Systematic Theology

                    A Compendium and Commonplace-Book

               Designed For The Use Of Theological Students

                                    By

                   Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.

President and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological
                                 Seminary

                           Revised and Enlarged

                             In Three Volumes

                                 Volume 1

                           The Doctrine of God

                             The Judson Press

   Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Kansas City,
                             Seattle, Toronto

                                   1907





CONTENTS


Preface
Part I. Prolegomena.
   Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.
      I. Definition of Theology.
      II. Aim of Theology.
      III. Possibility of Theology.
         1. The existence of a God.
         2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God
         3. God’s revelation of himself to man.
      IV. Necessity of Theology.
      V. Relation of Theology to Religion.
         1. Derivation.
         2. False Conceptions.
         3. Essential Idea.
         4. Inferences.
   Chapter II. Material of Theology.
      I. Sources of Theology.
         1. Scripture and Nature.
         2. Scripture and Rationalism.
         3. Scripture and Mysticism.
         4. Scripture and Romanism.
      II. Limitations of Theology.
      III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
   Chapter III. Method Of Theology.
      I. Requisites to the study of Theology.
      II. Divisions of Theology.
      III. History of Systematic Theology.
      IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.
      V. Text-Books in Theology.
Part II. The Existence Of God.
   Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God’s Existence.
      I. First Truths in General.
      II. The Existence of God a first truth.
         1. Its universality.
         2. Its necessity.
         3. Its logical independence and priority.
      III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God’s Existence.
      IV. Contents of this Intuition.
   Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God’s Existence.
      I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.
      II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful
      Collocation in Nature.
      III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and
      Moral Nature.
      IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and
      Necessary Ideas.
   Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.
      I. Materialism.
      II. Materialistic Idealism.
      III. Idealistic Pantheism.
      IV. Ethical Monism.
Part III. The Scriptures A Revelation From God.
   Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.
      I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.
      II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.
      III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.
         1. Definition of Miracle.
         2. Possibility of Miracle.
         3. Probability of Miracles.
         4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.
         5. Evidential force of Miracles.
         6. Counterfeit Miracles.
      IV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.
      V. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a
      Divine Revelation.
         1. As to documentary evidence.
         2. As to testimony in general.
   Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine
   Revelation.
      I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.
         1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.
            1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).
            2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).
            3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).
            4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).
         2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.
      II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.
      III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.
         1. Scripture teaching in general.
         2. Moral System of the New Testament.
         3. The person and character of Christ.
         4. The testimony of Christ to himself—as being a messenger from
         God and as being one with God.
      IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.
   Chapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.
      I. Definition of Inspiration.
      II. Proof of Inspiration.
      III. Theories of Inspiration.
         1. The Intuition-theory.
         2. The Illumination Theory.
         3. The Dictation-theory.
         4. The Dynamical Theory.
      IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.
      V. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.
         1. Errors in matters of Science.
         2. Errors in matters of History.
         3. Errors in Morality.
         4. Errors of Reasoning.
         5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.
         6. Errors in Prophecy.
         7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.
            8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the
            persons to whom they are ascribed.
            9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.
            10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture
            teachers and their writings.
Part IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works Of God.
   Chapter I. The Attributes Of God.
      I. Definition of the term Attributes.
      II. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.
      III. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.
      IV. Classification of the Attributes.
      V. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.
         First division.—Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.
            1. Life.
            2. Personality.
         Second Division.—Infinity, and attributes therein involved.
            1. Self-existence.
            2. Immutability.
            3. Unity.
         Third Division.—Perfection, and attributes therein involved.
            1. Truth.
            2. Love.
            3. Holiness.
      VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.
         First Division.—Attributes having relation to Time and Space.
            1. Eternity.
            2. Immensity.
         Second Division.—Attributes having relation to Creation.
            1. Omnipresence.
            2. Omniscience.
            3. Omnipotence.
         Third Division.—Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.
            1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.
            2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.
            3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.
      VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.
         1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.
         2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.
   Chapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.
      I. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.
         1. Proofs from the New Testament.
            A. The Father is recognized as God.
            B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.
            C. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.
         2. Intimations of the Old Testament.
            A. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the
            Godhead.
            B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.
            C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.
            D. Descriptions of the Messiah.
      II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled
      to conceive of them as distinct Persons.
         1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.
         2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.
         3. The Holy Spirit is a person.
      III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic
      and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.
         1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are
         eternal.
         2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.
            A. The Sabellian.
            B. The Arian.
      IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three
      Persons, there is but one Essence.
      V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.
         1. These titles belong to the Persons.
         2. Qualified sense of these titles.
         3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.
      VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes
      the Key to all other Doctrines.
         1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.
         2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.
         3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other
         doctrines.
   Chapter III. The Decrees Of God.
      I. Definition of Decrees.
      II. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.
         1. From Scripture.
         2. From Reason.
            A. From the Divine Foreknowledge.
            B. From the Divine Wisdom.
            C. From the Divine Immutability.
            D. From the Divine Benevolence.
      III. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.
         1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.
         2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.
         3. That they make God the author of sin.
      IV. Concluding Remarks.
         1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.
         2. True method of preaching the doctrine.






                               [Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]





Christo Deo Salvatori.

“THE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF
SEEING.”—_Cicero._

“OPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY
LAW.”—_Psalm 119:18._

“FOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE
LIGHT.”—_Psalm 36:9._

“FOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS
PERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.”—_1 Cor. 13:9,
10._





PREFACE


The present work is a revision and enlargement of my “Systematic
Theology,” first published in 1886. Of the original work there have been
printed seven editions, each edition embodying successive corrections and
supposed improvements. During the twenty years which have intervened since
its first publication I have accumulated much new material, which I now
offer to the reader. My philosophical and critical point of view meantime
has also somewhat changed. While I still hold to the old doctrines, I
interpret them differently and expound them more clearly, because I seem
to myself to have reached a fundamental truth which throws new light upon
them all. This truth I have tried to set forth in my book entitled “Christ
in Creation,” and to that book I refer the reader for further information.

That Christ is the one and only Revealer of God, in nature, in humanity,
in history, in science, in Scripture, is in my judgment the key to
theology. This view implies a monistic and idealistic conception of the
world, together with an evolutionary idea as to its origin and progress.
But it is the very antidote to pantheism, in that it recognizes evolution
as only the method of the transcendent and personal Christ, who fills all
in all, and who makes the universe teleological and moral from its centre
to its circumference and from its beginning until now.

Neither evolution nor the higher criticism has any terrors to one who
regards them as parts of Christ’s creating and educating process. The
Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge himself
furnishes all the needed safeguards and limitations. It is only because
Christ has been forgotten that nature and law have been personified, that
history has been regarded as unpurposed development, that Judaism has been
referred to a merely human origin, that Paul has been thought to have
switched the church off from its proper track even before it had gotten
fairly started on its course, that superstition and illusion have come to
seem the only foundation for the sacrifices of the martyrs and the
triumphs of modern missions. I believe in no such irrational and atheistic
evolution as this. I believe rather in him in whom all things consist, who
is with his people even to the end of the world, and who has promised to
lead them into all the truth.

Philosophy and science are good servants of Christ, but they are poor
guides when they rule out the Son of God. As I reach my seventieth year
and write these words on my birthday, I am thankful for that personal
experience of union with Christ which has enabled me to see in science and
philosophy the teaching of my Lord. But this same personal experience has
made me even more alive to Christ’s teaching in Scripture, has made me
recognize in Paul and John a truth profounder than that disclosed by any
secular writers, truth with regard to sin and atonement for sin, that
satisfies the deepest wants of my nature and that is self-evidencing and
divine.

I am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because
I believe them to be false to both science and religion. How men who have
ever felt themselves to be lost sinners and who have once received pardon
from their crucified Lord and Savior can thereafter seek to pare down his
attributes, deny his deity and atonement, tear from his brow the crown of
miracle and sovereignty, relegate him to the place of a merely moral
teacher who influences us only as does Socrates by words spoken across a
stretch of ages, passes my comprehension. Here is my test of orthodoxy: Do
we pray to Jesus? Do we call upon the name of Christ, as did Stephen and
all the early church? Is he our living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent? Is he divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is
he the only-begotten Son, God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily? What think ye of the Christ? is still the
critical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in
the face of the evidence he has furnished us, cannot answer the question
aright.

Under the influence of Ritschl and his Kantian relativism, many of our
teachers and preachers have swung off into a practical denial of Christ’s
deity and of his atonement. We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian
defection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse
manner than did that of Channing and Ware a century ago. American
Christianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the
authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We need a new
vision of the Savior like that which Paul saw on the way to Damascus and
John saw on the isle of Patmos, to convince us that Jesus is lifted above
space and time, that his existence antedated creation, that he conducted
the march of Hebrew history, that he was born of a virgin, suffered on the
cross, rose from the dead, and now lives forevermore, the Lord of the
universe, the only God with whom we have to do, our Savior here and our
Judge hereafter. Without a revival of this faith our churches will become
secularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be
removed out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as
it has been with the apostate churches of New England.

I print this revised and enlarged edition of my “Systematic Theology,” in
the hope that its publication may do something to stem this fast advancing
tide, and to confirm the faith of God’s elect. I make no doubt that the
vast majority of Christians still hold the faith that was once for all
delivered to the saints, and that they will sooner or later separate
themselves from those who deny the Lord who bought them. When the enemy
comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard
against him. I would do my part in raising up such a standard. I would
lead others to avow anew, as I do now, in spite of the supercilious
assumptions of modern infidelity, my firm belief, only confirmed by the
experience and reflection of a half-century, in the old doctrines of
holiness as the fundamental attribute of God, of an original transgression
and sin of the whole human race, in a divine preparation in Hebrew history
for man’s redemption, in the deity, preëxistence, virgin birth, vicarious
atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his
future coming to judge the quick and the dead. I believe that these are
truths of science as well as truths of revelation; that the supernatural
will yet be seen to be most truly natural; and that not the open-minded
theologian but the narrow-minded scientist will be obliged to hide his
head at Christ’s coming.

The present volume, in its treatment of Ethical Monism, Inspiration, the
Attributes of God, and the Trinity, contains an antidote to most of the
false doctrine which now threatens the safety of the church. I desire
especially to call attention to the section on Perfection, and the
Attributes therein involved, because I believe that the recent merging of
Holiness in Love, and the practical denial that Righteousness is
fundamental in God’s nature, are responsible for the utilitarian views of
law and the superficial views of sin which now prevail in some systems of
theology. There can be no proper doctrine of the atonement and no proper
doctrine of retribution, so long as Holiness is refused its preëminence.
Love must have a norm or standard, and this norm or standard can be found
only in Holiness. The old conviction of sin and the sense of guilt that
drove the convicted sinner to the cross are inseparable from a firm belief
in the self-affirming attribute of God as logically prior to and as
conditioning the self-communicating attribute. The theology of our day
needs a new view of the Righteous One. Such a view will make it plain that
God must be reconciled before man can be saved, and that the human
conscience can be pacified only upon condition that propitiation is made
to the divine Righteousness. In this volume I propound what I regard as
the true Doctrine of God, because upon it will be based all that follows
in the volumes on the Doctrine of Man, and the Doctrine of Salvation.

The universal presence of Christ, the Light that lighteth every man, in
heathen as well as in Christian lands, to direct or overrule all movements
of the human mind, gives me confidence that the recent attacks upon the
Christian faith will fail of their purpose. It becomes evident at last
that not only the outworks are assaulted, but the very citadel itself. We
are asked to give up all belief in special revelation. Jesus Christ, it is
said, has come in the flesh precisely as each one of us has come, and he
was before Abraham only in the same sense that we were. Christian
experience knows how to characterize such doctrine so soon as it is
clearly stated. And the new theology will be of use in enabling even
ordinary believers to recognize soul-destroying heresy even under the mask
of professed orthodoxy.

I make no apology for the homiletical element in my book. To be either
true or useful, theology must be a passion. _Pectus est quod theologum
facit_, and no disdainful cries of “Pectoral Theology!” shall prevent me
from maintaining that the eyes of the heart must be enlightened in order
to perceive the truth of God, and that to know the truth it is needful to
do the truth. Theology is a science which can be successfully cultivated
only in connection with its practical application. I would therefore, in
every discussion of its principles, point out its relations to Christian
experience, and its power to awaken Christian emotions and lead to
Christian decisions. Abstract theology is not really scientific. Only that
theology is scientific which brings the student to the feet of Christ.

I would hasten the day when in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. I
believe that, if any man serve Christ, him the Father will honor, and that
to serve Christ means to honor him as I honor the Father. I would not
pride myself that I believe so little, but rather that I believe so much.
Faith is God’s measure of a man. Why should I doubt that God spoke to the
fathers through the prophets? Why should I think it incredible that God
should raise the dead? The things that are impossible with men are
possible with God. When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the
earth? Let him at least find faith in us who profess to be his followers.
In the conviction that the present darkness is but temporary and that it
will be banished by a glorious sunrising, I give this new edition of my
“Theology” to the public with the prayer that whatever of good seed is in
it may bring forth fruit, and that whatever plant the heavenly Father has
not planted may be rooted up.

ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
ROCHESTER, N. Y., AUGUST 3, 1906.





PART I. PROLEGOMENA.




Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.



I. Definition of Theology.


Theology is the science of God and of the relations between God and the
universe.


    Though the word “theology” is sometimes employed in dogmatic
    writings to designate that single department of the science which
    treats of the divine nature and attributes, prevailing usage,
    since Abelard (A. D. 1079-1142) entitled his general treatise
    “Theologia Christiana,” has included under that term the whole
    range of Christian doctrine. Theology, therefore, gives account,
    not only of God, but of those relations between God and the
    universe in view of which we speak of Creation, Providence and
    Redemption.

    John the Evangelist is called by the Fathers “the theologian,”
    because he most fully treats of the internal relations of the
    persons of the Trinity. Gregory Nazianzen (328) received this
    designation because he defended the deity of Christ against the
    Arians. For a modern instance of this use of the term “theology”
    in the narrow sense, see the title of Dr. Hodge’s first volume:
    “Systematic Theology, Vol. I: _Theology_.” But theology is not
    simply “the science of God,” nor even “the science of God and
    man.” It also gives account of the relations between God and the
    universe.

    If the universe were God, theology would be the only science.
    Since the universe is but a manifestation of God and is distinct
    from God, there are sciences of nature and of mind. Theology is
    “the science of the sciences,” not in the sense of including all
    these sciences, but in the sense of using their results and of
    showing their underlying ground; (see Wardlaw, Theology, 1:1, 2).
    Physical science is not a part of theology. As a mere physicist,
    Humboldt did not need to mention the name of God in his “Cosmos”
    (but see Cosmos, 2:418, where Humboldt says: “Psalm 104 presents
    an image of the whole Cosmos”). Bishop of Carlisle: “Science is
    atheous, and therefore cannot be atheistic.”

    Only when we consider the relations of finite things to God, does
    the study of them furnish material for theology. Anthropology is a
    part of theology, because man’s nature is the work of God and
    because God’s dealings with man throw light upon the character of
    God. God is known through his works and his activities. Theology
    therefore gives account of these works and activities so far as
    they come within our knowledge. All other sciences require
    theology for their complete explanation. Proudhon: “If you go very
    deeply into politics, you are sure to get into theology.” On the
    definition of theology, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik,
    1:2; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Theology; H. B.
    Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 44; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., 10,
    7, 4; 11, 6, 4; and Lactantius, De Ira Dei, 11.



II. Aim of Theology.


The aim of theology is the ascertainment of the facts respecting God and
the relations between God and the universe, and the exhibition of these
facts in their rational unity, as connected parts of a formulated and
organic system of truth.


    In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science
    does not create; it discovers. Theology answers to this
    description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it
    does not create them. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation,
    141—“Schiller, referring to the ardor of Columbus’s faith, says
    that if the great discoverer had not found a continent, he would
    have created one. But faith is not creative. Had Columbus not
    found the land—had there been no real object answering to his
    belief—his faith would have been a mere fancy.” Because theology
    deals with objective facts, we refuse to define it as “the science
    of religion”; _versus_ Am. Theol. Rev., 1850:101-126, and
    Thornwell, Theology, 1:139. Both the facts and the relations with
    which theology has to deal have an existence independent of the
    subjective mental processes of the theologian.

    Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and
    formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and
    explication of the relations between these facts, and the
    synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which
    unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic
    system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed
    arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living
    men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts +
    relations; Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I, Introd.,
    43—“There may be facts without science, as in the knowledge of the
    common quarryman; there may be thought without science, as in the
    early Greek philosophy.” A. MacDonald: “The _a priori_ method is
    related to the _a posteriori_ as the sails to the ballast of the
    boat: the more philosophy the better, provided there are a
    sufficient number of facts; otherwise, there is danger of
    upsetting the craft.”

    President Woodrow Wilson: “ ‘Give us the facts’ is the sharp
    injunction of our age to its historians ... But facts of
    themselves do not constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not
    concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation, of what
    things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings
    of facts as suggest meanings.” Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith,
    14—“The pursuit of science is the pursuit of relations.” Everett,
    Science of Thought, 3—“Logy” (_e. g._, in “theology”), from λόγος,
    = word + reason, expression + thought, fact + idea; _cf._ _John
    1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word.”

    As theology deals with objective facts and their relations, so its
    arrangement of these facts is not optional, but is determined by
    the nature of the material with which it deals. A true theology
    thinks over again God’s thoughts and brings them into God’s order,
    as the builders of Solomon’s temple took the stones already hewn,
    and put them into the places for which the architect had designed
    them; Reginald Heber: “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;
    Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.” Scientific men
    have no fear that the data of physics will narrow or cramp their
    intellects; no more should they fear the objective facts which are
    the data of theology. We cannot make theology, any more than we
    can make a law of physical nature. As the natural philosopher is
    “Naturæ minister et interpres,” so the theologian is the servant
    and interpreter of the objective truth of God. On the Idea of
    Theology as a System, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy,
    126-166.



III. Possibility of Theology.


The possibility of theology has a threefold ground: 1. In the existence of
a God who has relations to the universe; 2. In the capacity of the human
mind for knowing God and certain of these relations; and 3. In the
provision of means by which God is brought into actual contact with the
mind, or in other words, in the provision of a revelation.


    Any particular science is possible only when three conditions
    combine, namely, the actual existence of the object with which the
    science deals, the subjective capacity of the human mind to know
    that object, and the provision of definite means by which the
    object is brought into contact with the mind. We may illustrate
    the conditions of theology from selenology—the science, not of
    “lunar politics,” which John Stuart Mill thought so vain a
    pursuit, but of lunar physics. Selenology has three conditions: 1.
    the objective existence of the moon; 2. the subjective capacity of
    the human mind to know the moon; and 3. the provision of some
    means (_e. g._, the eye and the telescope) by which the gulf
    between man and the moon is bridged over, and by which the mind
    can come into actual cognizance of the facts with regard to the
    moon.


1. The existence of a God.


_In the existence of a God who has relations to the universe._—It has been
objected, indeed, that since God and these relations are objects
apprehended only by faith, they are not proper objects of knowledge or
subjects for science. We reply:

A. Faith is knowledge, and a higher sort of knowledge.—Physical science
also rests upon faith—faith in our own existence, in the existence of a
world objective and external to us, and in the existence of other persons
than ourselves; faith in our primitive convictions, such as space, time,
cause, substance, design, right; faith in the trustworthiness of our
faculties and in the testimony of our fellow men. But physical science is
not thereby invalidated, because this faith, though unlike
sense-perception or logical demonstration, is yet a cognitive act of the
reason, and may be defined as certitude with respect to matters in which
verification is unattainable.


    The objection to theology thus mentioned and answered is expressed
    in the words of Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 44,
    531—“Faith—belief—is the organ by which we apprehend what is
    beyond our knowledge.” But science is knowledge, and what is
    beyond our knowledge cannot be matter for science. Pres. E. G.
    Robinson says well, that knowledge and faith cannot be severed
    from one another, like bulkheads in a ship, the first of which may
    be crushed in, while the second still keeps the vessel afloat. The
    mind is one,—“it cannot be cut in two with a hatchet.” Faith is
    not antithetical to knowledge,—it is rather a larger and more
    fundamental sort of knowledge. It is never opposed to reason, but
    only to sight. Tennyson was wrong when he wrote: “We have but
    faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see” (In
    Memoriam, Introduction). This would make sensuous phenomena the
    only objects of knowledge. Faith in supersensible realities, on
    the contrary, is the highest exercise of reason.

    Sir William Hamilton consistently declares that the highest
    achievement of science is the erection of an altar “To the Unknown
    God.” This, however, is not the representation of Scripture. _Cf._
    _John 17:3—_“this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the
    only true God”; and _Jer. 9:24—_“let him that glorieth glory in
    that he hath understanding and knoweth me.” For criticism of
    Hamilton, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336. Fichte:
    “We are born in faith.” Even Goethe called himself a believer in
    the five senses. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 277-295,
    shows that intuitive beliefs in space, time, cause, substance,
    right, are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge.
    Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 14—“If theology is to be
    overthrown because it starts from some primary terms and
    propositions, then all other sciences are overthrown with it.”
    Mozley, Miracles, defines faith as “unverified reason.” See A. H.
    Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 19-30.


B. Faith is a knowledge conditioned by holy affection.—The faith which
apprehends God’s being and working is not opinion or imagination. It is
certitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of our
rational nature and upon the testimony of God. Its only peculiarity as a
cognitive act of the reason is that it is conditioned by holy affection.
As the science of æsthetics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and as
the science of ethics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the
morally right, so the science of theology is a product of reason, but of
reason as including a power of recognizing God which is practically
inseparable from a love for God.


    We here use the term “reason” to signify the mind’s whole power of
    knowing. Reason in this sense includes states of the sensibility,
    so far as they are indispensable to knowledge. We cannot know an
    orange by the eye alone; to the understanding of it, taste is as
    necessary as sight. The mathematics of sound cannot give us an
    understanding of music; we need also a musical ear. Logic alone
    cannot demonstrate the beauty of a sunset, or of a noble
    character; love for the beautiful and the right precedes knowledge
    of the beautiful and the right. Ullman draws attention to the
    derivation of _sapientia_, wisdom, from _sapĕre_, to taste. So we
    cannot know God by intellect alone; the heart must go with the
    intellect to make knowledge of divine things possible. “Human
    things,” said Pascal, “need only to be known, in order to be
    loved; but divine things must first be loved, in order to be
    known.” “This [religious] faith of the intellect,” said Kant, “is
    founded on the assumption of moral tempers.” If one were utterly
    indifferent to moral laws, the philosopher continues, even then
    religious truths “would be supported by strong arguments from
    analogy, but not by such as an obstinate, sceptical heart might
    not overcome.”

    Faith, then, is the highest knowledge, because it is the act of
    the integral soul, the insight, not of one eye alone, but of the
    two eyes of the mind, intellect and love to God. With one eye we
    can see an object as flat, but, if we wish to see around it and
    get the stereoptic effect, we must use both eyes. It is not the
    theologian, but the undevout astronomer, whose science is one-eyed
    and therefore incomplete. The errors of the rationalist are errors
    of defective vision. Intellect has been divorced from heart, that
    is, from a right disposition, right affections, right purpose in
    life. Intellect says: “I cannot know God”; and intellect is right.
    What intellect says, the Scripture also says: _1 Cor. 2:14—_“the
    natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
    they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because
    they are spiritually judged”_; 1:21—_“in the wisdom of God the
    world through its wisdom knew not God.”

    The Scripture on the other hand declares that “by faith we know”_
    (Heb. 11:3)_. By “heart” the Scripture means simply the governing
    disposition, or the sensibility + the will; and it intimates that
    the heart is an organ of knowledge: _Ex. 35:25—_“the women that
    were wise-hearted”; _Ps. 34:8—_“O taste and see that Jehovah is
    good” = a right taste precedes correct sight; _Jer. 24:7—_“I will
    give them a heart to know me”; _Mat. 5:8—_“Blessed are the pure in
    heart; for they shall see God”; _Luke 24:25—_“slow of heart to
    believe”; _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall
    know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak
    from myself”; _Eph. 1:18—_“having the eyes of your heart
    enlightened, that ye may know”; _1 John 4:7, 8—_“Every one that
    loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not
    knoweth not God.” See Frank, Christian Certainty, 303-324; Clarke,
    Christ. Theol., 362; Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality,
    114-137; R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 6;
    Fisher, Nat. and Method of Rev., 6; William James, The Will to
    Believe, 1-31; Geo. T. Ladd, on Lotze’s view that love is
    essential to the knowledge of God, in New World, Sept.
    1895:401-406; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 14, 15.


C. Faith, therefore, can furnish, and only faith can furnish, fit and
sufficient material for a scientific theology.—As an operation of man’s
higher rational nature, though distinct from ocular vision or from
reasoning, faith is not only a kind, but the highest kind, of knowing. It
gives us understanding of realities which to sense alone are inaccessible,
namely, God’s existence, and some at least of the relations between God
and his creation.


    Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:50, follows Gerhard in making faith the
    joint act of intellect and will. Hopkins, Outline Study of Man,
    77, 78, speaks not only of “the æsthetic reason” but of “the moral
    reason.” Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 91, 109, 145,
    191—“Faith is the certitude concerning matter in which
    verification is unattainable.” Emerson, Essays, 2:96—“Belief
    consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul—unbelief in
    rejecting them.” Morell, Philos. of Religion, 38, 52, 53, quotes
    Coleridge: “Faith consists in the synthesis of the reason and of
    the individual will, ... and by virtue of the former (that is,
    reason), faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of
    truth.” Faith, then, is not to be pictured as a blind girl
    clinging to a cross—faith is not blind—“Else the cross may just as
    well be a crucifix or an image of Gaudama.” “Blind unbelief,” not
    blind faith, “is sure to err, And scan his works in vain.” As in
    conscience we recognize an invisible authority, and know the truth
    just in proportion to our willingness to “do the truth,” so in
    religion only holiness can understand holiness, and only love can
    understand love (_cf._ _John 3:21—_“he that doeth the truth cometh
    to the light”).

    If a right state of heart be indispensable to faith and so to the
    knowledge of God, can there be any “theologia irregenitorum,” or
    theology of the unregenerate? Yes, we answer; just as the blind
    man can have a science of optics. The testimony of others gives it
    claims upon him; the dim light penetrating the obscuring membrane
    corroborates this testimony. The unregenerate man can know God as
    power and justice, and can fear him. But this is not a knowledge
    of God’s inmost character; it furnishes some material for a
    defective and ill-proportioned theology; but it does not furnish
    fit or sufficient material for a correct theology. As, in order to
    make his science of optics satisfactory and complete, the blind
    man must have the cataract removed from his eyes by some competent
    oculist, so, in order to any complete or satisfactory theology,
    the veil must be taken away from the heart by God himself (_cf._
    _2 Cor. 3:15, 16_—“_a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever
    it_ [marg. ‘a man’] _shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken
    away_”).

    Our doctrine that faith is knowledge and the highest knowledge is
    to be distinguished from that of Ritschl, whose theology is an
    appeal to the heart to the _exclusion_ of the head—to _fiducia_
    without _notitia_. But _fiducia_ includes _notitia_, else it is
    blind, irrational, and unscientific. Robert Browning, in like
    manner, fell into a deep speculative error, when, in order to
    substantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge
    as merely apparent. The appeal of both Ritschl and Browning from
    the head to the heart should rather be an appeal from the narrower
    knowledge of the mere intellect to the larger knowledge
    conditioned upon right affection. See A. H. Strong, The Great
    Poets and their Theology, 441. On Ritschl’s postulates, see
    Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 274-280, and
    Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie. On the relation of love
    and will to knowledge, see Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology,
    1900:717; Hovey, Manual Christ. Theol., 9; Foundations of our
    Faith, 12, 13; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:154-164; Presb. Quar., Oct.
    1871, Oct. 1872, Oct. 1873; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 99, 117;
    Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 2-8; New Englander, July, 1873:481;
    Princeton Rev., 1864:122; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 124, 125; Grau,
    Glaube als höchste Vernunft, in Beweis des Glaubens, 1865:110;
    Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 228; Newman, Univ. Sermons, 206;
    Hinton, Art of Thinking, Introd. by Hodgson, 5.


2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God


_In the capacity of the human mind for knowing God and certain of these
relations._—But it has urged that such knowledge is impossible for the
following reasons:

A. Because we can know only phenomena. We reply: (_a_) We know mental as
well as physical phenomena. (_b_) In knowing phenomena, whether mental or
physical, we know substance as underlying the phenomena, as manifested
through them, and as constituting their ground of unity. (_c_) Our minds
bring to the observation of phenomena not only this knowledge of
substance, but also knowledge of time, space, cause, and right, realities
which are in no sense phenomenal. Since these objects of knowledge are not
phenomenal, the fact that God is not phenomenal cannot prevent us from
knowing him.


    What substance is, we need not here determine. Whether we are
    realists or idealists, we are compelled to grant that there cannot
    be phenomena without noumena, cannot be appearances without
    something that appears, cannot be qualities without something that
    is qualified. This something which underlies or stands under
    appearance or quality we call substance. We are Lotzeans rather
    than Kantians, in our philosophy. To say that we know, not the
    self, but only its manifestations in thought, is to confound self
    with its thinking and to teach psychology without a soul. To say
    that we know no external world, but only its manifestations in
    sensations, is to ignore the principle that binds these sensations
    together; for without a somewhat in which qualities inhere they
    can have no ground of unity. In like manner, to say that we know
    nothing of God but his manifestations, is to confound God with the
    world and practically to deny that there is a God.

    Stählin, in his work on Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, 186-191, 218,
    219, says well that “limitation of knowledge to phenomena involves
    the elimination from theology of all claim to know the objects of
    the Christian faith as they are in themselves.” This criticism
    justly classes Ritschl with Kant, rather than with Lotze who
    maintains that knowing phenomena we know also the noumena
    manifested in them. While Ritschl professes to follow Lotze, the
    whole drift of his theology is in the direction of the Kantian
    identification of the world with our sensations, mind with our
    thoughts, and God with such activities of his as we can perceive.
    A divine nature apart from its activities, a preexistent Christ,
    an immanent Trinity, are practically denied. Assertions that God
    is self-conscious love and fatherhood become judgments of merely
    subjective value. On Ritschl, see the works of Orr, of Garvie, and
    of Swing; also Minton, in Pres. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1902:162-169,
    and C. W. Hodge, _ibid._, Apl. 1902:321-326; Flint, Agnosticism,
    590-597; Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 92-99.

    We grant that we can know God only so far as his activities reveal
    him, and so far as our minds and hearts are receptive of his
    revelation. The appropriate faculties must be exercised—not the
    mathematical, the logical, or the prudential, but the ethical and
    the religious. It is the merit of Ritschl that he recognizes the
    practical in distinction from the speculative reason; his error is
    in not recognizing that, when we do thus use the proper powers of
    knowing, we gain not merely subjective but also objective truth,
    and come in contact not simply with God’s activities but also with
    God himself. Normal religious judgments, though dependent upon
    subjective conditions, are not simply “judgments of worth” or
    “value-judgments,”—they give us the knowledge of “things in
    themselves.” Edward Caird says of his brother John Caird (Fund.
    Ideas of Christianity, Introd. cxxi)—“The conviction that God can
    be known and is known, and that, in the deepest sense, all our
    knowledge is knowledge of him, was the corner-stone of his
    theology.”

    Ritschl’s phenomenalism is allied to the positivism of Comte, who
    regarded all so-called knowledge of other than phenomenal objects
    as purely negative. The phrase “Positive Philosophy” implies
    indeed that all knowledge of mind is negative; see Comte, Pos.
    Philosophy, Martineau’s translation, 26, 28, 33—“In order to
    observe, your intellect must pause from activity—yet it is this
    very activity you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause,
    you cannot observe; if you do effect it, there is nothing to
    observe.” This view is refuted by the two facts; (1)
    consciousness, and (2) memory; for consciousness is the knowing of
    the self side by side with the knowing of its thoughts, and memory
    is the knowing of the self side by side with the knowing of its
    past; see Martineau, Essays Philos. and Theol., 1:24-40, 207-212.
    By phenomena we mean “facts, in distinction from their ground,
    principle, or law”; “neither phenomena nor qualities, as such, are
    perceived, but objects, percepts, or beings; and it is by an
    after-thought or reflex process that these are connected as
    qualities and are referred to as substances”; see Porter, Human
    Intellect, 51, 238, 520, 619-637, 640-645.

    Phenomena may be internal, _e. g._, thoughts; in this case the
    noumenon is the mind, of which these thoughts are the
    manifestations. Or, phenomena may be external, _e. g._, color,
    hardness, shape, size; in this case the noumenon is matter, of
    which these qualities are the manifestations. But qualities,
    whether mental or material, imply the existence of a substance to
    which they belong: they can no more be conceived of as existing
    apart from substance, than the upper side of a plank can be
    conceived of as existing without an under side; see Bowne, Review
    of Herbert Spencer, 47, 207-217; Martineau, Types of Ethical
    Theory, 1; 455, 456—“Comte’s assumption that mind cannot know
    itself or its states is exactly balanced by Kant’s assumption that
    mind cannot know anything outside of itself.... It is precisely
    because all knowledge is of relations that it is not and cannot be
    of phenomena alone. The absolute cannot _per se_ be known, because
    in being known it would _ipso facto_ enter into relations and be
    absolute no more. But neither can the phenomenal _per se_ be
    known, _i. e._, be known as phenomenal, without simultaneous
    cognition of what is non-phenomenal.” McCosh, Intuitions, 138-154,
    states the characteristics of substance as (1) being, (2) power,
    (3) permanence. Diman, Theistic Argument, 337, 363—“The theory
    that disproves God, disproves an external world and the existence
    of the soul.” We know something beyond phenomena, viz.: law,
    cause, force,—or we can have no science; see Tulloch, on Comte, in
    Modern Theories, 53-73; see also Bib. Sac., 1874:211; Alden,
    Philosophy, 44; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 87; Fleming, Vocab.
    of Philosophy, art.: Phenomena; New Englander, July, 1875:537-539.


B. Because we can know only that which bears analogy to our own nature or
experience. We reply: (_a_) It is not essential to knowledge that there be
similarity of nature between the knower and the known. We know by
difference as well as by likeness. (_b_) Our past experience, though
greatly facilitating new acquisitions, is not the measure of our possible
knowledge. Else the first act of knowledge would be inexplicable, and all
revelation of higher characters to lower would be precluded, as well as
all progress to knowledge which surpasses our present attainments. (_c_)
Even if knowledge depended upon similarity of nature and experience, we
might still know God, since we are made in God’s image, and there are
important analogies between the divine nature and our own.


    (_a_) The dictum of Empedocles, “Similia similibus percipiuntur,”
    must be supplemented by a second dictum, “Similia dissimilibus
    percipiuntur.” All things are alike, in being objects. But knowing
    is distinguishing, and there must be contrast between objects to
    awaken our attention. God knows sin, though it is the antithesis
    to his holy being. The ego knows the non-ego. We cannot know even
    self, without objectifying it, distinguishing it from its
    thoughts, and regarding it as another.

    (_b_) _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 79-82—“Knowledge
    is recognition and classification.” But we reply that a thing must
    first be perceived in order to be recognized or compared with
    something else; and this is as true of the first sensation as of
    the later and more definite forms of knowledge,—indeed there is no
    sensation which does not involve, as its complement, an at least
    incipient perception; see Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 351,
    352; Porter, Human Intellect, 206.

    (_c_) Porter, Human Intellect, 486—“Induction is possible only
    upon the assumption that the intellect of man is a reflex of the
    divine intellect, or that man is made in the image of God.” Note,
    however, that man is made in God’s image, not God in man’s. The
    painting is the image of the landscape, not, _vice versa_, the
    landscape the image of the painting; for there is much in the
    landscape that has nothing corresponding to it in the painting.
    Idolatry perversely makes God in the image of man, and so deifies
    man’s weakness and impurity. Trinity in God may have no exact
    counterpart in man’s present constitution, though it may disclose
    to us the goal of man’s future development and the meaning of the
    increasing differentiation of man’s powers. Gore, Incarnation,
    116—“If anthropomorphism as applied to God is false, yet
    theomorphism as applied to man is true; man is made in God’s
    image, and his qualities are, not the measure of the divine, but
    their counterpart and real expression.” See Murphy, Scientific
    Bases, 122; McCosh, in Internat. Rev., 1875:105; Bib. Sac.,
    1867:624; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:4-8, and Study of
    Religion, 1:94.


C. Because we know only that of which we can conceive, in the sense of
forming an adequate mental image. We reply: (_a_) It is true that we know
only that of which we can conceive, if by the term “conceive” we mean our
distinguishing in thought the object known from all other objects. But,
(_b_) The objection confounds conception with that which is merely its
occasional accompaniment and help, namely, the picturing of the object by
the imagination. In this sense, conceivability is not a final test of
truth. (_c_) That the formation of a mental image is not essential to
conception or knowledge, is plain when we remember that, as a matter of
fact, we both conceive and know many things of which we cannot form a
mental image of any sort that in the least corresponds to the reality; for
example, force, cause, law, space, our own minds. So we may know God,
though we cannot form an adequate mental image of him.


    The objection here refuted is expressed most clearly in the words
    of Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 25-36, 98—“The reality
    underlying appearances is totally and forever inconceivable by
    us.” Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, 77, 78 (_cf._ 26) suggests the
    source of this error in a wrong view of the nature of the concept:
    “The first distinguishing feature of a concept, viz.: that it
    cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination.” Porter,
    Human Intellect, 392 (see also 429, 656)—“The _concept_ is not a
    mental image”—only the _percept_ is. Lotze: “Color in general is
    not representable by any image; it looks neither green nor red,
    but has no look whatever.” The generic horse has no particular
    color, though the individual horse may be black, white, or bay. So
    Sir William Hamilton speaks of “the unpicturable notions of the
    intelligence.”

    Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 39, 40—“This doctrine of
    Nescience stands in exactly the same relation to causal power,
    whether you construe it as Material Force or as Divine Agency.
    Neither can be _observed_; one or the other must be _assumed_. If
    you admit to the category of knowledge only what we learn from
    observation, particular or generalized, then is Force unknown; if
    you extend the word to what is imported by the intellect itself
    into our cognitive acts, to make them such, then is God known.”
    Matter, ether, energy, protoplasm, organism, life,—no one of these
    can be portrayed to the imagination; yet Mr. Spencer deals with
    them as objects of Science. If these are not inscrutable, why
    should he regard the Power that gives unity to all things as
    inscrutable?

    Herbert Spencer is not in fact consistent with himself, for in
    divers parts of his writings he calls the inscrutable Reality back
    of phenomena the one, eternal, ubiquitous, infinite, ultimate,
    absolute Existence, Power and Cause. “It seems,” says Father
    Dalgairns, “that a great deal is known about the Unknowable.”
    Chadwick, Unitarianism, 75—“The beggar phrase ‘Unknowable’
    becomes, after Spencer’s repeated designations of it, as rich as
    Croesus with all saving knowledge.” Matheson: “To know that we
    know nothing is already to have reached a fact of knowledge.” If
    Mr. Spencer intended to exclude God from the realm of Knowledge,
    he should first have excluded him from the realm of Existence; for
    to grant that he is, is already to grant that we not only may know
    him, but that we actually to some extent do know him; see D. J.
    Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 22; McCosh, Intuitions, 186-189 (Eng.
    ed., 214); Murphy, Scientific Bases, 133; Bowne, Review of
    Spencer, 30-34; New Englander, July, 1875:543, 544; Oscar Craig,
    in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:594-602.


D. Because we can know truly only that which we know in whole and not in
part. We reply: (_a_) The objection confounds partial knowledge with the
knowledge of a part. We know the mind in part, but we do not know a part
of the mind. (_b_) If the objection were valid, no real knowledge of
anything would be possible, since we know no single thing in all its
relations. We conclude that, although God is a being not composed of
parts, we may yet have a partial knowledge of him, and this knowledge,
though not exhaustive, may yet be real, and adequate to the purposes of
science.


    (_a_) The objection mentioned in the text is urged by Mansel,
    Limits of Religious Thought, 97, 98, and is answered by Martineau,
    Essays, 1:291. The mind does not exist in space, and it has no
    parts: we cannot speak of its south-west corner, nor can we divide
    it into halves. Yet we find the material for mental science in
    partial knowledge of the mind. So, while we are not “geographers
    of the divine nature” (Bowne, Review of Spencer, 72), we may say
    with Paul, not “now know we a part of God,” but “now I know [God],
    in part”_ (1 Cor. 13:12)_. We may know truly what we do not know
    exhaustively; see _Eph. 3:19—_“to know the love of Christ which
    passeth knowledge.” I do not perfectly understand myself, yet I
    know myself in part; so I may know God, though I do not perfectly
    understand him.

    (_b_) The same argument that proves God unknowable proves the
    universe unknowable also. Since every particle of matter in the
    universe attracts every other, no one particle can be exhaustively
    explained without taking account of all the rest. Thomas Carlyle:
    “It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my
    hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.” Tennyson,
    Higher Pantheism: “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of
    the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little
    flower; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and
    all in all, I should know what God and man is.” Schurman,
    Agnosticism, 119—“Partial as it is, this vision of the divine
    transfigures the life of man on earth.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
    Religion, 1:167—“A faint-hearted agnosticism is worse than the
    arrogant and titanic gnosticism against which it protests.”


E. Because all predicates of God are negative, and therefore furnish no
real knowledge. We answer: (_a_) Predicates derived from our
consciousness, such as spirit, love, and holiness, are positive. (_b_) The
terms “infinite” and “absolute,” moreover, express not merely a negative
but a positive idea—the idea, in the former case, of the absence of all
limit, the idea that the object thus described goes on and on forever; the
idea, in the latter case, of entire self-sufficiency. Since predicates of
God, therefore, are not merely negative, the argument mentioned above
furnishes no valid reason why we may not know him.


    _Versus_ Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 530—“The absolute and
    the infinite can each only be conceived as a negation of the
    thinkable; in other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no
    conception at all.” Hamilton here confounds the infinite, or the
    absence of _all_ limits, with the indefinite, or the absence of
    all _known_ limits. _Per contra_, see Calderwood, Moral
    Philosophy, 248, and Philosophy of the Infinite, 272—“Negation of
    one thing is possible only by affirmation of another.” Porter,
    Human Intellect, 652—“If the Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name,
    had called the ox a _not-hog_, the use of a negative appellation
    would not necessarily authorize the inference of a want of
    definite conceptions or positive knowledge.” So with the infinite
    or not-finite, the unconditioned or not-conditioned, the
    independent or not-dependent,—these names do not imply that we
    cannot conceive and know it as something positive. Spencer, First
    Principles, 92—“Our consciousness of the Absolute, indefinite
    though it is, is positive, and not negative.”

    Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of “the farce of nescience
    playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science.” “The
    agnostic,” he says, “sets up the invisible picture of a _Grand
    Être_, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from
    man and from the world—blank within and void without—its very
    existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing
    down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in
    lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and
    awful non-entity.... The truth is that the agnostic’s abstraction
    of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal.” See McCosh,
    Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is
    not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in
    every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of
    length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our
    doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately
    follows.


F. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited,
and the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (_a_) God is
absolute, not as existing in _no_ relation, but as existing in no
_necessary_ relation; and (_b_) God is infinite, not as excluding all
coexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the
finite, and so unfettered by it. (_c_) God is actually limited by the
unchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well
as by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to
humanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in
such a sense as to render knowledge of him possible.


    _Versus_ Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95;
    _cf._ Spinoza: “Omnis determinatio est negatio;” hence to define
    God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable
    from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least
    internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable
    attributes and personal distinctions, is God’s perfection.
    Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so
    are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able
    thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all
    self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the
    greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God’s 1.
    _Perfection_ involves his limitation to (_a_) personality, (_b_)
    trinity, (_c_) righteousness; 2. _Revelation_ involves his
    self-limitation in (_a_) decree, (_b_) creation, (_c_)
    preservation, (_d_) government, (_e_) education of the world; 3.
    _Redemption_ involves his infinite self-limitation in the (_a_)
    person and (_b_) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in
    Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1891:521-532.

    Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135—“The infinite is not the
    quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated.... Both
    absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things.”
    Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10—“Religion has to do, not
    with _an_ Object that must let itself be known because its very
    existence is contingent upon its being known, but with _the_
    Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon
    him, and waiting until he manifest himself.” James Martineau,
    Study of Religion, 1:346—“We must not confound the _infinite_ with
    the _total_.... The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of
    self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal
    itself.... However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however
    sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in
    time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other
    terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite
    articulately speak in the finite.”

    Perfect personality excludes, not _self_-determination, but
    determination _from without_, determination _by another_. God’s
    self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore
    the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness
    but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution,
    gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The
    government of sinners by a holy God involves constant
    self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of
    divine forbearance; Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are
    limitations of the teacher also.” In inspiration, God limits
    himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in
    the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation:
    Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and
    holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God’s promises are also
    self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed
    restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by
    which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:189,
    195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130;
    Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh, Intuitions, 186;
    Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion,
    2:85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189-191.


G. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what
we know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to
our own senses and faculties. In reply: (_a_) We grant that we can know
only that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say
that we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we
know only what we know. But, (_b_) We deny that what we come into mental
contact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at
all, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not
merely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things.
We conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that
the laws of our thought are laws of God’s thought, and that the results of
normally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective
reality.


    _Versus_ Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96-116, and Herbert Spencer,
    First Principles, 68-97. This doctrine of relativity is derived
    from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that _a priori_
    judgments are simply “regulative.” But we reply that when our
    primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will
    cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature.
    The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself
    furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence
    external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not _into_ nature,
    but _in_ nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make
    all the world _seem_ green: they are the lenses of a microscope,
    which enable us to see what is objectively _real_ (Royce, Spirit
    of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding “the
    legislator of nature.” But it is so, only as discoverer of
    nature’s laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose
    its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it
    interprets the real meaning of the universe.

    Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: “All judgment implies an objective
    truth according to which we judge, which constitutes the standard,
    and with which we have something in common, _i. e._, our minds are
    part of an infinite and eternal Mind.” French aphorism: “When you
    are right, you are more right than you think you are.” God will
    not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote
    “No thoroughfare” over the reason in its highest exercise.
    Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:135, 136—“Over against Kant’s
    assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself,
    we may set Comte’s equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind
    cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy
    without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms
    correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that
    they do not.... 79—That our cognitive faculties correspond to
    things _as they are_, is much less surprising than that they
    should correspond to things _as they are not_.” W. T. Harris, in
    Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer’s
    self-contradiction: “All knowledge is, not absolute, but relative;
    our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but
    absolute.”

    Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:16-21, sets out with
    a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his
    adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of
    Kant. Ritschl’s statement may be summarized as follows: “We deal,
    not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God
    self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either
    things or God _apart from_ their phenomena or manifestations, as
    Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations
    _alone_, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed;
    but we do know both things and God _in_ their phenomena or
    manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with
    God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is
    always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human
    spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an
    intelligible order.”

    But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine,
    has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His
    “value-judgments” are simply an application to theology of the
    “regulative” principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things
    not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We
    reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are
    in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ’s
    preexistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics
    into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which
    we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union
    with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning
    Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives
    eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and
    his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely
    subjective value-judgment,—it is a coming in contact with
    objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton
    and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:13; H.
    B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336; J. S. Mill, Examination,
    1:113-134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.:
    “Hamilton,” in Johnson’s Encyclopædia; McCosh, Intuitions,
    139-146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97-123;
    Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy,
    48-79, esp. 71-79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific
    Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868:341; Princeton Rev., 1864:122;
    Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev.,
    March, 1878:445-448; Mind, April, 1878:257; Carpenter, Mental
    Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109-113;
    Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of
    Religion, 1:79, 120, 121, 135, 136.


3. God’s revelation of himself to man.


_In God’s actual revelation of himself and certain of these relations._—As
we do not in this place attempt a positive proof of God’s existence or of
man’s capacity for the knowledge of God, so we do not now attempt to prove
that God has brought himself into contact with man’s mind by revelation.
We shall consider the grounds of this belief hereafter. Our aim at present
is simply to show that, granting the fact of revelation, a scientific
theology is possible. This has been denied upon the following grounds:

A. That revelation, as a making known, is necessarily internal and
subjective—either a mode of intelligence, or a quickening of man’s
cognitive powers—and hence can furnish no objective facts such as
constitute the proper material for science.


    Morell, Philos. Religion, 128-131, 143—“The Bible cannot in strict
    accuracy of language be called a revelation, since a revelation
    always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living
    mind.” F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, 152—“Of our moral and
    spiritual God we know nothing without—everything within.” Theodore
    Parker: “Verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea
    like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion”; see review of Parker
    in Bib. Sac., 18:24-27. James Martineau, Seat of Authority in
    Religion: “As many minds as there are that know God at first hand,
    so many revealing acts there have been, and as many as know him at
    second hand are strangers to revelation”; so, assuming external
    revelation to be impossible, Martineau subjects all the proofs of
    such revelation to unfair destructive criticism. Pfleiderer,
    Philos. Religion, 1:185—“As all revelation is originally an
    _inner_ living experience, the springing up of religious truth in
    the heart, no external event can belong in itself to revelation,
    no matter whether it be naturally or supernaturally brought
    about.” Professor George M. Forbes: “Nothing can be revealed to us
    which we do not grasp with our reason. It follows that, so far as
    reason acts normally, it is a part of revelation.” Ritchie, Darwin
    and Hegel, 30—“The revelation of God is the growth of the idea of
    God.”


In reply to this objection, urged mainly by idealists in philosophy, (_a_)
We grant that revelation, to be effective, must be the means of inducing a
new mode of intelligence, or in other words, must be understood. We grant
that this understanding of divine things is impossible without a
quickening of man’s cognitive powers. We grant, moreover, that revelation,
when originally imparted, was often internal and subjective.


    Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 51-53, on _Gal. 1:16—_“to reveal
    his Son in me”: “The revelation on the way to Damascus would not
    have enlightened Paul, had it been merely a vision to his eye.
    Nothing can be revealed _to_ us which has not been revealed _in_
    us. The eye does not see the beauty of the landscape, nor the ear
    hear the beauty of music. So flesh and blood do not reveal Christ
    to us. Without the teaching of the Spirit, the external facts will
    be only like the letters of a book to a child that cannot read.”
    We may say with Channing: “I am more sure that my rational nature
    is from God, than that any book is the expression of his will.”


(_b_) But we deny that external revelation is therefore useless or
impossible. Even if religious ideas sprang wholly from within, an external
revelation might stir up the dormant powers of the mind. Religious ideas,
however, do not spring wholly from within. External revelation can impart
them. Man can reveal himself to man by external communications, and, if
God has equal power with man, God can reveal himself to man in like
manner.


    Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, asks pointedly: “If Messrs.
    Morell and Newman can teach by a book, cannot God do the same?”
    Lotze, Microcosmos, 2:660 (book 9, chap. 4), speaks of revelation
    as “either contained in some divine act of historic occurrence, or
    continually repeated in men’s hearts.” But in fact there is no
    alternative here; the strength of the Christian creed is that
    God’s revelation is both external and internal; see Gore, in Lux
    Mundi, 338. Rainy, in Critical Review, 1:1-21, well says that
    Martineau unwarrantably _isolates_ the witness of God to the
    individual soul. The inward needs to be combined with the outward,
    in order to make sure that it is not a vagary of the imagination.
    We need to distinguish God’s revelations from our own fancies.
    Hence, before giving the internal, God commonly gives us the
    external, as a standard by which to try our impressions. We are
    finite and sinful, and we need authority. The external revelation
    commends itself as authoritative to the heart which recognizes its
    own spiritual needs. External authority evokes the inward witness
    and gives added clearness to it, but only historical revelation
    furnishes indubitable proof that God is love, and gives us
    assurance that our longings after God are not in vain.


(_c_) Hence God’s revelation may be, and, as we shall hereafter see, it
is, in great part, an external revelation in works and words. The universe
is a revelation of God; God’s works in nature precede God’s words in
history. We claim, moreover, that, in many cases where truth was
originally communicated internally, the same Spirit who communicated it
has brought about an external record of it, so that the internal
revelation might be handed down to others than those who first received
it.


    We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures. The eternal Word
    antedated the written word, and through the eternal Word God is
    made known in nature and in history. Internal revelation is
    preceded by, and conditioned upon, external revelation. In point
    of time earth comes before man, and sensation before perception.
    Action best expresses character, and historic revelation is more
    by deeds than by words. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 1:231-264—“The
    Word is not in the Scriptures alone. The whole creation reveals
    the Word. In nature God shows his power; in incarnation his grace
    and truth. Scripture testifies of these, but Scripture is not the
    essential Word. The Scripture is truly apprehended and
    appropriated when in it and through it we see the living and
    present Christ. It does not bind men to itself alone, but it
    points them to the Christ of whom it testifies. Christ is the
    authority. In the Scriptures he points us to himself and demands
    our faith in him. This faith, once begotten, leads us to new
    appropriation of Scripture, but also to new criticism of
    Scripture. We find Christ more and more in Scripture, and yet we
    judge Scripture more and more by the standard which we find in
    Christ.”

    Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 71-82: “There is but one
    authority—Christ. His Spirit works in many ways, but chiefly in
    two: first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, secondly, the
    leading of the church into the truth. The latter is not to be
    isolated or separated from the former. Scripture is law to the
    Christian consciousness, and Christian consciousness in time
    becomes law to the Scripture—interpreting, criticizing, verifying
    it. The word and the spirit answer to each other. Scripture and
    faith are coördinate. Protestantism has exaggerated the first;
    Romanism the second. Martineau fails to grasp the coördination of
    Scripture and faith.”


(_d_) With this external record we shall also see that there is given
under proper conditions a special influence of God’s Spirit, so to quicken
our cognitive powers that the external record reproduces in our minds the
ideas with which the minds of the writers were at first divinely filled.


    We may illustrate the need of internal revelation from Egyptology,
    which is impossible so long as the external revelation in the
    hieroglyphics is uninterpreted; from the ticking of the clock in a
    dark room, where only the lit candle enables us to tell the time;
    from the landscape spread out around the Rigi in Switzerland,
    invisible until the first rays of the sun touch the snowy mountain
    peaks. External revelation (φανέρωσις, _Rom. 1:19, 20_) must be
    supplemented by internal revelation (ἀποκάλυψις, _1 Cor. 2:10,
    12_). Christ is the organ of external, the Holy Spirit the organ
    of internal, revelation. In Christ (_2 Cor. 1:20_) are “the yea”
    and “the Amen”—the objective certainty and the subjective
    certitude, the reality and the realization.

    Objective certainty must become subjective certitude in order to
    be a scientific theology. Before conversion we have the first, the
    external truth of Christ; only at conversion and after conversion
    do we have the second, “Christ formed in us”_ (Gal. 4:19)_. We
    have objective revelation at Sinai (_Ex. 20:22_); subjective
    revelation in Elisha’s knowledge of Gehazi (_2 K. 5:26_). James
    Russell Lowell, Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire: “Therefore with
    thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
    Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time’s shadows! and
    how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As
    when upon the anvil of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically
    wrought By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet’s thought!”


(_e_) Internal revelations thus recorded, and external revelations thus
interpreted, both furnish objective facts which may serve as proper
material for science. Although revelation in its widest sense may include,
and as constituting the ground of the possibility of theology does
include, both insight and illumination, it may also be used to denote
simply a provision of the external means of knowledge, and theology has to
do with inward revelations only as they are expressed in, or as they agree
with, this objective standard.


    We have here suggested the vast scope and yet the insuperable
    limitations of theology. So far as God is revealed, whether in
    nature, history, conscience, or Scripture, theology may find
    material for its structure. Since Christ is not simply the
    incarnate Son of God but also the eternal Word, the only Revealer
    of God, there is no theology apart from Christ, and all theology
    is Christian theology. Nature and history are but the dimmer and
    more general disclosures of the divine Being, of which the Cross
    is the culmination and the key. God does not intentionally conceal
    himself. He wishes to be known. He reveals himself at all times
    just as fully as the capacity of his creatures will permit. The
    infantile intellect cannot understand God’s boundlessness, nor can
    the perverse disposition understand God’s disinterested affection.
    Yet all truth is in Christ and is open to discovery by the
    prepared mind and heart.

    The Infinite One, so far as he is unrevealed, is certainly
    unknowable to the finite. But the Infinite One, so far as he
    manifests himself, is knowable. This suggests the meaning of the
    declarations: _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God at any time; the
    only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
    declared him”; _14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;
    _1 Tim. 6:16—_“whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” We therefore
    approve of the definition of Kaftan, Dogmatik, 1—“Dogmatics is the
    science of the Christian truth which is believed and acknowledged
    in the church upon the ground of the divine revelation”—in so far
    as it limits the scope of theology to truth revealed by God and
    apprehended by faith. But theology presupposes both God’s external
    and God’s internal revelations, and these, as we shall see,
    include nature, history, conscience and Scripture. On the whole
    subject, see Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:37-43; Nitzsch, System Christ.
    Doct., 72; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 193; Auberlen, Div. Rev.,
    Introd., 29; Martineau, Essays, 1:171, 280; Bib. Sac., 1867:593,
    and 1872:428; Porter, Human Intellect, 373-375; C. M. Mead, in
    Boston Lectures, 1871:58.


B. That many of the truths thus revealed are too indefinite to constitute
the material for science, because they belong to the region of the
feelings, because they are beyond our full understanding, or because they
are destitute of orderly arrangement.

We reply:

(_a_) Theology has to do with subjective feelings only as they can be
defined, and shown to be effects of objective truth upon the mind. They
are not more obscure than are the facts of morals or of psychology, and
the same objection which would exclude such feelings from theology would
make these latter sciences impossible.


    See Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who regard theology as a mere
    account of devout Christian feelings, the grounding of which in
    objective historical facts is a matter of comparative indifference
    (Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:401-403). Schleiermacher therefore
    called his system of theology “Der Christliche Glaube,” and many
    since his time have called their systems by the name of
    “Glaubenslehre.” Ritschl’s “value-judgments,” in like manner,
    render theology a merely subjective science, if any subjective
    science is possible. Kaftan improves upon Ritschl, by granting
    that we know, not only Christian feelings, but also Christian
    facts. Theology is the science of God, and not simply the science
    of faith. Allied to the view already mentioned is that of
    Feuerbach, to whom religion is a matter of subjective fancy; and
    that of Tyndall, who would remit theology to the region of vague
    feeling and aspiration, but would exclude it from the realm of
    science; see Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by
    Marian Evans (George Eliot); also Tyndall, Belfast Address.


(_b_) Those facts of revelation which are beyond our full understanding
may, like the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the atomic theory in
chemistry, or the doctrine of evolution in biology, furnish a principle of
union between great classes of other facts otherwise irreconcilable. We
may define our concepts of God, and even of the Trinity, at least
sufficiently to distinguish them from all other concepts; and whatever
difficulty may encumber the putting of them into language only shows the
importance of attempting it and the value of even an approximate success.


    Horace Bushnell: “Theology can never be a science, on account of
    the infirmities of language.” But this principle would render void
    both ethical and political science. Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of
    Revelation, 145—“Hume and Gibbon refer to faith as something too
    sacred to rest on proof. Thus religious beliefs are made to hang
    in mid-air, without any support. But the foundation of these
    beliefs is no less solid for the reason that empirical tests are
    not applicable to them. The data on which they rest are real, and
    the inferences from the data are fairly drawn.” Hodgson indeed
    pours contempt on the whole intuitional method by saying:
    “Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the
    explanation of everything else!” Yet he would probably grant that
    he begins his investigations by assuming his own existence. The
    doctrine of the Trinity is not wholly comprehensible by us, and we
    accept it at the first upon the testimony of Scripture; the full
    proof of it is found in the fact that each successive doctrine of
    theology is bound up with it, and with it stands or falls. The
    Trinity is rational because it explains Christian experience as
    well as Christian doctrine.


(_c_) Even though there were no orderly arrangement of these facts, either
in nature or in Scripture, an accurate systematizing of them by the human
mind would not therefore be proved impossible, unless a principle were
assumed which would show all physical science to be equally impossible.
Astronomy and geology are constructed by putting together multitudinous
facts which at first sight seem to have no order. So with theology. And
yet, although revelation does not present to us a dogmatic system
ready-made, a dogmatic system is not only implicitly contained therein,
but parts of the system are wrought out in the epistles of the New
Testament, as for example in Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; 8:6; 1 Tim.
3:16; Heb. 6:1, 2.


    We may illustrate the construction of theology from the dissected
    map, two pieces of which a father puts together, leaving his child
    to put together the rest. Or we may illustrate from the physical
    universe, which to the unthinking reveals little of its order.
    “Nature makes no fences.” One thing seems to glide into another.
    It is man’s business to distinguish and classify and combine.
    Origen: “God gives us truth in single threads, which we must weave
    into a finished texture.” Andrew Fuller said of the doctrines of
    theology that “they are united together like chain-shot, so that,
    whichever one enters the heart, the others must certainly follow.”
    George Herbert: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And
    the configuration of their glory; Seeing not only how each verse
    doth shine, But all the constellations of the story!”

    Scripture hints at the possibilities of combination, in _Rom.
    5:12-19_, with its grouping of the facts of sin and salvation
    about the two persons, Adam and Christ; in _Rom. 4:24, 25_, with
    its linking of the resurrection of Christ and our justification;
    in _1 Cor. 3:6_, with its indication of the relations between the
    Father and Christ; in _1 Tim. 3:16_, with its poetical summary of
    the facts of redemption (see Commentaries of DeWette, Meyer,
    Fairbairn); in _Heb. 6:1, 2_, with its statement of the first
    principles of the Christian faith. God’s furnishing of concrete
    facts in theology, which we ourselves are left to systematize, is
    in complete accordance with his method of procedure with regard to
    the development of other sciences. See Martineau, Essays, 1:29,
    40; Am. Theol. Rev., 1859:101-126—art. on the Idea, Sources and
    Uses of Christian Theology.



IV. Necessity of Theology.


The necessity of theology has its grounds:

(_a_) _In the organizing instinct of the human mind._ This organizing
principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion
or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and
unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective; just
in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to
systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of
human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since
the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets
the deepest want of man’s rational nature. Theology is a rational
necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new
systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law,
that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a
theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering.
Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for
the corruption of God’s truth or in a naturally illogical structure of
mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the
restraints of a complete Scriptural system.


    President E. G. Robinson: “Every man has as much theology as he
    can hold.” Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as
    naturally as we speak prose. “Se moquer de la philosophie c’est
    vraiment philosopher.” Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became
    metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means
    that he must attempt ‘to give account of things,’ as Plato said,
    ‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’ ” Men
    often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences
    of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself
    in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All
    other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the
    knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one
    science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In
    speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173,
    satirically exhorts us: “Trust your genius; follow your noble
    heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and
    change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the
    romanticists.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons
    who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected
    with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they
    have it.” See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy,
    Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.


(_b_) _In the relation of systematic truth to the development of
character._ Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of
Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of
God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of
spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been
objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from
their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths
which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other
hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon
the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are
those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can
be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical,
or mistaken.


    Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of
    sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these
    two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth
    of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.
    _Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =
    _“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative
    represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures
    the growth of the plant; _cf._ _3 Pet. 3:18—_“grow in the grace
    and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” For texts
    which represent truth as nourishment, see _Jer. 3:15—_“feed you
    with knowledge and understanding”; _Mat. 4:4—_“Man shall not live
    by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
    of God”; _1 Cor. 3:1, 2—_“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk,
    not with meat”; _Heb. 5:14—_“but solid food is for full-grown
    men.” Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its
    foundation; see _1 Cor. 3:10-15—_“I laid a foundation, and another
    buildeth thereon.” See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon,
    on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.

    Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot
    W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty
    without doctrine is a tree without roots.” Christian morality is a
    fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We
    cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the
    tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
    82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes,
    the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”
    Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time
    when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we
    say that it is independent of the tree?” The twelve manner of
    fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew
    there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple
    swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again
    to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those
    who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal
    with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle: “It is the mistake
    and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought
    instead of causes.” George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day,
    28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that
    Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a
    dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”


(_c_) _In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of
Christian doctrine._ His chief intellectual qualification must be the
power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and
powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit
in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield “the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only
as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers.
Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and
inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace
obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are
correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard
to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system.
With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is
not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men’s
souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is
the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their
relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology,
the person and work of Jesus Christ.


    The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires
    reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and
    eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong
    than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from
    “Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and
    logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice,
    1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His
    reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”
    So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal
    are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to
    indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching.
    Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to “the knowledge
    of the truth”_ (2 Tim. 2:25)_. The preacher must furnish the basis
    for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct
    before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know
    God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is
    absolutely necessary to his success.

    Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology,
    or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence?
    Professor Blackie: “One may as well expect to make a great patriot
    out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere
    rhetorician.” The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a
    mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John
    Henry Newman: “The false preacher is one who has to say something;
    the true preacher is one who has something to say.” Spurgeon,
    Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a
    tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not
    need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When
    people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring
    forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we
    have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a
    currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of
    superficial students.” Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and
    erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician’s prescription;
    by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending
    Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only
    after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on
    our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us.
    Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has. _2 Tim.
    2:2—_“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many
    witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able
    to teach others also.”


(_d_) _In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety
and aggressive power of the church._ The safety and progress of the church
is dependent upon her “holding the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13),
and serving as “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Defective
understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of
organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of
Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not
only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an
indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world’s
conversion.


    The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative
    curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of
    doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to
    express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who
    deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual
    acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them.
    The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of
    controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with
    regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up
    bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy: “What
    converted the world was not the example of Christ’s life,—it was
    the dogma of his death.” Coleridge: “He who does not withstand,
    has no standing ground of his own.” Mrs. Browning: “Entire
    intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”
    E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a
    precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a
    doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God’s garden;
    its trees are trees of his planting; and ‘all the trees of the
    Lord are full of sap’_ (Ps. 104:16)._”

    Bose, Ecumenical Councils: “A creed is not catholic because a
    council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it
    expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and
    women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into
    those forms of words.” Dorner: “The creeds are the precipitate of
    the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.” Foster,
    Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of
    some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and
    crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was
    given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the
    conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly
    as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when
    the containing vessel receives a blow.” Balfour, Foundations of
    Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials
    that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and
    declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the
    Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its
    inexplicable fulness.” Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan
    philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and
    to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled
    to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to
    assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret
    in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”

    Professor Howard Osgood: “A creed is like a backbone. A man does
    not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a
    backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a
    humpbacked Christian.” Yet we must remember that creeds are
    _credita_, and not _credenda_; historical statements of what the
    church _has_ believed, not infallible prescriptions of what the
    church _must_ believe. George Dana Boardman, The Church,
    98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
    151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of
    religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their
    artillery against the citadel itself.” T. H. Green: “We are told
    that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who
    knows what the Fathers believe now?” George A. Gordon, Christ of
    To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned
    in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the
    intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of
    our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely
    essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his
    endeavor for man is a delusion.” See Schaff, Creeds of
    Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity,
    121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick
    Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.


(_e_) _In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture._ The Scripture
urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John
5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of
its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with
spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of
revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the
preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim.
4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called “a scribe who
hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 13:52); the
“pastors” of the churches are at the same time to be “teachers” (Eph.
4:11); the bishop must be “apt to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), “handling aright
the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), “holding to the faithful word which is
according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound
doctrine and to convict the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9).


    As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in
    his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the
    pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to
    expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The
    treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to
    be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid
    and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least
    one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical
    applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards’s
    sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in
    Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not
    models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too
    scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too
    little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal
    preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed
    itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the
    other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count
    himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without
    regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of
    Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part,
    4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith
    we fly to heaven.”



V. Relation of Theology to Religion.


Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different
spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the
sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe,
so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of
individual and collective life. With regard to the term “religion”,
notice:


1. Derivation.


(_a_) The derivation from _religāre_, “to bind back” (man to God), is
negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists;
by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms as
_religio_, _religens_; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing
a fuller knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient
world.

(_b_) The more correct derivation is from _relegĕre_, “to go over again,”
“carefully to ponder.” Its original meaning is therefore “reverent
observance” (of duties due to the gods).


    For advocacy of the derivation of _religio_, as meaning “binding
    duty,” from _religāre_, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This
    derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a
    Christian writer. To meet the objection that the form _religio_
    seems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange cites
    _rebellio_, from _rebellāre_, and _optio_, from _optāre_. But we
    reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others,
    are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation.
    For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische
    Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger.
    Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews,
    Latin Lexicon, _in voce_; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7;
    Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6;
    Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max
    Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.


2. False Conceptions.


(_a_) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would
then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of
knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.


    In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is
    the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God’s
    knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not
    utterly ignore other elements in religion. “Feeling, intuition,
    and faith belong to it,” he said, “and mere cognition is
    one-sided.” Yet he was always looking for the movement of
    _thought_ in all forms of life; God and the universe were but
    developments of the primordial _idea_. “What knowledge is worth
    knowing,” he asked, “if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal
    life, and thinking is also true worship.” Hegel’s error was in
    regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding
    thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the
    bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly
    considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly
    religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love
    in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than
    he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge
    of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the
    intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional
    and voluntary nature.

    Goethe: “How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking,
    but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what
    you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you
    must use your fingers.” So we can never come to know God by
    thinking alone. _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he
    will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.” The Gnostics,
    Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological
    knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth’s maxim, “The Bible
    only, the religion of Protestants,” is inadequate and inaccurate;
    for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a
    fetich and a snare: _John 5:39,40—_“Ye search the Scriptures, ...
    and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” See Sterrett,
    Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human
    Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos.,
    476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.


(_b_) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of
dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless
exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.


    In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from
    the old rationalism to the evangelical faith. “Like Lazarus, with
    the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his
    steps,” yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the
    soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian
    feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks, “Emotion is impotent
    unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there
    will be emotion which is potent to persuade.” If Christianity is
    religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference
    between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the
    religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other
    religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes
    life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the
    cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith
    begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the
    worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of
    theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.

    Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher’s passive
    element of _dependence_, the active element of _prayer_. Kaftan,
    Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as the _Source_ of our
    being, but forgets that he is also our _End_.” Fellowship and
    progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence;
    and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as
    presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in
    neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his
    Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357.
    Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for
    those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in.
    Dorner: “The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his
    nurse.” On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie, _in
    voce_; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of
    Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine
    of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570;
    Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.


(_c_) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for
morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is
essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing
and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.


    Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss: “I know of but
    two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the
    sense of duty within my heart.” But the mere sense of duty often
    distresses. We object to the word “obey” as the imperative of
    religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only;
    (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will;
    (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian
    a servant only, not a friend; _cf._ _John 15:15—_“No longer do I
    call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation
    not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_). The
    voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of
    law. We object also to Matthew Arnold’s definition: “Religion is
    ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched
    with emotion.” This leaves out of view the receptive element in
    religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer
    statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as
    morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
    251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have
    recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142.
    Goethe: “Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to
    bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69;
    Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of
    Religion, 19.


3. Essential Idea.


Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in
recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the
indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as
consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect,
affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of
all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the
united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must
assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in
regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving
him.


    See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in
    God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79,
    and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is “Sache des ganzen
    Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the
    personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and
    Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation
    or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”;
    Dr. J. W. A. Stewart: “Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:
    “Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and
    Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as
    Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us,
    redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik,
    8—“The Christian religion is (1) the _kingdom of God_ as a goal
    above the world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)
    _reconciliation with God_ permitting attainment of this goal in
    spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in
    man’s natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion, _i.
    e._, that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”

    Herbert Spencer: “Religion is an _a priori_ theory of the
    universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds: “which assumes
    intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe,
    science dealing with the _How_, the phenomenal process, religion
    dealing with the _Who_, the intelligent Personality who works
    through the process.” Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is
    the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the
    recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet,
    as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of
    a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”
    Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal
    expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or
    realization of self in a completely realized personality which
    unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of
    all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and
    rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which
    accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the
    complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its
    true life in God.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply
    the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society,
    the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all
    men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend
    the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual
    relationship arising out of that unity of substance which
    constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.” See Van
    Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227;
    Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths,
    147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.


4. Inferences.


From this definition of religion it follows:

(_a_) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious
being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually
religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God.
False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the
imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul
in God.


    Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity
    be true, it is not _a_ religion, but _the_ religion. If Judaism be
    also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with
    Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the
    relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in
    other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions,
    but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became
    incorporated with fables and falsities.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas
    of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or
    essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is
    common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that
    explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains
    all the lower religions.” George P. Fisher: “The recognition of
    certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean
    that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by
    borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in
    fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion
    does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides
    illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and
    aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most
    spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”

    Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon on _Proverbs 20:27—_“The spirit of man
    is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a
    lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has
    naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no
    means naturally and universally religious. All false religions
    have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained
    or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these
    elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a
    counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin
    washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad
    money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul’s methods of
    dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and
    in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and
    justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the
    light of God’s self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen
    religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”; _cf._
    _Acts 14:16—_“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn
    from these vain things unto a living God”_;_ _17:22—_“I perceive
    that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities....
    What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto
    you.”

    Matthew Arnold: “Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye
    Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion
    scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills
    how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like
    rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be
    born again?” Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is
    absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other
    religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other
    religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored
    rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism,
    and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates.
    But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity
    is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson,
    Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is
    reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it
    sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes
    the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure
    beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like
    Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the
    present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like
    Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity
    is the manifold wisdom of God.” See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics,
    88-93. Shakespeare: “There is some soul of goodness in things
    evil, Would men observingly distill it out”


(_b_) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The
facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they
can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought
into rational relation to each other.


    This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious
    fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is
    important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be
    identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the
    perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our
    fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with
    devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all
    these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion
    involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the
    God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between
    human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul
    upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of
    self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one’s works and
    one’s record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle
    in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks
    of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or
    Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we
    also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of
    the omnipresent Christ, “the light which lighteth every man”_
    (John 1:9),_ and we see in them incipient repentance and faith,
    even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.
    _Christian_ fellowship must have a larger basis in accepted
    Christian truth, and _Church_ fellowship a still larger basis in
    common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.
    _Religious_ fellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact
    that “God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that
    feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”_ (Acts
    10:34, 35)_.


(_c_) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is
simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is
“formal communion between God and his people.” In it God speaks to man,
and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture
and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the
people.


    Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship
    is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.” But there is more in
    true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in
    true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in
    worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But
    communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called
    “a whirlwind in petticoats,” ended one of her brilliant
    soliloquies by saying: “What a delightful conversation we have
    had!” We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship
    in Thomas à Kempis’s dialogues between the saint and his Savior,
    in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe: “Against the great superiority
    of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to
    put one’s self on his level.” If this be the effect of loving and
    praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God!
    Inscription in Grasmere Church: “Whoever thou art that enterest
    this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself,
    for those who minister, and for those who worship here.” In _James
    1:27—_“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is
    this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
    to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“_religion_,” θρησκεία,
    is _cultus exterior_; and the meaning is that “the external
    service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a
    life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its
    inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to
    be inferred.” On the relation between religion and worship, see
    Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison,
    Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to
    Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.




Chapter II. Material of Theology.



I. Sources of Theology.


God himself, in the last analysis, must be the only source of knowledge
with regard to his own being and relations. Theology is therefore a
summary and explanation of the content of God’s self-revelations. These
are, first, the revelation of God in nature; secondly and supremely, the
revelation of God in the Scriptures.


    Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than
    to God himself?” Von Baader: “To know God without God is
    impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime
    source of knowledge.” C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8—“God reveals truth
    in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of
    mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but
    above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.” F. H. Johnson,
    What is Reality? 399—“The teacher intervenes when needed.
    Revelation _helps_ reason and conscience, but is not a
    _substitute_ for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution
    for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like
    nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing
    ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The
    Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars
    which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine
    to see the stars with our own eyes.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
    178—“The Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But
    it is useless when you put your eyes out.”

    We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The
    immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any
    more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from
    us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118—“The word ‘authority’ is
    derived from _auctor_, _augeo_, ‘to add.’ Authority adds something
    to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element
    of _witness_. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which
    cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which
    results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own
    knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church,
    Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only
    original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is
    only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.” Gore,
    Incarnation, 181—“All legitimate authority represents the reason
    of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to
    it.... Man is made in God’s image: he is, in his fundamental
    capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully,
    through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as
    Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better
    reason,—to use Plato’s beautiful expression, he can salute it by
    force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give
    intellectual account of it.”

    Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 332-337, holds that there is no
    such thing as unassisted reason, and that, even if there were,
    natural religion is not one of its products. Behind all evolution
    of our own reason, he says, stands the Supreme Reason.
    “Conscience, ethical ideals, capacity for admiration, sympathy,
    repentance, righteous indignation, as well as our delight in
    beauty and truth, are all derived from God.” Kaftan, in Am. Jour.
    Theology, 1900; 718, 719, maintains that there is no other
    principle for dogmatics than Holy Scripture. Yet he holds that
    knowledge never comes directly from Scripture, but from faith. The
    order is not: Scripture, doctrine, faith; but rather, Scripture,
    faith, doctrine. Scripture is no more a direct authority than is
    the church. Revelation is addressed to the whole man, that is, to
    the _will_ of the man, and it claims _obedience_ from him. Since
    all Christian knowledge is mediated through faith, it rests on
    obedience to the authority of revelation, and revelation is
    self-manifestation on the part of God. Kaftan should have
    recognized more fully that not simply Scripture, but all knowable
    truth, is a revelation from God, and that Christ is “the light
    which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. Revelation is an organic
    whole, which begins in nature, but finds its climax and key in the
    historical Christ whom Scripture presents to us. See H. C.
    Minton’s review of Martineau’s Seat of Authority, in Presb. and
    Ref. Rev., Apr. 1900:203 _sq._


1. Scripture and Nature.


By nature we here mean not only physical facts, or facts with regard to
the substances, properties, forces, and laws of the material world, but
also spiritual facts, or facts with regard to the intellectual and moral
constitution of man, and the orderly arrangement of human society and
history.


