AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT BY EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS1912 TOADOLF HARNACKON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAYBY HIS FIRST AMERICAN PUPIL PREFATORY NOTE It is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a larger work, inwhich the Judgments here expressed may be supported in detail. Especially, the author desires to treat the literature of the socialquestion and of the modernist movement with a fulness which has not beenpossible within the limits of this sketch. The philosophy of religionand the history of religions should have place, as also that estimate ofthe essence of Christianity which is suggested by the contact ofChristianity with the living religions of the Orient. PASQUE ISLAND, MASS. , _July_ 28, 1911. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A. INTRODUCTION. 1. B. THE BACKGROUND. 23. DEISM. 23. RATIONALISM. 25. PIETISM. 30. ÆSTHETIC IDEALISM. 33. CHAPTER II IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 39. KANT. 39. FICHTE. 55. SCHELLING. 60. HEGEL. 66. CHAPTER III THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION. 74. SCHLEIERMACHER. 74. RITSCHL AND THE RITSCHLIANS. 89 CHAPTER IV THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT. 110. STRAUSS. 114. BAUR. 118. THE CANON. 123. THE LIFE OF JESUS. 127. THE OLD TESTAMENT. 130. THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE. 136. HARNACK. 140. CHAPTER V THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE SCIENCES. 151. POSITIVISM. 156. NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 162. EVOLUTION. 170. MIRACLES. 175. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. 176. CHAPTER VI THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES; ACTION AND REACTION. 191. THE POETS. 195. COLERIDGE. 197. THE ORIEL SCHOOL. 199. ERSINE AND CAMPBELL. 201. MAURICE. 204. CHANNING. 205. BUSHNELL. 207. THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 211. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 212. NEWMAN. 214. MODERNISM. 221. ROBERTSON. 223. PHILLIPS BROOKS. 224. THE BROAD CHURCH. 224. CARLYLE. 228. EMERSON. 230. ARNOLD. 232. MARTINEAU. 234. JAMES. 238. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 243. CHAPTER I A. INTRODUCTION The Protestant Reformation marked an era both in life and thought forthe modern world. It ushered in a revolution in Europe. It establisheddistinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. Thesedistinctions have been significant not for Europe alone. They have hadinfluence also upon those continents which since the Reformation havecome under the dominion of Europeans. Yet few would now regard theReformation as epoch-making in the sense in which that pre-eminence hasbeen claimed. No one now esteems that it separates the modern from themediæval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. The perspectiveof history makes it evident that large areas of life and thoughtremained then untouched by the new spirit. Assumptions which had theirorigin in feudal or even in classical culture continued unquestioned. More than this, impulses in rational life and in the interpretation ofreligion, which showed themselves with clearness in one and another ofthe reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actuallyrepudiated, by their successors. It is possible to view many things inthe intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth century, even somewhich Protestants have passionately reprobated, as but the taking upagain of clues which the reformers had let fall, the carrying out ofpurposes of their movement which were partly hidden from themselves. Men have asserted that the Renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism. They have gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religiousrevival which the Reformation was. Even these men will, however, notdeny that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the religiousreformation possible or, at all events, effective. Nor can it be deniedthat after the Revolution, in the Protestant communities theintellectual element was thrust into the background. The practical anddevotional prevailed. Humanism was for a time shut out. There was moreroom for it in the Roman Church than among Protestants. Again, theRenaissance itself had been not so much an era of discovery of a newintellectual and spiritual world. It had been, rather, the rediscoveryof valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. Thatthorough-going review of the principles at the basis of all relations ofthe life of man, which once seemed possible to Renaissance andReformation, was postponed to a much later date. When it did take place, it was under far different auspices. There is a remarkable unity in the history of Protestant thought in theperiod from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century. Thereis a still more surprising unity of Protestant thought in this periodwith the thought of the mediæval and ancient Church. The basis andmethods are the same. Upon many points the conclusions are identical. There was nothing of which the Protestant scholastics were more proudthan of their agreement with the Fathers of the early Church. They didnot perceive in how large degree they were at one with Christianthinkers of the Roman communion as well. Few seem to have realised howlargely Catholic in principle Protestant thought has been. Thefundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have been the same. The notions of revelation and inspiration were identical. The idea ofauthority was common to both, only the instance in which that authorityis lodged was different. The thoughts of God and man, of the world, ofcreation, of providence and prayer, of the nature and means ofsalvation, are similar. Newman was right in discovering that from thefirst he had thought, only and always, in what he called Catholic terms. It was veiled from him that many of those who ardently opposed himthought in those same terms. It is impossible to write upon the theme which this book sets itselfwithout using the terms Catholic and Protestant in the conventionalsense. The words stand for certain historic magnitudes. It is equallyimpossible to conceal from ourselves how misleading the language oftenis. The line between that which has been happily called the religion ofauthority and the religion of the spirit does not run between Catholicand Protestant. It runs through the middle of many Protestant bodies, through the border only of some, and who will say that the Roman Churchknows nothing of this contrast? The sole use of recurrence here to thehistoric distinction is to emphasise the fact that this distinctionstands for less than has commonly been supposed. In a large way thehistory of Christian thought, from earliest times to the end of theeighteenth century, presents a very striking unity. In contrast with this, that modern reflection which has taken thephenomenon known as religion and, specifically, that historic form ofreligion known as Christianity, as its object, has indeed also slowlyrevealed the fact that it is in possession of certain principles. Furthermore, these principles, as they have emerged, have been felt tobe new and distinctive principles. They are essentially modernprinciples. They are the principles which, taken together, differentiatethe thinker of the nineteenth century from all who have ever been beforehim. They are principles which unite all thinkers at the end of thenineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in practicallyevery portion of the world, as they think of all subjects exceptreligion. It comes more and more to be felt that these principles mustbe reckoned with in our thought concerning religion as well. One of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in truecritical fashion with problems of history and literature. Long beforethe end of the age of rationalism, this principle had been applied toliterature and history, other than those called sacred. The thoroughgoing application of this scientific method to the literatures andhistory of the Old and New Testaments is almost wholly an achievement ofthe nineteenth century. It has completely altered the view of revelationand inspiration. The altered view of the nature of the documents ofrevelation has had immeasurable consequences for dogma. Another of these elements is the new view of nature and of man'srelation to nature. Certain notable discoveries in physics and astronomyhad proved possible of combination with traditional religion, as in thecase of Newton. Or again, they had proved impossible of combination withany religion, as in the case of Laplace. The review of the religious andChristian problem in the light of the ever increasing volume ofscientific discoveries--this is the new thing in the period which wehave undertaken to describe. A theory of nature as a totality, in whichman, not merely as physical, but even also as social and moral andreligious being, has place in a series which suggests no break, hasaffected the doctrines of God and of man in a way which neither thosewho revered nor those who repudiated religion at the beginning of thenineteenth century could have imagined. Another leading principle grows out of Kant's distinction of two worldsand two orders of reason. That distinction issued in a new theory ofknowledge. It laid a new foundation for an idealistic construing of theuniverse. In one way it was the answer of a profoundly religious natureto the triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalisticmovement had run out. By it the philosopher gave standing forever tomuch that prophets and mystics in every age had felt to be true, yet hadnever been able to prove by any method which the ordered reasoning ofman had provided. Religion as feeling regained its place. Ethics was setonce more in the light of the eternal. The soul of man became the objectof a scientific study. There have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger factorswhich enter into an interpretation of Christianity which may fairly besaid to be new in the nineteenth century. They are new in a sense inwhich the intellectual elements entering into the reconsideration ofChristianity in the age of the Reformation were not new. They arecharacteristic of the nineteenth century. They would naturally issue inan interpretation of Christianity in the general context of the life andthought of that century. The philosophical revolution inaugurated byKant, with the general drift toward monism in the interpretation of theuniverse, separates from their forebears men who have lived since Kant, by a greater interval than that which divided Kant from Plato. Theevolutionary view of nature, as developed from Schelling and Comtethrough Darwin to Bergson, divides men now living from thecontemporaries of Kant in his youthful studies of nature, as those menwere not divided from the followers of Aristotle. Of purpose, the phrase Christian thought has been interpreted as thoughtconcerning Christianity. The problem which this book essays is that ofan outline of the history of the thought which has been devoted, duringthis period of marvellous progress, to that particular object inconsciousness and history which is known as Christianity. Christianity, as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific reflection ofthe age--this it is which we propose to consider. Our religion asaffected in its interpretation by principles of thought which arealready widespread, and bid fair to become universal among educatedmen--this it is which in this little volume we aim to discuss. The termreligious thought has not always had this significance. Philosophy ofreligion has signified, often, a philosophising of which religion was, so to say, the atmosphere. We cannot wonder if, in these circumstances, to the minds of some, the atmosphere has seemed to hinder clearness ofvision. The whole subject of the philosophy of religion has within thelast few decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted thatthe aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a religiousspirit. On the contrary, the aim is to consider religion itself, withthe best aid which current philosophy and science afford. In this senseonly can we give the study of religion and Christianity a place amongthe sciences. It remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all events, ofthose who have thought profoundly concerning Christianity will be foundto have been Christian men. Religion is a form of consciousness. It willbe those who have had experience to which that consciousnesscorresponds, whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. That remarkis true, for example, of æsthetic matters as well. To be a good judge ofmusic one must have musical feeling and experience. To speak with anydeeper reasonableness concerning faith, one must have faith. To thinkprofoundly concerning Christianity one needs to have had the Christianexperience. But this is very different from saying that to speakworthily of the Christian religion, one must needs have made his own thestatements of religion which men of a former generation may have foundserviceable. The distinction between religion itself, on the one hand, and the expression of religion in doctrines and rites, or theapplication of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is initself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century. It isone which separates us from Christian men in previous centuries asmarkedly as it does any other. It is a simple implication of the Kantiantheory of knowledge. The evidence for its validity has come through theapplication of historical criticism to all the creeds. Mystics of allages have seen the truth from far. The fact that we may assume theprevalence of this distinction among Christian men, and lay it at thebase of the discussion we propose, is assuredly one of the gains whichthe nineteenth century has to record. It follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have to deal willhave been, in their own time, of the number of avowedly Christian men. Some who have greatly furthered movements which in the end provedfruitful for Christian thought, have been men who in their own timealienated from professed and official religion. In the retrospect wemust often feel that their opposition to that which they took to bereligion was justifiable. Yet their identification of that with religionitself, and their frank declaration of what they called their ownirreligion, was often a mistake. It was a mistake to which both they andtheir opponents in due proportion contributed. A still larger class ofthose with whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves apersonal adherence to Christianity. But their identification withChristianity, or with a particular Christian Church, has been oftenbitterly denied by those who bore official responsibility in the Church. The heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. There issomething perverse in Gottfried Arnold's maxim, that the true Church, inany age, is to be found with those who have just been excommunicatedfrom the actual Church. However, the maxim points in the direction of atruth. By far the larger part of those with whom we have to do have hadacknowledged relation to the Christian tradition and institution. Theywere Christians and, at the same time, true children of the intellectuallife of their own age. They esteemed it not merely their privilege, butalso their duty, to endeavour to ponder anew the religious and Christianproblem, and to state that which they thought in a manner congruous withthe thoughts which the men of the age would naturally have concerningother themes. It has been to most of these men axiomatic that doctrine has onlyrelative truth. Doctrine is but a composite of the content of thereligious consciousness with materials which the intellect of a givenman or age or nation in the total view of life affords. As such, doctrine is necessary and inevitable for all those who in any measurelive the life of the mind. But the condition of doctrine is its mobile, its fluid and changing character. It is the combination of a more orless stable and characteristic experience, with a reflection which, exactly in proportion as it is genuine, is transformed from age to age, is modified by qualities of race and, in the last analysis, differs withindividual men. Dogma is that portion of doctrine which has beenelevated by decree of ecclesiastical authority, or even only by commonconsent, into an absoluteness which is altogether foreign to its nature. It is that part of doctrine concerning which men have forgotten that ithad a history, and have decided that it shall have no more. In its verynotion dogma confounds a statement of truth, which must of necessity behuman, with the truth itself, which is divine. In its identification ofstatement and truth it demands credence instead of faith. Men haveconfounded doctrine and dogma; they have been taught so to do. They havefelt the history of Christian doctrine to be an unfruitful anduninteresting theme. But the history of Christian thought would seek toset forth the series of interpretations put, by successive generations, upon the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of thecommunion of men with God. These interpretations ray out at all edgesinto the general intellectual life of the age. They draw one whole setof their formative impulses from the general intellectual life of theage. It is this relation of the progress of doctrine to the generalhistory of thought in the nineteenth century, which the writer designedto emphasise in choosing the title of this work. As was indicated in the closing paragraphs of the preceding volume ofthis series, the issue of the age of rationalism had been for the causeof religion on the whole a distressing one. The majority of those whowere resolved to follow reason were agreed in abjuring religion. Thatthey had, as it seems to us, but a meagre understanding of what religionis, made little difference in their conclusion. Bishop Butler complainsin his _Analogy_ that religion was in his time hardly considered asubject for discussion among reasonable men. Schleiermacher in the verytitle of his _Discourses_ makes it plain that in Germany the situationwas not different. If the reasonable eschewed religious protests inGermany, evangelicals in England, the men of the great revivals inAmerica, many of them, took up a corresponding position as towards thelife of reason, especially toward the use of reason in religion. Thesinister cast which the word rationalism bears in much of the popularspeech is evidence of this fact. To many minds it appeared as if onecould not be an adherent both of reason and of faith. That was acontradiction which Kant, first of all in his own experience, and thenthrough his system of thought, did much to transcend. The deliverancewhich he wrought has been compared to the deliverance which Luther inhis time achieved for those who had been in bondage to scholasticism inthe Roman Church. Although Kant has been dead a hundred years, both thedefence of religion and the assertion of the right of reason are still, with many, on the ancient lines. There is no such strife betweenrationality and belief as has been supposed. But the confidence of thatfact is still far from being shared by all Christians at the beginningof the twentieth century. The course in reinterpretation andreadjustment of Christianity, which that calm conviction would imply, isstill far from being the one taken by all of those who bear theChristian name. If it is permissible in the writing of a book like thisto have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, theauthor may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes with the earnesthope that in some measure he may contribute also to the establishment ofan understanding upon which so much both for the Church and the worlddepends. We should say a word at this point as to the general relation ofreligion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first inclearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made thestudy of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of thatapprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content ofChristianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is thistrue of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. It is a positive religion. It is connected with personalities, above allwith one transcendent personality, that of Jesus. It sprang out ofanother religion which had already emerged into the light ofworld-history. It has been associated for two thousand years withportions of the race which have made achievements in culture and leftrecord of those achievements. It is the function of speculation tointerpret this phenomenon. When speculation is tempted to spin by itsown processes something which it would set beside this historicmagnitude or put in place of it, and still call that Christianity, wemust disallow the claim. It was the licence of its speculativeendeavour, and the identification of these endeavours with Christianity, which finally discredited Hegelianism with religious men. Nor can it bedenied that theologians themselves have been sinners in this respect. The disposition to regard Christianity as a revealed and divinelyauthoritative metaphysic began early and continued long. When thetheologians also set out to interpret Christianity and end in offeringus a substitute, which, if it were acknowledged as absolute truth, woulddo away with Christianity as historic fact, as little can we allow theclaim. Again, Christianity exists not merely as a matter of history. It existsalso as a fact in living consciousness. It is the function of psychologyto investigate that consciousness. We must say that, accuratelyspeaking, there is no such thing as Christian philosophy. There arephilosophies, good or bad, current or obsolete. These are Christian onlyin being applied to the history of Christianity and the content of theChristian consciousness. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing asChristian consciousness. There is the human consciousness, operatingwith and operated upon by the impulse of Christianity. It is the greathuman experience from which we single out for investigation that partwhich is concerned with religion, and call that the religiousexperience. It is essential, therefore, that those generalinvestigations of human consciousness and experience, as such, which arebeing carried on all about us should be reckoned with, if our Christianlife and thought are not altogether to fall out of touch with advancingknowledge. For this reason we have misgiving about the position of somefollowers of Ritschl. Their opinion, pushed to the limit, seems to meanthat we have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance ofscience. Religion is a feeling of which he alone who possesses it cangive account. He alone who has it can appreciate such an account whengiven. We acknowledge that religion is in part a feeling. But thatfeeling must have rational justification. It must also have rationalguidance if it is to be saved from degenerating into fanaticism. To say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends in our having todo with a bad philosophy. In that case we have a philosophy with whichwe operate without having investigated it, instead of having one withwhich we operate because we have investigated it. The philosophy ofwhich we are aware we have. The philosophy of which we are not aware hasus. No doubt, we may have religion without philosophy, but we cannotformulate it even in the rudest way to ourselves, we cannot communicateit in any way whatsoever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy. In the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this is merelythe deposit of the regnant notions of the time. It may be amended orsuperseded, and our theology with it. Yet while it lasts it is our onepossible vehicle of expression. It is the interpreter and the critiqueof what we have experienced. It is not open to a man to retreat withinhimself and say, I am a Christian, I feel thus, I think so, thesethoughts are the content of Christianity. The consequence of thatposition is that we make the religious experience to be no part of thenormal human experience. If we contend that the being a Christian is thegreat human experience, that the religious life is the true human life, we must pursue the opposite course. We must make the religious lifecoherent with all the other phases and elements of life. If we wouldcontend that religious thought is the truest and deepest thought, wemust begin at this very point. We must make it conform absolutely to thelaws of all other thought. To contend for its isolation, as an area byitself and a process subject only to its own laws, is to court thejudgment of men, that in its zeal to be Christian it has ceased to bethought. Our most profitable mode of procedure would seem to be this. We shallseek to follow, as we may, those few main movements of thought markingthe nineteenth century which have immediate bearing upon our theme. Weshall try to register the effect which these movements have had uponreligious conceptions. It will not be possible at any point to do morethan to select typical examples. Perhaps the true method is that weshould go back to the beginnings of each one of these movements. Weshould mark the emergence of a few great ideas. It is the emergence ofan idea which is dramatically interesting. It is the moment of emergencein which that which is characteristic appears. Our subject is far toocomplicated to permit that the ramifications of these influences shouldbe followed in detail. Modifications, subtractions, additions, thereader must make for himself. These main movements of thought are, as has been said, three in number. We shall take them in their chronological order. There is first thephilosophical revolution which is commonly associated with the name ofKant. If we were to seek with arbitrary exactitude to fix a date for thebeginning of this movement, this might be the year of the publication ofhis first great work, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, in 1781. [1] Kant wasindeed himself, both intellectually and spiritually, the product oftendencies which had long been gathering strength. He was the exponentof ideas which in fragmentary way had been expressed by others, but hegathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses of his age. Outfrom some portion of his works lead almost all the paths whichphilosophical thinkers since his time have trod. One cannot say even ofhis work, _Der Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_, 1793, that it is the sole source, or even the greatest source, of hisinfluence upon religious thinking. But from the body of his work as awhole, there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed completelythe notion of revelation. There came also a view of the universe as anideal unity which, especially as elaborated by Fichte, Schelling andHegel, has radically altered the traditional ideas of God, of man, ofnature and of their relations, the one to the other. [Footnote 1: In the text the titles of books which are discussed aregiven for the first time in the language in which they are written. Books which are merely alluded to are mentioned in English. ] We shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and criticalmovement. It is the effort to apply consistently and without fear themaxims of historical and literary criticism to the documents of the Oldand New Testaments. With still greater arbitrariness, and yet withappreciation of the significance of Strauss' endeavour, we might set asthe date of the full impact of this movement upon cherished religiousconvictions, that of the publication of his _Leben Jesu_, 1835. Thismovement has supported with abundant evidence the insight of thephilosophers as to the nature of revelation. It has shown that thatwhich we actually have in the Scriptures is just that which Kant, withhis reverence for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that wemust have, if revelation is to be believed in at all. With this changedview has come an altered attitude toward many statements which devoutmen had held that they must accept as true, because these were found inScripture. With this changed view the whole history, whether of theJewish people or of Jesus and the origins of the Christian Church, hasbeen set in a new light. In the third place, we shall have to deal with the influence of thesciences of nature and of society, as these have been developedthroughout the whole course of the nineteenth century. If one must havea date for an outstanding event in this portion of the history, perhapsthat of the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, 1859, wouldserve as well as any other. The principles of these sciences have cometo underlie in a great measure all the reflection of cultivated men inour time. In amazing degree they have percolated, through elementaryinstruction, through popular literature, and through the newspapers, tothe masses of mankind. They are recognised as the basis of a triumphantmaterial civilisation, which has made everything pertaining to the innerand spiritual life seem remote. Through the social sciences there hascome an impulse to the transfer of emphasis from the individual tosociety, the disposition to see everything in its social bearing, to doeverything in the light of its social antecedents and of its socialconsequences. Here again we have to note the profoundest influence uponreligious conceptions. The very notion connected with the wordsredemption and salvation appears to have been changed. In the case of each of these particular movements the church, as theorgan of Christianity, has passed through a period of antagonism tothese influences, of fear of their consequences, of resistance to theirprogress. In large portions of the church at the present moment theprotest is renewed. The substance of these modern teachings, which yetseem to be the very warp and woof of the intellectual life of the modernman, is repudiated and denounced. It is held to imperil the salvation ofthe soul. It is pronounced impossible of combination with belief in adivinely revealed truth concerning the universe and a saving faith formen. In other churches, outside the churches, the forms in which menhold their Christianity have been in large measure adjusted to theresults of these great movements of thought. They have, as these menthemselves believe, been immensely strengthened and made sure by thosevery influences which were once considered dangerous. In connection with this indication of the nature of our materials, wehave sought to say something of the time of emergence of the salientelements. It may be in point also to give some intimation of the placeof their origins, that is to say, of the participation of the variousnationalities in this common task of the modern Christian world. Thatinternational quality of scholarship which seems to us natural, is athing of very recent date. That a discovery should within a reasonableinterval become the property of all educated men, that scholars of onenation should profit by that which the learned of another land havedone, appears to us a thing to be assumed. It has not always been so, especially not in matters of religious faith. The Roman Church and theLatin language gave to medieval Christian thought a certaininternational character. Again the Renaissance and Reformation had acertain world wide quality. The relations of the English Church in thereigns of the last Tudors to Germany, Switzerland, and France are not tobe forgotten. But the life of the Protestant national churches in theeighteenth century shows little of this trait. The barriers of languagecounted for something. The provincialism of national churches anddenominational predilections counted for more. In the philosophical movement we must begin with the Germans. Themovement of English thought known as deism was a distinct forerunner ofthe rationalist movement, within the particular area of the discussionof religion. However, it ran into the sand. The rationalist movement, considered in its other aspects, never attained in England in theeighteenth century the proportions which it assumed in France andGermany. In France that movement ran its full course, both among thelearned and, equally, as a radical and revolutionary influence among theunlearned. It had momentous practical consequences. In no sphere was itmore radical than in that of religion. Not in vain had Voltaire foryears cried, '_Écrasez l'infâme_, ' and Rousseau preached that the youthwould all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he hadhad in the religious schools were made impossible. There was for manyminds no alternative between clericalism and atheism. Quite logically, therefore, after the downfall of the Republic and of the Empire thereset in a great reaction. Still it was simply a reversion to the absolutereligion of the Roman Catholic Church as set forth by the Jesuit party. There was no real transcending of the rationalist movement in France inthe interest of religion. There has been no great constructive movementin religious thought in France in the nineteenth century. There isrelatively little literature of our subject in the French language untilrecent years. In Germany, on the other hand, the rationalist movement had always hadover against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. Rationalism ran a much soberer course than in France. It was never arevolutionary and destructive movement as in France. It was not adilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in England. Itwas far more creative and constructive than elsewhere. Here also beforethe end of the century it had run its course. Yet here the men whotranscended the rationalist movement and shaped the spiritual revival inthe beginning of the nineteenth century were men who had themselves beentrained in the bosom of the rationalist movement. They had appropriatedthe benefits of it. They did not represent a violent reaction againstit, but a natural and inevitable progress within and beyond it. This itwas which gave to the Germans their leadership at the beginning of thenineteenth century in the sphere of the intellectual life. It is worthyof note that the great heroes of the intellectual life in Germany, inthe period of which we speak, were most of them deeply interested in theproblem of religion. The first man to bring to England the leaven ofthis new spirit, and therewith to transcend the old philosophicalstandpoint of Locke and Hume, was Coleridge with his _Aids toReflection_, published in 1825. But even after this impulse of Coleridgethe movement remained in England a sporadic and uncertain one. It hadnothing of the volume and conservativeness which belonged to it inGermany. Coleridge left among his literary remains a work published in 1840 underthe title of _Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_. What is here writtenis largely upon the basis of intuition and forecast like that of Remarusand Lessing a half-century earlier in Germany. Strauss and others werealready at work in Germany upon the problem of the New Testament, Vatkeand Reuss upon that of the Old. This was a different kind of labour, anddestined to have immeasurably greater significance. George Eliot'smaiden literary labour was the translation into English of Strauss'first edition. But the results of that criticism were only slowlyappropriated by the English. The ostensible results were at firstradical and subversive in the extreme. They were fiercely repudiated inStrauss' own country. Yet in the main there was acknowledgement of thecorrectness of the principle for which Strauss had stood. Hardly beforethe decade of the sixties was that method accepted in England in anywider way, and hardly before the decade of the seventies in America. Ronan was the first to set forth, in 1863, the historical and criticalproblem in the new spirit, in a way that the wide public which readFrench understood. When we come to speak of the scientific movement it is not easy to saywhere the leadership lay. Many Englishmen were in the first rank ofinvestigators and accumulators of material. The first attempt at asystematisation of the results of the modern sciences was that ofAuguste Comte in his _Philosophie Positive_. This philosophy, however, under its name of Positivism, exerted a far greater influence, both inComte's time and subsequently, in England than it did in France. HerbertSpencer, after the middle of the decade of the sixties, essayed to dosomething of the sort which Comte had attempted. He had far greateradvantages for the solution of the problem. Comte's foil in all of hisdiscussions of religion was the Catholicism of the south of France. Nonethe less, the religion which in his later years he created, bearsstriking resemblance to that which in his earlier years he had sought todestroy. Spencer's attitude toward religion was in his earlier work oneof more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticismthan in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of hisscientific freedom and conscientiousness. Both of these men representthe effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of viewof the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the placeof religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. The factthat there had been no such philosophical readjustment in Great Britainas in Germany, made the acceptance of the evolutionary theory of theuniverse, which more and more the sciences enforced, slower and moredifficult. The period of resistance on the part of those interested inreligion extended far into the decade of the seventies. A word may be added concerning America. The early settlers had beenproud of their connection with the English universities. Anextraordinary number of them, in Massachusetts at least, had beenCambridge men. Yet a tradition of learning was later developed, whichwas not without the traits of isolation natural in the circumstances. The residence, for a time, even of a man like Berkeley in this country, altered that but little. The clergy remained in singular degree theeducated and highly influential class. The churches had developed, inconsonance with their Puritan character, a theology and philosophy soportentous in their conclusions, that we can without difficultyunderstand the reaction which was brought about. Wesleyanism hadmodified it in some portions of the country, but intensified it inothers. Deism apparently had had no great influence. When therationalist movement of the old world began to make itself felt, it wasat first largely through the influence of France. The religious life ofthe country at the beginning of the nineteenth century was at a low ebb. Men like Belaham and Priestley were known as apostles of a freer spiritin the treatment of the problem of religion. Priestley came toPennsylvania in his exile. In the large, however, one may say that theNew England liberal movement, which came by and by to be calledUnitarian, was as truly American as was the orthodoxy to which it wasopposed. Channing reminds one often of Schleiermacher. There is noevidence that he had learned from Schleiermacher. The liberal movementby its very impetuosity gave a new lease of life to an orthodoxy which, without that antagonism, would sooner have waned. The great revivals, which were a benediction to the life of the country, were thought tohave closer relation to the theology of those who participated in themthan they had. The breach between the liberal and conservativetendencies of religious thought in this country came at a time when thephilosophical reconstruction was already well under way in Europe. Thedebate continued until long after the biblical-critical movement was inprogress. The controversy was conducted upon both sides in practicallytotal ignorance of these facts. There are traces upon both sides of thatinsight which makes the mystic a discoverer in religion, before thelogic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. Therewill always be interest in the literature of a discussion conducted byreverent and, in their own way, learned and original men. Yet there is apathos about the sturdy originality of good men expended upon a problemwhich had been already solved. The men in either camp proceeded fromassumptions which are now impossible to the men of both. It was notuntil after the Civil War that American students of theology began innumbers to study in Germany. It is a much more recent thing that one mayassume the immediate reading of foreign books, or boast of currentcontribution from American scholars to the labour of the world's thoughtupon these themes. We should make a great mistake if we supposed that the progress has beenan unceasing forward movement. Quite the contrary, in every aspect of itthe life of the early part of the nineteenth century presents thespectacle of a great reaction. The resurgence of old ideas and forcesseems almost incredible. In the political world we are wont to attributethis fact to the disillusionment which the French Revolution hadwrought, and the suffering which the Napoleonic Empire had entailed. Thereaction in the world of thought, and particularly of religious thought, was, moreover, as marked as that in the world of deeds. The Roman Churchprofited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men as much asdid the absolute State. Almost the first act of Pius VII. After hisreturn to Rome in 1814, was the revival of the Society of Jesus, whichhad been after long agony in 1773 dissolved by the papacy itself. 'Altarand throne' became the watchword of an ardent attempt at restoration ofall of that which millions had given their lives to do away. All tooeasily, one who writes in sympathy with that which is conventionallycalled progress may give the impression that our period is one in whichmovement has been all in one direction. That is far from being true. Onewhose very ideal of progress is that of movement in directions oppositeto those we have described may well say that the nineteenth century hashad its gifts for him as well. The life of mankind is too complex thatone should write of it with one exclusive standard as to loss and gain. And whatever be one's standard the facts cannot be ignored. The France of the thirties and the forties saw a liberal movement withinthe Roman Church. The names of Lamennais, of Lacordaire, of Montalembertand Ozanam, the title _l'Avenir_ occur to men's minds at once. Perhapsthere has never been in France a party more truly Catholic, more devout, refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between thecultivated and the Church. However, before the Second Empire, an end hadbeen made of that. It cannot be said that the French Church exactlyfavoured the infallibility. It certainly did not stand against thedecree as in the old days it would have done. The decree ofinfallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress ofreaction in the Roman Church. That action, theoretically at least, doesaway with even that measure of popular constitution in the Church towhich the end of the Middle Age had held fast without wavering, whichthe mightiest of popes had not been able to abolish and the council ofTrent had not dared earnestly to debate. Whether the decree of 1870 isviewed in the light of the _Syllabus of Errors_ of 1864, and again ofthe _Encyclical_ of 1907, or whether the encyclicals are viewed in thelight of the decree, the fact remains that a power has been given to theCuria against what has come to be called Modernism such as Innocentnever wielded against the heresies of his day. Meantime, so hostile areexactly those peoples among whom Roman Catholicism has had full sway, that it would almost appear that the hope of the Roman Church is inthose countries in which, in the sequence of the Reformation, areligious tolerance obtains, which the Roman Church would have doneeverything in its power to prevent. Again, we should deceive ourselves if we supposed that the reaction hadbeen felt only in Roman Catholic lands. A minister of Prussia forbadeKant to speak concerning religion. The Prussia of Frederick William III. And of Frederick William IV. Was almost as reactionary as if Metternichhad ruled in Berlin as well as in Vienna. The history of the censorshipof the press and of the repression of free thought in Germany until theyear 1848 is a sad chapter. The ruling influences in the Lutheran Churchin that era, practically throughout Germany, were reactionary. Theuniversities did indeed in large measure retain their ancient freedom. But the church in which Hengstenberg could be a leader, and in whichstaunch seventeenth-century Lutheranism could be effectively sustained, was almost doomed to further that alienation between the life of pietyand the life of learning which is so much to be deplored. In the Churchthe conservatives have to this moment largely triumphed. In thetheological faculties of the universities the liberals in the main haveheld their own. The fact that both Church and faculties arefunctionaries of the State is often cited as sure in the end to bringabout a solution of this unhappy state of things. For such a solution, it must be owned, we wait. The England of the period after 1815 had indeed no such cause forreaction as obtained in France or even in Germany. The nation having hadits Revolution in the seventeenth century escaped that of theeighteenth. Still the country was exhausted in the conflict againstNapoleon. Commercial, industrial and social problems agitated it. TheChurch slumbered. For a time the liberal thought of England foundutterance mainly through the poets. By the decade of the thirtiesmovement had begun. The opinions of the Noetics in Oriel College, Oxford, now seem distinctly mild. They were sufficient to awaken Newmanand Pusey, Froude, Keble, and the rest. Then followed the mostsignificant ecclesiastical movement which the Church of England in thenineteenth century has seen, the Oxford or Tractarian movement, as ithas been called. There was conscious recurrence of a mind like that ofNewman to the Catholic position. He had never been able to conceivereligion in any other terms than those of dogma, or the Christianassurance on any other basis than that of external authority. Nothingcould be franker than the antagonism of the movement, from itsinception, to the liberal spirit of the age. By inner logic Newman foundhimself at last in the Roman Church. Yet the Anglo-Catholic movement isto-day overwhelmingly in the ascendant in the English Church. The BroadChurchmen of the middle of the century have had few successors. It isthe High Church which stands over against the great mass of thedissenting churches which, taken in the large, can hardly be said to betheologically more liberal than itself. It is the High Church which hasshowed Franciscanlike devotion in the problems of social readjustmentwhich England to-day presents. It has shown in some part of itsconstituency a power of assimilation of new philosophical, critical andscientific views, which makes all comparison of it with the Roman Churchmisleading. And yet it remains in its own consciousness Catholic to thecore. In America also the vigour of onset of the liberalising forces at thebeginning of this century tended to provoke reaction. The alarm withwhich the defection of so considerable a portion of the Puritan Churchwas viewed gave coherence to the opposition. There were those whodevoutly held that the hope of religion lay in its furtherliberalisation. Equally there were those who deeply felt that thedeliverance lay in resistance to liberalisation. One of the concreteeffects of the division of the churches was the separation of theeducation of the clergy from the universities, the entrusting it toisolated theological schools under denominational control. The systemhas done less harm than might have been expected. Yet at present therewould appear to be a general movement of recurrence to the eldertradition. The maintenance of the religious life is to some extent amatter of nurture and observances, of religious habit and practice. Thistruth is one which liberals, in their emphasis upon liberty and theindividual, are always in danger of overlooking. The great revivals ofreligion in this century, like those of the century previous, have beenconnected with a form of religious thought pronouncedly pietistic. Thebuilding up of religious institutions in the new regions of the West, and the participation of the churches of the country in missions, wearpredominantly this cast. Antecedently, one might have said that the lackof ecclesiastical cohesion among the Christians of the land, the easewith which a small group might split off for the furtherance of its ownparticular view, would tend to liberalisation. It is doubtful whetherthis is true. Isolation is not necessarily a condition of progress. Theemphasis upon trivial differences becomes rather a condition of theirpermanence. The middle of the nineteenth century in the United Stateswas a period of intense denominationalism. That is synonymous with aperiod of the stagnation of Christian thought. The religion of a peopleabsorbed in the practical is likely to be one which they at leastsuppose to be a practical religion. In one age the most practical thingwill appear to men to be to escape hell, in another to furthersocialism. The need of adjustment of religion to the great intellectuallife of the world comes with contact with that life. What strikes one inthe survey of the religious thought of the country, by and large, for acentury and a quarter, is not so much that it has been reactionary, asthat it has been stationary. Almost every other aspect of the life ofour country, including even that of religious life as distinguished fromreligious thought, has gone ahead by leaps and bounds. This it is whichin a measure has created the tension which we feel. B. THE BACKGROUND Deism In England before the end of the Civil War a movement for therationalisation of religion had begun to make itself felt. It was infull force in the time of the Revolution of 1688. It had not altogetherspent itself by the middle of the eighteenth century. The movement hasborne the name of Deism. In so far as it had one watchword, this came tobe 'natural religion. ' The antithesis had in mind was that to revealedreligion, as this had been set forth in the tradition of the Church, andparticularly under the bibliolatry of the Puritans. It is a witness tothe liberty of speech enjoyed by Englishmen in that day and to theirinterest in religion, that such a movement could have arisen largelyamong laymen who were often men of rank. It is an honour to the Englishrace that, in the period of the rising might of the rational spiritthroughout the western world, men should have sought at once to utilisethat force for the restatement of religion. Yet one may say quite simplythat this undertaking of the deists was premature. The time was not ripefor the endeavour. The rationalist movement itself needed greaterbreadth and deeper understanding of itself. Above all, it needed thesalutary correction of opposing principles before it could avail forthis delicate and difficult task. Religion is the most conservative ofhuman interests. Rationalism would be successful in establishing a newinterpretation of religion only after it had been successful in manyother fields. The arguments of the deists were never successfullyrefuted. On the contrary, the striking thing is that their opponents, the militant divines and writings of numberless volumes of 'Evidencesfor Christianity, ' had come to the same rational basis with the deists. They referred even the most subtle questions to the pure reason, as noone now would do. The deistical movement was not really defeated. Itlargely compelled its opponents to adopt its methods. It left a depositwhich is more nearly rated at its worth at the present than it was inits own time. But it ceased to command confidence, or even interest. Samuel Johnson said, as to the publication of Bolingbroke's work by hisexecutor, three years after the author's death: 'It was a rusty oldblunderbuss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself, instead of leaving a half-crown to a Scotchman to let it off after hisdeath. ' It is a great mistake, however, in describing the influence ofrationalism upon Christian thought to deal mainly with deism. Englishdeism made itself felt in France, as one may see in the case ofVoltaire. Kant was at one time deeply moved by some English writers whowould be assigned to this class. In a sense Kant showed traces of thedeistical view to the last. The centre of the rationalistic movementhad, however, long since passed from England to the Continent. Thereligious problem was no longer its central problem. We quite fail toappreciate what the nineteenth century owes to the eighteenth and to therationalist movement in general, unless we view this latter in a fargreater way. Rationalism In 1784 Kant wrote a tractate entitled, _Was ist Aufklärung?_ He said:'Aufklärung is the advance of man beyond the stage of voluntaryimmaturity. By immaturity is meant a man's inability to use hisunderstanding except under the guidance of another. The immaturity isvoluntary when the cause is not want of intelligence but of resolution. _Sapere aude!_ "Dare to use thine own understanding, " is therefore themotto of free thought. If it be asked, "Do we live in a free-thinkingage?" the answer is, "No, but we live in an age of free thought. " Asthings are at present, men in general are very far from possessing, oreven from being able to acquire, the power of making a sure and rightuse of their own understanding without the guidance of others. On theother hand, we have clear indications that the field now lies, nevertheless, open before them, to which they can freely make their wayand that the hindrances to general freedom of thought are graduallybecoming less. And again he says: 'If we wish to insure the true use ofthe understanding by a method which is universally valid, we must firstcritically examine the laws which are involved in the very nature of theunderstanding itself. For the knowledge of a truth which is valid foreveryone is possible only when based on laws which are involved in thenature of the human mind, as such, and have not been imported into itfrom without through facts of experience, which must always beaccidental and conditional. ' There speaks, of course, the prophet of the new age which was totranscend the old rationalist movement. Men had come to harp incomplacency upon reason. They had never inquired into the nature andlaws of action of the reason itself. Kant, though in fullest sympathywith its fundamental principles, was yet aware of the excesses andweaknesses in which the rationalist movement was running out. No man wasever more truly a child of rationalism. No man has ever written, to whomthe human reason was more divine and inviolable. Yet no man ever hadgreater reserves within himself which rationalism, as it had been, hadnever touched. It was he, therefore, who could lay the foundations for anew and nobler philosophy for the future. The word _Aufklärung_, whichthe speech of the Fatherland furnished him, is a better word than ours. It is a better word than the French _l'Illuminisme_, the Enlightenment. Still we are apparently committed to the term Rationalism, although itis not an altogether fortunate designation which the English-speakingrace has given to a tendency practically universal in the thinking ofEurope, from about 1650 to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Historically, the rationalistic movement was the necessary preliminaryfor the modern period of European civilization as distinguished from theecclesiastically and theologically determined culture which hadprevailed up to that time. It marks the great cleft between the ancientand mediæval world of culture on the one hand and the modern world onthe other. The Reformation had but pushed ajar the door to the modernworld and then seemed in surprise and fear about to close it again. Thethread of the Renaissance was taken up again only in the Enlightenment. The stream flowed underground which was yet to fertilise the modernworld. We are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and universality of themovement. It was a transformation of culture, a change in the principlesunderlying civilisation, in all departments of life. It had indeed, asone of its most general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical andtheological authority. Whatever it was doing, it was never without asidelong glance at religion. That was because the alleged divine rightof churches and states was the one might which it seemed everywherenecessary to break. The conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, wastaken up also by Pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age. This was in spite of the fact that the Pietists' view of religion wasthe opposite of the rationalist view. Rationalism was characterised bythorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its consequences. This arose from its zeal for the natural and the human, in a day whenall men, defenders and assailants of religion alike, accepted the dictumthat what was human could not be divine, the divine must necessarily bethe opposite of the human. In reality this general trait of oppositionto religion deceives us. It is superficial. In large part therationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one sideif the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is true in spite of thefact that the pot-house rationalism of Germany and France in theeighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthoodand the Church. On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in thebureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found moresolid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial aspect mustnot hide from us. Troeltsch first in our own day has given us a satisfactory account ofthe vast achievement of the movement in every department of humanlife. [2] It annihilated the theological notion of the State. In theperiod after the Thirty Years' War men began to question what had beenthe purpose of it all. Diplomacy freed itself from Jesuitical and papalnotions. It turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. Asecular view of the purpose of God in history began to prevail in allclasses of society. The Grand Monarque was ready to proclaim the divineright of the State which was himself. Still, not until the period of hisdotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would havecalled religion. Publicists, both Catholic and Protestant, sought torecur to the _lex naturæ_ in contradistinction with the old _lexdivina_. The natural rights of man, the rights of the people, therationally conditioned rights of the State, a natural, prudential, utilitarian morality interested men. One of the consequences of thistheory of the State was a complete alteration in the thought of therelation of State and Church. The nature of the Church itself as anempirical institution in the midst of human society was subjected to thesame criticism with the State. Men saw the Church in a new light. As theState was viewed as a kind of contract in men's social interest, so theChurch was regarded as but a voluntary association to care for theirreligious interests. It was to be judged according to the practicalsuccess with which it performed this function. [Footnote 2: Troeltsch, Art. 'Aufklärung' in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencylopädie_, 3 Aufl. , Bd. Ii. , s. 225 f. ] Then also, in the economic and social field the rational spirit madeitself felt. Commerce and the growth of colonies, the extension of themiddle class, the redistribution of wealth, the growth of cities, thedependence in relations of trade of one nation upon another, all thesethings shook the ancient organisation of society. The industrial systemgrew up upon the basis of a naturalistic theory of all economicrelations. Unlimited freedom in labour and in the use of capital wereclaimed. There came a great revolution in public opinion upon allmatters of morals. The ferocity of religious wars, the cruelty ofreligious controversies, the bigotry of the confessional, these all, which, only a generation earlier, had been taken by long-sufferinghumanity as if they had been matters of course, were now viewed withcontrition by the more exalted spirits and with contempt andembitterment by the rest. Men said, if religion can give us not bettermorality than this, it is high time we looked to the natural basis ofmorality. Natural morality came to be the phrase ever on the lips of theleading spirits. Too frequently they had come to look askance at themorality of those who alleged a supernatural sanction for that whichthey at least enjoined upon others. We come in this field also, as inothers, upon the assertion of the human as nobler and more beautifulthan that which had by the theologians been alleged to be divine. Theassertion came indeed to be made in ribald and blasphemous forms, but itwas not without a great measure of provocation. Then there was the altered view of nature which came through thescientific discoveries of the age. Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Gassendi, Newton, are the fathers of the modern sciences. These are themen who brought new worlds to our knowledge and new methods to our use. That the sun does not move about the earth, that the earth is but aspeck in space, that heaven cannot be above nor hell beneath, these arethoughts which have consequences. Instead of the old deductive method, that of the mediæval Aristotelianism, which had been worse thanfruitless in the study of nature, men now set out with a greatenthusiasm to study facts, and to observe their laws. Modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, tooktheir rises within the period of which we speak. The influence wasindescribable. Newton might maintain his own simple piety side by side, so to say, with his character, as a scientific man, though even he didnot escape the accusation of being a Unitarian. In the resistance whichofficial religion offered at every step to the advance of the sciences, it is small wonder if natures less placid found the maintenance of theirancestral faith too difficult. Natural science was deistic with Lockeand Voltaire, it was pantheistic in the antique sense with Shaftesbury, it was pantheistic-mystical with Spinoza, spiritualistic with Descartes, theistic with Leibnitz, materialistic with the men of the Encyclopædia. It was orthodox with nobody. The miracle as traditionally defined becameimpossible. At all events it became the millstone around the neck of theapologists. The movement went to an extreme. All the evils of excessupon this side from which we since have suffered were forecast. Theywere in a measure called out by the evils and errors which had so longreigned upon the other side. Again, in the field of the writing of history and of the critique ofancient literatures, the principles of rational criticism were workedout and applied in all seriousness. Then these maxims began to beapplied, sometimes timidly and sometimes in scorn and shallowness, tothe sacred history and literature as well. To claim, as the defenders ofthe faith were fain to do, that this one department of history wasexempt, was only to tempt historians to say that this was equivalent toconfession that we have not here to do with history at all. Nor can we overlook the fact that the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies witnessed a great philosophical revival. Here again it is therationalist principle which is everywhere at work. The observations uponnature, the new feeling concerning man, the vast complex of facts andimpulses which we have been able in these few words to suggest, demandeda new philosophical treatment. The philosophy which now took its risewas no longer the servant of theology. It was, at most, the friend, andeven possibly the enemy, of theology. Before the end of the rationalistperiod it was the master of theology, though often wholly indifferent totheology, exactly because of its sense of mastery. The greatphilosophers of the eighteenth century, Hume, Berkeley, and Kant, belongwith a part only of their work and tendency to the rationalist movement. Still their work rested upon that which had already been done by Spinozaand Malebranche, by Hobbes and Leibnitz, by Descartes and Bayle, byLocke and Wolff, by Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. With all of thecontrasts among these men there are common elements. There is an everincreasing antipathy to the thought of original sin and of supernaturalrevelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in thewill of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, theintelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, aboveall, the repudiation of authority. All these elements led, toward the end of the period, to the effort atthe construction of a really rational theology. Leibnitz and Lessingboth worked at that problem. However, not until after the labours ofKant was it possible to utilise the results of the rationalist movementfor the reconstruction of theology. If evidence for this statement werewanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of Herder. He wasyounger than Kant, yet the latter seems to have exerted but slightinfluence upon him. He earnestly desired to reinterpret Christianity inthe new light of his time, yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile. Pietism Allusion has been made to pietism. We have no need to set forth its ownachievements. We must recur to it merely as one of the influences whichmade the transition from the century of rationalism to bear, in Germany, an aspect different from that which it bore in any other land. Pietismhad at first much in common with rationalism. It shared with the latterits opposition to the whole administration of religion established bythe State, its antagonism to the social distinctions which prevailed, its individualism, its emphasis upon the practical. It was part of ageneral religious reaction against ecclesiasticism, as were alsoJansenism in France, and Methodism in England, and the Whitefieldianrevival in America. But, through the character of Spener, and throughthe peculiarity of German social relations, it gained an influence overthe educated classes, such as Methodism never had in England, nor, onthe whole, the Great Awakening in America. In virtue of this, Germanpietism was able, among influential persons, to present victoriousopposition to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalisticmovement. In no small measure it breathed into that movement a religiousquality which in other lands was utterly lacking. It gave to it anethical seriousness from which in other places it had too often setitself free. In England there had followed upon the age of the great religiousconflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. Men turned withall energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly moderncivilisation. They retained, after a short period of friction, a smugand latitudinarian orthodoxy, which Methodism did little to change. InFrance not only was the Huguenot Church annihilated, but the Jansenistmovement was savagely suppressed. The tyranny of the Bourbon State andthe corruption of the Gallican Church which was so deeply identifiedwith it caused the rationalist movement to bear the trait of apassionate opposition to religion. In the time of Pascal, Jansenism hada moment when it bade fair to be to France what pietism was to Germany. Later, in the anguish and isolation of the conflict the movement lostits poise and intellectual quality. In Germany, even after the temporaryalliance of pietism and rationalism against the Church had beentranscended, and the length and breadth of their mutual antagonism hadbeen revealed, there remained a deep mutual respect and salutaryinteraction. Obscurantists and sentimentalists might denouncerationalism. Vulgar ranters like Dippel and Barth might defame religion. That had little weight as compared with the fact that Klopstock, Hamannand Herder, Jacobi, Goethe and Jean Paul, had all passed at some timeunder the influence of pietism. Lessing learned from the Moravians theundogmatic essence of religion. Schleiermacher was bred among thedevoted followers of Zinzendorf. Even the radicalism of Kant retainedfrom the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categoricalimperative of duty. It would be hard to find anything to surpass histestimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or thebeauty of the home life in which he was bred. Such facts as these madethemselves felt both in the philosophy and in the poetry of the age. Therationalist movement itself came to have an ethical and spiritual trait. The triviality, the morbidness and superstition of pietism receivedtheir just condemnation. But among the leaders of the nation in everywalk of life were some who felt the drawing to deal with ethical andreligious problems in the untrammelled fashion which the century hadtaught. We may be permitted to try to show the meaning of pietism by a concreteexample. No one can read the correspondence between the youthfulSchleiermacher and his loving but mistaken father, or again, thelifelong correspondence of Schleiermacher with his sister, withoutreceiving, if he has any religion of his own, a touching impression ofwhat the pietistic religion meant. The father had long before, unknownto the son, passed through the torments of the rational assault upon afaith which was sacred to him. He had preached, through years, in themisery of contradiction with himself. He had rescued his drowning soulin the ark of the most intolerant confessional orthodoxy. In the crisisof his son's life he pitiably concealed these facts. They should havebeen the bond of sympathy. The son, a sorrowful little motherless boy, was sent to the Moravian school at Niesky, and then to Barby. He was toescape the contamination of the universities, and the woes through whichhis father had passed. Even there the spirit of the age pursued him. Theprecocious lad, in his loneliness, raised every question which the racewas wrestling with. He long concealed these facts, dreading to wound theman he so revered. Then in a burst of filial candour, he threw himselfupon his father's mercy, only to be abused and measurelessly condemned. He had his way. He resorted to Halle, turned his back on sacred things, worked in titanic fashion at everything but the problem of religion. Atleast he kept his life clean and his soul sensitive among the flagrantlyimmoral who were all about him, even in the pietists' own university. Helaid the foundations for his future philosophical construction. Hebathed in the sentiments and sympathies, poetic, artistic andhumanitarian, of the romanticist movement. In his early Berlin period hewas almost swept from his feet by its flood. He rescued himself, however, by his rationalism and romanticism into a breadth and power offaith which made him the prophet of the new age. By him, for ageneration, men like-minded saved their souls. As one reads, onerealises that it was the pietists' religion which saved him, and which, in another sense, he saved. His recollections of his instruction amongthe Herrnhuter are full of beauty and pathos. His sister never advanceda step upon the long road which he travelled. Yet his sympathy with herremained unimpaired. The two poles of the life of the age are visiblehere. The episode, full of exquisite personal charm, is a veritableminiature of the first fifty years of the movement which we have torecord. No one did for England or for France what Schleiermacher haddone for the Fatherland. Æsthetic Idealism Besides pietism, the Germany of the end of the eighteenth centurypossessed still another foil and counterpoise to its decadentrationalism. This was the so-called æsthetic-idealistic movement, whichshades off into romanticism. The debt of Schleiermacher to that movementhas been already hinted at. It was the revolt of those who had this incommon with the pietists, that they hated and despised the outwornrationalism. They thought they wanted no religion. It is open to us tosay that they misunderstood religion. It was this misunderstanding whichSchleiermacher sought to bring home to them. What religion theyunderstood, ecclesiasticism, Roman or Lutheran, or again, the banalitiesand fanaticisms of middle-class pietism, they despised. Their war withrationalism was not because it had deprived man of religion. It had beenequally destructive of another side of the life of feeling, theæsthetic. Their war was not on behalf of the good, it was in the name ofthe beautiful. Rationalism had starved the soul, it had minimised andderided feeling. It had suppressed emotion. It had been fatal to art. Itwas barren of poetry. It had had no sympathy with history and nounderstanding of history. It had reduced everything to the process bywhich two and two make four. The pietists said that the frenzy forreason had made man oblivious of the element of the divine. The æstheticidealists said that it had been fatal to the element of the human. Fromthis point of view their movement has been called the new humanism. Theglamour of life was gone, they said. Mystery had vanished. And mysteryis the womb of every art. Rationalism had been absolutely uncreative, only and always destructive. Rousseau had earlier uttered this wail inFrance, and had greatly influenced certain minds in Germany. Shelley andKeats were saying something of the sort in England. Even as toWordsworth, it may be an open question if his religion was not mainlyromanticism. All these men used language which had been conventionallyassociated with religion, to describe this other emotion. Rationalism had ended in proving deadly to ideals. This was true. Butmen forgot for the moment how glorious an ideal it had once been to berational and to assert the rationality of the universe. Still the timehad come when, in Germany at all events, the great cry was, 'back to theideal. ' It is curious that men always cry 'back' when they mean'forward. ' For it was not the old idealism, either religious oræsthetic, which they were seeking. It was a new one in which the soberfruits of rationalism should find place. Still, for the moment, as wehave seen, the air was full of the cry, 'back to the State by divineright, back to the Church, back to the Middle Age, back to the beauty ofclassical antiquity. ' The poetry, the romance, the artistic criticism ofthis movement set themselves free at a stroke from theological bondageand from the externality of conventional ethics. It shook off the dustof the doctrinaires. It ridiculed the petty utilitarianism which hadbeen the vogue. It had such an horizon as men had never dreamed before. It owed that horizon to the rationalism it despised. From its newelevation it surveyed all the great elements of the life of man. It sawmorals and religion, language and society, along with art and itself, asthe free and unconscious product through the ages, of the vitality ofthe human spirit. It must be said that it neither solved nor put awaythe ancient questions. Especially through its one-sided æstheticism itveiled that element of dualism in the world which Kant clearly saw, andwe now see again, after a century which has sometimes leaned to easypantheism. However, it led to a study of the human soul and of all itsactivities, which came closer to living nature than anything which theworld had yet seen. To this group of æsthetic idealists belong, not to mention lesser names, Lessing and Hamann and Winckelmann, but above all Herder and Goethe. Herder was surely the finest spirit among the elder contemporaries ofGoethe. Bitterly hostile to the rationalists, he had been moved byRousseau to enthusiasm for the free creative life of the human spirit. With Lessing he felt the worth of every art in and for itself, and thegreatness of life in its own fulfilment. He sets out from the analysisof the poetic and artistic powers, the appreciation of which seemed tohim to be the key to the understanding of the spiritual world. Thenfirst he approaches the analysis of the ethical and religious feeling. All the knowledge and insight thus gained he gathers together into ahistory of the spiritual life of mankind. This life of the human spiritcomes forth everywhere from nature, is bound to nature. It constitutesone whole with a nature which the devout soul calls God, and apprehendswithin itself as the secret of all that it is and does. Even in theperiod in which he had become passionately Christian, Herder never wasable to attain to a scientific establishing of his Christianity, or toany sense of the specific aim of its development. He felt himself to beseparated from Kant by an impassable gulf. All the sharp antinomiesamong which Kant moved, contrasts of that which is sensuous with thatwhich is reasonable, of experience with pure conception, of substanceand form in thought, of nature and freedom, of inclination and duty, seemed to Herder grossly exaggerated, if not absolutely false. SometimesHerder speaks as if the end of life were simply the happiness which aman gets out of the use of all his powers and out of the mere fact ofexistence. Deeper is Kant's contention, that the true aim of life can beonly moral culture, even independent of happiness, or rather one mustfind his noblest happiness in that moral culture. At a period in his life when Herder had undergone conversion to courtorthodoxy at Bückeburg and threatened to throw away that for which hislife had stood, he was greatly helped by Goethe. The identification ofHerder with Christianity continued to be more deep and direct than thatof Goethe ever became, yet Goethe has also his measure of significancefor our theme. If he steadied Herder in his religious experience, hesteadied others in their poetical emotionalism and artisticsentimentality, which were fast becoming vices of the time. The classicrepose of his spirit, his apparently unconscious illustration of theancient maxim, 'nothing too much, ' was the more remarkable, becausethere were few influences in the whole gamut of human life to which hedid not sooner or later surrender himself, few experiences which he didnot seek, few areas of thought upon which he did not enter. Systems andtheories were never much to his mind. A fact, even if it wereinexplicable, interested him much more. To the evolution of formalthought in his age he held himself receptive rather than directing. Hekept, to the last, his own manner of brooding and creating, within thelimits of a poetic impressionableness which instinctively viewed thematerial world and the life of the soul in substantially similarfashion. There is something almost humorous in the way in which heeagerly appropriated the results of the philosophising of his time, inso far as he could use these to sustain his own positions, andcaustically rejected those which he could not thus use. He soon got byheart the negative lessons of Voltaire and found, to use the words whichhe puts into the mouth of Faust, that while it freed him from hissuperstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismalbeyond endurance. In the mechanical philosophy which presented itself inthe _Système de la Nature_ as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 'Itappeared to us, ' he says, 'so grey, so cimmerian and so dead that weshuddered at it as at a ghost. We thought it the very quintessence ofold age. All was said to be necessary, and therefore there was no God. Why not a necessity for a God to take its place among the othernecessities!' On the other hand, the ordinary teleological theology, with its external architect of the world and its externally determineddesigns, could not seem to Goethe more satisfactory than the mechanicalphilosophy. He joined for a time in Rousseau's cry for the return tonature. But Goethe was far too well balanced not to perceive that such acry may be the expression of a very artificial and sophisticated stateof mind. It begins indeed in the desire to throw off that which isreally oppressive. It ends in a fretful and reckless revolt against themost necessary conditions of human life. Goethe lived long enough to seein France that dissolution of all authority, whether of State or Church, for which Rousseau had pined. He saw it result in the return of aportion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitivestate, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw. ' It was notthat paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough, both Rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined was theprimitive state. The thought of the discipline and renunciation of our lower nature inorder to the realisation of a higher nature of mankind is written uponthe very face of the second part of _Faust_. Certain passages in_Dichtung_ and _Wahrheit_ are even more familiar. 'Our physical as wellas our social life, morality, custom, knowledge of the world, philosophy, religion, even many an accidental occurrence in our dailylife, all tell us that we must renounce. ' 'Renunciation, once for all, in view of the eternal, ' that was the lesson which he said made him feelan atmosphere of peace breathed upon him. He perceived the supreme moralprominence of certain Christian ideas, especially that of the atonementas he interpreted it. 'It is altogether strange to me, ' he writes toJacobi, 'that I, an old heathen, should see the cross planted in my owngarden, and hear Christ's blood preached without its offending me. ' Goethe's quarrel with Christianity was due to two causes. In the firstplace, it was due to his viewing Christianity as mainly, if notexclusively, a religion of the other world, as it has been called, areligion whose God is not the principle of all life and nature and forwhich nature and life are not divine. In the second place, it was due tothe prominence of the negative or ascetic element in Christianity ascommonly presented, to the fact that in that presentation the law ofself-sacrifice bore no relation to the law of self-realisation. In bothof these respects he would have found himself much more at home with theapprehension of Christianity which we have inherited from the nineteenthcentury. The programme of charity which he outlines in the _Wanderjahre_as a substitute for religion would be taken to-day, so far as it goes, as a rather moderate expression of the very spirit of the Christianreligion. CHAPTER II IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY The causes which we have named, religious and æsthetic, as well aspurely speculative, led to such a revision of philosophical principlesin Germany as took place in no other land. The new idealisticphilosophy, as it took shape primarily at the hands of Kant, completedthe dissolution of the old rationalism. It laid the foundation for thespeculative thought of the western world for the century which was tocome. The answers which æstheticism and pietism gave to rationalism wereincomplete. They consisted largely in calling attention to that whichrationalism had overlooked. Kant's idealism, however, met theintellectual movement on its own grounds. It triumphed over it with itsown weapons. The others set feeling over against thought. He taught mena new method in thinking. The others put emotion over against reason. Hecriticised in drastic fashion the use which had been made of reason. Heinquired into the nature of reason. He vindicated the reasonableness ofsome truths which men had indeed felt to be indefeasibly true, but whichthey had not been able to establish by reasoning. KANT Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, possibly of remoterScottish ancestry. His father was a saddler, as Melanchthon's had beenan armourer and Wolff's a tanner. His native city with its universitywas the scene of his whole life and labour. He was never outside ofPrussia except for a brief interval when Königsberg belonged to Russia. He was a German professor of the old style. Studying, teaching, writingbooks, these were his whole existence. He was the fourth of ninechildren of a devoted pietist household. Two of his sisters served inthe houses of friends. The consistorial-rath opened the way to theuniversity. An uncle aided him to publish his first books. His earlierinterest was in the natural sciences. He was slow in coming topromotion. Only after 1770 was he full professor of logic andmetaphysics. In 1781 he published the first of the books upon whichrests his world-wide fame. Nevertheless, he lived to see the triumph ofhis philosophy in most of the German universities. His subjects areabstruse, his style involved. It never occurred to him to make thetreatment of his themes easier by use of the imagination. He had but amodicum of that quality. He was hostile to the pride of intellect oftenmanifested by petty rationalists. He was almost equally hostile toexcessive enthusiasm in religion. The note of his life, apart from hisintellectual power, was his ethical seriousness. He was in conflict withecclesiastical personages and out of sympathy with much of institutionalreligion. None the less, he was in his own way one of the most religiousof men. His brief conflict with Wöllner's government was the onlyinstance in which his peace and public honour were disturbed. He nevermarried. He died in Königsberg in 1804. He had been for ten years somuch enfeebled that his death was a merciful release. Kant used the word 'critique' so often that his philosophy has beencalled the 'critical philosophy. ' The word therefore needs anexplanation. Kant himself distinguished two types of philosophy, whichhe called the dogmatic and critical types. The essence of a dogmaticphilosophy is that it makes belief to rest upon knowledge. Its endeavouris to demonstrate that which is believed. It brings out as its foil thecharacteristically sceptical philosophy. This esteems that the proofsadvanced in the interest of belief are inadequate. The belief itself istherefore an illusion. The essence of a critical philosophy, on theother hand, consists in this, that it makes a distinction between thefunctions of knowing and believing. It distinguishes between theperception of that which is in accordance with natural law and theunderstanding of the moral meaning of things. [3] Kant thus uses his wordcritique in accordance with the strict etymological meaning of the root. He seeks to make a clear separation between the provinces of belief andknowledge, and thus to find an adjustment of their claims. Of an objectof belief we may indeed say that we know it. Yet we must make clear toourselves that we know it in a different sense from that in which weknow physical fact. Faith, since it does not spring from the purereason, cannot indeed, as the old dogmatisms, both philosophical andtheological, have united in asserting, be demonstrated by the reason. Equally it cannot, as scepticism has declared, be overthrown by the purereason. The ancient positive dogmatism had been the idealistic philosophy ofPlato and Aristotle. The old negative dogmatism had been the materialismof the Epicureans. To Plato the world was the realisation of ideas. Ideas, spiritual entities, were the counterparts and necessaryantecedents of the natural objects and actual facts of life. To theEpicureans, on the other hand, there are only material bodies andnatural laws. There are no ideas or purposes. In the footsteps of theformer moved all the scholastics of the Middle Age, and again, evenLocke and Leibnitz in their so-called 'natural theology. ' In thefootsteps of the latter moved the men who had made materialism andscepticism to be the dominant philosophy of France in the latter half ofthe eighteenth century. The aim of Kant was to resolve this age-longcontradiction. Free, unprejudiced investigation of the facts and laws ofthe phenomenal world can never touch the foundations of faith. Naturalscience can lead in the knowledge only of the realm of the laws ofthings. It cannot give us the inner moral sense of those things. Tospeak of the purposes of nature as men had done was absurd. Naturaltheology, as men had talked of it, was impossible. What science can giveis a knowledge of the facts about us in the world, of the growth of thecosmos, of the development of life, of the course of history, all viewedas necessary sequences of cause and effect. [Footnote 3: Paulsen, _Kant_, a. 2. ] On the other hand, with the idealists, Kant is fully persuaded thatthere is a meaning in things and that we can know it. There is a sensein life. With immediate certainty we set moral good as the absolute aimin life. This is done, however, not through the pure reason or byscientific thinking, but primarily through the will, or as Kant prefersto call it, the practical reason. What is meant by the practical reasonis the intelligence, the will and the affections operating together;that is to say, the whole man and not merely his intellect, directed tothose problems upon which, in sympathy and moral reaction, the whole manmust be directed and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty ofratiocination, does not adequately operate. In the practical reason thewill is the central thing. The will is that faculty of man to whichmoral magnitudes appeal. It is with moral magnitudes that the will isprimarily concerned. The pure reason may operate without the will andthe affections. The will, as a source of knowledge, never works withoutthe intelligence and the affections. But it is the will which alonejudges according to the predicates good and evil. The pure reason judgesaccording to the predicates true and false. It is the practical reasonwhich ventures the credence that moral worth is the supreme worth inlife. It then confirms this ventured credence in a manifold experiencethat yields a certainty with which no certainty of objects given in thesenses is for a moment to be compared. We know that which we havebelieved. We know it as well as that two and two make four. Still we donot know it in the same way. Nor can we bring knowledge of it to otherssave through an act of freedom on their part, which is parallel to theoriginal act of freedom on our own part. How can these two modes of thought stand related the one to the other?Kant's answer is that they correspond to the distinction between twoworlds, the world of sense and the transcendental or supersensibleworld. The pure and the practical reason are the faculties of man fordealing with these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and thenoumenal. The world which is the object of scientific investigation isnot the actuality itself. This is true in spite of the fact that to thecommon man the material and sensible is always, as he would say, thereal. On the contrary, in Kant's opinion the material world is only thepresentation to our senses of something deeper, of which our senses areno judge. The reality lies behind this sensible presentation andappearance. The world of religious belief is the world of thistranscendent reality. The spirit of man, which is not pure reason only, but moral will as well, recognises itself also as part of this reality. It expresses the essence of that mysterious reality in terms of its ownessence. Its own essence as free spirit is the highest aspect of realityof which it is aware. It may be unconscious of the symbolic nature ofits language in describing that which is higher than anything which weknow, by the highest which we do know. Yet, granting that, and supposingthat it is not a contradiction to attempt a description of thetranscendent at all, there is no description which carries us so far. This series of ideas was perhaps that which gave to Kant's philosophyits immediate and immense effect upon the minds of men wearied with theendless strife and insoluble contradiction of the dogmatic and scepticalspirits. We may disagree with much else in the Kantian system. Even herewe may say that we have not two reasons, but only two functionings ofone. We have not two worlds. The philosophical myth of two worlds has nobetter standing than the religious myth of two worlds. We have twocharacteristic aspects of one and the same world. These perfectlyinterpenetrate the one the other, if we may help ourselves with thelanguage of space. Each is everywhere present. Furthermore, theseactions of reason and aspects of world shade into one another byimperceptible degrees. Almost all functionings of reason have somethingof the qualities of both. However, when all is said, it was of greatestworth to have had these two opposite poles of thought brought clearly tomind. The dogmatists, in the interest of faith, were resisting at everystep the progress of the sciences, feeling that that progress wasinimical to faith. The devotees of science were saying that itsprocesses were of universal validity, its conclusions irresistible, thegradual dissolution of faith was certain. Kant made plain that neitherparty had the right to such conclusions. Each was attempting to applythe processes appropriate to one form of rational activity within thesphere which belonged to the other. Nothing but confusion could result. The religious man has no reason to be jealous of the advance of thesciences. The interests of faith itself are furthered by suchinvestigation. Illusions as to fact which have been mistakenlyidentified with faith are thus done away. Nevertheless, its own eternalright is assured to faith. With it lies the interpretation of the factsof nature and of history, whatever those facts may be found to be. Withthe practical reason is the interpretation of these facts according totheir moral worth, a worth of which the pure reason knows nothing andscientific investigation reveals nothing. Here was a deliverance not unlike that which the Reformation hadbrought. The mingling of Aristotelianism and religion in the scholastictheology Luther had assailed. Instead of assent to human dogmas Lutherhad the immediate assurance of the heart that God was on his side. Andwhat is that but a judgment of the practical reason, the response of theheart in man to the spiritual universe? It is given in experience. It isnot mediated by argument. It cannot be destroyed by syllogism. It needsno confirmation from science. It is capable of combination with any ofthe changing interpretations which science may put upon the outwarduniverse. The Reformation had, however, not held fast to its greattruth. It had gone back to the old scholastic position. It had restedfaith in an essentially rationalistic manner upon supposed facts innature and alleged events of history in connection with the revelation. It had thus jeopardised the whole content of faith, should thesesupposed facts of nature or events in history be at any time disproved. Men had made faith to rest upon statements of Scripture, alleging suchand such acts and events. They did not recognise these as the naïve andchildlike assumptions concerning nature and history which the authors ofScripture would naturally have. When, therefore, these statements beganwith the progress of the sciences to be disproved, the defenders of thefaith presented always the feeble spectacle of being driven from oneform of evidence to another, as the old were in turn destroyed. Theassumption was rife at the end of the eighteenth century thatChristianity was discredited in the minds of all free and reasonablemen. Its tenets were incompatible with that which enlightened meninfallibly knew to be true. It could be no long time until thehollowness and sham would be patent to all. Even the interested and theignorant would be compelled to give it up. Of course, the invinciblydevout in every nation felt of instinct that this was not true. Theyfelt that there is an inexpugnable truth of religion. Still that wasmerely an intuition of their hearts. They were right. But they wereunable to prove that they were right, or even to get a hearing with manyof the cultivated of their age. To Kant we owe the debt, that he put anend to this state of things. He made the real evidence for religion thatof the moral sense, of the nonscience and hearts of men themselves. Thereal ground of religious conviction is the religious experience. He thusset free both science and religion from an embarrassment under whichboth laboured, and by which both had been injured. Kant parted company with the empirical philosophy which had held thatall knowledge arises from without, comes from experienced sensations, isessentially perception. This theory had not been able to explain thefact that human experience always conforms to certain laws. On the otherhand, the philosophy of so-called innate ideas had sought to derive allknowledge from the constitution of the mind itself. It left out ofconsideration the dependence of the mind upon experience. It tended toconfound the creations of its own speculation with reality, or rather, to claim correspondence with fact for statements which had no warrant inexperience. There was no limit to which this speculative process mightnot be pushed. By this process the medieval theologians, with allgravity, propounded the most absurd speculations concerning nature. Bythis process men made the most astonishing declarations upon the basis, as they supposed, of revelation. They made allegations concerninghistory and the religious experience which the most rudimentaryknowledge of history or reflection upon consciousness proved to be quitecontrary to fact. Both empiricism and the theory of innate ideas had agreed in regardingall knowledge as something given, from without or from within. Theknowing mind was only a passive recipient of impressions thus impartedto it. It was as wax under the stylus, _tabula rasa_, clean paperwaiting to be written upon. Kant departed from this radically. Hedeclared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's activitywith its receptivity. The material of thought, or at least some of thematerials of thought, must be given us in the multiformity of ourperceptions, through what we call experience from the outer world. Onthe other hand, the formation of this material into knowledge is thework of the activity of our own minds. Knowledge is the result of thesystematising of experience and of reflection upon it. This activity ofthe mind takes place always in accordance with the mind's own laws. Kantheld them to the absolute dependence of knowledge upon material appliedin experience. He compared himself to Copernicus who had taught men thatthey themselves revolved around a central fact of the universe. They hadsupposed that the facts revolved about them. The central fact of theintellectual world is experience. This experience seems to be given usin the forms of time and space and cause. These are merely forms of themind's own activity. It is not possible for us to know 'the thing initself, ' the _Ding an sich_ in Kant's phrase, which is the externalfactor in any sensation or perception. We cannot distinguish thatexternal factor from the contribution to it, as it stands in ourperception, which our own minds have made. If we cannot do that even forourselves, how much less can we do it for others! It is the subject, thethinking being who says 'I, ' which, by means of its characteristic andnecessary active processes, in the perception of things under the formsof time and space, converts the chaotic material of knowledge into aregular and ordered world of reasoned experience. In this sense theunderstanding itself imposes laws, if not upon nature, yet, at least, upon nature as we can ever know it. There is thus in Kant's philosophy asceptical aspect. Knowledge is limited to phenomena. We cannot by purereason know anything of the world which lies beyond experience. Thisthought had been put forth by Locke and Berkeley, and by Hume also, in adifferent way. But with Kant this scepticism was not the gist of hisphilosophy. It was urged rather as the basis of the unconditionedcharacter which he proposed to assert for the practical reason. Kant'sscepticism is therefore very different from that of Hume. It does notmilitate against the profoundest religious conviction. Yet it preparedthe way for some of the just claims of modern agnosticism. According to Kant, it is as much the province of the practical reason tolay down laws for action as it is the province of pure reason todetermine the conditions of thought, though the practical reason candefine only the form of action which shall be in the spirit of duty. Itcannot present duty to us as an object of desire. Desire can be only aform of self-love. In the end it reckons with the advantage of havingdone one's duty. It thus becomes selfish and degraded. Theidentification of duty and interest was particularly offensive to Kant. He was at war with every form of hedonism. To do one's duty because oneexpects to reap advantage is not to have done one's duty. The doing ofduty in this spirit simply resolves itself into a subtler and morepervasive form of selfishness. He castigates the popular presentation ofreligion as fostering this same fault. On the other hand, there is atrait of rigorism in Kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, which wasnot altogether consistent with the implications of his own philosophy. This philosophy afforded, as we have seen, the basis for a monistic viewof the universe. But to his mind the natural inclinations of man areopposed to good conscience and sound reason. He had contempt for theshallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature of man wasall good, and needed only to be allowed to run its natural course toproduce highest ethical results. He does not seem to have penetrated tothe root of Rousseau's fallacy, the double sense in which he constantlyused the words 'nature' and 'natural. ' Otherwise, Kant would have beenable to repudiate the preposterous doctrine of Rousseau, without himselffalling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human nature. Inthis doctrine he is practically at one with the popular teaching of hisown pietistic background, and with Calvinism as it prevailed with manyof the religiously-minded of his day. In its extreme statements thelatter reminds one of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ranparallel to the development of Christian thought and so profoundlyinfluenced it. Kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. According to himthe natural inclinations of men are such as to produce a never-endingstruggle between duty and desire. To desire to do a thing made himsuspicious that he was not actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doingit. The sense in which man may be in his nature both a child of God, and, at the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not yetclear either to Kant or to his opponents. His pessimism was a reflectionof his moral seriousness. Yet it failed to reckon with that which is yeta glorious fact. One of the chief results of doing one's duty is thegradual escape from the desire to do the contrary. It is the gradualfostering by us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do thatduty. Even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of this highdesire. In the lowest man there is indeed the superficial desire toindulge his passions. There is also the latent longing to be conformedto the good. There is the sense that he fulfils himself then only whenhe is obedient to the good. One of the great facts of spiritualexperience is this gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard withinus. We do really cease to desire the things which are against rightreason and conscience. We come to desire the good, even if it shall costus pain and sacrifice to do it. Paul could write: 'When I would do good, evil is present with me. ' But, in the vividness of his identification ofhis willing self with his better self against his sinning self, he couldalso write: 'So then it is no more I that do the sin. ' _Das radicaleBöse_ of human nature is less radical than Kant supposed, and 'thecategorical imperative' of duty less externally categorical than healleged. Still it is the great merit of Kant's philosophy to havebrought out with all possible emphasis, not merely as against theoptimism of the shallow, but as against the hedonism of soberer people, that our life is a conflict between inclination and duty. The claims ofduty are the higher ones. They are mandatory, absolute. We do our dutywhether or not we superficially desire to do it. We do our duty whetheror not we foresee advantage in having done it. We should do it if weforesaw with clearness disadvantage. We should find our satisfaction inhaving done it, even at the cost of all our other satisfactions. Thereis a must which is over and above all our desires. This is what Kantreally means by the categorical imperative. Nevertheless, his statementcomes in conflict with the principle of freedom, which is one of themost fundamental in his system. The phrases above used only eddy aboutthe one point which is to be held fast. There may be that in theuniverse which destroys the man who does not conform to it, but in thelast analysis he is self-destroyed, that is, he chooses not to conform. If he is saved, it is because he chooses thus to conform. Man would bethen most truly man in resisting that which would merely overpower him, even if it were goodness. Of course, there can be no goodness whichoverpowers. There can be no goodness which is not willed. Nothing can bea motive except through awakening our desire. That which one desires isnever wholly external to oneself. According to Kant, morality becomes religion when that which the formershows to be the end of man is conceived also to be the end of thesupreme law-giver, God. Religion is the recognition of our duties asdivine commands. The distinction between revealed and natural religionis stated thus: In the former we know a thing to be a divine commandbefore we recognise it as our duty. In the latter we know it to be ourduty before we recognise it as a divine command. Religion may be bothnatural and revealed. Its tenets may be such that man can be conceivedas arriving at them by unaided reason. But he would thus have arrived atthem at a later period in the evolution of the race. Hence revelationmight be salutary or even necessary for certain times and places withoutbeing essential at all times or, for that matter, a permanent guaranteeof the truth of religion. There is nothing here which is new or originalwith Kant. This line of reasoning was one by which men since Lessing hadhelped themselves over certain difficulties. It is cited only to showhow Kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some matters, although heso splendidly transcended it in others. The orthodox had immemorially asserted that revelation impartedinformation not otherwise attainable, or not then attainable. Therationalists here allege the same. Kant is held fast in this view. Assuredly what revelation imparts is not information of any sortwhatsoever, not even information concerning God. What revelation impartsis God himself, through the will and the affection, the practicalreason. Revelation is experience, not instruction. The revealers arethose who have experienced God, Jesus the foremost among them. They haveexperienced God, whom then they have manifested as best they could, butfar more significantly in what they were than in what they said. Thereis surely the gravest exaggeration of what is statutory and external inthat which Kant says of the relation of ethics and religion. How can weknow that to be a command of God, which does not commend itself in ourown heart and conscience? The traditionalist would have said, bydocuments miraculously confirmed. It was not in consonance with hisnoblest ideas for Kant to say that. On the other hand, that which Iperceive to be my duty I, as religious man, feel to be a command of God, whether or not a mandate of God to that effect can be adduced. Whetheran alleged revelation from God inculcates such a truth or duty may beincidental. In a sense it is accidental. The content of all historicrevelation is conditioned in the circumstances of the man to whom therevelation is addressed. It is clear that the whole matter of revelationis thus apprehended by Kant with more externality than we should havebelieved. His thought is still essentially archaic and dualistic. He is, therefore, now and then upon the point of denying that such a thing asrevelation is possible. The very idea of revelation, in this form, doesviolence to his fundamental principle of the autonomy of the humanreason and will. At many points in his reflection it is transparentlyclear that nothing can ever come to a man, or be given forth by him, which is not creatively shaped by himself. As regards revelation, however, Kant never frankly took that step. The implications of his ownsystem would have led him to that step. They led to an idea ofrevelation which was psychologically in harmony with the assumptions ofhis system, and historically could be conceived as taking place withoutthe interjection of the miraculous in the ordinary sense. If the divinerevelation is to be thought as taking place within the human spirit, andin consonance with the laws of all other experience, then the humanspirit must itself be conceived as standing in such relation to thedivine that the eternal reason may express and reveal itself in theregular course of the mind's own activity. Then the manifold moral andreligious ideals of mankind in all history must take their place asintegral factors also in the progress of the divine revelation. When we come to the more specific topics of his religious teaching, freedom, immortality, God, Kant is prompt to assert that these cannot beobjects of theoretical knowledge. Insoluble contradictions arisewhenever a proof of them is attempted. If an object of faith could bedemonstrated it would cease to be an object of faith. It would have beenbrought down out of the transcendental world. Were God to us an objectamong other objects, he would cease to be a God. Were the soul ademonstrable object like any other object, it would cease to be thetranscendental aspect of ourselves. Kant makes short work of theso-called proofs for the existence of God which had done duty in thescholastic theology. With subtilty, sometimes also with bitter irony, heshows that they one and all assume that which they set out to prove. They are theoretically insufficient and practically unnecessary. Theyhave such high-sounding names--the ontological argument, thecosmological, the physico-theological--that almost in spite of ourselveswe bring a reverential mood to them. They have been set forth withsolemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something almoststartling in the way that Kant knocks them about. The fact that theordinary man among us easily perceives that Kant was right shows onlyhow the climate of the intellectual world has changed. Freedom, immortality, God, are not indeed provable. If given at all, they can begiven only in the practical reason. Still they are postulates in themoral order which makes man the citizen of an intelligible world. Therecan be no 'ought' for a being who is necessitated. We can perceive, anddo perceive, that we ought to do a thing. It follows that we can do it. However, the hindrances to the realisation of the moral ideal are suchthat it cannot be realised in a finite time. Hence the postulate ofeternal life for the individual. Finally, reason demands realisation ofa supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a corresponding happiness. Manis a final end only as a moral subject. There must be One who is notonly a law-giver, but in himself also the realisation of the law ofthe moral world. Kant's moral argument thus steps off the line of the others. It is not aproof at all in the sense in which they attempted to be proofs. Theexistence of God appears as a necessary assumption, if the highest goodand value in the world are to be fulfilled. But the conception andpossibility of realisation of a highest good is itself something whichcannot be concluded with theoretical evidentiality. It is the object ofa belief which in entire freedom is directed to that end. Kant laysstress upon the fact that among the practical ideas of reason, that offreedom is the one whose reality admits most nearly of being proved bythe laws of pure reason, as well as in conduct and experience. Upon anact of freedom, then, belief rests. 'It is the free holding that to betrue, which for the fulfilment of a purpose we find necessary. ' Now, asobject of this 'free holding something to be true, ' he sets forth theconception of the highest good in the world, to be realised throughfreedom. It is clear that before this argument would prove that a God isnecessary to the realisation of the moral order, it would have to beshown that there are no adequate forces immanent within society itselffor the establishment and fulfilment of that order. As a matter of fact, reflexion in the nineteenth century, devoted as it has been to theevolution of society, has busied itself with hardly anything more thanwith the study of those immanent elements which make for morality. It istherefore not an external guarantor of morals, such as Kant thought, which is here given. It is the immanent God who is revealed in thehistory and life of the race, even as also it is the immanent God who isrevealed in the consciousness of the individual soul. Even the moralargument, therefore, in the form in which Kant puts it, sounds remoteand strange to us. His reasoning strains and creaks almost as if he werestill trying to do that which he had just declared could not be done. What remains of significance for us, is this. All the debate about firstcauses, absolute beings, and the rest, gives us no God such as our soulsneed. If a man is to find the witness for soul, immortality and God atall, he must find it within himself and in the spiritual history of hisfellows. He must venture, in freedom, the belief in these things, andfind their corroboration in the contribution which they make to thesolution of the mystery of life. One must venture to win them. One mustcontinue to venture, to keep them. If it were not so, they would not beobjects of faith. The source of the radical evil in man is an intelligible act of humanfreedom not further to be explained. Moral evil is not, as such, transmitted. Moral qualities are inseparable from the responsibility ofthe person who commits the deeds. Yet this radical disposition to evilis to be changed into a good one, not altogether by a process of moralreformation. There is such a thing as a fundamental revolution of aman's habit of thought, a conscious and voluntary transference of aman's intention to obey, from the superficial and selfish desires whichhe has followed, to the deep and spiritual ones which he will henceforthallow. There is an epoch in a man's life when he makes the transition. He probably does it under the spell of personal influence, by the powerof example, through the beauty of another personality. To Kant salvationwas character. It was of and in and by character. To no thinker has themoral participation of a man in the regeneration of his own characterbeen more certain and necessary than to Kant. Yet, the change indirection of the will generally comes by an impulse from without. Itcomes by the impress of a noble personality. It is sustained byenthusiasm for that personality. Kant has therefore a perfectly rationaland ethical and vital meaning for the phrase 'new birth. ' For the purpose of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so effective asthe contemplation of an historical example of such surpassing moralgrandeur as that which we behold in Jesus. For this reason we may lookto Jesus as the ideal of goodness presented to us in flesh and blood. Yet the assertion that Jesus' historical personality altogethercorresponds with the complete and eternal ethical ideal is one which wehave no need to make. We do not possess in our own minds the absoluteideal with which in that assertion we compare him. The ethical ideal of the race is still in process of development. Jesushas been the greatest factor urging forward that development. Weourselves stand at a certain point in that development. We have theideals which we have because we stand at that point at which we do. Themen who come after us will have a worthier ideal than we do. Again, tosay that Jesus in his words and conduct expressed in its totality theeternal ethical ideal, would make of his life something different fromthe real, human life. Every real, human life is lived within certainactual antitheses which call out certain qualities and do not call outothers. They demand certain reactions and not others. This is theconcrete element without which nothing historical can be conceived. Tosay that Jesus lived in entire conformity to the ethical ideal so far aswe are able to conceive it, and within the circumstances which his owntime and place imposed, is the most that we can say. But in any case, Kant insists, the real object of our religious faith is not the historicman, but the ideal of humanity well-pleasing to God. Since this ideal isnot of our own creation, but is given us in our super-sensible nature, it may be conceived as the Son of God come down from heaven. The turn of this last phrase is an absolutely characteristic one, andbrings out another quality of Kant's mind in dealing with the Christiandoctrines. They are to him but symbols, forms into which a variety ofmeanings may be run. He had no great appreciation of the historicalelement in doctrine. He had no deep sense of the social element and ofthat for which Christian institutions stand. We may illustrate with thatwhich he says concerning Christ's vicarious sacrifice. Substitutioncannot take place in the moral world. Ethical salvation could not beconferred through such a substitution, even if this could take place. Still, the conception of the vicarious suffering of Christ may be takenas a symbolical expression of the idea that in the pain ofself-discipline, of obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were vicariously, for the old. The atonement is a continualethical process in the heart of the religious man. It is a grave defectof Kant's religious philosophy, that it was so absolutelyindividualistic. Had he realised more deeply than he did the socialcharacter of religion and the meaning of these doctrines, not alone asbetween man and God, but as between man and man, he surely would havedrawn nearer to that interpretation of the doctrine of the atonementwhich has come more and more to prevail. This is the solution whichfinds in the atonement of Christ the last and most glorious example of auniversal law of human life and history. That law is that no redemptivegood for men is ever secured without the suffering and sacrifice ofthose who seek to confer that good upon their fellows. Kant was disposedto regard the traditional forms of Christian doctrine, not as the oldrationalism had done, as impositions of a priesthood or inherentlyabsurd. He sought to divest them indeed of that which was speculativelyuntrue, though he saw in them only symbols of the great moral truthswhich lie at the heart of religion. The historical spirit of the nextfifty years was to teach men a very different way of dealing with thesesame doctrines. * * * * * Kant had said that the primary condition, fundamental not merely toknowledge, but to all connected experience, is the knowing, experiencing, thinking, acting self. It is that which says 'I, ' the ego, the permanent subject. But that is not enough. The knowing self demandsin turn a knowable world. It must have something outside of itself towhich it yet stands related, the object of knowledge. Knowledge issomehow the combination of those two, the result of their co-operation. How have we to think of this co-operation? Both Hume and Berkeley hadended in scepticism as to the reality of knowledge. Hume was in doubt asto the reality of the subject, Berkeley as to that of the object. Kantdissented from both. He vindicated the undoubted reality of theimpression which we have concerning a thing. Yet how far that impressionis the reproduction of the thing as it is in itself, we can neverperfectly know. What we have in our minds is not the object. It is anotion of that object, although we may be assured that we could have nosuch notion were there no object. Equally, the notion is what it isbecause the subject is what it is. We can never get outside theprocesses of our own thought. We cannot know the thing as it is, the_Ding-an-sich_, in Kant's phrase. We know only that there must be a'thing in itself. ' FICHTE Fichte asked, Why? Why must there be a _Ding-an-sich_? Why is not thatalso the result of the activity of the ego? Why is not the ego, thethinking subject, all that is, the creator of the world, according tothe laws of thought? If so much is reduced to idea, why not all? Thiswas Fichte's rather forced resolution of the old dualism of thought andthing. It is not the denial of the reality of things, but the assertionthat their ideal element, that part of them which is not mere 'thing, 'the action and subject of the action, is their underlying reality. According to Kant things exist in a world beyond us. Man has no facultyby which he can penetrate into that world. Still, the farther we followKant in his analysis the more does the contribution to knowledge fromthe side of the mind tend to increase, and the more does the factor inour impressions from the side of things tend to fade away. This basis ofimpression being wholly unknowable is as good as non-existent for us. Yet it never actually disappears. There would seem to be inevitable asort of kernel of matter or prick of sense about which all our thoughtsare generated. Yet this residue is a vanishing quantity. This seemed toFichte to be a self-contradiction and a half-way measure. Only twopositions appeared to him thorough-going and consequent. Either oneposits as fundamental the thing itself, matter, independent of anyconsciousness of it. So Spinoza had taught. Or else one takesconsciousness, the conscious subject, independent of any matter or thingas fundamental. This last Fichte claimed to be the real issue of Kant'sthought. He asserts that from the point of view of the thing in itselfwe can never explain knowledge. We may be as skilful as possible inplacing one thing behind another in the relation of cause to effect. Itis, however, an unending series. It is like the cosmogony of the Easternpeople which fabled that the earth rests upon the back of an elephant. The elephant stands upon a tortoise. The question is, upon what does thetortoise stand? So here, we may say, in the conclusive manner in whichmen have always said, that God made the world. Yet sooner or later wecome to the child's question: Who made God? Fichte rightly replied: 'IfGod is for us only an object of knowledge, the _Ding-an-sich_ at the endof the series, there is no escape from the answer that man, the thinker, in thinking God made him. ' All the world, including man, is but thereflexion, the revelation in forms of the finite, of an unceasing actionof thought of which the ego is the object. Nothing more paradoxical thanthis conclusion can be imagined. It seems to make the human subject, theman myself, the creator of the universe, and the universe only thatwhich I happen to think it to be. This interpretation was at first put upon Fichte's reasoning with suchvigour that he was accused of atheism. He was driven from his chair inJena. Only after several years was he called to a corresponding post inBerlin. Later, in his _Vocation of Man_, he brought his thought toclearness in this form: 'If God be only the object of thought, itremains true that he is then but the creation of man's thought. God is, however, to be understood as subject, as the real subject, thetranscendent thinking and knowing subject, indwelling in the world andmaking the world what it is, indwelling in us and making us what we are. We ourselves are subjects only in so far as we are parts of God. Wethink and know only in so far as God thinks and knows and acts and livesin us. The world, including ourselves, is but the reflection of thethought of God, who thus only has existence. Neither the world nor wehave existence apart from him. ' Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born at Rammenau in 1762. His father was aribbon weaver. He came of a family distinguished for piety anduprightness. He studied at Jena, and became an instructor there in 1793. He was at first a devout disciple of Kant, but gradually separatedhimself from his master. There is a humorous tale as to one of his earlybooks which was, through mistake of the publisher, put forth without theauthor's name. For a brief time it was hailed as a work of Kant--his_Critique of Revelation_. Fichte was a man of high moral enthusiasm, very uncompromising, unable to put himself in the place of an opponent, in incessant strife. The great work of his Jena period was his_Wissenschaftslehre_, 1794. His popular Works, _Die Bestimmung desMenschen_ and _Anweisung zum seligen Leben_, belong to his Berlinperiod. The disasters of 1806 drove him out of Berlin. Amidst thedangers and discouragements of the next few years he wrote his famous_Reden an die deutsche Nation_. He drew up the plan for the founding ofthe University of Berlin. In 1810 he was called to be rector of thenewly established university. He was, perhaps, the chief adviser ofFrederick William III in the laying of the foundations of theuniversity, which was surely a notable venture for those trying years. In the autumn of 1812 and again in 1813, when the hospitals were full ofsick and wounded after the Russian and Leipzig campaigns, Fichte and hiswife were unceasing in their care of the sufferers. He died of fevercontracted in the hospital in January 1814. According to Fichte, as we have seen, the world of sense is thereflection of our own inner activity. It exists for us as the sphere andmaterial of our duty. The moral order only is divine. We, the finiteintelligences, exist only in and through the infinite intelligence. Allour life is thus God's life. We are immortal because he is immortal. Ourconsciousness is his consciousness. Our life and moral force is his, thereflection and manifestation of his being, individuation of the infinitereason which is everywhere present in the finite. In God we see theworld also in a new light. There is no longer any nature which isexternal to ourselves and unrelated to ourselves. There is only Godmanifesting himself in nature. Even the evil is only a means to goodand, therefore, only an apparent evil. We are God's immediatemanifestation, being spirit like himself. The world is his mediatemanifestation. The world of dead matter, as men have called it, does notexist. God is the reality within the forms of nature and withinourselves, by which alone we have reality. The duty to which a Godoutside of ourselves could only command us, becomes a privilege to whichwe need no commandment, but to the fulfilment of which, rather, we aredrawn in joy by the forces of our own being. How a man could, even inthe immature stages of these thoughts, have been persecuted for atheism, it is not easy to see, although we may admit that his earlier forms ofstatement were bewildering. When we have his whole thought before us weshould say rather that it borders on acosmic pantheism, for whicheverything is God and the world does not exist. We have no need to follow Fichte farther. Suffice it to say, withreference to the theory of knowledge, that he had discovered that onecould not stand still with Kant. One must either go back toward theposition of the old empiricism which assumed the reality of the worldexactly as it appeared, or else one must go forward to an idealism morethorough-going than Kant had planned. Of the two paths which, with allthe vast advance of the natural sciences, the thought of the nineteenthcentury might traverse, that of the denial of everything except themechanism of nature, and that of the assertion that nature is but theorgan of spirit and is instinct with reason, Fichte chose the latter andblazed out the path along which all the idealists have followed him. Inreference to the philosophy of religion, we must say that, with all theextravagance, the pantheism and mysticism of his phrases, Fichte's greatcontribution was his breaking down of the old dualism between God andman which was still fundamental to Kant. It was his assertion of theunity of man and God and of the life of God in man. This thought hasbeen appropriated in all of modern theology. SCHELLING It was the meagreness of Fichte's treatment of nature which impelledSchelling to what he called his outbreak into reality. Nature will notbe dismissed, as simply that which is not I. You cannot say that natureis only the sphere of my self-realisation. Individuals are in their waythe children of nature. They are this in respect of their souls as muchas of their bodies. Nature was before they were. Nature is, moreover, not alien to intelligence. On the contrary, it is a treasure-house ofintelligible forms which demand to be treated as such. It appeared toSchelling, therefore, a truer idealism to work out an intelligiblesystem of nature, exhibiting its essential oneness with personality. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling was born in 1775 at Leonberg inWürttemberg. His father was a clergyman. He was precocious in hisintellectual development and much spoiled by vanity. Before he wastwenty years old he had published three works upon problems suggested byFichte. At twenty-three he was extraordinarius at Jena. He hadapparently a brilliant career before him. He published his _ErsterEntwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophe_, 1799, and also his _Systemdes transcendentalen Idealismus_, 1800. Even his short residence at Jenawas troubled by violent conflicts with his colleagues. It was brought toan end by his marriage with the wife of Augustus von Schlegel, who hadbeen divorced for the purpose. From 1806 to 1841 he lived in Munich inretirement. The long-expected books which were to fulfil his earlypromise never appeared. Hegel's stricture was just. Schelling had notaste for the prolonged and intense labour which his brilliant earlyworks marked out. He died in 1854, having reached the age ofseventy-nine years, of which at least fifty were as melancholy andfruitless as could well be imagined. The dominating idea of Schelling's philosophy of nature may be said tobe the exhibition of nature as the progress of intelligence towardconsciousness and personality. Nature is the ego in evolution, personality in the making. All natural objects are visible analogues andcounterparts of mind. The intelligence which their structure reveals, men had interpreted as residing in the mind of a maker of the world. Nature had been spoken of as if it were a watch. God was its greatartificer. No one asserted that its intelligence and power ofdevelopment lay within itself. On the contrary, nature is always in theprocess of advance from lower, less highly organised and lessintelligible forms, to those which are more highly organised, morenearly the counterpart of the active intelligence in man himself. Thepersonality of man had been viewed as standing over against nature, thislast being thought of as static and permanent. On the contrary, thepersonality of man, with all of its intelligence and free will, is butthe climax and fulfilment of a long succession of intelligible forms innature, passing upward from the inorganic to the organic, from theunconscious to the conscious, from the non-moral to the moral, as theseare at last seen in man. Of course, it was the life of organic naturewhich first suggested this notion to Schelling. An organism is aself-moving, self-producing whole. It is an idea in process ofself-realisation. What was observed in the organism was then made bySchelling the root idea of universal nature. Nature is in all its partsliving, self-moving along the lines of its development, productivity andproduct both in one. Empirical science may deal with separate productsof nature. It may treat them as objects of analysis and investigation. It may even take the whole of nature as an object. But nature is notmere object. Philosophy has to treat of the inner life which moves thewhole of nature as intelligible productivity, as subject, no longer asobject. Personality has slowly arisen out of nature. Nature was goingthrough this process of self-development before there were any men tocontemplate it. It would go through this process were there no longermen to contemplate it. Schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute idealism whichFichte had carried through in a one-sided way. He has given us also awonderful anticipation of certain modern ideas concerning nature'spreparation for the doctrine of evolution, which was a stroke of geniusin its way. He attempted to arrange the realm of unconsciousintelligences in an ascending series which should bridge the gulfbetween the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism inwhich self consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, andmoral life, at last integrated. Inadequate material and a fondness foranalogies led Schelling into vagaries in following out this scheme. Nevertheless, it is only in detail that we can look askance at hisattempt. In principle our own conception of the universe is the same. Itis the dynamic view of nature and an application of the principle ofevolution in the widest sense. His errors were those into which a manwas bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep of theimagination that which has been the result of the detailed and patientinvestigation of three generations. What Schelling attempted was to takenature as we know it and to exhibit it as in reality a function ofintelligence, pointing, through all the gradations of its varied forms, towards its necessary goal in self-conscious personality. Instead, therefore, of our having in nature and personality two things whichcannot be brought together, these become members of one great organismof intelligence of which the immanent God is the source and thesustaining power. These ideas constitute Schelling's contribution to anidealistic and, of course, an essentially monistic view of the universe. The unity of man with God, Fichte had asserted. Schelling set forth theoneness of God and nature, and again of man and nature. The circle wascomplete. * * * * * If we have succeeded in conveying a clear idea of the movement ofthought from Kant to Hegel, that idea might be stated thus. There arebut three possible objects which can engage the thought of man. Theseare nature and man and God. There is the universe, of which we becomeaware through experience from our earliest childhood. Then there is man, the man given in self-consciousness, primarily the man myself. In thissense man seems to stand over against nature. Then, as the thirdpossible object of thought, we have God. Upon the thought of God weusually come from the point of view of the category of cause. God is thename which men give to that which lies behind nature and man as theorigin and explanation of both. Plato's chief interest was in man. Hetalked much concerning a God who was somehow the speculative postulateof the spiritual nature in man. Aristotle began a real observation ofnature. But the ancient and, still more, the mediæval study of naturewas dominated by abstract and theological assumptions. These preventedany real study of that nature in the midst of which man lives, inreaction against which he develops his powers, and to which, on onewhole side of his nature, he belongs. Even in respect of that which menreverently took to be thought concerning God, they seem to have beenunaware how much of their material was imaginative and poetic symbolismdrawn from the experience of man. The traditional idea of revelationproved a disturbing factor. Assuming that revelation gave informationconcerning God, and not rather the religious experience of communionwith God himself, men accepted statements of the documents of revelationas if they had been definitions graciously given from out the realm ofthe unseen. In reality, they were but fetches from out the world of theknown into the world of the unknown. The point of interest is this:--In all possible combinations in which, throughout the history of thought, these three objects had been set, theone with the others, they had always remained three objects. There wasno essential relation of the one to the other. They were like the pointsof a triangle of which any one stood over against the other two. Godstood over against the man whom he had fashioned, man over against theGod to whom he was responsible. The consequences for theology areevident. When men wished to describe, for example, Jesus as the Son ofGod, they laid emphasis upon every quality which he had, or was supposedto have, which was not common to him with other men. They lost sight ofthat profound interest of religion which has always claimed that, insome sense, all men are sons of God and Jesus was the son of man. Jesuswas then only truly honoured as divine when every trait of his humanitywas ignored. Similarly, when men spoke of revelation they laid emphasisupon those particulars in which this supposed method of coming byinformation was unlike all other methods. Knowledge derived directlyfrom God through revelation was in no sense the parallel of knowledgederived by men in any other way. So also God stood over against nature. God was indeed declared to have made nature. He had, however, but givenit, so to say, an original impulse. That impulse also it had in somestrange way lost or perverted, so that the world, though it had beenmade by God, was not good. For the most part it moved itself, althoughGod's sovereignty was evidenced in that he could still supervene uponit, if he chose. The supernatural was the realm of God. Natural andsupernatural were mutually exclusive terms, just as we saw that divineand human were exclusive terms. So also, on the third side of ourtriangle, man stood over against nature. Nature was to primitive men therealm of caprice, in which they imagined demons, spirits and the like. These were antagonistic to men, as also hostile to God. Then, when withthe advance of reflexion these spirits, and equally their counterparts, the good genii and angels, had all died, nature became the realm of ironnecessity, of regardless law, of all-destroying force, of cruel andindifferent fate. From this men took refuge in the thought of acompassionate God, though they could not withdraw themselves or thosewhom they loved from the inexorable laws of nature. They could not seethat God always, or even often, intervened on their behalf. It cannot bedenied that these ideas prevail to some extent in the popular theologyat the present moment. Much of our popular religious language is aninheritance from a time when they universally prevailed. The religiousintuition even of psalmists and prophets opposed many of these notions. The pure religious intuition of Jesus opposed almost every one of them. Mystics in every religion have had, at times, insight into an altogetherdifferent scheme of things. The philosophy, however, even of thelearned, would, in the main, have supported the views above described, from the dawn of reflexion almost to our own time. It was Kant who first began the resolution of this three-cornereddifficulty. When he pointed out that into the world, as we know it, anelement of spirit goes, that in it an element of the ideal inheres, hebegan a movement which has issued in modern monism. He affirmed thatthat element from my thought which enters into the world, as I know it, may be so great that only just a point of matter and a prick of senseremains. Fichte said: 'Why do we put it all in so perverse a way? Whyreduce the world of matter to just a point? Why is it not taken for whatit is, and yet understood to be all alive with God and we able to thinkof it, because we are parts of the great thinker God?' Still Fichte hadbusied himself almost wholly with consciousness. Schelling endeavouredto correct that. Nature lives and moves in God, just as truly in one wayas does man in another. Men arise out of nature. A circle has been drawnthrough the points of our triangle. Nature and man are in a new anddeeper sense revelations of God. In fact, supplementing one another, they constitute the only possible channels for the manifestation of God. It hardly needs to be said that these thoughts are widely appropriatedin our modern world. These once novel speculations of the kings ofthought have made their way slowly to all strata of society. Remote anddifficult in their first expression in the language of the schools, their implications are to-day on everybody's lips. It is this unitaryview of the universe which has made difficult the acceptance of atheology, the understandlng of a religion, which are still largelyphrased in the language of a philosophy to which these ideas did notbelong. There is not an historic creed, there is hardly a greater systemof theology, which is not stated in terms of a philosophy and sciencewhich no longer reign. Men are asking: 'cannot Christianity be so statedand interpreted that it shall meet the needs of men of the twentiethcentury, as truly as it met those of men of the first or of thesixteenth?' Hegel, the last of this great group of idealisticphilosophers whom we shall name, enthusiastically believed in this newinterpretation of the faith which was profoundly dear to him. He madeimportant contribution to that interpretation. HEGEL Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770. His fatherwas in the fiscal service of the King of Württemberg. He studied inTübingen. He was heavy and slow of development, in striking contrastwith Schelling. He served as tutor in Bern and Frankfort, and began tolecture in Jena in 1801. He was much overshadowed by Schelling. Thevictory of Napoleon at Jena in 1806 closed the university for a time. In1818 he was called to Fichte's old chair in Berlin. Never on very goodterms with the Prussian Government, he yet showed his large sympathywith life in every way. After 1820 a school of philosophical thinkersbegan to gather about him. His first great book, his _Phenomenologie desGeistes_ 1807 (translated, Baillie, London, 1910), was published at theend of his Jena period. His _Philosophie der Religion_ and _Philosophieder Geschichte_ were edited after his death. They are mainly in the formwhich his notes took between 1823 and 1827. He died during an epidemicof cholera in Berlin in 1831. Besides his deep interest in history the most striking feature ofHegel's preliminary training was his profound study of Christianity. Hemight almost be said to have turned to philosophy as a means offormulating the ideas which he had conceived concerning the developmentof the religious consciousness, which seemed to him to have been thebearer of all human culture. No one could fail to see that the idea ofthe relation of God and man, of which we have been speaking, was boundto make itself felt in the interpretation of the doctrine of theincarnation and of all the dogmas, like that of the trinity, which areconnected with it. Characteristically, Hegel had pure joy in thespeculative aspects of the problem. If one may speak in all reverence, and, at the same time, not without a shade of humour, Hegel rejoiced tofind himself able, as he supposed, to rehabilitate the dogma of thetrinity, rationalised in approved fashion. It is as if the dogma hadbeen a revered form or mould, which was for him indeed emptied of itsoriginal content. He felt bound to fill it anew. Or to speak morejustly, he was really convinced that the new meaning which he pouredinto the dogma was the true meaning which the Church Fathers had beenseeking all the while. In the light of two generations of sober dealing, as historians, with such problems, we can but view his solution in amanner very different from that which he indulged. He was even disposedmildly to censure the professional theologians for leaving the defenceof the doctrine of the trinity to the philosophers. There were then, andhave since been, defenders of the doctrine who have thought that Hegeltendered them great aid. As a matter of fact, despite his own utterseriousness and reverent desire, his solution was a complete dissolutionof the doctrine and of much else besides. His view would have beenfatal, not merely to that particular form of orthodox thought, but, whatis much more serious, to the religious meaning for which it stood. Sooner or later men have seen that the whole drift of Hegelianism was totransform religion into intellectualism. One might say that it wasexactly this which the ancient metaphysicians, in the classic doctrineof the trinity, had done. They had transformed religion intometaphysics. The matter would not have been remedied by having a modernmetaphysician do the same thing in another way. Hegel was weary of Fichte's endless discussion of the ego andSchelling's of the absolute. It was not the abyss of the unknowable fromwhich things said to come, or that into which they go, which interestedHegel. It was their process and progress which we can know. It was thatpart of their movement which is observable within actual experience, with which he was concerned. Now one of the laws of the movement of allthings, he said, is that by which every thought suggests, and everyforce tends directly to produce, its opposite. Nothing stands alone. Everything exists by the balance and friction of opposing tendencies. Wehave the universal contrasts of heat and cold, of light and darkness, ofinward and outward, of static and dynamic, of yes and no. There are twosides to every case, democratic government and absolutism, freedom ofreligion and authority, the individualistic and the social principles, amaterialistic and a spiritual interpretation of the universe. Onlythings which are dead have ceased to have this tide and alternation. Christ is for living religion now a man, now God, revelation nownatural, now supernatural. Religion in the eternal conflict betweenreason and faith, morals the struggle of good and evil, God nowmysterious and now manifest. Fichte had said: The essence of the universe is spirit. Hegel said: Yes, but the true notion of spirit is that of the resolution ofcontradiction, of the exhibition of opposites as held together in theirunity. This is the meaning of the trinity. In the trinity we have Godwho wills to manifest himself, Jesus in whom he is manifest, and thespirit common to them both. God's existence is not static, it isdynamic. It is motion, not rest. God is revealer, recipient, andrevelation all in one. The trinity was for Hegel the central doctrine ofChristianity. Popular orthodoxy had drawn near to the assertion of threeGods. The revolt, however, in asserting the unity of God, had made ofGod a meaningless absolute as foundation of the universe. The orthodox, in respect to the person of Christ, had always indeed asserted inlaboured way that Jesus was both God and man. Starting from their ownabstract conception of God, and attributing to Jesus the qualities ofthat abstraction, they had ended in making of the humanity of Jesus aperfectly unreal thing. On the other hand, those who had set out fromJesus's real humanity had been unable to see that he was anything morethan a mere man, as their phrase was. On their own assumption of themutual exclusiveness of the conceptions of God and man, they could notdo otherwise. Hegel saw clearly that God can be known to us only in and throughmanifestation. We can certainly make no predication as to how Godexists, in himself, as men say, and apart from our knowledge. He existsfor our knowledge only as manifest in nature and man. Man is for Hegelpart of nature and Jesus is the highest point which the nature of God asmanifest in man has reached. In this sense Hegel sometimes even callsnature the Son of God, and mankind and Jesus are thought of as parts ofthis one manifestation of God. If the Scripture asserts, as it seemed tothe framers of the creeds to do, that God manifested himself from beforeall worlds in and to a self-conscious personality like his own, Hegelwould answer: But the Scripture is no third source of knowledge, besidesnature and man. Scripture is only the record of God's revelation ofhimself in and to men. If these men framed their profoundest thought inthis way, that is only because they lived in an age when men had alltheir thoughts of this sort in a form which we can historically trace. For Platonists and Neoplatonists, such as the makers of the creeds--andsome portions of the Scripture show this influence, as well--the divine, the ideal, was always thought of as eternal. It always existed as purearchetype before it ever existed as historic fact. The rabbins had aspeculation to the same effect. The divine which exists must havepre-existed. Jesus as Son of God could not be thought of by the ancientworld in any terms but these. The divine was static, changelesslyperfect. For the modern man the divinest of all things is the mystery ofgrowth. The perfect man is not at the beginning, but far down theimmeasurable series of approaches to perfection. The perfection of othermen is the work of still other ages, in which this extraordinary andinexplicable moral magnitude which Jesus is, has had its influence, andconferred upon them power to aid them in the fulfilment of God's intentfor themselves, which is like that intent for himself which Jesus hasfulfilled. Surely enough has been said to show that what we have here is only theabsorption of even the profoundest religious meanings into the vortex ofan all-dissolving metaphysical system. The most obvious meaning of thephrase 'Son of God, ' its moral and spiritual, its real religiousmeaning, is dwelt on, here in Hegel, as little as Hegel claimed that theNicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. Nothing marks more clearly thedistance we have travelled since Hegel than does the general recognitionthat his attempted solution does not even lie in the right direction. Itis an attempt within the same area as that of the Nicene Council and thecreeds, namely, the metaphysical area. What is at stake is not thepre-existence or the two natures. Hegel was right in what he saidconcerning these. The pre-existence cannot be thought of except asideal. The two natures we assert for every man, only not in such amanner as to destroy unity in the personality. The heart of the dogma isnot in these. It is the oneness of God and man, a moral and spiritualoneness, oneness in conduct and consciousness, the presence andrealisation of God, who is spirit, in a real man, the divineness ofJesus, in a sense which sees no meaning any longer in the old debate asbetween his divinity and his deity. In the light of the new theory of the universe which we have reviewed, it flashes upon us that both defenders and assailants of the doctrine ofthe incarnation, in the age-long debate, have proceeded from theassumption that God and man are opposites. Men contended for thedivineness of Jesus in terms which by definition shut out his truehumanity. They asserted the identity of a real man, a true historicpersonage, with an abstract notion of God which had actually been framedby the denial of all human qualities. Their opponents with a likehelplessness merely reversed the situation. To admit the deity of Jesuswould have been for them, in all candour and clear-sightedness, absolutely impossible, because the admission would have shut out histrue humanity. On the old definitions we cannot wonder that the strugglewas a bitter one. Each party was on its own terms right. If God is bydefinition other than man, and man the opposite of God, then it is notsurprising that the attempt to say that Jesus of Nazareth was both, remained mysticism to the one and seemed folly to the other. Now, within the area of the philosophy which begins with Kant this oldantinomy has been resolved. An actual circle of clear relations joinsthe points of the old hopeless triangle. Men are men because of Godindwelling in them, working through them. The phrase 'mere man' is seento be a mere phrase. To say that the Nazarene, in some way notgenetically to be explained, but which is hidden within the recesses ofhis own personality, shows forth in incomparable fulness that relationof God and man which is the ideal for us all, seems only to be sayingover again what Jesus said when he proclaimed: 'I and My Father areone. ' That Jesus actualised, not absolutely in the sense that he stoodout of relation to history, but still perfectly within his relation tohistory, that which in us and for us is potential, the sonship ofGod--that seems a very simple and intelligible assertion. It certainlymakes a large part of the debate of ages seem remote from us. It bringshome to us that we live in a new world. Interesting and fruitful is Hegel's expansion of the idea of redemptionbeyond that of the individual to that of the whole humanity, and inevery aspect of its life. In my relation to the world are given myduties. The renunciation of outward duty makes the inward life barren. The principle which is to transform the world wears an aspect verydifferent from that of stoicism, of asceticism or even of theindividualism which has sought soul-salvation. In the midst ofunworthiness and helplessness there springs up the consciousness ofreconciliation. Man, with all his imperfections, becomes aware that heis the object of the loving purpose of God. Still this redemption of aman is something which is to be worked out, in the individual life andon the stage of universal history. The first step beyond the individuallife is that of the Church. It is from within this community ofbelievers that men, in the rule, receive the impulse to the good. Thecommunity is, in its idea, a society in which the conquest of evil isalready being achieved, where the individual is spared much bitterconflict and loneliness. Nevertheless, so long as this unity of the lifeof man with God is realised in the Church alone there remains a falseand harmful opposition between the Church and the world. Religion isfaced by a hostile power to which its principles have no application. The world is denounced as unholy. With this stigma cast upon it, it maybe unholy. Yet the retribution falls also upon the Church, in that itbecomes artificial, clerical, pharisaical. The end is never that whathave been called the standards of the Church shall prevail. The end isthat the Church shall be the shrine and centre of an influence by virtueof which the standard of truth and goodness which naturally belongs toany relation of life shall prevail. The distinction between religion andsecular life must be abandoned. Nothing is less sacred than a Church seton its own aggrandisement. The relations of family and of the State, ofbusiness and social life, are to be restored to the divineness whichbelongs to them, or rather, the divineness which is inalienable fromthem is to be recognised. In the laws and customs of a true State, Christianity first penetrates with its principles the real world. Onesees how large a portion of these thoughts have been taken up into theprogramme of modern social movements. They are the basis of what mencall a social theology. A book like Fremantle's _World as the Subject ofRedemption_ is their thorough-going exposition in the English tongue. We have no cause to pursue the philosophical movement beyond this point. Its exponents are not without interest. Especially is this true ofSchopenhauer. But the deposit from their work is for our particularpurpose not great. The wonderful impulse had spent itself. These fourbrilliant men stand together, almost as much isolated from thegeneration which followed them as from that which went before. Thehistorian of Christian thought in the nineteenth century cannotoverestimate the significance of their personal interest in religion. CHAPTER III THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION The outstanding trait of Kant's reflection upon religion is its supremeinterest in morals and conduct. Metaphysician that he was, Kant saw theevil which intellectualism had done to religion. Religion was aprofoundly real thing to him in his own life. Religion is a life. It isa system of thought only because life is a whole. It is a system ofthought only in the way of deposit from a vivid and vigorous life. A mannormally reflects on the conditions and aims of what he does. Religionis conduct. Ends in character are supreme. Religions and the manyinterpretations of Christianity have been good or bad, according as theyministered to character. So strong was this ethical trait in Kant thatit dwarfed all else. He was not himself a man of great breadth orrichness of feeling. He was not a man of imagination. His religion wasaustere, not to say arid. Hegel was before all things anintellectualist. Speculation was the breath of life to him. He hadmetaphysical genius. He tended to transform in this direction everythingwhich he touched. Religion is thought. He criticised the rationalistmovement from the height of vantage which idealism had reached. But aspure intellectualist he would put most rationalists to shame. We owe tothis temperament his zeal for an interpretation of the universe 'all inone piece. ' Its highest quality would be its abstract truth. Hisunderstanding of religion had the glory and the limitations which attendthis view. SCHLEIERMACHER Between Kant and Hegel came another, Schleiermacher. He too was no meanphilosopher. But he was essentially a theologian, the founder of moderntheology. He served in the same faculty with Hegel and was overshadowedby him. His influence upon religious thought was less immediate. It hasbeen more permanent. It was characteristically upon the side which Kantand Hegel had neglected. That was the side of feeling. His theology hasbeen called the theology of feeling. He defined religion as feeling. Christianity is for him a specific feeling. Because he made so much offeeling, his name has been made a theological household word by many whoappropriated little else of all he had to teach. His warmth and passion, his enthusiasm for Christ, the central place of Christ in his system, made him loved by many who, had they understood him better, might haveloved him less. For his real greatness lay, not in the fact that hepossessed these qualities alone, but that he possessed them in asingularly beautiful combination with other qualities. The emphasis is, however, correct. He was the prophet of feeling, as Kant had been ofethical religion and Hegel of the intellectuality of faith. The entireProtestant theology of the nineteenth century has felt his influence. The English-speaking race is almost as much his debtor as is his own. The French Huguenots of the revival felt him to be one of themselves. Even to Amiel and Scherer he was a kindred spirit. It is a true remark of Dilthey that in unusual degree an understandingof the man's personality and career is necessary to the appreciation ofhis thought. Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher was born in 1768 inBreslau, the son of a chaplain in the Reformed Church. He neverconnected himself officially with the Lutheran Church. We have alludedto an episode broadly characteristic of his youth. He was tutor in thehouse of one of the landed nobility of Prussia, curate in a countryparish, preacher at the Charité in Berlin in 1795, professorextraordinarius at Halle in 1804, preacher at the Church of theDreifaltigkeit in Berlin in 1807, professor of theology and organiser ofthat faculty in the newly-founded University of Berlin in 1810. He nevergave up his position as pastor and preacher, maintaining this activityalong with his unusual labours as teacher, executive and author. He diedin 1834. In his earlier years in Berlin he belonged to the circle ofbrilliant men and women who made Berlin famous in those years. It was afashionable society composed of persons more or less of therationalistic school. Not a few of them, like the Schlegels, were deeplytinged with romanticism. There were also among them Jews of the house ofthe elder Mendelssohn. Morally it was a society not altogether abovereproach. Its opposition to religion was a by-word. An affection of thesusceptible youth for a woman unhappily married brought him to the vergeof despair. It was an affection which his passing pride as romanticistwould have made him think it prudish to discard, while the deep, underlying elements of his nature made it inconceivable that he shouldindulge. Only in later years did he heal his wound in a happy marriedlife. The episode was typical of the experience he was passing through. Heunderstood the public with which his first book dealt. That book bearsthe striking title, _Reden über die Religion, an die Gebildeten unterihren Verächtern_ (translated, Oman, Oxford, 1893). His publicunderstood him. He could reach them as perhaps no other man could do. Ifhe had ever concealed what religion was to him, he now paid the price. If they had made light of him, he now made war on them. This meed theycould hardly withhold from him, that he understood most other thingsquite as well as they, and religion much better than they. Therhetorical form is a fiction. The addresses were never delivered. Theirtension and straining after effect is palpable. They are a cry of painon the part of one who sees that assailed which is sacred to him, oftriumph as he feels himself able to repel the assault, of broodingpersuasiveness lest any should fail to be won for his truth. He concedeseverything. It is part of his art to go further than his detractors. Heis so well versed in his subject that he can do that with consummatemastery, where they are clumsy or dilettante. It is but a pale ghost ofreligion that he has left. But he has attained his purpose. He hasvindicated the place of religion in the life of culture. He has shownthe relation of religion to every great thing in civilisation, itsaffinity with art, its common quality with poetry, its identity with allprofound activities of the soul. These all are religion, though theirvotaries know it not. These are reverence for the highest, dependence onthe highest, self-surrender to the highest. No great man ever lived, nogreat work was ever done, save in an attitude toward the universe, whichis identical with that of the religious man toward God. The universe isGod. God is the universe. That religionists have obscured this simpletruth and denied this grand relation is true, and nothing to the point. The cultivated should be ashamed not to know this. Then, with a sympathywith institutional religion and a knowledge of history in which he stoodalmost alone, he retracts much that he has yielded, he rebuilds muchthat he has thrown down, proclaims much which they must now concede. Thebook was published in 1799. Twenty years later he said sadly that if hewere rewriting it, its shafts would be directed against some verydifferent persons, against glib and smug people who boasted the form ofgodliness, conventional, even fashionable religionists and lovelessecclesiastics. Vast and various influences in the Germany of the firsttwo decades of the century had wrought for the revival of religion. Ofthose influences, not the least had been that of Schleiermacher's book. Among the greatest had been Schleiermacher himself. The religion of feeling, as advocated in the _Reden_, had left much onthe ethical side to be desired. This defect the author sought to remedyin his _Monologen_, published in 1800. The programme of theologicalstudies for the new University of Berlin, _Kurze Darstellung desTheologischen Studiums_, 1811, shows his theological system already inlarge part matured. His _Der christliche Glaube_, published in 1821, revised three years before his death in 1834, is his monumental work. His _Ethik_, his lectures upon many subjects, numerous volumes ofsermons, all published after his death, witness his versatility. Hissermons have the rare note which one finds in Robertson and Brooks. All of the immediacy of religion, its independence of rational argument, of historical tradition or institutional forms, which was characteristicof Schleiermacher to his latest day, is felt in the _Reden_. By it hethrilled the hearts of men as they have rarely been thrilled. It is notforms and traditions which create religion. It is religion which createsthese. They cannot exist without it. It may exist without them, thoughnot so well or so effectively. Religion is the sense of God. That sensewe have, though many call it by another name. It would be more true tosay that that sense has us. It is inescapable. All who have it are thereligious. Those who hold to dogmas, rites, institutions in such a wayas to obscure and overlay this sense of God, those who hold those assubstitute for that sense, are the nearest to being irreligious. Anyform, the most _outré_, bizarre and unconventional, is good, so onlythat it helps a man to God. All forms are evil, the most accredited themost evil, if they come between a man and God. The pantheism of thethought of God in all of Schleiermacher's early work is undeniable. Henever wholly put it aside. The personality of God seemed to him alimitation. Language is here only symbolical, a mere expression from anenvironment which we know, flung out into the depths of that we cannotsee. If the language of personal relations helps men in living withtheir truth--well and good. It hinders also. For himself he felt that ithindered more than helped. His definition of religion as the feeling ofdependence upon God, is cited as evidence of the effect upon him of hiscontention against the personalness of God. Religion is also, it isalleged, the sentiment of fellowship with God. Fellowship impliespersons. But to no man was the fellowship with the soul of his own souland of all the universe more real than was that fellowship toSchleiermacher. This was the more true in his maturer years, the yearsof the magnificent rounding out of his thought. God was to him indeednot 'a man in the next street. ' What he says about the problem of thepersonalness of God is true. We see, perhaps, more clearly than did hethat the debate is largely about words. Similarly, we may say thatSchleiermacher's passing denial of the immortality of the soul wasdirected, in the first instance, against the crass, unsocial and immoralview which has disfigured much of the teaching of religion. Hiscontention was directed toward that losing of oneself in God throughideals and service now, which in more modern phrase we call the entranceupon the immortal life here, the being in eternity now. For a soul sodisposed, for a life thus inspired, death is but an episode. For himselfhe rejoices to declare it one to the issue of which he is indifferent. If he may thus live with God now, he cares little whether or not heshall live by and by. In his _Monologues_ Schleiermacher first sets forth his ethical thought. As it is religion that a man feels himself dependent upon God, so is itthe beginning of morality that a man feels his dependence upon hisfellows and their dependence on him. Slaves of their own time andcircumstance, men live out their lives in superficiality and isolation. They are a prey to their own selfishness. They never come into thoserelations with their fellows in which the moral ideal can be realised. Man in his isolation from his fellows is nothing and accomplishesnothing. The interests of the whole humanity are his private interests. His own happiness and welfare are not possible to be secured savethrough his co-operation with others, his work and service for others. The happiness and welfare of others not merely react upon his own. Theyare in a large sense identical with his own. This oneness of a man withall men is the basis of morality, just as the oneness of man with God isthe basis of religion. In both cases the oneness exists whether or notwe know it. The contradictions and miseries into which immoral orunmoral conduct plunges us, are the witness of the fact that thisinviolable unity of a man with humanity is operative, even if he ignoresit. Often it is his ignoring of this relation which brings him throughmisery to consciousness of it. Man as moral being is but anindividuation of humanity, just as, again, as religious being he is butan individuation of God. The goal of the moral life is the absorption ofself, the elimination of self, which is at the same time therealisation of self, through the life and service for others. The goalof religion is the elimination of self, the swallowing up of self, inthe service of God. In truth, the unity of man with man is at bottomonly another form of his unity with God, and the service of humanity isthe identical service of God. Other so-called services of God are ameans to this, or else an illusion. This parallel of religion and moralsis to be set over against other passages, easily to be cited, in whichSchleiermacher speaks of passivity and contemplation as the means of therealisation of the unity of man and God, as if the elimination of selfmeant a sort of Nirvana. Schleiermacher was a pantheist and mystic. Nophilosopher save Kant ever influenced him half so much as did Spinoza. There is something almost oriental in his mood at times. An occasionalfragment of description of religion might pass as a better delineationof Buddhism than of Christianity. This universality of his mind isinteresting. These elements have not been unattractive to some portionsof his following. One wearied with the Philistinism of the modernpopular urgency upon practicality turns to Schleiermacher, as indeedsometimes to Spinoza, and says, here is a man who at least knows whatreligion is. Yet nothing is further from the truth than to say thatSchleiermacher had no sense for the meaning of religion in the outwardlife and present world. In the _Reden_ Schleiermacher had contended that religion is a conditionof devout feeling, specifically the feeling of dependence upon God. Thisview dominates his treatment of Christianity. It gives him his point ofdeparture. A Christian is possessed of the devout feeling of dependenceupon God through Jesus Christ or, as again he phrases it, of dependenceupon Christ. Christianity is a positive religion in the sense that ithas direct relation to certain facts in the history of the race, most ofall to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But it does not consist in anypositive propositions whatsoever. These have arisen in the process ofinterpretation of the faith. The substance of the faith is theexperience of renewal in Christ, of redemption through Christ. Thisinward experience is neither produced by pure thought nor dependent uponit. Like all other experience it is simply an object to be described andreckoned with. Orthodox dogmatists had held that the content of theChristian faith is a doctrine given in revelation. Schleiermacher heldthat it is a consciousness inspired primarily by the personality ofJesus. It must be connected with the other data and acta of ourconsciousness under the general laws of the operation of the mind. Against rationalism and much so-called liberal Christianity, Schleiermacher contended that Christianity is not a new set ofpropositions periodically brought up to date and proclaimed as if thesealone were true. New propositions can have only the same relativity oftruth which belonged to the old ones in their day. They may standbetween men and religion as seriously as the others had done. The condition of the heart, which is religion, the experience throughJesus which is Christianity, is primarily an individual matter. But itis not solely such. It is a common experience also. Schleiermacherrecognises the common element in the Christian consciousness, theelement which shows itself in the Christian experience of all ages, ofdifferent races and of countless numbers of men. By this recognition ofthe Christian Church in its deep and spiritual sense, Schleiermacherhopes to escape the vagaries and eccentricities, and again thenarrowness and bigotries of pure individualism. No liberal theologianuntil Schleiermacher had had any similar sense of the meaning of theChristian Church, and of the privilege and duty of Christian thought tocontribute to the welfare of that body of men believing in God andfollowing Christ which is meant by the Church. This is in markedcontrast with the individualism of Kant. Of course, Schleiermacher wouldnever have recognised as the Church that part of humanity which is heldtogether by adherence to particular dogmas, since, for him, Christianityis not dogma. Still less could he recognise as the Church that part ofmankind which is held together by a common tradition of worship, or by agiven theory of organisation, since these also are historical andincidental. He meant by the Church that part of humanity, in all placesand at all times, which has been held together by the common possessionof the Christian consciousness and the Christian experience. The outlineof this experience, the content of this consciousness, can never be sodefined as to make it legislatively operative. If it were so defined weshould have dogma and not Christianity. Nevertheless, it may bepractically potent. The degree in which a given man may justly identifyhis own consciousness and experience with that of the Christian world isproblematical. In Schleiermacher's own case, the identification of someof his contentions as, for example, the thought that God is not personalwith the great Christian consciousness of the past, is more thanproblematical. To this Schleiermacher would reply that if thesecontentions were true, they would become the possession of spiritualChristendom with the lapse of time. Advance always originated with oneor a few. If, however, in the end, a given portion found no place in theconsciousness of generation truly evidencing their Christian life, thatposition would be adjudged an idiosyncrasy, a negligible quantity. Thisview of Schleiermacher's as to the Church is suggestive. It is theundertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time. It issomewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marksof the churches, as these have been inherited even in Protestantism fromthe Catholic age. In a very real sense Jesus occupied the central place inSchleiermacher's system. The centralness of Jesus Christ he himself wasnever weary of emphasising. It became in the next generation a favoritephrase of some who followed Schleiermacher's pure and bounteous spiritafar off. Too much of a mystic to assert that it is through Jesus alonethat we know God, he yet accords to Jesus an absolutely unique place inrevelation. It is through the character and personality of Jesus thatthe change in the character of man, which is redemption, is marshalledand sustained. Redemption is a man's being brought out of the conditionin which all higher self consciousness was dimmed and enfeebled, intoone in which this higher consciousness is vivid and strong and the powerof self-determination toward the good has been restored. Salvation isthus moral and spiritual, present as well as future. It is possible inthe future only because actual in the present. It is the reconstructionof a man's nature and life by the action of the spirit of God, conjointly with that of man's own free spirit. It is intelligible in Schleiermacher's context that Jesus should bespoken of as the sole redeemer of men, their only hope, and that theChristian's dependence upon him should be described as absolute. As amatter of fact, however, the idea of dependence upon Christ alone hasbeen often, indeed, one may say generally, associated with a conceptionof salvation widely different from that of Schleiermacher. It has beenoftenest associated with the notion of something purely external, forensic, even magical. It is connected, even down to our own time, withreliance upon the blood of Christ, almost as if this were externallyapplied. It has postulated a propitiatory sacrifice, a vicariousatonement, a completed transaction, something which was laid up for alland waiting to be availed of by some. Now every external, forensic, magical notion of salvation, as something purchased for us, imputed tous, conferred upon us, would have been utterly impossible toSchleiermacher. It is within the soul of man that redemption takesplace. Conferment from the side of God and Christ, or from God throughChrist, can be nothing more, as also it can be nothing less, than theimparting of wisdom and grace and spiritual power from the personalityof Jesus, which a man then freely takes up within himself and givesforth as from himself. The Christian consciousness contains, along withthe sense of dependence upon Jesus, the sense of moral alliance andspiritual sympathy with him, of a free relation of the will of man tothe will of God as revealed in Jesus. The will of man is set upon thereproduction within himself, so far as possible, of the consciousness, experience and character of Jesus. The sin from which man is to be delivered is described by Schleiermacherthus: It is the dominance of the lower nature in us, of thesense-consciousness. It is the determination of our course of life bythe senses. This preponderance of the senses over the consciousness ofGod is the secret of unhappiness, of the feeling of defeat and misery inmen, of the need of salvation. One has to read Schleiermacher's phrase, 'the senses' here, as we read Paul's phrase, 'the flesh. ' On the otherhand, the preponderance of the consciousness of God, the willingobedience to it in every act of life, becomes to us the secret ofstrength and of blessedness in life. This is the special experience ofthe Christian. It is the effect of the impulse and influence of Christ. We receive this impulse in a manner wholly consistent with the laws ofour psychological and moral being. We carry forward this impulse withvarying fortunes and by free will. It comes to us, however, from withoutand from above, through one who was indeed true man, but who is also, ina manner not further explicable, to be identified with the moral idealof humanity. This identification of Jesus with the moral ideal iscomplete and unquestioning with Schleiermacher. It is visible in theinterchangeable use of the titles Jesus and Christ. Our savingconsciousness of God could proceed from the person of Jesus only if thatconsciousness were actually present in Jesus in an absolute measure. Ideal and person in him perfectly coincide. As typical and ideal man, according to Schleiermacher, Jesus wasdistinguished from all other founders of religions. These come before usas men chosen from the number of their fellows, receiving, quite as muchfor themselves as for others, that which they received from God. It isnowhere implied that Jesus himself was in need of redemption, but ratherthat he alone possessed from earliest years the fulness of redemptivepower. He was distinguished from other men by his absolute moralperfection. This excluded not merely actual sin, but all possibility ofsin and, accordingly, all real moral struggle. This perfection wascharacterised also by his freedom from error. He never originated anerroneous notion nor adopted one from others as a conviction of his own. In this respect his person was a moral miracle in the midst of thecommon life of our humanity, of an order to be explained only by a newspiritually creative act of God. On the other hand, Schleiermacher sayssquarely that the absence of the natural paternal participation in theorigin of the physical life of Jesus, according to the account in thefirst and third Gospels, would add nothing to the moral miracle if itcould be proved and detract nothing if it should be taken away. Singularis this ability on the part of Schleiermacher to believe in the moralmiracle, not upon its own terms, of which we shall speak later, but uponterms upon which the outward and physical miracle, commonly so-called, had become, we need not say incredible, but unnecessary toSchleiermacher himself. Singular is this whole part of Schleiermacher'sconstruction, with its lapse into abstraction of the familiar sort, ofwhich, in general, the working of his mind had been so free. For surelywhat we here have is abstraction. It is an undissolved fragment ofmetaphysical theology. It is impossible of combination with thehistorical. It is wholly unnecessary for the religious view of salvationwhich Schleiermacher had distinctly taken. It is surprising how slow menhave been to learn that the absolute cannot be historic nor the historicabsolute. Surely the claim that Jesus was free from error in intellectualconception is unnecessary, from the point of view of the savinginfluence upon character which Schleiermacher had asserted. It is incontradiction with the view of revelation to which Schleiermacher hadalready advanced. It is to be accounted for only from the point of viewof the mistaken assumption that the divine, even in manifestation, mustbe perfect, in the sense of that which is static and not of that whichis dynamic. The assertion is not sustained from the Gospel itself. Itreduces many aspects of the life of Jesus to mere semblance. That alsowhich is claimed in regard to the abstract impossibility of sin upon thepart of Jesus is in hopeless contradiction with that whichSchleiermacher had said as to the normal and actual development ofJesus, in moral as also in all other ways. Such development isimpossible without struggle. Struggle is not real when failure isimpossible. So far as we know, it is in struggle only that character ismade. Even as to the actual commission of sin on Jesus' part, theassertion of the abstract necessity of his sinlessness, for the work ofmoral redemption, goes beyond anything which we know. The question ofthe sinlessness of Jesus is not an _a priori_ question. To say that hewas by conception free from sin is to beg the question. We thus form aconception and then read the Gospels to find evidence to sustain it. Tosay that he did, though tempted in all points like as we are, yet soconduct himself in the mystery of life as to remain unstained, is indeedto allege that he achieved that which, so far us we know, is withoutparallel in the history of the race. But it is to leave him true man, and so the moral redeemer of men who would be true. To say that, if hewere true man, he must have sinned, is again to beg the question. Let usrepeat that the question is one of evidence. To say that he was, thoughtrue man, so far as we have any evidence in fact, free from sin, is onlyto say that his humanity was uniquely penetrated by the spirit of Godfor the purposes of the life which he had to live. That heart-brokenrecollection of his own sin which one hears in _The Scarlet Letter_, giving power to the preacher who would reach men in their sins, has notthe remotest parallel in any reminiscence of Jesus which we possess. There is every evidence of the purity of Jesus' consciousness. There isno evidence of the consciousness of sin. There is a passage in the_Discourses_, in which Schleiermacher himself declared that theidentification of the fundamental idea of religion with the historicalfact in which that religion had its rise, was a mistake. Surely it isexactly this mistake which Schleiermacher has here made. It will be evident from all that has been said that to Schleiermacherthe Scripture was not the foundation of faith. As such it was almostuniversally regarded in his time. The New Testament, he declared, isitself but a product of the Christian consciousness. It is a record ofthe Christian experience of the men of the earlier time. To us it is ameans of grace because it is the vivid and original register of thatexperience. The Scriptures can be regarded as the work of the HolySpirit only in so far as this was this common spirit of the earlyChurch. This spirit has borne witness to Christ in these writings notessentially otherwise than in later writings, only more at first hand, more under the impression of intercourse with Jesus. Least of all may webase the authority of Scripture upon a theory of inspiration such asthat generally current in Schleiermacher's time. It is the personalityof Jesus which is the inspiration of the New Testament. Christian faith, including the faith in the Scriptures, can rest only upon the totalimpression of the character of Jesus. In the same manner Schleiermacher speaks of miracles. These cannot beregarded in the conventional manner as supports of religion, for thesimplest of all reasons. They presuppose religion and faith and must beunderstood by means of those. The accounts of external miraclescontained in the Gospels are matters for unhesitating criticism. TheChristian finds, for moral reasons and because of the response of hisown heart, the highest revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Extraordinaryevents may be expected in Jesus' career. Yet these can be calledmiracles only relatively, as containing something extraordinary forcontemporary knowledge. They may remain to us events whollyinexplicable, illustrating a law higher than any which we yet know. Therewith they are not taken out of the realm of the orderly phenomenaof nature. In other words, the notion of the miraculous is purelysubjective. What is a miracle for one age may be no miracle in the viewof the next. Whatever the deeds of Jesus may have been, howeverinexplicable all ages may find them, we can but regard them as merelynatural consequences of the personality of Jesus, unique because he wasunique. 'In the interests of religion the necessity can never arise ofregarding an event as taken out of its connection with nature, inconsequence of its dependence upon God. ' It is not possible within the compass of this book to do more than dealwith typical and representative persons. Schleiermacher wasepoch-making. He gathered in himself the creative impulses of thepreceding period. The characteristic theological tendencies of the twosucceeding generations may be traced back to him. Many men worked inseriousness upon the theological problem. No one of them marks an eraagain until we come to Ritschl. The theologians of the interval betweenSchleiermacher and Ritschl have been divided into three groups. Thefirst group is of distinctly philosophical tendency. The influence ofHegel was felt upon them all. To this group belong Schweitzer, Biedermann, Lipsius, and Pfleiderer. The influence of Hegel was greatestupon Biedermann, least upon Lipsius. An estimate of the influence ofSchleiermacher would reverse that order. Especially did Lipsius seek tolay at the foundation of his work that exact psychological study of thephenomena of religion which Schleiermacher had declared requisite. It ispossible that Lipsius will more nearly come to his own when theenthusiasm for Ritschl has waned. The second group of Schleiermacher'sfollowers took the direction opposite to that which we have named. Theywere the confessional theologians. Hoffmann shows himself learned, acuteand full of power. One does not see, however, why his method should notprove anything which any confession ever claimed. He sets out fromSchleiermacher's declaration concerning the content of the Christianconsciousness. In Hoffmann's own devout consciousness there had beenresponse, since his childhood, to every item which the creed alleged. Therefore these items must have objective truth. One is reminded of anEnglish parallel in Newman's _Grammar of Assent_. Yet another group, that of the so-called mediating theologians, contains some well-knownnames. Here belong Nitzsch, Rothe, Müller, Dorner. The name hadoriginally described the effort to find, in the Union, common groundbetween Lutherans and Reformed. In the fact that it made the creeds oflittle importance and fell back on Schleiermacher's emphasis uponfeeling, the movement came to have the character also of an attempt tofind a middle way between confessionalists and rationalists. Itsrepresentatives had often the kind of breadth of sympathy which goeswith lack of insight, rather than that breadth of sympathy which is dueto the possession of insight. Yet Rothe rises to real distinction, especially in his forecast of the social interpretation of religion. With the men of this group arose a speculation concerning the person ofChrist which for a time had some currency. It was called the theory ofthe kenosis. Jesus is spoken of in a famous passage of the letter to thePhilippians; as having emptied himself of divine qualities that he mightbe found in fashion as a man. In this speculation the divine attributeswere divided into two classes. Of the one class it was held Christ hademptied himself in becoming flesh, or at least he had them in abeyance. He had them, but did not use them. What we have here is but a despairingeffort to be just to Jesus' humanity and yet to assert his deity in theancient metaphysical terms. It is but saying yes and no in the samebreath. Biedermann said sadly of the speculation that it represented thekenosis, not of the divine nature, but of the human understanding. RITSCHL AND THE RITSCHLIANS If any man in the department of theology in the latter half of thenineteenth century attained a position such as to entitle him to becompared with Schleiermacher, it was Ritschl. He was long the mostconspicuous figure in any chair of dogmatic theology in Germany. Heestablished a school of theological thinkers in a sense in whichSchleiermacher never desired to gain a following. He exertedecclesiastical influence of a kind which Schleiermacher never sought. Hewas involved in controversy in a degree to which the life ofSchleiermacher presents no parallel. He was not a preacher, he was nophilosopher. He was not a man of Schleiermacher's breadth of interest. His intellectual history presents more than one breach within itself, asthat of Schleiermacher presented none, despite the wide arc which hetraversed. Of Ritschl, as of Schleiermacher, it may be said that heexerted a great influence over many who have only in part agreed withhim. Albrecht Ritschl was born in 1822 in Berlin, the son of a bishop in theLutheran Church. He was educated at Bonn and at Tübingen. He establishedhimself at Bonn, where, in 1853, he became professor extraordinarius andin 1860 ordinaries. In 1864 he was called to Göttingen. In 1874 hebecame consistorialrath in the new Prussian establishment for theHanoverian Church. He died in 1888. These are the simple outward factsof a somewhat stormy professional career. There was pietistic influencein Ritschl's ancestry, as also in Schleiermacher's. Ritschl had, however, reacted violently against it. His attitude was that ofrepudiation of everything mystical. He had strong aversion to the typeof piety which rested its assurance solely upon inward experience. Thisaversion is one root of the historic positivism which makes him, at thelast, assert the worthlessness of all supposed revelations outside ofthe Bible and of all supposed Christian experience apart from theinfluence of the historical Christ. He began his career under theinfluence of Hegel. He came to the position in which he felt that thesole hope for theology was in the elimination from it of allmetaphysical elements. He felt that none of his predecessors had carriedout Schleiermacher's dictum, that religion is not thought, but religiousthought only one of the functions of religion. Yet, of course, he wasnot able to discuss fundamental theological questions withoutphilosophical basis, particularly an explicit theory of knowledge. Histheory of knowledge he had derived eclectically and somewhateccentrically, from Lotze and Kant. To this day not all, either of hisfriends or foes, are quite certain what it was. It is open to doubtwhether Ritschl really arrived at his theory of cognition and then madeit one of the bases of his theology. It is conceivable that he made histheology and then propounded his theory of cognition in its defence. Ina word, the basis of distinction between religious and scientificknowledge is not to be sought in its object. It is to be found in thesphere of the subject, in the difference of attitude of the subjecttoward the object. Religion is concerned with what he calls_Werthurtheile_, judgments of value, considerations of our relation tothe world, which are of moment solely in accordance with their value inawakening feelings of pleasure or of pain. The thought of God, forexample, must be treated solely as a judgment of value. It is aconception which is of worth for the attainment of good, for ourspiritual peace and victory over the world. What God is in himself wecannot know, an existential Judgment we cannot form without going overto the metaphysicians. What God is to us we can know simply as religiousmen and solely upon the basis of religious experience. God is holy love. That is a religious value-judgment. But what sort of a being God must bein order that we may assign to him these attributes, we cannot saywithout leaving the basis of experience. This is pragmatism indeed. Itopens up boundless possibilities of subjectivism in a man who wasapparently only too matter-of-fact. There was a time in his career when Ritschl was popular with bothconservatives and liberals. There were long years in which he wasbitterly denounced by both. Yet there was something in the man and inhis teaching which went beyond all the antagonisms of the schools. Therecan be no doubt that it was the intention of Ritschl to build histheology solely upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. The joy and confidencewith which this theology could be preached, Ritschl awakened in hispupils in a degree which had not been equalled by any theologian sinceSchleiermacher himself. Numbers who, in the time of philosophical andscientific uncertainty, had lost their courage, regained it in contactwith his confident and deeply religious spirit. A wholesome nature, eminently objective in temper, concentrated with all his force upon histask, of rare dialectical gifts, he had a great sense of humour andoccasionally also the faculty of bitterly sarcastic speech. His veryfigure radiated the delight of conflict as he walked the Göttingen wall. A devoted pupil, writing immediately after Ritschl's death, usedconcerning Schleiermacher a phrase which we may transfer to Ritschlhimself. 