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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
LITERATURE & DOGMA
�‘ La tendance a Tordre ne peut-elle faire tine partie essentielle
de nos inclinations, de notre instinct, coniine la tendance a la
conservation, d la reproduction V
Senancour.
(‘May not the tendency to conduct form an essential part
of our inclinations, of our instinct, like the tendency to self
preservation, to the reproduction of the species?’)
�LITERATURE & DOGMA
AN ESSAY TOWARDS
A BETTER APPREHENSION OF THE BIBLE
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETP.Y IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
[PUBLISHED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
LONDON
WATTS & CO.
17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET
1902
[All rights reserved]
��PREFACE
TO
POPULAR
When I praise cheap books and insist on
the need for them, people turn round
upon me and say, '■Physician, heal thyself!
nobody’s books are dearer than your own.’
Whether his books shall be cheap or not,
does not depend wholly upon the author;
and I might urge, besides, that in fore
telling a success for cheap books, I was
thinking of books by authors more popular
than I am. A volume of my verse, how
ever, at a comparatively cheap price, has
been in circulation for some time, and
I have long had the wish to try the
experiment of bringing out one of my
prose books at a price yet cheaper. That
wish I fulfil by the publication of the
present volume. The book chosen has
been more in demand than any other of
my prose writings, and it lent itself to my
purpose, further, by admitting of consider
able condensation. The argument of the
work is more readily followed, and for the
general reader it probably gains in force,
by the suppression of a good deal of the
apparatus of citation and illustration from
Scripture which originally accompanied
it. The public to which the book was in
the first instance addressed was one which
expects, with a work of this kind, such an
apparatus. But to the general public its
fulness is not so well suited, and, for them,
its reduction probably improves the book
at the same time that it shortens it.
I do not, however, choose for the
experiment of a popular edition this
book, merely because it admits of being
EDITION (1883)
shortened, or because it has been much
in demand. I choose it far more for the
reason that I think it, of all my books in
prose, the one most important (if I may
say so) and most capable of being useful.
Ten years ago, when it was first published,
I explained my design in writing it. No
one who has had experience of the
inattention and random judgments of
mankind will be very quick to cry out
because a serious design is not fairly and
fully apprehended. Literature and Dogma,
however, has perhaps had more than its
due share of misrepresentation.
The sole notion of Literature and
Dogma, with many people, is that it is a
book containing an abominable illustra
tion, and attacking Christianity. It may
be regretted that an illustration likely to
be torn from its context, to be improperly
used, and to give pain, should ever have
been adopted. But it was not employed
aggressively or bitterly; on the contrary,
it was part of a plea for treating popular
religion with gentleness and indulgence.
Many of those who have most violently
protested against the illustration resent it,
no doubt, because it directs attention to
that extreme licence of affirmation about
God which prevails in our popular re
ligion ; and one is not the easier forgiven
for directing attention to error, because
one marks it as an object for indulgence.
To protesters of this sort I owe no de
ference and make no concessions. But
the illustration has given pain, I am told,
�6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
in a quarter where my deference, and the
deference of all who can appreciate one
of the purest careers and noblest characters
of our time, is indeed due • and finding
that in that quarter pain has been given
by the illustration, I do not hesitate to
expunge it.
The illustration, then, disappears; let
me add a word or two as to the notion
that Literature and Dogma is an attack
upon Christianity. It is not even an
attack upon the errors of popular Chris
tianity. Those errors are very open to
attack; they are much attacked already,
and in a fashion, often, which I dislike
and condemn; they will certainly be at
tacked more and more, until they perish.
But it is not the object of Literature and
Dogma to attack them. Neither, on the
other hand, is it the object of Literature
and Dogma to contend with the enemies
and deniers of Christianity, and to con
vince them of their error. Sooner or
later, indeed, they will be convinced of it,
but by other agencies and through a quite
other force than mine ; it is not the object
of Literature and Dogma to confute them.
The object of Literature and Dogma is
to re-assure those who feel attachment
to Christianity, to the Bible, but who
recognise the growing discredit befalling
miracles and the supernatural. Such
persons are to be re-assured, not by dis
guising or extenuating the discredit which
has befallen miracles and the supernatural,
but by insisting on the natural truth of
Christianity. That miracles have fallen
into discredit is to be frankly admitted ;
that they have fallen into discredit justly
and necessarily, and through the very
Same natural and salutary process which
had previously extinguished our belief in
witchcraft, is to be frankly admitted also.
Even ten years ago, when Literature and
Dogma was first published, lucidity on
his matter was, on the whole, not danger
ous but expedient; it is even yet more
expedient to-day. It has become even
yet more manifest that by the sanction of
miracles Christianity can no longer stand;
it can stand only by its natural truth.
Of course, to pass from a Christianity
relying on its miracles to a Christianity
relying on its natural truth is a great
change. It can only be brought about by
those whose attachment to Christianity is
such, that they cannot part with it, and
yet cannot but deal with it sincerely.
This was the case with the Germanic
nations who brought about that former
great change, the Reformation. Probably
the abandonment of the tie wfith Rome
was hardly less of a change to the
Christendom of the sixteenth century,
than the abandonment of the proof from
miracles is to the Christendom of to-day.
Yet the Germanic nations broke the tie
with Rome, because they loved Chris
tianity well enough to deal sincerely with
themselves as to clericalism and tradition.
The Latin nations did not break their tie
with Rome. This was not because they
loved Rome more, or because they less
saw the truth as to clericalism or tradition
—a truth which had become evident
enough then, as the truth about miracles
has become now.
But they did not
really care enough about Christianity (I
speak of the nations, not, of course, of
individuals) to feel compelled to deal
sincerely with themselves about it. The
heretical Germanic nations, who re
nounced clericalism and tradition, proved
their attachment to Christianity by so
doing, and preserved for it that serious
hold upon men’s minds which is a great
and beneficent force to-day, and the
force to which Literature and Dogma
makes appeal. Miracles have to go the
same way as clericalism and tradition ;
and the important thing is, not that the
world should be acute enough to see this
�PREFACE TO POPULAR EDITION
7
(there needs, indeed, no remarkable the subject of the New, Righteousness by
acuteness to see it), but that a great and Jesus Christ, are, in positive strict truth,
progressive part of the world should be man’s most momentous matters of concern.
capable of seeing this and of yet holding The command of the Old Testament,
‘Fear God and keep his commandments,’
fast to Christianity.
To assist those called to such an put into other words, what is it but this :
endeavour, is the object, I repeat, of ‘Reverently obey the eternal power moving
Literature and Dogma. It is not an us to fulfil the true law of our being ; ’—•
attack upon miracles and the super and when shall that command be done
natural. It unreservedly admits, indeed, away ? The command of the New Testa
that the belief in them has given way ment : ‘ Watch that ye may be counted
and cannot be restored, it recommends worthy to stand before the Son of Man,’
entire lucidity of mind on this subject, put into other words, what is it ? It is
it points out certain characters of weak this : ‘ So live, as to be worthy of that
ness in the sanction drawn from miracles, high and true ideal of man and of man’s
even while the belief in them lasted. Its life, which shall be at last victorious.’
real concern, however, is not with miracles, All the future is there.
Jesus himself, as he appears in the
but with the natural truth of Christianity.
It is after this that, among the more Gospels, and for the very reason that he
serious races of the world, the hearts of is so manifestly above the heads of his
men are really feeling; and what really reporters there, is, in the jargon of modern
furthers them is to establish it. At philosophy, an absolute ; we cannot explain
present, reformers in religion are far too him, cannot get behind him and above
negative, spending their labour, some of him, cannot command him. He is there
them, in inveighing against false beliefs fore the perfection of an ideal, and it is as
which are doomed, others, in contending an ideal that the divine has its best worth
about matters of discipline and ritual which and reality. The unerring and consum
are indifferent. Popular Christianity de mate felicity of Jesus, his prepossessing
rived its power from the characters of ness, his grace and truth, are, moreover,
certainty and of grandeur which it wore ; at the same time the law for right perform
these characters do actually belong to ance on all man’s great lines of endeavour,
Christianity in its natural truth, and to although the Bible deals with the line of
show them there should be our object. conduct only.
Even those corrections, and they are
This alone is really important.
And shown they can be. Certainty and many and grave, which will have to be
grandeur are really and truly characters applied to popular Christianity, are to
of Christianity. Theologians and popular be drawn from Christianity itself. The
religion have given a wrong turn to it all, materialistic future state, the materialistic
and present it to us in a form which is kingdom of God, of our popular religion,
fantastic and false ; but the firm founda will dissolve ‘ like some insubstantial
tion for human life is to be found in it, vision faded.’ But they will dissolve
and the true source for us of strength, through the action, through the gradually
joy, and peace. Sine vid non itur, and increasing influence, of other and pro
Christianity can be shown to be mankind’s founder texts of Scripture than the
indispensable way. The subject of the popular texts on which they base them
Old Testament, Salvation by righteousness, selves. Using the language of accom-^
�8
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
modation to the ideas current amongst
his hearers, Jesus talked of drinking wine
and sitting on thrones in the kingdom of
God; and texts of this kind are what
popular religion promptly seized and built
upon. But other profounder texts mean
while there were, which remained, one
may say, in shadow. ‘This is life eternal,
to know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent;’—
‘The kingdom of God is righteousness,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.’
These deeper texts will gradually come
more and more into notice and prominence
and use, as it becomes evident that the
future state built on the language of
accommodation has no reality.
The
teachers of religion will more and more
bring these texts forward and develop
them. And as, from being everywhere
preached and believed, the illusory future
state gained power and apparent substance,
so, too, by coming to be more and more
dwelt upon and to possess men’s minds
more and more, the true ideal will ac
quire, in its turn, a fulness and force
which no isolated endeavours can give
to it.
This is but another way of saying,
what is perfectly true, that not only is
Christianity necessary, but the Church
also. The Church is necessary, the
clergy are necessary; the future of
Christianity is hardly conceivable without
them. But as lucidity is a condition
from which the Christianity of the future
cannot escape, so is it a condition from
which the Church and the clergy cannot
escape either. At present they seem
scarcely to comprehend this. Archdeacon
Norris labours with all his might to clear
the so-called Athanasian Creed from the
reproach of over-harshness, not seeing
that the really fatal defect of that docu
ment is not its over-harshness but its
futility. The Guardian proclaims ‘ the
miracle of the Incarnation ’ to be ‘ the
fundamental truth ’ for Christians. How
strange that on me should devolve the
office of instructing the Guardian that
the fundamental thing for Christians is
not the incarnation but the imitation of
Christ 1 In insisting on ‘ the miracle of
the Incarnation,’ the Guardian insists
on just that side of Christianity which
is perishing. Christianity is immortal;
it has eternal truth, inexhaustible value,
a boundless future. But our popular
religion at present conceives the birth,
ministry, and death of Christ, as alto
gether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
miracle ;—and miracles do not happen.
�PREFACE
(■S73)
An inevitable revolution, of which we all
recognise the beginnings and signs, but
which has already spread, perhaps, farther
than most of us think, is befalling the
religion in which we have been brought
up. In those countries where religion
has been most loved, this revolution will
be felt the most keenly; felt through all
its stages and in all its incidents. In
no country will it be more felt than in
England. This cannot be otherwise. It
cannot be but that the revolution should
come, and that it should be here felt
passionately, profoundly, painfully. In
regard to it, how’ever, there is incumbent
on everyone the utmost duty of con
siderateness and caution. There can be
no surer proof of a narrow and illinstructed mind, than to think and up
hold that what a man takes to be the
truth on religious matters is always to be
proclaimed. Our truth on these matters,
and likewise the error of others, is some
thing so relative, that the good or harm
likely to be done by speaking ought
always to be taken into account. ‘ I keep
silence at many things,’ says Goethe, ‘ for
I would not mislead men, and am well
content if others can find satisfaction in
what gives me offence.’ The man who
believes that his truth on religious matters
is so absolutely the truth, that say it when,
and where, and to whom he will, he
cannot but do good with it, is in our day
almost always a man whose truth is half
blunder, and wholly useless.
To be convinced therefore that our
current theology is false, is not necessarily
a reason for publishing that conviction.
The theology may be false, and yet one
may do more harm in attacking it than
by keeping silence and waiting. To judge
rightly the time and its conditions is the
great thing; there is a time, as the
Preacher says, to speak, and a time to
keep silence. If the present time is a
time to speak, there must be a reason
why it is so.
And there A a reason; and it is this.
Clergymen and ministers of religion are
full of lamentations over what they call
the spread of scepticism, and because of
the little hold which religion now has
on the masses of the people—the lapsed
masses, as some call them. Practical
hold on them it never, perhaps, had very
much, but they did not question its truth,
and they held it in considerable awe. As
the best of them raised themselves up out
of a merely animal life, religion attracted
and engaged them. But now they seem
to have hardly any awe of it at all, and
they freely question its truth. And many
of the most successful, energetic, and
ingenious of the artisan class, who are
steady and rise, are now found either of
themselves rejecting the Bible altogether,
or following teachers who tell them that
the Bible is an exploded superstition.
Let me quote from the letter of a working
man—a man, himself, of no common
intelligence and temper—a passage that
�IO
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
sets this forth very clearly. ‘ Despite the
efforts of the churches,’ he says, ‘ the
speculations of the day are working their
way down among the people, many of
whom are asking for the reason and
authority for the things they have been
taught to believe. Questions of this kind,
too, mostly reach them through doubtful
channels ; and owing to this, and to their
lack of culture, a discovery of imperfection
and fallibility in the Bible leads to its
contemptuous rejection as a great priestly
imposture. And thus those among the
working class, who eschew the teachings
of the orthodox, slide off towards, not the
late Mr. Maurice, nor yet Professor Huxley,
but towards Mr. Bradlaugh.’
Despite the efforts of the churches, the
writer tells us, this contemptuous rejection
of the Bible happens. And we regret
the rejection as much as the clergy and
ministers of religion do. There may be
others who do not regret it, but we
do. All that the churches can say about
the importance of the Bible and its
religion, we concur in. And it is the
religion of the Bible that is professedly
in question with all the churches, when
they talk of religion and lament its pro
spects. With Catholics as well as Protes
tants, and with all the sects of Protestant
ism, this is so ; and from the nature of
the case it must be so. What the religion
of the Bible is, how it is to be got at, they
may not agree ; but that it is the religion
of the Bible for which they contend, they
all aver. ‘The Bible,’ says Cardinal
Newman, ‘ is the record of the whole
revealed faith ; so far all parties agree.’
Now, this religion of the Bible we say
they cannot value more than we do. If
we hesitate to adopt strictly their language
about its aZZ-importance, that is only
because we take an uncommonly large
view of human perfection, and say, speak
ing strictly, that there go to this certain
things—art, for instance, and science—
which the Bible hardly meddles with.
The difference between us and them,
however, is more a difference of theoretical
statement than of practical conclusion.
Speaking practically, and looking at the
very large part of human life engaged by
the Bible, at the comparatively small part
unengaged by it, we are quite willing, like
the churches, to call the Bible and its
religion aZZ-important.
All this agreement there is, both in
words and in things, between us and the
churches. And yet, when we behold the
clergy and ministers of religion lament
the neglect of religion and aspire to
restore it, how must we feel that to
restore religion as they understand it, to
re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our
current theology, whether learned or popu
lar, is absolutely and for ever impossible !
—as impossible as to restore the feudal
system, or the belief in witches. Let us
admit that the Bible cannot possibly die;
but then the churches cannot even con
ceive the Bible without the gloss which
they at present put upon it, and this gloss,
as certainly, cannot possibly live. And it
is not a gloss which one church or one sect
puts upon the Bible and another does not;
it is the gloss they all put upon it, calling
it the substratum of belief common to
all Christian churches, and largely shared
with them even by natural religion. It
is this so-called axiomatic basis which
must go, and it supports all the rest. If
the Bible were really inseparable from
this and depended upon it, then Mr.
Bradlaugh would have his way and the
Bible would go too ; since this basis is
inevitably doomed. For whatever is to
stand must rest upon something which
is verifiable, not unverifiable. Now, the
assumption with which all the churches
and sects set out—that there is ‘ a Great
Personal First Cause, the moral and
�PREFACE
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ and
that from him the Bible derives its
authority—cannot, at present, at any rate,
be verified.
Those who ‘ ask for the reason and
authority for the things that they have
been taught to believe,’ as the people, we
are told, are now doing, will begin at the
beginning. Rude and hard reasoners as
they are, they will never consent to admit,
as a self-evident axiom, the preliminary
assumption with which the churches start.
So, if the people are to receive a religion
of the Bible, we must find for the Bible
some other basis than that which the
churches assign to it, a verifiable basis
and not an assumption. This new reli
gion of the Bible the people may receive ;
the version now current of the religion of
the Bible they will not receive.
Here, then, is the problem ; to find,
for the Bible, for Christianity, for our
religion, a basis in something which can
be verified, instead of in something which
has to be assumed. So true and prophetic
are Vinet’s words: ‘ We must] he said,
‘make it our business to bring forward
the rational side of Christianity, and to
show that for thinkers, too, it has a right
to be an authority.’ Yes, and the pro
blem we have stated must be the first
stage in the business. With this problem
unsolved, all other religious discussion is
idle trifling.
This is why Dissent, as a religious
movement of our day, would be almost
droll, if it were not, from the tempers and
actions it excites, so extremely irreligious.
But what is to be said for men, aspiring
to deal with the cause of religion, who
either cannot see that what the people
now require is a religion of the Bible
quite different from that which any of the
churches or sects supply ; or who, seeing
this, spend their energies in fiercely bat
tling as to whether the Church should be
ii
a national institution or no ? The ques
tion, at the present juncture, is in itself so
absolutely unimportant! The thing is,
to recast religion. If this is done, the
new religion will be the national one; if
it is not done, the separating the nation,
in its collective and corporate character,
from religion, will not do it. It is as if
men’s minds were much unsettled about
mineralogy, and the teachers of it were at
variance, and no teacher was convincing,
and many people, therefore, were disposed
to throw the study of mineralogy over
board altogether. What would naturally
be the first business for every friend of
the study? Surely, to establish on safe
grounds the value of the study, and to put
its claims in a new light where they could
no longer be denied. But if he acted as
our Dissenters act in religion, what would
he do ? - Give himself, heart and soul, to
a furious crusade against keeping the
Government School of Mines 1
Meanwhile, however, there is now an
end to all fear of doing harm by gainsay
ing the received theology of the churches
and sects. For this theology is itself now
a hindrance to the Bible rather than a
help. Nay, to abandon it, to put some
other construction on the Bible than this
theology puts, to find some other basis for
the Bible than this theology finds, is
indispensable, if we would have the Bible
reach the people. And this is the aim of
the following essay: to show that, when
we come to put the right construction on
the Bible, -we give to the Bible a real
experimental basis, and keep on this basis
throughout; instead of any basis of unverifiable assumption to start with, followed
by a string of other unverifiable assump
tions of the like kind, such as the re
ceived theology necessitates.
And this aim we cannot seek without
coming in sight of another aim too, which
we have often and often pointed out, and
�12
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
tried to recommend: culture, the acquaint
ing ourselves with the best that has been
known and said in the world, and thus
with the history of the human spirit.
One cannot go far in the attempt to bring
in, for the Bible, a right construction,
without seeing how necessary is some
thing of culture to its being admitted and
used. The correspondent whom we have
above quoted notices how the lack of
culture disposes the masses to conclude
at once, from any imperfection or falli
bility in the Bible, that it is a priestly
imposture. To a certain extent this is
the fault, not of the people’s want of
culture, but of the priests and theologians
themselves, who for centuries have kept
assuring men that perfect and infallible
the Bible is. Still, even without this con
fusion added by his theological instruc
tors, the homo unius libri, the man of no
range in his reading, must almost inevita
bly misunderstand the Bible, cannot treat
it largely enough, must be inclined to
treat it all alike, and to press every word.
To understand that the language of the
Bible is fluid, passing, and literary, not
rigid, fixed, and scientific, is the first step
towards a right understanding of the
Bible. But to take this very first step,
some experience of how me n have thought
and expressed themselves, and some flexi
bility of spirit, are necessary ; and this
is culture. After all, the Bible is not a
talisman, to be taken and used literally;
neither is any existing Church a talisman,
whatever pretensions of the sort it may
make, for giving the right interpretation
of the Bible. But only true culture can
give us this interpretation; so that if con
duct is, as it is, inextricably bound up
with the Bible and the right interpretation
of it, then the importance of culture
becomes unspeakable. For if conduct is
necessary (and there is nothing so neces
sary), culture is necessary.
And the poor require it as much as the
rich; and at present their education, even
when they get education, gives them
hardly anything of it. Yet hardly less of
it, perhaps, than the education of the rich
gives to the rich. For when we say that
culture is, To know the best that has been
thought and said in the world, we imply
that, for culture, a system directly tending
to this end is necessary in our reading.
Now, there is no such system yet present
to guide the reading of the rich any more
than of the poor. Such a system is
hardly even thought of; a man who wants
it must make it for himself. And our
reading being so without purpose as it is,
nothing can be truer than what Butler
says, that really, in general, no part of our
time is more idly spent than the time
spent in reading.
Still, culture is indispensably neces
sary, and culture is reading', but reading
with a purpose to guide it, and with
system. He does a good work who does
anything to help this; indeed, it is the
one essential service now to be rendered
to education. And the plea, that this or
that man has no time for culture, will
vanish as soon as we desire culture so
much that we begin to examine seriously
our present use of our time. It has often
been said, and cannot be said too often:
Give to any man all the time that he now
wastes, not only on his vices (when he
has them), but on useless business, weari
some or deteriorating amusements, trivial
letter-writing, random reading, and he will
have plenty of time for culture. ‘ Die
Zeit ist unendlich lang,' says Goethe; and
so it really is. Some of us waste all of it,
most of us waste much, but all of us
waste some.
�CONTENTS
FAGS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
I.
.
RELIGION GIVEN
.
s,
.
.
,
. ................................................................. 15
..............................................................................................................................18
II.
ABERGLAUBE INVADING..................................................................................................................... 35
III.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN............................................................................................................................ 41
IV.
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY............................................................................................................ 50
V.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES............................................................................................................... 53
VI.
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD.......................................................................................................... 64
VII.
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF................................................................................ 70
VIII.
IX.
FAITH IN CHRIST
................................................................................................................................ 77
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING....................................................................................................... 81
X.
OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE............................................................................................... 93
XI.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLDTESTAMENT.........................................................103
XII.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY.................................................................................. Ill
CONCLUSION
................................................................................................................................................ 117
��LITERATURE & DOGMA
INTROD UCTION
Lord Beaconsfield, treating Hellenic
things with the scornful negligence natural
to a Hebrew, said in a well-known book
that our aristocratic class, the polite
flower of the nation, were truly Hellenic
in this respect among others,—that they
cared nothing for letters and never read.
Now, there seems to be here some in
accuracy, if we take our standard of what
is Hellenic from Hellas at its highest
pitch of development. For the latest
historian of Greece, Dr. Curtius, tells us
that in the Athens of Pericles ‘read
ing was universally diffused ; ’ and again,
that ‘what more than anything distin
guishes the Greeks from the Barba
rians of ancient and modern times, is
the idea of a culture comprehending body
and soul in an equal measure.’ And I
have myself called our aristocratic class
Barbarians, which is the contrary of
Hellenes, from this very reason : because,
with all their fine, fresh appearance, their
open-air life, and their love of field-sports,
for reading and thinking they have in
general no great turn. But no doubt
Lord Beaconsfield was thinking of the
primitive Hellenes of North-Western
Greece, from among whom the Dorians of
Peloponnesus originally came, but who
•themselves remained in their old seats and
did not migrate and develop like their
more famous brethren. And of these
primitive Hellenes, of Greeks like the
Chaonians and Molossians, it is probably
a very just account to give, that they
lived in the open air, loved field-sports,
and never read. And, explained in this
way, Lord Beaconsfield’s parallel of our
aristocratic class with what he somewhat
misleadingly calls the old Hellenic race
appears ingenious and sound. To those
lusty northerners, the Molossian or Chaonian Greeks,—Greeks untouched by the
development which contradistinguishes
the Hellene from the Barbarian,—our
aristocratic class, as he exhibits it, has a
strong resemblance. At any rate, this
class,—which from its great possessions,
its beauty and attractiveness, the admira
tion felt for it by the Philistines or middle
class, its actual power in the nation, and
the still more considerable destinies to
which its politeness, in Mr. Carlyle’s
opinion, entitles it, cannot but attract our
notice, pre-eminently,—shows at present
a great and genuine disregard for letters.
And perhaps, if there is any other body
of men which strikes one, even after look
ing at our aristocratic class, as being in
the sunshine, as exercising great attraction,
as. being admired by the Philistines or
middle-class, and as having before it a
future still more brilliant than its present,
it is the friends of physical science. Now,
their revolt against the tyranny of letters
is notorious. To deprive letters of the
too great place they have hitherto filled in
men’s estimation, and to substitute other
studies for these, is the object of a sort
of crusade with a body of people impor
tant in itself, but still more important
because of the gifted leaders who march
at its head.
Religion has always hitherto been a
great power in England; and on this
account, perhaps, whatever humiliations
may be in store for religion in the future,
the friends of physical science will not
object to our saying, that, after them and
�i6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
the aristocracy, the leaders of the religious
world fill a prominent place in the public
eye even now, and one cannot help noticing
what their opinions and likings are. And
it is curious how the feeling of the chief
people in the religious world, too, seems
to be just now against letters, which they
slight as the vague and inexact instrument
of shallow essayists and magazine-writers ;
and in favour of dogma, of a scientific
and exact presentment of religious things,
instead of a literary presentment of them.
‘ Dogmatic theology,’ says the Guardian,
speaking of our existing dogmatic theo
logy,—‘ Dogmatic theology, that is,
precision and definiteness of religious
thought.’ ‘ Maudlin sentimentalism,’ says
the Dean of Norwich, ‘ with its miserable
disparagements of any definite doctrine ; a
nerveless religion, without the sinew and
bone of doctrine.’ The distinguished
Chancellor of the University of Oxford
thought it needful to tell us on a public
occasion lately, that ‘ religion is no more
to be severed from dogma than light from
the sun.’ .Everyone, again, remembers
the Bishops of Winchester 1 and Glouces
ter making in Convocation their remark
able effort ‘ to do something,’ as they
said, ‘ for the honour of Our Lord’s God
head,’ and to mark their sense of ‘that
infinite separation for time and for eternity
which is involved in rejecting the Godhead
of the Eternal Son.’ In the same way:
‘To no teaching,’says one champion of
dogma, ‘ can the appellation of Christian
be truly given which does not involve the
idea of a Personal God.’ Another lays
like stress on correct ideas about the
Personality of the Holy Ghost. ‘ Our
Lord unquestionably,’ says a third, ‘ an
nexes eternal life to a right knowledge
of the Godhead,’—that is, to a right
speculative, dogmatic knowledge of it. A
fourth appeals to history and human
nature for proof that ‘an undogmatic
Church can no more satisfy the hunger
of the soul, than a snowball, painted to
look like fruit, •would stay the hunger of
the stomach.’ And all these friends of
theological science are, lil^ the friends of
physical science, though from another
1 The late Bishop Wilberforce.
cause, severe upon letters. Attempts
made at a literary treatment of religious
history and ideas they call ‘ a subverting
of the faith once delivered to the saints.’
Those who make them they speak of as
‘ those who have made shipwreck of the'
faith ; ’ and when they talk of ‘ the poison
openly disseminated by infidels,’ and de
scribe the ‘progress of infidelity,’ which
more and more, according to their
account, ‘ denies God, rejects Christ, and
lets loose every human passion,’ though
they have the audaciousness of physical
science most in their eye, yet they have a
direct aim, too, at the looseness and
dangerous temerity of letters.
Keeping in remembrance what Scrip
ture says about the young man who had
great possessions, to be able to work a
change of mind in our aristocratic class
we never have pretended, we never shall
pretend. But to the friends of physical
science and to the friends of dogma we
do feel emboldened, after giving our best
consideration to the matter, to say a few
words on behalf of letters, and in depre
cation of the slight which, on different
grounds, they both put upon them. But
particularly in reply to the friends of
dogma do we wish to insist on the case
for letters, because of the great issues
which seem to us to be here involved.
Therefore of the relation of letters to
religion we are going now to speak ; of
their effect upon dogma, and of the con
sequences of this to religion. And so the
subject of the present volume will be
literature and dogma.
2.
It is clear that dogmatists love religion;
for else why do they occupy themselves
with it so much, and make it, most of
them, the business, even the professional
business, of their lives ? And clearly
religion seeks man’s salvation. How dis
tressing, therefore, must it be to them to
think that ‘salvation is unquestionably
annexed to a right knowledge of the God
head,’ and that a right knowledge of the
Godhead depends upon reasoning, for
�INTRODUCTION
which so many people have not much
aptitude ; and upon reasoning from ideas
or terms such as substance, idehtity,
causation, design, about which there is
endless disagreement! It is true, a right
knowledge of geometry also depends
upon reasoning, and many people never
get it ; but then, in the first place, salva
tion is not annexed to a right knowledge of
geometry ; and in the second, the ideas
or terms such as point, line, angle, from
which we reason in geometry, are terms
about which there is no ambiguity or
disagreement. But as to the demonstra
tions and terms of theology we cannot
comfort ourselves in this manner. How
must this thought mar the Archbishop of
York's enjoyment of such a solemnity as
that in which, to uphold and renovate
religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, Dean Payne Smith, and other
kindred souls, upon the theory of causa
tion ! And what a consolation to us,
who are so perpetually being taunted with
our known inaptitude for abstruse reason
ing, if we can find that for this great
concern of religion, at any rate, abstruse
reasoning does not seem to be the ap
pointed help ; and that as good or better
a help—for indeed there can hardly, to
judge by the present state of things, be a
worse—may be something which is in an
ordinary man’s power !
For the good of letters is, that they
require no extraordinary acuteness such
as is required to handle the theory of
causation like the Archbishop of York,
or the doctrine of the Godhead of the
Eternal Son like the Bishops of Win
chester and Gloucester. The good of
letters maybe had without skill in arguing,
or that formidable logical apparatus, not
unlike a guillotine, which Professor Huxley
speaks of somewhere as the young man’s
best companion ;—and so it would be his
best companion, no doubt, if all wisdom
were come at by hard reasoning. In that
case, all who could not manage this
apparatus (and only a few picked crafts
men can manage it) would be in a pitiable
condition.
But the valuable thing in letters—that
J7
is, in the acquainting oneself with the
best which has been thought and said in
the world—is, as we have often remarked,
the judgment which forms itself insensibly
in a fair mind along with fresh knowledge;
and this judgment almost anyone with a
fair mind, who will but trouble himself to
try and make acquaintance with the best
which has been thought and uttered in
the world, may, if he is lucky, hope to
attain to.
For this judgment comes
almost of itself, and what it displaces it
displaces easily and naturally, and without
any turmoil of controversial reasonings.
The thing comes to look differently to
us, as we look at it by the light of fresh
knowledge. We are not beaten from our
old opinion by logic, we are not driven
off our ground; our ground itself changes
with us.
Far more of our mistakes come from
want of fresh knowledge than from want
of correct reasoning; and, therefore, letters
meet a greater want in us than does logic.
The idea of a triangle is a definite and
ascertained thing, and to deduce the
properties of a triangle from it is an affair
of reasoning. There are heads unapt for
this sort of work, and some of the blun
dering to be found in the world is from
this cause. But how far more of the
blundering to be found in the world
comes from people fancying that some
idea is a definite and ascertained thing,
like the idea of a triangle, when it is not;
and proceeding to deduce properties from
it, and to do battle about them, when
their first start was a mistake ! And how
liable are people with a talent for hard,
abstruse reasoning, to be tempted to this
mistake I And what can clear up such
a mistake except a wide and familiar
acquaintance with the human spirit and
its productions, showing how ideas and
terms arose, and what is their character?
and this is letters and history, not logic.
So that minds w’ith small aptitude for
abstruse reasoning may yet, through letters,
gain some hold on sound judgment and
useful knowledge, and may even clear up
blunders committed, out of their very
excess of talent, by the athletes of logic.
B
�18
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
CHAPTER I
RELIGION GIVEN
I have said elsewhere1 how much it has
contributed to the misunderstanding of
St. Paul, that terms like grace, new birth,
justification —which he used in a fluid and
passing way, as men use terms in common
discourse or in eloquence and poetry, to
describe approximately, but only approxi
mately, what they have present before
their mind but do not profess that their
mind does or can grasp exactly or ade
quately—that such terms people have
blunderingly taken in a fixed and rigid
manner, as if they were symbols with as
definite and fully grasped a meaning as
the names line or angle, and proceeded
to use them on this supposition. Terms,
in short, which with St. Paul are literary
terms, theologians have employed as if
they were scientific terms.
But if one desires to deal with this
mistake thoroughly, one must observe it
in that supreme term with which religion
is filled—the term God. The seemingly
incurable ambiguity in the mode of em
ploying this word is at the root of all
our religious differences and difficulties.
People use it as if it stood for a perfectly
definite and ascertained idea, from which
we might, without more ado, extract
propositions and draw inferences, just as
we should from any other definite and
ascertained idea. For instance, I open a
book which controverts what its author
thinks dangerous views about religion,
and I read : ‘Our sense of morality
tells us so-and-so; our sense of God, on
the other hand, tells us so-and-so.’ And
again, ‘ the impulse in man to seek God ’
is distinguished, as if the distinction were
self-evident and explained itself, from ‘ the
impulse in man to seek his highest perfec
tion.’ Now, morality represents for every
body a thoroughly definite and ascertained
idea—the idea of human conduct regu
lated in a certain manner. Everybody,
again, understands distinctly enough what
1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 160.
is meant by man’s perfection—his reach
ing the best which his powers and
circumstances allow him to reach. And
the word ‘ God ’ is used, in connection
with both these words, morality and
perfection, as if it stood for just as definite
and ascertained an idea as they do; an
idea drawn from experience, just as the
ideas are which they stand for; an idea
about which everyone was agreed, and from
which we might proceed to argue and to
make inferences, with the certainty that,
as in the case of morality and perfection,
the basis on which we were going every
one knew and granted. But, in truth,
the word ‘ God ’ is used in most cases as
by no means a term of science or exact
knowledge, but a term of poetry and
eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak,
at a not fully grasped object of the
speaker’s consciousness, a literary term,
in short; and mankind mean different
things by it as their consciousness differs.
The first question, then, is, how people
are using the word; whether in this
literary way, or in a scientific way. The
second question is, what, supposing them
to use the term as one of poetry and
eloquence, and to import into it, therefore,
a great deal of their own individual
feelings and character, is yet the common
substratum of idea on which, in using it,
they all rest. For this will then be for
them, and for us in dealing with them, the
real sense of the word ; the sense in which
we can use it for purposes of argument
and inference without ambiguity.
Strictly and formally the word ‘ God,’
so some philologists tell us, means, like
its kindred Aryan words, Theos, Deus,
and Deva, simply shining or brilliant.
In a certain narrow way, therefore, this
would be (if the etymology is right) the
one exact and scientific sense of the word.
It was long thought, however, to mean
good, and so Luther took it to mean the
best that man knows or can know ; and in
this sense, as a matter of fact and history,
�RELIGION GIVEN
mankind constantly use the word. This
is the common substratum of idea on
which men in general, when they use the
word God, rest; and we can take this as
the word’s real sense fairly enough, only it
does not give us anything very precise.
But then there is also the scientific
sense held by theologians, deduced from
the ideas of substance, identity, causation,
design, and so on ; hut taught, they say,
or at least implied, in the Bible, and on
which all the Bible rests. According to
this scientific and theological sense—which
has all the outward appearances, at any
rate, of great precision—God is an infinite
and eternal substance, and at the same
time a person, the great first cause, the
moral and intelligent governor of the
universe; Jesus Christ is consubstantial
with him; and the Holy Ghost is a person
proceeding from the other two. This is
the sense for which, or for portions of
which, the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester are so zealous to do some
thing.
Other people, however, who fail to
perceive the force of such a deduction
from the abstract ideas above mentioned,
who indeed think it quite hollow, but who
are told that this sense is in the Bible,
and that they must receive it if they
receive the Bible, conclude that in that
case they had better receive neither the
one nor the other. Something of this
sort, it was, no doubt, which made
Professor Huxley tell the London School
Board lately, that ‘if these islands had
no religion at all, it would not enter into
his mind to introduce the religious idea
by the agency of the Bible.’ Of such
people there are now a great many ; and
indeed there could hardly, for those who
value the Bible, be a greater example of
the sacrifices one is sometimes called
upon to make for the truth, than to find
that for the truth as held by the Bishops
of Winchester and Gloucester, if it is the
truth, one must sacrifice the allegiance of
so many people to the Bible.
But surely, if there be anything with
which metaphysics have nothing to do,
and where a plain man, without skill to
walk in the arduous paths of abstruse
19
reasoning, may yet find himself at home,
it is religion. For the object of religion
is conduct; and conduct is really, however
men may overlay it with philosophical
disquisitions, the simplest thing in the
world. That is to say, it is the simplest
thing in the world as far as tinderstanding
is concerned; as regards doing, it is the
hardest thing in the world. Here is the
difficulty,—to do what we very well know
ought to be done ; and instead of facing
this, men have searched out another with
which they occupy themselves by pre
ference,—the origin of what is called
the moral sense, the genesis and physio
logy of conscience, and so on. No one
denies that here, too, is difficulty, or that
the difficulty is a proper object for the
human faculties to be exercised upon ;
but the difficulty here is speculative. It
is not the difficulty of religion, which is a
practical one; and it often tends to
divert the attention from this. Yet surely
the difficulty of religion' is great enough
by itself, if men would but consider it, to
satisfy the most voracious appetite for
difficulties. It extends to rightness in
the whole range of what we call conduct;
in three-fourths, therefore, at the very
lowest computation, of human life. The
only doubt is whether we ought not to
make the range of conduct wider still,
and to say it is four-fifths of human life,
or five-sixths. But it is better to be under
the mark than over it; so let us be con
tent with reckoning conduct as threefourths of human life.
And to recognise in what way conduct
is this, let us eschew all school-terms, like
moral sense, and volitional, and altruistic,
which philosophers employ, and let us
help ourselves by the most palpable and
plain examples. When the rich man in
the Bible-parable says : ‘ Soul, thou hast
much goods laid up for many years ; take
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ! ’1—
those goods which he thus assigns as the
stuff with which human life is mainly
concerned (and so in practice it really is),
—those goods and our dealings with
them,—our taking our ease, eating, drink1 Luke, xii, 19.
B2
�20
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
ing, being merry, are the matter of conduct, true or false, there the impulses con
the range where it is exercised. Eating, fessedly now are, and the business of
drinking, ease, pleasure, money, the inter conduct is to deal with them. But it is
course of the sexes, the giving free swing evident, if conduct deals with these, both
to one’s temper and instincts—these are how important a thing conduct is, and
the matters with which conduct is con how simple a thing. Important, because
cerned, and with which all mankind know it covers so large a portion of human life,
and the portion common to all sorts of
and feel it to be concerned.
Or, when Protagoras points out of what people; simple, because, though there
things we are, from childhood till we die, needs perpetual admonition to form con
being taught and admonished, and says duct, the admonition is needed not to
(but it is lamentable that here we have determine what we ought to do, but to
not at hand Mr. Jowett, who so excellently make us do it.
And as to this simplicity, all moralists
introduces the enchanter Plato and his
personages, but must use our own w’ords) : are agreed. ‘ Let any plain honest man,’
‘ From the time he can understand what says Bishop Butler, ‘ before he engages in
is said to him, nurse, and mother, and any course of action ’ (he means action of
teacher, and father too, are bending their the very kind we call conduct}, ‘ask him
efforts to this end—to make the child self : Is this I am going about right or is
good; teaching and showing him, as to it wrong ? is it good or is it evil ? I do not
everything he has to do or say, how this in the least doubt but that this question
is right and that not right, and this is would be answered agreeably to truth and
honourable and that vile, and this is holy virtue by almost any fair man in almost
and that unholy, and this do and that do any circumstance.' And Bishop Wilson
not; ’ Protagoras, also, when he says this, says : ‘ Look up to God ’ (by which he
bears his testimony to the scope and means just this : Consult your conscience)
nature of conduct, tellg us what conduct is. ‘ at all times, and you will, as in a glass,
Or, once more, when M. Littre (and we discover what is fit to be done.’ And the
hope to make our peace with the Comtists Preacher’s well-known sentence is exactly
by quoting an author of theirs in pre to the same effect : ‘ God made man up
ference to those authors whom all the right; but they have sought out many
British public is now reading and quoting) inventions,’1—or, as it more correctly is,
—when M. Littrd in a most ingenious ‘ many abstruse reasonings.' Let us hold
essay on the origin of morals, traces up, fast to this, and we shall find we have a
better, perhaps, than anyone else, all our stay by the help of which even poor weak
impulses into two elementary instincts, the men, with no pretensions to be logical
instinct of self-preservation and the repro athletes, may stand firmly.
ductive instinct—then we take his theory
And so, when we are asked, what is the
and we say, that all the impulses which object of religion ?—let us reply : Con
can be conceived as derivable from the duct. And when we are asked further,
instinct of self-preservation in us and what is conduct ?—let us answer : Threefrom the reproductive instinct, these terms fourths of life.
being applied in their ordinary sense, are
the matter of conduct. It is evident this
2.
includes, to say no more, every impulse
And certainly we need not go far about
relating to temper, every impulse relating to prove that conduct, or ‘ righteousness,’
to sensuality; and we all know how which is the object of religion, is in
much that is.
a special manner the object of Bible
How we deal with these impulses is religion. The word ‘ righteousness ’ is
the matter of conduct,—how we obey, the master-word of the Old Testament.
regulate, or restrain them ; that, and Keep judgment and do righteousness!
nothing else. Not whether M. Littr^’s
1 Ecclesiastes, vii, 29.
theory is true or false; for whether it be
�RELIGION GIVEN
Cease to do evil, learn to do well! 1 these
words being taken in their plainest sense
of conduct. Offer the sacrifice, not of
victims and ceremonies, as the way of the
world in religion then was, but: Offer the
sacrifice of righteousness I2 The great
concern of the New Testament is likewise
righteousness, but righteousness reached
through particular means, righteousness
by the means of Jesus Christ. A sen
tence which sums up the New Testament
and assigns the ground whereon the
Christian Church stands, is, as we have
elsewhere said,3 this : Let every one that
nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity !4 If we are to take a sentence
which in like manner sums up the Old
Testament, such a sentence is this : O ye
that love the Eternal, see that ye hate the
thing which is evilI to him that ordereth
his conversation right shall be shown the
salvation of GodP
But instantly there will be raised the
objection that this is morality, not religion;
morality, ethics, conduct, being by many
people, and above all by theologians,
carefully contradistinguished from religion,
which is supposed in some special way to
be connected with propositions about the
Godhead of the Eternal Son, or proposi
tions about the personality of God, or
about election, or justification. Religion,
however, means simply either a binding to
righteousness, or else a serious attending
to righteousness and dwelling upon it.
Which of these two it most nearly means,
depends upon the view we take of the word’s
derivation; but it means one of them,
and they are really much the same. And
the antithesis between ethical and religious
is thus quite a false one. Ethical means
practical, it relates to practice or conduct
passing into habit or disposition. Reli
gious also means practical, but practical in
a still higher degree; and the right anti
thesis to both ethical and religious, is the
same as the right antithesis to practical:
namely, theoretical.
1 Isaiah, lvi, I ; i, l6, 17.
2 Psalm iv, 5.
8 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 159.
4 II Timothy, ii, 19.
5 Ps. xcvii, 10; 1, 23.
21
Now, propositions about the Godhead
of the Eternal Son are theoretical, and
they therefore are very properly opposed
to propositions which are moral or ethical;
but they are with equal propriety opposed
to propositions which are religious. They
differ in kind from what is religious, while
what is ethical agrees in kind with it. But
is there, therefore, no difference between
what is ethical or morality, and religion ?
There is a difference; a difference of
degree. Religion, if we follow the inten
tion of human thought and human lan
guage in the use of the word, is ethics
heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling ;
the passage from morality to religion is
made when to morality is applied emo
tion. And the true meaning of re
ligion is thus, not simply morality, but
morality touched by emotion. And this
new elevation and inspiration of morality
is well marked by the word ‘righteous
ness.’ Conduct is the word of common
life, morality is the word of philosophical
disquisition, righteousness is the word of
religion.
Some people, indeed, arc for calling all
high thought and feeling by the name of
religion; according to that saying of
Goethe : ‘ He who has art and science,
has also religion.’ But let us use words
as mankind generally use them. We may
call art and science touched by emotion
religion, if we will; as we may make the
instinct of self-preservation, into which
M. Littrd traces up all our private affec-l
tions, include the perfecting ourselves by
the study of what is beautiful in art ; and
the reproductive instinct, into which he
traces up all our social affections, include
the perfecting mankind by political
science. But men have not yet got to
that stage, when we think much of either
their private or their social affections at
all, except as exercising themselves in
conduct; neither do we yet think of
religion as otherwise exercising itself.
When mankind speak of religion, they
have before their mind an activity en-l
gaged, not with the whole of life, but with
that three-fourths of life which is conduct.
This is wide enough range for one word,
surely; but at any rate, let us at present
�22
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
limit ourselves in the use of the word
religion as mankind do.
And if some one now asks: But what is
this application of emotion to morality,
and by what marks may we know it ?—we
can quite easily satisfy him; not, indeed,
by any disquisition of our own, but in a
much better way, by examples. ‘ By the
dispensation of Providence to mankind,’
says Quintilian, ‘ goodness gives men
most satisfaction.’1 That is morality.
‘ The path of the just is as the shining
light which shineth more and more unto
the perfect day.’1 That is morality touched
2
with emotion, or religion. ‘ Hold off
from sensuality,’ says Cicero; ‘for, if you
have given yourself up to it, you will find
yourself unable to think of anything else.’ 3
That is morality. ‘ Blessed are the pure in
heart,’ says Jesus Christ; ‘for they shall
see God.’4 That is religion. ‘We all
want to live honestly, but cannot,’ says
the Greek maxim-maker.5 That is moral
ity. ‘ O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this
death ? ’ says St. Paul.6 That is religion.
‘Would thou wert of as good conversa
tion in deed as in word ! ’7 is morality.
‘ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my
lather which is in Heaven,’8 is religion.
| Live as you were meant to live ! ’9 is
morality. ‘ Lay hold on eternal life ! ’10 is
religion.
Or we may take the contrast within
the bounds of the Bible itself. ‘Love
not sleep, lest thou come to poverty,’ is
morality. But : ‘ My meat is to do the
will of him that sent me, and to finish his
work,’ is religion.11 Or we may even
1 Dedit hoc Providentia' hominibus munus, ut
honesta magis juvarent.
2 Proverbs, iv, 18.
3 Sis a venereis amoribus aversus ; quibus si te
dedideris, non aliud quidquam possis cogitare
quam illud quod diligis.
4 Matthew, v, 8.
5 ©eAojUtr xaXws tfjv travres, aXA’ ov SuvapeOa.
6 Romans, vii, 24.
5 Etfl’ 4tr0a
epya rois Xbyois ftra.
8 Matthew, vii, 21.
9 Zijtrop Kara <bv<w>,
10 I Tim., vi, 12.
n Prov., xx. 13 ; John, iv, 34.
observe a third stage between these two
stages, which shows to us the transition
from one to the other. ‘ If thou givest
thy soul the desires that please her, she
will make thee a laughing stock to thine
enemies ; ’ 1—that is morality. ‘ He that
resisteth pleasure crowneth his life ; ’2—
that is morality with the tone heightened,
passing, or trying to pass, into religion.