    We here use the word “nature” in the ordinary sense, as including
    man. There is another and more proper use of the word “nature,”
    which makes it simply a complex of forces and beings under the law
    of cause and effect. To nature in this sense man belongs only as
    respects his body, while as immaterial and personal he is a
    supernatural being. Free will is not under the law of physical and
    mechanical causation. As Bushnell has said: “Nature and the
    supernatural together constitute the one system of God.” Drummond,
    Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 232—“Things are natural or
    supernatural according to where we stand. Man is supernatural to
    the mineral; God is supernatural to the man.” We shall in
    subsequent chapters use the term “nature” in the narrow sense. The
    universal use of the phrase “Natural Theology,” however, compels
    us in this chapter to employ the word “nature” in its broader
    sense as including man, although we do this under protest, and
    with this explanation of the more proper meaning of the term. See
    Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:183 _sq._

    E. G. Robinson: “Bushnell separates nature from the supernatural.
    Nature is a blind train of causes. God has nothing to do with it,
    except as he steps into it from without. Man is supernatural,
    because he is outside of nature, having the power of originating
    an independent train of causes.” If this were the proper
    conception of nature, then we might be compelled to conclude with
    P. T. Forsyth, in Faith and Criticism, 100—“There is no revelation
    in nature. There can be none, because there is no forgiveness. We
    cannot be sure about her. She is only aesthetic. Her ideal is
    harmony, not reconciliation.... For the conscience, stricken or
    strong, she has no word.... Nature does not contain her own
    teleology, and for the moral soul that refuses to be fancy-fed,
    Christ is the one luminous smile on the dark face of the world.”
    But this is virtually to confine Christ’s revelation to Scripture
    or to the incarnation. As there was an astronomy without the
    telescope, so there was a theology before the Bible. George
    Harris, Moral Evolution, 411—“Nature is both evolution and
    revelation. As soon as the question _How_ is answered, the
    questions _Whence_ and _Why_ arise. Nature is to God what speech
    is to thought.” The title of Henry Drummond’s book should have
    been: “Spiritual Law in the Natural World,” for nature is but the
    free though regular activity of God; what we call the supernatural
    is simply his extraordinary working.


(_a_) Natural theology.—The universe is a source of theology. The
Scriptures assert that God has revealed himself in nature. There is not
only an outward witness to his existence and character in the constitution
and government of the universe (Ps. 19; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:20), but an
inward witness to his existence and character in the heart of every man
(Rom. 1:17, 18, 19, 20, 32; 2:15). The systematic exhibition of these
facts, whether derived from observation, history or science, constitutes
natural theology.


    Outward witness: _Ps.19:1-6—_“The heavens declare the glory of
    God”; _Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness, in that
    he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons”;
    _Rom. 1:20—_“for the invisible things of him since the creation of
    the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things
    that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.” Inward
    witness: _Rom. 1:19—τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ = _“that which is known of
    God is manifest in them.” Compare the ἀποκαλύπτεται of the gospel
    in verse 17, with the ἀποκαλύπτεται of wrath in verse 18—two
    revelations, one of ὀργή, the other of χάρις; see Shedd,
    Homiletics, 11. _Rom. 1:32—_“knowing the ordinance of God”;
    _2:15—_“they show the work of the law written in their hearts.”
    Therefore even the heathen are “without excuse”_ (Rom. 1:20)_.
    There are two books: Nature and Scripture—one written, the other
    unwritten: and there is need of studying both. On the passages in
    Romans, see the Commentary of Hodge.

    Spurgeon told of a godly person who, when sailing down the Rhine,
    closed his eyes, lest the beauty of the scene should divert his
    mind from spiritual themes. The Puritan turned away from the
    moss-rose, saying that he would count nothing on earth lovely. But
    this is to despise God’s works. J. H. Barrows: “The Himalayas are
    the raised letters upon which we blind children put our fingers to
    spell out the name of God.” To despise the works of God is to
    despise God himself. God is present in nature, and is now
    speaking. _Ps. 19:1—_“The heavens declare the glory of God, and
    the firmament showeth his handiwork”—present tenses. Nature is not
    so much a _book_, as a _voice_. Hutton, Essays, 2:236—“The direct
    knowledge of spiritual communion must be supplemented by knowledge
    of God’s ways gained from the study of nature. To neglect the
    study of the natural mysteries of the universe leads to an
    arrogant and illicit intrusion of moral and spiritual assumptions
    into a different world. This is the lesson of the book of Job.”
    Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 85—“Man, the servant and interpreter of
    nature, is also, and is thereby, the servant and interpreter of
    the living God.” Books of science are the record of man’s past
    interpretations of God’s works.


(_b_) Natural theology supplemented.—The Christian revelation is the chief
source of theology. The Scriptures plainly declare that the revelation of
God in nature does not supply all the knowledge which a sinner needs (Acts
17:23; Eph. 3:9). This revelation is therefore supplemented by another, in
which divine attributes and merciful provisions only dimly shadowed forth
in nature are made known to men. This latter revelation consists of a
series of supernatural events and communications, the record of which is
presented in the Scriptures.


    _Acts 17:23_—Paul shows that, though the Athenians, in the
    erection of an altar to an unknown God, “acknowledged a divine
    existence beyond any which the ordinary rites of their worship
    recognized, that Being was still unknown to them; they had no just
    conception of his nature and perfections” (Hackett, _in loco_).
    _Eph. 3:9—_“the mystery which hath been hid in God”—this mystery
    is in the gospel made known for man’s salvation. Hegel, in his
    Philosophy of Religion, says that Christianity is the only
    revealed religion, because the Christian God is the only one from
    whom a revelation can come. We may add that as science is the
    record of man’s progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in
    the realm of nature, so Scripture is the record of man’s
    progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in the realm of
    spirit. The phrase “word of God” does not primarily denote a
    _record_,—it is the _spoken_ word, the _doctrine_, the vitalizing
    _truth_, disclosed by Christ; see _Mat. 13:19—_“heareth the word
    of the kingdom”; _Luke 5:1—_“heard the word of God”; _Acts
    8:25—_“spoken the word of the Lord”; _13:48, 49—_“glorified the
    word of God: ... the word of the Lord was spread abroad”; _19:10,
    20—_“heard the word of the Lord, ... mightily grew the word of the
    Lord”; _1 Cor. 1:18—_“the word of the cross”—all designating not a
    document, but an unwritten word; _cf.__ Jer. 1:4—_“the word of
    Jehovah came unto me”; _Ez. 1:3—_“the word of Jehovah came
    expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest.”


(_c_) The Scriptures the final standard of appeal.—Science and Scripture
throw light upon each other. The same divine Spirit who gave both
revelations is still present, enabling the believer to interpret the one
by the other and thus progressively to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Because of our finiteness and sin, the total record in Scripture of God’s
past communications is a more trustworthy source of theology than are our
conclusions from nature or our private impressions of the teaching of the
Spirit. Theology therefore looks to the Scripture itself as its chief
source of material and its final standard of appeal.


    There is an internal work of the divine Spirit by which the outer
    word is made an inner word, and its truth and power are manifested
    to the heart. Scripture represents this work of the Spirit, not as
    a giving of new truth, but as an illumination of the mind to
    perceive the fulness of meaning which lay wrapped up in the truth
    already revealed. Christ is “the truth”_ (John 14:6)_; “in whom
    are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”_ (Col.
    2:3)_; the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “shall take of mine, and shall
    declare it unto you”_ (John 16:14)_. The incarnation and the Cross
    express the heart of God and the secret of the universe; all
    discoveries in theology are but the unfolding of truth involved in
    these facts. The Spirit of Christ enables us to compare nature
    with Scripture, and Scripture with nature, and to correct mistakes
    in interpreting the one by light gained from the other. Because
    the church as a whole, by which we mean the company of true
    believers in all lands and ages, has the promise that it shall be
    guided “into all the truth”_ (John 16:13)_, we may confidently
    expect the progress of Christian doctrine.

    Christian experience is sometimes regarded as an original source
    of religious truth. Experience, however, is but a testing and
    proving of the truth objectively contained in God’s revelation.
    The word “experience” is derived from _experior_, to test, to try.
    Christian consciousness is not “norma normans,” but “norma
    normata.” Light, like life, comes to us through the mediation of
    others. Yet the first comes from God as really as the last, of
    which without hesitation we say: “God made me,” though we have
    human parents. As I get through the service-pipe in my house the
    same water which is stored in the reservoir upon the hillside, so
    in the Scriptures I get the same truth which the Holy Spirit
    originally communicated to prophets and apostles. Calvin,
    Institutes, book I, chap. 7—“As nature has an immediate
    manifestation of God in conscience, a mediate in his works, so
    revelation has an immediate manifestation of God in the Spirit, a
    mediate in the Scriptures.” “Man’s nature,” said Spurgeon, “is not
    an organized lie, yet his inner consciousness has been warped by
    sin, and though once it was an infallible guide to truth and duty,
    sin has made it very deceptive. The standard of infallibility is
    not in man’s consciousness, but in the Scriptures. When
    consciousness in any matter is contrary to the word of God, we
    must know that it is not God’s voice within us, but the devil’s.”
    Dr. George A. Gordon says that “Christian history is a revelation
    of Christ additional to that contained in the New Testament.”
    Should we not say “illustrative,” instead of “additional”? On the
    relation between Christian experience and Scripture, see Stearns,
    Evidence of Christian Experience, 286-309: Twesten, Dogmatik,
    1:344-348; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:15.

    H. H. Bawden: “God is the ultimate authority, but there are
    delegated authorities, such as family, state, church; instincts,
    feelings, conscience; the general experience of the race,
    traditions, utilities; revelation in nature and in Scripture. But
    the highest authority available for men in morals and religion is
    the truth concerning Christ contained in the Christian Scriptures.
    What the truth concerning Christ _is_, is determined by: (1) the
    human reason, conditioned by a right attitude of the feelings and
    the will; (2) in the light of all the truth derived from nature,
    including man; (3) in the light of the history of Christianity;
    (4) in the light of the origin and development of the Scriptures
    themselves. The authority of the generic reason and the authority
    of the Bible are co-relative, since they both have been developed
    in the providence of God, and since the latter is in large measure
    but the reflection of the former. This view enables us to hold a
    rational conception of the function of the Scripture in religion.
    This view, further, enables us to rationalize what is called the
    inspiration of the Bible, the nature and extent of inspiration,
    the Bible as history—a record of the historic unfolding of
    revelation; the Bible as literature—a compend of life-principles,
    rather than a book of rules; the Bible Christocentric—an
    incarnation of the divine thought and will in human thought and
    language.”


(_d_) The theology of Scripture not unnatural.—Though we speak of the
systematized truths of nature as constituting natural theology, we are not
to infer that Scriptural theology is unnatural. Since the Scriptures have
the same author as nature, the same principles are illustrated in the one
as in the other. All the doctrines of the Bible have their reason in that
same nature of God which constitutes the basis of all material things.
Christianity is a supplementary dispensation, not as contradicting, or
correcting errors in, natural theology, but as more perfectly revealing
the truth. Christianity is indeed the ground-plan upon which the whole
creation is built—the original and eternal truth of which natural theology
is but a partial expression. Hence the theology of nature and the theology
of Scripture are mutually dependent. Natural theology not only prepares
the way for, but it receives stimulus and aid from, Scriptural theology.
Natural theology may now be a source of truth, which, before the
Scriptures came, it could not furnish.


    John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity. 23—“There is no such
    thing as a natural religion or religion of reason distinct from
    revealed religion. Christianity is more profoundly, more
    comprehensively, rational, more accordant with the deepest
    principles of human nature and human thought than is natural
    religion; or, as we may put it, Christianity is natural religion
    elevated and transmuted into revealed.” Peabody, Christianity the
    Religion of Nature, lecture 2—“Revelation is the unveiling,
    uncovering of what previously existed, and it excludes the idea of
    newness, invention, creation.... The revealed religion of earth is
    the natural religion of heaven.” Compare _Rev. 13:8—_“the Lamb
    that hath been slain from the foundation of the world” = the
    coming of Christ was no make-shift; in a true sense the Cross
    existed in eternity; the atonement is a revelation of an eternal
    fact in the being of God.

    Note Plato’s illustration of the cave which can be easily threaded
    by one who has previously entered it with a torch. Nature is the
    dim light from the cave’s mouth; the torch is Scripture. Kant to
    Jacobi, in Jacobi’s Werke, 3:523—“If the gospel had not previously
    taught the universal moral laws, reason would not yet have
    obtained so perfect an insight into them.” Alexander McLaren:
    “Non-Christian thinkers now talk eloquently about God’s love, and
    even reject the gospel in the name of that love, thus kicking down
    the ladder by which they have climbed. But it was the Cross that
    taught the world the love of God, and apart from the death of
    Christ men may hope that there is a heart at the centre of the
    universe, but they can never be sure of it.” The parrot fancies
    that he taught men to talk. So Mr. Spencer fancies that he
    invented ethics. He is only using the twilight, after his sun has
    gone down. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 252, 253—“Faith, at the
    Reformation, first gave scientific certainty; it had God sure:
    hence it proceeded to banish scepticism in philosophy and
    science.” See also Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 333; Bowen,
    Metaph. and Ethics, 442-463; Bib. Sac., 1874:436; A. H. Strong,
    Christ in Creation, 226, 227.


2. Scripture and Rationalism.


Although the Scriptures make known much that is beyond the power of man’s
unaided reason to discover or fully to comprehend, their teachings, when
taken together, in no way contradict a reason conditioned in its activity
by a holy affection and enlightened by the Spirit of God. To reason in the
large sense, as including the mind’s power of cognizing God and moral
relations—not in the narrow sense of mere reasoning, or the exercise of
the purely logical faculty—the Scriptures continually appeal.

A. The proper office of reason, in this large sense, is: (_a_) To furnish
us with those primary ideas of space, time, cause, substance, design,
right, and God, which are the conditions of all subsequent knowledge.
(_b_) To judge with regard to man’s need of a special and supernatural
revelation. (_c_) To examine the credentials of communications professing
to be, or of documents professing to record, such a revelation. (_d_) To
estimate and reduce to system the facts of revelation, when these have
been found properly attested. (_e_) To deduce from these facts their
natural and logical conclusions. Thus reason itself prepares the way for a
revelation above reason, and warrants an implicit trust in such revelation
when once given.


    Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 318—“Reason terminates in the
    proposition: Look for revelation.” Leibnitz: “Revelation is the
    viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial
    assembly (reason), and then himself presides.” Reason can
    recognize truth after it is made known, as for example in the
    demonstrations of geometry, although it could never discover that
    truth for itself. See Calderwood’s illustration of the party lost
    in the woods, who wisely take the course indicated by one at the
    tree-top with a larger view than their own (Philosophy of the
    Infinite, 126). The novice does well to trust his guide in the
    forest, at least till he learns to recognise for himself the marks
    blazed upon the trees. Luthardt, Fund. Truths, lect. viii—“Reason
    could never have invented a self-humiliating God, cradled in a
    manger and dying on a cross.” Lessing, Zur Geschichte und
    Litteratur, 6:134—“What is the meaning of a revelation that
    reveals nothing?”

    Ritschl denies the presuppositions of any theology based on the
    Bible as the infallible word of God on the one hand, and on the
    validity of the knowledge of God as obtained by scientific and
    philosophic processes on the other. Because philosophers,
    scientists, and even exegetes, are not agreed among themselves, he
    concludes that no trustworthy results are attainable by human
    reason. We grant that reason without love will fall into many
    errors with regard to God, and that faith is therefore the organ
    by which religious truth is to be apprehended. But we claim that
    this faith includes reason, and is itself reason in its highest
    form. Faith criticizes and judges the processes of natural science
    as well as the contents of Scripture. But it also recognizes in
    science and Scripture prior workings of that same Spirit of Christ
    which is the source and authority of the Christian life. Ritschl
    ignores Christ’s world-relations and therefore secularizes and
    disparages science and philosophy. The faith to which he trusts as
    the source of theology is unwarrantably sundered from reason. It
    becomes a subjective and arbitrary standard, to which even the
    teaching of Scripture must yield precedence. We hold on the
    contrary, that there are ascertained results in science and in
    philosophy, as well as in the interpretation of Scripture as a
    whole, and that these results constitute an authoritative
    revelation. See Orr, The Theology of Ritschl; Dorner, Hist. Prot.
    Theol., 1:233—“The unreasonable in the empirical reason is taken
    captive by faith, which is the nascent true reason that despairs
    of itself and trustfully lays hold of objective Christianity.”


B. Rationalism, on the other hand, holds reason to be the ultimate source
of all religious truth, while Scripture is authoritative only so far as
its revelations agree with previous conclusions of reason, or can be
rationally demonstrated. Every form of rationalism, therefore, commits at
least one of the following errors: (_a_) That of confounding reason with
mere reasoning, or the exercise of the logical intelligence. (_b_) That of
ignoring the necessity of a holy affection as the condition of all right
reason in religious things. (_c_) That of denying our dependence in our
present state of sin upon God’s past revelations of himself. (_d_) That of
regarding the unaided reason, even its normal and unbiased state, as
capable of discovering, comprehending, and demonstrating all religious
truth.


    Reason must not be confounded with ratiocination, or mere
    reasoning. Shall we follow reason? Yes, but not individual
    reasoning, against the testimony of those who are better informed
    than we; nor by insisting on demonstration, where probable
    evidence alone is possible; nor by trusting solely to the evidence
    of the senses, when spiritual things are in question. Coleridge,
    in replying to those who argued that all knowledge comes to us
    from the senses, says: “At any rate we must bring to all facts the
    light in which we see them.” This the Christian does. The light of
    love reveals much that would otherwise be invisible. Wordsworth,
    Excursion, book 5 (598)—“The mind’s repose On evidence is not to
    be ensured By act of naked reason. Moral truth Is no mechanic
    structure, built by rule.”

    Rationalism is the mathematical theory of knowledge. Spinoza’s
    Ethics is an illustration of it. It would deduce the universe from
    an axiom. Dr. Hodge very wrongly described rationalism as “an
    overuse of reason.” It is rather the use of an abnormal,
    perverted, improperly conditioned reason; see Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
    1:34, 39, 55, and criticism by Miller, in his Fetich in Theology.
    The phrase “sanctified intellect” means simply intellect
    accompanied by right affections toward God, and trained to work
    under their influence. Bishop Butler: “Let reason be kept to, but
    let not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting to an
    infinite scheme that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of
    all its parts, and call that reasoning.” Newman Smyth, Death’s
    Place in Evolution, 86—“Unbelief is a shaft sunk down into the
    darkness of the earth. Drive the shaft deep enough, and it would
    come out into the sunlight on the earth’s other side.” The most
    unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon
    reason, in the narrow sense. “The better to exalt reason, they
    make the world irrational.” “The hen that has hatched ducklings
    walks with them to the water’s edge, but there she stops, and she
    is amazed when they go on. So reason stops and faith goes on,
    finding its proper element in the invisible. Reason is the feet
    that stand on solid earth; faith is the wings that enable us to
    fly; and normal man is a creature with wings.” Compare γνῶσις (_1
    Tim. 6:20—_“the knowledge which is falsely so called”) with
    ἐπίγνωσις (_2 Pet. 1:2—_“the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
    Lord” = full knowledge, or true knowledge). See Twesten, Dogmatik,
    1:467-500; Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 4, 5; Mansel, Limits of
    Religious Thought, 96; Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution.


3. Scripture and Mysticism.


As rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism
recognizes too much.

A. True mysticism.—We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds
of all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new
revelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already
revealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work
of the Spirit is therefore an opening of men’s minds to understand
Christ’s previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of
Christianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism
is that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives
through the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal
means.


    “Mystic” = one initiated, from μύω, “to close the eyes”—probably
    in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine
    truth is a “mystery,” not only as something into which one must be
    initiated, but as ὑπερβάλλουσα τῆς γνώσεως (_Eph.
    3:19_)—surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer
    on _Rom. 11:25—_“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this
    mystery.” The Germans have _Mystik_ with a favorable sense,
    _Mysticismus_ with an unfavorable sense,—corresponding
    respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is
    intimated in _John 16:13—_“the spirit of truth ... shall guide you
    into all the truth”; _Eph. 3:9—_“dispensation of the mystery”; _1
    Cor. 2:10—_“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.”
    Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35—“Whenever true religion
    revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, _i. e._, higher
    knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the
    heart.” Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in _Acts
    26:24, 25_, with his self-vindication in _2 Cor. 5:13—_“whether we
    are beside ourselves, it is unto God.”

    Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as
    rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said
    reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental
    doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his
    individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the
    larger unity of God’s being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates
    the race, the universe, Christ himself.” _Ibid._, 5—Mysticism is
    “the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of
    the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.
    It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth;
    (2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the
    divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord;
    (4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The
    ‘scala perfectionis’ is (_a_) the purgative life; (_b_) the
    illuminative life; (_c_) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine
    Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John ... is not a subjective
    mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery,
    but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of
    realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its
    experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its
    own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an
    acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is:
    Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the
    type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ’s
    external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson,
    Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into
    which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; _cf.__
    Rom. 6:17—_“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of
    teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”


B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs
in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct
communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities
into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (_a_) the
outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (_b_) the
activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge;
(_c_) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.


    In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy
    Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and
    in Scripture (_Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness”;
    _Rom. 1:20—_“the invisible things of him since the creation of the
    world are clearly seen”; _Acts 7:51—_“ye do always resist the Holy
    Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye”; _Eph. 6:17—_“the sword of
    the Spirit, which is the word of God”). By this truth already
    given we are to test all new communications which would contradict
    or supersede it (_1 John 4:1—_“believe not every spirit, but prove
    the spirits, whether they are of God”; _Eph. 5:10—_“proving what
    is well pleasing unto the Lord”). By these tests we may try
    Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical
    tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon,
    Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an
    unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a “swallowing
    up of man in God.” But Christ does not deprive us of reason and
    will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the
    selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their
    normal clearness and strength. Compare _Ps. 16:7—_“Jehovah, who
    hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night
    seasons”—God teaches his people through the exercise of their own
    faculties.

    False mysticism is sometimes present though unrecognized. All
    expectation of results without the use of means partakes of it.
    Martineau, Seat of Authority, 288—“The lazy will would like to
    have the vision while the eye that apprehends it sleeps.”
    Preaching without preparation is like throwing ourselves down from
    a pinnacle of the temple and depending on God to send an angel to
    hold us up. Christian Science would trust to supernatural
    agencies, while casting aside the natural agencies God has already
    provided; as if a drowning man should trust to prayer while
    refusing to seize the rope. Using Scripture “ad aperturam libri”
    is like guiding one’s actions by a throw of the dice. Allen,
    Jonathan Edwards, 171, note—“Both Charles and John Wesley were
    agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts as to
    some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and regarding
    the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revelation of
    God’s will in the matter”; _cf._ Wedgwood, Life of Wesley, 193;
    Southey, Life of Wesley, 1:216. J. G. Paton, Life, 2:74—“After
    many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I went alone before the
    Lord, and on my knees cast lots, with a solemn appeal to God, and
    the answer came: ‘Go home!’ ” He did this only once in his life,
    in overwhelming perplexity, and finding no light from human
    counsel. “To whomsoever this faith is given,” he says, “let him
    obey it.”

    F. B. Meyer, Christian Living, 18—“It is a mistake to seek a sign
    from heaven; to run from counsellor to counsellor; to cast a lot;
    or to trust in some chance coincidence. Not that God may not
    reveal his will thus; but because it is hardly the behavior of a
    child with its Father. There is a more excellent way,”—namely,
    appropriate Christ who is wisdom, and then go forward, sure that
    we shall be guided, as each new step must be taken, or word
    spoken, or decision made. Our service is to be “rational service”_
    (Rom. 12:1)_; blind and arbitrary action is inconsistent with the
    spirit of Christianity. Such action makes us victims of temporary
    feeling and a prey to Satanic deception. In cases of perplexity,
    waiting for light and waiting upon God will commonly enable us to
    make an intelligent decision, while “whatsoever is not of faith is
    sin”_ (Rom. 14:23)_.

    “False mysticism reached its logical result in the Buddhistic
    theosophy. In that system man becomes most divine in the
    extinction of his own personality. Nirvana is reached by the
    eightfold path of right view, aspiration, speech, conduct,
    livelihood, effort, mindfulness, rapture; and Nirvana is the loss
    of ability to say: ‘This is I,’ and ‘This is mine.’ Such was
    Hypatia’s attempt, by subjection of self, to be wafted away into
    the arms of Jove. George Eliot was wrong when she said: ‘The
    happiest woman has no history.’ Self-denial is not
    self-effacement. The cracked bell has no individuality. In Christ
    we become our complete selves.” _Col 2:9, 10—_“For in him dwelleth
    all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made
    full.”

    Royce, World and Individual, 2:248, 249—“Assert the spiritual man;
    abnegate the natural man. The fleshly self is the root of all
    evil; the spiritual self belongs to a higher realm. But this
    spiritual self lies at first outside the soul; it becomes ours
    only by grace. Plato rightly made the eternal Ideas the source of
    all human truth and goodness. Wisdom comes into a man, like
    Aristotle’s νοῦς.” A. H. Bradford, The Inner Light, in making the
    direct teaching of the Holy Spirit the sufficient if not the sole
    source of religious knowledge, seems to us to ignore the principle
    of evolution in religion. God builds upon the past. His revelation
    to prophets and apostles constitutes the norm and corrective of
    our individual experience, even while our experience throws new
    light upon that revelation. On Mysticism, true and false, see
    Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4, 5, 11; Stearns, Evidence of
    Christian Experience, 289-294; Dorner, Geschichte d. prot. Theol.,
    48-59, 243; Herzog, Encycl., art.: Mystik, by Lange; Vaughan,
    Hours with the Mystics, 1:199; Morell, Hist. Philos., 58, 191-215,
    556-625, 726; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69, 97, 104; Fleming,
    Vocab. Philos., _in voce_; Tholuck, Introd. to Blüthensammlung aus
    der morgenländischen Mystik; William James, Varieties of Religious
    Experience, 379-429.


4. Scripture and Romanism.


While the history of doctrine, as showing the progressive apprehension and
unfolding by the church of the truth contained in nature and Scripture, is
a subordinate source of theology, Protestantism recognizes the Bible as
under Christ the primary and final authority.

Romanism, on the other hand, commits the two-fold error (_a_) Of making
the church, and not the Scriptures, the immediate and sufficient source of
religious knowledge; and (_b_) Of making the relation of the individual to
Christ depend upon his relation to the church, instead of making his
relation to the church depend upon, follow, and express his relation to
Christ.


    In Roman Catholicism there is a mystical element. The Scriptures
    are not the complete or final standard of belief and practice. God
    gives to the world from time to time, through popes and councils,
    new communications of truth. Cyprian: “He who has not the church
    for his mother, has not God for his Father.” Augustine: “I would
    not believe the Scripture, unless the authority of the church also
    influenced me.” Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola both
    represented the truly obedient person as one dead, moving only as
    moved by his superior; the true Christian has no life of his own,
    but is the blind instrument of the church. John Henry Newman,
    Tracts, Theol. and Eccl., 287—“The Christian dogmas were in the
    church from the time of the apostles,—they were ever in their
    substance what they are now.” But this is demonstrably untrue of
    the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary; of the treasury of
    merits to be distributed in indulgences; of the infallibility of
    the pope (see Gore, Incarnation, 186). In place of the true
    doctrine, “Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia,” Romanism substitutes her
    maxim, “Ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus.” Luther saw in this the
    principle of mysticism, when he said: “Papatus est merus
    enthusiasmus.” See Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69.

    In reply to the Romanist argument that the church was before the
    Bible, and that the same body that gave the truth at the first can
    make additions to that truth, we say that the unwritten word was
    before the church and made the church possible. The word of God
    existed before it was written down, and by that word the first
    disciples as well as the latest were begotten (_1 Pet.
    1:23—_“begotten again ... through the word of God”). The grain of
    truth in Roman Catholic doctrine is expressed in _1 Tim.
    3:15—_“the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
    truth” = the church is God’s appointed proclaimer of truth; _cf.__
    Phil. 2:16—_“holding forth the word of life.” But the church can
    proclaim the truth, only as it is built upon the truth. So we may
    say that the American Republic is the pillar and ground of liberty
    in the world; but this is true only so far as the Republic is
    built upon the principle of liberty as its foundation. When the
    Romanist asks: “Where was your church before Luther?” the
    Protestant may reply: “Where yours is not now—in the word of God.
    Where was your face before it was washed? Where was the fine flour
    before the wheat went to the mill?” Lady Jane Grey, three days
    before her execution, February 12, 1554, said: “I ground my faith
    on God’s word, and not upon the church; for, if the church be a
    good church, the faith of the church must be tried by God’s word,
    and not God’s word by the church, nor yet my faith.”

    The Roman church would keep men in perpetual childhood—coming to
    her for truth instead of going directly to the Bible; “like the
    foolish mother who keeps her boy pining in the house lest he stub
    his toe, and would love best to have him remain a babe forever,
    that she might mother him still.” Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,
    30—“Romanism is so busy in building up a system of guarantees,
    that she forgets the truth of Christ which she would guarantee.”
    George Herbert: “What wretchedness can give him any room, Whose
    house is foul while he adores his broom!” It is a semi-parasitic
    doctrine of safety without intelligence or spirituality. Romanism
    says: “Man for the machine!” Protestantism: “The machine for man!”
    Catholicism strangles, Protestantism restores, individuality. Yet
    the Romanist principle sometimes appears in so-called Protestant
    churches. The Catechism published by the League of the Holy Cross,
    in the Anglican Church, contains the following: “It is to the
    priest only that the child must acknowledge his sins, if he
    desires that God should forgive him. Do you know why? It is
    because God, when on earth, gave to his priests and to them alone
    the power of forgiving sins. Go to the priest, who is the doctor
    of your soul, and who cures you in the name of God.” But this
    contradicts _John 10:7_—where Christ says “I am the door”; and _1
    Cor. 3:11—_“other foundation can no man lay than that which is
    laid, which is Jesus Christ” = Salvation is attained by immediate
    access to Christ, and there is no door between the soul and him.
    See Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 227; Schleiermacher,
    Glaubenslehre, 1:24; Robinson, in Mad. Av. Lectures, 387; Fisher,
    Nat. and Method of Revelation, 10; Watkins, Bampton Lect. for
    1890:149; Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World, 327.



II. Limitations of Theology.


Although theology derives its material from God’s two-fold revelation, it
does not profess to give an exhaustive knowledge of God and of the
relations between God and the universe. After showing what material we
have, we must show what material we have not. We have indicated the
sources of theology; we now examine its limitations. Theology has its
limitations:

(_a_) _In the finiteness of the human understanding._ This gives rise to a
class of necessary mysteries, or mysteries connected with the infinity and
incomprehensibleness of the divine nature (Job 11:7; Rom. 11:33).


    _Job 11:7—_“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find
    out the Almighty to perfection?” _Rom. 11:33—_“how unsearchable
    are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Every doctrine,
    therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning
    of Tertullian’s sayings: “Certum est, quia impossible est: quo
    absurdius, eo verius”; that of Anselm: “Credo, ut intelligam”; and
    that of Abelard: “Qui credit cito, levis corde est.” Drummond,
    Nat. Law in Spir. World: “A science without mystery is unknown; a
    religion without mystery is absurd.” E. G. Robinson: “A finite
    being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.” Hovey,
    Manual of Christ. Theol., 7—“To infer from the perfection of God
    that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely
    and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God
    that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from
    the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;—all
    these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to
    the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.” See Calderwood,
    Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.


(_b_) _In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical._
This gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which
consist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken
separately, are perfectly comprehensible.


    We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a
    _single_ point of truth as _two_. We see God and man, divine
    sovereignty and human freedom, Christ’s divine nature and Christ’s
    human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as
    two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but
    one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet
    they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at
    once in its little hand. Negro preacher: “You can’t carry two
    watermelons under one arm.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra,
    1:2—“In nature’s infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.”
    Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34—“Man’s progress in knowledge has
    been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been
    gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all
    human history before.” And yet we may say with D’Arcy, Idealism
    and Theology, 248—“Man’s position in the universe is eccentric.
    God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth
    completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us
    the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.” William
    Watson, Collected Poems, 271—“Think not thy wisdom can illume away
    The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge
    both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things
    clear.”


(_c_) _In the inadequacy of language._ Since language is the medium
through which truth is expressed and formulated, the invention of a proper
terminology in theology, as in every other science, is a condition and
criterion of its progress. The Scriptures recognize a peculiar difficulty
in putting spiritual truths into earthly language (1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor.
3:6; 12:4).


    _1 Cor. 2:13—_“not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth”; _2 Cor.
    3:6—_“the letter killeth”; _12:4—_“unspeakable words.” God submits
    to conditions of revelation; _cf.__ John 16:12—_“I have yet many
    things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Language has
    to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put
    to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they “stagger under
    their weight of meaning”—_e. g._, the word “day,” in _Genesis 1_,
    and the word ἀγάπη in _1 Cor. 13_. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on _1
    Cor. 13:12—_“now we see in a mirror, darkly”—in a metallic mirror
    whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold
    Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect
    speech—“but then face to face” = immediately, without the
    intervention of an imperfect medium. “As fast as we tunnel into
    the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into
    walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless
    mine.”


(_d_) _In the incompleteness of our knowledge of the Scriptures._ Since it
is not the mere letter of the Scriptures that constitutes the truth, the
progress of theology is dependent upon hermeneutics, or the interpretation
of the word of God.


    Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to
    grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott,
    Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: “I am verily persuaded that the
    Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.”
    Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion
    of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has
    been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an
    evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in
    the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and
    typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet
    we still need to offer the prayer of _Ps. 119:18—_“Open thou mine
    eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” On New
    Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
    Religion, 334-336.


(_e_) _In the silence of written revelation._ For our discipline and
probation, much is probably hidden from us, which we might even with our
present powers comprehend.


    Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and
    death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his
    occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the
    atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and
    political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic
    virtues, governmental corruption. “Jesus was in heaven at the
    revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about
    heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of
    man, or death as the result of Adam’s sin; and he says little of
    departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.” It was better
    to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them.
    His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would
    not divert men’s minds from pursuing the one thing needful; _cf.__
    Luke 13:23, 24—_“Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said
    unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say
    unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul’s
    silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered
    with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John
    Foster spent his life, “gathering questions for eternity”; _cf.__
    John 13:7—_“What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt
    understand hereafter.” The most beautiful thing in a countenance
    is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well
    must omit well. Story: “Of every noble work the silent part is
    best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.” _Cf.__ 1
    Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which
    entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared
    for them that love him”; _Deut 29:29—_“The secret things belong
    unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto
    us and to our children.” For Luther’s view, see Hagenbach, Hist.
    Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine
    Silence.


(_f_) _In the lack of spiritual discernment caused by sin._ Since holy
affection is a condition of religious knowledge, all moral imperfection in
the individual Christian and in the church serves as a hindrance to the
working out of a complete theology.


    _John 3:3—_“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
    God.” The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,—witness
    the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century
    succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of
    Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay’s transl.),
    514—“Science is much under the influence of the will; and the
    truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The
    will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific
    evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the
    will.” Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of
    science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without
    becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having
    become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
    collections of facts, with the result of producing “atrophy of
    that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.” But a
    similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and
    religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in
    his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: “We are
    very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the
    professors’ chairs are all filled.”



III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.


(_a_) _A perfect system of theology is impossible._ We do not expect to
construct such a system. All science but reflects the present attainment
of the human mind. No science is complete or finished. However it may be
with the sciences of nature and of man, the science of God will never
amount to an exhaustive knowledge. We must not expect to demonstrate all
Scripture doctrines upon rational grounds, or even in every case to see
the principle of connection between them. Where we cannot do this, we
must, as in every other science, set the revealed facts in their places
and wait for further light, instead of ignoring or rejecting any of them
because we cannot understand them or their relation to other parts of our
system.


    Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed
    down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the
    trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr.
    Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than
    none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood
    spoke of Dr. Johnson’s “Contradictionary,” which had both
    “interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at
    the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word
    characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the
    advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through
    fifty-five years: that word is _failure_; I know no more of
    electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether,
    electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I
    knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty
    years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious
    Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the
    new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy
    nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as
    Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can
    be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered
    by enforcing some ’via media.’ Truth lies rather in the union of
    opposite propositions, as in Christ’s divinity and humanity, and
    in grace and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity;
    Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John
    Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George
    Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would
    secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But
    if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress
    is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a
    larger appropriation of it.”


(_b_) _Theology is nevertheless progressive._ It is progressive in the
sense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God,
and our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more
perfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective
facts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we
may say: “Religion has been reproached with not being progressive; it
makes amends by being imperishable.” Though our knowledge may be
imperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a
theology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of
Scripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all
cohere about Christ, the central person and theme.


    The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not
    progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not
    man’s creation of new planets, but man’s discovery of planets that
    were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations
    between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles:
    “Originality is a habit of recurring to origins—the habit of
    securing personal experience by personal application to original
    facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature,
    Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of
    resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal
    experiences which arise from contact with these facts.” Fisher,
    Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48—“The starry heavens are now what
    they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe,
    except that which comes through the increased power and use of the
    telescope.” We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to
    steer, said he had “sailed _by_ that star.”

    Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493—“Metaphysics, so far as they are true
    to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in
    charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always _is_....
    It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while
    disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the
    motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.”
    Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79—“True conservatism
    is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its
    good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to
    the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So
    Jesus came not ‘to destroy the law or the prophets’; he ‘came not
    to destroy, but to fulfil’_ (Mat. 5:17)_.... The last book on
    Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.”
    John Milton, Areopagitica: “Truth is compared in the Scripture to
    a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual
    progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and
    tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.” Paul in _Rom.
    2:16_, and in _2 Tim. 2:8_—speaks of “my gospel.” It is the duty
    of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while
    he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “I
    that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that
    earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon at Ajalon.” We do
    not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new
    Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of
    both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.




Chapter III. Method Of Theology.



I. Requisites to the study of Theology.


The requisites to the successful study of theology have already in part
been indicated in speaking of its limitations. In spite of some
repetition, however, we mention the following:

(_a_) _A disciplined mind._ Only such a mind can patiently collect the
facts, hold in its grasp many facts at once, educe by continuous
reflection their connecting principles, suspend final judgment until its
conclusions are verified by Scripture and experience.


    Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
    lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
    Evolveable from the whole: evolved at last Painfully, held
    tenaciously by me.” Teachers and students may be divided into two
    classes: (1) those who know enough already; (2) those wish to
    learn more than they now know. Motto of Winchester School in
    England: “Disce, aut discede.” Butcher, Greek Genius, 213,
    230—“The Sophists fancied that they were imparting education, when
    they were only imparting results. Aristotle illustrates their
    method by the example of a shoemaker who, professing to teach the
    art of making painless shoes, puts into the apprentice’s hand a
    large assortment of shoes ready-made. A witty Frenchman classes
    together those who would make science popular, metaphysics
    intelligible, and vice respectable. The word σχόλη, which first
    meant ‘leisure,’ then ‘philosophical discussion,’ and finally
    ‘school,’ shows the pure love of learning among the Greeks.”
    Robert G. Ingersoll said that the average provincial clergyman is
    like the land of the upper Potomac spoken of by Tom Randolph, as
    almost worthless in its original state, and rendered wholly so by
    cultivation. Lotze, Metaphysics, 1:16—“the constant whetting of
    the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with
    it.” “To do their duty is their only holiday,” is the description
    of Athenian character given by Thucydides. Chitty asked a father
    inquiring as to his son’s qualifications for the law: “Can your
    son eat sawdust without any butter?” On opportunities for culture
    in the Christian ministry, see New Englander, Oct. 1875:644; A. H.
    Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 273-275; Christ in Creation,
    318-320.


(_b_) _An intuitional as distinguished from a merely logical habit of
mind_,—or, trust in the mind’s primitive convictions, as well as in its
processes of reasoning. The theologian must have insight as well as
understanding. He must accustom himself to ponder spiritual facts as well
as those which are sensible and material; to see things in their inner
relations as well as in their outward forms; to cherish confidence in the
reality and the unity of truth.


    Vinet, Outlines of Philosophy, 39, 40—“If I do not feel that good
    is good, who will ever prove it to me?” Pascal: “Logic, which is
    an abstraction, may shake everything. A being purely intellectual
    will be incurably sceptical.” Calvin: “Satan is an acute
    theologian.” Some men can see a fly on a barn door a mile away,
    and yet can never see the door. Zeller, Outlines of Greek
    Philosophy, 93—“Gorgias the Sophist was able to show
    metaphysically that nothing can exist; that what does exist cannot
    be known by us; and that what is known by us cannot be imparted to
    others” (quoted by Wenley, Socrates and Christ, 28). Aristotle
    differed from those moderate men who thought it impossible to go
    over the same river twice,—he held that it could not be done even
    once (_cf._ Wordsworth, Prelude, 536). Dove, Logic of the
    Christian Faith, 1-29, and especially 25, gives a demonstration of
    the impossibility of motion: A thing cannot move in the place
    where it is; it cannot move in the places where it is not; but the
    place where it is and the places where it is not are all the
    places that there are; therefore a thing cannot move at all.
    Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 109, shows that the bottom of
    a wheel does not move, since it goes backward as fast as the top
    goes forward. An instantaneous photograph makes the upper part a
    confused blur, while the spokes of the lower part are distinctly
    visible. Abp. Whately: “Weak arguments are often thrust before my
    path; but, although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to
    destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut
    through a cushion with a sword.” _Cf.__ 1 Tim. 6:20—_“oppositions
    of the knowledge which is falsely so called”; _3:2—_“the bishop
    therefore must be ... sober-minded”—σώφρων = “well balanced.” The
    Scripture speaks of “sound [ὑγιής = healthful] doctrine”_ (1 Tim.
    1:10)_. Contrast _1 Tim. 6:4—[νοσῶν = ailing] _“diseased about
    questionings and disputes of words.”


(_c_) _An acquaintance with physical, mental, and moral science._ The
method of conceiving and expressing Scripture truth is so affected by our
elementary notions of these sciences, and the weapons with which theology
is attacked and defended are so commonly drawn from them as arsenals, that
the student cannot afford to be ignorant of them.


    Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics:
    “Mein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie über’s Denken
    gedacht”—“I have been wise in never thinking about thinking”; he
    would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental
    principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets
    and their Theology, 296-299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1-18;
    also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 _sq._ Many a theological system
    has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations
    were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: “No difficulty arises in
    theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.” N. W. Taylor:
    “Give me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in
    theology.” President Samson Talbot: “I love metaphysics, because
    they have to do with realities.” The maxim “Ubi tres medici, ibi
    duo athei,” witnesses to the truth of Galen’s words: ἄριστος
    ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος—“the best physician is also a philosopher.”
    Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can
    dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: “Science has not
    invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has
    modified the statement of many.... Physical Science will
    undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the
    sooner the better.” There is great advantage to the preacher in
    taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after
    another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said,
    “like iron into the blood.”


(_d_) _A knowledge of the original languages of the Bible._ This is
necessary to enable us not only to determine the meaning of the
fundamental terms of Scripture, such as holiness, sin, propitiation,
justification, but also to interpret statements of doctrine by their
connections with the context.


    Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue,
    when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends
    replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E.
    G. Robinson: “Language is a great organism, and no study so
    disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.”
    Chrysostom: “This is the cause of all our evils—our not knowing
    the Scriptures.” Yet a modern scholar has said: “The Bible is the
    most dangerous of all God’s gifts to men.” It is possible to adore
    the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow
    interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon
    connecting phrases, as for example, the διὰ τοῦτο and ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in
    _Rom. 5:12_. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813-1853,
    said to his pupils: “One of the best preparations for death is a
    thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.” The youthful Erasmus:
    “When I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after
    that, some clothes.” The dead languages are the only really living
    ones—free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage.
    Divine Providence has put revelation into fixed forms in the
    Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330—“To
    be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.” On the true
    idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos.
    and Religion, 302-313.


(_e_) _A holy affection toward God._ Only the renewed heart can properly
feel its need of divine revelation, or understand that revelation when
given.


    _Ps. 25:14—_“The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him”;
    _Rom. 12:2—_“prove what is the ... will of God”; _cf._ _Ps.
    36:1—_“the transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an
    oracle.” “It is the heart and not the brain That to the highest
    doth attain.” To “learn by heart” is something more than to learn
    by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In
    Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Faithful does not go through the
    Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the
    fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into
    Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair. “Great thoughts
    come from the heart,” said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like
    Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle: “The power of
    attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”
    Pascal: “We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the
    heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows
    nothing of.” Hobbes: “Even the axioms of geometry would be
    disputed, if men’s passions were concerned in them.” Macaulay:
    “The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it
    interfered with vested interests.” Nordau, Degeneracy:
    “Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for
    the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of
    time.”

    Lord Bacon: “A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the
    wrong path.” Goethe: “As are the inclinations, so also are the
    opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only
    with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us
    liberty.” Fichte: “Our system of thought is very often only the
    history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience....
    Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason
    according to their will.” Neander’s motto was: “Pectus est quod
    theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.” John
    Stirling: “That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a
    living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating
    vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.” But such an eye, we add,
    is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson: “Never study theology in
    cold blood.” W. C. Wilkinson: “The head is a magnetic needle with
    truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic
    iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the
    truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.” See an
    affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle’s enlightenment, after the
    death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, in
    Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of
    feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.


(_f_) _The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit._ As only the Spirit
fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to
apprehend them.


    _1 Cor. 2:11, 12—_“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit
    of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we
    might know.” Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine
    aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.” Professor Beck of Tübingen:
    “For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the
    truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the
    unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination
    by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not
    only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.” As all the truths of
    the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the
    simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the
    declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the
    protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot
    of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful
    hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are
    needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is
    needed to show us that the “new commandment” illustrated by the
    death of Christ is only an “old commandment which ye had from the
    beginning”_ (1 John 2:7)_. The Principia of Newton is a revelation
    of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us
    to enter into the meaning of Christ’s revelations in both
    Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to
    work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;
    _Mat. 13:52—_“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple
    of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder,
    who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” See
    Adolph Monod’s sermons on Christ’s Temptation, addressed to the
    theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the
    French and German, 117-179.



II. Divisions of Theology.


Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and
Practical.

1. _Biblical Theology_ aims to arrange and classify the facts of
revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and
treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the
apostolic age.


    Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis;
    Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more
    of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical
    Theology. The third volume of Ritschl’s Justification and
    Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the
    first and second volumes being little more than an historical
    introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and
    phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl’s estimates and
    interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and
    rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical
    Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed
    from the rest, as Steudel’s Biblical Theology of the Old
    Testament; Schmidt’s Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and
    in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul.
    These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of
    Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there
    is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is
    conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the
    differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the
    theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous
    addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian
    Theology in the Apostolic Age.


2. _Historical Theology_ traces the development of the Biblical doctrines
from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the
results of this development in the life of the church.


    By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and
    apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly
    contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the
    Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is
    called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and
    accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and
    inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance
    Cunningham’s Historical Theology; Hagenbach’s and Shedd’s
    Histories of Doctrine; Neander’s Church History. There is always a
    danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly
    reflected in the history of the church. Shedd’s History of
    Christian Doctrine has been called “The History of Dr. Shedd’s
    Christian Doctrine.” But if Dr. Shedd’s Augustinianism colors his
    History, Dr. Sheldon’s Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher’s
    History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial.
    See Neander’s Introduction and Shedd’s Philosophy of History.


3. _Systematic Theology_ takes the material furnished by Biblical and by
Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an
organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations
between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived
from nature or from the Scriptures.


    Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which
    Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and
    preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly
    distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in
    strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in
    the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in
    the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their
    rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand,
    not with the symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not
    what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God’s
    revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which
    nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical
    Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters.
    Notice here the technical use of the word “symbol,” from συμβάλλω,
    = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the
    essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed,
    consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.

    Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not,
    however, derived from “dog,” as Douglas Jerrold facetiously
    suggested, when he said that “dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”
    but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two
    principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of
    the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic,
    for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding.
    In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church,
    and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The
    Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides,
    and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher,
    Al. Schweizer thinks that the term “Dogmatik” should be discarded
    as essentially unprotestant, and that “Glaubenslehre” should take
    its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that “dogma has
    ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”
    While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology
    has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common
    faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the
    saints”_ (Jude 3)_—and the study of Systematic Theology has been
    one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.
    _Mat. 15:13, 14—_“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted
    not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides” =
    there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life.
    Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of
    themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.


4. _Practical Theology_ is the system of truth considered as a means of
renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its
publication and enforcement.


    To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral
    Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the
    right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to
    bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee,
    Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon,
    and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R.
    W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John
    Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.

    It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of
    theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these,
    if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot
    properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so
    called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological
    ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be
    confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting,
    as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either
    extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy
    of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed,
    and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.
    “Speculative theology starts from certain _a priori_ principles,
    and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It
    deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from
    axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.” Bib. Sac.,
    1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree
    with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries
    to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”
    Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies “instruction in a
    circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of
    Theology, together with an account of the relations between them.
    Hegel’s Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles
    and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst,
    Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der
    theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.

    The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been
    variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith
    and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not
    the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of
    things rationally.” Science asks: “What _do_ I know?” Philosophy
    asks: “What _can_ I know?” William James, Psychology,
    1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort
    to think clearly.” Aristotle: “The particular sciences are toiling
    workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are
    slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the
    sciences.” With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon
    remarks: “Those who have handled knowledge have been too much
    either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former
    are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to
    immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make
    cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle
    course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and
    the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a
    power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”
    Novalis: “Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God,
    freedom and immortality.” Prof. DeWitt of Princeton: “Science,
    philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing
    the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below
    second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes
    philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal
    it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this
    unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is
    the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving
    to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore
    starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.” W. N. Clarke,
    Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts;
    philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks
    to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”

    Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its
    subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic
    exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our
    knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal, _e. g._,
    God and the soul.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of
    the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws
    within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which
    they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand,
    is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending
    them. Its sphere is substance and essence.” Bowne, Theory of
    Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy = _doctrine of knowledge_
    (is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) + _doctrine
    of being_ (is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or
    purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke,
    Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems
    of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being.
    Historically theories of being come first, because the object is
    the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of
    philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or
    the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of
    knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”

    Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology: “Locke and Kant
    represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical,
    physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational,
    metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for
    the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant
    for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two
    are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and
    Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme
    empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh
    represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusively
    _analytical_; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it
    represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary
    philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in
    America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a
    reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of
    Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian
    doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making
    all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark
    Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the
    influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated
    to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and
    processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and
    succession. There is nothing _a priori_. Wundt identifies
    apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle.
    Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat
    these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is
    psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusively
    _static_, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view.
    Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer,
    Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory,
    while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and
    Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological
    Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude.
    The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater
    scope and more practical significance.” On the relation of
    theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der
    Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.



III. History of Systematic Theology.


1. _In the Eastern Church_, Systematic Theology may be said to have had
its beginning and end in John of Damascus (700-760).


    Ignatius († 115—Ad Trall., c. 9) gives us “the first distinct
    statement of the faith drawn up in a series of propositions. This
    systematizing formed the basis of all later efforts” (Prof. A. H.
    Newman). Origen of Alexandria (186-254) wrote his Περὶ Ἀρχῶν;
    Athanasius of Alexandria (300-373) his Treatises on the Trinity
    and the Deity of Christ; and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia
    (332-398) his Λόγος κατηχητικὸς ὁ μέγας. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures,
    323, regards the “De Principiis” of Origen as the “first complete
    system of dogma,” and speaks of Origen as “the disciple of Clement
    of Alexandria, the first great teacher of philosophical
    Christianity.” But while the Fathers just mentioned seem to have
    conceived the plan of expounding the doctrines in order and of
    showing their relation to one another, it was John of Damascus
    (700-760) who first actually carried out such a plan. His Ἔκδοσις
    ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου Πίστεως, or Summary of the Orthodox Faith,
    may be considered the earliest work of Systematic Theology.
    Neander calls it “the most important doctrinal text-book of the
    Greek Church.” John, like the Greek Church in general, was
    speculative, theological, semi-pelagian, sacramentarian. The
    Apostles’ Creed, so called, is, in its present form, not earlier
    than the fifth century; see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:19.
    Mr. Gladstone suggested that the Apostles’ Creed was a development
    of the baptismal formula. McGiffert, Apostles’ Creed, assigns to
    the meagre original form a date of the third quarter of the second
    century, and regards the Roman origin of the symbol as proved. It
    was framed as a baptismal formula, but specifically in opposition
    to the teachings of Marcion, which were at that time causing much
    trouble at Rome. Harnack however dates the original Apostles’
    Creed at 150, and Zahn places it at 120. See also J. C. Long, in
    Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892: 89-101.


2. _In the Western Church_, we may (with Hagenbach) distinguish three
periods:

(_a_) The period of Scholasticism,—introduced by Peter Lombard
(1100-1160), and reaching its culmination in Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274)
and Duns Scotus (1265-1308).


    Though Systematic Theology had its beginning in the Eastern
    Church, its development has been confined almost wholly to the
    Western. Augustine (353-430) wrote his “Encheiridion ad
    Laurentium” and his “De Civitate Dei,” and John Scotus Erigena (†
    850), Roscelin (1092-1122), and Abelard (1079-1142), in their
    attempts at the rational explanation of the Christian doctrine
    foreshadowed the works of the great scholastic teachers. Anselm of
    Canterbury (1034-1109), with his “Proslogion de Dei Existentia”
    and his “Cur Deus Homo,” has sometimes, but wrongly, been called
    the founder of Scholasticism. Allen, in his Continuity of
    Christian Thought, represents the transcendence of God as the
    controlling principle of the Augustinian and of the Western
    theology. The Eastern Church, he maintains, had founded its
    theology on God’s immanence. Paine, in his Evolution of
    Trinitarianism, shows that this is erroneous. Augustine was a
    theistic monist. He declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,”
    and regards God’s upholding as a continuous creation. Western
    theology recognized the immanence of God as well as his
    transcendence.

    Peter Lombard, however, (1100-1160), the “magister sententiarum,”
    was the first great systematizer of the Western Church, and his
    “Libri Sententiarum Quatuor” was the theological text-book of the
    Middle Ages. Teachers lectured on the “Sentences” (_Sententia_ =
    sentence, _Satz_, _locus_, point, article of faith), as they did
    on the books of Aristotle, who furnished to Scholasticism its
    impulse and guide. Every doctrine was treated in the order of
    Aristotle’s four causes: the material, the formal, the efficient,
    the final. (“Cause” here = requisite: (1) matter of which a thing
    consists, _e. g._, bricks and mortar; (2) form it assumes, _e.
    g._, plan or design; (3) producing agent, _e. g._, builder; (4)
    end for which made, _e. g._, house.) The organization of physical
    as well as of theological science was due to Aristotle. Dante
    called him “the master of those who know.” James Ten Broeke, Bap.
    Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-26—“The Revival of Learning showed the
    world that the real Aristotle was much broader than the Scholastic
    Aristotle—information very unwelcome to the Roman Church.” For the
    influence of Scholasticism, compare the literary methods of
    Augustine and of Calvin,—the former giving us his materials in
    disorder, like soldiers bivouacked for the night; the latter
    arranging them like those same soldiers drawn up in battle array;
    see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 4, and Christ in
    Creation, 188, 189.

    Candlish, art.: Dogmatic, in Encycl. Brit., 7:340—“By and by a
    mighty intellectual force took hold of the whole collected
    dogmatic material, and reared out of it the great scholastic
    systems, which have been compared to the grand Gothic cathedrals
    that were the work of the same ages.” Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274),
    the Dominican, “doctor angelicus,” Augustinian and Realist,—and
    Duns Scotus (1265-1308), the Franciscan, “doctor
    subtilis,”—wrought out the scholastic theology more fully, and
    left behind them, in their _Summæ_, gigantic monuments of
    intellectual industry and acumen. Scholasticism aimed at the proof
    and systematizing of the doctrines of the Church by means of
    Aristotle’s philosophy. It became at last an illimitable morass of
    useless subtilities and abstractions, and it finally ended in the
    nominalistic scepticism of William of Occam (1270-1347). See
    Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.


(_b_) The period of Symbolism,—represented by the Lutheran theology of
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), and the Reformed theology of John Calvin
(1509-1564); the former connecting itself with the Analytic theology of
Calixtus (1585-1656), and the latter with the Federal theology of Cocceius
(1603-1669).


    _The Lutheran Theology._—Preachers precede theologians, and Luther
    (1485-1546) was preacher rather than theologian. But Melanchthon
    (1497-1560), “the preceptor of Germany,” as he was called,
    embodied the theology of the Lutheran church in his “Loci
    Communes” = points of doctrine common to believers (first edition
    Augustinian, afterwards substantially Arminian; grew out of
    lectures on the Epistle to the Romans). He was followed by
    Chemnitz (1522-1586), “clear and accurate,” the most learned of
    the disciples of Melanchthon. Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), called
    “Lutherus redivivus,” and John Gerhard (1582-1637) followed Luther
    rather than Melanchthon. “Fifty years after the death of
    Melanchthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of
    theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of
    Melanchthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait
    of the great Reformer, and trampled it under foot in the presence
    of the assemblage” (E. D. Morris, paper at the 60th Anniversary of
    Lane Seminary). George Calixtus (1586-1656) followed Melanchthon
    rather than Luther. He taught a theology which recognized the good
    element in both the Reformed and the Romanist doctrine and which
    was called “Syncretism.” He separated Ethics from Systematic
    Theology, and applied the analytical method of investigation to
    the latter, beginning with the end, or final cause, of all things,
    viz.: blessedness. He was followed in his analytic method by
    Dannhauer (1603-1666), who treated theology allegorically,
    Calovius (1612-1686), “the most uncompromising defender of
    Lutheran orthodoxy and the most drastic polemicist against
    Calixtus,” Quenstedt (1617-1688), whom Hovey calls “learned,
    comprehensive and logical,” and Hollaz († 1730). The Lutheran
    theology aimed to purify the _existing_ church, maintaining that
    what is not against the gospel is for it. It emphasized the
    material principle of the Reformation, justification by faith; but
    it retained many Romanist customs not expressly forbidden in
    Scripture. Kaftan, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:716—“Because the
    mediæval school-philosophy mainly held sway, the Protestant
    theology representing the new faith was meanwhile necessarily
    accommodated to forms of knowledge thereby conditioned, that is,
    to forms essentially Catholic.”

    _The Reformed Theology._—The word “Reformed” is here used in its
    technical sense, as designating that phase of the new theology
    which originated in Switzerland. Zwingle, the Swiss reformer
    (1484-1531), differing from Luther as to the Lord’s Supper and as
    to Scripture, was more than Luther entitled to the name of
    systematic theologian. Certain writings of his may be considered
    the beginning of Reformed theology. But it was left to John Calvin
    (1509-1564), after the death of Zwingle, to arrange the principles
    of that theology in systematic form. Calvin dug channels for
    Zwingle’s flood to flow in, as Melanchthon did for Luther’s. His
    Institutes (“Institutio Religionis Christianæ”), is one of the
    great works in theology (superior as a systematic work to
    Melanchthon’s “Loci”). Calvin was followed by Peter Martyr
    (1500-1562), Chamier (1565-1621), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605).
    Beza carried Calvin’s doctrine of predestination to an extreme
    supralapsarianism, which is hyper-Calvinistic rather than
    Calvinistic. Cocceius (1603-1669), and after him Witsius
    (1626-1708), made theology centre about the idea of the covenants,
    and founded the Federal theology. Leydecker (1642-1721) treated
    theology in the order of the persons of the Trinity. Amyraldus
    (1596-1664) and Placeus of Saumur (1596-1632) modified the
    Calvinistic doctrine, the latter by his theory of mediate
    imputation, and the former by advocating the hypothetic
    universalism of divine grace. Turretin (1671-1737), a clear and
    strong theologian whose work is still a text-book at Princeton,
    and Pictet (1655-1725), both of them Federalists, showed the
    influence of the Cartesian philosophy. The Reformed theology aimed
    to build a _new_ church, affirming that what is not derived from
    the Bible is against it. It emphasized the formal principle of the
    Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture.

    In general, while the line between Catholic and Protestant in
    Europe runs from west to east, the line between Lutheran and
    Reformed runs from south to north, the Reformed theology flowing
    with the current of the Rhine northward from Switzerland to
    Holland and to England, in which latter country the Thirty-nine
    Articles represent the Reformed faith, while the Prayer-book of
    the English Church is substantially Arminian; see Dorner, Gesch.
    prot. Theologie, Einleit., 9. On the difference between Lutheran
    and Reformed doctrine, see Schaff, Germany, its Universities,
    Theology and Religion, 167-177. On the Reformed Churches of Europe
    and America, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 87-124.


(_c_) The period of Criticism and Speculation,—in its three divisions: the
Rationalistic, represented by Semler (1725-1791); the Transitional, by
Schleiermacher (1768-1834); the Evangelical, by Nitzsch, Müller, Tholuck
and Dorner.


    _First Division._ Rationalistic theologies: Though the Reformation
    had freed theology in great part from the bonds of scholasticism,
    other philosophies after a time took its place. The Leibnitz-
    (1646-1754) Wolffian (1679-1754) exaggeration of the powers of
    natural religion prepared the way for rationalistic systems of
    theology. Buddeus (1667-1729) combated the new principles, but
    Semler’s (1725-1791) theology was built upon them, and represented
    the Scriptures as having a merely local and temporary character.
    Michaelis (1716-1784) and Doederlein (1714-1789) followed Semler,
    and the tendency toward rationalism was greatly assisted by the
    critical philosophy of Kant (1724-1804), to whom “revelation was
    problematical, and positive religion merely the medium through
    which the practical truths of reason are communicated” (Hagenbach,
    Hist. Doct., 2:397). Ammon (1766-1850) and Wegscheider (1771-1848)
    were representatives of this philosophy. Daub, Marheinecke and
    Strauss (1808-1874) were the Hegelian dogmatists. The system of
    Strauss resembled “Christian theology as a cemetery resembles a
    town.” Storr (1746-1805), Reinhard (1753-1812), and Knapp
    (1753-1825), in the main evangelical, endeavored to reconcile
    revelation with reason, but were more or less influenced by this
    rationalizing spirit. Bretschneider (1776-1828) and De Wette
    (1780-1849) may be said to have held middle ground.

    _Second Division._ Transition to a more Scriptural theology.
    Herder (1744-1803) and Jacobi (1743-1819), by their more spiritual
    philosophy, prepared the way for Schleiermacher’s (1768-1834)
    grounding of doctrine in the facts of Christian experience. The
    writings of Schleiermacher constituted an epoch, and had great
    influence in delivering Germany from the rationalistic toils into
    which it had fallen. We may now speak of a

    _Third Division_—and in this division we may put the names of
    Neander and Tholuck, Twesten and Nitzsch, Müller and Luthardt,
    Dorner and Philippi, Ebrard and Thomasius, Lange and Kahnis, all
    of them exponents of a far more pure and evangelical theology than
    was common in Germany a century ago. Two new forms of rationalism,
    however, have appeared in Germany, the one based upon the
    philosophy of Hegel, and numbering among its adherents Strauss and
    Baur, Biedermann, Lipsius and Pfleiderer; the other based upon the
    philosophy of Kant, and advocated by Ritschl and his followers,
    Harnack, Hermann and Kaftan; the former emphasizing the ideal
    Christ, the latter emphasizing the historical Christ; but neither
    of the two fully recognizing the living Christ present in every
    believer (see Johnson’s Cyclopædia, art.: Theology, by A. H.
    Strong).


3. _Among theologians of views diverse from the prevailing Protestant
faith_, may be mentioned:

(_a_) Bellarmine (1542-1621), the Roman Catholic.


    Besides Bellarmine, “the best controversial writer of his age”
    (Bayle), the Roman Catholic Church numbers among its noted modern
    theologians:—Petavius (1583-1652), whose dogmatic theology Gibbon
    calls “a work of incredible labor and compass”; Melchior Canus
    (1523-1560), an opponent of the Jesuits and their scholastic
    method; Bossuet (1627-1704), who idealized Catholicism in his
    Exposition of Doctrine, and attacked Protestantism in his History
    of Variations of Protestant Churches; Jansen (1585-1638), who
    attempted, in opposition to the Jesuits, to reproduce the theology
    of Augustine, and who had in this the powerful assistance of
    Pascal (1623-1662). Jansenism, so far as the doctrines of grace
    are concerned, but not as respects the sacraments, is virtual
    Protestantism within the Roman Catholic Church. Moehler’s
    Symbolism, Perrone’s “Prelectiones Theologicæ,” and Hurter’s
    “Compendium Theologiæ Dogmaticæ” are the latest and most approved
    expositions of Roman Catholic doctrine.


(_b_) Arminius (1560-1609), the opponent of predestination.


    Among the followers of Arminius (1560-1609) must be reckoned
    Episcopius (1583-1643), who carried Arminianism to almost Pelagian
    extremes; Hugo Grotius (1553-1645), the jurist and statesman,
    author of the governmental theory of the atonement; and Limborch
    (1633-1712), the most thorough expositor of the Arminian doctrine.


(_c_) Laelius Socinus (1525-1562), and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), the
leaders of the modern Unitarian movement.


    The works of Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew, Faustus
    Socinus (1539-1604) constituted the beginnings of modern
    Unitarianism. Laelius Socinus was the preacher and reformer, as
    Faustus Socinus was the theologian; or, as Baumgarten Crusius
    expresses it: “the former was the spiritual founder of
    Socinianism, and the latter the founder of the sect.” Their
    writings are collected in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. The
    Racovian Catechism, taking its name from the Polish town Racow,
    contains the most succinct exposition of their views. In 1660, the
    Unitarian church of the Socini in Poland was destroyed by
    persecution, but its Hungarian offshoot has still more than a
    hundred congregations.


4. _British Theology_, represented by:

(_a_) The Baptists, John Bunyan (1628-1688), John Gill (1697-1771), and
Andrew Fuller (1754-1815).


    Some of the best British theology is Baptist. Among John Bunyan’s
    works we may mention his “Gospel Truths Opened,” though his
    “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Holy War” are theological treatises in
    allegorical form. Macaulay calls Milton and Bunyan the two great
    creative minds of England during the latter part of the 17th
    century. John Gill’s “Body of Practical Divinity” shows much
    ability, although the Rabbinical learning of the author
    occasionally displays itself in a curious exegesis, as when on the
    word “Abba” he remarks: “You see that this word which means
    ’Father’ reads the same whether we read forward or backward; which
    suggests that God is the same whichever way we look at him.”
    Andrew Fuller’s “Letters on Systematic Divinity” is a brief
    compend of theology. His treatises upon special doctrines are
    marked by sound judgment and clear insight. They were the most
    influential factor in rescuing the evangelical churches of England
    from antinomianism. They justify the epithets which Robert Hall,
    one of the greatest of Baptist preachers, gives him: “sagacious,”
    “luminous,” “powerful.”


(_b_) The Puritans, John Owen (1616-1683), Richard Baxter (1615-1691),
John Howe (1630-1705), and Thomas Ridgeley (1666-1734).


    Owen was the most rigid, as Baxter was the most liberal, of the
    Puritans. The Encyclopædia Britannica remarks: “As a theological
    thinker and writer, John Owen holds his own distinctly defined
    place among those titanic intellects with which the age abounded.
    Surpassed by Baxter in point and pathos, by Howe in imagination
    and the higher philosophy, he is unrivaled in his power of
    unfolding the rich meanings of Scripture. In his writings he was
    preëminently the great theologian.” Baxter wrote a “Methodus
    Theologiæ,” and a “Catholic Theology”; John Howe is chiefly known
    by his “Living Temple”; Thomas Ridgeley by his “Body of Divinity.”
    Charles H. Spurgeon never ceased to urge his students to become
    familiar with the Puritan Adams, Ambrose, Bowden, Manton and
    Sibbes.


(_c_) The Scotch Presbyterians, Thomas Boston (1676-1732), John Dick
(1764-1833), and Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).


    Of the Scotch Presbyterians, Boston is the most voluminous, Dick
    the most calm and fair, Chalmers the most fervid and popular.


(_d_) The Methodists, John Wesley (1703-1791), and Richard Watson
(1781-1833).


    Of the Methodists, John Wesley’s doctrine is presented in
    “Christian Theology,” collected from his writings by the Rev.
    Thornley Smith. The great Methodist text-book, however, is the
    “Institutes” of Watson, who systematized and expounded the
    Wesleyan theology. Pope, a recent English theologian, follows
    Watson’s modified and improved Arminianism, while Whedon and
    Raymond, recent American writers, hold rather to a radical and
    extreme Arminianism.


(_e_) The Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691), and Robert Barclay (1648-1690).


    As Jesus, the preacher and reformer, preceded Paul the theologian;
    as Luther preceded Melanchthon; as Zwingle preceded Calvin; as
    Laelius Socinus preceded Faustus Socinus; as Wesley preceded
    Watson; so Fox preceded Barclay. Barclay wrote an “Apology for the
    true Christian Divinity,” which Dr. E. G. Robinson described as
    “not a formal treatise of Systematic Theology, but the ablest
    exposition of the views of the Quakers.” George Fox was the
    reformer, William Penn the social founder, Robert Barclay the
    theologian, of Quakerism.


(_f_) The English Churchmen, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), Gilbert Burnet
(1643-1715), and John Pearson (1613-1686).


    The English church has produced no great systematic theologian
    (see reasons assigned in Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 470). The
    “judicious” Hooker is still its greatest theological writer,
    although his work is only on “Ecclesiastical Polity.” Bishop
    Burnet is the author of the “Exposition of the XXXIX Articles,”
    and Bishop Pearson of the “Exposition of the Creed.” Both these
    are common English text-books. A recent “Compendium of Dogmatic
    Theology,” by Litton, shows a tendency to return from the usual
    Arminianism of the Anglican church to the old Augustinianism; so
    also Bishop Moule’s “Outlines of Christian Doctrine,” and Mason’s
    “Faith of the Gospel.”


5. _American theology_, running in two lines:

(_a_) The Reformed system of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), modified
successively by Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803),
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840), Leonard Woods
(1774-1854), Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), Nathaniel W. Taylor
(1786-1858), and Horace Bushnell (1802-1876). Calvinism, as thus modified,
is often called the New England, or New School, theology.


    Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest of metaphysicians and
    theologians, was an idealist who held that God is the only real
    cause, either in the realm of matter or in the realm of mind. He
    regarded the chief good as happiness—a form of sensibility. Virtue
    was voluntary choice of this good. Hence union with Adam in acts
    and exercises was sufficient. Thus God’s will made identity of
    being with Adam. This led to the exercise-system of Hopkins and
    Emmons, on the one hand, and to Bellamy’s and Dwight’s denial of
    any imputation of Adam’s sin or of inborn depravity, on the
    other—in which last denial agree many other New England
    theologians who reject the exercise-scheme, as for example,
    Strong, Tyler, Smalley, Burton, Woods, and Park. Dr. N. W. Taylor
    added a more distinctly Arminian element, the power of contrary
    choice—and with this tenet of the New Haven theology, Charles G.
    Finney, of Oberlin, substantially agreed. Horace Bushnell held to
    a practically Sabellian view of the Trinity, and to a
    moral-influence theory of the atonement. Thus from certain
    principles admitted by Edwards, who held in the main to an Old
    School theology, the New School theology has been gradually
    developed.

    Robert Hall called Edwards “the greatest of the sons of men.” Dr.
    Chalmers regarded him as the “greatest of theologians.” Dr.
    Fairbairn says: “He is not only the greatest of all the thinkers
    that America has produced, but also the highest speculative genius
    of the eighteenth century. In a far higher degree than Spinoza, he
    was a ’God-intoxicated man.’” His fundamental notion that there is
    no causality except the divine was made the basis of a theory of
    necessity which played into the hands of the deists whom he
    opposed and was alien not only to Christianity but even to theism.
    Edwards could not have gotten his idealism from Berkeley; it may
    have been suggested to him by the writings of Locke or Newton,
    Cudworth or Descartes, John Norris or Arthur Collier. See Prof. H.
    N. Gardiner, in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596; Prof. E. C.
    Smyth, in Am. Jour. Theol., Oct. 1897:956; Allen, Jonathan
    Edwards, 16, 308-310, and in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1891:767;
    Sanborn, in Jour. Spec. Philos., Oct. 1883:401-420; G. P. Fisher,
    Edwards on the Trinity, 18, 19.


(_b_) The older Calvinism, represented by Charles Hodge the father
(1797-1878) and A. A. Hodge the son (1823-1886), together with Henry B.
Smith (1815-1877), Robert J. Breckinridge (1800-1871), Samuel J. Baird,
and William G. T. Shedd (1820-1894). All these, although with minor
differences, hold to views of human depravity and divine grace more nearly
conformed to the doctrine of Augustine and Calvin, and are for this reason
distinguished from the New England theologians and their followers by the
popular title of Old School.


    Old School theology, in its view of predestination, exalts God;
    New School theology, by emphasizing the freedom of the will,
    exalts man. It is yet more important to notice that Old School
    theology has for its characteristic tenet the guilt of inborn
    depravity. But among those who hold this view, some are
    federalists and creationists, and justify God’s condemnation of
    all men upon the ground that Adam represented his posterity. Such
    are the Princeton theologians generally, including Charles Hodge,
    A. A. Hodge, and the brothers Alexander. Among those who hold to
    the Old School doctrine of the guilt of inborn depravity, however,
    there are others who are traducians, and who explain the
    imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity upon the ground of the
    natural union between him and them. Baird’s “Elohim Revealed” and
    Shedd’s essay on “Original Sin” (Sin a Nature and that Nature
    Guilt) represent this realistic conception of the relation of the
    race to its first father. R. J. Breckinridge, R. L. Dabney, and J.
    H. Thornwell assert the fact of inherent corruption and guilt, but
    refuse to assign any _rationale_ for it, though they tend to
    realism. H. B. Smith holds guardedly to the theory of mediate
    imputation.

    On the history of Systematic Theology in general, see Hagenbach,
    History of Doctrine (from which many of the facts above given are
    taken), and Shedd, History of Doctrine; also, Ebrard, Dogmatik,
    1:44-100; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:15-128; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus,
    24-52. Gretillat, Théologie Systématique, 3:24-120, has given an
    excellent history of theology, brought down to the present time.
    On the history of New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions
    and Essays, 285-354.



IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.


1. _Various methods of arranging the topics of a theological system._

(_a_) The Analytical method of Calixtus begins with the assumed end of all
things, blessedness, and thence passes to the means by which it is
secured. (_b_) The Trinitarian method of Leydecker and Martensen regards
Christian doctrine as a manifestation successively of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. (_c_) The Federal method of Cocceius, Witsius, and Boston
treats theology under the two covenants. (_d_) The Anthropological method
of Chalmers and Rothe; the former beginning with the Disease of Man and
passing to the Remedy; the latter dividing his Dogmatik into the
Consciousness of Sin and the Consciousness of Redemption. (_e_) The
Christological method of Hase, Thomasius and Andrew Fuller treats of God,
man, and sin, as presuppositions of the person and work of Christ. Mention
may also be made of (_f_) The Historical method, followed by Ursinus, and
adopted in Jonathan Edwards’s History of Redemption; and (_g_) The
Allegorical method of Dannhauer, in which man is described as a wanderer,
life as a road, the Holy Spirit as a light, the church as a candlestick,
God as the end, and heaven as the home; so Bunyan’s Holy War, and Howe’s
Living Temple.


    See Calixtus, Epitome Theologiæ; Leydecker, De Œconomia trium
    Personarum in Negotio Salutis humanæ; Martensen (1808-1884),
    Christian Dogmatics; Cocceius, Summa Theologiæ, and Summa Doctrinæ
    de Fœdere et Testamento Dei, in Works, vol. vi; Witsius, The
    Economy of the Covenants; Boston, A Complete Body of Divinity (in
    Works, vol. 1 and 2), Questions in Divinity (vol. 6), Human Nature
    in its Fourfold State (vol. 8); Chalmers, Institutes of Theology;
    Rothe (1799-1867), Dogmatik, and Theologische Ethik; Hase
    (1800-1890), Evangelische Dogmatik; Thomasius (1802-1875), Christi
    Person und Werk; Fuller, Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation (in
    Works, 2:328-416), and Letters on Systematic Divinity (1:684-711);
    Ursinus (1534-1583), Loci Theologici (in Works, 1:426-909);
    Dannhauer (1603-1666) Hodosophia Christiana, seu Theologia
    Positiva in Methodum redacta. Jonathan Edwards’s so-called History
    of Redemption was in reality a system of theology in historical
    form. It “was to begin and end with eternity, all great events and
    epochs in time being viewed ‘sub specie eternitatis.’ The three
    worlds—heaven, earth and hell—were to be the scenes of this grand
    drama. It was to include the topics of theology as living factors,
    each in its own place,” and all forming a complete and harmonious
    whole; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 379, 380.