'One wonders whether such a theology ever existed as aconnected whole, except in the mind of its originator. Neither by thoseabout him, nor by those after him, has it been reproduced in itsentirety or free from glaring contradictions. ' It was not free fromcontradictions in Ritschl's own mind. His pupils divided his inheritanceamong them. Each appropriated that which accorded with his own way oflooking at things and viewed the remainder as something which might beleft out of the account. It is long since one could properly speak of aRitschlian school. It will be long until we shall cease to reckon with aRitschlian influence. He did yeoman service in breaking down the highLutheran confessionalism which had been the order of the day. In hisrecognition of the excesses of the Tübingen school all would now agree. In his feeling against mere sentimentalities of piety many sympathise. In his emphasis upon the ethical and practical, in his urgency upon theactual problem of a man's vocation in the world, he meets in strikingmanner the temper of our age. In his emphasis upon the social factor inreligion, he represents a popular phase of thought. With all of this, itis strange to find a man of so much learning who had so little sympathywith the comparative study of religions, who was such a dogmatist onbehalf of his own inadequate notion of revelation, the logical effect ofwhose teaching concerning the Church would be the revival of aninstitutionalism and externalism such as Protestantism has hardly known. Since Schleiermacher the German theologians had made the problem of theperson of Christ the centre of discussion. In the same period theproblem of the person of Christ had been the central point of debate inAmerica. Here, as there, all the other points arranged themselves aboutthis one. The new movement which went out from Ritschl took as itscentre the work of Christ in redemption. This is obvious from the verytitle of Ritschl's great book, _Die Christliche Lehre von derRechtfertigung und Versöhnung_. Of this work the first edition of thethird and significant volume was published in 1874. Before that time theformal treatises on theology had followed a traditional order of topics. It had been assumed as self-evident that one should speak of a personbefore one talked of his work. It did not occur to the theologians thatin the case of the divine person, at all events, we can securely saythat we know something as to his work. Much concerning his person mustremain a mystery to us, exactly because he is divine. Our safest course, therefore, would be to infer the unknown qualities of his person fromthe known traits of his work. Certainly this would be true as to thework of God in nature. This was not the way, however, in which the mindsof theologians worked. The habit of dealing with conceptions as if theywere facts had too deep hold upon them. So long as men believed inrevelation as giving them, not primarily God and the transcendentalworld itself, but information about God and the transcendental, theynaturally held that they knew as much of the persons of God and Christas of their works. Schleiermacher had opened men's eyes to the fact that the great work ofChrist in redemption is an inward one, an ethical and spiritual work, the transformation of character. He had said, not merely that thetransformation of man's character follows upon the work of redemption. It is the work of redemption. The primary witness to the work of Christis, therefore, in the facts of consciousness and history. These arecapable of empirical scrutiny. They demand psychological investigation. When thus investigated they yield our primary material for any assertionwe may make concerning God. Above all, it is the nature of Jesus, aslearned on the evidence of his work in the hearts of men, which is ourgreat revelation and source of inference concerning the nature of God. Instead of saying in the famous phrase, that the Christians think ofChrist as God, we say that we are able to think of God, as a religiousmagnitude, in no other terms than in those of his manifestation andredemptive activity in Jesus. None since Kant, except extreme confessionalists, and those indiminishing degree, have held that the great effect of the work ofChrist was upon the mind and attitude of God. Less and less have menthought of justification as forensic and judicial, a declaring sinnersrighteous in the eye of the divine law, the attribution of Christ'srighteousness to men, so far at least as to relieve these last ofpenalty. This was the Anselmic scheme. Indeed, it had been Tertullian's. Less and less have men thought of reconciliation as that of an angry Godto men, more and more as of alienated men with God. The phrases of theorthodoxy of the seventeenth century, Lutheran as well as Calvinistic, survive. More and more new meaning, not always consistent, is injectedinto them. No one would deny that the loftiest moral enthusiasm, thenoblest sense of duty, animated the hearts of many who thought in theterms of Calvinism. The delineation of God as unreconciled, of the workand sufferings of Christ as a substitution, of salvation as aconferment, caused gratitude, tender devotion, heroic allegiance insome. It worked revulsion in others. It was protested against mostradically by Kant, as indeed it had been condemned by many before him. For Kant the renovation of character was the essential salvation. Yetthe development of his doctrine was deficient through theindividualistic form which it took. Salvation was essentially a changein the individual mind, brought about through the practical reason, andhaving its ideal in Jesus. Yet for Kant our salvation had no closerrelation to the historic revelation in Jesus. Furthermore, so much wasthis change an individual issue that we may say that the actualisationof redemption would be the same for a given man, were he the only man inthe universe. To hold fast to the ethical idealism of Kant, and toovercome its subjectivity and individualism, was the problem. The reference to experience which underlies all that was said above wasparticularly congruous with the mood of an age grown weary ofHegelianism and much impressed with the value of the empirical method inall the sciences. Another great contention of our age is for therecognition of the value of what is social. Its emphasis is upon thatwhich binds men together. Salvation is not normally achieved except inthe life of a man among and for his fellows. It is by doing one's dutythat one becomes good. One is saved, not in order to become a citizen ofheaven by and by, but in order to be an active citizen of a kingdom ofreal human goodness here and now. In reality no man is being saved, except as he does actively and devotedly belong to that kingdom. Theindividual would hardly be in God's eyes worth the saving, except inorder that he might be the instrumentality of the realisation of thekingdom. Those are ideas which it is possible to exaggerate in statementor, at least, to set forth in all the isolation of their quality ashalf-truths. But it is hardly possible to exaggerate their significanceas a reversal of the immemorial one-sidedness, inadequacy, andartificiality both of the official statement and of the popularapprehension of Christianity. These ideas appeal to men in our time. They are popular because men think them already. Men are pleased, evenwhen somewhat incredulous, to learn that Christianity will bear thissocial interpretation. Most Christians are in our time overwhelminglyconvinced that in this direction lies the interpretation whichChristianity must bear, if it is to do the work and meet the needs ofthe age. Its consonance with some of the truths underlying socialism mayaccount, in a measure, for the influence which the Ritschlian theologyhas had. As was indicated, Ritschl's epoch-making book bears the title, _TheChristian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation_. The book mightbe described in the language of the schools as a monograph upon onegreat dogma of the Christian faith, around which, as the author treatsit, all the other doctrines are arranged. The familiar topic ofjustification, of which Luther made so much, was thus given again thecentral place. What the book really offered was something quitedifferent from this. It was a complete system of theology, but itdiffered from the traditional systems of theology. These had followedhelplessly a logical scheme which begins with God as he is in himselfand apart from any knowledge which we have of him. They then slowlyproceeded to man and sin and redemption, one empirical object and twoconcrete experiences which we may know something about. Ritschl reversedthe process. He aimed to begin with certain facts of life. Such factsare sin and the consciousness of forgiveness, awareness of restorationto the will and power of goodness, the gift of love and of a spiritwhich can feel itself victorious even in the midst of ills in life, confidence that this life is not all. These phrases, taken together, would describe the consciousness of salvation. This consciousness of sinand salvation is a fact in individual men. It has evidently been a factin the life of masses of men for many generations. The facts have thus apsychology and a history from which reflection on the phenomenon offaith must take its departure. There is no reason why, upon this basis, and until it departs from the scientific methods which are given withthe nature of its object, theology should not be as truly a science asis any other known among men. This science starts with man, who in the object of many other sciences. It confines itself to man in this one aspect of his relation to morallife and to the transcendent meaning of the universe. It notes the factthat men, when awakened, usually have the sense of not being in harmonywith the life of the universe or on the way to realisation of itsmeaning. It notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness ofprogressive restoration to that harmony. It inquires as to the processof that restoration. It asks as to the power of it. It discovers thatthat power is a personal one. Men have believed that this power has beenexerted over them, either in personal contact, or across the ages andthrough generations of believers, by one Jesus, whom they call Saviour. They have believed that it was God who through Jesus saved them. Jesus'consciousness thus became to them a revelation of God. The thought leadson to the consideration of that which a saved man does, or ought to do, in the life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution inwhich this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum total of humaninstitutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inwardforce. There is room even for a clause in which to compress the littlethat we know of anything beyond this life. We have written inunconventional words. There is no one place, either in Ritschl's work orelsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands together in onecontext. This is unfortunate. Were this the case, even wayfaring menmight have understood somewhat better than they have what Ritschl wasaiming at. It is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme should haveleft so much to be desired. That this execution would prove difficultneeds hardly to be said. That it could never be the work of one man iscertainly true. To have had so great an insight is title enough to fame. Ritschl falls off from his endeavour as often as didSchleiermacher--more often and with less excuse. The might of the pastis great. The lumber which he meekly carries along with him issurprising, as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of thelumber which he recognised as such. The putting of new wine into oldbottles is so often reprobated by Ritschl that the reader is justlysurprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. The system is not'all of one piece'--distinctly not. There are places where the rent iscertainly made worse by the old cloth on the new garment. The work takenas a whole is so bewildering that one finds himself asking, 'What isRitschl's method?' If what is meant is not a question of detail, but ofthe total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the apprehensionwhich we strove to outline above, then Ritschl's courageous and completeinversion of the ancient method, his demand that we proceed from theknown to the unknown, is a contribution so great that all shortcomingsin the execution of it are insignificant. His first volume deals withthe history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with Anselm andAbelard. In it Ritschl's eminent qualities as historian come out. In italso his prejudices have their play. The second volume deals with theBiblical foundations for the doctrine. Ritschl was bred in the Tübingenschool. Yet here is much forced exegesis. Ritschl's positivistic view ofthe Scripture and of the whole question of revelation, was not congruouswith his well-learned biblical criticism. The third volume is theconstructive one. It is of immeasurably greater value than the othertwo. It is this third volume which has frequently been translated. In respect of his contention against metaphysics it is hardly necessarythat we should go into detail. With his empirical and psychologicalpoint of departure, given above, most men will find themselves in entiresympathy. The confusion of religion, which is an experience, with dogmawhich is reasoning about it, and the acceptance of statements inScripture which are metaphysical in nature, as if they were religioustruths--these two things have, in time past, prevented many earnestthinkers from following the true road. When it comes to the constructiveportion of his work, it is, of course, impossible for Ritschl to buildwithout the theoretical supports which philosophy gives, or to follow upcertain of the characteristic magnitudes of religion without followingthem into the realm of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to thatof religion, they belong. It would be unjust to Ritschl to suppose thatthese facts were hidden from him. As to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. In the longhistory of religious thought those who have revolted againstmetaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually takenrefuge in mysticism. Hither the prophet Augustine takes refuge when hewould flee the ecclesiastic Augustine, himself. The Brethren of the FreeSpirit, Tauler, à Kempis, Suso, the author of the _Theologia Germanica_, Molinos, Madame Gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. Ritschl had seenmuch of mysticism in pietist circles. He knew the history of themovement well. What impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthyminds have often claimed, as their revelation from God, an experiencewhich might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other source. Hedesired to cut off the possibility of what seemed to him often a tragicdelusion. The margin of any mystical movement stretches out towardmonstrosities and absurdities. For that matter, what prevents a Buddhistfrom declaring his thoughts and feelings to be Christianity? Indeed, Ritschl asks, why is not Buddhism as good as such Christianity? He is, therefore, suspicious of revelations which have nothing by which theycan be measured and checked. The claim of mystics that they came, in communion with God, to the pointwhere they have no need of Christ, seemed to him impious. There is noway of knowing that we are in fellowship with God, except by comparingwhat we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which wehistorically learn that the fellowship with God gave to Christ. This isthe sense and this the connexion in which Ritschl says that we cannotcome to God save in and through the historic Christ as he is given us inthe Gospels. The inner life, at least, which is there depicted for usis, in this outward and authoritative sense, our norm and guide. Large difficulties loom upon the horizon of this positivistic insistenceupon history. Can we know the inner life of Christ well enough to use itthus as test in every, or even in any case? Does not the use of such atest, or of any test in this external way, take us out of the realm ofthe religion of the spirit? Men once said that the Church was theirguide. Others said the Scripture was their guide. Now, in the sense ofthe outwardness of its authority, we repudiate even this. It ringsdevoutly if we say Christ is our guide. Yet, as Ritschl describes thisguidance, in the exigency of his contention against mysticism, have weanything different? What becomes of Confucianists and Shintoists, whohave never heard of the historic Christ? And all the while we have thesense of a query in our minds. Is it open to any man to repudiatemysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then leave us to discoverthat he does not mean mysticism as historians of every faith haveunderstood it, but only the margin of evil which is apparentlyinseparable from it? That margin of evil others see and deplore. Againstit other remedies have been suggested, as, for example, intelligence. Some would feel that in Ritschl's remedy the loss is greater than thegain. This historical character of revelation is so truly one of the fountainheads of the theology which takes its rise in Ritschl, that it deservesto be considered somewhat more at length. The Ritschlian movement hasengaged a generation of more or less notable thinkers in the periodsince Ritschl's death. These have dissented at many points fromRitschl's views, diverged from his path and marked out courses of theirown. We shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt thedelineation in terms, not exclusively of Ritschl, but of that which maywith some laxity be styled Ritschlianism. The value judgments ofreligion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, asthe Ritschlians understand it. Faith, however, does not invent its owncontents. Historical facts, composing the revelation, actually exist, quite independent of the use which the believer makes of them. No groupof thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the person of thehistoric Jesus. The historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, is the divinerevelation. That sums up this aspect of the Ritschlian position. Somenegative consequences of this position we have already noted. Let usturn to its positive significance. Herrmann is the one of the Ritschlians who has dealt with this matternot only with great clearness, but also with deep Christian feeling inhis _Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_, 1886, and notably in his address, _Der Begriff der Offenbarung_, 1887. If the motive of religion were anintellectual curiosity, a verbal communication would suffice. As it is apractical necessity, this must be met by actual impulse in life. Thatpassing out of the unhappiness of sin, into the peace and larger lifewhich is salvation, does indeed imply the movement of God's spirit onour hearts, in conversion and thereafter. This is essentially mediatedto us through the Scriptures, especially through those of the NewTestament, because the New Testament contains the record of thepersonality of Jesus. In that our personality is filled with the spiritwhich breathes in him, our salvation is achieved. The image of Jesuswhich we receive acts upon us as something indubitably real. Itvindicates itself as real, in that it takes hold upon our manhood. Ofcourse, this assumes that the Church has been right in accepting theGospels as historical. Herrmann candidly faces this question. Not everyword or deed, he says, which is recorded concerning Jesus, belongs tothis central and dynamic revelation of which we speak. We do not helpmen to see Jesus in a saving way if, on the strength of accounts in theNew Testament, we insist concerning Jesus that he was born of a virgin, that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead. We shouldnot put these things before men with the declaration that they mustassent to them. We must not try to persuade ourselves that that whichacted upon the disciples as indubitably real must of necessity actsimilarly upon us. We are to allow ourselves to be seized and upliftedby that which, in our position, touches us as indubitably real. This is, in the first place, the moral character of Jesus. It is his inner lifewhich, on the testimony of the disciples, meets us as something real andactive in the world, as truly now as then. What are some facts of thisinner life? The Jesus of the New Testament shows a firmness of religiousconviction, a clearness of moral judgment, a purity and force of will, such as are not found united in any other figure in history. We have theimage of a man who is conscious that he does not fall short of the idealfor which he offers himself. It is this consciousness which is yetunited in him with the most perfect humility. He lives out his life andfaces death in a confidence and independence which have never beenapproached. He has confidence that he can lift men to such a height thatthey also will partake with him in the highest good, through their fullsurrender to God and their life of love for their fellows. It is clear that Herrmann aims to bring to the front only those elementsin the life of Jesus which are likely to prove most effectual in meetingthe need and winning the faith of the men of our age. He would cast intothe background those elements which are likely to awaken doubt and tohinder the approach of men's souls to God. For Herrmann himself thevirgin birth has the significance that the spiritual life of Jesus didnot proceed from the sinful race. But Herrmann admits that a man couldhold even that without needing to allege that the physical life of Jesusdid not come into being in the ordinary way. The distinction between theinner and outward life of Jesus, and the declaration that belief in theformer alone is necessary, has the result of thus ridding us ofquestions which can scarcely fail to be present to the mind of everymodern man. Yet it would be unjust to imply that this is the purpose. Quite the contrary, the distinction is logical for this theology. Redemption is an affair of the inner life of a man. It is the force ofthe inner life of the Redeemer which avails for it. It is from thebelief that such an inner and spiritual life was once realised here onearth, that our own faith gathers strength, and gets guidance in theconflict for the salvation of our souls. The belief in the historicityof such an inner life is necessary. So Harnack also declares in his_Wesen des Christenthums_, 1900. It is noteworthy that in this connexionneither of these writers advances to a form of speculation concerningthe exalted Christ, which in recent years has had some currency. According to this doctrine, there is ascribed to the risen and ascendedJesus an existence with God which is thought of in terms different fromthose which we associate with the idea of immortality. In other words, this continued existence of Christ as God is a counterpart of thatexistence before the incarnation, which the doctrine of thepre-existence alleged. But surely this speculation can have no betterstanding than that of the pre-existence. Sin in the language of religion is defection from the law of God. It isthe transgression of the divine command. In what measure, therefore, thelife of man can be thought of as sinful, depends upon his knowledge ofthe will of God. In Scripture, as in the legends of the early history ofthe race, this knowledge stands in intimate connexion with the witnessto a primitive revelation. This thought has had a curious history. Theideas of mankind concerning God and his will have grown and changed asmuch as have any other ideas. The rudimentary idea of the good isprobably of social origin. It first emerges in the conflict of men onewith another. As the personalised ideal of conduct, the god then reactsupon conduct, as the conduct reacts upon the notion of the god. Onlyslowly has the ideal of the good been clarified. Only slowly have thegods been ethicised. 'An honest God is the noblest work of man. ' Themoralising and spiritualising of the idea of Jahve lies right upon theface of the Old Testament. The ascent of man on his ethical andspiritual side is as certain as is that on his physical side. Longstruggle upward through ignorance, weakness, sin, gradual elevating ofthe standard of what ought to he, growingly successful effort to conformto that standard--this is what the history of the race has seen. Athwart this lies the traditional dogma. The dogma took up into itself alegend of the childhood of the world. It elaborated that which inGenesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as asacred philosophy of history. It postulated an original revelation. Itaffirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. Tothe framers of the dogma, if sin is the transgression of God's will, then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. In the Scriptureswe have vague intimations concerning God's will, growingly clearerknowledge of that will, evolving through history to Jesus. In the dogmawe have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness inwhich the will of God was from the beginning perfectly known. In the Platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precedethe fact. Every step of progress is a defection from that idea. Thedogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. It aims togive us the point of departure by which we are to recognise the natureof sin. At the same moment it would describe the perfection of man atwhich God has willed that by age-long struggle he should arrive. Now, ifwe place this perfection at the beginning of human history, before allhuman self-determination, we divest it of ethical quality. Whatever elseit may be, it is not character. On the other hand, if we would make thisperfection really that of moral character, then we cannot place it atthe beginning of human history, but far down the course of the evolutionof the higher human traits, of the consciousness of sin and of thestruggle for redemption. It is not revelation from God, but naïveimagination, later giving place to adventurous speculation concerningthe origin of the universe, which we have in the doctrine of theprimeval perfection of man. We do not really make earnest with ourChristian claim that in Jesus we have our paramount revelation, until weadmit this. It is through Jesus, and not from Adam that we know sin. So we might go on to say that the dogma of inherited guilt is acontradiction in terms. Disadvantage may be inherited, weakness, proclivity to sin, but not guilt, not sin in the sense of that whichentails guilt. What entails guilt is action counter to the will of Godwhich we know. That is always the act of the individual man myself. Itcannot by any possibility be the act of another. It may be theconsequence of the sins of my ancestors that I do moral evil withoutknowing it to be such. Even my fellows view this as a mitigation, if notas an exculpation. The very same act, however, which up to this pointhas been only an occasion for pity, becomes sin and entails guilt, whenit passes through my own mind and will as a defection from a will of Godin which I believe, and as a righteousness which I refuse. The confusionof guilt and sin in order to the inclusion of all under the need ofsalvation, as in the Augustinian scheme, ended in bewilderment andstultification of the moral sense. It caused men to despair ofthemselves and gravely to misrepresent God. It is no wonder if in theage of rationalism this dogma was largely done away with. The religioussense of sin was declared to be an hallucination. Nothing is moreevident in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin. This alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and inadequacy ofthat theology. Kant's doctrine of radical evil testifies to his deepsense that the rationalists were wrong. He could see also theimpossibility of the ancient view. But he had no substitute. Hegel, muchas he prided himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as onlyrelative, good in the making. Schleiermacher made a beginning ofconstruing the thought of sin from the point of view of the Christianconsciousness. Ritschl was the first consistently to carry outSchleiermacher's idea, placing the Christian consciousness in the centreand claiming that the revelation of the righteousness of God and of theperfection of man is in Jesus. All men being sinners, there is a vastsolidarity, which he describes as the Kingdom of Evil and sets overagainst the Kingdom of God, yet not so that the freedom orresponsibility of man is impaired. God forgives all sin save that ofwilful resistance to the spirit of the good. That is, Ritschl regardsall sin, short of this last, as mainly ignorance and weakness. It isfrom Ritschl, and more particularly from Kaftan, that the phrases havebeen mainly taken which served as introduction to this paragraph. For the work of God through Christ, in the salvation of men from theguilt and power of sin, various terms have been used. Different aspectsof the work have been described by different names. Redemption, regeneration, justification, reconciliation and election orpredestination--these are the familiar words. This is the order in whichthe conceptions stand, if we take them as they occur in consciousness. Election then means nothing more than the ultimate reference to God ofthe mystery of an experience in which the believer already rejoices. Onthe other hand, in the dogma the order is reversed. Election must comefirst, since it is the decree of God upon which all depends. Redemptionand reconciliation have, in Christian doctrine, been traditionallyregarded as completed transactions, waiting indeed to be applied to theindividual or appropriated by him through faith, but of themselveswithout relation to faith. Reconciliation was long thought of as that ofan angry God to man. Especially was this last the characteristic view ofthe West, where juristic notions prevailed. Origen talked of a right ofthe devil over the soul of man until bought off by the sacrifice ofChrist. This is pure paganism, of course. The doctrine of Anselm marks agreat advance. It runs somewhat thus: The divine honour is offended inthe sin of man. Satisfaction corresponding to the greatness of the guiltmust be rendered. Man is under obligation to render this satisfaction;yet he is unable so to do. A sin against God is an infinite offence. Itdemands an infinite satisfaction. Man can render no satisfaction whichis not finite. The way out of this dilemma is the incarnation of thedivine Logos. For the god-man, as man, is entitled to bring thissatisfaction for men. On the other hand, as God he is able so to do. Inhis death this satisfaction is embodied. He gave his life freely. Godhaving received satisfaction through him demands nothing more from us. Abelard had, almost at the same time with Anselm, interpreted the deathof Christ in far different fashion. It was a revelation of the love ofGod which wins men to love in turn. This notion of Abelard was far toosubtle. The crass objective dogma of Anselm prevailed. The death ofChrist was a sacrifice. The purpose was the propitiation of an angryGod. The effect was that, on the side of God, a hindrance to man'ssalvation was removed. The doctrine accurately reflects the feudal ideasof the time which produced it. In Grotius was done away the notion ofprivate right, which lies at the basis of the theory of Anselm. That ofpublic duty took its place. A sovereign need not stand upon his offendedhonour, as in Anselm's thought. Still, he cannot, like a privatecitizen, freely forgive. He must maintain the dignity of his office, inorder not to demoralise the world. The sufferings of Christ did noteffect a necessary private satisfaction. They were an example whichsatisfied the moral order of the world. Apart from this change, theconception remains the same. As Kaftan argues, we can escape the dreadful externality andartificiality of this scheme, only as redemption and regeneration arebrought back to their primary place in consciousness. These are theinitial experiences in which we become aware of God's work throughChrist in us and for us. The reconciliation is of us. The redemption isfrom our sins. The regeneration is to a new moral life. Through theinfluence of Jesus, reconciled on our part to God and believing in Hisunchanging love to us, we are translated into God's kingdom and live forthe eternal in our present existence. Redemption is indeed the work ofGod through Christ, but it has intelligible parallel in the awakening ofthe life of the mind, or again of the spirit of self-sacrifice, throughthe personal influence of the wise and good. Salvation begins in such anawakening through the personal influence of the wisest and best. It istransformation of our personality through the personality of Jesus, bythe personal God of truth, of goodness and of love. All that which Godthrough Jesus has done for us is futile, save as we make theactualisation of our deliverance from sin our continuous and unceasingtask. When this connexion of thought is broken through, we transfer thewhole matter of salvation from the inner to the outer world and make ofit a transaction independent of the moral life of man. Justification and reconciliation also are primarily acts and gifts ofGod. Justification is a forensic act. The sense is not that injustification we are made just. We are, so to say, temporarily thusregarded, not that leniency may become the occasion of a new offence, but that in grateful love we may make it the starting point of a newlife. We must justify our justification. It is easy to see theobjections to such a course on the part of a civil judge. He mustconsider the rights of others. It was this which brought Grotius and therest, with the New England theologians down to Park, to feel thatforgiveness could not be quite free. If we acknowledge that thissymbolism of God as judge or sovereign is all symbolism, mere figure ofspeech, not fact at all, then that objection--and much else--falls away. If we assert that another figure of speech, that of God as Father, moreperfectly suggests the relation of God and man, then forgiveness may befree. Then justification and forgiveness are only two words for one andthe same idea. Then the nightmare of a God who would forgive and cannot, of a God who will forgive but may not justify until something furtherhappens, is all done away. Then the relation of the death of Jesus tothe forgiveness of our sins cannot be other than the relation of hislife to that forgiveness. Both the one and the other are a revelation ofthe forgiving love of God. We may say that in his death the wholemeaning of his life was gathered. We may say that his death was theconsummation of his life, that without it his life would not have beenwhat it is. This is, however, very far from being the ordinary statementof the relation of Jesus' death, either to his own life or to theforgiveness of our sins. The doctrinal tradition made much also of the deliverance frompunishment which follows after the forgiveness of sin. In fact, in manyforms of the dogma, it has been the escape from punishment which waschiefly had in mind. Along with the forensic notion of salvation welargely or wholly discard the notion of punishment. We retain only thesense that the consequence of continuing in sin is to become moresinful. God himself is powerless to prevent that. Punishment isimmanent, vital, necessary. The penalty is gradually taken away if thesin itself is taken away--not otherwise. It returns with the sin, itcontinues in the sin, it is inseparable from the sin. Punishment is nolonger the right word. Reward is not the true description of thatgrowing better which is the consequence of being good. Reward orpunishment as _quid pro quo_, as arbitrary assignments, as externalequivalents, do not so much as belong to the world of ideas in which wemove. For this view the idea that God laid upon Jesus penalties due tous, fades into thin air. Jesus could by no possibility have met thepunishment of sin, except he himself had been a sinner. Then he musthave met the punishment of his own sin and not that of others. Thatportion which one may gladly bear of the consequences of another's sinmay rightfully be called by almost any other name. It cannot be calledpunishment since punishment is immanent. Even eternal death is not ajudicial assignment for our obstinate sinfulness. Eternal death is theobstinate sinfulness, and the sinfulness the death. It must be evident that reconciliation can have, in this scheme, nomeaning save that man's being reconciled to God. Jesus reveals a God whohas no need to be reconciled to us. The alienation is not on the side ofGod. That, being alienated from God, man may imagine that God is hostileto him, is only the working of a familiar law of the human mind. Thefiction of an angry God is the most awful survival among us of primitivepaganism. That which Jesus by his revelation of God brought to pass wasa true 'at-one-ment, ' a causing of God and man to be at one again. Tothe word atonement, as currently pronounced, and as, until a halfcentury ago, almost universally apprehended, the notion of that which issacrificial attached. To the life and death of Jesus, as revelation ofGod and Saviour of men, we can no longer attach any sacrificial meaningwhatsoever. There is indeed the perfectly general sense in which sobeautiful a life and so heroic a death were, of course, a grandexemplification of self-sacrifice. Yet this is a sense so different fromthe other and in itself so obvious, that one hesitates to use the sameword in the immediate context with that other, lest it should appearthat the intention was to obscure rather than to make clear the meaning. For atonement in a sense different from that of reconciliation, we haveno significance whatever. Reconciliation and atonement describe one andthe same fact. In the dogma the words were as far as possible from beingsynonyms. They referred to two facts, the one of which was the means andessential prerequisite of the other. The vicarious sacrifice was theantecedent condition of the reconciling of God. In our thought it is nota reconciliation of God which is aimed at. No sacrifice is necessary. Nosacrifice such as that postulated is possible. Of the reconciliation ofman to God the only condition is the revelation of the love of God inthe life and death of Jesus and the obedient acceptance of thatrevelation on the part of men. CHAPTER IV THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT It has been said that in Christian times the relation of philosophy andreligion may be determined by the attitude of reason toward a singlematter, namely, the churchly doctrine of revelation. [4] There are threepossible relations of reason to this doctrine. First, it may be affirmedthat the content of religion and theology is matter communicated to manin extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which it isbeyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. We have then the twospheres arbitrarily separated. As regards their relation, theology is atfirst supreme. Reason is the handmaiden of faith. It is occupied inapplying the principles which it receives at the hands of theology. These are the so-called Ages of Faith. Notably was this the attitude ofthe Middle Age. But in the long run either authoritative revelation, thus conceived, must extinguish reason altogether, or else reason mustclaim the whole man. After all, it is in virtue of his having somereason that man is the subject of revelation. He is continually asked toexercise his reason upon certain parts of the revelation, even by thosewho maintain that he must do so only within limits. It is only becausethere in a certain reasonableness in the conceptions of revealedreligion that man has ever been able to make them his own or to find inthem meaning and edification. This external relation of reason torevelation cannot continue. Nor can the encroachments of reason be metby temporary distinctions such as that between the natural and thesupernatural. The antithesis to the natural is not the supernatural, butthe unnatural. The antithesis to reason is not faith, but irrationality. The antithesis to human truth is not the divine truth. It is falsehood. [Footnote 4: Seth Pringle-Pattison, _The Philosophical Radicals_, p. 216. ] When men have made this discovery, a revulsion carries their minds tothe second position of which we spoke. This is, namely, the position ofextreme denial. It is an attitude of negation toward revelation, such asprevailed in the barren and trivial rationalism of the end of theeighteenth century. The reason having been long repressed revengesitself, usurping everything. The explanation of the rise of positivereligion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis ofdeceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. The religionof those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any religion, is merelythe current morality. Their explanation of the religion of others isthat it is merely the current morality plus certain unprovableassumptions. Indeed, they may think it to be but the obstinate adherenceto these assumptions minus the current morality. It is impossible thatthis shallow view should prevail. To overcome it, however, there is needof a philosophy which shall give not less, but greater scope to reasonand at the same time an inward meaning to revelation. This brings us to the third possible position, to which the bestthinkers of the nineteenth century have advanced. So long as deisticviews of the relation of God to man and the world held the field, revelation meant something interjected _ab extra_ into the establishedorder of things. The popular theology which so abhorred deism was yetessentially deistic in its notion of God and of his separation from theworld. Men did not perceive that by thus separating God from the worldthey set up alongside of him a sphere and an activity to which hisrelations were transient and accidental. No wonder that other men, finding their satisfying activity within the sphere which was thusseparated from God, came to think of this absentee God as an appendageto the scheme of things. But if man himself be inexplicable, save assharing in the wider life of universal reason, if the process of historybe realised as but the working out of an inherent divine purpose, themanifestation of an indwelling divine force, then revelation denotes nolonger an interference with that evolution. It is a factor in thatevolution. It is but the normal relation of the immanent spirit of Godto the children of men at the crises of their fate. Then revelation isan experience of men precisely in the line and according to the methodof all their nobler experiences. It is itself reasonable and moral. Inspiration is the normal and continuous effect of the contact of theGod who is spirit with man who is spirit too. The relation is neverbroken. But there are times in which it has been more particularly felt. There have been personalities to whom in eminent degree this depth ofcommunion with God has been vouchsafed. To such persons and eras thereligious sense of mankind, by a true instinct, has tended to restrictthe words 'revelation' and 'inspiration. ' This restriction, however, signifies the separation of the grand experience from the ordinary, onlyin degree and not in kind. Such an experience was that of prophets andlaw-givers under the ancient covenant. Such an experience, inimmeasurably greater degree, was that of Jesus himself. Such aturning-point in the life of the race was the advent of Christianity. The world has not been wrong in calling the documents of theserevelations sacred books and in attributing to them divine authority. Ithas been largely wrong _in the manner in which it construed theirauthority_. It has been wholly wrong in imagining that the documentsthemselves were the revelation. They are merely the record _of apersonal communion with the transcendent_. It was Lessing who first castthese fertile ideas into the soil of modern thought. They were neverheartily taken up by Kant. One can think, however, with what enthusiasmmen recurred to them after their postulates had been verified and theidea of God, of man and of the world which they implied, had beenconfirmed by Fichte and Schelling. In the philosophical movement, the outline of which we have suggested, what one may call the _nidus_ of a new faith in Scripture had beenprepared. The quality had been forecast which the Scripture must befound to possess, if it were to retain its character as document ofrevelation. In those very same years the great movement of biblicalcriticism was gathering force which, in the course of the nineteenthcentury, was to prove by stringent literary and historical methods, whatqualities the documents which we know as Scripture do possess. It was toprove in the most objective fashion that the Scripture does not possessthose qualities which men had long assigned to it. It was to prove that, as a matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which thephilosophic forecast, above hinted, required. It was thus actually torestore the Bible to an age in which many reasonable men had lost theirfaith in it. It was to give a genetic reconstruction of the literatureand show the progress of the history which the Scripture enshrines. After a contest in which the very foundations of faith seemed to beremoved, it was to afford a basis for a belief in Scripture andrevelation as positive and secure as any which men ever enjoyed, withthe advantage that it is a foundation upon which the modern man can anddoes securely build. The synchronism of the two endeavours isremarkable. The convergence upon one point, of studies starting, so tosay, from opposite poles and having no apparent interest in common, isinstructive. It is an illustration of that which Comte said, that allthe great intellectual movements of a given time are but themanifestation of a common impulse, which pervades and possesses theminds of the men of that time. The attempt to rationalise the narrative of Scripture was no new one. Itgrew in intensity in the early years of the nineteenth century. Theconflict which was presently precipitated concerned primarily theGospels. It was natural that it should do so. These contain the mostimportant Scripture narrative, that of the life of Jesus. Strauss had ingood faith turned his attention to the Gospels, precisely because hefelt their central importance. His generation was to learn that theypresented also the greatest difficulties. The old rationalisticinterpretation had started from the assumption that what we have in thegospel narrative is fact. Yet, of course, for the rationalists, thefacts must be natural. They had the appearance of being supernaturalonly through the erroneous judgment of the narrators. It was for theinterpreter to reduce everything which is related to its simple, naturalcause. The water at Cana was certainly not turned into wine. It musthave been brought by Jesus as a present and opened thus in jest. Jesuswas, of course, begotten in the natural manner. A simple maiden musthave been deceived. The execution of this task of the rationalising ofthe narratives by one Dr. Paulus, was the _reductio ad absurdum_ of theclaim. The most spiritual of the narratives, the finest flower ofreligious poetry, was thus turned into the meanest and most trivialincident without any religious significance whatsoever. The obtusenessof the procedure was exceeded only by its vulgarity. STRAUSS On the other hand, as Pfleiderer has said, we must remember thedifficulty which beset the men of that age. Their general culture madeit difficult for them to accept the miraculous element in the gospelnarrative as it stood. Yet their theory of Scripture gave them no notionas to any other way in which the narratives might be understood. The menhad never asked themselves how the narratives arose. In the preface tohis _Leben Jesu_, Strauss said: 'Orthodox and rationalists alikeproceed from the false assumption that we have always in the Gospelstestimony, sometimes even that of eye-witnesses, to fact. They are, therefore, reduced to asking themselves what can have been the real andnatural fact which is here witnessed to in such extraordinary way. Wehave to realise, ' Strauss proceeds, 'that the narrators testifysometimes, not to outward facts, but to ideas, often most poetical andbeautiful ideas, constructions which even eye-witnesses hadunconsciously put upon facts, imagination concerning them, reflexionsupon them, reflexions and imaginings such as were natural to the timeand at the author's level of culture. What we have here is notfalsehood, not misrepresentation of the truth. It is a plastic, naïve, and, at the same time, often most profound apprehension of truth, withinthe area of religious feeling and poetic insight. It results innarrative, legendary, mythical in nature, illustrative often ofspiritual truth in a manner more perfect than any hard, prosaicstatement could achieve. ' Before Strauss men had appreciated thatparticular episodes, like the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection, might have some such explanation as this. No one had ever undertaken toapply this method consistently, from one end to the other of the gospelnarrative. What was of more significance, no one had clearly defined theconception of legend. Strauss was sure that in the application of thisnotion to certain portions of the Scripture no irreverence was shown. Nomoral taint was involved. Nothing which could detract from the reverencein which we hold the Scripture was implied. Rather, in his view, thehistory of Jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, ofits elements are viewed in this way, when they are seen as the productof the poetic spirit, working all unconsciously at a certain level ofculture and under the impulse of a great enthusiasm. There is no doubt that Strauss, who was at that time an earnestChristian, felt the relief from certain difficulties in the biography ofJesus which this theory affords. He put it forth in all sincerity asaffording to others like relief. He said that while rationalists andsupernaturalists alike, by their methods, sacrificed the divine contentof the story and clung only to its form, his hypothesis sacrificed thehistoricity of the narrative form, but kept the eternal and spiritualtruth. In his opinion, the lapse of a single generation was enough togive room for this process of the growth of the legendary elements whichhave found place in the written Gospels which we have. Ideas entertainedby primitive Christians relative to their lost Master, have been, allunwittingly, transformed into facts and woven into the tale of hiscareer. The legends of a people are in their basal elements never thework of a single individual. They are never intentionally produced. Theimperceptible growth of a joint creative work of this kind was possible, however, only on the supposition that oral tradition was, for a time, the means of transmission of the reminiscences of Jesus. Strauss'explanation of his theory has been given above, to some extent in hisown words. We may see how he understood himself. We may appreciate alsothe genuineness of the religious spirit of his work. At the same timethe thorough-going way in which he applied his principle, the relentlessmarch of his argument, the character of his results, must sometimes havebeen startling even to himself. They certainly startled others. Theeffect of his work was instantaneous and immense. It was not at all theeffect which he anticipated. The issue of the furious controversy whichbroke out was disastrous both to Strauss' professional career and to hiswhole temperament and character. David Friedrich Strauss was born in 1808 in Ludwigsburg in Württemberg. He studied in Tübingen and in Berlin. He became an instructor in thetheological faculty in Tübingen in 1832. He published his _Leben Jesu_in 1835. He was almost at once removed from his portion. In 1836 hewithdrew altogether from the professorial career. His answer to hiscritics, written in 1837, was in bitter tone. More conciliatory was hisbook, _Über Vergängliches und Bleibendes im Christenthum_, published in1839. Indeed there were some concessions in the third edition of his_Leben Jesu_ in 1838, but these were all repudiated in 1840. His _LebenJesu für das deutsche Volk_, published in 1866 was the effort topopularise that which he had done. It is, however, in point of method, superior to his earlier work, Comments were met with even greaterbitterness. Finally, not long before his death in 1874, he published_Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_, in which he definitely broke withChristianity altogether and went over to materialism and pessimism. Pfleiderer, who had personal acquaintance with Strauss and held him inregard, once wrote: 'Strauss' error did not lie in his regarding some ofthe gospel stories as legends, and some of the narratives of themiraculous as symbols of ideal truths. So far Strauss was right. Thecontribution which he made is one which we have all appropriated andbuilt upon. His error lay in his looking for those religious truthswhich are thus symbolised, outside of religion itself, in adventurousmetaphysical speculations. He did not seek them in the facts of thedevout heart and moral will, as these are illustrated in the actual lifeof Jesus. ' If Strauss, after the disintegration in criticism of certainelements in the biography of Jesus, had given us a positive picture ofJesus as the ideal of religious character and ethical force, his workwould indeed have been attacked. But it would have outlived the attackand conferred a very great benefit. It conferred a great benefit as itwas, although not the benefit which Strauss supposed. The benefit whichit really conferred was in its critical method, and not at all in itsresults. Of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which Strauss' _LebenJesu_ called forth, little is at this distance worth the mentioning. Ullmann, who was far more appreciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real weakness of Strauss' work. That weakness lay in thefailure to draw any distinction between the historical and the mythical. He threatened to dissolve the whole history into myth. He had no sensefor the ethical element in the personality and teaching of Jesus nor ofthe creative force which this must have exerted. Ullmann says withcogency that, according to Strauss, the Church created its Christvirtually out of pure imagination. But we are then left with the query:What created the Church? To this query Strauss has absolutely no answerto give. The answer is, says Ullmann, that the ethical personality ofJesus created the Church. This ethical personality is thus a supremehistoric fact and a sublime historic cause, to which we must endeavourto penetrate, if need be through the veil of legend. The oldrationalists had made themselves ridiculous by their effort to explaineverything in some natural way. Strauss and his followers often appearedfrivolous, since, according to them, there was little left to beexplained. If a portion of the narrative presented a difficulty, it wasdeclared mythical. What was needed was such a discrimination between thelegendary and historical elements in the Gospels as could be reachedonly by patient, painstaking study of the actual historical quality andstanding of the documents. No adequate study of this kind had ever beenundertaken. Strauss did not undertake it, nor even perceive that it wasto be undertaken. There had been many men of vast learning in textualand philological criticism. Here, however, a new sort of critique wasapplied to a problem which had but just now been revealed in all itslength and breadth. The establishing of the principles of thishistorical criticism--the so-called Higher Criticism--was the herculeantask of the generation following Strauss. To the development of thatscience another Tübingen professor, Baur, made permanent contribution. With Strauss himself, sadder than the ruin of his career, was thetragedy of the uprooting of his faith. This tragedy followed in manyplaces in the wake of the recognition of Strauss' fatal half-truth. BAUR Baur, Strauss' own teacher in Tübingen, afterward famous as biblicalcritic and church-historian, said of Strauss' book, that through it wasrevealed in startling fashion to that generation of scholars, how littlereal knowledge they had of the problem which the Gospels present. ToBaur it was clear that if advance was to be made beyond Strauss'negative results, the criticism of the gospel history must wait upon anadequate criticism of the documents which are our sources for thathistory. Strauss' failure had brought home to the minds of men the factthat there were certain preliminary studies which must needs be takenup. Meantime the other work must wait. As one surveys the literature ofthe next thirty years this fact stands out. Many apologetic lives ofJesus had to be written in reply to Strauss. But they are almostcompletely negligible. No constructive work was done in this field untilnearly a generation had passed. Since all history, said Baur, before it reaches us must pass through themedium of a narrator, our first question as to the gospel history isnot, what objective reality can be accorded to the narrative itself. There is a previous question. This concerns the relation of thenarrative to the narrator. It might be very difficult for us to make upour minds as to what it was that, in a given case, the witness saw. Wehave not material for such a judgment. We have probably much evidence, up and down his writings, as to what sort of man the witness was, inwhat manner he would be likely to see anything and with what personalequation he would relate that which he saw. Baur would seem to have beenthe first vigorously and consistently to apply this principle to thegospel narratives. Before we can penetrate deeply into the meaning of anauthor we must know, if we may, his purpose in writing. Every authorbelongs to the time in which he lives. The greater the importance of hissubject for the parties and struggles of his day, the safer is theassumption that both he and his work will bear the impress of thesestruggles. He will represent the interests of one or another of theparties. His work will have a tendency of some kind. This was one ofBaur's oft-used words--the tendency of a writer and of his work. We mustascertain that tendency. The explanation of many things both in the formand substance of a writing would be given could we but know that. Theletters of Paul, for example, are written in palpable advocacy ofopinions which were bitterly opposed by other apostles. The biographiesof Jesus suggest that they also represent, the one this tendency, theother that. We have no cause to assert that this trait of which we speakimplies conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate. The simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias in theworking of their own minds. It is obvious that until we have reckonedwith such elements as these, we cannot truly judge of that which theGospels say. To the elaboration of the principles of this historicalcriticism Baur gave the labour of his life. His biblical work alonewould have been epoch-making. Ferdinand Christian Baur was born in 1793 in Schmieden, near Stuttgart. He became a professor in Tübingen in 1826 and died there in 1860. He wasan ardent disciple of Hegel. His greatest work was surely in the fieldof the history of dogma. His works, _Die Christliche Lehre von derVereöhnung_, 1838, _Die Christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit undMenschwerdung Gottes_, 1841-1843, his _Lehrbuch der ChristlichenDogmengeschichte_, 1847, together constitute a contribution to whichHarnack's work in our own time alone furnishes a parallel. Baur hadbegun his thorough biblical studies before the publication of Strauss'book. The direction of those studies was more than ever confirmed by hisinsight of the shortcomings of Strauss' work. Very characteristicallyalso he had begun his investigations, not at the most difficult point, that of the Gospels, as Strauss had done, but at the easiest point, theEpistles of Paul. As early as 1831 he had published a tractate, _DieChristus-Partei in der Corinthischen Gemeinde_. In that book he haddelineated the bitter contest between Paul and the Judaising element inthe Apostolic Church which opposed Paul whithersoever he went. In 1835his disquisition, _Die sogenannten Pastoral-Briefe_, appeared. In theteachings of these letters he discovered the antithesis to the gnosticheresies of the second