‘ Flesh and blood cannot inherit the king
dom of God ; ’3—there the passage is
made, and we have religion. Our religious
examples are here all taken from the
Bible, and from the Bible such examples
can best be taken ; but we might also
find them elsewhere. ‘Oh that my lot
might lead me in the path of holy inno
cence of thought and deed, the path which
august laws ordain, laws which in the
highest heaven had their birth, neither
did the race of mortal man beget them,
nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep;
the power of God is mighty in them, and
groweth not old 1 ’ That is from So
phocles, but it is as much religion as any
of the things which we have quoted as
religious. Like them, it is not the mere
enjoining of conduct, but it is this enjoin
ing, touched, strengthened, and almost
transformed, by the addition of feeling.
So what is meant by the application of
emotion to morality has now, it is to be
hoped, been made clear. The next ques
tion will probably be : But how does one
get the application made? Why, how
does one get to feel much about any
matter whatever? By dwelling upon it,
by staying our thoughts upon it, by having
it perpetually in our mind. The very
words mind, memory, remain, come,
probably, all from the same root, from
the notion of staying, attending. Pos
sibly even the word man comes from
the same; so entirely does the idea
of humanity, of intelligence, of looking
before and after, of raising oneself out
of the flux of things, rest upon the idea
of steadying oneself, concentrating one
self, making order in the chaos of one’s
impressions, by attending to one impres’ Ecclesiasticus, xviii, 31,
2 Ecclesiasticus, xix, 5.
* I Corinthians, xv, 50.
�RELIGION GIVEN
23
to his own death ; ’ ‘ The way of trans
gressors is hard ; ’ nobody will deny that
those texts may stand for the fundamental
and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testa
ment.1 No people ever felt so strongly
as the people of the Old Testament, the
Hebrew people, that conduct is threefourths of our life and its largest concern.
No people ever felt so strongly that suc
ceeding, going right, hitting the mark in
this great concern, was the way of peace,
the highest possible satisfaction. ‘ He
that keepeth the law, happy is he ; its
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its
paths are peace ; if thou hadst walked in
its ways thou shouldst have dwelt in peace
for ever ! ’2 Jeshurun, one of the ideal
names of their race, is the upright; Israel,
the other and greater, is the wrestler with
God, he who has known the conten
tion and strain it costs to stand upright.
That mysterious personage by whom their
history first touches the hill of Sion, is
Melchisedek, the righteous king. Their
holy city, Jerusalem, is the foundation, or
vision, or inheritance, of that which right
eousness achieves—peace. The law of
righteousness was such an object of atten
tion to them, that its words were to ‘ be
in their heart, and thou shalt teach them
diligently unto thy children, and shalt
talk of them when thou sittest in thine
house, and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thou
risest up.’3 That they might keep them
ever in mind, they wore them, went about
with them, made talismans of them:
‘ Bind them upon thy fingers, bind them
about thy neck; write them upon the
table of thine heart! ’4 ‘ Take fast hold
of her,’ they said of the doctrine of con-]
duct, or righteousness, ‘ let her not go
keep her, for she is thy life ! ’ 5
3People who thus spoke of righteousness
Only with one people—the people from could not but have had their minds long
whom we get the Bible—these distractions and deeply engaged with it; much more
than the generality of mankind, who have
did not so much happen.
The Old Testament, nobody will ever nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the
deny, is filled with the word and thought
’ Prov., xii, 28 ; xi, 19; xiii, 15.
of righteousness. ‘ Ip the way of right
2 Prov., xxix, 18; iii, 17. Baruch, iii, 13.
eousness is life, and in the pathway thereof
8 Deuteronomy, vi, 6, 7.
is no death ; ’ ‘ Righteousness tendeth to
4 Prov., vii, 3 ; iii, 3.
4 Prov., iv, 13.
life; ’ ‘ He that pursueth evil pursueth it
sion rather than the other. The rules of
conduct, of morality, were themselves,
philosophers suppose, reached in this
way ;—the notion of a whole self as op
posed to a partial self, a best self to an
inferior self, to a momentary self a per
manent self requiring the restraint of
impulses a man would naturally have in
dulged ;—because, by attending to his life,
man found it had a scope beyond the
wants of the present moment. Suppose
it was so ; then the first man who, as ‘ a
being,’ comparatively, ‘ of a large dis
course, looking before and after,’ con
trolled the native, instantaneous, me
chanical impulses of the instinct of self
preservation, controlled the native, instan
taneous, mechanical impulses of the re
productive instinct, had morality revealed
to him.
But there is a long way from this to
that habitual dwelling on the rules thus
reached, that constant turning them over
in the mind, that near and lively experi
mental sense of their beneficence, which
communicates emotion to our thought of
them, and thus incalculably heightens
their power. And the more mankind
attended to the claims of that part of our
nature which does not belong to conduct
or morality, properly so called (and we
have seen that, after all, about one-fourth
of our nature is in this case), the more
they would have distractions to take off
their thoughts from those moral conclu
sions which all races of men, one may say,
seem to have reached, and to prevent
these moral conclusions from being quick
ened by emotion, and thus becoming
religious.
�24
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
notion of morals or conduct. And, if live.’1 And we may well give ourselves,
they were so deeply attentive to it, one in grateful and devout self-surrender, to
thing could not fail to strike them. It is that by which we are thus visited. So
this : the very great part in righteousness much is there incalculable, so much that
which belongs, we may say, to not our belongs to not ourselves, in conduct ; and
selves. In the first place, we did not the more we attend to conduct, and the
make ourselves and our nature, or con more we value it, the more we shall feel
duct as the object of three-fourths of that this.
The not ourselves, which is in us and in
nature; we did not provide that happi
ness should follow conduct, as it unde the world around us, has almost every
niably does; that the sense of succeeding, where, as far as we can see, struck the
going right, hitting the mark, in conduct, minds of men as they awoke to conscious
should give satisfaction, and a very high ness, and has inspired them with awe.
satisfaction, just as really as the sense of Everyone knows how the mighty natural
doing well in his work gives pleasure to a objects which most took their regards
poet or painter, or accomplishing what became the objects to which this awe
he tries gives pleasure to a man who is addressed itself. Our very word God is, per
learning to ride or to shoot; or as satisfy haps, a reminiscence of these times, when
ing his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a men invoked ‘ The Brilliant on high,’
sublime hoc candens quod invocent omnes
man who is hungry.
All this we did not make; and, in the Jovem, as the power representing to them
next place, our dealing with it at all, when that which transcended the limits of their
it is made, is not wholly, or even nearly narrow selves, and by which they lived
wholly, in our own power. Our conduct and moved and had their being. Every
is capable, irrespective of what we can one knows of what differences of opera
ourselves certainly answer for, of almost tion men’s dealing with this power has in
infinitely different degrees of force and different places and times shown itself
energy in the performance of it, of lucidity capable ; how here they have been moved
and vividness in the perception of it, of by the not ourselves to a cruel terror, there
fulness in the satisfaction from it; and to a timid religiosity, there again to a play
these degrees may vary from day to day, of imagination ; almost always, however,
and quite incalculably. Facilities and connecting with it, by some string or other,
felicities—whence do they come ? sugges conduct.
But we are not writing a history of
tions and stimulations—where do they
tend? hardly a day passes but we have religion ; we are only tracing its effect on
some experience of them. And so Henry the language of the men from whom we
More was led to say, that ‘there was get the Bible. At the time they produced
something about us that knew better, those documents which give to the Old
often, what we would be at than we our Testament its power and its true character,
selves.’ For instance : everyone can under the not ourselves which weighed upon the
stand bow health and freedom from pain mind of Israel, and engaged its awe, was
may give energy for conduct, and how a the not ourselves by which we get the sense
neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it. It for righteousness, and whence we find the
does not depend on ourselves, indeed, help to do right. This conception was
whether we have the neuralgia or not, but indubitably what lay at the bottom of that
we can understand its impairing our spirit. remarkable change which under Moses, at
But the strange thing is, that with the same a certain stage of their religious history,
neuralgia we may find ourselves one day befell the Hebrew people’s mode of nam
without spirit and energy for conduct, and ing God.2 This was what they intended
another day with them. So that we may in that name, which we wrongly convey,
most truly say, with the author of the
’ Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero
Imitation : ‘ Left to ourselves, we sink and erigimur et vivimus.
perish ; visited, we lift up our heads and
* See Exodus, iii, 14.
�RELIGION GIVEN
25
Eternal; the Eternal wliatl The Eternal
cause ? Alas, these poor people were not
Archbishops of York. They meant the
Eternal righteous, who loveth righteous
ness. They had dwelt upon the thought
of conduct, and of right and wrong, until
the not ourselves, which is in us and all
around us, became to them adorable
eminently and altogether as a power which
makes for righteousness ; which makes for
it unchangeably and eternally, and is there
fore called The Eternal.
There is not a particle of metaphysics
in their use of this name, any more than
in their conception of the not ourselves to
which they attached it. Both came to
them not from abstruse reasoning but
from experience, and from experience in
the plain region of conduct. Theologians
with metaphysical heads render Israel’s
Eternal by the selfexistent, and Israel’s
not ourselves by the absolute, and attribute
to Israel their own subtleties. According
to them, Israel had his head full of the
necessity of a first cause, and therefore
said, The Eternal; as, again, they imagine
him looking out into the world, noting
everywhere the marks of design and adap
tation to his wants, and reasoning out and
inferring thence the fatherhood of God.
All these fancies come from an excessive
turn for reasoning, and from a neglect of
observing men’s actual course of thinking
and way of using words. Israel, at this
stage when The Eternal was revealed to
him, inferred nothing, reasoned out no
thing ; he felt and experienced. When he
begins to speculate, in the schools of
Rabbinism, he quickly shows how much
less native talent than the Bishops of Win
chester and Gloucester he has for this
perilous business. Happily, when The
Eternal was revealed to him, he had not
yet begun to speculate.
Israel personified, indeed, his Eternal,
for he was strongly moved, he was an
orator and poet. Man never knows how
anthropomorphic he is, says Goethe; and
so man tends always to represent every
thing under his own figure. In poetry
and eloquence man may and must follow
1 ‘ Qu’est-ce que la nature ?’ says Pascal; ‘pentetre une premitre coutume, comme la coutume est this tendency, but in science it often leads
him astray. Israel, however, did not
une seconde nature.’
either without translation, by Jehovah,
which gives us the notion of a mere
mythological deity, or by a wrong transla
tion, Lord, which gives us the notion of a
magnified and non-natural man. The
name they used was : The Eternal.
Philosophers dispute whether moral
ideas, as they call them, the simplest ideas
of conduct and righteousness which now
seem instinctive, did not all grow, were
not once inchoate, embryo, dubious, un
formed.1 That may have been so; the
question is an interesting one for science.
But the interesting question for conduct
is whether those ideas are unformed or
formed now. They are formed now ; and
they were formed when the Hebrews
named the power, not of their own mak
ing, which pressed upon their spirit : The
Eternal. Probably the life of Abraham,
the friend of God, however imperfectly the
Bible traditions by themselves convey it
to us, was a decisive step forwards in the
development of these ideas of righteous
ness.
Probably this was the moment
when such ideas became fixed and ruling
for the Hebrew people, and marked it
permanently off from all other peoples
who had not made the same step. But
long before the first beginnings of recorded
history, long before the oldest word of
Bible literature, these ideas must have
been at work. We know it by the result,
although they may have for a long while
been but rudimentary. In Israel’s earliest
history and earliest utterances, under the
name of Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty,
there may have lain and matured, there
did lie and mature, ideas of God more as
a moral power, more as a power connected,
above everything, with conduct and right
eousness, than were entertained by other
races. Not only can we judge by the
result that this must have been so, but we
can see that it w'as so. Still their name,
The Mighty, does not in itself involve any
41 true and deep religious ideas, any more
than our Aryan name, Deva, Deus, The
Shining. With The Eternal it is other
wise. For what did they mean by the
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
26
scientifically predicate personality of God;
he would not even have had a notion what
was meant by it. He called him the
maker of all things, who gives drink to all
out of his pleasures as out of a river; but
he was led to this by no theory of a first
cause. The grandeur of the spectacle given
by the world, the grandeur of the sense of
its all being not ourselves, being above and
beyond ourselves and immeasurably dwarf
ing us, a man of imagination instinctively
personifies as a single, mighty, living and
productive power; as Goethe tells us that
the words which rose naturally to his lips,
when he stood on the top of the Brocken,
were: ‘Lord, what is man, that thou
mindest him, or the son of man, that thou
makest account of him ? ’1 But Israel’s
confessing and extolling of this power
came not even from his imaginative feel
ing, but came first from his gratitude for
righteousness. To one who knows what
conduct is, it is a joy to be alive; and the
not ourselves, which by bringing forth for
us righteousness makes our happiness,
working just in the same sense, brings
forth this glorious world to be righteous
in. That is the notion at the bottom of
a Hebrew’s praise of a Creator; and if
we attend, we can see this quite clearly.
Wisdom and understanding mean, for
Israel, the love of order, of righteousness.
Righteousness, order, conduct, is for Israel
at once the source of all man’s happiness
and at the same time the very essence
of The Eternal. The great work of the
Eternal is the foundation of this order in
man, the implanting in mankind of his
own love of righteousness, his own spirit,
his own wisdom and understanding;
and it is only as a farther and natural
working of this energy that Israel con
ceives the establishment of order in the
world, or creation. ‘To depart from evil,
that is understanding ! Happy is the man
that findeth wisdom, and the man that
getteth understanding ! The Eternal by
wisdom hath founded the earth, by under
standing hath he established the heavens', ’2
and so the Bible-writer passes into the
account of creation. It all comes to him
from the idea of righteousness.
1 Ps. cxlix, 3.
2 Prov., iii, 13-20.
I
And it is the same with all the language
our Hebrew religionist uses. God is a
father, because the power in and around
us, which makes for righteousness, is
indeed best described by the name of this
authoritative but yet tender and protect
ing relation. So, too, with the intense fear
and abhorrence of idolatry. Conduct,
righteousness, is, above all, a matter of
inward motion and rule. No sensible
forms can represent it, or help us to it ;
such attempts at representation can only
distract us from it. So, too, with the sense
of the oneness of God. ‘ Hear, O Israel 1
The Lord our God is one Lord.’1 People
think that in this unity of God,—this
monotheistic idea, as they call it,—they have
certainly got metaphysics at last. They have
got nothing of the kind. The monotheistic
idea of Israel is simply seriousness. There
are, indeed, many aspects of the not our
selves ; but Israel regarded one aspect of it
only, that by which it makes for righteous
ness. He had the advantage, to be sure, that
with this aspect three-fourths of human life
is concerned. But there are other aspects
which may be set in view. ‘ Frail and
striving mortality,’ says the elder Pliny in
a noble passage, ‘mindful of its own
weakness, has distinguished these aspects
severally, so as for each man to be able to
attach himself to the divine by this or that
part, according as he has most need.’2
That is an apology for polytheism, as
answering to man’s many-sidedness. But
Israel felt that being thus many-sided
degenerates into an imaginative play, and
bewilders what Israel recognised as our sole
religious consciousness,—the consciousness
of right. ‘ Let thine eyelids look right on,
and let thine eyelids look straight before
thee; turn not to the right hand nor to
the left; remove thy foot from evil! ’3
For does not Ovid say,4 in excuse for
1 Deut., vi, 4.
2 Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista
digessit, infirmitatis suae memor, ut portionibus
coleret quisque, quo maxime indigeret. Nat.
Hist., ii, 5.
3 Prov., iv, 25, 27.
4 Tristia, ii. 287 :—
Quis locus est templis augustior ? haec quoque vitet,
In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam.
See the whole passage.
�RELIGION GIVEN
27
the immorality of his verses, that the sight
and mention of the gods themselves,—the
rulers of human life,—often raised im
moral thoughts? And so the sight and
mention of all aspects of the not ourselves
must. Yet how tempting are many of
these aspects ! Even at this time of day
the grave authorities of the University of
Cambridge are so struck by one of them,
that of pleasure, life and fecundity,—of the
hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus,
—that they set it publicly up as an object
for their scholars to fix their minds upon,
and to compose verses in honour of. That
is all very well at present; but with this
natural bent in the authorities of the
University of Cambridge, and in the IndoEuropean race to which they belong,
where would they be now if it had not
been for Israel, and for the stern check
which Israel put upon the glorification and
divinisation of this natural bent of man
kind, this attractive aspect of the not our
selves! Perhaps going in procession,
Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars,
and all, in spite of their Professor of Moral
Philosophy, to the temple of Aphrodite!
Nay, and very likely Mr. Birks himself, his
brows crowned with myrtle and scarcely
a shade of melancholy on his counte
nance, would have been going along with
them ! It is Israel and his seriousness
that have saved the authorities of the
University of Cambridge from carrying
their divinisation of pleasure to these
lengths, or from making more of it,
indeed, than a mere passing intellectual
play; and even this play Israel would
have beheld with displeasure, saying : O
turn away mine eyes lest they behold vanity,
but quicken Thou me in Thy way! 1 So
earnestly and exclusively were Israel’s
regards bent on one aspect of the not
ourselves : its aspect as a power making
for conduct, for righteousness. Israel’s
Eternal was the Eternal which says : ‘ Be
ye holy,-fox I am holy 1 ’ Now, as righte
ousness is but a heightened conduct, so
holiness is but a heightened righteous
ness; a more finished, entire, and awefilled righteousness.
It was such a
righteousness which was Israel’s ideal;
and therefore it was that Israel said,
not indeed what our Bibles make him
say, but this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The
Eternal is our God, The Eternal alone.'
And in spite of his turn for personifi
cation, his want of a clear boundary-line
between poetry and science, his inaptitude
to express even abstract notions by other
than highly concrete terms,—in spite of
these scientific disadvantages, or rather,
perhaps, because of them, because he had
no talent for abstruse reasoning to lead
him astray,—the spirit and tongue of
Israel kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense
of the inadequacy of language in convey
ing man’s ideas of God, which contrast
strongly with the licence of affirmation in
our Western theology. ‘The high and
holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
name is holy,’1 is far more proper and
felicitous language than ‘ the moral and
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ just
because it far less attempts to be precise,
but keeps to the language of poetry and
does not essay the language of science.
As he had developed his idea of God
from personal experience, Israel knew
what we, who have developed our idea
from his words about it, so often are
ignorant of: that his words were but
thrown out at a /vast object of conscious
ness, which he could not fully grasp, and
which he apprehended clearly by one
point alone,—that it made for the great
concern of life, conduct. How little we
know of it besides, how impenetrable is
the course of its ways with us, how we
are baffled in our attempts to name and
describe it, how, when we personify it and
call it ‘ the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe,’ we presently find it not
to be a person as man conceives of per
sons, nor moral as man conceives of
moral, nor intelligent as man conceives of
intelligent, nor a governor as man conceives
of governors,—all this, which scientific
theology loses sight of, Israel, who had
but poetry and eloquence, and no system,
and who did not mind contradicting him
self, knew. ‘ Is it any pleasure to the
1 Ps. cxix, 37.
’ Ps., lvii, 15.
�28
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Almighty, that thou art righteous?’1
What a blow to our ideal of that magnified
and non-natural man, ‘ the moral and in
telligent Governor’ ! Say what we can
about God, say our best, we have yet,
Israel knew, to add instantly : ‘ Lo, these
are fringes of his ways ; but how little a
portion is heard of him !’2 Yes, indeed,
Israel remembered that, far better than
our bishops do. ‘ Canst thou by search
ing find out God; canst thou find out
the perfection of the Almighty? It is
more high than heaven, what canst thou
do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou
know ? ’3
Will it be said, experience might also
have shown to Israel a not ourselves which
did not make for his happiness, but rather
made against it, baffled his claims to it?
But'no man, as I have elsewhere re
marked,4 who simply follows his own
consciousness, is aware of any claims, any
rights, whatever ; what he gets of good
makes him thankful, what he gets of ill
seems to him natural. His simple spon
taneous feeling is well expressed by that
saying of Izaak Walton: ‘ Every misery
that I miss is a new mercy, and therefore
let us be thankful.’ It is true, the not
ourselves of which we are thankfully con
scious we inevitably speak of and speak to
as a man ; for ‘ man never knows how
anthropomorphic he is.’ And as time
proceeds, imagination and reasoning keep
working upon this substructure, and
build from it a magnified and non-natural
man. Attention is then drawn, afterwards,
to causes outside ourselves which seem to
make for sin and suffering; and then
either these causes have to be reconciled
by some highly ingenious scheme with the
magnified and non-natural man’s power,
or a second magnified and non-natural
man has to be supposed, who pulls the
contrary way to the first. So arise Satan
and his angels. But all this is secondary,
and comes much later. Israel, the founder
of our religion, did not begin with this.
He began with experience. He knew
from thankful experience the not our
1 Job, xxii, 3.
2 Job, xxvi, 14.
8 Job, xi, 7.
4 Culture and Anarchy, p. 192.
selves which makes for righteousness, and
knew how little we know about God
besides.
4.
The language of the Bible, then, is
literary, not scientific language; language
thrown out at an object of consciousness
not fully grasped, which inspired emotion.
Evidently, if the object be one not fully to
be grasped, and one to inspire emotion,
the language of figure and feeling will
satisfy us better about it, will cover more
of what we seek to express, than the
language of literal fact and science. The
language of science about it will be below
what we feel to be the truth.
The question however has risen and
confronts us : what was the scientific
basis of fact for this consciousness ?
When we have once satisfied ourselves
both a? to the tentative, poetic way in
which the Bible-authors used language,
and also as to their having no pretensions
to metaphysics at all, let us, therefore,
when there is this question raised as to
the scientific account of what they had
before their minds, be content with a very
unpretending answer. And in this way
such a phrase as that which I have
formerly used concerning God, and have
been much blamed for using,—the phrase,
namely, that, ‘for science, God is simply
the stream of tendency by which all things
seek to fulfil the law of their being]—may
be allowed, and may even prove useful.
Certainly it is inadequate; certainly it is
a less proper phrase than, for instance :
‘Clouds and darkness are round about
him, righteousness and judgment are the
habitation of his seat.’1 But then it is,
in however humble a degree and with
1 Ps. xcvii, 2. It has been urged that if the
personifying mode of expression is more proper,
it must, also, be more scientifically exact. But
surely it will on reflection appear that this is by
no means so. Wordsworth calls the earth ‘ the
mighty mother of mankind,’ and the geographers
call her ‘ an oblate spheroid ; ’ Wordsworth’s ex
pression is more proper and adequate to convey
what men feel about the earth, but it is not
therefore the more scientifically exact.
�RELIGION GIVEN
however narrow a reach, a scientific defini
tion, which the other is not. 1 he phrase,
‘A personal First Cause, the moral,and
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ has
also, when applied to God, the character,
no doubt, of a scientific definition. But
then it goes far beyond what is admittedly
certain and verifiable, which is what we
mean by scientific. It attempts far too
much. If we want here, as we do want,
to have what is admittedly certain and
verifiable, we must content ourselves with
very little. No one will say, that it is
admittedly certain and verifiable, that
there is a personal first cause, the .moral
and intelligent governor of the universe,
whom we may call God if we will. But
that all things seem to us to have what we
call a law of their being, and to tend to
fulfil it, is certain and admitted ; though
whether we will call this God or not, is a
matter of choice. Suppose, however, we
call it God, we then give the name of
God to a certain admitted reality; this, at
least, is an advantage.
And the notion of our definition does,
in fact, enter into the term God, in men’s
common use of it. To please God, to
serve God, to obey God’s will, means- to
follow a law of things which is found in
conscience, and w’hich is an indication,
irrespective of our arbitrary wish and fancy,
of what we ought to do. There is, then,
a real power which makes for righteous
ness ; and it is the greatest of realities for
us.1 When St. Paul says, that our business
is ‘ to serve the spirit of God,’ ‘ to serve
the living and true God ; ’1 and when
2
Epictetus says: ‘What do I want?—to
acquaint myself with the natural order of
things, and comply with it,’3 they both
1 Prayer, about which so much has often been
said unadvisedly and ill, deals with this reality.
All good and beneficial prayer is in truth, how
ever men may describe it, at bottom nothing else
than an energy of aspiration towards the eternal
not ourselves that makes for righteousness,—of
aspiration towards it, and of co-operation with it.
Nothing, therefore, can be more efficacious, more
right, and more real. •
2 Philippians, iii, 3 (in the r.eadin.g of the
Vatican manuscript) ; I Thessalonians, i, 9. ,
3 t( £ovAojuai; KaTajuaflui'
/cat ravry
Cirtaflai.
29
mean, so far, the same, in that they both
mean we should obey a tendency, which
is not ourselves, but which appears in our
consciousness, by which we and other
things fulfil the real law of our being.
It is true, the not ourselves, by which
things fulfil the real law of their being,
extends a great deal beyond that sphere
where alone we usually think of it. That
is, a man may disserve God, disobey
indications, not of our own making, but
which appear, if we attend, in our con
sciousness—he may disobey, I say, such
indications of the real law of our being,
in other spheres besides the sphere of
conduct. He does disobey them, when
he sings a hymn like : My Jesus to know,
and feel his blood flow—ox, indeed, like
nine-tenths of our hymns—or when he
frames and maintains a blundering and
miserable, constitution of society, as well
as when he commits some plain breach of
the moral law. That is, he may disobey
them in art and science as well as in con
duct. But he attends, and the generality
of men attend, almost solely to the indi
cations of a true law of our being as to
conduct 5 and hardly at all to indications,
though they as really exist, of a true law
of our being on its aesthetic and intelligential side. The reason is, that the
moral side, though not more real, is so
much larger; taking in, as we have said,
at least three-fourths of life. Now, the
indications on this moral side of that
tendency, not of our making, by which
things fulfil the law of their being, we do
very much mean to denote and to sum up
when we speak of the will of God, pleasing
God, serving God. Let us keep firm
footing on this basis of plain fact, narrow
though it may be.
To feel that one is fulfilling in any
way the law of one’s being, that one is
succeeding and hitting the mark, bring’,
as we know, happiness ; to feel this in
regard to so great a thing as conduct,
brings, of course, happiness proportionate
to the thing’s greatness. We have already
had Quintilian’s witness, how right con
duct gives joy. Who could value know
ledge more than Goethe ? but he marks it
as being without question a lesser source
�30
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
of joy than conduct. Conduct he ranks
with health as beyond all compare primary.
‘Nothing, after health and •virtue,1 he
says, ‘can give so much satisfaction as
learning and knowing.’ Nay, and Bishop
Butler, at the view of the happiness from
conduct, breaks free from all that hesi
tancy and depression which so commonly
hangs on his masterly thinking. ‘Selflove, methinks, should be alarmed 1 May
she not pass over greater pleasures than
those she is so wholly taken up with ? ’
And Bishop Wilson, always hitting the
right nail on the head in matters of this
sort, remarks that, ‘ if it were not for the
practical difficulties attending it, virtue
zvould hardly be distinguishable from a kind
of sensuality.1 The practical difficulties
are, indeed, exceeding great. Plain as is
the course and high the prize, we all
find ourselves daily led to say.with the
Imitation-. ‘Would that for one single
day we had lived in this world as we
ought! ’ Yet the course is so evidently
plain, and the prize so high, that the
same Imitation cries out presently : ‘ If a
man would but take notice, what peace
he brings to himself, and what joy to
others, merely by managing himself right!’
And for such happiness, since certainly
we ourselves did not make it, we instinc
tively feel grateful; according to that
remark of one of the wholesomest and
truest of moralists, Barrow : ‘ He is not a
man, who doth not delight to make some
returns thither whence he hath found
great kindness.’
And this sense of
gratitude, again, is itself an addition to
our happiness ! So strong, altogether, is
the witness and sanction happiness gives
to going right in conduct, to fulfilling, so
far as conduct is concerned, the law
indicated to us of our being. Now, there
can be no sanction to compare, for force,
with the strong sanction of happiness, if
it be true what Bishop Butler, who is
here but the mouthpiece of humanity
itself, says so irresistibly : ‘ It is manifest
that nothing can be of consequence to
mankind, or any creature, but happiness.’
But we English are taunted with our
proneness to an unworthy eudaemonism,
and an Anglican bishop may perhaps be
a suspected witness. Let us call, then, a
glorious father of the Catholic Church,
the great Augustine himself. Says St.
Augustine : ‘ Act we must in pursuance of
what .gives us most delight; quod amplius
nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse
est.’
And now let us see how exactly Israel’s
perceptions about God follow and confirm
this simple line, which we have here
reached quite independently. First: ‘ It
is joy to the just to do judgment.’1 Then:
‘It becometh well the just to be thankful.1*
Finally : ‘ A pleasant thing it is to be
thankful.’3 What can be simpler than
this, and at the same time more solid?
But again : ‘ The statutes of the Eternal
rejoice the heart.’4 And then: ‘I will
give thanks unto thee, O Eternal, with
my whole heart; at midnight will I rise
to give thanks unto thee because of thy
righteous judgments I ’5 And lastly : ‘ It
is a good thing to give thanks unto the
Eternal; it is a good thing to sing
praises unto our God 1 ’6 Why, these are
the very same propositions as the pre
ceding, only with a power and depth of
emotion added !
Emotion has been
applied to morality.
God or Eternal'^ here really, at bottom,
nothing but a deeply moved way of saying
‘ the power that makes for conduct or.
righteousness.1 ‘Trust in God1 is, in a
deeply moved way of expression, the trust
in the law of conduct ; ‘ delight in the
Eternal1 is, in a deeply moved way of
expression, the happiness we all feel to
spring from conduct. Attending to con
duct, to judgment, makes the attender
feel that it is joy to do it. Attending to
it more still, makes him feel that it is the
commandment of the Eternal, and that
the joy got from it is joy from fulfilling
the commandment of the Eternal. The
thankfulness for this joy is thankfulness
to the Eternal ; and to the Eternal, again,
is due that further joy which comes from
this thankfulness.
‘ The fear of the
Eternal, that is wisdom; and to depart
1 Prov., xxi, 15.
2 Ps. xxxiii, I.
8 Ps. cxlvii, 1.
4 Ps. xix, 8.
8 Ps. cxxxviii, I ; cxix, 62.
6 Ps. xcii, 1 ; cxlvii, 1.
�RELIGION GIVEN
from evil, that is understanding.’1 ‘ The
fear of the Eternal' and ‘ To depart from
evil' here mean, and are put to mean, and
by the very laws of Hebrew composition
which make the second phrase in a
parallelism repeat the first in other words,
they must mean, just the same thing.
Yet, what man of soul, after he had once
risen to feel that to depart from evil was
to walk in awful observance of an endur
ing clue, within us and without us, which
leads to happiness, but would prefer to
say, instead of ‘ to depart from evil,’ ‘ the
fear of the Eternal ’ ?
Henceforth, then, Israel transferred to
this Eternal all his obligations. Instead
of saying: ‘ Whoso keepeth the com
mandment keepeth his own soul,’2 he
• rather said, ‘ My soul, wait thou only
upon God, for of him cometh my salva
tion ! ’ 3 Instead of saying : ‘ Bind them
(the laws of righteousness) continually
upon thine heart, and tie them about thy
neck!’4 he rather said, ‘Have I not
remembered Thee on my bed, and
thought upon Thee when I was waking?’5
The obligation of a grateful and devout
self-surrender to the Eternal replaced all
sense of obligation to one’s own better
self, one’s own permanent interest. The
moralist’s rule : ‘ Take thought for your
permanent, not your momentary, well
being,’ became now: ‘ Honour the Eternal,
not doing thine own ways, nor finding
thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own
words.’6 That is, with Israel religion
replaced morality.
It is true, out of the humble yet divine
ground of attention to conduct, of care for
what in conduct is right and good, grew
morality and religion both; but, from the
time when the soul felt the motive of
religion, it dropped and could not but
drop the other. And the motive of doing
right, to a sincere soul, is now really no
longer his own welfare, but to please God;
and it bewilders his consciousness if you
tell him that he does right out of self-love.
So that, as we have said that the first man
who, as ‘a being of a large discourse,
1 Job, xxviii, 28.
s Ps. lxii, 5, 1.
4 Ps. lxiii, 7.
2 Prov., xix, 16.
4 Prov., vi, 2.
6 Is. lviii, 13.
3i
looking before and after,’ controlled the
blind momentary impulses of the instinct
of self-preservation, and controlled the
blind momentary impulses of the sexual
instinct, had morality revealed to him ; so
in like manner we may say, that the first
man who was thrilled with gratitude,
devotion, and awe, at the sense of joy and
peace, not of his own making, which
followed the exercise of this self-control,
had religion revealed to him. And, for
us at least, this man was Israel.
Now here, as we have already pointed
out the falseness of the common antithesis
between ethical and religious, let us an
ticipate the objection that the religion
here spoken of is but natural religion, by
pointing out the falseness of the common
antithesis, also, between natural and
revealed. For that in us which is really
natural is, in truth, revealed. We awake
to the consciousness of it, we are aware
of it coming forth in our mind; but we
feel that we did not make it, that it is dis
covered to us, that it is what it is whether
we will or no. If we are little concerned
about it, we say it is natural; if much,
we say it is revealed. But the difference
between the two is not one of kind, only
of degree. The real antithesis, to natural
and revealed alike, is invented, artificial.
Religion springing out of an experience
of the power, the grandeur, the necessity
of righteousness, is revealed religion,
whether we find it in Sophocles or in
Isaiah. ‘The will of mortal men did not
beget it, neither shall oblivion ever put it
to sleep.’ A system of theological notions
about personality, essence, existence, consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and is
the proper opposite to revealed; since it
is a religion which comes forth in no one’s
consciousness, but is invented by theo
logians—able men with uncommon talents
for abstruse reasoning. This religion is
in no sense revealed, just because it is in
no sense natural. And revealed religion
is properly so named, just in propor
tion as it is in a pre-eminent degree
natural.
The religion of the Bible, therefore,
is well said to be revealed, because the
great natural truth, that ‘ righteousness
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
33
tendeth to life'1 is seized and exhibited
there with such incomparable force and
efficacy. All, or very nearly all, the nations
of mankind have recognised the import
ance of conduct, and have attributed to
it a natural obligation. They, however,
looked at conduct, not as something full
of happiness and joy, but as something
one could not manage to do without.
But : ‘ Sion heard of it and rejoiced, and
the daughters of Judah were glad, because
of thy judgments, O Eternal ! ’ 2 Happi
ness is our being’s end and aim, and no one
has ever come near Israel in feeling, and
in making others feel, that to righteousness
belongs happiness ! The prodigies and
the marvellous of Bible-religion are com
mon . to it with all religions ; the love
of righteousness, in this eminency, is its
own.
5The real germ of religious conscious
ness, therefore, out of which sprang Israel’s
name for God, to which the records of his
history adapted themselves, and which
came to be clothed upon, in time, with a
mighty growth of poetry and tradition,
was a consciousness of the not ourselves
which makes for righteousness. And the
way to convince oneself of this is by
studying the Bible with a fair mind, and
with the tact which letters, surely, alone
can give. For the thing turns upon under
standing the manner in which men have
thought, their way of using words, and
what they mean by them. And by know
ing letters, by becoming conversant with
the best that has been thought and said
in the world, we become acquainted not
only with the history, but also with the
scope and powers, of the instruments
which men employ in thinking and speak
ing. And this is just what is sought for.
And with the sort of experience thus
gained of the history of the human spirit,
objections, as we have said, will be found
not so much to be refuted by reasoning
as to fall away of themselves. It is
objected : ‘ Why, if the Hebrews of the
1 Prov., xi, 19.
2 Ps. xcvii, 8.
Bible had thus eminently the sense for
righteousness, does it not equally dis
tinguish the Jews now?’ But does not
experience show us, how entirely a change
of circumstances may change a people’s
character; and have the modern Jews lost
more of what distinguished their ancestors,
or even so much, as the modern Greeks
of what distinguished theirs? Where
is now, among the Greeks, the dignity of
life of Pericles, the dignity of thought and
of art of Phidias and Plato ? It is objected
that the Jews’ God was not the enduring
power that makes for righteousness, but
only their tribal God, who gave them the
victory in the battle and plagued them
that hated them. But how, then, comes
their literature to be full of such things
as : ‘ Show me thy ways, O Eternal, and
teach me thy paths; let integrity and
uprightness preserve me, for I put my
trust in thee ! if I incline unto wickedness
with my heart, the Eternal will not hear
me.’1 From the sense that with men
thus guided and going right in goodness
it could not but be well, that their leaf
could not wither and that whatsoever they
did must prosper,2 would naturally come
the sense that in their wars with an
enemy the enemy should be put to con
fusion and they should triumph. But
how, out of the mere sense that their
enemy should be put to confusion and
they should triumph, could the desire for
goodness come ?
It is objected, again, that their ‘ law
of the Lord ’ was a positive traditionary
code to the Hebrews, standing as a
mechanical rule which held them in awe;
that their ‘fear of the Lord’ was super
stitious dread of an assumed magnified
and non-natural man. But why, then,
are they always saying ‘ Teach me thy
statutes, Teach me thy way, Show thou
me the way that I shall walk in, Open
mine eyes, Make me to understand wisdom
secretly !’3 if all the law they were think
ing of stood, stark and written, before
their eyes already ? And what could they
mean by : ‘ I will love thee, O Eternal,
1 Ps. xxv, 4, 21 ; lxvi, 18.
2 Ps. i, 3.
3 Ps. cxix, 12 ; lxxxvi, Il ; cxliii, 8 ; cxix, 18 ;
li, 6.
v
�RELIGION GIVEN
33
rfty strength ! ’1 if the fear they meant the reality and naturalness of that sense
was not the awe-filled observance from Clearly, unless a sense or endowment of
deep attachment, but a servile terror ? It human nature, however in itself real and
is objected, that their conception of beneficent, has some signal representative
righteousness was a narrow and rigid one, among mankind, it tends to be pressed
centring mainly in what they called judg upon by other senses and endowments, to
ment : ‘ Hate the evil and love the good, suffer from its own want of energy, and to
and establish judgment in the gate ! ’2 so be more and more pushed out of sight.
that ‘ evil,’ for them, did not take in all Anyone, for instance, who will go to the
faults whatever of heart and conduct, but Potteries, and will look at the tawdry,
meant chiefly oppression, graspingness, glaring, ill-proportioned ware which is
a violent, mendacious tongue, insolent being made there for certain American
and riotous excess. True; their con and colonial markets, will easily convince
ception of righteousness was much of himself how, in our people and kindred,
this kind, and it was narrow. But who the sense for the arts of design, though
ever sincerely attends to conduct, along it is certainly planted in human nature,
however limited a line, is on his way to might dwindle and sink to almost nothing,
bring under the eye of conscience all if it were not for the witness borne to this
conduct whatever; and already, in the sense, and the protest offered against its
Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous extinction, by the brilliant aesthetic endow
inculcation of the social virtues of judg ment and artistic work of ancient Greece.
ment and justice is continually broken And one cannot look out over the world
through by deeper movements of personal without seeing that the same sort of thing
religion. Every time that the words con might very well befall conduct, too, if it were
trition or humility drop from the lips of not for the signal witness borne by Israel.
Then there is the practical force of their
prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears.
It is objected, finally, that even their example ; and this is even more important.
own narrow conception of righteousness Everyone is aware how those, who want
this people could not follow, but were to cultivate any sense or endowment in
perpetually oppressive, grasping, slander themselves, must be habitually conversant
ous, sensual. Why, the very interest and with the works of people who have been
importance of their witness to righteous eminent for that sense, must study them,
ness lies in their having felt so deeply the catch inspiration from them. Only in this
necessity of what they were so little able way, indeed, can progress be made. And
to accomplish ! They had the strongest as long as the world lasts, all who want to
impulses in the world to violence and make progress in righteousness will come
excess, the keenest pleasure in gratifying to Israel for inspiration, as to the people
these impulses. And yet they had such who have had the sense for righteousness
a sense of the natural necessary connexion most glowing and strongest ; and in hear
between conduct and happiness, that they ing and reading the words Israel has
kept always saying, in spite of themselves : uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a
To him that ordereth his conversation right glow and a force they could find nowhere
else. As well imagine a man with a sense
shall be shown the salvation of God!3
Now manifestly this sense of theirs has for sculpture not cultivating it by the help
a double force for the rest of mankind,— of the remains of Greek art, or a man with
an evidential force and a practical force. a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the
Its evidential force is in keeping before help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man
men’s view, by the example of the signal with a sense for conduct not cultivating
apparition, in one branch of our race, of it by the help of the Bible 1 And this
the sense for conduct and righteousness, sense, in the satisfying of which we come
naturally to the Bible, is a sense which
the generality of men have far more
1 Ps. xviii, I.
4 Amos, v, 15.
decidedly than they have the sense for
3 Ps. 1, 23.
c
�34
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
art or for science. At any rate, whether
this or that man has it decidedly or not,
it is the sense which has to do with threefourths of human life.
This does truly constitute for Israel a
most extraordinary distinction. In spite
of all which in them and in their character
is unattractive, nay, repellent,—in spite of
their shortcomings even in righteousness
itself and their insignificance in everything
else,—this petty, unsuccessful, unamiable
people, without politics, without science,
without art, without charm, deserve their
great place in the world’s regard, and are
likely to have it more, as the -world goes
on, rather than less. It is secured to
them by the facts of human nature, and
by the unalterable constitution of things.
‘ God hath given commandment to bless,
and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse
it ; he hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and
he hath not seen perverseness in Israel;
the Eternal, his God, is with him ! ’1
Anyone does a good deed who removes
stumbling blocks out of the way of our
feeling and profiting by the witness left
by this people. And so, instead of making
our Hebrew speakers mean, in their use
of the word God, a scientific affirmation
which never entered into their heads, and
about which many will dispute, let us
content ourselves with making them
mean, as a matter of scientific fact and
experience, what they really did mean as
such, and what is unchallengeable. Let
us put into their ‘ Eternal ’ and ‘ God ’ no
more science than they did :—the enduring
power, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness. They meant more by these
names, but they meant this; and this they
grasped fully. And the sense which this
will give us for their words is at least
solid ; so that we may find it of use as a
guide to steady us, and to give us a
constant clue in following what they say.
And is it so unworthy? It is true,
unless we can fill it with as much feeling
as they did, the mere possessing it will
not carry us far. But matters are not at
all mended by taking their language of
approximate figure and turning it into
the language of scientific definition ; or
by crediting them with our own dubious
science, deduced from metaphysical ideas
which ‘they never had. A better way than
this, surely, is to take their fact of experi
ence, to keep it steadily for our basis in
using their language, and to see whether
from using their language with the ground
of this real and firm sense to it, as they
themselves did, somewhat of their feeling,
too, may not grow upon us. At least we
shall know what we are saying ; and that
what we are saying is true, however in
adequate.
But is this confessed inadequateness of
our speech, concerning that which we will
not call by the negative name of the
unknown and unknowable, but rather by
the name of the unexplored and inex
pressible, and of which the Hebrews
themselves said : It is more high than
heaven, what canst thou dot deeper than
hell, what canst thou knowT—is this
reservedness of affirmation about God
less worthy of him, than the astounding
particularity and licence of affirmation of
our dogmatists, as if he were, a man in
the next street ? Nay, and nearly all the
difficulties which torment theology,—as
the reconciling God’s justice with his
mercy and so on,—come from this licence
and particularity ; theologians having pre
cisely, as it would often seem, built up a
wall first, in order afterwards to run their
own heads against it.
This, we say, is what comes of too
much talent for abstract reasoning. One
cannot help seeing the theory of causation
and such things, when one should only
see a far simpler matter : the power, the
grandeur, the necessity of righteousness.
To be sure, a perception of these is at
the bottom of popular religion, under
neath all the extravagances theologians
have taught people to utter, and makes
the whole value of it. For the sake of
this true practical perception one might
be quite content to leave at rest a matter
where practice, after all, is everything,
and theory nothing. Only, when religion
is called in question because of the ex-
1 Numbers, xxiii, 20, 21.
1 Job, xi, 7.
�ABERGLAUBE INVADING
travagances of theology being passed off
as religion, one disengages and helps
religion by showing their utter delusive
ness. They arose out of the talents of
able men for reasoning, and their want
(not through lack of talent, for the thing
needs none: it needs only time, trouble,
good fortune, and a fair mind; but
through their being taken up with their
reasoning power), their want of literary
experience. By a sad mishap for them,
35
the sphere where they show their talents
is one for literary experience rather than
for reasoning. This mishap has at the
very outset,—in the dealings of theologians
with that starting-point in our religion,
the experience of Israel as set forth in the
O d Testament,—been the cause, we have
seen, of great confusion. Naturally, as
we shall hereafter see, the confusion
becomes worse confounded as they pro
ceed.
CHAPTER II
ABERGLAUBE INVADING
When people ask for our attention be plain, solid, and experimental sense they
cause of what has passed, they say, ‘in attached to them at bottom; and in
the Council of the Trinity,’ and been pro attaching it they were on sure ground of
mulgated, for our direction, by ‘a Personal fact, where we can all go with them.
First Cause, the moral and intelligent Their words, we shall find, taken in this
Governor of the universe,’ it is certainly sense, have quite a new force for us, and
open to any man to refuse to hear them, an indisputable one. It is worth while
on the plea that the very thing they start accustoming ourselves to use them thus,
with they have no means of proving. in order to bring out this force and to see
And we see that many do so refuse their how real it is, limited though it be, and
attention; and that the breach there is, insignificant as it may appear. The very
for instance, between popular religion and substitution of the word Eternal for the
what is called science, comes from this word Lord is something gained in this
cause. But it is altogether different when direction. The word Eternal has less of
people ask for our attention on the particularity and palpability for the imagi
strength of this other first principle : ‘To nation, but what it does affirm is some
righteousness belongs happiness;’ or this: thing real and verifiable.
Let us fix firmly in our minds, with this
‘ There is an enduring power, not our
selves, which makes for righteousness.’ limited but real sense to the words we
The more we meditate on this starting employ, the connexion of ideas which was
ground of theirs, the more we shall find ever present to the spirit of the Hebrew
that there is solidity in it, and the more people. In the way of righteousness is life,
we shall be inclined to go along with and in the pathway thereof is no death ;
as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that
them and to see what will come of it.
And herein is the advantage of giving pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death;
this plain, though restricted, sense to the as the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked
Bible-phrases : ‘ Blessed is the man that no more, but the righteous is an everlasting
feareth the Eternal!’and : ‘Whoso trusteth foundation;—here is the ground idea.1
in the Eternal, happy is he ! ’1 By tradi Yet there are continual momentary sug
tion, emotion, imagination, the Hebrews, gestions which make for gratifying our
no doubt, came to attach more than this apparent self, for unrighteousness ; never
plain sense to these phrases. But this theless, what makes for our real self, for
1 Ps. cxii, I; Prov., xvi, 20.
1 Prov., xii, 28 ; xi, 19 ; x, 25.
C 2
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
righteousness, is lasting, and holds good
in the end. Therefore : Twist in the
Eternal with all thine heart, and lean not
unto thine own understanding ; there is no
wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel
against the Eternal; there is a way that
seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death; there are many
devices in a man's heart, nevertheless, the
counsel of the Eternal, that shall standi
To follow this counsel of the Eternal is
the only true wisdom and understanding.
The fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom,
and to depart from evil, that is understand
ing? It is also happiness. Blessed is
everyone that feareth the Eternal, that
walketh in his ways; happy shall he be,
and it shall be well with him ! 3 O taste
and see how gracious the Eternal is 1
blessed is the man that trusteth in him?