2. _The Synthetic Method_, which we adopt in this compendium, is both the
most common and the most logical method of arranging the topics of
theology. This method proceeds from causes to effects, or, in the language
of Hagenbach (Hist. Doctrine, 2:152), “starts from the highest principle,
God, and proceeds to man, Christ, redemption, and finally to the end of
all things.” In such a treatment of theology we may best arrange our
topics in the following order:

1st. The existence of God.
2d. The Scriptures a revelation from God.
3d. The nature, decrees and works of God.
4th. Man, in his original likeness to God and subsequent apostasy.
5th. Redemption, through the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.
6th. The nature and laws of the Christian church.
7th. The end of the present system of things.



V. Text-Books in Theology.


1. _Confessions_: Schaff, Creeds of Christendom.

2. _Compendiums_: H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology; A. A. Hodge,
Outlines of Theology; E. H. Johnson, Outline of Systematic Theology;
Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics; W. N. Clarke, Outline of Christian
Theology; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik;
Kurtz, Religionslehre.

3. _Extended Treatises_: Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine; Shedd,
Dogmatic Theology; Calvin, Institutes; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology;
Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics; Baird, Elohim Revealed; Luthardt,
Fundamental, Saving, and Moral Truths; Phillippi, Glaubenslehre;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk.

4. _Collected Works_: Jonathan Edwards; Andrew Fuller.

5. _Histories of Doctrine_: Harnack; Hagenbach; Shedd; Fisher; Sheldon;
Orr, Progress of Dogma.

6. _Monographs_: Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin; Shedd, Discourses and
Essays; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity; Dorner, History of the Doctrine of
the Person of Christ; Dale, Atonement; Strong, Christ in Creation; Upton,
Hibbert Lectures.

7. _Theism_: Martineau, Study of Religion; Harris, Philosophical Basis of
Theism; Strong, Philosophy and Religion; Bruce, Apologetics; Drummond,
Ascent of Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.

8. _Christian Evidences_: Butler, Analogy of Natural and Revealed
Religion; Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief; Row, Bampton
Lectures for 1877; Peabody, Evidences of Christianity; Mair, Christian
Evidences; Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion; Matheson,
Spiritual Development of St. Paul.

9. _Intellectual Philosophy_: Stout, Handbook of Psychology; Bowne,
Metaphysics; Porter, Human Intellect; Hill, Elements of Psychology; Dewey,
Psychology.

10. _Moral Philosophy_: Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality;
Smyth, Christian Ethics; Porter, Elements of Moral Science; Calderwood,
Moral Philosophy; Alexander, Moral Science; Robins, Ethics of the
Christian Life.

11. _General Science_: Todd, Astronomy; Wentworth and Hill, Physics;
Remsen, Chemistry; Brigham, Geology; Parker, Biology; Martin, Physiology;
Ward, Fairbanks, or West, Sociology; Walker, Political Economy.

12. _Theological Encyclopædias_: Schaff-Herzog (English); McClintock and
Strong; Herzog (Second German Edition).

13. _Bible Dictionaries_: Hastings; Davis; Cheyne; Smith (edited by
Hackett).

14. _Commentaries_: Meyer, on the New Testament; Philippi, Lange, Shedd,
Sanday, on the Epistle to the Romans; Godet, on John’s Gospel; Lightfoot,
on Philippians and Colossians; Expositor’s Bible, on the Old Testament
books.

15. _Bibles_: American Revision (standard edition); Revised Greek-English
New Testament (published by Harper & Brothers); Annotated Paragraph Bible
(published by the London Religious Tract Society) Stier and Theile,
Polyglotten-Bibel.


    An attempt has been made, in the list of text-books given above,
    to put first in each class the book best worth purchasing by the
    average theological student, and to arrange the books that follow
    this first one in the order of their value. German books, however,
    when they are not yet accessible in an English translation, are
    put last, simply because they are less likely to be used as books
    of reference by the average student.





PART II. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.




Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God’s Existence.


God is the infinite and perfect Spirit in whom all things have their
source, support, and end.


    On the definition of the term God, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:366.
    Other definitions are those of Calovius: “Essentia spiritualis
    infinite”; Ebrard: “The eternal source of all that is temporal”;
    Kahnis: “The infinite Spirit”; John Howe: “An eternal, uncaused,
    independent, necessary Being, that hath active power, life,
    wisdom, goodness, and whatsoever other supposable excellency, in
    the highest perfection, in and of itself”; Westminster Catechism:
    “A Spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom,
    power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth”; Andrew Fuller: “The
    first cause and last end of all things.”


The existence of God is a first truth; in other words, the knowledge of
God’s existence is a rational intuition. Logically, it precedes and
conditions all observation and reasoning. Chronologically, only reflection
upon the phenomena of nature and of mind occasions its rise in
consciousness.


    The term intuition means simply direct knowledge. Lowndes (Philos.
    of Primary Beliefs, 78) and Mansel (Metaphysics, 52) would use the
    term only of our direct knowledge of substances, as self and body;
    Porter applies it by preference to our cognition of first truths,
    such as have been already mentioned. Harris (Philos. Basis of
    Theism, 44-151, but esp. 45, 46) makes it include both. He divides
    intuitions into two classes: 1. _Presentative_ intuitions, as
    self-consciousness (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of
    spirit and already come in contact with the supernatural), and
    sense-perception (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of
    matter, at least in my own organism, and come in contact with
    nature); 2. _Rational_ intuitions, as space, time, substance,
    cause, final cause, right, absolute being. We may accept this
    nomenclature, using the terms “first truths” and “rational
    intuitions” as equivalent to each other, and classifying rational
    intuitions under the heads of (1) intuitions of relations, as
    space and time; (2) intuitions of principles, as substance, cause,
    final cause, right; and (3) intuition of absolute Being, Power,
    Reason, Perfection, Personality, as God. We hold that, as upon
    occasion of the senses cognizing (_a_) extended matter, (_b_)
    succession, (_c_) qualities, (_d_) change, (_e_) order, (_f_)
    action, respectively, the mind cognizes (_a_) space, (_b_) time,
    (_c_) substance, (_d_) cause, (_e_) design, (_f_) obligation, so
    upon occasion of our cognizing our finiteness, dependence and
    responsibility, the mind directly cognizes the existence of an
    Infinite and Absolute Authority, Perfection, Personality, upon
    whom we are dependent and to whom we are responsible.

    Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 60—“As we walk in entire
    ignorance of our muscles, so we often think in entire ignorance of
    the principles which underlie and determine thinking. But as
    anatomy reveals that the apparently simple act of walking involves
    a highly complex muscular activity, so analysis reveals that the
    apparently simple act of thinking involves a system of mental
    principles.” Dewey, Psychology, 238, 244—“Perception, memory,
    imagination, conception—each of these is an act of intuition....
    Every concrete act of knowledge involves an intuition of God.”
    Martineau, Types, 1:459—The attempt to divest experience of either
    percepts or intuitions is “like the attempt to peel a bubble in
    search for its colors and contents: in tenuem ex oculis evanuit
    auram”; Study, 1:199—“Try with all your might to do something
    difficult, _e. g._, to shut a door against a furious wind, and you
    recognize Self and Nature—causal will, over against external
    causality”; 201—“Hence our fellow-feeling with Nature”; 65—“As
    Perception gives us Will in the shape of Causality over against us
    in the non-ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of
    Authority over against us in the non-ego”; Types, 2:5—“In
    perception it is self and nature, in morals it is self and God,
    that stand face to face in the subjective and objective
    antithesis”; Study, 2:2, 3—“In volitional experience we meet with
    objective _causality_; in moral experience we meet with objective
    _authority_,—both being objects of immediate knowledge, on the
    same footing of certainty with the apprehension of the external
    material world. I know of no logical advantage which the belief in
    finite objects around us can boast over the belief in the infinite
    and righteous Cause of all”; 51—“In recognition of God as Cause,
    we raise the University; in recognition of God as Authority, we
    raise the Church.”

    Kant declares that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea
    of personality,—personality consists in the freedom of the whole
    soul from the mechanism of nature. Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“So
    far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as the identical
    subject of inward experience, it is, and is named simply for that
    reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine,
    32—“Our conception of substance is derived, not from the physical,
    but from the mental world. Substance is first of all that which
    underlies our _mental_ affections and manifestations.” James, Will
    to Believe, 80—“Substance, as Kant says, means ‘das Beharrliche,’
    the abiding, that which will be as it has been, because its being
    is essential and eternal.” In this sense we have an intuitive
    belief in an abiding substance which underlies our own thoughts
    and volitions, and this we call the soul. But we also have an
    intuitive belief in an abiding substance which underlies all
    natural phenomena and all the events of history, and this we call
    God. Among those who hold to this general view of an intuitive
    knowledge of God may be mentioned the following:—Calvin,
    Institutes, book I, chap. 3; Nitzsch, System of Christian
    Doctrine, 15-26, 133-140; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:78-84;
    Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725; Porter, Human Intellect, 497;
    Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 58-89; Farrar, Science in Theology,
    27-29; Bib. Sac., July, 1872:533, and January, 1873:204; Miller,
    Fetich in Theology, 110-122; Fisher, Essays, 565-572; Tulloch,
    Theism, 314-336; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:191-203;
    Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, 75, 76; Raymond,
    Syst. Theology, 1:247-262; Bascom, Science of Mind, 246, 247;
    Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 155-224; A. H. Strong,
    Philosophy and Religion, 76-89.



I. First Truths in General.


1. _Their nature._

A. Negatively.—A first truth is not (_a_) Truth written prior to
consciousness upon the substance of the soul—for such passive knowledge
implies a materialistic view of the soul; (_b_) Actual knowledge of which
the soul finds itself in possession at birth—for it cannot be proved that
the soul has such knowledge; (_c_) An idea, undeveloped at birth, but
which has the power of self-development apart from observation and
experience—for this is contrary to all we know of the laws of mental
growth.


    Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1:17—“Intelligi necesse est esse deos,
    quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cogitationes habemus.”
    Origen, Adv. Celsum, 1:4—“Men would not be guilty, if they did not
    carry in their minds common notions of morality, innate and
    written in divine letters.” Calvin, Institutes, 1:3:3—“Those who
    rightly judge will always agree that there is an indelible sense
    of divinity engraven upon men’s minds.” Fleming, Vocab. of
    Philosophy, art.: “Innate Ideas”—“Descartes is supposed to have
    taught (and Locke devoted the first book of his Essays to refuting
    the doctrine) that these ideas are innate or connate with the
    soul; _i. e._, the intellect finds itself at birth, or as soon as
    it wakes to conscious activity, to be possessed of ideas to which
    it has only to attach the appropriate names, or of judgments which
    it only needs to express in fit propositions—_i. e._, prior to any
    experience of individual objects.”

    Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 77—“In certain families,
    Descartes teaches, good breeding and the gout are innate. Yet, of
    course, the children of such families have to be instructed in
    deportment, and the infants just learning to walk seem happily
    quite free from gout. Even so geometry is innate in us, but it
    does not come to our consciousness without much trouble”; 79—Locke
    found no innate ideas. He maintained, in reply, that “infants,
    with their rattles, showed no sign of being aware that things
    which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”
    Schopenhauer said that “Jacobi had the trifling weakness of taking
    all he had learned and approved before his fifteenth year for
    inborn ideas of the human mind.” Bowne, Principles of Ethics,
    5—“That the rational ideas are conditioned by the sense experience
    and are sequent to it, is unquestioned by any one; and that
    experience shows a successive order of manifestation is equally
    undoubted. But the sensationalist has always shown a curious
    blindness to the ambiguity of such a fact. He will have it that
    what comes after must be a modification of what went before;
    whereas it might be _that_, _and_ it might be a new, though
    conditioned, manifestation of an immanent nature or law. Chemical
    affinity is not gravity, although affinity cannot manifest itself
    until gravity has brought the elements into certain relations.”

    Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:103—“This principle was not
    from the beginning in the consciousness of men; for, in order to
    think ideas, reason must be clearly developed, which in the first
    of mankind it could just as little be as in children. This however
    does not exclude the fact that there was from the beginning the
    unconscious rational impulse which lay at the basis of the
    formation of the belief in God, however manifold may have been the
    direct motives which co-operated with it.” Self is implied in the
    simplest act of knowledge. Sensation gives us two things, _e. g._,
    black and white; but I cannot compare them without asserting
    difference _for me_. Different sensations make no _knowledge_,
    without a _self_ to bring them together. Upton, Hibbert Lectures,
    lecture 2—“You could as easily prove the existence of an external
    world to a man who had no senses to perceive it, as you could
    prove the existence of God to one who had no consciousness of
    God.”


B. Positively.—A first truth is a knowledge which, though developed upon
occasion of observation and reflection, is not derived from observation
and reflection,—a knowledge on the contrary which has such logical
priority that it must be assumed or supposed, in order to make any
observation or reflection possible. Such truths are not, therefore,
recognized first in order of time; some of them are assented to somewhat
late in the mind’s growth; by the great majority of men they are never
consciously formulated at all. Yet they constitute the necessary
assumptions upon which all other knowledge rests, and the mind has not
only the inborn capacity to evolve them so soon as the proper occasions
are presented, but the recognition of them is inevitable so soon as the
mind begins to give account to itself of its own knowledge.


    Mansel, Metaphysics, 52, 279—“To describe experience as the cause
    of the idea of space would be as inaccurate as to speak of the
    soil in which it was planted as the cause of the oak—though the
    planting in the soil is the condition which brings into
    manifestation the latent power of the acorn.” Coleridge: “We see
    before we know that we have eyes; but when once this is known, we
    perceive that eyes must have preëxisted in order to enable us to
    see.” Coleridge speaks of first truths as “those necessities of
    mind or forms of thinking, which, though revealed to us by
    experience, must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience
    possible.” McCosh, Intuitions, 48, 49—Intuitions are “like flower
    and fruit, which are in the plant from its embryo, but may not be
    actually formed till there have been a stalk and branches and
    leaves.” Porter, Human Intellect, 501, 519—“Such truths cannot be
    acquired or assented to first of all.” Some are reached last of
    all. The moral intuition is often developed late, and sometimes,
    even then, only upon occasion of corporal punishment. “Every man
    is as lazy as circumstances will admit.” Our physical laziness is
    occasional; our mental laziness frequent; our moral laziness
    incessant. We are too lazy to think, and especially to think of
    religion. On account of this depravity of human nature we should
    expect the intuition of God to be developed last of all. Men
    shrink from contact with God and from the thought of God. In fact,
    their dislike for the intuition of God leads them not seldom to
    deny all their other intuitions, even those of freedom and of
    right. Hence the modern “psychology without a soul.”

    Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 105-115—“The idea of God ...
    is latest to develop into clear consciousness ... and must be
    latest, for it is the unity of the difference of the self and the
    not-self, which are therefore presupposed.” But “it has not less
    validity in itself, it gives no less trustworthy assurance of
    actuality, than the consciousness of the self, or the
    consciousness of the not-self.... The consciousness of God is the
    logical _prius_ of the consciousness of self and of the world. But
    not, as already observed, the chronological; for, according to the
    profound observation of Aristotle, what in the nature of things is
    first, is in the order of development last. Just because God is
    the first principle of being and knowing, he is the last to be
    manifested and known.... The finite and the infinite are both
    known together, and it is as impossible to know one without the
    other as it is to apprehend an angle without the sides which
    contain it.” For account of the relation of the intuitions to
    experience, see especially Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good,
    39-64, and History of Philosophy, 2:199-245. Compare Kant,
    Critique of Pure Reason, Introd., 1. See also Bascom, in Bib.
    Sac., 23:1-47; 27:68-90.


2. _Their criteria._ The criteria by which first truths are to be tested
are three:

A. Their universality. By this we mean, not that all men assent to them or
understand them when propounded in scientific form, but that all men
manifest a practical belief in them by their language, actions, and
expectations.

B. Their necessity. By this we mean, not that it is impossible to deny
these truths, but that the mind is compelled by its very constitution to
recognize them upon the occurrence of the proper conditions, and to employ
them in its arguments to prove their non-existence.

C. Their logical independence and priority. By this we mean that these
truths can be resolved into no others, and proved by no others; that they
are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge, and can
therefore be derived from no other source than an original cognitive power
of the mind.


    Instances of the professed and formal denial of first truths:—the
    positivist denies causality; the idealist denies substance; the
    pantheist denies personality; the necessitarian denies freedom;
    the nihilist denies his own existence. A man may in like manner
    argue that there is no necessity for an atmosphere; but even while
    he argues, he breathes it. Instance the knock-down argument to
    demonstrate the freedom of the will. I grant my own existence in
    the very doubting of it; for “cogito, ergo sum,” as Descartes
    himself insisted, really means “cogito, scilicet sum”; H. B.
    Smith: “The statement is analysis, not proof.” Ladd, Philosophy of
    Knowledge, 59—“The _cogito_, in barbarous Latin = _cogitans sum_:
    thinking is self-conscious _being_.” Bentham: “The word _ought_ is
    an authoritative imposture, and ought to be banished from the
    realm of morals.” Spinoza and Hegel really deny self-consciousness
    when they make man a phenomenon of the infinite. Royce likens the
    denier of personality to the man who goes outside of his own house
    and declares that no one lives there because, when he looks in at
    the window, he sees no one inside.

    Professor James, in his Psychology, assumes the reality of a
    brain, but refuses to assume the reality of a soul. This is
    essentially the position of materialism. But this assumption of a
    brain is metaphysics, although the author claims to be writing a
    psychology without metaphysics. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 3—“The
    materialist believes in causation proper so long as he is
    explaining the origin of mind from matter, but when he is asked to
    see in mind the cause of physical change he at once becomes a mere
    phenomenalist.” Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 400—“I know
    that all beings, if only they can count, must find that three and
    two make five. Perhaps the angels cannot count; but, if they can,
    this axiom is true for them. If I met an angel who declared that
    his experience had occasionally shown him a three and two that did
    _not_ make five, I should know at once what sort of an angel he
    was.” On the criteria of first truths, see Porter, Human
    Intellect, 510, 511. On denial of them, see Shedd, Dogmatic
    Theology, 1:213.



II. The Existence of God a first truth.


1. Its universality.


That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the first criterion of
universality_, is evident from the following considerations:

A. It is an acknowledged fact that the vast majority of men have actually
recognized the existence of a spiritual being or beings, upon whom they
conceived themselves to be dependent.


    The Vedas declare: “There is but one Being—no second.” Max Müller,
    Origin and Growth of Religion, 34—“Not the visible sun, moon and
    stars are invoked, but something else that cannot be seen.” The
    lowest tribes have conscience, fear death, believe in witches,
    propitiate or frighten away evil fates. Even the fetich-worshiper,
    who calls the stone or the tree a god, shows that he has already
    the idea of a God. We must not measure the ideas of the heathen by
    their capacity for expression, any more than we should judge the
    child’s belief in the existence of his father by his success in
    drawing the father’s picture. On heathenism, its origin and
    nature, see Tholuck, in Bib. Repos., 1832:86; Scholz, Götzendienst
    und Zauberwesen.


B. Those races and nations which have at first seemed destitute of such
knowledge have uniformly, upon further investigation, been found to
possess it, so that no tribe of men with which we have thorough
acquaintance can be said to be without an object of worship. We may
presume that further knowledge will show this to be true of all.


    Moffat, who reported that certain African tribes were destitute of
    religion, was corrected by the testimony of his son-in-law,
    Livingstone: “The existence of God and of a future life is
    everywhere recognized in Africa.” Where men are most nearly
    destitute of any formulated knowledge of God, the conditions for
    the awakening of the idea are most nearly absent. An apple-tree
    may be so conditioned that it never bears apples. “We do not judge
    of the oak by the stunted, flowerless specimens on the edge of the
    Arctic Circle.” The presence of an occasional blind, deaf or dumb
    man does not disprove the definition that man is a seeing, hearing
    and speaking creature. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 154—“We need
    not tremble for mathematics, even if some tribes should be found
    without the multiplication-table.... Sub-moral and sub-rational
    existence is always with us in the case of young children; and, if
    we should find it elsewhere, it would have no greater
    significance.”

    Victor Hugo: “Some men deny the Infinite; some, too, deny the sun;
    they are the blind.” Gladden, What is Left? 148—“A man may escape
    from his shadow by going into the dark; if he comes under the
    light of the sun, the shadow is there. A man may be so mentally
    undisciplined that he does not recognize these ideas; but let him
    learn the use of his reason, let him reflect on his own mental
    processes, and he will know that they are necessary ideas.” On an
    original monotheism, see Diestel, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
    Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5:669; Max Müller, Chips, 1:337;
    Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, No. 11; Legge, Religions of
    China, 8-11; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:201-208. _Per contra_,
    see Asmus, Indogerm. Relig., 2:1-8; and synopsis in Bib. Sac.,
    Jan. 1877:167-172.


C. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that those individuals, in
heathen or in Christian lands, who profess themselves to be without any
knowledge of a spiritual power or powers above them, do yet indirectly
manifest the existence of such an idea in their minds and its positive
influence over them.


    Comte said that science would conduct God to the frontier and then
    bow him out, with thanks for his provisional services. But Herbert
    Spencer affirms the existence of a “Power to which no limit in
    time or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena as presented
    in consciousness are manifestations.” The intuition of God, though
    formally excluded, is implicitly contained in Spencer’s system, in
    the shape of the “irresistible belief” in Absolute Being, which
    distinguishes his position from that of Comte; see H. Spencer, who
    says: “One truth must ever grow clearer—the truth that there is an
    inscrutable existence everywhere manifested, to which we can
    neither find nor conceive beginning or end—the one absolute
    certainty that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and
    eternal energy from which all things proceed.” Mr. Spencer assumes
    unity in the underlying Reality. Frederick Harrison sneeringly
    asks him: “Why not say ‘forces,’ instead of ‘force’?” While
    Harrison gives us a supreme moral ideal without a metaphysical
    ground, Spencer gives us an ultimate metaphysical principle
    without a final moral purpose. The idea of God is the synthesis of
    the two,—“They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Lord,
    art more than they” (Tennyson, In Memoriam).

    Solon spoke of ὁ θεός and of τὸ θεῖον, and Sophocles of ὁ μέγας
    θεός. The term for “God” is identical in all the Indo-European
    languages, and therefore belonged to the time before those
    languages separated; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:201-208. In
    Virgil’s Æneid, Mezentius is an atheist, a despiser of the gods,
    trusting only in his spear and in his right arm; but, when the
    corpse of his son is brought to him, his first act is to raise his
    hands to heaven. Hume was a sceptic, but he said to Ferguson, as
    they walked on a starry night: “Adam, there is a God!” Voltaire
    prayed in an Alpine thunderstorm. Shelley wrote his name in the
    visitors’ book of the inn at Montanvert, and added: “Democrat,
    philanthropist, atheist”; yet he loved to think of a “fine
    intellectual spirit pervading the universe”; and he also wrote:
    “The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever
    shines, Earth’s shadows fly.” Strauss worships the Cosmos, because
    “order and law, reason and goodness” are the soul of it. Renan
    trusts in goodness, design, ends. Charles Darwin, Life, 1:274—“In
    my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist, in the
    sense of denying the existence of a God.”


D. This agreement among individuals and nations so widely separated in
time and place can be most satisfactorily explained by supposing that it
has its ground, not in accidental circumstances, but in the nature of man
as man. The diverse and imperfectly developed ideas of the supreme Being
which prevail among men are best accounted for as misinterpretations and
perversions of an intuitive conviction common to all.


    Huxley, Lay Sermons, 163—“There are savages without God, in any
    proper sense of the word; but there are none without ghosts.”
    Martineau, Study, 2:353, well replies: “Instead of turning other
    people into ghosts, and then appropriating one to ourselves [and
    attributing another to God, we may add] by way of imitation, we
    start from the sense of personal continuity, and then predicate
    the same of others, under the figures which keep most clear of the
    physical and perishable.” Grant Allen describes the higher
    religions as “a grotesque fungoid growth,” that has gathered about
    a primitive thread of ancestor-worship. But this is to derive the
    greater from the less. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 358—“I can find no
    trace of ancestor-worship in the earliest literature of Babylonia
    which has survived to us”—this seems fatal to Huxley’s and Allen’s
    view that the idea of God is derived from man’s prior belief in
    spirits of the dead. C. M. Tyler, in Am. Jour. Theo., Jan.
    1899:144—“It seems impossible to deify a dead man, unless there is
    embryonic in primitive consciousness a prior concept of Deity.”

    Renouf, Religion of Ancient Egypt, 93—“The whole mythology of
    Egypt ... turns on the histories of Ra and Osiris.... Texts are
    discovered which identify Osiris and Ra.... Other texts are known
    wherein Ra, Osiris, Amon, and all other gods disappear, except as
    simple _names_, and the unity of God is asserted in the noblest
    language of monotheistic religion.” These facts are earlier than
    any known ancestor-worship. “They point to an original idea of
    divinity above humanity” (see Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 317). We
    must add the idea of the superhuman, before we can turn any
    animism or ancestor-worship into a religion. This superhuman
    element was suggested to early man by all he saw of nature about
    him, especially by the sight of the heavens above, and by what he
    knew of causality within. For the evidence of a universal
    recognition of a superior power, see Flint, Anti-theistic
    Theories, 250-289, 522-533; Renouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879:100;
    Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:132-157; Peschel, Races of Men, 261; Ulrici,
    Leib und Seele, 688, and Gott und die Natur, 658-670, 758; Tylor,
    Primitive Culture, 1:377, 381, 418; Alexander, Evidences of
    Christianity, 22; Calderwood, Philosophy of the Infinite, 512;
    Liddon, Elements of Religion, 50; Methodist Quar. Rev., Jan.
    1875:1; J. F. Clark, Ten Great Religions, 2:17-21.


2. Its necessity.


That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the second criterion of
necessity_, will be seen by considering:

A. That men, under circumstances fitted to call forth this knowledge,
cannot avoid recognizing the existence of God. In contemplating finite
existence, there is inevitably suggested the idea of an infinite Being as
its correlative. Upon occasion of the mind’s perceiving its own
finiteness, dependence, responsibility, it immediately and necessarily
perceives the existence of an infinite and unconditioned Being upon whom
it is dependent and to whom it is responsible.


    We could not recognize the finite as finite, except by comparing
    it with an already existing standard—the Infinite. Mansel, Limits
    of Religious Thought, lect. 3—“We are compelled by the
    constitution of our minds to believe in the existence of an
    Absolute and Infinite Being—a belief which appears forced upon us
    as the complement of our consciousness of the relative and
    finite.” Fisher, Journ. Chr. Philos., Jan. 1883:113—“Ego and
    non-ego, each being conditioned by the other, presuppose
    unconditioned being on which both are dependent. Unconditioned
    being is the silent presupposition of all our knowing.” Perceived
    dependent being implies an independent; independent being is
    perfectly self-determining; self-determination is personality;
    perfect self-determination is infinite Personality. John Watson,
    in Philos. Rev., Sept. 1893:526—“There is no consciousness of self
    apart from the consciousness of other selves and things; and no
    consciousness of the world apart from the consciousness of the
    single Reality presupposed in both.” E. Caird, Evolution of
    Religion, 64-68—In every act of consciousness the primary elements
    are implied: “the idea of the object, or not-self; the idea of the
    subject, or self; and the idea of the unity which is presupposed
    in the difference of the self and not-self, and within which they
    act and react on each other.” See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite,
    46, and Moral Philos., 77; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 283-285;
    Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:211.


B. That men, in virtue of their humanity, have a capacity for religion.
This recognized capacity for religion is proof that the idea of God is a
necessary one. If the mind upon proper occasion did not evolve this idea,
there would be nothing in man to which religion could appeal.


    “It is the suggestion of the Infinite that makes the line of the
    far horizon, seen over land or sea, so much more impressive than
    the beauties of any limited landscape.” In times of sudden shock
    and danger, this rational intuition becomes a presentative
    intuition,—men become more conscious of God’s existence than of
    the existence of their fellow-men and they instinctively cry to
    God for help. In the commands and reproaches of the moral nature
    the soul recognizes a Lawgiver and Judge whose voice conscience
    merely echoes. Aristotle called man “a political animal”; it is
    still more true, as Sabatier declares, that “man is incurably
    religious.” St. Bernard: “Noverim me, noverim te.” O. P. Gifford:
    “As milk, from which under proper conditions cream does not rise,
    is not milk, so the man, who upon proper occasion shows no
    knowledge of God, is not man, but brute.” We must not however
    expect cream from frozen milk. Proper environment and conditions
    are needed.

    It is the recognition of a divine Personality in nature which
    constitutes the greatest merit and charm of Wordsworth’s poetry.
    In his Tintern Abbey, he speaks of “A presence that disturbs me
    with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something
    far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting
    suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky and
    in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking
    things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.”
    Robert Browning sees God in humanity, as Wordsworth sees God in
    nature. In his Hohenstiel-Schwangau he writes: “This is the glory,
    that in all conceived Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind—Not
    mine, but like mine—for the double joy Making all things for me,
    and me for Him.” John Ruskin held that the foundation of beauty in
    the world is the presence of God in it. In his youth he tells us
    that he had “a continual perception of sanctity in the whole of
    nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest—an instinctive awe
    mixed with delight, an indefinable thrill such as we sometimes
    imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied spirit.” But it
    was not a disembodied, but an embodied, Spirit that he saw.
    Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, § 7—“Unless education and culture
    were preceded by an innate consciousness of God as an operative
    predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture
    to work upon.” On Wordsworth’s recognition of a divine personality
    in nature, see Knight, Studies, 282-317, 405-426; Hutton, Essays,
    2:113.


C. That he who denies God’s existence must tacitly assume that existence
in his very argument, by employing logical processes whose validity rests
upon the fact of God’s existence. The full proof of this belongs under the
next head.


    “I am an atheist, God knows”—was the absurd beginning of an
    argument to disprove the divine existence. Cutler, Beginnings of
    Ethics, 22—“Even the Nihilists, whose first principle is that God
    and duty are great bugbears to be abolished, assume that God and
    duty exist, and they are impelled by a sense of duty to abolish
    them.” Mrs. Browning, The Cry of the Human: “ ‘There is no God,’
    the foolish saith; But none, ‘There is no sorrow’; And nature oft
    the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the
    preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised; And lips
    say, ‘God be pitiful,’ Who ne’er said, ‘God be praised.’ ” Dr. W.
    W. Keen, when called to treat an Irishman’s aphasia, said: “Well,
    Dennis, how are you?” “Oh, doctor, I cannot spake!” “But, Dennis,
    you _are_ speaking.” “Oh, doctor, it’s many a word I cannot
    spake!” “Well, Dennis, now I will try you. See if you cannot say,
    ‘Horse.’ ” “Oh, doctor dear, ‘horse’ is the very word I cannot
    spake!” On this whole section, see A. M. Fairbairn, Origin and
    Development of the Idea of God, in Studies in Philos. of Relig.
    and History; Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 45; Bishop
    Temple, Bampton Lectures, 1884:37-65.


3. Its logical independence and priority.


That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the third criterion of
logical independence and priority_, may be shown as follows:

A. It is presupposed in all other knowledge as its logical condition and
foundation. The validity of the simplest mental acts, such as
sense-perception, self-consciousness, and memory, depends upon the
assumption that a God exists who has so constituted our minds that they
give us knowledge of things as they are.


    Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88—“The ground of science and
    of cognition generally is to be found neither in the subject nor
    in the object _per se_, but only in the divine thinking that
    combines the two, which, as the common ground of the forms of
    thinking in all finite minds, and of the forms of being in all
    things, makes possible the correspondence or agreement between the
    former and the latter, or in a word makes knowledge of truth
    possible.” 91—“Religious belief is presupposed in all scientific
    knowledge as the basis of its possibility.” This is the thought of
    _Psalm 36:10—_“In thy light shall we see light.” A. J. Balfour,
    Foundations of Belief, 303—“The uniformity of nature cannot be
    proved from experience, for it is what makes proof from experience
    possible.... Assume it, and we shall find that facts conform to
    it.... 309—The uniformity of nature can be established only by the
    aid of that principle itself, and is necessarily involved in all
    attempts to prove it.... There must be a God, to justify our
    confidence in innate ideas.”

    Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 276—“Reflection shows that
    the community of individual intelligences is possible only through
    an all-embracing Intelligence, the source and creator of finite
    minds.” Science rests upon the postulate of a world-order. Huxley:
    “The object of science is the discovery of the rational order
    which pervades the universe.” This rational order presupposes a
    rational Author. Dubois, in New Englander, Nov. 1890:468—“We
    assume uniformity and continuity, or we can have no science. An
    intelligent Creative Will is a genuine scientific hypothesis
    [postulate?], suggested by analogy and confirmed by experience,
    not contradicting the fundamental law of uniformity but accounting
    for it.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 18—“That nature is a system,
    is the assumption underlying the earliest mythologies: to fill up
    this conception is the aim of the latest science.” Royce, Relig.
    Aspect of Philosophy, 435—“There is such a thing as error; but
    error is inconceivable unless there be such a thing as truth; and
    truth is inconceivable unless there be a seat of truth, an
    infinite all-including Thought or Mind; therefore such a Mind
    exists.”


B. The more complex processes of the mind, such as induction and
deduction, can be relied on only by presupposing a thinking Deity who has
made the various parts of the universe and the various aspects of truth to
correspond to each other and to the investigating faculties of man.


    We argue from one apple to the others on the tree. Newton argued
    from the fall of an apple to gravitation in the moon and
    throughout the solar system. Rowland argued from the chemistry of
    our world to that of Sirius. In all such argument there is assumed
    a unifying thought and a thinking Deity. This is Tyndall’s
    “scientific use of the imagination.” “Nourished,” he says, “by
    knowledge partially won, and bounded by coöperant reason,
    imagination is the mightiest instrument of the physical
    discoverer.” What Tyndall calls “imagination”, is really insight
    into the thoughts of God, the great Thinker. It prepares the way
    for logical reasoning,—it is not the product of mere reasoning.
    For this reason Goethe called imagination “die Vorschule des
    Denkens,” or “thought’s preparatory school.”

    Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 23—“Induction is
    syllogism, with the immutable attributes of God for a constant
    term.” Porter, Hum. Intellect, 492—“Induction rests upon the
    assumption, as it demands for its ground, that a personal or
    thinking Deity exists”; 658—“It has no meaning or validity unless
    we assume that the universe is constituted in such a way as to
    presuppose an absolute and unconditioned originator of its forces
    and laws”; 662—“We analyze the several processes of knowledge into
    their underlying assumptions, and we find that the assumption
    which underlies them all is that of a self-existent Intelligence
    who not only can be known by man, but must be known by man in
    order that man may know anything besides”; see also pages 486,
    508, 509, 518, 519, 585, 616. Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism,
    81—“The processes of reflective thought imply that the universe is
    grounded in, and is the manifestation of, reason”; 560—“The
    existence of a personal God is a necessary datum of scientific
    knowledge.” So also, Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of
    Christianity, 564, and in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:129,
    130.


C. Our primitive belief in final cause, or, in other words, our conviction
that all things have their ends, that design pervades the universe,
involves a belief in God’s existence. In assuming that there is a
universe, that the universe is a rational whole, a system of
thought-relations, we assume the existence of an absolute Thinker, of
whose thought the universe is an expression.


    Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:81—“The real can only be
    thinkable if it is realized thought, a thought previously thought,
    which our thinking has only to think again. Therefore the real, in
    order to be thinkable for us, must be the realized thought of the
    creative thinking of an eternal divine Reason which is presented
    to our cognitive thinking.” Royce, World and Individual,
    2:41—“Universal teleology constitutes the essence of all facts.”
    A. H. Bradford, The Age of Faith, 142—“Suffering and sorrow are
    universal. Either God could prevent them and would not, and
    therefore he is neither beneficent nor loving; or else he cannot
    prevent them and therefore something is greater than God, and
    therefore there is no God? But here is the use of reason in the
    individual reasoning. Reasoning in the individual necessitates the
    absolute or universal reason. If there is the absolute reason,
    then the universe and history are ordered and administered in
    harmony with reason; then suffering and sorrow can be neither
    meaningless nor final, since that would be the contradiction of
    reason. That cannot be possible in the universal and absolute
    which contradicts reason in man.”


D. Our primitive belief in moral obligation, or, in other words, our
conviction that right has universal authority, involves the belief in
God’s existence. In assuming that the universe is a moral whole, we assume
the existence of an absolute Will, of whose righteousness the universe is
an expression.


    Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88—“The ground of moral
    obligation is found neither in the subject nor in society, but
    only in the universal or divine Will that combines both....
    103—The idea of God is the unity of the true and the good, or of
    the two highest ideas which our reason thinks as theoretical
    reason, but demands as practical reason.... In the idea of God we
    find the only synthesis of the world that _is_—the world of
    science, and of the world that _ought to be_—the world of
    religion.” Seth, Ethical Principles, 425—“This is not a
    mathematical demonstration. Philosophy never is an exact science.
    Rather is it offered as the only sufficient foundation of the
    moral life.... The life of goodness ... is a life based on the
    conviction that its source and its issues are in the Eternal and
    the Infinite.” As finite truth and goodness are comprehensible
    only in the light of some absolute principle which furnishes for
    them an ideal standard, so finite beauty is inexplicable except as
    there exists a perfect standard with which it may be compared. The
    beautiful is more than the agreeable or the useful. Proportion,
    order, harmony, unity in diversity—all these are characteristics
    of beauty. But they all imply an intellectual and spiritual Being,
    from whom they proceed and by whom they can be measured. Both
    physical and moral beauty, in finite things and beings, are
    symbols and manifestations of Him who is the author and lover of
    beauty, and who is himself the infinite and absolute Beauty. The
    beautiful in nature and in art shows that the idea of God’s
    existence is logically independent and prior. See Cousin, The
    True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 140-153; Kant, Metaphysic of
    Ethics, who holds that belief in God is the necessary
    presupposition of the belief in duty.


To repeat these four points in another form—the intuition of an Absolute
Reason is (_a_) the necessary presupposition of all other knowledge, so
that we cannot know anything else to exist except by assuming first of all
that God exists; (_b_) the necessary basis of all logical thought, so that
we cannot put confidence in any one of our reasoning processes except by
taking for granted that a thinking Deity has constructed our minds with
reference to the universe and to truth; (_c_) the necessary implication of
our primitive belief in design, so that we can assume all things to exist
for a purpose, only by making the prior assumption that a purposing God
exists—can regard the universe as a thought, only by postulating the
existence of an absolute Thinker; and (_d_) the necessary foundation of
our conviction of moral obligation, so that we can believe in the
universal authority of right, only by assuming that there exists a God of
righteousness who reveals his will both in the individual conscience and
in the moral universe at large. We cannot _prove_ that God is; but we can
show that, in order to show the existence of any knowledge, thought,
reason, conscience, in man, man must _assume_ that God is.


    As Jacobi said of the beautiful: “Es kann gewiesen aber nicht
    bewiesen werden”—it can be shown, but not proved. Bowne,
    Metaphysics, 472—“Our objective knowledge of the finite must rest
    upon ethical trust in the infinite”; 480—“Theism is the absolute
    postulate of all knowledge, science and philosophy”; “God is the
    most certain fact of objective knowledge.” Ladd, Bib. Sac., Oct.
    1877:611-616—“Cogito, ergo Deus est. We are obliged to postulate a
    not-ourselves which makes for rationality, as well as for
    righteousness.” W. T. Harris: “Even natural science is impossible,
    where philosophy has not yet taught that reason made the world,
    and that nature is a revelation of the rational.” Whately, Logic,
    270; New Englander, Oct. 1871, art. on Grounds of Confidence in
    Inductive Reasoning; Bib. Sac., 7:415-425; Dorner, Glaubenslehre,
    1:197; Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, ch. “Zweck”;
    Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, 540-626; Lachelier, Du Fondement de
    l’Induction, 78. _Per contra_, see Janet, Final Causes, 174, note,
    and 457-464, who holds final cause to be, not an intuition, but
    the result of applying the principle of causality to cases which
    mechanical laws alone will not explain.

    Pascal: “Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and Reason confounds the
    Dogmatist. We have an incapacity of demonstration, which the
    former cannot overcome; we have a conception of truth which the
    latter cannot disturb.” “There is no Unbelief! Whoever says.
    ‘To-morrow,’ ‘The Unknown,’ ‘The Future,’ trusts that Power alone.
    Nor dares disown.” Jones, Robert Browning, 314—“We cannot indeed
    prove God as the conclusion of a syllogism, for he is the primary
    hypothesis of all proof.” Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau:
    “I know that he is there, as I am here, By the same proof, which
    seems no proof at all, It so exceeds familiar forms of proof”;
    Paracelsus, 27—“To know Rather consists in opening out a way
    Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape Than in effecting
    entrance for a light Supposed to be without.” Tennyson, Holy
    Grail: “Let visions of the night or day Come as they will, and
    many a time they come.... In moments when he feels he cannot die,
    And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision,
    nor that One Who rose again”; The Ancient Sage, 548—“Thou canst
    not prove the Nameless, O my son! Nor canst thou prove the world
    thou movest in. Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor
    canst Thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove
    that thou art both in one. Thou canst not prove that thou art
    immortal, no, Nor yet that thou art mortal. Nay, my son, thou
    canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in
    converse with thyself. For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
    Nor yet disproven: Wherefore be thou wise, Cleave ever to the
    sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of
    Faith.”



III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God’s Existence.


Our proof that the idea of God’s existence is a rational intuition will
not be complete, until we show that attempts to account in other ways for
the origin of the idea are insufficient, and require as their
presupposition the very intuition which they would supplant or reduce to a
secondary place. We claim that it cannot be derived from any other source
than an original cognitive power of the mind.

1. Not from external revelation,—whether communicated (_a_) through the
Scriptures, or (_b_)through tradition; for, unless man had from another
source a previous knowledge of the existence of a God from whom such a
revelation might come, the revelation itself could have no authority for
him.


    (_a_) See Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 10; Ebrard,
    Dogmatik, 1:117; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“A
    revelation takes for granted that he to whom it is made has some
    knowledge of God, though it may enlarge and purify that
    knowledge.” We cannot prove God from the authority of the
    Scriptures, and then also prove the Scriptures from the authority
    of God. The very idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes
    belief in a God who can make it. Newman Smyth, in New Englander,
    1878:355—We cannot derive from a sun-dial our knowledge of the
    existence of a sun. The sun-dial presupposes the sun, and cannot
    be understood without previous knowledge of the sun. Wuttke,
    Christian Ethics, 2:103—“The voice of the divine ego does not
    first come to the consciousness of the individual ego from
    without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already
    this inner one; there must echo out from within man something
    kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized
    and accepted as divine.”

    Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 21, 22—“If man
    is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he
    must have what Schelling happily termed ‘an original atheism of
    consciousness.’ Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the
    nature of man,—it must be implanted from without.” Schurman,
    Belief in God, 78—“A primitive revelation of God could only mean
    that God had endowed man with the capacity of apprehending his
    divine original. This capacity, like every other, is innate, and
    like every other, it realizes itself only in the presence of
    appropriate conditions.” Clarke, Christian Theology,
    112—“Revelation cannot demonstrate God’s existence, for it must
    assume it; but it will manifest his existence and character to
    men, and will serve them as the chief source of certainty
    concerning him, for it will teach them what they could not know by
    other means.”

    (b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for
    “tradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated”
    (Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a
    primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies—that
    very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and
    presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of
    a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge
    thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the
    reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally
    from reasoning—an explanation which we consider further on. On the
    traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker,
    Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86-96; Fairbairn, Studies in
    Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics,
    453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos.,
    312-322.

    Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of
    man’s belief in God: “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor”;
    Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is
    a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused
    the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible?
    What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships,
    merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to
    say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it.
    There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external
    things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never
    impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature
    a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his
    representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of
    reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact
    that belief in God’s existence gets a wider hold upon the race
    with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused
    belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear;
    indeed, “the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom”_ (Ps.
    111:10)_.


2. Not from experience,—whether this mean (_a_) the sense-perception and
reflection of the individual (Locke), (_b_) the accumulated results of the
sensations and associations of past generations of the race (Herbert
Spencer), or (_c_) the actual contact of our sensitive nature with God,
the supersensible reality, through the religious feeling (Newman Smyth).

The first form of this theory is inconsistent with the fact that the idea
of God is not the idea of a sensible or material object, nor a combination
of such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are direct opposites of
the material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our
idea of the former.


    With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the
    passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke’s
    “tabula rasa” theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas
    for their cause. To his statement: “Nihil est in intellectu nisi
    quod ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz replied: “Nisi intellectus
    ipse.” Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our
    knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying
    knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source
    of any other knowledge. The German _Gottesbewusstsein_ = not
    “consciousness of God,” but “knowledge of God”; _Bewusstsein_ here
    = not a “conknowing,” but a “beknowing”; see Porter, Human
    Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.

    Fraser, Locke, 143-147—Sensations are the bricks, and association
    the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and
    Knowledge, 47—“Develope language by allowing sounds to associate
    and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel
    of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of
    sensation....52—One who does not know how to read would look in
    vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to
    help his failure by using strong spectacles.” Yet even if the idea
    of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in
    rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy,
    132—“There is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge
    to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason;
    between those who attribute the development of the germ to
    mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent
    potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature
    was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that
    everything in nature is immediately intended rather than
    predetermined.” All these may be methods of the immanent God.


The second form of the theory is open to the objection that the very first
experience of the first man, equally with man’s latest experience,
presupposes this intuition, as well as the other intuitions, and therefore
cannot be the cause of it. Moreover, even though this theory of its origin
were correct, it would still be impossible to think of the object of the
intuition as not existing, and the intuition would still represent to us
the highest measure of certitude at present attainable by man. If the
evolution of ideas is toward truth instead of falsehood, it is the part of
wisdom to act upon the hypothesis that our primitive belief is veracious.


    Martineau, Study, 2:26—“Nature is as worthy of trust in her
    processes, as in her gifts.” Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163,
    164—“Are we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in
    the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can
    indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great
    doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy
    cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances
    of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all
    truth must be declared impossible.” See also Harris, Philos. Basis
    Theism, 137-142.

    Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death,
    referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: “Can we
    trust to the convictions of a monkey’s mind?” We may reply: “Can
    we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?” Bowne,
    Ethics, 3—“The genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its
    validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot
    be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical
    value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in
    astrology.... 11—Even if man came from the ape, we need not
    tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the
    Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got
    it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any
    psychological theory.... 159—We must not appeal to savages and
    babies to find what is natural to the human mind.... In the case
    of anything that is under the law of development we can find its
    true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by
    studying the finished outcome.” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution,
    13—“If the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we
    trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science
    and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere
    chance and unreason?” Even though man came from the ape, there is
    no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: “A man ’s a man
    for a’ that.”

    We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It
    matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how
    imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us
    correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the
    intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us
    knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that
    evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes,
    Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the
    polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth,
    Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more
    truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals
    from the artist’s sense of beauty to the child’s. Higher
    mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only
    by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was
    _first_ felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once
    descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things....
    A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior
    grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his
    higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to
    him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this
    highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.

    Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245—“Evolution simply gave man such
    _height_ that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth
    which had previously been below the horizon. This is very
    different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted
    products of the experiences of utility.... The germ of the idea of
    God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon
    as he became man,—the brute’s gaining it turned him into man.
    Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of
    experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns
    the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.” Sir Charles
    Lyell: “The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though
    liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The
    religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It
    existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before
    advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is
    to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was
    before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great
    truth.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine:
    “Securus judicat orbis terrarum,” and tells us that the intellect
    is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may
    have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is
    the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103—“To
    Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural
    history, and force is supreme. To Christianity nature is only the
    beginning, and man the consummation. Which gives the higher
    revelation of the life of the tree—the seed, or the fruit?”


The third form of the theory seems to make God a sensuous object, to
reverse the proper order of knowing and feeling, to ignore the fact that
in all feeling there is at least some knowledge of an object, and to
forget that the validity of this very feeling can be maintained only by
previously assuming the existence of a rational Deity.


    Newman Smyth tells us that feeling comes first; the idea is
    secondary. Intuitive ideas are not denied, but they are declared
    to be direct reflections, in thought, of the feelings. They are
    the mind’s immediate perception of what it feels to exist. Direct
    knowledge of God by intuition is considered to be idealistic,
    reaching God by inference is regarded as rationalistic, in its
    tendency. See Smyth, The Religious Feeling; reviewed by Harris, in
    New Englander, Jan., 1878: reply by Smyth, in New Englander, May,
    1878.

    We grant that, even in the case of unregenerate men, great peril,
    great joy, great sin often turn the rational intuition of God into
    a presentative intuition. The presentative intuition, however,
    cannot be affirmed to be common to all men. It does not furnish
    the foundation or explanation of a universal capacity for
    religion. Without the rational intuition, the presentative would
    not be possible, since it is only the rational that enables man to
    receive and to interpret the presentative. The very trust that we
    put in feeling presupposes an intuitive belief in a true and good
    God. Tennyson said in 1869: “Yes, it is true that there are
    moments when the flesh is nothing to me; when I know and feel the
    flesh to be the vision; God and the spiritual is the real; it
    belongs to me more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me
    that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my
    existence,—I could believe you; but you never, never can convince
    me that the _I_ is not an eternal Reality, and that the spiritual
    is not the real and true part of me.”


3. Not from reasoning,—because

(_a_) The actual rise of this knowledge in the great majority of minds is
not the result of any conscious process of reasoning. On the other hand,
upon occurrence of the proper conditions, it flashes upon the soul with
the quickness and force of an immediate revelation.

(_b_) The strength of men’s faith in God’s existence is not proportioned
to the strength of the reasoning faculty. On the other hand, men of
greatest logical power are often inveterate sceptics, while men of
unwavering faith are found among those who cannot even understand the
arguments for God’s existence.

(_c_) There is more in this knowledge than reasoning could ever have
furnished. Men do not limit their belief in God to the just conclusions of
argument. The arguments for the divine existence, valuable as they are for
purposes to be shown hereafter, are not sufficient by themselves to
warrant our conviction that there exists an infinite and absolute Being.
It will appear upon examination that the _a priori_ argument is capable of
proving only an abstract and ideal proposition, but can never conduct us
to the existence of a real Being. It will appear that the _a posteriori_
arguments, from merely finite existence, can never demonstrate the
existence of the infinite. In the words of Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions,
23)—“A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically
absurd, as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is
not distributed in the premises”—in short, from finite premises we cannot
draw an infinite conclusion.


    Whately, Logic, 290-292; Jevons, Lessons in Logic, 81; Thompson,
    Outline Laws of Thought, sections 82-92; Calderwood, Philos. of
    Infinite, 60-69, and Moral Philosophy, 238; Turnbull, in Bap.
    Quarterly, July, 1872:271; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 239; Dove,
    Logic of Christian Faith, 21. Sir Wm. Hamilton: “Departing from
    the particular, we admit that we cannot, in our highest
    generalizations, rise above the finite.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The
    human mind turns out larger grists than are ever put in at the
    hopper.” There is more in the idea of God than could have come out
    so small a knot-hole as human reasoning. A single word, a chance
    remark, or an attitude of prayer, suggests the idea to a child.
    Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that
    there was a God, but that she had not known his name. Ladd,
    Philosophy of Mind, 119—“It is a foolish assumption that nothing
    can be certainly known unless it be reached as the result of a
    conscious syllogistic process, or that the more complicated and
    subtle this process is, the more sure is the conclusion.
    Inferential knowledge is always dependent upon the superior
    certainty of immediate knowledge.” George M. Duncan, in Memorial
    of Noah Porter, 246—“All deduction rests either on the previous
    process of induction, or on the intuitions of time and space which
    involve the Infinite and Absolute.”


(_d_) Neither do men arrive at the knowledge of God’s existence by
inference; for inference is condensed syllogism, and, as a form of
reasoning, is equally open to the objection just mentioned. We have seen,
moreover, that all logical processes are based upon the assumption of
God’s existence. Evidently that which is presupposed in all reasoning
cannot itself be proved by reasoning.


    By inference, we of course mean mediate inference, for in
    immediate inference (_e. g._, “All good rulers are just; therefore
    no unjust rulers are good”) there is no reasoning, and no progress
    in thought. Mediate inference is reasoning—is condensed syllogism;
    and what is so condensed may be expanded into regular logical
    form. Deductive inference: “A negro is a fellow-creature;
    therefore he who strikes a negro strikes a fellow-creature.”
    Inductive inference: “The first finger is before the second;
    therefore it is before the third.” On inference, see Martineau,
    Essays, 1:105-108; Porter, Human Intellect, 444-448; Jevons,
    Principles of Science, 1:14, 136-139, 168, 262.

    Flint, in his Theism, 77, and Herbert, in his Mod. Realism
    Examined, would reach the knowledge of God’s existence by
    inference. The latter says God is not demonstrable, but his
    existence is inferred, like the existence of our fellow men. But
    we reply that in this last case we infer only the finite from the
    finite, while the difficulty in the case of God is in inferring
    the infinite from the finite. This very process of reasoning,
    moreover, presupposes the existence of God as the absolute Reason,
    in the way already indicated.

    Substantially the same error is committed by H. B. Smith, Introd.
    to Chr. Theol., 84-133, and by Diman, Theistic Argument, 316, 364,
    both of whom grant an intuitive element, but use it only to eke
    out the insufficiency of reasoning. They consider that the
    intuition gives us only an abstract idea, which contains in itself
    no voucher for the existence of an actual being corresponding to
    the idea, and that we reach real being only by inference from the
    facts of our own spiritual natures and of the outward world. But
    we reply, in the words of McCosh, that “the intuitions are
    primarily directed to individual objects.” We know, not the
    infinite in the abstract, but infinite space and time, and the
    infinite God. See McCosh, Intuitions, 26, 199, who, however, holds
    the view here combated.

    Schurman, Belief in God, 43—“I am unable to assign to our belief
    in God a higher certainty than that possessed by the working
    hypotheses of science.... 57—The nearest approach made by science
    to our hypothesis of the existence of God lies in the assertion of
    the universality of law ... based on the conviction of the unity
    and systematic connection of all reality.... 64—This unity can be
    found only in self-conscious spirit.” The fault of this reasoning
    is that it gives us nothing necessary or absolute. Instances of
    working hypotheses are the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the
    law of gravitation, the atomic theory in chemistry, the principle
    of evolution. No one of these is logically independent or prior.
    Each of them is provisional, and each may be superseded by new
    discovery. Not so with the idea of God. This idea is presupposed
    by all the others, as the condition of every mental process and
    the guarantee of its validity.



IV. Contents of this Intuition.


1. In this fundamental knowledge _that_ God is, it is necessarily implied
that to some extent men know intuitively _what_ God is, namely, (_a_) a
Reason in which their mental processes are grounded; (_b_) a Power above
them upon which they are dependent; (_c_) a Perfection which imposes law
upon their moral natures; (_d_) a Personality which they may recognize in
prayer and worship.

In maintaining that we have a rational intuition of God, we by no means
imply that a presentative intuition of God is impossible. Such a
presentative intuition was perhaps characteristic of unfallen man; it does
belong at times to the Christian; it will be the blessing of heaven (Mat.
5:8—“the pure in heart ... shall see God”; Rev. 22:4—“they shall see his
face”). Men’s experiences of face-to-face apprehension of God, in danger
and guilt, give some reason to believe that a presentative knowledge of
God is the normal condition of humanity. But, as this presentative
intuition of God is not in our present state universal, we here claim only
that all men have a rational intuition of God.

It is to be remembered, however, that the loss of love to God has greatly
obscured even this rational intuition, so that the revelation of nature
and the Scriptures is needed to awaken, confirm and enlarge it, and the
special work of the Spirit of Christ to make it the knowledge of
friendship and communion. Thus from knowing about God, we come to know God
(John 17:3—“This is life eternal, that they should know thee”; 2 Tim.
1:12—“I know him whom I have believed”).


    Plato said, for substance, that there can be no ὅτι οἶδεν without
    something of the ἁ οἶδεν. Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism,
    208—“By rational intuition man knows that absolute Being _exists_;
    his knowledge of _what_ it is, is progressive with his progressive
    knowledge of man and of nature.” Hutton, Essays: “A haunting
    presence besets man behind and before. He cannot evade it. It
    gives new meanings to his thoughts, new terror to his sins. It
    becomes intolerable. He is moved to set up some idol, carved out
    of his own nature, that will take its place—a non-moral God who
    will not disturb his dream of rest. It is a righteous Life and
    Will, and not the mere _idea_ of righteousness that stirs men so.”
    Porter, Hum. Int., 661—“The Absolute is a thinking Agent.” The
    intuition does not grow in certainty; what grows is the mind’s
    quickness in applying it and power of expressing it. The intuition
    is not complex; what is complex is the Being intuitively cognized.
    See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 232; Lowndes, Philos. of Primary
    Beliefs, 108-112; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 157—Latent faculty of
    speech is called forth by speech of others; the choked-up well
    flows again when debris is cleared away. Bowen, in Bib. Sac.,
    33:740-754; Bowne, Theism, 79.

    Knowledge of a person is turned into personal knowledge by actual
    communication or revelation. First, comes the intuitive knowledge
    of God possessed by all men—the assumption that there exists a
    Reason, Power, Perfection, Personality, that makes correct
    thinking and acting possible. Secondly, comes the knowledge of
    God’s being and attributes which nature and Scripture furnish.
    Thirdly, comes the personal and presentative knowledge derived
    from actual reconciliation and intercourse with God, through
    Christ and the Holy Spirit. Stearns, Evidence of Christian
    Experience, 208—“Christian experience verifies the claims of
    doctrine by experiment,—so transforming probable knowledge into
    real knowledge.” Biedermann, quoted by Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
    18—“God reveals himself to the human spirit, 1. as its infinite
    _Ground_, in the reason; 2. as its infinite _Norm_, in the
    conscience; 3. as its infinite _Strength_, in elevation to
    religious truth, blessedness, and freedom.”

    Shall I object to this Christian experience, because only
    comparatively few have it, and I am not among the number? Because
    I have not seen the moons of Jupiter, shall I doubt the testimony
    of the astronomer to their existence? Christian experience, like
    the sight of the moons of Jupiter, is attainable by all. Clarke,
    Christian Theology, 113—“One who will have full proof of the good
    God’s reality must put it to the experimental test. He must take
    the good God for real, and receive the confirmation that will
    follow. When faith reaches out after God, it finds him.... They
    who have found him will be the sanest and truest of their kind,
    and their convictions will be among the safest convictions of
    man.... Those who live in fellowship with the good God will grow
    in goodness, and will give practical evidence of his existence
    aside from their oral testimony.”


2. The Scriptures, therefore, do not attempt to prove the existence of
God, but, on the other hand, both assume and declare that the knowledge
that God is, is universal (Rom. 1:19-21, 28, 32; 2:15). God has inlaid the
evidence of this fundamental truth in the very nature of man, so that
nowhere is he without a witness. The preacher may confidently follow the
example of Scripture by assuming it. But he must also explicitly declare
it, as the Scripture does. “For the invisible things of him since the
creation of the world are clearly seen” (καθορᾶται—spiritually viewed);
the organ given for this purpose is the νοῦς (νοούμενα); but then—and this
forms the transition to our next division of the subject—they are
“perceived through the things that are made” (τοῖς ποιήμασιν, Rom. 1:20).


    On _Rom. 1:19-21_, see Weiss, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 251, note;
    also commentaries of Meyer, Alford, Tholuck, and Wordsworth; τὸ
    γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ = not “that which may be known” (Rev. Vers.) but
    “that which is known” of God; νοούμενα καθορᾶται = are clearly
    seen in that they are perceived by the reason—νοούμενα expresses
    the manner of the καθορᾶται (Meyer); compare _John 1:9_; _Acts
    17:27_; _Rom. 1:28_; _2:15_. On _1 Cor. 15:34_, see Calderwood,
    Philos. of Inf., 466—ἀγνωσίαν Θεοῦ τινὲς ἔχουσι = do not possess
    the specially exalted knowledge of God which belongs to believers
    in Christ (_cf._ _1 Jo. 4:7—_“every one that loveth is begotten of
    God, and knoweth God”). On _Eph. 2:12_, see Pope, Theology,
    1:240—ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ is opposed to being in Christ, and
    signifies rather forsaken of God, than denying him or entirely
    ignorant of him. On Scripture passages, see Schmid, Bib. Theol.
    des N. T., 486; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:62.

    E. G. Robinson: “The first statement of the Bible is, not that
    there is a God, but that ‘In the beginning God created the heavens
    and the earth’_ (Gen. 1:1)_. The belief in God never was and never
    can be the result of logical argument, else the Bible would give
    us proofs.” Many texts relied upon as _proofs_ of God’s existence
    are simply _explications_ of the idea of God, as for example: _Ps.
    94:9, 10—_“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that
    formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the nations,
    shall not he correct, even he that teacheth man knowledge?” Plato
    says that God holds the soul by its roots,—he therefore does not
    need to demonstrate to the soul the fact of his existence.
    Martineau, Seat of Authority, 308, says well that Scripture and
    preaching only interpret what is already in the heart which it
    addresses: “Flinging a warm breath on the inward oracles hid in
    invisible ink, it renders them articulate and dazzling as the
    handwriting on the wall. The divine Seer does not convey to you
    _his_ revelation, but qualifies you to receive _your own_. This
    mutual relation is possible only through the common presence of
    God in the conscience of mankind.” Shedd, Dogmatic Theology,
    1:195-220—“The earth and sky make the same sensible impressions on
    the organs of a brute that they do upon those of a man; but the
    brute never discerns the ‘invisible things’ of God, his ‘eternal
    power and godhood’_ (Rom. 1:20)_.”

    Our subconscious activity, so far as it is normal, is under the
    guidance of the immanent Reason. Sensation, before it results in
    thought, has in it logical elements which are furnished by
    mind—not ours, but that of the Infinite One. Christ, the Revealer
    of God, reveals God in every man’s mental life, and the Holy
    Spirit may be the principle of self-consciousness in man as in
    God. Harris, God the Creator, tells us that “man finds the Reason
    that is eternal and universal revealing itself in the exercise of
    his own reason.” Savage, Life after Death, 268—“How do you know
    that your subliminal consciousness does not tap Omniscience, and
    get at the facts of the universe?” Savage negatives this
    suggestion, however, and wrongly favors the spirit-theory. For his
    own experience, see pages 295-329 of his book.

    C. M. Barrows, in Proceedings of Soc. for Psychical Research, vol.
    12, part 30, pages 34-36—“There is a subliminal agent. What if
    this is simply one intelligent Actor, filling the universe with
    his presence, as the ether fills space; the common Inspirer of all
    mankind, a skilled Musician, presiding over many pipes and keys,
    and playing through each what music he will? The subliminal self
    is a universal fountain of energy, and each man is an outlet of
    the stream. Each man’s personal self is contained in it, and thus
    each man is made one with every other man. In that deep Force, the
    last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all psychical and
    bodily effects find their common origin.” This statement needs to
    be qualified by the assertion of man’s ethical nature and distinct
    personality; see section of this work on Ethical Monism, in
    chapter III. But there is truth here like that which Coleridge
    sought to express in his Æolian Harp: “And what if all of animated
    Nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into
    thought, as o’er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual
    breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all?” See F. W. H.
    Myers, Human Personality.

    Dorner, System of Theology, 1:75—“The consciousness of God is the
    true fastness of our self-consciousness.... Since it is only in
    the God-conscious man that the innermost personality comes to
    light, in like manner, by means of the interweaving of that
    consciousness of God and of the world, the world is viewed in God
    (‘sub specie eternitatis’), and the certainty of the world first
    obtains its absolute security for the spirit.” Royce, Spirit of
    Mod. Philosophy, synopsis in N. Y. Nation: “The one indubitable
    fact is the existence of an infinite self, a Logos or World-mind
    (345). That it exists is clear, I. Because idealism shows that
    real things are nothing more nor less than ideas, or
    ‘possibilities of experience’; but a mere ‘possibility’, as such,
    is nothing, and a world of ‘possible’ experiences, in so far as it
    is real, must be a world of actual experience to some self (367).
    If then there be a real world, it has all the while existed as
    ideal and mental, even before it became known to the particular
    mind with which we conceive it as coming into connection (368).
    II. But there is such a real world; for, when I _think_ of an
    object, when I _mean_ it, I do not merely have in mind an idea
    resembling it, for I aim at the object, I pick it out, I already
    in some measure possess it. The object is then already present in
    essence to my hidden self (370). As truth consists in knowledge of
    the conformity of a cognition to its object, that alone can know a
    truth which includes within itself both idea and object. This
    inclusive Knower is the Infinite Self (374). With this I am in
    essence identical (371); it is my larger self (372); and this
    larger self alone _is_ (379). It includes all reality, and we know
    other finite minds, because we are one with them in its unity”
    (409).

    The experience of George John Romanes is instructive. For years he
    could recognize no personal Intelligence controlling the universe.
    He made four mistakes: 1. _He forgot that only love can see_, that
    God is not disclosed to the mere intellect, but only to the whole
    man, to the integral mind, to what the Scripture calls “the eyes
    of your heart”_ (Eph. 1:18)_. Experience of life taught him at
    last the weakness of mere reasoning, and led him to depend more
    upon the affections and intuitions. Then, as one might say, he
    gave the X-rays of Christianity a chance to photograph God upon
    his soul. 2. _He began at the wrong end_, with matter rather than
    with mind, with cause and effect rather than with right and wrong,
    and so got involved in the mechanical order and tried to interpret
    the moral realm by it. The result was that instead of recognizing
    freedom, responsibility, sin, guilt, he threw them out as
    pretenders. But study of conscience and will set him right. He
    learned to take what be found instead of trying to turn it into
    something else, and so came to interpret nature by spirit, instead
    of interpreting spirit by nature. 3. _He took the Cosmos by bits_,
    instead of regarding it as a whole. His early thinking insisted on
    finding design in each particular part, or nowhere. But his more
    mature thought recognized wisdom and reason in the ordered whole.
    As he realized that this is a universe, he could not get rid of
    the idea of an organizing Mind. He came to see that the Universe,
    as a thought, implies a Thinker. 4. _He fancied that nature
    excludes God_, instead of being only the method of God’s working.
    When he learned how a thing was done, he at first concluded that
    God had not done it. His later thought recognized that God and
    nature are not mutually exclusive. So he came to find no
    difficulty even in miracles and inspiration; for the God who is in
    man and of whose mind and will nature is only the expression, can
    reveal himself, if need be, in special ways. So George John
    Romanes came back to prayer, to Christ, to the church.

    On the general subject of intuition as connected with our idea of
    God, see Ladd, in Bib. Sac., 1877:1-36, 611-616; 1878:619; Fisher,
    on Final Cause and Intuition, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan.
    1883:113-134; Patton, on Genesis of Idea of God, in Jour. Christ.
    Philos., Apl. 1883:283-307; McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,
    124-140; Mansel, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., vol. 14:604 and 615;
    Robert Hall, sermon on Atheism; Hutton, on Atheism, in Essays,
    1:3-37; Shairp, in Princeton Rev., March, 1881:264.




Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God’s Existence.


Although the knowledge of God’s existence is intuitive, it may be
explicated and confirmed by arguments drawn from the actual universe and
from the abstract ideas of the human mind.

Remark 1. These arguments are probable, not demonstrative. For this reason
they supplement each other, and constitute a series of evidences which is
cumulative in its nature. Though, taken singly, none of them can be
considered absolutely decisive, they together furnish a corroboration of
our primitive conviction of God’s existence, which is of great practical
value, and is in itself sufficient to bind the moral action of men.


    Butler, Analogy, Introd., Bohn’s ed., 72—Probable evidence admits
    of degrees, from the highest moral certainty to the lowest
    presumption. Yet probability is the guide of life. In matters of
    morals and religion, we are not to expect mathematical or
    demonstrative, but only probable, evidence, and the slightest
    preponderance of such evidence may be sufficient to bind our moral
    action. The truth of our religion, like the truth of common
    matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence taken together; for
    probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence,
    but multiply it. Dove, Logic of Christ. Faith, 24—Value of the
    arguments taken together is much greater than that of any single
    one. Illustrated from water, air and food, together but not
    separately, supporting life; value of £1000 note, not in paper,
    stamp, writing, signature, taken separately. A whole bundle of
    rods cannot be broken, though each rod in the bundle may be broken
    separately. The strength of the bundle is the strength of the
    whole. Lord Bacon, Essay on Atheism: “A little philosophy
    inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth
    men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh
    upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go
    no further, but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate
    and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
    Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 221-223—“The proof of a God and
    of a spiritual world which is to satisfy us must consist in a
    number of different but converging lines of proof.”

    In a case where only circumstantial evidence is attainable, many
    lines of proof sometimes converge, and though no one of the lines
    reaches the mark, the conclusion to which they all point becomes
    the only rational one. To doubt that there is a London, or that
    there was a Napoleon, would indicate insanity; yet London and
    Napoleon are proved by only probable evidence. There is no
    constraining efficacy in the arguments for God’s existence; but
    the same can be said of all reasoning that is not demonstrative.
    Another interpretation of the facts is _possible_, but no other
    conclusion is so _satisfactory_, as that God is; see Fisher,
    Nature and Method of Revelation, 129. Prof. Rogers: “If in
    practical affairs we were to hesitate to act until we had absolute
    and demonstrative certainty, we should never begin to move at
    all.” For this reason an old Indian official advised a young
    Indian judge “always to give his verdict, but always to avoid
    giving the grounds of it.”

    Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 11-14—“Instead of doubting everything
    that can be doubted, let us rather doubt nothing until we are
    compelled to doubt.... In society we get on better by assuming
    that men are truthful, and by doubting only for special reasons,
    than we should if we assumed that all men are liars, and believed
    them only when compelled. So in all our investigations we make
    more progress if we assume the truthfulness of the universe and of
    our own nature than we should if we doubted both.... The first
    method seems the more rigorous, but it can be applied only to
    mathematics, which is a purely subjective science. When we come to
    deal with reality, the method brings thought to a standstill....
    The law the logician lays down is this: Nothing may be believed
    which is not proved. The law the mind actually follows is this:
    Whatever the mind demands for the satisfaction of its subjective
    interests and tendencies may be assumed as real, in default of
    positive disproof.”


Remark 2. A consideration of these arguments may also serve to explicate
the contents of an intuition which has remained obscure and only half
conscious for lack of reflection. The arguments, indeed, are the efforts
of the mind that already has a conviction of God’s existence to give to
itself a formal account of its belief. An exact estimate of their logical
value and of their relation to the intuition which they seek to express in
syllogistic form, is essential to any proper refutation of the prevalent
atheistic and pantheistic reasoning.


    Diman, Theistic Argument, 363—“Nor have I claimed that the
    existence, even, of this Being can be demonstrated as we
    demonstrate the abstract truths of science. I have only claimed
    that the universe, as a great fact, demands a rational
    explanation, and that the most rational explanation that can
    possibly be given is that furnished in the conception of such a
    Being. In this conclusion reason rests, and refuses to rest in any
    other.” Rückert: “Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen
    Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet ihr nicht ihn beweisen mit Beweisen.”
    Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 307—“Theology depends on noetic
    and empirical science to give the occasion on which the idea of
    the Absolute Being arises, and to give content to the idea.”
    Andrew Fuller, Part of Syst. of Divin., 4:283, questions “whether
    argumentation in favor of the existence of God has not made more
    sceptics than believers.” So far as this is true, it is due to an
    overstatement of the arguments and an exaggerated notion of what
    is to be expected from them. See Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine,
    translation, 140; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:119, 120; Fisher, Essays on
    Supernatural Origin of Christianity, 572, 573; Van Oosterzee, 238,
    241.

    “Evidences of Christianity?” said Coleridge, “I am weary of the
    word.” The more Christianity was _proved_, the less it was
    _believed_. The revival of religion under Whitefield and Wesley
    did what all the apologists of the eighteenth century could not
    do,—it quickened men’s intuitions into life, and made them
    practically recognize God. Martineau, Types, 2:231—Men can “bow
    the knee to the passing _Zeitgeist_, while turning the back to the
    consensus of all the ages”; Seat of Authority, 312—“Our reasonings
    lead to explicit Theism because they start from implicit Theism.”
    Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, 81—“The proofs are ...
    attempts to account for and explain and justify something that
    already exists; to decompose a highly complex though immediate
    judgment into its constituent elements, none of which when
    isolated can have the completeness or the cogency of the original
    conviction taken as a whole.”

    Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 31, 32—“Demonstration is only a
    makeshift for helping ignorance to insight.... When we come to an
    argument in which the whole nature is addressed, the argument must
    seem weak or strong, according as the nature is feebly, or fully,
    developed. The moral argument for theism cannot seem strong to one
    without a conscience. The argument from cognitive interests will
    be empty when there is no cognitive interest. Little souls find
    very little that calls for explanation or that excites surprise,
    and they are satisfied with a correspondingly small view of life
    and existence. In such a case we cannot hope for universal
    agreement. We can only proclaim the faith that is in us, in hope
    that this proclamation may not be without some response in other
    minds and hearts.... We have only probable evidence for the
    uniformity of nature or for the affection of friends. We cannot
    logically prove either. The deepest convictions are not the
    certainties of logic, but the certainties of life.”


Remark 3. The arguments for the divine existence may be reduced to four,
namely: I. The Cosmological; II. The Teleological; III. The
Anthropological; and IV. The Ontological. We shall examine these in order,
seeking first to determine the precise conclusions to which they
respectively lead, and then to ascertain in what manner the four may be
combined.



I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.


This is not properly an argument from effect to cause; for the proposition
that every effect must have a cause is simply identical, and means only
that every caused event must have a cause. It is rather an argument from
begun existence to a sufficient cause of that beginning, and may be
accurately stated as follows:

Everything begun, whether substance or phenomenon, owes its existence to
some producing cause. The universe, at least so far as its present form is
concerned, is a thing begun, and owes its existence to a cause which is
equal to its production. This cause must be indefinitely great.


    It is to be noticed that this argument moves wholly in the realm
    of nature. The argument from man’s constitution and beginning upon
    the planet is treated under another head (see Anthropological
    Argument). That the present form of the universe is not eternal in
    the past, but has begun to be, not only personal observation but
    the testimony of geology assures us. For statements of the
    argument, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn’s transl.), 370;
    Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 8:34-44; Bib. Sac.,
    1849:613; 1850:613; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 570; Herbert Spencer,
    First Principles, 93. It has often been claimed, as by Locke,
    Clarke, and Robert Hall, that this argument is sufficient to
    conduct the mind to an Eternal and Infinite First Cause. We
    proceed therefore to mention


1. _The defects of the Cosmological Argument._

A. It is impossible to show that the universe, so far as its substance is
concerned, has had a beginning. The law of causality declares, not that
everything has a cause—for then God himself must have a cause—but rather
that everything begun has a cause, or in other words, that every event or
change has a cause.


    Hume, Philos. Works, 2:411 _sq._, urges with reason that we never
    saw a world made. Many philosophers in Christian lands, as
    Martineau, Essays, 1:206, and the prevailing opinions of
    ante-Christian times, have held matter to be eternal. Bowne,
    Metaphysics, 107—“For being itself, the reflective reason never
    asks a cause, unless the being show signs of dependence. It is
    change that first gives rise to the demand for cause.” Martineau,
    Types, 1:291—“It is not existence, as such, that demands a cause,
    but the coming into existence of what did not exist before. The
    intellectual law of causality is a law for phenomena, and not for
    entity.” See also McCosh, Intuitions, 225-241; Calderwood, Philos.
    of Infinite, 61. _Per contra_, see Murphy, Scient. Bases of Faith,
    49, 195, and Habit and Intelligence, 1:55-67; Knight, Lect. on
    Metaphysics, lect. ii, p. 19.


B. Granting that the universe, so far as its phenomena are concerned, has
had a cause, it is impossible to show that any other cause is required
than a cause within itself, such as the pantheist supposes.


    Flint, Theism, 65—“The cosmological argument alone proves only
    force, and no mere force is God. Intelligence must go with power
    to make a Being that can be called God.” Diman, Theistic Argument:
    “The cosmological argument alone cannot decide whether the force
    that causes change is permanent self-existent mind, or permanent
    self-existent matter.” Only intelligence gives the basis for an
    answer. Only mind in the universe enables us to infer mind in the
    maker. But the argument from intelligence is not the Cosmological,
    but the Teleological, and to this last belong all proofs of Deity
    from order and combination in nature.

    Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 201-296—Science has to do with those
    changes which one portion of the visible universe causes in
    another portion. Philosophy and theology deal with the Infinite
    Cause which brings into existence and sustains the entire series
    of finite causes. Do we ask the cause of the stars? Science says:
    Fire-mist, or an infinite regress of causes. Theology says:
    Granted; but this infinite regress demands for its explanation the
    belief in God. We must believe both in God, and in an endless
    series of finite causes. God is the cause of all causes, the soul
    of all souls: “Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving
    heart how near!” We do not need, as mere matter of science, to
    think of any beginning.


C. Granting that the universe most have had a cause outside of itself, it
is impossible to show that this cause has not itself been caused, _i. e._,
consists of an infinite series of dependent causes. The principle of
causality does not require that everything begun should be traced back to
an uncaused cause; it demands that we should assign a cause, but not that
we should assign a first cause.


