just in time to show his Lordship the
way to our pew, my love, he has kindly consented to
stay to tea,” I replied; adding in a whisper, “ and tell
mamma it’s all right.”
I subjoin my sermon, because it is not a long one,
while it shows my way of dealing in the pulpit with
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some of the most serious of a clergyman’s difficulties at
the present day. The text was from Acts i. 9-11, part
of the Gospel for the day. The sermon was as follows :
“ The story I have just read to you is one full of
difficulty to those who know what we know now about
the earth, and the world of which it is a part. But to
those who first heard it, there would have been no
difficulty in it at all; or, at all events, if they found
any difficulties in it, they would have been of quite a
different nature from those I have just mentioned. For
in that age men generally supposed the earth to be a
flat mass, very much bigger than anything else in the
universe, except the skies, and in the middle of them. It
is true that they thought it was round. But there are
two ways in which things may be round, as I have often
said to you : they may be round like an orange, or they
may be round like a shilling; and men then commonly
thought that the earth was round like a shilling. And
as a shilling has an upper side or top, and an under
side or bottom, so they thought the earth had, and that
men lived on this top or upper side, while on the under
side they supposed that the souls of the dead lived in
what in the Old Testament is called Slieol, and in the
New Testament Hades—a word often confused in our
version, under the name “ Hell,” with a word Gehenna,
which has a very different sense in the original. I re
turn to the ancient notions about the universe. Over
this flat central earth men imagined that there was a
great hollow covering, the heavens, as we translate the
Jewish name for it, to which the Jews thought that the
stars were fastened with diamond nails, as their Rabbis
taught in after times; while in these heavens they sup
posed that the sun and moon ran about from one end of
them to the other. How this could be, they do not
appear to have ever asked themselves. It was quite
enough for them that such was the will of Jehovah, who
dwelt, they thought, above the clouds, in these heavens
of which we saw the under side.
�The Bishop.
279
“ Now persons who had such imaginations as these
about the earth, and the heaven covering it, could
have no difficulty in supposing that Jesus Christ might
go up into this heaven, and there live with God, and
govern all things by His divine power, if they believed
in His divine being at all. But if we try to fit in such
a story to our notions about the earth and the universe,
the case is quite changed. We think of the earth as
being round like an orange, a ball always turning round
about a line passing through the middle of it, called its
axis, and so making day and night; and besides this,
going round the sun every year, and so making summer
and winter. Now such a ball has an inside and an out
side no doubt, but to speak of it as having an upper
and an under side is to talk nonsense. What people mean
by upper in this respect, is the point over their heads,
and by under, the point below their feet. But at the
end of every twelve hours our heads point in a direction
opposite to the one in which they pointed at the be
ginning of them ; and, in the meantime, they have
pointed in a countless number of different directions
between these two; and if we were to travel to any
other part of the earth, the same thing would happen,
except just at the two ends of its axis, where our heads,
in the one case, would point where our feet pointed in
the other case ; and the points to which our heads
pointed would be different at each different place; so
that the words 1 upper ’ and 1 under’ have no meaning
at all when they are applied to the earth as we imagine
it to be, instead of having a very clear and intelligible
meaning, as they had to the writer of the Acts of the
Apostles.
“ Perhaps, however, some of you who are listening
to me may be thinking to yourselves, after all is said, lup’
and 1 down ’ are very unimportant words, and the par
son makes a great deal too much fuss about them, when
the meaning is only that Christ went away from the
earth to some place beyond the stars, where God lives.
T
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But there cannot be a more unfortunate way of getting
out of the difficulty than this, because the idea that
Christ went away from the earth in going up into heaven,
is just what those who wrote this story did not mean.
For Christ to be in heaven meant, according to their
ideas, that He was with men as God is with men, ‘ about
their path, and about their bed, and spying out all their
ways, and would be so with them always, ‘ even unto
the end of the world,’ as we read in the first gospel. It
was anything but to be ‘ away ’ from them. Yet per
sons who, in order to avoid contradicting the words of
the New Testament, introduce this variation, or as it is
properly called ‘rationalising’ of them, that is, who
make the Bible say something it does not say, because
they think the Bible ought to have said it, if they are
to retain any belief in the story of the Ascension, cannot
avoid falling into this fatal departure from the spirit of
the old narrative. For, in the universe, as we now
conceive it, the earth, instead of being, as it was to the
writers of the Bible, both Old and New Testament, the
centre round which all God’s action turns, the most
important part of the whole universe, is so very insigni
ficant a part, that it is truly, to use a scriptural simile,
‘as the small dust in the balance;’ so little, that if we
could go only so far from it as to the furthest of the
planets which all move round our own sun, let alone the
stars each of which is a sun in itself, we should scarcely
be able to see it, even though we knew where to look
for it; so that if we are to have a belief which shall give
us the same sort of feelings as the old belief of Christ
having gone into heaven gave to the first Christians,
this faith must certainly not be a belief that He has gone
to some home of God, farther away from us than the
stars.
‘‘But if we are not to ‘ rationalise ’ this story of Jesus
having gone up into heaven, by making it mean He
went away from the earth; and if we cannot under
stand it literally, because to ‘ go up ’ from the earth has
�The Bishop.