Blessed is the man whose delight is in the
law of the Eternal; his leaf shall not
wither, and whatsoever he doeth, it shall
prosper? And the more a man walks in
this way of righteousness, the more he
feels himself borne by a power not his
own : Not by might and not by power, but
by my spirit, saith the Eternal? O
Eternal, I know that the way of man is
not in himself! all things come of thee ; in
thy light do we see light; man's goings are
of the Eternal; the Eternal ordereth a
good man's going, and maketh his way
acceptable to himself.1 But man feels, too,
how far he always is from fulfilling or
even from fully perceiving this true law of
his being, these indications of the Eternal,
the way of righteousness. He says, and
must say: I am a stranger upon earth,
Oh, hide not thy commandments from me!
Enter not into judgment with thy servant,
O Eternal, for in thy sight shall no man
living be justified!3 Nevertheless, as a
man holds on to practice as well as he
can, and avoids, at any rate, ‘presump
tuous sins,’ courses he can clearly see to1
3
2
1 Prov., iii, 5 ; xxi, 30; xiv, 12; xix, 21.
2 Job, xxviii, 28.
3 Ps. cxxviii, 1.
4 Ps. xxxiv, 8.
5 Ps. i, 1, 2, 3.
6 Zechariah, iv, 6.
2 Jeremiah, x, 23 ; I Chronicles, xxix, 14; Ps.
Xxxvi, 9 ; Prov., xx, 24 ; Ps. xxxvii, 23.
8
cxix, 89; exliii, 2.
be wrong, films fall away from his eyes,
the indications of the Eternal come out
more and more fully, we are cleansed
from faults which were hitherto secret to
us. Examine me, O God, and prove me,
try out my reins and my heart; look well
if there be any way of wickedness in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!1 O
cleanse thou me from my secretfaults ! thou
hast proved my heart, thou hast visited me
in the night, thou hast tried me and shalt
find nothing? And the more we thus get
to keep innocency, the more we wonder
fully find joy and peace. O how plentiful
is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for
them that far thee! thou shalt hide them
in the secret of thy presence from the pro
voking of men? Thou wilt show me the
path of life, in thy presence is the fulness of
joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures
for evermore? More and more this dwell
ing oruthejoyand peace from righteous
ness, and on the power which makes for
righteousness, becomes a man’s consola
tion and refuge. Thou art my hiding
place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble ;
if my delight had not been in thy law, 1
should have perished in my trouble? In
the day of my trouble I sought the Eternal;
a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the
heat!3 O lead me to the rock that is
higher than I! 7 The name of the Eternal
is as a strong tower, the righteous runneth
into it and is safe? And the more we
experience this shelter, the more we come
to feel that it is protecting even to tender
ness. Like as a father pitieth his own
children, even so is the Eternal merciful
unto them that fear him? Nay, every
other support, we at last find, every other
attachment may fail us ; this alone fails
not. Can a woman forget her sucking
child, that she should not have compassion
on the son of her womb I Yea, they may
forget, yet will I not forget thee ! 10
All this, we say, rests originally upon
1 Ps.
2 Ps.
8 Ps.
5 Ps.
e Ps.
’ Ps.
8 Ps.
xix, 13 ; cxxxix, 23, 24.
xix, 12 ; xvii, 3.
xxxi, 19, 20.
4 Ps. xvi, II.
xxxii, 7 ; cxix, 92.
lxxvii, 2 ; Is., xxv, 4.
lxi, 2.
8 Prov., xviii, IO.
ciii, 13.
” Is., x'.ix, 15,
�ABERGLAUBE INVADING
*•
the simple but solid experience : ‘ Con
duct brings happiness] or, ‘ Righteousness
tendeth to life]1 And, by making it
again rest there, we bring out in a new
but most real and sure way its truth and
its power.
For it has not always continued to rest
there, and in popular religion now, as we
manifestly see, it rests there no longer.
It is important to follow the way in which
this change gradually happened, and the
thing ceased to rest there. Israel’s original
perception was true : Righteousness tendeth
to life! 2 It was true, that the workers*of
righteousness have a covenant with the
Eternal, that their work shall be blessed
and blessing, and shall endure for ever.
But what apparent contradictions was this
true original perception destined to meet
with I What vast delays, at any rate,
were to be interposed before its truth
could become manifest! And how in
structively the successive documents of
the Bible, which popular religion treats as
if it were all of one piece, one time, and
one mind, bring out the effect on Israel
of these delays and contradictions I What
a distance between the eighteenth Psalm
and the eighty-ninth ; between the Book
of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes!
A time some thousand years before Christ,
the golden age of Israel, is the date to
which the eighteenth Psalm and the chief
part of the Book of Proverbs belong.
This is the time in which the sense of the
necessary connexion between righteous
ness and happiness appears with its full
simplicity and force. The ughteous shall
be recompensed in the earth, much more the
wicked and the sinner! is the constant
burden of the Book of Proverbs ; the evil
bow before the good, and the wicked at the
gates of the righteous !3 And David, in
the eighteenth Psalm, expresses his con
viction of the intimate dependence of
happiness upon conduct, in terms which,
though they are not without a certain
crudity, are yet far more edifying in their
truth and naturalness than those morbid
sentimentalities of Protestantism about
1 Prov., xi, 19.
2 Prov., xi, 19.
• Prov., xi. 31 ; Pr;v., xiv, 19.
37
man’s natural vileness and Christ’s imputed
righteousness, to which they are dia
metrically opposed. ‘ I have kept the
ways of the Eternal,’ he says; ‘ I wa|
also upright before him, and I kept my
self from mine iniquity ; therefore hath
the Eternal rewarded me according to
my righteousness, according to the clean
ness of my hands hath he recompensed
me; great prosperity showreth he unto his
king, and showeth lovingkindness unto
David his anointed, and unto his seed for
evermore.’ That may be called a classic
passage for the covenant Israel always
thinks and speaks of as made by God
with his servant David, Israel’s second
founder. And this covenant was but a re
newal of the covenant made with Israel’s
first founder, God’s servant Abraham,
that ‘ righteousness shall inherit a blessing]
and that ‘ in thy seed all nations of the
earth shall be blessed] 1
But what a change in the eighty-ninth
Psalm, a few hundred years later ! ‘ Eter
nal, where are thy former lovingkindnesses
which thou swarest unto David ? thou
hast abhorred and forsaken thine an
ointed, thou hast made void the cove
nant ; O remember how short my time
is ! ’2 ‘ The righteous shall be recompensed
in the earth ! the speaker means ; ‘ my
death is near, and death ends all; where,
Eternal, is thy promise ? ’
Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward
travail to which, in the six hundred years
that followed the age of David and Solo
mon, the many and rude shocks befalling
Israel’s fundamental idea, Righteousness
tendeth to life and he that pursueth evil
pursueth it to his own death, gave occasion.
‘ Wherefore do the wicked live,’ asks Job,
‘become old, yea, are mighty in power?
their houses are safe from fear, neither is
the rod of God upon them.’3 Job him
self is righteous, and yet: ‘ On mine eye
lids is the shadow of death, not for any
injustice in mine hands.’4 All through
the Book of Job the question, how this
can be, is over and over again asked and
never answered ; inadequate solutions are
1 I Peter, iii, 9; Genesis, xxvi, 4.
2 Ps. lxxxix, 49, 38, 39, 47.
* Job, xxi, 7, 9.
4 Job, xvi, i6, 17.
�38
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
offered and repelled, but an adequate
solution is never reached. The only
solution reached is that of silence before
the insoluble : ‘ I will lay mine hand upon
my mouth.’1
The two perceptions,
Righteousness tendeth to life, and, ‘ The
ungodly prosper in the world] are left
confronting one another like Kantian
antinomies.1 ‘ The earth is given unto the
2
hand of the wicked ! ’ and yet: ‘ The coun
sel of the wicked is far from me ; God
rewardeth him and he shall know it! ’ 3
And this last, the original perception,
remains indestructible. The Book of
Ecclesiastes has been called sceptical,
epicurean; it is certainly without the
glow and hope which animate the Bible
in general. It belongs, probably, to the
fourth century before Christ, to the latter
and worse days of the Persian rule ; with
difficulties pressing the Jewish community
on all sides, with a Persian governor lord
ing it in Jerusalem, with resources light
and taxes heavy, with the cancer of
poverty eating into the mass of the people,
with the rich estranged from the poor and
from the national traditions, with the
priesthood slack, insincere and worthless.
Composed under such circumstances, the
book has been said, and with justice, to
breathe resignation at the grave of Israel.
Its author sees ‘the tears of the oppressed,
and they had no comforter, and on the
side of their oppressors there was power;
wherefore I praised the dead which are
already dead more than the living which
are yet alive.’4 He sees ‘ all things come
alike to all, there is one event to the
righteous and to the wicked.’5 Attempts
at a philosophic indifference appear, at a
sceptical suspension of judgment, at an
easy ne quid nimis : ‘Be not righteous
overmuch, neither make thyself overwise !
why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’6
Vain attempts, even at a moment which
favoured them ! shows of scepticism, van
ishing as soon as uttered before the in
tractable conscientiousness of Israel 1 For
1 Job, xl, 4.
2 Prov., xi, 19; Ps. Ixxiii, 12.
8 Job, ix, 24 ; xxi, 16, 19.
4 'Eccles., iv, I, 2.
8 Eccles., ix, 2.
6 Eccles., vii, 16.
the Preacher makes answer against him
self : ‘ Though a sinner do evil a hundred
times and his days be prolonged, yet
surely I know that it shall be well with
them that fear God; but it shall not be
well with the wicked, because he feareth
not before God.’1
_ Malachi, probably almost contemporary
with the Preacher, felt the pressure of
the same circumstances, had the same
occasions of despondency. All around
him people were saying : ‘ Everyone
that doeth evil is good in the sight of
the Eternal, and he delighteth in them ;
w’here is the God of judgment? it is vain
to serve God, and what profit is it that we
have kept his ordinance?’2 What a
change from the clear certitude of the
golden age : ‘As the whirlwind passeth, so
is the wicked no more ; but the righteous
is an everlasting foundation 1 ’3 But yet,
wi.th all the certitude of this happier past,
Malachi answers on behalf of the Eternal:
‘Unto you that fear my name shall the
sun of righteousness arise with healing in
his wings I’4
Many there were, no doubt, who had
lost all living sense that the promises w’ere
made to righteousness; wrho took them
mechanically, as made to them andassured
to them because they were the seed of Abra
ham, because they were, in St. Paul’s words:
‘Israelites, to whom pertain the adop
tion and the glory and the covenants and
the giving of the law and the service of
God, and whose are the fathers.’5 These
people were perplexed and indignant when
the privileged seed became unprosperous;
and they looked for some great change to
be wrought in the fallen fortunes of Israel,
wrought miraculously and materially. And
these were, no doubt, the great majority ;
and of the mass of Jewish expectation
concerning the future they stamped the
character. With them, however, our in
terest does not so much lie ; it lies rather
with the prophets and those whom the
prophets represent. It lies with the con
tinued depositaries of the original revela1 Eccles., viii, 12, 13.
2 Malachi, ii, 17 ; iii, 14.
8 Prov., x, 25.
4 Malachi, iv, 2.
* Roni., ix, 4, 5.
�ABERGLA UBE INVADING
tion to Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life-,
who saw clearly.enough that the promises
were to righteousness, and that what tend
eth to life was not the seed of Abraham
taken in itself, but righteousness. With
this minority, and with its noble repre
sentatives the prophets, our present inter
est lies ; the further development of their
conviction about righteousness is what it
here imports us to trace. An indestructi
ble faith that the righteous is an everlasting
foundation they had : yet they too, as we
have seen, could not but notice, as time
went on, many things which seemed ap
parently to contradict this their belief. In
private life, there was the frequent pro
sperity of the sinner. In the life of nations
there was the rise and power of the great
unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen,
the unsuccessfulness of Israel ; although
Israel was undoubtedly, as compared with
the heathen, the depositary and upholder
.of the idea of righteousness. Therefore
prophets and righteous men also, like the
unspiritual crowd, could not but look
ardently and expectantly to the future, to
some great change and redress in store.
At the same time, although their ex
perience that the righteous were often
afflicted, and the wicked often pro
sperous, could not but perplex pious
Hebrews ; although their conscience felt,
and could not but feel, that, compared
with the other nations with whom they
came in contact, they themselves and
their fathers had a concern for righteous
ness, and an unremitting sense of its
necessity, which put them in covenant
with the Eternal who makes for righteous
ness, and which rendered the triumph of
other nations over them a triumph of
people who cared little for righteousness
over people who cared for it much, and a
cause of perplexity, therefore, to men’s
trust in the Eternal,—though their con
science told them this, yet of their own
shortcomings and perversities it told
them louder still, and that their sins had
in truth been enough to break their cove
nant with the Eternal a thousand times
over, and to bring justly upon them all
the miseries which they suffered. To
enable them to meet the terrible day,
39
when the Eternal would avenge him -of
his enemies and make up his jewels, they
themselves needed, they knew, the voice
of a second Elijah, a change of the inner
man, repentance.1
2.
And then, with Malachi’s testimony
on its lips to the truth of Israel’s ruling
idea, Righteousness tendeth to life! died
prophecy. Through some four hundred
years the mind of Israel revolved those
wonderful utterances, which, even now,
on the ear of even those who only half
understand them and who do not at all
believe them, strike with such strange,
incomparable power—the promises of
prophecy. Through four hundred years,
amid distress and humiliation, the Hebrew
race pondered those magnificent assur
ances that ‘ the Eternals arm is not
shortened,' that ‘ righteousness shall be for
ever] 2 and that the future would prove
this, even if the present did not. ‘The
Eternal fainteth not, neither is weary ; he
giveth power to the faint.3 They that
wait on the Eternal shall renew their
strength ; the redeemed of the Eternal
shall return and come with singing to
Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon
their head; they shall repair the old
wastes, the desolations of many genera
tions; and I, the Eternal, will make an
everlasting covenant with them.4 The
Eternal shall be thine everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended; the Gentiles shall come to thy
light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising, and my salvation shall be for
ever, and my righteousness shall not be
abolished.’5
The prophets themselves, speaking
when the ruin of their country was im-j
pending, or soon after it had happened/
had for the most part had in prospect the
actual restoration of Jerusalem, the sub-j
1 Mai., iii, 17 ; iv, 5.
2 Is., lix, I; li, 8.
3 Is., xl, 28, 29.
4 Is., xl, 31; xxxv, 10; lxi, 4, 8.
6 Is., lx, 20, 3 ; li, 6.
�40
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
mission of the nations around, and the
empire of David and Solomon renewed.
But as time went on, and Israel’s return
from captivity and resettlement of Jeru
salem by no means answered his glowing
anticipations from them, these anticipa
tions had more and more a construction
put upon them which set at defiance the
unworthiness and infelicities of the actual
present, which filled up what prophecy
left in outline, and which embraced the
world. The Hebrew Amos, of the eighth
century before Christ, promises to his
hearers a recovery from their ruin in
which they shall possess the remnant of
Edom ; the Greek or Aramaic Amos of
the Christian era, whose words St. James
produces in the conference at Jerusalem,
promises a recovery for Israel in which
the residue of men shall seek the Eternal.1
This is but a specimen of what went
forward on a large scale. The redeemer,
whom the unknown prophet of the captivity
foretold to -Zion,2 has, a few hundred
years later, for the writer whom we call
Daniel and for his contemporaries, be
come the miraculous agent of Israel’s new
restoration, the heaven-sent executor of
the Eternal’s judgment, and the bringerin of the kingdom of righteousness—the
Messiah, in short, of our popular religion.
‘ One like the Son of Man came with the
clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient
of Days, and there was given him do
minion and glory, and a kingdom, that
all people, nations, and languages should
serve him; and the kingdom and do
minion shall be given to the people of the
saints of the Most High.’3 An impar
tial criticism will hardly find in the
Old Testament writers before the times of
the Maccabees (and certainly not in the
passages usually quoted to prove it) the
set doctrine of the immortality of the soul
or of the resurrection of the dead. But
by the time of the Maccabees, when this
passage of the Book of Daniel was written,
in the second century before Christ, the
Jews have undoubtedly become familiar,
not indeed with the idea of the immortality
1 Am., ix, 12; Acts, xv. ’72 Is., lix, 20.
’ Paq., yii, 13, 14, 27.
of the soul as philosophers like Plato con
ceived it, but with the rjotion of a resur
rection of the dead to take their trial
for acceptance or rejection in the Most
High’s judgment and kingdom.
To this, then, has swelled Israel’s
original and fruitful thesis :—Righteous
ness tendeth to life! as the whirlwind
passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the
righteous is an everlasting foundation ! 1
The phantasmagories of more prodigal
and wild imaginations have mingled with
the product of Israel’s own austere spirit;
Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even Greece, have
left their trace there; but the unchange
able substructure remains, and on that
substructure is everything built which
comes after.
In one sense, the lofty Messianic idea
of ‘ the great and notable day of the
Eternal,’ ‘ the consolation of Israel,’
‘ the restitution of all things,’ 2 are
even more important than the solid
but humbler idea, righteousness tend
eth to life, out of which they arose.
In another sense they are much less
important. They are more important,
because they are the development of this
idea and prove its strength. It might
have been crushed and baffled by the
falsification events seemed to delight in
giving it; that instead of being crushed
and baffled, it took this magnificent flight,
shows its innate power. And they also in
a wonderful manner attract emotion to the
ideas of conduct and morality, attract it
to them and combine it with them. On
the other hand, the idea that righteousness
tendeth to life has a firm, experimental
ground, which the Messianic ideas have
not. And the day comes when the pos
session of such a ground is invaluable.
That the spirit of man should entertain
hopes and anticipations, beyond what it
actually knows and can verify, is quite
natural. Human life could not have the
scope, and depth, and progress it has,
were this otherwise. It is natural, too, to
make these hopes and anticipations give
in their turn support to the simple and
* Prov., xi, 19 ; x, 25.
2 Acts, ii, 2Q 5 Lqke, ji, 25; Acts, iii,
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
humble experience which was their original
ground. Israel, therefore, who originally
followed righteousness because he felt that
it tended to life, might and did naturally
come at last to follow it because it would
enable him to stand before the Son of
Man at his coming, and to share in the
triumph of the saints of the Most High.
But this latter belief has not the same
character as the belief which it is thus
set to confirm. It is a kind of fairy-tale,
which a man tells himself, which no one,
we grant, can prove impossible to turn out
true, but which no one also can prove
certain to turn out true. It is exactly
what is expressed by the German word
‘ Aberglaube,’ extra-belief, belief beyond
what is certain and verifiable. Our word
‘superstition’ had by its derivation this
same meaning, but it has come to be used
4i
in a merely bad sense, and to mean a
childish and craven religiosity. With the
German word it is not so; therefore
Goethe can say with propriety and truth :
‘ Aberglaube is the poetry of life—der
Aberglaube ist die Poesie des lebensl It is
so. Extra-belief, that which we hope,
augur, imagine, is the poetry of life, and
has the rights of poetry. But it is not
science; and yet it tends always to
imagine itself science, to substitute itself
for science, to make itself the ground of
the very science out of which it has
grown. The Messianic ideas, which were
the poetry of life to Israel in the age
when Jesus Christ came, did this ; and it
is the more important to mark that they
did it, because similar ideas have so
signally done the same thing with popular
Christianity.
CHAPTER III
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
Jesus Christ was undoubtedly the very
last sort of Messiah that the Jews expected.
Christian theologians say confidently that
the characters of humility, obscureness,
and depression, were commonly attributed
to the Jewish Messiah ; and even Bishop
Butler, in general the most severely exact
of writers, gives countenance to this error.
What is true is, that we find these
characters attributed to some one by the
prophets ; that we attribute them to Jesus
Christ ; that Jesus is for us the Messiah,
and that Jesus they suit. But for the
prophets themselves, and for the Jews
who heard and read them, these characters
of lowliness and depression belonged to
God’s chastened servant, the idealised
Israel. When Israel had been purged
and renewed by these, the Messiah was
to appear ; but with glory and power for
his attributes, not humility and weakness.
It is impossible to resist acknowledging
this, if we read the Bible to find from it
what really those who wrote it intended
to think and say, and not to put into
it what we wish them to have thought
and said. To find in Jesus the genuine
Jewish Messiah, or to find in him the Son
of Man of Daniel, one coming with the
clouds of heaven and having universal
daminion given him, must certainly, to a
Jew, have been extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the
Old Testament the germ of Christianity.
In developing this germ lay the future of
righteousness itself, of Israel’s primary
and immortal concern ; and the incom
parable greatness of the religion founded
by Jesus Christ comes from his having
developed it. Jesus Christ is not the
Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation
pointed; and yet Christendom with perfect
justice has made him the Messiah, because
he alone took, when his nation was on
another and a false track, a way obscurely
indicated in the Old Testament, and the
�42
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
one only possible and successful way, for
the accomplishment of the Messiah’s
function—to bring in everlasting righteous
ness.1 Let us see how this was so.
Religion in the Old Testament is a
matter of national and social conduct
mainly. First, it consists in devotion to
Israel’s God, the Eternal who loveth right
eousness, and of separation from other
nations whose concern for righteousness
was less fervent than Israel’s—of abhor
rence of their idolatries which were sure
to bewilder and diminish this fervent
concern. Secondly, it consists in doing
justice, hating all wrong, robbery and
oppression, abstaining from insolence,
lying, and slandering. The Jews’ polity,
their theocracy, was of such immense
importance, because religion, when con
ceived as having its existence in these
national and social duties mainly, requires
a polity to put itself forth in ; and the
Jews’ polity was adapted to religion so
conceived. But this religion, as it de
veloped itself, was by no means fully
worthy of the intuition cut of which it
had grown. We have seen how, in its
intuition of God—of that ‘ not ourselves ’
of which all mankind form some concep
tion or other—as the Eternal that makesfor
righteousness, the Hebrew race found the
revelation needed to breathe emotion into
the laws of morality, and to make morality,
religion. This revelation is the capital
fact of the Old Testament, and the source
cf its grandeur and power. But it is
evident that this revelation lost, as time
went on, its nearness and clearness ; and
that for the mass of the Hebrews their
God came to be a mere magnified and
non-natural man, like the God of our
popular religion now, who has commanded
certain courses of conduct and attached
certain sanctions to them.
And though prophets and righteous
men, among the Hebrews, might preserve
always the immediate and truer appre
hension of their God as the Eternal zvho
makes for righteousness, they in vain tried
to communicate this apprehension to the
mass of their countrymen. They had,
1 Dan., ix, 24.
indeed, special difficulty to contend with
in communicating it; and the difficulty
was this. Those courses of conduct
which Israel’s intuition of the Eternal had
originally touched with emotion and made
religion, lay chiefly, we have seen, in the
line of national and social duties. By
reason of the stage of their own growth
and the world’s, at which this revelation
found the Hebrews, the thing could not
well be otherwise. And national and social
duties are peculiarly capable of a mechani
cal exterior performance, in which the
heart has no share. One may observe
rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry, abstain
from murder and theft and false witness,
and yet have one’s inward thoughts bad,
callous and disordered. Then even the
admitted duties themselves come to be
ill-discharged or set at nought, because
the emotion which was the only certain
security for their good discharge is want
ing. The very power of religion, as we have
seen, lies in its bringing emotion to bear
On our rules of conduct, and thus making
us care for them so much, consider them
so deeply and reverentially, that we sur
mount the great practical difficulty of
acting in obedience to them, and follow
them heartily and easily. Therefore the
Israelites, when they lost their primary
intuition and the deep feeling which went
with it, were perpetually idolatrous, per
petually slack or niggardly in the service
of Jehovah, perpetually violators of judg
ment and justice.
The prophets earnestly reminded their
nation of the superiority of judgment and
justice to any exterior ceremony like
sacrifice. But judgment and justice them
selves, as Israel in general conceived them,
have something exterior in them ; now,
what was wanted was more inwardness,
more feeling. This was given by adding
mercy and humbleness to judgment and
justice. Mercy and humbleness are some
thing inward, they are affections of the
heart. And even in the Proverbs these
appear : ‘ The merciful man doeth good
to his own soul; ’ ‘ He that hath mercy
on the poor, happy is he ; ’ ‘ Honour
shall uphold the humble in spirit; ’ ‘ When
• pride cometh, shame cometh, but with
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
43
the lowly is wisdom.’1 And the prophet the development and of the cardinal
Micah asked his nation : ‘ What doth the points of his teaching we shall have to
Eternal require of thee, but to do justly, speak more at length by-and-by; all we
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly have to do here is to pass them in a rapid
with thy God ? ’—adding mercy and preliminary review. Israel had said : ‘ To
humility to the old judgment and justice.1 him that ordereth his conversation right
2
But a farther development is given to shall be shown the salvation of God.’1
humbleness, when the second Isaiah adds And Jesus said : ‘ Except your righteous
contrition to it: ‘ I ’ (the Eternal) ‘ dwell ness exceed the righteousness of the
with him that is of a contrite and humble Scribes and Pharisees,’—that is of the
spirit ; ’3 or when the Psalmist says, very people who then passed for caring
‘ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit-, .most about righteousness and practising
a broken and a conirite heart, O God, it most rigidly,—‘ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven.’2 But
thou wilt not despise ! ’4
This is personal religion ; religion con righteousness had by Jesus Christ’s time
sisting in the inward feeling and disposition lost, in great measure, the mighty impulse
of the individual himself, rather than in which emotion gives; and in losing this,
the performance of outward acts towards had lost also the mighty sanction which
religion or society. It is the essence of happiness gives. ‘The whole head was
Christianity, it is what the Jews needed, sick and the whole heart faint ; ’3 the
it is the line in which their religion was glad and immediate sense of being in the
ripe for development. And it appears right way, in the way of peace, was gone;
in the Old Testament. Still in the Old the sense of being wrong and astray, of
Testament it by no means comes out sin, and of helplessness under sin, was
fully. The leaning, there, is to make oppressive. The thing was, by giving a
religion social rather than personal, an fuller idea of righteousness, to re-apply
affair of outward duties rather than of emotion to it, and by thus re-applying
inward dispositions. Soon after the very emotion, to disperse the feeling of being
words wre have just quoted from him, amiss and helpless, to give the sense of
the second Isaiah adds: ‘ If thou take being right and effective ; to restore, in
away from the midst of thee the yoke, short, to righteousness the sanction of
the putting forth of the finger and speak happiness.
But this could only be done by attend
ing vanity, and if thou draw out thy soul
to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted ing to that inward world of feelings and
soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity dispositions which Judaism had too much
and thy darkness be as the noonday, and neglected. The first need, therefore, for
the Eternal shall guide thee continually Israel at that time, was to make religion
and make fat thy bones.’5 This stands, cease to be mainly a national and social
or at least appears to stand, as a full matter, and become mainly a personal
description of righteousness; and as such, matter. ‘ Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse
first the inside of the cup, that the outside
it is unsatisfying.
may be clean also ! ’4—this was the very
ground-principle in Jesus Christ’s teach
£•
ing. Instead of attending so much to
What was wanted, then, was a fuller your outward acts, attend, he said, first
description of righteousness. Now, it is of all to your inward thoughts, to the state
clear that righteousness, the central ob of your heart and feelings. This doctrine
ject of Israel’s concern, was the central has perhaps been overstrained and mis
object of Jesus Christ’s concern also. Of applied by certain people since; but it
was the lesson which at that timewas above
1 Prov., xi, 17 ; xiv, 21 ; xxix, 23 ; xi, 2.
2 Micah, vi, 8.
3 Is., lvii, 15.
4 Ps. li, 17.
8 Is., Iviii, 9-11.
1 Ps. 1, 23.
8 Is., i, 5.
2 Matth., v, 20.
4 Matth., xxiii, 26.
�44
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
all needed. It is a great progress beyond
even that advanced maxim of pious Jews :
‘To do justice and judgment is more
acceptable than sacrifice.’1 For to do
justice and judgment is still, as we have
remarked, something external, and may
leave the feelings untouched, uncleared,
dead. What was wanted was to plough
up, clear, and quicken the feelings them
selves. And this is what Jesus Christ
did.
‘ My son, give me thy heart!'1 says the
teacher of righteousness in the golden
age of Israel.2 And when Israel had the
Eternal revealed to him, and founded our
religion, he gave his heart. But the time
came when this direct vision ceased, and
Israel’s religion was a mere affair of
tradition, and of doctrines and rules
received from without. Then it might
be truly said of this professed servant of
the Eternal : ‘ This people honour me
with their lips, but have removed their
heart far from me, and their fear toward
me is taught by the precept of men.’3
With little or no power of distinguishing
between what was rule of ceremonial and
what was rule of conduct, they followed
the prescriptions of their religion with a
servile and sullen mind, ‘ precept upon
precept, line upon line, here a little and
there a little,’4 and no end to it all.
What a change since the days when it
was joy to the just to do judgment!5
The prophets saw clearly enough the
evil, nay, they could even point to the
springs which must be touched in order
to work a cure. But they could not press
these springs steadily enough or skilfully
enough to work the cure themselves.
Jesus Christ’s new and different way of
putting things was the secret of his succeed
ing where the prophets failed. And this
new way he had of putting things is what
is indicated by the expression epieikeia,—
an expression best rendered, as I have
elsewhere said,6 by the phrase : ‘ sweet
reasonableness.’ For that which is epieikes
is that which has an air of truth and like1 Prov., xxi, 3.
2 Prov., xxiii, 26.
3 Is., xxix, 13.
4 Is., xxviii, 13.
4 Prov., xxi, 15.
6 St. Paul and Protestantism, preface, p. xix.
Jihood ; and that which has an air of truth
and likelihood is prepossessing. Now,
never were there utterances concerningconduct and righteousness,—Israel’s master
concern, and the master topic of the New
Testament as well as of the Old,—which
so carried with them an air of consummate
truth and likelihood as Jesus Christ’s did ;
and never, therefore, were any utterances
so irresistibly prepossessing. He put
things in such a way that his hearer was
led to take each rule or fact of conduct
by its inward side, its effect on the heart
and character; then the reason of the
thing, the meaning of what had been
mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon
him.
The hearer could distinguish
between what was only ceremony, and
what was conduct-, and the hardest rule
of conduct came to appear to him infinitely
reasonable and natural, and therefore
infinitely prepossessing. A return upon
themselves, and a consequent intuition of
the truth and reason of the matter of
conduct in question, gave to men for
right action the clearness, spirit, energy,
happiness, they had lost.
This power of returning upon them
selves, and seeing by a flash the truth and
reason of things, his disciples learnt of
Jesus. They learnt too, from observing
him and his example, much which, with
out perhaps any conscious process of
being apprehended in its reason, was dis
cerned instinctively to be true and life
giving as soon as it was recommended
in Christ’s words and illustrated by Christ’s
example. Two lessons in particular they
learnt in this way, and added them to the
great lesson of self-examination and appeal
to the inner man, with which they started.
‘ Whoever will come after me, let him
renounce himself and take up his cross
daily and follow me ! he that will save
his life shall lose it, he that will lose his
life shall save it? 1 This was one of the
two. ‘ Learn of me that I am mild and
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls ! ’2 was the other. Jesus made
his followers first look within and examine
themselves ; he made them feel that they
1 Luke, ix, 23, 24.
2 Matth., xi, 29.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
had a best and real self as opposed to
their ordinary and apparent one, and that
their happiness depended on saving this
best self from being overborne. Then to
find his own soul,' his true and permanent
self, became set up in man’s view as his
chief concern, as the secret of happiness ;
and so it really is. ‘ How is a man ad
vantaged if he gain the whole world and
forfeit himself I''1 was the searching ques
tion which Jesus made men ask them
selves. And by recommending, and still
more by himself exemplifying in his own
practice, by showing active in himself,
with the most prepossessing pureness,
clearness, and beauty, the two qualities
by which our ordinary self is indeed most
essentially counteracted, self-renouncement
and mildness, he made his followers feel
that in these qualities lay the secret of
their best self ; that to attain them was in
the highest degree requisite and natural,
and that a man’s whole happiness depended
upon it.
Self-examination,
self-renouncement,
and mildness, were, therefore, the great
means by which Jesus Christ renewed
righteousness and religion. All these
means are indicated in the Old Testa
ment. : God requireth truth in the inzvard
parts ! Not doing thine own ways, norfind
ing thine own pleasure! Seek meekness ! 3
But how far more strongly are they forced
upon the attention in the New Testament,
and set up clearly as the central mark for
our endeavours! Thou blind Pharisee,
cleanse first the inside of the cup that the
outside may be clean also!4 Whoever will
come after me, let him renounce himself and
take up his cross daily and follow me !5
Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in
heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
souls /6 So that, although personal re
ligion is clearly recommended in the Old
Testament, nevertheless these injunctions
of the New Testament effect so much
more for the extrication and establish
ment of personal religion than the general
exhortations in the Old to offer the sacn'
2
♦
•
Matth., xvi, 25.
2 Luke, ix, 25.
Ps. li, 6; Is., lviii, 13 ; Zephaniah, ii, 3.
Matth., xxiii, 26.
4 Luke, ix, 23.
Matth., xi, 29.
45
fice of righteousness, to do judgment4 that,
comparatively with the Old, the New
Testament may be said to have really
founded inward and personal religion.
While the Old Testament says : Attend to
conduct! the New Testament says : Attend
to the feelings and dispositions whence
conduct proceeds ! And as attending to
conduct had very much degenerated into
deadness and formality, attending to the
springs of conduct was a revelation, a
revival of intuitive and fresh perceptions,
a touching of morals with emotion, a
discovering of religion, similar to that
which had been effected when Israel,
struck with the abiding power not of
man’s causing which makes for righteous
ness, and filled with joy and awe by it,
had in the old days named God the
Eternal. Man came under a new dis
pensation, and made with God a second
covenant.
3-
To rivet the attention on the indications
of personal religion furnished by the Old
Testament; to take the humble, inward,
and suffering ‘ servant of God ’ of the
prophets, and to elevate this as the
Messiah, the seed of Abraham and of
David, in whom all nations should be
blessed, whose throne should be as the
days of heaven, who should redeem his
people and restore the kingdom to Israel
—was a work of the highest originality.
It cannot, as we have seen, be said, that
by the suffering servant of God, and by
the triumphant Messiah, the prophets
themselves meant one and the same
person. But language of hope and as
piration, such as theirs, is in its very
nature malleable. Criticism may and
must determine what the original speakers
seem to have directly meant. But the
very nature of their language justifies any
powerful and fruitful application of it;
and every such application may be said,
in the words of popular religion, to have
been lodged there from the first by the
spirit of God. Certainly it was a some1 Ps. iv. 5; Is., h i, 1.
�46
LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
what violent exegetical proceeding, to
fuse together into one personage Daniel’s
Son of Man coming with the clouds of
heaven, the first Isaiah’s ‘ Branch out of
the root of Jesse,’ who should smite the
earth with the rod of his mouth and reign
in glory and peace and righteousness,
and the second Isaiah’s meek and afflicted
Servant of God charged with the precious
message of a golden future—to fuse
together in one these three by no means
identical personages ; to add to them the
sacrificial lamb of the passover and of
the temple-service, which was constantly
before a Jew’s eyes ; to add, besides, the
Prophet like to himself whom Moses
promised to the children of Israel; to
add, further, the Holy One of Israel and
Redeemer, who for the prophets was the
Eternal himself; and then to say, that
the combination thence resulting was the
Messiah or Christ whom all the prophets
had meant and predicted, and that Jesus
was this Messiah. To us, who have been
formed and fashioned by a theology whose
set purpose is to efface all the difficulties
in such a combination, and to make it
received easily and unhesitatingly, it may
appear natural. In itself, and with the
elements of which it is composed viewed
singly and impartially, it cannot but be
pronounced violent.
But the elements in question have their
chief use and value, wTe repeat, not as
objects of criticism ; they belong of right
to whoever can best possess himself of
them for practice and edification. Simply
of the Son of Man coming in the clouds, of
the branch of Jesse smiting the earth with
the rod of his mouth, slaying the wicked
with his breath, and re-establishing in un
exampled splendour David's kingdom,
nothing could be made. With such a
Messiah filling men’s-thoughts and hopes,
the real defects of Israel still remained,
because these chiefly proceeded from
Israel’s making his religion too much a
national and social affair, too little a
personal affair. But a Messiah who did
not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and
afflicted without opening his mouth, who
worked inwardly, obscurely, and patiently,
yet failed not nor was discouraged until
his doctrine made its way and transformed
the world—this was the Messiah whom
Israel needed, and in whom the lost great
ness of Israel could be restored and
culminate. For the true greatness of
Israel was righteousness ; and only by an
inward personal religion could the sense
revive of what righteousness really was—
revive in Israel and bear fruit for the
world.
Instead, then, of ‘the Root of Jesse
who should set up an ensign for the
nations and assemble the outcasts of
Israel,’1 Jesus Christ took from prophecy
and made pre-eminent ‘the Servant whom
man despiseth and the people abhorreth,’
but ‘ who bringeth good tidings, who publisheth peace, publisheth salvation.’2 And
instead of saying like the prophets : ‘ This
people must mend, this nation must do so
and so, Israel must follow such and such
ways,’ Jesus took the individual Israelite
by himself apart, made him listen for the
voice of his conscience, and said to him
in effect: ‘ If every one would mend one,
we should have a new world.’ So vital
for the Jews was this change of character
in their religion, that the Old Testament
abounds, as we have said, in pointings
and approximations to it; and most truly
might Jesus Christ say to his followers,
that many prophets and righteous men
had desired, though unavailingly, to see
the things which they, the disciples, saw
and heard.3
The desire felt by pious Israelites for
some new aspect of religion such as Jesus
Christ presented, is, undoubtedly, the
best proof of its timeliness and salutari
ness. Perhaps New Testament evidence
to prove the workings of this desire may
be received with suspicion, as having
arisen after the event and when the new
ideal of the Christ had become estab
lished. Otherwise, John the Baptist’s
characterisation of the Messiah as ‘the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of
the w’orld,’4 and the bold Messianic turn
given in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew
to the prophecy there quoted from rhe
1 Is., xi, IO, 12.
8 Matth., xiii, 17.
2 Is., xlix, 7 ; lii, 7.
4 John, i, 29.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
forty-second chapter of Isaiah, would be
evidence of the highest importance. ‘A
bruised reed breaketh he not,’ says Isaiah
of the meek servant and messenger of
God, ‘ and a glimmering wick quencheth
he not; he declareth judgment with truth;
far lands wait for his doctrine.’1 ‘A
bruised reed shall he not break,’ runs the
passage in St. Matthew, ‘and smoking
flax shall he not quench, until he send
forth judgment unto victory: in his name
shall the Gentiles trust.’2 The words,
until he send forth judgment unto victory,
words giving a clear Messianic stamp to
the personage described, are neither in
the original Hebrew nor in the Greek of
the Septuagint. Where did the Gospel
writer find them ? If, as is possible, they
were in some version then extant, they
prove in a striking way the existence and
strength of the aspiration which Jesus
Christ satisfied by transforming the old
popular ideal of the Messiah. But there
are in any case signs of the existence of
such an aspiration, since a Jewish com' mentator, contemporary, probably, with
the Christian era, but not himself a
Christian, assigns to this very prophecy
a Messianic intention. And, indeed, the
rendering of the final words, in his name
shall the Gentiles trustj which is in the
Greek of the Septuagint as well as in that
of St. Matthew, shows a similar leaning in
the Jews of Alexandria some two centuries
before Christ.
Signs there are then, without doubt, of
others, besides Jesus Christ, trying to
identify the Messiah of popular Jewish
hope—the triumphant Root of David, the
mystic son of man—with an ideal of
meekness, inwardness, patience, and self
denial. And well might reformers try to
effect this identification, for the true line
of Israel’s progress lay through it! But
not he who tries makes an epoch, but he
who effects ; and the identification which
was needed Jesus Christ effected. Hence
1 Is., xlii, 3, 4.
2 Matth., xii, 20, 21.
3 These words are imported from an un
doubtedly Messianic passage, the famous pre
diction of the ‘rod out of the stem of Jesse’ in
the eleventh chapter of Isaiah. Compare, in the
Septuagint, Is., xi, 10, with Is., xlii, 4.
47
forth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly,
he who allied himself with this identifica
tion ; who perceived its incomparable
fruitfulness, its continuance of the real
tradition of Israel, its correspondence
with the ruling idea of the Hebrew spirit:
Through righteousness to happiness! or, in
Bible-words: To him that ordereth his
conversation right shall be shown the salva
tion of God!1 That the Jewish nation at
large, and its rulers, refused to accept the
identification, shows simply that want of
power to penetrate through wraps and
appearances to the essence of things,
which the majority of mankind always
display. The national and social character
of their theocracy was everything to the
Jews, and they could see no blessings in
a revolution which annulled it.
It has often been remarked that the
Puritans are like the Jews of the Old
Testament; and Mr. Froude thinks he
defends the Puritans by saying that they,
like the Jews of the Old Testament, had
their hearts set on a theocracy, on a
fashioning of politics and society to suit
the government of God. How strange
that he does not perceive that he thus
passes, and with justice, the gravest con
demnation on the Puritans as followers of
Jesus Christ ! At the Christian era the
time had passed, in religion, for outward
adaptations of this kind, and for all care
about establishing or abolishing them.
The time had come for inwardness and
self-reconstruction,—a time to last till the
self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It
was the error of the Jews that they did
not perceive this; and the old error of
the Jews the Puritans, without the Jews’
excuse, faithfully repeated. And the blun
der of both had the same cause,—a want
of tact to perceive what is really most
wanted for the attainment of their own
professed ideal, the reign of righteousness.
When Jesus appeared, his disciples
were those who did not make this blunder.
They were, in general, simple souls, with
out pretensions which Jesus Christ’s new
religious ideal cut short, or self-conse
quence which it mortified. And any
1 Ps. 1, 23.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Israelite who was, on the one hand, not
warped by personal pretensions and self
consequence, and on the other, not dull
of feeling and gross of life like the com
mon multitude, might well be open to the
spell which, after all, was the great con
firmation of Christ’s religion, as it was the
great confirmation of the original religion
of Israel—the spell of its happiness. ‘ Be
glad, O ye righteous, and rejoice in the
Eternal,’—the old and lost prerogative of
Israel,—Christianity offered to make again
a living and true word to him.1
happy again. The prophets all point to
such a saviour, and he is the Messiah,
and the promised happiness to Israel is
in him and in his reign. He is, in the
exalted language of prophecy, the holy
one of God, the son of God, the beloved
of God, the chosen of Godj the anointed
of God, the son of man in an eminent
and unique sense, the Messiah and Christ.
In plainer language he is ‘a man who
tells you the truth which he has heard of
God; ’ who came not of himself and
speaks not of himself, but who ‘came
forth from God,’—from the original God
of Israel’s worship, the God of righteous
ness, and of happiness joined to righteous
4ness,—‘and is come to you.’1 Israelis
For we have already remarked how it perpetually talking of God and calling
is the great achievement of the Israel of him his Father ; and ‘ everyone,’ says
the Old Testament, happiness being man Jesus Christ, ‘who hears the Father,
kind’s confessed end and aim, to have comes to me, for I know him, and know
more than anyone else felt, and more His will, and utter His word.’2 God’s
than anyone else succeeded in making will and word, in the Old Testament, was
others feel, that to righteousness belongs righteousness. In the New Testament, it
happiness. Now, it will be denied by no is righteousness explained to have its
one that Jesus, in his turn, was eminently essence in inwardness, mildness, and self
characterised by professing to bring, and renouncement. This is, in substance, the
by being felt to bring, happiness. All the word of Jesus which he who hears ‘ shall
words that belong to his mission,—gospel, never see death; ’ of which he who follows
kingdom of God, saviour, grace, peace, living it ‘ shall know by experience whether it be
'water, bread oflife,—are brimful of promise of God.’ 3
and of joy. ‘ I am come,’ he said, ‘ that
But as the Israel of the Old Testament
ye might have life, and that ye might have did not say or feel that he followed
it more abundantly ; ’ ‘ Come to me, and righteousness by his own power, or out
ye shall find rest unto your souls; ’ ‘ I of self-interest and self-love, but said and
speak, that my disciples may have my joy felt that he followed it in thankful self
fulfilled in themselves? 2
surrender to ‘ the Eternal who loveth
You can see, says Jesus to his followers, righteousness,’ and that ‘ the Eternal
you can see the leading religionists of the ordereth a good man’s going and maketh
Jewish nation, with the current notions his way acceptable to Himself—so, in the
about righteousness, God’s will, and the restoration effected by Jesus, the motive
meaning of prophecy, you can see them which is of force is not the moral motive
saying and not doing, full of fierce temper, that inwardness, mildness, and self-re
pride, and sensuality;—this shows they nouncement make for man’s happiness,
can be but blind guides for you. The but a far stronger motive, full of ardent
saviour of Israel is he who makes Israel affection and gratitude, and which, though
use his conscience simply and sincerely, it really has its ground and confirmation
who makes him change and sweeten his in the fact that inwardness, mildness, and
temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. self-renouncement do make for man’s
Such a saviour will make unhappy Israel
1 Ps. xxxii, 11 ; xcvii, 12.
2 John, x, io; Matth., xi, 28, 29 ; John, xvii,
13-
1
*
•
4
John, viii, 40, 42 ; xvi, 27, 28.
John, vi, 45 ; viii, 29, 16.
John, viii, 51 ; vii, 17.
Ps. xi, 7; xxxvii, 23.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
happiness, yet keeps no consciousness of
this as its ground. For it acquired a far
surer ground in personal devotion to
Jesus Christ, who brought the doctrine
to his disciples and made a passage for it
into their hearts ; in believing that he
was indeed the Christ come from God; in
following him, loving him, And in the
happiness which thus believing in Jesus
Christ, following him, and loving him, gives,
it found the mightiest of sanctions.
5-
And thus was the great doctrine of the
Old Testament: To righteousness belongs
happiness I made a true and potent word
again. Jesus Christ was the Messiah to
restore the all things of Israel,1—righteous
ness, and happiness with righteousness;
to bring light and recovery after long
days of darkness and ruin, and to make
good the belief written on Israel’s heart:
The righteous is an everlasting foundation ! 1
2
But we have seen how in the hopes of
the nation and in the promises of prophecy
this true and vital belief of Israel was
mixed with a, quantity of what we have
called Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding
all manner of shape and circumstance to
the original thought. The kingdom of
David and Solomon was to be restored
on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel
were to lick the dust, kings were to bring
gifts ; there was to be the Son of Man
coming in the clouds, judgment given to
the saints of the Most High, and an
eternal reign of the saints afterwards.
Now, most of this has a poetical value,
some of it has a moral value. All of it is,
in truth, a testimony to the strength of
Israel’s idea of righteousness. For the
order of its growth is, as we have seen,
this : ‘ To righteousness belongs happiness ;
but this sure rule is often broken in the
state of things which now is; there must,
therefore, be in store for us, in the future,
a state of things where it will hold good.’
But none of it has a scientific value, a
1 Matth., xvji, II ; Acts, iii, 21.
2 Prov., x, 25.
49
certitude arising from proof and experi
ence. And indeed it cannot have this,
for it professes to be an anticipation of a
state of things not yet actually experienced.
But human nature is such, that the
mind easily dwells on an anticipation of
this kind until we come to forget the
order in which it arose, place it first when
it is by rights second, and make it support
that by which it is in truth supported.