    So with the whole series of causes. The materialist is bound to
    find a cause for this series, only when the series is shown to
    have had a beginning. But the very hypothesis of an infinite
    series of causes excludes the idea of such a beginning. An
    infinite chain has no topmost link (_versus_ Robert Hall); an
    uncaused and eternal succession does not need a cause (_versus_
    Clarke and Locke). See Whately, Logic, 270; New Englander, Jan.
    1874:75; Alexander, Moral Science, 221; Pfleiderer, Die Religion,
    1:160-164; Calderwood, Moral Philos., 225; Herbert Spencer, First
    Principles, 37—criticized by Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 36.
    Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:128, says that the causal principle is
    not satisfied till by regress we come to a cause which is not
    itself an effect—to one who is _causa sui_; Aids to Study of
    German Theology, 15-17—Even if the universe be eternal, its
    contingent and relative nature requires us to postulate an eternal
    Creator; Diman, Theistic Argument, 86—“While the law of causation
    does not lead logically up to the conclusion of a first cause, it
    compels us to affirm it.” We reply that it is not the law of
    causation which compels us to affirm it, for this certainly “does
    not lead logically up to the conclusion.” If we infer an uncaused
    cause, we do it, not by logical process, but by virtue of the
    intuitive belief within us. So substantially Secretan, and
    Whewell, in Indications of a Creator, and in Hist. of Scientific
    Ideas, 2:321, 322—“The mind takes refuge, in the assumption of a
    First Cause, from an employment inconsistent with its own nature”;
    “we necessarily infer a First Cause, although the palætiological
    sciences only point toward it, but do not lead us to it.”


D. Granting that the cause of the universe has not itself been caused, it
is impossible to show that this cause is not finite, like the universe
itself. The causal principle requires a cause no greater than just
sufficient to account for the effect.


    We cannot therefore infer an infinite cause, unless the universe
    is infinite—which cannot be proved, but can only be assumed—and
    this is assuming an infinite in order to prove an infinite. All we
    know of the universe is finite. An infinite universe implies
    infinite number. But no number can be infinite, for to any number,
    however great, a unit can be added, which shows that it was not
    infinite before. Here again we see that the most approved forms of
    the Cosmological Argument are obliged to avail themselves of the
    intuition of the infinite, to supplement the logical process.
    _Versus_ Martineau, Study, 1:416—“Though we cannot directly infer
    the infinitude of God from a limited creation, indirectly we may
    exclude every other position by resort to its unlimited scene of
    existence (space).” But this would equally warrant our belief in
    the infinitude of our fellow men. Or, it is the argument of Clarke
    and Gillespie (see Ontological Argument below). Schiller, Die
    Grösse der Welt, seems to hold to a boundless universe. He
    represents a tired spirit as seeking the last limit of creation. A
    second pilgrim meets him from the spaces beyond with the words:
    “Steh! du segelst umsonst,—vor dir Unendlichkeit”—“Hold! thou
    journeyest in vain,—before thee is only Infinity.” On the law of
    parsimony, see Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 628.


2. _The value of the Cosmological Argument_, then, is simply this,—it
proves the existence of some cause of the universe indefinitely great.
When we go beyond this and ask whether this cause is a cause of being, or
merely a cause of change, to the universe; whether it is a cause apart
from the universe, or one with it; whether it is an eternal cause, or a
cause dependent upon some other cause; whether it is intelligent or
unintelligent, infinite or finite, one or many,—this argument cannot
assure us.


    On the whole argument, see Flint, Theism, 93-130; Mozley, Essays,
    Hist. and Theol., 2:414-444; Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 148-154;
    Studien und Kritiken, 1876:9-31.



II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful
Collocation in Nature.


This is not properly an argument from design to a designer; for that
design implies a designer is simply an identical proposition. It may be
more correctly stated as follows: Order and useful collocation pervading a
system respectively imply intelligence and purpose as the cause of that
order and collocation. Since order and useful collocation pervade the
universe, there must exist an intelligence adequate to the production of
this order, and a will adequate to direct this collocation to useful ends.


    Etymologically, “teleological argument” = argument to ends or
    final causes, that is, “causes which, beginning as a thought, work
    themselves out into a fact as an end or result” (Porter, Hum.
    Intellect, 592-618);—health, for example, is the final cause of
    exercise, while exercise is the efficient cause of health. This
    definition of the argument would be broad enough to cover the
    proof of a designing intelligence drawn from the constitution of
    man. This last, however, is treated as a part of the
    Anthropological Argument, which follows this, and the Teleological
    Argument covers only the proof of a designing intelligence drawn
    from nature. Hence Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn’s trans.),
    381, calls it the physico-theological argument. On methods of
    stating the argument, see Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:625. See also
    Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 155-185; Mozley, Essays Hist. and
    Theol., 2:365-413.

    Hicks, in his Critique of Design-Arguments, 347-389, makes two
    arguments instead of one: (1) the argument from _order_ to
    _intelligence_, to which he gives the name Eutaxiological; (2) the
    argument from _adaptation_ to _purpose_, to which he would
    restrict the name Teleological. He holds that teleology proper
    cannot prove _intelligence_, because in speaking of “ends” at all,
    it must assume the very intelligence which it seeks to prove; that
    it actually does prove simply the _intentional exercise_ of an
    intelligence whose existence has been previously established.
    “Circumstances, forces or agencies converging to a definite
    rational result imply volition—imply that this result is
    intended—is an end. This is the major premise of this new
    teleology.” He objects to the term “final cause.” The end is not a
    cause at all—it is a motive. The characteristic element of cause
    is power to produce an effect. Ends have no such power. The will
    may choose them or set them aside. As already assuming
    intelligence, ends cannot prove intelligence.

    With this in the main we agree, and count it a valuable help to
    the statement and understanding of the argument. In the very
    observation of _order_, however, as well as in arguing from it, we
    are obliged to assume the same all-arranging intelligence. We see
    no objection therefore to making Eutaxiology the first part of the
    Teleological Argument, as we do above. See review of Hicks, in
    Meth. Quar. Rev., July, 1883:569-576. We proceed however to
    certain


1. _Further explanations._

A. The major premise expresses a primitive conviction. It is not
invalidated by the objections: (_a_) that order and useful collocation may
exist without being purposed—for we are compelled by our very mental
constitution to deny this in all cases where the order and collocation
pervade a system: (_b_) that order and useful collocation may result from
the mere operation of physical forces and laws—for these very forces and
laws imply, instead of excluding, an originating and superintending
intelligence and will.


    Janet, in his work on Final Causes, 8, denies that finality is a
    primitive conviction, like causality, and calls it the result of
    an induction. He therefore proceeds from (1) marks of order and
    useful collocation to (2) finality in nature, and then to (3) an
    intelligent cause of this finality or “pre-conformity to future
    event.” So Diman, Theistic Argument, 105, claims simply that, as
    change requires cause, so orderly change requires intelligent
    cause. We have shown, however, that induction and argument of
    every kind presupposes intuitive belief in final cause. Nature
    does not give us final cause; but no more does she give us
    efficient cause. Mind gives us both, and gives them as clearly
    upon one experience as after a thousand. Ladd: “Things have mind
    in them: else they could not be minded by us.” The Duke of Argyll
    told Darwin that it seemed to him wholly impossible to ascribe the
    adjustments of nature to any other agency than that of mind.
    “Well,” said Darwin, “that impression has often come upon me with
    overpowering force. But then, at other times, it all seems—;” and
    then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to indicate the
    passing of a vision out of sight. Darwinism is not a refutation of
    ends in nature, but only of a particular theory with regard to the
    way in which ends are realized in the organic world. Darwin would
    begin with an infinitesimal germ, and make all the subsequent
    development unteleological; see Schurman, Belief in God, 193.

    (_a_) Illustration of unpurposed order in the single throwing of
    “double sixes,”—constant throwing of double sixes indicates
    design. So arrangement of detritus at mouth of river, and warming
    pans sent to the West Indies,—useful but not purposed. Momerie,
    Christianity and Evolution, 72—“It is only within narrow limits
    that seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced by chance. And
    therefore, as the signs of purpose increase, the presumption in
    favor of their accidental origin diminishes.” Elder, Ideas from
    Nature, 81, 82—“The uniformity of a boy’s marbles shows them to be
    products of design. A single one might be accidental, but a dozen
    cannot be. So atomic uniformity indicates manufacture.”
    Illustrations of purposed order, in Beattie’s garden, Tillotson’s
    blind men, Kepler’s salad. Dr. Carpenter: “The atheist is like a
    man examining the machinery of a great mill, who, finding that the
    whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from a brick wall, infers
    that the shaft is a sufficient explanation of what he sees, and
    that there is no moving power behind it.” Lord Kelvin: “The
    atheistic idea is nonsensical.” J. G. Paton, Life, 2:191—The
    sinking of a well on the island of Aniwa convinces the cannibal
    chief Namakei that Jehovah God exists, the invisible One. See
    Chauncey Wright, in N. Y. Nation, Jan. 15, 1874; Murphy,
    Scientific Bases of Faith, 208.

    (_b_) Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 231-247—“Law is _method_,
    not _cause_. A man cannot offer the very fact to be explained, as
    its sufficient explanation.” Martineau, Essays, 1:144—“Patterned
    damask, made not by the weaver, but by the loom?” Dr. Stevenson:
    “House requires no architect, because it is built by stone-masons
    and carpenters?” Joseph Cook: “Natural law without God behind it
    is no more than a glove without a hand in it, and all that is done
    by the gloved hand of God in nature is done by the hand and not by
    the glove. Evolution is a process, not a power; a method of
    operation, not an operator. A book is not written _by_ the laws of
    spelling and grammar, but _according_ to those laws. So the book
    of the universe is not written by the laws of heat, electricity,
    gravitation, evolution, but according to those laws.” G. F.
    Wright, Ant. and Orig. of Hum. Race, lecture IX—“It is impossible
    for evolution to furnish evidence which shall drive design out of
    nature. It can only drive it back to an earlier point of entrance,
    thereby increasing our admiration for the power of the Creator to
    accomplish ulterior designs by unlikely means.”

    Evolution is only the method of God. It has to do with the _how_,
    not with the _why_, of phenomena, and therefore is not
    inconsistent with design, but rather is a new and higher
    illustration of design. Henry Ward Beecher: “Design by wholesale
    is greater than design by retail.” Frances Power Cobbe: “It is a
    singular fact that, whenever we find out _how_ a thing is done,
    our first conclusion seems to be that _God_ did not do it.” Why
    should we say: “The more law, the less God?” The theist refers the
    phenomena to a cause that knows itself and what it is doing; the
    atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself and
    what it is doing (Bowne). George John Romanes said that, if God be
    immanent, then all natural causation must appear to be mechanical,
    and it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing to
    prove it due to natural causation: “Causes in nature do not
    obviate the necessity of a cause in nature.” Shaler,
    Interpretation of Nature, 47—Evolution shows that the direction of
    affairs is under control of something like our own intelligence:
    “Evolution spells Purpose.” Clarke, Christ. Theology, 105—“The
    modern doctrine of evolution has been awake to the existence of
    innumerable ends _within_ the universe, but not to the one great
    end _for_ the universe itself.” Huxley, Critiques and Addresses,
    274, 275, 307—“The teleological and mechanical views of the
    universe are not mutually exclusive.” Sir William Hamilton,
    Metaphysics: “Intelligence stands first in the order of existence.
    Efficient causes are preceded by final causes.” See also Thornton,
    Old Fashioned Ethics, 199-265; Archbp. Temple, Bampton Lect.,
    1884:99-123; Owen, Anat. of Vertebrates, 3:796; Peirce, Ideality
    in the Physical Sciences, 1-35; Newman Smyth, Through Science to
    Faith, 96; Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 135.


B. The minor premise expresses a working-principle of all science, namely,
that all things have their uses, that order pervades the universe, and
that the methods of nature are rational methods. Evidences of this appear
in the correlation of the chemical elements to each other; in the fitness
of the inanimate world to be the basis and support of life; in the typical
forms and unity of plan apparent in the organic creation; in the existence
and coöperation of natural laws; in cosmical order and compensations.

This minor premise is not invalidated by the objections: (_a_) That we
frequently misunderstand the end actually subserved by natural events and
objects; for the principle is, not that we necessarily know the actual
end, but that we necessarily believe that there is some end, in every case
of systematic order and collocation. (_b_) That the order of the universe
is manifestly imperfect; for this, if granted, would argue, not absence of
contrivance, but some special reason for imperfection, either in the
limitations of the contriving intelligence itself, or in the nature of the
end sought (as, for example, correspondence with the moral state and
probation of sinners).


    The evidences of order and useful collocation are found both in
    the indefinitely small and the indefinitely great. The molecules
    are manufactured articles; and the compensations of the solar
    system which provide that a secular flattening of the earth’s
    orbit shall be made up for by a secular rounding of that same
    orbit, alike show an intelligence far transcending our own; see
    Cooke, Religion and Chemistry, and Credentials of Science,
    23—“Beauty is the harmony of relations which perfect fitness
    produces; law is the prevailing principle which underlies that
    harmony. Hence both beauty and law imply design. From energy,
    fitness, beauty, order, sacrifice, we argue might, skill,
    perfection, law, and love in a Supreme Intelligence. Christianity
    implies design, and is the completion of the design argument.”
    Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:168—“A good definition of beauty
    is immanent purposiveness, the teleological ideal background of
    reality, the shining of the Idea through phenomena.”

    Bowne, Philos. Theism, 85—“Design is never causal. It is only
    ideal, and it demands an efficient cause for its realization. If
    ice is not to sink, and to freeze out life, there must be some
    molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of
    an equal weight of water.” Jackson, Theodore Parker,
    355—“Rudimentary organs are like the silent letters in many
    words,—both are witnesses to a past history; and there is
    intelligence in their preservation.” Diman, Theistic Argument:
    “Not only do we observe in the world the change which is the basis
    of the Cosmological Argument, but we perceive that this change
    proceeds according to a fixed and invariable rule. In inorganic
    nature, general order, or _regularity_; in organic nature, special
    order or _adaptation_.” Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 113-115,
    224-230: “Inductive science proceeds upon the postulate that the
    reasonable and the natural are one.” This furnished the guiding
    clue to Harvey and Cuvier; see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences,
    2:489-491. Kant: “The anatomist must assume that nothing in man is
    in vain.” Aristotle: “Nature makes nothing in vain.” On molecules
    as manufactured articles, see Maxfield, in Nature, Sept. 25, 1873.
    See also Tulloch, Theism, 116, 120; LeConte, Religion and Science,
    lect. 2 and 3; McCosh, Typical Forms, 81, 420; Agassiz, Essay on
    Classification, 9, 10; Bib. Sac., 1849:626 and 1850:613; Hopkins,
    in Princeton Review, 1882:181.

    (_a_) Design, in fact that rivers always run by large towns? that
    springs are always found at gambling places? Plants made for man,
    and man for worms? Voltaire: “Noses are made for spectacles—let us
    wear them!” Pope: “While man exclaims ‘See all things for my use,’
    ‘See man for mine,’ replies the pampered goose.” Cherries do not
    ripen in the cold of winter when they do not taste as well, and
    grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer when the new wine would
    turn to vinegar? Nature divides melons into sections for
    convenience in family eating? Cork-tree made for bottle-stoppers?
    The child who was asked the cause of salt in the ocean, attributed
    it to codfish, thus dimly confounding final cause with efficient
    cause. Teacher: “What are marsupials?” Pupil: “Animals that have
    pouches in their stomachs.” Teacher: “And what do they have
    pouches for?” Pupil: “To crawl into and conceal themselves in,
    when they are pursued.” Why are the days longer in summer than in
    winter? Because it is the property of all natural objects to
    elongate under the influence of heat. A Jena professor held that
    doctors do not exist because of disease, but that diseases exist
    precisely in order that there may be doctors. Kepler was an
    astronomical Don Quixote. He discussed the claims of eleven
    different damsels to become his second wife, and he likened the
    planets to huge animals rushing through the sky. Many of the
    objections to design arise from confounding a part of the creation
    with the whole, or a structure in the process of development with
    a structure completed. For illustrations of mistaken ends, see
    Janet, Final Causes.

    (_b_) Alphonso of Castile took offense at the Ptolemaic System,
    and intimated that, if he had been consulted at the creation, he
    could have suggested valuable improvements. Lange, in his History
    of Materialism, illustrates some of the methods of nature by
    millions of gun barrels shot in all directions to kill a single
    hare; by ten thousand keys bought at haphazard to get into a shut
    room; by building a city in order to obtain a house. Is not the
    ice a little overdone about the poles? See John Stuart Mill’s
    indictment of nature, in his posthumous Essays on Religion,
    29—“Nature impales men, breaks men as if on a wheel, casts them to
    be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the
    first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them
    with cold, poisons them with the quick or slow venom of her
    exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve,
    such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never
    surpassed.” So argue Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.

    The doctrine of evolution answers many of these objections, by
    showing that order and useful collocation in the system as a whole
    is necessarily and cheaply purchased by imperfection and suffering
    in the initial stages of development. The question is: Does the
    system as a whole imply design? My opinion is of no value as to
    the usefulness of an intricate machine the purpose of which I do
    not know. If I stand at the beginning of a road and do not know
    whither it leads, it is presumptuous in me to point out a more
    direct way to its destination. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 20-22—“In
    order to counterbalance the impressions which apparent disorder
    and immorality in nature make upon us, we have to assume that the
    universe at its root is not only rational, but good. This is
    faith, but it is an act on which our whole moral life depends.”
    Metaphysics, 165—“The same argument which would deny mind in
    nature denies mind in man.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev.,
    264—“Fifty years ago, when the crane stood on top of the tower of
    unfinished Cologne Cathedral, was there no evidence of design in
    the whole structure?” Yet we concede that, so long as we cannot
    with John Stuart Mill explain the imperfections of the universe by
    any limitations in the Intelligence which contrived it, we are
    shut up to regarding them as intended to correspond with the moral
    state and probation of sinners which God foresaw and provided for
    at the creation. Evil things in the universe are symbols of sin,
    and helps to its overthrow. See Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 264,
    265; McCosh, Christ. and Positivism, 82 _sq._; Martineau, Essays,
    1:50, and Study, 1:351-398; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 599; Mivart,
    Lessons from Nature, 366-371; Princeton Rev., 1878:272-303; Shaw,
    on Positivism.


2. _Defects of the Teleological Argument._ These attach not to the
premises but to the conclusion sought to be drawn therefrom.

A. The argument cannot prove a personal God. The order and useful
collocations of the universe may be only the changing phenomena of an
impersonal intelligence and will, such as pantheism supposes. The finality
may be only immanent finality.


    There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality.
    National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee
    works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the
    world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8—“Plant the
    ship-builder’s skill within the timber itself, and you have the
    mode in which nature produces.” Here we see a dim anticipation of
    the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation
    from without. Neander: “The divine work goes on from within
    outward.” John Fiske: “The argument from the watch has been
    superseded by the argument from the flower.” Iverach, Theism,
    91—“The effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause
    from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent
    rational principle.” Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350—“Theism is in no
    way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world ...
    nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give
    it externality.”

    Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62-80—“The universe exists in some
    all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of
    brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping
    themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building,
    adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last
    presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and
    finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of
    self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in
    size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron
    endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other
    locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new
    locomotives in their turn.” So nature in its separate parts may
    seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not
    “disown a directive power,”—only this power is “behind the
    mechanism as its final cause ... it must be teleological.”

    Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe
    as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light
    of evolution, we must still hold that nature alone cannot prove
    that this intelligence is personal. Hopkins, Miscellanies,
    18-36—“So long as there is such a thing as impersonal and adapting
    intelligence in the brute creation, we cannot necessarily infer
    from unchanging laws a free and personal God.” See Fisher,
    Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 576-578. Kant shows that the
    argument does not prove intelligence apart from the world
    (Critique, 370). We must bring mind to the world, if we would find
    mind in it. Leave out man, and nature cannot be properly
    interpreted: the intelligence and will in nature may still be
    unconscious. But, taking in man, we are bound to get our idea of
    the intelligence and will in nature from the highest type of
    intelligence and will we know, and that is man’s. “Nullus in
    microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus.” “We receive but
    what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live.”

    The Teleological Argument therefore needs to be supplemented by
    the Anthropological Argument, or the argument from the mental and
    moral constitution of man. By itself, it does not prove a Creator.
    See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 26; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos.,
    bk. 9, chap. 6; Foundations of our Faith, 38; Murphy, Scientific
    Bases, 215; Habit and Intelligence, 2:6, and chap. 27. On immanent
    finality, see Janet, Final Causes, 345-415; Diman, Theistic
    Argument, 201-203. Since righteousness belongs only to
    personality, this argument cannot prove righteousness in God.
    Flint, Theism, 66—“Power and Intelligence alone do not constitute
    God, though they be infinite. A being may have these, and, if
    lacking righteousness, may be a devil.” Here again we see the need
    of the Anthropological Argument to supplement this.


B. Even if this argument could prove personality in the intelligence and
will that originated the order of the universe, it could not prove either
the unity, the eternity, or the infinity of God; not the unity—for the
useful collocations of the universe might be the result of oneness of
counsel, instead of oneness of essence, in the contriving intelligence;
not the eternity—for a created demiurge might conceivably have designed
the universe; not the infinity—since all marks of order and collocation
within our observation are simply finite.


    Diman asserts (Theistic Argument, 114) that all the phenomena of
    the universe must be due to the same source—since all alike are
    subject to the same method of sequence, _e. g._, gravitation—and
    that the evidence points us irresistibly to some _one_ explanatory
    cause. We can regard this assertion only as the utterance of a
    primitive belief in a first cause, not as the conclusion of
    logical demonstration, for we know only an infinitesimal part of
    the universe. From the point of view of the intuition of an
    Absolute Reason, however, we can cordially assent to the words of
    F. L. Patton: “When we consider Matthew Arnold’s ‘stream of
    tendency,’ Spencer’s ‘unknowable,’ Schopenhauer’s ‘world as will,’
    and Hartmann’s elaborate defence of finality as the product of
    unconscious intelligence, we may well ask if the theists, with
    their belief in one personal God, are not in possession of the
    only hypothesis that can save the language of these writers from
    the charge of meaningless and idiotic raving” (Journ. Christ.
    Philos., April, 1883:283-307).

    The ancient world, which had only the light of nature, believed in
    many gods. William James, Will to Believe, 44—“If there be a
    divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her, cannot
    possibly be its _ultimate word_ to man. Either there is no spirit
    revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there; and
    (as all the higher religions have assumed) what we call visible
    nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and surface-show whose
    full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen, or _other_ world.”
    Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 234—“But is not
    intelligence itself the mystery of mysteries?... No doubt,
    intellect is a great mystery.... But there is a choice in
    mysteries. Some mysteries leave other things clear, and some leave
    things as dark and impenetrable as ever. The former is the case
    with the mystery of intelligence. It makes possible the
    comprehension of everything but itself.”


3. _The value of the Teleological Argument_ is simply this,—it proves from
certain useful collocations and instances of order which have clearly had
a beginning, or in other words, from the present harmony of the universe,
that there exists an intelligence and will adequate to its contrivance.
But whether this intelligence and will is personal or impersonal, creator
or only fashioner, one or many, finite or infinite, eternal or owing its
being to another, necessary or free, this argument cannot assure us.

In it, however, we take a step forward. The causative power which we have
proved by the Cosmological Argument has now become an intelligent and
voluntary power.


    John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Theism, 168-170—“In the present
    state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large
    balance of probability in favor of causation by intelligence.”
    Ladd holds that, whenever one being acts upon its like, each being
    undergoes changes of state that belong to its own nature under the
    circumstances. Action of one body on another never consists in
    transferring the state of one being to another. Therefore there is
    no more difficulty in beings that are unlike acting on one another
    than in beings that are like. We do not transfer ideas to other
    minds,—we only rouse them to develop their own ideas. So force
    also is positively not transferable. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 49,
    begins with “the conception of things interacting according to law
    and forming an intelligible system. Such a system cannot be
    construed by thought without the assumption of a unitary being
    which is the fundamental reality of the system. 53—No passage of
    influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf, so long as the
    things are regarded as independent. 56—The system itself cannot
    explain this interaction, for the system is only the members of
    it. There must be some being in them which is their reality, and
    of which they are in some sense phases or manifestations. In other
    words, there must be a basal monism.” All this is substantially
    the view of Lotze, of whose philosophy see criticism in Stählin’s
    Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, 116-156, and especially 123.
    Falckenberg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 454, shows as to
    Lotze’s view that his assumption of monistic unity and continuity
    does not explain how change of condition in one thing should, as
    equalization or compensation, follow change of condition in
    another thing. Lotze explains this _actuality_ by the ethical
    conception of an all-embracing Person. On the whole argument, see
    Bib. Sac., 1849:634; Murphy, Sci. Bases, 216; Flint, Theism,
    131-210; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:164-174; W. R. Benedict, on
    Theism and Evolution, in Andover Rev., 1886:307-350, 607-622.



III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and Moral
Nature.


This is an argument from the mental and moral condition of man to the
existence of an Author, Lawgiver, and End. It is sometimes called the
Moral Argument.


    The common title “Moral Argument” is much too narrow, for it seems
    to take account only of conscience in man, whereas the argument
    which this title so imperfectly designates really proceeds from
    man’s intellectual and emotional, as well as from his moral,
    nature. In choosing the designation we have adopted, we desire,
    moreover, to rescue from the mere physicist the term
    “Anthropology”—a term to which he has attached altogether too
    limited a signification, and which, in his use of it, implies that
    man is a mere animal,—to him Anthropology is simply the study of
    _la bête humaine_. Anthropology means, not simply the science of
    man’s physical nature, origin, and relations, but also the science
    which treats of his higher spiritual being. Hence, in Theology,
    the term Anthropology designates that division of the subject
    which treats of man’s spiritual nature and endowments, his
    original state and his subsequent apostasy. As an argument,
    therefore, from man’s mental and moral nature, we can with perfect
    propriety call the present argument the Anthropological Argument.


The argument is a complex one, and may be divided into three parts.

1. Man’s intellectual and moral nature must have had for its author an
intellectual and moral Being. The elements of the proof are as
follows:—(_a_) Man, as an intellectual and moral being, has had a
beginning upon the planet. (_b_) Material and unconscious forces do not
afford a sufficient cause for man’s reason, conscience, and free will.
(_c_) Man, as an effect, can be referred only to a cause possessing
self-consciousness and a moral nature, in other words, personality.


    This argument is is part an application to man of the principles
    of both the Cosmological and the Teleological Arguments. Flint,
    Theism, 74—“Although causality does not involve design, nor design
    goodness, yet design involves causality, and goodness both
    causality and design.” Jacobi: “Nature conceals God; man reveals
    him.”

    Man is an effect. The history of the geologic ages proves that man
    has not always existed, and even if the lower creatures were his
    progenitors, his intellect and freedom are not eternal _a parte
    ante_. We consider man, not as a physical, but as a spiritual,
    being. Thompson, Christian Theism, 75—“Every true cause must be
    sufficient to account for the effect.” Locke, Essay, book 4, chap.
    10—“Cogitable existence cannot be produced out of incogitable.”
    Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:258 _sq._

    Even if man had always existed, however, we should not need to
    abandon the argument. We might start, not from beginning of
    existence, but from beginning of phenomena. I might see God in the
    world, just as I see thought, feeling, will, in my fellow men.
    Fullerton, Plain Argument for God: I do not infer you, as cause of
    the _existence_ of your body: I recognize you as present and
    _working_ through your body. Its changes of gesture and speech
    reveal a personality behind them. So I do not need to argue back
    to a Being who once _caused_ nature and history; I recognize a
    _present_ Being, exercising wisdom and power, by signs such as
    reveal personality in man. Nature is itself the Watchmaker
    manifesting himself in the very process of making the watch. This
    is the meaning of the noble Epilogue to Robert Browning’s Dramatis
    Personæ, 252—“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or
    decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and
    knows.” “That Face,” said Mr. Browning to Mrs. Orr, “That Face is
    the face of Christ; that is how I feel him.” Nature is an
    expression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an
    expression of my mind and will. But in both cases, behind and
    above the face is a personality, of which the face is but the
    partial and temporary expression.

    Bowne, Philos. Theism, 104, 107—“My fellow beings act _as if_ they
    had thought, feeling, and will. So nature looks _as if_ thought,
    feeling, and will were behind it. If we deny mind in nature, we
    must deny mind in man. If there be no controlling mind in nature,
    moreover, there can be none in man, for if the basal power is
    blind and necessary, then all that depends upon it is necessitated
    also.” LeConte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 44—“There is only
    one place in the world where we can get behind physical phenomena,
    behind the veil of matter, namely, in our own brain, and we find
    there a self, a person. Is it not reasonable that, if we could get
    behind the veil of nature, we should find the same, that is, a
    Person? But if so, we must conclude, an infinite Person, and
    therefore the only complete Personality that exists. Perfect
    personality is not only self-conscious, but self-existent. _They_
    are only imperfect images, and, as it were, separated fragments,
    of the infinite Personality of God.”

    Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination in view of
    moral ends. The brute has intelligence and will, but has neither
    self-consciousness, conscience, nor free-will. See Julius Müller,
    Doctrine of Sin, 1:76 _sq._ Diman, Theistic Argument, 91,
    251—“Suppose ‘the intuitions of the moral faculty are the slowly
    organized results of experience received from the race’; still,
    having found that the universe affords evidence of a supremely
    intelligent cause, we may believe that man’s moral nature affords
    the highest illustration of its mode of working”; 358—“Shall we
    explain the lower forms of will by the higher, or the higher by
    the lower?”


2. Man’s moral nature proves the existence of a holy Lawgiver and Judge.
The elements of the proof are:—(_a_) Conscience recognizes the existence
of a moral law which has supreme authority. (_b_) Known violations of this
moral law are followed by feelings of ill-desert and fears of judgment.
(_c_) This moral law, since it is not self-imposed, and these threats of
judgment, since they are not self-executing, respectively argue the
existence of a holy will that has imposed the law, and of a punitive power
that will execute the threats of the moral nature.


    See Bishop Butler’s Sermons on Human Nature, in Works, Bohn’s ed.,
    385-414. Butler’s great discovery was that of the supremacy of
    conscience in the moral constitution of man: “Had it strength as
    it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would
    absolutely govern the world.” Conscience = the moral judiciary of
    the soul—not law, nor sheriff, but judge; see under Anthropology.
    Diman, Theistic Argument, 251—“Conscience does not lay down a law;
    it warns us of the existence of a law; and not only of a law, but
    of a purpose—not our own, but the purpose of another, which it is
    our mission to realize.” See Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,
    218 _sq._ It proves personality in the Lawgiver, because its
    utterances are not abstract, like those of reason, but are in the
    nature of command; they are not in the indicative, but in the
    imperative, mood; it says, “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” This
    argues _will_.

    Hutton, Essays, 1:11—“Conscience is an ideal Moses, and thunders
    from an invisible Sinai”; “the Atheist regards conscience not as a
    skylight, opened to let in upon human nature an infinite dawn from
    above, but as a polished arch or dome, completing and reflecting
    the whole edifice beneath.” But conscience cannot be the mere
    reflection and expression of nature, for it represses and condemns
    nature. Tulloch, Theism: “Conscience, like the magnetic needle,
    indicates the existence of an unknown Power which from afar
    controls its vibrations and at whose presence it trembles.” Nero
    spends nights of terror in wandering through the halls of his
    Golden House. Kant holds that faith in duty requires faith in a
    God who will defend and reward duty—see Critique of Pure Reason,
    359-387. See also Porter, Human Intellect, 524.

    Kant, in his Metaphysic of Ethics, represents the action of
    conscience as like “conducting a case before a court,” and he
    adds: “Now that he who is accused before his conscience should be
    figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd
    representation of a tribunal; since, in such an event, the accuser
    would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to
    itself always some other than itself as Judge, unless it is to
    arrive at a contradiction with itself.” See also his Critique of
    the Practical Reason, Werke, 8:214—“Duty, thou sublime and mighty
    name, that hast in thee nothing to attract or win, but challengest
    submission; and yet dost threaten nothing to sway the will by that
    which may arouse natural terror or aversion, but merely holdest
    forth a Law; a Law which of itself finds entrance into the mind,
    and even while we disobey, against our will compels our reverence,
    a Law in presence of which all inclinations grow dumb, even while
    they secretly rebel; what origin is there worthy of thee? Where
    can we find the root of thy noble descent, which proudly rejects
    all kinship with the inclinations?” Archbishop Temple answers, in
    his Bampton Lectures, 58, 59, “This eternal Law is the Eternal
    himself, the almighty God.” Robert Browning: “The sense within me
    that I owe a debt Assures me—Somewhere must be Somebody, Ready to
    take his due. All comes to this: Where due is, there acceptance
    follows: find Him who accepts the due.”

    Salter, Ethical Religion, quoted in Pfleiderer’s article on
    Religionless Morality, Am. Jour. Theol., 3:237—“The earth and the
    stars do not create the law of gravitation which they obey; no
    more does man, or the united hosts of rational beings in the
    universe, create the law of duty.” The will expressed in the moral
    imperative is _superior_ to ours, for otherwise it would issue no
    commands. Yet it is _one_ with ours as the life of an organism is
    one with the life of its members. Theonomy is not heteronomy but
    the highest autonomy, the guarantee of our personal freedom
    against all servitude of man. Seneca: “Deo parere libertas est.”
    Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 272—“In conscience we see an ‘alter
    ego’, in us yet not of us, another Personality behind our own.”
    Martineau, Types, 2:105—“Over a person only a person can have
    authority.... A solitary being, with no other sentient nature in
    the universe, would feel no duty”; Study, 1:26—“As Perception
    gives us Will in the shape of _Causality_ over against us in the
    Non-Ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of _Authority_
    over against us in the Non-Ego.... 2:7—We cannot deduce the
    phenomena of character from an agent who has none.” Hutton,
    Essays, 1:41, 42—“When we disobey conscience, the Power which has
    therein ceased to _move_ us has retired only to _observe_—to keep
    _watch_ over us as we mould ourselves.” Cardinal Newman, Apologia,
    377—“Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my
    conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist,
    or a polytheist, when I looked into the world.”


3. Man’s emotional and voluntary nature proves the existence of a Being
who can furnish in himself a satisfying object of human affection and an
end which will call forth man’s highest activities and ensure his highest
progress.

Only a Being of power, wisdom, holiness, and goodness, and all these
indefinitely greater than any that we know upon the earth, can meet this
demand of the human soul. Such a Being must exist. Otherwise man’s
greatest need would be unsupplied, and belief in a lie be more productive
of virtue than belief in the truth.


    Feuerbach calls God “the Brocken-shadow of man himself”;
    “consciousness of God = self-consciousness”; “religion is a dream
    of the human soul”; “all theology is anthropology”; “man made God
    in his own image.” But conscience shows that man does not
    recognize in God simply his like, but also his opposite. Not as
    Galton: “Piety = conscience + instability.” The finest minds are
    of the leaning type; see Murphy, Scientific Bases, 370; Augustine,
    Confessions, 1:1—“Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is
    restless till it finds rest in thee.” On John Stuart Mill—“a mind
    that could not find God, and a heart that could not do without
    him”—see his Autobiography, and Browne, in Strivings for the Faith
    (Christ. Ev. Socy.), 259-287. Comte, in his later days,
    constructed an object of worship in Universal Humanity, and
    invented a ritual which Huxley calls “Catholicism _minus_
    Christianity.” See also Tyndall, Belfast Address: “Did I not
    believe, said a great man to me once, that an Intelligence exists
    at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.”
    Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1:505,506.

    The last line of Schiller’s Pilgrim reads: “Und das Dort ist
    niemals hier.” The finite never satisfies. Tennyson, Two Voices:
    “’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for
    which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.” Seth, Ethical
    Principles, 419—“A moral universe, an absolute moral Being, is the
    indispensable environment of the ethical life, without which it
    cannot attain to its perfect growth.... There is a moral _God_, or
    this is no _universe_.” James, Will to Believe, 116—“A God is the
    most adequate possible object for minds framed like our own to
    conceive as lying at the root of the universe. Anything short of
    God is not a rational object, anything more than God is not
    possible, if man needs an object of knowledge, feeling, and will.”

    Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 41—“To speak of the Religion of the
    Unknowable, the Religion of Cosmism, the Religion of Humanity,
    where the personality of the First Cause is not recognized, is as
    unmeaning as it would be to speak of the love of a triangle or the
    rationality of the equator.” It was said of Comte’s system that,
    “the wine of the real presence being poured out, we are asked to
    adore the empty cup.” “We want an object of devotion, and Comte
    presents us with a looking-glass” (Martineau). Huxley said he
    would as soon adore a wilderness of apes as the Positivist’s
    rationalized conception of humanity. It is only the ideal in
    humanity, the divine element in humanity that can be worshiped.
    And when we once conceive of this, we cannot be satisfied until we
    find it somewhere realized, as in Jesus Christ.

    Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 265-272—Huxley believes that Evolution is
    “a materialized logical process”; that nothing endures save the
    flow of energy and “the rational order which pervades it.” In the
    earlier part of this process, _nature_, there is no morality or
    benevolence. But the process ends by producing _man_, who can make
    progress only by waging moral war against the natural forces which
    impel him. He must be benevolent and just. Shall we not say, in
    spite of Mr. Huxley, that this shows what the nature of the system
    is, and that there must be a benevolent and just Being who
    ordained it? Martineau, Seat of Authority, 63-68—“Though the
    authority of the higher incentive is self-known, it cannot be
    self-created; for while it is in me, it is above me.... This
    authority to which conscience introduces me, though emerging in
    consciousness, is yet _objective_ to us all, and is necessarily
    referred to the nature of things, irrespective of the accidents of
    our mental constitution. It is not dependent on us, but
    independent. All minds born into the universe are ushered into the
    presence of a real righteousness, as surely as into a scene of
    actual space. Perception reveals _another_ than ourselves;
    conscience reveals _a higher_ than ourselves.”

    We must freely grant, however, that this argument from man’s
    aspirations has weight only upon the supposition that a wise,
    truthful, holy, and benevolent God exists, who has so constituted
    our minds that their thinking and their affections correspond to
    truth and to himself. An evil being might have so constituted us
    that all logic would lead us into error. The argument is therefore
    the development and expression of our intuitive idea of God.
    Luthardt, Fundamental Truths: “Nature is like a written document
    containing only consonants. It is we who must furnish the vowels
    that shall decipher it. Unless we bring with us the idea of God,
    we shall find nature but dumb.” See also Pfleiderer, Die Religion,
    1:174.


A. _The defects of the Anthropological Argument are_: (_a_) It cannot
prove a creator of the material universe. (_b_) It cannot prove the
infinity of God, since man from whom we argue is finite. (_c_) It cannot
prove the mercy of God. But,

B. _The value of the Argument_ is, that it assures us of the existence of
a personal Being, who rules us in righteousness, and who is the proper
object of supreme affection and service. But whether this Being is the
original creator of all things, or merely the author of our own existence,
whether he is infinite or finite, whether he is a Being of simple
righteousness or also of mercy, this argument cannot assure us.

Among the arguments for the existence of God, however, we assign to this
the chief place, since it adds to the ideas of causative power (which we
derived from the Cosmological Argument) and of contriving intelligence
(which we derived from the Teleological Argument), the far wider ideas of
personality and righteous lordship.


    Sir Wm. Hamilton, Works of Reid, 2:974, note U; Lect. on Metaph.,
    1:33—“The only valid arguments for the existence of God and for
    the immortality of the soul rest upon the ground of man’s moral
    nature”; “theology is wholly dependent upon psychology, for with
    the proof of the moral nature of man stands or falls the proof of
    the existence of a Deity.” But Diman, Theistic Argument, 244, very
    properly objects to making this argument from the nature of man
    the sole proof of Deity: “It should be rather used to show the
    attributes of the Being whose existence has been already proved
    from other sources”; “hence the Anthropological Argument is as
    dependent upon the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments as they
    are upon it.”

    Yet the Anthropological Argument is needed to supplement the
    conclusions of the two others. Those who, like Herbert Spencer,
    recognize an infinite and absolute Being, Power and Cause, may yet
    fail to recognize this being as spiritual and personal, simply
    because they do not recognize themselves as spiritual and personal
    beings, that is, do not recognize reason, conscience and free-will
    in man. Agnosticism in philosophy involves agnosticism in
    religion. R. K. Eccles: “All the most advanced languages
    capitalize the word ‘God,’ and the word ‘I.’ ” See Flint, Theism,
    68; Mill, Criticism of Hamilton, 2:266; Dove, Logic of Christian
    Faith, 211-236, 261-299; Martineau, Types, Introd., 3; Cooke,
    Religion and Chemistry: “God is love; but nature could not prove
    it, and the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world in
    order to attest it.”

    Everything in philosophy depends on where we begin, whether with
    nature or with self, whether with the necessary or with the free.
    In one sense, therefore, we should in practice begin with the
    Anthropological Argument, and then use the Cosmological and
    Teleological Arguments as warranting the application to nature of
    the conclusions which we have drawn from man. As God stands over
    against man in Conscience, and says to him: “Thou”; so man stands
    over against God in Nature, and may say to him: “Thou.” Mulford,
    Republic of God, 28—“As the personality of man has its foundation
    in the personality of God, so the realization by man of his own
    personality always brings man nearer to God.” Robert Browning:
    “Quoth a young Sadducee: ‘Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain
    we Have, as they tell us, souls?’ ‘Son, there is no reply!’ The
    Rabbi bit his beard: ‘Certain, a soul have _I_—_We_ may have
    none,’ he sneered. Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s Hammer, The
    Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And
    struck the simple, solemn.”

    It is very common at this place to treat of what are called the
    Historical and the Biblical Arguments for the existence of God—the
    former arguing, from the unity of history, the latter arguing,
    from the unity of the Bible, that this unity must in each case
    have for its cause and explanation the existence of God. It is a
    sufficient reason for not discussing these arguments, that,
    without a previous belief in the existence of God, no one will see
    unity either in history or in the Bible. Turner, the painter,
    exhibited a picture which seemed all mist and cloud until he put a
    dab of scarlet into it. That gave the true point of view, and all
    the rest became intelligible. So Christ’s coming and Christ’s
    blood make intelligible both the Scriptures and human history. He
    carries in his girdle the key to all mysteries. Schopenhauer,
    knowing no Christ, admitted no philosophy of history. He regarded
    history as the mere fortuitous play of individual caprice. Pascal:
    “Jesus Christ is the centre of everything, and the object of
    everything, and he that does not know him knows nothing of nature,
    and nothing of himself.”



IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and Necessary
Ideas.


This argument infers the existence of God from the abstract and necessary
ideas of the human mind. It has three forms:

1. That of Samuel Clarke. Space and time are attributes of substance or
being. But space and time are respectively infinite and eternal. There
must therefore be an infinite and eternal substance or Being to whom these
attributes belong.

Gillespie states the argument somewhat differently. Space and time are
modes of existence. But space and time are respectively infinite and
eternal. There must therefore be an infinite and eternal Being who
subsists in these modes. But we reply:

Space and time are neither attributes of substance nor modes of existence.
The argument, if valid, would prove that God is not mind but matter, for
that could not be mind, but only matter, of which space and time were
either attributes or modes.


    The Ontological Argument is frequently called the _a priori_
    argument, that is, the argument from that which is logically
    prior, or earlier than experience, viz., our intuitive ideas. All
    the forms of the Ontological Argument are in this sense _a
    priori_. Space and time are _a priori_ ideas. See Samuel Clarke,
    Works, 2:521; Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God. _Per contra_,
    see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 364: Calderwood, Moral
    Philosophy, 226—“To begin, as Clarke did, with the proposition
    that ‘something has existed from eternity,’ is virtually to
    propose an argument after having assumed what is to be proved.
    Gillespie’s form of the _a priori_ argument, starting with the
    proposition ‘infinity of extension is necessarily existing,’ is
    liable to the same objection, with the additional disadvantage of
    attributing a property of matter to the Deity.”

    H. B. Smith says that Brougham misrepresented Clarke: “Clarke’s
    argument is in his sixth proposition, and supposes the existence
    proved in what goes before. He aims here to establish the
    infinitude and omnipresence of this First Being. He does not prove
    _existence_ from immensity.” But we reply, neither can he prove
    the _infinity_ of God from the immensity of space. Space and time
    are neither substances nor attributes, but are rather relations;
    see Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 331-335; Cocker, Theistic
    Conception of the World, 66-96. The doctrine that space and time
    are attributes or modes of God’s existence tends to materialistic
    pantheism like that of Spinoza, who held that “the one and simple
    substance” (substantia una et unica) is known to us through the
    two attributes of thought and extension; mind = God in the mode of
    thought; matter = God in the mode of extension. Dove, Logic of the
    Christian Faith, 127, says well that an extended God is a material
    God; “space and time are attributes neither of matter nor mind”;
    “we must carry the moral idea into the natural world, not the
    natural idea into the moral world.” See also, Blunt, Dictionary
    Doct. and Hist. Theol., 740; Porter, Human Intellect, 567. H. M.
    Stanley, on Space and Science, in Philos. Rev., Nov.
    1898:615—“Space is not full of things, but things are spaceful....
    Space is a form of dynamic appearance.” Prof. C. A. Strong: “The
    world composed of consciousness and other existences is not in
    space, though it may be in something of which space is the
    symbol.”


2. That of Descartes. We have the idea of an infinite and perfect Being.
This idea cannot be derived from imperfect and finite things. There must
therefore be an infinite and perfect Being who is its cause.

But we reply that this argument confounds the idea of the infinite with an
infinite idea. Man’s idea of the infinite is not infinite but finite, and
from a finite effect we cannot argue an infinite cause.


    This form of the Ontological Argument, while it is _a priori_, as
    based upon a necessary idea of the human mind, is, unlike the
    other forms of the same argument, _a posteriori_, as arguing from
    this idea, as an _effect_, to the existence of a Being who is its
    _cause_. _A posteriori_ argument = from that which is later to
    that which is earlier, that is, from effect to cause. The
    Cosmological, Teleological, and Anthropological Arguments are
    arguments _a posteriori_. Of this sort is the argument of
    Descartes; see Descartes, Meditation 3: “Hæc idea quæ in nobis est
    requirit Deum pro causa; Deusque proinde existit.” The idea in
    men’s minds is the impression of the workman’s name stamped
    indelibly on his work—the shadow cast upon the human soul by that
    unseen One of whose being and presence it dimly informs us. Blunt,
    Dict. of Theol., 739; Saisset, Pantheism, 1:54—“Descartes sets out
    from a fact of consciousness, while Anselm sets out from an
    abstract conception”; “Descartes’s argument might be considered a
    branch of the Anthropological or Moral Argument, but for the fact
    that this last proceeds from man’s constitution rather than from
    his abstract ideas.” See Bib. Sac., 1849:637.


3. That of Anselm. We have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being. But
existence is an attribute of perfection. An absolutely perfect Being must
therefore exist.

But we reply that this argument confounds ideal existence with real
existence. Our ideas are not the measure of external reality.


    Anselm, Proslogion, 2—“Id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest
    esse in intellectu solo.” See translation of the Proslogion, in
    Bib. Sac., 1851:529, 699; Kant, Critique, 368. The arguments of
    Descartes and Anselm, with Kant’s reply, are given in their
    original form by Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:420-428. The
    major premise here is not that all perfect ideas imply the
    existence of the object which they represent, for then, as Kant
    objects, I might argue from my perfect idea of a $100 bill that I
    actually possessed the same, which would be far from the fact. So
    I have a perfect idea of a perfectly evil being, of a centaur, of
    nothing,—but it does not follow that the evil being, that the
    centaur, that nothing, exists. The argument is rather from the
    idea of absolute and perfect Being—of “that, no greater than which
    can be conceived.” There can be but one such being, and there can
    be but one such idea.

    Yet, even thus understood, we cannot argue from the idea to the
    actual existence of such a being. Case, Physical Realism, 173—“God
    is not an idea, and consequently cannot be inferred from mere
    ideas.” Bowne, Philos. Theism, 43—The Ontological Argument “only
    points out that the idea of the perfect must include the idea of
    existence; but there is nothing to show that the self-consistent
    idea represents an objective reality.” I can imagine the
    Sea-serpent, the Jinn of the Thousand and One Nights, “The
    Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their
    shoulders.” The winged horse of Uhland possessed every possible
    virtue, and only one fault,—it was dead. If every perfect idea
    implied the reality of its object, there might be horses with ten
    legs, and trees with roots in the air.

    “Anselm’s argument implies,” says Fisher, in Journ. Christ.
    Philos., Jan. 1883:114, “that existence _in re_ is a constituent
    of the concept. It would conclude the existence of a being from
    the definition of a word. This inference is justified only on the
    basis of philosophical realism.” Dove, Logic of the Christ. Faith,
    141—“The Ontological Argument is the algebraic formula of the
    universe, which leads to a valid conclusion with regard to real
    existence, only when we fill it in with objects with which we
    become acquainted in the arguments _a posteriori_.” See also
    Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:331, Dogm. Theol., 1:221-241, and in Presb.
    Rev., April, 1884:212-227 (favoring the argument); Fisher, Essays,
    574; Thompson, Christian Theism, 171; H. B. Smith, Introd. to
    Christ. Theol., 122; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:181-187; Studien
    und Kritiken, 1875:611-655.

    Dorner, in his Glaubenslehre, 1:197, gives us the best statement
    of the Ontological Argument: “Reason thinks of God as existing.
    Reason would not be reason, if it did not think of God as
    existing. Reason only is, upon the assumption that God is.” But
    this is evidently not argument, but only vivid statement of the
    necessary assumption of the existence of an absolute Reason which
    conditions and gives validity to ours.


Although this last must be considered the most perfect form of the
Ontological Argument, it is evident that it conducts us only to an ideal
conclusion, not to real existence. In common with the two preceding forms
of the argument, moreover, it tacitly assumes, as already existing in the
human mind, that very knowledge of God’s existence which it would derive
from logical demonstration. It has value, therefore, simply as showing
what God must be, if he exists at all.

But the existence of a Being indefinitely great, a personal Cause,
Contriver and Lawgiver, has been proved by the preceding arguments; for
the law of parsimony requires us to apply the conclusions of the first
three arguments to one Being, and not to many. To this one Being we may
now ascribe the infinity and perfection, the idea of which lies at the
basis of the Ontological Argument—ascribe them, not because they are
demonstrably his, but because our mental constitution will not allow us to
think otherwise. Thus clothing him with all perfections which the human
mind can conceive, and these in illimitable fullness, we have one whom we
may justly call God.


    McCosh, Div. Govt., 12, note—“It is at this place, if we do not
    mistake, that the idea of the Infinite comes in. The capacity of
    the human mind to form such an idea, or rather its intuitive
    belief in an Infinite of which it feels that it cannot form an
    adequate conception, may be no proof (as Kant maintains) of the
    existence of an infinite Being; but it is, we are convinced, the
    means by which the mind is enabled to invest the Deity, shown on
    other grounds to exist, with the attributes of infinity, _i. e._,
    to look on his being, power, goodness, and all his perfections, as
    infinite.” Even Flint, Theism, 68, who holds that we reach the
    existence of God by inference, speaks of “necessary conditions of
    thought and feeling, and ineradicable aspirations, which force on
    us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will
    neither permit us to deny these perfections to God, nor to ascribe
    them to any other being.” Belief in God is not the conclusion of a
    demonstration, but the solution of a problem. Calderwood, Moral
    Philosophy, 226—“Either the whole question is assumed in starting,
    or the Infinite is not reached in concluding.”

    Clarke, Christian Theology, 97-114, divides his proof into two
    parts: I. Evidence of the existence of God from the intellectual
    starting-point: The discovery of _Mind_ in the universe is made,
    1. through the intelligibleness of the universe to us; 2. through
    the idea of cause; 3. through the presence of ends in the
    universe. II. Evidence of the existence of God from the religious
    starting-point: The discovery of the _good God_ is made, 1.
    through the religious nature of man; 2. through the great
    dilemma—God the best, or the worst; 3. through the spiritual
    experience of men, especially in Christianity. So far as Dr.
    Clarke’s proof is intended to be a statement, not of a primitive
    belief, but of a logical process, we must hold it to be equally
    defective with the three forms of proof which we have seen to
    furnish some corroborative evidence of God’s existence. Dr. Clarke
    therefore does well to add: “Religion was not produced by proof of
    God’s existence, and will not be destroyed by its insufficiency to
    some minds. Religion existed before argument; in fact, it is the
    preciousness of religion that leads to the seeking for all
    possible confirmations of the reality of God.”

    The three forms of proof already mentioned—the Cosmological, the
    Teleological, and the Anthropological Arguments—may be likened to
    the three arches of a bridge over a wide and rushing river. The
    bridge has only two defects, but these defects are very serious.
    The first is that one cannot get on to the bridge; the end toward
    the hither bank is wholly lacking; the bridge of logical argument
    cannot be entered upon except by assuming the validity of logical
    processes; this assumption takes for granted at the outset the
    existence of a God who has made our faculties to act correctly; we
    get on to the bridge, not by logical process, but only by a leap
    of intuition, and by assuming at the beginning the very thing
    which we set out to prove. The second defect of the so-called
    bridge of argument is that when one has once gotten on, he can
    never get off. The connection with the further bank is also
    lacking. All the premises from which we argue being finite, we are
    warranted in drawing only a finite conclusion. Argument cannot
    reach the Infinite, and only an infinite Being is worthy to be
    called God. We can get off from our logical bridge, not by logical
    process, but only by another and final leap of intuition, and by
    once more assuming the existence of the infinite Being whom we had
    so vainly sought to reach by mere argument. The process seems to
    be referred to in _Job 11:7—_“Canst thou by searching find out
    God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?”


As a logical process this is indeed defective, since all logic as well as
all observation depends for its validity upon the presupposed existence of
God, and since this particular process, even granting the validity of
logic in general, does not warrant the conclusion that God exists, except
upon a second assumption that our abstract ideas of infinity and
perfection are to be applied to the Being to whom argument has actually
conducted us.

But although both ends of the logical bridge are confessedly wanting, the
process may serve and does serve a more useful purpose than that of mere
demonstration, namely, that of awakening, explicating, and confirming a
conviction which, though the most fundamental of all, may yet have been
partially slumbering for lack of thought.


    Morell, Philos. Fragments, 177, 179—“We can, in fact, no more
    prove the existence of a God by a logical argument, than we can
    prove the existence of an external world; but none the less may we
    obtain as strong a _practical_ conviction of the one, as the
    other.” “We arrive at a scientific belief in the existence of God
    just as we do at any other possible human truth. We _assume_ it,
    as a hypothesis absolutely necessary to account for the phenomena
    of the universe; and then evidences from every quarter begin to
    converge upon it, until, in process of time, the common sense of
    mankind, cultivated and enlightened by ever accumulating
    knowledge, pronounces upon the validity of the hypothesis with a
    voice scarcely less decided and universal than it does in the case
    of our highest scientific convictions.”

    Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 572—“What then is the
    purport and force of the several arguments for the existence of
    God? We reply that these proofs are the different modes in which
    faith expresses itself and seeks confirmation. In them faith, or
    the object of faith, is more exactly conceived and defined, and in
    them is found a corroboration, not arbitrary but substantial and
    valuable, of that faith which springs from the soul itself. Such
    proofs, therefore, are neither on the one hand sufficient to
    create and sustain faith, nor are they on the other hand to be set
    aside as of no value.” A. J. Barrett: “The arguments are not so
    much a bridge in themselves, as they are guys, to hold firm the
    great suspension-bridge of intuition, by which we pass the gulf
    from man to God. Or, while they are not a ladder by which we may
    reach heaven, they are the Ossa on Pelion, from whose combined
    height we may descry heaven.”

    Anselm: “Negligentia mihi videtur, si postquam confirmati sumus in
    fide non studemus quod credimus intelligere.” Bradley, Appearance
    and Reality: “Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what
    we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an
    instinct.” Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, lect.
    III—“Belief in a personal God is an instinctive judgment,
    progressively justified by reason.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy,
    241—The arguments are “historical memorials of the efforts of the
    human race to vindicate to itself the existence of a reality of
    which it is conscious, but which it cannot perfectly define.” H.
    Fielding, The Hearts of Men, 313—“Creeds are the grammar of
    religion. They are to religion what grammar is to speech. Words
    are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed
    afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse.
    As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must
    follow.” Pascal: “The heart has reasons of its own which the
    reason does not know.” Frances Power Cobbe: “Intuitions are God’s
    tuitions.” On the whole subject, see Cudworth, Intel. System,
    3:42; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 150 _sq._; Curtis, Human
    Element in Inspiration, 242; Peabody, in Andover Rev., July, 1884;
    Hahn, History of Arguments for Existence of God; Lotze, Philos. of
    Religion, 8-34; Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:53-71.

    Hegel, in his Logic, page 3, speaking of the disposition to regard
    the proofs of God’s existence as the only means of producing faith
    in God, says: “Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we said
    that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of
    the chemical, botanical and zoölogical qualities of our food; and
    that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of
    anatomy and physiology.” It is a mistake to suppose that there can
    be no religious _life_ without a correct _theory_ of life. Must I
    refuse to drink water or to breathe air, until I can manufacture
    both for myself? Some things are given to us. Among these things
    are “grace and truth”_ (John 1:17; __cf.__ 9)_. But there are ever
    those who are willing to take nothing as a free gift, and who
    insist on working out all knowledge, as well as all salvation, by
    processes of their own. Pelagianism, with its denial of the
    doctrines of grace, is but the further development of a
    rationalism which refuses to accept primitive truths unless these
    can be logically demonstrated. Since the existence of the soul, of
    the world, and of God cannot be proved in this way, rationalism is
    led to curtail, or to misinterpret, the deliverances of
    consciousness, and hence result certain systems now to be
    mentioned.




Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.


Any correct explanation of the universe must postulate an intuitive
knowledge of the existence of the external world, of self, and of God. The
desire for scientific unity, however, has occasioned attempts to reduce
these three factors to one, and according as one or another of the three
has been regarded as the all-inclusive principle, the result has been
Materialism, Materialistic Idealism, or Idealistic Pantheism. This
scientific impulse is better satisfied by a system which we may designate
as Ethical Monism.


    We may summarize the present chapter as follows: 1. _Materialism_:
    Universe = Atoms. Reply: Atoms can do nothing without force, and
    can be nothing (intelligible) without ideas. 2. _Materialistic
    Idealism_: Universe = Force + Ideas. Reply: Ideas belong to Mind,
    and Force can be exerted only by Will. 3. _Idealistic Pantheism_:
    Universe = Immanent and Impersonal Mind and Will. Reply: Spirit in
    man shows that the Infinite Spirit must be Transcendent and
    Personal Mind and Will. We are led from these three forms of error
    to a conclusion which we may denominate 4. _Ethical Monism_:
    Universe = Finite, partial, graded manifestation of the divine
    Life; Matter being God’s self-limitation under the law of
    necessity, Humanity being God’s self-limitation under the law of
    freedom, Incarnation and Atonement being God’s self-limitations
    under the law of grace. Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of
    one Substance, Principle, or Ground of Being, is consistent with
    Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine that the soul is personally
    distinct from matter on the one hand and from God on the other.



I. Materialism.


Materialism is that method of thought which gives priority to matter,
rather than to mind, in its explanations of the universe. Upon this view,
material atoms constitute the ultimate and fundamental reality of which
all things, rational and irrational, are but combinations and phenomena.
Force is regarded as a universal and inseparable property of matter.

The element of truth in materialism is the reality of the external world.
Its error is in regarding the external world as having original and
independent existence, and in regarding mind as its product.


    Materialism regards atoms as the bricks of which the material
    universe, the house we inhabit, is built. Sir William Thomson
    (Lord Kelvin) estimates that, if a drop of water were magnified to
    the size of our earth, the atoms of which it consists would
    certainly appear larger than boy’s marbles, and yet would be
    smaller than billiard balls. Of these atoms, all things, visible
    and invisible, are made. Mind, with all its activities, is a
    combination or phenomenon of atoms. “Man ist was er iszt: ohne
    Phosphor kein Gedanke”—“One _is_ what he _eats_: without
    phosphorus, no thought.” Ethics is a bill of fare; and worship,
    like heat, is a mode of motion. Agassiz, however, wittily asked:
    “Are fishermen, then, more intelligent than farmers, because they
    eat so much fish, and therefore take in more phosphorus?”

    It is evident that much is here attributed to atoms which really
    belongs to force. Deprive atoms of force, and all that remains is
    extension, which = space = zero. Moreover, “if atoms _are_
    extended, they cannot be ultimate, for extension implies
    divisibility, and that which is conceivably divisible cannot be a
    philosophical ultimate. But, if atoms _are not_ extended, then
    even an infinite multiplication and combination of them could not
    produce an extended substance. Furthermore, an atom that is
    neither extended substance nor thinking substance is
    inconceivable. The real ultimate is force, and this force cannot
    be exerted by nothing, but, as we shall hereafter see, can be
    exerted only by a personal Spirit, for this alone possesses the
    characteristics of reality, namely, definiteness, unity, and
    activity.”

    Not only force but also intelligence must be attributed to atoms,
    before they can explain any operation of nature. Herschel says not
    only that “the force of gravitation seems like that of a universal
    will,” but that the atoms themselves, in recognizing each other in
    order to combine, show a great deal of “presence of mind.” Ladd,
    Introd. to Philosophy, 269—“A distinguished astronomer has said
    that every body in the solar system is behaving as if it knew
    precisely how it ought to behave in consistency with its own
    nature, and with the behavior of every other body in the same
    system.... Each atom has danced countless millions of miles, with
    countless millions of different partners, many of which required
    an important modification of its mode of motion, without ever
    departing from the correct step or the right time.” J. P. Cooke,
    Credentials of Science, 104, 177, suggests that something more
    than atoms is needed to explain the universe. A correlating
    Intelligence and Will must be assumed. Atoms by themselves would
    be like a heap of loose nails which need to be magnetized if they
    are to hold together. All structures would be resolved, and all
    forms of matter would disappear, if the Presence which sustains
    them were withdrawn. The atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is
    “parvus in suo genere deus”—“a little god in its nature”—only
    because it is the expression of the mind and will of an immanent
    God.

    Plato speaks of men who are “dazzled by too near a look at
    material things.” They do not perceive that these very material
    things, since they can be interpreted only in terms of spirit,
    must themselves be essentially spiritual. Materialism is the
    explanation of a world of which we know something—the world of
    mind—by a world of which we know next to nothing—the world of
    matter. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 297, 298—“How about your material
    atoms and brain-molecules? They have no real existence save as
    objects of thought, and therefore the very thought, which you say
    your atoms produce, turns out to be the essential precondition of
    their own existence.” With this agree the words of Dr. Ladd:
    “Knowledge of matter involves repeated activities of sensation and
    reflection, of inductive and deductive inference, of intuitional
    belief in substance. These are all activities of mind. Only as the
    mind has a self-conscious life, is any knowledge of what matter
    is, or can do, to be gained.... Everything is real which is the
    permanent subject of changing states. That which touches, feels,
    sees, is more real than that which is touched, felt, seen.”

    H. N. Gardner, Presb. Rev., 1885:301, 665, 666—“Mind gives to
    matter its chief meaning,—hence matter alone can never explain the
    universe.” Gore, Incarnation, 31—“Mind is not the _product_ of
    nature, but the necessary _constituent_ of nature, considered as
    an ordered knowable system.” Fraser, Philos. of Theism: “An
    immoral act must originate in the immoral agent; a physical effect
    is not _known_ to originate in its physical cause.” Matter,
    inorganic and organic, presupposes mind; but it is not true that
    mind presupposes matter. LeConte: “If I could remove your brain
    cap, what would I see? Only physical changes. But you—what do you
    perceive? Consciousness, thought, emotion, will. Now take external
    nature, the Cosmos. The observer from the outside sees only
    physical phenomena. But must there not be in this case also—on the
    other side—psychical phenomena, a Self, a Person, a Will?”

    The impossibility of finding in matter, regarded as mere atoms,
    any of the attributes of a cause, has led to a general abandonment
    of this old Materialism of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius,
    Condillac, Holbach, Feuerbach, Büchner; and Materialistic Idealism
    has taken its place, which instead of regarding force as a
    property of matter, regards matter as a manifestation of force.
    From this section we therefore pass to Materialistic Idealism, and
    inquire whether the universe can be interpreted simply as a system
    of force and of ideas. A quarter of a century ago, John Tyndall,
    in his opening address as President of the British Association at
    Belfast, declared that in matter was to be found the promise and
    potency of every form of life. But in 1898, Sir William Crookes,
    in his address as President of that same British Association,
    reversed the apothegm, and declared that in life he saw the
    promise and potency of every form of matter. See Lange, History of
    Materialism; Janet, Materialism; Fabri, Materialismus; Herzog,
    Encyclopädie, art.: Materialismus; but esp., Stallo, Modern
    Physics, 148-170.


In addition to the general error indicated above, we object to this system
as follows:

1. In knowing matter, the mind necessarily judges itself to be different
in kind, and higher in rank, than the matter which it knows.


    We here state simply an intuitive conviction. The mind, in using
    its physical organism and through it bringing external nature into
    its service, recognizes itself as different from and superior to
    matter. See Martineau, quoted in Brit. Quar., April, 1882:173, and
    the article of President Thomas Hill in the Bibliotheca Sacra,
    April, 1852:353—“All that is really given by the act of
    sense-perception is the existence of the conscious self, floating
    in boundless space and boundless time, surrounded and sustained by
    boundless power. The material moved, which we at first think the
    great reality, is only the shadow of a real being, which is
    immaterial.” Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 317—“Imagine an
    infinitesimal being in the brain, watching the action of the
    molecules, but missing the thought. So science observes the
    universe, but misses God.” Hebberd, in Journ. Spec. Philos.,
    April, 1886:135.

    Robert Browning, “the subtlest assertor of the soul in song,”
    makes the Pope, in The Ring and the Book, say: “Mind is not
    matter, nor from matter, but above.” So President Francis Wayland:
    “What is mind?” “No matter.” “What is matter?” “Never mind.”
    Sully, The Human Mind, 2:369—“Consciousness is a reality wholly
    disparate from material processes, and cannot therefore be
    resolved into these. Materialism makes that which is immediately
    known (our mental states) subordinate to that which is only
    indirectly or inferentially known (external things). Moreover, a
    material entity existing _per se_ out of relation to a cogitant
    mind is an absurdity.” As materialists work out their theory,
    their so-called matter grows more and more ethereal, until at last
    a stage is reached when it cannot be distinguished from what
    others call spirit. Martineau: “The matter they describe is so
    exceedingly clever that it is up to anything, even to writing
    Hamlet and discovering its own evolution. In short, but for the
    spelling of its name, it does not seem to differ appreciably from
    our old friends, Mind and God.” A. W. Momerie, in Christianity and
    Evolution, 54—“A being conscious of his unity cannot possibly be
    formed out of a number of atoms unconscious of their diversity.
    Any one who thinks this possible is capable of asserting that half
    a dozen fools might be compounded into a single wise man.”


2. Since the mind’s attributes of (_a_) continuous identity, (_b_)
self-activity, (_c_) unrelatedness to space, are different in kind and
higher in rank than the attributes of matter, it is rational to conclude
that mind is itself different in kind from matter and higher in rank than
matter.


    This is an argument from specific qualities to that which
    underlies and explains the qualities. (_a_) Memory proves personal
    identity. This is not an identity of material atoms, for atoms
    change. The molecules that come cannot remember those that depart.
    Some immutable part in the brain? organized or unorganized?
    Organized decays; unorganized = soul. (_b_) Inertia shows that
    matter is not self-moving. It acts only as it is acted upon. A
    single atom would never move. Two portions are necessary, and
    these, in order to useful action, require adjustment by a power
    which does not belong to matter. Evolution of the universe
    inexplicable, unless matter were first moved by some power outside
    itself. See Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, 92. (_c_) The highest
    activities of mind are independent of known physical conditions.
    Mind controls and subdues the body. It does not cease to grow when
    the growth of the body ceases. When the body nears dissolution,
    the mind often asserts itself most strikingly.

    Kant: “Unity of apprehension is possible on account of the
    transcendental unity of self-consciousness.” I get my idea of
    unity from the indivisible self. Stout, Manual of Psychology,
    53—“So far as matter exists independently of its presentation to a
    cognitive subject, it cannot have material properties, such as
    extension, hardness, color, weight, etc.... The world of material
    phenomena presupposes a system of immaterial agency. In this
    immaterial system the individual consciousness originates. This
    agency, some say, is _thought_, others _will_.” A. J. Dubois, in
    Century Magazine, Dec. 1894:228—Since each thought involves a
    molecular movement in the brain, and this moves the whole
    universe, mind is the secret of the universe, and we should
    interpret nature as the expression of underlying purpose. Science
    is mind following the traces of mind. There can be no mind without
    antecedent mind. That all human beings have the same mental modes
    shows that these modes are not due simply to environment. Bowne:
    “Things act upon the mind and the mind reacts with knowledge.
    Knowing is not a passive receiving, but an active construing.”
    Wundt: “We are compelled to admit that the physical development is
    not the cause, but much more the effect, of psychical
    development.”

    Paul Carus, Soul of Man, 52-64, defines soul as “the form of an
    organism,” and memory as “the psychical aspect of the preservation
    of form in living substance.” This seems to give priority to the
    organism rather than to the soul, regardless of the fact that
    without soul no organism is conceivable. Clay cannot be the
    ancestor of the potter, nor stone the ancestor of the mason, nor
    wood the ancestor of the carpenter. W. N. Clarke, Christian
    Theology, 99—“The intelligibleness of the universe to us is strong
    and ever present evidence that there is an all-pervading rational
    Mind, from which the universe received its character.” We must add
    to the maxim, “Cogito, ergo sum,” the other maxim, “Intelligo,
    ergo Deus est.” Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:273—“The whole
    idealistic philosophy of modern times is in fact only the carrying
    out and grounding of the conviction that Nature is ordered by
    Spirit and for Spirit, as a subservient means for its eternal
    ends; that it is therefore not, as the heathen naturalism thought,
    the one and all, the last and highest of things, but has the
    Spirit, and the moral Ends over it, as its Lord and Master.” The
    consciousness by which things are known precedes the things
    themselves, in the order of logic, and therefore cannot be
    explained by them or derived from them. See Porter, Human
    Intellect, 22, 131, 132. McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,
    chap. on Materialism; Divine Government, 71-94; Intuitions,
    140-145. Hopkins, Study of Man, 53-56; Morell, Hist. of
    Philosophy, 318-334; Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 403; Theol.
    Eclectic, 6:555; Appleton, Works, 1:151-154; Calderwood, Moral
    Philos., 235; Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725, and synopsis, in
    Bap. Quar., July, 1873:380.


3. Mind rather than matter must therefore be regarded as the original and
independent entity, unless it can be scientifically demonstrated that mind
is material in its origin and nature. But all attempts to explain the
psychical from the physical, or the organic from the inorganic, are
acknowledged failures. The most that can be claimed is, that psychical are
always accompanied by physical changes, and that the inorganic is the
basis and support of the organic. Although the precise connection between
the mind and the body is unknown, the fact that the continuity of physical
changes is unbroken in times of psychical activity renders it certain that
mind is not transformed physical force. If the facts of sensation indicate
the dependence of mind upon body, the facts of volition equally indicate
the dependence of body upon mind.


    The chemist can produce _organic_, but not _organized_,
    substances. The _life_ cannot be produced from matter. Even in
    living things progress is secured only by plan. Multiplication of
    desired advantage, in the Darwinian scheme, requires a selecting
    thought; in other words the natural selection is artificial
    selection after all. John Fiske, Destiny of the Creature,
    109—“Cerebral physiology tells us that, during the present life,
    although thought and feeling are always manifested in connection
    with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought
    and feeling be in any sense the product of matter. Nothing could
    be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis,
    that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is
    not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What
    goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular
    movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way
    correlated, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants.”

    Leibnitz’s “preëstablished harmony” indicates the difficulty of
    defining the relation between mind and matter. They are like two
    entirely disconnected clocks, the one of which has a dial and
    indicates the hour by its hands, while the other without a dial
    simultaneously indicates the same hour by its striking apparatus.
    To Leibnitz the world is an aggregate of atomic souls leading
    absolutely separate lives. There is no real action of one upon
    another. Everything in the monad is the development of its
    individual unstimulated activity. Yet there is a preëstablished
    harmony of them all, arranged from the beginning by the Creator.
    The internal development of each monad is so adjusted to that of
    all the other monads, as to produce the false impression that they
    are mutually influenced by each other (see Johnson, in Andover
    Rev., Apl. 1890:407, 408). Leibnitz’s theory involves the complete
    rejection of the freedom of the human will in the libertarian
    sense. To escape from this arbitrary connection of mind and matter
    in Leibnitz’s preëstablished harmony, Spinoza rejected the
    Cartesian doctrine of two God-created substances, and maintained
    that there is but one fundamental substance, namely, God himself
    (see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 172).

    There is an increased flow of blood to the head in times of mental
    activity. Sometimes, in intense heat of literary composition, the
    blood fairly surges through the brain. No diminution, but further
    increase, of physical activity accompanies the greatest efforts of
    mind. Lay a man upon a balance; fire a pistol shot or inject
    suddenly a great thought into his mind; at once he will tip the
    balance, and tumble upon his head. Romanes, Mind and Motion,
    21—“Consciousness causes physical changes, but not _vice versa_.
    To say that mind is a function of motion is to say that mind is a
    function of itself, since motion exists only for mind. Better
    suppose the physical and the psychical to be only one, as in the
    violin sound and vibration are one. Volition is a cause in nature
    because it has cerebration for its obverse and inseparable side.
    But if there is no motion without mind, then there can be no
    universe without God.”... 34—“Because within the limits of human
    experience mind is only known as associated with brain, it does
    not follow that mind cannot exist without brain. Helmholtz’s
    explanation of the effect of one of Beethoven’s sonatas on the
    brain may be perfectly correct, but the explanation of the effect
    given by a musician may be equally correct within its category.”

    Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1:§ 56—“Two things,
    mind and nervous action, exist together, but we cannot imagine how
    they are related” (see review of Spencer’s Psychology, in N.
    Englander, July, 1873). Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 120—“The
    passage from the physics of the brain to the facts of
    consciousness is unthinkable.” Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion,
    95—“The metamorphosis of vibrations into conscious ideas is a
    miracle, in comparison with which the floating of iron or the
    turning of water into wine is easily credible.” Bain, Mind and
    Body, 131—There is no break in the physical continuity. See Brit.
    Quar., Jan. 1874; art. by Herbert, on Mind and the Science of
    Energy; McCosh, Intuitions, 145; Talbot, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1871.
    On Geulincx’s “occasional causes” and Descartes’s dualism, see
    Martineau, Types, 144, 145, 156-158, and Study, 2:77.


4. The materialistic theory, denying as it does the priority of spirit,
can furnish no sufficient cause for the highest features of the existing
universe, namely, its personal intelligences, its intuitive ideas, its
free-will, its moral progress, its beliefs in God and immortality.


    Herbert, Modern Realism Examined: “Materialism has no physical
    evidence of the existence of consciousness in others. As it
    declares our fellow men to be destitute of free volition, so it
    should declare them destitute of consciousness; should call them,
    as well as brutes, pure automata. If physics are all, there is no
    God, but there is also no man, existing.” Some of the early
    followers of Descartes used to kick and beat their dogs, laughing
    meanwhile at their cries and calling them the “creaking of the
    machine.” Huxley, who calls the brutes “conscious automata,”
    believes in the gradual banishment, from all regions of human
    thought, of what we call spirit and spontaneity: “A spontaneous
    act is an absurdity; it is simply an effect that is uncaused.”

    James, Psychology, 1:149—“The girl in Midshipman Easy could not
    excuse the illegitimacy of her child by saying that ‘it was a very
    small one.’ And consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate
    birth in any philosophy that starts without it, and yet professes
    to explain all facts by continued evolution.... Materialism denies
    reality to almost all the impulses which we most cherish. Hence it
    will fail of universal adoption.” Clerk Maxwell, Life, 391—“The
    atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking
    about, and it is strange to find a number of them combining to
    form a man of feeling.... 426—I have looked into most
    philosophical systems, and I have seen none that will work without
    a God.” President E. B. Andrews: “Mind is the only substantive
    thing in this universe, and all else is adjective. Matter is not
    primordial, but is a function of spirit.” Theodore Parker: “Man is
    the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds
    nothing so tall or grand as himself, nothing so valuable to him.
    The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope—the star
    that is looking, not looked after, nor looked at.”

    Materialism makes men to be “a serio-comic procession of wax
    figures or of cunning casts in clay” (Bowne). Man is “the
    cunningest of clocks.” But if there were nothing but matter, there
    could be no materialism, for a system of thought, like
    materialism, implies consciousness. Martineau, Types, preface,
    xii, xiii—“It was the irresistible pleading of the moral
    consciousness which first drove me to rebel against the limits of
    the merely scientific conception. It became incredible to me that
    nothing was possible except the actual.... Is there then no _ought
    to be_, other than _what is_?” Dewey, Psychology, 84—“A world
    without ideal elements would be one in which the home would be
    four walls and a roof to keep out cold and wet; the table a mess
    for animals; and the grave a hole in the ground.” Omar Khayyám,
    Rubaiyat, stanza 72—“And that inverted bowl they call the Sky,
    Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die, Lift not your hands to
    It for help—for it As impotently moves as you or I.” Victor Hugo:
    “You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers?
    Why then is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to
    fail? Winter is on my head, and eternal spring is in my heart....
    The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear the immortal
    symphonies of the worlds which invite me.”