2.8i
no meaning at all, what are we to think of it? The
answer may perhaps rise very readily to the lips of some
who hear me, ‘ Think of it ? Why, simply that it is a
“ cunningly devised fable
a story which the apostles
invented, that they might get credit for themselves out
of the honour given to their Master, as the head of His
Church. Depend upon it, that’s the common sense of the
whole matter.’ But there is a grave difficulty in the way
of this £ common sense ’ explanation. If the apostles
had invented such a story for any such purpose as is sug
gested, we must suppose that they would have made the
most of it. They would have taken care to spread the
tale as widely as possible, and we should be certain to
find plenty of allusions to it in any Christian writings
which take us back to that age. Now this is not the
case. We have four lives of Jesus in the New Testa
ment, but two of them end without any notice at all of
this £ going up’ of Jesus into heaven; a third, which
we call the gospel according to St Mark, says, indeed,
that ‘ Jesus was received into heaven,’ but makes no
mention of any one having seen Him ascend there, and
goes on to declare that £ He sat at the right hand of
God,’ which is not what any one could have been sup
posed to have seen, as they might see a man rise into
a cloud, and even this is contained in a passage not
found in the oldest and best copies of this gospel. Nay,
what is still more curious, the gospel ascribed to St
Luke, although it seems to have been written by the
same person who wrote the Acts, gives an account of
this £ taking up’ of Jesus very different from that in the
Acts; making it happen on the evening of the day on
which He rose from the dead, instead of forty days
afterwards, as any one may see who reads the 1st, 13th,
30th, 33d, 36th, and 41st verses of the 24th chapter of
Luke, one after the other; and saying nothing at all
about any ‘ cloud’ into which He was received, or any
£ men in white apparel/ who came afterwards to fore
tell His coming again. And yet the writer of the later
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version of the story takes no notice at all of the former
version, and makes no attempt to fit the latter into the
former, so that the two stories might hang together, and
not seem to destroy each other, as we should naturally
expect to find him doing, if the story had been design
edly made up.
( But further, we have in the New Testament a num
ber of letters written by St Paul, the first great preacher
of the faith in Jesus among the G-entiles, from which we
see how firmly he believed that Jesus was in heaven, and
would come again to judge all mankind very soon, pro
bably while St Paul himself was still alive. Yet, nowhere
in these letters do we find any allusion to the story of
Jesus having gone up into heaven in the presence of
His apostles. Now, when we consider what St Paul
thought about the Lord, it is quite impossible to sup
pose that he would not have dwelt upon the account of
His ascension, if he had ever heard of it; and it is
quite incredible that the other apostles should not have
told him this tale, if they had invented it, in order to
gain converts. So that the silence of St Paul about the
story of the ascension of Jesus seems to me to prove
conclusively that it is not a tale got up by the other
apostles.
“ But then you may say, Does not this silence prove
a great deal more ? Does it not prove that St Paul
never could have heard of the visible ascension of Jesus
at all ? And if he had never heard of such an event at
all, does not this prove that it never happened ? And
if it never happened, what becomes of the Christian
religion which you preach to us? My friends, these
are very important questions. Let us look into them
quietly.
“Many of you probably are aware that the fourth
article of the Church of England declares £ Christ did
truly rise from the dead, and took again His body, with
flesh and bones, and all things appertaining to the per
fection of man’s nature, wherewith He ascended into
�The Bishop.
283
heaven, and there sitteth until He return to judge all
men at the last day.’ As a minister of the Church, I
a® bound not to contradict this statement; but there is
nothing that I know of to prevent me from considering
with you how far the statement is borne out by the
ascertainable evidence for it; or examining what the
effect of rejecting it must be upon the religious feelings of
any persons among you who may not believe it, if, apart
from the weight due to the positive statement of the
Church, the evidence should appear insufficient. Now,
I must admit that, in this case, the evidence for the
assertion of the Church does seem very weak. When
we consider that the story of the visible ascension of
Jesus is found in one only of the New Testament
writers; that this writer gives inconsistent accounts of
it; that he does not profess to have seen the event
himself, nor tell us from whom he heard the account;
that we do not know with any certainty who he was,
nor when he wrote; and that no notice of the story is
to be found in St Paul’s letters, I own that I do not
Bee what argument to oppose to anyone who should
maintain, the reasonable inference from these facts
is, that the supposed event never happened at all,
except the argument that the writer of the Acts was
clearly himself persuaded of the truth of the story told
by him; and that, as he had better opportunities than
we have of ascertaining what evidence there was for it,
we may properly trust to his judgment. And I cannot
honestly say that this argument is a strong one. Let
us examine then what eftect the conclusion that Christ
never did visibly ascend from the earth should have
upon the Christian religion, in the minds of any persons
who may come to this conclusion.
“Well, my brethren, in the first place, obviously the
difficulty which I noticed in the beginning of my ser
mon, from the absurdity, according to our present
notions of the universe, of speaking of a heaven above
the earth, disappears of itself. And with it we get rid
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of the notion, so destructive of the feelings connected
with the old story, that the heaven into which Christ
went is some place beyond the stars, as we now think
of them. And the disappearance of these stumblingblocks is not due to any arbitrary way of dealing with
the story. We do not get rid of them simply by leaving
out what appears to us improbable, though it may be
just as well attested as other parts of the narrative
which we retain. The reason for thinking that this
account of Christ’s having been seen by His apostles to
go into the clouds states only what the writer of the
Acts believed to have happened, and not what actually
did happen, would be only the same sort of reason which
would lead us to say, if we met anywhere with a story
of Queen Victoria having been crowned Queen of
France, This must be a mistake; for such an event, if
it had happened, would certainly have been mentioned
by many writers, whereas one only has mentioned it;
and this one, we may suppose, to make the comparison
with the story of the Ascension more complete, in one
passage had said that this coronation took place when
the Queen went to visit Louis Philippe, and in another,
that it took place when she went to visit Louis Napoleon.