And so there had come to be many
Israelites,—most likely they were the great
majority of their nation,—who supposed
that righteousness was to be followed, not
out of thankful self-surrender to ‘ the
Eternal who loveth righteousness,’1 but
because the Ancient of Days was to sit
before long, and judgment was to be given
to the saints, and they were to possess the
kingdom, and from the kingdom those
who did not follow righteousness were to
be excluded. From this way of conceiving
religion came naturally the religious con
dition of the Jews as Jesus at his coming
found it; and from which, by his new
and living way of presenting the Messiah,
he sought to extricate the whole nation,
and did extricate his disciples. He did
extricate these, in that he fixed their
thoughts upon himself and upon an ideal
of inwardness, mildness, and self-renounce
ment, instead of a phantasmagory of out
ward grandeur and self-assertion. But
at the same time the whole train of an
extra-belief, or Aberglaube, which had
attached itself to Israel’s old creed : The
righteous is an everlasting foundation!
transferred itself to the new creed brought
by Jesus. And there arose, accordingly,
a new Aberglaube like the old. The mild,
inward, self-renouncing and sacrificed
Servant of the Eternal, the new and
better Messiah, was yet, before the present
generation passed, to come on the clouds
of heaven in power and glory like the
Messiah of Daniel, to gather by trumpetcall his elect from the four winds, and to
set his apostles on twelve thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel. The motive
of Christianity,—which was, in truth, that
pure souls ‘knew the voice’2 of Jesus as
1 Ps. xi, 7.
* John, x, 4.
D
�5°
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
sheep know the voice of their shepherd,
and felt, after seeing and hearing him,
that his doctrine and ideal was what
they wanted, that he was ‘indeed the
saviour of the world,’1—this simple motive
became a mixed motive, adding to its first
contents a vast extra-belief of a phan
tasmagorical advent of Jesus Christ, a
resurrection and judgment, Christ’s ad
herents glorified, his rejectors punished
everlastingly.
And when the generation, for which
this advent was first fixed, had passed
away without it, Christians discovered by
a process of criticism common enough in
popular theology, but by which, as Bishop
Butler says of a like kind of process,
‘anything may be made out of anything,’
—they discovered that the advent had
never really been fixed for that first
generation by the writers of the New
Testament, but that it was foretold, and
certainly in store, for a later time. So
the Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed
out of reach of all practical tests, and
made stronger than ever. With the
multitude, this Aberglatibe, or extra-belief,
inevitably came soon to surpass the
original conviction itself in attractiveness
and seeming certitude. The future and
the miraculous engaged the chief atten
tion of Christians; and, in accordance
with this strain of thought, they more and
more rested the proof of Christianity, not
on its internal evidence, but on prophecy
and miracle.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY
1Abergla ube is the poetry of life.’ That himself in his conduct by taking an object
men should, by help of their imagination, of hope and presentiment as if it were an
take short cuts to what they ardently object of certainty, he may even be said
desire, whether the triumph of Israel or to gain thereby an advantage.
the triumph of Christianity, should tell
And yet there is always a drawback to
themselves fairy-tales about it, should make a man’s advantage in thus treating, when
these fairy tales the basis for what is far he deals with religion and conduct, what
more sure and solid than the fairy-tales, is extra-belief and not certain as if it were
the desire itself—all this has in it, we matter of certainty, and in making it his
repeat, nothing which is not natural, no ground of action. He pays for it. The
thing blameable. Nay, the region of our time comes when he discovers that it is
hopes and presentiments extends, as we not certain ; and then the whole certainty
have also said, far beyond the region of of religion seems discredited, and the
what we can know with certainty. What basis of conduct gone. This danger at
we reach but by hope and presentiment tends the reliance on prediction and
may yet be true ; and he would be a miracle as evidences of Christianity.
narrow reasoner who denied, for instance,
They have been attacked as a part of
all validity to the idea of immortality, the ‘ cheat ’ or ‘ imposture ’ of religion and
because this idea rests on presentiment of Christianity. For us, religion is the
mainly, and does not admit of certain solidest of realities, and Christianity the
demonstration. In religion, above all, greatest and happiest stroke ever yet made
extra-belief is in itself no matter, as for human perfection. Prediction and
suredly, for blame. The object of re miracle were attributed to it as its sup
ligion is conduct; and if a man helps ports because of its grandeur, and because
of the awe and admiration which it in
1 John, iv, 42.
spired. Generations of men have helped
�THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY
51
themselves to hold firmer to it, helped
themselves in conduct, by the aid of these
supports. ‘ Miracles prove] men have
said and thought, ‘ that the order of
physical nature is not fate, nor a mere
material constitution of things, but the
subject of a free, omnipotent Master.
Prophecy fulfilled proves that neither fate
nor man are masters of the world.’1
And to take prophecy first. ‘ The con
ditions,’ it is said, ‘ which form the true
conclusive standard of a prophetic inspira
tion are these : That the prediction be
known to have been promulgated before
the event; that the event be such as
could not have been foreseen, when it
was predicted, by an effort of human
reason; and that the event and the pre
diction correspond together in a clear
accomplishment. There are prophecies
in Scripture answering to the standard
of an absolute proof. Their publication,
their fulfilment, their supernatural pre
science, are fully ascertained.’1 On this
2
sort of ground men came to rest the proof
of Christianity.
tions and that they must be in the Bible,
enhanced, certainly, this look; but the
look, even without these aids, was suffi
ciently striking.
Yes, that Jacob on his death-bed should
two thousand years before Christ have
‘been enabled,’ as the phrase is, to fore
tell to his son Judah that ‘the sceptre
shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh
(or the Messiah) come, and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be,’1 does
seem, when the explanation is put with it
that the Jewish kingdom lasted till the
Christian era and then perished, a miracle
of prediction in favour of our current
Christian theology. That Jeremiah should
during the captivity have ‘ been enabled |
to foretell, in Jehovah’s name : ‘ The
days come that I will raise unto David
a righteous Branch; in his days Judah
shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell
safely; and this is his name whereby he
shall be called, the lord our righteous
ness ! ’2—does seem a prodigy of predic
tion in favour of that tenet of the Godhead
of the Eternal Son, for which the Bishops
of Winchester and Gloucester are so
anxious to do something. For unquesJ
2.
tionably, in the prophecy here given, the
Branch of David, the future Saviour of
Now, it may be said, indeed, that a Israel, who was Jesus Christ, appears to
prediction fulfilled, an exhibition of super be expressly identified with the Lord God,
natural prescience, proves nothing for or with Jehovah. Again, that David should
against the truth and necessity of conduct say : ‘ The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
and righteousness. But it must be allowed, thou on my right hand until I make thine
notwithstanding, that while human nature enemies thy footstool,’3 does seem a pro
is what it is, the mass of men are likely digy of prediction to the same effect.
to listen more to a teacher of righteous And so long as these prophecies stand as
ness, if he accompanies his teaching by they are here given, they no doubt bring
an exhibition of supernatural prescience. to Christianity all the support (and with
And what were called the ‘ signal predic the mass of mankind this is by no means
tions ’ concerning the Christ of popular inconsiderable) which it can derive from
theology, as they stand in our Bibles, had the display of supernatural prescience.
and have undoubtedly a look of super
But who will dispute that it more and
natural prescience. The employment of more becomes known, that these pro
capital letters, and other aids, such as the phecies 4 cannot stand as we have here
constant use of the future tense, naturally
and innocently adopted by interpreters
1 Gen., xlix, 10.
2 Jen, xxiii, 5, 6.
who were profoundly convinced that
* Ps. ex, 1.
4 A real predicti'on of Jesus Christ’s Godhead, of
Christianity needed these express predic
1 Davison’s Discourses
course ii, Part 2.
2 Discourses ix and xii.
on
Prophecy;
Dis
the kind that popular religion desires, is to be
found in Benjamin’s prophecy of the coming, in
the last days, of the King of Heaven to judge
I Israel, ‘ because when God came to them in the
d 2
�52
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
given them ? Manifestly, it more and
more becomes known, that the passage
from Genesis, with its mysterious Shiloh
and the gathering of the people to him,
is rightly to be rendered as follows : ‘ The
pre-eminence shall not depart from Judah
so long as the people resort to Shiloh (the
national sanctuary before Jerusalem was
won) ; and the nations (the heathen
Canaanites) shall obey him? We here
purposely leave out of sight any such
consideration as that our actual books of
the Old Testament came first together
through the instrumentality of the house
of Judah, and when the destiny of Judah
was already traced; and that to say roundly
and confidently : '‘Jacob was enabled to
foretell, The sceptre shall not depart from
Judah,’ is wholly inadmissible. For this
consideration is of force, indeed, but it is
a consideration drawn from the rules of
literary history and criticism, and not
likely to have weight with the mass of
mankind. Palpable error and mistrans
lation are what will have weight with
them.
And what, then, will they say as they
come to know (and do not and must not
more and more of them come to know it
every day ?) that Jeremiah’s supposed
signal identification of Jesus Christ with
the Lord God of Israel : ‘ I will raise to
David a righteous Branch, and this is the
name whereby he shall be called, the
Lord our righteousness,’ runs really:
‘ I will raise to David a righteous branch ;
in his days Judah shall be saved and
Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is the
name whereby they shall call themselves :
The Eternal is our righteousness ! ’ The
prophecy thus becomes simply one of the
many promises of a successor to David
under whom the Hebrew people should
trust in the Eternal and follow righteous
ness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis
is one of the many prophecies of the
enduring continuance of the greatness
flesh they did not believe in him as their deliverer.’
But this prediction occurs in an apocryphal
Christian writing of the end of the first century,
the 7iestaments op the Twelve Patriarchs. See
Fabricius, Codex Pseudep-'grafhus Veteris Testavienti, vol. ii, p. 745.
of Judah. ‘The Lord said unto my
Lord,’ in like manner ;—will not people
be startled when they find that it ought
instead to run as follows : ‘ The Eternal
said unto my lord the king,’—a simple
promise of victory to a royal leader of
God’s chosen people ?
3Leslie, in his once famous Short and
Easy Methods with the Deists, speaks of
the impugners of the current evidences
of Christianity as men who consider the
Scripture histories and the Christian
religion ‘ cheats and impositions of cun
ning and designing men upon the cre
dulity of simple people.’ Collins, and
the whole array of writers at whom Leslie
aims this, greatly need to be re-surveyed
from the point of view of our own age.
Nevertheless, we may grant that some of
them, at any rate, conduct their attacks
on the current evidences for Christianity
in such a manner as to give the notion
that in their opinion Christianity itself,
and religion, is a cheat and an imposture.
But how far more prone will the mass of
mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if
they have been kept intent on predictions
such as those of which we have just given
specimens; if they have been kept full
of the great importance of this line of
mechanical evidence, and then suddenly
find that this line of evidence gives way
at all points ? It can hardly be gainsaid,
that, to a delicate and penetrating criti
cism, it has long been manifest that the
chief literal fulfilment by Jesus Christ of
things said by the prophets was the fulfil
ment such as would naturally be given
by one who nourished his spirit on the
prophets, and on living and acting their
words. The great prophecies of Isaiah
and Jeremiah are, critics can easily see,
not strictly predictions at all; and predic
tions which are strictly meant as such,
like those in the Book of Daniel, are an
embarrassment to the Bible rather than
a main element of it. The ‘Zeit-Geist,’
and the mere spread of what is called
enlightenment, superficial and barren as
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
53
this often is, will inevitably, before long, power to promise and to threaten by rising
make this conviction of criticism a popular from the dead and ascending into heaven,
opinion, held far and wide. And then, is certainly not the guide whom lovers of
what will be their case, who have been Christianity, if they could discern what it
so long and sedulously taught to rely is that he really expects and aims at, and
on supernatural predictions as a main what it is which they themselves really
desire, would think it wise to follow.
stay?
But the subject of miracles is a very
The same must be said of miracles.
The substitution of some other proof of great one; it includes within itself, indeed,
Christianity for this accustomed proof is the whole question about ‘ supernatural
now to be desired most by those who prescience,’ which meets us when we deal
most think Christianity of importance. with prophecy. And this great subject
That old friend of ours on whom we requires, in order that we may deal with
have formerly commented,1 who insists it properly, some little recapitulation of
upon it that Christianity is and shall be our original design in this essay, and of
nothing else but this, ‘ that Christ promised the circumstances in which the cause of
Paradise to the saint and threatened the religion and of the Bible seems to be at
worldly man with hell-fire, and proved his this moment placed.
CHAPTER V
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
We have seen that some new treatment or
other the religion of the Bible certainly
seems to require, for it is attacked on all
sides, and the theologians are not so suc
cessful as one might wish in defending it.
One critic says, that if these islands had
no religion at all it would not enter into
his mind to introduce the religious and
ethical idea by the agency of the Bible.
Another, that though certain common
places are common to all systems of
morality, yet the Bible-way of enunciating
these commonplaces no longer suits us.
And we may rest assured, he adds, that
by saying what we think in some other,
more congenial, language, we shall really
be taking the shortest road to discovering
the new doctrines which will satisfy at
once our reason and our imagination.
Another critic goes farther still, and calls
Bible-religion not only destitute of a
modern and congenial way of stating its
commonplaces of morality, but a defacer
and disfigurer of moral treasures which
were once in better keeping. The more
1 See St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 157.
one studies, the more, says he, orie is
convinced that the religion which calls
itself revealed contains, in the way of
what is good, nothing which is not the
incoherent and ill-digested residue of the
wisdom of the ancients. To the same
effect the Duke of Somerset—who has
been affording proof to the world that our
aristocratic class are not, as has been said,
inaccessible to ideas and merely polite,
but that they are familiar, on the con
trary, with modern criticism of the most
advanced kind—the Duke of Somerset
finds very much to condemn in the Bible
and its teaching; although the soul, he
says, has (outside the Bible, apparently)
one unassailable fortress to which she may
retire—faith in God.
All this seems to threaten to push
Bible-religion from the place it has long
held in our affections. And even what
the most modern criticism of all some
times does to save it and to set it up
again, can hardly be called very flattering
to it. For whereas the Hebrew race
imagined that to them were committed
the oracles of God, and that their God,
�54
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
‘ the Eternal who loveth righteousness,’1
was the God to whom ‘ every knee shall
bow and every tongue shall swear,’2 there
now comes M. Emile Burnouf, the
accomplished kinsman of the gifted
orientalist Eugene Burnouf, and will
prove to us in a thick volume3 that the
oracles of God wrere not committed to a
Semitic race at all, but to the Aryan;
that the true God is not Israel’s God at
all, but is ‘the idea of the absolute’
which Israel could never properly master.
This ‘ sacred theory of the Aryas,’ it
seems, passed into Palestine from Persia
and India, and got possession of the
founder of Christianity and of his greatest
apostles St. Paul and St. John ; becoming
more perfect, and returning more and
more to its true character of a ‘ transcen
dent metaphysic,’ as the doctors of the
Christian Church developed it. So that
we Christians, who are Aryas, may have
the satisfaction of thinking that ‘ the
religion of Christ has not come to us
from the Semites,’ and that ‘ it is in the
hymns of the Veda, and not in the Bible,
that we are to look for the primordial
source of our religion.’ The theory of
Christ is accordingly the theory of the
Vedic Agni, or fire. The Incarnation
represents the Vedic solemnity of the
production of fire, symbol of force' of
every kind, of all movement, life, and
thought. The Trinity of Father, Son,
and Spirit is the Vedic Trinity of Sun,
Fire, and Wind ; and God, finally, is ‘ a
cosmic unity.’
Such speculations almost take away the
breath of a mere man of letters. What
one is inclined to say of them is this.
Undoubtedly these exploits of the Aryan
genius must be gratifying to us members
of the Aryan race. The original God of
the Hebrews, M. Burnouf says expressly,
‘ was not a cosmic unity; ’ the religion of
the Hebrews ‘had not that transcendent
metaphysic which the genius of the Aryas
requires; ’ and, ‘ in passing from the Aryan
race to the inferior races, religion under
went a deterioration due to the physical
. Rs. xi, 7.
* Is., xlv, 23.
La Science des Religions-, Paris, 1872.
and moral constitution of these races.’
For religion, it must be remembered, is, in
M. Burnouf’s view, fundamentally a science;
‘a metaphysical conception, a theory, a
synthetic explanation of the universe.’
Now, ‘the perfect Arya is capable of a
great deal of science; the Semite is in
ferior to him.’ As Aryas or Aryans, then,
wTe ought to be pleased at having vindi
cated the greatness of our race, and having
not borrowed a Semitic religion as it stood,
but transformed it by importing our own
metaphysics into it.
And this seems to harmonise very well
with what the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester say about ‘doing something
for the honour of Our Lord’s Godhead,’
and about ‘ the infinite separation for time
and for eternity which is involved in
rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal Son,
Very God of Very God, Light of Light;’
and also with the Athanasian Creed gene
rally, and with what the clergy write to
the Guardian about ‘ eternal life being
unquestionably annexed to a right know
ledge of the Godhead.’ For all these
have in view high science and meta
physics, worthy of the Aryas. But to
Bible-religion, in the plain sense of the
w’ord, it is not flattering; for it throws
overboard almost entirely the Old Testa
ment, and makes the essence of the New
to consist in an esoteric doctrine not very
visible there, but more fully developed
outside of it. The metaphysical element
is made the fundamental element in reli
gion. But, ‘ the Bible-books, especially
the more ancient of them, are destitute of
metaphysics, and consequently of method
and classification in their ideas.’ Israel,
therefore, instead of being a light of the
Gentiles and a salvation to the ends of the
earth, falls to a place in the world’s reli
gious history behind the Arya. He is
dismissed as ranking anthropologically
between the Aryas and the yellow men ;
as having frizzled hair, thick lips, small
calves, flat feet, and belonging, above all,
to those ‘ occipital races ’ whose brain
cannot grow above the age of sixteen ;
whereas the brain of a theological Arya,
such as one of our bishops, may go on
growing all his life.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
But we, who think that the Old Testa
ment leads surely up to the New, who
believe that, indeed, ‘ salvation is of the
Jews,’1 and that, for what concerns con
duct or righteousness (that is, for what
concerns three-fourths of human life),
they and their documents can no more
be neglected by whoever would make
proficiency in it, than Greece can be
neglected by anyone who would make
proficiency in art, or Newton’s discoveries
by whoever would comprehend the world’s
physical laws,—we are naturally not satis
fied with this treatment of Israel and the
Bible. And admitting that Israel shows
no talent for metaphysics, we say that his
religious greatness is just this, that he does
not found religion on metaphysics, but on
moral experience, which is a much simpler
matter; and that, ever since the apparition
of Israel and the Bible, religion is no
longer what, according to M. Burnouf, to
our Aryan forefathers in the valley of the
Oxus it was,—and what perhaps it really
was to them,—metaphysical theory, but is
what Israel has made it.
And what Israel made, and how he
made it, we seek to show from the Bible
itself. Thus we hope to win for the Bible
and its religion, which seem to us so in
dispensable to the world, an access to
many of those who now neglect them.
For there is this to be said against M.
Burnouf’s metaphysics : no one can allege
that the Bible has failed to win access for
want of metaphysics being applied to it.
Metaphysics are just what all our theology
runs up into, and our bishops, as we
know, are here particularly strong. But
we see every day that the making religion
into metaphysics is the weakening of
religion ; now, M. Burnouf makes religion
into metaphysics more than ever. Yet
evidently the metaphysical method lacks
power for laying hold on people, and
compelling them to receive the Bible
from it; it is felt to be inconclusive as
thus employed, and its inconclusiveness
tells against the Bible. This is the case
with the old metaphysics of our bishops,
and it will be the case with M. Burnouf’s
’-John, iv, 22.
55
new metaphysics also. They will be
found, we fear, to have an inconclusive
ness in their recommendation of Chris
tianity. To very many persons, indeed
to the great majority, such a method, in
such a matter, must be inconclusive.
2.
Therefore we would not allow ourselves
to start with any metaphysical conception
at all, not with the monotheistic idea, as
it is styled, any more than with the pan
theistic idea ; and, indeed, we are quite
sure that Israel himself began with no
thing of the kind. The idea of God, as it
is given us in the Bible, rests, we say,
not on a metaphysical conception of the
necessity of certain deductions from our
ideas of cause, existence, identity, and the
like ; but on a moral perception of a rule
of conduct not of our own making, into
which we are born, and which exists
whether we will or no; of awe at its
grandeur and necessity, and of gratitude
at its beneficence. This is the great
original revelation made to Israel, this is
his ‘ Eternal.’
Man, however, as Goethe says, never
knows how anthropomorphic he is. Israel
described his Eternal in the language of
poetry and emotion, and could not thus
describe him but with the characters of a
man. Scientifically he never attempted
to describe him at all. But still the
Eternal was ever at last reducible, for
Israel, to the reality of experience out of
which the revelation sprang ; he was ‘ the
righteous Eternal who loveth righteous
ness.’ They who ‘ seek the Eternal,’ and
they who ‘ follow after righteousness,’ were
identical; just as, conversely, they who
‘fear the Eternal,’and they who ‘depart
from evil,’ were identical.1 Above all:
'■Blessed is the man that feareth the
Eternal; ’ ‘ it is joy to the just to do
judgment; ’ ‘ righteousness tendeth to
life-,' ‘the righteous is an everlasting
foundation.'2
1 Is., li, I ; Prov., iii, 7.
2 Ps. cxii, I; Prov., xxi, 15 ; xi, 19; x, 25.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
56
But, as time went on, facts seemed, we
saw, to contradict this fundamental belief,
to refute this faith in the Eternal; material
forces prevailed, and God appeared, as
they say, to be on the side of the big
battalions. The great unrighteous king
doms of the world, kingdoms which cared
far less than Israel for righteousness and
for the Eternal who makes for righteous
ness, overpowered Israel. Prophecy as
sured him that the triumph of the
Eternal’s cause and people was certain :
Behold the Eternal's hand is not shortened,
that it cannot save.1 The triumph was
but adjourned through Israel’s own sins :
Your iniquities have separated between you
and your God.2 Prophecy directed its
hearers to the future, and promised them
a new, everlasting kingdom, under a
heaven-sent leader. The characters of
this kingdom and leader were more
spiritualised by one prophet, more ma
terialised by another. As time went
on, in the last centuries before our era,
they became increasingly turbid and
phantasmagorical. In addition to his
original experimental belief in the
Almighty Eternal who makes for right
eousness, Israel had now a vast Aber
glaube, an after or extra-belief, not ex
perimental, in an approaching kingdom
of the saints, to be established by an
Anointed, a Messiah, or by ‘one like
the Son of Man,’ commissioned from the
Ancient of Days and coming in the
clouds of heaven.
Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah,
the Son of Man, the Son of God ; and
the question is, what is the true meaning
of these assertions of his, and of all his
teaching ? It is the same question we
had about the Old Testament. Is the
language scientific, or is it, as we say,
literary!—that is, the language of poetry
and emotion, approximative language,
thrown out, as it were, at certain great
objects which the human mind augurs
and feels after, but not language accurately
defining them? Popular religion says,
we know, that the language is scientific ;
that the God of the Old Testament is a
* Is., lix, I.
» Is., ix, 2.
great Personal First Cause, who thinks
and loves (for this too, it seems, we ought
to have added), the moral and intelligent
Governor of the universe. Learned re
ligion, the metaphysical theology of our
bishops, proves or confirms the existence
of this personal God by abstruse reason
ing from our ideas of cause, design,
existence, identity, and so on. Popular
religion rests it altogether on revelation
and miracle. The God of Israel, for
popular religion, is a magnified and nonnatural man who has really worked
stupendous miracles, whereas the Gods of
the heathen were vainly imagined to be
able to work them, but could not, and
had therefore no real existence. Of this
God, Jesus for popular religion is the Son.
He came to appease God’s wrath against
sinful men by the sacrifice of himself;
and he proved his Sonship by a course of
stupendous miracles, and by the wonder
ful accomplishment in him of the super
natural Messianic predictions of prophecy.
Here, again, learned religion elucidates
and develops the relation of the Son to
the Father by a copious exhibition of
metaphysics; but for popular religion the
relationship, and the authority of Jesus
which derives from it, is altogether estab
lished by miracle.
Now, we have seen that our bishops
and their metaphysics are so little con
vincing, that many people throw the
Bible quite aside and will not attend to it,
because they are given to understand that
the metaphysics go necessarily along with
it, and that one cannot be taken without
the other. So far, then, the talents of the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester,
and their zeal to do something for the
honour of the Eternal Son’s Godhead,
may be said to be actual obstacles to the
receiving and studying of the Bible. But
the same may now be also said of the
popular theology which rests the Bible’s
authority and the Christian religion on
miracle. To a great many persons this is
tantamount to stopping their use of the
Bible and of the Christian religion ; for
they have made up their minds that what
is popularly called miracle never does
really happen, and that the belief in it
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
arises out of either ignorance or mistake.
To these persons we restore the use of the
Bible, if, while showing them that the
Bible-language is not scientific, but the
language of common speech or of poetry
and eloquence, approximative language
thrown out at certain great objects of
consciousness which it does not pretend
to define fully, we convince them at the
same time that this language deals with
facts of positive experience, most moment
ous and real.
We have sought to do this for the Old
Testament first, and we now seek to do
it for the New. But our attempt has in
view those who are incredulous about the
Bible and inclined to throw it aside,
not those who at present receive it on
the grounds supplied either by popular
theology or by metaphysical theology.
For persons of this kind, what we say
neither will have, nor seeks to have, any
constraining force at all ; only it is ren
dered necessary by the want of constrain
ing force, for others than themselves, in
their own theology. How little constrain
ing force metaphysical dogma has, we
all see. And we have shown, too, how
the proof from the fulfilment in Jesus
Christ of a number of detailed predictions,
supposed to have been made with super
natural prescience about him long before
hand, is losing, and seems likely more
and more to lose, its constraining force.
It is found that the predictions and their
fulfilment are not what they are said
to be.
Now we come to miracles, more specially
so called. And we have to see whether
the constraining force of this proof, too,
must not be admitted to be far less than
it used to be, and whether some other
source of authority for the Bible is not
much to be desired.
3-
That miracles, when fully believed, are
felt by men in general to be a source of
authority, it is absurd to deny. One may
say, indeed: Suppose I could change the
pen with which I write this into a pen
57
wiper, I should not thus make what I
write any the truer or more convincing.
That may be so in reality, but the mass
of mankind feel differently. In the judg
ment of the mass of mankind, could I
visibly and undeniably change the pen
with which I write this into a penwiper,
not only would this which I write acquire
a claim to be held perfectly true and
convincing, but I should even be entitled
to affirm, and to be believed in affirming,
propositions the most palpably at war
with common fact and experience. It is
almost impossible to exaggerate the prone
ness of the human mind to take miracles
as evidence, and to seek for miracles as
evidence ; or the extent to which religion,
and religion of a true and admirable kind,
has been, and is still, held in connection
with a reliance upon miracles. This
reliance will long outlast the reliance on
the supernatural prescience of prophecy,
for it is not exposed to the same tests.
To pick Scripture miracles one by one to
pieces is an odious and repulsive task ;
it is also an unprofitable one, for what
ever we may think of the affirmative
demonstrations of them, a negative
demonstration of them is, from the cir
cumstances of the case, impossible. And
yet the human mind is assuredly passing
away, however slowly, from this hold of
reliance also; and those who make it
their stay will more and more find it
fail them, will more and more feel them
selves disturbed, shaken, distressed, and
bewildered.
For it is what we call the Time- Spirit
which is sapping the proof from miracles
—it is the ‘Zeit-Geist’ itself. Whether
we attack them, or whether we defend
them, does not much matter.
The
human mind, as its experience widens, is
turning away from them. And for this
reason : it sees, as its experience widens,
how they arise. It sees that under certain
circumstances, they always do arise ; and
that they have not more solidity in one
case than another. Under certain cir|
cumstances, wherever men are found,
there is, as Shakespeare says :—
No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scape of nature, no distemper’d day,
�58
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
Imposture is so far from being the general
rule in these cases that it is the rare
exception. Signs and wonders men’s
minds will have, and they create them
honestly and naturally ; yet not so but
that we can see how they create them.
Roman Catholics fancy that Bible
miracles and the miracles of their
Church form a class by themselves;
Protestants fancy that Bible-miracles,
alone, form a class by themselves. This
was eminently the posture of mind of
the late Archbishop Whately :—he held
that all other miracles would turn out to
be impostures, or capable of a natural
explanation, but that Bible-miracles would
stand sifting by a London special jury or
by a committee of scientific men. No
acuteness can save such notions, as our
knowledge widens, from being seen to be
mere extravagances, and the Protestant
notion is doomed to an earlier ruin than
the Catholic. For the Catholic notion
admits miracles—so far as Christianity,
at least, is concerned—in the mass; the
Protestant notion invites to a criticism by
which it must before long itself perish.
When Stephen was martyred, he looked
up into heaven, and saw the glory of God
and Jesus standing on the right hand of
God. That, says the Protestant, is solid
fact. At the martyrdom of St. Fructuosus
the Christian servants of the Roman
governor, Babylas and Mygdone, saw the
heavens open, and the saint and his
deacon Eulogius carried up on high with
crowns on their heads. That is, says the
Protestant, imposture or else illusion. St.
Paul hears on his way to Damascus the
voice of Jesus say to him : ‘Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me ? ’ That is solid
fact. The companion of St. Thomas
Aquinas hears a voice from the crucifix
say to the praying saint: ‘ Thou hast
written well of me, Thomas ; what recompence dost thou desire ? ’ That is impos
ture or else illusion. Why ? It is im
possible to find any criterion by which
one of these incidents may establish its
claim to a solidity which we refuse to the
others.
One of two things must be made out
in order to place either the Bible-miracles
alone, or the Bible-miracles and the
miracles of the Catholic Church with
them, in a class by themselves. Either
they must be shown to have arisen in a
time eminently unfavourable to such a
process as Shakespeare describes, to ampli
fication and the production of legend ; or
they must be shown to be recorded in
documents of an eminently historical
mode of birth and publication. But
surely it is manifest that the Bible
miracles fulfil neither of these condi
tions. It was said that the waters of
the Pamphylian Sea miraculously opened
a passage for the army of Alexander the
Great. Admiral Beaufort, however, tells
us that, ‘ though there are no tides in this
part of the Mediterranean, a considerable
depression of the sea is caused by longcontinued north winds, and Alexander,
taking advantage of such a moment, may
have dashed on without impediment.’1
And we accept the explanation as a
matter of course. But the waters of the
Red Sea are said to have miraculously
opened a passage for the children of
Israel; and we insist on the literal truth
of this story, and reject natural explana
tions as impious. Yet the time and cir
cumstances of the flight from Egypt were
a thousand times more favourable to the
rise of some natural incident into a
miracle, than the age of Alexander.
They were a time and circumstances of
less broad daylight. It was said, again,
that during the battle of Leuctra the
gates of the Heracleum at Thebes sud
denly opened, and the armour of Hercules
vanished from the temple, to enable the
god to take part with the Thebans in
the battle. Probably there was some real
circumstance, however slight, which gave
a foundation for the story. But this is
the utmost we think of saying in its
favour ; the literal story it never even
occurs to one of us to believe. But that
the walls of Jericho literally fell down at
1 Beaufort’s Karamania, p. n6.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
the sound of the trumpets of Joshua, we
are asked to believe, told that it is im
pious to disbelieve it. Yet which place
and time were most likely to generate a
miraculous story with ease—Hellas and
the days of Epaminondas, cr Palestine
and the days of Joshua? And of docu
mentary records, which are the most
historical in their way of being generated
and propagated, which the most favour
able for the admission of legend and
miracle of all kinds—the Old Testa
ment narratives with their incubation of
centuries, and the New Testament narra
tives with their incubation of a century
(and tradition active all the while), or the
narratives, say, of Herodotus or Plutarch ?
None of them are what we call critical.
Experience of the history of the human
mind, and of men’s habits of seeing,
sifting, and relating, convinces us that the
miraculous stories of Herodotus or Plu
tarch do grow out of the process described
by Shakespeare. But we shall find our
selves inevitably led, sooner or later, to
extend the same rule to all miraculous
stories; nay, the considerations which
apply in other cases, apply, we shall most
surely discover, with even greater force in
the case of Bible miracles.
4-
This being so, there is nothing one
would more desire for a person or docu
ment one greatly values, than to make
them independent of miracles. And with
regard to the Old Testament we have
done this ; for we have shown that the
essential matter in the Old Testament is
the revelation to Israel of the immeasur
able grandeur, the eternal necessity, the
priceless blessing of that with which not
less than three-fourths of human life is
indeed concerned—-righteousness. Ar.d it
makes no difference to the preciousness
of this revelation, whether we believe that
the Red Sea miraculously opened a
passage to the Israelites, and the walls of
Jericho miraculously fell down at the blast
of Joshua’s trumpet, or that these stories
arose in the same way as other stories of
59
the kind. Eut in the New Testament the
essential thing is the revelation of Jesus
Christ. For this too, then, if one values
it, one’s great wish must in like manner
be to make it independent of miracle, if
miracle is a stay which one perceives, as
more and more we are all coming to per
ceive it, to be not solid.
Now, it may look at first sight a strange
thing to say, but it is a truth which we
will make abundantly clear as we go on,
that one of the very best helps to prepare
the way for valuing the Bible and be
lieving in Jesus Christ, is to convince
oneself of the liability to mistake in the
Bible writers. Our popular theology sup
poses that the Old Testament writers were
miraculously inspired, and could make no
mistakes; that the New Testament writers
were miraculously inspired, and could
make no mistakes ; and that there this
miraculous inspiration stopped, and all
writers on religion have been liable to
make mistakes ever since. It is as if a
hand had been put out of the sky pre
senting us with the Bible, and the rules
of criticism which apply to other books
did not apply to the Bible. Now, the
fatal thing for this supposition is, that its
owners stab it to the heart the moment
they use any palliation or explaining away,
however small, of the literal words of the
Bible; and some they always use. For
instance, it is said in the eighteenth Psalm
that a consuming fire went out of the
mouth of God, so that coals were kindled
at it. The veriest literalist will cry out:
Everyone knows that this is not to be
taken literally ! The truth is, even he
knows that this is not to be taken literally ;
but others know that a great deal more is
not to be taken literally. He knows very
little; but, as far as his little knowledge
goes, he gives up his theory, which is, of
course, palpably hollow. For indeed jt is
only by applying to the Bible a criticism,
such as it is, that such a man makes
out that criticism does not apply to the
Bible.
There has grown up an irresistible
sense that the belief in miracles was due
to man’s want of experience, to his igno
rance, agitation, and helplessness. And
�6o
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
it will not do to stake all truth and
value of the Bible upon its having been
put out of the sky, upon its being guaran
teed by miracles, and upon their being
true. If we present the Bible in this
fashion, then the cry, Imposture / will
more and more, in spite of all we can do,
gather strength, and the book will be
thrown aside more and more.
But when men come to see, that, both
in the New Testament and in the Old,
what is given us is words thrown out at
an immense reality not fully or half fully
grasped by the writers, but, even thus,
able to affect us with indescribable force;
when we convince ourselves that, as in the
Old Testament we have Israel’s inadequate
yet inexhaustibly fruitful testimony to the
Eternal that makes for righteousness, so
we have in the New Testament a report
inadequate, indeed, but the only report
we have, and therefore priceless, by men,
some more able and clear, others less
able and clear, but all full of the influences
of their time and condition, partakers
of some of its simple or its learned ig
norance—inevitably, in fine, expecting
miracles and demanding them—a report,
I say, by these men of that immense
reality not fully or half fully grasped by
them, the mind of Christ—then we shall
be drawn to the Gospels with a new zest
and as by a fresh spell. We shall throw
ourselves upon their narratives with an
ardour answering to the value of the pearl
of great price they hold, and to the diffi
culty of reaching it.
So, to profit fully by the New Testa
ment, the first thing to be done is to
make it perfectly clear to oneself that its
reporters both could err and did err. For
a plain person, an incident in the report
of St. Paul’s conversion—which comes
into our minds the more naturally as this
incident has been turned against some
thing we have ourselves said 1 —would,
one would think, be enough. We had
spoken of the notion that St. Paul’s mi
raculous vision at his conversion proved
the truth of his doctrine. We related a
vision which converted Sampson Stani1 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 54.
forth, one of the early Methodists; and
we said that just so much proving force
and no more, as Sampson Staniforth’s
vision had to confirm the truth of anything
he might afterwards teach, St. Paul’s vision
had to establish his subsequent doctrine.
It was eagerly rejoined that Staniforth’s
vision was but a fancy of his own, whereas
the reality of Paul’s was proved by his
companions hearing the voice that spoke
to him. And so in one place of the Acts
we are told they did; but in another plaze
of the Acts we are told by Paul himself
just the contrary : that his companions
did not hear the voice that spoke to him.
Need we say that the two statements have
been ‘ reconciled ’ ? They have over and
over again ; but by one of those processes
which are the opprobrium of our Bible
criticism, and by which, as Bishop Butler
says, anything can be made to mean any
thing. There is between the two state
ments a contradiction as clear as can be.
The contradiction proves nothing against
the good faith of the reporter, and St.
Paul undoubtedly had his vision ; he had
it as Sampson Staniforth had his. What
the contradiction proves is the incurable
looseness with which the circumstances
of what is called and thought a miracle
are related; and that this looseness the
Bible relaters of a miracle exhibit, just
like other people. And the moral is : what
an unsure stay, then, must miracles be !
But, after all, that there is here any
contradiction or mistake, some do deny;
so let us choose a case where the mistake
is quite undeniably clear. Such a case
we find in the confident expectation and
assertion, on the part of the New Testa
ment writers, of the approaching end of
the world. Even this mistake people try
to explain away; but it is so palpable
that no words can cloud our perception
of it. The time is short. The Lord is at
hand. The end of all things is at hand.
Little children, it is the final time. The
Lord's coming is at hand; behold, the judge
standeth before the door.x Nothing can
1 1 Cor., vii, 29 ; Philibp.,ve, 5 : 1 Pet., iv, 7 ;
I John, ii, 18 ; Tames, v, 8, 9. We have here
the express declarations of St. Paul, St. Peter,
St. John, and St. James.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
61
really obscure the evidence furnished by argument of the same kind. Habit makes
such sayings as these. When Paul told us so lend ourselves to their way of speak
the Thessalonians that they and he, at ing, that commonly nothing checks us;
the approaching coming of Christ, should but, the moment we begin to attend, we
have their turn after, not before, the faith perceive how much there is which ought
ful dead :—‘ For the Lord himself shall to check us. Take the famous allegation
descend from heaven with a shout, with of the parted clothes but lot-assigned coat
the voice of the archangel and with the of Christ, as fulfilment of the supposed
trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall prophecy in the Psalms : ‘ They parted
rise first, then we which are alive and re my garments among them, and for my
main shall be caught up together with vesture did they cast lots.’1 The words
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in of the Psalm are taken to mean contrast,
the air,’1—when he said this, St. Paul was when they do in truth mean identity.
in truth simply mistaken in his notion of According to the rules of Hebrew poetry,
what was going to happen. This is as for my vesture they did cast lots is merely a
repetition, in different words, of they parted
clear as anything can be.
And not only were the New Testament my garments among them, not an antithesis
writers thus demonstrably liable to com to it. The alleged ‘prophecy’ is, there
mit, like other men, mistakes in fact; they fore, due to a dealing with the Psalmist’s
were also demonstrably liable to commit words which is arbitrary and erroneous.
mistakes in argument. As before, let us So, again, to call the words, a bone of him
take a case which will be manifest and shall not be brokenp a prophecy of Christ,
palpable to everyone. St. Paul, arguing fulfilled by his legs not being broken on
to the Galatians that salvation was not by the cross, is evidently, the moment one
the Jewish law but by Jesus Christ, proves considers it, a playing with words which
his point from the promise to Abraham nowadays we should account childish.
having been made to him and his seed, not For what do the words, taken, as alone
seeds. The words are not, he says, ‘ seeds, words can rationally be taken, along with
as of many, but as of one; to thy seed, their context, really prophesy? The
which is Christ.’2 Now, as to the point entire safety of the righteous, not his
to he proved, we all agree with St. Paul; death. Many are the troubles of the right
but his argument is that of a Jewish eous, but the Eternal delivereth him out
Rabbi, and is clearly both fanciful and of all; he keepeth all his bones, so that not
false. The writer in Genesis never in one of them is broken? Worse words,
tended to draw any distinction between therefore, could hardly have been chosen
one of Abraham’s seed, and Abraham’s from the Old Testament to apply in that
seed general. And even if he had ex connexion where they come ; for they
pressly meant, what Paul says he did not are really contradicted by the death of
mean, Abraham’s seed in general, he Christ, not fulfilled by it.
It is true, this verbal and unintelligent
would still have said seed, and not seeds.
This is a good instance to take, because use of Scripture is just what was to be
the Apostle’s substantial doctrine is here expected from the circumstances of the
not at all concerned. As to the root of New Testament writers. It was inevita
the matter in question, we are all at one ble for them; it was the sort of trifling
with St. Paul. But it is evident how he which then, in common Jewish theology,
could, like the rest of us, bring forward a passed for grave argument and made a
quite false argument in support of a quite serious impression, as it has in common
Christian theology ever since. But this
true thesis.
And the use of prophecy by the writers does not make it the less really trifling ;
of the New Testament furnishes really, or hinder one nowadays from seeing it to
almost at every turn, instances of false
1 I Thess., iv, 16, 17.
2 GW., iii, 16.
1 Ps. xxii, 18.
1 See John, xix, 36.
8 Ps. xxxiv, 19, 20.
�62
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
be trifling, directly we examine it. The
mistake made will strike some people
more forcibly in one of the cases cited,
some in another, but in one or other of
the cases the mistake will be visible to
everybody.
Now, this recognition of the liability of
the New Testament writers to make mis
takes, both of fact and of argument, will
certainly, as we have said, more and more
gain strength, and spread wider and
wider. The futility of their mode of
demonstration from prophecy, of which
we have just given examples, will be more
and more felt. The fallibility of that
demonstration from miracles to which
they and all about them attached such
preponderating weight, which made the
disciples of Jesus believe in him, which
made the people believe in him, will be
. more and more recognised.
Reverence for all, who in those first
dubious days of Christianity, chose the
better part, and resolutely cast in their
lot with ‘the despised and rejected of
men ’ 1 Gratitude to all, who, while the
tradition was yet fresh, helped by their
writings to preserve and set clear the
precious record of the words and life of
Jesus ! And honour, eternal honour, to
the great and profound qualities of soul
and mind which some of these writers
display ! But the writers are admirable
for what they are, not for what, by the
nature of things, they could not be. It
was superiority enough in them to attach
themselves firmly to Jesus; to feel to the
bottom of their hearts that power of his
words, which alone held permanently—
held, when the miracles, in which the
multitude believed as well as the disciples,
failed to hold. The good faith of the
Bible-writers is above all question, it
speaks for itself; and the very same
criticism, which shows us the defects of
their exegesis and of their demonstrations
from miracles, establishes their good faith.
But this could not, and did not, prevent
them from arguing in the methods by
which everyone around them argued, and
from expecting miracles where everybody
else expected them.
In one respect alone have the miracles
recorded by them a more real ground
than the mass of miracles of which we
have the relation. Medical science has
never gauged—never, perhaps, enough
set itself to gauge—the intimate con
nexion between moral fault and disease.
To what extent, or in how many cases,
what is called illness is due to moral
springs having been used amiss—whether
by being over-used or by not being used
sufficiently—we hardly at all know, and
we far too little inquire. Certainly it is
due to this very much more than we
commonly think; and the more it is due
to this, the more do moral therapeutics
rise in possibility and importance.1 The
bringer of light and happiness, the calmer
and pacifier, or invigorator and stimulator,
is one of the chiefest of doctors. Such a
doctor was Jesus; such an operator, by an
efficacious and real, though little observed
and little employed agency, upon what we,
in the language of popular superstition,
call the unclean spirits, but which are to
be designated more literally and more
correctly as the uncleared, unpurified
spirits, which came raging and madding
before him. This his own language
shows, if we know how to read it.
‘ What does it matter whether I say, Thy
sins are forgiven thee I or whether I say,
Arise and zvalkV2 And again: ‘ Thou
art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse
thing befall thee.'3 His reporters, we
must remember, are men who saw thau
maturgy in all that Jesus did, and who
saw in all sickness and disaster visitations
from God, and they bend his language
accordingly. But indications enough re
main to show the line of the Master, his
perception of the large part of moral
cause in many kinds of disease, and his
method of addressing to this part his
cure.
It would never have done, indeed, to
have men pronouncing right and left that
this and that was a judgment, and how,
and for what, and on whom. And so,
1 Consult the Charmides of Plato (cap. v.) for a
remarkable account of the theory of such a treat
ment, attributed by Socrates to Zamolxis, the godking of the Thracians.
2 Matth., ix, 5.
8 John, v, 14..
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
63
when the disciples, seeing an afflicted ever have thought differently.
Discre
person, asked whether this man had done pancies which we now labour with such
sin or his parents, Jesus checked them honest pains and by such astonishing
and said : ‘ Neither the one nor the other, methods to explain away,—the voice at
but that the works of God might be made Paul’s conversion, heard by the bystanders
manifest in him.’1 Not the less clear is according to one account, not heard by
his own belief in the moral root of much them according to another ; the Holy
physical disease, and in moral therapeu Dove at Christ’s baptism, visible to John
tics; and it is important to note well the the Baptist in one narrative, in two others
instances of miracles where this belief to Jesus himself, in another, finally, to all
comes in. For the action of Jesus in the people as well; the single blind man
these instances, however it may be ampli in one relation, growing into two blind
fied in the reports, was real; but it is men in another ; the speaking with
not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, tongues, according to St. Paul a sound
thaumaturgy,—it is not what people are without meaning, according to the Acts
fond of calling the supernatural, but what an intelligent and intelligible utterance,—
is better called the non-natural. It is, on all this will be felt to require really no
the contrary, like the grace of Raphael, explanation at all, to explain itself, to be
or the grand style of Phidias, eminently natural to the whole class of incidents to
natural ; but it is above common, low’- w’hich these miracles belong, and the
pitched nature. It is a line of nature not inevitable result of the looseness with
yet mastered or followed out.
which the stories of them arise and are
Its significance us a guarantee of the propagated.
authenticity of Christ’s mission is trivial,
And the more the miraculousness of
however, compared with the guarantee the story deepens, as after the death of
furnished by his sayings. Its importance Jesus, the more does the texture of the
is in its necessary effect upon the incidents become loose and floating, the
beholders and reporters. This element more does the very air and aspect of
of what was really wonderful, unprece things seem to tell us we are in wonder
dented, and unaccountable, they had land. Jesus after his resurrection not
actually before them ; and we may known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her
estimate how it must have helped and for the gardener; appearing in another
seemed to sanction that tendency which form, and not known by the two disciples
in any case would have carried them, going with him to Emmaus and at supper
circumstanced as they were, to find all with him there; not known by his most
the performances and career of Jesus intimate apostles on the borders of the
miraculous.
Sea of Galilee ;—and presently, out of
But, except for this, the miracles related these vague beginnings, the recognitions
in the Gospels will appear to us more and getting asserted, then the ocular demon
more, the more our . experience and strations, the final commissions, the
knowledge increases, to have but the ascension;—one hardly knows which of
same ground which is common to all the two to call the most evident here,
miracles, the ground indicated by Shake the perfect simplicity and good faith of
speare ; to have been generated under the narrators, or the plainness with which
the same kind of conditions as other they themselves really say to us: Behold
miracles, and to follow the same laws. a legend growing under your eyes !