    Diman, Theistic Argument, 348—“Materialism can never explain the
    fact that matter is always combined with force. Coördinate
    principles? then dualism, instead of monism. Force cause of
    matter? then we preserve unity, but destroy materialism; for we
    trace matter to an immaterial source. Behind multiplicity of
    natural forces we must postulate some single power—which can be
    nothing but coördinating mind.” Mark Hopkins sums up Materialism
    in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1879:490—“1. Man, who is a person, is made
    by a thing, _i. e._, matter. 2. Matter is to be worshiped as man’s
    maker, if anything is to be (_Rom. 1:25_). 3. Man is to worship
    himself—his God is his belly.” See also Martineau, Religion and
    Materialism, 25-31, Types, 1: preface, xii, xiii, and Study,
    1:248, 250, 345; Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,
    145-161; Buchanan, Modern Atheism, 247, 248; McCosh, in
    International Rev., Jan. 1895; Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1875, art.: Man
    Transcorporeal; Calderwood, Relations of Mind and Brain; Laycock,
    Mind and Brain; Diman, Theistic Argument, 358; Wilkinson, in
    Present Day Tracts, 3:no. 17; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:487-499; A.
    H. Strong, Philos. and Relig., 31-38.



II. Materialistic Idealism.


Idealism proper is that method of thought which regards all knowledge as
conversant only with affections of the percipient mind.

Its element of truth is the fact that these affections of the percipient
mind are the conditions of our knowledge. Its error is in denying that
through these and in these we know that which exists independently of our
consciousness.

The idealism of the present day is mainly a materialistic idealism. It
defines matter and mind alike in terms of sensation, and regards both as
opposite sides or successive manifestations of one underlying and
unknowable force.


    Modern subjective idealism is the development of a principle found
    as far back as Locke. Locke derived all our knowledge from
    sensation; the mind only combines ideas which sensation furnishes,
    but gives no material of its own. Berkeley held that externally we
    can be sure only of sensations,—cannot be sure that any external
    world exists apart from mind. Berkeley’s idealism, however, was
    objective; for he maintained that while things do not exist
    independently of consciousness, they do exist independently of
    _our_ consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a correct
    philosophy takes the place of a mindless external world as the
    cause of our ideas. Kant, in like manner, held to existences
    outside of our own minds, although he regarded these existences as
    unknown and unknowable. Over against these forms of objective
    idealism we must put the subjective idealism of Hume, who held
    that internally also we cannot be sure of anything but mental
    phenomena; we know thoughts, feelings and volitions, but we do not
    know mental substance within, any more than we know material
    substance without; our ideas are a string of beads, without any
    string; we need no cause for these ideas, in an external world, a
    soul, or God. Mill, Spencer, Bain and Tyndall are Humists, and it
    is their subjective idealism which we oppose.

    All these regard the material atom as a mere centre of force, or a
    hypothetical cause of sensations. Matter is therefore a
    manifestation of force, as to the old materialism force was a
    property of matter. But if matter, mind and God are nothing but
    sensations, then the body itself is nothing but sensations. There
    is no _body_ to have the sensations, and no _spirit_, either human
    or divine, to produce them. John Stuart Mill, in his Examination
    of Sir William Hamilton, 1:234-253, makes sensations the only
    original sources of knowledge. He defines matter as “a permanent
    possibility of sensation,” and mind as “a series of feelings aware
    of itself.” So Huxley calls matter “only a name for the unknown
    cause of the states of consciousness”; although he also declares:
    “If I am compelled to choose between the materialism of a man like
    Büchner and the idealism of Berkeley, I would have to agree with
    Berkeley.” He would hold to the priority of matter, and yet regard
    matter as wholly ideal. Since John Stuart Mill, of all the
    materialistic idealists, gives the most precise definitions of
    matter and of mind, we attempt to show the inadequacy of his
    treatment.

    The most complete refutation of subjective idealism is that of Sir
    William Hamilton, in his Metaphysics, 348-372, and Theories of
    Sense-perception—the reply to Brown. See condensed statement of
    Hamilton’s view, with estimate and criticism, in Porter, Human
    Intellect, 236-240, and on Idealism, 129, 132. Porter holds that
    original perception gives us simply affections of our own
    sensorium; as cause of these, we gain knowledge of extended
    externality. So Sir William Hamilton: “Sensation proper has no
    object but a subject-object.” But both Porter and Hamilton hold
    that through these sensations we know that which exists
    independently of our sensations. Hamilton’s natural realism,
    however, was an exaggeration of the truth. Bowne, Introd. to
    Psych. Theory, 257, 258—“In Sir William Hamilton’s desire to have
    no go-betweens in perception, he was forced to maintain that every
    sensation is felt where it seems to be, and hence that the mind
    fills out the entire body. Likewise he had to affirm that the
    object in vision is not the thing, but the rays of light, and even
    the object itself had, at last, to be brought into consciousness.
    Thus he reached the absurdity that the true object in perception
    is something of which we are totally unconscious.” Surely we
    cannot be immediately conscious of what is outside of
    consciousness. James, Psychology, 1:11—“The terminal organs are
    telephones, and brain-cells are the receivers at which the mind
    listens.” Berkeley’s view is to be found in his Principles of
    Human Knowledge, § 18 _sq._ See also Presb. Rev., Apl.
    1885:301-315; Journ. Spec. Philos., 1884:246-260, 383-399;
    Tulloch, Mod. Theories, 360, 361; Encyc. Britannica, art.:
    Berkeley.

    There is, however, an idealism which is not open to Hamilton’s
    objections, and to which most recent philosophers give their
    adhesion. It is the objective idealism of Lotze. It argues that we
    know nothing of the extended world except through the forces which
    impress our nervous organism. These forces take the form of
    vibrations of air or ether, and we interpret them as sound, light,
    or motion, according as they affect our nerves of hearing, sight,
    or touch. But the only force which we immediately know is that of
    our own wills, and we can either not understand matter at all or
    we must understand it as the product of a will comparable to our
    own. Things are simply “concreted laws of action,” or divine ideas
    to which permanent reality has been given by divine will. What we
    perceive in the normal exercise of our faculties has existence not
    only for us but for all intelligent beings and for God himself: in
    other words, our idealism is not subjective, but objective. We
    have seen in the previous section that atoms cannot explain the
    universe,—they presuppose both ideas and force. We now see that
    this force presupposes will, and these ideas presuppose mind. But,
    as it still may be claimed that this mind is not self-conscious
    mind and that this will is not personal will, we pass in the next
    section to consider Idealistic Pantheism, of which these claims
    are characteristic. Materialistic Idealism, in truth, is but a
    half-way house between Materialism and Pantheism, in which no
    permanent lodging is to be found by the logical intelligence.

    Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 152—“The objectivity of our
    cognition consists therefore in this, that it is not a meaningless
    play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a world whose
    coherency is ordered in pursuance of the injunction of the sole
    Reality in the world, to wit, the Good. Our cognition thus
    possesses more of truth than if it copied exactly a world that has
    no value in itself. Although it does not comprehend in what manner
    all that is phenomenon is presented to the view, still it
    understands what is the meaning of it all; and is like to a
    spectator who comprehends the æsthetic significance of that which
    takes place on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing
    essential if he were to see besides the machinery by means of
    which the changes are effected on the stage.” Professor C. A.
    Strong: “Perception is a shadow thrown upon the mind by a
    thing-in-itself. The shadow is the symbol of the thing; and, as
    shadows are soulless and dead, physical objects may seem soulless
    and dead, while the reality symbolized is never so soulful and
    alive. Consciousness is reality. The only existence of which we
    can conceive is mental in its nature. All existence _for_
    consciousness is existence _of_ consciousness. The horse’s shadow
    accompanies him, but it does not help him to draw the cart. The
    brain-event is simply the mental state itself regarded from the
    point of view of the perception.”

    Aristotle: “Substance is in its nature prior to relation” = there
    can be no relation without things to be related. Fichte:
    “Knowledge, just because it is knowledge, is not reality,—it comes
    not first, but second.” Veitch, Knowing and Being, 216, 217, 292,
    293—“Thought can do nothing, except as it is a synonym for
    Thinker.... Neither the finite nor the infinite consciousness,
    alone or together, can constitute an object external, or explain
    its existence. The existence of a thing logically precedes the
    perception of it. Perception is not creation. It is not the
    thinking that makes the ego, but the ego that makes the thinking.”
    Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Divine thoughts presuppose a
    divine Being. God’s thoughts do not constitute the real world. The
    real force does not lie in them,—it lies in the divine Being, as
    living, active Will.” Here was the fundamental error of Hegel,
    that he regarded the Universe as mere Idea, and gave little
    thought to the Love and the Will that constitute it. See John
    Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, 1:75; 2:80; Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1872:
    art. on Huxley; Lowndes, Philos. Primary Beliefs, 115-143; Atwater
    (on Ferrier), in Princeton Rev., 1857:258, 280; Cousin, Hist.
    Philosophy, 2:239-343; Veitch’s Hamilton, (Blackwood’s Philos.
    Classics,) 176, 191; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 58-74.


To this view we make the following objections:

1. Its definition of matter as a “permanent possibility of sensation”
contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of
matter, we have direct knowledge of substance as underlying phenomena, as
distinct from our sensations, and as external to the mind which
experiences these sensations.


    Bowne, Metaphysics, 432—“How the possibility of an odor and a
    flavor can be the cause of the yellow color of an orange is
    probably unknowable, except to a mind that can see that two and
    two may make five.” See Iverach’s Philosophy of Spencer Examined,
    in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 29. Martineau, Study, 1:102-112—“If
    external impressions are telegraphed to the brain, intelligence
    must receive the message at the beginning as well as deliver it at
    the end.... It is the external object which gives the possibility,
    not the possibility which gives the external object. The mind
    cannot make both its _cognita_ and its _cognitio_. It cannot
    dispense with standing-ground for its own feet, or with atmosphere
    for its own wings.” Professor Charles A. Strong: “Kant held to
    things-in-themselves back of physical phenomena, as well as to
    things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena; he thought
    things-in-themselves back of physical might be identical with
    things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena. And since mental
    phenomena, on this theory, are not specimens of reality, and
    reality manifests itself indifferently through them and through
    physical phenomena, he naturally concluded that we have no ground
    for supposing reality to be like either—that we must conceive of
    it as ‘weder Materie noch ein denkend Wesen’—‘neither matter nor a
    thinking being’—a theory of the Unknowable. Would that it had been
    also the Unthinkable and the Unmentionable!” Ralph Waldo Emerson
    was a subjective idealist; but, when called to inspect a farmer’s
    load of wood, he said to his company: “Excuse me a moment, my
    friends; we have to attend to these matters, just as if they were
    real.” See Mivart, On Truth, 71-141.


2. Its definition of mind as a “series of feelings aware of itself”
contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of mind,
we have direct knowledge of a spiritual substance of which these phenomena
are manifestations, which retains its identity independently of our
consciousness, and which, in its knowing, instead of being the passive
recipient of impressions from without, always acts from within by a power
of its own.


    James, Psychology, 1:226—“It seems as if the elementary psychic
    fact were not _thought_, or _this thought_, or _that thought_, but
    _my thought_, every thought being owned. The universal conscious
    fact is not ‘feelings and thoughts exist,’ but ‘I think,’ and ‘I
    feel.’ ” Professor James is compelled to say this, even though he
    begins his Psychology without insisting upon the existence of a
    soul. Hamilton’s Reid, 443—“Shall I think that thought can stand
    by itself? or that ideas can feel pleasure or pain?” R. T. Smith,
    Man’s Knowledge, 44—“We say ‘my notions and my passions,’ and when
    we use these phrases we imply that our central self is felt to be
    something different from the notions or passions which belong to
    it or characterize it for a time.” Lichtenberg: “We should say,
    ‘It thinks;’ just as we say, ‘It lightens,’ or ‘It rains.’ In
    saying ‘Cogito,’ the philosopher goes too far if he translates it,
    ‘I think.’ ” Are the faculties, then, an army without a general,
    or an engine without a driver? In that case we should not _have_
    sensations,—we should only _be_ sensations.

    Professor C. A. Strong: “I have knowledge of _other minds_. This
    non-empirical knowledge—transcendent knowledge of
    things-in-themselves, derived neither from experience nor
    reasoning, and assuming that like consequents (intelligent
    movements) must have like antecedents (thoughts and feelings), and
    also assuming instinctively that something exists outside of my
    own mind—this refutes the post-Kantian phenomenalism. _Perception_
    and _memory_ also involve transcendence. In both I transcend the
    bounds of experience, as truly as in my knowledge of other minds.
    In memory I recognize a _past_, as distinguished from the present.
    In perception I cognize a possibility of _other_ experiences like
    the present, and this alone gives the sense of permanence and
    reality. Perception and memory refute phenomenalism.
    Things-in-themselves must be assumed in order to fill the gaps
    between individual minds, and to give coherence and
    intelligibility to the universe, and so to avoid pluralism. If
    matter can influence and even extinguish our minds, it must have
    some force of its own, some existence in itself. If consciousness
    is an evolutionary product, it must have arisen from simpler
    mental facts. But these simpler mental facts are only another name
    for things-in-themselves. A deep prerational instinct compels us
    to recognize them, for they cannot be logically demonstrated. We
    must assume them in order to give continuity and intelligibility
    to our conceptions of the universe.” See, on Bain’s Cerebral
    Psychology, Martineau’s Essays, 1:265. On the physiological method
    of mental philosophy, see Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1871:1; Bowen, in
    Princeton Rev., March, 1878:423-450; Murray, Psychology, 279-287.


3. In so far as this theory regards mind as the obverse side of matter, or
as a later and higher development from matter, the mere reference of both
mind and matter to an underlying force does not save the theory from any
of the difficulties of pure materialism already mentioned; since in this
case, equally with that, force is regarded as purely physical, and the
priority of spirit is denied.


    Herbert Spencer, Psychology, quoted by Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy,
    2:80—“Mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective
    faces of the same thing. Yet we remain utterly incapable of
    seeing, or even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind still
    continues to us a something without kinship to other things.”
    Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, quoted by Talbot, Bap. Quar., Jan.
    1871:5—“All that I know of matter and mind in themselves is that
    the former is an external centre of force, and the latter an
    internal centre of force.” New Englander, Sept. 1883:636—“If the
    atom be a mere centre of force and not a real thing in itself,
    then the atom is a supersensual essence, an immaterial being. To
    make immaterial matter the source of conscious mind is to make
    matter as wonderful as an immortal soul or a personal Creator.”
    See New Englander, July, 1875:532-535; Martineau, Study, 102-130,
    and Relig. and Mod. Materialism, 25—“If it takes mind to construe
    the universe, how can the negation of mind constitute it?”

    David J. Hill, in his Genetic Philosophy, 200, 201, seems to deny
    that thought precedes force, or that force precedes thought:
    “Objects, or things in the external world, may be elements of a
    thought-process in a cosmic subject, without themselves being
    conscious.... A true analysis and a rational genesis require the
    equal recognition of both the objective and the subjective
    elements of experience, without priority in time, separation in
    space or disruption of being. So far as our minds can penetrate
    reality, as disclosed in the activities of thought, we are
    everywhere confronted with a Dynamic Reason.” In Dr. Hill’s
    account of the genesis of the universe, however, the unconscious
    comes first, and from it the conscious seems to be derived.
    Consciousness of the object is only the obverse side of the object
    of consciousness. This is, as Martineau, Study, 1:341, remarks,
    “to take the sea on board the boat.” We greatly prefer the view of
    Lotze, 2:641—“Things are acts of the Infinite wrought within minds
    alone, or states which the Infinite experiences nowhere but in
    minds.... Things and events are the sum of those actions which the
    highest Principle performs in all spirits so uniformly and
    coherently, that to these spirits there must seem to be a world of
    substantial and efficient things existing in space outside
    themselves.” The data from which we draw our inferences as to the
    nature of the external world being mental and spiritual, it is
    more rational to attribute to that world a spiritual reality than
    a kind of reality of which our experience knows nothing. See also
    Schurman, Belief in God, 208, 225.


4. In so far as this theory holds the underlying force of which matter and
mind are manifestations to be in any sense intelligent or voluntary, it
renders necessary the assumption that there is an intelligent and
voluntary Being who exerts this force. Sensations and ideas, moreover, are
explicable only as manifestations of Mind.


    Many recent Christian thinkers, as Murphy, Scientific Bases of
    Faith, 13-15, 29-36, 42-52, would define mind as a function of
    matter, matter as a function of force, force as a function of
    will, and therefore as the power of an omnipresent and personal
    God. All force, except that of man’s free will, is the will of
    God. So Herschel, Lectures, 460; Argyll, Reign of Law, 121-127;
    Wallace on Nat. Selection, 363-371; Martineau, Essays, 1:63, 121,
    145, 265; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 146-162. These writers are
    led to their conclusion in large part by the considerations that
    nothing dead can be a proper cause; that will is the only cause of
    which we have immediate knowledge; that the forces of nature are
    intelligible only when they are regarded as exertions of will.
    Matter, therefore, is simply centres of force—the regular and, as
    it were, automatic expression of God’s mind and will. Second
    causes in nature are only secondary activities of the great First
    Cause.

    This view is held also by Bowne, in his Metaphysics. He regards
    only personality as real. Matter is phenomenal, although it is an
    activity of the divine will outside of us. Bowne’s phenomenalism
    is therefore an objective idealism, greatly preferable to that of
    Berkeley who held to God’s energizing indeed, but only within the
    soul. This idealism of Bowne is not pantheism, for it holds that,
    while there are no second causes in nature, man is a second cause,
    with a personality distinct from that of God, and lifted above
    nature by his powers of free will. Royce, however, in his
    Religious Aspect of Philosophy, and in his The World and the
    Individual, makes man’s consciousness a part or aspect of a
    universal consciousness, and so, instead of making God come to
    consciousness in man, makes man come to consciousness in God.
    While this scheme seems, in one view, to save God’s personality,
    it may be doubted whether it equally guarantees man’s personality
    or leaves room for man’s freedom, responsibility, sin and guilt.
    Bowne, Philos. Theism, 175—“ ‘Universal reason’ is a class-term
    which denotes no possible existence, and which has reality only in
    the specific existences from which it is abstracted.” Bowne claims
    that the impersonal finite has only such otherness as a thought or
    act has to its subject. There is no substantial existence except
    in persons. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Neo-Kantianism
    erects into a God the mere form of self-consciousness in general,
    that is, confounds consciousness _überhaupt_ with a _universal_
    consciousness.”

    Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 318-343, esp. 328—“Is
    there anything in existence but myself? Yes. To escape solipsism I
    must admit at least other persons. Does the world of apparent
    objects exist for me only? No; it exists for others also, so that
    we live in a common world. Does this common world consist in
    anything more than a similarity of impressions in finite minds, so
    that the world apart from these is nothing? This view cannot be
    disproved, but it accords so ill with the impression of our total
    experience that it is practically impossible. Is then the world of
    things a continuous existence of some kind independent of finite
    thought and consciousness? This claim cannot be demonstrated, but
    it is the only view that does not involve insuperable
    difficulties. What is the nature and where is the place of this
    cosmic existence? That is the question between Realism and
    Idealism. Realism views things as existing in a real space, and as
    true ontological realities. Idealism views both them and the space
    in which they are supposed to be existing as existing only in and
    for a cosmic Intelligence, and apart from which they are absurd
    and contradictory. Things are independent of _our_ thought, but
    not independent of _all_ thought, in a lumpish materiality which
    is the antithesis and negation of consciousness.” See also
    Martineau, Study, 1:214-230, 341. For advocacy of the substantive
    existence of second causes, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 582-588;
    Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:596; Alden, Philosophy, 48-80; Hodgson,
    Time and Space, 149-218; A. J. Balfour, in Mind, Oct. 1893: 430.



III. Idealistic Pantheism.


Pantheism is that method of thought which conceives of the universe as the
development of one intelligent and voluntary, yet impersonal, substance,
which reaches consciousness only in man. It therefore identifies God, not
with each individual object in the universe, but with the totality of
things. The current Pantheism of our day is idealistic.

The elements of truth in Pantheism are the intelligence and voluntariness
of God, and his immanence in the universe; its error lies in denying God’s
personality and transcendence.


    Pantheism denies the real existence of the finite, at the same
    time that it deprives the Infinite of self-consciousness and
    freedom. See Hunt, History of Pantheism; Manning, Half-truths and
    the Truth; Bayne, Christian Life, Social and Individual, 21-53;
    Hutton, on Popular Pantheism, in Essays, 1:55-76—“The pantheist’s
    ‘I believe in God’, is a contradiction. He says: ‘I perceive the
    external as different from myself; but on further reflection, I
    perceive that this external was itself the percipient agency.’ So
    the worshiped is really the worshiper after all.” Harris,
    Philosophical Basis of Theism, 173—“Man is a bottle of the ocean’s
    water, in the ocean, temporarily distinguishable by its limitation
    within the bottle, but lost again in the ocean, so soon as these
    fragile limits are broken.” Martineau, Types, 1:23—Mere immanency
    excludes Theism; transcendency leaves it still possible;
    211-225—Pantheism declares that “there is nothing but God; he is
    not only sole cause but entire effect; he is all in all.” Spinoza
    has been falsely called “the God-intoxicated man.” “Spinoza, on
    the contrary, translated God into the universe; it was Malebranche
    who transfigured the universe into God.”

    The later Brahmanism is pantheistic. Rowland Williams,
    Christianity and Hinduism, quoted in Mozley on Miracles, 284—“In
    the final state personality vanishes. You will not, says the
    Brahman, accept the term ‘void’ as an adequate description of the
    mysterious nature of the soul, but you will clearly apprehend
    soul, in the final state, to be unseen and ungrasped being,
    thought, knowledge, joy—no other than very God.” Flint, Theism,
    69—“Where the will is without energy, and rest is longed for as
    the end of existence, as among the Hindus, there is marked
    inability to think of God as cause or will, and constant
    inveterate tendency to pantheism.”

    Hegel denies God’s transcendence: “God is not a spirit beyond the
    stars; he is spirit in all spirit”; which means that God, the
    impersonal and unconscious Absolute, comes to consciousness only
    in man. If the eternal system of abstract thoughts were itself
    conscious, finite consciousness would disappear; hence the
    alternative is either _no God_, or _no man_. Stirling: “The Idea,
    so conceived, is a blind, dumb, invisible idol, and the theory is
    the most hopeless theory that has ever been presented to
    humanity.” It is practical autolatry, or self-deification. The
    world is reduced to a mere process of logic; thought thinks; there
    is thought without a thinker. To this doctrine of Hegel we may
    well oppose the remarks of Lotze: “We cannot make mind the
    equivalent of the infinitive _to think_,—we feel that it must be
    that which thinks; the essence of things cannot be either
    existence or activity,—it must be that which exists and that which
    acts. Thinking means nothing, if it is not the thinking of a
    thinker; acting and working mean nothing, if we leave out the
    conception of a subject distinguishable from them and from which
    they proceed.” To Hegel, Being _is_ Thought; to Spinoza, Being
    _has_ Thought + Extension; the truth seems to be that Being _has_
    Thought + Will, and _may_ reveal itself in Extension and Evolution
    (Creation).

    By other philosophers, however, Hegel is otherwise interpreted.
    Prof. H. Jones, in Mind, July, 1893: 289-306, claims that Hegel’s
    fundamental Idea is not Thought, but Thinking: “The universe to
    him was not a system of thoughts, but a thinking reality,
    manifested most fully in man.... The fundamental reality is the
    universal intelligence whose operation we should seek to detect in
    all things. All reality is ultimately explicable as Spirit, or
    Intelligence,—hence our ontology must be a Logic, and the laws of
    things must be laws of thinking.” Sterrett, in like manner, in his
    Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, 17, quotes Hegel’s
    Logic, Wallace’s translation, 89, 91, 236: “Spinoza’s _Substance_
    is, as it were, a dark, shapeless abyss, which devours all
    definite content as utterly null, and produces from itself nothing
    that has positive subsistence in itself.... God is Substance,—he
    is, however, no less the Absolute Person.” This is essential to
    religion, but this, says Hegel, Spinoza never perceived:
    “Everything depends upon the Absolute Truth being perceived, not
    merely as Substance, but as Subject.” God is self-conscious and
    self-determining Spirit. Necessity is excluded. Man is free and
    immortal. Men are not mechanical parts of God, nor do they lose
    their identity, although they _find themselves_ truly only in him.
    With this estimate of Hegel’s system, Caird, Erdmann and Mulford
    substantially agree. This is Tennyson’s “Higher Pantheism.”

    Seth, Ethical Principles, 440—“Hegel conceived the superiority of
    his system to Spinozism to lie in the substitution of Subject for
    Substance. The true Absolute must contain, instead of abolishing,
    relations; the true Monism must include, instead of excluding,
    Pluralism. A One which, like Spinoza’s Substance, or the Hegelian
    Absolute, does not enable us to think the Many, cannot be the true
    One—the unity of the Manifold.... Since evil exists, Schopenhauer
    substituted for Hegel’s Panlogism, which asserted the identity of
    the rational and the real, a blind impulse of life,—for absolute
    Reason he substituted a reasonless Will”—a system of practical
    pessimism. Alexander, Theories of Will, 5—“Spinoza recognized no
    distinction between will and intellectual affirmation or denial.”
    John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:107—“As there is no
    reason in the conception of pure space why any figures or forms,
    lines, surfaces, solids, should arise in it, so there is no reason
    in the pure colorless abstraction of Infinite Substance why any
    world of finite things and beings should ever come into existence.
    It is the grave of all things, the productive source of nothing.”
    Hegel called Schelling’s Identity or Absolute “the infinite night
    in which all cows are black”—an allusion to Goethe’s Faust, part
    2, act 1, where the words are added: “and cats are gray.” Although
    Hegel’s preference of the term Subject, instead of the term
    Substance, has led many to maintain that he believed in a
    personality of God distinct from that of man, his over-emphasis of
    the Idea, and his comparative ignoring of the elements of Love and
    Will, leave it still doubtful whether his Idea was anything more
    than unconscious and impersonal intelligence—less materialistic
    than that of Spinoza indeed, yet open to many of the same
    objections.


We object to this system as follows:

1. Its idea of God is self-contradictory, since it makes him infinite, yet
consisting only of the finite; absolute, yet existing in necessary
relation to the universe; supreme, yet shut up to a process of
self-evolution and dependent for self-consciousness on man; without
self-determination, yet the cause of all that is.


    Saisset, Pantheism, 148—“An imperfect God, yet perfection arising
    from imperfection.” Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:13—“Pantheism applies
    to God a principle of growth and imperfection, which belongs only
    to the finite.” Calderwood, Moral Philos., 245—“Its first
    requisite is moment, or movement, which it assumes, but does not
    account for.” Caro’s sarcasm applies here: “Your God is not yet
    made—he is in process of manufacture.” See H. B. Smith, Faith and
    Philosophy, 25. Pantheism is practical atheism, for impersonal
    spirit is only blind and necessary force. Angelus Silesius: “Wir
    beten ‘Es gescheh, mein Herr und Gott, dein Wille’; Und sieh’, Er
    hat nicht Will’,—Er ist ein ew’ge Stille”—which Max Müller
    translates as follows: “We pray, ‘O Lord our God, Do thou thy holy
    Will’; and see! God has no will; He is at peace and still.”
    Angelus Silesius consistently makes God dependent for
    self-consciousness on man: “I know that God cannot live An instant
    without me; He must give up the ghost, If I should cease to be.”
    Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Hegelianism destroys both God
    and man. It reduces man to an object of the universal Thinker, and
    leaves this universal Thinker without any true personality.”
    Pantheism is a game of solitaire, in which God plays both sides.


2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it
directly contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are
not parts and particles of God, but distinct personal subsistences.


    Martineau, Essays, 1:158—“Even for immanency, there must be
    something wherein to dwell, and for life, something whereon to
    act.” Many systems of monism contradict consciousness; they
    confound harmony between two with absorption in one. “In Scripture
    we never find the universe called τὸ πᾶν, for this suggests the
    idea of a self-contained unity: we have everywhere τὰ πάντα
    instead.” The Bible recognizes the element of truth in
    pantheism—God is “_through all_”; also the element of truth in
    mysticism—God is “_in you all_”; but it adds the element of
    transcendence which both these fail to recognize—God is “above
    all”_ (Eph. 4:6)_. See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of
    Christianity, 539. G. D. B. Pepper: “He who is over all and in all
    is yet distinct from all. If one is over a thing, he is not that
    very thing which he is over. If one is in something, he must be
    distinct from that something. And so the universe, over which and
    in which God is, must be thought of as something distinct from
    God. The creation cannot be identical with God, or a mere form of
    God.” We add, however, that it may be a manifestation of God and
    dependent upon God, as our thoughts and acts are manifestations of
    our mind and will and dependent upon our mind and will, yet are
    not themselves our mind and will.

    Pope wrote: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body
    nature is and God the soul.” But Case, Physical Realism, 193,
    replies: “Not so. Nature is to God as works are to a man; and as
    man’s works are not his body, so neither is nature the body of
    God.” Matthew Arnold, On Heine’s Grave: “What are we all but a
    mood, A single mood of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who
    alone is all things in one?” Hovey, Studies, 51—“Scripture
    recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, but it also teaches
    the existence of a world of things, animate and inanimate, in
    distinction from God. It represents men as prone to worship the
    creature more than the Creator. It describes them as sinners
    worthy of death ... moral agents.... It no more thinks of men as
    being literally parts of God, than it thinks of children as being
    parts of their parents, or subjects as being parts of their king.”
    A. J. F. Behrends: “The true doctrine lies between the two
    extremes of a crass dualism which makes God and the world two
    self-contained entities, and a substantial monism in which the
    universe has only a phenomenal existence. There is no identity of
    substance nor division of the divine substance. The universe is
    eternally dependent, the product of the divine _Word_, not simply
    _manufactured_. Creation is primarily a spiritual act.” Prof.
    George M. Forbes: “Matter exists in subordinate dependence upon
    God; spirit in coördinate dependence upon God. The body of Christ
    was Christ externalized, made manifest to sense-perception. In
    apprehending matter, I am apprehending the mind and will of God.
    This is the highest sort of reality. Neither matter nor finite
    spirits, then, are mere phenomena.”


3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is
highest in rank, and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the
existence of personal intelligences. A substance which is itself
unconscious, and under the law of necessity, cannot produce beings who are
self-conscious and free.


    Gess, Foundations of our Faith, 36—“Animal instinct, and the
    spirit of a nation working out its language, might furnish
    analogies, if they produced personalities as their result, but not
    otherwise. Nor were these tendencies self-originated, but received
    from an external source.” McCosh, Intuitions, 215, 393, and
    Christianity and Positivism, 180. Seth, Freedom as an Ethical
    Postulate, 47—“If man is an ‘imperium in imperio,’ not a person,
    but only an aspect or expression of the universe or God, then he
    cannot be free. Man may be depersonalized either into nature or
    into God. Through the conception of our own personality we reach
    that of God. To resolve our personality into that of God would be
    to negate the divine greatness itself by invalidating the
    conception through which it was reached.” Bradley, Appearance and
    Reality, 551, is more ambiguous: “The positive relation of every
    appearance as an adjective to Reality; and the presence of Reality
    among its appearances in different degrees and with diverse
    values; this double truth we have found to be the centre of
    philosophy.” He protests against both “an empty transcendence” and
    “a shallow pantheism.” Hegelian immanence and knowledge, he
    asserts, identified God and man. But God is more than man or man’s
    thought. He is spirit and life—best understood from the human
    _self_, with its thoughts, feelings, volitions. Immanence needs to
    be qualified by transcendence. “God is not God till he has become
    all-in-all, and a God which is all-in-all is not the God of
    religion. God is an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance
    of the Absolute.” Bradley’s Absolute, therefore, is not so much
    personal as super-personal; to which we reply with Jackson, James
    Martineau, 416—“Higher than personality is lower; beyond it is
    regression from its height. From the equator we may travel
    northward, gaining ever higher and higher latitudes; but, if ever
    the pole is reached, pressing on from thence will be descending
    into lower latitudes, not gaining higher.... Do I say, I am a
    pantheist? Then, _ipso facto_, I deny pantheism; for, in the very
    assertion of the Ego, I imply all else as objective to me.”


4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious
natures by denying man’s freedom and responsibility; by making God to
include in himself all evil as well as all good; and by precluding all
prayer, worship, and hope of immortality.


    Conscience is the eternal witness against pantheism. Conscience
    witnesses to our freedom and responsibility, and declares that
    moral distinctions are not illusory. Renouf, Hibbert Lect.,
    234—“It is only out of condescension to popular language that
    pantheistic systems can recognize the notions of right and wrong,
    of iniquity and sin. If everything really emanates from God, there
    can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have
    been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavored to harmonize
    these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral
    evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled ’Ethica’;
    but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of
    Euclid.” Hodge, System. Theology, 1:299-330—“Pantheism is
    fatalistic. On this theory, duty = pleasure; right = might; sin =
    good in the making. Satan, as well as Gabriel, is a
    self-development of God. The practical effects of pantheism upon
    popular morals and life, wherever it has prevailed, as in Buddhist
    India and China, demonstrate its falsehood.” See also Dove, Logic
    of the Christian Faith, 118; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,
    202; Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:603-615; Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. On
    the fact of sin as refuting the pantheistic theory, see Bushnell,
    Nature and the Supernat., 140-164.

    Wordsworth: “Look up to heaven! the industrious sun Already half
    his course hath run; He cannot halt or go astray; But our immortal
    spirits may.” President John H. Harris; “You never ask a cyclone’s
    opinion of the ten commandments.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
    245—“Pantheism makes man an automaton. But how can an automaton
    have duties?” Principles of Ethics, 18—“Ethics is defined as the
    science of conduct, and the conventions of language are relied
    upon to cover up the fact that there is no ‘conduct’ in the case.
    If man be a proper automaton, we might as well speak of the
    conduct of the winds as of human conduct; and a treatise on
    planetary motions is as truly the ethics of the solar system as a
    treatise on human movements is the ethics of man.” For lack of a
    clear recognition of personality, either human or divine, Hegel’s
    Ethics is devoid of all spiritual nourishment,—his
    “Rechtsphilosophie” has been called “a repast of bran.” Yet
    Professor Jones, in Mind, July, 1893:304, tells us that Hegel’s
    task was “to discover what conception of the single principle or
    fundamental unity which alone _is_, is adequate to the differences
    which it carries within it. ‘_Being_,’ he found, leaves no room
    for differences,—it is overpowered by them.... He found that the
    Reality can exist only as absolute Self-consciousness, as a
    Spirit, who is universal, and who knows himself in all things. In
    all this he is dealing, not simply with thoughts, but with
    Reality.” Prof. Jones’s vindication of Hegel, however, still
    leaves it undecided whether that philosopher regarded the divine
    self-consciousness as distinct from that of finite beings, or as
    simply inclusive of theirs. See John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
    Christianity, 1:109.


5. Our intuitive conviction of the existence of a God of absolute
perfection compels us to conceive of God as possessed of every highest
quality and attribute of men, and therefore, especially, of that which
constitutes the chief dignity of the human spirit, its personality.


    Diman, Theistic Argument, 328—“We have no right to represent the
    supreme Cause as inferior to ourselves, yet we do this when we
    describe it under phrases derived from physical causation.”
    Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 351—“We cannot conceive of anything
    as impersonal, yet of higher nature than our own,—any being that
    has not knowledge and will must be indefinitely inferior to one
    who has them.” Lotze holds truly, not that God is
    _supra_-personal, but that man is _infra_-personal, seeing that in
    the infinite Being alone is self-subsistence, and therefore
    perfect personality. Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 224—“The
    radical feature of personality is the survival of a permanent
    self, under all the fleeting or deciduous phases of experience; in
    other words, the personal identity that is involved in the
    assertion ‘I am.’... Is limitation a necessary adjunct of that
    notion?” Seth, Hegelianism: “As in us there is more _for
    ourselves_ than _for others_, so in God there is more of thought
    _for himself_ than he manifests _to us_. Hegel’s doctrine is that
    of immanence without transcendence.” Heinrich Heine was a pupil
    and intimate friend of Hegel. He says: “I was young and proud, and
    it pleased my vain-glory when I learned from Hegel that the true
    God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God who lived in
    heaven, but was rather _myself upon the earth_.” John Fiske, Idea
    of God, xvi—“Since our notion of force is purely a generalization
    from our subjective sensations of overcoming resistance, there is
    scarcely less anthropomorphism in the phrase ‘Infinite Power’ than
    in the phrase ‘Infinite Person.’ We must symbolize Deity in some
    form that has meaning to us; we cannot symbolize it as physical;
    we are bound to symbolize it as psychical. Hence we may say, God
    is Spirit. This implies God’s personality.”


6. Its objection to the divine personality, that over against the Infinite
there can be in eternity past no non-ego to call forth self-consciousness,
is refuted by considering that even man’s cognition of the non-ego
logically presupposes knowledge of the ego, from which the non-ego is
distinguished; that, in an absolute mind, self-consciousness cannot be
conditioned, as in the case of finite mind, upon contact with a not-self;
and that, if the distinguishing of self from a not-self were an essential
condition of divine self-consciousness, the eternal personal distinctions
in the divine nature or the eternal states of the divine mind might
furnish such a condition.


    Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:163, 190 _sq._—“Personal
    self-consciousness is not primarily a distinguishing of the ego
    from the non-ego, but rather a distinguishing of itself from
    itself, _i. e._, of the unity of the self from the plurality of
    its contents.... Before the soul distinguishes self from the
    not-self, it must know self—else it could not see the distinction.
    Its development is connected with the knowledge of the non-ego,
    but this is due, not to the fact of _personality_, but to the fact
    of _finite_ personality. The mature man can live for a long time
    upon his own resources. God needs no other, to stir him up to
    mental activity. Finiteness is a hindrance to the development of
    our personality. Infiniteness is necessary to the highest
    personality.” Lotze, Microcosmos, vol. 3, chapter 4; transl. in N.
    Eng., March, 1881:191-200—“Finite spirit, not having conditions of
    existence in itself, can know the ego only upon occasion of
    knowing the non-ego. The Infinite is not so limited. He alone has
    an independent existence, neither introduced nor developed through
    anything not himself, but, in an inward activity without beginning
    or end, maintains himself in himself.” See also Lotze, Philos. of
    Religion, 55-69; H. N. Gardiner on Lotze, in Presb. Rev.,
    1885:669-673; Webb, in Jour. Theol. Studies, 2:49-61.

    Dorner, Glaubenslehre: “Absolute Personality = perfect
    consciousness of self, and perfect power over self. We need
    something external to waken our consciousness—yet
    self-consciousness comes [logically] before consciousness of the
    world. It is the soul’s act. Only after it has distinguished self
    from self, can it consciously distinguish self from another.”
    British Quarterly, Jan. 1874:32, note; July, 1884:108—“The ego is
    _thinkable_ only in relation to the non-ego; but the ego is
    _liveable_ long before any such relation.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:185, 186—In the pantheistic scheme, “God distinguishes himself
    from the _world_, and thereby finds the object required by the
    subject; ... in the Christian scheme, God distinguishes himself
    from _himself_, not from something that is not himself.” See
    Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:122-126; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt
    and Christ. Belief, 161-190; Hanne, Idee der absoluten
    Persönlichkeit; Eichhorn, Die Persönlichkeit Gottes; Seth,
    Hegelianism and Personality; Knight, on Personality and the
    Infinite, in Studies in Philos. and Lit., 70-118.

    On the whole subject of Pantheism, see Martineau, Study of
    Religion, 2:141-194, esp. 192—“The _personality_ of God consists
    in his voluntary agency as free cause in an unpledged sphere, that
    is, a sphere transcending that of immanent law. But precisely this
    also it is that constitutes his _infinity_, extending his sway,
    after it has filled the actual, over all the possible, and giving
    command over indefinite alternatives. Though you might deny his
    infinity without prejudice to his personality, you cannot deny his
    personality without sacrificing his infinitude: for there is a
    mode of action—the _preferential_, the very mode which
    distinguishes rational beings—from which you exclude him”;
    341—“The metaphysicians who, in their impatience of distinction,
    insist on taking the sea on board the boat, swamp not only it but
    the thought it holds, and leave an infinitude which, as it can
    look into no eye and whisper into no ear, they contradict in the
    very act of affirming.” Jean Paul Richter’s “Dream”: “I wandered
    to the farthest verge of Creation, and there I saw a _Socket_,
    where an _Eye_ should have been, and I heard the shriek of a
    Fatherless World” (quoted in David Brown’s Memoir of John Duncan,
    49-70). Shelley, Beatrice Cenci: “Sweet Heaven, forgive weak
    thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth, in the
    void world—The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!”

    For the opposite view, see Biedermann, Dogmatik, 638-647—“Only
    man, as finite spirit, is personal; God, as absolute spirit, is
    not personal. Yet in religion the mutual relations of intercourse
    and communion are always personal.... Personality is the only
    adequate term by which we can represent the theistic conception of
    God.” Bruce, Providential Order, 76—“Schopenhauer does not level
    up cosmic force to the human, but levels down human will-force to
    the cosmic. Spinoza held intellect in God to be no more like man’s
    than the dog-star is like a dog. Hartmann added intellect to
    Schopenhauer’s will, but the intellect is unconscious and knows no
    moral distinctions.” See also Bruce, Apologetics, 71-90; Bowne,
    Philos. of Theism, 128-134, 171-186; J. M. Whiton, Am. Jour.
    Theol., Apl. 1901:306—Pantheism = God consists in all things;
    Theism = All things consist in God, their ground, not their sum.
    Spirit in man shows that the infinite Spirit must be personal and
    transcendent Mind and Will.



IV. Ethical Monism.


Ethical Monism is that method of thought which holds to a single
substance, ground, or principle of being, namely, God, but which also
holds to the ethical facts of God’s transcendence as well as his
immanence, and of God’s personality as distinct from, and as guaranteeing,
the personality of man.


    Although we do not here assume the authority of the Bible,
    reserving our proof of this to the next following division on The
    Scriptures a Revelation from God, we may yet cite passages which
    show that our doctrine is not inconsistent with the teachings of
    holy Writ. The immanence of God is implied in all statements of
    his omnipresence, as for example: _Ps. 139:7 sq.—_“Whither shall I
    go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
    _Jer. 23:23, 24—_“Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God
    afar off?... Do not I fill heaven and earth?” _Acts 17:27, 28—_“he
    is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and
    have our being.” The transcendence of God is implied in such
    passages as: _1 Kings 8:27—_“the heaven and the heaven of heavens
    cannot contain thee”; _Ps. 113:5—_“that hath his seat on high”;
    _Is. 57:15—_“the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.”

    This is the faith of Augustine: “O God, thou hast made us for
    thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in thee.... I
    could not be, O my God, could not be at all, wert thou not in me;
    rather, were not I in thee, of whom are all things, by whom are
    all things, in whom are all things.” And Anselm, in his
    Proslogion, says of the divine nature: “It is the essence of the
    being, the principle of the existence, of all things.... Without
    parts, without differences, without accidents, without changes, it
    might be said in a certain sense alone to exist, for in respect to
    it the other things which appear to be have no existence. The
    unchangeable Spirit is all that is, and it is this without limit,
    simply, interminably. It is the perfect and absolute Existence.
    The rest has come from non-entity, and thither returns if not
    supported by God. It does not exist by itself. In this sense the
    Creator alone exists; created things do not.”


1. While Ethical Monism embraces the one element of truth contained in
Pantheism—the truth that God is in all things and that all things are in
God—it regards this scientific unity as entirely consistent with the facts
of ethics—man’s freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt; in other words,
Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of one substance, ground, or
principle of being, is qualified by Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine
that the soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand, and from
God on the other.


    Ethical Monism is a monism which holds to the ethical facts of the
    freedom of man and the transcendence and personality of God; it is
    the monism of free-will, in which personality, both human and
    divine, sin and righteousness, God and the world, remain—two in
    one, and one in two—in their moral antithesis as well as their
    natural unity. Ladd, Introd. to Philosophy: “Dualism is yielding,
    in history and in the judgment-halls of reason, to a monistic
    philosophy.... Some form of philosophical monism is indicated by
    the researches of psycho-physics, and by that philosophy of mind
    which builds upon the principles ascertained by these researches.
    Realities correlated as are the body and the mind must have, as it
    were, a common ground.... They have their reality in the ultimate
    one Reality; they have their interrelated lives as expressions of
    the one Life which is immanent in the two.... Only some form of
    monism that shall satisfy the facts and truths to which both
    realism and idealism appeal can occupy the place of the true and
    final philosophy.... Monism must so construct its tenets as to
    preserve, or at least as not to contradict and destroy, the truths
    implicated in the distinction between the _me_ and the _not-me_,
    ... between the morally good and the morally evil. No form of
    monism can persistently maintain itself which erects its system
    upon the ruins of fundamentally ethical principles and ideals.”...
    Philosophy of Mind, 411—“Dualism must be dissolved in some
    ultimate monistic solution. The Being of the world, of which all
    particular beings are but parts, must be so conceived of as that
    in it can be found the one ground of all interrelated existences
    and activities.... This one Principle is an Other and an Absolute
    Mind.”

    Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, II, 3:101, 231—“The unity of
    essence in God and man is the great discovery of the present
    age.... The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is
    the endeavor to point out the essential unity of the divine and
    human. To the theology of the present day, the divine and human
    are not mutually exclusive, but are connected magnitudes.... Yet
    faith postulates a difference between the world and God, between
    whom religion seeks an union. Faith does not wish to be a relation
    merely to itself, or to its own representations and thoughts; that
    would be a monologue,—faith desires a dialogue. Therefore it does
    not consort with a monism which recognizes only God, or only the
    world; it opposes such a monism as this. Duality is, in fact, a
    condition of true and vital unity. But duality is not dualism. It
    has no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity.” Professor
    Small of Chicago: “With rare exceptions on each side, all
    philosophy to-day is monistic in its ontological presumptions; it
    is dualistic in its methodological procedures.” A. H. Bradford,
    Age of Faith, 71—“Men and God are the same in substance, though
    not identical as individuals.” The theology of fifty years ago was
    merely individualistic, and ignored the complementary truth of
    solidarity. Similarly we think of the continents and islands of
    our globe as disjoined from one another. The dissociable sea is
    regarded as an absolute barrier between them. But if the ocean
    could be dried, we should see that all the while there had been
    submarine connections, and the hidden unity of all lands would
    appear. So the individuality of human beings, real as it is, is
    not the only reality. There is the profounder fact of a common
    life. Even the great mountain-peaks of personality are superficial
    distinctions, compared with the organic oneness in which they are
    rooted, into which they all dip down, and from which they all,
    like volcanoes, receive at times quick and overflowing impulses of
    insight, emotion and energy; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation
    and Ethical Monism, 189, 190.


2. In contrast then with the two errors of Pantheism—the denial of God’s
transcendence and the denial of God’s personality—Ethical Monism holds
that the universe, instead of being one with God and conterminous with
God, is but a finite, partial and progressive manifestation of the divine
Life: Matter being God’s self-limitation under the law of Necessity;
Humanity being God’s self-limitation under the law of Freedom; Incarnation
and Atonement being God’s self-limitations under the law of Grace.


    The universe is related to God as my thoughts are related to me,
    the thinker. I am greater than my thoughts, and my thoughts vary
    in moral value. Ethical Monism traces the universe back to a
    beginning, while Pantheism regards the universe as coëternal with
    God. Ethical Monism asserts God’s transcendence, while Pantheism
    regards God as imprisoned in the universe. Ethical Monism asserts
    that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, but that
    contrariwise the whole universe taken together, with its elements
    and forces, its suns and systems, is but a light breath from his
    mouth, or a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. Upton,
    Hibbert Lectures: “The Eternal is present in every finite thing,
    and is felt and known to be present in every rational soul; but
    still is not broken up into individualities, but ever remains one
    and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying
    principle, immanently and indivisibly present in every one of that
    countless plurality of finite individuals into which man’s
    analyzing understanding dissects the Cosmos.” James Martineau, in
    19th Century, Apl. 1895:559—“What is Nature but the province of
    God’s pledged and habitual causality? And what is Spirit, but the
    province of his free causality, responding to the needs and
    affections of his children?... God is not a retired architect, who
    may now and then be called in for repairs. Nature is not
    self-active, and God’s agency is not intrusive.” Calvin: Pie hoc
    potest dici, Deum esse Naturam.

    With this doctrine many poets show their sympathy. “Every fresh
    and new creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God
    proceeds.” Robert Browning asserts God’s immanence;
    Hohenstiel-Schwangau: “This is the glory that, in all conceived Or
    felt, or known, I recognize a Mind—Not mine, but like mine—for the
    double joy, Making all things for me, and me for him”; Ring and
    Book, Pope: “O thou, as represented to me here In such conception
    as my soul allows—Under thy measureless, my atom-width! Man’s
    mind, what is it but a convex glass, Wherein are gathered all the
    scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite
    there, be our heaven for earth, Our Known Unknown, our God
    revealed to man?” But Browning also asserts God’s transcendence:
    in Death in the Desert, we read: “Man is not God, but hath God’s
    end to serve, A Master to obey, a Cause to take, Somewhat to cast
    off, somewhat to become”; in Christmas Eve, the poet derides “The
    important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one
    with the Creator”; he tells us that it was God’s plan to make man
    in his image: “To create man, and then leave him Able, his own
    word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him too, As a mere
    machine could never do That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its
    fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of
    course.... God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands
    away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly
    made to live And look at him from a place apart And use his gifts
    of brain and heart”; “Life’s business being just the terrible
    choice.”

    So Tennyson’s Higher Pantheism: “The sun, the moon, the stars, the
    seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O soul, the vision
    of Him who reigns? Dark is the world to thee; thou thyself art the
    reason why; For is not He all but thou, that hast power to feel ‘I
    am I’? Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit
    can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and
    feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot
    see; But if we could see and hear, this vision—were it not He?”
    Also Tennyson’s Ancient Sage: “But that one ripple on the
    boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
    Forever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion
    of the deep”; and In Memoriam: “One God, one law, one element, And
    one far-off divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves.”
    Emerson: “The day of days, the greatest day in the feast of life,
    is that in which the inward eye opens to the unity of things”; “In
    the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings.” Mrs.
    Browning: “Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush
    afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” So
    manhood is itself potentially a divine thing. All life, in all its
    vast variety, can have but one Source. It is either one God, above
    all, through all, and in all, or it is no God at all. E. M.
    Poteat, On Chesapeake Bay: “Night’s radiant glory overhead, A
    softer glory there below, Deep answered unto deep, and said: A
    kindred fire in us doth glow. For life is one—of sea and stars, Of
    God and man, of earth and heaven—And by no theologic bars Shall my
    scant life from God’s be riven.” See Professor Henry Jones, Robert
    Browning.


3. The immanence of God, as the one substance, ground and principle of
being, does not destroy, but rather guarantees, the individuality and
rights of each portion of the universe, so that there is variety of rank
and endowment. In the case of moral beings, worth is determined by the
degree of their voluntary recognition and appropriation of the divine.
While God is all, he is also in all; so making the universe a graded and
progressive manifestation of himself, both in his love for righteousness
and his opposition to moral evil.


    It has been charged that the doctrine of monism necessarily
    involves moral indifference; that the divine presence in all
    things breaks down all distinctions of rank and makes each thing
    equal to every other; that the evil as well as the good is
    legitimated and consecrated. Of pantheistic monism all this is
    true,—it is not true of ethical monism; for ethical monism is the
    monism that recognizes the ethical fact of personal intelligence
    and will in both God and man, and with these God’s purpose in
    making the universe a varied manifestation of himself. The worship
    of cats and bulls and crocodiles in ancient Egypt, and the
    deification of lust in the Brahmanic temples of India, were
    expressions of a non-ethical monism, which saw in God no moral
    attributes, and which identified God with his manifestations. As
    an illustration of the mistakes into which the critics of monism
    may fall for lack of discrimination between monism that is
    pantheistic and monism that is ethical, we quote from Emma Marie
    Caillard: “Integral parts of God are, on monistic premises, liars,
    sensualists, murderers, evil livers and evil thinkers of every
    description. Their crimes and their passions enter intrinsically
    into the divine experience. The infinite Individual in his
    wholeness may reject them indeed, but none the less are these evil
    finite individuals constituent parts of him, even as the twigs of
    a tree, though they are not the tree, and though the tree
    transcends any or all of them, are yet constituent parts of it.
    Can he whose universal consciousness includes and defines all
    finite consciousnesses be other than responsible for all finite
    actions and motives?”

    To this indictment we may reply in the words of Bowne, The Divine
    Immanence, 130-133—“Some weak heads have been so heated by the new
    wine of immanence as to put all things on the same level, and make
    men and mice of equal value. But there is nothing in the
    dependence of all things on God to remove their distinctions of
    value. One confused talker of this type was led to say that he had
    no trouble with the notion of a divine man, as he believed in a
    divine oyster. Others have used the doctrine to cancel moral
    differences; for if God be in all things, and if all things
    represent his will, then whatever is is right. But this too is
    hasty. Of course even the evil will is not independent of God, but
    lives and moves and has its being in and through the divine. But
    through its mysterious power of selfhood and self-determination
    the evil will is able to assume an attitude of hostility to the
    divine law, which forthwith vindicates itself by appropriate
    reactions.

    “These reactions are not divine in the highest or ideal sense.
    They represent nothing which God desires or in which he delights;
    but they are divine in the sense that they are things to be done
    under the circumstances. The divine reaction in the case of the
    good is distinct from the divine reaction against evil. Both are
    divine as representing God’s action, but only the former is divine
    in the sense of representing God’s approval and sympathy. All
    things serve, said Spinoza. The good serve, and are furthered by
    their service. The bad also serve and are used up in the serving.
    According to Jonathan Edwards, the wicked are useful ‘in being
    acted upon and disposed of.’ As ‘vessels of dishonor’ they may
    reveal the majesty of God. There is nothing therefore in the
    divine immanence, in its only tenable form, to cancel moral
    distinctions or to minify retribution. The divine reaction against
    iniquity is even more solemn in this doctrine. The besetting God
    is the eternal and unescapable environment; and only as we are in
    harmony with him can there be any peace.... What God thinks of
    sin, and what his will is concerning it can be plainly seen in the
    natural consequences which attend it.... In law itself we are face
    to face with God; and natural consequences have a supernatural
    meaning.”


4. Since Christ is the Logos of God, the immanent God, God revealed in
Nature, in Humanity, in Redemption, Ethical Monism recognizes the universe
as created, upheld, and governed by the same Being who in the course of
history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by
his death on Calvary. The secret of the universe and the key to its
mysteries are to be found in the Cross.


    _John 1:1-4 (marg.), 14, 18—_“In the beginning was the Word, and
    the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the
    beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without
    him was not any thing made. That which hath been made was life in
    him; and the life was the light of men.... And the Word became
    flesh, and dwelt among us.... No man hath seen God at any time;
    the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
    declared him.” _Col. 1:16, 17—_“for in him were all things
    created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
    things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities
    or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him;
    and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.” _Heb.
    1:2, 3—_“his Son ... through whom also he made the worlds ...
    upholding all things by the word of his power”; _Eph. 1:22,
    23—_“the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that
    filleth all in all” = fills all things with all that they contain
    of truth, beauty, and goodness; _Col. 2:2, 3, 9—_“the mystery of
    God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and
    knowledge hidden ... for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the
    Godhead bodily.”

    This view of the relation of the universe to God lays the
    foundation for a Christian application of recent philosophical
    doctrine. Matter is no longer blind and dead, but is spiritual in
    its nature, not in the sense that it _is_ spirit, but in the sense
    that it is the continual _manifestation_ of spirit, just as my
    thoughts are a living and continual manifestation of myself. Yet
    matter does not consist simply in _ideas_, for ideas, deprived of
    an external object and of an internal subject, are left suspended
    in the air. Ideas are the product of Mind. But matter is known
    only as the operation of force, and force is the product of Will.
    Since this force works in rational ways, it can be the product
    only of Spirit. The system of forces which we call the universe is
    the immediate product of the mind and will of God; and, since
    Christ is the mind and will of God in exercise, Christ is the
    Creator and Upholder of the universe. Nature is the omnipresent
    Christ, manifesting God to creatures.

    Christ is the principle of cohesion, attraction, interaction, not
    only in the physical universe, but in the intellectual and moral
    universe as well. In all our knowing, the knower and known are
    “connected by some Being who is their reality,” and this being is
    Christ, “the Light which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. We
    _know_ in Christ, just as “in him we live, and move, and have our
    being”_ (Acts 17:28)_. As the attraction of gravitation and the
    principle of evolution are only other names for Christ, so he is
    the basis of inductive reasoning and the ground of moral unity in
    the creation. I am bound to love my neighbor as myself because he
    has in him the same life that is in me, the life of God in Christ.
    The Christ in whom all humanity is created, and in whom all
    humanity consists, holds together the moral universe, drawing all
    men to himself and so drawing them to God. Through him God
    “reconciles all things unto himself ... whether things upon the
    earth, or things in the heavens”_ (Col. 1:20)_.

    As Pantheism = exclusive immanence = God imprisoned, so Deism =
    exclusive transcendence = God banished. Ethical Monism holds to
    the truth contained in each of these systems, while avoiding their
    respective errors. It furnishes the basis for a new interpretation
    of many theological as well as of many philosophical doctrines. It
    helps our understanding of the Trinity. If within the bounds of
    God’s being there can exist multitudinous finite personalities, it
    becomes easier to comprehend how within those same bounds there
    can be three eternal and infinite personalities,—indeed, the
    integration of plural consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine
    consciousness may find a valid analogy in the integration of
    subordinate consciousnesses in the unit-personality of man; see
    Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, 53, 54.

    Ethical Monism, since it is ethical, leaves room for human wills
    and for their freedom. While man could never break the natural
    bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond
    and introduce into creation a principle of discord and evil. Tie a
    cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger,
    diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. So there
    has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power,
    spiritually to isolate himself from God while yet he is naturally
    joined to God. As humanity is created in Christ and lives only in
    Christ, man’s self-isolation is his moral separation from Christ.
    Simon, Redemption of Man, 339—“Rejecting Christ is not so much
    refusal to _become_ one with Christ as it is refusal to _remain_
    one with him, refusal to let him be our life.” All men are
    naturally one with Christ by physical birth, before they become
    morally one with him by spiritual birth. They may set themselves
    against him and may oppose him forever. This our Lord intimates,
    when he tells us that there are natural branches of Christ, which
    do not “abide in the vine” or “bear fruit,” and so are “cast
    forth,” “withered,” and “burned”_ (John 15:4-6)_.

    Ethical Monism, however, since it is Monism, enables us to
    understand the principle of the Atonement. Though God’s holiness
    binds him to punish sin, the Christ who has joined himself to the
    sinner must share the sinner’s punishment. He who is the life of
    humanity must take upon his own heart the burden of shame and
    penalty that belongs to his members. Tie the cord about your
    finger; not only the finger suffers pain, but also the heart; the
    life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to
    untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member.
    Humanity is bound to Christ, as the finger to the body. Since
    human nature is one of the “all things” that “consist” or hold
    together in Christ (_Col 1:17_), and man’s sin is a
    self-perversion of a part of Christ’s own body, the whole must be
    injured by the self-inflicted injury of the part, and “it must
    needs be that Christ should suffer”_ (Acts 17:3)_. Simon,
    Redemption of Man, 321—“If the Logos is the Mediator of the divine
    immanence in creation, especially in man; if men are
    differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos
    is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation—_i.
    e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the self-perversion of
    these human differentiations react on him who is their
    constitutive principle?” A more full explanation of the relations
    of Ethical Monism to other doctrines must be reserved to our
    separate treatment of the Trinity, Creation, Sin, Atonement,
    Regeneration. Portions of the subject are treated by Upton,
    Hibbert Lectures; Le Conte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 43-50;
    Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 297-301, 311-317, and
    Immanence of God, 5-32, 116-153; Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge,
    574-590, and Theory of Reality, 525-529; Edward Caird, Evolution
    of Religion, 2:48; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:258-283;
    Göschel, quoted in Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:170. An
    attempt has been made to treat the whole subject by A. H. Strong,
    Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1-86, 141-162, 166-180,
    186-208.





PART III. THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD.




Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.



I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.


1. _Needs of man’s nature._ Man’s intellectual and moral nature requires,
in order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its
moral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of
religious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its
present state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The
proof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical.

A. Psychological proof.—(_a_) Neither reason nor intuition throws light
upon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us;
for example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal
existence after death. (_b_) Even the truth to which we arrive by our
natural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses
minds and wills perverted by sin. (_c_) To break this power of sin, and to
furnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the
merciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature.


    (_a_) Bremen Lectures, 72, 73; Plato, Second Alcibiades, 22, 23;
    Phædo, 85—λόγου θείου τινός. Iamblicus, περὶ τοῦ Πυθαγορικοῦ βίου,
    chap. 28. Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, shows how completely reason
    and intuition failed to supply the knowledge of God which man
    needs: “Renown is loud,” he says, “and not to lose one’s senses is
    God’s greatest gift.... The being praised outrageously Is grave;
    for at the eyes of such a one Is launched, from Zeus, the
    thunder-stone. Therefore do I decide For so much and no more
    prosperity Than of his envy passes unespied.” Though the gods
    might have favorites, they did not love men as men, but rather,
    envied and hated them. William James, Is Life Worth Living? in
    Internat. Jour. Ethics, Oct. 1895:10—“All we know of good and
    beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less all we know of
    evil.... To such a harlot we owe no moral allegiance.... If there
    be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her,
    cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no
    Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed
    there; and, as all the higher religions have assumed, what we call
    visible nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and
    surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen
    or _other_ world.”

    (_b_) _Versus_ Socrates: Men will do right, if they only know the
    right. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:219—“In opposition to the
    opinion of Socrates that badness rests upon ignorance, Aristotle
    already called the fact to mind that the doing of the good is not
    always combined with the knowing of it, seeing that it depends
    also on the passions. If badness consisted only in the want of
    knowledge, then those who are theoretically most cultivated must
    also be morally the best, which no one will venture to assert.” W.
    S. Lilly, On Shibboleths: “Ignorance is often held to be the root
    of all evil. But mere knowledge cannot transform character. It
    cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will
    from bad to good. It may turn crime into different channels, and
    render it less easy to detect. It does not change man’s natural
    propensities or his disposition to gratify them at the expense of
    others. Knowledge makes the good man more powerful for good, the
    bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it can do.” Gore,
    Incarnation, 174—“We must not depreciate the method of argument,
    for Jesus and Paul occasionally used it in a Socratic fashion, but
    we must recognize that it is not the basis of the Christian system
    nor the primary method of Christianity.” Martineau, in Nineteenth
    Century, 1:331, 531, and Types, 1:112—“Plato dissolved the idea of
    the right into that of the good, and this again was
    indistinguishably mingled with that of the true and the
    beautiful.” See also Flint, Theism, 305.

    (_c_) _Versus_ Thomas Paine: “Natural religion teaches us, without
    the possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary or proper
    to be known.” Plato, Laws, 9:854, _c_, for substance: “Be good;
    but, if you cannot, then kill yourself.” Farrar, Darkness and
    Dawn, 75—“Plato says that man will never know God until God has
    revealed himself in the guise of suffering man, and that, when all
    is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the
    universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to
    order.” Prometheus, the type of humanity, can never be delivered
    “until some god descends for him into the black depths of
    Tartarus.” Seneca in like manner teaches that man cannot save
    himself. He says: “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God
    comes _to_ men, yes, _into_ men.” We are sinful, and God’s
    thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways.
    Therefore he must make known his thoughts to us, teach us what we
    are, what true love is, and what will please him. Shaler,
    Interpretation of Nature, 227—“The inculcation of moral truths can
    be successfully effected only in the personal way; ... it demands
    the influence of personality; ... the weight of the impression
    depends upon the voice and the eye of a teacher.” In other words,
    we need not only the exercise of authority, but also the
    manifestation of love.


B. Historical proof.—(_a_) The knowledge of moral and religious truth
possessed by nations and ages in which special revelation is unknown is
grossly and increasingly imperfect. (_b_) Man’s actual condition in
ante-Christian times, and in modern heathen lands, is that of extreme
moral depravity. (_c_) With this depravity is found a general conviction
of helplessness, and on the part of some nobler natures, a longing after,
and hope of, aid from above.


    Pythagoras: “It is not easy to know [duties], except men were
    taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received
    them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some
    divine means.” Socrates: “Wait with patience, till we know with
    certainty how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and man.”
    Plato: “We will wait for one, be he a God or an inspired man, to
    instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our
    eyes.” Disciple of Plato: “Make probability our raft, while we
    sail through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe
    conveyance, such as some divine communication would be.” Plato
    thanked God for three things: first, that he was born a rational
    soul; secondly, that he was born a Greek; and, thirdly, that he
    lived in the days of Socrates. Yet, with all these advantages, he
    had only probability for a raft, on which to navigate strange seas
    of thought far beyond his depth, and he longed for “a more sure
    word of prophecy”_ (2 Pet. 1:19)_. See references and quotations
    in Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 35, and in
    Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 156-172, 335-338; Farrar, Seekers
    after God; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 187.


2. _Presumption of supply._ What we know of God, by nature, affords ground
for hope that these wants of our intellectual and moral being will be met
by a corresponding supply, in the shape of a special divine revelation. We
argue this:

(_a_) From our necessary conviction of God’s wisdom. Having made man a
spiritual being, for spiritual ends, it may be hoped that he will furnish
the means needed to secure these ends. (_b_) From the actual, though
incomplete, revelation already given in nature. Since God has actually
undertaken to make himself known to men, we may hope that he will finish
the work he has begun. (_c_) From the general connection of want and
supply. The higher our needs, the more intricate and ingenious are, in
general, the contrivances for meeting them. We may therefore hope that the
highest want will be all the more surely met. (_d_) From analogies of
nature and history. Signs of reparative goodness in nature and of
forbearance in providential dealings lead us to hope that, while justice
is executed, God may still make known some way of restoration for sinners.


    (_a_) There were two stages in Dr. John Duncan’s escape from
    pantheism: 1. when he came first to believe in the existence of
    God, and “danced for joy upon the brig o’ Dee”; and 2. when, under
    Malan’s influence, he came also to believe that “God meant that we
    should know him.” In the story in the old Village Reader, the
    mother broke completely down when she found that her son was
    likely to grow up stupid, but her tears conquered him and made him
    intelligent. Laura Bridgman was blind, deaf and dumb, and had but
    small sense of taste or smell. When her mother, after long
    separation, went to her in Boston, the mother’s heart was in
    distress lest the daughter should not recognize her. When at last,
    by some peculiar mother’s sign, she pierced the veil of
    insensibility, it was a glad time for both. So God, our Father,
    tries to reveal himself to our blind, deaf and dumb souls. The
    agony of the Cross is the sign of God’s distress over the
    insensibility of humanity which sin has caused. If he is the Maker
    of man’s being, he will surely seek to fit it for that communion
    with himself for which it was designed.

    (_b_) Gore, Incarnation, 52, 53—“Nature is a first volume, in
    itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is
    Christ.” (_c_) R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God,
    228—“Mendicants do not ply their calling for years in a desert
    where there are no givers. Enough of supply has been received to
    keep the sense of want alive.” (_d_) In the natural arrangements
    for the healing of bruises in plants and for the mending of broken
    bones in the animal creation, in the provision of remedial agents
    for the cure of human diseases, and especially in the delay to
    inflict punishment upon the transgressor and the space given him
    for repentance, we have some indications, which, if uncontradicted
    by other evidence, might lead us to regard the God of nature as a
    God of forbearance and mercy. Plutarch’s treatise “De Sera Numinis
    Vindicta” is proof that this thought had occurred to the heathen.
    It may be doubted, indeed, whether a heathen religion could even
    continue to exist, without embracing in it some element of hope.
    Yet this very delay in the execution of the divine judgments gave
    its own occasion for doubting the existence of a God who was both
    good and just. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on
    the throne,” is a scandal to the divine government which only the
    sacrifice of Christ can fully remove.

    The problem presents itself also in the Old Testament. In Job 21,
    and in Psalms, 17, 37, 49, 73, there are partial answers; see _Job
    21:7—_“Wherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty
    in power?” _24:1—_“Why are not judgment times determined by the
    Almighty? And they that know him, why see they not his days?” The
    New Testament intimates the existence of a witness to God’s
    goodness among the heathen, while at the same time it declares
    that the full knowledge of forgiveness and salvation is brought
    only by Christ. Compare _Acts 14:17—_“And yet he left not himself
    without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven
    rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and
    gladness”; _17:25-27—_“he himself giveth to all life, and breath,
    and all things; and he made of one every nation of men ... that
    they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find
    him”; _Rom. 2:4—_“the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”;
    _3:25—_“the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the
    forbearance of God”; _Eph. 3:9—_“to make all men see what is the
    dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God”;
    _2 Tim. 1:10—_“our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and
    brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.” See
    Hackett’s edition of the treatise of Plutarch, as also Bowen,
    Metaph. and Ethics, 462-487; Diman, Theistic Argument, 371.


We conclude this section upon the reasons _a priori_ for expecting a
revelation from God with the acknowledgment that the facts warrant that
degree of expectation which we call hope, rather than that larger degree
of expectation which we call assurance; and this, for the reason that,
while conscience gives proof that God is a God of holiness, we have not,
from the light of nature, equal evidence that God is a God of love. Reason
teaches man that, as a sinner, he merits condemnation; but he cannot, from
reason alone, know that God will have mercy upon him and provide
salvation. His doubts can be removed only by God’s own voice, assuring him
of “redemption ... the forgiveness of ... trespasses” (Eph. 1:7) and
revealing to him the way in which that forgiveness has been rendered
possible.


    Conscience knows no pardon, and no Savior. Hovey, Manual of
    Christian Theology, 9, seems to us to go too far when he says:
    “Even natural affection and conscience afford some clue to the
    goodness and holiness of God, though much more is needed by one
    who undertakes the study of Christian theology.” We grant that
    natural affection gives some clue to God’s goodness, but we regard
    conscience as reflecting only God’s holiness and his hatred of
    sin. We agree with Alexander McLaren: “Does God’s love need to be
    proved? Yes, as all paganism shows. Gods vicious, gods careless,
    gods cruel, gods beautiful, there are in abundance; but where is
    there a god who loves?”



II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.


1. _As to its substance._ We may expect this later revelation not to
contradict, but to confirm and enlarge, the knowledge of God which we
derive from nature, while it remedies the defects of natural religion and
throws light upon its problems.


    Isaiah’s appeal is to God’s previous communications of truth: _Is.
    8:20—_“To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not
    according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” And
    Malachi follows the example of Isaiah; _Mal. 4:4—_“Remember ye the
    law of Moses my servant.” Our Lord himself based his claims upon
    the former utterances of God: _Luke 24:27—_“beginning from Moses
    and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the
    scriptures the things concerning himself.”


2. _As to its method._ We may expect it to follow God’s methods of
procedure in other communications of truth.


    Bishop Butler (Analogy, part ii, chap. iii) has denied that there
    is any possibility of judging _a priori_ how a divine revelation
    will be given. “We are in no sort judges beforehand,” he says, “by
    what methods, or in what proportion, it were to be expected that
    this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.” But
    Bishop Butler somewhat later in his great work (part ii, chap. iv)
    shows that God’s progressive plan in revelation has its analogy in
    the slow, successive steps by which God accomplishes his ends in
    nature. We maintain that the revelation in nature affords certain
    presumptions with regard to the revelation of grace, such for
    example as those mentioned below.

    Leslie Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891:180—“Butler
    answered the argument of the deists, that the God of Christianity
    was unjust, by arguing that the God of nature was equally unjust.
    James Mill, admitting the analogy, refused to believe in either
    God. Dr. Martineau has said, for similar reasons, that Butler
    ‘wrote one of the most terrible persuasives to atheism ever
    produced.’ So J. H. Newman’s ‘kill or cure’ argument is
    essentially that God has either revealed nothing, or has made
    revelations in some other places than in the Bible. His argument,
    like Butler’s, may be as good a persuasive to scepticism as to
    belief.” To this indictment by Leslie Stephen we reply that it has
    cogency only so long as we ignore the fact of human sin. Granting
    this fact, our world becomes a world of discipline, probation and
    redemption, and both the God of nature and the God of Christianity
    are cleared from all suspicion of injustice. The analogy between
    God’s methods in the Christian system and his methods in nature
    becomes an argument in favor of the former.


(_a_) That of continuous historical development,—that it will be given in
germ to early ages, and will be more fully unfolded as the race is
prepared to receive it.


    Instances of continuous development in God’s impartations are
    found in geological history; in the growth of the sciences; in the
    progressive education of the individual and of the race. No other
    religion but Christianity shows “a steady historical progress of
    the vision of one infinite Character unfolding itself to man
    through a period of many centuries.” See sermon by Dr. Temple, on
    the Education of the World, in Essays and Reviews; Rogers,
    Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 374-384; Walker, Philosophy of the
    Plan of Salvation. On the gradualness of revelation, see Fisher,
    Nature and Method of Revelation, 46-86; Arthur H. Hallam, in John
    Brown’s Rab and his Friends, 282—“Revelation is a gradual
    approximation of the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of
    finite humanity.” A little fire can kindle a city or a world; but
    ten times the heat of that little fire, if widely diffused, would
    not kindle anything.


(_b_) That of original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons
in that nation, that it may through them be communicated to mankind.


    Each nation represents an idea. As the Greek had a genius for
    liberty and beauty, and the Roman a genius for organization and
    law, so the Hebrew nation had a “genius for religion” (Renan);
    this last, however, would have been useless without special divine
    aid and superintendence, as witness other productions of this same
    Semitic race, such as Bel and the Dragon, in the Old Testament
    Apocrypha; the gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament; and later
    still, the Talmud and the Koran.

    The O. T. Apocrypha relates that, when Daniel was thrown a second
    time into the lions’ den, an angel seized Habakkuk in Judea by the
    hair of his head and carried him with a bowl of pottage to give to
    Daniel for his dinner. There were seven lions, and Daniel was
    among them seven days and nights. Tobias starts from his father’s
    house to secure his inheritance, and his little dog goes with him.
    On the banks of the great river a great fish threatens to devour
    him, but he captures and despoils the fish. He finally returns
    successful to his father’s house, and his little dog goes in with
    him. In the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus carries water in his mantle
    when his pitcher is broken; makes clay birds on the Sabbath, and,
    when rebuked, causes them to fly; strikes a youthful companion
    with death, and then curses his accusers with blindness; mocks his
    teachers, and resents control. Later Moslem legends declare that
    Mohammed caused darkness at noon; whereupon the moon flew to him,
    went seven times around the Kaāba, bowed, entered his right
    sleeve, split into two halves after slipping out at the left, and
    the two halves, after retiring to the extreme east and west, were
    reunited. These products of the Semitic race show that neither the
    influence of environment nor a native genius for religion
    furnishes an adequate explanation of our Scriptures. As the flame
    on Elijah’s altar was caused, not by the dead sticks, but by the
    fire from heaven, so only the inspiration of the Almighty can
    explain the unique revelation of the Old and New Testaments.

    The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression
    of their life we “must look beneath the surface, in the soul,
    where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face
    with God” (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 28). But the Hebrew
    religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason,
    and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of
    knowledge, and the æsthetic sense. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek
    Genius, 34—“The Phœnicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it
    was the Greeks who wrote.” Aristotle was the beginner of science,
    and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the
    scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by
    striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would
    never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not
    been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has
    contributed her constitutional government, and America her manhood
    suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God
    is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to
    every other. _Acts 17:26_—God “made of one every nation of men to
    dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their
    appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; _Rom.
    3:12—_“What advantage then hath the Jew?... first of all, that
    they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” God’s choice of the
    Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious
    truth, is analogous to his choice of other nations, as the
    repositories and communicators of æsthetic, scientific,
    governmental truth.

    Hegel: “No nation that has played a weighty and active part in the
    world’s history has ever issued from the simple development of a
    single race along the unmodified lines of blood-relationship.
    There must be differences, conflicts, a composition of opposed
    forces.” The conscience of the Hebrew, the thought of the Greek,
    the organization of the Latin, the personal loyalty of the Teuton,
    must all be united to form a perfect whole. “While the Greek
    church was orthodox, the Latin church was Catholic; while the
    Greek treated of the two wills in Christ, the Latin treated of the
    harmony of our wills with God; while the Latin saved through a
    corporation, the Teuton saved through personal faith.” Brereton,
    in Educational Review, Nov. 1901:339—“The problem of France is
    that of the religious orders; that of Germany, the construction of
    society; that of America, capital and labor.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
    Religion, 1:183, 184—“Great ideas never come from the masses, but
    from marked individuals. These ideas, when propounded, however,
    awaken an echo in the masses, which shows that the ideas had been
    slumbering unconsciously in the souls of others.” The hour
    strikes, and a Newton appears, who interprets God’s will in
    nature. So the hour strikes, and a Moses or a Paul appears, who
    interprets God’s will in morals and religion. The few grains of
    wheat found in the clasped hand of the Egyptian mummy would have
    been utterly lost if one grain had been sown in Europe, a second
    in Asia, a third in Africa, and a fourth in America; all being
    planted together in a flower-pot, and their product in a
    garden-bed, and the still later fruit in a farmer’s field, there
    came at last to be a sufficient crop of new Mediterranean wheat to
    distribute to all the world. So God followed his ordinary method
    in giving religious truth first to a single nation and to chosen
    individuals in that nation, that through them it might be given to
    all mankind. See British Quarterly, Jan. 1874: art.: Inductive
    Theology.