The difficulty, then, disappears. Yes, you may reply,
no doubt the difficulty disappears, but with it that faith
in the Divine nature of Jesus, of which you so often
talk to us, must disappear also. Why so? What is
this faith, when we come to think of it? Certainly
not a faith in any particular, visible, passing event;
but the faith in a continual presence. To believe in
the Divine nature of Jesus Christ, is to believe that we
live and move and have our being in virtue of a power,
whose true character was shown by the acts of the
Lord, because His will was one with the will of this
divine power; so that, from Him, we may learn not
only what He imagined God to be, as we may learn
this from the words or acts of other men; but what
God is in Himself.
�The Bishop.
285
“ Now such a belief is quite distinct from the ques
tion whether or not the body of the Lord did rise into
the air in the presence of His apostles, ‘ till a cloud
received Him out of their sight,’ as the story in the
Acts tells us. No doubt this story has often been used,
by those who thought that it described what actually
had taken place, as an evidence for the truth of their
other beliefs about Him. But any of you who has ever
attended a trial in a court of justice must know that the
evidence for any matter is a very different thing from
the matter itself. Suppose a man to be accused of a
murder, and a witness to come forward and say, I was
standing at my bedroom window, at such and such a
time, and I saw the accused person strike the blow
which killed the murdered man; and suppose it to be
afterwards clearly proved that this witness was, at that
very time, quietly asleep in his bed, and could not have
seen what he stated, his evidence would be worthless;
yet, for all that, the accused man might have committed
the murder.
“And so, in the case we are considering, the body of
the Lord may never have been £ taken up ’ into the air,
as the writer of the Acts supposed, and as the fourth of
our articles asserts; and yet the will which acted through
that body, while the Lord lived on earth as a man, may
have been truly divine, truly one with the will of God,
as the Church has believed. Those who are in the
habit of hearing me preach will know how very little
importance I attach personally to the stories about our
Lord which are commonly brought forward as evidences
of His divine nature, and over which almost all the
battles with those who deny that belief have been
fought, as a means for deciding that question ; though it
would be impossible for me on the present occasion to
go into this matter at such length as would be necessary,
in order to do it any justice, without making my dis
course a great deal too long. But, at the same time,
I would not have you think that, because these stories
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are not wanted as proofs of the divine nature of Jesus,
therefore they are idle stories—stories not worthy of
attention at all—stories from which nothing valuable is
to be learned. Far from it. These stories, if they are
not historically true, are at all events the dress in which
the belief in the divinity of Christ naturally clothed
itself to the imaginations of those in whom that great
idea first dawned; and they are full of the spiritual
lessons to be drawn from it. And these are not lessons
which those who doubt whether the stories are histori
cally true try to extract from them, that they may not
seem quite useless; but lessons which the Church has
always drawn from them, from the time when they were
first told; and has thus borne witness that not the
mere passing sights or sounds of which the stories tell,
but the meaning conveyed through them, is 1 the one
thing needful ’ to be apprehended.
“At Easter we found abundant proofs that what the
Church has seen in the story of the resurrection of
Christ was the affirmation of her faith that ‘ He could
not be holden of death,’ which the conception of His
divine nature necessarily implies. And now, in this
story of His aseension, we have, ready to our hands,
the lessons of trust and active goodness proper to it,
meeting the present needs of our spirits as they met the
needs of those to whom, eighteen hundred years ago, they
were first given. 1 Lo ! T am with you always, even to
the end of the world.’ ‘ Why stand ye gazing up into
the heavens ? ’ Jesus is not gone from you ; He is ever
present among you; He ‘will not leave you comfort
less, but will come,’ as we read in the fourth gospel,
by the Spirit of Truth to all who love Him, ‘that He
may make His abode with them. And not He only,
but the Father also.’
“ So were men told by the earliest Christian teachers;
so the Church of England herself expounds the lesson
to be drawn from her faith in the ascension of Christ,
when she teaches us to pray ‘ that, like as we do believe
�The Bishop.