When once the ‘Zeit-Geist’ has made us
And suggestions of this sort, with
entertain the notion of this, a thousand respect to the whole miraculous side of
things in the manner of relating will the New Testament, will meet us at every
strike us which never struck us before, turn; we here but give a sample of them.
and will make us wonder how we could It is neither our wish nor our design to
accumulate them, to marshal them, to
1 John, ix, 3.
insist upon them, to make their force felt.
�64
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Let those who desire to keep. them at
arm’s length continue to do so, if they
can, and go on placing the sanction of
the Christian religion in its miracles.
Our point is that the objections to
miracles do, and more and more will,
without insistence, without attack, with
out controversy, make their own force
felt; and that the sanction of Chris
tianity, if Christianity is not to be lost
along with its miracles, must be found
elsewhere.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
Now, then, will be perceived the bearing phecy : The Eternal keepeth all the hones
and gravity of what I some little way back of the righteous, so that not one of them is
said, that the more we convince ourselves broken;1 who proves salvation to be by
of the liability of the New Testament Christ alone, from the promise to Abra
writers to mistake, the more we really ham being made to seed in the singular
bring out the greatness and worth of the number, not the plural. If, therefore, the
New Testament. For the more the re human mind is now drawing away from
porters were fallible and prone to delusion, reliance on miracles, coming to perceive
the more does Jesus become independent the community of character which per
of the mistakes they made, and unaffected vades them all, to understand their natural
by them. We have plain proof that here laws, so to speak—their loose mode of
was a very great spirit; and the greater he origination and their untrustworthiness—
was, the more certain were his disciples to and is inclined rather to distrust the dealer
misunderstand him. The depth of their in them than to pin its faith upon him;
misunderstanding of him is really a kind then it is good for the authority of Jesus,
of measure of the height of his superiority. that his reporters are evidently liable to
And this superiority is what interests us ignorance and error. He is reported to
in the records of the New Testament; for deal in miracles, to be above all a thauthe New Testament exists to reveal Jesus maturgist. But the more his reporters
Christ, not to establish the immunity of were intellectually men of their nation and
its writers from error.
time, and of its current beliefs—the more,
Jesus himself is not a New Testament that is, they were open to mistakes—the
writer ; he is the object of description and more certain they were to impute miracles
comment to the New Testament writers. to a wonderful and half-understood per
As the Old Testament speaks about the sonage like Jesus, whether he would or
Eternal and bears an invaluable witness to no. He himself may, at the same time,
him, without yet ever adequately in words have had quite other notions as to what
defining and expressing him ; so, and even he was doing and intending.
yet more, do the New Testament writers
Again, the mistake of imagining that
speak about Jesus and give a priceless the world was to end, as St. Paul an
record of him, without adequately and nounces, within the lifetime of the first
accurately comprehending him. They are Christian generation, is palpable. But the
altogether on another plane from Jesus, reporters of Jesus make him announcing
and their mistakes are not his. It is not just the same thing: ‘This generation
Jesus himself who relates his own miracles shall not pass away till they shall see the
to us; who tells us of his own apparitions Son of Man coming in the clouds with
after his death; who alleges his crucifixion
and sufferings as a fulfilment cf the pro
1 Ps. xxxiv, 20.
�THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
great power and glory, and then shall he
send his angels and gather his elect from
the four winds.’1 Popular theology can
put a plain satisfactory sense upon this,
but, as usual, through that process de
scribed by Butler by which anything can
be made to mean anything; and from
this sort of process the human mind is
beginning to shrink. A more plausible
theology will say that the words are an
accommodation; that the speaker lends
himself to the fancies and expectations of
his hearers. A good deal of such accom
modation there is in this and other say
ings of Jesus; but accommodation to the
full extent here supposed would surely
have been impossible. To suppose it, is
most violent and unsatisfactory. Either,
then, the words were, like St. Paul’s an
nouncement, a mistake, or they are not
really the very words Jesus said, just as he
said them. That is, the reporters have
given them a turn, however slight, a tone
and a colour, a connexion, to make them
comply with a fixed idea in their own
minds, which they unfeignedly believed
was a fixed idea with Jesus also. Now,
the more we regard the reporters of Jesus
as men liable to err, full of the turbid
Jewish fancies about ‘ the grand consum
mation ’ which were then current, the
easier we can understand these men in
evitably putting their own eschatology into
the mouth of Jesus, when they had to
report his discourse about the kingdom of
God and the troubles in store for the
Jewish nation, and the less need have we
to make Jesus a co-partner in their escha
tology.
Again, the futility of such demonstrations
from prophecy as those of which I have
quoted examples, and generally of all that
Jewish exegesis, based on a mere unintel
ligent catching at the letter of the Old
Testament, isolated from its context and
real meaning, of which the New Testament
writers give us so much, begins to discon
cert attentive readers of the Bible more
and more, and to be felt by them as an
embarrassment to the cause of Jesus, not
a support. Well, then, it is good for the
1 Matth., xxiv, 30, 31, 34.
65
authority of Jesus, that those who esta
blish it by arguments of this sort should be
clearly men of their race and time, not
above its futile methods of reasoning and
demonstration. The more they were this,
and the more they were sure to mix up
much futile logic and exegesis with their
presentation of Jesus, the less is Jesus
himself responsible for such logic and
exegesis, or at all dependent upon it. He
may himself have rated such argumentation
at precisely its true value, and have based
his mission and authority upon nogrounds
but solid ones. Whether he did so or not,
his hearers and reporters were sure to base
it on their own fantastic grounds also, and
to credit Jesus with doing the same.
In short, the more w« conceive Jesus as
almost as much over the heads of his dis
ciples and reporters then, as he is over the
heads of the mass of so-called Christians
now, and the more we see his disciples to
have been, as they were, men raised by a
truer moral susceptiveness above their
countrymen, but in intellectual conceptions
and habits much on a par with them, all
the more do we make room, so to speak,
for Jesus to be a personage immensely
great and wonderful; as wonderful as any
thing his reporters imagined him to be,
though in a different manner.
2.
We make room for him to be this, and
through the inadequate reporting of his
followers there breaks and shines, and will
more and more break and shine the more
the matter is examined, abundant evidence
that he was this. It is most remarkable,
and the best proof of the simplicity, seri
ousness, and good faith, which intercourse
with Jesus Christ inspired, that witnesses
with a fixed prepossession, and having no
doubt at all as to the interpretation to be
put on his acts and career, should yet
admit so much of what makes against
themselves and their own power of inter
preting. For them, it was a thing beyond
all doubt, that by miracles Jesus mani
fested forth his glory, and induced the
faithful to believe in him. Yet what
E
�66
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
checks to this paramount and all-governing lyptic pictures of the Book of Daniel and
belief of theirs do they report from Jesus the Book of Enoch, and a transference of
himself! Everybody will be able to them to Jesus Christ and his kingdom.
recall such checks, although he may never It is not surprising, certainly, that men
yet have been accustomed to consider with the mental range of their time, and
their full significance. Except ye see signs with so little flexibility of thought, that,
and wonders, ye will not believe ! 1—as when Jesus told them to beware of ‘the
much as to say: ‘ Believe on right leaven of the Pharisees,’1 or when he
grounds you cannot, and you must needs called himself ‘ the bread of life ’ and
believe on wrong!’ And again : ‘Believe said, He that eateth me shall live by me,2
me that I am in the Father and the Father they stuck hopelessly fast in the literal
in me ; or else believe for the very works' meaning of the words, and were accordingly
sake ! ’2—as much as to say : ‘ Acknow puzzled or else offended by them,—it is
ledge me on the ground of my healing not surprising that these men should have
and restoring acts being miraculous, if been incapable of dealing in a large spirit
you must; but it is not the right ground.’ with prophecies like those of Daniel, that
No, not the right ground; and when they should have applied them to Jesus
Nicodemus came and would put belief in narrowly and literally, and should there
Christ on this ground (‘We know that fore have conceived his kingdom uninthou art a teacher come from God, for no telligently. This is not remarkable; what
one can do the miracles that thou doest is remarkable is, that they should them
except God be’with him'), Jesus rejoined : selves supply us with their Master’s blame
‘ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a of their too literal criticism, his famous
man be born from above, he cannot see the sentence : ‘ The kingdom of God is within
kingdom of God ! ’ thus tacitly changing you ! ’3 Such an account of the kingdom
his disciple’s ground and correcting him.3 of God has more right, even if recorded
Even distress and impatience at this false only once, to pass with us for Jesus Christ’s
ground being taken is visible sometimes : own account, than the common materialis
‘ Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why ing accounts, if repeated twenty times;
doth this generation ask for a sign? for it was manifestly quite foreign to the
Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign disciples’ own notions, and they could
be given to this generation !’4 Who does never have invented it. Evidence of the
not see what double and treble import same kind, again,—evidence borne by the
ance these checks from Jesus to the reporters themselves against their own
reliance on miracles gain, through their power of rightly understanding what their
being reported by those who relied on Master, on this topic of the kingdom of
miracles devoutly? Who does not see God and its coming, meant to say,—is
what a clue they offer as to the real mind Christ’s warning to his Apostles, that the
of Jesus? To convey at all to such subject of final things was one where they
hearers of him that there was any objec were all out of their depth : ‘ It is not for
tion to miracles, his own sense of the you to know the times and seasons which
objection must have been profound ; and the Father hath put in his own power.’4
to get them, who neither shared nor'
So, too, with the use of prophecy and
understood it, to repeat it a few times, he of the Old Testament generally. A very
must have repeated it many times.
small experience of Jewish exegesis will
Take, again, the eschatology of the convince us that, in the disciples, their
disciples, their notion of the final things, catching at the letter of the Scriptures,
Of the approaching great judgment and and mistaking this play with words for
end of the world. This consisted mainly serious argument, was nothing extraordi
in a literal appropriation of the apoca nary. The extraordinary thing is that
1 John, iv, 48.
1 John, iii, 2, 3.
2 John, xiv, 11.
4 Mark, viii, 12.
* Matth., xvi, 6-12.
3 Luke, xvii, 21.
2 John, vi, 48, 57.
4 Ads, i, 7.
�The new testament record
Jesus, even in the report of these critics,
uses Scripture in a totally different manner;
he wields it as an instrument of which he
truly possesses the use. Either he puts
prophecy into act, and by the startling
point thus made he engages the popular
imagination on his side, makes the popu
lar familiarity with prophecy serve him;
as when he rides into Jerusalem on an
ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and
sellers. Or else he applies Scripture in
what is called ‘a superior spirit,’ to make
it yield to narrow-minded hearers a lesson
of wisdom ; as, for instance, to rebuke a
superstitious observance of the Sabbath
he employs the incident of David’s
taking the shewbread. His reporters, in
short, are the servants’ of the Scripture
letter, Jesus is its master; and it is from
the very men who were servants to it
themselves, that we learn that he was
master of it. How signal, therefore,
must this mastery have been ! how emi
nently and strikingly different from the
treatment known and practised by the
disciples themselves !
Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the
rule was, undoubtedly, that men ‘ believed
on Jesus when they saw the miracles which
he did.’1 Miracles were in these re
porters’ eyes, beyond question, the evi
dence of the Christian religion. And
yet these same reporters indicate another
and a totally different evidence offered for
the Christian religion by Jesus Christ
himself. Every one that heareth and
learneth from the Father, cometh unto me.2
As the Father hath taught me, so I speak ; 3
he that is of God heareth the words of
God; 4 if God was your Father, ye would
have loved me 1 5 This is inward evidence,
direct evidence.
From that previous
knowledge of God, as ‘the Eternal that
loveth righteousness,’ which Israel pos
sessed, the hearers of Jesus could and
should have concluded irresistibly, when
they heard his words, that he came from
God. Now miracles are outward evidence,
indirect evidence, not conclusive in this
fashion. To walk on the sea cannot
1 John, ii, 23.
2 John, vi, 45.
* John, viii, 28.
4 John, viii, 47.
5 John, viii, 42.
67
really prove a man to proceed from the
Eternal that loveth righteousness; although
undoubtedly, as we have said, a man who
walks on the sea will be able to make the
mass of mankind believe about him
almost anything he chooses to say. But
there is, after all, no necessary connexion
between walking on the sea and proceed
ing from the Eternal that loveth righteous
ness. Jesus propounds, on the other
hand, an evidence of which the whole
force lies in the necessary connexion
between the proving matterand the power
that makes for righteousness. This is
his evidence for the Christian religion.
His disciples felt the force of the
evidence, indeed. Peter’s answer to the
question, ‘ Will ye also go away ? ’—‘ To
whom should we go ? thou hast the words
of eternal life ! ’1 proves it. But feeling the
force of a thing is very different from
understanding and possessing it. The
evidence, which the disciples were con
scious of understanding and possessing,
was the evidence from miracles. And
yet, in their report, Jesus is plainly shown
to us insisting on a different evidence, an
internal one. The character of the re
porters gives to this indication a para
mount importance. That they should
indicate this internal evidence once, as
the evidence on which Jesus insisted,
is more significant, we say, than their
indicating, twenty times, the evidence
from miracles as the evidence naturally
convincingto mankind, and recommended,
as they thought, by Jesus. The notion
of the one evidence they would have of
themselves; the notion of the other they
could only get from a superior mind. This
mind must have been full of it to induce
them to feel it at all; and their exhibition
of it, even then, must of necessity be
inadequate and broken.
But is it possible to overrate the value
of the ground thus gained for showing the
riches of the New Testament to those
who, sick of the popular, arguments from
prophecy, sick of the popular arguments
from miracles, are for casting the New
Testament aside altogether? The book
1 John, vi, 68.
E2
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
contains all that we know of a wonderful
spirit, far above the heads of his reporters,
still farther above the head of our popular
theology, which has added its own mis
understanding of the reporters to the
reporters’ misunderstanding of Jesus.
And it was quite inevitable that anything
so superior and so profound should be
imperfectly understood by those amongst
whom it first appeared, and for a very
long time afterwards ; and that it should
come at last gradually to stand out clearer
only by time,—Time, as the Greek maxim
says, the wisest of all things, for he is the
unfailing discoverer.
Yet, however much is discovered, the
object of our scrutiny must still be beyond
us, must still transcend our adequate
knowledge, if for no other reason, because
of the character of the first and only
records of him. But in the view now
taken we have,—even at the point to
which we have already come,—at least a
wonderful figure transcending his time,
transcending his disciples, attaching them
but transcending them; in very much
that he uttered going far above their
heads, treating Scripture and prophecy
like a master while they treated it like
children, resting his doctrine on internal
evidence while they rested it on miracles;
and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and
penetrativeness, planting his profound
veins of thought in their memory along
with their own notions and prepossessions,
to come out all mixed up together, but
still distinguishable one day and separable
—and leaving his word thus to bear fruit
for the future.
3Truly, then, some one will exclaim, we
may say with the Imitation : Magna ars
est scire conversari cum fesu 1 And so it
is. To extract from his reporters the true
Jesus entire, is even impossible ; to extract
him in considerable part is one of the
highest conceivable tasks of criticism.
And it is vain to use that favourite argu
ment of popular theology that man could
never have been left by Providence in
difficulty and obscurity about a matter of
so much importance to him. Such an
argument we are not bound to notice.
For the cardinal rule of our present in
quiry is that rule of Newton’s : Hypotheses
non fingo-, and this argument of popular
theology rests on the eternal hypothesis of
a magnified and non-natural man at the
head of mankind’s and the world’s affairs.
And as to the argument itself, even if we
deal with it, we may say that the course
of things, so far as we can see, is not so ;
things do not proceed in this fashion.
Because a man has frequently to make
sea-passages, he is not gifted with an
immunity from sea-sickness; because a
thing is of the highest interest and im
portance to know, it is not, therefore, easy
to know; on the contrary, in general, in
proportion to its magnitude it is difficult,
and requires time.
But the right commentary on the sen
tence of the Imitation is given by the
Imitation itself in the sentence following:
Esto humilis etpacificus eterit tecum Jesus!
What men could take at the hands of
Jesus, what they could use, what could
save them, he made as clear as light; and
Christians have never been able, even if
they would, to miss seeing it. No,never;
but still they have superadded to it a vast
Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief of their
own ; and the Aberglaube has pushed on
one side, for very many, the saving doc
trine of Jesus, has hindered attention from
being riveted on this and on its line of
growth and working, has nearly effaced it,
has developed all sorts of faults contrary
to it. This Aberglaube has sprung out of
a false criticism of the literary records in
which the doctrine is conveyed ; what is
called ‘ orthodox divinity’ is, in fact, an
immense literary misapprehension. Hav
ing caused the saving doctrines enshrined
in these records to be neglected, and
having credited the records with existing
for the sake of its own Aberglaube, this
blunder now threatens to cause the
records themselves to be neglected by all
those (and their numbers are fast increas
ing) whom its own Aberglaube fills with
impatience and aversion. Therefore it is
needful to show the line of growth of this
�THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
Aberglaube, and its delusiveness ; to show,
and with more detail than we have
admitted hitherto, the line of growth of
Jesus Christ’s doctrine, and the farreaching sanctions, the inexhaustible
attractiveness, the grace and truth, with
which he invested it. The doctrine itself
is essentially simple ; and what is difficult,
—the literary criticism of the documents
containing the doctrine,—is not the
doctrine.
This literary criticism, however, is ex
tremely difficult. It calls into play the
highest requisites for the study of letters ;
great and wide acquaintance with the
history of the human mind, knowledge of
the manner in which men have thought,
of their way of using words and of what
they mean by them, delicacy of perception
and quick tact, and besides all these, a
favourable moment and the ‘ Zeit-Geist.’
And yet everyone among us criticises the
Bible, and thinks it is‘of the essence of
the Bible that it can be thus criticised
with success ! And the Four Gospels,
the part of the Bible to which this sort of
criticism is most applied and most con
fidently, are just the part which for
literary criticism is infinitely the hardest,
however simple they may look, and how
ever simple the saving doctrine they con
tain really is. For Prophets and Epistlers
speak for themselves : but in the Four
Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus,
who is far above them.
Now, we all know what the literary
criticism of the mass of mankind is. To
be worth anything, literary and scientific
criticism require, both of them, the finest
heads and the most sure tact; and they
require, besides, that the world and the
world’s experience shall have come some
considerable way. But, ever since this
last condition has been fulfilled, the finest
heads for letters and science, the surest
tact for these, have turned themselves in
general to other departments of work than
criticism of the Bible, this department
being occupied already in such force of
numbers and hands, if not of heads, and
there being so many annoyances and even
dangers in freely approaching it. As our
Reformers were to Shakespeare and Bacon
69
in tact for letters and science, or as Luther,
even, was to Goethe in this respect, such
almost has on the whole been, since the
Renascence, the general proportion in rate
of power for criticism between those who
have given themselves to secular letters
and science, and those who have given
themselves to interpreting the Bible, and
who, in conjunction with the popular
interpretation of it both traditional and
contemporary, have made what is called
‘ orthodox theology.’ It is as if some
simple and saving doctrines, essential for
men to know, were enshrined in Shake
speare’s Hamlet or in Newton’s Principia
(though the Gospels are really a far more
complex and difficult object of criticism
than either); and a host of second-rate
critics, and official critics, and what is
called ‘ the popular mind ’ as well, threw
themselves upon Hamlet and the Prin
cipia, with the notion that they could and
should extract from these documents, and
impose on us for our belief, not only the
saving doctrines enshrined there, but also
the right literary and scientific criticism of
the entire documents. A pretty mess
they would make of it! and just this sort
of mess is our so-called orthodox theo
logy. And its professors are nevertheless
bold, overweening, and even abusive, in
maintaining their criticism against all
questioners ; although really, if one thinks
seriously of it, it was a kind of imper
tinence in such professors to attempt any
such criticism at all.
Happily, the faith that saves is attached
to the saving doctrines in the Bible, which
are very simple; not to its literary and
scientific criticism, which is very hard.
And no man is to be called ‘ infidel ’ for
his bad literary and scientific criticism of
the Bible; but if he were, how dreadful
would the state of our orthodox theo
logians be ! They themselves freely fling
about this word infidel at all those who
reject their literary and scientific criticism,
which turns out to be quite false. It
would be but just to mete to them with
their own measure, and to condemn them
by their own rule; and, when they air
their unsound criticism in public, to cry
indignantly : The Bishop of So-and-so, tht
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
70
Dean of So-and-so, and other infidel lec
turers of the presen t day ! or : That ram
pant infidel, the Archdeacon of So-and-so,
in his recent letter on the Athanasian
Creed! or: ‘The Rock,’.‘The Church
Times,’ and the rest of the infidel press /
or : The torrent of infidelity which pours
every Sunday from otir pulpits ! Just
would this be, and by no means inurbane;
but hardly, perhaps, Christian. Therefore
we will not permit ourselves to say it;
but it is only kind to point out, in pass
ing, to these loud and rash people, to
what they expose themselves at the hands
of adversaries less scrupulous than we
are.
CHAPTER VII
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
In our third chapter we passed in brief
review the teaching of Jesus. But there
the objection met us, that what attested
Jesus Christ was miracles, and the preter
natural fulfilment in him of certain detailed
predictions made about him long before.
We had to pause and deal with this
objection. And now, as it disperses, we
come in full view of our old point again :—
that what did attest Jesus Christ, was his
restoration of the intuition. Jesus Christ
found Israel all astray, with an endless
talk about God, the law, righteousness,
the kingdom, everlasting life,—and no real
hold upon any one of them. Israel’s old,
sure proof of being in the right way, his test
which anybody could at once apply,—the
sanction of joy and peace,—was plainly
wanting. ‘ O Eternal, blessed is the man
that putteth his trust in thee,’1 was a
corner-stone of Israel’s religion. Now,
the Jewish people, however they might
talk about putting their trust in the
Eternal, were evidently, as they stood
there before Jesus, not blessed at all; and
they knew it themselves as well as he did.
‘ Great peace have they who love thy law,’2
was another corner-stone. But the Jewish
people had at that time in its soul as little
peace as it had joy and blessedness ; it
was seething with inward unrest, irritation,
and trouble. Yet the way of the Eternal
was most indubitably a way of peace and
joy; so, if Israel felt no peace and no
joy, Israel could not be walking in the
* Ps, Ixxxiv, jj.
2 Ps. cxix, 165.
way of the Eternal. Here we have the
firm, unchanging ground, on which the
operations of Jesus both began and always
proceeded.
And it is to be observed that Jesus by
no means gave a new, more precise,
scientific definition of God, but took up
this term just as Israel used it, to stand
for the Eternal that loveth righteousness.
If therefore this term was, in Israel’s use
of it, not a term of science, but, as we say,
a term of common speech, of poetry and
eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of
consciousness not fully covered by it, so
it was in Jesus Christ’s use of it also.
And if the substratum of real affirmation
in the term was, with Israel, not the
affirmation of ‘ a great Personal First
Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe,’ but the affirmation of ‘an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness,’ so it remained with
Jesus Christ likewise. He set going a
great process of searching and sifting;
but this process had for its direct object
the idea of righteousness, and only touched
the idea of God through this, and not
independently of this and immediately.
If the idea of righteousness was changed,
this implied, undoubtedly, a correspond
ing change in the idea of the Power that
makes for righteousness; but in this
manner only, and to this extent, does the
teaching of Jesus re-define the idea of
God.
But search and sift and renew the idea
of righteousness Jesus did. And though
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
the work of Jesus, like the name of God,
calls up in the believer a multitude of
emotions and associations far more than
any brief definition can cover, yet, remem
bering Jeremy Taylor’s advice to avoid
exhortations to get Christ, to be in Christ,
and to seek some more distinct and practi
cal way of speaking of him, we shall not do
ill, perhaps, if we summarise to our own
minds his work by saying, that he restored
the intuition of God through transforming
the idea of righteousness ; and that, to do
this, he brought a method, and he brought
a secret. And of those two great words
which fill such a place in his gospel,
repentance and peace,—as we see that his
Apostles, when they preached his gospel,
preached ‘Repentance unto life’1 and
‘Peace through Jesus Christ,’2—of these
two great words, one, repentance, attaches
itself, we shall find, to his method, and the
other, peace, to his secret.
There was no question between Jesus
Christ and the Jews as to the object to
aim at. ‘ If thou wouldst enter into life,
keep the commandments,’ said Jesus.3
And Israel, too, on his part, said: ‘ He
that keepeth the commandments keepeth
his own soul.’4 But what command
ments ? The commandments of God ;
about this, too, there was no question.
But: ‘ Leaving the commandment of
God, ye hold the tradition of men; ye
make the commandment of God of none
effect by your tradition ; ’ said Jesus.5
Therefore the commandments which Israel
followed were not those commandments
of God by which a man keeps his own
soul, enters into life. And the practical
proof of this was, that Israel stood before
the eyes of the world manifestly neither
blessed nor at peace ; yet these characters
of bliss and peace the following of the
real commandments of God was confessed
to give. So a rule, or method, was
wanted, by which to determine on what
the keeping of the real commandments of
God depended.
And Jesus gave one: ‘ The things that
1 Acts, xi, 18.
2 Acts, x, 36.
8 Matth., xix, 17.
4 Prov., xix, 16.
4 Mark, vii, 9, 13.
7l
come from within a man's heart, they it is
which defile him ! ’1
We have seen what an immense matter
conduct is;—that it is three-fourths of
life. We have seen how plain and simple
a matter it is, so far as knowledge is
concerned. We have seen how, more
over, philosophers are for referring all
conduct to one or other of man’s two
elementary instincts,—the instinct of self
preservation and the reproductive instinct.
It is the suggestions of one or other of
these instincts, philosophers say, which
call forth all cases in which there is scope
for exercising morality, or conduct. And
this does, we saw, cover the facts well
enough. For we can run up nearly all
faults of conduct into two classes,—faults
of temper and faults of sensuality; to be
referred, all of them, to one or other of
these two instincts. Now, Jesus not only
says that things coming from within a
man’s heart defile him, he adds expressly
what these things that, coming from
within a man, defile him, are. And what
he enumerates are the following : ‘ Evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
stealings, greeds, viciousnesses, fraud, dis
soluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride,
folly.’2 These fall into two groups: one,
of faults of self-assertion, graspingness and
violence, all of which we may call faults
of temper; and the other, of faults of
sensuality. And the two groups, between
them, do for practical purposes cover all
the range of faults proceeding from these
two sources, and therefore all the range of
conduct. So the motions or impulses to
faults of conduct were what Jesus said the
real commandments of God are con
cerned with. And it was plain what such
faults are; but, to make assurance more
sure, he went farther and said what they
are. But no outward observances were
conduct, were that keeping of the com
mandments of God which was the keeping
of a man’s own soul and made him enter
into life. To have the A?ar/and thoughts
in order as to certain matters, was
conduct.
1 Matth., xv, 18 ; Mark, vii, 20, 21.
2 Mark, vii, 21, 22.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
72
This was the ‘method’ of Jesus: the
setting up a great unceasing inward move
ment of attention and verification in
matters which are three-fourths of human
life, where to see true and to verify is not
difficult, the difficult thing is to care and
to attend. And the inducement to attend
was because joy and peace, missed on
every other line, were to be reached on
this.
2.
bined stress of evidence for it, and may
be taken as so eminently his. And no
wonder. For the maxim contains his
secret, the secret by which, emphatically,
his gospel ‘brought life and immortality
to light.’1 Christ’s method directed the
disciple’s eye inward, and set his con
sciousness to work; and the first thing
his consciousness told him was, that he
had two selves pulling him different ways.
Till we attend, till the method is set at
work, it seems as if ‘ the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts ’2 were
to be followed as a matter of course ; as
if an impulse to do a thing must mean
that we should do it. But when we
attend, we find that an impulse to do a
thing is really in itself no reason at all
why we should do it; because impulses
proceed from two sources, quite different,
and of quite different degrees of authority.
St. Paul contrasts them as the inward man,
and the man in our members ; the mind
of the flesh, and the spiritual mind.3
Jesus contrasts them as life, properly so
named, and life in this world.* And the
moment we seriously attend to conscience,
to the suggestions which concern practice
and conduct, we can see plainly enough
from which source a suggestion comes,
and that the suggestions from one source
are to overrule those from the other.
But this is a negative state of things, a
reign of check and constraint, a reign,
merely, of morality. Jesus changed it
into what was positive and attractive,
lighted it up, made it religion, by the
idea of two lives. One of them life,
properly so called, full of light, endur
ance, felicity, in connexion with the higher
and permanent self; and the other of
them life improperly so called, in con
nexion with the lower and transient self.
The first kind of life was already a che
rished ideal with Israel (‘ Thou wilt show
But for this world of busy inward move
ment created by the method of Jesus, a
rule of action was wanted; and this rule
was found in his secret. It was this
of which the Apostle Paul afterwards
possessed himself with such energy, and
called it ‘ the word of the cross,’ 1 or,
necrosis, ‘ dying.’ The rule of action St.
Paul gave was : ‘ Always bearing about in
the body the dying of Jesus, that the life
also of Jesus may be made manifest in
our body 1 ’2 In the popular theurgy,
these words are commonly referred to
what is called ‘ pleading the blood of the
covenant,’—relying on the death and
merits of Christ (in pursuance of the
contract originally passed in the Council
of the Trinity) to satisfy God’s wrath
against sinners and to redeem us. But
they do really refer to words of Jesus,
often and often repeated, and of which
the following may very well stand as pre
eminently representative : ‘ He that will
save his life shall lose it; he that will lose
his life shall save it. He that loveth his
life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life
in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
Whosoever will come after me, let him
renounce himself and take up his cross
daily, and follow me.' 3
These words, or words like them, were
repeated again and again, so that no
reporter could miss them. No reporter
did miss them. We find them, as we
1 II Tim., i, 10.
find the method of conscience, in all the
2 Ta fleA^/xara ttjs capKbs Kai rwv Siavoiwv.—
four Gospels. Perhaps there is no other Ephesians, ii, 3.
3 Rom., chap. viii.
maxim of Jesus which has such a com* 'O XJ-yos 6 rov ffravpov.—I Cor., i, 18.
2 II Cor., iv, io.
• Luke, ix, 24; John, xii, 25; Luke, ix, 23.
4 John, xii, 25. The strict grammatical and
logical connexion of the words iv rip Kiirp.<p rovrtp
is with 0 p.i<rwv, but the sense and effect is as given
above.
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
73
'me the path of life ! ’);1 and a man person of the Trinity approving the
might be placed in it, Jesus said, by dy Second, because he stands to the con
ing to the second. For it is to be noted tract already in the Council of the Trinity
that our common expression, ‘ deny him passed. But what it really means is, that
self,’ is an inadequate and misleading the joy of Jesus, of this ‘ Son of Peace,’1
version of the words used by Jesus. the ‘joy’ he was so desirous that his
To deny one’s self is commonly under disciples should find ‘fulfilled in them
stood to mean that one refuses one’s self selves,’ 2 was due to his having himself
something. But what Jesus says is : ‘ Let followed his own secret. And the great
a man disown himself, renounce himself, counterpart to : A life-giving change of the
die as regards his old self, and so live.’ inner man,—the promise : Peace through
Himself the old man, the life in this world, Jesus Christ!3—his peace through this
meant following those ‘ wishes of the flesh secret of his.
and of the current thoughts ’ which Jesus
Now, the value of this rule that one
had, by his method, already put his dis should die to one’s apparent self, live to
ciples in the way of sifting and scrutinis one’s real self, depends upon whether it is
ing, and of trying by the standard of true. And true it certainly is;—a pro
conformity to conscience.
found truth of what our scientific friends,
Thus, after putting him by his method who have a systematic philosophy and a
in the way to find what doing righteous nomenclature to match, and who talk of
ness was, by his secret Jesus put his Egoism and Altruism, would call, per
disciple in the way of doing it. For the haps, psycho-physiology. And we may
breaking the sway of what is commonly trace men’s experience affirming and con
called one's self, ceasing our concern with firming it, from a very plain and level
it and leaving it to perish, is not, Jesus account of it to an account almost as
said, being thwarted or crossed, but living. high and solemn as that of Jesus. That
And the proof of this is that it has the an opposition there is, in all matter of
characters of life in the highest degree,— what we call conduct, between a man’s
the sense of going right, hitting the mark, first impulses and what he ultimately
succeeding. That is, it has the characters finds to be the real law of his being; that
of happiness; and happiness is, for Israel, a man accomplishes his right function as
the same thing as having the Eternal with a man, fulfils his end, hits the mark, in
us, seeing the salvation of God. ‘The giving effect to the real law of his being ;
tree,’ as Jesus said, and as men’s common and that happiness attends his thus hitting
sense and proverbial speech say with him, the mark,—all good observers report. No
‘is known by its fruits2 and Jesus, statement of this general experience can
then, was to be received by Israel as be simpler or more faithful than one given
sent from God, because the secret of us by that great naturalist, Aristotle.4 ‘ In
Jesus leads to the salvation of God, all wholes made up of parts,’ says he,
which is what Israel most desired. The ‘ there is a ruler and a ruled; throughout
word of the cross, in short, turned out to nature this is so; we see it even in things
be at the same time the word of the king without life, they have their harmony or
dom? And to this experimental sanction law. The living being is composed of
of his secret, this sense it gives of having soul and body, whereof the one is
the Eternal on our side and approving us, naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now
Jesus appealed when he said of himself: what is natural we are to learn from what
‘ Therefore doth my Father love me, be fulfils the law of its nature most, and not
cause I lay down my life, that I may take from what is depraved. So we ought to
it again.’4 This, again, in our popular take the man who has the best disposition
theurgy, is materialised into the First of body and soul; and in him we shall
1 Ps. xvi, II.
2 Matth., xii, 33.
8 'O AJyos ttjs PacriXtias.—Matth., xiii, 19.
4 John, x, 17.
1 Luke, x, 6.
8 Acts, xi, 18; x, 36.
2 John, xvii, 13.
4 Politics, i, 5.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
74
find that this is so ; for in people that are
grievous both to others and to themselves
the body may often appear ruling the
soul, because such people are poor
creatures and false to nature.’ And
Aristotle goes on to distinguish between
the body, over which, he says, the rule of
the soul is absolute, and the movement of
thought and desire, over which reason
has, says he, ‘a constitutional rule,’ in
words which exactly recall St. Paul’s
phrase for our double enemy : ‘ the flesh
and the current thoughts.' So entirely
are we here on ground of general ex
perience. And if we go on and take
this maxim from Stobaeus : ‘ All fine
acquirement implies a foregoing effort of
self-control; ’1 or this from Horace:
‘ Rule your current self or it will rule>wz 1
bridle it in and chain it down ! ’1 or this
2
from Goethe’s autobiography: ‘ Every
thing cries out to us that we must re
nounce ; ’3 or still more this from his
Faust: ‘ Thou must go without, go with
out \ that is the everlasting song which
every hour, all our life through, hoarsely
sings to us ! ’4—then we have testimony
not only to the necessity of this natural
law of rule and suppression, but also to
the strain and labour and suffering which
attend it. But when we come a little
further and take a sentence like this of
Plato : ‘ Of sufferings and pains cometh
help, for it is not possible by any other
way to be ridded of our iniquity ; ’5 then
we get a higher strain, a strain like St.
Peter’s : ‘ He that hath suffered in the
flesh hath ceased from sin ; ’6 and we are
brought to see, not only the necessity of
the law of rule and suppression, not only
the pain and suffering in it, but also its
1 nwrbs
koAou KTf]/j.aTOS irAvos ‘irpoyyeirai i tear'
eyicpdreiav.
2 . . . Animum rege, qui nisi paret
Imperat; hunc fraenis, hunc tu compesce
catcnis.
3 Alles ruft uns zu, dass wir entsagen sollen.
4 Ensbehren sollst du ! sollst entbehren I
Das ist der ewige G esang,
Den unser ganzes Lebcn lang
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt.
5 A? a\yr]3dv<av Kai o^vvSiv yiyyerai i) utplXtta,
ov yap oT6y re &X\ais aSinlas wrraK\d.TTeff9ai.
6 I Pet., iv, I.
beneficence. And this positive sense of
beneficence, salutariness, and hope, come
out yet more strongly when Wordsworth
says to Duty : ‘ Nor know we anything so
fair as is the smile upon thy face;’ or
when Bishop Wilson says: ‘ They that
deny themselves will be sure to find their
strength increased, their affections raised,
and their inward peace continually aug
mented ; ’ and most of all, perhaps, when
we hear from Goethe : ‘ Die and come to
life ! for so long as this is not accom
plished thou art but a troubled guest
upon an earth of gloom ! ’1 But this is
evidently borrowed from Jesus, and by
one whose testimony is of all the more
weight, because he certainly would not
have become thus a borrower from Jesus,
unless the truth had compelled him.
And never certainly was the joy, which
in self-renouncement underlies the pain,
so brought out as when Jesus boldly
called the suppression of our first impulses
and current thoughts : life, real life, eternal
life. So that Jesus not only saw this
great necessary truth of there being, as
Aristotle says, in human nature a part to
rule and a part to be ruled ; he saw it so
thoroughly, that he saw through the suffer
ing at its surface to the joy at its centre,
filled it with promise and hope, and made
it infinitely attractive. As Israel, there
fore, is ‘the people of righteousness,’
because, though others have perceived
the importance of righteousness, Israel,
above everyone, perceived the happiness
of it; so self-renouncement, the main
factor in conduct or righteousness, is ‘ the
secret of Jesus,’ because, although others
have seen that it was necessary, Jesus,
above everyone, saw that it was peace, joy,
life.
Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle
(and it is a mark of his greatness) does
not, in the passage we have quoted from
him, begin with a complete system of
psycho-physiology, and show us where
and how and why in this system the rule
of renouncement comes in, and draw out
1 Stirb und werde !
Denn, so lang du das nicht hast,
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde !
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
for us definitively the law of our being
towards which this rule leads up. He
says that the rule exists, that it is ancillary
to the law of our being, and that we are
to study the best men, in whom it most
exists, to make us see that it is thus
ancillary. He here appeals throughout
to a verifying sense, such as we have said
that everyone in this great but plain
matter of conduct really has; he does
not appeal to a speculative theory of the
system of things, and deduce conclusions
from it. And he shows his greatness in
this, because the law of our being is not
something which is already definitively
known and can be exhibited as part of a
speculative theory of the system of things ;
it is something which discovers itself and
becomes, as we follow (among other things)
the rule of renouncement. What we can
say with most certainty about the law of
our being is, that we find the rule of
renouncement practically lead up to it.
In matters of practice and conduct, there
fore, an experience like this is really a far
safer ground to insist on than any specu
lative theory of the system of things. And
to a theory of such sort Jesus never ap
peals. Here is what characterises his teach
ing, and distinguishes him, for instance,
from the author of the Fourth Gospel.
This author handles what we may call
theosophical speculation in a beautiful
and impressive manner; the introduction
to his Gospel is undoubtedly in a very
noble and profound strain. But it is
theory; externally it seems, at any rate,
to deliver, with the forms of science, a
theosophy not controllable by experience.
And therefore it is impossible even to
conceive Jesus himself uttering the intro
duction to the Fourth Gospel; because
theory Jesus never touches, but bases
himself invariably on experience. True,
the experience must, for philosophy, have
its place in a theory of the system of
human nature, when the theory is at last
ready and perfect; but the point is, that
the experience is ripe and solid, and fit to
be used safely, long before the theory.
And it was the experience which Jesus
always used.
Undoubtedly, however, attempts may
75
not improperly be made, even now,—by
those, at least, who have a talent for these
matters,—to exhibit the experience, with
what leads to it and what derives from it,
in a system of psycho-physiology. And
then, perhaps, it will be found to be con
nected with other truths of psycho-physio
logy, such as the unity of life, as it is
called, and the impersonality of reasonj
Only, thus exhibited, it will be philosophy,
mental exercitation, and will concern us
as a matter of science, not of conduct.
And, as the discipline of conduct is threefourths of life, for our aesthetic and intel
lectual disciplines, real as these are, there
is but one-fourth of life left; and if we let
art and science divide this one-fourth fairly
between them, they will have just oneeighth of life each.
So the exhibition of the truth : ‘ He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal,' in its order and place as
a truth of psycho-physiology, concerns
one-eighth of our life and no more. But
Jesus, we say, exhibited nothing for the
benefit of this one-eighth of us; this is
what distinguishes him from all moralists
and philosophers, and even from the
greatest of his own disciples. How he
reached a doctrine we cannot say; but he
always exhibited it as an intuition and
practical rule, and a practical rule which,
if adopted, would have the force of an
intuition for its adopter also. This is
why none of his doctrines are of the
character of that favourite doctrine of our
theologians, ‘ the blessed truth that the
God of the universe is a Person; ’ because
this doctrine is incapable of application as
a practical rule, and can never come to
have the force of an intuition. But what
we call the secret of Jesus: ‘He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal,' was a truth of which he
could say: ‘ It is so; try it yourself and
you will see it is so, by the sense of going
right, hitting the mark, succeeding, living,
which you will get.’
And the same with the commandment,
‘ Love one another]1 which is the positive
1 John, xiii, 34.
�76
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
side of the commandment, '■Renounce thy
self' 1 and, like this, can be drawn out as
a truth of psycho-physiology. Jesus ex
hibited it as an intuition and a practical
rule; and as what, by being practised,
would, through giving happiness, prove its
own truth as a rule of life. This, we say,
is of the very essence of his secret of self
renouncement, as of his method of inward
ness ;—that its truth will be found to com
mend itself by happiness, to prove itself
by happiness. And of the secret more
especially is this true. And as we have
said, that though there gathers round the
word ‘God’ very much besides, yet we
shall in general, in reading the Bible, get
the surest hold on the word ‘God’ by
giving it the sense of the Eternal Power,
not ourselves, which makes for righteous
ness, so we shall get the best hold on
many expressions of Jesus by referring
them, though they include more, yet
primarily and pointedly to his ‘ secret ’
and to the happiness which this contained.
Bread of life, living water, these are, in
general, Jesus, Jesus in his whole being
and in his total effect; but in especial
they are Jesus as offering his secret. And
when Jesus says: ‘ He that eateth me
shall live by me! ’2 we shall understand
the words best if we think of his secret.
And so again with the famous words
to the woman by the well in Samaria:
‘Whosoever drinketh of this water shall
thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of
the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst, but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a spring of water welling
up unto everlasting life.’3 These words,
how are we to take them, so as to reach
their meaning best? What distinctly is
this ‘water that I shall give him’? Jesus
himself and his word no doubt; yet so
we come but to that very notion, which
Jeremy Taylor warns us against as vague,
of getting Christ. The Bishop of Glou
cester will tell us, perhaps, that it is ‘ the
blessed truth that the Creator of the uni
verse is a Person,’ or the doctrine of the
1 ‘ We know that we have passed from death to
life,’—how? ' because we love the brethren.''—See
I John, iii, 14.
2 John, vi, 57.
* John, iv, 13, 14..
consubstantiality of the Eternal Son.
But surely it would be a strong figure of
speech to say of these doctrines, that a
man, after receiving them, could never
again feel thirsty ? See, on the contrary,
how the words suit the secret: ‘ He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal.’ This ‘ secret of Jesus,’
as we call it, will be found applicable to
all the thousand problems which the
exercise of conduct daily offers ; it alone
can solve them all happily, and may
indeed be called ‘ a spring of water
welling up unto everlasting life.’ And, in
general, wherever the words life and death
are used by Jesus, we shall do well to
have his ‘ secret ’ at hand; for in his
thoughts, on these occasions, it is never
far off.
And now, too, we can see why it is a
mistake, and may lead to much error, to
exhibit any series of maxims, like those
of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ulti
mate sum and formula into which Chris
tianity may be run up. Maxims of this
kind are but applications of the method
and the secret of Jesus; and the method
and secret are capable of yet an infinite
number more of such applications. Chris
tianity is a source-, no one supply of water
and refreshment that comes from it can be
called the sum of Christianity.
3-
A method of inwardness, a secret of
self-renouncement;—but can any statement
of what Jesus brought be complete, which
does not include that temper of mildness
and sweetness in which both of these
worked ? To the representative texts
already given there is certainly to be
added this other : ‘ Learn of me that lam
wild and lowly in heart, and ye shall find
rest unto your souls ! ’1 Shall we attach
mildness to the method, because, without
it, a clear and limpid view inwards is
impossible ? Or shall we attach it to the
secret"}—the dying to faults of temper is
• Matth,, xi, 29.
�FAITH IN CHRIST
a. part, certainly, of dying to one’s ordinary
self, one’s life in this world. Mildness,
however, is rather an element in which,
in Jesus, both method and secret worked;
the medium through which both the
method and the secret were exhibited.
We may think of it as perfectly illustrated
and exemplified in his answer to the foolish
question, Who is the greatest in the kingdom
of heaven 1—when, taking a little child
and setting him in the midst, he said:
‘ Whosoever receives the kingdom of God
as a little child,the same is the greatest in
it.’1 Here are both inward appraisal and
self-renouncement; but what is most ad
mirable is the sweet reasonableness, the
exquisite, mild, winning felicity, with
which the renouncement and the inward
appraisal are applied and conveyed. And
the conjunction of the three in Jesus,—the method of inwardness, and the secret
of self-renouncement, working in and
through this element of mildness, —
produced the total impression of his
‘ epieikeia,’ or sweet reasonableness ;
a total impression ineffable and inde
scribable for the disciples, as also it
was irresistible for them, but at which
their descriptive words, words like this
‘ sweet reasonableness,1 and like '‘full of
grace and truth,' are thrown out and
aimed.1
2
And this total stamp of ‘grace and
truth,’ this exquisite conjunction and
balance, in an element of mildness, of a
method of inwardness perfectly handled
and a self-renouncement perfectly kept,
77
was found in Jesus alone. What are the
method of inwardness and the secret of
self-renouncement without the sure balance
of Jesus, without his epieikeial Much,
but very far indeed from what he showed
or what he meant; they come to be used
blindly, used mechanically, used amiss,
and lead to the strangest aberrations.
St. Simeon Stylites on his column, Pascal
girdled with spikes, Lacordaire flogging
himself on his death-bed, are what the
secret by itself produces. The method by
itself gives us our political Dissenter,
pluming himself on some irrational ‘ con
scientious objections,’ and not knowing,
that with conscience he has done nothing
until he has got to the bottom of con
science, and made it tell him right.
Therefore the disciples of Jesus were not
told to believe in his method, or to believe
in his secret, but to believe in him ; they
were not told to follow the method or to
follow the secret, but they were told:
‘ Follow me ! ’ For it was only by fixing
their heart and mind on Jesus that they
could learn to use the method and secret
right; by '•believing in him,’ 'feeding on
him ; ’ by, as he often said, ‘ remaining in
him.’
But this is just what Israel had been
told to do as regards the Eternal himself.
‘ I have set the Eternal always before me; ’
‘ Mine eyes are ever tozvard the Eternal; ’
‘ The Eternal is the strength of my life; ’
‘ Wait, I say, on the Eternal ’1 Now,
then, let us go back again for a little to
Israel, and to Israel’s belief.
CHAPTER VIII
FAITH IN CHRIST
As the Jews were always talking about the
Messiah, so they were always talking, we
know, about God. And they believed in
God’s Messiah after their notion of him,
1 Matth., xviii, 1-4 ; Mark, ix, 15.
2 Bossuet calls him le debonnaire fesus ; Cowper
speaks of his questioning the disciples going to
Emmaus ‘ with a kind, engaging air.’
because they believed in God after their
notion of him-,—but both notions were
wrong. All their aspirations were now
turned towards the Messiah; whoever
would do them good, must first change
their ideal of the Messiah. But their
Ps. xvi, 8; xxv, 15 ; xxvii, I, 14.