(_c_) That of preservation in written and accessible documents, handed
down from those to whom the revelation is first communicated.


    Alphabets, writing, books, are our chief dependence for the
    history of the past; all the great religions of the world are
    book-religions; the Karens expected their teachers in the new
    religion to bring to them a book. But notice that false religions
    have scriptures, but not Scripture; their sacred books lack the
    principle of unity which is furnished by divine inspiration. H. P.
    Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 68—“Mohammed
    discovered that the Scriptures of the Jews were the source of
    their religion. He called them a ‘book-people,’ and endeavored to
    construct a similar code for his disciples. In it God is the only
    speaker; all its contents are made known to the prophet by direct
    revelation; its Arabic style is perfect; its text is
    incorruptible; it is absolute authority in law, science and
    history.” The Koran is a grotesque human parody of the Bible; its
    exaggerated pretensions of divinity, indeed, are the best proof
    that it is of purely human origin. Scripture, on the other hand,
    makes no such claims for itself, but points to Christ as the sole
    and final authority. In this sense we may say with Clarke,
    Christian Theology, 20—“Christianity is not a book-religion, but a
    life-religion. The Bible does not give us Christ, but Christ gives
    us the Bible.” Still it is true that for our knowledge of Christ
    we are almost wholly dependent upon Scripture. In giving his
    revelation to the world, God has followed his ordinary method of
    communicating and preserving truth by means of written documents.
    Recent investigations, however, now render it probable that the
    Karen expectation of a book was the survival of the teaching of
    the Nestorian missionaries, who as early as the eighth century
    penetrated the remotest parts of Asia, and left in the wall of the
    city of Singwadu in Northwestern China a tablet as a monument of
    their labors. On book-revelation, see Rogers, Eclipse of Faith,
    73-96, 281-304.


3. _As to its attestation._ We may expect that this revelation will be
accompanied by evidence that its author is the same being whom we have
previously recognized as God of nature. This evidence must constitute
(_a_) a manifestation of God himself; (_b_) in the outward as well as the
inward world; (_c_) such as only God’s power or knowledge can make; and
(_d_) such as cannot be counterfeited by the evil, or mistaken by the
candid, soul. In short, we may expect God to attest by miracles and by
prophecy, the divine mission and authority of those to whom he
communicates a revelation. Some such outward sign would seem to be
necessary, not only to assure the original recipient that the supposed
revelation is not a vagary of his own imagination, but also to render the
revelation received by a single individual authoritative to all (compare
Judges 6:17, 36-40—Gideon asks a sign, for himself; 1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah
asks a sign, for others). But in order that our positive proof of a divine
revelation may not be embarrassed by the suspicion that the miraculous and
prophetic elements in the Scripture history create a presumption against
its credibility, it will be desirable to take up at this point the general
subject of miracles and prophecy.



III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.


1. Definition of Miracle.


A. Preliminary Definition.—A miracle is an event palpable to the senses,
produced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event
therefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of
nature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent
to explain.

This definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the
miracle:—(_a_) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law;
since natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much
as before. (_b_) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies—a
product merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect
of a will outside of nature. (_c_) A miracle is not an event without a
cause; since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (_d_) A
miracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of
wisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so
that in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued.
(_e_) A miracle is not contrary to experience; since it is not contrary to
experience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (_f_) A miracle
is not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination;
but is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective
proof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious
teacher.


    For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and
    Christianity, 302. On the whole subject, see Mozley, Miracles;
    Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in
    Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A. H. Strong, Philosophy
    and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The
    definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the
    miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which
    profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New
    Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them
    either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or
    objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the
    former aspect they are called τέρατα, “wonders,” and σημεῖα,
    “signs,”_ (John 4:48; Acts 2:22)_. In the latter aspect they are
    called δυνάμεις, “powers,” and ἔργα, “works,”_ (Mat 7:22; John
    14:11)_. See H. B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp.
    94—“σημεῖον, sign, marking the purpose or object, the moral end,
    placing the event in connection with revelation.” The Bible Union
    Version uniformly and properly renders τέρας by “wonder,” δυνάμις
    by “miracle,” ἔργον by “work,” and σημεῖον by “sign.” Goethe,
    Faust: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das
    Unzulängliche wird hier Ereigniss”—“Everything transitory is but a
    parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.” So the miracles
    of the New Testament are acted parables,—Christ opens the eyes of
    the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies
    the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the
    dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and
    sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.

    A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is
    demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed
    interest of natural law. Such a modification is proposed by
    Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage
    illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine,
    which would present to the observer in regular succession the
    series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make
    a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million;
    Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock
    which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results
    are due simply to the original construction of the respective
    machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:591,
    592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in
    Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A. H. Strong,
    Philosophy and Religion, 129-147. Babbage and Peabody would deny
    that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God,
    and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God
    is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted
    the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the
    appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this
    view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine
    working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the
    system, while it still holds God’s work to be essential, not only
    to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the
    religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict
    the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the
    prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See
    Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.

    But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large
    degree the element of “signality” which is needed, if it is to
    accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which
    miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as
    an attestation of revelation—the advantage, namely, that while
    special providence affords _some_ warrant that this revelation
    comes from God, miracle gives _full_ warrant that it comes from
    God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the
    knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and
    the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory
    far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example,
    could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun.
    Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse
    to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense
    in which the term nature is ordinarily used. Our Lord, moreover,
    seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: “If
    I by the finger of God cast out demons”_ (Luke 11:20)_; _Mark
    1:41—_“I will; be thou made clean.” The view of Babbage is
    inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate
    exercise of _will_ in the miracle, but because it regards nature
    as a mere _machine_ which can operate apart from God—a purely
    deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products
    of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be
    only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature,
    like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William
    Elder, Ideas from Nature: “The century-plant which we have seen
    growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our
    old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural
    notwithstanding.” If, however, we interpret nature dynamically,
    rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of
    the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine,
    there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both
    natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has
    natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is
    produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to
    an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment
    combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles
    as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix-xxvi, 7,
    143-166; Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, 333-336; Smith’s and
    Hastings’ Dict. of Bible, art.: Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton
    Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:541, 542.


B. Alternative and Preferable Definition.—A miracle is an event in nature,
so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command
of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on
the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design
of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.

This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the
preliminary definition given above:—(_a_) It recognizes the immanence of
God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis
between the laws of nature and the will of God. (_b_) It regards the
miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already
present in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general
plan. (_c_) It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular
activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these
will best secure his purpose in creation. (_d_) It leaves it possible that
all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be
traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may
be only names for the one and self-same will of God. (_e_) It reconciles
the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any
possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by
maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself
are to be interpreted as signs of God’s special commission to him under
whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.


    Augustine, who declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,”
    defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 21:8—“Portentum ergo fit
    non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” He says also
    that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is
    more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be,
    than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again.
    E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104—“The natural is God’s work.
    He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and
    the supernatural. The natural is supernatural. God works in
    everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means,
    is God’s end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.” Shaler,
    Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something
    exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in
    nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from
    the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel
    fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame.
    Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result
    of a regularly rising temperature. Nature may be God’s regular
    action, miracle its unique result. God’s regular action may be
    entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely
    natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt
    the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591—“Everything is
    miracle,—therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is
    miracle,—therefore science sees God nowhere.”

    Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as
    infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles, 18—“The
    Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the
    emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was
    all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.”
    Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 4:117—“The force of a miracle to us,
    arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew,
    because he had no notion of natural law.” _Ps. 77:19, 20—_“Thy way
    was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy
    footsteps were not known”—They knew not, and we know not, by what
    precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise
    track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is
    that “Thou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses
    and Aaron.” J. M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion: “The
    supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very
    life; ... not an outside power interfering with the course of
    nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating
    through it.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 35—“Miracle,
    instead of spelling ‘monster’, as Emerson said, simply bears
    witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the
    divine character.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:533—“To cause the sun to
    rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but
    the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike
    the manner in the other.”

    Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural
    processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to
    deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go,
    in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of
    Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan,
    the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction
    of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when
    regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New
    Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves
    to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is
    turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and
    in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The
    virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of
    parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just
    demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life
    and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ’s resurrection
    may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect
    human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the
    type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down
    our life and take it again. The scientist may yet find that his
    disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in
    science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are
    not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian
    argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would
    evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the
    impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his
    instrument.

    This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and
    irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by
    some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which
    minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as
    mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs
    to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig.,
    1:295—“Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the
    idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the
    ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment
    the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power,
    wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a
    poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe’s
    apothegm: “Miracle is faith’s dearest child.” Foster, Finality of
    the Christian Religion, 128-138—“We most honor biblical miraculous
    narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl
    defines miracles as “those striking _natural_ occurrences with
    which the experience of God’s special help is connected.” He
    leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his
    school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of
    Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ’s resurrection as
    a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven
    Puzzling Books, 202—“In the hands of perfect and spiritual man,
    the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in
    ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority
    of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may
    be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality,
    2:288—“I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all
    reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of
    Christ.” We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working
    of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation
    of the new life which he imparts: _John 14:12—_“He that believeth
    on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works
    than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”

    We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to
    miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not
    to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is
    not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All’s Well
    that Ends Well, 2:3:1—“They say miracles are past; and we have our
    philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things
    supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of
    terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we
    should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There
    was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her
    texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.”
    Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334—“Biological and psychological
    science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic,
    is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and
    that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity,
    there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a
    Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural
    agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the
    scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God,—therefore no
    miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33—“The miracle
    of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate
    power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great
    exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.”
    Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“Redemption is not natural but
    supernatural—supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature
    which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work
    of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God
    had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a
    witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand,
    growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very
    end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are
    not a common but a sacred writing,—they are the hieroglyphics of
    God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.” President Mark
    Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See
    Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard,
    in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view
    of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The
    Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of
    Science, 336.


2. Possibility of Miracle.


An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature.
This is evident from the following considerations:

(_a_) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and
transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and
chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended
or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in
accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to
themselves.


    By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that
    is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image
    of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man’s will
    does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the
    transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and
    Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel,
    23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the
    world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd,
    Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of
    the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation,
    from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the
    forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and
    oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now,
    after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and
    tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water
    forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of
    cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its
    temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore,
    Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in
    which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena
    unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not
    resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the
    creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new
    nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will
    radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are
    the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as
    Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the
    same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the
    essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of
    that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony.
    William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly
    to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.”


(_b_) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature,
and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish,
while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still
operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the
water—for the axe still has weight (_cf._ 2 K. 6:5-7).


    _Versus_ Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of
    the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often
    needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s
    definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support
    the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts
    upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron
    to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is
    miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27:
    After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high
    up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without
    altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant
    continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471;
    Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row,
    Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge:
    Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working
    or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not
    suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into
    the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the
    ball would not diminish and the ball would never return.
    “Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that
    attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or
    violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws,
    each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But
    men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force
    additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So
    spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday
    School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find
    thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the
    dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free
    personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the _personal_
    view of life for the _impersonal_ and _mechanical_ view.
    Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of
    facts,—it is not _science_.”


(_c_) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts
upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his
physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human
will can _use_ means, only because it has the power of acting initially
_without_ means.


    See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept.
    1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311—“Not Divinity
    alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its
    measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way
    on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle.
    Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350—“The making of all events miraculous
    is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world
    with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.” George Adam Smith, on
    _Is. 33:14—_“devouring fire ... everlasting burnings”: “If we look
    at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings
    collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not
    the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not
    see God.” P. S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is
    invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and
    insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once
    you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is
    only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws,
    which thus gives light to the ages,”—or, let us say rather, the
    momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will
    of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
    100—“Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische Möglichkeit, Hume ihre
    geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit,
    Schleiermacher ihre religiöse Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige
    Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische
    Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.”


(_d_) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what
the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to
accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God
dwells in and controls the universe. If man’s will can act directly upon
matter in his own physical organism, God’s will can work immediately upon
the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if
there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The
impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of
atheism or pantheism.


    See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an
    Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to
    hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1—“A
    miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a
    use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher
    powers.” See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und
    Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18,
    19, 26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,” 1888:303; W. E.
    Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science
    and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32—Three postulates:
    (1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man’s
    will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding
    brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes
    throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec.
    1894:229—Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things
    are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of
    ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in
    unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of
    consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural;
    prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which _the Mind_
    in nature cannot ignore. _Cf.__ Ps. 115:3—_“our God is in the
    heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased” = his almighty power
    and freedom do away with all _a priori_ objections to miracles. If
    God is not a mere _force_, but a _person_, then miracles are
    possible.


(_e_) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in
Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos
or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make
God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy.
Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of
life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of
miracle.


    See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166—“This conception of
    evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose
    influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does
    not regard the universe as a _plenum_ to which nothing can be
    added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a
    plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of
    whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once
    imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its
    law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from
    the finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning’s
    phrase, ‘All’s love, but all’s law,’ must be interpreted as
    meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the
    operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present
    God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a
    rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of
    unique and startling manifestations of power.

    “The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is
    the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent
    with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the
    past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress
    there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces,
    and the new combination of forces can be explained only by some
    new force that causes the combination. This new force, moreover,
    must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the
    better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be
    continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase,
    nay, they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition
    of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new
    combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will.
    But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan
    the rationality of evolution depends.

    “A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and
    mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the
    superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which
    apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but
    of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and
    there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the
    bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would
    be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and
    superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly;
    imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and
    you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new
    beginnings.

    “Evolution, then, depends on increments of force _plus_ continuity
    of plan. New creations are possible because the immanent God has
    not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far
    away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral
    universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are
    possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which
    the universe was built. If we were deists, believing in a distant
    God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be
    irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of
    which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy,
    evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of
    Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the
    fulness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”

    Lotze’s own statement of his position may be found in his
    Microcosmos, 2:479 _sq._ Professor James Ten Broeke has
    interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the
    miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction
    between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of
    which the movements of the natural world are carried on only
    _through_ the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the
    general course of things, according to existing facts and the
    purpose of the divine Governor.”


3. Probability of Miracles.


A. We acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature,
there is a presumption against miracles. Experience testifies to the
uniformity of natural law. A general uniformity is needful, in order to
make possible a rational calculation of the future, and a proper ordering
of life.


    See Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. ii; F. W. Farrar, Witness of
    History to Christ, 3-45; Modern Scepticism, 1:179-227; Chalmers,
    Christian Revelation, 1:47. G. D. B. Pepper: “Where there is no
    law, no settled order, there can be no miracle. The miracle
    presupposes the law, and the importance assigned to miracles is
    the recognition of the reign of law. But the making and launching
    of a ship may be governed by law, no less than the sailing of the
    ship after it is launched. So the introduction of a higher
    spiritual order into a merely natural order constitutes a new and
    unique event.” Some Christian apologists have erred in affirming
    that the miracle was antecedently as probable as any other event,
    whereas only its antecedent improbability gives it value as a
    proof of revelation. Horace: “Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus
    vindice nodus Inciderit.”


B. But we deny that this uniformity of nature is absolute and universal.
(_a_) It is not a truth of reason that can have no exceptions, like the
axiom that a whole is greater than its parts. (_b_) Experience could not
warrant a belief in absolute and universal uniformity, unless experience
were identical with absolute and universal knowledge. (_c_) We know, on
the contrary, from geology, that there have been breaks in this
uniformity, such as the introduction of vegetable, animal and human life,
which cannot be accounted for, except by the manifestation in nature of a
supernatural power.


    (_a_) Compare the probability that the sun will rise to-morrow
    morning with the certainty that two and two make four. Huxley, Lay
    Sermons, 158, indignantly denies that there is any “must” about
    the uniformity of nature: “No one is entitled to say _a priori_
    that any given so-called miraculous event is impossible.” Ward,
    Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:84—“There is no evidence for the
    statement that the mass of the universe is a definite and
    unchangeable quantity”; 108, 109—“Why so confidently assume that a
    rigid and monotonous uniformity is the only, or the highest,
    indication of order, the order of an ever living Spirit, above
    all? How is it that we depreciate machine-made articles, and
    prefer those in which the artistic impulse, or the fitness of the
    individual case, is free to shape and to make what is literally
    manufactured, hand-made?... Dangerous as teleological arguments in
    general may be, we may at least safely say the world was not
    designed to make science easy.... To call the verses of a poet,
    the politics of a statesman, or the award of a judge mechanical,
    implies, as Lotze has pointed out, marked disparagement, although
    it implies, too, precisely those characteristics—exactness and
    invariability—in which Maxwell would have us see a token of the
    divine.” Surely then we must not insist that divine wisdom must
    always run in a rut, must ever repeat itself, must never exhibit
    itself in unique acts like incarnation and resurrection. See
    Edward Hitchcock, in Bib. Sac., 20:489-561, on “The Law of
    Nature’s Constancy Subordinate to the Higher Law of Change”;
    Jevons, Principles of Science, 2:430-438; Mozley, Miracles, 26.

    (_b_) S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 18 December, 1831—“The light
    which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern of the ship,
    which shines only on the waves behind us.” Hobbes: “Experience
    concludeth nothing universally.” Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy,
    131—“Evidence can tell us only what has happened, and it can never
    assure us that the future _must_ be like the past; 132—Proof that
    all nature is mechanical would not be inconsistent with the belief
    that everything in nature is immediately sustained by Providence,
    and that my volition counts for something in determining the
    course of events.” Royce, World and Individual, 2:204—“Uniformity
    is not absolute. Nature is a vaster realm of life and meaning, of
    which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God’s
    life. The rhythm of the heart-beat has its normal regularity, yet
    its limited persistence. Nature may be merely the _habits of free
    will_. Every region of this universally conscious world may be a
    centre whence issues new conscious life for communication to all
    the worlds.” Principal Fairbairn: “Nature is Spirit.” We prefer to
    say: “Nature is the manifestation of spirit, the regularities of
    freedom.”

    (_c_) Other breaks in the uniformity of nature are the coming of
    Christ and the regeneration of a human soul. Harnack, What is
    Christianity, 18, holds that though there are no interruptions to
    the working of natural law, natural law is not yet fully known.
    While there are no miracles, there is plenty of the miraculous.
    The power of mind over matter is beyond our present conceptions.
    Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 210—The effects are no more
    consequences of the laws than the laws are consequences of the
    effects = both laws and effects are exercises of divine will.
    King, Reconstruction in Theology, 56—We must hold, not to the
    _uniformity_ of law, but to the _universality_ of law; for
    evolution has successive stages with new laws coming in and
    becoming dominant that had not before appeared. The new and higher
    stage is practically a miracle from the point of view of the
    lower. See British Quarterly Review, Oct. 1881:154; Martineau,
    Study, 2:200, 203, 209.


C. Since the inworking of the moral law into the constitution and course
of nature shows that nature exists, not for itself, but for the
contemplation and use of moral beings, it is probable that the God of
nature will produce effects aside from those of natural law, whenever
there are sufficiently important moral ends to be served thereby.


    Beneath the expectation of uniformity is the intuition of final
    cause; the former may therefore give way to the latter. See
    Porter, Human Intellect, 592-615—Efficient causes and final causes
    may conflict, and then the efficient give place to the final. This
    is miracle. See Hutton, in Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1885, and
    Channing, Evidences of Revealed Religion, quoted in Shedd, Dogm.
    Theol., 1:534, 535—“The order of the universe is a means, not an
    end, and like all other means must give way when the end can be
    best promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an
    idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of
    business when they clog instead of advancing it.” Balfour,
    Foundations of Belief, 357—“The stability of the heavens is in the
    sight of God of less importance than the moral growth of the human
    spirit.” This is proved by the Incarnation. The Christian sees in
    this little earth the scene of God’s greatest revelation. The
    superiority of the spiritual to the physical helps us to see our
    true dignity in the creation, to rule our bodies, to overcome our
    sins. Christ’s suffering shows us that God is no indifferent
    spectator of human pain. He subjects himself to our conditions, or
    rather in this subjection reveals to us God’s own eternal
    suffering for sin. The atonement enables us to solve the problem
    of sin.


D. The existence of moral disorder consequent upon the free acts of man’s
will, therefore, changes the presumption against miracles into a
presumption in their favor. The non-appearance of miracles, in this case,
would be the greatest of wonders.


    Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 331-335—So a man’s
    personal consciousness of sin, and above all his personal
    experience of regenerating grace, will constitute the best
    preparation for the study of miracles. “Christianity cannot be
    proved except to a bad conscience.” The dying Vinet said well:
    “The greatest miracle that I know of is that of my conversion. I
    was dead, and I live; I was blind, and I see; I was a slave, and I
    am free; I was an enemy of God, and I love him; prayer, the Bible,
    the society of Christians, these were to me a source of profound
    _ennui_; whilst now it is the pleasures of the world that are
    wearisome to me, and piety is the source of all my joy. Behold the
    miracle! And if God has been able to work that one, there are none
    of which he is not capable.”

    Yet the physical and the moral are not “sundered as with an axe.”
    Nature is but the lower stage or imperfect form of the revelation
    of God’s truth and holiness and love. It prepares the way for the
    miracle by suggesting, though more dimly, the same essential
    characteristics of the divine nature. Ignorance and sin
    necessitate a larger disclosure. G. S. Lee, The Shadow Christ,
    84—“The pillar of cloud was the dim night-lamp that Jehovah kept
    burning over his infant children, to show them that he was there.
    They did not know that the night itself was God.” Why do we have
    Christmas presents in Christian homes? Because the parents do not
    love their children at other times? No; but because the mind
    becomes sluggish in the presence of merely regular kindness, and
    special gifts are needed to wake it to gratitude. So our sluggish
    and unloving minds need special testimonies of the divine mercy.
    Shall God alone be shut up to dull uniformities of action? Shall
    the heavenly Father alone be unable to make special communications
    of love? Why then are not miracles and revivals of religion
    constant and uniform? Because uniform blessings would be regarded
    simply as workings of a machine. See Mozley, Miracles, preface,
    xxiv; Turner, Wish and Will, 291-315; N. W. Taylor, Moral
    Government, 2:388-423.


E. As belief in the possibility of miracles rests upon our belief in the
existence of a personal God, so belief in the probability of miracles
rests upon our belief that God is a moral and benevolent being. He who has
no God but a God of physical order will regard miracles as an impertinent
intrusion upon that order. But he who yields to the testimony of
conscience and regards God as a God of holiness, will see that man’s
unholiness renders God’s miraculous interposition most necessary to man
and most becoming to God. Our view of miracles will therefore be
determined by our belief in a moral, or in a non-moral, God.


    Philo, in his Life of Moses, 1:88, speaking of the miracles of the
    quails and of the water from the rock, says that “all these
    unexpected and extraordinary things are amusements or playthings
    of God.” He believes that there is room for arbitrariness in the
    divine procedure. Scripture however represents miracle as an
    extraordinary, rather than as an arbitrary, act. It is “his work,
    his strange work ... his act, his strange act”_ (Is. 28:21)_.
    God’s ordinary method is that of regular growth and development.
    Chadwick, Unitarianism, 72—“Nature is economical. If she wants an
    apple, she develops a leaf; if she wants a brain, she develops a
    vertebra. We always thought well of backbone; and, if Goethe’s was
    a sound suggestion, we think better of it now.”

    It is commonly, but very erroneously, taken for granted that
    miracle requires a greater exercise of power than does God’s
    upholding of the ordinary processes of nature. But to an
    omnipotent Being our measures of power have no application. The
    question is not a question of power, but of rationality and love.
    Miracle implies self-restraint, as well as self-unfolding, on the
    part of him who works it. It is therefore not God’s common method
    of action; it is adopted only when regular methods will not
    suffice; it often seems accompanied by a sacrifice of feeling on
    the part of Christ _Mat. 17:17—_“O faithless and perverse
    generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear
    with you? bring him hither to me”; _Mark 7:34—_“looking up to
    heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be
    opened”; _cf.__ Mat. 12:39—_“An evil and adulterous generation
    seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but
    the sign of Jonah the prophet.”


F. From the point of view of ethical monism the probability of miracle
becomes even greater. Since God is not merely the intellectual but the
moral Reason of the world, the disturbances of the world-order which are
due to sin are the matters which most deeply affect him. Christ, the life
of the whole system and of humanity as well, must suffer; and, since we
have evidence that he is merciful as well as just, it is probable that he
will rectify the evil by extraordinary means, when merely ordinary means
do not avail.


    Like creation and providence, like inspiration and regeneration,
    miracle is a work in which God limits himself, by a new and
    peculiar exercise of his power,—limits himself as part of a
    process of condescending love and as a means of teaching
    sense-environed and sin-burdened humanity what it would not learn
    in any other way. Self-limitation, however, is the very perfection
    and glory of God, for without it no self-sacrificing love would be
    possible (see page 9, F.). The probability of miracles is
    therefore argued not only from God’s holiness but also from his
    love. His desire to save men from their sins must be as infinite
    as his nature. The incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection,
    when once made known to us, commend themselves, not only as
    satisfying our human needs, but as worthy of a God of moral
    perfection.

    An argument for the probability of the miracle might be drawn from
    the concessions of one of its chief modern opponents, Thomas H.
    Huxley. He tells us in different places that the object of science
    is “the discovery of the rational order that pervades the
    universe,” which in spite of his professed agnosticism is an
    unconscious testimony to Reason and Will at the basis of all
    things. He tells us again that there is no necessity in the
    uniformities of nature: “When we change ‘will’ into ‘must,’ we
    introduce an idea of necessity which has no warrant in the
    observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover
    elsewhere.” He speaks of “the infinite wickedness that has
    attended the course of human history.” Yet he has no hope in man’s
    power to save himself: “I would as soon adore a wilderness of
    apes,” as the Pantheist’s rationalized conception of humanity. He
    grants that Jesus Christ is “the noblest ideal of humanity which
    mankind has yet worshiped.” Why should he not go further and
    concede that Jesus Christ most truly represents the infinite
    Reason at the heart of things, and that his purity and love,
    demonstrated by suffering and death, make it probable that God
    will use extraordinary means for man’s deliverance? It is doubtful
    whether Huxley recognized his own personal sinfulness as fully as
    he recognized the sinfulness of humanity in general. If he had
    done so, he would have been willing to accept miracle upon even a
    slight preponderance of historical proof. As a matter of fact, he
    rejected miracle upon the grounds assigned by Hume, which we now
    proceed to mention.


4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.


_The amount of testimony necessary to prove a miracle_ is no greater than
that which is requisite to prove the occurrence of any other unusual but
confessedly possible event.

Hume, indeed, argued that a miracle is so contradictory of all human
experience that it is more reasonable to believe any amount of testimony
false than to believe a miracle to be true.


    The original form of the argument can be found in Hume’s
    Philosophical Works, 4:124-150. See also Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:615.
    For the most recent and plausible statement of it, see
    Supernatural Religion, 1:55-94. The argument maintains for
    substance that things are impossible because improbable. It
    ridicules the credulity of those who “thrust their fists against
    the posts, And still insist they see the ghosts,” and holds with
    the German philosopher who declared that he would not believe in a
    miracle, even if he saw one with his own eyes. Christianity is so
    miraculous that it takes a miracle to make one believe it.


The argument is fallacious, because

(_a_) It is chargeable with a _petitio principii_, in making our own
personal experience the measure of all human experience. The same
principle would make the proof of any absolutely new fact impossible. Even
though God should work a miracle, he could never prove it.

(_b_) It involves a self-contradiction, since it seeks to overthrow our
faith in human testimony by adducing to the contrary the general
experience of men, of which we know only from testimony. This general
experience, moreover, is merely negative, and cannot neutralize that which
is positive, except upon principles which would invalidate all testimony
whatever.

(_c_) It requires belief in a greater wonder than those which it would
escape. That multitudes of intelligent and honest men should against all
their interests unite in deliberate and persistent falsehood, under the
circumstances narrated in the New Testament record, involves a change in
the sequences of nature far more incredible than the miracles of Christ
and his apostles.


    (_a_) John Stuart Mill, Essays on Theism, 216-241, grants that,
    even if a miracle were wrought, it would be impossible to prove
    it. In this he only echoes Hume, Miracles, 112—“The ultimate
    standard by which we determine all disputes that may arise is
    always derived from experience and observation.” But here our own
    personal experience is made the standard by which to judge all
    human experience. Whately, Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon
    Buonaparte, shows that the same rule would require us to deny the
    existence of the great Frenchman, since Napoleon’s conquests were
    contrary to all experience, and civilized nations had never before
    been so subdued. The London Times for June 18, 1888, for the first
    time in at least a hundred years or in 31,200 issues, was
    misdated, and certain pages read June 17, although June 17 was
    Sunday. Yet the paper would have been admitted in a court of
    justice as evidence of a marriage. The real wonder is, not the
    break in experience, but the continuity without the break.

    (_b_) Lyman Abbott: “If the Old Testament told the story of a
    naval engagement between the Jewish people and a pagan people, in
    which all the ships of the pagan people were absolutely destroyed
    and not a single man was killed among the Jews, all the sceptics
    would have scorned the narrative. Every one now believes it,
    except those who live in Spain.” There are people who in a similar
    way refuse to investigate the phenomena of hypnotism, second
    sight, clairvoyance, and telepathy, declaring _a priori_ that all
    these things are impossible. Prophecy, in the sense of prediction,
    is discredited. Upon the same principle wireless telegraphy might
    be denounced as an imposture. The son of Erin charged with murder
    defended himself by saying: “Your honor, I can bring fifty people
    who did not see me do it.” Our faith in testimony cannot be due to
    experience.

    (_c_) On this point, see Chalmers, Christian Revelation, 3:70;
    Starkie on Evidence, 739; De Quincey, Theological Essays,
    1:162-188; Thornton, Old-fashioned Ethics, 143-153; Campbell on
    Miracles. South’s sermon on The Certainty of our Savior’s
    Resurrection had stated and answered this objection long before
    Hume propounded it.


5. Evidential force of Miracles.


(_a_) Miracles are the natural accompaniments and attestations of new
communications from God. The great epochs of miracles—represented by
Moses, the prophets, the first and second comings of Christ—are coincident
with the great epochs of revelation. Miracles serve to draw attention to
new truth, and cease when this truth has gained currency and foothold.


    Miracles are not scattered evenly over the whole course of
    history. Few miracles are recorded during the 2500 years from Adam
    to Moses. When the N. T. Canon is completed and the internal
    evidence of Scripture has attained its greatest strength, the
    external attestations by miracle are either wholly withdrawn or
    begin to disappear. The spiritual wonders of regeneration remain,
    and for these the way has been prepared by the long progress from
    the miracles of power wrought by Moses to the miracles of grace
    wrought by Christ. Miracles disappeared because newer and higher
    proofs rendered them unnecessary. Better things than these are now
    in evidence. Thomas Fuller: “Miracles are the swaddling-clothes of
    the infant church.” John Foster: “Miracles are the great bell of
    the universe, which draws men to God’s sermon.” Henry Ward
    Beecher: “Miracles are the midwives of great moral truths; candles
    lit before the dawn but put out after the sun has risen.”
    Illingworth, in Lux Mundi, 210—“When we are told that miracles
    contradict experience, we point to the daily occurrence of the
    spiritual miracle of regeneration and ask: ‘Which is easier to
    say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise and walk?’_ (Mat.
    9:5)_.”

    Miracles and inspiration go together; if the former remain in the
    church, the latter should remain also; see Marsh, in Bap. Quar.
    Rev., 1887:225-242. On the cessation of miracles in the early
    church, see Henderson, Inspiration, 443-490; Bückmann, in Zeitsch.
    f. luth. Theol. u. Kirche, 1878:216. On miracles in the second
    century, see Barnard, Literature of the Second Century, 139-180.
    A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 167—“The apostles were
    commissioned to speak for Christ till the N. T. Scriptures, his
    authoritative voice, were completed. In the apostolate we have a
    provisional inspiration; in the N. T. a stereotyped inspiration;
    the first being endowed with authority _ad interim_ to forgive
    sins, and the second having this authority _in perpetuo_.” Dr.
    Gordon draws an analogy between coal, which is fossil sunlight,
    and the New Testament, which is fossil inspiration. Sabatier,
    Philos. Religion, 74—“The Bible is very free from the senseless
    prodigies of oriental mythology. The great prophets, Isaiah, Amos,
    Micah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, work no miracles. Jesus’
    temptation in the wilderness is a victory of the moral
    consciousness over the religion of mere physical prodigy.” Trench
    says that miracles cluster about the _foundation_ of the
    theocratic kingdom under Moses and Joshua, and about the
    _restoration_ of that kingdom under Elijah and Elisha. In the O.
    T., miracles confute the gods of Egypt under Moses, the Phœnician
    Baal under Elijah and Elisha, and the gods of Babylon under
    Daniel. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 376, and art.: Miracle, by
    Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.


(_b_) Miracles generally certify to the truth of doctrine, not directly,
but indirectly; otherwise a new miracle must needs accompany each new
doctrine taught. Miracles primarily and directly certify to the divine
commission and authority of a religious teacher, and therefore warrant
acceptance of his doctrines and obedience to his commands as the doctrines
and commands of God, whether these be communicated at intervals or all
together, orally or in written documents.


    The exceptions to the above statement are very few, and are found
    only in cases where the whole commission and authority of Christ,
    and not some fragmentary doctrine, are involved. Jesus appeals to
    his miracles as proof of the truth of his teaching in _Mat. 9:5,
    6—_“Which is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say,
    Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath
    authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of
    the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;
    _12:28—_“if I by the spirit of God cast out demons, then is the
    kingdom of God come upon you.” So Paul in _Rom. 1:4_, says that
    Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God with power, ... by the
    resurrection from the dead.” Mair, Christian Evidences, 223,
    quotes from Natural Religion, 181—“It is said that the
    theo-philanthropist Larévellière-Lépeaux once confided to
    Talleyrand his disappointment at the ill success of his attempt to
    bring into vogue a sort of improved Christianity, a sort of
    benevolent rationalism which he had invented to meet the wants of
    a benevolent age. ‘His propaganda made no way,’ he said. ‘What was
    he to do?’ he asked. The ex-bishop Talleyrand politely condoled
    with him, feared it was a difficult task to found a new religion,
    more difficult than he had imagined, so difficult that he hardly
    knew what to advise. ‘Still,’—so he went on after a moment’s
    reflection,—‘there is one plan which you might at least try: I
    should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third
    day.’ ” See also Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 147-167;
    Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:168-172.


(_c_) Miracles, therefore, do not stand alone as evidences. Power alone
cannot prove a divine commission. Purity of life and doctrine must go with
the miracles to assure us that a religious teacher has come from God. The
miracles and the doctrine in this manner mutually support each other, and
form parts of one whole. The internal evidence for the Christian system
may have greater power over certain minds and over certain ages than the
external evidence.


    Pascal’s aphorism that “doctrines must be judged by miracles,
    miracles by doctrine,” needs to be supplemented by Mozley’s
    statement that “a supernatural fact is the proper proof of a
    supernatural doctrine, while a supernatural doctrine is not the
    proper proof of a supernatural fact.” E. G. Robinson, Christian
    Theology, 107, would “defend miracles, but would not buttress up
    Christianity by them.... No amount of miracles could convince a
    good man of the divine commission of a known bad man; nor, on the
    other hand, could any degree of miraculous power suffice to
    silence the doubts of an evil-minded man.... The miracle is a
    certification only to him who can perceive its significance....
    The Christian church has the resurrection written all over it. Its
    very existence is proof of the resurrection. Twelve men could
    never have founded the church, if Christ had remained in the tomb.
    The living church is the burning bush that is not consumed.” Gore,
    Incarnation, 57—“Jesus did not appear after his resurrection to
    unbelievers, but to believers only,—which means that this crowning
    miracle was meant to confirm an existing faith, not to create one
    where it did not exist.”

    Christian Union, July 11, 1891—“If the anticipated resurrection of
    Joseph Smith were to take place, it would add nothing whatever to
    the authority of the Mormon religion.” Schurman, Agnosticism and
    Religion, 57—“Miracles are merely the bells to call primitive
    peoples to church. Sweet as the music they once made, modern ears
    find them jangling and out of tune, and their dissonant notes
    scare away pious souls who would fain enter the temple of
    worship.” A new definition of miracle which recognizes their
    possible classification as extraordinary occurrences in nature,
    yet sees in all nature the working of the living God, may do much
    to remove this prejudice. Bishop of Southampton, Place of Miracle,
    53—“Miracles alone could not produce conviction. The Pharisees
    ascribed them to Beelzebub. Though Jesus had done so many signs,
    yet they believed not.... Though miracles were frequently wrought,
    they were rarely appealed to as evidence of the truth of the
    gospel. They are simply signs of God’s presence in his world. By
    itself a miracle had no evidential force. The only test for
    distinguishing divine from Satanic miracles is that of the moral
    character and purpose of the worker; and therefore miracles depend
    for all their force upon a previous appreciation of the character
    and personality of Christ (79). The earliest apologists make no
    use of miracles. They are of no value except in connection with
    prophecy. Miracles _are_ the revelation of God, not the _proof_ of
    revelation.” _Versus_ Supernatural Religion, 1:23, and Stearns, in
    New Englander, Jan. 1882:80. See Mozley, Miracles, 15; Nicoll,
    Life of Jesus Christ, 133; Mill, Logic, 374-382; H. B. Smith, Int.
    to Christ. Theology, 167-169; Fisher, in Journ. Christ. Philos.,
    April, 1883:270-283.


(_d_) Yet the Christian miracles do not lose their value as evidence in
the process of ages. The loftier the structure of Christian life and
doctrine the greater need that its foundation be secure. The authority of
Christ as a teacher of supernatural truth rests upon his miracles, and
especially upon the miracle of his resurrection. That one miracle to which
the church looks back as the source of her life carries with it
irresistibly all the other miracles of the Scripture record; upon it alone
we may safely rest the proof that the Scriptures are an authoritative
revelation from God.


    The miracles of Christ are simple correlates of the
    Incarnation—proper insignia of his royalty and divinity. By mere
    external evidence however we can more easily prove the
    resurrection than the incarnation. In our arguments with sceptics,
    we should not begin with the ass that spoke to Balaam, or the fish
    that swallowed Jonah, but with the resurrection of Christ; that
    conceded, all other Biblical miracles will seem only natural
    preparations, accompaniments, or consequences. G. F. Wright, in
    Bib. Sac., 1889:707—“The difficulties created by the miraculous
    character of Christianity may be compared to those assumed by a
    builder when great permanence is desired in the structure erected.
    It is easier to lay the foundation of a temporary structure than
    of one which is to endure for the ages.” Pressensé: “The empty
    tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the church, and if in this
    foundation of her faith the church has been mistaken, she must
    needs lay herself down by the side of the mortal remains, I say,
    not of a man, but of a religion.”

    President Schurman believes the resurrection of Christ to be “an
    obsolete picture of an eternal truth—the fact of a continued life
    with God.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 102, thinks no
    consistent union of the gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection
    can be attained; apparently doubts a literal and bodily rising;
    yet traces Christianity back to an invincible faith in Christ’s
    conquering of death and his continued life. But why believe the
    gospels when they speak of the sympathy of Christ, yet disbelieve
    them when they speak of his miraculous power? We have no right to
    trust the narrative when it gives us Christ’s words “Weep not” to
    the widow of Nain, (_Luke 7:13_), and then to distrust it when it
    tells us of his raising the widow’s son. The words “Jesus wept”
    belong inseparably to a story of which “Lazarus, come forth!”
    forms a part (_John 11:35, 43_). It is improbable that the
    disciples should have believed so stupendous a miracle as Christ’s
    resurrection, if they had not previously seen other manifestations
    of miraculous power on the part of Christ. Christ himself is the
    great miracle. The conception of him as the risen and glorified
    Savior can be explained only by the fact that he did so rise. E.
    G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 109—“The Church attests the fact of
    the resurrection quite as much as the resurrection attests the
    divine origin of the church. Resurrection, as an evidence, depends
    on the existence of the church which proclaims it.”


(_e_) The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ—by which we mean his
coming forth from the sepulchre in body as well as in spirit—is
demonstrated by evidence as varied and as conclusive as that which proves
to us any single fact of ancient history. Without it Christianity itself
is inexplicable, as is shown by the failure of all modern rationalistic
theories to account for its rise and progress.


    In discussing the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, we are
    confronted with three main rationalistic theories:

    I. The _Swoon-theory_ of Strauss. This holds that Jesus did not
    really die. The cold and the spices of the sepulchre revived him.
    We reply that the blood and water, and the testimony of the
    centurion (_Mark 15:45_), proved actual death (see Bib. Sac.,
    April, 1889:228; Forrest, Christ of History and Experience,
    137-170). The rolling away of the stone, and Jesus’ power
    immediately after, are inconsistent with immediately preceding
    swoon and suspended animation. How was his life preserved? where
    did he go? when did he die? His not dying implies deceit on his
    own part or on that of his disciples.

    II. The _Spirit-theory_ of Keim. Jesus really died, but only his
    spirit appeared. The spirit of Jesus gave the disciples a sign of
    his continued life, a telegram from heaven. But we reply that the
    telegram was untrue, for it asserted that his body had risen from
    the tomb. The tomb was empty and the linen cloths showed an
    orderly departure. Jesus himself denied that he was a bodiless
    spirit: “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me having”_
    (Luke 24:39)_. Did “his flesh see corruption”_ (Acts 2:31)_? Was
    the penitent thief raised from the dead as much as he? Godet,
    Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith, lect. i: A dilemma for
    those who deny the fact of Christ’s resurrection: Either his body
    remained in the hands of his disciples, or it was given up to the
    Jews. If the disciples retained it, they were impostors: but this
    is not maintained by modern rationalists. If the Jews retained it,
    why did they not produce it as conclusive evidence against the
    disciples?

    III. The _Vision-theory_ of Renan. Jesus died, and there was no
    objective appearance even of his spirit. Mary Magdalene was the
    victim of subjective hallucination, and her hallucination became
    contagious. This was natural because the Jews expected that the
    Messiah would work miracles and would rise from the dead. We reply
    that the disciples did not expect Jesus’ resurrection. The women
    went to the sepulchre, not to see a risen Redeemer, but to embalm
    a dead body. Thomas and those at Emmaus had given up all hope.
    Four hundred years had passed since the days of miracles; John the
    Baptist “did no miracle”_ (John 10:41)_; the Sadducees said “there
    is no resurrection”_ (Mat. 22:23)_. There were thirteen different
    appearances, to: 1. the Magdalen; 2. other women; 3. Peter; 4.
    Emmaus; 5. the Twelve; 6. the Twelve after eight days; 7. Galilee
    seashore; 8. Galilee mountain; 9. Galilee five hundred; 10. James;
    11. ascension at Bethany; 12. Stephen; 13. Paul on way to
    Damascus. Paul describes Christ’s appearance to him as something
    objective, and he implies that Christ’s previous appearances to
    others were objective also: “last of all [these bodily
    appearances], ... he appeared to me also”_ (1 Cor. 15:8)_. Bruce,
    Apologetics, 396—“Paul’s interest and intention in classing the
    two together was to level his own vision [of Christ] up to the
    objectivity of the early Christophanies. He believed that the
    eleven, that Peter in particular, had seen the risen Christ with
    the eye of the body, and he meant to claim for himself a vision of
    the same kind.” Paul’s was a sane, strong nature. Subjective
    visions do not transform human lives; the resurrection moulded the
    apostles; they did not create the resurrection (see Gore,
    Incarnation, 76). These appearances soon ceased, unlike the law of
    hallucinations, which increase in frequency and intensity. It is
    impossible to explain the ordinances, the Lord’s day, or
    Christianity itself, if Jesus did not rise from the dead.

    The resurrection of our Lord teaches three important lessons: (1)
    It showed that his work of atonement was completed and was stamped
    with the divine approval; (2) It showed him to be Lord of all and
    gave the one sufficient external proof of Christianity; (3) It
    furnished the ground and pledge of our own resurrection, and thus
    “brought life and immortality to light”_ (2 Tim. 1:10)_. It must
    be remembered that the resurrection was the one sign upon which
    Jesus himself staked his claims—“the sign of Jonah”_ (Luke
    11:29)_; and that the resurrection is proof, not simply of God’s
    power, but of Christ’s own power: _John 10:18—_“I have power to
    lay it down, and I have power to take it again”; _2:19—_“Destroy
    this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”.... _21—_“he
    spake of the temple of his body.” See Alexander, Christ and
    Christianity, 9, 158-224, 302; Mill, Theism, 216; Auberlen, Div.
    Revelation, 56; Boston Lectures, 203-239; Christlieb, Modern Doubt
    and Christian Belief, 448-503; Row, Bampton Lectures,
    1887:358-423; Hutton, Essays, 1:119; Schaff, in Princeton Rev.,
    May, 1880; 411-419; Fisher, Christian Evidences, 41-46, 82-85;
    West, in Defence and Conf. of Faith, 80-129; also special works on
    the Resurrection of our Lord, by Milligan, Morrison, Kennedy, J.
    Baldwin Brown.


6. Counterfeit Miracles.


Since only an act directly wrought by God can properly be called a
miracle, it follows that surprising events brought about by evil spirits
or by men, through the use of natural agencies beyond our knowledge, are
not entitled to this appellation. The Scriptures recognize the existence
of such, but denominate them “lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9).

These counterfeit miracles in various ages argue that the belief in
miracles is natural to the race, and that somewhere there must exist the
true. They serve to show that not all supernatural occurrences are divine,
and to impress upon us the necessity of careful examination before we
accept them as divine.

False miracles may commonly be distinguished from the true by (_a_) their
accompaniments of immoral conduct or of doctrine contradictory to truth
already revealed—as in modern spiritualism; (_b_) their internal
characteristics of inanity and extravagance—as in the liquefaction of the
blood of St. Januarius, or the miracles of the Apocryphal New Testament;
(_c_) the insufficiency of the object which they are designed to
further—as in the case of Apollonius of Tyana, or of the miracles said to
accompany the publication of the doctrines of the immaculate conception
and of the papal infallibility; (_d_) their lack of substantiating
evidence—as in mediæval miracles, so seldom attested by contemporary and
disinterested witnesses; (_e_) their denial or undervaluing of God’s
previous revelation of himself in nature—as shown by the neglect of
ordinary means, in the cases of Faith-cure and of so-called Christian
Science.


    Only what is valuable is counterfeited. False miracles presuppose
    the true. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 283—“The
    miracles of Jesus originated faith in him, while mediæval miracles
    follow established faith. The testimony of the apostles was given
    in the face of incredulous Sadducees. They were ridiculed and
    maltreated on account of it. It was no time for devout dreams and
    the invention of romances.” The blood of St. Januarius at Naples
    is said to be contained in a vial, one side of which is of thick
    glass, while the other side is of thin. A similar miracle was
    wrought at Hales in Gloucestershire. St. Alban, the first martyr
    of Britain, after his head is cut off, carries it about in his
    hand. In Ireland the place is shown where St. Patrick in the fifth
    century drove all the toads and snakes over a precipice into the
    nether regions. The legend however did not become current until
    some hundreds of years after the saint’s bones had crumbled to
    dust at Saul, near Downpatrick (see Hemphill, Literature of the
    Second Century, 180-182). Compare the story of the book of Tobit
    (6-8), which relates the expulsion of a demon by smoke from the
    burning heart and liver of a fish caught in the Tigris, and the
    story of the Apocryphal New Testament (I, Infancy), which tells of
    the expulsion of Satan in the form of a mad dog from Judas by the
    child Jesus. On counterfeit miracles in general, see Mozley,
    Miracles, 15, 161; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 72;
    A. S. Farrar, Science and Theology, 208; Tholuck, Vermischte
    Schriften, 1:27; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:630; Presb. Rev.,
    1881:687-719.

    Some modern writers have maintained that the gift of miracles
    still remains in the church. Bengel: “The reason why _many_
    miracles are not now wrought is not so much because _faith_ is
    established, as because _unbelief_ reigns.” Christlieb: “It is the
    want of faith in our age which is the greatest hindrance to the
    stronger and more marked appearance of that miraculous power which
    is working here and there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the
    final and most important reason for the retrogression of
    miracles.” Edward Irving, Works, 5:464—“Sickness is sin apparent
    in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of
    corruption. Now, as Christ came to destroy death, and will yet
    redeem the body from the bondage of corruption, if the church is
    to have a first fruits or earnest of this power, it must be by
    receiving power over diseases that are the first fruits and
    earnest of death.” Dr. A. J. Gordon, in his Ministry of Healing,
    held to this view. See also Boys, Proofs of the Miraculous in the
    Experience of the Church; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural,
    446-492; Review of Gordon, by Vincent, in Presb. Rev.,
    1883:473-502; Review of Vincent, in Presb. Rev., 1884:49-79.

    In reply to the advocates of faith-cure in general, we would grant
    that nature is plastic in God’s hand; that he can work miracle
    when and where it pleases him; and that he has given promises
    which, with certain Scriptural and rational limitations, encourage
    believing prayer for healing in cases of sickness. But we incline
    to the belief that in these later ages God answers such prayer,
    not by miracle, but by special providence, and by gifts of
    courage, faith and will, thus acting by his Spirit directly upon
    the soul and only indirectly upon the body. The laws of nature are
    generic volitions of God, and to ignore them and disuse means is
    presumption and disrespect to God himself. The Scripture promise
    to faith is always expressly or impliedly conditioned upon our use
    of means: we are to work out our own salvation, for the very
    reason that it is God who works in us; it is vain for the drowning
    man to pray, so long as he refuses to lay hold of the rope that is
    thrown to him. Medicines and physicians are the rope thrown to us
    by God; we cannot expect miraculous help, while we neglect the
    help God has already given us; to refuse this help is practically
    to deny Christ’s revelation in nature. Why not live without
    eating, as well as recover from sickness without medicine?
    Faith-feeding is quite as rational as faith-healing. To except
    cases of disease from this general rule as to the use of means has
    no warrant either in reason or in Scripture. The atonement has
    purchased complete salvation, and some day salvation shall be
    ours. But death and depravity still remain, not as penalty, but as
    chastisement. So disease remains also. Hospitals for Incurables,
    and the deaths even of advocates of faith-cure, show that they too
    are compelled to recognize some limit to the application of the
    New Testament promise.

    In view of the preceding discussion we must regard the so-called
    Christian Science as neither Christian nor scientific. Mrs. Mary
    Baker G. Eddy denies the authority of all that part of revelation
    which God has made to man in nature, and holds that the laws of
    nature may be disregarded with impunity by those who have proper
    faith; see G. F. Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1899:375. Bishop
    Lawrence of Massachusetts: “One of the errors of Christian Science
    is its neglect of accumulated knowledge, of the fund of
    information stored up for these Christian centuries. That
    knowledge is just as much God’s gift as is the knowledge obtained
    from direct revelation. In rejecting accumulated knowledge and
    professional skill, Christian Science rejects the gift of God.”
    Most of the professed cures of Christian Science are explicable by
    the influence of the mind upon the body, through hypnosis or
    suggestion; (see A. A. Bennett, in Watchman, Feb. 13, 1903).
    Mental disturbance may make the mother’s milk a poison to the
    child; mental excitement is a common cause of indigestion; mental
    depression induces bowel disorders; depressed mental and moral
    conditions render a person more susceptible to grippe, pneumonia,
    typhoid fever. Reading the account of an accident in which the
    body is torn or maimed, we ourselves feel pain in the same spot;
    when the child’s hand is crushed, the mother’s hand, though at a
    distance, becomes swollen; the mediæval _stigmata_ probably
    resulted from continuous brooding upon the sufferings of Christ
    (see Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 676-690).

    But mental states may help as well as harm the body. Mental
    expectancy facilitates cure in cases of sickness. The physician
    helps the patient by inspiring hope and courage. Imagination works
    wonders, especially in the case of nervous disorders. The diseases
    said to be cured by Christian Science are commonly of this sort.
    In every age fakirs, mesmerists, and quacks have availed
    themselves of these underlying mental forces. By inducing
    expectancy, imparting courage, rousing the paralyzed will, they
    have indirectly caused bodily changes which have been mistaken for
    miracle. Tacitus tells us of the healing of a blind man by the
    Emperor Vespasian. Undoubted cures have been wrought by the royal
    touch in England. Since such wonders have been performed by Indian
    medicine-men, we cannot regard them as having any specific
    Christian character, and when, as in the present case, we find
    them used to aid in the spread of false doctrine with regard to
    sin, Christ, atonement, and the church, we must class them with
    the “lying wonders” of which we are warned in _2 Thess. 2:9_. See
    Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism, 381-386; Buckley,
    Faith-Healing, and in Century Magazine, June, 1886:221-236; Bruce,
    Miraculous Element in Gospels, lecture 8; Andover Review,
    1887:249-264.



IV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.


We here consider prophecy in its narrow sense of mere prediction,
reserving to a subsequent chapter the consideration of prophecy as
interpretation of the divine will in general.

1. _Definition._ Prophecy is the foretelling of future events by virtue of
direct communication from God—a foretelling, therefore, which, though not
contravening any laws of the human mind, those laws, if fully known, would
not, without this agency of God, be sufficient to explain.


    In discussing the subject of prophecy, we are met at the outset by
    the contention that there is not, and never has been, any real
    foretelling of future events beyond that which is possible to
    natural prescience. This is the view of Kuenen, Prophets and
    Prophecy in Israel. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 2:42, denies any
    direct prediction. Prophecy in Israel, he intimates, was simply
    the consciousness of God’s righteousness, proclaiming its ideals
    of the future, and declaring that the will of God is the moral
    ideal of the good and the law of the world’s history, so that the
    fates of nations are conditioned by their bearing toward this
    moral purpose of God: “The fundamental error of the vulgar
    apologetics is that it confounds prophecy with heathen
    soothsaying—national salvation without character.” W. Robertson
    Smith, in Encyc. Britannica, 19:821, tells us that “detailed
    prediction occupies a very secondary place in the writings of the
    prophets; or rather indeed what seem to be predictions in detail
    are usually only free poetical illustrations of historical
    principles, which neither received nor demanded exact fulfilment.”

    As in the case of miracles, our faith in an immanent God, who is
    none other than the Logos or larger Christ, gives us a point of
    view from which we may reconcile the contentions of the
    naturalists and supernaturalists. Prophecy is an immediate act of
    God; but, since all natural genius is also due to God’s
    energizing, we do not need to deny the employment of man’s natural
    gifts in prophecy. The instances of telepathy, presentiment, and
    second sight which the Society for Psychical Research has
    demonstrated to be facts show that prediction, in the history of
    divine revelation, may be only an intensification, under the
    extraordinary impulse of the divine Spirit, of a power that is in
    some degree latent in all men. The author of every great work of
    creative imagination knows that a higher power than his own has
    possessed him. In all human reason there is a natural activity of
    the divine Reason or Logos, and he is “the light which lighteth
    every man”_ (John 1:9)_. So there is a natural activity of the
    Holy Spirit, and he who completes the circle of the divine
    consciousness completes also the circle of human consciousness,
    gives self-hood to every soul, makes available to man the natural
    as well as the spiritual gifts of Christ; _cf.__ John 16:14—_“he
    shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The same
    Spirit who in the beginning “brooded over the face of the waters”_
    (Gen. 1:2)_ also broods over humanity, and it is he who, according
    to Christ’s promise, was to “declare unto you the things that are
    to come”_ (John 16:13)_. The gift of prophecy may have its natural
    side, like the gift of miracles, yet may be finally explicable
    only as the result of an extraordinary working of that Spirit of
    Christ who to some degree manifests himself in the reason and
    conscience of every man; _cf.__ 1 Pet 1:11—_“searching what time
    or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did
    point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ,
    and the glories that should follow them.” See Myers, Human
    Personality, 2:262-292.

    A. B. Davidson, in his article on Prophecy and Prophets, in
    Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 4:120, 121, gives little weight to
    this view that prophecy is based on a natural power of the human
    mind: “The arguments by which Giesebrecht, Berufsgabung, 13 ff.,
    supports the theory of a ‘faculty of presentiment’ have little
    cogency. This faculty is supposed to reveal itself particularly on
    the approach of death (_Gen. 28_ and _49_). The contemporaries of
    most great religious personages have attributed to them a
    prophetic gift. The answer of John Knox to those who credited him
    with such a gift is worth reading: ‘My assurances are not marvels
    of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecy. But
    _first_, the plain truth of God’s word; _second_, the invincible
    justice of the everlasting God; and _third_, the ordinary course
    of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my
    assurances and grounds.’ ” While Davidson grants the fulfilment of
    certain specific predictions of Scripture, to be hereafter
    mentioned, he holds that “such presentiments as we can observe to
    be authentic are chiefly products of the conscience or moral
    reason. True prophecy is based on moral grounds. Everywhere the
    menacing future is connected with the evil past by ‘therefore’_
    (Micah 3:12; Is. 5:13; Amos 1:2)_.” We hold with Davidson to the
    moral element in prophecy, but we also recognize a power in normal
    humanity which he would minimize or deny. We claim that the human
    mind even in its ordinary and secular working gives occasional
    signs of transcending the limitations of the present. Believing in
    the continual activity of the divine Reason in the reason of man,
    we have no need to doubt the possibility of an extraordinary
    insight into the future, and such insight is needed at the great
    epochs of religious history. Expositor’s Gk. Test.,
    2:34—“Savonarola foretold as early as 1496 the capture of Rome,
    which happened in 1527, and he did this not only in general terms
    but in detail; his words were realized to the letter when the
    sacred churches of St. Peter and St. Paul became, as the prophet
    foretold, stables for the conquerors’ horses.” On the general
    subject, see Payne-Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ;
    Alexander, Christ and Christianity; Farrar, Science and Theology,
    106; Newton on Prophecy; Fairbairn on Prophecy.


2. _Relation of Prophecy to Miracles._ Miracles are attestations of
revelation proceeding from divine power; prophecy is an attestation of
revelation proceeding from divine knowledge. Only God can know the
contingencies of the future. The possibility and probability of prophecy
may be argued upon the same grounds upon which we argue the possibility
and probability of miracles. As an evidence of divine revelation, however,
prophecy possesses two advantages over miracles, namely: (_a_) The proof,
in the case of prophecy, is not derived from ancient testimony, but is
under our eyes. (_b_) The evidence of miracles cannot become stronger,
whereas every new fulfilment adds to the argument from prophecy.

3. _Requirements in Prophecy, considered as an Evidence of Revelation._
(_a_) The utterance must be distant from the event. (_b_) Nothing must
exist to suggest the event to merely natural prescience. (_c_) The
utterance must be free from ambiguity. (_d_) Yet it must not be so precise
as to secure its own fulfilment. (_e_) It must be followed in due time by
the event predicted.


    Hume: “All prophecies are real miracles, and only as such can be
    admitted as proof of any revelation.” See Wardlaw, Syst. Theol.,
    1:347. (_a_) Hundreds of years intervened between certain of the
    O. T. predictions and their fulfilment. (_b_) Stanley instances
    the natural sagacity of Burke, which enabled him to predict the
    French Revolution. But Burke also predicted in 1793 that France
    would be partitioned like Poland among a confederacy of hostile
    powers. Canning predicted that South American colonies would grow
    up as the United States had grown. D’Israeli predicted that our
    Southern Confederacy would become an independent nation. Ingersoll
    predicted that within ten years there would be two theatres for
    one church. (_c_) Illustrate ambiguous prophecies by the Delphic
    oracle to Crœsus: “Crossing the river, thou destroyest a great
    nation”—whether his own or his enemy’s the oracle left
    undetermined. “Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello.” (_d_)
    Strauss held that O. T. prophecy itself determined either the
    events or the narratives of the gospels. See Greg, Creed of
    Christendom, chap. 4. (_e_) Cardan, the Italian mathematician,
    predicted the day and hour of his own death, and committed suicide
    at the proper time to prove the prediction true. Jehovah makes the
    fulfilment of his predictions the proof of his deity in the
    controversy with false gods: _Is. 41:23—_“Declare the things that
    are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods”;
    _42:9—_“Behold, the former things are come to pass and new things
    do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.”


4. _General Features of Prophecy in the Scriptures._ (_a_) Its large
amount—occupying a great portion of the Bible, and extending over many
hundred years. (_b_) Its ethical and religious nature—the events of the
future being regarded as outgrowths and results of men’s present attitude
toward God. (_c_) Its unity in diversity—finding its central point in
Christ the true servant of God and deliverer of his people. (_d_) Its
actual fulfilment as regards many of its predictions—while seeming
non-fulfilments are explicable from its figurative and conditional nature.


    A. B. Davidson, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 4:125, has
    suggested reasons for the apparent non-fulfilment of certain
    predictions. Prophecy is poetical and figurative; its details are
    not to be pressed; they are only drapery, needed for the
    expression of the idea. In _Isa. 13:16—_“Their infants shall be
    dashed in pieces ... and their wives ravished”—the prophet gives
    an ideal picture of the sack of a city; these things did not
    actually happen, but Cyrus entered Babylon “in peace.” Yet the
    essential truth remained that the city fell into the enemy’s
    hands. The prediction of Ezekiel with regard to Tyre, _Ez.
    26:7-14_, is recognized in _Ez. 29:17-20_ as having been fulfilled
    not in its details but in its essence—the actual event having been
    the breaking of the power of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. _Is.
    17:1—_“Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it
    shall be a ruinous heap”—must be interpreted as predicting the
    blotting out of its dominion, since Damascus has probably never
    ceased to be a city. The conditional nature of prophecy explains
    other seeming non-fulfilments. Predictions were often threats,
    which might be revoked upon repentance. _Jer. 26:13—_“amend your
    ways ... and the Lord will repent him of the evil which he hath
    pronounced against you.” _Jonah 3:4—_“Yet forty days, and Nineveh
    shall be overthrown ...” _10—God saw their works, that they turned
    from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he said
    he would do unto them; and he did it not_; _cf.__ Jer. 18:8_;
    _26:19_.

    Instances of actual fulfilment of prophecy are found, according to
    Davidson, in Samuel’s prediction of some things that would happen
    to Saul, which the history declares did happen (_1 Sam. 1_ and
    _10_). Jeremiah predicted the death of Hananiah within the year,
    which took place (_Jer. 28_). Micaiah predicted the defeat and
    death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead (_1 Kings 22_). Isaiah predicted
    the failure of the northern coalition to subdue Jerusalem (_Is.
    7_); the overthrow in two or three years of Damascus and Northern
    Israel before the Assyrians (_Is. 8 and 17_); the failure of
    Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem, and the melting away of his army
    (_Is. 37:34-37_). “And in general, apart from details, the main
    predictions of the prophets regarding Israel and the nations were
    verified in history, for example, _Amos 1_ and _2_. The chief
    predictions of the prophets relate to the imminent downfall of the
    kingdoms of Israel and Judah; to what lies beyond this, namely,
    the restoration of the kingdom of God; and to the state of the
    people in their condition of final felicity.” For predictions of
    the exile and the return of Israel, see especially _Amos
    9:9—_“For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel
    among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet
    shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth.... _14—_And I will
    bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall
    build the waste cities and inhabit them.” Even if we accept the
    theory of composite authorship of the book of Isaiah, we still
    have a foretelling of the sending back of the Jews from Babylon,
    and a designation of Cyrus as God’s agent, in _Is. 44:28—_“that
    saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my
    pleasure: even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the
    temple, Thy foundation shall be laid”; see George Adam Smith, in
    Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:493. Frederick the Great said to his
    chaplain: “Give me in one word a proof of the divine origin of the
    Bible”; and the chaplain well replied: “The Jews, your Majesty.”
    In the case of the Jews we have even now the unique phenomena of a
    people without a land, and a land without a people,—yet both these
    were predicted centuries before the event.


5. _Messianic Prophecy in general._ (_a_) Direct predictions of events—as
in Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s birth, suffering and subsequent
glory. (_b_) General prophecy of the Kingdom in the Old Testament, and of
its gradual triumph. (_c_) Historical types in a nation and in
individuals—as Jonah and David. (_d_) Prefigurations of the future in
rites and ordinances—as in sacrifice, circumcision, and the passover.

6. _Special Prophecies uttered by Christ._ (_a_) As to his own death and
resurrection. (_b_) As to events occurring between his death and the
destruction of Jerusalem (multitudes of impostors; wars and rumors of
wars; famine and pestilence). (_c_) As to the destruction of Jerusalem and
the Jewish polity (Jerusalem compassed with armies; abomination of
desolation in the holy place; flight of Christians; misery; massacre;
dispersion). (_d_) As to the world-wide diffusion of his gospel (the Bible
already the most widely circulated book in the world).


    The most important feature in prophecy is its Messianic element;
    see _Luke 24:27—_“beginning from Moses and from all the prophets,
    he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning
    himself”; _Acts 10:43—_“to him bear all the prophets witness”;
    _Rev. 19:10—_“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
    Types are intended resemblances, designed prefigurations; for
    example, Israel is a type of the Christian church; outside nations
    are types of the hostile world; Jonah and David are types of
    Christ. The typical nature of Israel rests upon the deeper fact of
    the community of life. As the life of God the Logos lies at the
    basis of universal humanity and interpenetrates it in every part,
    so out of this universal humanity grows Israel in general; out of
    Israel as a nation springs the spiritual Israel, and out of
    spiritual Israel Christ according to the flesh,—the upward rising
    pyramid finds its apex and culmination in him. Hence the
    predictions with regard to “the servant of Jehovah”_ (Is.
    42:1-7)_, and “the Messiah”_ (Is. 61:1; John 1:41)_, have partial
    fulfilment in Israel, but perfect fulfilment only in Christ; so
    Delitzsch, Oehler, and Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253. Sabatier, Philos.
    Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially and in some degree
    Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its
    bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.” Gardiner, O. T.
    and N. T. in their Mutual Relations, 170-194.

    In the O. T., Jehovah is the Redeemer of his people. He works
    through judges, prophets, kings, but he himself remains the
    Savior; “it is only the Divine in them that saves”; “Salvation is
    of Jehovah”_ (Jonah 2:9)_. Jehovah is manifested in the Davidic
    King under the monarchy; in Israel, the Servant of the Lord,
    during the exile; and in the Messiah, or Anointed One, in the
    post-exilian period. Because of its conscious identification with
    Jehovah, Israel is always a forward-looking people. Each new
    judge, king, prophet is regarded as heralding the coming reign of
    righteousness and peace. These earthly deliverers are saluted with
    rapturous expectation; the prophets express this expectation in
    terms that transcend the possibilities of the present; and, when
    this expectation fails to be fully realized, the Messianic hope is
    simply transferred to a larger future. Each separate prophecy has
    its drapery furnished by the prophet’s immediate surroundings, and
    finds its occasion in some event of contemporaneous history. But
    by degrees it becomes evident that only an ideal and perfect King
    and Savior can fill out the requirements of prophecy. Only when
    Christ appears, does the real meaning of the various Old Testament
    predictions become manifest. Only then are men able to combine the
    seemingly inconsistent prophecies of a priest who is also a king
    (_Psalm 110_), and of a royal but at the same time a suffering
    Messiah (_Isaiah 53_). It is not enough for us to ask what the
    prophet himself meant, or what his earliest hearers understood, by
    his prophecy. This is to regard prophecy as having only a single,
    and that a human, author. With the spirit of man coöperated the
    Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit (_1 Pet. 1:11—_“the Spirit of
    Christ which was in them”; _2 Pet. 1:21—_“no prophecy ever came by
    the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
    Spirit”). All prophecy has a twofold authorship, human and divine;
    the same Christ who spoke through the prophets brought about the
    fulfilment of their words.

    It is no wonder that he who through the prophets uttered
    predictions with regard to himself should, when he became
    incarnate, be the prophet _par excellence_ (_Deut. 18:15_; _Acts
    3:22—_“Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up
    from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken”).
    In the predictions of Jesus we find the proper key to the
    interpretation of prophecy in general, and the evidence that while
    no one of the three theories—the preterist, the continuist, the
    futurist—furnishes an exhaustive explanation, each one of these
    has its element of truth. Our Lord made the fulfilment of the
    prediction of his own resurrection a test of his divine
    commission: it was “the sign of Jonah the prophet”_ (Mat. 12:39)_.
    He promised that his disciples should have prophetic gifts: _John
    15:15—_“No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth
    not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all
    things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you”;
    _16:13—_“the Spirit of truth ... he shall declare unto you the
    things that are to come.” Agabus predicted the famine and Paul’s
    imprisonment (_Acts 11:28_; _21:10_); Paul predicted heresies
    (_Acts 20:29, 30_), shipwreck (_Acts 27:10, 21-26_), “the man of
    sin”_ (2 Thess. 2:3)_, Christ’s second coming, and the
    resurrection of the saints (_1 Thess. 4:15-17_).


7. On the double sense of Prophecy.

(_a_) Certain prophecies apparently contain a fulness of meaning which is
not exhausted by the event to which they most obviously and literally
refer. A prophecy which had a partial fulfilment at a time not remote from
its utterance, may find its chief fulfilment in an event far distant.
Since the principles of God’s administration find ever recurring and ever
enlarging illustration in history, prophecies which have already had a
partial fulfilment may have whole cycles of fulfilment yet before them.


    In prophecy there is an absence of perspective; as in Japanese
    pictures the near and the far appear equally distant; as in
    dissolving views, the immediate future melts into a future
    immeasurably far away. The candle that shines through a narrow
    aperture sends out its light through an ever-increasing area;
    sections of the triangle correspond to each other, but the more
    distant are far greater than the near. The châlet on the
    mountain-side may turn out to be only a black cat on the woodpile,
    or a speck upon the window pane. “A hill which appears to rise
    close behind another is found on nearer approach to have receded a
    great way from it.” The painter, by foreshortening, brings
    together things or parts that are relatively distant from each
    other. The prophet is a painter whose foreshortenings are
    supernatural; he seems freed from the law of space and time, and,
    rapt into the timelessness of God, he views the events of history
    “sub specie eternitatis.” Prophecy was the sketching of an
    outline-map. Even the prophet could not fill up the outline. The
    absence of perspective in prophecy may account for Paul’s being
    misunderstood by the Thessalonians, and for the necessity of his
    explanations in _2 Thess. 2:1, 2_. In _Isaiah 10_ and _11_, the
    fall of Lebanon (the Assyrian) is immediately connected with the
    rise of the Branch (Christ); in _Jeremiah 51:41_, the first
    capture and the complete destruction of Babylon are connected with
    each other, without notice of the interval of a thousand years
    between them.

    Instances of the double sense of prophecy may be found in _Is.
    7:14-16_; _9:6, 7—_“a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, ...
    unto us a son is given”—compared with _Mat. 1:22, 23_, where the
    prophecy is applied to Christ (see Meyer, _in loco_); _Hos.
    11:1—_“I ... called my son out of Egypt”—referring originally to
    the calling of the nation out of Egypt—is in _Mat. 2:15_ referred
    to Christ, who embodied and consummated the mission of Israel;
    _Psalm 118:22, 23—_“The stone which the builders rejected is
    become the head of the corner”—which primarily referred to the
    Jewish nation, conquered, carried away, and flung aside as of no
    use, but divinely destined to a future of importance and grandeur,
    is in _Mat. 21:42_ referred by Jesus to himself, as the true
    embodiment of Israel. William Arnold Stevens, on The Man of Sin,
    in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360—As in _Daniel 11:36_, the
    great enemy of the faith, who “shall exalt himself, and magnify
    himself above every god,” is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes,
    so “the man of lawlessness” described by Paul in _2 Thess. 2:3_ is
    the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age. This had its
    seat in the temple of God, but was doomed to destruction when the
    Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But even this second
    fulfilment of the prophecy does not preclude a future and final
    fulfilment. Broadus on Mat., page 480—In _Isaiah 41:8_ to _chapter
    53_, the predictions with regard to “the servant of Jehovah” make
    a gradual transition from Israel to the Messiah, the former alone
    being seen in _41:8_, the Messiah also appearing in _42:1 __sq._,
    and Israel quite sinking out of sight in _chapter 53_.

    The most marked illustration of the double sense of prophecy
    however is to be found in _Matthew 24_ and _25_, especially
    _24:34_ and _25:31_, where Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of
    Jerusalem passes into a prophecy of the end of the world. Adamson,
    The Mind in Christ, 183—“To him history was the robe of God, and
    therefore a constant repetition of positions really similar,
    kaleidoscopic combining of a few truths, as the facts varied in
    which they were to be embodied.” A. J. Gordon: “Prophecy has no
    sooner become history, than history in turn becomes prophecy.”
    Lord Bacon: “Divine prophecies have springing and germinant
    accomplishment through many ages, though the height or fulness of
    them may refer to some one age.” In a similar manner there is a
    manifoldness of meaning in Dante’s Divine Comedy. C. E. Norton,
    Inferno, xvi—“The narrative of the poet’s spiritual journey is so
    vivid and consistent that it has all the reality of an account of
    an actual experience; but within and beneath runs a stream of
    allegory not less consistent and hardly less continuous than the
    narrative itself.” A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their
    Theology, 116—“Dante himself has told us that there are four
    separate senses which he intends his story to convey. There are
    the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the analogical. In
    _Psalm 114:1_ we have the words, ‘When Israel went forth out of
    Egypt.’ This, says the poet, may be taken literally, of the actual
    deliverance of God’s ancient people; or allegorically, of the
    redemption of the world through Christ; or morally, of the rescue
    of the sinner from the bondage of his sin; or anagogically, of the
    passage of both soul and body from the lower life of earth to the
    higher life of heaven. So from Scripture Dante illustrates the
    method of his poem.” See further, our treatment of Eschatology.
    See also Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Sermons on the Interpretation of
    Scripture, Appendix A, pages 441-454; Aids to Faith, 449-462;
    Smith’s Bible Dict., 4:2727. _Per contra_, see Elliott, Horæ
    Apocalypticæ, 4:662. Gardiner, O. T. and N. T., 262-274, denies
    double sense, but affirms manifold applications of a single sense.
    Broadus, on _Mat. 24:1_, denies double sense, but affirms the use
    of types.


(_b_) The prophet was not always aware of the meaning of his own
prophecies (1 Pet. 1:11). It is enough to constitute his prophecies a
proof of divine revelation, if it can be shown that the correspondences
between them and the actual events are such as to indicate divine wisdom
and purpose in the giving of them—in other words, it is enough if the
inspiring Spirit knew their meaning, even though the inspired prophet did
not.


    It is not inconsistent with this view, but rather confirms it,
    that the near event, and not the distant fulfilment, was often
    chiefly, if not exclusively, in the mind of the prophet when he
    wrote. Scripture declares that the prophets did not always
    understand their own predictions: _1 Pet. 1:11—_“searching what
    time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them
    did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of
    Christ, and the glories that should follow them.” Emerson:
    “Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he
    knew.” Keble: “As little children lisp and tell of heaven, So
    thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given.”
    Westcott: Preface to Com. on Hebrews, vi—“No one would limit the
    teaching of a poet’s words to that which was definitely present to
    his mind. Still less can we suppose that he who is inspired to
    give a message of God to all ages sees himself the completeness of
    the truth which all life serves to illuminate.” Alexander McLaren:
    “Peter teaches that Jewish prophets foretold the events of
    Christ’s life and especially his sufferings; that they did so as
    organs of God’s Spirit; that they were so completely organs of a
    higher voice that they did not understand the significance of
    their own words, but were wiser than they knew and had to search
    what were the date and the characteristics of the strange things
    which they foretold; and that by further revelation they learned
    that ‘the vision is yet for many days’_ (Is. 24:22; Dan. 10:14)_.
    If Peter was right in his conception of the nature of Messianic
    prophecy, a good many learned men of to-day are wrong.” Matthew
    Arnold, Literature and Dogma: “Might not the prophetic ideals be
    poetic dreams, and the correspondence between them and the life of
    Jesus, so far as real, only a curious historical phenomenon?”
    Bruce, Apologetics, 359, replies: “Such scepticism is possible
    only to those who have no faith in a living God who works out
    purposes in history.” It is comparable only to the unbelief of the
    materialist who regards the physical constitution of the universe
    as explicable by the fortuitous concourse of atoms.


8. _Purpose of Prophecy—so far as it is yet unfulfilled._ (_a_) Not to
enable us to map out the details of the future; but rather (_b_) To give
general assurance of God’s power and foreseeing wisdom, and of the
certainty of his triumph; and (_c_) To furnish, after fulfilment, the
proof that God saw the end from the beginning.


    _Dan. 12:8, 9—_“And I heard, but I understood not; then said I, O
    my Lord, what shall be the issue of these things? And he said, Go
    thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the
    time of the end”; _2 Pet. 1:19_—prophecy is “a lamp shining in a
    dark place, until the day dawn”—not until day dawns can distant
    objects be seen; _20—_“no prophecy of scripture is of private
    interpretation”—only God, by the event, can interpret it. Sir
    Isaac Newton: “God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men’s
    curiosity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they
    were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own
    providence, not the interpreter’s, be thereby manifested to the
    world.” Alexander McLaren: “Great tracts of Scripture are dark to
    us till life explains them, and then they come on us with the
    force of a new revelation, like the messages which of old were
    sent by a strip of parchment coiled upon a bâton and then written
    upon, and which were unintelligible unless the receiver had a
    corresponding bâton to wrap them round.” A. H. Strong, The Great
    Poets and their Theology, 23—“Archilochus, a poet of about 700 B.
    C., speaks of ‘a grievous _scytale_’—the _scytale_ being the staff
    on which a strip of leather for writing purposes was rolled
    slantwise, so that the message inscribed upon the strip could not
    be read until the leather was rolled again upon another staff of
    the same size; since only the writer and the receiver possessed
    staves of the proper size, the _scytale_ answered all the ends of
    a message in cypher.”