287
our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens,
so we may also in heart and soul thither ascend, and
with Him continually dwell’-—words destitute of any
meaning if applied to the visible going up of Christ, and
demonstrating that what the framers of our prayer-book
valued in the story was, not the outward phenomenon,
but the spiritual significance symbolised in it. Even
that statement, so strange to our ears, which I have
quoted from the fourth article, may be interpreted, in
a spiritual sense, to mean that Christ has not thrown
off His humanity, but is still essentially what He was
on earth—sensible of our burdens, and sympathetic
with our struggles. So then, I say to you now, Sur.sum
corda. Awake ! ye who lull yourselves in the dreams
of sense, who rest on the fleeting, the perishable; on
that which speaks only to your senses; which appeareth
for a time, and then vanisheth away; awake to know
that within you and around you is the eternal Love,
geeking to draw you into communion with itself. This
is no delusion of some enthusiastic teacher, who takes
his' own fancies for the utterances of the Divinity. The
voice which addresses you comes out of the depths of
the ages. The Power who invites you has manifested
His influence through the long course of human history,
‘bringing out of His treasures things new and old;’
—old as existence; new as the life which every year
covers the earth with fresh flowers, rising out of her
dark and mysterious womb, to drink in the free air, and
glow in the warm sunshine, and scatter around them
beauty and fruitfulness. Will you refuse to listen to
the invitation ? Oh ! beware lest He who would come
to be your deliverer, your guide, and your comforter,
should come to be your judge. For ‘ if our heart con
demn us,’ then, brethren, most assuredly we shall have
this witness in ourselves, ‘ that God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things.’ ”
The Bishop offered his arm to Agnes as we left
the church, Lord M------ walking by their side, while
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Miss M------ took possession of Constance, who is a
great favourite of her’s.
“ Your husband has solved one difficulty at least,” said
the Bishop, with a smile, to my wife, as they were walk
ing to the rectory. “ He has got the ear of the young
men. I was astonished to see such a congregationon a week day, too.”
“ There were a good many strangers,” replied Agnes,
who, as she told me afterwards, thought this a very pro
mising beginning; “ and the having the service in the
evening, and the music, and the church being pretty,
and not always the same, has something to do with it,
I suppose. ”
“ Yes,” said the Bishop. “I was surprised at your
floral decorations—they are quite artistic. I had no
idea your husband would have encouraged such acts of
outward worship.”
“It is a good deal our eldest girl’s doing,” Agnes
said.
“ She seems to have quite a genius for this
species of decoration. But Edward has always agreed
with Dr Arnold, that in enlisting the senses in the act
of worship, we have more reason to learn from the
Roman Catholics than to quarrel with them.”
“ However,” replied the Bishop, “ there’s more than
that wanted to bring together such a congregation as
you had this evening.”
“No doubt,” said Agnes, “and it has been a great
pleasure to my husband, during the last two or three
years, to find that his people appear to take so much
interest in his teaching.”
“ I think he is to be envied in that respect, indeed.
I know my diocese pretty well now, but I have never
met with anything like this before.”
“ And it is not mere curiosity,” observed Lord M------ ,
“ that brings them. I hear on all sides of the improve
ment among the young men of late. 1 They may say
what they likes about our parson,’ old farmer G------told me only yesterday, 1 and I cannot say as how I
�The Bishop.
289
can rightly make out what he’s after myself; but any
how, the young men, to say nothing of the women, is
better than they was; they’s kinder-like to the beasts,
and they’s nicer toward the girls, and they’s more civil
spoken, and they doesn’t need near so much looking
atar; and as for the boys and lasses as is growing up,
and has had more schooling, there’s a mint of them as
is as busy as bees, and as sharp and trusty as a colly
dog. So I’m for parson, anyhow.’ ”
“ A very gratifying testimony,” observed the Bishop.
“ By the bye, Mrs P------ , was not that Will S-----sitting just opposite us ? ” asked Lord M------ .
“ Do you mean that rather pale man, with very bright
eyes, which he scarcely ever took off Mr P------ said
the Bishop.
“ Yes, that was Will S------ ,” Agnes replied.
“And who is he?” asked the Bishop. “I have
rarely seen a more intelligent face.”
“ Oh, he’s one of P------ ’s converts,” said Lord M------ ,
“ a joiner, and a very clever fellow too, who at one
time had a sort of passion for going about and lecturing
on the errors, contradictions, and absurdities of the
gospel stories; but P—-— has converted him. And
by what means do you think ? ”
“ I have no notion.”
“ By means of Gibbon’s celebrated 15th chapter.”
“ That was a curious remedy for the disease, cer
tainly,” said the Bishop. “ How did it operate ? ”
“ I will tell you the account of it which my steward,
who, by the way, was one of your congregation this
evening, Mrs P------ , gave me of it. He met Will
about a year ago, and said to him, e Mr S—-—, how is
it that I have not heard of your lecturing on the gospels
of late?’ ‘Why, the fact is,’ replied S——, ‘ I had a
talk with Parson P------ a few months since, and he has
put me on a new tack.’ ‘ How so, Mr S------ ? ’ said I.
‘ He has not refuted your arguments about the gospels,
has he ? ’ ‘ No, sir,’ replied S------. ‘ He’s not at all
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like any other parson whom I have come across. He
didn’t try to refute me, and he didn’t abuse me for not
being refuted. . He left me in possession of all my posi
tions, but he just turned them, as the soldiers say.’
‘ Turned them ; but how ? ’ I asked. 1 Well, by setting
me on explaining to my own satisfaction, how it happened
that a person of such a remarkable character as Jesus
had, even according to the books on which I relied,
such as “ The English life of Jesus,” or Strauss’ “ New
Life of .him, should have been born just at such a
curious nick in the .world’s history, when so many causes,
all independent of each other, met together to make
men believe in him, as we see mentioned in Gibbon’s
famous chapter about Christianity, or the introduction
to Strauss ££ New Life.” Well, I have been trying for
the last three months, and the more I try, the harder I
find it to give an answer, unless I take Mr P------ ’a
way. So I suppose I shall even be driven to follow it,’
he added, laughing, £ though it’s rather against the grain
too. And now he almost always comes to this church,
though he has pretty nearly a four mile walk to it. Is
it not so, P------ ? ” continued Lord M------ addressing
me ; for during this story the Bishop’s party had reached
the lawn, where I was standing with Lady M------ , be
fore our drawing-room window.