�?8
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
ideal of God’s Messiah depended upon
their notion of God. This notion was
now false, like their ideal of the Messiah ;
but once it had been true, or, at least, true
comparatively;—once Israel had had the
intuition of God as the Eternal that loveth
righteousness. And the intuition had never
been so lost but that it was capable of be
ing revived. To change their dangerous
and misleading ideal of God’s Messiah,
therefore, and to make the Jews believe in
the true Messiah, could only be accom
plished by bringing them back to a truer
notion of God and his righteousness. By
this it could, perhaps, be accomplished,
but by this only.
And this is what Jesus sought to do.
He sought to do it in the way we have
seen, by his ‘ method ’ and his ‘ secret.’
First, by his ‘ method ’ of a change of the
inner man. ‘ Do not be all abroad, do not
be in the air,'1 he said to his nation.
‘ You look for the kingdom of God. The
kingdom of God is the reign of righteous
ness, God’s will done by all mankind.
Well, then, seek the kingdom of God !
the kingdom of God is within you ! ’2 And,
next, by his ‘secret’ of peace. ‘ Renounce
thyself, and take up thy cross daily and
follow me!3 He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this
world shall keep it unto life eternal.'4 And
the revolution thus made was so immense,
that the least in this new kingdom of
heaven, this realm of the ‘ method ’ and
the ‘ secret,’ was greater, Jesus said, than
one who, like John the Baptist, was even
greatest in the old realm of Jewish re
ligion.5 And those who obeyed the
gospel of this new kingdom came to the
light p they had joy -f they entered into
peace p they ceased to thirst-, the word
became in them a spring of water welling
up unto everlasting life? But these were
the admitted tests of righteousness, of
obeying the voice of the Eternal who
loveth righteousness. ‘ There ariseth light
for the righteous, and gladness for the
1
2
4
6
8
Luke, xvii, 21.
John, xii, 25.
John, iii, 21.
John, xvi, 33.
Luke, xii, 29.
3 Luke, ix, 23.
8 Matth., xi, 11.
7 John, xvii, 13.
8 John, iv, 14.
upright in heart;1 he that feareth the
Eternal, blessed is he 1 ’2
Now, the special value of the Fourth
Gospel is, not that it exhibits the method
and secret of Jesus,—for all the Gospels
exhibit them,—but that it exhibits the
establishment of them by means of Israel’s
own idea of God, cleared and re-awakened.
The argument is : ‘ You arealways talking
about God, God’s word, righteousness;
always saying that God is your Father,
and will send his Messiah for your salva
tion. Well, he who receives me shows
that he talks about God with a knowledge
of what he is saying ; he sets to his seal
that God is true.3 He who is of God
heareth the words of God p every one that
heareth and learneth of the Father cometh
unto mep andye have not his word abiding in
you, because, whom he hath sent, him ye
believe not; 6 if any one will do God's will
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be
of God.'7 This, therefore, is what Jesus
said :—‘ I, whose message of salvation is :
If a man keep my word he shall never see
death !8 am sent of God ; because he,
who obeys my saying : Renounce thyself
and follow me ! 9 shall feel that he truly
lives, and that he is following, therefore,
Israel’s God of whom it is said: Thou wilt
show me the path of life.'10
The doctrine therefore is double :—
Renounce thyself, the secret of Jesus, in
volving a foregoing exercise of his method ;
and, Follow me, who am sent from God !
That is the favourite expression :—Sent
from God. ‘ I come forth from the
Father; the Father hath sent me : God
hath sent me.’11 Now this identified
Jesus and his salvation with the Messiah
whom, with his salvation, the Jews were
expecting. For his disciples therefore,
and for Christendom after them, Jesus was
and is the Messiah or Christ.
Meanwhile, as with the word God, so
with the word Christ. Jesus did not give
1 Ps. xcvii, 11.
2 Ps. cxii, 1.
4 John, viii, 47.
8 John, iii, 33.
8 John, v, 38.
8 John, vi, 45.
8 John, viii, 51.
7 John, vii, 17.
10 Ps. xvi, II.
9 Matth., xvi, 24.
11 John, xvi, 27, 23, 30; vi, 57; vii, 29; viii,
42; xvii, 8.
�FAITH IN CHRIST
any scientific definition of it,—such as,
for instance, that Christ was the Logos.
He took the word Christ as the Jews used
it, as he took the word God as the Jews
used it. And as he amended their notion
of God, the Eternal who loveth righteous
ness, by showing what righteousness really
was, so he amended their notion of the
Messiah, the chosen bringer of God's salva
tion, by showing what salvation really was.
And though his own application of terms
to designate himself is not a matter where
we can perfectly trust his reporters (as it
is clear, for instance, that the writer of the
Fourth Gospel was more metaphysical
than Jesus himself),1 yet there is no
difficulty in supposing him to have applied
to himself each and all of the terms which
the Jews in any way used to describe
the Messiah, — Messiah or Christ, God’s
Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or
Glorified One, the Son of God, the Son
of Man ; because his concern, as we have
said, was with his countrymen’s idea of
salvation, not with their terms for desig
nating the bringer of it. But the simplest
term, the term which gives least open
ing into theosophy,—Son of Man,—he
certainly preferred. So, too, he loved
the simple expressions, ‘ God sent me,’
‘The Father hath sent me;’ and he
chose so often to say, in a general manner,
‘ I am Hefi* rather than to say positively,
‘ I am the Christ.'
And evidently this mode of speaking
struck his hearers. We find the Jews
saying : ‘ How long dost thou make us to
doubt! if thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly.’3 And even then Jesus does not
answer point-blank, but prefers to say : ‘I
have told you, and ye believe not.’ Yet
this does not imply that he had the least
doubt or hesitation in naming himself the
1 It is to be remembered too, that whereas
Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the most concrete and
unmetaphysical of languages, he is reported in
Greek, the most metaphysical. What, in the
mouth of Jesus, was the word which comes to us
as fjLovoyevIjs {only begotten} ? Probably the simple
Aramaic word for unique, only. And yet, in the
Greek record, even the word p.ovoyevi)s is not,
like only begotten in our translation, reserved for
Christ; see Luke, vii, 12 ; viii, 42 ; ix, 38.
2 John, iv, 26 ; viii, 24, 28.
3 John, x, 24.
Messiah, the Son of God ; but only that
his concern was, as we have said, with
God’s righteousness and Christ’s salvation,
and that he avoided all use of the names
God and Christ, which might give an
opening into mere theosophical specula
tion. And this is shown, moreover, by
the largeness and freedom,—almost, one
may say, indifference,—of his treatment of
both names ; as names, in using which,
his hearers were always in danger of going
off into a theosophy that did them no
good and had better occupy them as little
as possible. ‘ I and my Father are one !'1
he w’ould say at one time; and, ‘ My
Father is greater than I!'1 at another.
2
When the Jew’s were offended at his call
ing himself the Son of God, he quotes
Scripture to show that even mere men
were in Scripture called Gods; and for
you, he says, who go by the letter of
Scripture, surely this is sanction enough
for calling anyone, whom God sends, the
Son of God ! 3 He did not at all mean,
that the Messiah was a son of God merely
in the sense in which any great man might
be so called ; but he meant that these
questions of theosophy were useless
for his hearers, and that they puzzled
themselves with them in vain. All they
were concerned with was, that he was the
Messiah they expected, sent to them with
salvation from God.
It is the same when Jesus says: ‘Before
Abraham was, lam!’4 He was baffling
his countrymen’s theosophy, showing them
how little his doctrine was meant to offer
a field for it. ‘Life,’ he means, ‘the life
of him who lays down his life that he may
take it again? is not what you suppose.
Your notions of life and death are all
false, and with your present notions you
cannot discuss theology with me ; follow
me ! ’ So, again, to the Jews in the rut
of their traditional theology, and haggling
about the Son of DavidJesus, they
insisted, could not be the Christ, because
the Christ was the Son of David. Jesus
answers them by the objection that in
the Psalms (and the Scripture cannot be
1 John, x, 30.
2 John, xiv, 28.
» John, x, 34-36.
4 John, viii, 58.
5 John, x, 17.
�8o
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
broken !) David calls the Christ his Lord ;
and ‘ if he call him Lord, how is he then
his son ? ’1 The argument as a serious
argument is perfectly futile. The king of
God’s chosen people is going out to war,
and what the Psalmist really sings is :
‘The Eternal saith unto the king’s majesty,
Thou shalt conquer!’ St. Peter in the
Acts gravely uses the same verse to prove
Jesus to be Christ: ‘ God,’ says he, ‘tells
my Lord, Sit thou tipon my right hand!
Yet David never went up into heaven.’2
Now, this is exactly of a piece with St.
Paul’s proving salvation to be by Christ
alone, from seed, in the promise to Abra
ham, being in the singular not the plural.3
It is merely false criticism of the Old
Testament, such as the Jews were full of,
and of which the Apostles retained far
too much. But the Jews were full of it,
and therefore the objection of Jesus was
just such an objection as the Jews would
think weighty. He used it as he might
have used a crux about personality or
consubstantiality with the Bishops of Win
chester or Gloucester ;—to baffle and put
to rout their false dogmatic theology, to
disenchant them with it and make them
cast it aside and come simply to him.
‘See,’ he says to the Jewish doctors,
‘ what a mess you make of it with your
learning, and evidences, and orthodox
theology ; with the wisdom of your wise
men and the understanding ofyour prudent
men! You can do nothing with them,
your arms break in your hands. Fling
the rubbish away, cease from your own
wisdom? and throw yourselves upon my
method and secret,—upon me ! Believe
that the Father hath sent me; he that
receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me.
Jf any man will do His will, he shall know
of the doctrine whether it be of God, or
whether I have invented it 1 ’5
And no grand performance or discovery
of a man’s own to bring him thus to joy
and peace, but an attachment ! the in
fluence of One full of grace and truth !
An influence, which we feel we know not
how, and which subdues us we know
1 Matth., xxii, 42-45.
2 Acts, ii, 34.
8 Gat., iii, 16.
4 Prov., xxiii, 4.
8 John, xii, 44; xiii, 20; vii, 17.
not when ; which, like the wind, breathes
where it lists, passes here, and does not
pass there 1 Once more, then, we come
to that root and ground of religion, that
element of awe and gratitude which fills
religion with emotion, and makes it other
and greater than morality,—the not our
selves. We did not make the order of
conduct, or provide that happiness should
belong to it, or dispose our hearts to it.
Man's goings are of the Eternal, as Israel
said • Eternal, I know that the way of
man is not in himself! Neither did we
invent Jesus, or make the ‘grace and
truth’ of Jesus, or provide that happiness
should belong to feeling them, or dispose
our hearts to feel them. No man can
come to me, as Jesus said, except the Father
which sent me draw him! So the revela
tion of Jesus Christ in the New Testament
is like the revelation of the God of Israel
in the Old, in being the revelation of
‘the Eternal not ourselves which makes
for righteousness.’ It is like it, and has
the same power of religion in it.
2.
Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform
the immense materialising Aberglaube,
into which the religion of Israel had
fallen, and to spiritualise it at all points ;
while in his method and secret he supplied
a sure basis for practice. But to follow
him entirely there was needed an epieikeia,
an unfailing sweetness and unerring per
ception, like his own. It was much if
his disciples got firm hold on his method
and his secret; and if they transmitted
fragments enough of his lofty spiritualism
to make it in the fulness of time dis
cernible, and to make it at once and from
the first in a large degree serviceable.
Who can read in% the Gospels the com
ments preserved to us, both of disciples
and of others, on what he said, and not
feel that Jesus must have known, while
he nevertheless persevered in saying them,
how things like: ‘ Before Abraham was,
Iam] 3 or : 11 will not leave you comfort1 Prov., xx, 24; Jer., x, 23.
2 John, vi, 44.
8 John, viii, 58.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
less, I will come unto you,'1 would be
misapprehended by those who heard
them ?
But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that
he knew and foresaw this. With the
promise of the Spirit of truth which
should, after his departure, work in his
disciples first, then in the world, and
which should convince the world of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment, and
finally transform it, we are all familiar.
But we do not enough remark the impres
sive words, uttered to the crowd around
him only a little while before, and of
far wider application than the reporter
imagined. ‘ Yet a little while is the light
with you; walk while ye have the light,
lest the darkness overtake you unawares !' 2
The real application cannot have been to
the unconverted only ; a call to the un
converted to make haste because their
chance of conversion would soon, with
Christ’s departure, be gone. No, converts
81
came in far thicker after Christ’s depar
ture than in his life. The words are for
the converted also. It is as if Jesus fore
saw the want of his sweet reasonableness,
which he could not leave, to help his
method and his secret, which he could
leave ; as if he foresaw his words mis
construed, his rising to eternal life turned
into a physical miracle, the advent of the
Spirit of truth turned into a scene of
thaumaturgy, Peter proving his Master’s
Messiahship from a Psalm that does not
prove it, the great Apostle of the Gentiles
word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the
most beautiful soul among his own re
porters saddling him with metaphysics ;
—foresaw the growth of creeds, the
growth of dogma, and so through all the
confusion worse confounded of councils,
schoolmen, and confessions of faith, down
to our own two bishops bent on ‘doing
something’ for the honour of the Godhead
of the Eternal Son !
CHAPTER IX
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Miracles, and, above all, the crowning
miracles of the Resurrection and Ascen
sion to be followed by the second Advent,
were from the first firmly fixed as parts of
the disciples’ belief. ‘ Behold, he cometh
with clouds; and every eye shall see him,
and they also which pierced him, and all
kindreds of the earth shall wail because of
him / ’3 As time went on, and Chris
tianity spread wider and wider among the
multitudes, and with less and less of con
trol from the personal influence of Jesus,
Christianity developed more and more its
side of miracle and legend; until to
believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant
to believe the points of the legend,—his
preternatural conception and birth, his
miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily
resurrection, his ascent into heaven, and
his future triumphant return to judgment.
1 John, xiv, 18.
2 John, xii, 35.
’ Revelation, i, 7.
And these and like matters are what
popular religion drew forth from the re
cords of Jesus as the essentials of belief,
These essentials got embodied in a short
formulary; and so the creed which is
called the Apostles’ Creed came together.
It is not the apostles’ creed, for it took
more than five hundred years to grow to
maturity. It was not the creed of any
single doctor or body of doctors, but it
was a sort of summary of Christiauity
which the people, the Church at large,
would naturally develop; it is the popular
science of Christianity. Given the alleged
charge : ‘ Go ye and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit,’1 and the
candidate for baptism would naturally
come to have a profession of faith to make
respecting that whereinto he was baptized ;
f , *■
1 Matth., xxviii, 19.
r
�82
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
this profession of faith would naturally
become just such a summary as the
Apostles’ Creed. It contains no mention
of either the ‘ method ’ or the ‘ secret,’ it
is occupied entirely with external facts ;
and it may be safely said, not only that
such a summary of religious faith could
never have been delivered by Jesus, but it
could never have been adopted as ade
quate by any of his principal Apostles, by
Peter, or Paul, or John. But it is, as we
have said, the popular science of Chris
tianity.
Years proceeded. The world came in
to Christianity ; the world, and the world’s
educated people, and the educated peo
ple’s Aryan genius with its turn for making
religion a metaphysical conception; and
all this in a time of declining criticism, a
time when the possibility of true scientific
criticism, in any direction whatever, was
lessening rather than increasing. The
popular science was found not elaborate
enough to satisfy. Ingenious men took
its terms and its data, and applied to
them, not an historical criticism showing
how they arose, but abstruse metaphysical
conceptions. And so we have the socalled Nicene Creed, which is the learned
science of Christianity, as the Apostles’
Creed is the popular science.
Now, how this sort of learned science
is related to the Bible we shall feel, if we
compare the religious utterances of its
doctors with the religious utterances of
the Bible. Suppose, for instance, we
compare with the Psalms the Soliloquies of
St. Augustine, a truly great and religious
man ; and of St. Augustine, not in school
and controversy, but in religious soliloquy.
St. Augustine prays : ‘ Come to my help,
thou one God, one eternal true substance,
where is no discrepancy, no confusion, no
transience, no indigency, no death ; where
is supreme concord, supreme evidence,
supreme constancy, supreme plenitude,
supreme life; where nothing is lacking,
nothing is over and above ; where he who
begets and he who is begotten of him
are one; God, above whom is nothing,
outside whom is nothing, without whom
is nothing ; God, beneath whom is the
whole, in whom is the whole, with
whom is the whole ! ’ And a further
Book of Soliloquies, popularly ascribed to
St. Augustine and printed with his works,
but probably of a later date and author,
shows the full-blown development of all
this, shows the inevitable results of bring
ing to the idea of God this play of intel
lectual fancy so alien to the Bible. The
passages we will quote take evidently their
inspiration from the words of St. Augustine
just given, and even retain in some degree
his forms of expression : ‘ Holy Trinity,
superadmirable Trinity, and superinenarrable, and superinscrutable, and superinaccessible, superincomprehensible, su
perin telligible, superessential, superessentially surpassing all sense, all reason,
all intellect, all intelligence, all essence
of supercelestial minds; which can neithei
be said, nor thought, nor understood, noi
known even by the eyes of angels 1 ’ And
again, more practically, but still in the
same style : ‘ O three co-equal and co
eternal Persons, one and true God, Father
and Son and Holy Ghost, who by thyself
inhabitest eternity and light inaccessible,
who hast founded the earth in thy power,
and rulest the world by thy prudence,
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,
terrible and strong, just and merciful,
admirable, laudable, amiable, one God,
three persons, one essence, power, wisdom,
goodness, one and undivided Trinity, open
unto me that cry unto Thee the gates of
righteousness 1 ’
And now compare this with the Bible:—•
Teach me to do the thing thatpleaseth thee,
for thou art my God! let thy loving spirit
lead me forth into the land of righteous
ness ! 1 That is Israel’s way of praying 1
that is how a poor ill-endowed Semite,
belonging to the occipital races, unhelped
by the Aryan genius and ignorant that
religion is a metaphysical conception,
talks religion ! and we see what a different
thing he makes of it.
But, finally, the original Semite fell
more and more into the shade. The
Aryans came to the front, the notion of
religion being a metaphysical conception
prevailed. But the doctors differed in
1 Ps. exliii, io.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
their metaphysics ; and the doctors who
conquered enshrined their victorious form
of metaphysics in a creed, the so-called
Creed of St. Athanasius, which is learned
science like the Nicene Creed, but learned
science which has fought and got ruffled
by fighting, and is fiercely dictatorial now
that it has won; learned science with a
strong dash of violent and vindictive
temper. Thus we have the three Creeds :
the so-called Apostles’ Creed, popular
science; the Nicene Creed, learned
science; the Athanasian Creed, learned
science with a strong dash of temper.
And the two latter are founded on the
first, taking its data just as they stand, but
dressing them metaphysically.
Now this first Creed is founded on a
supposed final charge from Jesus to his
Apostles: ‘ Go ye and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost 1 ’1 It ex
plains and expands what Jesus here told
his Apostles to baptize the world into.
But we have already remarked the differ
ence in character between the narrative,
in the Gospels, of what happened before
Christ’s death, and the narrative of what
happened after it. For all words of Jesus
placed after his death, the internal evi
dence becomes pre-eminently important.
He may well have said words attributed
to him, but not then. So the speech to
Thomas, ‘ Because thou hast seen me
thou hast believed ; blessed are they who
have not seen and yet have believed 1 ’2
may quite well have been a speech of
Jesus uttered on some occasion during his
life, and then transferred to the story of
the days after his resurrection and made
the centre of this incident of the doubt of
Thomas. On the other hand, again, the
prophecy of the details of Peter’s death 3
is almost certainly an addition after the
event, because it is not at all in the man
ner of Jesus. What is in his manner, and
what he had probably at some time said,
are the words given elsewhere : ‘ Whither
I go thou canst not follow me now, but
thou shalt follow me afterwards.’4 So,
1 Matth., xxviii, 19.
8 John, xxi, 18.
2 John, xx, 29.
4 John, xiji, 36.
83
too, it is extremely improbable that Jesus
should have ever charged his Apostles to
‘ baptize all nations in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’
There is no improbability in his investing
them with a very high commission. He
may perfectly well have said : ‘ Whose-I
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted J
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are re
tained.’ 1 But it is almost impossible he
can have given this charge to baptize in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost; it is by far too systematic
and what people are fond of calling an
anachronism. It is not the least like
what Jesus was in the habit of saying, and
it is just like what would be attributed to
him as baptism and its formula grew in
importance. The genuine charge of Jesus
to his Apostles was, almost certainly : ‘ As
my Father sent me, even so send I you,’2
and not this. So that our three Creeds,
and with them the whole of our so-called
orthodox theology, are founded upon
words which Jesus in all probability
never uttered.
2.
We may leave all questions about the
Church, its rise, and its organisation, out
of sight altogether. Much as is made of
them, they are comparatively unimportant,
Jesus never troubled himself with what
are called Church matters at all ; his
attention was fixed solely upon the
individual. His Apostles did what was
necessary, as such matters came to require
a practical notice and arrangement but
to the Apostles, too, they were still quite
secondary. The Church grew into some
thing quite different from what they or"
Jesus had, or could have had, any thought
of. But this was of no importance in
itself; and how believers should organise
their society as circumstances changed,
circumstances themselves might very well
decide.
The one important question was and is,
how believers laid and kept hold on
the revelations contained in the Bible I
* John, xx, 23.
2 John, xx, 22.
F 2
�84
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
because for the sake of these it con logical, will mean merely, that, having
fessedly is, that every church exists. accustomed ourselves to look at things
Even the apostles, we have seen, did not through a glass of a certain colour, we see
lay hold on them perfectly. In their them always of that colour. What the
attachment to miracles, in the prominence science of Bible-criticism, like all other
they gave to the crowning miracles of science, needs, is a very wide experience
Christ’s bodily resurrection and second from comparative observation in many
advent, they went aside from the saving directions, and a very slowly acquired habit
doctrine of Jesus themselves, and were of mind. All studies have the benefit of
sure,—which was worse,—to make others these guides, when they exist, and one
go aside from it ten thousand times more. isolated study can never have the benefit
But they were too near to Jesus not to have of them by itself. There is a common
been able to preserve the main lines of his order, a general level, a uniform possibility,
teaching, to preserve his way of using words; for these things. As were the geography,
history, physiology, cosmology, of the men
and they did, in fact, preserve them.
But at their death the immediate who developed dogma, so was also their
remembrance of Jesus faded away, and faculty for a scientific Bible-criticism, such
whatever Aberglaube the Apostles them as dogma pretends to be. Now we know
selves had had and sanctioned was left what their geography, history, physiology,
to w’ork without check. And, at the cosmology, were. Cosmas Indicopleustes,
same time, the world and society pre a Christian navigator of Justinian’s time,
sented conditions constantly less and less denies that the earth is spherical, and asserts
favourable to sane criticism. And it was it to be a flat surface with the sky put over
then, and under these conditions, that it like a dish-cover. The Christian meta
the dogma which is now called orthodox, physics of the same age applying the ideas
and which our dogmatic friends imagine of substance and identity to what the
to be purely a methodical arrangement of Bible says about God, Jesus, and the
the admitted facts of Christianity, grew Holy Spirit, are on a par with this natural
up. We have shown from the thing itself, philosophy.
And again, as one part of their scientific
by putting the dogma in comparison with
the genuine teaching of Jesus, how little Bible-criticism, so the rest. We have
it is this; but it is well to make clear to seen in the Bible-writers themselves a
oneself, also (for one can), from the quite uncritical use of the Old Testament
circumstances of the case, that it could and of prophecy. Now, does this become
less in the authors of our dogmatic
not be this.
For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an theology,—a far more pretentious effort
attempt at both literary and scientific of criticism than the Bible-writers ever
criticism of the highest order ; and the made,—or does it become greater? It
age which developed dogma had neither becomes a thousand times greater. Not
the resources nor the faculty for such a only are definite predictions found where
criticism. It is idle to talk of the they do not exist,—as, for example, in
theological instinct, the analogy of faith, Isaiah’s I will restore thy judges as at the
as if by the mere occupation with a limited first,x is found a definite foretelling of the
subject-matter one could reach the truth Apostles,—but in the whole Bible a secret
about it. It is as if one imagined that allegorical sense is supposed, higher than
by the mere study of Greek we could the natural sense; so that Jerome calls
reach the truth about the origin of Greek tracing the natural sense an eating dust
words, and dogmatise about them ; and like the serpent, in rnodum serpentis terram
could appeal to our supposed possession, comedere. Therefore, for one expounder,
through our labours, of the philological Isaiah’s prophecy against Egypt : The
instinct, the analogy of language, to make Eternal rideth upon a light cloud, and
our dogmatism go down. In general such shall come into Egyptp is the flight into
an instinct, whether theological or philo
1 Is., i, 26.
2 Js., xix, 1.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Egypt of the Holy Family, and the light
cloud is the virgin-born body of Jesus;
for another, The government shall be ztpon
his shoulder,1 is Christ’s carrying upon his
shoulder the cross; for another, The lion
shall eat straw like the ox,2 is the faithful
and the wicked alike receiving the body
of Christ in the Eucharist.
These are the men, this is the critical
faculty, from which our so-called orthodox
dogma proceeded. The worth of all the
productions of such a critical faculty is
easy to estimate, for the worth is nearly
uniform.
When the Rabbinical ex
pounders interpret: Woe unto them that
lay field to field / 3 as a prophetic curse on
the accumulation of Church property, or:
Woe unto them that rise up early in the
morning that they may follow strong
drink /4 as a prediction of the profligacy
of the Church clergy, or: Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of vanity / 5
as God’s malediction on Church bells,
we say at once that such critics thus give
their measure as interpreters of the true
sense of the Bible. The moment we
think seriously and fairly, we must see
that the patristic interpretations of
prophecy give, in like manner, their
authors’ measure as interpreters of the
true sense of the Bible. Yet this is what
the dogma of the Nicene and Athanasian.
Creeds professes to be, and must be if it
is to be worth anything,—the true sense
xtracted from the Bible; for, ‘ the Bible
is the record of the whole revealed faith,’
says Cardinal Newman. But we see how
impossible it is that this true sense the
dogma of these Creeds should be.
Therefore it is, that it is useful to give
signal instances of the futility of patristic
and mediaeval criticism ; not to raise an
idle laugh, but because our whole dog
matic theology has a patristic and
mediaeval source, and from the nullity
of the deliverances of this criticism,
where it can be brought manifestly to
book, may be inferred the nullity of its
deliverances, where, from the impalpable
and incognisable character of the subjects
1 Is., ix, 6.
* Is., v, 8.
2 Is., lxv, 25.
4 Is., v, 11.
* Is., v, 18.
85
treated, to bring it manifestly to book is
impossible.
In the account of the
Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis,
‘ the greater light to rule the day,’ is the
priesthood ; ‘ the lesser light to rule the
night,’1 borrowing its beams from the
greater, is the Holy Roman Empire.
When the disciples of Jesus produced two
swords and Jesus said: ‘It is enough,’2
he meant, .we are told, the temporal and
the spiritual power, and that both were
necessary and both at the disposal of the
Church ; but by saying afterwards to
Peter, after he had cut off the ear of
Malchus : ‘ Put- up thy sword into the
sheath,’3 he meant that the Church was
not to wield the temporal power itself,
but to employ the secular government to
wield it. Now, this is the very same
force of criticism which in the Athanasian
Creed ‘ arranged, sentence after sen
tence,’ that doctrine of the Godhead of
the Eternal Son for which the Bishops of
Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious
to ‘ do something.’
The Schoolmen themselves are but the
same false criticism developed, and clad
in an apparatus of logic and system. In
that grand and instructive repertory
founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire
Litteraire de la France, we read that in;
the theological faculty of the University
of Paris, the leading mediaeval university,
it was seriously discussed whether Jesus
at his ascension had his clothes on or not...
If he had not, did he appear before his
Apostles naked ? if he had, what became
of the clothes ? Monstrous / everyone
will say.4 Yes, but the very same criti-j
cism, Only full-blown, which produced:
‘Neither confounding the Persons nor
dividing the Substance.’ The very same
criticism, which originally treated terms
as scientific which were not scientific!
which, instead of applying literary and
1 Gen., i, 16.
2 Luke, xxii, 38.
8 John, xviii, 11.
4 Be it observed, however, that there is an
honest scientific effort in the Schoolmen, and that
to this sort of thing one really does come, when
one fairly sets oneself to treat miracles literally
and exactly; but most of us are content to leave
them in a half light.
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
historical criticism to the data of popular
Aberglaube, took these data just as they
stood and merely dressed them scien
tifically.
Cataolic dogma itself is true, urges,
however, Cardinal Newman, because inf telligent Catholics have dropped errors
and absurdities like the False Decretals
or the works of the pretended Dionysius
the Areopagite, but have not dropped
dogma. This is only saying that men
drop the more palpable blunder before
the less palpable. The adequate criticism
of the Bible is extremely difficult, and
slowly does the ‘Zeit-Geist’ unveil it.
Meanwhile, of the premature and false
criticism to which we are accustomed, we
drop the evidently weak parts first; we
retain the rest, to drop it gradually and
piece by piece as it loosens and breaks up.
But it is all of one order, and in time it
will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed’s
damnatory clauses only, but the whole
Creed; not this one Creed only, but the
three Creeds,—our whole received appli
cation of science, popular or learned, to the
Bible. For it was an inadequate and
false science, and could not, from the
nature of the case, be otherwise.
3And now we see how much that clergy
man deceives himself, who writes to the
Guardian: ‘ The objectors to the Atha
nasian Creed at any rate admit, that its
doctrinal portions are truly the carefully
distilled essence of the scattered intima
tions of Holy Scripture on the deep
mysteries in question,—priceless dis
coveries made in that field.’ When one
has travelled to the Athanasian Creed
along the gradual line of the historical
development of Christianity, instead of
living stationary all one’s life with this
Creed blocking up the view, one is really
tempted to say, when one reads a deliver
ance like that of this clergyman : Sancta
simplicitas / It is just because the
Athanasian Creed pretends to be, in its
doctrine, ‘the carefully distilled essence
of the scattered intimations of Holy
Scripture,’ and is so very far from it, that
it is worthless. It is ‘ the carefully dis
tilled essence of the scattered intimations
of Holy Scripture ’ just as that allegory
of the two swords was. It is really a
mixture,—for true criticism, as it ripens,
it is even a grotesque mixture,—of learned
pseudo-science with popular Aberglaube.
But it cannot be too carefully borne in
mind that the real ‘essence of Holy
Scripture,’ its saving truth, is no such
criticism at all as the so-called orthodox
dogma attempts and attempts unsuccess
fully. No, the real essence of Scripture
is a much simpler matter. It is, for the
Old Testament : To him that ordereth his
conversation right shall be shozvn the salva
tion of God I—and for the New Testament:
Follow Jesus ! This is Bible-dogma, as
opposed to the dogma of our formularies.
On this Bible-dogma if Churches were
founded, and to preach this Bible-dogma
if ministers were ordained, Churches and
ministers would have all the dogma to
which the Bible attaches eternal life.
Plain and precise enough it is, in all
conscience; with the advantage of being
precisely right, whereas the dogma of our
formularies is precisely wrong. And if
anyone finds it too simple, let him
remember that its hardness is practical,
not speculative. It is a rule of conduct-,
let him act it, and he will find it hard
enough.
Utinarn per unum diem bene
essemtis conversati in hoc mtindo ! But as
a matter of mere knowledge it is very
simple, it lies on the surface of the Bible
and cannot be missed.
And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma
havealways, we must repeat and remember,
held and professed this Bible-dogma too.
Their ecclesiastical dogma may have pre
vented their attending closely enough to
the Bible-dogma, may have led them often
to act false to it; but they have always
held it. The method and the secret of
Jesus have been always prized. The
Catholic Church from the first held aloft
the secret of Jesus ; the monastic orders
were founded, we may say, in homage to
it. And from time to time, through the
course of ages, there have arisen men
who threw themselves on the method and
�ABERGLAURE RE-INVADING
secret of Jesus with extraordinary force,
with intuitive sense that here was
salvation; and who really cared for
nothing else, though ecclesiastical dogma,
too, they professed to believe, and
sincerely thought they did believe,—but
their heart was elsewhere. These are
they who ‘ received the kingdom of God
as a little child,’ who perceived how simple
a thing Christianity was, though so
inexhaustible, and who are therefore ‘ the
greatest in the kingdom of God.’ And
they, not the theological doctors, are the
true lights of the Christian Church ; not
Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Butler, but
the nameless author of the Imitation, but
Tauler, but St. Francis of Sales, Wilson of
Sodor and Man. Yet not only these men,
but the whole body of Christian churches
and sects always, have all at least professed
the method and secret of Jesus, and to some
extent used them. And whenever these
were used, they have borne their natural
fruits of joy and life ; and this joy and
this life have been taken to flow from the
ecclesiastical dogma held along with them,
and to sanction and prove it. And people,
eager to praise the bridge which carried
them over from death to life, have taken
this dogma for the bridge, or part of the
bridge, that carried them over, and have
eagerly praised it. Thus religion has been
made to stand on its apex instead of its
base. Righteousness is supported on eccle
siastical dogma, instead of ecclesiastical
dogma being supported on righteousness.
But in the beginning it was not so.
Because righteousness is eternal, necessary,
life-giving, therefore the mighty ‘ not our
selves which makes for righteousness ’ was
the Eternal, Israel’s God; was all-powerful,
all-merciful; sends his Messiah, elects
his people, establishes his kingdom, re
ceives into everlasting habitations. But
gradually this petrifies, gradually it is
more and more added to; until at last,
because righteousness was originally per
ceived to be eternal, necessary, life-giving,
we find ourselves ‘ worshipping One God
in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither
confounding the Persons nor dividing the
Substance.’ And then the original order
is reversed. Because there is One God
87
in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, who
receives into everlasting habitations,
establishes his kingdom, elects his people,
sends his Messiah, is all-merciful, allpowerful, Israel’s God, the Eternal,—
therefore righteousness is eternal, neces
sary, life-giving. And shake the belief
in the One God in Trinity and Trinity
in Unity, the belief in righteousness is
shaken, it is thought, also. Whereas
righteousness and the God of righteous
ness, the God of the Bible, are in truth
quite independent of the God of eccle
siastical dogma, the work of critics of the
Bible,—critics understanding neither what
they say nor whereof they affirm.
4-
Nor did even the Reformation and
Protestantism much mend the work of
these critics; the time was not yet ripe
for it. Protestantism, nevertheless, was a
strenuous and noble effort at improve
ment ; for it was an effort of return to the
‘method’ of Jesus,—that leaven which
never, since he set it in the world, has
ceased or can cease to work. Catholicism,
we have said, laid hold on the ‘ secret ’ of
Jesus, and strenuously, however blindly,
employed it; this is the grandeur and the
glory of Catholicism. In like manner
Protestantism laid hold on his ‘ method,’
and strenuously, however blindly, em
ployed it; and herein is the greatness of
Protestantism. The preliminary labour
of inwardness and sincerity in the con
science of each individual man, which
was the method of Jesus and his indis
pensable discipline for learning to employ
his secret aright, had fallen too much out o.f
view; obedience had in a manner superseded
it. Protestantism drew it into light and
prominence again ; was even, one may
say, over absorbed by it, so as to leave too
much out of view the ‘ secret.’ This, if
one would be just both to Catholicism and
to Protestantism, is the thing to bear in
mind :—Protestantism had hold of Jesus
Christ’s ‘ method ’ of inwardness and sin
cerity, Catholicism had hold of his ‘ secret ’
of self-renouncement. The chief word
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
with Protestantism is the word of the Joseph de Maistre calls it, is in truth but
method : repentance, conversion. The chief the necessary ‘method,’ the eternally
word with Catholicism is the word of the incumbent duty, imposed by Jesus him
secret: peace, joy.
self, when he said : ‘Judge righteous
And since, though the method and the judgment.’1 ‘ Judge righteous judgment ’
secret are equally indispensable, the is, however, the duty imposed ; and the
secret may be said to have in it more of duty is not, whatever many Protestants
practice and conduct, Catholicism may may seem to think, fulfilled if the judg
claim perhaps to have more of religion. ment be wrong. But the duty of in
On the other hand, Protestantism has wardly judging is the very entrance into
more light: and, as the method of in the way and walk of Jesus.
wardness and sincerity, once gained, is of
Luther, then, made an inward verifying
general application, and a power for all movement, the individual conscience,
the purposes of life, Protestantism, we once more the base of operations; and
can see, has been accompanied by most he was right. But he did so to the
prosperity. And here is the answer to following extent only. When he found
Mr. Buckle’s famous parallel between the priest coming between the individual
Spain and Scotland, that parallel which believer and his conscience, standing to
everyone feels to be a sophism. Scotland him in the stead of conscience, he
has had, to make her different from pushed the priest aside and brought the
Spain, the ‘method’ of Jesus; and believer face to face with his conscience
though, in theology, Scotland may have again. This explains, of course, his
turned it to no great account, she has battle against the sale of indulgences and
found her account in it in almost every other abuses of the like kind ; but it ex
thing else. Catholicism, again, has had, plains also his treatment of that cardinal
perhaps, most happiness. When one point in the Catholic religious system, the
thinks of the bitter and contentious mass. He substituted for it, as the car
temper of Puritanism,—temper being, dinal point in the Protestant system, justifi
nevertheless, such a vast part of conduct,— cation by faith. The miracle of Jesus Christ’s
and then thinks of St. Theresa and her atoning sacrifice, satisfying God’s wrath,
sweetness, her never-sleeping hatred of and taking off the curse from mankind, is
‘ detraction,’ one is tempted almost to say, the foundation both of the mass and of the
that there was more of Jesus in St. famous Lutheran tenet. But, in the mass,
Theresa’s little finger than in John Knox’s the priest makes the miracle over again,
whole body.
Protestantism has the and applies its benefits to the believer.
method of Jesus with his secret too much In the tenet of justification, the believer
left out of mind; Catholicism has his is himself in contact with the miracle of
secret with his method too much left Christ’s atonement, and applies Christ’s
out of mind. Neither has his unerring merits to himself. The conscience is thus
balance, his intuition, his sweet reasonable brought into direct communication with
ness. But both have hold of a great truth, Christ’s saving act; but this saving act is
and get from it a great power.
still taken,—just as popular religion con
And many of the reproaches cast by ceived it, and as formal theology adopted
one on the other are idle. If Catholicism it from popular religion,—as a miracle, the
is reproached with being indifferent to miracle of the Atonement. This popular
much that is called civilisation, it must be and imperfect conception of the sense of
answered: So was Jesus. If Protestantism, Christ’s death, and in general the whole
with its private judgment, is accused of inadequate criticism of the Bible involved
opening a wide field for individual fancies in the Creeds, underwent at the Reforma
and mistakes, it must be answered : So tion no scrutiny and no change. Luther’s
did Jesus when he introduced his method. actual application, therefore, of the
Private judgment, 1 the fundamental and ‘ method ’ of Jesus to that inner body of
insensate doctrine of Protestantism? as
1 John, vii, 24.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
dogma, developed as we have seen, which
he found regnant, proceeded no farther
than this.
And justification by faith., our being
saved by ‘giving our hearty consent to
Christ’s atoning work on our behalf/ by
‘ pleading simply the blood of the
covenant/ Luther made the essential
matter not only of his own religious
system but of the entire New Testament.
We must be enabled, he said, and we are
enabled, to distinguish among the books
of the Bible those which are the best;
now, those are the best which show
Christ, and teach what would be enough
for us to know even if no other parts of
the Bible existed. And this evangelical
element, as it has been called, this funda
mental thought of the Gospel, is, for
Luther, our ‘ being justified by the alone
merits of Christ.’ This is the doctrine of
‘ passive or Christian righteousness/ as
Luther is fond of naming it, which con
sists in ‘ doing nothing, but simply know
ing and believing that Christ is gone to
the Father and we see him no more !
that he sits in Heaven at the right hand
of the Father, not as our judge, but made
unto us by God wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption ;1 in sum,
that he is our high-priest making inter
cession for us.’ Everyone will recognise
the consecrated watchwords of Protestant
theology.
Such is Luther’s criticism of the New
Testament, of its fundamental thought.
And he picks out, as the kernel and
marrow of the New Testament, the
Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle by
the author of this Gospel, St. Paul’s
Epistles,—in especial those to the
Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians,—and
the First Epistle of St. Peter. Now, the
common complaint against Luther is on
the score of his audacity in thus venturing
to. make a table of precedence for the
equally inspired books of the New Testa
ment. Yet in this he was quite right,
and was but following the method of
Jesus, if the good news conveyed in the
whole New Testament is, as it is, some
thing definite, and all parts do not convey
1 I Cor., i, 30.
89
it equally. Where he was wrong, was
in his delineation of this fundamental
thought of the New Testament, in his
description of the good news; and few,
probably, who have followed us thus far,
will have difficulty in admitting that he
was wrong here, and quite wrong. And
this has been the fault of Protestantism
generally : not its presumption in inter
preting Scripture for itself,—for the
Church interpreted it no better, and
Jesus has thrown on each individual the
duty of interpreting it for himself,—but
that it has interpreted it wrong, and no
better than the Church. ‘ Calvinism has
borne ever an inflexible front to illusion
and mendacity/ says Mr. Froude. Surely
this is but a flourish of rhetoric ! for the
Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the
Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic
dogma, a false criticism of the Bible,
an illusion. And the Calvinistic and
Lutheran doctrines both of them sin in
the same way; not by using a method
which, after all, is the method of Jesus,
but by not using the method enough, by
not applying it to the Bible thoroughly,
by keeping too much of what the tradi
tions of men chose to tell them.
5-
The time was not then ripe for doing
more; and we, if we can do more, have
the fulness of time to thank for it, not
ourselves. Yet it needs all one’s sense
of the not ourselves in these things, to
make us understand how doctrines,
supposed to be the essence of the Bible
by great Catholics and by great Pro
testants, should ever have been supposed
to be so, and by such men.
To take that chief stronghold of ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism, the insti
tution of the Eucharist. As Catholics
present it, it makes the Church indis
pensable, with all her apparatus of
an apostolical succession, an authorised
priesthood, a power of absolution. Yet,
as Jesus founded it, it is the most antiecclesiastical of institutions, pulverising
alike the historic churches in their beauty
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
and the dissenting sects in their unloveli
ness ;—it is the consecration of absolute in
dividualism. ‘ This cup is the new covenant
in my blood which is shed for you.’1 When
Jesus so spoke, what did he mean, what
was in his mind? Undoubtedly these
words of the prophet Jeremiah : ‘Behold
the days come, saith the Eternal, that I
will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel, not according to the covenant
that I made w’ith their fathers, which
covenant they brake; but this shall be
the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel: After those days, saith
the Eternal, I will put my law in their
irewardparts, and write it in their hearts,
and they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour and every man his brother, say
ing : Know the Eternal! for they shall
all know me, from the least to the
greatest.’2 No more scribes, no more
doctors, no more priests ! the crowning
act in the ‘secret’of Jesus seals at the
same time his ‘ method,’—his method of
pure inwardness, individual responsibility,
personal religion.
Take, again, the Protestant doctrine of
Justification; of trusting in the alone
merits of Christ, pleading the Blood of
the Covenant, imputed righteousness. In
our railway stations are hung up, as every
one knows, sheets of Bible-texts to catch
the passer’s eye; and very profitable
admonitions to him they in general are.
It is said that the thought of thus exhi
biting them occurred to Dr. Marsh, a
venerable leader of the so-called Evan
gelical party in our Church, the party
which specially clings to the special
Protestant doctrine of justification ; and
that he arranged the texts which we daily
see. And there is one which we may all
remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh
asks the prophet Micah’s question:
‘Wherewith shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before the high God ? ’3
and he answers it with one short sentence
from the New Testament: ‘ With the
precious blood of Christ.’ This is pre
cisely the popular Protestant notion of the
Gospel; and we are all so used to it that
Dr. Marsh’s application of the text has
probably surprised no one. And yet, if
one thinks of it, how astonishing an
application it is! For even the Hebrew
Micah, some seven or eight centuries
before Christ, had seen that this sort of
gospel, or good news, was none at all; for
even he suggests this always popular
notion of atoning blood, only to reject it,
and ends: ‘ He hath showed thee, O
man, what is good; and what doth the
Eternal require of thee, but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God ? ’ So that the Hebrew
Micah, nearly three thousand years ago,
under the old dispensation, was far in
advance of this venerable and amiable
coryphaeus of our Evangelical party now,
under the Christian dispensation !
Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it
will be said, through their false criticism of
the New Testament, and we have our
selves admitted that the perfect criticism of
the New Testament is extremely difficult.
True, the perfect criticism; but not such
an elementary criticism of it as shows the
gospel of Dr. Marsh and of our so called
Evangelical Protestants to be a false one.
For great as their literary inexperience
may be, and unpractised as is their tact
for perceiving the manner in which men
use words and what they mean by them,
one would think they could understand
such a plain caution against mistaking
Christ’s death for a miraculous atonement
as St. Paul has actually given them. For
St. Paul, who so admirably seized the
secret of Jesus, who preached Christ
Crucified,1 but who placed salvation in
being able to say, I am crucified with
Christ !2—St. Paul warns us clearly, that
this word of the cross, as he calls it, is so
simple, being neither miracle nor meta
physics, that it would be thought foolish
ness. The Jews want miracle, he says,
and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I
preach Christ crucified 13—that is, the
‘secret ’ of Jesus, as we call it. The Jews
want miracle !—that is a warning against
* Luke, xxii, 20.
2 Jer., xxxi, 31,
2 Micah, vi, 6.
1 I Cor., i, 23.
2 Gal., ii, 20.
8 I Cor., i, 23.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Dr. Marsh’s or Mr. Spurgeon’s doctrine,
against Evangelical Protestantism’s phantasmagories of the ‘ Contract in the
Council of the Trinity,’ the ‘Atoning
Blood,’ and ‘ Imputed Righteousness.’
The Greeks want metaphysics /—that is a
warning against the Bishops of Winches
ter and Gloucester, with their Aryan
genius (if so ill-sounding a word as Aryan,
spell it how one may, can ever be pro
perly applied to our bishops, and one
ought not rather to say Indo-European),
dressing the popular doctrine out with
fine speculations about the Godhead of
the Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality
with the Father, and so on. But we
preach, says St. Paul, Christ crucified !—
to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion
a stumbling-block, to the bishops and to
learned religion foolishness ; but, to them
that are called, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God. That is, we
preach a doctrine, not thaumaturgical and
not speculative, but practical and experi
mental ; a doctrine which has no meaning
except in positive application to conduct,
but in this application is inexhaustible.
6.
So false, so astoundingly false (thus one
is inclined to say by the light which the
‘ Zeit-Geist ’ is beginning to throw over
them) are both popular and learned
science in their criticism of the Bible.
And for the learned science one feels no
tenderness, because it has gone wrong
with a great parade of exactitude and
philosophy ; whereas all it really did was
to take the magnified and non-natural
Man of popular religion as God, and to
take Jesus as his son, and then to state
the relations between them metaphysically.
No difficulties suggested by the popular
science of religion has this learned science
ever removed, and it has created plenty
of its own.
But for the popular science of religion
one has, or ought to have, an infinite
tenderness. It is the spontaneous work
of nature. It is the travail of the human
mind to adapt to its grasp and employ
ment great ideas of which it feels the
91
attraction, but for which, except as given
to it by this travail, it would have been
immature. The imperfect science of
the Bible, formulated in the so-called
Apostles’ Creed, was the only vehicle by
which, to generation after generation of
men, the method and secret of Jesus
could gain any access; and in this sense
we may even call it, taking the point of
view of popular theology, providential.