century. He thought also that the stage oforganisation of the Church which they imply, accorded better with thissupposition than with that of their apostolic authorship. The samegeneral theme is treated in a much larger way in Baur's _Paulus, derApostel Jesu Christi_, in 1845. Here the results of his study of thebook of the Acts are combined with those of his inquiries as to thePauline Epistles. In the history of the apostolic age men had beenaccustomed to see the evidence only of peace and harmony. Baur sought toshow that the period had been one of fierce struggle, between the narrowJudaic and legalistic form of faith in the Messiah and that conception, introduced by Paul, of a world-religion free from the law. Out of thisconflict, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, went forth theCatholic Church. The monuments of this struggle and witnesses of thisprocess of growth are the New Testament writings, most of which wereproduced in the second century. The only documents which we have whichwere written before A. D. 70, were the four great Epistles of Paul, thoseto the Galatians, to the Romans, and to the Corinthians, together withthe Apocalypse. Many details in Baur's view are now seen to have been overstated andothers false. Yet this was the first time that a true historical methodhad been applied to the New Testament literature as a whole. Baur'scontribution lay in the originality of his conception of Christianity, in his emphasis upon Paul, in his realisation of the magnitude of thestruggle which Paul inaugurated against Jewish prejudices in theprimitive Church. In his idea, the issue of that struggle was, on theone hand, the freeing of Christianity from Judaism and on the other, thedeveloping of Christian thought into a system of dogma and of thescattered Christian communities into an organised Church. The FourthGospel contains, according to Baur, a Christian gnosis parallel to thegnosis which was more and more repudiated by the Church as heresy. TheLogos, the divine principle of life and light, appears bodily in thephenomenal world in the person of Jesus. It enters into conflict withthe darkness and evil of the world. This speculation is but thinlyclothed in the form of a biography of Jesus. That an account completelydominated by speculative motives gives but slight guarantee ofhistorical truth, was for Baur self-evident. The author remains unknown, the age uncertain. The book, however, can hardly have appeared beforethe time of the Montanist movement, that is, toward the end of thesecond century. Scholars now rate far more highly than did Baur theelement of genuine Johannine tradition which may lie behind the FourthGospel and account for its name. They do not find traces of Montanism orof paschal controversies. But the main contention stands. The FourthGospel represents the beginning of elaborate reflexion upon the life andwork of Jesus. It is what it is because of the fusion of the ethical andspiritual content of the revelation in the personality of Jesus, withmetaphysical abstractions and philosophical interpretation. Baur was by no means so fortunate in the solution which he offered ofthe problem which the synoptic Gospels present. His opinions are of nointerest except as showing that he too worked diligently upon a questionwhich for a long time seemed only to grow in complexity and which hasbusied scholars practically from Baur's day to our own. His zeal herealso to discover dogmatic purposes led him astray. The _Tendenzkritik_had its own tendencies. The chief was to exaggeration and one-sidedness. Baur had the kind of ear which hears grass grow. There is muchoverstrained acumen. Many radically false conclusions are reached byprejudiced operation with an historical formula, which in the lastanalysis is that of Hegel. Everything is to be explained on theprinciple of antithesis. Again, the assumption of conscious purpose ineverything which men do or write is a grave exaggeration. It is often incontradiction of that wonderful unconsciousness with which men andinstitutions move to the fulfilment of a purpose for the good, thepurpose of God, into which their own life is grandly taken up. To makeeach phase of such a movement the contribution of some one man's schemeor endeavour is, as was once said, to make God act like a professor. * * * * * The method of this book is that it seeks to deal only with men who haveinaugurated movements, or marked some turning-point in their coursewhich has proved of more than usual significance. The compass of thebook demands such a limitation. But by this method whole chapters in thelife of learning are passed over, in which the substance of achievementhas been the carrying out of a plan of which we have been able to noteonly the inception. There is a sense in which the carrying out of a planis both more difficult and more worthy than the mere setting it inmotion. When one thinks of the labour and patience which have beenexpended, for example, upon the problem of the Gospels in the pastseventy years, those truths come home to us. When one reminds himself ofthe hypotheses which have been made but to be abandoned, which have yethad the value that they at least indicated the area within whichsolutions do not lie, --when one thinks of the wellnigh immeasurable toilby which we have been led to large results which now seem secure, one ismade to realise that the conditions of the advance of science are, fortheologians, not different from those which obtain for scholars who, inany other field, would establish truth and lead men. In a general way, however, it may be said that the course of opinion in these twogenerations, in reference to such questions as those of the dates andauthorship of the New Testament writings, has been one of rathernoteworthy retrogression from many of the Tübingen positions. Harnack's_Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur_, 1893, and his _Chronologieder altchristlichen Literatur_, 1897, present a marked contrast toBaur's scheme. THE CANON The minds of New Testament scholars in the last generation have beenengaged with a question which, in its full significance, was hardlypresent to the attention of Baur's school. It is the question of the NewTestament as a whole. It is the question as to the time and manner andmotives of the gathering together of the separate writings into a canonof Scripture which, despite the diversity of its elements, exerted itsinfluence as a unit and to which an authority was ascribed, which theparticular writings cannot originally have had. When and how did theChristians come to have a sacred book which they placed on an equalitywith the Old Testament, which last they had taken over from thesynagogue? How did they choose the writings which were to belong to thisnew collection? Why did they reject books which we know were read foredification in the early churches? Deeper even than the question of thegrowth of the collection is that of the growth of the apprehensionconcerning it. This apprehension of these twenty-seven differentwritings as constituting the sole document of Christian revelation, given by the Holy Spirit, the identical holy book of the ChristianChurch, gave to the book a significance altogether different from thatwhich its constituent elements must have had for men to whom they hadappeared as but the natural literary deposit of the religious movementof the apostolic age. This apprehension took possession of the mind ofthe Christian community. It was made the subject of deliverances bycouncils of the Church. How did this great transformation take place?Was it an isolated achievement, or was it part of a general movement?Did not this development of life in the Christian communities which gavethem a New Testament belong to an evolution which gave them also theso-called Apostles' Creed and a monarchical organisation of the Churchand the beginnings of a ritual of worship? It is clear that we have here a question of greatest moment. With therise of this idea of the canon, with the assigning to this body ofliterature the character of Scripture, we have the beginning of thelarger mastery which the New Testament has exerted over the minds andlife of men. Compared with this question, investigations as to theauthorship and as to the time, place and circumstance of the productionof particular books, came, for the time, to occupy a secondary rank. Asthey have emerged again, they wear a new aspect and are approached in adifferent spirit. The writings are revealed as belonging to a far largercontext, that of the whole body of the Christian literature of the age. It in no way follows from that which we have said that the body ofdocuments, which ultimately found themselves together in the NewTestament, have not a unity other than the outward one which was byconsensus of opinion or conciliar decree imposed upon them. They dorepresent, in the large and in varying degrees, an inward and spiritualunity. There was an inspiration of the main body of these writings, theoutward condition of which, at all events, was the nearness of theirwriters to Jesus or to his eye-witnesses, and the consequence of whichwas the unique relation which the more important of these documentshistorically bore to the formation of the Christian Church. There was aheaven which lay about the infancy of Christianity which only slowlyfaded into the common light of day. That heaven was the spirit of theMaster himself. The chief of these writings do centrally enshrine thefirst pure illumination of that spirit. But the churchmen who made thecanon and the Fathers who argued about it very often gave mistakenreasons for facts in respect of which they nevertheless were right. Theygave what they considered sound external reasons. They alleged apostolicauthorship. They should have been content with internal evidence andspiritual effectiveness. The apostles had come, in the mind of the earlyChurch, to occupy a place of unique distinction. Writings long enshrinedin affection for their potent influence, but whose origin had not beenmuch considered, were now assigned to apostles, that they might haveauthority and distinction. The theory of the canon came after the fact. The theory was often wrong. The canon had been, in the main and in itsinward principle, soundly constituted. Modern critics reversed theprocess. They began where the Church Fathers left off. They tore downfirst that which had been last built up. Modern criticism, too, passedthrough a period in which points like those of authorship and date ofGospels and Epistles seemed the only ones to be considered. The resultsbeing here often negative, complete disintegration of the canon seemedthreatened, through discovery of errors in the processes by which thecanon had been outwardly built up. Men realise now that that was amistake. Two things have been gained in this discussion. There is first therecognition that the canon is a growth. The holy book and the conceptionof its holiness, as well, were evolved. Christianity was not primarily abook-religion save in the sense that almost all Christians revered theOld Testament. Other writings than those which we esteem canonical werelong used in churches. Some of those afterward canonical were not usedin all the churches. In similar fashion we have learned that identicalstatements of faith were not current in the earliest churches. Nor wasthere one uniform system of organisation and government. There was atime concerning which we cannot accurately use the word Church. Therewere churches, very simple, worshipping communities. But the Church, asoutward magnitude, as triumphant organisation, grew. So there were manycreeds or, at least, informally accredited and current beginnings ofdoctrine. By and by there was a formally accepted creed. So there werefirst dearly loved memorials of Jesus and letters of apostolic men. Onlyby and by was there a New Testament. The first gain is the recognitionof this state of things. The second follows. It is the recognition that, despite a sense in which this literature is unique, there is also asense in which it is but a part of the whole body of early Christianliterature. From the exact and exhaustive study of the early Christianliterature as a whole, we are to expect a clearer understanding and ajuster estimate of the canonical part of it. It is not easy to say towhom we have to ascribe the discovery and elaboration of these truths. The historians of dogma have done much for this body of opinion. Thehistorians of Christian literature have perhaps done more. Students ofinstitutions and of the canon law have had their share. Baur had morethan an inkling of the true state of things. But by far the mostconspicuous teacher of our generation, in two at least of theseparticular fields, has been Harnack. In his lifelong labour upon thesources of Christian history, he had come upon this question of thecanon again and again. In his _Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte_, 1887-1890, 4te. Aufl. , 1910, the view of the canon, which was givenabove, is absolutely fundamental. In his _Geschichte der altchristlichenLiteratur bis Eusebius_, 1893, and _Chronologic der allchristlichenLiteratur_, 1897-1904, the evidence is offered in rich detail. It was inhis tractate, _Das Neue Testament um das Jahr_ 200, 1889, that hecontended for the later date against Zahn, who had urged that theoutline of the New Testament was established and the conception of it asScripture present, by the end of the first century. Harnack argues thatthe decision practically shaped itself between the time of JustinMartyr, c. A. D. 150, and that of Irenæus, c. A. D. 180. The studies ofthe last twenty years have more and more confirmed this view. LIFE OF JESUS We said that the work of Strauss revealed nothing so clearly as theignorance of his time concerning the documents of the early Christianmovement. The labours of Baur and of his followers were directed towardovercoming this difficulty. Suddenly the public interest was stirred, and the earlier excitement recalled by the publication of a new life ofJesus. The author was a Frenchman, Ernest Renan, at one time a candidatefor the priesthood in the Roman Church. He was a man of learning andliterary skill, who made his _Vie de Jésus_, which appeared in 1863, thestarting-point for a series of historical works under the general title, _Les Origines de Christianisme_. In the next year appeared Strauss'popular work, _Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk_. In 1864 was publishedalso Weizsäcker's contribution to the life of Christ, his_Untersuchungen über die evangelische Geschichte_. To the same yearbelonged Schenkel's _Charakterbild Jesu_. In the years from 1867-1872appeared Keim's _Geschichte Jesu von Nazara_. There is something verystriking in this recurrence to the topic. After ail, this was the pointfor the sake of which those laborious investigations had beenundertaken. This was and is the theme of undying religious interest, thecharacter and career of the Nazarene. Renan's philosophical studies hadbeen mainly in English, studies of Locke and Hume. But Herder also hadbeen his beloved guide. For his biblical and oriental studies he hadturned almost exclusively to the Germans. There is a deep religiousspirit in the work of the period of his conflict with the Church. Theenthusiasm for Christ sustained him in his struggle. Of the days beforehe withdrew from the Church he wrote: 'For two months I was a Protestantlike a professor in Halle or Tübingen. ' French was at that time alanguage much better known in the world at large, particularly theEnglish-speaking world, than was German. Renan's book had great art andcharm. It took a place almost at once as a bit of world-literature. Thenumber of editions in French and of translations into other languages isamazing. Beyond question, the critical position was made known throughRenan to multitudes who would never have been reached by the Germanworks which were really Renan's authorities. It is idle to say withPfleiderer that it is a pity that, having possessed so much learning, Renan had not possessed more. That is not quite the point. The book hasmuch breadth and solidity of learning. Yet Renan has scarcely thehistorian's quality. His work is a work of art. It has the halo ofromance. Imagination and poetical feeling make it in a measure what itis. Renan was born in 1823 in Treguier in Brittany. He set out for thepriesthood, but turned aside to the study of oriental languages andhistory. He made long sojourn in the East. He spoke of Palestine ashaving been to him a fifth Gospel. He became Professor of Hebrew in the_College de France_. He was suspended from his office in 1863, andpermitted to read again only in 1871. He had formally separated himselffrom the Roman Church in 1845. He was a member of the Academy. Hisdiction is unsurpassed. He died in 1894. In his own phrase, he sought tobring Jesus forth from the darkness of dogma into the midst of the lifeof his people. He paints him first as an idyllic national leader, thenas a struggling and erring hero, always aiming at the highest, butdoomed to tragic failure through the resistance offered by reality tohis ideal. He calls the traditional Christ an abstract being who neverwas alive. He would bring the marvellous human figure before our eyes. He heightens the brilliancy of his delineation by the deep shadows ofmistakes and indiscretion upon Jesus' part. In some respects an epic oran historical romance, without teaching us history in detail, may yetenable us by means of the artist's intuition to realise an event orperiod, or make presentation to ourselves of a personality, better thanthe scant records acknowledged by the strict historian could ever do. Our materials for a real biography of Jesus are inadequate. This was thefact which, by all these biographies of Jesus, was brought home to men'sminds. Keim's book, the most learned of those mentioned, is hardly morethan a vast collection of material for the history of Jesus' age, whichhas now been largely superseded by Schürer's _Geschichte des JudischenVolkes im Zeitalier Jesu Christi_, 2 Bde. , 1886-1890. There have beenagain, since the decade of the sixties, periods of approach to the greatproblem. Weiss and Beyschlag published at the end of the eighties livesof Jesus which, especially the former, are noteworthy in their treatmentof the critical material. They do not for a moment face the question ofthe person of Christ. The same remark might be made, almost withoutexception, as to those lives of Jesus which have appeared in numbers inEngland and America. The best books of recent years are Albert Reville's_Jesus de Nazareth_, 1897, and Oscar Holtzmann's _Leben Jesu_, 1901. Sogreat are the difficulties and in such disheartening fashion are theyurged from all sides, that one cannot withhold enthusiastic recognitionof the service which Holtzmann particularly has here rendered, in acalm, objective, and withal deeply devout handling of his theme. Meantime new questions have arisen, questions of the relation of Jesusto Messianism, like those touched upon by Wrede in his _Das MessiasGeheimniss in den Evangelien_, 1901, and questions as to theeschatological trait in Jesus' own teaching. Schweitzer's book, _VonReimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben Jesu-Forschung_, 1906, notmerely sets forth this deeply interesting chapter in the history of thethought of modern men, but has also serious interpretative value initself. For English readers Sanday's _Life of Christ in RecentResearch_, 1907, follows the descriptive aspect, at least, of the samepurpose with Schweitzer's book, covering, however, only the last twentyyears. It is characteristic that Ritschl, notwithstanding his emphasis upon thehistorical Jesus, asserted the impossibility of a biography of Jesus. The understanding of Jesus is through faith. For Wrede, on the otherhand, such a biography is impossible because of the nature of oursources. Not alone are they scant, but they are not biographical. Theyare apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything except thoseproblems which a biographer must raise. The last few years have evenconjured up the question whether Jesus ever lived. One may say with allsimplicity, that the question has, of course, as much rightfulness ashas any other question any man could raise. The somewhat extendeddiscussion has, however, done nothing to make evident how it couldarise, save in minds unfamiliar with the materials and unskilled inhistorical research. The conditions which beset us when we ask for abiography of Jesus that shall answer scientific requirement are notessentially different from those which meet us in the case of any otherpersonage equally remote in point of time, and equally woven about--ifany such have been--by the love and devotion of men. Bousset's littlebook, _Was Wissen wir von Jesus?_ 1904, convinces a quiet mind that weknow a good deal. Qualities in the personality of Jesus obviously workedin transcendent measure to call out devotion. No understanding ofhistory is adequate which has no place for the unfathomed inpersonality. Exactly because we ourselves share this devotion, we couldearnestly wish that the situation as to the biography of Jesus wereother than it is. THE OLD TESTAMENT We have spoken thus far as if the whole biblical-critical problem hadbeen that of the New Testament. In reality the same impulses which hadopened up that question to the minds of men had set them working uponthe problem of the Old Testament as well. We have seen how theChristians made for themselves a canon of the New Testament. By theforce of that conception of the canon, and through the belief that, almost in a literal sense, God was the author of the whole book, theobvious differences among the writings had been obscured. Men forgot theevolution through which the writings had passed. The same thing hadhappened for the Old Testament in the Jewish synagogues and for therabbis before the Christian movement. When the Christians took over theOld Testament they took it over in this sense. It was a closed bookwherein all appreciation of the long road which the religion of Israelhad traversed in its evolution had been lost. The relation of the oldcovenant to the new was obscured. The Old Testament became a Christianbook. Not merely were the Christian facts prophesied in the OldTestament, but its doctrines also were implied. Almost down to moderntimes texts have been drawn indifferently from either Testament to provedoctrine and sustain theology. Moses and Jesus, prophets and Paul, arecited to support an argument, without any sense of difference. What wehave said is hardly more true of Augustine or Anselm than of the classicPuritan divines. This was the state of things which the critics faced. The Old Testament critical movement is a parallel at all points of theone which we have described in reference to the New. Of course, elderscholars, even Spinoza, had raised the question as to the Mosaicauthorship of certain portions of the Pentateuch. Roman Catholicscholars in the seventeenth century, for whom the stringent theory ofinspiration had less significance than for Protestants, had set forthviews which showed an awakening to the real condition. Yet, at thebeginning of the nineteenth century, no one would have forecast arevolution in opinion which would recognise the legendary quality ofconsiderable portions of the Pentateuch and historical books, whichwould leave but little that is of undisputed Mosaic authorship, whichwould place the prophets before the law, which would concede the growthof the Jewish canon, which would perceive the relation of Judaism to thereligions of the other Semite peoples and would seek to establish thetrue relation of Judaism to Christianity. In the year 1835, the same year in which Strauss' _Leben Jesu_ saw thelight, Wilhelm Vatke published his _Religion des Alten Testaments_. Vatke was born in 1806, began to teach in Berlin in 1830, was professorextraordinarius there in 1837 and died in 1882, not yet holding a fullprofessorship. His book was obscurely written and scholastic. Publicattention was largely occupied by the conflict which Strauss' work hadcaused. Reuss in Strassburg was working on the same lines, but publishedthe main body of his results much later. The truth for which these scholars and others like them argued, workedits way slowly by force of its own merit. Perhaps it was due to thisfact that the development of Old Testament critical views was subject toa fluctuation less marked than that which characterised the case of theNew Testament. It is not necessary to describe the earlier stages of thediscussion in Vatke's own terms. To his honour be it said that the viewswhich he thus early enunciated were in no small degree identical withthose which were in masterful fashion substantiated in Holland by Kuenenabout 1870, in Germany by Wellhausen after 1878, and made known toEnglish readers by Robertson Smith In 1881. Budde has shown in his _Kanon des Alten Testaments_, 1900, that the OldTestament which lies before us finished and complete, assumed itspresent form only as the result of the growth of several centuries. Atthe beginning of this process of the canonisation stands that strangeevent, the sudden appearance of a holy book of the law under KingJosiah, in 621 B. C. The end of the process, through the decisions of thescribes, falls after the destruction of Jerusalem, possibly even in thesecond century. Lagarde seems to have proved that the rabbis of thesecond century succeeded in destroying all copies of the Scripture whichdiffered from the standard then set up. This state of things hasenormously increased a difficulty which was already great enough, thatof the detection and separation of the various elements of which many ofthe books in this ancient literature are made up. Certain books of theNew Testament also present the problem of the discrimination of elementsof different ages, which have been wrought together into the documentsas we now have them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage. The synoptic Gospels are, of course, the great example. The book of theActs presents a problem of the same kind. But the Pentateuch, or ratherHexateuch, the historical books in less degree, the writings even ofsome of the prophets, the codes which formulate the law and ritual, arecomposites which have been whole centuries in the making and remaking. There was no such thing as right of authorship in ancient Israel, littleof it in the ancient world at all. What was once written was popular orpriestly property. Histories were newly narrated, laws enlarged andrearranged, prophecies attributed to conspicuous persons. All this tookplace not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, but becausethere was no interest in historic truth and no conception of it. Therewriting of a nation's history from the point of view of its priesthoodbore, to the ancient Israelite, beyond question, an aspect altogetherdifferent from that which the same transaction would bear to us. Thedifficulty of the separation of these materials, great in any case, isenhanced by the fact alluded to, that we have none but internalevidence. The success of the achievement, and the unanimity attainedwith reference to the most significant questions, is one of the marvelsof the life of learning of our age. In the Jewish tradition it had been assumed that the Mosaic law waswritten down in the wilderness. Then, in the times of the Judges and ofthe Kings, the historical books took shape, with David's Psalms and thewise words of Solomon. At the end of the period of the Kings we have theprophetic literature and finally Ezra and Nehemiah. De Wette haddisputed this order, but Wellhausen in his _Prolegomena zur GeshichteIsraels_, 1883, may be said to have proved that this view was no longertenable. Men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of it, havebeen given to nomads in the wilderness? Do not all parts of it assume asettled state of society and an agricultural life? Do the historicalbooks from Judges to the II. Kings know anything about the law? Are thepractices of worship which they imply consonant with the suppositionthat the law was in force? How is it that that law appears both underJosiah and again under Ezra, as something new, thus far unknown, and yetas ruling the religious life of the people from that day forth? It seemsimpossible to escape the conclusion that only after Josiah'sreformation, more completely after the restoration under Ezra, did thereligion of the law exist. The centralisation of worship at one point, such as the book of Deuteronomy demands, seems to have been the thingachieved by the reform under Josiah. The establishment of the priestlyhierarchy such as the code ordains was the issue of the religiousrevolution wrought in Ezra's time. To put it differently, the so-called_Book of the Covenant, the nucleus of the law-giving_, itself impliesthe multiplicity of the places of worship. Deuteronomy demands thecentralisation of the worship as something which is yet to take place. The priestly Code declares that the limitation of worship to one placewas a fact already in the time of the journeys of Israel in thewilderness. It is assumed that the Hebrews in the time of Moses sharedthe almost universal worship of the stars. Moses may indeed haveconcluded a covenant between his people and Jahve, their God, hallowingthe judicial and moral life of the people, bringing these into relationto the divine will. Jahve was a holy God whose will was to guide thepeople coming up out of the degradation of nature-worship. That part ofthe people held to the old nature-worship is evident in the time ofElijah. The history of Israel is not that of defection from a purerevelation. It is the history of a gradual attainment of purerrevelation, of enlargement in the application of it, of discovery of newprinciples contained in it. It is the history also of the decline ofspiritual religion. The zeal of the prophets against the ceremonialworship shows that. Their protest reveals at that early date thebeginning of that antithesis which had become so sharp in Jesus' time. This determination of the relative positions of law and prophets was thefirst step in the reconstruction of the history, both of the nation ofIsrael and of its literature. At the beginning, as in every literature, are songs of war and victory, of praise and grief, hymns, even riddlesand phrases of magic. Everywhere poetry precedes prose. Then come mythsrelating to the worship and tales of the fathers and heroes. Elements ofboth these sorts are embedded in the simple chronicles which began nowto be written, primitive historical works, such as those of the Jahvistand Elohist, of the narrators of the deeds of the judges and of Davidand of Saul. Perhaps at this point belong the earliest attempts atfixing the tradition of family and clan rights, and of the regulation ofpersonal conduct, as in the Book of the Covenant. Then comes the greatoutburst of the prophetic spirit, the preaching of an age of greatreligious revival. Then follows the law, with its minute regulation ofall details of life upon which would depend the favour of the God whohad brought punishment upon the people in the exile. The prophecy runson into apocalyptic like that of the book of Daniel. The contact withthe outside world makes possible a phase of literature such as that towhich the books of Job and Ecclesiastes belong. The deepening of theinner life gave the world the lyric of the Psalms, some of which arecredibly assigned to a period so late as that of the Maccabees. In this which has been said of the literature we have the clue also forthe reconstruction of the nation's history. The naïve assumption in thewriting of all history had once been that one must begin with thebeginning. But to Wellhausen, Stade, Eduard Meyer and Kittel andCornill, it has been clear that the history of the earliest times is themost uncertain. It is the least adapted to furnish a secure point ofdeparture for historical inquiry. There exist for it usually nocontemporary authorities, or only such as are of problematical worth. This earliest period constitutes a problem, the solution of which, sofar as any solution is possible, can be hoped for only through approachfrom the side of ascertained facts. We must start from a period which ishistorically known. For the history of the Hebrews, this is the time ofthe first prophets of whom we have written records, or from whom we havewritten prophecies. We get from these, as also from the earliest directattempts at history writing, only that conception of Israel'spre-historic life which was entertained in prophetic circles in theeighth century. We learn the heroic legends in the interpretation whichthe prophets put upon them. We have still to seek to interpret them forourselves. We must begin in the middle and work both backward andforward. Such a view of the history of Israel affords every opportunityfor the connecting of the history and religion of Israel with those ofthe other Semite stocks. Some of these have in recent years beendiscovered to offer extraordinary parallels to that which the OldTestament relates. THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE When speaking of Baur's contribution to New Testament criticism, wealluded to his historical works. He was in a distinct sense a reformerof the method of the writing of church history. To us the notions of thehistorical and of that which is genetic are identical. Of course, naïvereligious chronicles do not meet that test. A glance at the historiesproduced by the age of rationalism will show that these also fall shortof it. The perception of the relativity of institutions like the papacyis here wholly wanting. Men and things are brought summarily to the barof the wisdom of the author's year of grace. They are approved orcondemned by this criterion. For Baur, all things had come to pass inthe process of the great life of the world. There must have been arationale of their becoming. It is for the historian with sympathy andimagination to find out what their inherent reason was. One other thingdistinguishes Baur as church historian from his predecessors. Herealised that before one can delineate one must investigate. One must goto the sources. One must estimate the value of those sources. One musthave ground in the sources for every judgment. Baur was himself a greatinvestigator. Yet the movement for the investigation of the sources ofbiblical and ecclesiastical history which his generation initialed hasgone on to such achievements that, in some respects, we can but view thefoundations of Baur's own work as precarious, the results at which hearrived as unwarranted. New documents have come to light since his day. Forgeries have been proved to be such, The whole state of learning as tothe literature of the Christian origins has been vastly changed. Thereis still another other thing to say concerning Baur. He was a Hegelian. He has the disposition always to interpret the movements of thereligious spirit in the sense of philosophical ideas. He frankly saysthat without speculation every historical investigation remains but aplay upon the surface of things. Baur's fault was that in his searchfor, or rather in his confident discovery of, the great connectingforces of history, the biographical element, the significance ofpersonality, threatened altogether to disappear. The force in thehistory was the absolute, the immanent divine will. The methodeverywhere was that of advance by contrasts and antagonisms. One gets animpression, for example, that the Nicene dogma became what it did by themight of the idea, that it could not by any possibility have had anyother issue. The foil to much of this in Baur's own age was represented in the workof Neander, a converted Jew, professor of church history in Berlin, whoexerted great influence upon a generation of English and Americanscholars. He was not an investigator of sources. He had no talent forthe task. He was a delineator, one of the last of the great painters ofhistory, if one may so describe the type. He had imagination, sympathy, a devout spirit. His great trait was his insight into personality. Hewrote history with the biographical interest. He almost resolves historyinto a series of biographical types. He has too little sense for theconnexion of things, for the laws of the evolution of the religiousspirit. The great dramatic elements tend to disappear behind theemotions of individuals. The old delineators were before the age ofinvestigation. Since that impulse became masterful, some historians havebeen completely absorbed in the effort to make contribution to thisinvestigation. Others, with a sense of the impossibility of masteringthe results of investigation in all fields, have lost the zeal for thewriting of church history on a great scale. They have contentedthemselves with producing monographs upon some particular subject, inwhich, at the most, they may hope to embody all that is known as to somespecific question. We spoke above of the new conception of the relation of the canonicalliterature of the New Testament to the extracanonical. We alluded to thenew sense of the continuity of the history of the apostolic churcheswith that of the Church of the succeeding age. The influence of theseideas has been to set all problems here involved in a new light. Until1886 it might have been said with truth that we had no good history ofthe apostolic age. In that year Weizsäcker's book, _Das ApostolischeZeitalter der Christlichen Kirche_, admirably filled the place. A partof the problem of the historian of the apostolic age is difficult forthe same reason which was given when we were speaking of the biographyof Jesus. Our materials are inadequate. First with the beginning of theactivities of Paul have we sources of the first rank. The relation ofstatements in the Pauline letters to data in the book of the Acts wasone of the earliest problems which the Tübingen school set itself. Anattempt to write the biography of Paul reminds us sharply of ourlimitations. We know almost nothing of Paul prior to his conversion, orsubsequent to the enigmatical breaking off of the account of thebeginnings of his work at Rome. Harnack's _Mission und Ausbreitung desChristenthums_, 1902 (translated, Moffatt, 1908), takes up the work ofPaul's successors in that cardinal activity. It offers, strange as itmay seem, the first discussion of the dissemination of Christianitywhich has dealt adequately with the sources. It gives also a picture ofthe world into which the Christian movement went. It emphasises anew thetruth which has for a generation past grown in men's apprehension thatthere is no possibility of understanding Christianity, except againstthe background of the religious life and thought of the world into whichit came. Christianity had vital relation, at every step of its progress, to the religious movements and impulses of the ancient world, especiallyin those centres of civilisation which Paul singled out for hisendeavour and which remained the centres of the Christian growth. It wasan age which has often been summarily described as corrupt. Despite itscorruption, or possibly because it was corrupt, it gives evidence, however, of religious stirring, of strong ethical reaction, of spiritualendeavour rarely paralleled. In the Roman Empire everything travelled. Religions travelled. In the centres of civilisation there was scarcely afaith of mankind which had not its votaries. It was an age of religious syncretism, of hospitality to diversereligious ideas, of the commingling of those ideas. These thingsfacilitated the progress of Christianity. They made certain that if theChristian movement had in it the divine vitality which men claimed, itwould one day conquer the world. Equally, they made certain that, as thevery condition of this conquest, Christianity would be itselftransformed. This it is which has happened in the evolution ofChristianity from its very earliest stages and in all phases of itslife. Of any given rite, opinion or institution, of the many which havepassed for almost two millenniums unchallenged under the Christian name, men about us are now asking: But how much of it is Christian? In whatmeasure have we to think of it as derived from some other source, andrepresenting the accommodation and assimilation of Christianity to itsenvironment in process of its work? What is Christianity? Notunnaturally the ancient Church looked with satisfaction upon the greatchange which passed over Christianity when Constantine suddenly madethat which had been the faith of a despised and persecuted sect, thereligion of the world. The Fathers can have thought thus only becausetheir minds rested upon that which was outward and spectacular. Notunnaturally the metamorphosis in the inward nature of Christianity whichhad taken place a century and a quarter earlier was hidden from theireyes. In truth, by that earlier and subtler transformation Christianityhad passed permanently beyond the stage in which it had beenpreponderantly a moral and spiritual enthusiasm, with its centre andauthority in the person of Jesus. It became a system and an institution, with a canon of New Testament Scripture, a monarchical organisation anda rule of faith which was formulated in the Apostles' Creed. To Baur the truth as to the conflict of Paul with the Judaisers hadmeant much. He thought, therefore, with reference to the rise ofpriesthood and ritual among the Christians, to the emphasis on Scripturein the fashion of the scribes, to the insistence upon rules and dogmasafter the manner of the Pharisees, that they were but the evidence ofthe decline and defeat of Paul's free spirit and of the resurgence ofJudaism in Christianity. He sought to explain the rise of the episcopalorganisation by the example of the synagogue. Ritschl in his _Entstehungder alt-catholischen Kirche_, 1857, had seen that Baur's theory couldnot be true. Christianity did not fall back into Judaism. It wentforward to embrace the Hellenic and Roman world. The institutions, dogmas, practices of that which, after A. D. 200, may with propriety becalled the Catholic Church, are the fruit of that embrace. There washere a falling off from primitive and spiritual Christianity. But it wasnot a falling back into Judaism. There were priests and scribes andPharisees with other names elsewhere. The phenomenon of the waning ofthe original enthusiasm of a period of religious revelation has been afrequent one. Christianity on a grand scale illustrated this phenomenonanew. Harnack has elaborated this thesis with unexampled brilliancy andpower. He has supported it with a learning in which he has no rival andwith a religious interest which not even hostile critics would deny. Thephrase, 'the Hellenisation of Christianity, ' might almost be taken asthe motto of the work to which he owes his fame. HARNACK Adolf Harnack was born in 1851 in Dorpat, in one of the Baltic provincesof Russia. His father, Theodosius Harnack, was professor of pastoraltheology in the University of Dorpat. Harnack studied in Leipzig andbegan to teach there in 1874. He was called to the chair of churchhistory in Giessen in 1879. In 1886 he removed to Marburg and in 1889 toBerlin. Harnack's earlier published work was almost entirely in thefield of the study of the sources and materials of early church history. His first book, published in 1873, was an inquiry as to the sources forthe history of Gnosticism. His _Patrum Apostolicorum Opera_, 1876, prepared by him jointly with von Gehhardt and Zahn, was in a way only aforecast of the great collection, _Texte und Untersuchungen zurGeschickte der alt-christlichen Literatur_, begun in 1882, upon whichnumbers of scholars have worked together with him. The collection hasalready more than thirty-five volumes. In his own two works, _DieGeschichte der alt-christlichen Literatur bis Eusebius_, 1893, and _DieChronologie der alt-christlichen Literatur bis Eusebius_, 1897, aredeposited the results of his reflexion on the mass of this material. His_Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament_, 1906, etc. , should notbe overlooked. He has had the good fortune to be among those who havediscovered manuscripts of importance. He has had to do with the PrussianAcademy's edition of the Greek Fathers. A list of his published works, which was prepared in connexion with the celebration of his sixtiethbirthday in 1911, bears witness to his amazing diligence and fertility. He was for thirty-five years associated with Schurer in the publicationof the _Theologische Literaturzeitung_. He has filled important posts inthe Church and under the government. To this must be added an activityas a teacher which has placed a whole generation of students from everyportion of the world under undying obligation. One speaks with reserveof the living, but surely no man of our generation has done more to makethe history of which we write. Harnack's epoch-making work was his _Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte_, 1886-88, fourth edition, 1910. The book met, almost from the moment ofits appearance, with the realisation of the magnitude of that which hadbeen achieved. It rested upon a fresh and independent study of thesources. It departed from the mechanism which had made the old treatisesupon the history of doctrine formal and lifeless. Harnack realised tothe full how many influences other than theological had had part in thedevelopment of doctrine. He recognised the reaction of modes of life andpractice, and of external circumstances on the history of thought. Hishistory of doctrine has thus a breadth and human quality never beforeattained. Philosophy, worship, morals, the development of Churchgovernment and of the canon, the common interests and passions of theage and those of the individual participants, are all made tributary tohis delineation. Harnack cannot share Baur's view that the triumph of theLogos-Christology at Nicæa and Chalcedon was inevitable. A certainhistoric naturalness of the movement he would concede, the world onwhich Christianity entered being what it was. He is aware, however, thatmany elements other than Christian have entered into the development. Hehas phrased his apprehension thus. That Hellenisation of Christianitywhich Gnosticism represented, and against which, in this, its acuteform, the Church contended was, after all, the same thing which, byslower process and more unconsciously, befell the Church itself. Thatpure moral enthusiasm and inspiration which had been the gist of theChristian movement, in its endeavour to appropriate the world, had beenappropriated by the world in far greater measure than its adherentsknew. It had taken up its mission to change the world. It had dreamedthat while changing the world it had itself remained unchanged. Theworld was changed, the world of life, of feeling and of thought. ButChristianity was also changed. It had conquered the world. It had noperception of the fact that it illustrated the old law that theconquered give laws to the conquerors. It had fused the ancient culturewith the flame of its inspiration. It did not appreciate the degree inwhich the elements of that ancient culture now coloured its far-shiningflame. It had been a maker of history. Meantime it had been unmade andremade by its own history. It confidently carried back its canon, dogma, organisation, to Christ and the apostles. It did not realise that thevery fact that it could find these things natural and declare themancient, proved with conclusiveness that it had itself departed from thestandard of Christ and the apostles. It esteemed that these were itsdefences against the world. It little dreamed that they were, by theirvery existence, the evidence of the fact that the Church had notdefended itself against the world. Its dogma was the Hellenisation ofits thought. Its organisation was the Romanising of its life. Its canonand ritual were the externalising, and conventionalising of its spiritand enthusiasm. These are positive and constructive statements ofHarnack's main position. When, however, they are turned about and stated negatively, thesestatements all convey, more or less, the impression that the advance ofChristianity had been its destruction, and the evolution of dogma hadbeen a defection from Christ. This is the aspect of the contention whichgave hostile critics opportunity to say that we have before us thehistory of the loss of Christianity. Harnack himself has many sentenceswhich superficially will bear that construction. Hatch had said in hisbrilliant book, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon theChristian Church_, 1891, that the domestication of Greek philosophy inthe Church signified a defection from the Sermon on the Mount. Thecentre of gravity of the Gospel was changed from life to doctrine, frommorals to metaphysics, from goodness to orthodoxy. The change wasportentous. The aspect of pessimism is, however, removed when onerecognises the inevitableness of some such process, if Christianity wasever to wield an influence in the world at all. Again, one must considerthat the process of the recovery of pure Christianity must begin atexactly this point, namely, with the recognition of how much in currentChristianity is extraneous. It must begin with the sloughing off ofthese extraneous elements, with the recovery of the sense for that whichoriginal Christianity was. Such a recovery would be the setting freeagain of the power of the religion itself. The constant touchstone and point of reference for every stage of thehistory of the Church must be the gospel of Jesus. But what was thegospel of Jesus? In what way did the very earliest Christians apprehendthat gospel? This question is far more difficult for us to answer thanit was for those to whom the New Testament was a closed body ofliterature, externally differentiated from all other, and with amiraculous inspiration extending uniformly to every phrase in any book. These men would have said that they had but to find the propercombination of the sacred phrases. But we acknowledge that the centralinspiration was the personality of Jesus. The books possess thisinspiration in varying degree. Certain of the books have distinctlybegun the fusion of Christian with other elements. They themselvesrepresent the first stages of the history of doctrine. We acknowledgethat those utterances of Jesus which have been preserved for us, shapedthemselves by the antitheses in which Jesus stood. There is much aboutthem that is palpably incidental, practically relevant andunquestionably only relative. In a large sense, much of the meaning ofthe gospel has to be gathered out of the evidence of the operation ofits spirit in subsequent ages of the Christian Church, and from remoteraspects of the influence of Jesus on the world. Thus the very conceptionof the gospel of Jesus becomes inevitably more or less subjective. Itbecomes an ideal construction. The identification of this ideal with theoriginal gospel proclamation becomes precarious. We seem to move in acircle. We derive the ideal from the history, and then judge the historyby the ideal. Is there any escape from this situation, short of the return to theauthority of Church or Scripture in the ancient sense? Furthermore, eventhe men to whom the gospel was in the strictest sense a letter, identified the gospel with their own private interpretation of thisletter. Certainly the followers of Ritschl who will acknowledge notraits of the gospel save those of which they find direct witness in theGospels, thus ignore that the Gospels are themselves interpretations. This undue stress upon the documents which we are fortunate enough topossess, makes us forget the limitations of these documents. We tendthus to exaggerate that which must be only incidental, as, for example, the Jewish element, in the teaching of Jesus. We thus underrate phasesof Jesus' teaching which, no doubt, a man like Paul would haveapprehended better than did the evangelists themselves. In truth, inHarnack's own delineation of the teaching of Jesus, those elements of itwhich found their way to expression in Paul, or again in the fourthGospel, are rather underrated than overstated, in the author's anxietyto exclude elements which are acknowledged to be interpretative in theirnature. We are driven, in some measure, to seek to find out what thegospel was from the way in which the earliest Christians took it up. Wereturn ever afresh to questions nearly unanswerable from the materialsat hand. What was the central principle in the shaping of the earlieststages of the new community, both as to its thought and life? Was it thelonging for the coming of the Kingdom of God, the striving after therighteousness of the Sermon on the Mount? Or was it the faith of theMessiah, the reverence for the Messiah, directed to the person of Jesus?What word dominated the preaching? Was it that the Kingdom of God wasnear, that the Son of Man would come? Or was it that in Jesus Messiahhas come? What was the demand upon the hearer? Was it, Repent, or wasit, Believe on the Lord Jesus, or was it both, and which had the greateremphasis? Was the name of Jesus used in the formulas of worship beforethe time of Paul? What do we know about prayer in the name of Jesus, orbaptism in that name, or miracles in the name of Jesus, or of the Lord'sSupper and the conception of the Lord as present with his disciples inthe rite? Was this revering of Jesus, which was fast moving toward aworship of him, the inner motive force of the whole construction of thedogma of his person and of the trinity? In the second volume Harnack treats of the development primarily of theChristological and trinitarian dogma, from the fourth to the seventhcenturies. The dramatic interest of the narrative exceeds anything whichhas been written on this theme. A debate which to most modern men isremote and abstruse almost to the point of unintelligibility, and ofwhich many of the external aspects are disheartening in the extreme, ishere brought before us in something of the reasonableness which it musthave had for those who took part in it. Tertullian shaped the problemand established the nomenclature for the Christological solution whichthe Orient two hundred years later made its own. It was he who, from thepoint of view of the Jurist, rather than of the philosopher, gave thewords 'person' and 'substance, ' which continually occur in thisdiscussion, the meaning which in the Nicene Creed they bear. Mostbrilliant is Harnack's characterisation of Arius and Athanasius. InArius the notion of the Son of God is altogether done away. Only thename remains. The victory of Arianism would have resolved Christianityinto cosmology and formal ethics. It would have destroyed it asreligion. Yet the perverse situation into which the long and fiercecontroversy had drifted cannot be better illustrated than by oneundisputed fact. Athanasius, who assured for Christianity its characteras a religion of the living communion of God with man, is yet thetheologian in whose Christology almost every possible trace of therecollection of the historic Jesus has disappeared. The purpose of theredemption is to bring men into community of life with God. ButAthanasius apprehended this redemption as a conferment, from without andfrom above, of a divine nature. He subordinated everything to this idea. The whole narrative concerning Jesus falls under the interpretation thatthe only quality requisite for the Redeemer in his work was thepossession in all fulness of the divine nature. His incarnation, hismanifestation in real human life, held fast to in word, is reduced to amere semblance. Salvation is not an ethical process, but a miraculousendowment. The Christ, who was God, lifts men up to godhood. They becomeGod. These phrases are of course capable of ethical and intelligiblemeaning. The development of the doctrine, however, threw the emphasisupon the metaphysical and miraculous aspects of the work. It gloried inthe fact that the presence of divine and human, two natures in oneperson forever, was unintelligible. In the end it came to pass that theenthusiastic assent to that which defied explanation became the verymark of a humble and submissive faith. One reads the so-calledAthanasian Creed, and hears the ring of its determination to exactassent. It had long since been clear to these Catholics and churchmenthat, with the mere authority of Scripture, it was not possible todefend Christianity against the heretics. The heresies read theirheresies out of the Bible. The orthodox read orthodoxy from the samepage. Marcion had proved that, in the very days when the canon took itsshape. There must be an authority to define the interpretation of theScripture. Those who would share the benefits which the Church dispensedmust assent unconditionally to the terms of membership. All these questions were veiled for the early Christians behind thequestion of the kind of Christ in whom their hearts believed. With allthat we have said about the reprehensible admixture of the metaphysicalelement in the dogma, with all the accusation which we bring concerningacute or gradual Hellenisation, secularisation and defection from theChrist, we ought not to hide from ourselves that in this giganticstruggle there were real religious interests at stake, and that for themen of both parties. Dimly, or perhaps vividly, the man of either partyfelt that the conception of the Christ which he was fighting for wascongruous with the conception of religion which he had, or felt that hemust have. It is this religious issue, everywhere present, which givesdignity to a struggle which otherwise does often sadly lack it. Thereare two religious views of the person of Christ which have stood, fromthe beginning, the one over against the other. [5] The one saw in Jesusof Nazareth a man, distinguished by his special calling as the MessianicKing, endued with special powers, lifted above all men ever known, yet aman, completely subject to God in faith, obedience and prayer. This viewis surely sustained by many of Jesus' own words and deeds. It shinesthrough the testimony of the men who followed him. Even the belief inhis resurrection and his second coming did not altogether do away withit. The other view saw in him a new God who, descending from God, brought mysterious powers for the redemption of mankind into the world, and after short obscuring of his glory, returned to the abode of God, where he had been before. From this belief come all the hymns andprayers to Jesus as to God, all miracles and exorcisms in his name. [Footnote 5: Wernle, _Einfzhrung in das Theologische Studium_, 1908, v. 204. ] In the long run, the simpler view did not maintain itself. If false godsand demons were expelled, it was the God Jesus who expelled them. Themore modest faith believed that in the man Jesus, being such an one ashe was, men had received the greatest gift which the love of God had tobestow. In turn the believer felt the assurance that he also was a childof God, and in the spirit of Jesus was to realise that sonship. Syncretist religions suggested other thoughts. We see that already evenin the synoptic tradition the calling upon the name of Jesus had foundplace. One wonders whether that first apprehension ever stood alone inits purity. The Gentile Churches founded by Paul, at all events, had nosuch simple trust. Equally, the second form of faith seems never to havebeen able to stand alone in its peculiar quality. Some of the gnosticsects had it. Marcion again is our example. The new God Jesus hadnothing to do with the cruel God of the Old Testament. He supplanted theold God and became the only God. In the Church the new God, come downfrom heaven, must be set in relation with the long-known God of Israel. No less, must he stand in relation to the simple hero of the Gospelswith his human traits. The problem of theological reflexion was to findthe right middle course, to keep the divine Christ in harmony, on theone side, with monotheism, and on the other, with the picture which theGospels gave. Belief knew nothing of these contradictions. The samesimple soul thanked God for Jesus with his sorrows and his sympathy, asman's guide and helper, and again prayed to Jesus because he seemed toowonderful to be a man. The same kind of faith achieves the samewondering and touching combination to-day, after two thousand years. With thought comes trouble. Reflexion wears itself out upon theinsoluble difficulty, the impossible combination, the flatcontradiction, which the two views present, so soon as they are clearlyseen. In the earliest Christian writings the fruit of this reflexion liesbefore us in this form:--The Creator of worlds, the mediator, the lordof angels and demons, the Logos which was God and is our Saviour, wasyet a humble son of man, undergoing suffering and death, having laidaside his divine glory. This picture is made with materials which thecanonical writings themselves afford. Theological study had henceforthnothing to do but to avoid extremes and seek to make this image, whichreflexion upon two polar opposites had yielded, as nearly thinkable aspossible. It has been said that the trinitarian doctrine is not in theNew Testament, that it was later elaborated by a different kind of mind. This is not true. But the inference is precisely the contrary of thatwhich defenders of the dogma would formerly have drawn from thisconcession. The same kind of mind, or rather the same two kinds of mind, are at work in the New Testament. Both of the religious elements abovesuggested are in the Gospels and Epistles. The New Testament presentsattempts at their combination. Either form may be found in theliterature of the later age. If we ask ourselves, What is that in Jesuswhich gives us the sense of redemption, surely we should answer, It ishis glad and confident resting in the love of God the Father. It is hiscourage, his faith in men, which becomes our faith in ourselves. It ishis wonderful mingling of purity and love of righteousness with love ofthose who have sinned. You may find this in the ancient literature, asthe Fathers describe that to which their souls cling. But this is notthe point of view from which the dogma is organised. The NiceneChristology is not to be understood from this approach. The cry of adying civilisation after power and light and life, the feeling thatthese might come to it, streaming down as it were, from above, as aphysical, a mechanical, a magical deliverance, this is the frame withinwhich is set what is here said of the help and redemption wrought byChrist. The resurrection and the incarnation are the points at whichthis streaming in of the divine light and power upon a darkened world isfelt. That religion seemed the highest, that interpretation of Christianitythe truest, the absolute one, which could boast that it possessed thepower of the Almighty through his physical union with men. He whocontended that Jesus was God, contended therewith for a power whichcould come upon men and make them in some sense one with God. This isthe view which has been almost exclusively held in the Greek Church. Itis the view which has run under and through and around the otherconception in the Roman and Protestant Churches. The sense thatsalvation is inward, moral, spiritual, has rarely indeed been absentfrom Christendom. It would be preposterous to allege that it had. Yetthis sense has been overlaid and underrun and shot through with thatother and disparate idea of salvation, as of a pure bestowment, something achieved apart from us, or, if one may so say, some alterationof ourselves upon other than moral and spiritual terms. The conceptionof the person Christ shows the same uncertainty. Or rather, with a givenview of the nature of religion and salvation, the corresponding view ofChrist is certain. In the age-long and world-wide contest over thetrinitarian formula, with all that is