££ Yes. I generally see him on Sunday mornings, if
you mean Will S------ I replied. “ I believe he has
made an arrangement with Margaret B------ to have
dinner with her and Tom. I should have liked to have
given him a general invitation to dine at the rectory,
but I found, through Tom, that he had rather not be
asked, except on special occasions.”
££ I suppose,” said Lord M——, ££ he was afraid of
having the loaves and fishes thrown in his face.”
“ It is a curious thing,” remarked the Bishop, “ to
return to what you told us of Farmer G----- , that
when we wish to compliment any one on his good
qualities, we should so often compare him to an unrea
soning creature.”
�The Bishop.
291
il And the converse,” said Lord M------ .
11 My
game-keeper, for instance, told me the other day that
one of my dogs ‘ was as spiteful as a Christian? What
do you say to that, P------ ? ”
“ It seems to me rather to bear out Darwin’s idea,
that the first action of the free intelligence of man on
the instincts of the animal would probably be to dete
riorate them.”
“ A sort of scientific ‘ fall of man,’ ” observed the
Bishop.
“ At all events, a stumble at first setting out,” said
Lord M------ .
“ Perhaps Mr P------ would say, rather an instance
of ‘ reculer pour mieux sauter,’ ” added Lady M------ .
“ I am very much inclined to agree with your Lady
ship,” I replied. “ In the mysterious course of the
divine evolution, the road to good seems often to lie
through apparent evil.”
“ Much, I suppose, as the road to religious truth lies
through doubt and critical questionings ? ” asked Lord
M------ , with an arch expression of face.
“ I admit the- justice of your comparison,” I said.
“ Questionings and doubts are not goods to be desired
in themselves; but they seem to be the only way to the
end to be desired—convictions which can bear to be
questioned without being destroyed.”
“ A process of natural selection by ‘ the struggle for
existence,’ eh, P------ ?” said Lord M------- .
“ I believe that is really so. The internal is, I take
it, profoundly similar to the external. As we have
learned that the process of decay and death, which at
first sight appears so repugnant to our notions of divine
order, is the effectual method of preventing the degene
ration of living beings, by preserving those only who
are most fit to live, so it appears to me to be the case
with opinions and beliefs. Shelter them from contest,
you destroy their vitality.”
“ But what then is to become of woman’s virtues ? ”
asked Lady M------ . “ Won’t you allow them a quiet
�,
292
Via Catholica.
nook to grow up in, unvisited by the rough winds of
heaven ? ”
f “ I am afraid I cannot grant even that, Lady M------ .
The tenderest of things are often in themselves the
toughest.”
“ Especially twining things, which twist their tendrils
about one, so that there is no shaking them off'. But
here’s Miss Constance come to say tea is ready. You
will make one of those tender, tough, twining things
when you grow up, I’ll warrant,” added Lord M---- -,
as, clasping her in his arms, he snatched a kiss, while
she struggled to escape, and at last ran off to the draw
ing-room.
“ Oh, Papa, you will never be forgiven if you don’t
take care. You don’t know what a scrape you will get
yourself into with Constance.”
“ How so?” I asked Lord M-------.
11 Why, she has fallen in love, I believe, with a grave
clergyman, old enough to be her father, a Mr R------ ,
and vows that she will not be kissed by any gentleman
except her papa and this friend of his.”
“ Hoity, toity, here’s a pretty pickle indeed,” said
Lord M—-—-, giving a long whistle, while we were
taking our seats at the tea table ; which Agnes, who had
slipped away when we reached the house, had managed
somehow to furnish forth more handsomely than I had
thought possible under the circumstances.
“ Well! my Lord,” said Lord M------ to the Bishop,
who was chatting pleasantly with Agnes, when £ we had
taken out the desire of meat and of drink,’ I don’t
know what they would say of this system of operations
in the rival camp; but to my imagination, we don’t
look much like a body of inquisitors assembled to try a
clergyman ‘ grievously suspected of heresy ?’ ”
“Not like the pictures of them which one sees in
illustrated works, at all events,” added Lady M------ .
“ Oh ! but the inquisition is not over yet, the chief
inquisitor has not spoken,” said Miss M------ .
�The Bishop.
2 93
“ But he has listened,” the Bishop said; and has
heard a good deal that pleased him, after some things
that alarmed him. For I own, Mr P—-—, to having
felt very uncomfortable when you were about half way
through your sermon. I almost feared it might become
my duty to get up, and walk out of the church ; but
can you guess, madam, what reassured me,” he con
tinued turning to my wife.
“ No, what was it, my Lord ? ”
“ Your face. I saw that you had placed yourself so
as to be able to observe me without seeming to do it.”
“ Oh ! my Lord, how can you make such a cruel
remark,” exclaimed Miss M-----“ Quite natural-and right,” interposed Lord M------ .
“ Any how, you will not deny it to have been the
fact,” continued the Bishop. “Well, I divined, from
the glances you gave me now and then, and the little smile
round your mouth, that something tranquillising was
coming ; and you see I read right.”