    Prophecy is like the German sentence,—it can be understood only
    when we have read its last word. A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the
    Spirit, 48—“God’s providence is like the Hebrew Bible; we must
    begin at the end and read backward, in order to understand it.”
    Yet Dr. Gordon seems to assert that such understanding is possible
    even before fulfilment: “Christ did not know the day of the end
    when here in his state of humiliation; but he does know now. He
    has shown his knowledge in the Apocalypse, and we have received
    ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto
    his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass’_
    (Rev. 1:1)_.” A study however of the multitudinous and conflicting
    views of the so-called interpreters of prophecy leads us to prefer
    to Dr. Gordon’s view that of Briggs, Messianic Prophecies, 49—“The
    first advent is the resolver of all Old Testament prophecy; ...
    the second advent will give the key to New Testament prophecy. It
    is ‘the Lamb that hath been slain’_ (Rev. 5:12)_ ... who alone
    opens the sealed book, solves the riddles of time, and resolves
    the symbols of prophecy.”

    Nitzsch: “It is the essential condition of prophecy that it should
    not disturb man’s relation to history.” In so far as this is
    forgotten, and it is falsely assumed that the purpose of prophecy
    is to enable us to map out the precise events of the future before
    they occur, the study of prophecy ministers to a diseased
    imagination and diverts attention from practical Christian duty.
    Calvin: “Aut insanum inveniet aut faciet”; or, as Lord Brougham
    translated it: “The study of prophecy either finds a man crazy, or
    it leaves him so.” Second Adventists do not often seek
    conversions. Dr. Cumming warned the women of his flock that they
    must not study prophecy so much as to neglect their household
    duties. Paul has such in mind in _2 Thess. 2:1, 2—_“touching the
    coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ... that ye be not quickly shaken
    from your mind ... as that the day of the Lord is just at hand”;
    _3:11—_“For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly.”


9. _Evidential force of Prophecy—so far as it is fulfilled._ Prophecy,
like miracles, does not stand alone as evidence of the divine commission
of the Scripture writers and teachers. It is simply a corroborative
attestation, which unites with miracles to prove that a religious teacher
has come from God and speaks with divine authority. We cannot, however,
dispense with this portion of the evidences,—for unless the death and
resurrection of Christ are events foreknown and foretold by himself, as
well as by the ancient prophets, we lose one main proof of his authority
as a teacher sent from God.


    Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 338—“The Christian’s
    own life is the progressive fulfilment of the prophecy that
    whoever accepts Christ’s grace shall be born again, sanctified,
    and saved. Hence the Christian can believe in God’s power to
    predict, and in God’s actual predictions.” See Stanley Leathes, O.
    T. Prophecy, xvii—“Unless we have access to the supernatural, we
    have no access to God.” In our discussions of prophecy, we are to
    remember that before making the truth of Christianity stand or
    fall with any particular passage that has been regarded as
    prediction, we must be certain that the passage is meant as
    prediction, and not as merely figurative description. Gladden,
    Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 195—“The book of Daniel is not a
    prophecy,—it is an apocalypse.... The author [of such books] puts
    his words into the mouth of some historical or traditional writer
    of eminence. Such are the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses,
    Baruch, 1 and 2 Esdras, and the Sibylline Oracles. Enigmatic form
    indicates persons without naming them, and historic events as
    animal forms or as operations of nature.... The book of Daniel is
    not intended to teach us history. It does not look forward from
    the sixth century before Christ, but backward from the second
    century before Christ. It is a kind of story which the Jews called
    Haggada. It is aimed at Antiochus Epiphanes, who, from his
    occasional fits of melancholy, was called Epimanes, or Antiochus
    the Mad.”

    Whatever may be our conclusion as to the authorship of the book of
    Daniel, we must recognize in it an element of prediction which has
    been actually fulfilled. The most radical interpreters do not
    place its date later than 163 B. C. Our Lord sees in the book
    clear reference to himself (_Mat. 26:64—_“the Son of man, sitting
    at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven”;
    _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_); and he repeats with emphasis certain
    predictions of the prophet which were yet unfulfilled (_Mat.
    24:15—_“When ye see the abomination of desolation, which was
    spoken of through Daniel the prophet”; _cf._ _Dan. 9:27_; _11:31_;
    _12:11_). The book of Daniel must therefore be counted profitable
    not only for its moral and spiritual lessons, but also for its
    actual predictions of Christ and of the universal triumph of his
    kingdom (_Dan. 2:45—_“a stone cut out of the mountain without
    hands”). See on Daniel, Hastings’ Bible Dictionary; Farrar, in
    Expositor’s Bible. On the general subject see Annotated Paragraph
    Bible, Introd. to Prophetical Books; Cairns, on Present State of
    Christian Argument from Prophecy, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no.
    27; Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Briggs, Messianic Prophecy;
    Redford, Prophecy, its Nature and Evidence; Willis J. Beecher, the
    Prophet and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 455-465.


Having thus removed the presumption originally existing against miracles
and prophecy, we may now consider the ordinary laws of evidence and
determine the rules to be followed in estimating the weight of the
Scripture testimony.



V. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a Divine
Revelation.


PRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE APPLICABLE TO THE PROOF OF A DIVINE
REVELATION (mainly derived from Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists,
and from Starkie on Evidence).


1. As to documentary evidence.


(_a_) Documents apparently ancient, not bearing upon their face the marks
of forgery, and found in proper custody, are presumed to be genuine until
sufficient evidence is brought to the contrary. The New Testament
documents, since they are found in the custody of the church, their
natural and legitimate depository, must by this rule be presumed to be
genuine.


    The Christian documents were not found, like the Book of Mormon,
    in a cave, or in the custody of angels. Martineau, Seat of
    Authority, 322—“The Mormon prophet, who cannot tell God from devil
    close at hand, is well up with the history of both worlds, and
    commissioned to get ready the second promised land.” Washington
    Gladden, Who wrote the Bible?—“An angel appeared to Smith and told
    him where he would find this book; he went to the spot designated
    and found in a stone box a volume six inches thick, composed of
    thin gold plates, eight inches by seven, held together by three
    gold rings; these plates were covered with writing, in the
    ‘Reformed Egyptian tongue’; with this book were the ‘Urim and
    Thummim’, a pair of supernatural spectacles, by means of which he
    was able to read and translate this ‘Reformed Egyptian’ language.”
    Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 113—“If the ledger of a business
    firm has always been received and regarded as a ledger, its value
    is not at all impeached if it is impossible to tell which
    particular clerk kept this ledger.... The epistle to the Hebrews
    would be no less valuable as evidence, if shown not to have been
    written by Paul.” See Starkie on Evidence, 480 _sq._; Chalmers,
    Christian Revelation, in Works, 3:147-171.


(_b_) Copies of ancient documents, made by those most interested in their
faithfulness, are presumed to correspond with the originals, even although
those originals no longer exist. Since it was the church’s interest to
have faithful copies, the burden of proof rests upon the objector to the
Christian documents.


    Upon the evidence of a copy of its own records, the originals
    having been lost, the House of Lords decided a claim to the
    peerage; see Starkie on Evidence, 51. There is no manuscript of
    Sophocles earlier than the tenth century, while at least two
    manuscripts of the N. T. go back to the fourth century. Frederick
    George Kenyon, Handbook to Textual Criticism of N. T.: “We owe our
    knowledge of most of the great works of Greek and Latin
    literature—Æschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Horace, Lucretius,
    Tacitus, and many more—to manuscripts written from 900 to 1500
    years after their authors’ deaths; while of the N. T. we have two
    excellent and approximately complete copies at an interval of only
    250 years. Again, of the classical writers we have as a rule only
    a few score of copies (often less), of which one or two stand out
    as decisively superior to all the rest; but of the N. T. we have
    more than 3000 copies (besides a very large number of versions),
    and many of these have distinct and independent value.” The mother
    of Tischendorf named him Lobgott, because her fear that her babe
    would be born blind had not come true. No man ever had keener
    sight than he. He spent his life in deciphering old manuscripts
    which other eyes could not read. The Sinaitic manuscript which he
    discovered takes us back within three centuries of the time of the
    apostles.


(_c_) In determining matters of fact, after the lapse of considerable
time, documentary evidence is to be allowed greater weight than oral
testimony. Neither memory nor tradition can long be trusted to give
absolutely correct accounts of particular facts. The New Testament
documents, therefore, are of greater weight in evidence than tradition
would be, even if only thirty years had elapsed since the death of the
actors in the scenes they relate.


    See Starkie on Evidence, 51, 730. The Roman Catholic Church, in
    its legends of the saints, shows how quickly mere tradition can
    become corrupt. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, yet
    sermons preached to-day on the anniversary of his birth make him
    out to be Unitarian, Universalist, or Orthodox, according as the
    preacher himself believes.


2. As to testimony in general.


(_a_) In questions as to matters of fact, the proper inquiry is not
whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there
is sufficient probability that it is true. It is unfair, therefore, to
allow our examination of the Scripture witnesses to be prejudiced by
suspicion, merely because their story is a sacred one.


    There must be no prejudice against, there must be open-mindedness
    to, truth; there must be a normal aspiration after the signs of
    communication from God. Telepathy, forty days fasting,
    parthenogenesis, all these might once have seemed antecedently
    incredible. Now we see that it would have been more rational to
    admit their existence on presentation of appropriate evidence.


(_b_) A proposition of fact is proved when its truth is established by
competent and satisfactory evidence. By competent evidence is meant such
evidence as the nature of the thing to be proved admits. By satisfactory
evidence is meant that amount of proof which ordinarily satisfies an
unprejudiced mind beyond a reasonable doubt. Scripture facts are therefore
proved when they are established by that kind and degree of evidence which
would in the affairs of ordinary life satisfy the mind and conscience of a
common man. When we have this kind and degree of evidence it is
unreasonable to require more.


    In matters of morals and religion competent evidence need not be
    mathematical or even logical. The majority of cases in criminal
    courts are decided upon evidence that is circumstantial. We do not
    determine our choice of friends or of partners in life by strict
    processes of reasoning. The heart as well as the head must be
    permitted a voice, and competent evidence includes considerations
    arising from the moral needs of the soul. The evidence, moreover,
    does not require to be demonstrative. Even a slight balance of
    probability, when nothing more certain is attainable, may suffice
    to constitute rational proof and to bind our moral action.


(_c_) In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every
witness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the
burden of impeaching his testimony lying upon the objector. The principle
which leads men to give true witness to facts is stronger than that which
leads them to give false witness. It is therefore unjust to compel the
Christian to establish the credibility of his witnesses before proceeding
to adduce their testimony, and it is equally unjust to allow the
uncorroborated testimony of a profane writer to outweigh that of a
Christian writer. Christian witnesses should not be considered interested,
and therefore untrustworthy; for they became Christians against their
worldly interests, and because they could not resist the force of
testimony. Varying accounts among them should be estimated as we estimate
the varying accounts of profane writers.


    John’s account of Jesus differs from that of the synoptic gospels;
    but in a very similar manner, and probably for a very similar
    reason, Plato’s account of Socrates differs from that of Xenophon.
    Each saw and described that side of his subject which he was by
    nature best fitted to comprehend,—compare the Venice of Canaletto
    with the Venice of Turner, the former the picture of an expert
    draughtsman, the latter the vision of a poet who sees the palaces
    of the Doges glorified by air and mist and distance. In Christ
    there was a “hiding of his power”_ (Hab. 3:4)_; “how small a
    whisper do we hear of him!”_ (Job 26:14)_; he, rather than
    Shakespeare, is “the myriad-minded”; no one evangelist can be
    expected to know or describe him except “in part”_ (1 Cor.
    13:12)_. Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 2:402—“All of us human beings
    resemble diamonds, in having several distinct facets to our
    characters; and, as we always turn one of these to one person and
    another to another, there is generally some fresh side to be seen
    in a particularly brilliant gem.” E. P. Tenney, Coronation,
    45—“The secret and powerful life he [the hero of the story] was
    leading was like certain solitary streams, deep, wide, and swift,
    which run unseen through vast and unfrequented forests. So wide
    and varied was this man’s nature, that whole courses of life might
    thrive in its secret places,—and his neighbors might touch him and
    know him only on that side on which he was like them.”


(_d_) A slight amount of positive testimony, so long as it is
uncontradicted, outweighs a very great amount of testimony that is merely
negative. The silence of a second witness, or his testimony that he did
not see a certain alleged occurrence, cannot counterbalance the positive
testimony of a first witness that he did see it. We should therefore
estimate the silence of profane writers with regard to facts narrated in
Scripture precisely as we should estimate it if the facts about which they
are silent were narrated by other profane writers, instead of being
narrated by the writers of Scripture.


    Egyptian monuments make no mention of the destruction of Pharaoh
    and his army; but then, Napoleon’s dispatches also make no mention
    of his defeat at Trafalgar. At the tomb of Napoleon in the
    Invalides of Paris, the walls are inscribed with names of a
    multitude of places where his battles were fought, but Waterloo,
    the scene of his great defeat, is not recorded there. So
    Sennacherib, in all his monuments, does not refer to the
    destruction of his army in the time of Hezekiah. Napoleon gathered
    450,000 men at Dresden to invade Russia. At Moscow the
    soft-falling snow conquered him. In one night 20,000 horses
    perished with cold. Not without reason at Moscow, on the
    anniversary of the retreat of the French, the exultation of the
    prophet over the fall of Sennacherib is read in the churches.
    James Robertson, Early History of Israel, 395, note—“Whately, in
    his Historic Doubts, draws attention to the fact that the
    principal Parisian journal in 1814, on the very day on which the
    allied armies entered Paris as conquerors, makes no mention of any
    such event. The battle of Poictiers in 732, which effectually
    checked the spread of Mohammedanism across Europe, is not once
    referred to in the monastic annals of the period. Sir Thomas
    Browne lived through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, yet
    there is no syllable in his writings with regard to them. Sale
    says that circumcision is regarded by Mohammedans as an ancient
    divine institution, the rite having been in use many years before
    Mohammed, yet it is not so much as once mentioned in the Koran.”

    Even though we should grant that Josephus does not mention Jesus,
    we should have a parallel in Thucydides, who never once mentions
    Socrates, the most important character of the twenty years
    embraced in his history. Wieseler, however, in Jahrbuch f. d.
    Theologie, 23:98, maintains the essential genuineness of the
    commonly rejected passage with regard to Jesus in Josephus,
    Antiq., 18:3:3, omitting, however, as interpolations, the phrases:
    “if it be right to call him man”; “this was the Christ”; “he
    appeared alive the third day according to prophecy”; for these, if
    genuine, would prove Josephus a Christian, which he, by all
    ancient accounts, was not. Josephus lived from A. D. 34 to
    possibly 114. He does elsewhere speak of Christ; for he records
    (20:9:1) that Albinus “assembled the Sanhedrim of judges, and
    brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,
    whose name was James, and some others ... and delivered them to be
    stoned.” See Niese’s new edition of Josephus; also a monograph on
    the subject by Gustav Adolph Müller, published at Innsbruck, 1890.
    Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 22—“To mention Jesus more
    fully would have required some approval of his life and teaching.
    This would have been a condemnation of his own people whom he
    desired to commend to Gentile regard, and he seems to have taken
    the cowardly course of silence concerning a matter more
    noteworthy, for that generation, than much else of which he writes
    very fully.”


(_e_) “The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon: first,
their ability; secondly, their honesty; thirdly, their number and the
consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their
testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony
with collateral circumstances.” We confidently submit the New Testament
witnesses to each and all of these tests.


    See Starkie on Evidence, 726.




Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation.



I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.


THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS, or proof that the books of the
Old and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned
and by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.


    Our present discussion comprises the first part, and only the
    first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (κανών, a measuring-reed;
    hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the
    determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred
    Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We
    do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or
    Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils
    received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings
    of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they
    are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to
    in _1 Cor. 5:9_ should be discovered and be universally judged
    authentic, it could be placed with Paul’s other letters and could
    form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800
    years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321—“Abstractly the Canon is an open
    question. It can never be anything else on the principles of
    Protestantism which forbid us to accept the decisions of church
    councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the
    question of the Canon is closed.” The Westminster Confession says
    that the authority of the word of God “does not rest upon historic
    evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does
    not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the
    matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our
    hearts concerning its divine authority.” Clarke, Christian
    Theology, 24—“The value of the Scriptures to us does not depend
    upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O. T. half its pages are
    of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism
    is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation.
    The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they
    describe the entrance of God into the life of man.”

    Saintine, Picciola, 782—“Has not a feeble reed provided man with
    his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?”
    Hugh Macmillan: “The idea of stringed instruments was first
    derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot
    his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest
    music of peace were invented by those who first heard this
    inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no
    music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning
    everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the
    heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts
    its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord’s song of infinite
    forgiveness.” George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of
    O. T., 5—“The church has never renounced her liberty to revise the
    Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the
    liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders
    of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the
    Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed
    extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound
    the church to believe all the teachings of the O. T. Christ
    discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its
    contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our
    sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false.
    Their judgment was that much in the O. T. was rudimentary. This
    opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the
    attempt to fix the historic order. The N. T. criticism of the O.
    T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the
    obligation of it. O. T. criticism is not, like Baur’s of the N.
    T., the result of _a priori_ Hegelian reasoning. From the time of
    Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to
    miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when it is
    treated as a parable. The O. T. is a gradual ethical revelation of
    God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant
    for her Canon of the O. T. than she has for her Canon of the N. T.
    The O. T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that
    word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at
    any time revise.”

    We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility
    and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their
    genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious
    books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero’s
    Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we
    use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (_i. e._,
    truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist.
    Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which are
    written in whole or in part by persons other than they whose names
    they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class. The
    Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine,
    because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition
    of Deut. 34, after Moses’ death, does not invalidate the
    genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later
    Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of
    that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were
    made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the
    genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine,
    Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity;
    also Archibald, The Bible Verified.


1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.


We do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New
Testament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of
them which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third
century, references to them have been inwoven into all history and
literature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents
not only existed, but were generally accepted as genuine, before the close
of the second century.


    Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that
    Origen’s works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New
    Testament. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12—“The early years of
    Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our
    lives.... Those early years are the most important in our
    education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and
    struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to
    measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by
    unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our
    maturity.... It was in some such unconscious way that the
    Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the
    form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed
    manhood of the fourth century.”


A. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of 2
Peter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less
collected form, in the latter half of the second century. These
collections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the
long continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to
fix their origin later than the first half of the second century.

(_a_) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the “New Testament” as made up of
the “Gospels” and “Apostles.” He vouches for the genuineness of the four
gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the
Apocalypse; in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our
Canon.


    Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first
    three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of
    Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite
    origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four
    gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional
    authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ, 40—“The
    oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier
    one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and
    Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier.”


(_b_) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East
(having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New
Testament writings mutually complement each other’s slight deficiencies,
and together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our
present New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as
genuine.


    Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50—“The fragment on the
    Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about
    170 A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence
    which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to
    speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who
    did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by
    John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow
    disciples and his elders.” Bacon, N. T. Introduction, 50, gives
    the Muratorian Canon in full; 30—“Theophilus of Antioch (181-190)
    is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting _John 1:1_ as from
    ‘John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.’ ” On the
    Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito
    Version, see Schaff, Introd. to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N. T., xxxvii;
    Smith’s Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389.


(_c_) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but
that of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul’s, shows, nevertheless,
that at that early day “apostolic writings were regarded as a complete
original rule of doctrine.” Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the
genuineness of those writings which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.


    Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded
    the God of the O. T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different
    from the God of the N. T. Marcion was “ipso Paulo paulinior”—“plus
    loyal que le roi.” He held that Christianity was something
    entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went
    before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the “Gospel” (Luke,
    with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements)
    and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to
    Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas,
    shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from
    Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion’s view had
    prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian
    Church. God’s revelation would have been deprived of its proof
    from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of
    Jewish history, would have been denied. But without the Old
    Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would
    lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to
    God’s natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be
    removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would
    seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or
    inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there
    is above; so the O. T. roots of God’s revelation are as extensive
    and necessary as are its N. T. trunk and branches and leaves. See
    Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, and
    art.: Canon, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. Also Reuss, History of
    Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.


B. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the
second century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but
testify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are
therefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to
the first century, when the apostles lived.

(_a_) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and
among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of
the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel,
while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and
friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of
the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of
Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the
gospels was written by the person whose name it bears.


    To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four
    gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four
    living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is
    here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four
    gospels, but what he conceives to be God’s reason for ordaining
    that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that
    he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of
    testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.

    Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a
    chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he
    shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So
    Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four
    cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early
    attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to
    demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of
    Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the
    authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle
    died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two
    Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished—John the Apostle and
    John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have
    been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we
    reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued
    previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels,
    145—“Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded
    these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place
    in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.”
    See Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:695.


(_b_) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of “memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of
Jesus Christ,” and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are
evidently cited from our gospels.


    To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the
    term “memoirs” instead of “gospels.” We reply that he elsewhere
    uses the term “gospels” and identifies the “memoirs” with them:
    Apol., 1:66—“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which
    are called gospels,” _i. e._, not memoirs, but gospels, was the
    proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the
    heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses
    the term “memoirs”, or “memorabilia”, which Xenophon had used as
    the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may
    avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may
    commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that
    Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin’s repeated
    statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by
    apostles,” and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his
    further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his
    apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin’s use
    of the word “memoirs” is his use of the term “Sunday”, instead of
    Sabbath: Apol. 1:67—“On the day called Sunday, all who live in
    cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the
    memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.”
    Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal
    authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly
    quotes the words and acts of Jesus’ life from a written source,
    using the word γέγραπται. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill,
    Literature of Second Century, 234.

    To Justin’s testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the
    words spoken from heaven at the Savior’s baptism, he makes them to
    be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting _Psalm
    2:7_, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel,
    _Mat. 3:17_. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory,
    quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the
    cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the
    Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should
    not argue from this that he did not possess our present
    Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace,
    and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their
    genuineness,—yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after
    Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels.
    Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the
    different evangelists—a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably
    followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr’s
    testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49,
    note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as “writing
    _circa_ 155 A. D.”


(_c_) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a “hearer of John,” testifies
that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (τὰ λόγια),”
and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (ὕστερον
Πέτρῳ) [or under Peter’s direction], an unsystematic account (οὐ τάξει)”
of the same events and discourses.


    To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have
    had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We
    reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a
    Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the
    original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew,
    while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same.
    Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James,
    might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the
    writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives
    that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember
    stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths
    at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work
    of Papias had for its title Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις—“Exposition
    of Oracles relating to the Lord” = Commentaries on the Gospels.
    Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss
    mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the
    quotations from the O. T. in Jesus’ discourses in Matthew are all
    taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott
    answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his
    Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral
    version of Christ’s discourses the version of these already
    existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis
    of true teaching, the “deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην—committed to Timothy
    (_1 Tim. 6:20_; _2 Tim. 1:12, 14_), the same story told many times
    and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew,
    Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic
    testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly,
    written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems
    probable from the fact that the Oriental name for “tares,”
    _zawān_, (_Mat. 13:25_) has been transliterated into Greek,
    ζιζάνια. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally
    wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the
    Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and
    partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the
    so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own
    gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew.
    Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the
    original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he
    afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill,
    Literature of the Second Century, 267.

    To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is
    the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a
    true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far
    as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as
    logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the
    evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping
    which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a
    life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus’
    teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and
    9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and
    12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this
    opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel
    describes our Lord’s preparation for his death, his progress to
    Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the
    resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of
    material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently
    unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of
    J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life
    of Jesus, 1:27-39.


(_d_) The Apostolic Fathers,—Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of
Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),—companions and friends of
the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations
from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every
book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is
represented.


    Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they
    are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day,
    and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves.
    “Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain
    range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous
    bodies below.” In an article by P. W. Calkins, McClintock and
    Strong’s Encyclopædia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic
    Fathers in great numbers are put side by side with the New
    Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude.
    An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that
    these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our
    New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer,
    in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation,
    11—“Ignatius says to Polycarp: ‘The times call for thee, as the
    winds call for the pilot.’ So do the times call for reverent,
    fearless scholarship in the church.” Such scholarship, we are
    persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N. T.
    documents.


(_e_) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the
fulfilment of Christ’s prophecies with regard to the destruction of
Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the
occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally
attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to “the former treatise”, or the
gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before
the end of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help
and sanction of that apostle.


    _Acts 1:1—_“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning
    all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” If the Acts was
    written A. D. 63, two years after Paul’s arrival at Rome, then
    “the former treatise,” the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be
    dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took
    place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at
    least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still
    living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus’ life.
    Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180—“At any considerably
    later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent
    conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the
    Parousia would have been avoided or explained.... Matthew, in its
    present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle
    of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark’s gospel
    was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the
    Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he
    wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition
    that it was long after.” See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels;
    Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.


C. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament
documents as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for
good and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this
presumption is corroborated by the following considerations:

(_a_) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure
themselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.


    Evidences of care are the following:—Paul, in _2 Thess. 2:2_,
    urged the churches to use care, “to the end that ye be not quickly
    shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or
    by word, or by epistle as from us”; _1 Cor. 5:9—_“I wrote unto you
    in my epistle to have no company with fornicators”; _Col.
    4:16—_“when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it
    be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also
    read the epistle from Laodicea.” Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis,
    who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as
    Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon
    of the O. T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the
    Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O. T., 203—“Melito, the Bishop of
    Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O. T. Scriptures which he
    professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling
    in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew
    Canon, save in the omission of Esther.” Serapion, Bishop of
    Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: “We receive Peter and other
    apostles as Christ, but as skilful men we reject those writings
    which are falsely ascribed to them.” Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist
    Congress, 1899:94—“Serapion, after permitting the reading of the
    Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it,
    not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because
    he thought it was not written by Peter.” Tertullian (160-230)
    gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor
    for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De
    Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner,
    Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences, 92.


(_b_) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete
correspondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they
profess to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to
the apostolic age.


    Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in σπεκουλάτωρ (_Mark
    6:27_) and κεντυρίων (_Mark 15:39_); of Greek and Aramæan, as in
    πρασιαὶ πρασιαί (_Mark 6:40_) and βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (_Mat.
    24:15_); this could hardly have occurred after the first century.
    Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray’s
    “Henry Esmond,” which, in spite of the author’s special studies
    and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had
    originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors
    that Macaulay in his most remiss moments would hardly have made.
    James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that “different to” was not a
    century old. “Hang it, no!” replied Thackeray. In view of this
    failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to
    construct a story purporting to be written a century before his
    time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may
    well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a
    practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after,
    the apostolic age. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37;
    Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354.


(_c_) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that
Tatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it
without naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels
which he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus
(150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.


    The sceptical work entitled “Supernatural Religion” said in 1874;
    “No one seems to have seen Tatian’s Harmony, probably for the very
    simple reason that there was no such work”; and “There is no
    evidence whatever connecting Tatian’s Gospel with those of our
    Canon.” In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in
    Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the
    commencement of it was: “In the beginning was the Word”_ (John
    1:1)_. In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in
    the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century
    from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris, in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800
    _sq._, says that the recovery of Tatian’s Diatessaron has
    indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced
    critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of
    the facts they discuss. The gospels must have been well
    established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to
    combine them. Mrs. A. S. Lewis, in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“The
    gospels were translated into Syriac before A. D. 160. It follows
    that the Greek document from which they were translated was older
    still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did
    the other.” Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231,
    gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his
    Diatessaron as 172 A. D.

    The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of
    John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during
    John’s exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John
    had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He
    had hitherto spoken Aramæan, and Greek was comparatively
    unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after,
    probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother
    tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; _per contra_, see
    Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas which indicate
    a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel are the
    following: “the Lamb of God,” “the Word of God,” “the True” as an
    epithet applied to Christ, “the Jews” as enemies of God, “manna,”
    “him whom they pierced”; see Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:4, 5.
    In the fourth gospel we have ἀμνός, in Apoc. ἀρνίον, perhaps
    better to distinguish “the Lamb” from the diminutive τὸ θηρίον,
    “the beast.” Common to both Gospel and Rev. are ποιεῖν, “to do”
    [the truth]; περιπατεῖν, of moral conduct; ἀληθινός, “genuine”;
    διψᾷν, πεινᾷν, of the higher wants of the soul; σκηνοῦν ἐν,
    ποιμαίνειν, ὁδηγεῖν; also “overcome,” “testimony,” “Bridegroom,”
    “Shepherd,” “Water of life.” In the Revelation there are
    grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4—ἀπὸ ὁ ὤν;
    nominative for accusative, 7:9—εἶδον ... ὄχλος πολύς; accusative
    for nominative, 20:2—τὸν δράκοντα ὁ ὄφις. Similarly we have in
    _Rom. 12:5_—τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ εἶς instead of τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ ἕνα, where κατὰ
    has lost its regimen—a frequent solecism in later Greek writers;
    see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that
    the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to
    show that Emerson was wrong.

    The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third
    person, “and scorned to blot it with a name.” But so does Cæsar
    speak of himself in his Commentaries. Harnack regards both the
    fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter
    or Elder, the former written not later than about 110 A. D.; the
    latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more
    underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of
    the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his
    article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary,
    4:239-266. “It is the obvious advantage of the Vischer-Harnack
    hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its
    revised and Christianized edition under Domitian.” (Sanday,
    Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as
    raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the
    Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of
    Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents
    the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the
    Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document
    of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and
    issued not earlier than 136: “How strange that we should ever have
    thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of
    Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic
    conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the
    blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the
    war-march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the
    deluge of blood rises to the horses’ bits, with the speculative
    Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a
    feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at
    the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to
    Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen!”

    The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we
    consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of
    the “Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder”_ (Mark 3:17)_, but
    became in his later years the apostle of love: _1 John
    4:7—_“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” The
    likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was
    undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same
    authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that “the discovery of
    the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of
    discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests
    indubitably all four of our canonical books.” Riddle, in Popular
    Com., 1:25—“If a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub
    has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.” On
    the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introd. to N. T.,
    1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33,
    also Beginnings of Christianity, 320-362, and Grounds of Theistic
    and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth
    Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century, and Criticism of the Fourth
    Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80-87;
    Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249-287; British
    Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25;
    Westcott, in Bib. Com. on John’s Gospel, Introd., xxviii-xxxii;
    Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W. L. Ferguson, in Bib. Sac.,
    1896:1-27.


(_d_) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the
first century after it was written (so Clement of Borne, Justin Martyr,
and the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in
the Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal
characteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline
authorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenæus,
Muratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the
evidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third
Council of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin
churches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was
finally and forever removed.


    The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that
    of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an
    Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures”_
    (Acts 18:24)_; but it may notwithstanding have been written at the
    suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially
    Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points
    out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and
    only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of
    the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free
    from anacolutha, and is always dominated by emotion. He holds that
    these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast
    also Paul’s method of quoting the O. T.: “it is written”_ (Rom.
    11:8; 1 Cor. 1:31; Gal. 3:10)_ with that of the Hebrews: “he
    saith”_ (8:5, 13)_, “he hath said”_ (4:4)_. Paul quotes the O. T.
    fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. _Heb.
    2:3—_“which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was
    confirmed unto us by them that heard”—shows that the writer did
    not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly
    saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he
    always insisted on the primary and independent character of his
    gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas
    to Christians at Rome, A. D. 81-96. More recently however he
    attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint
    authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable
    to this view. William T. C. Hanna: “The words of the author ...
    are marshalled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or
    with the swell of a tidal wave”; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations
    in N. T. from O. T., xii. Plumptre, Introd. to N. T., 37, and in
    Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same
    with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being
    composed before, the former after, the writer’s conversion to
    Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen:
    “God only knows who wrote it.” Harnack however remarks: “The time
    in which our ancient Christian literature, the N. T. included, was
    considered as a web of delusions and falsifications, is past. The
    oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in
    most of its details, true and trustworthy.” See articles on
    Hebrews, in Smith’s and in Hastings’ Bible Dictionaries.


(_e_) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently
held to be spurious, we may say that, although we have no conclusive
external evidence earlier than A. D. 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none
earlier than A. D. 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their
genuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and
moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third
century as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names
they bear.


    Firmilianus (250), Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is the first
    clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but, in naming
    it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of
    Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very
    gradual recognition and acceptance of 2 Peter, compare the loss of
    the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after
    his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were
    recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; De
    Wette’s first publication of certain letters of Luther after the
    lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to
    their genuineness; or the concealment of Milton’s Treatise on
    Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in
    London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir
    William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth,
    Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to
    their editors, biographers and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of
    the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures
    and Reviews, 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was
    probably sent from the East shortly before Peter’s martyrdom;
    distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation
    in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114—“A ledger
    may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted,
    but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as
    any other part of the _res gestæ_.” See Plumptre, Epistles of
    Peter, Introd., 73-81; Alford on 2 Peter, 4: Prolegomena, 157;
    Westcott, on Canon, in Smith’s Bib. Dict., 1:370, 373; Blunt,
    Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Canon.

    It is urged by those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the
    epistle speaks of “your apostles”_ (3:2)_, just as _Jude 17_
    speaks of “the apostles,” as if the writer did not number himself
    among them. But 2 Peter begins with “Simon Peter, a servant and
    apostle of Jesus Christ,” and Jude, “brother of James”_ (verse 1)_
    was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introd. to
    N. T., xxxi—“The earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter
    appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman
    Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian
    homily from the middle of the second century.” Origen (born 186)
    testifies that Peter left one epistle, “and perhaps a second, for
    that is disputed.” He also says: “John wrote the Apocalypse, and
    an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a
    third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.” He quotes also
    from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was
    doubted.

    Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written
    respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to
    whom they are ascribed—the ascriptions to these authors being
    later additions. Hort remarks: “If I were asked, I should say that
    the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I
    had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.”
    Sanday, Oracles of God, 73 note, considers the arguments in favor
    of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot
    get beyond a _non liquet_. He refers to Salmon, Introd. to N. T.,
    529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later
    conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on
    Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter “is probably at least to
    this extent a counterfeit, that it appears under a name which is
    not that of its true author.”

    Chase, in Hastings’ Bib. Dict., 3:806-817, says that “the first
    piece of _certain_ evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from
    Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that
    the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria.... We find no
    trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic
    days was still living.... It was not the work of the apostle but
    of the second century ... put forward without any sinister motive
    ... the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device
    rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of
    such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord’s promise
    of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of
    infallibility.” Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and
    spiritual value of 2 Peter—internal evidence which in our judgment
    causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic
    authorship.


(_f_) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the
general acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century,
and of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the
second century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere
collections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide
circulation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their
blood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither
have been deceived as to their previous non-existence, nor have been
induced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine.
Inasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with
their genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length
the most important of these opposing views.


    The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be
    demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of
    its books. It does not matter that 2nd Alcibiades was not written
    by Plato, or Pericles by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in
    397 gave a place in the Canon to the O. T. Apocrypha, but the
    Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: “It is not
    a Biblical book,” and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of
    James. The judgment of Christendom at large is more trustworthy
    than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To
    hold the books of the N. T. to be written in the second century by
    other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to
    forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been
    several forgers at work, and, since their writings wonderfully
    agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able
    men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of
    the second century have been preserved.

    G. F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343—“In
    civil law there are ‘statutes of limitations’ which provide that
    the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain
    period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for
    example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for
    a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid
    claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.” Mair,
    Evidences, 99—“We probably have not a tenth part of the evidence
    upon which the early churches accepted the N. T. books as the
    genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict.”
    Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58—“Those who gave up
    the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as
    ‘traditores,’ traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought
    to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were
    not equally sacred. Some were essential, and some were
    non-essential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between
    _canonical_ and _non-canonical_. The general consciousness of
    Christians grew into a distinct registration.” Such registration
    is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof
    upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
    Introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary
    on N. T.


D. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are
attempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament
records, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of
naturalism.

Against them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in
their principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New
Testament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural
development, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make
history a matter, not of testimony, but of _a priori_ speculation. It
indeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since
the witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can
no longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ’s
life or doctrine.


    In Germany, half a century ago, “a man was famous according as he
    had lifted up axes upon the thick trees”_ (Ps. 74:5, A. V.)_, just
    as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could
    not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other;
    see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79—on Homer. Nicoll, The
    Church’s One Foundation, 15—“Like the mummers of old, sceptical
    critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear
    of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of
    the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is
    impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the
    criticism begins to operate in earnest.” Matthew Arnold: “Our
    popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and
    death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
    miracle,—and _miracles do not happen_.” This presupposition
    influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in
    his article on the Gospels in the Encyc. Britannica. We give
    special attention to four of the theories based upon this
    assumption.


1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).


According to this view, the gospels are crystallizations into story of
Messianic ideas which had for several generations filled the minds of
imaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas
are unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and
deliberate deception is absent.


    This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his
    name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which
    extended the meaning of the word “myths” so as to include all
    narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted
    the existence of “pious frauds” in the gospels. Baur, he says,
    first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had “not
    unfrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere
    fictions.” The animating spirit of both the old view and the new
    is the same. Strauss says: “We know with certainty what Jesus was
    _not_, and what he has _not_ done, namely, nothing superhuman and
    supernatural.” “No gospel can claim that degree of historic
    credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our
    reason to the point of believing miracles.” He calls the
    resurrection of Christ “ein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug.” “If the
    gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle
    from the life-story of Jesus;” see Strauss, Life of Jesus, 17; New
    Life of Jesus, 1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A. T., 210,
    211, distinguishes the myth from the _saga_ or legend: The
    criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible,
    while the _saga_ is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has
    in it the element only of belief, the _saga_ has in it an element
    of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 37—“A myth is false in
    appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the
    fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasonings. When the
    heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of
    truth to shine through. And does not childhood run on into
    maturity and old age?”

    It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the
    animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that
    of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the
    supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the
    previous objections of sceptics to the gospel narrative and hurled
    them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus’
    trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and
    insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered
    straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and
    saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that “somehow she never
    could get interested” in Strauss’s Leben Jesu, which her sceptical
    son had given her for religious reading. The work was almost
    altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss’s
    own view of what Jesus was.

    If Luther’s dictum is true that “the heart is the best
    theologian,” Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main
    qualification for his task. Encyc. Britannica, 22:592—“Strauss’s
    mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth
    of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical
    sympathy. His work was rarely constructive, and, save when he was
    dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian,
    biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe’s
    profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for
    productive criticism.” Pfleiderer, Strauss’s Life of Jesus,
    xix—“Strauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions
    about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not
    show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was
    the Messiah.” See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato,
    1:249.


We object to the Myth-theory of Strauss, that

(_a_) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the
gospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such
mythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman
and Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries.

(_b_) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was
possible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age
of historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.


    Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of
    the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that “Esse
    aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt.” Arnold of
    Rugby: “The idea of men writing mythic histories between the times
    of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for
    realities!” Pilate’s sceptical inquiry, “What is truth?”_ (John
    18:38)_, better represented the age. “The mythical age is past
    when an idea is presented abstractly—apart from narrative.” The
    Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit
    was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the
    Baptist, _Mat. 11:3—_“Art thou he that cometh, or look we for
    another?” and our Lord’s answer, _Mat. 11:4, 5—_“Go and tell John
    the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight ...
    the dead are raised up,” show that the Jews expected miracles to
    be wrought by the Messiah; yet _John 10:41—_“John indeed did no
    sign” shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular
    teachers with miraculous powers; see E. G. Robinson, Christian
    Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman
    Origin of the Bible, 61; Cox, Miracles, 50.


(_c_) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and
expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter
to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of
the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could
their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a
suffering Messiah.


    The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews.
    2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for _our_
    sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the
    Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.” The whole
    multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop
    that oozes out of a cask” (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ’s
    kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its
    _spirituality_ and its _universality_ (Bruce, Apologetics, 3).
    There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other
    hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his
    god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The
    Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would
    have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to
    depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the
    Second Century, 99-136).


(_d_) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what
we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the
apostles.

(_e_) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels
among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations.

(_f_) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ’s
crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these
facts.


    (_d_) Witness Thomas’s doubting, and Paul’s shipwrecks and
    scourgings. _Cf._ _2 Pet. 1:16_—οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις
    ἐξακολουθήσαντες = “we have not been on the false track of myths
    artificially elaborated.” See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to
    Christ, 49-88. (_e_) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel
    Narratives are Mythical,—What Then? and, But How,—if the Gospels
    are Historic? (_f_) As the existence of the American Republic is
    proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of
    Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the
    seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have
    come about in a nation so Sabbatarian, had not the first day been
    the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish
    Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lord’s
    Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and
    remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian
    church. See Muir, on the Lord’s Supper an abiding Witness to the
    Death of Christ, In Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and
    his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of
    Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief,
    379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith,
    in Faith and Philosophy, 442-468; Bayne, Review of Strauss’s New
    Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern
    Scepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art. by Prof.
    W. A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264;
    Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
    92-126; A. P. Peabody, in Smith’s Bible Dict., 2:954-958.


2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).


This maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second
century, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling
opposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. “These great
national tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding
to them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.”


    Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 A. D.; Matthew at 130;
    Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was.
    He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the
    documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining
    the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the
    presupposition of his investigations, when he says: “The principal
    argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain
    this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they
    give an account of the life of Jesus which involves
    impossibilities”—_i. e._, miracles. He would therefore remove
    their authorship far enough from Jesus’ time to permit regarding
    the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united
    the universalistic spirit of the new religion, _and_ the
    particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his
    disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first
    conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the
    Tübingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in
    Bruce, Apologetics, 360. E. G. Robinson interprets Baur as
    follows: “Paul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James =
    ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity. Protestant preaching
    should dwell more on the ethical—cases of conscience—and less on
    mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.”

    Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the
    real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers
    wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory:
    “His was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs
    or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations
    of Christianity.” The estimate of posterity is probably expressed
    in the judgment with regard to the Tübingen school by Harnack:
    “The _possible_ picture it sketched was not the _real_, and the
    key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice
    for the most simple.... The Tübingen views have indeed been
    compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the
    development of the church in the second century, it may safely be
    said that the hypotheses of the Tübingen school have proved
    themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are to-day
    held by only a very few scholars.” See Baur, Die kanonischen
    Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural
    Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for
    1885. For accounts of Baur’s position, see Herzog, Encyclopädie,
    art.: Baur; Clarke’s transl. of Hase’s Life of Jesus, 34-36;
    Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.


We object to the Tendency-theory of Baur, that

(_a_) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if
applied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of
the past, and render all history impossible.


    The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid
    examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry
    evidences of a hidden _animus_ in the most simple and ingenuous
    literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of
    “Jack and Jill.”


(_b_) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies which it professes to find in
the several gospels are more satisfactorily explained as varied but
consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.


    Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between
    the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian,
    but was the first preacher to the Gentiles, and his doctrine
    appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable
    extent by Paul’s (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-69). Paul was not an
    exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the
    gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The
    evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view.
    As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a
    dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points
    of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark,
    Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life
    of Christ. The deeper reality which makes reconciliation of the
    different views possible is the actual historical Christ. Marcus
    Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1:675—“They are not two
    Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the
    profile and front face, but one another’s complement rather than
    contradiction.”

    Godet, Introd. to Gospel Collection, 272—Matthew shows the
    greatness of Jesus—his full-length portrait; Mark his
    indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his
    essential divinity. Matthew first wrote Aramæan Logia. This was
    translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry
    of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation
    was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E.
    D. Burton: Matthew = fulfilment of past prophecy; Mark =
    manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy;
    Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most
    impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to
    Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition
    alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other
    fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts
    and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F.
    W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 61.


(_c_) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty
religious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of
the second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been
published under assumed names and for covert ends.


    The general character of the literature of the second century is
    illustrated by Ignatius’s fanatical desire for martyrdom, the
    value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories
    of Barnabas, Clement of Rome’s belief in the phœnix, and the
    absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth
    gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a
    mountain among mole-hills. Wynne, Literature of the Second
    Century, 60—“The apostolic and the sub-apostolic writers differ
    from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of
    quartz with veins of the precious metal gleaming through it.”
    Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92—“Instead of the writers
    of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or
    developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century
    shows great retrogression,—its writers were not able to retain or
    comprehend all that had been given them.” Martineau, Seat of
    Authority, 291—“Writers not only barbarous in speech and rude in
    art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper,
    and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of
    Hermas, the imbecility of Irenæus, the fury of Tertullian, the
    rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of
    Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if
    he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of
    thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of
    the church.” We can apply to the writers of the second century the
    question of R. G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy:
    “Is it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on
    Shakespeare’s doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home?”
    On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith,
    73-108.


(_d_) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a
faithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of
fabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the
ground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles.


    “A genial set of Jesuitical religionists”—with mind and heart
    enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same
    time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their
    writings every trace of the developments of church authority
    belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of
    the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that
    century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical
    theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not
    possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
    12—“If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius
    of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange
    to the original apostles.” Fairbairn has well shown that if
    Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human
    Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the
    Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been
    simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it
    would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or
    Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son
    of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be
    and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy
    of the Christian Religion, 4, 15—“Without the personal charm of
    the historical Jesus, the œcumenical creeds would never have been
    either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical
    conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have
    ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so
    powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has
    been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The
    two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name
    ‘Jesus Christ.’ ”


(_e_) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the
gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated
communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of
orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents
instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.


    Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The
    Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle
    of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of
    that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the
    Logos, but to successive “Æons.” How did the Gnostics, without
    “peep or mutter,” come to accept as genuine what had only in their
    own time been first sprung upon the churches? While Basilides
    (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the
    fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that
    it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur
    “He believed in the all-sufficiency of the Hegelian theory of
    development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere.
    Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and
    teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development,
    must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels
    claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the
    utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought
    could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.” But such a
    conception certainly existed in the second century, and it
    directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F. W.
    Farrar, on _Hebrews 1:2_—“The word _æon_ was used by the later
    Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at
    once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and
    the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the
    Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘The Word became flesh’_ (John
    1:14)_.” A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings
    could not in the second century have been quoted by the Gnostics
    themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not
    been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle
    John.


(_f_) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans,
Galatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is
fatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at
the period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus’
life and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long
acknowledged in the Christian church.


    Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276—“There never has been the slightest
    suspicion of unauthenticity cast on these epistles (Gal., 1 and 2
    Cor., Rom.), and they bear so incontestably the character of
    Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the
    assertion of critical doubts in their case.” Baur, in discussing
    the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains
    the outward from the inward: Paul translated intense and sudden
    conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward
    scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by
    Paul’s companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here
    mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144;
    Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures
    for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss,
    Life of Jesus, 1:157 _sq._; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ.
    Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic,
    5:1-42; Auberlen, Div. Revelation; Bib. Sac., 19:75; Answers to
    Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, 4th ed.,
    Introd.; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan.
    1875; Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day
    Tracts, 7: no. 38.


3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).


This theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all
belong to the century following Jesus’ death. “According to” Matthew,
Mark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these
gospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus’ life were so
sublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the
gospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine,—in short, the
gospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a
foundation in fact.


    The _animus_ of this theory is plainly shown in Renan’s Life of
    Jesus, preface to 13th ed.—“If miracles and the inspiration of
    certain books are realities, my method is detestable. If miracles
    and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my
    method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is
    decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration
    that there is no room for believing in a thing of which the world
    offers no experimental trace.” “On the whole,” says Renan, “I
    admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion,
    date from the first century, and the authors are, generally
    speaking, those to whom they are attributed.” He regards Gal., 1
    and 2 Cor., and Rom., as “indisputable and undisputed.” He speaks
    of them as “being texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete
    sincerity, and without legends” (Les Apôtres, xxix; Les Évangiles,
    xi). Yet he denies to Jesus “sincerity with himself”; attributes
    to him “innocent artifice” and the toleration of pious fraud, as
    for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own
    resurrection. “To conceive the good is not sufficient: it must be
    made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be
    followed.... Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost
    somewhat of its original purity,—his mission overwhelmed him....
    Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own
    greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artizan?” So
    Renan “pictures Christ’s later life as a misery and a lie, yet he
    requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior,
    Sakya-Mouni, as demigods” (see Nicoll, The Church’s One
    Foundation, 62, 63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary
    Magdalene, he says: “O divine power of love! sacred moments, in
    which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a
    resuscitated God!” See Renan, Life of Jesus, 21.


To this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that

(_a_) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian
documents. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but
interpolated _ad libitum_, is contradicted by the essential agreement of
the manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.


    Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew
    at 84 A. D.; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark
    a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur.
    Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism,
    attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the
    Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus’s Refutation of all Heresies, the
    Clementine Homilies, and Tatian’s Diatessaron: “According to Baur
    and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the
    N. T. belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the
    present head of the Baur school, we have somewhat less than three
    quarters belonging to the first century, while substantially the
    same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann. According to
    Renan, we have distinctly more than three quarters of the N. T.
    falling within the first century, and therefore within the
    apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and
    extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur’s grand assault, that
    is, within the last fifty years.” We may add that the concession
    of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan’s
    hypothesis that the N. T. documents have been so enlarged by pious
    fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such
    events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so
    fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in
    substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral
    tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much
    longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai
    can repeat after the lapse of twenty years portions of the Hindu
    sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old
    Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the
    Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept
    the gospel narratives free from the corruption which Renan
    supposes.


(_b_) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of
romantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are
utterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their
lives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.


    On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A. H. Strong,
    Christ in Creation, 332-363, especially 356—“Renan attributes the
    origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a
    constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to
    him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender
    impulses and passionate ardors, whose native genius it was to play
    upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference
    to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer
    feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions,
    melting moods, these were the secrets of his power. Religion was a
    beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion—excellent as a balm and
    solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if
    they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced
    back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed
    out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to
    be a sort of maudlin monasticism.... How different from the strong
    and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing
    them to the truth, and which claims men’s imitation only because,
    without love for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How
    inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has
    everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every
    revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty
    forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by
    mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic
    skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters
    of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of
    puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth
    suffered by the martyrs witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of
    his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can
    believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to
    greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence
    over all ages by resigning themselves to semi-idiocy.”


(_c_) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a
system directly opposed to men’s natural tastes and prepossessions—a
system which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.


    A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 358—“And if the later triumphs
    of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can
    we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by
    women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his
    gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the
    sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power
    which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally
    gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by
    opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young
    rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce
    revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him
    to the Cross,—what is there in _him_ to account for the moral
    wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire
    in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus’
    first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second
    period, according to Renan’s gospel, furnish any rational
    explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the
    earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.”

    Berdoe, Browning, 47—“If Christ were not God, his life at that
    stage of the world’s history could by no possibility have had the
    vitalizing force and love-compelling power that Renan’s pages
    everywhere disclose. Renan has strengthened faith in Christ’s
    deity while laboring to destroy it.”

    Renan, in discussing Christ’s appearance to Paul on the way to
    Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely
    reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of
    lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an
    appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and
    reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have
    made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified
    Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his
    own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy,
    the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the
    earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and
    Contemp. Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and
    Philosophy, 401-441; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressensé,
    in Theol. Eclectic, 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life
    of Jesus, 1-33; Bib. Sac, 22:207; 23:353, 529; Present Day Tracts,
    3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences,
    43-48; A. H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905.


4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).


This holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs which
were devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and
the original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the
Mount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy,
added to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so
changed Christianity from a life into a doctrine.


    Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70; Luke at 78-93; the
    fourth gospel at 80-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the
    book of Revelation as the works, not of John the Apostle, but of
    John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the fourth gospel
    from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface
    added after its original composition in order to enable the
    Hellenistic reader to understand it. “The gospel itself,” says
    Harnack, “contains no Logos-idea; it did not develop out of a
    Logos-idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects
    itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the
    historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This
    historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of
    speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still
    too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The
    Logos-idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism,
    the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the ’Son of
    man’ in the book of Daniel.... The fourth gospel, which does not
    proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be
    used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word....
    The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed
    occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them;
    has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated
    lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it
    is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly
    lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere
    be taken into account; only little can be taken from it, and that
    with caution.... On the other hand it is a source of the first
    rank for the answer of the question what living views of the
    person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has
    brought into being.” See Harnack’s article in Zeitschrift für
    Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums, 13.
    Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with
    Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97,
    that as the result of the Logos-speculation, “the centre of
    gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who
    founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal
    Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.” This
    view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on
    the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.


We object to the Development-theory of Harnack, that

(_a_) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its
original form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits
the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is preëminently the gospel of the
miracle-worker.

(_b_) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus’ life and ethical
teaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ’s
deity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his
universal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his
omnipresence (28:20), while the phrase “Son of man” implies that he is
also “Son of God.”


    _Mat. 11:27—_“All things have been delivered unto me of my Father:
    and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know
    the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
    reveal him”; _25:32—_“and before him shall be gathered all the
    nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the
    shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats”; _28:18—_“All
    authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;
    _28:20—_“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
    world.” These sayings of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel show that the
    conception of Christ’s greatness was not peculiar to John: “I am”
    transcends time; “with you” transcends space. Jesus speaks “sub
    specie eternitatis”; his utterance is equivalent to that of _John
    8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am,” and to that of _Hebrews
    13:8—_“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for
    ever.” He is, as Paul declares in _Eph. 1:23_, one “that filleth
    all in all,” that is, who is omnipresent.

    A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206—The phrase “Son of man”
    intimates that Christ was more than man: “Suppose I were to go
    about proclaiming myself ‘Son of man.’ Who does not see that it
    would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more.
    ‘Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call
    himself the same?’ When one takes the title ‘Son of man’ for his
    characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is
    something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his
    original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his
    part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of
    man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to
    inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked ‘What
    think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?’ we must answer, not
    simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.” On Son of
    man, see Driver; on Son of God, see Sanday; both in Hastings’
    Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday: “The Son is so called primarily
    as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation
    must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have
    its roots in the eternity of Godhead.” Gore, Incarnation, 65,
    73—“Christ, the final Judge, of the synoptics, is not dissociable
    from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.”


(_c_) The preëxistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as
accretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul
who wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated
the Logos-doctrine of John.

(_d_) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian
philosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already
present in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the
microscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the
substance of the faith.


    Gore, Incarnation, 62—“The divinity, incarnation, resurrection of
    Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the
    apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized
    as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of
    Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had
    seen the risen Christ were still alive.” The Alexandrian
    philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the
    form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it
    which brought out its meaning. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
    146—“When we come to John’s gospel, therefore, we find in it the
    mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world
    for at least sixty years.... If the Platonizing philosophy of
    Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian
    doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help
    to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers.
    Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their
    philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into
    clear view the truth that was there already.”

    Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126—“The metaphysical conception
    of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according
    to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the
    cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of
    salvation.” See Kilpatrick’s article on Philosophy, in Hastings’
    Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the
    self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in
    its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before
    Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual
    peculiarities of the N. T. writers conceptions which Paul insists
    are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that
    the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning
    and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended
    Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after
    which Greek philosophy was vainly groping.


(_e_) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin-birth because his story is
limited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus’ deeds, Matthew
apparently gives us Joseph’s story and Luke gives Mary’s story—both
stories naturally published only after Jesus’ resurrection.

(_f_) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus’ death was itself
predicted by our Lord (John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his
teachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the
apostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun (Acts
1:1).


    _John 16:12, 13—_“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
    cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is
    come, he shall guide you into all the truth”; _Acts 1:1—_“The
    former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus
    began to do and to teach.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
    146—“That the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation
    upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh,
    should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that
    wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,—it is precisely
    what Jesus himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to
    his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that
    the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and
    his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is
    the whole secret of what are called accretions to original
    Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are
    inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and
    inventions. They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain
    imaginings, but correct interpretations.... When the later
    theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as
    coming not from Jesus but from Paul’s epistles and from the fourth
    gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and
    authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making
    us see the fulness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.”

    While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul
    contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally
    possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that
    gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des
    Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated
    Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical
    theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have
    regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority
    have seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did
    most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first
    comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished
    redemption and a present salvation—the crucified and risen Christ
    as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2)
    as something new, which does away with the religion of the law;
    (3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as
    superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not
    simply Greek but also human,—Paul made the gospel comprehensible
    to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion
    still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at
    home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman empire, and
    inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local
    into a universal religion. His influence however, according to
    Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma
    and O. T. inspiration—points in which, in our judgment, Paul took
    sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world.


2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.


Since nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and
certain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters
only by way of convenient classification or of literary personification,
we here mean by genuineness honesty of purpose and freedom from anything
counterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the
authorship of the documents.

We show the genuineness of the Old Testament books:

(_a_) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of
the Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.


    The N. T. shows coincidences of language with the O. T. Apocryphal
    books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while,
    with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther,
    Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either
    for illustration or proof. The single Apocryphal quotation is
    found in _Jude 14_ and is in all probability taken from the book
    of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 A.
    D., and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same
    primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch
    afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to
    the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 B.
    C., and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings’ Bible Dictionary:
    Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95. “If Paul
    could quote from Gentile poets (_Acts 17:28_; _Titus 1:12_), it is
    hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was
    certainly in high standing among the faithful”; see Schodde, Book
    of Enoch, 41, with the Introd. by Ezra Abbot. While _Jude 14_
    gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal
    book, _Jude 6_ and _9_ contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and
    to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses, 62.
    In _Hebrews 1:3_, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and
    _Hebrews 11:34-38_ is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees.


(_b_) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who
declare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books, that are now
comprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.


    Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books “which are justly
    accredited” (omit θεῖα—Niese, and Hastings’ Dict., 3:607). Our
    present Hebrew Bible makes twenty-four, by separating Ruth from
    Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah. See Josephus, Against
    Apion, 1:8; Smith’s Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359,
    360. Philo (born 20 B. C.) never quotes an Apocryphal book,
    although he does quote from nearly all the books of the O. T.; see
    Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern
    Criticism and Preaching, 7—“The theory which ascribed the Canon of
    the O. T. to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of
    its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of
    the O. T. Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 B. C.,
    with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption
    of the whole Law, or first five books of the O. T., under Nehemiah
    in 445 B. C. Then came the prophets before 200 B. C., and the
    Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict
    definition of the last division was not complete by the time of
    Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the
    Psalms; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation
    from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last
    of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools.
    But while Christ is the chief authority for the O. T., he was also
    its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was
    indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh
    commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission
    of divorce; touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful;
    broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath-day; left no
    commands about sacrifice, temple-worship, circumcision, but, by
    institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the
    Old. The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.” Gladden,
    Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96—“Doubts were entertained in our
    Lord’s day as to the canonicity of several parts of the O. T.,
    especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.”


(_c_) From the testimony of the Septuagint translation, dating from the
first half of the third century, or from 280 to 180 B. C.


    MSS. of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the O. T. Apocrypha, but
    the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a
    level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct
    from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also
    24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; 2 Mac. 6:23; 1 Esd. 1:28; 6:1; Baruch
    2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange’s
    Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to
    the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of “the Law and the
    Prophets and the rest of the books,” which shows that as early as
    130 B. C., the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold
    division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the
    author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a
    completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this
    connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9
    (80-90 B. C.) speaks of “the sacred books which are now in our
    hands.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611—“The O. T. was the
    result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the
    Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the
    decisions of the Council of Jamnia”—Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh,
    7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins
    at some time between 90 to 118 A. D. This Council decided in favor
    of Canticles and Ecclesiastes, and closed the O. T. Canon.

    The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the
    Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and
    by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or
    280 B. C. “The legend is that it was made by seventy-two persons
    in seventy-two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics
    that this version of the several books is the work not only of
    different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at
    first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books
    gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed
    by the second century B. C.” (Century Dictionary, _in voce_). It
    therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our
    O. T. documents. Driver, Introd. to O. T. Lit., xxxi—“For the
    opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the O.
    T. was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra’s time, there is no foundation
    in antiquity whatever.... All that can reasonably be treated as
    historical in the accounts of Ezra’s literary labors is limited to
    the Law.”


(_d_) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the
times of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.), the Pentateuch together with
the book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as
authoritative.


    2 Mac, 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and
    there is a tradition that a “Great Synagogue” was gathered in his
    time to determine the Canon. But Hastings’ Dictionary, 4:644,
    asserts that “the Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and
    not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told
    about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the
    later Jews.” In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the
    tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures
    that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says:
    “Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar,
    Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the
    time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired
    in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the
    ancient Scriptures.” But the work now divided into 1 and 2
    Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (_Neh.
    12:22_), whose date is 336 B. C. The utmost the tradition proves
    is that about 300 B. C. the Pentateuch was in some sense
    attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bib. Sac.,
    1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dict., art.: Pentateuch;
    Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible,
    398-403. On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright,
    Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475-477.


(_e_) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time
of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.).


    The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from
    “Babylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and
    Sepharvaim”_ (2 K. 17:6, 24, 26)_, to take the place of the people
    of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land.
    The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the
    incursions of wild beasts which the intermission of tillage
    occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was
    against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent
    to teach them “the law of the god of the land” and he “taught them
    how they should fear Jehovah”_ (2 K. 17:27, 28)_. The result was
    that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of
    Jehovah with that of their graven images (_verse 33_). When the
    Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of
    Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was
    indignantly refused (_Ezra 4_ and _Nehemiah 4_). Hostility arose
    between Jews and Samaritans—a hostility which continued not only
    to the time of Christ (_John 4:9_), but even to the present day.
    Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the
    Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at
    which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It
    witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its
    present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

    Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 44, 45—“After being
    repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim
    of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the
    Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.” W.
    Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Brit., 21:244—“The priestly law, which
    is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem
    before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was
    first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion.
    The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from
    the Jews after Ezra’s reforms, _i. e._, after 444 B. C. Before
    that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all
    similar to that which we know; but there must have been a
    community ready to accept the Pentateuch.” See Smith’s Bible
    Dictionary, art.: Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible
    Dictionary, art.: Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O.
    T., 1-41.


(_f_) From the finding of “the book of the law” in the temple, in the
eighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 B. C.


    _2 K. 22:8—_“And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the
    scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.”
    _23:2—_“The book of the covenant” was read before the people by
    the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in
    Hastings’ Bible Dict., 3:596—“The earliest written law or book of
    divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic
    account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented
    as found in the temple in the 18th year of king Josiah (B. C. 621)
    and proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time
    forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was
    commanded to ponder day and night (_Joshua 1:8_; _Ps. 1:2_); and
    thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in
    Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic
    principles.” Ryle, in Hastings’ Bible Dict., 1:602—“The law of
    Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient
    code contained in _Exodus 20-23_, and precedes the final
    formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its
    ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the
    Pentateuch.”

    Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor’s Bible: “Deuteronomy
    does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in
    the third person in the introduction and historical framework,
    while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions
    where the author speaks for himself, the phrase ’beyond Jordan’
    means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase ‘beyond
    Jordan’ means west of Jordan; and the only exception is _Deut.
    3:8_, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of
    Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd
    person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a
    later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the
    Pentateuch. Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives
    Moses’ words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy
    covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but
    not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and
    contributes to it an account of Joshua’s death. JE speaks of kings
    in Israel (_Gen. 36:31-39_). Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the
    early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.”

    Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 43-49—“The Deuteronomic law was so
    short that Shaphan could read it aloud before the king (_2 K.
    22:10_) and the king could read ‘the whole of it’ before the
    people (_23:2_); compare the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole
    week (_Neh. 8:2-18_). It was in the form of a covenant; it was
    distinguished by curses; it was an expansion and modification,
    fully within the legitimate province of the prophet, of a Torah of
    Moses codified from the traditional form of at least a century
    before. Such a Torah existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now
    incorporated as ‘the book of the covenant’ in _Exodus 20_ to _24_.
    The year 620 is therefore the _terminus a quo_ of Deuteronomy. The
    date of the priestly code is 444 B. C.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures
    for 1893, grants “(1) the presence in the Pentateuch of a
    considerable element which in its present shape is held by many to
    be not earlier than the captivity; (2) the composition of the book
    of Deuteronomy, not long, or at least not very long, before its
    promulgation by king Josiah in the year 621, which thus becomes a
    pivot-date in the history of Hebrew literature.”


(_g_) From references in the prophets Hosea (B. C. 743-737) and Amos
(759-745) to a course of divine teaching and revelation extending far back
of their day.


    _Hosea 8:12—_“I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law”;
    here is asserted the existence prior to the time of the prophet,
    not only of a law, but of a written law. All critics admit the
    book of Hosea to be a genuine production of the prophet, dating
    from the eighth century B. C.; see Green, in Presb. Rev.,
    1886:585-608. _Amos 2:4—_“they have rejected the law of Jehovah,
    and have not kept his statutes”; here is proof that, more than a
    century before the finding of Deuteronomy in the temple, Israel
    was acquainted with God’s law. Fisher, Nature and Method of
    Revelation, 26, 27—“The lofty plane reached by the prophets was
    not reached at a single bound.... There must have been a tap-root
    extending far down into the earth.” Kurtz remarks that “the later
    books of the O. T. would be a tree without roots, if the
    composition of the Pentateuch were transferred to a later period
    of Hebrew history.” If we substitute for the word “Pentateuch” the
    words “Book of the covenant,” we may assent to this dictum of
    Kurtz. There is sufficient evidence that, before the times of
    Hosea and Amos, Israel possessed a written law—the law embraced in
    _Exodus 20-24_—but the Pentateuch as we now have it, including
    Leviticus, seems to date no further back than the time of
    Jeremiah, 445 B. C. The Levitical law however was only the
    codification of statutes and customs whose origin lay far back in
    the past and which were believed to be only the natural expansion
    of the principles of Mosaic legislation.

    Leathes, Structure of O. T., 54—“Zeal for the restoration of the
    temple after the exile implied that it had long before been the
    centre of the national polity, that there had been a ritual and a
    law before the exile.” Present Day Tracts, 3:52—Levitical
    institutions could not have been first established by David. It is
    inconceivable that he “could have taken a whole tribe, and no
    trace remain of so revolutionary a measure as the dispossessing
    them of their property to make them ministers of religion.” James
    Robertson, Early History of Israel: “The varied literature of
    850-750 B. C. implies the existence of reading and writing for
    some time before. Amos and Hosea hold, for the period succeeding
    Moses, the same scheme of history which modern critics pronounce
    late and unhistorical. The eighth century B. C. was a time of
    broad historic day, when Israel had a definite account to give of
    itself and of its history. The critics appeal to the prophets, but
    they reject the prophets when these tell us that other teachers
    taught the same truth before them, and when they declare that
    their nation had been taught a better religion and had declined
    from it, in other words, that there had been law long before their
    day. The kings did not _give law_. The priests _presupposed_ it.
    There must have been a formal system of law much earlier than the
    critics admit, and also an earlier reference in their worship to
    the great events which made them a separate people.” And Dillman
    goes yet further back and declares that the entire work of Moses
    presupposes “a preparatory stage of higher religion in Abraham.”


(_h_) From the repeated assertions of Scripture that Moses himself wrote a
law for his people, confirmed as these are by evidence of literary and
legislative activity in other nations far antedating his time.


    _Ex. 24:4—_“And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah”;
    _34:27—_“And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for
    after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee
    and with Israel”; _Num. 33:2—_“And Moses wrote their goings out
    according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah”; _Deut.
    31:9—_“And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests
    the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah,
    and unto all the elders of Israel”; _22—_“So Moses wrote this song
    the same day, and taught it the children of Israel”; _24-26—_“And
    it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words
    of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses
    commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of
    Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side
    of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be
    there for a witness against thee.” The law here mentioned may
    possibly be only “the book of the covenant”_ (Ex. 20-24)_, and the
    speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy may have been orally handed down.
    But the fact that Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the
    Egyptians”_ (Acts 7:22)_, together with the fact that the art of
    writing was known in Egypt for many hundred years before his time,
    make it more probable that a larger portion of the Pentateuch was
    of his own composition.

    Kenyon, in Hastings’ Dict., art.: Writing, dates the Proverbs of
    Ptah-hotep, the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, at
    3580-3536 B. C., and asserts the free use of writing among the
    Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia as early as 4000 B. C. The
    statutes of Hammurabi king of Babylon compare for extent with
    those of Leviticus, yet they date back to the time of Abraham,
    2200 B. C.,—indeed Hammurabi is now regarded by many as the
    Amraphel of _Gen. 14:1_. Yet these statutes antedate Moses by 700
    years. It is interesting to observe that Hammurabi professes to
    have received his statutes directly from the Sun-god of Sippar,
    his capital city. See translation by Winckler, in Der alte Orient,
    97; Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws; Kelso, in Princeton Theol.
    Rev., July, 1905:399-412—Facts “authenticate the traditional date
    of the Book of the Covenant, overthrow the formula Prophets and
    Law, restore the old order Law and Prophets, and put into
    historical perspective the tradition that Moses was the author of
    the Sinaitic legislation.”


As the controversy with regard to the genuineness of the Old Testament
books has turned of late upon the claims of the Higher Criticism in
general, and upon the claims of the Pentateuch in particular, we subjoin
separate notes upon these subjects.


    _The Higher Criticism in general._ Higher Criticism does not mean
    criticism in any invidious sense, any more than Kant’s Critique of
    Pure Reason was an unfavorable or destructive examination. It is
    merely a dispassionate investigation of the authorship, date and
    purpose of Scripture books, in the light of their composition,
    style and internal characteristics. As the Lower Criticism is a
    text-critique, the Higher Criticism is a structure-critique. A
    bright Frenchman described a literary critic as one who rips open
    the doll to get at the sawdust there is in it. This can be done
    with a sceptical and hostile spirit, and there can be little doubt
    that some of the higher critics of the Old Testament have begun
    their studies with prepossessions against the supernatural, which
    have vitiated all their conclusions. These presuppositions are
    often unconscious, but none the less influential. When Bishop
    Colenso examined the Pentateuch and Joshua, he disclaimed any
    intention of assailing the miraculous narratives as such; as if he
    had said: “My dear little fish, you need not fear me; I do not
    wish to catch you; I only intend to drain the pond in which you
    live.” To many scholars the waters at present seem very low in the
    Hexateuch and indeed throughout the whole Old Testament.

    Shakespeare made over and incorporated many old Chronicles of
    Plutarch and Holinshed, and many Italian tales and early tragedies
    of other writers; but Pericles and Titus Andronicus still pass
    current under the name of Shakespeare. We speak even now of
    “Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar,” although of its twenty-seven editions
    the last fourteen have been published since his death, and more of
    it has been written by other editors than Gesenius ever wrote
    himself. We speak of “Webster’s Dictionary,” though there are in
    the “Unabridged” thousands of words and definitions that Webster
    never saw. Francis Brown: “A modern writer masters older records
    and writes a wholly new book. Not so with eastern historians. The
    latest comer, as Renan says, ‘absorbs his predecessors without
    assimilating them, so that the most recent has in its belly the
    fragments of the previous works in a raw state.’ The Diatessaron
    of Tatian is a parallel to the composite structure of the O. T.
    books. One passage yields the following: _Mat. 21:12a_; _John
    2:14a_; _Mat. 21:12b_; _John 2:14b, 15_; _Mat. 21:12c, 13_; _John
    2:16_; _Mark 11:16_; _John 2:17-22_; all succeeding each other
    without a break.” Gore, Lux Mundi, 353—“There is nothing
    materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in
    attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the divine
    command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the
    collection of Psalms to David, and of Proverbs to Solomon.”

    The opponents of the Higher Criticism have much to say in reply.
    Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, holds that the early chapters
    of Genesis were copied from Babylonian sources, but he insists
    upon a Mosaic or pre-Mosaic date for the copying. Hilprecht
    however declares that the monotheistic faith of Israel could never
    have proceeded “from the Babylonian mountain of gods—that
    charnel-house full of corruption and dead men’s bones.” Bissell,
    Genesis Printed in Colors, Introd., iv—“It is improbable that so
    many documentary histories existed so early, or if existing that
    the compiler should have attempted to combine them. Strange that
    the earlier should be J and should use the word ‘Jehovah,’ while
    the later P should use the word ‘Elohim,’ when ‘Jehovah’ would
    have far better suited the Priests’ Code.... xiii—The Babylonian
    tablets contain in a continuous narrative the more prominent facts
    of both the alleged Elohistic and Jehovistic sections of Genesis,
    and present them mainly in the Biblical order. Several hundred
    years before Moses what the critics call _two_ were already _one_.
    It is absurd to say that the unity was due to a redactor at the
    period of the exile, 444 B. C. He who believes that God revealed
    himself to primitive man as one God, will see in the Akkadian
    story a polytheistic corruption of the original monotheistic
    account.” We must not estimate the antiquity of a pair of boots by
    the last patch which the cobbler has added; nor must we estimate
    the antiquity of a Scripture book by the glosses and explanations
    added by later editors. As the London Spectator remarks on the
    Homeric problem: “It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or
    work of art should be produced without a great master-mind which
    first conceives the whole, as that a fine living bull should be
    developed out of beef-sausages.” As we shall proceed to show,
    however, these utterances overestimate the unity of the Pentateuch
    and ignore some striking evidences of its gradual growth and
    composite structure.

    _The Authorship of the Pentateuch in particular._ Recent critics,
    especially Kuenen and Robertson Smith, have maintained that the
    Pentateuch is Mosaic only in the sense of being a gradually
    growing body of traditional law, which was codified as late as the
    time of Ezekiel, and, as the development of the spirit and
    teachings of the great law-giver, was called by a legal fiction
    after the name of Moses and was attributed to him. The actual
    order of composition is therefore: (1) Book of the Covenant
    (_Exodus 20-23_); (2) Deuteronomy; (3) Leviticus. Among the
    reasons assigned for this view are the facts (_a_) that
    Deuteronomy ends with an account of Moses’ death, and therefore
    could not have been written by Moses; (_b_) that in Leviticus
    Levites are mere servants to the priests, while in Deuteronomy the
    priests are officiating Levites, or, in other words, all the
    Levites are priests; (_c_) that the books of Judges and of 1
    Samuel, with their record of sacrifices offered in many places,
    give no evidence that either Samuel or the nation of Israel had
    any knowledge of a law confining worship to a local sanctuary. See
    Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Wellhausen, Geschichte
    Israels, Band 1; and art.: Israel, in Encyc. Brit., 13:398, 399,
    415; W. Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Church, 306, 386, and
    Prophets of Israel; Hastings, Bible Dict., arts.: Deuteronomy,
    Hexateuch, and Canon of the O. T.

    It has been urged in reply, (1) that Moses may have written, not
    autographically, but through a scribe (perhaps Joshua), and that
    this scribe may have completed the history in Deuteronomy with the
    account of Moses’ death; (2) that Ezra or subsequent prophets may
    have subjected the whole Pentateuch to recension, and may have
    added explanatory notes; (3) that documents of previous ages may
    have been incorporated, in course of its composition by Moses, or
    subsequently by his successors; (4) that the apparent lack of
    distinction between the different classes of Levites in
    Deuteronomy may be explained by the fact that, while Leviticus was
    written with exact detail for the priests, Deuteronomy is the
    record of a brief general and oral summary of the law, addressed
    to the people at large and therefore naturally mentioning the
    clergy as a whole; (5) that the silence of the book of Judges as
    to the Mosaic ritual may be explained by the design of the book to
    describe only general history, and by the probability that at the
    tabernacle a ritual was observed of which the people in general
    were ignorant. Sacrifices in other places only accompanied special
    divine manifestations which made the recipient temporarily a
    priest. Even if it were proved that the law with regard to a
    central sanctuary was not observed, it would not show that the law
    did not exist, any more than violation of the second commandment
    by Solomon proves his ignorance of the decalogue, or the mediæval
    neglect of the N. T. by the Roman church proves that the N. T. did
    not then exist. We cannot argue that “where there was
    transgression, there was no law” (Watts, New Apologetic, 83, and
    The Newer Criticism).

    In the light of recent research, however, we cannot regard these
    replies as satisfactory. Woods, in his article on the Hexateuch,
    Hastings’ Dictionary, 2:365, presents a moderate statement of the
    results of the higher criticism which commends itself to us as
    more trustworthy. He calls it a theory of stratification, and
    holds that “certain more or less independent documents, dealing
    largely with the same series of events, were composed at different
    periods, or, at any rate, under different auspices, and were
    afterwards combined, so that our present Hexateuch, which means
    our Pentateuch with the addition of Joshua, contains these several
    different literary strata.... The main grounds for accepting this
    hypothesis of stratification are (1) that the various literary
    pieces, with very few exceptions, will be found on examination to
    arrange themselves by common characteristics into comparatively
    few groups; (2) that an original consecution of narrative may be
    frequently traced between what in their present form are isolated
    fragments.

    “This will be better understood by the following illustration. Let
    us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patchwork quilt,
    explain the character of the original pieces out of which the bits
    of stuff composing the quilt were cut. First, we notice that,
    however well the colors may blend, however nice and complete the
    whole may look, many of the adjoining pieces do not agree in
    material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, they have
    been made up out of very different pieces of stuff.... But suppose
    we further discover that many of the bits, though now separated,
    are like one another in material, texture, etc., we may conjecture
    that these have been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this
    beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits when unpicked
    fit together, so that the pattern of one is continued in the
    other; and, moreover, that if all of like character are sorted
    out, they form, say, four groups, each of which was evidently once
    a single piece of stuff, though parts of each are found missing,
    because, no doubt, they have not been required to make the whole.
    But we make the analogy of the Hexateuch even closer, if we
    further suppose that in certain parts of the quilt the bits
    belonging to, say, two of these groups are so combined as to form
    a subsidiary pattern within the larger pattern of the whole quilt,
    and had evidently been sewed together before being connected with
    other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer still, if
    we suppose that, besides the more important bits of stuff, smaller
    embellishments, borderings, and the like, had been added so as to
    improve the general effect of the whole.”