saddening in the struggle and allthat was misleading in the issue, it is because we see men struggling tocome into the clear as to these two meanings of religion, that thecontest has such absorbing interest. Men have been right in declining tocall that religion in which a man saves himself. They have been wrong inesteeming that they were then only saved of God or Christ when they weresaved by an obviously external process. Even this antinomy is softenedwhen one no longer holds that God and men are mutually exclusiveconceptions. It is God working within us who saves, the God who in Jesusworked such a wonder of righteousness and love as else the world hasnever seen. CHAPTER V THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES By the middle of the nineteenth century the empirical sciences hadundergone vast expansion in the study of detail and in the discovery ofprinciples. Men felt the necessity of some adequate discussion of therelation of these sciences one to another and of their unity. There wasneed of the organisation of the mass of knowledge, largely new and everincreasing, which the sciences furnished. It lay in the logic of thecase that some of these attempts should advance the bold claim to dealwith all knowledge whatsoever and to offer a theory of the universe as awhole. Religion, both in its mythological and in its theological stages, had offered a theory of the universe as a whole. The great metaphysicalsystems had offered theories of the universe as a whole. Both hadprofessed to include all facts. Notoriously both theology andmetaphysics had dealt in most inadequate fashion with the materialworld, in the study of which the sciences were now achieving greatresults. Indeed, the methods current and authoritative with theologiansand metaphysicians had actually prevented study of the physicaluniverse. Both of these had invaded areas of fact to which their methodshad no application and uttered dicta which had no relation to truth. Thevery life of the sciences depended upon deliverance from this bondage. The record of that deliverance is one of the most dramatic chapters inthe history of thought. Could one be surprised if, in the resentmentwhich long oppression had engendered and in the joy which overwhelmingvictory had brought, scientific men now invaded the fields of theiropponents? They repaid their enemies in their own coin. There was withsome a disposition to deny that there exists an area of knowledge towhich the methods of metaphysicians and theologians might apply. Thiswas Comte's contention. Others conceded that there might be such anarea, but claimed that we can have no knowledge of it. Even thetheologians, after their first shock, were disposed to concede that, concerning the magnitudes in which they were most interested, as forexample, God and soul, we have no knowledge of the sort which the methodof the physical sciences would give. They fell back upon Kant'sdistinction of the two reasons and two worlds. They exaggerated thesharpness of that distinction. They learned that the claim ofagnosticism was capable of being viewed as a line of defence, behindwhich the transcendental magnitudes might be secure. Indeed, if one maytake Spencer as an example, it is not certain that this was not theintent of some of the scientists in their strong assertion ofagnosticism. Spencer's later work reveals that he had no disposition todeny that there are foundations for belief in a world lying behind thephenomenal, and from which the latter gets its meaning. Meantime, after positivism was buried and agnosticism dead, a thing wasachieved for which Comte himself laid the foundation and in whichSpencer as he grew older was ever more deeply interested. This was thegreat development of the social sciences. Every aspect of the life ofman, including religion itself, has been drawn within the area of thesocial sciences. To all these subjects, including religion, there havebeen applied empirical methods which have the closest analogy with thosewhich have reigned in the physical sciences. Psychology has been made ascience of experiment, and the psychology of religion has been given aplace within the area of its observations and generalizations. Theethical, and again the religious consciousness has been subjected to thesame kind of investigation to which all other aspects of consciousnessare subjected. Effort has been made to ascertain and classify thephenomena of the religious life of the race in all lands and in allages. A science of religions is taking its place among the othersciences. It is as purely an inductive science as is any other. Thehistory of religions and the philosophy of religion are being rewrittenfrom this point of view. In the first lines of this chapter we spoke of the empirical sciences, meaning the sciences of the material world. It is clear, however, thatthe sciences of mind, of morals and of religion have now becomeempirical sciences. They have their basis in experience, the experienceof individuals and the experience of masses of men, of ages ofobservable human life. They all proceed by the method of observation andinference, of hypothesis and verification. There is a unity of method asbetween the natural and social and psychical sciences, the reach ofwhich is startling to reflect upon. Indeed, the physiological aspects ofpsychology, the investigations of the relation of adolescence toconversion, suggest that the distinction between the physical and thepsychical is a vanishing distinction. Science comes nearer to offeringan interpretation of the universe as a whole than the opening paragraphsof this chapter would imply. But it does so by including religion, notby excluding it. No one would any longer think of citing Kant'sdistinction of two reasons and two worlds in the sense of establishing acity of refuge into which the persecuted might flee. Kant renderedincomparable service by making clear two poles of thought. Yet we mustrealise how the space between is filled with the gradations of anabsolute continuity of activity. Man has but one reason. This mayconceivably operate upon appropriate material in one or the other ofthese polar fashions. It does operate in infinite variations of degree, in unity with itself, after both fashions, at all times and upon allmaterials. Positivism was a system. Agnosticism was at least a phase of thought. The broadening of the conception of science and the invasion of everyarea of life by a science thus broadly conceived, has been an influenceless tangible than those others but not, therefore, less effective. Positivism was bitterly hostile to Christianity, though, in the mind ofComte himself and of a few others, it produced a curious substitute, possessing many of the marks of Roman Catholicism. The name 'agnostic'was so loosely used that one must say that the contention was hostile toreligion in the minds of some and not of others. The new movement for aninclusive science is not hostile to religion. Yet it will transformcurrent conceptions of religion as those others never did. In proportionas it is scientific, it cannot be hostile. It may at most beindifferent. Nevertheless, in the long run, few will choose the theme ofreligion for the scientific labour of life who have not some interest inreligion. Men of these three classes have accepted the doctrine ofevolution. Comte thought he had discovered it. Spencer and those forwhom we have taken him as type, did service in the elaboration of it. Tothe men of our third group, the truth of evolution seems no longerdebatable. Here too, in the word 'evolution, ' we have a term which hasbeen used with laxity. It corresponds to a notion which has onlygradually been evolved. Its implications were at first by no meansunderstood. It was associated with a mechanical view of the universewhich was diametrically opposed to its truth. Still, there could not bea doubt that the doctrine contravened those ideas as to the origin ofthe world, and more particularly of man, of the relations of species, and especially of the human species to other forms of animal life, whichhad immemorially prevailed in Christian circles and which had thewitness of the Scriptures on their behalf. If we were to attempt, withacknowledged latitude, to name a book whose import might be said to becardinal for the whole movement treated of in this chapter, that bookwould be Darwin's _Origin of Species_, which was published in 1859. Long before Darwin the creation legend had been recognised as such. Theastronomy of the seventeenth century had removed the earth from itscentral position. The geology of the eighteenth had shown how long musthave been the ages of the laying down of the earth's strata. Thequestion of the descent of man, however, brought home the significanceof evolution for religion more forcibly than any other aspect of thedebate had done. There were scientific men of distinction who were notconvinced of the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis. To most Christianmen the theory seemed to leave no unique distinction or spiritualquality for man. It seemed to render impossible faith in the Scripturesas revelation. To many it seemed that the whole issue as between aspiritual and a purely materialistic view of the universe was involved. Particularly was this true of the English-speaking peoples. One other factor in the transformation of the Christian view needs to bedwelt upon. It is less theoretical than those upon which we have dwelt. It is the influence of socialism, taking that word in its largest sense. An industrial civilisation has developed both the good and the evil ofindividualism in incredible degree. The unity of society which thefeudal system and the Church gave to Europe in the Middle Age had beendestroyed. The individualism and democracy which were essential toProtestantism notoriously aided the civil and social revolution, but thecentrifugal forces were too great. Initiative has been wonderful, butcohesion is lacking. Democracy is yet far from being realised. The civilliberations which were the great crises of the western world from 1640to 1830 appear now to many as deprived of their fruit. Governmentsundertake on behalf of subjects that which formerly no government wouldhave dreamed of doing. The demand is that the Church, too, become afactor in the furtherance of the outward and present welfare of mankind. If that meant the call to love and charity it would be an old refrain. That is exactly what it does not mean. It means the attack upon evilswhich make charity necessary. It means the taking up into theidealisation of religion the endeavour to redress all wrongs, to do awaywith all evils, to confer all goods, to create a new world and not, asheretofore, mainly at least, a new soul in the midst of the old world. No one can deny either the magnitude of the evils which it is sought toremedy, or the greatness of the goal which is thus set before religion. The volume of religious and Christian literature devoted to these socialquestions is immense. It is revolutionary in its effect. For, after all, the very gist of religion has been held to be that it deals primarilywith the inner life and the transcendent world. That it has dealt withthe problem of the inner life and transcendent world in such a manner asto retard, or even only not to further, the other aspects of man's lifeis indeed a grave indictment. That it should, however, see ends in theouter life and present world as ends fully sufficient in themselves, that it should cease to set these in the light of the eternal, is thatit should cease to be religion. The physical and social sciences havegiven to men an outward setting in the world, a basis of power andhappiness such as men never have enjoyed. Yet the tragic failure of ourcivilisation to give to vast multitudes that power and happiness, is theproof that something more than the outward basis is needed. The successof our civilisation is its failure. This is by no means a recurrence to the old antithesis of religion andcivilisation, as if these were contradictory elements. On the contrary, it is but to show that the present world of religion and of economicsare not two worlds, but merely different aspects of the same world. Therewith it is not alleged that religion has not a specificcontribution to make. POSITIVISM The permanent influence of that phase of thought which called itselfPositivism has not been great. But a school of thought which numberedamong its adherents such men and women as John Stuart Mill, George HenryLewes, George Eliot, Frederic Harrison, and Matthew Arnold, cannot besaid to have been without significance. A book upon the translation ofwhich Harriet Martinean worked with sustained enthusiasm cannot bedismissed as if it were merely a curiosity. Comte's work, _Coura dePhilosophie Positive_, appeared between the years 1830 and 1842. Littréwas his chief French interpreter. But the history of the positivistmovement belongs to the history of English philosophical and religiousthought, rather than to that of France. Comte was born at Montpellier in 1798, of a family of intense RomanCatholic piety. He showed at school a precocity which might bearcomparison with Mill's. Expelled from school, cast off by his parents, dismissed by the elder Casimir Perier, whose secretary he had been, heeked out a living by tutoring in mathematics. Friends of his philosophyrallied to his support. He never occupied a post comparable with hisgenius. He was unhappy in his marriage. He passed through a period ofmental aberration, due, perhaps, to the strain under which he worked. Hedid not regain his liberty without an experience which embittered himagainst the Church. During the fourteen years of the production of hisbook he cut himself off from any reading save that of current scientificdiscovery. He came under the influence of Madame Vaux, whom, after herdeath, he idolised even more than before. For the problem which, in theearlier portion of his work, he set himself, that namely, of theorganising of the sciences into a compact body of doctrine, he possessedextraordinary gifts. Later, he took on rather the air of a high priestof humanity, legislating concerning a new religion. It is but fair tosay that at this point Littré and many others parted company with Comte. He developed a habit and practice ascetic in its rigour and mystic inits devotion to the positivists' religion--the worship of humanity. Hewas the friend and counsellor of working-men and agitators, of littlechildren, of the poor and miserable. He ended his rather pathetic andturbulent career in 1857, gathering a few disciples about his bed as heremembered that Socrates had done. Comte begins with the natural sciences and postulates the doctrine ofevolution. To the definition of this doctrine he makes some interestingapproaches. The discussion of the order and arrangement of the varioussciences and of their characteristic differences is wonderful in itsinsight and suggestiveness. He asserts that in the study of nature weare concerned solely with the facts before us and the relations whichconnect those facts. We have nothing to do with the supposed essence orhidden nature and meaning of those facts. Facts and the invariable lawswhich govern them are the only legitimate objects of pursuit. Comteinfers that because we can know, in this sense, only phenomena and theirrelations, we should in consequence guard against illusions which creepin again if we so much as use the words principle, or cause, or will, orforce. By phenomena must be understood objects of perception, to theexclusion, for example, of psychological changes reputed to be known inself-consciousness. That there is no knowledge but of the physical, thatthere is no knowing except by perception--this is ever reiterated asself-evident. Even psychology, resting as it does largely upon theobservation of the self by the self, must be illusive. Physiology, oreven phrenology, with the value of which Comte was much impressed, musttake its place. Every object of knowledge is other than the knowingsubject. Whatever else the mind knows, it can never know itself. Byinvincible necessity the human mind can observe all phenomena except itsown. Commenting upon this, James Martineau observed: 'We have had in thehistory of thought numerous forms of idealism which construed alloutward phenomena as mere appearances within the mind. We have hithertohad no strictly corresponding materialism, which claimed certainty forthe outer world precisely because it was foreign to ourselves. ' Man isthe highest product of nature, the highest stage of nature's most matureand complex form. Man as individual is nothing more. Physiology gives usnot merely his external constitution and one set of relations. It is thewhole science of man. There is no study of mind in which its actions andstates can be contemplated apart from the physical basis in conjunctionwith which mind exists. Thus far man has been treated only biologically, as individual. We mustadvance to man in society. Almost one half of Comte's bulky work isdevoted to this side of the inquiry. Social phenomena are a classcomplex beyond any which have yet been investigated. So much is this thecase and so difficult is the problem presented, that Comte feltconstrained in some degree to change his method. We proceed fromexperience, from data in fact, as before. But the facts are not mereillustrations of the so called laws of individual human nature. Socialfacts are the results also of situations which represent the accumulatedinfluence of past generations. In this, as against Bentham, for example, with his endless recurrence to human nature, as he called it, Comte wasright. Comte thus first gave the study of history its place insociology. In this study of history and sociology, the collectivephenomena are more accessible to us and better known by us, than are theparts of which they are composed. We therefore proceed here from thegeneral to the particular, not from the particular to the general, as inresearch of the kinds previously named. The state of every part of thesocial organisation is ultimately connected with the contemporaneousstate of all the other parts. Philosophy, science, the fine arts, commerce, navigation, government, are all in close mutual dependence. When any considerable change takes place in one, we may know that aparallel change has preceded or will follow in the others. The progressof society is not the aggregate of partial changes, but the product of asingle impulse acting through all the partial agencies. It can thereforebe most easily traced by studying all together. These are the mainprinciples of sociological investigation as set forth by Comte, some ofthem as they have been phrased by Mill. The most sweeping exemplification of the axiom last alluded to, as toparallel changes, is Comte's so-called law of the three states ofcivilisation. Under this law, he asserts, the whole historical evolutioncan be summed up. It is as certain as the law of gravitation. Everythingin human society has passed, as has the individual man, through thetheological and then through the metaphysical stage, and so arrives atthe positive stage. In this last stage of thought nothing either ofsuperstition or of speculation will survive. Theology and metaphysicsComte repeatedly characterises as the two successive stages ofnescience, unavoidable as preludes to science. Equally unavoidable is itthat science shall ultimately prevail in their place. The advance ofscience having once begun, there is no possibility but that it willultimately possess itself of all. One hears the echo of this confidencein Haeckel also. There is a persistence about the denial of anyknowledge whatsoever that goes beyond external facts, which ill comportswith the pretensions of positivism to be a philosophy. For its finalclaim is not that it is content to rest in experimental science. On thecontrary, it would transform this science into a homogeneous doctrinewhich is able to explain everything in the universe. This is but a _tourde force_. The promise is fulfilled through the denial of the reality ofeverything which science cannot explain. Comte was never willing to facethe fact that the very existence of knowledge has a noumenal as well asa phenomenal side. The reasonableness of the universe is certainly aconception which we bring to the observation of nature. If we did notthus bring it with us, no mere observation of nature would ever give itto us. It is impossible for science to get rid of the conception offorce, and ultimately of cause. There can be no phenomenon which is nota manifestation of something. The very nomenclature falls into hopelessconfusion without these conceptions. Yet the moment we touch them wetranscend science and pass into the realm of philosophy. It is merejuggling with words to say that our science has now become a philosophy. The adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. Apparently Comtemeant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limitresearch to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence andsuccession. But to call the inquiry into phenomena positive, in thesense that it alone deals with reality, to imply that the inquiry intocauses deals with that which has no reality, is to beg the question. This is not a premise with which he may set out in the evolution of hissystem. Comte denied the accusation of materialism and atheism. He did the firstonly by changing the meaning of the term materialism. Materialism theworld has supposed to be the view of man's condition and destiny whichmakes these to begin and end in nature. That certainly was Comte's view. The accusation of atheism also he avoids by a mere play on words. He isnot without a God. Humanity is God. Mankind is the positivist's Supreme. Altruism takes the place of devotion. The devotion so long wasted upon amere creature of the imagination, to whom it could do no good, he wouldnow give to men who sorely need it and can obviously profit by it. Surely the antithesis between nature and the supernatural, in the formin which Comte argues against it, is now abandoned by thoughtful people. Equally the antithesis of altruism to the service of God is perverse. Itarouses one's pity that Comte should not have seen how, in true religionthese two things coalesce. Moreover, this deification of mankind, in so far as it is not a soundingphrase, is an absurdity. When Comte says, for example, that theauthority of humanity must take the place of that of God, he hasrecognised that religion must have authority. Indeed, the whole socialorder must have authority. However, this is not for him, as we areaccustomed to say, the authority of the truth and of the right. There isno such abstraction as the truth, coming to various manifestations. There is no such thing as right, apart from relatively right concretemeasures. There is no larger being indwelling in men. Society, humanityin its collective capacity, must, if need be, override the individual. Yet Comte despises the mere rule of majorities. The majority which hewould have rule is that of those who have the scientific mind. We mayadmit that in this he aims at the supremacy of truth. But, in fact, heprepares the way for a doctrinaire tyranny which, of all forms ofgovernment, might easily turn out to be the worst which a long-sufferinghumanity has yet endured. In the end, we are told, love is to take the place of force. Humanity ispresent to us first in our mothers, wives and daughters. For these it ispresent in their fathers, husbands, sons. From this primary circle lovewidens and worship extends as hearts enlarge. It is the prayer tohumanity which first rises above the mere selfishness of the sort to getsomething out of God. Remembrance in the hearts of those who loved usand owe something to us is the only worthy form of immortality. Clearlyit is only the caricature of prayer or of the desire of immortalitywhich rises before Comte's mind as the thing to be escaped. For thiscaricature religious men, both Catholic and Protestant, without doubt, gave him cause. There were to be seven sacraments, corresponding toseven significant epochs in a man's career. There were to be priests forthe performance of these sacraments and for the inculcation of thedoctrines of positivism. There were to be temples of humanity, affordingopportunity for and reminder of this worship. In each temple there wasto be set up the symbol of the positivist religion, a woman of thirtyyears with her little son in her arms. Littré spoke bitterly of thepositivist religion as a lapse of the author into his old aberration. This religion was certainly regarded as negligible by many to whom hissystem as a whole meant a great deal. At least, it is an interestingexample, as is also his transformation of science into a philosophy, ofthe resurgence of valid elements in life, even in the case of a man whohas made it his boast to do away with them. NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM We may take Spencer as representative of a group of men who, after themiddle of the nineteenth century, laboured enthusiastically to set forthevolutionary and naturalistic theories of the universe. These theorieshad also, for the most part, the common trait that they professedagnosticism as to all that lay beyond the reach of thenatural-scientific methods, in which the authors were adept. Both Wardand Boutroux accept Spencer as such a type. Agnosticism for obviousreasons could be no system. Naturalism is a tendency in interpretationof the universe which has many ramifications. There is no intention ofmaking the reference to one man's work do more than serve asintroduction to the field. Spencer was eager in denial that he had been influenced by Comte. Yetthere is a certain reminder of Comte in Spencer's monumental endeavourto systematise the whole mass of modern scientific knowledge, under thegeneral title of 'A Synthetic Philosophy. ' He would show the unity ofthe sciences and their common principles or, rather, the one greatcommon principle which they all illustrate, the doctrine of evolution, as this had taken shape since the time of Darwin. Since 1904 we have anautobiography of Herbert Spencer, which, to be sure, seems largely tohave been written prior to 1889. The book is interesting, as well in thelight which it throws upon the expansion of the sciences and thedevelopment of the doctrine of evolution in those years, as in therevelation of the personal traits of the man himself. Concerning theseTolstoi wrote to a friend, apropos of a gift of the book: 'Inautobiographies the most important psychological phenomena are oftenrevealed quite independently of the author's will. ' Spencer was born in 1820 in Derby, the son of a schoolmaster. He came ofNonconformist ancestry of most marked individuality. His early educationwas irregular and inadequate. Before he reached the age of seventeen hisreading had been immense. He worked with an engineer in the period ofthe building of the railways in the Midlands. He always retained hisinterest in inventions. He wrote for the newspapers and magazines anddefinitely launched upon a literary career. At the age of thirty hepublished his first book, on _Social Statics_. He made friends among themost notable men and women of his age. So early as 1855 he was thevictim of a disease of the heart which never left him. It was on hisrecovery from his first grave attack that he shaped the plan whichhenceforth held him, of organising the modern sciences and incorporatingthem into what he called a synthetic philosophy. There was immenseincrease in actual knowledge and in the power of his reflection on thatknowledge, as the years went by. A generation elapsed between thepublication of his _First Principles_ and the conclusion of his moreformal literary labours. There is something captivating about a man'slife, the energy of which remains so little impaired that he esteems itbetter to write a new book, covering some untouched portion of hisscheme, than to give to an earlier volume the revision which in thelight of his matured convictions it may need. His philosophicallimitations he never transcended. He does not so naïvely offer asubstitute for philosophy as does Comte. But he was no master inphilosophy. There is a reflexion of the consciousness of this fact inhis agnosticism. That the effort of the agnostic contention has been great, and on thewhole salutary, few would deny. Spencer's own later work shows that hisdeclaration, that the absolute which lies behind the universe isunknowable, is to be taken with considerable qualification. It is only arelative unknowableness which he predicates. Moreover, before Spencer'sdeath, the doctrine of evolution had made itself profoundly felt in thediscussion of all aspects of life, including that of religion. Thereseemed no longer any reason for the barrier between science and religionwhich Spencer had once thought requisite. The epithet agnostic, as applied to a certain attitude of scientificmind, is just, as over against excessive claims to valid knowledge made, now by theology and now by speculative philosophy. It is hardlydescriptive in any absolute sense. Spencer had coined the ratherfortunate illustration which describes science as a gradually increasingsphere, such that every addition to its surface does but bring us intomore extensive contact with surrounding nescience. Even upon thisillustration Ward has commented that the metaphor is misleading. Thecontinent of our knowledge is not merely bounded by an ocean ofignorance. It is intersected and cut up by straits and seas ofignorance. The author of _Ecce Coelum_ has declared: 'Things die outunder the microscope into the same unfathomed and, so far as we can see, unfathomable mystery, into which they die off beyond the range of ourmost powerful telescope. ' This sense of the circumambient unknown hasbecome cardinal with the best spirits of the age. Men have a morerigorous sense of what constitutes knowledge. They have reckoned more strictly with the methods by which alone secureand solid knowledge may be attained. They have undisguised scepticism asto alleged knowledge not arrived at in those ways. It was the working ofthese motives which gave to the labours of the middle of the nineteenthcentury so prevailingly the aspect of denial, the character whichCarlyle described as an everlasting No. This was but a preparatorystage, a retrogression for a new and firmer advance. In the sense of the recognition of our ignorance and of a becomingmodesty of affirmation, over against the mystery into which all ourthought runs out, we cannot reject the correction which agnosticism hasadministered. It is a fact which has had disastrous consequences, thatprecisely the department of thought, namely the religious, which onemight suppose would most have reminded men of the outlying mystery, thatphase of life whose very atmosphere is mystery, has most often beenguilty of arrant dogmatism. It has been thus guilty upon the basis ofthe claim that it possessed a revelation. It has allowed itselfunlimited licence of affirmation concerning the most remote anddifficult matters. It has alleged miraculously communicated informationconcerning those matters. It has clothed with a divineauthoritativeness, overriding the mature reflexion and laboriousinvestigation of learned men, that which was, after all, nothing but theinnocent imaginings of the childhood of the race. In this good sense ofa parallel to that agnosticism which scientists profess for themselveswithin their own appointed realm, there is a religious agnosticism whichis one of the best fruits of the labour of the age. It is not thatreligious men have abandoned the thought of revelation. They apprehendedmore justly the nature of revelation. They confess that there is muchignorance which revelation does not mitigate. _Exeunt omnia inmysterium_. They are prepared to say concerning many of the dicta ofreligiosity, that they cannot affirm their truth. They are prepared tosay concerning the experience of God and the soul, that they know thesewith an indefeasible certitude. This just and wholesome attitude towardreligious truth is only a corollary of the attitude which science hastaught us toward all truth whatsoever. The strictly philosophic term phenomenon, to which science has taken sokindly, is in itself an explicit avowal of something beyond thephenomenal. Spencer is careful to insist upon this relation of thephenomenal to the noumenal. His _Synthetic Philosophy_ opens with anexposition of this non-relative or absolute, without which the relativeitself becomes contradictory. It is an essential part of Spencer'sdoctrine to maintain that our consciousness of the absolute, indefiniteas it is, is positive and not negative. 'Though the absolute cannot inany manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet wefind that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness. The belief which this datum of consciousness constitutes has a higherwarrant than any other belief whatsoever. ' In short, the absolute ornoumenal, according to Spencer, though not known as the phenomenal orrelative is known, is so far from being for knowledge a pure blank, thatthe phenomenal, which is said to be known, is in the strict senseinconceivable without it. This actuality behind appearances, withoutwhich appearances are unthinkable, is by Spencer identified with thatultimate verity upon which religion ever insists. Religion itself is aphenomenon, and the source and secret of most complex and interestingphenomena. It has always been of the greatest importance in the historyof mankind. It has been able to hold its own in face of the attacks ofscience. It must contain an element of truth. All religions, however, assert that their God is for us not altogether cognisable, that God is agreat mystery. The higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. It is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popularreligiosity offends. It talks of God as if he were a man in the nextstreet. It does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches intothe truth, and presumably accurate definition of that truth. Equally, the attempts which are logically possible at metaphysical solutions ofthe problem, namely, theism, pantheism, and atheism, if they areconsistently carried out, assert, each of them, more than we know andare involved in contradiction with themselves. But the results of modernphysics and chemistry reveal, as the constant element in all phenomena, force. This manifests itself in various forms which are interchangeable, while amid all these changes the force remains the same. This lattermust be regarded as the reality, and basis of all that is relative andphenomenal. The entire universe is to be explained from the movements ofthis absolute force. The phenomena of nature and of mental life comeunder the same general laws of matter, motion, and force. Spencer's doctrine, as here stated, is not adequate to account for theworld of mental life or adapted to serve as the basis of areconciliation of science and religion. It does not carry us beyondmaterialism. Spencer's real intention was directed to something higherthan that. If the absolute is to be conceived at all, it is as anecessary correlative of our self-consciousness. If we get the idea offorce from the experience of our own power of volition, is it notnatural to think of mind-force as the prius of physical force, and notthe reverse? Accordingly, the absolute force, basis of all specificforces, would be mind and will. The doctrine of evolution wouldharmonise perfectly with these inferences. But it would have to becomeidealistic evolution, as in Schelling, instead of materialistic, as inComte. We are obliged, Spencer owns, to refer the phenomenal world oflaw and order to a first cause. He says that this first cause isincomprehensible. Yet he further says, when the question of attributingpersonality to this first cause is raised, that the choice is notbetween personality and something lower. It is between personality andsomething higher. To this may belong a mode of being as muchtranscending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion. It is strange, he says, that men should suppose the highest worship tolie in assimilating the object of worship to themselves. And yet, again, in one of the latest of his works he writes: 'Unexpected as it will beto most of my readers, I must assert that the power which manifestsitself in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of thepower which manifests itself beyond consciousness. The conception towhich the exploration of nature everywhere tends is much less that of auniverse of dead matter than that of a universe everywhere alive. ' Similar is the issue in the reflexion of Huxley. Agnosticism had atfirst been asserted in relation to the spiritual and the teleological. It ended in fastening upon the material and mechanical. After all, saysHuxley, in one of his essays:--'What do we know of this terrible matter, except as a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of ourown consciousness? Again, what do we know of that spirit over whosethreatened extinction by matter so great lamentation has now arisen, except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause ofstates of our consciousness?' He concedes that matter is inconceivableapart from mind, but that mind is not inconceivable apart from matter. He concedes that the conception of universal and necessary law is anideal. It is an invention of the mind's own devising. It is not aphysical fact. In brief, taking agnostic naturalism just as it seemeddisposed a generation ago to present itself, it now appears as if it hadbeen turned exactly inside out. Instead of the physical world beingprimary and fundamental and the mental world secondary, if notaltogether problematical, the precise converse is true. Nature, as science regards it, may be described as a system whose parts, be they simple or complex, are wholly governed by universal laws. Knowledge of these laws is an indispensable condition of that control ofnature upon which human welfare in so large degree depends. But thisreign of law is an hypothesis. It is not an axiom which it would beabsurd to deny. It is not an obvious fact, thrust upon us whether wewill or no. Experiences are possible without the conception of law andorder. The fruit of experience in knowledge is not possible without it. That is only to say that the reason why we assume that nature is aconnected system of uniform laws, lies in the fact that we ourselves areself-conscious personalities. When the naturalists say that the notionof cause is a fetish, an anthropomorphic superstition which we musteliminate, we have to answer: 'from the realm of empirical scienceperhaps, but not from experience as a whole. ' Indeed, a glance at thehistory, and particularly at the popular literature, of science affordsthe interesting spectacle of the rise of an hallucination, the growth ofa habit of mythological speech, which is truly surprising. We begin tohear of self-existent laws which reign supreme and bind nature fast infact. By this learned substitution for God, it was once confidentlyassumed that the race was to emerge from mythical dawn and metaphysicalshadows into the noon-day of positive knowledge. Rather, it would appearthat at this point a part of the human race plunged into a new era ofmyth-making and fetish worship--the homage to the fetish of law. Eventhe great minds do not altogether escape. 'Fact I know and law I know, 'says Huxley, with a faint suggestion of sacred rhetoric. But surely wedo not know law in the same sense in which we know fact. If there are nocauses among our facts, then we do not know anything about the laws. Ifwe do know laws it is because we assume causes. If, in the language ofrational beings, laws of nature are to be spoken of as self-existent andindependent of the phenomena which they are said to govern, suchlanguage must be merely analogous to the manner in which we often speakof the civil law. We say the law does that which we know the executivedoes. But the thorough-going naturalist cast off these implications asthe last rags of a creed outworn. Physicists were fond of talking of themovement of molecules, just as the ancient astrologers imagined that theplanets had souls and guided their own courses. We had supposed thatthis was anthropomorphism. In truth, this would-be scientific mode ofspeech is as anthropomorphic as is the cosmogony of Hesiod, only on asmaller scale. Primitive religion ascribed life to everything of whichit talked. Polytheism in religion and independent forces andself-existent laws in science are thus upon a par. The gods many andlords many, so amenable to concrete presentation in poetry and art, havegiven place to one Supreme Being. So also light, heat, and other naturalagencies, palpable and ready to hand for the explanation of everything, in the myth-making period of science which living men can stillremember, have by this time paled. They have become simply variousmanifestations of one underlying spiritual energy, which is indeedbeyond our perception. [6] When Comte said that the universe could notrest upon will, because then it would be arbitrary, incalculable, subject to caprice, one feels the humour and pathos of it. Comte'sexperience with will, his own and that of others, had evidently been toolargely of that sad sort. Real freedom consists in conformity to whatought to be. In God, whom we conceive as perfect, this conformity iscomplete. With us it remains an ideal. Were we the creatures of a blindmechanical necessity there could be no talk of ideal standards and nomeaning in reason at all. [Footnote 6: Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. Ii. P. 248. ] EVOLUTION In the progress of the thought of the generation, say, from 1870 to thepresent day, the conception of evolution has been much changed. Thedoctrine of evolution has itself been largely evolved within thatperiod. The application of it has become familiar in fields of whichthere was at first no thought. The bearing of the acceptance of it uponreligion has been seen to be quite different from that which was atfirst supposed. The advocacy of the doctrine was at first associatedwith the claims of naturalism or positivism. Wider applications of thedoctrine and deeper insight into its meaning have done away with thismisunderstanding. Evolution, as originally understood, was as far aspossible from suggesting anything mechanical. By the term was meantprimarily the gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonicbeginning to its mature and final stage. This adult form was regardednot merely as the goal actually reached through successive stages ofgrowth. It was conceived as the end aimed at, and achieved through theforce of some vital or ideal principle shaping the plastic material anddirecting the process of growth. In short, evolution implied ideal endscontrolling physical means. Yet we find with Spencer, as prevailinglyalso with others in the study of the natural sciences, the ideas of endand of cause looked at askance. They are regarded an outside the pale ofthe natural sciences. In a very definite sense that is true. The logicalconsequence of this admission should be merely the recognition that theidea of evolution as developed in the natural sciences cannot be thewhole idea. The entire history of anything, Spencer tells us, must include itsappearance out of the imperceptible, and its disappearance again intothe imperceptible. Be it a single object, or the whole universe, anaccount which begins with it in a concrete form, or leaves off with itsconcrete form, is incomplete. He uses a familiar instance, that of acloud appearing when vapour drifts over a cold mountain top, and againdisappearing when it emerges into warmer air. The cloud emerges from theimperceptible as heat is dissipated. It is dissolved again as heat isabsorbed and the watery particles evaporate. Spencer esteems this ananalogue of the appearance of the universe itself, according to thenebular hypothesis. Yet assuredly, as the cloud presupposes vapourswhich had previously condensed, and the vapour clouds that hadpreviously evaporated, and as clouds dissolve in one place even at themoment that they are forming in another, so we are told of nebulæ whichare in every phase of advance or of decline. To ask which was first, solid masses or nebulous haze, is much like recurring to the riddle ofthe hen and the egg. Still, we are told, we have but to extend ourthought beyond this emergence and subsidence of sidereal systems, ofcontinents, nations, men, to find a permanent totality made up oftransient individuals in every stage of change. The physical assumptionwith which Spencer sets out is that the mass of the universe and itsenergy are fixed in quantity. All the phenomena of evolution areincluded in the conservation of this matter and force. Besides the criticism which was offered above, that the mere law of thepersistence of force does not initiate our series, there is a furtherobjection. Even within the series, once it has been started, this law ofthe persistence of force is solely a quantitative law. When energy istransformed there is an equivalence between the new form and the old. Ofthe reasons for the direction evolution takes, for the permanence ofthat direction once it has been taken, so that the sequence of forms isa progression, the explication of a latent nature--of all this, the merelaw of the persistence of force gives us no explanation whatever. Thechange at random from one form of manifestation to another might be astriking illustration of the law of the persistence of force, but itwould be the contradiction of evolution. The very notion of evolution isthat of the sequence of forms, so that something is expressed orachieved. That achievement implies more than the mere force. Or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which the language of mechanismdoes not reckon. It assumes the idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of the force. Unquestionably that which men sought to be rid of was the idea ofpurpose in nature, in the old sense of design in the mind of God, external to the material universe, of force exerted upon nature fromwithout, so as to cause nature to conform to the design of its 'GreatOriginal, ' in Addison's high phrase. In this effort, however, thereducing of all to mere force and permutation of force, not merelyexplains nothing, but contradicts facts which stare us in the face. Itdeprives evolution of the quality which makes it evolution. To put inthis incongruous quality at the beginning, because we find it necessaryat the end, is, to say the least, naïve. To deny that we have put it in, to insist that in the marvellous sequence we have only an illustrationof mechanism and of conservation of force, is perverse. We passedthrough an era in which some said that they did not believe in God;everything was accounted for by evolution. In so far as they meant thatthey did not believe in the God of deism and of much traditionaltheology, they did not stand alone in this claim. In so far as theymeant by evolution mere mechanism, they explained nothing and destroyedthe notion of evolution besides. In so far as they meant more than meremechanism, they lapsed into the company of the scientific myth-makers towhom we alluded above. They attributed to their abstraction, evolution, qualities which other people found in the forms of the universe viewedas the manifestation of an immanent God. Only by so doing were they ableto ascribe to evolution that which other people describe as the work ofGod. At this level the controversy becomes one simply about words. Of course, the great illumination as to the meaning of evolution hascome with its application to many fields besides the physical. Darwinwas certainly the great inaugurator of the evolutionary movement inEngland. Still, Darwin's problem was strictly limited. The impression iswidespread that the biological evolutionary theories were firstdeveloped, and furnished the basis for the others. Yet both Hegel andComte, not to speak of Schelling, were far more interested in theintellectual and historical, the ethical and social aspects of thequestion. Both Hegel and Comte were, whether rightly or wrongly, rathercontemptuous of the appeal to biology and organic life. Both had thesense that they used a great figure of speech when they spoke of societyas an organism, and compared the working of institutions to biologicalfunctions. This is indeed the question. It is a question over whichSpencer sets himself lightly. He passes back and forth between organicevolution and the ethical, economic, and social movements which aredescribed by the same term, as if we were in possession of a perfectlysafe analogy, or rather as if we were assured of an identical principle. Much that is already archaic in Spencer's economic and social, hishistorical and ethical, not to say his religious, chapters is due to theinfluence of this fact. Of his own mind it was true that he had come tothe doctrine of evolution from the physical side. He brought to hisother subjects a more or less developed method of operating with theconception. He never fully realised how new subjects would alter themethod and transform the conception. Spencerian evolution is anassertion of the all-sufficiency of natural law. The authority ofconscience is but the experience of law-abiding and dutiful generationsflowing in our veins. The public weal has hold over us, because thehappiness and misery of past ages are inherited by us. It marked a great departure when Huxley began vigorously to dissent fromthese views. According to him evolutionary science has done nothing forethics. Men become ethical only as they set themselves against theprinciples embodied in the evolutionary process of the world. Evolutionis the struggle for existence. It is preposterous to say that man becamegood by succeeding in the struggle for existence. Instead of the oldsingle movement, as in Spencer, straight from the nebula to the saint, Huxley has place for suffering. Suffering is most intense in manprecisely under conditions most essential to the evolution of his noblerpowers. The loss of ease or money may be gain in character. The cosmicalprocess is not only full of pain. It is full of mercilessness and ofwickedness. Good has been evolved, but so has evil. The fittest may havesurvived. There is no guarantee that they are the best. The continualstruggle against our fellows poisons our higher life. It will hardly doto say with Huxley that the ethical struggle is the reverse of thecosmical process. Nevertheless, we have here a most interestingtransformation in thought. These ideas and principles, as is well known, were elaborated andadvanced upon in a very popular book, Drummond's _Ascent of Man_, 1894. Even the title was a happy and suggestive one. Struggle for life is afact, but it is not the whole fact. It is balanced by the struggle forthe life of others. This latter reaches far down into the levels of whatwe call brute life. Its divinest reach is only the fulfilment of thereal nature of humanity. It is the living with men which develops themoral in man. The prolongation of infancy in the higher species has hadto do with the development of moral nature. So only that we hold asufficiently deep view of reason, provided we see clearly that reasontransforms, perfects, makes new what we inherit from the beast, we neednot fear for morality, though it should universally be taught thatmorality came into being by the slow and gradual fashioning of bruteimpulse. Benjamin Kidd in his _Social Evolution_, 1895, has reverted again toextreme Darwinism in morals and sociology. The law is that of unceasingstruggle. Reason does not teach us to moderate the struggle. It butsharpens the conflict. All religions are præter-rational, Christianitymost of all, in being the most altruistic. Kidd, not without reason, comments bitterly upon Spencer's Utopia, the passage of militarism intoindustrialism. The struggle in industrialism is fiercer than ever. Reason affects the animal nature of man for the worse. Clearly consciousof what he is doing, man objects to sacrificing himself for his familyor tribe. Instinct might lead an ape to do that. Intelligence warns aman against it. Reason is cruel beyond anything dreamed of in the beast. That portion of the community which loves to hear the abuse of reason, rejoiced to hear this phrase. They rejoiced when they heard thatreligion was the only remedy, and that religion was ultra-rational, contra-rational, supernatural, in this new sense. How one comes by it, or how one can rationally justify the yielding of allegiance to it, isnot clear. One must indeed have the will to believe if one believes onthese terms. These again are but examples. They convey but a superficial impressionof the effort to apply the conception of evolution to the moral andreligious life of man. All this has taken place, of course, in a farlarger setting that of the endeavour to elaborate the evolutionary viewof politics and of the state, of economics and of trade, of social lifeand institutions, of culture and civilisation in every aspect. Thiselaboration and reiteration of the doctrine of evolution sometimeswearies us. It is but the unwearied following of the main clue to theriddle of the universe which the age has given us. It is nothing moreand nothing less than the endeavour to apprehend the ideal life, nolonger as something held out to us, set up before us, but also assomething working within us, realising itself through us and among us. To deny the affinity of this with religion would be fatuous and alsofutile. Temporarily, at least, and to many interests of religion, itwould be fatal. MIRACLES It must be evident that the total view of the universe which theacceptance of the doctrine of evolution implies, has had effect in thediminution of the acuteness of the question concerning miracles. Itcertainly gives to that question a new form. A philosophy which assertsthe constant presence of God in nature and the whole life of the world, a criticism which has given us a truer notion of the documents whichrecord the biblical miracles, the reverent sense of ignorance which ourincreasing knowledge affords, have tended to diminish the dogmatism ofmen on either side of the debate. The contention on behalf of themiracle, in the traditional sense of the word, once seemed the bulwarkof positive religion, the distinction between the man who was satisfiedwith a naturalistic explanation of the universe and one whose devoutsoul asked for something more. On the other hand, the contention againstthe miracle appeared to be a necessary corollary of the notion of a lawand order which are inviolable throughout the universe. Furthermore, many men have come of themselves to the conclusion for whichSchleiermacher long ago contended. Whatever may be theoreticallydetermined concerning miracles, yet the miracle can never again beregarded as among the foundations of faith. This is for the simplest ofreasons. The belief in a miracle presupposes faith. It is the faithwhich sustains the miracle, and not the miracle the faith. Jesus is tomen the incomparable moral and spiritual magnitude which he is, not onthe evidence of some unparalleled things physical which it is alleged hedid. Quite the contrary, it is the immediate impression of the moral andspiritual wonder which Jesus is, that prepares what credence we cangather for the wonders which it is declared he did. This is a transferof emphasis, a redistribution of weight in the structure of our thought, the relief of which many appreciate who have not reasoned the matterthrough for themselves. Schleiermacher had said, and Herrmann and others repeat the thought, that, as the Christian faith finds in Christ the highest revelation, miracles may reasonably be expected of him. Nevertheless, he adds, thesedeeds can be called miracles or esteemed extraordinary, only ascontaining something which was beyond contemporary knowledge of theregular and orderly connexion between physical and spiritual life. Therewith, it must be evident, that the notion of the miraculous isfundamentally changed. So it comes to pass that we have a book likeMackintosh's _Natural History of the Christian Religion_, 1894, whoseavowed purpose is to do away with the miraculous altogether. Of course, the author means the traditional notion of the miraculous, according towhich it is the essence of arbitrariness and the negation of law. It isnot that he has less sense for the divine life of the world, or for thequality of Christianity as revelation. On the other hand, we have a booklike Percy Gardner's _Exploratio Evangelica_, 1899. With the mostsearching criticism of the narratives of some miracles, there isreverent confession, on the author's part, that he is baffled by thereports of others. There is recognition of unknown possibilities in thecase of a character like that of Jesus. It is not that Gardner has aless stringent sense of fact and of the inexorableness of law than hasMackintosh or an ardent physicist. The problem is reduced to that of thechoice of expression. We are not able to withhold a justification of thescholar who declares: We must not say that we believe in the miraculous. This language is sure to be appropriated by those who still take theirdeparture from the old dualism, now hopelessly obsolete, for which abreach of the law of nature was the crowning evidence of the love ofGod. On the other hand, the assertion that we do not believe in themiraculous will easily be taken by some to mean the denial of the wholesense of the nearness and power and love of God, and of the unimaginedpossibilities of such a moral nature as was that of Christ. It is to berepeated that we have here a mere difference as to terms. The debate isno longer about ideas. The traditional notion of the miracle arose out of the confusion of twoseries of ideas which, in the last analysis, have nothing to do witheach other. On the one hand, there is the conception of law and order, of cause and effect, of the unbroken connexion of nature. On the otherhand is the thought of the divine purpose in the life of the world andof the individual. By the aid of that first sequence of thoughts we findourselves in the universe and interpret the world of fact to ourselves. Yet in the other sequence lies the essence of religion. The twosequences may perfectly well coexist in the same mind. Out of theattempt to combine them nothing clear or satisfying can issue. If oneshould be, to-day, brought face to face with a fact which was alleged tobe a miracle, his instinctive effort would be, nevertheless, to seek tofind its cause, to establish for it a connexion in the natural order. Inthe ancient world men did not argue thus, nor in the modern world untilless than two hundred years ago. The presumption of the order of naturehad not assumed for them the proportions which it has for us. For us itis overwhelming, self-evident. Therewith is not involved that we lackbelief in a divine purpose for the world and for the individual life. We do not deny that there are laws of nature of which we have noexperience, facts which we do not understand, events which, if theyshould occur, would stand before us as unique. Still, the decisive thingis, that in face of such an event, instead of viewing it quite simply asa divine intervention, as men used to do, we, with equal simplicity andno less devoutness, conceive that same event as only an illustration ofa connexion in nature which we do not understand. There is no inherentreason why we may not understand it. When we do understand it, therewill be nothing more about it that is conceivably miraculous. There willbe then no longer a unique quality attaching to the event. Therewithends the possible significance of such an event as proof of divineintervention for our especial help. We have but a connexion in naturesuch that, whether understood or not, if it were to recur, the eventwould recur. The miracles which are related in the Scripture may be divided for ourconsideration into three classes. To the first class belong most ofthose which are related in the Old Testament, but some also which areconspicuous in the New Testament. They are, in some cases, the poeticaland imaginative representation of the profoundest religious ideas. Sosoon as one openly concedes this, when there is no longer any necessityeither to attack or to defend the miracle in question, one is in aposition to acknowledge how deep and wonderful the thoughts often areand how beautiful the form in which they are conveyed. It is throughimagination and symbolism that we are able to convey the subtlestmeanings which we have. Still more was this the case with men of anearlier age. In the second place, the narratives of miracles are, someof them, of such a sort that we may say that an event or circumstance innature has been obviously apprehended in naïve fashion. This by no meansforbids us to interpret that same event in quite a different way. Themen of former time, exactly in proportion as they had less sense of theorder of nature than have we, so were they also far readier to assumethe immediate forthputting of the power of God. This was true not merelyof the uneducated. It is difficult, or even impossible, for us to findout what the event was. Fact and apprehension are inextricablyinterwoven. That which really happened is concealed from us by the talewhich had intended to reveal it. In the third place, there are manycases in the history of Jesus, and some in that of the apostles andprophets, in which that which is related moves in the borderland betweenbody and soul, spirit and matter, the region of the influence of will, one's own or that of another, over physical conditions. Concerning suchcases we are disposed, far more than were men even a few years ago, toconcede that there is much that is by no means yet investigated, and thesoundest judgment we can form is far from being sure. Even if werecognise to the full the lamentable resurgence of outworn superstitionsand stupidities, which again pass current among us for an unhappymoment, if we detect the questionable or manifestly evil consequences ofcertain uses made or alleged of psychic influence, yet still we are notalways in a position to say, with certainty, what is true in tales ofhealing which we hear in our own day. There are certain of thestatements concerning Jesus' healing power and action which areabsolutely baffling. They can be eliminated from the narrative only by aprocedure which might just as well eliminate the narrative. In many ofthe narratives there may be much that is true. In some all may be asrelated. In Jesus' time, on the witness of the Scripture itself, it wasassumed as something no one questioned, that miraculous deeds wereperformed, not alone by Jesus and the apostles, but by many others, andnot always even by the good. Such deeds were performed through the powerof evil spirits as well as by the power of God. To imagine that theworking of miracles proved that Jesus came from God, is the most patentimportation of a modern apologetic notion into the area of ancientthought. We must remember that Jesus himself laid no great weight uponthe miracles which we assume that he believed he wrought, and some ofwhich we may believe that he did work. Many he performed with hesitationand desired so far as possible to conceal. Even if we were in a position at one point or another in the life ofJesus to defend the traditional assumptions concerning the miraculous, yet it must be evident how opposed it is to right reason, to lay stresson the abstract necessity of belief in the miraculous. The traditionalconception of the miraculous is done away for us. This is not at all bythe fact that we are in a position to say with Matthew Arnold: 'Thetrouble with miracles is that they never happen. ' We do not know enoughto say that. To stake all on the assertion of the impossibility ofso-called miracles is as foolish as to stake much on the affirmation oftheir actuality. The connexion of nature is only an induction. This cannever be complete. The real question is both more complex and also moresimple. The question is whether, even if an event, the most unparalleledof those related in the Gospels or outside of them, should be provedbefore our very eyes to have taken place, the question is whether weshould believe it to have been a miracle in the traditional sense, anevent in which the actual--not the known, but the possible--order ofnature had been broken through, and in the old sense, God hadarbitrarily supervened. Allowed that the event were, in our own experience and in the knownexperience of the race, unparalleled, yet it would never occur to us tosuppose but that there was a law of this case, also, a connexion innature in which, as work of God, it occurred, and in which, if theconditions were repeated, it would recur. We should unceasinglyendeavour through observation, reflexion, and new knowledge, to show howwe might subordinate this event in the connexion of nature which weassume. We should feel that we knew more, and not less, of God, if weshould succeed. And if our effort should prove altogether futile, weshould be no less sure that such natural connexion exists. This isbecause nature is for us the revelation of the divine. The divine, weassume, has a natural order of working. Its inviolability is thedivinest thing about it. It is through this sequence of ideas that weare in a position to deny, not facts which may be inexplicable, but thetraditional conception of the miracle. For surely no one needs to betold that this is not the conception of the miracle which has existed inthe minds of the devout, and equally of the undevout, from the beginningof thought until the present day. However, there is nothing in all of this which hinders us from believingwith a full heart in the love and grace and care of God, in his holy andredeeming purpose for mankind and for the individual. It is true thatthis belief cannot any longer retain its naïve and childish form. It istrue that it demands of a man far more of moral force, of ethical andspiritual mastery, of insight and firm will, to sustain the belief inthe purpose of God for himself and for all men, when a man believes thathe sees and feels God only in and through nature and history, throughpersonal consciousness and the personal consciousness of Jesus. It istrue that it has, apparently, been easier for men to think of God asoutside and above his world, and of themselves as separated from theirfellows by his special providence. It is more difficult, through gladand intelligent subjection to all laws of nature and of history, toachieve the education of one's spirit, to make good one's innerdeliverance from the world, to aid others in the same struggle and toset them on their way to God. Men grow uncertain within themselves, because they say that traditional religion has apprehended the matter ina different way. This is true. It is also misleading. Whatever miraclesJesus may have performed, no one can say that he performed them to makelife easier for himself, to escape the common lot, to avoid struggle, toevade suffering and disgraceful death. On the contrary, in genuine humanself-distrust, but also in genuine heroism, he gave himself to hisvocation, accepting all that went therewith, and finished the work ofGod which he had made his own. This is the more wonderful because it layso much nearer to him than it can lie to us, to pray for specialevidence of the love of God and to set his faith on the receiving of it. He had not the conception of the relation of God to nature and historywhich we have. We may well view the modern tendency to belief in healings throughprayer, suggestion and faith, as an intelligible, an interesting, and inpart, a touching manifestation. Of course there is mingled with it muchdense ignorance, some superstition and even deception. Yet behind such aphenomenon there is meaning. Men of this mind make earnest with thethought that God cares for them. Without that thought there is noreligion. They have been taught to find the evidence of God's love andcare in the unusual. They are quite logical. It has been a weak point ofthe traditional belief that men have said that in the time of Christthere were miracles, but since that time, no more. Why not, if we canonly in spirit come near to Christ and God? They are quite logical alsoin that they have repudiated modern science. To be sure, noinconsiderable part of them use the word science continually. But the very esoteric quality of their science is that it meanssomething which no one else ever understood that it meant. In realitytheir breach with science is more radical than their breach withChristianity. They feel the contradiction in which most men are boundfast, who will let science have its way, up to a certain point, but whobeyond that, would retain the miracle. Dimly the former appreciate thatthis position is impossible. They leave it to other men to becomealtogether scientific if they wish. For themselves they prefer to remainreligious. What a revival of ancient superstitions they have brought topass, is obvious. Still we shall never get beyond such adventurous andpreposterous endeavours to rescue that which is inestimably precious inreligion, until the false antithesis between reason and faith, the lyingcontradiction between the providence of God and the order of nature, isovercome. Some science mankind apparently must have. Altogether withoutreligion the majority, it would seem, will never be. How these arerelated, the one to the other, not every one sees. Many attempt theiradmixture in unhappy ways. They might try letting them stand in peace ascomplement and supplement the one to the other. Still better, they mayperhaps some day see how each penetrates, permeates and glorifies theother. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES We said that the last generation had been characterised by an unexampledconcentration of intellectual interest upon problems presented by thesocial sciences. With this has gone an unrivalled earnestness in theinterpretation of religion as a social force. The great religiousenthusiasm has been that of the application of Christianity to thesocial aspects of life. This effort has furnished most of the watchwordsof religious teaching. It has laid vigorous, not to say violent, handson religious institutions. It has given a new perspective to effort anda new impulse to devotion. The revival of religion in our age has takenthis direction, with an exclusiveness which has had both good and evilconsequences. Yet, before all, it should be made clear that itconstitutes a religious revival. Some are deploring the prostratecondition of spiritual interests. If one judged only by conventionalstandards, they have much evidence upon their side. Some are seeking togalvanise religious life by recurrence to evangelistic methodssuccessfully operative half a century ago. The outstanding fact is thatthe age shows immense religious vitality, so soon as one concedes thatit must be allowed to show its vitality in its own way. It is the age ofthe social question. One must be ignorant indeed of the activity of thechurches and of the productivity of religious thinkers, if he does notown that in Christian circles also no questions are so rife as these. Whether the panaceas have been all wise or profitable may be questioned. Whether the interest has not been even excessive and one-sided, whetherthe accusation has not been occasionally unjust and the self-accusationmorbid, these are questions which it might be possible in some quartersto ask. This is, however, only another form of proof of what we say. Thereligious interest in social questions has not been aroused primarily byintellectual and scientific impulses, nor fostered mainly by doctrinairediscussion. On the contrary, the initiative has been from the practicalside. It has been a question of life and service. If anything, one oftenmisses the scientific note in the flood of semi-religious literaturerelating to this theme, the realisation that, to do well, it is oftenprofitable to think. Yet there is effort to mediate the best results ofsocial-scientific thinking, through clerical education and directly tothe laity. On the other hand, a deep sense of ethical and spiritualresponsibility is prevalent among thinkers upon social topics. Often indeed has the quality of Christianity been observed which is hereexemplified. Each succeeding age has read into Christ's teachings, ordrawn out from his example, the special meaning which that generation, or that social level, or that individual man had need to draw. To themin their enthusiasm it has often seemed as if this were the only lessonreasonable men could draw. Nothing could be more enlightening than isreflexion upon this reading of the ever-changing ideals of man's lifeinto Christianity, or of Christianity into the ever-advancing ideals ofman's life. This chameleonlike quality of Christianity is the farthestpossible remove from the changelessness which men love to attribute toreligion. It is the most wonderful quality which Christianity possesses. It is precisely because of the recognition of this capacity for changethat one may safely argue the continuance of Christianity in the world. Yet also because of this recognition, one is put upon his guard againstjoining too easily in the clamour that a past apprehension of religionwas altogether wrong, or that a new and urgent one, in its exclusiveemphasis and its entirety, is right. Our age is haunted by the sense ofterrific social and economic inequalities which prevail. It has set itsheart upon the elimination of those inequalities. It is an age whosedisrespect for religion is in some part due to the fact that religionhas not done away with these inequalities. It is an age which isimmediately interested in an interpretation of religion which will makecentral the contention that, before all things else, these inequalitiesmust be done away. If religion can be made a means of every man'sgetting his share of the blessings of this world, well and good. If not, there are many men and women to whom religion seems utterly meaningless. This sentence hardly overstates the case. It is the challenge of the ageto religion to do something which the age profoundly needs, and whichreligion under its age-long dominant apprehension has not conspicuouslydone, nor even on a great scale attempted. It is the challenge toreligion to undertake a work of surpassing grandeur--nothing less thanthe actualisation of the whole ideal of the life of man. Religious menrespond with the quickened and conscientious conviction, not indeed thatthey have laid too great an emphasis upon the spiritual, but that undera dualistic conception of God and man and world, they have neversufficiently realised that the spiritual is to be realised in thematerial, the ideal in and not apart from the actual, the eternal in andnot after the temporal. Yet with that oscillatory quality which belongsto human movements, especially where old wrongs and errors have comedeeply to be felt, a part of the literature of the contention showsmarked tendency to extremes. A religion in the body must become areligion of the body. A Christianity of the social state runs risk ofbeing apprehended as merely one more means for compassing outward andmaterial ends. Religion does stand for the inner life and thetranscendent world, only not an inner life through the neglect of theouter, or a transcendent world in some far-off star or after an æon ortwo. There might be meaning in the argument that, exactly because somany other forces in our age do make for the realisation of the outerlife and present world with an effectiveness and success which noprevious age has ever dreamed, there is the more reason, and not theless, why religion should still be religion. Exactly this is thecontention of Eueken in one of the most significant contributions ofrecent years to the philosophy of religion, his _Wahrheitsgehalt derReligion_, 1901, transl. Jones, 1911. The very source and cause of thesure recovery of religion in our age will be the experience of thefutility, the bankruptcy, of a civilisation without faith. No noblerargument has been heard in our time for the spiritual meaning ofreligion, with the fullest recognition of all its other meanings. The modern emphasis on the social aspects of religion may be said tohave been first clearly expressed in Seeley's _Ecce Homo_, 1867. Thepith of the book is in this phrase: 'To reorganise society and to bindthe members of it together by the closest ties was the business ofJesus' life. ' Allusion has been made to Fremantle's _The World as theSubject of Redemption_, 1885. Worthy of note is also Fairbairn's_Religion in History and Modern Life_, 1894; pre-eminently so isBosanquet's _The Civilisation of Christendom_, 1893. Westcott's_Incarnation and Common Life_, 1893, contains utterances of weight. Peabody, in his book, _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_, 1905, hasgiven, on the whole, the best résumé of the discussion. He conveysincidentally an impression of the body of literature produced in recentyears, in which it is assumed, sometimes with embitterment, that thecentre of gravity of Christianity is outside the Church. Sell, in thevery title of his illuminating little book, _Christenthum undWeltgeschichte seit der Reformation: das Christenthum in seinerEntwickelung über die Kirche hinaus_, 1910, records an impression, whichis widespread and true, that the characteristic mark of modernChristianity is that it has transcended the organs and agenciesofficially created for it. It has become non-ecclesiastical, if notactually hostile to the Church. It has permeated the world in unexpectedfashion and does the deeds of Christianity, though rather eager to avoidthe name. The anti-clericalism of the Latin countries is notunintelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the Teutonic not without acause. German socialism, ever since Karl Marx, has been fundamentallyantagonistic to any religion whatsoever. It is purely secularist intone. This is also a strained situation, liable to become perverse. Thatpart of the Christian Church which understands itself, rejoices innothing so much as in the fact that the spirit of Christ is so widelydisseminated, his influence felt by many who do not know what influenceit is which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would nevercall themselves his workers. That part of the Church is not therewithconvinced but that there is need of the Church as institution, and ofthose who are consciously disciples of Jesus in the world. By far the largest question, however, which is raised in this connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated. It is, perhaps, the lastquestion one would have expected the literature of the social movementto raise. It is, namely, the question of the individual. Ever since themiddle of the eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, towhich the individual is sacrificed, has obtained. Within the period ofwhich this book treats the world has won an enlargement of horizon ofwhich it never dreamed. It has gained a forecast of the future ofculture and civilisation which is beyond imagination. The access ofcomfort makes men at home in the world as they never were at home. Therehas been set a value on this life which life never had before. Thesuccession of discoveries and applications of discovery makes it seem asif there were to be no end in this direction. From Rousseau to Spencermen have elaborated the view that the historical process cannot reallyissue in anything else than in ever higher stages of perfection and ofhappiness. They postulate a continuous enhancement of energy and asteady perfecting of intellectual and moral quality. As the goal ofevolution appears an ideal condition which is either indefinitelyremote, that is, which gives room for the bliss of infinite progress inits direction, or else a definitely attainable condition, which wouldhave within itself the conditions of perpetuity. The resistlessness with which this new view of the life of civilisationhas won acknowledgment from men of all classes is amazing. It rests upona belief in the self-sufficiency and the all-sufficiency of the life ofthis world, of the bearings of which it may be assumed that few of itsvotaries are aware. In reality this view cannot by any possibility bedescribed as the result of knowledge. On the contrary, it is a ventureof faith. It is the peculiar, the very characteristic and suggestiveform which the faith of our age takes. Men believe in this indefiniteprogress of the world and of mankind, because without postulating suchprogress they do not see how they can assume the absolute worth of anactivity which is yet the only thing which has any interest to most ofthem. Under this view one can assign to the individual life a definitesignificance, only upon the supposition that the individual is the organof realisation of a part of this progress of mankind. All happiness andsuffering, all changes in knowledge and manner of conduct, are supposedto have no worth each for itself or for the sake of the individual, butonly for their relation to the movement as a whole. Surely this is anillusion. Exactly that in which the characteristic quality of the worldand of life is found, the individual personalities, the singlegenerations, the concrete events--these lose, in this view, their ownparticular worth. What can possibly be the worth of a whole of which theparts have no worth? We have here but a parallel on a huge scale of thatdeadly trait in our own private lives, according to which it makes nodifference what we are doing, so only that we are doing, or whither weare going, so only that we cease not to go, or what our noise is allabout, so only that there be no end of the noise. Certainly no one canestablish the value of the evolutionary process in and of itself. If the movement as a whole has no definite end that has absolute worth, then it has no worth except as the stages, the individual factorsincluded in it, attain to something within themselves which is ofincreasing worth. If the movement achieves this, then it has worth, nototherwise. We may illustrate this question by asking ourselvesconcerning the existence and significance of suffering and of the eviland of the bad which are in the world, in their relation to thistendency to indefinite progress which is supposed to be inherent incivilisation. On this theory we have to say that the suffering of theindividual is necessary for the development and perfecting of the whole. As over against the whole the individual has no right to make demands asto welfare or happiness. The bad also becomes only relative. In themovement taken as a whole, it is probably unavoidable. In any case it isnegligible, since the movement is irresistible. All ethical values areabsorbed in the dynamic ones, all personal values in the collectiveones. Surely the sole intelligent question about any civilisation is, what sort of men does it produce. If it produces worthless individuals, it is so far forth a worthless civilisation. If it has sacrificed manyworthy men in order to produce this ignoble result, then it is moreobviously ignoble than ever. Furthermore, this notion of an inherent necessity and an irresistibletendency to progress is a chimera. The progress of mankind is a task. Itis something to which the worthy human spirit is called upon to makecontribution. The unworthy never hear the call. Progress is not anatural necessity. It is an ethical obligation. It is a task which hasbeen fulfilled by previous generations in varying degrees ofperfectness. It will be participated in by succeeding generations withvarying degrees of wisdom and success. But as to there being anythingautonomous about it, this is sheer hallucination, myth-making again, onthe part of those who boast that they despise the myth, miracle-mongering on the part of those who have abjured the miracle, nonsense on the part of those who boast that they alone are sane. Thereis no ultimate source of civilisation but the individual, as there isalso no issue of civilisation but in individuals. Men, characters, personalities, are the makers of it. Men are the product which is made. The higher stages and achievements of the life of society have come topass always and only upon condition that single personalities haverecognised the problem, seen their individual duty and known how toinspire others with enthusiasm. Periods of decline are always those inwhich this personal element cannot make itself felt. Democracies andperiods of the intensity of emphasis upon the social movement, tenddirectly to the depression and suppression of personality. [7] Suchreflexions will have served their purpose if they give us some clearsense of what we have to understand as the effect of the social movementon religion. They may give also some forecast of the effect of realreligion on the social movement. For religion is the relation of God andpersonality. It can be social only in the sense that society, in all itsnormal relations, is the sphere within which that relation of God andpersonality is to be wrought out. [Footnote 7: Siebeck, _Religionsphilosophie_, 1893, s. 407. ] CHAPTER VI THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES: ACTION AND REACTION In those aspects of our subject with which we have thus far dealt, leadership has been largely with the Germans. Effort was indeed made inthe chapter on the sciences to illustrate the progress of thought byreference to British writers. In this department the original andcreative contribution of British authors was great. There were, however, also in the earlier portion of the nineteenth century movements ofreligious thought in Great Britain and America related to some of thosewhich we have previously considered. Moreover, one of the mostinfluential movements of English religious thought, the so-called OxfordMovement, with the Anglo-Catholic revival which it introduced, was of areactionary tendency. It has seemed, therefore, feasible to append tothis chapter that which we must briefly say concerning the generalmovement of reaction which marked the century. This reactionary movementhas indeed everywhere run parallel to the one which we have endeavouredto record. It has often with vigour run counter to our movement. It hasrevealed the working of earnest and sometimes anxious minds indirections opposed to those which we have been studying. No one can failto be aware that there has been a great Catholic revival in thenineteenth century. That revival has had place in the Roman Catholiccountries of the Continent as well. It was in order to include theprivilege of reference to these aspects of our subject that this chapterwas given a double title. Yet in no country has the nineteenth centuryso favourably altered the position of the Roman Catholic Church as inEngland. In no country has a Church which has been esteemed to beProtestant been so much influenced by Catholic ideas. This again is areason for including our reference to the reaction here. According to Pfleiderer, a new movement in philosophy may be said tohave begun in Great Britain in the year 1825, with the publication ofColeridge's _Aids to Reflection_. In Coleridge's _Confessions of anEnquiring Spirit_, published six years after his death in 1834, we havea suggestion of the biblical-critical movement which was beginning toshape itself in Germany. In the same years we have evidence in the worksof Erskine and the early writings of Campbell, that in Scotlandtheologians were thinking on Schleiermacher's lines. In those same yearsbooks of more or less marked rationalistic tendency were put forth bythe Oriel School. Finally, with Pusey's _Assize Sermon_, in 1833, Newmanfelt that the movement later to be called Tractarian had begun. We shallnot be wrong, therefore, in saying that the decade following 1825 sawthe beginnings in Britain of more formal reflexion upon all the aspectsof the theme with which we are concerned. What went before that, however, in the way of liberal religiousthinking, though informal in its nature, should not be ignored. It wasthe work of the poets of the end of the eighteenth and of the beginningof the nineteenth centuries. The culmination of the great revolt againstthe traditional in state and society and against the conventional inreligion, had been voiced in Britain largely by the poets. So vigorouswas this utterance and so effective, that some have spoken of thecontribution of the English poets to the theological reconstruction. Itis certain that the utterances of the poets tended greatly to thedissemination of the new ideas. There was in Great Britain no such unityas we have observed among the Germans, either of the movement as a wholeor in its various parts. There was a consecution nothing less thanmarvellous in the work of the philosophers from Kant to Hegel. There wasa theological sequence from Schleiermacher to Ritschl. There was anunceasing critical advance from the days of Strauss. There was nothingresembling this in the work of the English-speaking people. Thecontributions were for a long time only sporadic. The movement had noinclusiveness. There was no aspect of a solid front in the advance. Inthe department of the sciences only was the situation different. In away, therefore, it will be necessary in this chapter merely to singleout individuals, to note points of conflict, one and another, all alongthe great line of advance. Or, to put it differently, it will bepossible to pursue a chronological arrangement which would have beenbewildering in our study heretofore. With the one great division betweenthe progressive spirits and the men of the reaction, it will be possibleto speak of philosophers, critics and theologians together, among theirown contemporaries, and so to follow the century as it advances. In the closing years of the eighteenth century in England what claimedto be a rational supernaturalism prevailed. Men sought to combine faithin revealed religion with the empirical philosophy of Locke. Theyconceived God and his relation to the world under deistical forms. Theeducated often lacked in singular degree all deeper religious feeling. They were averse to mysticism and spurned enthusiasm. Utilitarianconsiderations, which formed the practical side of the empiricalphilosophy, played a prominent part also in orthodox belief. The theoryof the universe which obtained among the religious is seen at its worstin some of the volumes of the Warburton Lectures, and at its bestperhaps in Butler's _Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion_. Thecharacter and views of the clergy and of the ruling class among thelaity of the Church of England, early in the nineteenth century, arepictured with love and humour in Trollope's novels. They form thebackground in many of George Eliot's books, where, in more mordantmanner, both their strength and weaknesses are shown. Even the remarkswhich introduce Dean Church's _Oxford Movement_, 1891, in which thechurchly element is dealt with in deep affection, give anything but aninspiring view. The contrast with this would-be rational and unemotional religiousrespectability of the upper classes was furnished, for masses of thepeople, in the quickening of the consciousness of sin and grace afterthe manner of the Methodists. But the Methodism of the earlier age hadas good as no intellectual relations whatsoever. The Wesleys andWhitefield had indeed influenced a considerable portion of the Anglicancommunion. Their pietistic trait, combined, for the most part, with aCalvinism which Wesley abhorred and an old-fashioned low church feelingwith which also Wesley had no sympathy, shows itself in the so-calledevangelical party which was strong before 1830. This evangelicalmovement in the Church of England manifested deep religious feeling, itput forth zealous philanthropic effort, it had among its representativesmen and women of great beauty of personal character and piety. Yet itwas completely cut off from any living relation to the thought of theage. There was among its representatives no spirit of theologicalinquiry. There was, if anything, less probability of theologicalreconstruction, from this quarter, than from the circles of the olderGerman pietism, with which this English evangelicalism of the time ofthe later Georges had not a little in common. There had been a greatenthusiasm for humanity at the opening of the period of the FrenchRevolution, but the excesses and atrocities of the Revolution hadprofoundly shocked the English mind. There was abroad something of thesame sense for the return to nature, and of the greatness of man, whichmoved Schiller and Goethe. The exponents of it were, however, almostexclusively the poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Byron. There wasnothing which combined these various elements as parts of a great whole. Britain had stood outside the area of the Revolution, and yet had putforth stupendous efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of therevolutionary era and of the Napoleonic despotism. This tended perhapsto give to Britons some natural satisfaction in the British Constitutionand the established Church which flourished under it. Finally, while menon the Continent were devising holy alliances and other chimeras of thesort, England was precipitated into the earlier acute stages of theindustrial revolution in which she has led the European nations andstill leads. This fact explains a certain preoccupation of the Britishmind with questions remote from theological reconstruction or religiousspeculation. THE POETS It may now sound like a contradiction if we assert that the years from1780 to 1830 constitute the era of the noblest English poetry since thetimes of great Elizabeth. The social direction of the new theology ofthe present day, with its cry against every kind of injustice, with itsclaim of an equal opportunity for a happy life for every man--this wasthe forecast of Cowper, as it had been of Blake. To Blake all outwardinfallible authority of books or churches was iniquitous. He was atdaggers drawn with every doctrine which set limit to the freedom of allmen to love God, or which could doubt that God had loved all men. Jesusalone had seen the true thing. God was a father, every man his child. Long before 1789, Burns was filled with the new ideas of the freedom andbrotherhood of man, with zeal for the overthrow of unjust privilege. Hehad spoken in imperishable words of the holiness of the common life. Hehad come into contact with the most dreadful consequences of Calvinism. He has pilloried these mercilessly in his 'Holy Tulzie' and in his 'HolyWillie's Prayer. ' Such poems must have shaken Calvinism more than athousand liberal sermons could have done. What Coleridge might have donein this field, had he not so early turned to prose, it is not easy tosay. The verse of his early days rests upon the conviction, fundamentalto his later philosophy, that all the new ideas concerning men and theworld are a revelation of God. Wordsworth seems never consciously tohave broken with the current theology. His view of the natural glory andgoodness of humanity, especially among the poor and simple, has not muchrelation to that theology. His view of nature, not as created of God. Inthe conventional sense, but as itself filled with God, of God asconscious of himself at every point of nature's being, has still less. Man and nature are but different manifestations of the one soul of all. Byron's contribution to Christian thought, we need hardly say, was of anegative sort. It was destructive rather than constructive. Among theconventions and hypocrisies of society there were none which he moreutterly despised than those of religion and the Church as he saw these. There is something volcanic, Voltairean in his outbreaks. But there is adifference. Both Voltaire and Byron knew that they had not the currentreligion. Voltaire thought, nevertheless, that he had a religion. Posterity has esteemed that he had little. Byron thought he had none. Posterity has felt that he had much. His attack was made in a recklessbitterness which lessened its effect. Yet the truth of many things whichhe said is now overwhelmingly obvious. Shelley began with being what hecalled an atheist. He ended with being what we call an agnostic, whosepure poetic spirit carried him far into the realm of the highestidealism. The existence of a conscious will within the universe is notquite thinkable. Yet immortal love pervades the whole. Immortality isimprobable, but his highest flights continually imply it. He is surethat when any theology violates the primary human affections, ittramples into the dust all thoughts and feelings by which men may becomegood. The men who, about 1840, stood paralysed between what Strausslater called 'the old faith and the new, ' or, as Arnold phrased it, were'between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, ' foundtheir inmost thoughts written broad for them in Arthur Clough. From thetime of the opening of Tennyson's work, the poets, not by destructionbut by construction, not in opposition to religion but in harmony withit, have built up new doctrines of God and man and aided incalculably inpreparing the way for a new and nobler theology. In the latter part ofthe nineteenth century there was perhaps no one man in England who didmore to read all of the vast advance of knowledge in the light of higherfaith, and to fill such a faith with the spirit of the glad advance ofknowledge, than did Browning. Even Arnold has voiced in his poetry not alittle of the noblest conviction of the age. And what shall one say ofMrs. Browning, of the Rossettis and William Morris, of Emerson andLowell, of Lanier and Whitman, who have spoken, often with consummatepower and beauty, that which one never says at all without faith andrarely says well without art? COLERIDGE Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 at his father's vicarage, Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire. He was the tenth child of his parents, weak in frame, always suffering much. He was a student at Christ'sHospital, London, where he was properly bullied, then at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he did not take his degree. For some happy years helived in the Lake region and was the friend of Wordsworth and Southey. He studied in Göttingen, a thing almost unheard of in his time. Theyears 1798 to 1813 were indeed spent in utter misery, through the opiumhabit which he had contracted while seeking relief from rheumatic pain. He wrote and taught and talked in Highgate from 1814 to 1834. He hadplanned great works which never took shape. For a brief period hesevered his connexion with the English Church, coming under Unitarianinfluence. He then reverted to the relation in which his ecclesiasticalinstincts were satisfied. We read his _Aids to Reflection_ and his_Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_, and wonder how they can ever haveexerted a great influence. Nevertheless, they were fresh and stimulatingin their time. That Coleridge was a power, we have testimony from mendiffering among themselves so widely as do Hare, Sterling, Newman andJohn Stuart Mill. He was a master of style. He had insight and breadth. Tulloch says of the _Aids_, that it is a book which none but a thinkerupon divine things will ever like. Not all even of these have liked it. Inexcusably fragmentary it sometimes seems. One is fain to ask: Whatright has any man to publish a scrap-book of his musings? Coleridge hadthe ambition to lay anew the foundations of spiritual philosophy. The_Aids_ were but of the nature of prolegomena. For substance hisphilosophy went back to Locke and Hume and to the Cambridge Platonists. He had learned of Kant and Schleiermacher as well. He was nometaphysician, but a keen interpreter of spiritual facts, who himselfhad been quickened by a particularly painful experience. He saw inChristianity, rightly conceived, at once the true explanation of ourspiritual being and the remedy for its disorder. The evangelicaltradition brought religion to a man from without. It took no account ofman's spiritual constitution, beyond the fact that he was a sinner andin danger of hell. Coleridge set out, not from sin alone, but from thewhole deep basis of spiritual capacity and responsibility upon which sinrests. He asserts experience. We are as sure of the capacity for thegood and of the experience of the good as we can be of the evil. Thecase is similar as to the truth. There are aspects of truth whichtranscend our powers. We use words without meaning when we talk of theplans of a being who is neither an object for our senses nor a part ofour self-consciousness. All truth must be capable of being rendered intowords conformable to reason. Theologians had declared their doctrinestrue or false without reference to the subjective standard of judgment. Coleridge contended that faith must rest not merely upon objective data, but upon inward experience. The authority of Scripture is in itstruthfulness, its answer to the highest aspirations of the human reasonand the most urgent necessities of the moral life. The doctrine of anatonement is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within therange of spiritual experience. The apostolic language took colour fromthe traditions concerning sacrifice. Much has been taken by the Churchas literal dogmatic statement which should be taken as more figure ofspeech, borrowed from Jewish sources. Coleridge feared that his thoughts concerning Scripture might, ifpublished, do more harm than good. They were printed first in 1840. Their writing goes back into the period long before the conflict raisedby Strauss. There is not much here that one might not have learned fromHerder and Lessing. Utterances of Whately and Arnold showed that mindsin England were waking. But Coleridge's utterances rest consistentlyupon the philosophy of religion and theory of dogma which have beenabove implied. They are more significant than are mere flashes ofgenerous insight, like those of the men named. The notion of verbalinspiration or infallible dictation of the Holy Scriptures could notpossibly survive after the modern spirit of historical inquiry had madeitself felt. The rabbinical idea was bound to disappear. A truer senseof the conditions attending the origins and progress of civilisation andof the immaturities through which religious as well as moral and socialideas advance, brought of necessity a changed idea of the nature ofScripture and revelation. Its literature must be read as literature, itshistory as history. For the answer in our hearts to the spirit in theBook, Coleridge used the phrase: 'It finds me. ' 'Whatever finds me bearswitness to itself that it has proceeded from the Holy Ghost. In theBible there is more that finds me than in all the other books which Ihave read. ' Still, there is much in the Bible that does not find me. Itis full of contradictions, both moral and historical. Are we to regardthese as all equally inspired? The Scripture itself does not claim that. Besides, what good would it do us to claim that the original documentswere inerrant, unless we could claim also that they had been inerrantlytransmitted? Apparently Coleridge thought that no one would ever claimthat. Coleridge wrote also concerning the Church. His volume on _TheConstitution of Church and State_ appeared in 1830. It is the leastsatisfactory of his works. The vacillation of Coleridge's own courseshowed that upon this point his mind was never clear. Arnold also, though in a somewhat different way, was zealous for the theory thatChurch and State are really identical, the Church being merely the Statein its educational and religious aspect and organisation. If ThomasArnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save thistheory from being chimerical, no better result was to be expected fromColeridge. THE ORIEL SCHOOL It has often happened in the history of the English universities that agiven college has become, through its body of tutors and students, through its common-room talk and literary work, the centre, for thetime, of a movement of thought which gives leadership to the college. Inthis manner it has been customary to speak of the group of men who, before the rise of the Oxford Movement, gathered at Oriel College, asthe Oriel School. Newman and Keble were both Oriel tutors. The Oriel menwere of distinctly liberal tendency. There were men of note among them. There was Whately, Archbishop of Dublin after 1831, and Copleston, fromwhom both Keble and Newman owned that they learned much. There wasArnold, subsequently Headmaster of Rugby. There was Hampden, Professorof Divinity after 1836. The school was called from its liberalism theNoetic school. Whether this epithet contained more of satire or ofcomplacency it is difficult to say. These men arrested attention andfilled some of the older academic and ecclesiastical heads with alarm. Without disrespect one may say that it is difficult now to understandthe commotion which they made. Arnold had a truly beautiful character. What he might have done as Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Oxfordwas never revealed, for he died in 1842. Whately, viewed as a noetic, appears commonplace. Perhaps the only one of the group upon whom we need dwell was Hampden. In his Bampton Lectures of 1832, under the title of _The ScholasticPhilosophy considered in its Relation to Christian Theology_, heassailed what had long been the very bulwark of traditionalism. His ideawas to show how the vast fabric of scholastic theology had grown up, particularly what contributions had been made to it in the Middle Age. The traditional dogma is a structure reared upon the logical terminologyof the patristic and mediæval schools. It has little foundation inScripture and no response in the religious consciousness. We have herethe application, within set limits, of the thesis which Harnack in ourown time has applied in a universal way. Hampden's opponents were notwrong in saying that his method would dissolve, not merely thatparticular system of theology, but all creeds and theologies whatsoever. Patristic, mediæval Catholic theology and scholastic Protestantism, noless, would go down before it. A pamphlet attributed to Newman, published in 1836, precipitated a discussion which, for bitterness, hasrarely been surpassed in the melancholy history of theological dispute. The excitement went to almost unheard of lengths. In the controversy theArchbishop, Dr. Howley, made but a poor figure. The Duke of Wellingtondid not add to his fame. Wilberforce and Newman never cleared themselvesof the suspicion of indirectness. This was, however, after the openingof the Oxford Movement. ERSKINE AND CAMPBELL The period from 1820 to 1850 was one of religious and intellectualactivity in Scotland as well. Tulloch depicts with a Scotsman'spatriotism the movement which centres about the names of Erskine andCampbell. Pfleiderer also judges that their contribution was assignificant as any made to dogmatic theology in Great Britain in thenineteenth century. They achieved the same reconstruction of thedoctrine of salvation which had been effected by Kant andSchleiermacher. At their hands the doctrine was rescued from thatforensic externality into which Calvinism had degenerated. It was givenagain its quality of ethical inwardness, and based directly uponreligious experience. High Lutheranism had issued in the sameexternality in Germany before Kant and Schleiermacher, and the NewEngland theology before Channing and Bushnell. The merits of Christachieved an external salvation, of which a man became participantpractically upon condition of assent to certain propositions. Similarly, in the Catholic revival, salvation was conceived as an external andfuture good, of which a man became participant through the sacramentsapplied to him by priests in apostolical succession. In point ofexternality there was not much to choose between views which were feltto be radically opposed the one to the other. Erskine was not a man theologically educated. He led a peculiarlysecluded life. He was an advocate by profession, but, withdrawing fromthat career, virtually gave himself up to meditation. Campbell was aminister of the Established Church of Scotland in a remote village, Row, upon the Gare Loch. When he was convicted of heresy and driven from theministry, he also devoted himself to study and authorship. Both men seemto have come to their results largely from the application of their ownsound religious sense to the Scriptures. That the Scottish Church shouldhave rejected the truth for which these men contended was the heaviestblow which it could have inflicted on itself. Thereby it arrested itsown healthy development. It perpetuated its traditional view, somewhatas New England orthodoxy was given a new lease of life through thepartisanship which the Unitarian schism engendered. The matter was notmended at the time of the great rupture of the Scottish Church in 1843. That body which broke away from the Establishment, and achieved a purelyecclesiastical control of its own clergy, won, indeed, by this means thename of the Free Church, though, in point of theological opinion, it wasfar from representing the more free and progressive element. Tullochpays a beautiful tribute to the character of Erskine, whom he knew. Quiet, brooding, introspective, he read his Bible and his own soul, andwith singular purity of intuition generalised from his own experience. Therewith is described, however, both the power and the limitation ofhis work. His first book was entitled _Remarks on the Internal Evidencefor the Truth of Revealed Religion_, 1820. The title itself issuggestive of the revolution through which the mind both of Erskine andof his age was passing. His book, _The Unconditional Freeness of theGospel_, appeared in 1828; _The Brazen Serpent_ in 1831. Men haveconfounded forgiveness and pardon. They have made pardon equivalent tosalvation. But salvation is character. Forgiveness is only one of themeans of it. Salvation is not a future good. It is a present fellowshipwith God. It is sanctification of character by means of our labour andGod's love. The fall was the rise of the spirit of freedom. Fallen mancan never be saved except through glad surrender of his childishindependence to the truth and goodness of God. Yet that surrender is thepreservation and enlargement of our independence. It is the secret oftrue self-realisation. The sufferings of Christ reveal God's holy love. It is not as if God's love had been purchased by the sufferings of hisSon. On the contrary, it is man who needs to believe in God's love, andso be reconciled to the God whom he has feared and hated. Christovercomes sin by obediently enduring the suffering which sin naturallyentails. He endures it in pure love of his brethren. Man must overcomesin in the same way. Campbell published, so late as 1856, his great work _The Nature of theAtonement and its Relation to the Remission of Sins and Eternal Life_. It was the matured result of the reflections of a quarter of a century, spent partly in enforced retirement after 1831. Campbell maintainsunequivocally that the sacrifice of Christ cannot be understood as apunishment due to man's sin, meted out to Christ in man's stead. Viewedretrospectively, Christ's work in the atonement is but the highestexample of a law otherwise universally operative. No man can workredemption for his fellows except by entering into their condition, asif everything in that condition were his own, though much of it may bein no sense his due. It is freely borne by him because of hisidentification of himself with them. Campbell lingers in the myth ofChrist's being the federal head of the humanity. There is somethingpathetic in the struggle of his mind to save phrases and theparaphernalia of an ancient view which, however, his fundamentalprinciple rendered obsolete, He struggles to save the word satisfaction, though it means nothing in his system save that God is satisfied as hecontemplates the character of Christ. Prospectively considered, thesacrifice of Christ effects salvation by its moral power over men inexample and inspiration. Vicarious sacrifice, the result of which wasmerely imputed, would leave the sinner just where he was before. It isan empty fiction. But the spectacle of suffering freely undertaken forour sakes discovers the treasures of the divine image in man. The loveof God and a man's own resolve make him in the end, in fact, that whichhe has always been in capacity and destiny, a child of God, possessed ofthe secret of a growing righteousness, which is itself salvation. MAURICE Scottish books seem to have been but little read in England in that day. It was Maurice who first made the substance of Campbell's teaching knownin England. Frederick Denison Maurice was the son of a Unitarianminister, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a time when it wasimpossible for a Nonconformist to obtain a degree. He was ordained apriest of the Church of England in 1834, even suffering himself to bebaptised again. He was chaplain of Lincoln's Inn and Professor ofTheology in King's College, London. After 1866 he was Professor of MoralPhilosophy in Cambridge, though his life-work was over. At the heart ofMaurice's theology lies the contention to which he gave the name ofuniversal redemption. Christ's work is for every man. Every man isindeed in Christ. Man's unhappiness lies only in the fact that he willnot own this fact and live accordingly. Man as man is the child of God. He cannot undo that fact or alter that relation if he would. He does notneed to become a child of God, as the phrase has been. He needs only torecognise that he already is such a child. He can never cease to bearthis relationship. He can only refuse to fulfil it. With other wordsErskine and Coleridge and Schleiermacher had said this same thing. For the rest, one may speak briefly of Maurice. He was animated by thestrongest desire for Church unity, but at the back of his mind lay aconception of the Church and an insistence upon uniformity which madeunity impossible. In the light of his own inheritance his ecclesiasticalpositivism seems strange. Perhaps it was the course of his experiencewhich made this irrational positivism natural. Few men in his generationsuffered greater persecutions under the unwarranted supposition on thepart of contemporaries that he had a liberal mind. In reality, few menin his generation had less of a quality which, had he possessed it, would have given him peace and joy even in the midst of hispersecutions. The casual remark above made concerning Campbell is truein enhanced degree of Maurice. A large part of the industry of a veryindustrious life was devoted to the effort to convince others andhimself that those few really wonderful glimpses of spiritual truthwhich he had, had no disastrous consequences for an inherited system ofthought in which they certainly did not take their rise. His name wasconnected with the social enthusiasm that inaugurated a new movement inEngland which will claim attention in another paragraph. CHANNING Allusion has been made to a revision of traditional theology which tookplace in America also, upon the same general lines which we have seen inSchleiermacher and in Campbell. The typical figure here, the protagonistof the movement, is William Ellery Channing. It may be doubted whetherthere has ever been a civilisation more completely controlled by itsChurch and ministers, or a culture more entirely dominated by theology, than were those of New England until the middle of the eighteenthcentury. There had been indeed a marked decline in religious life. Thehistory of the Great Awakening shows that. Remonstrances against theGreat Awakening show also how men's minds were moving away from thetheory of the universe which the theology of that movement implied. Onecannot say that in the preaching of Hopkins there is an appreciablerelaxation of the Edwardsian scheme. Interestingly enough, it was inNewport that Channing was born and with Hopkins that he associated untilthe time of his licensure to preach in 1802. Many thought that Channingwould stand with the most stringent of the orthodox. Deism andrationalism had made themselves felt in America after the Revolution. Channing, during his years in Harvard College, can hardly have failed tocome into contact with the criticism of religion from this side. Thereis no such clear influence of current rationalism upon Channing as, forexample, upon Schleiermacher. Yet here in the West, which most Europeansthought of as a wilderness, circumstances brought about the launching ofthis man upon the career of a liberal religious thinker, when as yetSchleiermacher had hardly advanced beyond the position of the_Discourses_, when Erskine had not yet written a line and Campbell wasstill a child. Channing became minister of the Federal Street Church inBoston in 1803. The appointment of Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinityin Harvard College took place in 1805. That appointment was the firstclear indication of the liberal party's strength. Channing's BaltimoreAddress was delivered in 1819. He died in 1847. In the schism among the Congregational Churches in New England, whichbefore 1819 apparently had come to be regarded by both parties asremediless, Channing took the side of the opposition to Calvinisticorthodoxy. He developed qualities as controversialist and leader whichthe gentler aspect of his early years had hardly led men to suspect. This American liberal movement had been referred to by Belsham asrelated to English Unitarianism. After 1815, in this country, by itsopponents at least, the movement was consistently called Unitarian. Channing did with zeal contend against the traditional doctrine of theatonement and of the trinity. On the other hand, he saw in Christ theperfect revelation of God to humanity and at the same time the ideal ofhumanity. He believed in Jesus' sinlessness and in his miracles, especially in his resurrection. The keynote of Channing's character andconvictions is found in his sense of the inherent greatness of man. Ofthis feeling his entire system is but the unfolding. It was early anddeliberately adopted by him as a fundamental faith. It remained theimmovable centre of his reverence and trust amid all the inroads ofdoubt and sorrow. Political interest was as natural to Channing'searlier manhood as it had been to Fichte in the emergency of theFatherland. Similarly, in the later years of his life, when evilsconnected with slavery had made themselves felt, his participation inthe abolitionist agitation showed the same enthusiasm and practicalbent. He had his dream of communism, his perception of the evils of ourindustrial system, his contempt for charity in place of economic remedy. All was for man, all rested upon supreme faith in man. That man isendowed with knowledge of the right and with the power to realise it, was a fundamental maxim. Hence arose Channing's assertion of free-will. The denial of free-will renders the sentiment of duty but illusory. Inthe conscience there is both a revelation and a type of God. Itssuggestions, by the very authority they carry with them, declarethemselves to be God's law. God, concurring with our highest nature, present in its action, can be thought of only after the pattern which hegives us in ourselves. Whatever revelation God makes of himself, he mustdeal with us as with free beings living under natural laws. Revelationmust be merely supplementary to those laws. Everything arbitrary andmagical, everything which despairs of us or insults us as moral agents, everything which does not address itself to us through reason andconscience, must be excluded from the intercourse between God and man. What the doctrines of salvation and atonement, of the person of Christand of the influence of the Holy Spirit, as construed from this centrewould be, may without difficulty be surmised. The whole of Channing'steaching is bathed in an atmosphere of the reverent love of God which isthe very source of his enthusiasm for man. BUSHNELL A very different man was Horace Bushnell, born in the year of Channing'slicensure, 1802. He was not bred under the influence of the strictCalvinism of his day. His father was an Arminian. Edwards had madeArminians detested in New England. His mother had been reared in theEpiscopal Church. She was of Huguenot origin. When about seventeen, while tending a carding-machine, he wrote a paper in which heendeavoured to bring Calvinism into logical coherence and, in theinterest of sound reason, to correct St. Paul's willingness to beaccursed for the sake of his brethren. He graduated from Yale College in1827. He taught there while studying law after 1829. He describeshimself at this period as sound in ethics and sceptical in religion, thesoundness of his morals being due to nature and training, thescepticism, to the theology in which he was involved. His law studieswere complete, yet he turned to the ministry. He had been born on theorthodox side of the great contention in which Channing was a leader ofthe liberals in the days of which we speak. He never saw any reason tochange this relation. His clerical colleagues, for half a life-time, sought to change it for him. In 1833 he was ordained and installed asminister of the North Church in Hartford, a pastorate which he neverleft. The process of disintegration of the orthodox body was continuing. There was almost as much rancour between the old and the new orthodoxyas between orthodox and Unitarians themselves. Almost before his careerwas well begun an incurable disease fastened itself upon him. Not muchlater, all the severity of theological strife befell him. Between thesetwo we have to think of him doing his work and keeping his sense ofhumour. His earliest book of consequence was on _Christian Nurture_, publishedin 1846. Consistent Calvinism presupposes in its converts mature years. Even an adult must pass through waters deep for him. He is not a sinfulchild of the Father. He is a being totally depraved and damned toeverlasting punishment. God becomes his Father only after he isredeemed. The revivalists' theory Bushnell bitterly opposed. It made ofreligion a transcendental matter which belonged on the outside of life, a kind of miraculous epidemic. He repudiated the prevailingindividualism. He anticipated much that is now being said concerningheredity, environment and subconsciousness. He revived the sense of theChurch in which Puritanism had been so sadly lacking. The book is aclassic, one of the rich treasures which the nineteenth century offersto the twentieth. Bushnell, so far as one can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. He is, nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the theory ofknowledge, in his rather diffuse 'Dissertation on Language, ' which isprefixed to the volume which bears the title _God in Christ_, 1849. Hewas following his living principle, the reference of doctrine toconscience. God must be a 'right God. ' Dogma must make no assertionconcerning God which will not stand this test. Not alone does the dogmamake such assertions. The Scripture makes them as well. How can this be?What is the relation of language to thought and of thought to fact? Howcan the language of Scripture be explained, and yet the reality of therevelation not be explained away? There is a touching interest whichattaches to this Hartford minister, working out, alone and clumsily, aproblem the solution of which the greatest minds of the age had beengradually bringing to perfection for three-quarters of a century. In the year 1848 Bushnell was invited to give addresses at theCommencements of three divinity schools: that at Harvard, thenunqualifiedly Unitarian; that at Andover, where the battle withUnitarianism had been fought; and that at Yale, where Bushnell had beentrained. The address at Cambridge was on the subject of _the Atonement_;the one at New Haven on _the Divinity of Christ_, including Bushnell'sdoctrine of the trinity; the one at Andover on _Dogma and Spirit_, aplea for the cessation of strife. He says squarely of the old schooltheories of the atonement, which represent Christ as suffering thepenalty of the law in our stead: 'They are capable, one and all of them, of no light in which they do not offend some right sentiment of ourmoral being. If the great Redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, consents to receive the penal woes of the world in his person, and ifthat offer is accepted, what does it signify, save that God will havehis modicum of suffering somehow; and if he lets the guilty go he willyet satisfy himself out of the innocent?' The vicariousness of love, theidentification of the sufferer with the sinner, in the sense that theSaviour is involved by his desire to help us in the woes which naturallyfollow sin, this Bushnell mightily affirmed. Yet there is no pretencethat he used vicariousness or satisfaction in the same sense in whichhis adversaries did. He is magnificently free from all such indirection. In the New Haven address there is this same combination of fire andlight. The chief theological value of the doctrine of the trinity, asmaintained by the New England Calvinistic teachers, had been to furnishthe _dramatis personæ_ for the doctrine of the atonement. In thespeculation as to the negotiation of this substitutionary transaction, the language of the theologians had degenerated into stark tritheism. Edwards, describing the councils of the trinity, spoke of the threepersons as 'they. ' Bushnell saw that any proper view of the unity of Godmade the forensic idea of the atonement incredible. He sought to replacethe ontological notion of the trinity by that of a trinity ofrevelation, which held for him the practical truths by which his faithwas nourished, and yet avoided the contradictions which the otherdoctrine presented both to reason and faith. Bushnell would have beenfar from claiming that he was the first to make this fight. The AmericanUnitarians had been making it for more than a generation. The Unitarianprotest was wholesome. It was magnificent. It was providential, but itpaused in negation. It never advanced to construction. Bushnell'ssignificance is not that he fought this battle, but that he fought itfrom the ranks of the orthodox Church. He fought it with a personalequipment which Channing had not had. He was decades later in his work. He took up the central religious problem when Channing's successors werefollowing either Emerson or Parker. The Andover address consisted in the statement of Bushnell's views ofthe causes which had led to the schism in the New England Church. Asingle quotation may give the key-note of the discourse:--'We had on ourside an article of the creed which asserted a metaphysical trinity. Thatmade the assertion of the metaphysical unity inevitable and desirable. We had theories of atonement, of depravity, of original sin, whichrequired the appearance of antagonistic theories. On our side, theological culture was so limited that we took what was really only ourown opinion for the unalterable truth of God. On the other side, it wasso limited that men, perceiving the insufficiency of dogma, took theopposite contention with the same seriousness and totality ofconviction. They asserted liberty, as indeed they must, to vindicatetheir revolt. They produced, meantime, the most intensely human and, inthat sense, the most intensely opinionated religion ever invented. ' THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL The Oxford Movement has been spoken of as a reaction against theso-called Oriel Movement, a conservative tendency over against anintellectualist and progressive one. In a measure the personalanimosities within the Oxford circle may be accounted for in this way. The Tractarian Movement, however, which issued, on the one hand, in thegoing over of Newman to the Church of Rome and, on the other, in a greatrevival of Catholic principles within the Anglican Church itself, standsin a far larger setting. It was not merely an English or insularmovement. It was a wave from a continental flood. On its own showing itwas not merely an ecclesiastical movement. It had political and socialaims as well. There was a universal European reaction against theEnlightenment and the Revolution. That reaction was not simple, butcomplex. It was a revolt of the conservative spirit from the new idealswhich had been suddenly translated into portentous realities. It wasmarked everywhere by hatred of the eighteenth century with all its waysand works. On the one side we have the revolutionary thesis, the rightsof man, the authority of reason, the watchwords liberty, equality, fraternity. On the other side stood forth those who were prepared toassert the meaning of community, the continuity of history, spiritual aswell as civil authority as the basis of order, and order as thecondition of the highest good. In literature the tendency appears asromanticism, in politics as legitimism, in religion as ultramontanism. Le Maistre with his _L'Eglise gallicane du Pape_; Chateaubriand with his_Génie du Christianisme_; Lamennais with his _Essai sur l'Indifferenceen Matière, de Religion_, were, from 1820 to 1860, the exponents of aview which has had prodigious consequences for France and Italy. Theromantic movement arose outside of Catholicism. It was impersonated inHerder. Friedrich Schlegel, Werner and others went over to the RomanChurch. The political reaction was specifically Latin and Catholic. Inthe lurid light of anarchy Rome seemed to have a mission again. Divineright in the State must be restored through the Church. The Catholicapologetic saw the Revolution as only the logical conclusion of thepremises of the Reformation. The religious revolt of the sixteenthcentury, the philosophical revolt of the seventeenth, the politicalrevolt of the eighteenth, the social revolt of the nineteenth, are allparts of one dreadful sequence. As the Church lifted up the world afterthe first flood of the barbarians, so must she again lift up the worldafter the devastations made by the more terrible barbarians of theeighteenth century. England had indeed stood a little outside of thecyclone which had devastated the world from Coronna to Moscow and fromthe Channel to the Pyramids, but she had been exhausted in putting downthe revolution. Only God's goodness had preserved England. The logic ofPuritanism would have been the same. Indeed, in England the State wasweaker and worse than were the states upon the Continent. For since 1688it had been a popular and constitutional monarchy. In FrederickWilliam's phrase, its sovereign took his crown from the gutter. TheChurch was through and through Erastian, a creature of the State. Bishops were made by party representatives. Acts like the Reform Bills, the course of the Government in the matter of the Irish Church, weresteps which would surely bring England to the pass which France hadreached in 1789. The source of such acts was wrong. It was with thepeople. It was in men, not in God. It was in reason, not in authority. It would be difficult to overstate the strength of this reactionarysentiment in important circles in England at the end of the third decadeof the nineteenth century. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT In so far as that complex of causes just alluded to made of the OxfordMovement or the Catholic revival a movement of life, ecclesiastical, social and political as well, its history falls outside the purpose ofthis book. We proposed to deal with the history of thought. Reactionarymovements have frequently got on without much thought. They have leftlittle deposit of their own in the realm of ideas. Their avowedprinciple has been that of recurrence to that which has already beenthought, of fidelity to ideas which have long prevailed. This is thereason why the conservatives have not a large place in such a sketch asthis. It is not that their writings have not often been full of highlearning and of the subtlest of reasoning. It is only that the ideasabout which they reason do not belong to the history of the nineteenthcentury. They belong, on the earnest contention of the conservativesthemselves--those of Protestants, to the history of the Reformation--andof Catholics, both Anglican and Roman, to the history of the early ormediæval Church. Nevertheless, when with passionate conviction a great man, taking thereactionary course, thinks the problem through again from his own pointof view, then we have a real phenomenon in the history of contemporarythought. When such an one wrestles before God to give reason to himselfand to his fellows for the faith that is in him, then the reactionary'sreasoning is as imposing and suggestive as is any other. He leaves inhis work an intellectual deposit which must be considered. He makes acontribution which must be reckoned with, even more seriously, perhaps, by those who dissent from it than by those who may agree with it. Suchdeposit Newman and the Tractarian movement certainly did make. Theyoffered a rationale of the reaction. They gave to the Catholic revival astanding in the world of ideas, not merely in the world of action. Whether their reasoning has weight to-day, is a question upon whichopinion is divided. Yet Newman and his compeers, by their character andstanding, by their distinctively English qualities and by the road ofreason which they took in the defence of Catholic principles, madeCatholicism English again, in a sense in which it had not been Englishfor three hundred years. Yet though Newman brought to the Roman Churchin England, on his conversion to it, a prestige and qualities which inthat communion were unequalled, he was never _persona grata_ in thatChurch. Outwardly the Roman Catholic revival in England was not in largemeasure due to Newman and his arguments. It was due far more to men likeWiseman and Manning, who were not men of argument but of deeds. NEWMAN John Henry Newman was born in 1801, the son of a London banker. Hismother was of Huguenot descent. He came under Calvinistic influence. Through study especially, of Romaine _On Faith_ he became the subject ofan inward conversion, of which in 1864 he wrote: 'I am still morecertain of it than that I have hands and feet. ' Thomas Scott, theevangelical, moved him. Before he was sixteen he made a collection ofScripture texts in proof of the doctrine of the trinity. From Newton _Onthe Prophecies_ he learned to identify the Pope with anti-Christ--adoctrine by which, he adds, his imagination was stained up to the year1843. In his _Apologia_, 1865, he declares: 'From the age of fifteen, dogma has been a fundamental principle of my religion. I cannot enterinto the idea of any other sort of religion. ' At the age of twenty-one, two years after he had taken his degree, he came under very differentinfluences. He passed from Trinity College to a fellowship in Oriel. Touse his own phrase, he drifted in the direction of liberalism. He wastouched by Whately. He was too logical, and also too dogmatic, to besatisfied with Whately's position. Of the years from 1823 to 1827 Mozleysays: 'Probably no one who then knew Newman could have told which way hewould go. It is not certain that he himself knew. ' Francis W. Newman, Newman's brother, who later became a Unitarian, remembering his ownyears of stress, speaks with embitterment of his elder brother, who wasprofoundly uncongenial to him. The year 1827, in which Keble's _Christian Year_ was published, sawanother change in Newman's views. Illness and bereavement came to himwith awakening effect. He made the acquaintance of Hurrell Froude. Froude brought Newman and Keble together. Henceforth Newman bore no moretraces either of evangelicalism or of liberalism. Of Froude it isdifficult to speak with confidence. His brother, James Anthony Froude, the historian, author of the _Nemesis of Faith_, 1848, says that he wasgifted, brilliant, enthusiastic. Newman speaks of him with almostboundless praise. Two volumes of his sermons, published after his deathin 1836, make the impression neither of learning nor judgment. Clearlyhe had charm. Possibly he talked himself into a common-room reputation. Newman says: 'Froude made me look with admiration toward the Church ofRome. ' Keble never had felt the liberalism through which Newman hadpassed. Cradled as the Church of England had been in Puritanism, thelatter was to him simply evil. Opinions differing from his own were notsimply mistaken, they were sinful. He conceived no religious truthoutside the Church of England. In the _Christian Year_ one perceives aninfluence which Newman strongly felt. It was that of the idea of thesacramental significance of all natural objects or events. Pusey becameprofessor of Hebrew in 1830. He lent the movement academic standing, which the others could not give. He had been in Germany, and hadpublished an _Inquiry into the Rationalist Character of GermanTheology_, 1825. He hardly did more than expose the ignorance of Rose. He was himself denounced as a German rationalist who dared to speak of anew era in theology. Pusey, mourning the defection of Newman, whom hedeeply loved, gathered in 1846 the forces of the Anglo-Catholics andcontinued in some sense a leader to the end of his long life in 1882. The course of political events was fretting the Conservativesintolerably. The agitation for the Reform Bill was taking shape. SirRobert Peel, the member for Oxford, had introduced a Bill for theemancipation of the Roman Catholics. There was violent commotion inOxford. Keble and Newman strenuously opposed the measure. In 1830 therewas revolution in France. In England the Whigs had come into power. Newman's mind was excited in the last degree. 'The vital question, ' hesays, 'is this, how are we to keep the Church of England from beingliberalised?' At the end of 1832 Newman and Froude went abroad together. On this journey, as he lay becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio, hewrote his immortal hymn, 'Lead, Kindly Light. ' He came home assured thathe had a work to do. Keble's Assize Sermon on the _National Apostasy_, preached in July 1833, on the Sunday after Newman's return to Oxford, kindled the conflagration which had been long preparing. Newmanconceived the idea of the _Tracts for the Times_ as a means ofexpressing the feelings and propagating the opinions which deeply movedhim. 'From the first, ' he says, 'my battle was with liberalism. Byliberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle. Secondly, my aim was theassertion of the visible Church with sacraments and rites and definitereligious teaching on the foundation of dogma; and thirdly, theassertion of the Anglican Church as opposed to the Church of Rome. 'Newman grew greatly in personal influence. His afternoon sermons at St. Mary's exerted spiritual power. They deserved so to do. Here he was athis best. All of his strength and little of his weakness shows. Hisinsight, his subtility, his pathos, his love of souls, his marvellousplay of dramatic as well as of spiritual faculty, are in evidence. Kebleand Pusey were busying themselves with the historical aspects of thequestion. Pusey began the _Library of the Fathers_, the most elaborateliterary monument of the movement. Nothing could be more amazing thanthe uncritical quality of the whole performance. The first check to themovement came in 1838, when the Bishop of Oxford animadverted upon the_Tracts_. Newman professed his willingness to stop them. The Bishop didnot insist. Newman's own thought moved rapidly onward in the only coursewhich was still open to it. Newman had been bred in the deepest reverence for Scripture. In a sensethat reverence never left him, though it changed its form. He saw thatit was absurd to appeal to the Bible in the old way as an infalliblesource of doctrine. How could truth be infallibly conveyed in defectiveand fallible expressions? Newman's own studies in criticism, by no meansprofound, led him to this correct conclusion. This was the end for himof evangelical Protestantism. The recourse was then to the infallibleChurch. Infallible guide and authority one must have. Without thesethere can be no religion. To trust to reason and conscience as conveyingsomething of the light of God is impossible. To wait in patience and tolabour in fortitude for the increase of that light is unendurable. Onemust have certainty. There can be no certainty by the processes of themind from within. This can come only by miraculous certification fromwithout. According to Newman the authority of the Church should never have beenimpaired in the Reformation. Or rather, in his view of that movement, this authority, for truly Christian men, had never been impaired. Theintellect is aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy. Its action inreligious matters is corrosive, dissolving, sceptical. 'Man's energy ofintellect must be smitten hard and thrown back by infallible authority, if religion is to be saved at all. ' Newman's philosophy was utterlysceptical, although, unlike most absolute philosophical sceptics, he hada deep religious experience. The most complete secularist, in hisnegation of religion, does not differ from Newman in his low opinion ofthe value of the surmises of the mind as to the transcendental meaningof life and the world. He differs from Newman only in lacking that whichto Newman was the most indefeasible thing which he had at all, namely, religious experience. Newman was the child of his age, though no oneever abused more fiercely the age of which he was the child. He supposedthat he believed in religion on the basis of authority. Quite thecontrary, he believed in religion because he had religion or, as hesays, in a magnificent passage in one of his parochial sermons, becausereligion had him. His scepticism forbade him to recognise that this wasthe basis of his belief. His diremption of human nature was absolute. The soul was of God. The mind was of the devil. He dare not trust hisown intellect concerning this inestimable treasure of his experience. Hedare not trust intellect at all. He knew not whither it might lead him. The mind cannot be broken to the belief of a power above it. It musthave its stiff neck bent to recognise its Creator. His whole book, _The Grammar of Assent_, 1870, is pervaded by theintensest philosophical scepticism. Scepticism supplies its motives, determines its problems, necessitates its distinctions, rules over thesuccession and gradation of its arguments. The whole aim of the work isto withdraw religion and the proofs of it, from the region of reasoninto the realm of conscience and imagination, where the arguments whichreign may satisfy personal experience without alleging objectivevalidity or being able to bear the criticism which tests it. Again, heis the perverse, unconscious child of the age which he curses. Had notKant and Schleiermacher, Coleridge and Channing sought, does not Ritschlseek, to remove religion from the realm of metaphysics and to bring itwithin the realm of experience? They had, however, pursued the same endby different means. One is reminded of that saying of Gretchenconcerning Mephistopheles: 'He says the same thing with the pastor, onlyin different words. ' Newman says the same words, but means a differentthing. Assuming the reduction of religion to experience, in which Kant andSchleiermacher would have agreed, and asserting the worthlessness ofmentality, which they would have denied, we are not surprised to hearNewman say that without Catholicism doubt is invincible. 'The Church'sinfallibility is the provision adopted by the mercy of the Creator topreserve religion in the world. Outside the Catholic Church all thingstend to atheism. The Catholic Church is the one face to face antagonist, able to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion and theall-dissolving scepticism of the mind. I am a Catholic by virtue of mybelief in God. If I should be asked why I believe in God, I shouldanswer, because I believe in myself. I find it impossible to believe inmyself, without believing also in the existence of him who lives as apersonal, all-seeing, all-judging being in my conscience. ' Thesepassages are mainly taken from the _Apologia_, written long after Newmanhad gone over to the Roman Church. They perfectly describe the attitudeof his mind toward the Anglican Church, so long as he believed this, andnot the Roman, to be the true Church. He had once thought that a mancould hold a position midway between the Protestantism which herepudiated and the Romanism which he still resisted. He stayed in the_via media_ so long as he could. But in 1839 he began to have doubtsabout the Anglican order of succession. The catholicity of Rome began toovershadow the apostolicity of Anglicanism. The Anglican formulariescannot be at variance with the teachings of the authoritative anduniversal Church. This is the problem which the last of the _Tracts_, _Tract Ninety_, sets itself. It is one of those which Newman wrote. Onemust find the sense of the Roman Church in the Thirty-Nine Articles. This tract is prefaced by an extraordinary disquisition upon reserve inthe communication of religious knowledge. God's revelations of himselfto mankind have always been a kind of veil. Truth is the reward ofholiness. The Fathers were holy men. Therefore what the Fathers saidmust be true. The principle of reserve the Articles illustrate. They donot mean what they say. They were written in an uncatholic age, that is, in the age of the Reformation. They were written by Catholic men. Elsehow can the Church of England be now a Catholic Church? Through theirreserve they were acceptable in an uncatholic age. They cannot beuncatholic in spirit, else how should they be identical in meaning withthe great Catholic creeds? Then follows an exposition of every importantarticle of the thirty-nine, an effort to interpret each in the sense ofthe Roman Catholic Church of to-day. Four tutors published a protestagainst the tract. Formal censure was passed upon it. It was now evidentto Newman that his place in the leadership of the Oxford Movement wasgone. From this time, the spring of 1841, he says he was on his deathbedas regards the Church of England. He withdrew to Littlemore andestablished a brotherhood there. In the autumn of 1843 he resigned theparochial charge of St. Mary's at Oxford. On the 9th of October 1845 hewas formally admitted to the Roman Church. On the 6th of October ErnestRenan had formally severed his connexion with that Church. It is a strange thing that in his _Essay on the Development of ChristianDoctrine_, written in 1845, Newman himself should have advancedsubstantially Hampden's contention. Here are written many thingsconcerning the development of doctrine which commend themselves to mindsconversant with the application of historical criticism to the wholedogmatic structure of the Christian ages. The purpose is with Newmanentirely polemical, the issue exactly that which one would not haveforeseen. Precisely because the development of doctrine is so obvious, because no historical point can be found at which the growth of doctrineceased and the rule of faith was once for all settled, therefore aninfallible authority outside of the development must have existed fromthe beginning, to provide a means of distinguishing true developmentfrom false. This infallible guide is, of course, the Church. It seemsincredible that Newman could escape applying to the Church the sameargument which he had so skilfully applied to Scripture and dogmatichistory. Similar is the case with the argument of the _Grammar ofAssent_. 'No man is certain of a truth who can endure the thought of itscontrary. ' If the reason why I cannot endure the thought of thecontradictory of a belief which I have made my own, is that so to thinkbrings me pain and darkness, this does not prove my truth. If my beliefever had its origin in reason, it must be ever refutable by reason. Itis not corroborated by the fact that I do not wish to see anything thatwould refute it. [8] This last fact may be in the highest degree an actof arbitrariness. To make the impossibility of thinking the opposite, the test of truth, and then to shut one's eyes to those evidences whichmight compel one to think the opposite, is the essence of irrationality. One attains by this method indefinite assertiveness, but not certainty. Newman lived in some seclusion in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri inBirmingham for many years. A few distinguished men, and a number of hisfollowers, in all not more than a hundred and fifty, went over to theRoman Church after him. The defection was never so great as, in thefirst shock, it was supposed that it would be. The outward influence ofNewman upon the Anglican Church then ceased. But the ideas which he putforth have certainly been of great influence in that Church to this day. Most men know the portrait of the great cardinal, the wide forehead, ploughed deep with horizontal furrows, the pale cheek, down which 'longlines of shadow slope, which years and anxious thought and sufferinggive. ' One looks into the wonderful face of those last days--Newmanlived to his ninetieth year--and wonders if he found in the infallibleChurch the peace which he so earnestly sought. [Footnote 8: Fairbairn, _Catholicism, Roman and Anglican_, p. 157. ] MODERNISM It was said that the Oxford Movement furnished the rationale of thereaction. Many causes, of course, combine to make the situation of theRoman Church and the status of religion in the Latin countries of theContinent the lamentable one that it is. That position is worst in thosecountries where the Roman Church has most nearly had free play. Thealienation both of the intellectual and civil life from organisedreligion is grave. That the Roman Church occupies in England to-day aposition more favourable than in almost any nation on the Continent, andbetter than it occupied in England at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, is due in large measure to the general influence of themovement with which we have been dealing. The Anglican Church was at thebeginning of the nineteenth century preponderantly evangelical, low-church and conscious of itself as Protestant. At the beginning ofthe twentieth it is dominantly ritualistic and disposed to minimise itsrelation to the Reformation. This resurgence of Catholic principles isanother effect of the movement of which we speak. Other factors musthave wrought for this result besides the body of arguments which Newmanand his compeers offered. The argument itself, the mere intellectualfactor, is not adequate. There is an inherent contradiction in theeffort to ground in reason an authority which is to take the place ofreason. Yet round and round this circle all the labours of John HenryNewman go. Cardinal Manning felt this. The victory of the Church was notto be won by argument. It is well known that Newman opposed the decreeof infallibility. It cannot be said that upon this point his argumentshad great weight. If one assumes that truth comes to us externallythrough representatives of God, and if the truth is that which theyassert, then in the last analysis what they assert is truth. If one hasgiven in to such authority because one distrusts his reason, then it isquerulous to complain that the deliverances of authority do not comportwith reason. There may be, of course, the greatest interest in thestruggle as to the instance in which this authority is to be lodged. This interest attaches to the age-long struggle between Pope andCouncil. It attaches to the dramatic struggle of Döllinger, Dupanloup, Lord Acton and the rest, in 1870. Once the Church has spoken there is, for the advocate of authoritative religion, no logic but to submit. Similarly as to the _Encyclical_ and _Syllabus of Errors_ of 1864, whichforecast the present conflict concerning Modernism. The _Syllabus_ had adifferent atmosphere from that which any Englishman in the sixties wouldhave given it. Had not Newman, however, made passionate warfare on theliberalism of the modern world? Was it not merely a question of degrees?Was Gladstone's attitude intelligible? The contrast of two principles inlife and religion, the principles of authority and of the spirit, isbeing brought home to men's consciousness as it has never been before. One reads _Il Santo_ and learns concerning the death of Fogazzaro, onelooks into the literature relating to Tyrrell, one sees the fate ofLoisy, comparing the really majestic achievement in his works and thespirit of his _Simple Reflections_ with the _Encyclical Pascendi_, 1907. One understands why these men have done what they could to remain withinthe Roman Church. One recalls the attitude of Döllinger to theinauguration of the Old Catholic Movement, reflects upon the relativefutility of the Old Catholic Church, and upon the position of HyacintheLoyson. One appreciates the feeling of these men that it is impossible, from without, to influence as they would the Church which they haveloved. The present difficulty of influencing it from within seems almostinsuperable. The history of Modernism as an effective contention in theworld of Christian thought seems scarcely begun. The opposition toModernism is not yet a part of the history of thought. ROBERTSON In no life are reflected more perfectly the spiritual conflicts of thefifth decade of the nineteenth century than in that of Frederick W. Robertson. No mind worked itself more triumphantly out of thesedifficulties. Descended from a family of Scottish soldiers, evangelicalin piety, a student in Oxford in 1837, repelled by the Oxford Movement, he undertook his ministry under a morbid sense of responsibility. Hereacted violently against his evangelicalism. He travelled abroad, readenormously, was plunged into an agony which threatened mentally to undohim. He took his charge at Brighton in 1847, still only thirty-one yearsold, and at once shone forth in the splendour of his genius. A martyr todisease and petty persecution, dying at thirty-seven, he yet left theimpress of one of the greatest preachers whom the Church of England hasproduced. He left no formal literary work such as he had designed. Ofhis sermons we have almost none from his own manuscripts. Yet hisinfluence is to-day almost as intense as when the sermons weredelivered. It is, before all, the wealth and depth of his thought, thereality of the content of the sermons, which commands admiration. Theyare a classic refutation of the remark that one cannot preach theology. Out of them, even in their fragmentary state, a well-articulated systemmight be made. He brought to his age the living message of a man uponwhom the best light of his age had shone. PHILLIPS BROOKS Something of the same sort may be said concerning Phillips Brooks. Heinherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane andsecular interest of the earlier Unitarianism, on his mother's side theintensity of evangelical pietism with the Calvinistic form of thought. The conflict of these opposing tendencies in New England was at thattime so great that Brooks's parents sought refuge with the low-churchelement in the Episcopal Church. Brooks's education at Harvard College, where he took his degree in 1855, as also at Alexandria, and still more, his reading and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, inEngland in those years, was called the Broad Church party. He was deeplyinfluenced by Campbell and Maurice. Later well known in England, he wasthe compeer of the best spirits of his generation there. Deepened by theexperience of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of largeinfluence, dying as Bishop of Massachusetts in 1893. There is atheological note about his preaching, as in the case of Robertson. Oftenit is the same note. Brooks had passed through no such crisis as hadRobertson. He had flowered into the greatness of rational belief. Hissermons are a contribution to the thinking of his age. We have muchfinished material of this kind from his own hand, and a book or twobesides. His service through many years as preacher to his universitywas of inestimable worth. The presentation of ever-advancing thought toa great public constituency is one of the most difficult of tasks. It isalso one of the most necessary. The fusion of such thoughtfulness withspiritual impulse has rarely been more perfectly achieved than in thepreaching of Phillips Brooks. THE BROAD CHURCH We have used the phrase, the Broad Church party. Stanley had employedthe adjective to describe the real character of the English Church, overagainst the antithesis of the Low Church and the High. The designationadhered to a group of which Stanley was himself a type. They were notbound together in a party. They had no ecclesiastical end in view. Theywere of a common spirit. It was not the spirit of evangelicalism. Stillless was it that of the Tractarians. It was that which Robertson hadmanifested. It aimed to hold the faith with an open mind in all theintellectual movement of the age. Maurice should be enumerated here, with reservations. Kingsley beyond question belonged to this group. There was great ardour among them for the improvement of socialconditions, a sense of the social mission of Christianity. There grew upwhat was called a Christian Socialist movement, which, however, neverattained or sought a political standing. The Broad Church movementseemed, at one time, assured of ascendancy in the Church of England. Itsaims appeared congruous with the spirit of the times. Yet Dean Fremantleesteems himself perhaps the last survivor of an illustrious company. The men who in 1860 published the volume known as _Essays and Reviews_would be classed with the Broad Church. In its authorship wereassociated seven scholars, mostly Oxford men. Some one described _Essaysand Reviews_ as the _Tract Ninety_ of the Broad Church. It stirredpublic sentiment and brought the authors into conflict with authority ina somewhat similar way. The living antagonism of the Broad Church wassurely with the Tractarians rather than with the evangelicals. Yet themost significant of the essays, those on miracles and on prophecy, touched opinions common to both these groups. Jowett, later Master ofBalliol, contributed an essay on the 'Interpretation of Scripture. ' Ithardly belongs to Jowett's best work. Yet the controversy thenprecipitated may have had to do with Jowett's adherence to Platonicstudies instead of his devoting himself to theology. The most decisiveof the papers was that of Baden Powell on the 'Study of the Evidences ofChristianity. ' It was mainly a discussion of the miracle. It was radicaland conclusive. The essay closes with an allusion to Darwin's _Origin ofSpecies_, which had then just appeared. Baden Powell died shortly afterits publication. The fight came on Rowland Williams's paper uponBunson's _Biblical Researches_. It was really upon the prophecies andtheir use in 'Christian Evidences. ' Baron Bunsen was not a greatarchæologist, but he brought to the attention of English readers thatwhich was being done in Germany in this field. Williams used thearchæological material to rectify the current theological notionsconcerning ancient history. A certain type of English mind has alwaysshown zeal for the interpretation of prophecy. Williams's thesis, briefly put, was this: the Bible does not always give the history of thepast with accuracy; it does not give the history of the future at all;prophecy means spiritual teaching, not secular prognostication. A readerof our day may naturally feel that Wilson, with his paper on the'National Church, ' made the greatest contribution. He built indeed uponColeridge, but he had a larger horizon. He knew the arguments of thegreat Frenchmen of his day and of their English imitators who, in Benn'sphrase, narrowed and perverted the ideal of a world-wide humanity intothat of a Church founded on dogmas and administered by clericals. Wilsonargued that in Jesus' teaching the basis of the religious community isethical. The Church is but the instrument for carrying out the will ofGod as manifest in the moral law. The realisation of the will of Godmust extend beyond the limits of the Church's activity, however widelythese are drawn. There arose a violent agitation. Williams and Wilsonwere prosecuted. The case was tried in the Court of Arches. Williams wasdefended by no less a person than Fitzjames Stephen. The two divineswere sentenced to a year's suspension. This decision was reversed by theLord Chancellor. Fitzjames Stephen had argued that if the men mostinterested in the church, namely, its clergy, are the only men whomay be punished for serious discussion of the facts and truths ofreligion, then respect on the part of the world for the Church is at anend. By this discussion the English clergy, even if Anglo-Catholic, arein a very different position from the Roman priests, over whomencyclicals, even if not executed, are always suspended. Similar was the issue in the case of Colenso, Bishop of Natal. Equippedmainly with Cambridge mathematics added to purest self-devotion, he hadbeen sent out as a missionary bishop. In the process of the translationof the Pentateuch for his Zulus, he had come to reflect upon the problemwhich the Old Testament presents. In a manner which is altogethermarvellous he worked out critical conclusions parallel to those of OldTestament scholars on the Continent. He was never really an expert, butin his main contention he was right. He adhered to his opinion despitesevere pressure and was not removed from the episcopate. With suchguarantees it would be strange indeed if we could not say that biblicalstudies entered in Great Britain, as also in America, on a developmentin which scholars of these nations are not behind the best scholars ofthe world. The trials for heresy of Robertson Smith in Edinburgh and ofDr. Briggs in New York have now little living interest. Yet biblicalstudies in Scotland and America were incalculably furthered by thosediscussions. The publication of a book like _Supernatural Religion_, 1872, illustrates a proclivity not uncommon in self-conscious liberalcircles, for taking up a contention just when those who made it and havelived with it have decided to lay it down. However, the names of Hatchand Lightfoot alone, not to mention the living, are sufficient towarrant the assertions above made. * * * * * More than once in these chapters we have spoken of the service renderedto the progress of Christian thought by the criticism and interpretationof religion at the hands of literary men. That country and age may beesteemed fortunate in which religion occupies a place such that itcompels the attention of men of genius. In the history of culture thishas by no means always been the case. That these men do not always speakthe language of edification is of minor consequence. What is of infiniteworth is that the largest minds of the generation shall engagethemselves with the topic of religion. A history of thought concerningChristianity cannot but reckon with the opinions, for example, ofCarlyle, of Emerson, of Matthew Arnold--to mention only types. CARLYLE Carlyle has pictured for us his early home at Ecclefechan on the Border;his father, a stone mason of the highest character; his mother with herfrugal, pious ways; the minister, from whom he learned Latin, 'thepriestliest man I ever beheld in any ecclesiastical guise. ' The pictureof his mother never faded from his memory. Carlyle was destined for theChurch. Such had been his mother's prayer. He took his arts course inEdinburgh. In the university, he says, 'there was much talk aboutprogress of the species, dark ages, and the like, but the hungry younglooked to their spiritual nurses and were bidden to eat the east wind. 'He entered Divinity Hall, but already, in 1816, prohibitive doubts hadarisen in his mind. Irving sought to help him. Irving was not the manfor the task. The Christianity of the Church had become intellectuallyincredible to Carlyle. For a time he was acutely miserable, borderingupon despair. He has described his spiritual deliverance: 'Preciselythat befel me which the Methodists call their conversion, thedeliverance of their souls from the devil and the pit. There burst fortha sacred flame of joy in me. ' With _Sartor Resartus_ his message to theworld began. It was printed in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1833, but notpublished separately until 1838. His difficulty in finding a publisherembittered him. Style had something to do with this, the newness of hismessage had more. Then for twenty years he poured forth his message. Never did a man carry such a pair of eyes into the great world of Londonor set a more peremptory mark upon its notabilities. His best work wasdone before 1851. His later years were darkened with much misery ofbody. No one can allege that he ever had a happy mind. He was a true prophet, but, Elijah-like, he seemed to himself to bealone. His derision of the current religion seems sometimes needless. Yet even that has the grand note of sincerity. What he desired he in nosmall measure achieved--that his readers should be arrested and feelthemselves face to face with reality. His startling intuition, hisintellectual uprightness, his grasp upon things as they are, his passionfor what ought to be, made a great impression upon his age. It was initself a religious influence. Here was a mind of giant force, ofsternest truthfulness. His untruths were those of exaggeration. Hisinjustices were those of prejudice. He invested many questions of asocial and moral, of a political and religious sort with a noblermeaning than they had had before. His _French Revolution_, his papers on_Chartism_, his unceasing comment on the troubled life of the years from1830 to 1865, are of highest moment for our understanding of the growthof that social feeling in the midst of which we live and work. In hisbrooding sympathy with the downtrodden he was a great inaugurator of thesocial movement. He felt the curse of an aristocratic society, yet noone has told us with more drastic truthfulness the evils of ourdemocratic institutions. His word was a great corrective for much'rose-water' optimism which prevailed in his day. The note of hope is, however, often lacking. The mythology of an absentee God had faded fromhim. Yet the God who was clear to his mature consciousness, clear as thesun in the heavens, was a God over the world, to judge it inexorably. Again, it is not difficult to accumulate evidence in his words whichlooks toward pantheism; but what one may call the religious benefit ofpantheism, the sense that God is in his world, Carlyle often loses. Materialism is to-day so deeply discredited that we find it difficult torealise that sixty years ago the problem wore a different look. Carlylewas never weary of pouring out the vials of his contempt on'mud-philosophies' and exalting the spirit as against matter. Never wasa man more opposed to the idea of a godless world, in which man is hisown chief end, and his sensual pleasures the main aims of his existence. His insight into the consequences of our commercialism and luxury andabsorption in the outward never fails. Man is God's son, but the effortto realise that sonship in the joy and trust of a devout heart and inthe humble round of daily life sometimes seems to him cant orsuperstition. The humble life of godliness made an unspeakable appeal tohim. He had known those who lived that life. His love for them wasimperishable. Yet he had so recoiled from the superstitions andhypocrisies of others, the Eternal in his majesty was so ineffable, alleffort to approach him so unworthy, that almost instinctively he wouldcall upon the man who made the effort, to desist. So magnificent, allhis life long, had been his protest against the credulity and stupidityof men, against beliefs which assert the impossible and blink the facts, that, for himself, the great objects of faith were held fast to, so tosay, in their naked verity, with a giant's strength. They werehalf-querulously denied all garment and embodiment, lest he also shouldbe found credulous and self-deceived. From this titan labouring at thefoundations of the world, this Samson pulling down temples of thePhilistines on his head, this cyclops heaving hills at ships as theypass by, it seems a long way to Emerson. Yet Emerson was Carlyle'sfriend. EMERSON Arnold said in one of his American addresses: 'Besides thesevoices--Newman, Carlyle, Goethe--there came to us in the Oxford of myyouth a voice also from this side of the Atlantic, a clear and purevoice which, for my ear at any rate, brought a strain as new and movingand unforgetable as those others. Lowell has described the apparition ofEmerson to your young generation here. He was your Newman, your man ofsoul and genius, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for yourheart and imagination. ' Then he quotes as one of the most memorablepassages in English speech: 'Trust thyself. Accept the place which thedivine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, confidingthemselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying a perceptionwhich was stirring in their hearts, working through their hands, dominating their whole being. ' Arnold speaks of Carlyle's griminsistence upon labour and righteousness but of his scorn of happiness, and then says: 'But Emerson taught happiness in labour, in righteousnessand veracity. In all the life of the spirit, happiness and eternal hope, that was Emerson's gospel. By his conviction that in the life of thespirit is happiness, by his hope and expectation that this life of thespirit will more and more be understood and will prevail, by thisEmerson was great. ' Seven of Emerson's ancestors were ministers of New England churches. Heinherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of hisideals was modified by the glow of transcendentalism which passed overparts of New England in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws of life, reverencedthem and lived them, was the Puritan spirit, only elevated, enlarged andbeautified by the poetic temperament. Taking his degree from Harvard in1821, despising school teaching, stirred by the passion for spiritualleadership, the ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for itssatisfaction. In 1825 he entered the Divinity School in Harvard toprepare himself for the Unitarian ministry. In 1829 he became associateminister of the Second Unitarian Church in Boston. He arrived at theconviction that the Lord's Supper was not intended by Jesus to be apermanent sacrament. He found his congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant to agree with him. He therefore retired from the pastoraloffice. He was always a preacher, though of a singular order. His taskwas to befriend and guide the inner life of man. The influences of thisperiod in his life have been enumerated as the liberating philosophy ofColeridge, the mystical vision of Swedenborg, the intimate poetry ofWordsworth, the stimulating essays of Carlyle. His address before thegraduating class of the Divinity School at Cambridge in 1838 was animpassioned protest against what he called the defects of historicalChristianity, its undue reliance upon the personal authority of Jesus, its failure to explore the moral nature of man. He made a daring pleafor absolute self-reliance and new inspiration in religion: 'In the soullet redemption be sought. Refuse the good models, even those which aresacred in the imagination of men. Cast conformity behind you. Acquaintmen at first hand with deity. ' He never could have been the power he wasby the force of his negations. His power lay in the wealth, the variety, the beauty and insight with which he set forth the positive side of hisdoctrine of the greatness of man, of the presence of God in man, of thedivineness of life, of God's judgment and mercy in the order of theworld. One sees both the power and the limitation of Emerson's religiousteaching. At the root of it lay a real philosophy. He could notphilosophise. He was always passing from the principle to itsapplication. He could not systematise. He speaks of his 'formidabletendency to the lapidary style. ' Granting that one finds his philosophyin fragments, just as one finds his interpretation of religion inflashes of marvellous insight, both are worth searching for, and either, in Coleridge's phrase, finds us, whether we search for it or not. ARNOLD What shall we say of Matthew Arnold himself? Without doubt the twentyyears by which Arnold was Newman's junior at Oxford made a greatdifference in the intellectual atmosphere of that place, and of theEnglish world of letters, at the time when Arnold's mind was maturing. He was not too late to feel the spell of Newman. His mind was hardly oneto appreciate the whole force of that spell. He was at Oxford too earlyfor the full understanding of the limits within which alone thescientific conception of the world can be said to be true. Arnold oftenboasted that he was no metaphysician. He really need never havementioned the fact. The assumption that whatever is true can be verifiedin the sense of the precise kind of verification which science impliesis a very serious mistake. Yet his whole intellectual strength wasdevoted to the sustaining, one cannot say exactly the cause of religion, but certainly that of noble conduct, and to the assertion of the elationof duty and the joy of righteousness. With all the scorn that Arnoldpours upon the trust which we place in God's love, he yet holds to theconviction that 'the power without ourselves which makes forrighteousness' is one upon which we may in rapture rely. Arnold had convinced himself that in an ago such as ours, which willtake nothing for granted, but must verify everything, Christianity, inthe old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings andmiraculous events, is no longer tenable. We must confine ourselves tosuch ethical truths as can be verified by experience. We must rejecteverything which goes beyond these. Religion has no more to do withsupernatural dogma than with metaphysical philosophy. It has nothing todo with either. It has to do with conduct. It is folly to make religiondepend upon the conviction of the existence of an intelligent and moralgovernor of the universe, as the theologians have done. For the objectof faith in the ethical sense Arnold coined the phrase: 'The Eternal notourselves which makes for righteousness. ' So soon as we go beyond this, we enter upon the region of fanciful anthropomorphism, of extra belief, _aberglaube_, which always revenges itself. These are the maincontentions of his book, _Literature and Dogma_, 1875. One feels the value of Arnold's recall to the sense of the literarycharacter of the Scriptural documents, as urged in his book, _Saint Pauland Protestantism_, 1870, and again to the sense of the influence whichthe imagination of mankind has had upon religion. One feels the truth ofhis assertion of our ignorance. One feels Arnold's own deep earnestness. It was his concern that reason and the will of God should prevail. Though he was primarily a literary man, yet his great interest was inreligion. One feels so sincerely that his main conclusion is sound, thatit is the more trying that his statement of it should be often soperverse and his method of sustaining it so precarious. It is quitecertain that the idea of the Eternal not ourselves which makes forrighteousness is far from being the clear idea which Arnold claims. Itis far from being an idea derived from experience or verifiable inexperience, in the sense which he asserts. It seems positivelyincredible that Arnold did not know that with this conception he passedthe boundary of the realm of science and entered the realm ofmetaphysics, which he so abhorred. He was the eldest son of Thomas Arnold of Rugby. He was educated atWinchester and Rugby and at Balliol College. He was Professor of Poetryin Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He was an inspector of schools. The yearsof his best literary labour were much taken up in ways which werewasteful of his rare powers. He came by literary intuition to an idea ofScripture which others had built up from the point of view of a theoryof knowledge and by investigation of the facts. He is the helplesspersonification of a view of the relation of science and religion whichhas absolutely passed away. Yet Arnold died only in 1888. How much adistinguished inheritance may mean is gathered from the fact that agrand-daughter of Thomas Arnold and niece of Matthew Arnold, Mrs. Humphry Ward, in her novels, has dealt largely with problems ofreligious life, and more particularly of religious thoughtfulness. Shehas done for her generation, in her measure, that which George Eliot didfor hers. MARTINEAU As the chapter and the book draw to their close we can think of no manwhose life more nearly spanned the century, or whose work touched morefruitfully almost every aspect of Christian thoughtfulness than did thatof James Martineau. We can think of no man who gathered into himselfmore fully the significant theological tendencies of the age, or whoseutterance entitles him to be listened to more reverently as seer andsaint. He was born in 1805. He was bred as an engineer. He fulfilled foryears the calling of minister and preacher. He gradually exchanged thisfor the activity of a professor. He was a religious philosopher in theold sense, but he was also a critic and historian. His position withreference to the New Testament was partly antiquated before his _Seat ofAuthority in Religion_, 1890, made its appearance. Evolutionism neverbecame with him a coherent and consistent assumption. Ethics neveraltogether got rid of the innate ideas. The social movement left himalmost untouched. Yet, despite all this, he was in some sense arepresentative progressive theologian of the century. There is a parallel between Newman and Martineau. Both busied themselveswith the problem of authority. Criticism had been fatal to theapprehension which both had inherited concerning the authority ofScripture. From that point onward they took divergent courses. Thearguments which touched the infallible and oracular authority ofScripture, for Newman established that of the Church; for Martineau theyhad destroyed that of the Church four hundred years ago. Martineau'ssense, even of the authority of Jesus, reverent as it is, is yet nopietistic and mystical view. The authority of Jesus is that of the truthwhich he speaks, of the goodness which dwells in him, of God himself andGod alone. A real interest in the sciences and true learning in some ofthem made Martineau able to write that wonderful chapter in his _Seat ofAuthority_, which he entitled 'God in Nature. ' Newman could see innature, at most a sacramental suggestion, a symbol of transcendentaltruth. The Martineaus came of old Huguenot stock, which in England belonged tothe liberal Presbyterianism out of which much of British Unitarianismcame. The righteousness of a persecuted race had left an austere impressupon their domestic and social life. Intellectually they inherited theadvanced liberalism of their day. Harriet Martineau's earlier piety hadbeen of the most fervent sort. She reacted violently against it in lateryears. She had little of the politic temper and gentleness of herbrother. She described one of her own later works as the last word ofphilosophic atheism. James was, and always remained, of deepestsensitiveness and reverence and of a gentleness which stood in highcontrast with his powers of conflict, if necessity arose. Out ofMartineau's years as preacher in Liverpool and London came two books ofrare devotional quality, _Endeavours after the Christian Life_, 1843 and1847, and _Hours of Thought on Sacred Things_, 1873 and 1879. Almost allhis life he was identified with Manchester College, as a student whenthe college was located at York, as a teacher when it returned toManchester and again when it was removed to London. With its removal toOxford, accomplished in 1889, he had not fully sympathised. He believedthat the university itself must some day do justice to the education ofmen for the ministry in other churches than the Anglican. He was eightyyears old when he published his _Types of Ethical Theory_, eighty-twowhen he gave to the world his _Study of Religion_, eighty-five when his_Seat of Authority_ saw the light. The effect of this postponement ofpublication was not wholly good. The books represented marvellouslearning and ripeness of reflection. But they belong to a periodanterior to the dates they bear upon their title-pages. Martineau'seducation and his early professional experience put him in touch withthe advancing sciences. In the days when most men of progressive spiritwere carried off their feet, when materialism was flaunted in men'sfaces and the defence of religion was largely in the hands of those whoknew nothing of the sciences, Martineau was not moved. He saw the endfrom the beginning. There is nothing finer in his latest work than hisearly essays--'Nature and God, ' 'Science, Nescience and Faith, ' and'Religion as affected by Modern Materialism. ' He died in 1900 in hisninety-fifth year. It is difficult to speak of the living in these pages. Personalrelations enforce reserve and brevity. Nevertheless, no one can think ofManchester College and Martineau without being reminded of MansfieldCollege and of Fairbairn, a Scotchman, but of the Independent Church. Healso was both teacher and preacher all his days, leader of the movementwhich brought Mansfield College from Birmingham to Oxford, by theconfession both of Anglicans and of Non-conformists the most learned manin his subjects in the Oxford of his time, an historian, touched by thesocial enthusiasm, but a religious philosopher, _par excellence_. His_Religion and Modern Life_, 1894, his _Catholicism, Roman and Anglican_, 1899, his _Place of Christ in Modern Theology_, 1893, his _Philosophy ofthe Christian Religion_, 1902, and his _Studies in Religion andTheology_, 1910, indicate the wideness of his sympathies and the scopeof the application, of his powers. If imitation is homage, gratefulacknowledgment is here made of rich spoil taken from his books. Philosophy took a new turn in Britain after the middle of the decade ofthe sixties. It began to be conceded that Locke and Hume were dead. HadMill really appreciated that fact he might have been a philosopher morefruitful and influential than he was. Sir William Hamilton was dead. Mansel's endeavour, out of agnosticism to conjure the most absurdlypositivistic faith, had left thinking men more exposed to scepticism, ifpossible, than they had been before. When Hegel was thought in Germanyto be obsolete, and everywhere the cry was 'back to Kant, ' some Scotchand English scholars, the two Cairds and Seth Pringle-Pattison, withThomas Hill Green, made a modified Hegelianism current in Great Britain. They led by this path in the introduction of their countrymen to laterGerman idealism. By this introduction philosophy in both Britain andAmerica has greatly gained. Despite these facts, John Caird's_Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion_, 1880, is still only areligious philosophy. It is not a philosophy of religion. His_Fundamental Ideas of Christianity_, 1896, hardly escapes the oldantitheses among which theological discussion moved, say, thirty yearsago. Edward Caird's _Critical Philosophy of Kant_, 1889, and especiallyhis _Evolution of Religion_, 1892, marked the coming change moredefinitely than did any of the labours of his brother. Thomas Hill Greengave great promise in his _Introduction to Hume_, 1885, his _Prolegomenato Ethics_, 1883, and still more in essays and papers scattered throughthe volumes edited by Nettleship after Green's death. His contributionto religious discussion was such as to make his untimely end to bedeeply deplored. Seth Pringle-Pattison's early work, _The Developmentfrom Kant to Hegel_, 1881, still has great worth. His _Hegelianism andPersonality_, 1893, deals with one aspect of the topic which needs everagain to be explored, because of the psychological basis which inreligious discussion is now assumed. JAMES The greatest contribution of America to religious discussion in recentyears is surely William James's _Varieties of Religious Experience_, 1902. The book is unreservedly acknowledged in Britain, and in Germanyas well, to be the best which we yet have upon the psychology ofreligion. Not only so, it gives a new intimation as to what psychologyof religion means. It blazes a path along which investigators areeagerly following. Boyce, in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard in1911, declared James to be the third representative philosopher whomAmerica has produced. He had the form of philosophy as Emerson neverhad. He could realise whither he was going, as Emerson in hisintuitiveness never did. He criticised the dominant monism in mostpregnant way. He recurred to the problems which dualism owned but couldnot solve. We cannot call the new scheme dualism. The world does not goback. Yet James made an over-confident generation feel that thecenturies to which dualism had seemed reasonable were not so completelywithout intelligence as has been supposed by some. No philosophy mayclaim completeness as an interpretation of the universe. No moreconclusive proof of this judgment could be asked than is given quiteunintentionally in Haeckel's _Weltrãthsel_. At no point is this recall more earnest than in James's dealing with theantithesis of good and evil. The reaction of the mind of the race, andprimarily of individuals, upon the fact of evil, men's consciousness ofevil in themselves, their desire to be rid of it, their belief thatthere is a deliverance from it and that they have found thatdeliverance, is for James the point of departure for the study of theactual phenomena and the active principle of religion. The truestpsychological and philosophical instinct of the ago thus sets theexperience of conversion in the centre of discussion. Apparently mostmen have, at some time and in some way, the consciousness of a capacityfor God which is unfulfilled, of a relation to God unrealised, which isbroken and resumed, or yet to be resumed. They have the sense that theirown effort must contribute to this recovery. They have the sense alsothat something without themselves empowers them to attempt this recoveryand to persevere in the attempt. The psychology of religion is thus putin the forefront. The vast masses of material of this sort which thereligious world, both past and present, possesses, have been eitheractually unexplored, or else set forth in ways which distorted andobscured the facts. The experience is the fact. The best science theworld knows is now to deal with it as it would deal with any other fact. This is the epoch-making thing, the contribution to method in James'sbook. James was born in New York in 1842, the son of a Swedenborgiantheologian. He took his medical degree at Harvard in 1870. He began tolecture there in anatomy in 1872 and became Professor of Philosophy in1885. He was a Gifford and a Hibbert Lecturer. He died in 1910. When James's thesis shall have been fully worked out, much supposedinvestigation of primitive religions, which is really nothing butimagination concerning primitive religions, will be shown in its trueworthlessness. We know very little about primitive man. What we learn asto primitive man, on the side of his religion, we must learn in partfrom the psychology of the matured and civilised, the present living, thinking, feeling man in contact with his religion. Matured religion isnot to be judged by the primitive, but the reverse. The real study ofthe history of religions, the study of the objective phenomena, fromearliest to latest times, has its place. But the history of religions isperverted when it takes for fact in the life of primitive man that whichnever existed save in the imagination of twentieth century students. Early Christianity, on its inner and spiritual side, is to be judged bylater Christianity, by present Christianity, by the Christian experiencewhich we see and know to-day, and not conversely, as men have alwaysclaimed. The modern man is not to be converted after the pattern whichit is alleged that his grandfather followed. For, first, there is thequestion as to whether his grandfather did conform to this pattern. Andbeyond that, it is safer to try to understand the experience of thegrandfather, whom we do not know, by the psychology and experience ofthe grandson, whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture ofknowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which would occasioncharacteristic differences. The modern saint is not asked to be a saintlike Francis. In the first place, how do we know what Francis was like?In the second place, the experience of Francis may be most easilyunderstood by the aid of modern experience of true revolt fromworldliness and of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist amongus, with, of course, the proper background furnished by the history ofthe thirteenth century. Souls are one. Our souls may be, at least insome measure, known to ourselves. Even the souls of some of our fellowsmay be measurably known to us. What are the facts of the religiousexperience? How do souls react in face of the eternal? The experience ofreligion, the experience of the fatherhood of God, of the sonship ofman, of the moving of the spirit, is surely one experience. How did evenChrist's great soul react, experience, work, will, and suffer? By whatpossible means can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed, suffered? In the literature we learn only how men thought that hereacted. We must inquire of our own souls. To be sure, Christ belongedto the first century, and we live in the twentieth. It is possible forus to learn something of the first century and of the concrete outwardconditions which caused his life to take the shape which it did. Welearn this by strict historical research. Assuredly the supreme measurein which the spirit of all truth and goodness once took possession ofthe Nazarene, remains to us a mystery unfathomed and unfathomable. Dwelling in Jesus, that spirit made through him a revelation of thedivine such as the world has never seen. Yet that mystery leads forthalong the path of that which is intelligible. And, in another sense, even such religious experience as we ourselves may have, poor though itbe and sadly limited, leads back into the same mystery. It was with this contention that religion is a fact of the inner life ofman, that it is to be understood through consciousness, that it isessentially and absolutely reasonable and yet belongs to thetranscendental world, it was with this contention that, in the person ofImmanuel Kant, the history of modern religious thought began. It is withthis contention, in one of its newest and most far-reaching applicationsin the work of William James, that this history continues. For no onecan think of the number of questions which recent years have raised, without realising that this history is by no means concluded. It isconceivable that the changes which the twentieth century will bring maybe as noteworthy as those which the nineteenth century has seen. Atleast we may be grateful that so great and sure a foundation has beenlaid. BIBLIOGRAPHY CHAPTER I WERNLE, PAUL. _Einführung in das theologische Studium. _ Tübingen, 2. Aufl. , 1911. DIE KULTUR DER GEGENWART. Th. I. , Abth. 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