“ We must be on our guard against you, my Lord,”
said Lady M------ . “ Whatever you may say to other
sorts of criticism, you are a keen critic of our expression.”
“I must add,” the Bishop went on, “that if your
husband showed himself a very daring critic in pulling
the Scriptures to pieces, in the first half of his discourse,
he showed himself no less skilful in putting the Faith
together again in the end of it. I began to question,
as I listened to him, whether in our alarm at the free
criticism of the Bible, we had not taken our best friends
for our foes.”
“ Bravo 1 my Lord.” ^claimed Lord M-—-—, “ I
will tell you frankly, that is just my opinion ; and I
think it is the opinion that is beginning to make way
among a large section of laymen, who know anything
about the matter.”
“ Your Lordship’s judgment is very gratifying to me,
as I scarcely need say,” I observed.
“ Though, if it had been the other way, you know you
would not have cared one jot about it,” added Miss M—^.
�294
Via Catholica.
“Now, my dear Miss M------ ,” interposed Agnes,
rather eagerly, “you are quite wrong there. It has
long been a great grief to Edward, that the heads of
our Church seem, in general, to pay so little attention
to the questions raised by modern criticism about the
Bible; however honest, and fair, and good the critics
may be personally; and however little reason there
may be for thinking that they desire anything but to
ascertain the simple truth. I know that something
which his Lordship said in his last charge on this
subject, made him quite ill at the time, with worrying
about it. And sometimes he has thought of writing a
book to state just what his views are. Only a book of
that sort would take such a long time to do it .well;
that it is not easy for him to find the time for writing
“ But, I very much wish, Mr P
, you could find
time for such a work,” said the Bishop, “ I am sure it
would be very useful. Critical inquiries we have in
abundance, at least if we look beyond our own country;
and it is not in that line that I want to see you put
forth your strength. It is the constructive part of your
views ; the way you seem to have of showing that the
critical results, assuming them to be established, do not
touch the essence of the Catholic Faith, that I think so
important.”
. ■ ■ ,
'
“ Yes,” added Lord M —, “ that’s the point; and,
really P------ , I think you ought to write such a book.
You can take the critical conclusions for granted, on
the put-the-worst-possible-case principle. Genesis, a
set of fragments put together in the time of David, or
Solomon,—Deuteronomy not written till the time of
Josiah,—The last twenty-six chapters of Isaiah com
posed at Babylon,—The mass of the Levitical legislation,
after the captivity, as Kalisch and Colenso contend,—
and Daniel in the days of the Maccabees.”
“ And the Fourth gospel not till the middle of the
second century, I suppose,” said the Bishop ; “ you
�Ihe Bishop.
295
cannot stop short of that, I am afraid, Mr P------ , if
you are to deal with the critics on the principle which
Lord M------ advocates.”
“I think so, my Lord,” I replied, “and this, at all
events, we must admit, that a religious faith founded on
the assumption of the Fourth gospel having been written
by the Apostle John, would, at the present day, rest on
a foundation very liable to disturbance.”
“ I allow that,” said the Bishop, “ though it is going
a long way to concede it.”
“ To the end of the tether, my Lord; there remains
‘ none of the old authoritative ground left, that ground
which Rome has always occupied, and where her position
is so strong, when this is conceded. It becomes certain
that, if the Catholic faith in the Divinity of our Lord is
true,' as I think, that faith must have been intended to
rest, not On authoritative statements, but on some other
ground.”
“.And on what ground do you rest it?”
“ Why, on the doctrine of development, to be sure,”
interposed Lord M-i-----■. . “ Do you suppose our friend
there would leave the enemy in possession of such a
splendid piece of artillery, and not seize upon it for the
use of the armies of the .faithful. He has given over
throwing dirt at his foes,.-after the example of Milton’s
angels.; but bowls them over, instead, with their own
bullets.'” ’ .
'
“.I do not quite understand the process,” observed the
Bishop.
“ I think I can give your Lordship a general idea of
it in a few words,” I answered. “ Suppose we assume
the scientific conception of the divine action, as carried
on always by definite limited means, to be the true
conception.”
“ And give up Miracle, as we have given up
Infallibility ? ”
“ Yes, my Lord, give up miracles as phenomena, and
look upon the stories of miracles as only the instructive
u
�igb
Via Catholica.
affirmation by the spirit of man of its inherent freedom,
its superiority to mere natural necessity; as we give up
infallibility, looking on the notion of it as only the
instructive affirmation by man’s intelligence that its
goal is truth.”
“ Good.”
“ Then we have, first, the natural process of develop
ment on the earth, as the expression of a divine action
culminating in the production of a being capable of selfgovernment ; of moral will. Now this process has been
double—an action and a reaction, an internal acting
on an external, which reacts on the work produced.”
“ Yes,” said Lord M------ , “that is Darwin’s doctrine
in its latest shape—the internal manifests itself in an
external, but this manifestation is perpetually moulded
by that to which it has given rise. The beauty, which
appears to be the utterance of the spirit of love is per
fected by the selections caused by the love it has
evoked.”
“Well, then, if this moral being is to be itself
developed, as has been actually the case in mankind,
and the same sort of process is to go on, we ought to
find here also an internal moulding power, modified by
the reaction of an external which it has produced.”
11 And what do you consider this internal and ex
ternal to have been ? ” asked the Bishop.