And this rude criticism is full of poetry,
and in this poetry we have been all
nursed. To call it, as many of our
philosophical Liberal friends are fond of
calling it, ‘a degrading superstition,’ is
as untrue, as it is a poor compliment to
human nature, which produced this criti
cism and used it. It is an Aberglaube, or
extra-belief and fairy-tale, produced by
taking certain great names and great pro
mises too literally and materially; but it
is not a degrading superstition.
Protestants, on their part, have no
difficulty in calling the Catholic doctrine
of the mass ‘ a degrading superstition.’ It
is indeed a rude and blind criticism of
Jesus Christ’s words: He that eateth me
shall live by me. But once admit the
miracle of the ‘atoning sacrifice,’ once
move in this order of ideas, and what can
be more natural and beautiful than to
imagine this miracle every day repeated,
Christ offered in thousands of places,
everywhere the believer enabled to enact
the work of redemption and unite himself
with the Body whose sacrifice saves him ?
And the effect of this belief has been no
more degrading than the belief itself. The
fourth book of the Imitation, which treats
of The Sacrament of the Altar, is of later
date and lesser merit than the three books
which precede it; but it is worth while to
quote from it a few words for the sake of
the testimony they bear to the practical
operation, in many cases at any rate, of
this belief. ‘To us in our weakness thou
hast given, for the refreshment of mind
and body, thy sacred Body. The devout
communicant thou, my God, raisest from
the depth of his own dejection to the hope
of thy protection, and with a hitherto
unknown grace renewest him and enlightenest him within; so that they who
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
92
at first, before this Communion, had felt
themselves distrest and affectionless, after
the refreshment of this meat and drink
from heaven find themselves changed to
a new and better man.
For this most
high and worthy Sacrament is the saving
health of soul and body, the medicine of
all spiritual languor; by it my vices are
cured, my passions bridled, temptations are
conquered or diminished, a larger grace is
infused, the beginnings of virtue are made
to grow, faith is confirmed, hope strength
ened, and charity takes fire and dilates into
flame? So little is the doctrine of the
mass to be hastily called ‘ a degrading
superstition,’ either in its character or in
its working.
But it is false ! sternly breaks in the
Evangelical Protestant. O Evangelical
Protestant, is thine own doctrine, then,
so true? As the Romish doctrine of
the mass, ‘the Real Presence,’ is a rude
and blind criticism of, TA that eateth me
shall live by me f so the Protestant tenet
of justification, ‘pleading the blood of the
Covenant,’ is a rude and blind criticism
of, The Son of Man came to give his life a
ransom for many.2 It is a taking of the
words of Scripture literally and unintelligently. And our friends, the philosophical
Liberals, are not slow to call this, too, a
degrading superstition, just as Protest
ants call the doctrine of the mass a
degrading superstition. We say, on the
contrary, that a degrading superstition
neither the one nor the other is. In
imagining a sort of supernatural man, a
man infinitely magnified and improved,
with a race of vile offenders to deal with,
whom his natural goodness would incline
him to let off, only his sense of justice
will not allow it; then a younger super
natural man, his son, on the scale of his
father and very dear to him, who might
live in grandeur and splendour if he liked,
but who prefers to leave his home, to go
and live among the race of offenders, and
to be put to an ignominious death, on
condition that his merits shall be counted
against their demerits, and that his father’s
goodness shall be restrained no longer
1 John, vi, 57.
* Matth., xx, 28.
from taking effect, but any offender shall
be admitted to the benefit of it on simply
pleading the satisfaction made by the son ;
—and then, finally, a third supernatural
man, still on the same high scale, who
keeps very much in the background, and
works in a very occult manner, but very
efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy
in applying everywhere the benefits of
the son’s satisfaction, and the father’s
goodness ;—in an imagination, I say, such
as this, there is nothing degrading, and
this is precisely the Protestant story of
Justification. And how awe of the first of
these supernatural persons, gratitude and
love towards the second, and earnest co
operation with the third, may fill and rule
men’s hearts so as to transform their con
duct, we need not go about to show, for we
have all seen it with our eyes. Therefore in
the practical working of this tenet there is
nothing degrading; any more than there
is anything degrading in the tenet as an
imaginative conception. And looking to
the infinite importance of getting right
conduct,—three-fourths of human life,—
established, and to the inevitable anthro
pomorphism and extra-belief of men in
dealing with ideas, one might well hesitate
to attack an anthropomorphism or an
extra-belief by which men helped them
selves in conduct, merely because an
anthropomorphism or an extra-belief it
is, so long as it served its purpose, so long
as it was firmly and undoubtingly held, and
almost universally prevailing.
But, after all, the question sooner or
later arises in respect to a matter taken
for granted, like the Catholic doctrine of
the Mass or the Protestant doctrine of
Justification : Is it sure ? can what is here
assumed be verified! And this is the real
objection both to the Catholic and to the
Protestant doctrine as a basis for conduct;
—not that it is a degrading superstition,
but that it is not sure; that it assumes
what cannot be verified.
For a long time this objection occurred
to scarcely anybody. And there are still,
and for a long time yet there will be, many
to whom it does not occur. In particular,
on those ‘ devout women ’ who in the
history of religion have continually played
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
a part in many respects so beautiful but in
some respects so mischievous,—on them,
and on a certain number of men like them, it
has and can as yet have, so far as one can
see, no effect at all. Who that watches
the energumens during the celebration
of the Communion in some Ritualistic
church, their gestures and behaviour, the
floor of the church strewn with what seem
to be the dying and the dead, progress
to the altar almost barred by forms
suddenly dropping as if they were shot
in battle,—who that observes this de
lighted adoption of vehement rites, till
yesterday unknown, adopted and prac
tised now with all that absence of tact,
measure, and correct perception in things
of form and manner, all that slowness to
see when they are making themselves
ridiculous, which belongs to the people of
our English race,—who, I say, that marks
this can doubt, that for a not small portion
of our religious community a difficulty to
93
the intelligence will for a long time yet be
no difficulty at all? With their mental
condition and habits, given a story to
which their religious emotions can attach
themselves, and the famous Credo quia
ineptum will hold good with them still.
To think they know what passed in the
Council of the Trinity is not hard to
them ; they could easily think they even
knew what were the hangings of the
Trinity’s council-chamber.
Arbitrary and unsupported, however,
as the story they have taken up with may
be, yet it puts them in connexion with the
Bible and the religion of the Bible,—that
is, with righteousness and with the method
and secret of Jesus. These are so clear
in the Bible that no one who uses it can
help seeing them there; and of these
they do take for their use something,
though on a wrong ground. But these,
so far as they are taken into use, are
saving.
CHAPTER X
OUR ‘ MASSES ’ AND THE BIBLE
Many, however, and of a much stronger
and more important sort, there now are,
who will not thus take on trust the story
which is made the reason for putting our
selves in connexion with the Bible and
learning to use its religion; be it the
story of the divine authority of the Chui vh,
as in Catholic countries, or,—as generally
with us,—the story of the three super
natural persons standing on its own merits.
Is what this story asserts true, they are
beginning to ask ; can it be verified ?—
since experience proves, they add, that what
ever for man is true, man can verify. And
certainly the fairy-tale of the three super
natural persons no man can verify. They
find this to be so, and then they say :
The Bible takes for granted this story
and depends on the truth of it; what,
then, can rational people have to do
with the Bible ? So they get rid, to be
sure, of a false ground for using the Bible,
but they at the same time lose the Bible
itself, and the true religion of the Bible :
righteousness, and the method and secret
of Jesus.
And those who lose this
are the masses, as they are called; or
rather they are what is most strenuous,
intelligent, and alive among the masses,
and what will give the signal for the rest
to follow.
This is what everyone sees to constitute
the special moral feature of our times :
the masses are losing the Bible and its
religion. At the Renascence, many culti
vated wits lost it; but the great solid mass
of the common people kept it, and brought
the world back to it after a start had
seemed to be made in quite another
direction. But now it is the people which
is getting detached from the Bible. The
masses can no longer be relied on to
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
94
counteract what the cultivated wits are
doing, and stubbornly to make clever
men’s extravagances and aberrations, if
about the Bible they commit them, of no
avail. When our philosophical Liberal
friends say, that by universal suffrage,
public meetings, Church-disestablishment,
marrying one’s deceased wife’s sister,
secular schools, industrial development,
man can very well live; and that if he
studies the writings, say, of Mr. Herbert
Spencer into the bargain, he will be
perfect, he ‘ will have in modern and con
genial language the truisms common to
all systems of morality,’ and the Bible is
become quite old-fashioned and super
fluous for him;—when our philosophical
friends now say this, the masses, far from
checking them, are disposed to applaud
them to the echo. Yet assuredly, of
conduct, which is more than three-fourths
of human life, the Bible, whatever people
may thus think and say, is the great
inspirer; so that from the great inspirer
of more than three-fourths of human life
the masses of our society seem now to be
cutting themselves off. This promises,
certainly, if it does not already constitute,
a very unsettled condition of things. And
the cause of it lies in the Bible being
made to depend on a story, or set of
asserted facts, which it is impossible to
verify; and which hard-headed people,
therefore, treat as either an imposture, or
a fairy-tale that discredits all which is
found in connexion with it.
•
2.
Now if we look attentively at the
story, or set of asserted but unverified
and unverifiable facts, which we have
summarised in popular language above,
and which is alleged as the basis of the
Bible, we shall find that the difficulty
really lies all in one point. The whole
difficulty is with the infinitely magnified
man who is the first of the three super
natural persons of our story. If he could
be verified, the data we have are, possibly,
enough to warrant our admitting the truth
of the rest of the story. It is singular
how few people seem to see this, though
it is really quite clear. The Bible is
supposed to assume a great Personal
First Cause, who thinks and loves, the
moral and intelligent Governor of the
Universe. This is the God, also, of
natural religion, as people call it; and
this supposed certainty learned reasoners
take, and render it more certain still by
considerations of causality, identity, exist
ence, and so on. These, however, are
not found to help the certainty much;
but a certainty in itself the Great Personal
First Cause, the God of both natural and
revealed religion, is supposed to be.
Then, to this given beginning, all that
the Bible delivers has to fit itself on.
And so arises the account of the God of
the Old Testament, and of Christ and of
the Holy Ghost, and of the incarnation
and atonement, and of the sacraments,
and of inspiration, and of the church, and
of eternal punishment and eternal bliss,
as theology presents them. But difficul
ties strike people in this or that of these
doctrines. The incarnation seems incred
ible to one, the vicarious atonement to
another, the real presence to a third,
inspiration to a fourth, eternal punishment
to a fifth, and so on. And they set to
work to make religion more pure and
rational, as they suppose, by pointing out
that this or that of these doctrines is false,
that it must be a mistake of theologians ;
and by interpreting the Bible so as to show
that the doctrine is not really there. The
Unitarians are, perhaps, the great people
for this sort of partial and local rationalis
ing of religion ; for taking what here and
there on the surface seems to conflict
most with common sense, arguing that it
cannot be in the Bible and getting rid of
it, and professing to have thus relieved
religion of its difficulties. And now, when
there is much loosening of authority and
tradition, much impatience of what con
flicts with common sense, the Unitarians
are beginning confidently to give them
selves out as the Church of the Future.
But in all this there is in reality a good
deal of what we must call intellectual
shallowness. For, granted that there are
things in a system which are puzzling, yet
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
they belong to a system ; and it is childish
to pick them out by themselves and re
proach them with error, when you leave
untouched the basis of the system where
they occur, and indeed admit it for sound
yourself. The Unitarians are very loud
about the unreasonableness and unscripturalness of the common doctrine of the
Atonement. But in the Socinian Catech
ism it stands written : ‘ It is necessary for
salvation to know that God is; and to
know that God is, is to be firmly persuaded
that there exists in reality some One, who
has supreme dominion over all things.’
Presently afterwards it stands written,
that among the testimonies to Christ are,
‘ miracles very great and immense,’ miracula
admodum magna et immensa. Now, with
the One Supreme Governor, and miracles,
given to start with, it may fairly be urged
that that construction put by common
theology on the Bible-data, which we call
the story of the three supernatural men,
and in which the Atonement fills a pro
minent place, is the natural and legitimate
construction to put on them, and not unscriptural at all. Neither is it unreason
able ; in a system of things, that is, where
the Supreme Governor and miracles, or
even where the Supreme Governor with
out miracles, are already given.
And this is Butler’s great argument
in the Analogy. You all concede, he
says to his deistical adversaries, a Supreme
Personal First Cause, the almighty and
intelligent Governor of the universe;
this, you and I both agree, is the system
and order of nature. But you are offended
at certain things in revelation ;—that is, at
I things, Butler means, like a future life with
rewards and punishments, or like the doc
trine of the Trinity as theology collects
it from the Bible. Well, I will show you,
he says, that in your and my admitted
system of nature there are just as great
difficulties as in the system of revelation.
And he does show it; and by adversaries
such as his, who grant what the Deist or
Socinian grants, he never has been an
swered, he never can be answered. The
spear of Butler’s reasoning will even follow
and transfix the Duke of Somerset, who
finds so much to condemn in the Bible,
95
but ‘ retires into one unassailable fortress,
—faith in God.’
The only question, perhaps, is, whether
Butler, as an Anglican bishop, puts an
adequate construction upon what Bible
revelation, this basis of the Supreme
Personal First Cause being supposed,
may be allowed to be ; whether Catholic
dogma is not the truer construction to put
upon it. Cardinal Newman urges, fairly
enough: Butler admits, analogy is in
some sort violated by the fact of revela
tion ; only, with the precedent of natural
religion given, we have to own that the
difficulties against revelation are not
greater than against this precedent, and
therefore the admission of this precedent
of natural religion may well be taken to
clear them. And must we not go farther
in the same way, asks Cardinal Newman,
and own that the precedent of revelation,
too, may be taken to cover more than
itself; and that as, the Supreme Governor
being given, it is credible that the Incarna
tion is true, so, the Incarnation being
true, it is credible that God should not
have left the world to itself after Christ
and his Apostles disappeared, but should
have lodged divine insight in the Church
and its visible head ? So pleads Cardi
nal Newman ; and if it be said that
facts are against the infallibility of the
Church, or that Scripture is against it, yet
to wide, immense things, like facts and
Scripture, a turn may easily be given
which makes them favour it; and so an
endless field for discussion is opened, and
no certain conclusion is possible. For,
once launched on this line of hypothesis
and inference, with a Supreme Governor
assumed, and the task thrown upon us of
making out what he means us to infer and
what we may suppose him to do and to
intend, one of us may infer one thing and
another of us another, and neither can
possibly prove himself to be right or his
adversary to be wrong.
Only, there may come some one, who
says that the basis of all our inference,
the Supreme Personal First Cause, the
moral and intelligent Governor, is not the
order of nature, is an assumption, and not
a fact; and then, if this is so, our whole
�96
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
superstructure falls to pieces like a house
of cards.
And this is just what is
happening at present. The masses, with
their rude practical instinct, go straight to
the heart of the matter. They are told
there is a great Personal First Cause,
who thinks and loves, the moral and
intelligent Author and Governor of the
universe; and that the Bible and Bible
righteousness come to us from him. Now,
they do not begin by asking, with the
intelligent Unitarian, whether the doctrine
of the Atonement is worthy of this moral
and intelligent Ruler; they begin by
asking what proof we have of him at all.
Moreover, they require proof which is
clear and certain ; demonstration, or else
plain experimental proof, such as that fire
burns them if they touch it. If they are
to study and obey the Bible because it
comes from the Personal First Cause who
is Governor of the universe, they require
to be able to ascertain that there A this
Governor, just as they are able to ascer
tain that the angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles, or that fire burns.
And if they cannot ascertain it, they will
let the intelligent Unitarian perorate for
ever about the Atonement if he likes, but
they themselves pitch the whole Bible to
the winds.
Now, it is remarkable what a resting
on mere probabilities, or even on less than
probabilities, the proof for religion comes,
in the hands of its great apologist, Butler,
to be, even after he has started with the
assumption of his moral and intelligent
Governor. And no wonder ; for in the
primary assumption itself there is and can
be nothing demonstrable or experimental,
and therefore clearly known. So that of
Christianity, as Butler grounds it, the
natural criticism would really be in these
words of his own : ‘ Suppositions are not
to be looked upon as true, because not
incredible.’ However, Butler maintains
that in matters of practice, such as religion,
this is not so. In them it is prudent, he
says, to act on even a supposition, if it is
not incredible. Even the doubting about
religion implies, he argues, that it may be
true. Now, in matters of practice we are
bound in prudence, he says, to act upon
what may be a low degree of evidence;
yes, ‘ even though it be so low as to leave
the mind in very great doubt what is the
truth.'.
Was there ever such a way of establish
ing righteousness heard of? And suppose
we tried this with rude, hard, downright
people, with the masses, who for what is
told them want, above all, a plain ex
perimental proof, such as that fire will
burn you if you touch it. Whether in
prudence they ought to take the Bible
and religion on a low degree of evidence,
or not, it is quite certain that on this
ground they never will take them. And
it is quite certain, moreover, that never
on this ground did Israel, from whom we
derive our religion, take it himself or
recommend it. He did not take it in
prudence, because he found at any rate a
low degree of evidence for it; he took it
in rapture, because he found for it an evi
dence irresistible. But his own words are
the best: ‘ Thou, O Eternal, art the thing
that I long for, thou art my hope even
from my youth : through thee have I been
holden up ever since I was born.1 The
statutes of the Eternal rejoice the heart;
more desirable they are than gold, sweeter
than honey; in keeping of them there is
great reward.2 The Eternal is my strength,
my heart hath trusted in him and I am
helped ; therefore my heart danceth for
joy, and in my song will I praise him.’3
That is why Israel took his religion.
3-
But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus,
it was, we say, because he had a plain
experimental proof of him. God was to
Israel neither an assumption nor a meta
physical idea; he was a power that can be
verified as much as the power of fire to
burn or of bread to nourish : the power,
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.
And the greatness of Israel in religion, the
reason why he is said to have had religion
revealed to him, to have been entrusted
with the oracles of God, is because he had
1 Ps. Ixxi, 5, 6.
2 Ps. xix, 8, io, ii,
s Ps. xxviii, 7.
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
97
in such extraordinary force and vividness gives to the famous argument from design
the perception of this power. And he or to the doctrine of creation as opposed
communicates it irresistibly because he to evolution. And it is none at all.
feels it irresistibly; that is why the Bible
Free as is his use of anthropomorphic
is not as other books that inculcate language, Israel had, as we have remarked
righteousness. Israel speaks of his in already, far too keen a sense of reality not
tuition still feeling it to be an intuition, to shrink, when he comes anywhere near
an experience ; not as something which to the notion of exact speaking about God,
others have delivered to him, nor yet as from affirmation, from professing to know
a piece of metaphysical notion-building. a whit more than he does know. ‘ Lo,
Anthropomorphic he is, for all men are, these are skirts of his ways,’ he says of
and especially men not endowed with the what he has experienced, ‘ but how little a
Aryan genius for abstraction; but he portion is known of him ! ’1 And again :
does not make arbitrary assertions which ‘ The secret things belong unto the Eternal
can never be verified, like our popular our God-, but the revealed things belong
religion, nor is he ever pseudo-scientific, unto us and to our children for ever : that
we may do all the words of this law.’2
like our learned religion.
He is credited with the metaphysical How different from our licence of full and
ideas of the personality of God, of the particular statement: ‘ A Personal First
unity of God, and of creation as opposed Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
to evolution ; ideas depending, the first and intelligent Governor of the universe 1 ’
two of them, on notions of essence, Israel knew, concerning the eternal not
existence, and identity, the last of them ourselves, that it was ‘ a power that made
on the notion of cause and design. But for righteousness.’ This was revealed to
he is credited with them falsely.. All the Israel and his children, and through them
countenance he gives to the metaphysical to the world; all the rest about the
idea of the personality of God is given by eternal not ourselves was this power’s own
his anthropomorphic language, in which, secret. And all Israel’s language about
being a man himself, he naturally speaks this power, except that it makes for right
of the Power, with which he is concerned, eousness, is approximate language,—the
as a man also. So he says that Moses language of poetry and eloquence, thrown
saw God’s hinder parts;1 and he gives out at a vast object of our consciousness
just as much countenance to the scientific not fully apprehended by it, but extending
assertion that God has hinder parts, as to infinitely beyond it.
77/A, however, was ‘a revealed thing,’
the scientific assertion of God’s personality.
That is, he gives no countenance at all to Israel said, to him and to his children:
either. As to his asserting the unity of God ‘ the Eternal not ourselves that makes for
the case is the same. He would give, righteousness.’ And now, then, let us go
indeed, his heart and his worship to no to the masses with what Israel really did
manifestation of power, except of the power say, instead of what our popular and our
which makes for righteousness ; but he learned religion may choose to make him
affords to the metaphysical idea of the unity say. Let us announce, not: ‘ There rules a
of God no more countenance than this, and Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and
this is none at all. Then, lastly, as to the loves, the moral and intelligent Governor
idea of creation. He viewed, indeed, all of the universe, and therefore study your
order as depending on the supreme order Bible and learn to obey this ! ’ No ; but
of righteousness, and all the fulness and let us announce : ‘ There rules an enduring
beauty of the world as a boon added to Power, not ourselves, which makes for
the stock of that holder of the greatest of righteousness, and therefore study your
all boons already, the righteous. This, Bible and learn to obey this.’ For if we
however, is as much countenance as he announce the other instead, and they
1 Ex., xxxiii, 23.
1 Job, xxvi, 14.
2 Deut., xxix, 29.
G
�98
literature and dogma
reply: ‘ First let us verify that there rules
a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks
and loves, the moral and intelligent
Governor of the universe,’—what are we
to answer? We cannot answer.
But if, on the other hand, they ask :
‘ How are we to verify that there rules an
enduring Power, not ourselves, which
makes for righteousness?’—we may an
swer at once : ‘How? why as you verify
that fire burns,—by experience 1 It is
so ; try it! you can try it; every case of
conduct, of that which is more than threefourths of your own life and of the life of
all mankind, will prove it to you ! Dis
believe it, and you will find out your
mistake as surely as, if you disbelieve that
fire burns and put your hand into the fire
you will find out your mistake 1 Believe
it, and you will find the benefit of it 1 ’
This is the first experience.
But then the masses may go on, and
say : ‘ Why, however, even if there is an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness, should we study the
Bible that we may learn to obey him ?—
will not other teachers or books do as
well ? ’ And here again the answer is :
‘ Why ?—why, because this Power is
revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not
by other teachers and books ! that is,
there is infinitely more of him there, he
is plainer and easier to come at, and in
comparably more impressive. If you
want to know plastic art, you go to the
Greeks; if you want to know science, you
go to the Aryan genius. And why ?
Because they have the specialty for these
things ; for making us feel what they are
and giving us an enthusiasm for them.
Well, and so have Israel and the Bible a
specialty for righteousness, for making us
feel what it is and giving us an enthusiasm
for it. And here again it is experience
that we invoke : try it 1 Having convinced
yourself that there is an enduring Power,
not ourselves, that makes for righteous
ness, set yourself next to try to learn more
about this Power, and to feel an enthu
siasm for it. And to this end, take a
course of the Bible first, and then a
course of Benjamin Franklin, Horace
Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr.
Herbert Spencer; see which has most
effect, which satisfies you most, which
gives you most moral force. Why, the
Bible is of such avail for teaching
righteousness, that even to those who
come to it with all sorts of false notions
about the God of the Bible, it yet does
teach righteousness, and fills them with
the love of it; how much more those
who come to it with a
notion about
the God of the Bible ! ’ And this is the
second experience.
Now here, at the beginning of things,
is the point, we say, where to apply
correction to our current theology, if we
are to bring the religion of the Bible
home to the masses. It is of no use
beginning lower down, and amending this
or that ramification, such as the Atonement, or the Real Presence, or Eternal
Punishment, when the root from which
all springs is unsound. Those whom it
most concerns us to teach will never
interest themselves at all in our amended
religion, so long as the whole thing
appears to them unsupported and in the
air.
Yet that original conception of God,
on which all our religion is and must be
grounded, has been very little examined,
and very few of the controversies which
arise in religion go near it. Religious
people say solemnly, as if we doubted it,
that ‘ he that cometh to God must
believe that He A, and that He is a
rewarder of them that seek him; ’1 and
that ‘a man who preaches that Jesus
Christ is not God is virtually out of the
pale of Christian communion.’
We
entirely agree with them ; but we want to
know what they mean by God. Now on
this matter the state of their thoughts is,
to say the truth, extremely vague; but
what they really do at bottom mean by
God is, in general : the best one knows.
And this is the soundest definition they
will ever attain ; yet scientifically it is not
a satisfying definition, for clearly the best
1 Heb.) xi, 6.
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�OUR 1 MASSES' AND THE BIBLE
99
one knows differs for everybody. So they lator, suggests that the Hebrew religion
have to be more precise ; and when they was so unlike that of any other Semitic
collect themselves a little, they find that people because of the simple and austere
they mean by God a magnified and non- life led by the Beni-Israel as nomads of
natural man. But this, again, they can the desert; or because they did not, like
hardly say in so many words. Therefore other Semitic people, put a feminine
at last, when they are pressed, they divinity alongside of their masculine
collect themselves all they can, and make divinity, and thus open the way to all
a great effort, and out they come with sorts of immorality. But many other
their piece of science : God is a Great tribes have had the simple and austere
Personal First Cause, who thinks and life of nomads of the desert, without its
loves, the moral and intelligent Governor bringing them to the religion of Israel.
of the universe. But this piece of science And, if the Hebrews did not put a femi
of theirs we will have nothing to say to, nine divinity alongside of their masculine
for we account it quite hollow; and we divinity, while other Semitic people did,
say, and have shown (we think), that the surely there must have been something to
Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to cause this difference ! and what we want
say to it either. Yet the whole pinch of to know is this something.
the matter is here; and till we are agreed
And to this something, we say, the
as to what we mean by God, we can ‘ Zeit-Geist,’ and a prolonged and large
never, in discussing religious questions, experience of men’s expressions and how
understand one another or discuss they employ them, leads us. It was be
seriously. Yet, as we have said, hardly cause, while other people, in the operation
any of the discussions which arise in of that mighty not ourselves which is in us
religion turn upon this cardinal point. and around us, saw this thing and that
This is what cannot but strike one in that thing and many things, Israel saw in it
torrent of petitiones principii (for so we one thing only :—that it made for conduct,
really must call them) in the shape of for righteousness. And it docs ; and con
theological letters from clergymen, which duct is the main part of human life. And
pours itself every week through the hence, therefore, the extraordinary reality
columns of the Guardian. They all and power of Israel’s God and of Israel’s
employ the word God with such extra religion. And the more we strictly limit
ordinary confidence! as if ‘a Great ourselves, in attempting to give a scientific
Personal First Cause, who thinks and account of God, to Israel’s authentic in
loves, the moral and intelligent Governor tuition of him, and say that he is ‘the
of the universe,’ were a verifiable fact Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes
given beyond all question; and we had for righteousness,’ the more real and pro
now only to discuss what such a Being found will Israel’s words about God be
would naturally think about Church vest come to us, for we can then verify his
ments and the use of the Athanasian words as we use them.
Eternal, thou hast been our refuge from
Creed. But everything people say, under
these conditions, is in truth quite in the one generation to another !x If we define
air.
the Eternal to ourselves, ‘ a Great Personal
Even those who have treated Israel First Cause, who thinks and loves, the
and his religion the most philosophically, moral and intelligent Governor of the
seem not to have enough considered that universe,’ we can never verify that this
so wonderful an effect must have had has from age to age been a refuge to men.
some cause to account for it, other than But if we define the Eternal, ‘ the endur
any which they assign. Professor Kuenen, ing Power, not ourselves, that makes for
whose excellent History of the Religion righteousness,’ then we can know and
of Israel1 ought to find an English trans- till the Downfall of the Jewish State) ; Haarlem.
1 De Godsdienst van Israel tot den Ordergang
Van den foodschen Staat (The Religion of Israel
An English translation has now appeared.
1 Ps. xc, I. G2
�ICO
literature am> dogma
feel the truth of what we say when we
declare : Eternal^ thou hast been our refuge
from one generation to another 1 For in
all the history of man we can verify it.
Righteousness has been salvation ; and
to verify the God of Israel in man’s long
history is the most animating, the most
exalting and the most pure of delights.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the
Eternal /1 is a text, indeed, of which the
world offers to us the most inexhaustible
and the most marvellous illustration.
Nor is the change here proposed, in
itself, any difficult or startling change in
our habits of religious thought, but a
very simple one. Nevertheless, simple as
may be this change which is to be made
high up and at the outset, it undeniably
governs everything farther down. Jesus
is the Son of God; the Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of truth that proceeds from God.
What God? ‘A Great Personal First
Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the Universe? ’
—to whom Jesus and the Holy Spirit are
related in the way described in the Athana
sian Creed, so that the operations of the
three together produce what the West
minster divines call ‘ the Contract passed
in the Council of the Trinity,’ and what
we, for plainness, describe as the fairy-tale
of the three supernatural men ? This is
all in the air, but in the air it all hangs
together. There stand the Bible words!
how you construe them depends entirely
on what definition of God you start with.
If Jesus is the Son of ‘a Great Personal
First Cause,’ then the words of the Bible,
literally taken, may well enough lend
themselves to a story like that of the three
supernatural men. The story can never
be verified; but it may nevertheless be
what the Bible has to say, if the Bible
have started, as theology starts, with the
‘ Great Personal First Cause.’ And the
story may, when it comes to be examined,
have many minor difficulties, have things
to baffle us, things to shock us; but still
it may be what the Bible has to say.
However, the masses will get rid of all
minor difficulties in the simplest manner,
1 Ts. xxxiii, 12.
by rejecting the Bible altogether on ac
count of the major difficulty,—its starting
with an assumption which cannot possibly
be verified.
But suppose the Bible is discovered,
when its expressions are rightly understood,
to start with an assertion which can be
verified : the assertion, namely, not of ‘ a
Great Personal First Cause,’ but of ‘an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness.’ Then by the
light of this discovery we read and under
stand all the expressions that follow.
Jesus comes forth from this enduring
Power that makes for righteousness, is
sent by this Power, is this Power’s Son;
the Holy Spirit proceeds from this same
Power, and so on.
Now, from the innumerable minor
difficulties which attend the story of the
three supernatural men, this right con
struction, put on what the Bible says of
Jesus, of the Father, and of the Holy
Spirit, is free. But it is free from the
major difficulty also; for it neither de
pends upon what is unverifiable, nor is
it unverifiable itself. That Jesus is the
Son of a Great Personal First Cause is
itself unverifiable; and that there is a
Great Personal First Cause is unverifiable
too. But that there is an enduring Power,
not ourselves, which makes for righteous
ness, is verifiable, as we have seen, by
experience; and that Jesus is the off
spring of this Power is verifiable from
experience also. For God is the author
of righteousness; now, Jesus is the Son
of God because he gives the method and
secret by which alone is righteousness
possible. And that he does give this, we
can verify, again, from experience. It is
so! try, and you will find it to be so 1
Try all the ways to righteousness you can
think of, and you will find that no way
brings you to it except the way of Jesus,
but that this way does bring you to it!
And, therefore, as we found we could say
to the masses: ‘Attempt to do without
Israel’s God that makes for righteousness,
and you will find out your mistake ! ’ so
we find we can now proceed farther, and
say : ‘ Attempt to reach righteousness by
any way except that of Jesus, and you will
�OUR 1 MASSES' AND THE BIBLE
find out your mistake ! ’ This is a thing
that can prove itself, if it is so ; and it will
prove itself, because it is so.
Thus, we have the authority of both
Old and New Testament placed on just
the same solid basis as the authority of
the injunction to take food and rest:
namely, that experience proves we cannot
do without them. And we have neglect
of the Bible punished just as putting one’s
hand into the fire is punished : namely,
by finding we are the worse for it. Only,
to attend to this experience about the
Bible, needs more steadiness than to
attend to the momentary impressions of
hunger, fatigue, and pain; therefore it is
called faith, and counted a virtue. But
the appeal is to experience in this case just
as much as in the other; only to ex
perience of a far deeper and greater kind.
ioi
for us to make out ours,—is by reason and
experience. ‘ Even such as are readiest,’!
says Hooker very well, ‘ to cite for one
thing five hundred sentences of Scripture,
what warrant have they that any one of
them doth mean the thing for which it is
alleged ? ’
They can have none, he
replies, but reasoning and collection ; and
to the same effect Butler says of reason,
that ‘ it is indeed the only faculty we have
wherewith to judge concerning anything,
even revelation itself.’ Now it is simply
from experience of the human spirit and
its productions, from observing as widely
as we can the manner in which men have
thought, their way of using words and what
they mean by them, and from reasoning
upon this observation and experience,
that we conclude the construction theo
logians put upon the Bible to be false,
and ours to be the truer one.
In the first place, from Israel’s master
feeling, the feeling for righteousness, the
5predominant sense that men are, as St.
So there is no doubt that we get a Paul says, ‘created unto good works
much firmer, nay an impregnable, ground which God hath prepared beforehand that
for the Bible, and for recommending it to we should walk in them,’1 we collect the
the world, if we put the construction on it origin of Israel’s conception of God,—of
which we propose. The only question that mighty ‘not ourselves’ which more
is: Is this the right construction to put or less engages all men’s attention,—as the
on it ? is it the construction which properly Eternal Power that makes for righteous
belongs to the Bible? And here, again, ness. This we do, because the more we
our appeal is to the same test which we come to know how ideas and terms arise,
have employed throughout, the only and what is their character, the more this
possible test for man to employ,—the test explanation of Israel’s use of the word
of reason and experience. Given the ‘ God ’ seems the true and natural one.
Bible-documents, what, it is inquired, is Again, the construction we put upon the
the right construction to put upon them ? doctrine and work of Jesus is collected in
Is it the construction we propose ? or is the same way. From the data we have,
it- the construction of the theologians, and from comparison of these data with
according to which the dogmas of the what we have besides of the history of
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, ideas and expressions, this construction
and so on, are presupposed all through seems to us the true and natural one.
the Bible, are sometimes latent, sometimes The Gospel-narratives are just that sort of
come more visibly to the surface, but are account of such a work and teaching as
always there ; and to them every word in the work and teaching of Jesus Christ,
according to our construction of it, was,
the Bible has reference, plain or figured ?
Now, the Bible does not and cannot which would naturally have been given by
tell us itself, in black and white, what is devoted followers who did not fully
the right construction to put upon it; we understand it. And understand it fully
have to make this out. And the only they then could not, it was so very new,
possible way to make it out,—for the dog
ii, IQ,
matists to make out their construction, or
�102
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
great, and profound; only time gradually
brings its lines out more clear.
On the other hand, the theologians’
notion of dogmas presupposed in the
Bible, and of a constant latent reference
to them, we reject, because experience is
against it. The more we know of the
history of ideas and expressions, the more
we are convinced that this account is not
and cannot be the true one; that the
theologians have credited the Bible with
this presupposition of dogmas and this
constant latent reference to them, but
that they are not really there. ‘The
Fathers recognised] says Cardinal New
man, ‘ a certain truth lying hid under the
tenor of the sacred text as a whole, and
showing itself more or less in this verse
or that, as it might be. The Fathers
might have traditionary information of the
general drift of the inspired text which we
have not.’ Born into the world twenty
years later, and touched with the breath
of the ‘ Zeit-Geist,’ how would this
exquisite and delicate genius have been
himself the first to feel the unsoundness
of all this ! that we have heard the like
about other books before, and that it
always turns out to be not so, that the
right interpretation of a document, such
as the Bible, is not in this fashion. Homer’s
poetry was the Bible of the Greeks,
however strange a one ; and just in the
same way there grew up the notion of a
mystical and inner sense in the poetry of
Homer, underlying the apparent sense,
but brought to light by the commen
tators ; perhaps, even, they might have
traditionary information of the drift of
the Homeric poetry which we have not;
—who knows ? But, once for all, as our
literary experience widens, this notion of
a secret sense in Homer proves to be a
mere dream. So, too, is the notion of a
secret sense in the Bible, and of the
Fathers’ disengagement of it.
Demonstration in these matters is im
possible. It is a maintainable thesis that
the allegorising of the Fathers is right,
and that this is the true sense of the
Bible. It is a maintainable thesis that the
theological dogmas of the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the Atonement, underlie
the whole Bible. It is a maintainable
thesis, also, that Jesus was himself
immersed in the Aberglaube of his nation
and time, and that his disciples have
reported him with absolute fidelity;
in this case we should have, in our
estimate of Jesus, to make deductions for
his Aberglaube, and to admire him for the
insight he displayed in spite of it. This
thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or another
thesis is maintainable, as to the construc
tion to be put on such a document as the
Bible. Absolute demonstration is im
possible, and the only question is : Does
experience, as it widens and deepens,
make for this or that thesis, or make
against it? And the great thing against
any such thesis as either of the two wTe
have just mentioned is, that the more we
know of the history of- the human spirit
and its deliverances, the more we have
reason to think such a thesis improbable,
and it loses its hold on our assent more.
On the other hand, the great thing, as we
believe, in favour of such a construction
as we put upon the Bible is, that
experience, as it increases, constantly
confirms it; and that, though it cannot
command assent, it will be found to win
assent more and more.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS QF THE OLD TESTAMENT
CHAPTER XI
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Win assent in the end the new construction
will, but not at once ; and there will be a
passage-time of confusion first. It is not
for nothing, as we have said, that people
take short cuts and tell themselves fairy
tales, because the immense scale of the
history of ‘ bringing in everlasting right
eousness,’ is too much for their narrow
minds. It is not for nothing; they pay for
it. It is not for nothing that they found
religion on prediction and miracle,
guarantee it by preternatural interventions
and the coming of the Son of Man in the
clouds, consummate Jt by a banquet with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city
shining with gold and precious stones.
They are like people who have fed their
minds on novels or their stomachs on
opium; the reality of things is flat and
insipid to them, although it is in truth far
grander than the phantasmagorical world
of novels and of opium. But it is long
before the novel-reader or the opium-eater
can rid himself of his bad habits, and
brace his nerves, and recover the tone of
his mind enough to perceive it. Distress
and despair at the loss of his accustomed
stimulant are his first sensations.
Miracles, the mainstay of popular
religion, are touched by Ithuriel’s spear.
They are beginning to dissolve ; but what
are we to expect during the process of
dissolution ? Probably, amongst many
religious people, vehement efforts at re
action, a recrudescence of superstition ;
the passionate resolve to keep hold on
what is slipping away from them by giving
up more and more the use of reason in
religion, and by resting more and more on
authority. The Church of Rome is the
great upholder of authority as against
reason in religion; and it will be strange
if in the coming time of transition the
Church of Rome does not gain.
But for many more than those whom
Rome attracts there will be an interval,
between the time when men accepted the
religion of the Bible as a thaumaturgy and
the time when they perceive it to be some
thing different, in which they will be prone
to throw aside the religion of the Bible
altogether as a delusion. And this, again,
will be mainly the fault,—if fault that can
be called which was an inevitable error, —3
of the religious people themselves, who,
from the time of the Apostles downwards,
have insisted upon it that religion shall be
a thaumaturgy or nothing. For very
many, therefore, when it cannot be a
thaumaturgy, it will be nothing. And
very likely there will come a day when
there will be less religion than even now]
For the religion of the Bible is so simple
and powerful, that even those who make
the Bible a thaumaturgy get hold of
the religion, because they read the Bible |
but, if men do not read the Bible, they
cannot get hold of it. And then will be
fulfilled the saying of the prophet Amos 1
‘ Behold, the days come, saith the Eternal,
that I will send a famine in the land, not’
a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Eternal;
and they shall wander from sea to sea,
and from the north even to the east they
shall run to and fro to seek the word of
the Eternal, and shall not find it.’1
Nevertheless, as after this mournful
prophecy the herdsman of Tekoah goes
on to say: ‘ There shall yet not the least
grain of Israel fall to the earth / ’2 To
the Bible men will return; and why?
Because they cannot do without it.
Because happiness is our being’s end and
aim, and happiness belongs to righteous
ness, and righteousness is revealed in the
Bible. For this simple reason men will
return to the Bible, just as a man who tried
to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing
and he could do without it, would return to
* Am., viii, II, 12.
2 Am., ix, 9.
�io4
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
food ; or a man who tried to give up sleep,
thinking it was a vain thing and he could
do without it, would return to sleep.
Then there will come a time of recon
struction ; and then, perhaps, will be the
moment for labours, like this attempt of
ours, to be found useful. For though
everyone must read the Bible for himself,
and the perfect criticism of it is an
immense matter, and it may be possible
to go much beyond what we here achieve
or can achieve, yet the method for reading
the Bible we, as we hope and believe, here
give. And although, in this or that detail,
the construction we put upon the Bible
may be wrong, yet the main lines of the
construction will be found, we hope and
believe, right ; and the reader who has
the main lines may easily amend the
details for himself.
instance. The non-Christian religions are
not to the wise man mere monsters ; he
knows they have much good and truth in
them. He knows that Mahometanism,
and Brahminism, and Buddhism, are not
what the missionaries call them; and he
knows, too, how really unfit the mission
aries are to cope with them. For any
one who weighs the matter well, the mis
sionary in clerical coat and gaiters whom
one sees in wood-cuts preaching to a
group of picturesque Orientals, is, from
the inadequacy of his criticism both of
his hearers’ religion and of his own, and
his signal misunderstanding of the very
Volume he holds in his hand, a hardly
less grotesque object in his intellectual
equipment for his task than in his outward
attire. Yet everyone allows that this
strange figure carries something of what
is called European civilisation with him,
and a good part of this is due to Chris
2.
tianity. But even the Christianity itself
that he preaches, imbedded in a false
Meanwhile to popular Christianity, theology though it be, cannot but contain,
from those who can see its errors, is due in a greater or lesser measure as it may
an indulgence inexhaustible, except where happen, these three things: the all-im
limits are required to it for the good of ! portance of righteousness, the method of
religion itself. Two considerations make Jesus, the secret of Jesus. No Chris
this indulgence right. One is, that the tianity that is ever preached but manages
language of the Bible being,—which is to carry something of these along with it.
the great point a sound criticism establishes
And if it carries them to Mahometan
against dogmatic theology,—approximate, ism, they are carried where of the all
not scientific, in all expressions of religious importance of righteousness there is a
feeling approximate language is lawful, knowledge, but of the method and secret
and indeed is all we can attain to. It of Jesus, by which alone is righteousness
cannot be adequate, more or less proper possible, hardly any sense at all. If it
it can be ; but, in general, approximate carries them to Brahminism, they are
language consecrated by use and religious carried where of the all-importance of
feeling acquires therefrom a propriety of righteousness, the foundation of the whole
its own. This is the first consideration. matter, there is a wholly insufficient
The second is, that on both the ‘method’ sense; and where religion is, above all,
and the ‘ secret ’ of Jesus popular Chris that metaphysical conception, or meta
tianity in no contemptible measure both physical play, so dear to the Aryan genius
can and does, as we have said, lay hold, and to M. Emile Burnouf. If it carries
in spite of its inadequate criticism of the them to Buddhism, they are carried
Bible. Now, to lay hold on the method to a religion to be saluted with respect,
and secret of Jesus is a very great thing; indeed; for it has not only the sense for
an inadequate criticism of the Bible is a righteousness, it has, even, the secret of
comparatively small one.
Jesus. But it employs the secret ill,
Certainly this consideration should because greatly wanting in the method,
govern our way of regarding many things because utterly wanting in the sweet
in popular Christianity;—its missions, for reasonableness, the unerring balance, the
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
epieikeia. Therefore to all wfiom it visits,
the Christianity of our missions, inade
quate as may be its criticism of the
Bible, brings what may do them good.
And if it brings the Bible itself, it brings
what may not only help the good preached,
but may also with time dissipate the
erroneous criticism which accompanies
this and impairs it. All this is to be said
for popular religion; and it all makes in
favour of treating popular religion ten
derly, of sparing it as much as possible,
of trusting to time and indirect means to
transform it, rather than to sudden,
violent changes.
3-
Learned religion, however, the pseudo
science of dogmatic theology, merits no
such indulgence. It is a separable ac
cretion, which never had any business to
be attached to Christianity, never did it
any good, and now does it great harm,
and thickens an hundredfold the religious
confusion in which we live. Attempts to
adopt it, to put a new sense into it, to
make it plausible, are the most misspent
labour in the world. Certainly no reli
gious reformer who tries it, or has tried
it, will find his work live.
Nothing is more common, indeed,
than for religious writers, who have a
strong sense of the genuine and moral
side of Christianity, and who much en
large on the pre-eminence of this, to put
themselves right, as it were, with dogmatic
theology, by a passing sentence expressing
profound belief in its dogmas, though in
discussing them, it is implied, there is
little profit. So Mr. Erskine of Linlathen,
that unwearying and much-revered ex
ponent of the moral side of the Bible:
‘ It seems difficult,’ he says, ‘ to conceive
that any man should read through the
New Testament candidly and attentively,
without being convinced that the doctrine
of the Trinity is essential to and implied
in every part of the system.’ Even already
many readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when
they come across such a sentence as that,
as if they had suddenly taken gravel or
105
sand into their mouth. Twenty years
hence this feeling will be far stronger ;
the reader will drop the book, saying that
certainly it can avail him nothing. So,
also, Bunsen was fond of maintaining,
putting some peculiar meaning of his
own into the words, that the whole of
Christianity was in the Lutheran doctrine
of justification by faith. Thus, too, the
Bishop of Exeter chooses to say that his
main objection to keeping the Athanasian
Creed is, that it endangers the doctrine
of the Trinity, which is so important.
Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and devout
spirit,—of whom, however, the truth must
at last be told, that in theology he passed
his life beating the bush with deep
emotion and never starting the hare,—
Mr. Maurice declared that by reading
between the lines he saw in the Thirtynine Articles and the Athanasian Creed
the altogether perfect expression of the
Christian faith.
But all this is mischievous as well as
vain. It is vain, because it is meant to
conciliate the so-called orthodox, and it
does not conciliate them. Of his attach
ment to the doctrine of the Trinity the
Bishop of Exeter may make what pro
testations he will, Archdeacon Denison
will still smell a rat in them ; and the
time has passed when Bunsen’s Evangeli
cal phrases could fascinate the Evangeli
cals. Such language, however, does also
actual harm, because it proceeds from a
misunderstanding and prolongs it. For
it may be well to read between the lines
of a man labouring with an experience
he cannot utter ; but to read between the
lines of a notion-work is absurd, for it is
of the essence of a notion-work not to
need it. And the Athanasian Creed is
a notion-work, of which the fault is that
its basis is a chimaera. It is an applica
tion of the terms of Greek logic to a
chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity,
a notion unestablished, not resting on
observation and experience, but assumed
to be given in Scripture, yet not really
given there. Indeed the very expression,
the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and
character of Bible-religion. But, lest the
Unitarian should be unduly elated at
�ip6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
hearing this, let us hasten to add that
so too, and just as much, does the ex
pression, a Great Personal First Cause.
Learned pseudo-science applied to the
data of the Bible is best called plainly
what it is,—utter blunder; criticism of the
same order, and of which the futility will
one day be just as visible, as that criticism
about the two swords which some way
back we quoted. To try to tinker such
criticism only makes matters worse. The
best way is to throw it aside altogether, and
forget it as fast as possible. This is Avhat
the good of religion demands, and what
all the enemies of religion would most
deprecate. The hour for softening down,
and explaining away, is passed ; the whole
false notion-work has to go. Mild de
fences of it leave on the mind a sense
of the defender’s hopeless inability to
perceive our actual situation ; violent de
fences read, alas ! only like ‘ a tale told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.'