“ Confining ourselves to the subject of religion, I
find the internal action in the instinctive tendency of
man to ascribe the universe to some eternal, self-exist
ing being, whom he has called God ; and the external
element in the conceptions which he has formed about
God. Now we cannot get at the internal directly; we
can get at it only by studying the different shapes which
come out through the reaction of the external upon it,
and reducing them to some uniting conception.”
“ No doubt that is the scientific method.”
“ This method, then, I apply to the history of
religious beliefs. I find that they fall into two great
�The Bishop.
©lasses. The first set is one where the divine has been
regarded as quite distinct from man, and from the
universe ; the second set is one where the divine has
been looked on as dwelling in the universe and man,
and manifesting itself through them, the more especially
divine being placed sometimes in the individual, some
times in the family, or the state, sometimes in the
kosmos, of which the human is the highest form.
*
Now, if my method is right, we ought to find in these
two classes of beliefs a tendency to unite.”
“ There seems to me to be a hitch in your theory
here,” said Lord M------ . “ In natural development
we find a perpetually increasing diversity.”
“ But this diversity, when we learn to appreciate it,
leads our thoughts back to a unity out of which it has
grown up, and after which our intelligence instinctively
seeks. Now, if man’s religious beliefs are, as I main
tain, an expression of the same power which manifests
itself in nature, we ought to be led to unity by the study
of them also.”
* The first of these conceptions seems to have led to
Buddhism, where the highest perfection is placed in the
annihilation of desire, by which the individual escapes from
the chain of suocession. The second appears in the religion of
Egypt, where the divine was embodied in the king, as head of
the state, and in that of China, where it is embodied in the
king as father of the family. The third is seen in the religion
of Greece, which placed the divine in the beautiful, and in
Brahminlsm, which places it in the infinite. The religion of
Rome belongs to the 2d division, the divine being transferred
from the person of the sovereign to the principle of law and
social order. On the other hand, the conceptions of the
opposition between God and the world has produced
Mahommedanism, where the divine appears in an absolute
supernatural will, and the Turanian religions, where it
appears as a mysterious influence. In Judaism the opposi
tion of the human and divine is indicated, without being fully
developed, and in Christianity the two unite without coales
cing.—See an interesting work called Ten Great Religions, by
the Rev. T. F. Clarke, which, however, does not, I think,
sufficiently notice the double classification stated above,
�■298
Via Catholica.
“ Emile Burnouf would tell you that this is just what
the study of religion scientifically does lead us to ; that
all the great religions of mankind may be traced back
to the original Aryan conception, which regarded light,
heat, and intelligence as different forms of the same
power,” replied Lord M------ .
*
“ I admit that theory in respect to the Aryan faith
in an indwelling Deity. But Burnouf allows that the
Semitic faith introduced another element, though he
scarcely appreciates it as it deserves, I think, in the
conception of a God distinct from the world, which has
given rise to another series of religious developments
distinct from the Aryan.”
“ I quite go with you there, Mr P------ ,” observed
the Bishop.
e: Then, my Lord, I say, if the religious faiths of
man proceed from the action of that power from which
nature arises, the history of this double development
should lead our thoughts to the unity whence it has
sprung. There should grow up some faith in which
these opposite conceptions tend to unite.”
“ And this faith you find in the Catholic belief that
Christ was truly God and man.”
“Exactly so, my Lord.”
“ I think I begin to understand your position. You
consider that the real evidence for the faith in the In
carnation is to be sought in the whole religious history
of man, rather than in any particular texts of the Scrip
tures ? ”
“ Yes.”
“ And, in that history, you appear to hold that God
has used man’s imaginations about Him as an instru
ment, so to speak, by which men should be led to a
true appreciation of what He is in Himself.”
“ With the aid,” I added, “ of the important fact
that at the right moment, when the imagination of the
* See a series of articles on La Science des Religions in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 54, 74, 76, 77, and 82.
�The Bishop.
299
races who constituted the Roman world was prepared
to seize on the conception of one who was truly divine
coming among men as a man, one appeared round whom
their imagination could crystalise into a definite form,
and from whose character this conception could acquire
that quickening, purifying power which the faith in
Christ has actually exercised.”
“ I see you trace all through this development a
divine action, distinct from the action of the human
imagination, on which this power could lay hold, and
which has acted on it.”
“ Certainly, my Lord ; just as I trace in nature a
divine intelligence, working through the powers by
which it is displayed, and which limit its action. And
this conjugate action I consider to have culminated in
Christ.”
“ In fact,” said Lord M------ , “ you ascribe to your
internal power a double action. First, Separative,
shown in the twofold tendency of mankind to conceive
the divine, as distinct from the world and themselves,
and, as indwelling in the world and themselves, which
has led to the great differences in man’s religious con
ceptions ; secondly, Unitive, an action by which these
different modes of conception have been brought to
gether. I never quite apprehended that part of your
theory till I heard of the course of inquiry on which
you set Will S------ . It covers a blot in it.”
“ What blot ? ”
“ That the divine action did not appear sufficiently
‘thorough.’ It was seen in the distinction of religious
faiths, because these were traced to natural tendencies,
which man did not give to himself; but in their union,
when the facts of the gospel history melted away under
the critical blowpipe, the divine action appeared to
coalesce too completely with the human. But I see
now that you present both sides, the uniting action no
less than the separating, under the same aspect of a
human element dealing with a divine impulse—mould
ing, and yet being moulded by it.”
�300
Via Catbolica.
“ Yes,” I replied, “ that is an indispensable part of
my argument. The union of the two great forms of
religious conception evolved by mankind, in a faith
which claimed to be universal, would have been a
startling phenomenon in itself; but if it had taken
place only through the conscious action of man’s ima
gination contemplating the diversities, and seeking to
reconcile them, the meaning of it would have been
doubtful. Again, the concurrence of various indepen
dent circumstances to the spread of the belief in a
particular person as the revealer of the divine, however
striking of itself, would leave us in doubt as to the
meaning of this phenomenon; for such a concurrence
has happened more or less in other cases—Zoroastes,
Gautama, Sakva, Mahomet, for instance. But the
combination—the reconciliation of these great opposites
of religious conception—the remarkable, I may say
unique, character of the person through whom this
reconciliation was effected—the spontaneity, amount
ing to unconsciousness of what they were doing, of the
actors in this process—and the marvellous concurrence
of external circumstances favourable to the growth and
diffusion of the faith thus produced, appears to me to
form a fourfold cord capable of bearing any strain that
the reason can apply to it.”
“You may add,” said the Bishop, “the profound
adaptability of the conception which thus grew up and
spread, to the religious wants of man.”
“ No doubt, my Lord.
Feuerbach’s penetrating
analysis of the internal action of the Catholic idea
completes the chain of evidence which Gibbon’s masterly
exposition of its external surroundings began.”
“ But is there not, after all,” observed the Bishop,
“ a something rather arbitrary about this double action
which plays so important a part in your theory ? Why
should the separation in man’s religious conceptions
have taken place at all? You see, Mr P---- —he
added with a smile, “ I resemble Queen Caroline, Leib-
�The Bishop.
joi
nitz’s royal patroness : I want to know the pourquoi de
pourquoi.”
“ Your Lordship’s objection is a very sound one,” I
replied, “ and I am pleased to hear you make it. It
shows me how deeply you have entered into my reason
ing. But I think that I can show a solid pourquoi, a
vera ratio in this case, in the double nature of our
intelligent faculty; its resolution ' into the opposite
principles of Will and Reflection, which unite in the
Imagination. Man necessarily derives his conceptions
of the divine from that principle which is dominant in
himself. The races in whom the impulsive, self-sufficing,
personal element of Will predominated, naturally ap
prehended the Deity as absolutely distinct from the
universe which depended on His will; while the races
pre-eminently reflective, as naturally merged the action
of the producing power in that which it produced, as
reflection always merges into the ideas discerned by
reflecting.”
p And you place the principle of union, I know,”
said Lord M—, “ in the recognition of the superiority
of love, or moral perfection, to mere power.”
“Just so. The God of absolute will, the Allah of
Mahomet, crushes the universe beneath His unlimited
might. The God of perfect love, the Deity who, accord
ing to the Catholic idea, was manifested in Christ, can
dwell in the world and work through it, as an all
sustaining, ordering, sympathizing presence, without
being lost in it.”
“ He is at once in nature and above her, natural and
supernatural,” observed the Bishop.
“As man himself is, compared with other beings on
earth,” added Lord M—.
“But are you not resting your theology on a new
theory of psychology ? ” asked the Bishop.
“ I think, my lord, it is a theory to which modern
investigation into the action of the brain, with its
doctrines of unconscious cerebration, or latent thought,
�302
Via Catholica.
as Sir Wm. Hamilton called this phenomenon, steadily
tends. Between the impulsive motive power of will,
and the acts of intelligent attention, or reflection, there
seems to intervene a spontaneous constructive faculty,
the true home of genius, long since familiar to us as the
imagination”
“ And by it you maintain that the conception of the
divine has been originally elaborated, taking either an
emotive, impulsive, absolute, or a reflective inherent,
limited aspect, till, in the providential development of
man’s spiritual history, both phases united round the
person of Christ.”
“ Your Lordship perfectly apprehends my conception.”
“ I am afraid,” said Lady M—, looking up at the
clock on our drawing room chimney-piece, “ we really
must put off any more conversation till another oppor
tunity. I had no notion, it was so late; and I am sure
it is not good either for ’Nir P— or your Lordship to
do without sleep; though for my own part, I could sit
up all night listening to them,” she added to Agnes.
So the party broke up ; the Bishop’s last words being
“ Mind, Mr P—, you are to let us have your book.”-r •»
And now the reader knows how this work came to
he written; and can see also, why it must be written
anonymously ; for I could neither omit this last con
versation, nor publish my name, if I inserted it,
without committing the Bishop to my opinions, more
than I feel justified in doing.
P.S.—I will add what Lady M— has told me, that,
as soon as they got into the carriage, the Bishop said,
“ that Clergyman seems a remarkable sort of man. I
don’t know when I have had a conversation which has
interested me more. I am most curious to see what
his book will be like ; and I am very much obliged to
you for making me better acquainted with him.’.’
Agnes P—.
.»
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Via Catholica : or, passages from the autobiography of a country parson
Creator
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Scott, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 302 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Bound in Conway Tracts 24.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1872
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RA1833
N651
CT93
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Clergy
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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 (Via Catholica : or, passages from the autobiography of a country parson), 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
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Text
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English
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Clergymen
Conway Tracts
NSS