4-
But the great work to be done for the
better time which will arrive, and for the
time of transition which will precede it, is
not a work of destruction, but to show that
the truth is really, as it is, incomparably
higher, grander, more wide and deep
reaching, than the Aberglaube and false
science which it displaces.
The propounders of ‘The Great Per
sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves,’
are too modest when they sometimes say,
taking their lesson from the Bible, that,
after all, man can know next to nothing
of the Divine nature. They do them
selves signal injustice; they themselves
know, according to their own statements,
a great deal, far too much. They know so
much, that they make of God a magnified
and non-natural man; and when this
leads them into difficulties, and they
think to escape from these by saying that
God’s ways are not man’s ways, they do
not succeed in making their God cease to
resemble a man, they only make him re
semble a man puzzled. But the truth is,
that one may have a great respect for man, i
and yet be permitted, even however much
he be magnified, to imagine something
far beyond him. And this is the good of
such an unpretending definition of God
as ours : the Eternal Power, not ourselves,
that. makes for righteousness;—it leaves
the infinite to the imagination, and to the
gradual efforts of countless ages of men,
slowly feeling after more of it and finding
it. Ages and ages hence, no such ade
quate definition of the infinite not our
selves will yet be possible, as any sciolist
of a theologian will now pretend to rattle
you off in a moment. But on one point
of the operation of this not ourselves we
are clear: that it makes for conduct, for
righteousness. So far we know God, that
he is ‘the Eternal that lovcth righteous
ness ; ’ and the farther we go in righteous
ness, the more we shall know him.
And as this true and authentic God
of Israel is far grander than the God of
popular religion, so is his real affirmation
of himself in human affairs far grander
than that poor machinery of prediction
and miracle, by which popular religion
imagines that he affirms himself. The
greatness of the scale on which he operates
makes it hard for men to follow him; but
the greatness of the scale, too, makes the
grandeur of the operation. Take the
Scripture-promises and their accomplish
ment. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the
wicked no more; but the righteous is an
everlastingfoundation.1 And again : They
shall call Jerusalem the throne of the
Eternal, and all the nations shall be
gathered unto it.'2. It is objected that this
is not fulfilled. It is not fulfilled yet,
because the whole career of the human
race has to bring out its fulfilment, and
this career is still going forward. ‘ Men
are impatient, and for precipitating things,’
says Butler; and Davison, whom on a
former occasion I quoted to differ from
him,—Davison, not the least memorable
of that Oriel group, whose reputation I,
above most people, am bound to cherish,
—says withaweighty and noble simplicity
worthy of Butler: ‘ Conscience and the
present constitution of things are not
1 Prov., x, 25.
2 Jer. iii, 17.
�TIIEHRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
corresponding terms; it is conscience
and the issue of things which go together.’
It is so ; and this is what makes the
spectacle of human affairs so edifying
and so sublime. Give time enough for
the experience, and experimentally and
demonstrably it is true, that ‘the path
of the just is as the shining light which
shineth more and more unto the perfect
day.’1 Only, the limits for the experience
are wider than people commonly think.
‘Yet a little while, and the ungodly shall
be clean gone 1 ’2 but ‘ a little while ’
according to the scope and working of
that mighty Power to which a thousand
years are as one day. The world goes
on, nations and men arrive and depart,
with varying fortune, as it might seem,
with time and chance happening unto all.
Look a little deeper, and you will see that
one strain runs through it all: nations
and men, whoever is shipwrecked, is ship
wrecked on conduct. It is the God of
Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting
himself; the Eternal that loveth righteous
ness.
In this sense we should read the
Hebrew prophets. They did not foresee
and foretell curious coincidences, but
they foresaw and foretold this inevitable
triumph of righteousness. First, they
foretold it for all the men and nations of
their own day, and especially for those
colossal unrighteous kingdoms of the
heathen world, which looked everlasting ;
then, for all time. ‘ As the whirlwind
passeth, so is the wicked no more; ’—•
sooner or later it is, it must be, so.
Hebrew prophecy is never read aright
until it is read in this sense, which indeed
of itself it cries out for; it is, as Davison,
again, finely says, impatient for the larger
scope. How often, throughout the ages,
how often, even, by the Hebrew prophets
themselves, has some immediate visible
interposition been looked for ! ‘I looked,’
they make God say, ‘ and there was no
man to help, and I wondered that there
was none to uphold; therefore mine own
arm brought salvation unto me. The day
of vengeance is in mine heart, the year of
1 Prov., iv, 18.
2 Ps. xxxvii, IO.
IOfl
my redeemed is come.’1 O long-delaying
arm of might, will the Eternal never put
thee forth, to smite these sinners who go
on as if righteousness mattered nothing ?
There is no need ; they are smitten. Down
they come, one after another; Assyria falls,
Babylon, Rome; they all fall for want
of condzict, righteousness. ‘ The heathen
make much ado, and the kingdoms are
moved; but God hath showed his voice,
and the earth doth melt away.’2
Nay, but Judaea itself, the Holy Land,
the land of God’s Israel, perishes too,—
and perishes for want of righteousness
Yes, Israel’s visible Jerusalem is in ruins ;
and how, then, shall men ‘call Jerusalem
the throne of the Eternal, and all the
nations shall be gathered unto it ’ ? But
the true Israel was Israel the bringer in
and defender of the idea of conduct, Israel
the lifter-up to the nations of the banner
of righteousness. The true Jerusalem was
the city of this ideal Israel. And this
ideal Israel could not and cannot perish,
so long as its idea, righteousness and its
necessity, does not perish, but prevails.
Now, that it does prevail, the whole
course of the world proves, and the fall
of the actual Israel is of itself witness.
Thus, therefore, the ideal Israel for ever
lives and prospers; and its city is the city
whereunto all nations and languages, after
endless trials of everything else except
conduct, after incessantly attempting to
do without righteousness and failing, are
slowly but surely gathered.
To this Israel are the promises, and
to this Israel they are fulfilled. ‘ The
nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall(
be utterly wasted.’3 It is so; since all
history is an accumulation of experiences
that what men and nations fall by is want
of conduct. To call it by this plain name
is often not amiss, for the thing is never
more great than when it is looked at in
its simplicity and reality. Yet the true
name to touch the soul is the name Israel
gave : righteousness. And to Israel, as
the representative of this imperishable
and saving idea of righteousness, all the
1 Is., lxiii, 4, 5.
- Ps. xlvi, 6.
3 Is., lx, 12.
�108
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
promises come true, and the language of
none of them is pitched too high. The
Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my sidel
‘ Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou
handful Israel 1 I will help thee, saith the
Eternal. Behold, I have graven thee
upon the palms of my hands, thy walls
are continually before me. The Eternal
hath chosen Zion ; O pray for the peace
of Jerusalem ! they shall prosper that love
thee. Men shall call Jerusalem the throne
of the Eternal, and all the nations shall
be gathered unto it. And he will destroy
in this mountain the face of the covering
cast over all people, and the veil that is
spread over all nations ; he will swallow
up death in victory. And it shall be said
in that day : Lo, this is our God I this is
the Eternal, we have waited for him, we
will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’2
5And if Assyria and Babylon seem too
remote, let us look nearer home for tes
timonies to the inexhaustible grandeur
and significance of the Old Testament
revelation, according to that construction
which we here put upon it.
Every
educated man loves Greece, owes grati
tude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up
to the nations of the banner of art and
science, as Israel was the lifter-up of the
banner of righteousness. Now, the world
cannot do without art and science. And
the lifter-up of the banner of art and
science was naturally much occupied with
them, and conduct was a homely plain
matter. Not enough heed, therefore, was
given by him to conduct. But conduct,
plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life,
while art and science are only two-eighths.
And this brilliant Greece perished for
lack of attention enough to conduct; for
want of conduct, steadiness, character.
And there is this difference between
Greece and Judaea : both were custodians
of a revelation, and both perished ; but
Greece perished of iwr-fidelity to her
1 Ps. cxviii, 6.
2 Is., xli, 14; xlix, 16; Ps. cxxxii, 13 ;
cxxii, 6 ; Jer., iii, 17 ; Is., xxv, 7, 8, 9.
revelation, and Judaea perished of underfidelity to hers. Nay, and the victorious
revelation now, even now,—in this age
when more of beauty and more of know
ledge are so much needed, and knowledge,
at any rate, is so highly esteemed,—the
revelation which rules the world even
now, is not Greece’s revelation, but
Judaea’s; not the pre-eminence of art
and science, but the pre-eminence of
righteousness.
It reminds one of what is recorded of
Abraham, before the true inheritor of the
promises, the humble and homely Isaac,
was born. Abraham looked upon the
vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael,
and said appealingly to God : ‘ Oh that
Ishmael might live before thee 1 ’1 But
it cannot be; the promises are to conduct,
conduct only. And so, again, we in like
manner behold, long after Greece has
perished, a brilliant successor of Greece,
the Renascence, present herself with high
hapes. The preachers of righteousness,
blunderers as they often were, had for
centuries had it all their own way. Art
and science had been forgotten, men’s
minds had been enslaved, their bodies
macerated. But the gloomy, oppressive
dream is now over. ‘ Let us return to
Nature ! ’ And all the world salutes with
pride and joy the Renascence, and prays
to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ishmael might live
before thee 1 ’ Surely the future belongs
to this brilliant new-comer, with his
animating maxim: Let us return to
Nature! Ah, what pitfalls are in that
word Nature ! Let us return to art and
science, which are a part of Nature ; yes.
Let us return to a proper conception of
righteousness, to a true use of the method
and secret of Jesus, which have been all
denaturalised ; yes. But, ‘ Let us return
to Nature; ’—do you mean that we are
to give full swing to our inclinations, to
throw the reins on the neck of our senses,
of those sirens whom Paul the Israelite
called ‘ the deceiving lusts,’2 and of
following whom he s^id, ‘ Let no man
beguile you with vain words, for because
of these things cometh the wrath of God
1 Gen., xvij, 18.
a Epli., iv, 22.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
upon the children of disobedience ’ ? 1
Do you mean that conduct is not threefourths of life, and that the secret of
Jesus has no use? And the Renascence
did mean this, or half meant this; so
disgusted was it with the cowled and
tonsured Middle Age. And it died of it,
this brilliant Ishmael died of it 1 it died
of provoking a conflict with the homely
Isaac, righteousness. On the Continent
came the Catholic re-action ; in England,
as we have said elsewhere, ‘ the great
middle class, the kernel of the nation,
entered the prison of Puritanism, and had
the key turned upon its spirit there for
two hundred years.’ After too much
glorification of art, science, and culture,
too little ; after Rabelais, George Fox.
France, again, how often and how
impetuously for France has the prayer
gone up to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ishmael
might live before thee ! ’ It is not enough
perceived what it is which gives to France
her attractiveness for everybody, and her
success, and her repeated disasters.
France is Phomme sensuel moyen, the
average sensual man; Paris is the city of
Phomme sensuel moyen. This has an
attraction for all of us. We all have in
us this homme sensuel, the man of the
‘ wishes of the flesh and of the current
thoughts;’ but we develop^him under
checks and doubts, and unsystematically
and often grossly. France, on the other
hand, develops him confidently and
harmoniously. She makes the most of
him, because she knows what she is about
and keeps in a mean, as her climate is in
a mean, and her situation. She does not
develop him with madness, into a mon
strosity, as the Italy of the Renascence
did; she develops him equably and
systematically.
And hence she does
not shock people with him but attracts
them; she names herself the France
of tact and measure, good sense, logic.
In a way, this is true. As she develops
the senses, the apparent self, all round, in
good faith, without misgivings, without
violence, she has much reasonableness
and clearness in all her notions and
1 Ep>h , v, 6.
109
arrangements; a sort of balance even in
conduct ; as much art and science, and it
is not a little, as goes with the ideal of
I'homme sensuel moyen. And from her
ideal of the average sensual man France
has deduced her famous gospel of the
Rights of Man, which she preaches with
such an infinite crowing and self-admira
tion. France takes ‘the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts ’ for a
man’s rights ; and human happiness, and
the perfection of society, she places in
everybody’s being enabled to gratify these
wishes, to get these rights, as equally as
possible and as much as possible. In
Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying
development of this ideal of the average
sensual man is broken by the imperious
ideal of art and science disparaging it; in
the Germanic nations, by the ideal of
morality disparaging it. Still, whenever,
as often happens, the pursuers of these
higher ideals are a little weary of them, or
unsuccessful with them, they turn with a
sort of envy and admiration to the ideal
set up by France,—so positive, intelligible,
and, up to a certain point, satisfying.
They are inclined to try it instead of their
own, although they can never bring them
selves to try it thoroughly, and therefore
well. But this explains the great attrac
tion France exercises upon the world. AU
of us feel, at some time or other in our
lives, a hankering after the French ideal,
a disposition to try it. More particularly
is this true of the Latin nations; and there
fore everywhere, among these nations, you
see the old indigenous type of city dis
appearing, and the type of modern Paris,
the city of Phomme sensuel moyen, re
placing it. La Boheme, the ideal, free,
pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of
Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent
from every quarter, and the clearness and
apparent reasonableness of their ideal
besides, fill the French with a kind of
ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical
for propagating what they call French
civilisation everywhere, for establishing its
predominance, and their own predomi
nance along with it, as of the people
entrusted with an oracle so showy and
taking. Oh that Ishmael might live before
�literature and dogma
I IO
thee! Since everybody has something
which conspires with this -Ishmael, his
success, again and again, seems to be
certain. And again and again he seems
drawing near to a worldwide success,
nay, to have succeeded 1—but always, at
this point, disaster overtakes him, he sig
nally breaks down. At this crowning
moment, when all seems triumphant with
him, comes what the Bible calls a crisis or
judgment. Now is the judgment of this
world ! now shall the prince of this world
he cast out!1 Cast out he is, and always
must be, because his ideal, which is also
that of France in general, however she
may have noble spirits who contend
against it and seek a better, is after all a
false one. Plausible and attractive as it
may be, the constitution of things turns
out to be somehow or other against it.
And why ? Because the free development
of our senses all round, of our apparent
self, has to undergo a profound modifica
tion from the law of our higher real self,
the law of righteousness; because he,
whose ideal is the free development of
the senses all round, serves the senses, is a
servant. But the servant abideth not in
the house for ever; the son abideth for
ever?
Is it possible to imagine a grander
testimony to the truth of the revelation
committed to Israel? What miracle of
making an iron axe-head float on water,
what successful prediction that a thing
should happen just so many years and
months and days hence, could be really
half so impressive ?
6.
So that the whole history of the world
to this day is in truth one continual
establishing of the Old Testament revela
tion : ‘ O ye that love the Eternal, see that
ye hate the thing that is evil! to him that
ordereth his conversation right, shall be
shown the salvation of GodM And whether
we consider this revelation in respect to
human affairs at large, or in respect to
’ John, xii, 31.
2 John, viii, 35.
3 Ps. xcvii, 10; 1, 23.
individual happiness, in either case its
importance is so immense, that the people
to whom it was given, and whose record is
in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled
out as the Bible singles them. ‘ Behold,
darkness doth cover the earth, and gross
darkness the nations; but the Eternal
shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall
be seen upon thee ! ’1 For, while other
nations had the misleading idea that this
or that, other than righteousness, is saving,
and it is not; that this or that, other than
conduct, brings happiness, and it does
not; Israel had the true idea that right
eousness is saving, that to conduct belongs
happiness.
Nor let it be said that other nations,
too, had at least something of this idea.
They had, but they were not possessed
with it; now, to feel it enough to make
the world feel it, it was necessary to be
possessed with it. It is not sufficient to
have been visited by such an idea at
times, to have had it forced occasionally
on one’s mind by the teaching of ex
perience. No ; he that hath the bride is
the bridegroom;2 the idea belongs to
him who has most loved it. Common
prudence can say : Honesty is the best
policy; morality can say : To conduct
belongs happiness. But Israel and the
Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise
higher and say : ‘ Righteousness is salva
tion !’—and this is what is inspiring. ‘ I
have 5/zzcZ’unto thy testimonies 1 Eternal,
what love have I unto thy law ! all the day
long is my study in it. Thy testimonies
have I claimed as mine heritage for ever,
and why? they are the very joy of my
heart !’ 3 This is why the testimonies of
righteousness are Israel’s heritage for ever,
because they were the very joy of his heart.
Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and
elect of the Eternal. 1 He showeth his
word unto facob, his statutes and ordi
nances unto Israel. He hath not dealt
so with any nation, neither have the
heathen knowledge of his laws.’ 4
Poor Israel ! poor ancient people !5 It
was revealed to thee that righteousness is
1 Is., lx, 2.
2 John, iii, 29.
8 Ps. cxix, 31, 97, III.
4 Ps. cxlvii, 19, 20.
5 Is., xliv, 7.
�TttE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
salvation ;the question, what righteousness
is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the
vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the
things which belong unto thy peace 1 with
that blindness thy solitary pre-eminence
ended, and the new Israel, made up out of
all nations and languages, took thy room.
But, thy visitation complete, thy temple
in ruins, thy reign over, thine office done,
thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn,
thy shekels of silver and gold plundered,
did there yet stay with thee any remem
brance of thy primitive intuition, simple
and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth
righteousness ? Perhaps not; the Tal
mudists were fully as well able to efface it
as the Fathers. But if there did, what
punishment can have been to thee like the
Hi
punishment of watching the performances
of the Aryan genius upon the foundation
which thou hadst given to it ?—to behold
this terrible and triumphant philosopher,
with his monotheistic idea and his meta
physical Trinity, ‘ neither confounding the
Persons nor dividing the Substance ’ ? Like!
the torture for a poet to hear people laying
down the law about poetry who have not
the sense of what poetry is,—a sense with
which he was born ! like the affliction to
a man of science to hear people talk of
things as proved who do not even know
what constitutes a fact!
From the
Council of Nicaea down to Convocation
and our two bishops ‘ doing something |
for the Godhead of the Eternal Son, what
must thou have had to suffer !
CHAPTER XII
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
No ; the mystery hidden from ages and
generations,1 which none of the rulers of
this world knew,2 the mystery revealed
finally by Jesus Christ and rejected by the
Jews, was not the doctrine of the Trinity,
gior anything speculative. It was the method
and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not
change the object for men,—righteousness.
He made clear what it was, and that it
was for all men, and that it was this :—
his method and his secret, in union with his
temper.
This was the mystery, and the Apostles
had still the consciousness that it was.
To ‘ learn Christ,’ to ‘ be taught the truth
as it is in Jesus,’ was not, with them, to
acquire certain tenets about One God in
Trinity and Trinity in Unity. It was, 'to
be renewed in the spirit ofyour mind, and
to put on the new man which after God is
Treated in righteousness and true holiness? 3
And this exactly amounts to the method
and secret of Jesus.
For Catholic and for Protestant theo
Col., i, 26.
2 I Cor., ii, 8.
3 Eph., v, 23, 24.
logy alike this consciousness, which the
Apostles had still preserved, was lost.
For Catholic and Protestant theology
alike, the truth as it is in Jesus, the
mystery revealed in Christ, meant some
thing totally different from his method and
secret. But they recognised, and indeed
the thing was so plain that they could not
well miss it, they recognised that on all
Christians the method and secret of Jesus
were enjoined. So to this extent the
method and secret of Jesus were preached
and had their effect. To this extent true
Christianity has been known, and to the
extent before stated it has been neglected.]
Now, as we say that the truth and gran
deur of the Old Testament most comes
out experimentally,—that is, by the whole
course of the world establishing it, and
confuting what is opposed to it—so it is
with Christianity. Its grandeur and truth
are far best brought out experimentally',
and the thing is, to make people see this.
But there is this difference between
the religion of the Old Testament and
Christianity. Of the religion of the Old
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
113
Testament we can pretty well see to the
end, we can trace fully enough the experi
mental proof of it in history. But of
Christianity the future is as yet almost
unknown. For that the world cannot get
on without righteousness we have the clear
experience, and a grand and admirable
experience it is. But what the world will
become by the thorough use of that which
is really righteousness, the method and
the secret and the sweet reasonableness of
Jesus, we have as yet hardly any experience
at all. Therefore we, who in this essay
limit ourselves to experience, shall speak
here of Christianity and of its greatness
very soberly. Yet Christianity is really
all the grander for that very reason which
makes us speak about it in this sober
manner, —that it has such an immense
development still before it, and that it has
as yet so little shown all it contains, all it
can do. Indeed, that Christianity has
already done so much as it has, is a wit
ness to it; and that it has not yet done
more, is a witness to it too. Let us
observe how this is so.
2.
Few things are more melancholy than
to observe Christian apologists taunting
the Jews with the failure of Hebraism to
fulfil the splendid promises of prophecy,
and Jewish apologists taunting Christen
dom with the like failure on the part of
Christianity. Neither has yet fulfilled
them, or could yet have fulfilled them.
Certainly the restoration by Cyrus, the
Second Temple, the Maccabean victories,
are hardly more than the shadows of a
fulfilment of the magnificent words: ‘The
sons of them that afflicted thee shall
come bending unto thee, and all they
that despised thee shall bow themselves
down at the soles of thy feet; thy gates
shall not be shut day nor night, that men
may bring unto thee the treasures of the
Gentiles, and that their kings may be
brought.’1 The Christianisation of all
the leading nations of the world is, it is
1 Is., lx, 14, ii.
said, a much better fulfilment of that
promise. Be it so. Yet does Christen
dom, let us ask, offer more than a shadow
of the fulfilment of this: ‘ Violence shall
no more be heard in thy land; the vile
person shall no more be called noble, nor
the worker of mischief worthy; thy people
shall be all righteous; they shall all know
me, from the least to the greatest; I will
put my law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts; the Eternal shall
be thine everlasting light, and the days of
thy mourning shall be ended ’ ? 1 Mani
festly it does not. Yet the two promises
hang together: one of them is not truly
fulfilled unless the other is.
The promises were made to righteous
ness, with all which the idea of righteousness
involves. And it involves Christianity.
They were made on the immediate pro
spect of a small triumph for righteous
ness, the restoration of the Jews after the
captivity in Babylon : but they are not
satisfied by that triumph. The prevalence
of the profession of Christianity is a
larger triumph: yet in itself it hardly
satisfies them any better. What satisfies
them is the prevailing of that which
righteousness really is, and nothing else
satisfies them. Now, Christianity is that
which righteousness really is. Therefore,
if something called Christianity prevails,
and yet the promises are not satisfied,
the inference is that this something is not
that which righteousness really is, and
therefore not really Christianity. And as
the course of the world is perpetually
establishing the pre-eminence of righteous
ness, and confounding whatever denies
this pre-eminence, so, too, the course of
the world is for ever establishing what
righteousness really is,—that is to say,
true Christianity,—and confounding what
ever pretends to be true Christianity and
is not.
Now, just as the constitution of things
turned out to be against the great un
righteous kingdoms of the heathen world,
and against all the brilliant Ishmaels we
have seen since, so the constitution of
things turns out to be against all false
1 Is., lx, 18 ; xxxii, 5; lx, 21; Jcr., xxxi,
33> 34 5 Is-, Ix, 20.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
|
;I
j I
la
»
|i
presentations of Christianity, such as the
theology of the Fathers or Protestant
theology. They do not work successfully,
they do not reach the aim, they do not
bring the w°rid to the fruition of the
promises made to righteousness. And
the reason is, because they substitute for
what is really righteousness something
else. Catholic dogma or Lutheran justi-
1 fication by faith they substitute for the
I method and secret and temper of Jesus.
Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches
do recommend the method and the secret
of Jesus, though not in the right way or
in the right eminency, still the world is
| made partially acquainted with what
righteousness really is, and the doctrine
produces some effect, although the full
effect is much thwarted and deadened by
I
the false way in which the doctrine is
I
presented. However, the effect produced
i
is great. For instance, the sum of individual happiness that has been caused by
Christianity is, anyone can see, enormous.
But let us take the effect of Christianity
on the world. And if we look at the
■ thing closely, we shall find that its effect
has been this: Christianity has brought
the world, or at any rate all the leading
part of the world, to regard righteousness
as only the Jews regarded it before the
coming of Christ. The world has accepted,
so far as profession goes, that original
revelation made to Israel: the pre-eminence
of righteousness. The infinite truth and
attractiveness of the method and secret
and character of Jesus, however falsely
surrounded, have prevailed with the world
so far as this. And this is an immense
gain, and a signal witness to Christianity.
The world does homage to the pre-emi
nence of righteousness; and here we
have one of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so real and so glorious.
‘Glorious things are spoken of thee, O
City of God ! I will make mention of
Egypt and Babylon as of them that know
■ me! behold, the Philistines also, and
”3
writeth up the people : This man was
born there / ’1 That prophecy is at the
present day abundantly fulfilled. The
world’s chief nations have now all come,
we see, to reckon and profess themselves
born in Zion,—born, that is, in the
religion of Zion, the city of righteousness.
But there remains the question : what
righteousness really is. The method and
secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
But the world does not see this ; for it
puts, as righteousness, something else first
and this second. So that here, too, as to
seeing what righteousness really is, the
world now is much in the same position
in which the Jews, when Jesus Christ
came, were. It is often said : ‘ If Jesus
Christ came now, his religion would be
rejected.’ And this is only another way of
saying that the world now, as the Jewish
people formerly, has something which
thwarts and confuses its perception of
what righteousness really is. It is so;
and the thwarting cause is the same now
as then :—the dogmatic system current,
the so-called orthodox theology. This
prevents now, as it did then, that which
righteousness really is, the method and
secret and temper of Jesus, from being
rightly received, from operating fully, and
from accomplishing its due effect.
So true is this, that we have only to
look at our own community to see the
almost precise parallel, so far as religion
is concerned, to the state of things pre
sented in Judaea when Jesus Christ came.
The multitudes are the same everywhere.
The chief priests and elders of the people,
and the scribes, are our bishops and
dogmatists, with their pseudo-science of
learned theology blinding their eyes, and
always,—whenever simple souls are dis
posed to think that the method and secret
of Jesus is true religion, and that the
Great Personal First Cause and the God
head of the Eternal Son have nothing to
do with it,—eager to cry out: This people
that knoweth not the law are cursed! 2
The Pharisees, with their genuine concern
for religion, but total want of perception
of what religion really is, and by their
1 Ps. Ixxxvii, 3-6.
2 John, vii, 49.
H
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
U4
temper, attitude, and aims doing their
best to make religion impossible, are the
Protestant Dissenters. The Sadducees
are our friends the philosophical Liberals,
who believe neither in angel nor spirit
but in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even the
Roman governor has his close parallel in
bur celebrated aristocracy, with its super
ficial good sense and good nature, its
complete inaptitude for ideas, its profound
helplessness in presence of all great spiri
tual movements. And the result is, that
the splendid promises to righteousness
made by the Hebrew prophets, claimed
by the Jews as the property of Judaism,
claimed by us as the property of Chris
tianity, are almost as ludicrously inappli
cable to our religious state now, as to
theirs then.
And this, we say, is again a signal
witness to Christianity. Jesus Christ
came to reveal what righteousness, to
which the promises belong, really is;
and so long as this, though shown by
Jesus, is not recognised by us, we may
call ourselves Christendom as much as
we please, the true character of a Christen
dom will be wanting to us, because the
great promises of prophecy will be still
without their fulfilment. Nothing will
do, except righteousness ; and no other
conception of righteousness will do, ex
cept Jesus Christ’s conception of it :—
his method, his secret, and his temper.
3-
Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and
the imposing and impressive attestation
of it, if we could but worthily bring the
thing out, is here : in that immense ex
perimental proof of the necessity of it,
which the whole course of the world has
steadily accumulated, and indicates to us
as still continuing and extending. Men
will not admit assumptions, the popular
legend they call a fairy-tale, the metaphy
sical demonstrations do not demonstrate,
nothing but experimental proof will go
down ; and here is an experimental proof
which never fails, and which at the same
time is infinitely grander, by the vastness
of its scale, the scope of its duration, the
gravity of its results, than the machinery,
of the popular fairy-tale. Walking on the
water, multiplying loaves, raising corpses,
a heavenly judge appearing with trumpets
in the clouds while we are yet alive,—■
what is this compared to the real expe-*
rience offered as witness to us by Christi
anity? It is like the difference between
the grandeur of an extravaganza and the
grandeur of the sea or the sky,—immense
objects which dwarf us, but where we are
in contact with reality, and a reality of
which we can gradually, though very
slowly, trace the laws.
The more we trace the real law of
Christianity’s action the grander it willseem. Certainly in the Gospels there
is plenty of matter to call out our feelings.
But perhaps this has been somewhat over
used and mis-used, applied, as it has been,
chiefly so as to be subservient to what wre
call the fairy-tale of the three supernatural
men,—a story which we do not deny to
have, like other products of the popular
imagination, its pathos and power, but
which we have seen to be no solid foun
dation to rest our faith in the Bible on.
And perhaps, too, we do wrong, and
inevitably fall into what is artificial and
unnatural, in labouring so much to pro
duce in ourselves now, as the one impulse
determining us to use the method and
secret and temper of Jesus, that conscious
ardent sensation of personal love to him,
which we find the first generation of
Christians feeling and professing, and
which was the natural motor for those
who were with him or near him, and,
so to speak, touched him ; and in making
this our first object. At any rate, mis
employed as this motor has often been,
it might be well to forego or at least sus
pend its use for ourselves and others for
a time, and to fix our minds exclusively
on the recommendation given to the
method and secret of Jesus by their
being true, and by the whole course of
things proving this.
Now, just as the best recommendation
of the oracle committed to Israel, Righted
ousness is salvation, is found in our more
and more discovering, in our own history
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
and in the whole history of the world, that
it is so, so we shall find it to be with the
method and secret of Jesus. That this
is the righteousness which is salvation,
that the method and secret of Jesus, that
is to say, conscience and self-renounce
ment, with the temper of Jesus, are
righteousness, bring about the kingdom
of God or the reign of righteousness,—
this, which is the Christian revelation and
what Jesus came to establish, is best
impressed, for the present at any rate, by
experiencing and showing again and again,
in ourselves and in the course of the world,
that it is so ; that this is the righteousness
which is saving, and that none other saves.
Let us but well observe what comes, in
ourselves or the world, of trying any
other, of not being convinced that this is
righteousness, and this only; and we shall
find ourselves more and more, as by
irresistible viewless hands, caught and
drawn towards the Christian revelation,
and made to desire more and more to
serve it. No proof can be so solid as this
experimental proof; and none, again, can
be so grand, so fitted to fill us with awe,
admiration, and gratitude. So that feeling
and emotion will now well come in after
it, though not before it. For the whole
course of human things is really, accord
ing to this experience, leading up to the
fulfilment of Jesus Christ’s promise to his
disciples : Fear not, little flock / for it is
wour Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom? And thus that comes out,
after all, to be true, which St. Paul
announced prematurely to the first genera
tion of Christians : When Christ, who is
our life, shall appear, then shall ye also
appear with hint in glory.2 And the
author of the Apocalypse, in like manner,
foretold : The kingdom of the world is
become the kingdom of our Lord and his
Christ? The kingdom of the Lord the
world is already become, by its chief
nations professing the religion of righteous
ness. The kingdom of Christ the world
will have to become, it is on its way
to become, because the profession of
1 Luke, xii, 32.
2 Cot., iii, 4.
3 Rev., xi, 15. The Alexandrian manuscript
is followed.
”5
righteousness, except as Jesus Christ
interpreted righteousness, is vain. We
can see the process, we are ourselves part
of it, and can in our measure help forward
or keep back its completion.
When the prophet, indeed, says to
Israel, on the point of being restored by
Cyrus: ‘ The nation and kingdom that
will not serve thee shall perish ! ’1 the
promise, applied literally, fails. But ex
tended to that idea of righteousness, of
which Israel was the depositary and in
which the real life of Israel lay, the
promise is true, and we can see it fulfilled.
In like manner, when the Apostle says
to the Corinthians or to the Colossians,
instructed that the second advent would
come in their own generation : ‘ We must
all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christi'2—1 When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear
with him in glory ! ’3 the promise, applied
literally as the Apostle meant it and his
converts understood it, fails. But divested
of this Aberglaube or extra-belief, it is
true; if indeed the world can be shown,—■
and it can,—to be moving necessarily
towards the triumph of that Christ in
whom the Corinthian and Colossian
disciples lived, and whose triumph is the
triumph of all his disciples also.
4-
Let us keep hold of this same experi
mental process in dealing yvith the promise
of immortality; although here, if anywhere,
Aberglaube, extra-belief, hope, anticipa
tion, may well be permitted to come in.
Still, what we need for our foundation is
not Aberglaube, but Glaube ; not extra
belief in what is beyond the range of
possible experience, but belief in what
can and should be known to be true.
By what futilities the demonstration
of our immortality may be attempted, is
to be seen in Plato’s Phcedo. Man’s
natural desire for continuance, however
little it may be worth as a scientific proof
of our immortality, is at least a proof a
1 Is., Ix, 12.
* II Cor., v, 10.
* Col., iii, 4.
H 2
�116
J
J
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
thousand times stronger than any such
demonstration. The want of solidity in
such argument is so palpable, that one
scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon
it at all. And even of the common
Christian conception of immortality the
want of solidity is, perhaps, most con
clusively shown, by the impossibility of so
framing it as that it will at all support a
steady regard turned upon it. In our
English popular religion, for instance, the
common conception of a future state of
bliss is just that of the Vision of Mirza :
‘Persons dressed in glorious habits with
garlands on their heads, passing among
the trees, lying down by the fountains, or
resting on beds of flowers, amid a con
fused harmony of singing birds, falling
waters, human voices, and musical instru
ments.’ Or, even, with many, it is that
of a kind of perfected middle-class home,
with labour ended, the table spread, good
ness all around, the lost ones restored,
hymnody incessant. ‘ Poor fragments all
of this low earth U Keble might well
say. That this conception of immortality
cannot possibly be true, we feel, the
moment we consider it seriously. And
yet who can devise any conception of a
future state of "bliss, which shall bear close
examination better?
Here, again, it is far best to take what
is experimentally true, and nothing else, as
our foundation, and afterwards to let hope
and aspiration grow, if so it may be, out
of this. Israel had said : ‘ In the way of
righteousness is life, and in the pathway
thereof there is no death.’1 He had
said : ‘The righteous hath hope in his
death.’2 He had cried to his Eternal
that loveth righteousness : ‘ Thou wilt not
leave my soul in the grave, neither wilt
thou suffer thy faithful servant to see cor
ruption ! thou wilt show me the path of
life ! ’3 And by a kind of short cut to
the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews
constructed their fairy-tale of an advent,
judgment, and resurrection, as wre find it
in the Book of Daniel. Jesus, again, had
said : ‘ If a man keep my word, he shall
1 Prov., xii, 28.
2 Prov., xiv, 32.
* Ps. xvi, 10, 11.
never see death.’1 And by a kind of short
cut to the conclusion thus laid down,
Christians constructed their fairy-tale of
the second advent, the resurrection of the
body, the New Jerusalem. But instead
of fairy-tales, let us begin, at least, with
certainties.
And a certainty is the sense of life, of
being truly alive, which accompanies righte
ousness. If this experimental sense does
not rise to be stronger in us, does not rise
to the sense of being inextinguishable, that
is probably because our experience of
righteousness is really so very small. Here,
therefore, we may well permit ourselves
to trust Jesus, whose practice and intuition
both of them went, in these matters, so far
deeper than ours. At any rate, we have
in our experience this strong sense of Zyfc
from righteousness to start with; capable
of being developed, apparently, by pro
gress in righteousness into something im
measurably stronger. Here is the true
basis for all religious aspiration after im
mortality. And it is an experimental
basis; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is
again, when compared with the popular
Aberglaube, grand with all the superior
grandeur, on a subject of the highest
seriousness, of reality over fantasy.
At present, the fantasy hides the
grandeur of the reality. But when all
the Aberglaube of the second advent, with
its signs in the sky, sounding trumpets
and opening graves, is cleared away, then
and not till then will come out the pro
found truth and grandeur of words of
Jesus like these: ‘The hour is coming,
when they that are in the graves shall
hear the voice of the Son of God ; and
they that hear shall live.'2
5-
Finally, and above all. As, for the
right inculcation of righteousness, we
need the inspiring words of Israel’s love
for it, that is, we need the Bible ; so, for
the right inculcation of the method and
secret of Jesus, we need the efieikeia, the
1 John, viii, 51.
2 John, v, 25.
�the true greatness of Christianity
sweetBreasonableness, of Jesus. That is,
in other words again, we need the Bible;
for only through the Bible-records of Jesus
can we get at his epieikeia. Even in these
records, it is and can be presented but
imperfectly ; but only by reading and
re-reading the Bible can we get at it at
all.
Now, greatly as the failure, from the
stress laid upon the pseudo-science of
Church-dogma, to lay enough stress upon
the method and secret of Jesus, has kept
Christianity back from showing itself in its
full power, it is probable that the failure
to apply to the method and secret of Jesus,
so far as these have at any rate been used,
his sweet reasonableness or epieikeia.,—his
temper,—has kept it back even more.
And the infinite of the religion of Jesus,
—its immense capacity for ceaseless
progress and farther development,—lies
principally, perhaps, in the line of dis
engaging and keeping before our minds,
more and more, his temper, and applying
it to our use of his method and secret.
For it is obvious from experience how
much our use of Jesus Christ’s method
and secret requires to be guided and
governed by his temper of epieikeia.
Indeed, without this, his method and
secret seem of almost no use at all. The
Flagellants imagined that they were
employing his secret; and the Dissenters,
with their ‘spirit of watchful jealousy,’
imagine that they are employing his
method. To be sure, Mr. Bradlaugh
imagines that the method and the secret
of Jesus, nay, and Jesus himself too, are
all baneful, and that the sooner we get
rid of them the better. So far, then, the
Flagellants and the Dissenters are in
advance of Mr. Bradlaugh: they value
Christianity, and they profess the method
and secret of Jesus. But they employ
them so ill, that one is tempted to say
they might nearly as well be without them.
And this is because they are wholly
without his temper of sweet reasonable
ness, or epieikeia. Now this can only be
got, first, by knowing that it is in the
Bible, and looking for it there ; and then,
by reading and re-reading the Gospels
continually, until we catch something of it.
This, again, is an experimental process.
That the epieikeia or sweet reasonableness
of Jesus may be brought to govern our
use of his method and secret, and that it
can and will make our use of his method
and secret quite a different thing, is
proved by our actually finding this to be
so when we try. So that the culmination
of Christian righteousness, in the applying,
to guide our use of the method and secret
of Jesus, his sweet reasonableness or
epieikeia, is proved from experience. We
end, therefore, as we began,—by ex
perience. And the whole series of
experiences, of which the survey is thus
completed, rests, primarily, upon one
fundamental fact,—itself, eminently, a
fact of experience: the necessity of righte
ousness.
CONCLUSION.
But now, after all we have been saying
of the pre-eminency of righteousness, we
remember what we have said formerly in
praise of culture and of Hellenism, and
against too much Hebraism, too exclusive
a pursuit of the ‘ one thing needful,’ as
people call it. And we cannot help
wondering whether we shall not be
reproached with inconsistency, and told
that we ought at least to sing, as the
Greeks said, a palinode ; and whether it
may not really be so, and we ought. And,
certainly, if we had ever said that Hellen
ism was three-fourths of human life, and
conduct or righteousness but one-fourth,
a palinode, as well as an unmusical man
may, we would sing. But we have never
said it. In praising culture, we have
�n8
LITERATURE ANU UOGMA
never denied that conduct, not culture, is
three-fourths of human life.
Only it certainly appears, when the
thing is examined, that conduct comes to
have relations of a very close kind with
culture. And the reason seems to be
given by some words of our Bible, which,
though they may not be exactly the right
rendering of the original in that place, yet
in themselves they explain the connexion
of culture with conduct very well. ‘ I
have seen the travail,’ says the Preacher,
‘which God hath given to the sons of
men to be exercised in it; he hath made
everything beautiful in his time ; also, he
hath set the world in their heart.’1 He
hath set the world in their heart!—that is
why art and science, and what we call
culture, are necessary. They may be
only one-fourth of man’s life, but they are
there, as well as the three-fourths which
conduct occupies. ‘He hath set the
world in their heart.’ And, really, the
reason which we hence gather for the
close connexion between culture and
conduct, is so simple and natural that
we are almost ashamed to give it;
but we have offered so many simple and
natural explanations in place of the
abstruse ones which are current, that our
hesitation is foolish.
Let us suggest then, that, having this
one fourth of their nature concerned with
art and science, men cannot but somehow
employ it. If they think that the threefourths of their nature concerned with
conduct are the whole of their nature,
and that this is all they have to attend to,
still the neglected one-fourth is there, it
ferments, it breaks wildly out, it employs
itself all at random and amiss. And
hence, no doubt, our hymns and our
dogmatic theology. What is our dog
matic theology, except the mis-attribution
to the Bible,—the Book of conduct,—of a
science and an abstruse metaphysic which
is not there, because our theologians have
in themselves a faculty for science, for it
makes one-eighth of them ? But they do
not employ it on its proper objects ; so it
invades the Bible, and tries to make the
1 Ecclesiastes, iii, io, 11.
Bible what it is not, and to put into it
what is not there. And this prevents
their attending enough to what is in the
Bible, and makes them battle for what is
not in the Bible, but they have put
it there!—battle for it in a manner
clean contrary, often, to the teaching
of the Bible. So has arisen, for in
stance, all religious persecution. And
thus, we say, has conduct itself become
impaired.
So that conduct is impaired by the
want of science and culture; and our
theologians really suffer, not from having
too much science, but from having too
little. Whereas, if they had turned their
faculty for abstruse reasoning towards
the proper objects, and had given them
selves, in addition, a wide and large
acquaintance with the productions of the
human spirit and with men’s way of think
ing and of using words, then, on the one
hand, they would not have been tempted
to misemploy on the Bible their faculty
for abstruse reasoning, for they would
have had plenty of other exercise for it;
and, on the other hand, they would have
escaped that literary inexperience which
now makes them fancy that the Bible
language is scientific, and fit matter for
the application of their powers of abstruse
reasoning to it, when it is no such thing.
Then they would have seen the fallacy of
confounding the obscurity attaching to
the idea of God,—that vast not ourselves
which transcends us,—with the obscurity
attaching to the idea of their Trinity, a
confused metaphysical speculation which
puzzles us. The one, they would have
perceived, is the obscurity of the im
measurable depth of air, the other is the
obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would
have known, has no proper place in our
conceptions of God ; since whatever our
minds can possess of God they know
clearly, for no man, as Goethe says,
possesses what he does not understand;
but they can possess of Him but a very
little. All this our dogmatic theologians
would have known, if they had had more
science and more literature. And there
fore, simple as the Bible and conduct are,
still culture seems to be required for them,
�CONCLUSION
k—required *to prevent our mis-handling
and sophisticating them.
2.
Culture, then, and science and litera
ture are requisite, in the interest of religion
itself, even when, taking nothing but
conduct into account, we rightly make the
God of the Bible, as Israel made him, to be
simply and solely ‘ the Eternal Power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness}
For we are not to forget, that, grand as
this conception of God is, and well as it
meets the wants of far the largest part of
our being, of three-fourths of it, yet there
is one-fourth of our being of which it
does not strictly meet the wants, the part
which is concerned with art and science ;
or, in other wrords, with beauty and exact
knowledge.
For the total man, therefore, the truer
conception of God is as ‘the Eternal
Power, not ourselves, by which all things
fulfil the law of their being ; ’ by which,
therefore, we fulfil the law of our being so
far as our being is aesthetic and intellective,
as well as so far as it is moral. And it is
evident, as we have before now remarked,
that in this wider sense God is displeased
and disserved by many things which
be said, except by putting a strain
displease and disserve him
ghteousness. He is disby men uttering
as : Sing glory, glory,
I Triune ! and : Out
glory to
Til raise ! and :
of my
, and feel his blood flora,
My Jesus
'tis "life everlasting, 'Us heaven below !—■
or by theologians uttering such pseudo
science as their blessed truth that the God
of the universe is a person. But it would
be harsh to give, at present, this turn to
our employment of the phrases, pleasing
God, displeasing God.
And yet, as man makes progress, we
shall surely come to doing this. For, the
clearer our conceptions in science and art
become, the more will they assimilate
themselves to the conceptions of duty in
conduct, will become practically stringent
H9
like rules of conduct, and will invite the
same sort of language in dealing with them.
And so far let us venture to poach on M.
Emile Burnouf’s manor, and to talk about
the Aryan genius, as to say, that the love
of art and science, and the energy and
honesty in the pursuit of art and science,
in the best of the Aryan races do seem to
correspond in a remarkable way to the
love of conduct, and the energy and
honesty in the pursuit of conduct, in the
best of the Semitic. To treat science
and art with the same kind of seriousness
as conduct, does seem, therefore, to be a
not impossible thing for the Aryan genius
to come to.
But for all this, however, man is
hardly yet ripe. For our race, as we see
it now and as ourselves we form a part
of it, the true God is and must be pre
eminently the God of the Bible, the
Eternal who makes for righteousness, from
whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit
governs the course of humanity. Only,
we see that even for apprehending this
God of the Bible rightly and not wrongly,
science, and what so many people now
disparage, letters, and what we call, in
general, culture, seem to be necessary.
And meanwhile, to prevent our at all
pluming ourselves on having apprehended
what so much baffles our dogmatic friends
(although indeed it is not so much we
who apprehend it as the ‘ Zeit-Geist ’ who
discovers it to us), what a chastening and
wholesome reflexion for us it is, that it if
only to our natural inferiority to the^.
ingenious men that we are indebted for our
advantage over them ! For while they
were born with talents for metaphysical
speculation and abstruse reasoning, we are
so notoriously deficient in everything of
that kind, that our adversaries often taunt
us with our weakness, and have held us
up to public ridicule as being ‘ without a
system of philosophy based on principles
interdependent, subordinate, and co
herent.’ And so we were thrown on
letters; thrown upon reading this and
that,—which anybody can do,—and thus
gradually getting a notion of the history
of the human mind, which enables us
(the ‘Zeit-Geist’ favouring) to correct, in
�120
Literature
reading the Bible, some of the mistakes into
which men of more metaphysical talents
than literary experience have fallen.
Cripples in like manner have been known,
now and then, to be cast by their very
infirmity upon some mental pursuit which
has turned out happily for them; and a
good fortune of this kind has perhaps
been ours.
But we do not forget that this good
fortune we owe to our weakness, and that
the natural superiority remains with our
adversaries. And some- day, perhaps, the
and dogma
nature of God may be as well known as
the nature of a cone or a triangle ; and
then our two bishops may deduce its pro
perties with success, and make their
brilliant logical play about it,—rightly,
instead of as now, wrongly; and will
resume all their advantage. But this will
hardly be in our time. So that the
superiority of this pair of distinguished
metaphysicians will never perhaps, after
all, be of any real advantage to them, but
they will be deluded and bemocked by it
until they die.
/attaching to
At not ourselves
nth the obscurity
jjkjI their Trinity, a
( speculatiqs _ they w
>Yity
printed ev
SFOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NE'.V STREET SQUARE
LONDON
1
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Literature & dogma : an essay towards a better apprehension of the Bible
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Arnold, Matthew [1822-1888]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 6-120 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
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1902
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RA1566
N048
RA1804
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Bible
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Literature & dogma : an essay towards a better apprehension of the Bible), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
Language
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English
Bible as Literature
Bible-Criticism
NSS