    The author of this article goes on to point out three main
    portions of the Hexateuch which essentially differ from each
    other. There are three distinct codes: the Covenant code (C—_Ex.
    20:22_ to _23:33_, and _24:3-8_), the Deuteronomic code (D), and
    the Priestly code (P). These codes have peculiar relations to the
    narrative portions of the Hexateuch. In Genesis, for example, “the
    greater part of the book is divided into groups of longer or
    shorter pieces, generally paragraphs or chapters, distinguished
    respectively by the almost exclusive use of Elohim or Jehovah as
    the name of God.” Let us call these portions J and E. But we find
    such close affinities between C and JE, that we may regard them as
    substantially one. “We shall find that the larger part of the
    narratives, as distinct from the laws, of Exodus and Numbers
    belong to JE; whereas, with special exceptions, the legal portions
    belong to P. In the last chapters of Deuteronomy and in the whole
    of Joshua we find elements of JE. In the latter book we also find
    elements which connect it with D.

    “It should be observed that not only do we find here and there
    _separate pieces_ in the Hexateuch, shown by their characters to
    belong to these three sources, JE, D, and P, but the pieces will
    often be found connected together by an obvious continuity of
    subject when pieced together, like the bits of patchwork in the
    illustration with which we started. For example, if we read
    continuously _Gen. 11:27-33_; _12:4b, 5_; _13:6a, 11b, 12a_;
    _16:1a, 3, 15, 16_; _17_; _19:29_; _21:1a, 2b-5_; _23_;
    _25:7-11a_—passages mainly, on other grounds, attributed to P, we
    get an almost continuous and complete, though very concise,
    account of Abraham’s life.” We may concede the substantial
    correctness of the view thus propounded. It simply shows God’s
    actual method in making up the record of his revelation. We may
    add that any scholar who grants that Moses did not himself write
    the account of his own death and burial in the last chapter of
    Deuteronomy, or who recognizes two differing accounts of creation
    in _Genesis 1_ and _2_, has already begun an analysis of the
    Pentateuch and has accepted the essential principles of the higher
    criticism.

    In addition to the literature already referred to mention may also
    be made of Driver’s Introd. to O. T., 118-150, and Deuteronomy,
    Introd.; W. R. Harper, in Hebraica, Oct.-Dec. 1888, and W. H.
    Green’s reply in Hebraica. Jan.-Apr. 1889; also Green, The Unity
    of the Book of Genesis, Moses and the Prophets, Hebrew Feasts, and
    Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch; with articles by Green in
    Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882 and Oct. 1886; Howard Osgood, in Essays on
    Pentateuchal Criticism, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1888, and July,
    1893; Watts, The Newer Criticism, and New Apologetic, 83; Presb.
    Rev., arts. by H. P. Smith, April, 1882, and by F. L. Patton,
    1883:341-410; Bib. Sac., April, 1882:291-344, and by G. F. Wright,
    July, 1898:515-525; Brit. Quar., July, 1881:123; Jan.
    1884:138-143; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 373-385; Stebbins, A
    Study in the Pentateuch; Bissell, Historic Origin of the Bible,
    277-342, and The Pentateuch, its Authorship and Structure;
    Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 180-216, and The
    Veracity of the Hexateuch; Murray, Origin and Growth of the
    Psalms, 58; Payne-Smith, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 15;
    Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Kurtz, Hist. Old Covenant, 1:46;
    Perowne, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. and Feb. 1888; Chambers, Moses and
    his Recent Critics; Terry, Moses and the Prophets; Davis,
    Dictionary of the Bible, art.: Pentateuch; Willis J. Beecher, The
    Prophets and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 326-329.



II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.


We shall attempt to prove this only of the writers of the gospels; for if
they are credible witnesses, the credibility of the Old Testament, to
which they bore testimony, follows as a matter of course.

1. _They are capable or competent witnesses_,—that is, they possessed
actual knowledge with regard to the facts they professed to relate. (_a_)
They had opportunities of observation and inquiry. (_b_) They were men of
sobriety and discernment, and could not have been themselves deceived.
(_c_) Their circumstances were such as to impress deeply upon their minds
the events of which they were witnesses.

2. _They are honest witnesses._ This is evident when we consider that:
(_a_) Their testimony imperiled all their worldly interests. (_b_) The
moral elevation of their writings, and their manifest reverence for truth
and constant inculcation of it, show that they were not wilful deceivers,
but good men. (_c_) There are minor indications of the honesty of these
writers in the circumstantiality of their story, in the absence of any
expectation that their narratives would be questioned, in their freedom
from all disposition to screen themselves or the apostles from censure.


    Lessing says that Homer never calls Helen beautiful, but he gives
    the reader an impression of her surpassing loveliness by
    portraying the effect produced by her presence. So the evangelists
    do not describe Jesus’ appearance or character, but lead us to
    conceive the cause that could produce such effects. Gore,
    Incarnation, 77—“Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod, Judas, are not
    abused,—they are photographed. The sin of a Judas and a Peter is
    told with equal simplicity. Such fairness, wherever you find it,
    belongs to a trustworthy witness.”


3. _The writings of the evangelists mutually support each other._ We argue
their credibility upon the ground of their number and of the consistency
of their testimony. While there is enough of discrepancy to show that
there has been no collusion between them, there is concurrence enough to
make the falsehood of them all infinitely improbable. Four points under
this head deserve mention: (_a_) The evangelists are independent
witnesses. This is sufficiently shown by the futility of the attempts to
prove that any one of them has abridged or transcribed another. (_b_) The
discrepancies between them are none of them irreconcilable with the truth
of the recorded facts, but only present those facts in new lights or with
additional detail. (_c_) That these witnesses were friends of Christ does
not lessen the value of their united testimony, since they followed Christ
only because they were convinced that these facts were true. (_d_) While
one witness to the facts of Christianity might establish its truth, the
combined evidence of four witnesses gives us a warrant for faith in the
facts of the gospel such as we possess for no other facts in ancient
history whatsoever. The same rule which would refuse belief in the events
recorded in the gospels “would throw doubt on any event in history.”


    No man does or can write his own signature twice precisely alike.
    When two signatures, therefore, purporting to be written by the
    same person, are precisely alike, it is safe to conclude that one
    of them is a forgery. Compare the combined testimony of the
    evangelists with the combined testimony of our five senses. “Let
    us assume,” says Dr. C. E. Rider, “that the chances of deception
    are as one to ten when we use our eyes alone, one to twenty when
    we use our ears alone, and one to forty when we use our sense of
    touch alone; what are the chances of mistake when we use all these
    senses simultaneously? The true result is obtained by multiplying
    these proportions together. This gives one to eight thousand.”


4. _The conformity of the gospel testimony with experience._ We have
already shown that, granting the fact of sin and the need of an attested
revelation from God, miracles can furnish no presumption against the
testimony of those who record such a revelation, but, as essentially
belonging to such a revelation, miracles may be proved by the same kind
and degree of evidence as is required in proof of any other extraordinary
facts. We may assert, then, that in the New Testament histories there is
no record of facts contrary to experience, but only a record of facts not
witnessed in ordinary experience—of facts, therefore, in which we may
believe, if the evidence in other respects is sufficient.

5. _Coincidence of this testimony with collateral facts and
circumstances._ Under this head we may refer to (_a_) the numberless
correspondences between the narratives of the evangelists and contemporary
history; (_b_) the failure of every attempt thus far to show that the
sacred history is contradicted by any single fact derived from other
trustworthy sources; (_c_) the infinite improbability that this minute and
complete harmony should ever have been secured in fictitious narratives.

6. _Conclusion from the argument for the credibility of the writers of the
gospels._ These writers having been proved to be credible witnesses, their
narratives, including the accounts of the miracles and prophecies of
Christ and his apostles, must be accepted as true. But God would not work
miracles or reveal the future to attest the claims of false teachers.
Christ and his apostles must, therefore, have been what they claimed to
be, teachers sent from God, and their doctrine must be what they claimed
it to be, a revelation from God to men.


    On the whole subject, see Ebrard, Wissensch. Kritik der evang.
    Geschichte; Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists, 30, 31;
    Starkie on Evidence, 734; Whately, Historic Doubts as to Napoleon
    Buonaparte; Haley, Examination of Alleged Discrepancies; Smith’s
    Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; Paley, Horse Paulinæ; Birks, in
    Strivings for the Faith, 37-72—“Discrepancies are like the slight
    diversities of the different pictures of the stereoscope.” Renan
    calls the land of Palestine a fifth gospel. Weiss contrasts the
    Apocryphal Gospels, where there is no historical setting and all
    is in the air, with the evangelists, where time and place are
    always stated.

    No modern apologist has stated the argument for the credibility of
    the New Testament with greater clearness and force than
    Paley,—Evidences, chapters 8 and 10—“No historical fact is more
    certain than that the original propagators of the gospel
    voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and
    suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of
    the undertaking, the character of the persons employed in it, the
    opposition of their tenets to the fixed expectations of the
    country in which they at first advanced them, their undissembled
    condemnation of the religion of all other countries, their total
    want of power, authority, or force, render it in the highest
    degree _probable_ that this must have been the case.

    “The probability is increased by what we know of the fate of the
    Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt,
    and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to
    the institution within thirty years after its commencement—both
    which points are attested by heathen writers, and, being once
    admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries
    of the religion who exercised their ministry first amongst the
    people who had destroyed their Master, and afterwards amongst
    those who persecuted their converts, should themselves escape with
    impunity or pursue their purpose in ease and safety.

    “This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is
    advanced, I think, to historical certainty by the evidence of our
    own books, by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of
    the persons whose sufferings he relates, by the letters of the
    persons themselves, by predictions of persecutions, ascribed to
    the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been
    inserted in this history, much less, studiously dwelt upon, if
    they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely
    ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed because the
    event suggested them; lastly, by incessant exhortations to
    fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness, repetition and
    urgency upon the subject which were unlikely to have appeared, if
    there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the
    exercise of such virtues. It is also made out, I think, with
    sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the
    religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new
    course of life and conduct.

    “The next great question is, what they did this _for_. It was for
    a miraculous story of some kind, since for the proof that Jesus of
    Nazareth ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger
    for God, they neither had nor could have anything but miracles to
    stand upon.... If this be so, the religion must be true. These men
    could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might
    have avoided all these sufferings and lived quietly. Would men in
    such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw,
    assert facts which they had no knowledge of, go about lying to
    teach virtue, and though not only convinced of Christ’s being an
    impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his
    crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on, and so persist as to
    bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of
    the consequences, enmity and hatred, danger and death?”

    Those who maintain this, moreover, require us to believe that the
    Scripture writers were “villains for no end but to teach honesty,
    and martyrs without the least prospect of honor or advantage.”
    Imposture must have a motive. The self-devotion of the apostles is
    the strongest evidence of their truth, for even Hume declares that
    “we cannot make use of a more convincing argument in proof of
    honesty than to prove that the actions ascribed to any persons are
    contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in
    such circumstances, could ever induce them to such conduct.”



III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.


1. Scripture teaching in general.


A. The Bible is the work of one mind.

(_a_) In spite of its variety of authorship and the vast separation of its
writers from one another in point of time, there is a unity of subject,
spirit, and aim throughout the whole.


    We here begin a new department of Christian evidences. We have
    thus far only adduced external evidence. We now turn our attention
    to internal evidence. The relation of external to internal
    evidence seems to be suggested in Christ’s two questions in _Mark
    8:27, 29—_“Who do _men_ say that I am?... who say _ye_ that I am?”
    The unity in variety displayed in Scripture is one of the chief
    internal evidences. This unity is indicated in our word “Bible,”
    in the singular number. Yet the original word was “Biblia,” a
    plural number. The world has come to see a unity in what were once
    scattered fragments: the many “Biblia” have become one “Bible.” In
    one sense R. W. Emerson’s contention is true: “The Bible is not a
    book,—it is a literature.” But we may also say, and with equal
    truth: “The Bible is not simply a collection of books,—it is a
    book.” The Bible is made up of sixty-six books, by forty writers,
    of all ranks,—shepherds, fishermen, priests, warriors, statesmen,
    kings,—composing their works at intervals through a period of
    seventeen centuries. Evidently no collusion between them is
    possible. Scepticism tends ever to ascribe to the Scriptures
    greater variety of authorship and date, but all this only
    increases the wonder of the Bible’s unity. If unity in a half
    dozen writers is remarkable, in forty it is astounding. “The many
    diverse instruments of this orchestra play one perfect tune: hence
    we feel that they are led by one master and composer.” Yet it
    takes the same Spirit who inspired the Bible to teach its unity.
    The union is not an external or superficial one, but one that is
    internal and spiritual.


(_b_) Not one moral or religious utterance of all these writers has been
contradicted or superseded by the utterances of those who have come later,
but all together constitute a consistent system.


    Here we must distinguish between the external form and the moral
    and religious substance. Jesus declares in _Mat. 5:21, 22, 27, 28,
    33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44, _“Ye have heard that it was said to them
    of old time ... but I say unto you,” and then he seems at first
    sight to abrogate certain original commands. But he also declares
    in this connection, _Mat. 5:17, 18—_“Think not I am come to
    destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to
    fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass
    away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the
    law, till all things be accomplished.” Christ’s new commandments
    only bring out the inner meaning of the old. He fulfils them not
    in their literal form but in their essential spirit. So the New
    Testament completes the revelation of the Old Testament and makes
    the Bible a perfect unity. In this unity the Bible stands alone.
    Hindu, Persian, and Chinese religious books contain no consistent
    system of faith. There is progress in revelation from the earlier
    to the later books of the Bible, but this is not progress through
    successive steps of falsehood; it is rather progress from a less
    to a more clear and full unfolding of the truth. The whole truth
    lay germinally in the _protevangelium_ uttered to our first
    parents (_Gen. 3:15_—the seed of the woman should bruise the
    serpent’s head).


(_c_) Each of these writings, whether early or late, has represented moral
and religious ideas greatly in advance of the age in which it has
appeared, and these ideas still lead the world.


    All our ideas of progress, with all the forward-looking spirit of
    modern Christendom, are due to Scripture. The classic nations had
    no such ideas and no such spirit, except as they caught them from
    the Hebrews. Virgil’s prophecy, in his fourth Eclogue, of a coming
    virgin and of the reign of Saturn and of the return of the golden
    age, was only the echo of the Sibylline books and of the hope of a
    Redeemer with which the Jews had leavened the whole Roman world;
    see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 94-96.


(_d_) It is impossible to account for this unity without supposing such a
supernatural suggestion and control that the Bible, while in its various
parts written by human agents, is yet equally the work of a superhuman
intelligence.


    We may contrast with the harmony between the different Scripture
    writers the contradictions and refutations which follow merely
    human philosophies—_e. g._, the Hegelian idealism and the
    Spencerian materialism. Hegel is “a name to swear at, as well as
    to swear by.” Dr. Stirling, in his Secret of Hegel, “kept all the
    secret to himself, if he ever knew it.” A certain Frenchman once
    asked Hegel if he could not gather up and express his philosophy
    in one sentence for him. “No,” Hegel replied, “at least not in
    French.” If Talleyrand’s maxim be true that whatever is not
    intelligible is not French, Hegel’s answer was a correct one.
    Hegel said of his disciples: “There is only one man living who
    understands me, and he does not.”

    Goeschel, Gabler, Daub, Marheinecke, Erdmann, are Hegel’s right
    wing, or orthodox representatives and followers in theology; see
    Sterrett, Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion. Hegel is followed by
    Alexander and Bradley in England, but is opposed by Seth and
    Schiller. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 279-300, gives a valuable
    estimate of his position and influence: Hegel is all thought and
    no will. Prayer has no effect on God,—it is a purely psychological
    phenomenon. There is no free-will, and man’s sin as much as man’s
    holiness is a manifestation of the Eternal. Evolution is a fact,
    but it is only fatalistic evolution. Hegel notwithstanding did
    great service by substituting knowledge of reality for the
    oppressive Kantian relativity, and by banishing the old notion of
    matter as a mysterious substance wholly unlike and incompatible
    with the properties of mind. He did great service also by showing
    that the interactions of matter and mind are explicable only by
    the presence of the Absolute Whole in every part, though he erred
    greatly by carrying that idea of the unity of God and man beyond
    its proper limits, and by denying that God has given to the will
    of man any power to put itself into antagonism to His Will. Hegel
    did great service by showing that we cannot know even the part
    without knowing the whole, but he erred in teaching, as T. H.
    Green did, that the _relations_ constitute the _reality_ of the
    thing. He deprives both physical and psychical existences of that
    degree of selfhood or independent reality which is essential to
    both science and religion. We want real force, and not the mere
    idea of force; real will, and not mere thought.


B. This one mind that made the Bible is the same mind that made the soul,
for the Bible is divinely adapted to the soul,

(_a_) It shows complete acquaintance with the soul.


    The Bible addresses all parts of man’s nature. There are Law and
    Epistles for man’s reason; Psalms and Gospels for his affections;
    Prophets and Revelations for his imagination. Hence the popularity
    of the Scriptures. Their variety holds men. The Bible has become
    interwoven into modern life. Law, literature, art, all show its
    moulding influence.


(_b_) It judges the soul—contradicting its passions, revealing its guilt,
and humbling its pride.


    No product of mere human nature could thus look down upon human
    nature and condemn it. The Bible speaks to us from a higher level.
    The Samaritan woman’s words apply to the whole compass of divine
    revelation; it tells us all things that ever we did (_John 4:29_).
    The Brahmin declared that _Romans 1_, with its description of
    heathen vices, must have been forged after the missionaries came
    to India.


(_c_) It meets the deepest needs of the soul—by solutions of its problems,
disclosures of God’s character, presentations of the way of pardon,
consolations and promises for life and death.


    Neither Socrates nor Seneca sets forth the nature, origin and
    consequences of sin as committed against the holiness of God, nor
    do they point out the way of pardon and renewal. The Bible teaches
    us what nature cannot, viz.: God’s creatorship, the origin of
    evil, the method of restoration, the certainty of a future state,
    and the principle of rewards and punishments there.


(_d_) Yet it is silent upon many questions for which writings of merely
human origin seek first to provide solutions.


    Compare the account of Christ’s infancy in the gospels with the
    fables of the Apocryphal New Testament; compare the scant
    utterances of Scripture with regard to the future state with
    Mohammed’s and Swedenborg’s revelations of Paradise. See Alexander
    McLaren’s sermon on The Silence of Scripture, in his book
    entitled: Christ in the Heart, 131-141.


(_e_) There are infinite depths and inexhaustible reaches of meaning in
Scripture, which difference it from all other books, and which compel us
to believe that its author must be divine.


    Sir Walter Scott, on his death bed: “Bring me the Book!” “What
    book?” said Lockhart, his son-in-law. “There is but one book!”
    said the dying man. Réville concludes an Essay in the Revue des
    deux Mondes (1864): “One day the question was started, in an
    assembly, what book a man condemned to lifelong imprisonment, and
    to whom but one book would be permitted, had better take into his
    cell with him. The company consisted of Catholics, Protestants,
    philosophers and even materialists, but all agreed that their
    choice would fall only on the Bible.”

    On the whole subject, see Garbett, God’s Word Written, 3-56;
    Luthardt, Saving Truths, 210; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of Bible,
    155-181; W. L. Alexander, Connection and Harmony of O. T. and N.
    T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O. T.; Bernard, Progress of
    Doctrine in the N. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of
    Doctrine; Titcomb, in Strivings for the Faith; Immer,
    Hermeneutics, 91; Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 23; 5: no. 28; 6: no.
    31; Lee on Inspiration, 26-32.


2. Moral System of the New Testament.


The perfection of this system is generally conceded. All will admit that
it greatly surpasses any other system known among men. Among its
distinguishing characteristics may be mentioned:

(_a_) Its comprehensiveness,—including all human duties in its code, even
the most generally misunderstood and neglected, while it permits no vice
whatsoever.


    Buddhism regards family life as sinful. Suicide was commended by
    many ancient philosophers. Among the Spartans to steal was
    praiseworthy,—only to be caught stealing was criminal. Classic
    times despised humility. Thomas Paine said that Christianity
    cultivated “the spirit of a spaniel,” and John Stuart Mill
    asserted that Christ ignored duty to the state. Yet Peter urges
    Christians to add to their faith manliness, courage, heroism (_2
    Pet. 1:5—_“in your faith supply virtue”), and Paul declares the
    state to be God’s ordinance (_Rom. 13:1—_“Let every soul be in
    subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God;
    and the powers that be are ordained of God”). Patriotic defence of
    a nation’s unity and freedom has always found its chief incitement
    and ground in these injunctions of Scripture. E. G. Robinson:
    “Christian ethics do not contain a particle of chaff,—all is pure
    wheat.”


(_b_) Its spirituality,—accepting no merely external conformity to right
precepts, but judging all action by the thoughts and motives from which it
springs.


    The superficiality of heathen morals is well illustrated by the
    treatment of the corpse of a priest in Siam: the body is covered
    with gold leaf, and then is left to rot and shine. Heathenism
    divorces religion from ethics. External and ceremonial observances
    take the place of purity of heart. The Sermon on the Mount on the
    other hand pronounces blessing only upon inward states of the
    soul. _Ps. 51:6—_“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts,
    and in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom”; _Micah
    6:8—_“what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to
    love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?”


(_c_) Its simplicity,—inculcating principles rather than imposing rules;
reducing these principles to an organic system; and connecting this system
with religion by summing up all human duty in the one command of love to
God and man.


    Christianity presents no extensive code of rules, like that of the
    Pharisees or of the Jesuits. Such codes break down of their own
    weight. The laws of the State of New York alone constitute a
    library of themselves, which only the trained lawyer can master.
    It is said that Mohammedanism has recorded sixty-five thousand
    special instances in which the reader is directed to do right. It
    is the merit of Jesus’ system that all its requisitions are
    reduced to unity. _Mark 12:29-31—_“Hear, O Israel; The Lord our
    God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
    all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
    with all thy strength. The second is this: Thou shalt love thy
    neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than
    these.” Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:384-814, calls attention to
    the inner unity of Jesus’ teaching. The doctrine that God is a
    loving Father is applied with unswerving consistency. Jesus
    confirmed whatever was true in the O. T., and he set aside the
    unworthy. He taught not so much about God, as about the kingdom of
    God, and about the ideal fellowship between God and men. Morality
    was the necessary and natural expression of religion. In Christ
    teaching and life were perfectly blended. He was the
    representative of the religion which he taught.


(_d_) Its practicality,—exemplifying its precepts in the life of Jesus
Christ; and, while it declares man’s depravity and inability in his own
strength to keep the law, furnishing motives to obedience, and the divine
aid of the Holy Spirit to make this obedience possible.


    Revelation has two sides: Moral law, and provision for fulfilling
    the moral law that has been broken. Heathen systems can incite to
    temporary reformations, and they can terrify with fears of
    retribution. But only God’s regenerating grace can make the tree
    good, in such a way that its fruit will be good also (_Mat.
    12:33_). There is a difference between touching the pendulum of
    the clock and winding it up,—the former may set it temporarily
    swinging, but only the latter secures its regular and permanent
    motion. The moral system of the N. T. is not simply law,—it is
    also grace: _John 1:17—_“the law was given through Moses; grace
    and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Dr. William Ashmore’s tract
    represents a Chinaman in a pit. Confucius looks into the pit and
    says: “If you had done as I told you, you would never have gotten
    in.” Buddha looks into the pit and says: “If you were up here I
    would show you what to do.” So both Confucius and Buddha pass on.
    But Jesus leaps down into the pit and helps the poor Chinaman out.

    At the Parliament of Religions in Chicago there were many ideals
    of life propounded, but no religion except Christianity attempted
    to show that there was any power given to realize these ideals.
    When Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the ancient religions
    to answer Lady Macbeth’s question: “How cleanse this red right
    hand?” the priests were dumb. But Christianity declares that “the
    blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”_ (1 John 1:7)_.
    E. G. Robinson: Christianity differs from all other religions in
    being (1) a historical religion; (2) in turning abstract law into
    a person to be loved; (3) in furnishing a demonstration of God’s
    love in Christ; (4) in providing atonement for sin and forgiveness
    for the sinner; (5) in giving a power to fulfil the law and
    sanctify the life. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 249—“Christianity, by
    making the moral law the expression of a holy Will, brought that
    law out of its impersonal abstraction, and assured its ultimate
    triumph. Moral principles may be what they were before, but moral
    practice is forever different. Even the earth itself has another
    look, now that it has heaven above it.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life,
    92—“The achievement of Christianity was not the inculcation of a
    _new_, still less of a _systematic_, morality; but the
    introduction of a new _spirit_ into morality; as Christ himself
    said, a leaven into the lump.”


We may justly argue that a moral system so pure and perfect, since it
surpasses all human powers of invention and runs counter to men’s natural
tastes and passions, must have had a supernatural, and if a supernatural,
then a divine, origin.


    Heathen systems of morality are in general defective, in that they
    furnish for man’s moral action no sufficient example, rule,
    motive, or end. They cannot do this, for the reason that they
    practically identify God with nature, and know of no clear
    revelation of his holy will. Man is left to the law of his own
    being, and since he is not conceived of as wholly responsible and
    free, the lower impulses are allowed sway as well as the higher,
    and selfishness is not regarded as sin. As heathendom does not
    recognize man’s depravity, so it does not recognize his dependence
    upon divine grace, and its virtue is self-righteousness.
    Heathenism is man’s vain effort to lift himself to God;
    Christianity is God’s coming down to man to save him; see
    Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 11, 12. Martineau, 1:15, 16, calls
    attention to the difference between the physiological ethics of
    heathendom and the psychological ethics of Christianity.
    Physiological ethics begins with nature; and, finding in nature
    the uniform rule of necessity and the operation of cause and
    effect, it comes at last to man and applies the same rule to him,
    thus extinguishing all faith in personality, freedom,
    responsibility, sin and guilt. Psychological ethics, on the
    contrary, wisely begins with what we know best, with man; and
    finding in him free-will and a moral purpose, it proceeds outward
    to nature and interprets nature as the manifestation of the mind
    and will of God.

    “Psychological ethics are altogether peculiar to Christendom....
    Other systems begin outside and regard the soul as a homogeneous
    part of the _universe_, applying to the soul the principle of
    necessity that prevails outside of it.... In the Christian
    religion, on the other hand, the interest, the mystery of the
    world are concentrated in _human nature_.... The sense of sin—a
    sentiment that left no trace in Athens—involves a consciousness of
    personal alienation from the Supreme Goodness; the aspiration
    after holiness directs itself to a union of affection and will
    with the source of all Perfection; the agency for transforming men
    from their old estrangement to new reconciliation is a Person, in
    whom the divine and human historically blend; and the sanctifying
    Spirit by which they are sustained at the height of their purer
    life is a living link of communion between their minds and the
    Soul of souls.... So Nature, to the Christian consciousness, sank
    into the accidental and the neutral.” Measuring ourselves by human
    standards, we nourish pride; measuring ourselves by divine
    standards, we nourish humility. Heathen nations, identifying God
    with nature or with man, are unprogressive. The flat architecture
    of the Parthenon, with its lines parallel to the earth, is the
    type of heathen religion; the aspiring arches of the Gothic
    cathedral symbolize Christianity.

    Sterrett, Studies in Hegel, 33, says that Hegel characterized the
    Chinese religion as that of Measure, or temperate conduct;
    Brahmanism as that of Phantasy, or inebriate dream-life; Buddhism
    as that of Self-involvement; that of Egypt as the imbruted
    religion of Enigma, symbolized by the Sphynx; that of Greece, as
    the religion of Beauty; the Jewish as that of Sublimity; and
    Christianity as the Absolute religion, the fully revealed religion
    of truth and freedom. In all this Hegel entirely fails to grasp
    the elements of Will, Holiness, Love, Life, which characterize
    Judaism and Christianity, and distinguish them from all other
    religions. R. H. Hutton: “Judaism taught us that Nature must be
    interpreted by our knowledge of God, not God by our knowledge of
    Nature.” Lyman Abbott: “Christianity is not a new _life_, but a
    new _power_; not a _summons_ to a new life, but an _offer_ of new
    life; not a reënactment of the old law, but a power of God unto
    salvation; not love to God and man, but Christ’s message that God
    loves us, and will help us to the life of love.”

    Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 5, 6—“Christianity postulates an
    opening of the heart of the eternal God to the heart of man coming
    to meet him. Heathendom shows us the heart of man blunderingly
    grasping the hem of God’s garment, and mistaking Nature, his
    majestic raiment, for himself. Only in the Bible does man press
    beyond God’s external manifestations to God himself.” See Wuttke,
    Christian Ethics, 1:37-173; Porter, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no.
    19, pp. 33-64: Blackie, Four Phases of Morals; Faiths of the World
    (St. Giles Lectures, second series); J. F. Clarke, Ten Great
    Religions, 2:280-317; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith; Farrar, Witness of
    History to Christ, 134, and Seekers after God, 181, 182, 320;
    Curtis on Inspiration, 288. For denial of the all-comprehensive
    character of Christian Morality, see John Stuart Mill, on Liberty;
    _per contra_, see Review of Mill, in Theol. Eclectic, 6:508-512;
    Row, in Strivings for the Faith, pub. by Christian Evidence
    Society, 181-220; also, Bampton Lectures, 1877:130-176; Fisher,
    Beginnings of Christianity, 28-38, 174.


In contrast with the Christian system of morality the defects of heathen
systems are so marked and fundamental, that they constitute a strong
corroborative evidence of the divine origin of the Scripture revelation.
We therefore append certain facts and references with regard to particular
heathen systems.


    1. _Confucianism._ Confucius (_Kung-fu-tse_), B. C. 551-478,
    contemporary with Pythagoras and Buddha. Socrates was born ten
    years after Confucius died. Mencius (371-278) was a disciple of
    Confucius. Matheson, in Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures),
    73-108, claims that Confucianism was “an attempt to substitute a
    morality for theology.” Legge, however, in Present Day Tracts, 3:
    no. 18, shows that this is a mistake. Confucius simply left
    religion where he found it. God, or Heaven, is worshiped in China,
    but only by the Emperor. Chinese religion is apparently a survival
    of the worship of the patriarchal family. The father of the family
    was its only head and priest. In China, though the family widened
    into the tribe, and the tribe into the nation, the father still
    retained his sole authority, and, as the father of his people, the
    Emperor alone officially offered sacrifice to God. Between God and
    the people the gulf has so widened that the people may be said to
    have no practical knowledge of God or communication with him. Dr.
    W. A. P. Martin: “Confucianism has degenerated into a pantheistic
    medley, and renders worship to an impersonal ‘anima mundi,’ under
    the leading forms of visible nature.”

    Dr. William Ashmore, private letter: “The common people of China
    have: (1) Ancestor-worship, and the worship of deified heroes: (2)
    Geomancy, or belief in the controlling power of the elements of
    nature; but back of these, and antedating them, is (3) the worship
    of Heaven and Earth, or Father and Mother, a very ancient dualism;
    this belongs to the common people also, though once a year the
    Emperor, as a sort of high-priest of his people, offers sacrifice
    on the altar of Heaven; in this he acts alone. ‘Joss’ is not a
    Chinese word at all. It is the corrupted form of the Portuguese
    word ‘Deos.’ The word ‘pidgin’ is similarly an attempt to say
    ‘business’ (big-i-ness or bidgin). ‘Joss-pidgin’ therefore means
    simply ‘divine service,’ or service offered to Heaven and Earth,
    or to spirits of any kind, good or bad. There are many gods, a
    Queen of Heaven, King of Hades, God of War, god of literature,
    gods of the hills, valleys, streams, a goddess of small-pox, of
    child-bearing, and all the various trades have their gods. The
    most lofty expression the Chinese have is ‘Heaven,’ or ‘Supreme
    Heaven,’ or ‘Azure Heaven.’ This is the surviving indication that
    in the most remote times they had knowledge of one supreme,
    intelligent and personal Power who ruled over all.” Mr. Yugoro
    Chiba has shown that the Chinese classics permit sacrifice by all
    the people. But it still remains true that sacrifice to “Supreme
    Heaven” is practically confined to the Emperor, who like the
    Jewish high-priest offers for his people once a year.

    Confucius did nothing to put morality upon a religious basis. In
    practice, the relations between man and man are the only relations
    considered. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom,
    sincerity, are enjoined, but not a word is said with regard to
    man’s relations to God. Love to God is not only not commanded—it
    is not thought of as possible. Though man’s being is theoretically
    an ordinance of God, man is practically a law to himself. The
    first commandment of Confucius is that of filial piety. But this
    includes worship of dead ancestors, and is so exaggerated as to
    bury from sight the related duties of husband to wife and of
    parent to child. Confucius made it the duty of a son to slay his
    father’s murderer, just as Moses insisted on a strictly
    retaliatory penalty for bloodshed; see J. A. Farrer, Primitive
    Manners and Customs, 80. He treated invisible and superior beings
    with respect, but held them at a distance. He recognized the
    “Heaven” of tradition; but, instead of adding to our knowledge of
    it, he stifled inquiry. Dr. Legge: “I have been reading Chinese
    books for more than forty years, and any general requirement to
    love God, or the mention of any one as actually loving him, has
    yet to come for the first time under my eye.”

    Ezra Abbot asserts that Confucius gave the golden rule in positive
    as well as negative form; see Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism,
    222. This however seems to be denied by Dr. Legge, Religions of
    China, 1-58. Wu Ting Fang, former Chinese minister to Washington,
    assents to the statement that Confucius gave the golden rule only
    in its negative form, and he says this difference is the
    difference between a passive and an aggressive civilization, which
    last is therefore dominant. The golden rule, as Confucius gives
    it, is: “Do not unto others that which you would not they should
    do unto you.” Compare with this, Isocrates: “Be to your parents
    what you would have your children be to you.... Do not to others
    the things which make you angry when others do them to you”;
    Herodotus: “What I punish in another man, I will myself, as far as
    I can, refrain from”; Aristotle: “We should behave toward our
    friends as we should wish them to behave toward us”; Tobit,
    4:15—“What thou hatest, do to no one”; Philo: “What one hates to
    endure, let him not do”; Seneca bids us “give as we wish to
    receive”; Rabbi Hillel: “Whatsoever is hateful to you, do not to
    another; this is the whole law, and all the rest is explanation.”

    Broadus, in Am. Com. on Matthew, 161—“The sayings of Confucius,
    Isocrates, and the three Jewish teachers, are merely negative;
    that of Seneca is confined to giving, and that of Aristotle to the
    treatment of friends. Christ lays down a rule for positive action,
    and that toward all men.” He teaches that I am bound to do to
    others all that they could rightly desire me to do to them. The
    golden rule therefore requires a supplement, to show what others
    can rightly desire, namely, God’s glory first, and their good as
    second and incidental thereto. Christianity furnishes this divine
    and perfect standard; Confucianism is defective in that it has no
    standard higher than human convention. While Confucianism excludes
    polytheism, idolatry, and deification of vice, it is a shallow and
    tantalizing system, because it does not recognize the hereditary
    corruption of human nature, or furnish any remedy for moral evil
    except the “doctrines of the sages.” “The heart of man,” it says,
    “is naturally perfectly upright and correct.” Sin is simply “a
    disease, to be cured by self-discipline; a debt, to be canceled by
    meritorious acts; an ignorance, to be removed by study and
    contemplation.” See Bib. Sac., 1883:292, 293; N. Englander,
    1883:565; Marcus Dods, in Erasmus and other Essays, 239.

    2. THE INDIAN SYSTEMS. _Brahmanism_, as expressed in the Vedas,
    dates back to 1000-1500 B. C. As Caird (in Faiths of the World,
    St. Giles Lectures, lecture 1) has shown, it originated in the
    contemplation of the power in nature apart from the moral
    Personality that works in and through nature. Indeed we may say
    that all heathenism is man’s choice of a non-moral in place of a
    moral God. Brahmanism is a system of pantheism, “a false or
    illegitimate consecration of the finite.” All things are a
    manifestation of Brahma. Hence evil is deified as well as good.
    And many thousand gods are worshiped as partial representations of
    the living principle which moves through all. “How many gods have
    the Hindus?” asked Dr. Duff of his class. Henry Drummond thought
    there were about twenty-five. “Twenty-five?” responded the
    indignant professor; “twenty-five millions of millions!” While the
    early Vedas present a comparatively pure nature-worship, later
    Brahmanism becomes a worship of the vicious and the vile, of the
    unnatural and the cruel. Juggernaut and the suttee did not belong
    to original Hindu religion.

    Bruce, Apologetics, 15—“Pantheism in theory always means
    polytheism in practice.” The early Vedas are hopeful in spirit;
    later Brahmanism is a religion of disappointment. Caste is fixed
    and consecrated as a manifestation of God. Originally intended to
    express, in its four divisions of priest, soldier, agriculturist,
    slave, the different degrees of unworldliness and divine
    indwelling, it becomes an iron fetter to prevent all aspiration
    and progress. Indian religion sought to exalt receptivity, the
    unity of existence, and rest from self-determination and its
    struggles. Hence it ascribed to its gods the same character as
    nature-forces. God was the common source of good and of evil. Its
    ethics is an ethics of moral indifference. Its charity is a
    charity for sin, and the temperance it desires is a temperance
    that will let the intemperate alone. Mozoomdar, for example, is
    ready to welcome everything in Christianity but its reproof of sin
    and its demand for righteousness. Brahmanism degrades woman, but
    it deifies the cow.

    _Buddhism_, beginning with Buddha, 600 B. C., “recalls the mind to
    its elevation above the finite,” from which Brahmanism had fallen
    away. Buddha was in certain respects a reformer. He protested
    against caste, and proclaimed that truth and morality are for all.
    Hence Buddhism, through its possession of this one grain of truth,
    appealed to the human heart, and became, next to Christianity, the
    greatest missionary religion. Notice then, first, its
    _universalism_. But notice also that this is a false universalism,
    for it ignores individualism and leads to universal stagnation and
    slavery. While Christianity is a religion of history, of will, of
    optimism, Buddhism is a religion of illusion, of quietism, of
    pessimism; see Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 107-109. In
    characterizing Buddhism as a missionary religion, we must notice,
    secondly, its element of _altruism_. But this altruism is one
    which destroys the self, instead of preserving it. The future
    Buddha, out of compassion for a famished tiger, permits the tiger
    to devour him. “Incarnated as a hare, he jumps into the fire to
    cook himself for a meal for a beggar,—having previously shaken
    himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should
    perish with him”; see William James, Varieties of Religious
    Experience, 283. Buddha would deliver man, not by philosophy, nor
    by asceticism, but by self-renunciation. All isolation and
    personality are sin, the guilt of which rests, however, not on
    man, but on existence in general.

    While Brahmanism is pantheistic, Buddhism is atheistic in its
    spirit. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:285—“The Brahmanic
    Akosmism, that had explained the world as mere seeming, led to the
    Buddhistic Atheism.” Finiteness and separateness are evil, and the
    only way to purity and rest is by ceasing to exist. This is
    essential pessimism. The highest morality is to endure that which
    must be, and to escape from reality and from personal existence as
    soon as possible. Hence the doctrine of _Nirvana_. Rhys Davids, in
    his Hibbert Lectures, claims that early Buddhism meant by
    _Nirvana_, not annihilation, but the extinction of the self-life,
    and that this was attainable during man’s present mortal
    existence. But the term _Nirvana_ now means, to the great mass of
    those who use it, the loss of all personality and consciousness,
    and absorption into the general life of the universe. Originally
    the term denoted only freedom from individual desire, and those
    who had entered into _Nirvana_ might again come out of it; see
    Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 238. But even in its original form,
    _Nirvana_ was sought only from a selfish motive. Self-renunciation
    and absorption in the whole was not the enthusiasm of
    benevolence,—it was the refuge of despair. It is a religion
    without god or sacrifice. Instead of communion with a personal
    God, Buddhism has in prospect only an extinction of personality,
    as reward for untold ages of lonely self-conquest, extending
    through many transmigrations. Of Buddha it has been truly said
    “That all the all he had for needy man Was nothing, and his best
    of being was But not to be.” Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 296—“He by
    his own act dying all the time, In ceaseless effort utterly to
    cease, Will willing not to will, desire desiring To be desire no
    more, until at last The fugitive go free, emancipate But by
    becoming naught.” Of Christ Bruce well says: “What a contrast this
    Healer of disease and Preacher of pardon to the worst, to Buddha,
    with his religion of despair!”

    Buddhism is also fatalistic. It inculcates submission and
    compassion—merely negative virtues. But it knows nothing of manly
    freedom, or of active love—the positive virtues of Christianity.
    It leads men to spare others, but not to help them. Its morality
    revolves around self, not around God. It has in it no organizing
    principle, for it recognizes no God, no inspiration, no soul, no
    salvation, no personal immortality. Buddhism would save men only
    by inducing them to flee from existence. To the Hindu, family life
    involves sin. The perfect man must forsake wife and children. All
    gratification of natural appetites and passions is evil. Salvation
    is not from sin, but from desire, and from this men can be saved
    only by escaping from life itself. Christianity buries sin, but
    saves the man; Buddha would save the man by killing him.
    Christianity symbolizes the convert’s entrance upon a new life by
    raising him from the baptismal waters; the baptism of Buddhism
    should be immersion without emersion. The fundamental idea of
    Brahmanism, extinction of personality, remains the same in
    Buddhism; the only difference being that the result is secured by
    active atonement in the former, by passive contemplation in the
    latter. Virtue, and the knowledge that everything earthly is a
    vanishing spark of the original light, delivers man from existence
    and from misery.

    Prof. G. H. Palmer, of Harvard, in The Outlook, June 19,
    1897—“Buddhism is unlike Christianity in that it abolishes misery
    by abolishing desire; denies personality instead of asserting it;
    has many gods, but no one God who is living and conscious; makes a
    shortening of existence rather than a lengthening of it to be the
    reward of righteousness. Buddhism makes no provision for family,
    church, state, science, or art. It gives us a religion that is
    little, when we want one that is large.” Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews:
    “Schopenhauer and Spencer are merely teachers of Buddhism. They
    regard the central source of all as unknowable force, instead of
    regarding it as a Spirit, living and holy. This takes away all
    impulse to scientific investigation. We need to start from a
    Person, and not from a thing.”

    For comparison of the sage of India, Sakya Muni, more commonly
    called Buddha (properly “the Buddha” = the enlightened; but who,
    in spite of Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia,” is represented as not
    pure from carnal pleasures before he began his work), with Jesus
    Christ, see Bib. Sac., July, 1882:458-498; W. C. Wilkinson, Edwin
    Arnold, Poetizer and Paganizer; Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the
    Light of the World. Buddhism and Christianity are compared in
    Presb. Rev., July, 1883:505-548; Wuttke, Christian Ethics,
    1:47-54; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 33. See also
    Oldenberg, Buddha; Lillie, Popular Life of Buddha; Beal, Catena of
    Buddhist Scriptures, 153—“Buddhism declares itself ignorant of any
    mode of personal existence compatible with the idea of spiritual
    perfection, and so far it is ignorant of God”; 157—“The earliest
    idea of _Nirvana_ seems to have included in it no more than the
    enjoyment of a state of rest consequent on the extinction of all
    causes of sorrow.” The impossibility of satisfying the human heart
    with a system of atheism is shown by the fact that the Buddha
    himself has been apotheosized to furnish an object of worship.
    Thus Buddhism has reverted to Brahmanism.

    Monier Williams: “Mohammed has as much claim to be ‘the Light of
    Asia’ as Buddha has. What light from Buddha? Not about the heart’s
    depravity, or the origin of sin, or the goodness, justice,
    holiness, fatherhood of God, or the remedy for sin, but only the
    ridding self from suffering by ridding self from life—a doctrine
    of merit, of self-trust, of pessimism, and annihilation of
    personality.” Christ, himself personal, loving and holy, shows
    that God is a person of holiness and love. Robert Browning: “He
    that created love, shall not he love?” Only because Jesus is God,
    have we a gospel for the world. The claim that Buddha is “the
    Light of Asia” reminds one of the man who declared the moon to be
    of greater value than the sun, because it gives light in the
    darkness when it is needed, while the sun gives light in the
    daytime when it is not needed.

    3. THE GREEK SYSTEMS. _Pythagoras_ (584-504) based morality upon
    the principle of numbers. “Moral good was identified with unity;
    evil with multiplicity; virtue was harmony of the soul and its
    likeness to God. The aim of life was to make it represent the
    beautiful order of the Universe. The whole practical tendency of
    Pythagoreanism was ascetic, and included a strict self-control and
    an earnest culture.” Here already we seem to see the defect of
    Greek morality in confounding the good with the beautiful, and in
    making morality a mere self-development. Matheson, Messages of the
    Old Religions: Greece reveals the intensity of the hour, the value
    of the present life, the beauty of the world that now is. Its
    religion is the religion of beautiful humanity. It anticipates the
    new heaven and the new earth. Rome on the other hand stood for
    union, incorporation, a universal kingdom. But its religion
    deified only the Emperor, not all humanity. It was the religion,
    not of love, but of power, and it identified the church with the
    state.

    _Socrates_ (469-400) made knowledge to be virtue. Morality
    consisted in subordinating irrational desires to rational
    knowledge. Although here we rise above a subjectively determined
    good as the goal of moral effort, we have no proper sense of sin.
    Knowledge, and not love, is the motive. If men know the right,
    they will do the right. This is a great overvaluing of knowledge.
    With Socrates, teaching is a sort of midwifery—not depositing
    information in the mind, but drawing out the contents of our own
    inner consciousness. Lewis Morris describes it as the life-work of
    Socrates to “doubt our doubts away.” Socrates holds it right to
    injure one’s enemies. He shows proud self-praise in his dying
    address. He warns against pederasty, yet compromises with it. He
    does not insist upon the same purity of family life which Homer
    describes in Ulysses and Penelope. Charles Kingsley, in Alton
    Locke, remarks that the spirit of the Greek tragedy was ’man
    mastered by circumstance’; that of modern tragedy is “man
    mastering circumstance.” But the Greek tragedians, while showing
    man thus mastered, do still represent him as inwardly free, as in
    the case of Prometheus, and this sense of human freedom and
    responsibility appears to some extent in Socrates.

    _Plato_ (430-348) held that morality is pleasure in the good, as
    the truly beautiful, and that knowledge produces virtue. The good
    is likeness to God,—here we have glimpses of an extra-human goal
    and model. The body, like all matter, being inherently evil, is a
    hindrance to the soul,—here we have a glimpse of hereditary
    depravity. But Plato “reduced moral evil to the category of
    natural evil.” He failed to recognize God as creator and master of
    matter; failed to recognize man’s depravity as due to his own
    apostasy from God; failed to found morality on the divine will
    rather than on man’s own consciousness. He knew nothing of a
    common humanity, and regarded virtue as only for the few. As there
    was no common sin, so there was no common redemption. Plato
    thought to reach God by intellect alone, when only conscience and
    heart could lead to him. He believed in a freedom of the soul in a
    preëxistent state where a choice was made between good and evil,
    but he believed that, after that antemundane decision had been
    made, the fates determined men’s acts and lives irreversibly.
    Reason drives two horses, appetite and emotion, but their course
    has been predetermined.

    Man acts as reason prompts. All sin is ignorance. There is nothing
    in this life but determinism. Martineau, Types, 13, 48, 49, 78,
    88—Plato in general has no proper notion of responsibility; he
    reduces moral evil to the category of natural evil. His Ideas with
    one exception are not causes. Cause is mind, and mind is the Good.
    The Good is the apex and crown of Ideas. The Good is the highest
    Idea, and this highest Idea is a Cause. Plato has a feeble
    conception of personality, whether in God or in man. Yet God is a
    person in whatever sense man is a person, and man’s personality is
    reflective self-consciousness. Will in God or man is not so clear.
    The Right is dissolved into the Good. Plato advocated infanticide
    and the killing off of the old and the helpless.

    _Aristotle_ (384-322) leaves out of view even the element of
    God-likeness and antemundane evil which Plato so dimly recognized,
    and makes morality the fruit of mere rational self-consciousness.
    He grants evil proclivities, but he refuses to call them immoral.
    He advocates a certain freedom of will, and he recognizes inborn
    tendencies which war against this freedom, but how these
    tendencies originated he cannot say, nor how men may be delivered
    from them. Not all can be moral; the majority must be restrained
    by fear. He finds in God no motive, and love to God is not so much
    as mentioned as the source of moral action. A proud, composed,
    self-centered, and self-contained man is his ideal character. See
    Nicomachean Ethics, 7:6, and 10:10; Wuttke, Christian Ethics,
    1:92-126. Alexander, Theories of Will, 39-54—Aristotle held that
    desire and reason are the springs of action. Yet he did not hold
    that knowledge of itself would make men virtuous. He was a
    determinist. Actions are free only in the sense of being devoid of
    external compulsion. He viewed slavery as both rational and right.
    Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 76—“While Aristotle attributed
    to the State a more complete personality than it really possessed,
    he did not grasp the depth and meaning of the personality of the
    individual.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 289—Aristotle had
    no conception of the unity of humanity. His doctrine of unity did
    not extend beyond the State. “He said that ‘the whole is before
    the parts,’ but he meant by ‘the whole’ only the pan-Hellenic
    world, the commonwealth of Greeks; he never thought of humanity,
    and the word ‘mankind’ never fell from his lips. He could not
    understand the unity of humanity, because he knew nothing of
    Christ, its organizing principle.” On Aristotle’s conception of
    God, see James Ten Broeke, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892—God is
    recognized as personal, yet he is only the Greek Reason, and not
    the living, loving, providential Father of the Hebrew revelation.
    Aristotle substitutes the logical for the dynamical in his dealing
    with the divine causality. God is thought, not power.

    _Epicurus_ (342-270) regarded happiness, the subjective feeling of
    pleasure, as the highest criterion of truth and good. A prudent
    calculating for prolonged pleasure is the highest wisdom. He
    regards only this life. Concern for retribution and for a future
    existence is folly. If there are gods, they have no concern for
    men. “Epicurus, on pretense of consulting for their ease,
    complimented the gods, and bowed them out of existence.” Death is
    the falling apart of material atoms and the eternal cessation of
    consciousness. The miseries of this life are due to imperfection
    in the fortuitously constructed universe. The more numerous these
    undeserved miseries, the greater our right to seek pleasure.
    Alexander, Theories of the Will, 55-75—The Epicureans held that
    the soul is composed of atoms, yet that the will is free. The
    atoms of the soul are excepted from the law of cause and effect.
    An atom may decline or deviate in the universal descent, and this
    is the Epicurean idea of freedom. This indeterminism was held by
    all the Greek sceptics, materialists though they were.

    _Zeno_, the founder of the Stoic philosophy (340-264), regarded
    virtue as the only good. Thought is to subdue nature. The free
    spirit is self-legislating, self-dependent, self-sufficient.
    Thinking, not feeling, is the criterion of the true and the good.
    Pleasure is the consequence, not the end of moral action. There is
    an irreconcilable antagonism of existence. Man cannot reform the
    world, but he can make himself perfect. Hence an unbounded pride
    in virtue. The sage never repents. There is not the least
    recognition of the moral corruption of mankind. There is no
    objective divine ideal, or revealed divine will. The Stoic
    discovers moral law only within, and never suspects his own moral
    perversion. Hence he shows self-control and justice, but never
    humility or love. He needs no compassion or forgiveness, and he
    grants none to others. Virtue is not an actively outworking
    character, but a passive resistance to irrational reality. Man may
    retreat into himself. The Stoic is indifferent to pleasure and
    pain, not because he believes in a divine government, or in a
    divine love for mankind, but as a proud defiance of the irrational
    world. He has no need of God or of redemption. As the Epicurean
    gives himself to enjoyment of the world, the Stoic gives himself
    to contempt of the world. In all afflictions, each can say, “The
    door is open.” To the Epicurean, the refuge is intoxication; to
    the Stoic, the refuge is suicide: “If the house smokes, quit it.”
    Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:62-161, from whom much of this account
    of the Greeks systems is condensed, describes Epicureanism and
    Stoicism as alike making morality subjective, although
    Epicureanism regarded spirit as determined by nature, while
    Stoicism regarded nature as determined by spirit.

    The Stoics were materialists and pantheists. Though they speak of
    a personal God, this is a figure of speech. False opinion is at
    the root of all vice. Chrysippus denied what we now call the
    liberty of indifference, saying that there could not be an effect
    without a cause. Man is enslaved to passion. The Stoics could not
    explain how a vicious man could become virtuous. The result is
    apathy. Men act only according to character, and this a doctrine
    of fate. The Stoic indifference or apathy in misfortune is not a
    bearing of it at all, but rather a cowardly retreat from it. It is
    in the actual suffering of evil that Christianity finds “the soul
    of good.” The office of misfortune is disciplinary and purifying;
    see Seth, Ethical Principles, 417. “The shadow of the sage’s self,
    projected on vacancy, was called God, and, as the sage had long
    since abandoned interest in practical life, he expected his
    Divinity to do the same.”

    The Stoic reverenced God just because of his unapproachable
    majesty. Christianity sees in God a Father, a Redeemer, a carer
    for our minute wants, a deliverer from our sin. It teaches us to
    see in Christ the humanity of the divine, affinity with God, God’s
    supreme interest in his handiwork. For the least of his creatures
    Christ died. Kinship with God gives dignity to man. The
    individuality that Stoicism lost in the whole, Christianity makes
    the end of the creation. The State exists to develop and promote
    it. Paul took up and infused new meaning into certain phrases of
    the Stoic philosophy about the freedom and royalty of the wise
    man, just as John adopted and glorified certain phrases of
    Alexandrian philosophy about the Word. Stoicism was lonely and
    pessimistic. The Stoics said that the best thing was not to be
    born; the next best thing was to die. Because Stoicism had no God
    of helpfulness and sympathy, its virtue was mere conformity to
    nature, majestic egoism and self-complacency. In the Roman
    _Epictetus_ (89), _Seneca_ (65), and _Marcus Aurelius_ (121-180),
    the religious element comes more into the foreground, and virtue
    appears once more as God-likeness; but it is possible that this
    later Stoicism was influenced by Christianity. On Marcus Aurelius,
    see New Englander, July, 1881:415-431; Capes, Stoicism.

    4. SYSTEMS OF WESTERN ASIA. _Zoroaster_ (1000 B. C. ?), the
    founder of the Parsees, was a dualist, at least so far as to
    explain the existence of evil and of good by the original presence
    in the author of all things of two opposing principles. Here is
    evidently a limit put upon the sovereignty and holiness of God.
    Man is not perfectly dependent upon him, nor is God’s will an
    unconditional law for his creatures. As opposed to the Indian
    systems, Zoroaster’s insistence upon the divine personality
    furnished a far better basis for a vigorous and manly morality.
    Virtue was to be won by hard struggle of free beings against evil.
    But then, on the other hand, this evil was conceived as originally
    due, not to finite beings themselves, but either to an evil deity
    who warred against the good, or to an evil principle in the one
    deity himself. The burden of guilt is therefore shifted from man
    to his maker. Morality becomes subjective and unsettled. Not love
    to God or imitation of God, but rather self-love and
    self-development, furnish the motive and aim of morality. No
    fatherhood or love is recognized in the deity, and other things
    besides God (_e. g._, fire) are worshiped. There can be no depth
    to the consciousness of sin, and no hope of divine deliverance.

    It is the one merit of Parseeism that it recognizes the moral
    conflict of the world; its error is that it carries this moral
    conflict into the very nature of God. We can apply to Parseeism
    the words of the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards to the
    Buddhists of Japan: “All religions are expressions of man’s sense
    of dependence, but only one provides fellowship with God. All
    religions speak of a higher truth, but only one speaks of that
    truth as found in a loving personal God, our Father. All religions
    show man’s helplessness, but only one tells of a divine Savior,
    who offers to man forgiveness of sin, and salvation through his
    death, and who is now a living person, working in and with all who
    believe in him, to make them holy and righteous and pure.”
    Matheson, Messages of Old Religions, says that Parseeism
    recognizes an obstructive element in the nature of God himself.
    Moral evil is reality; but there is no reconciliation, nor is it
    shown that all things work together for good. See Wuttke,
    Christian Ethics, 1:47-54; Faiths of the World (St. Giles
    Lectures), 109-144; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 25;
    Whitney on the Avesta, in Oriental and Linguistic Studies.

    _Mohammed_ (570-632 A. D.), the founder of Islam, gives us in the
    Koran a system containing four dogmas of fundamental immorality,
    namely, polygamy, slavery, persecution, and suppression of private
    judgement. Mohammedanism is heathenism in monotheistic form. Its
    good points are its conscientiousness and its relation to God. It
    has prospered because it has preached the unity of God, and
    because it is a book-religion. But both these it got from Judaism
    and Christianity. It has appropriated the Old Testament saints and
    even Jesus. But it denies the death of Christ and sees no need of
    atonement. The power of sin is not recognized. The idea of sin, in
    Moslems, is emptied of all positive content. Sin is simply a
    falling short, accounted for by the weakness and shortsightedness
    of man, inevitable in the fatalistic universe, or not remembered
    in wrath by the indulgent and merciful Father. Forgiveness is
    indulgence, and the conception of God is emptied of the quality of
    justice. Evil belongs only to the individual, not to the race. Man
    attains the favor of God by good works, based on prophetic
    teaching. Morality is not a fruit of salvation, but a means. There
    is no penitence or humility, but only self-righteousness; and this
    self-righteousness is consistent with great sensuality, unlimited
    divorce, and with absolute despotism in family, civil and
    religious affairs. There is no knowledge of the fatherhood of God
    or of the brotherhood of man. In all the Koran, there is no such
    declaration as that “God so loved the world”_ (John 3:16)_.

    The submission of Islam is submission to an arbitrary will, not to
    a God of love. There is no basing of morality in love. The highest
    good is the sensuous happiness of the individual. God and man are
    external to one another. Mohammed is a teacher but not a priest.
    Mozley, Miracles, 140, 141—“Mohammed had no faith in human nature.
    There were two things which he thought men could do, and would do,
    for the glory of God—transact religious _forms_, and _fight_, and
    upon these two points he was severe; but within the sphere of
    common practical life, where man’s great trial lies, his code
    exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accomodates his
    rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by
    the accommodation which he adopts.... ‘Human nature is weak,’ said
    he.” Lord Houghton: The Koran is all wisdom, all law, all
    religion, for all time. Dead men bow before a dead God. “Though
    the world rolls on from change to change, And realms of thought
    expand, The letter stands without expanse or range, Stiff as a
    dead man’s hand.” Wherever Mohammedanism has gone, it has either
    found a desert or made one. Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., Dec.
    1882:866—“The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey is to
    abandon progress.” Muir, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no.
    14—“Mohammedanism reduces men to a dead level of social
    depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism. Islam is the work of
    man; Christianity of God.” See also Faiths of the World (St. Giles
    Lectures, Second Series), 361-396; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great
    Religions, 1:448-488; 280-317; Great Religions of the World,
    published by the Harpers; Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God.


3. The person and character of Christ.


A. The conception of Christ’s person as presenting deity and humanity
indissolubly united, and the conception of Christ’s character, with its
faultless and all-comprehending excellence, cannot be accounted for upon
any other hypothesis than that they were historical realities.


    The stylobate of the Parthenon at Athens rises about three inches
    in the middle of the 101 feet of the front, and four inches in the
    middle of the 228 feet of the flanks. A nearly parallel line is
    found in the entablature. The axes of the columns lean inward
    nearly three inches in their height of 34 feet, thus giving a sort
    of pyramidal character to the structure. Thus the architect
    overcame the apparent sagging of horizontal lines, and at the same
    time increased the apparent height of the edifice; see Murray,
    Handbook of Greece, 5th ed., 1884, 1:308, 309; Ferguson, Handbook
    of Architecture, 268-270. The neglect to counteract this optical
    illusion has rendered the Madeleine in Paris a stiff and
    ineffective copy of the Parthenon. The Galilean peasant who should
    minutely describe these peculiarities of the Parthenon would
    prove, not only that the edifice was a historical reality, but
    that he had actually seen it. Bruce, Apologetics, 343—“In reading
    the memoirs of the evangelists, you feel as one sometimes feels in
    a picture-gallery. Your eye alights on the portrait of a person
    whom you do not know. You look at it intently for a few moments
    and then remark to a companion: ‘That must be like the
    original,—it is so life-like.’ ” Theodore Parker: “It would take a
    Jesus to forge a Jesus.” See Row, Bampton Lectures, 1877:178-219,
    and in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 22; F. W. Farrar, Witness of
    History to Christ; Barry, Boyle Lecture on Manifold Witness for
    Christ.


(_a_) No source can be assigned from which the evangelists could have
derived such a conception. The Hindu avatars were only temporary unions of
deity with humanity. The Greeks had men half-deified, but no unions of God
and man. The monotheism of the Jews found the person of Christ a perpetual
stumbling-block. The Essenes were in principle more opposed to
Christianity than the Rabbinists.


    Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, 279—“The coëxistence of a perfect
    man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two
    coëxist, the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical
    standard sought.” We must conclude that the perfect manhood of
    Christ is a miracle, and the greatest of miracles. Bruce,
    Apologetics, 346, 351—“When Jesus asks: ‘Why callest thou me
    good?’ he means: ‘Learn first what goodness is, and call no man
    good till you are sure that he deserves it.’ Jesus’ goodness was
    entirely free from religious scrupulosity; it was distinguished by
    humanity; it was full of modesty and lowliness.... Buddhism has
    flourished 2000 years, though little is known of its founder.
    Christianity might have been so perpetuated, but it is not so. I
    want to be sure that the ideal has been embodied in an actual
    life. Otherwise it is only poetry, and the obligation to conform
    to it ceases.” For comparison of Christ’s incarnation with Hindu,
    Greek, Jewish, and Essene ideas, see Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of
    Christ, Introduction. On the Essenes, see Herzog, Encyclop., art,:
    Essener; Pressensé, Jesus Christ, Life, Times and Work, 84-87;
    Lightfoot on Colossians, 349-419; Godet, Lectures in Defence of
    the Christian Faith.


(_b_) No mere human genius, and much less the genius of Jewish fishermen,
could have originated this conception. Bad men invent only such characters
as they sympathize with. But Christ’s character condemns badness. Such a
portrait could not have been drawn without supernatural aid. But such aid
would not have been given to fabrication. The conception can be explained
only by granting that Christ’s person and character were historical
realities.


    Between Pilate and Titus 30,000 Jews are said to have been
    crucified around the walls of Jerusalem. Many of these were young
    men. What makes one of them stand out on the pages of history?
    There are two answers: The character of Jesus was a perfect
    character, and, He was God as well as man. Gore, Incarnation,
    63—“The Christ of the gospels, if he be not true to history,
    represents a combined effort of the creative imagination without
    parallel in literature. But the literary characteristics of
    Palestine in the first century make the hypothesis of such an
    effort morally impossible.” The Apocryphal gospels show us what
    mere imagination was capable of producing. That the portrait of
    Christ is not puerile, inane, hysterical, selfishly assertive, and
    self-contradictory, can be due only to the fact that it is the
    photograph from real life.

    For a remarkable exhibition of the argument from the character of
    Jesus, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332.
    Bushnell mentions the originality and vastness of Christ’s plan,
    yet its simplicity and practical adaptation; his moral traits of
    independence, compassion, meekness, wisdom, zeal, humility,
    patience; the combination in him of seemingly opposite qualities.
    With all his greatness, he was condescending and simple; he was
    unworldly, yet not austere; he had strong feelings, yet was
    self-possessed; he had indignation toward sin, yet compassion
    toward the sinner; he showed devotion to his work, yet calmness
    under opposition; universal philanthropy, yet susceptibility to
    private attachments; the authority of a Savior and Judge, yet the
    gratitude and the tenderness of a son; the most elevated devotion,
    yet a life of activity and exertion. See chapter on The Moral
    Miracle, in Bruce, Miraculous Element of the Gospels, 43-78.


B. The acceptance and belief in the New Testament descriptions of Jesus
Christ cannot be accounted for except upon the ground that the person and
character described had an actual existence.

(_a_) If these descriptions were false, there were witnesses still living
who had known Christ and who would have contradicted them. (_b_) There was
no motive to induce acceptance of such false accounts, but every motive to
the contrary. (_c_) The success of such falsehoods could be explained only
by supernatural aid, but God would never have thus aided falsehood. This
person and character, therefore, must have been not fictitious but real;
and if real, then Christ’s words are true, and the system of which his
person and character are a part is a revelation from God.


    “The counterfeit may for a season Deceive the wide earth; But the
    lie waxing great comes to labor, And truth has its birth.” Matthew
    Arnold, The Better Part: “Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us
    see, If we then too can be Such men as he!” When the blatant
    sceptic declared: “I do not believe that such a man as Jesus
    Christ ever lived,” George Warren merely replied: “I wish I were
    like him!” Dwight L. Moody was called a hypocrite, but the
    stalwart evangelist answered: “Well, suppose I am. How does that
    make your case any better? I know some pretty mean things about
    myself; but you cannot say anything against my Master.” Goethe:
    “Let the culture of the spirit advance forever; let the human
    spirit broaden itself as it will; yet it will never go beyond the
    height and moral culture of Christianity, as it glitters and
    shines in the gospels.”

    Renan, Life of Jesus: “Jesus founded the absolute religion,
    excluding nothing, determining nothing, save its essence.... The
    foundation of the true religion is indeed his work. After him,
    there is nothing left but to develop and fructify.” And a
    Christian scholar has remarked: “It is an astonishing proof of the
    divine guidance vouchsafed to the evangelists that no man, of
    their time or since, has been able to touch the picture of Christ
    without debasing it.” We may find an illustration of this in the
    words of Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism, 207—“Jesus’ doctrine
    of marriage was ascetic, his doctrine of property was communistic,
    his doctrine of charity was sentimental, his doctrine of
    non-resistance was such as commends itself to Tolstoi, but not to
    many others of our time. With the example of Jesus, it is the same
    as with his teachings. Followed unreservedly, would it not justify
    those who say: ‘The hope of the race is in its extinction’; and
    bring all our joys and sorrows to a sudden end?” To this we may
    answer in the words of Huxley, who declares that Jesus Christ is
    “the noblest ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshiped.”
    Gordon, Christ of To-Day, 179—“The question is not whether Christ
    is good enough to represent the Supreme Being, but whether the
    Supreme Being is good enough to have Christ for his
    representative. John Stuart Mill looks upon the Christian religion
    as the worship of Christ, rather than the worship of God, and in
    this way he explains the beneficence of its influence.”

    John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 254—“The most valuable part
    of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by
    holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model
    for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and
    can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than
    God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of
    perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the
    God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so
    great and salutary hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may
    be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left:
    a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his
    followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal
    preaching.... Who among his disciples, or among their proselytes,
    was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of
    imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?... About
    the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal
    originality combined with profundity of insight which, if we
    abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where
    something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of
    Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in
    his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime
    genius of whom our species can boast. When this preëminent genius
    is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral
    reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth,
    religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on
    this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor
    even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a
    better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into
    the concrete than the endeavor so to live that Christ would
    approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of
    the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ
    actually was ... a man charged with a special, express and unique
    commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may
    well conclude that the influences of religion on the character,
    which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost
    against the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and
    that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a
    firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and
    rectitude of the morality they sanction.” See also Ullmann,
    Sinlessness of Jesus; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 129-157;
    Schaff, Person of Christ; Young, The Christ in History; George
    Dana Boardman, The Problem of Jesus.


4. The testimony of Christ to himself—as being a messenger from God and as
being one with God.


Only one personage in history has claimed to teach absolute truth, to be
one with God, and to attest his divine mission by works such as only God
could perform.

A. This testimony cannot be accounted for upon the hypothesis that Jesus
was an intentional deceiver: for (_a_) the perfectly consistent holiness
of his life; (_b_) the unwavering confidence with which he challenged
investigation of his claims and staked all upon the result; (_c_) the vast
improbability of a lifelong lie in the avowed interests of truth; and
(_d_) the impossibility that deception should have wrought such blessing
to the world,—all show that Jesus was no conscious impostor.


    Fisher, Essays on the Supernat. Origin of Christianity,
    515-538—Christ knew how vast his claims were, yet he staked all
    upon them. Though others doubted, he never doubted himself. Though
    persecuted unto death, he never ceased his consistent testimony.
    Yet he lays claim to humility: _Mat. 11:29—_“I am meek and lowly
    in heart.” How can we reconcile with humility his constant
    self-assertion? We answer that Jesus’ self-assertion was
    absolutely essential to his mission, for he and the truth were
    one: he could not assert the truth without asserting himself, and
    he could not assert himself without asserting the truth. Since he
    was the truth, he needed to say so, for men’s sake and for the
    truth’s sake, and he could be meek and lowly in heart in saying
    so. Humility is not self-depreciation, but only the judging of
    ourselves according to God’s perfect standard. “Humility” is
    derived from “_humus_”. It is the coming down from airy and vain
    self-exploitation to the solid ground, the hard-pan, of actual
    fact.

    God requires of us only so much humility as is consistent with
    truth. The self-glorification of the egotist is nauseating,
    because it indicates gross ignorance or misrepresentation of self.
    But it is a duty to be self-asserting, just so far as we represent
    the truth and righteousness of God. There is a noble
    self-assertion which is perfectly consistent with humility. Job
    must stand for his integrity. Paul’s humility was not of the Uriah
    Heep variety. When occasion required, he could assert his manhood
    and his rights, as at Philippi and at the Castle of Antonia. So
    the Christian should frankly say out the truth that is in him.
    Each Christian has an experience of his own, and should tell it to
    others. In testifying to the truth he is only following the
    example of “Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the
    good confession”_ (1 Tim. 6:13)_.


B. Nor can Jesus’ testimony to himself be explained upon the hypothesis
that he was self-deceived: for this would argue (_a_) a weakness and folly
amounting to positive insanity. But his whole character and life exhibit a
calmness, dignity, equipoise, insight, self-mastery, utterly inconsistent
with such a theory. Or it would argue (_b_) a self-ignorance and
self-exaggeration which could spring only from the deepest moral
perversion. But the absolute purity of his conscience, the humility of his
spirit, the self-denying beneficence of his life, show this hypothesis to
be incredible.


    Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 39—If he were man, then to
    demand that all the world should bow down to him would be worthy
    of scorn like that which we feel for some straw-crowned monarch of
    Bedlam. Forrest, The Christ of History and of Experience, 22,
    76—Christ never united with his disciples in prayer. He went up
    into the mountain to pray, but not to pray _with them_: _Luke
    9:18—_“as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him.” The
    consciousness of preëxistence is the indispensable precondition of
    the total demand which he makes in the Synoptics. Adamson, The
    Mind in Christ, 81, 82—We value the testimony of Christians to
    their communion with God. Much more should we value the testimony
    of Christ. Only one who, first being divine, also knew that he was
    divine, could reveal heavenly things with the clearness and
    certainty that belong to the utterances of Jesus. In him we have
    something very different from the momentary flashes of insight
    which leave us in all the greater darkness.

    Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 5—“Self-respect is bottomed upon the
    ability to become what one desires to be; and, if the ability
    steadily falls short of the task, the springs of self-respect dry
    up; the motives of happy and heroic action wither. Science, art,
    generous civic life, and especially religion, come to man’s
    rescue,”—showing him his true greatness and breadth of being in
    God. The State is the individual’s larger self. Humanity, and even
    the universe, are parts of him. It is the duty of man to enable
    all men to be men. It is possible for men not only truthfully but
    also rationally to assert themselves, even in earthly affairs.
    Chatham to the Duke of Devonshire: “My Lord, I believe I can save
    this country, and that no one else can.” Leonardo da Vinci, in his
    thirtieth year, to the Duke of Milan: “I can carry through every
    kind of work in sculpture, in clay, marble, and bronze; also in
    painting I can execute everything that can be demanded, as well as
    any one whosoever.”

    Horace: “Exegi monumentum ære perennius.” Savage, Life beyond
    Death, 209—A famous old minister said once, when a young and
    zealous enthusiast tried to get him to talk, and failing, burst
    out with, “Have you no religion at all?” “None _to speak of_,” was
    the reply. When Jesus perceived a tendency in his disciples to
    self-glorification, he urged silence; but when he saw the tendency
    to introspection and inertness, he bade them proclaim what he had
    done for them (_Mat. 8:4_; _Mark 5:19_). It is never right for the
    Christian to proclaim himself; but, if Christ had not proclaimed
    himself, the world could never have been saved. Rush Rhees. Life
    of Jesus of Nazareth, 235-237—“In the teaching of Jesus, two
    topics have the leading place—the Kingdom of God, and himself. He
    sought to be Lord, rather than Teacher only. Yet the Kingdom is
    not one of power, national and external, but one of fatherly love
    and of mutual brotherhood.”

    Did Jesus do anything for effect, or as a mere example? Not so.
    His baptism had meaning for him as a consecration of himself to
    death for the sins of the world, and his washing of the disciples’
    feet was the fit beginning of the paschal supper and the symbol of
    his laying aside his heavenly glory to purify us for the marriage
    supper of the Lamb. Thomas à Kempis: “Thou art none the holier
    because thou art praised, and none the worse because thou art
    censured. What thou art, that thou art, and it avails thee naught
    to be called any better than thou art in the sight of God.” Jesus’
    consciousness of his absolute sinlessness and of his perfect
    communion with God is the strongest of testimonies to his divine
    nature and mission. See Theological Eclectic, 4:137; Liddon, Our
    Lord’s Divinity, 153; J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, 253; Young,
    Christ of History; Divinity of Jesus Christ, by Andover
    Professors, 37-62.


If Jesus, then, cannot be charged with either mental or moral unsoundness,
his testimony must be true, and he himself must be one with God and the
revealer of God to men.


    Neither Confucius nor Buddha claimed to be divine, or the organs
    of divine revelation, though both were moral teachers and
    reformers. Zoroaster and Pythagoras apparently believed themselves
    charged with a divine mission, though their earliest biographers
    wrote centuries after their death. Socrates claimed nothing for
    himself which was beyond the power of others. Mohammed believed
    his extraordinary states of body and soul to be due to the action
    of celestial beings; he gave forth the Koran as “a warning to all
    creatures,” and sent a summons to the King of Persia and the
    Emperor of Constantinople, as well as to other potentates, to
    accept the religion of Islam; yet he mourned when he died that he
    could not have opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Koran
    and of his own life. For Confucius or Buddha, Zoroaster or
    Pythagoras, Socrates or Mohammed to claim all power in heaven and
    earth, would show insanity or moral perversion. But this is
    precisely what Jesus claimed. He was either mentally or morally
    unsound, or his testimony is true. See Baldensperger,
    Selbstbewusstsein Jesu; E. Ballentine, Christ his own Witness.



IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.


1. _The rapid progress of the gospel in the first centuries of our era
shows its divine origin._

A. That Paganism should have been in three centuries supplanted by
Christianity, is an acknowledged wonder of history.


    The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was the most
    astonishing revolution of faith and worship ever known. Fifty
    years after the death of Christ, there were churches in all the
    principal cities of the Roman Empire. Nero (37-68) found (as
    Tacitus declares) an “ingens multitudo” of Christians to
    persecute. Pliny writes to Trajan (52-117) that they “pervaded not
    merely the cities but the villages and country places, so that the
    temples were nearly deserted.” Tertullian (160-230) writes: “We
    are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your places, your
    cities, your islands, your castles, your towns, your
    council-houses, even your camps, your tribes, your senate, your
    forum. We have left you nothing but your temples.” In the time of
    the emperor Valerian (253-268), the Christians constituted half
    the population of Rome. The conversion of the emperor Constantine
    (272-337) brought the whole empire, only 300 years after Jesus’
    death, under the acknowledged sway of the gospel. See McIlvaine
    and Alexander, Evidences of Christianity.


B. The wonder is the greater when we consider the obstacles to the
progress of Christianity:

(_a_) The scepticism of the cultivated classes; (_b_) the prejudice and
hatred of the common people; and (_c_) the persecutions set on foot by
government.


    (_a_) Missionaries even now find it difficult to get a hearing
    among the cultivated classes of the heathen. But the gospel
    appeared in the most enlightened age of antiquity—the Augustan age
    of literature and historical inquiry. Tacitus called the religion
    of Christ “exitiabilis superstitio”—“quos per flagitia invisos
    vulgus Christianos appellabat.” Pliny: “Nihil aliud inveni quam
    superstitionem pravam et immodicam.” If the gospel had been false,
    its preachers would not have ventured into the centres of
    civilization and refinement; or if they had, they would have been
    detected. (_b)_ Consider the interweaving of heathen religions
    with all the relations of life. Christians often had to meet the
    furious zeal and blind rage of the mob,—as at Lystra and Ephesus.
    (_c_) Rawlinson, in his Historical Evidences, claims that the
    Catacombs of Rome comprised nine hundred miles of streets and
    seven millions of graves within a period of four hundred years—a
    far greater number than could have died a natural death—and that
    vast multitudes of these must have been massacred for their faith.
    The Encyclopædia Britannica, however, calls the estimate of De
    Marchi, which Rawlinson appears to have taken as authority, a
    great exaggeration. Instead of nine hundred miles of streets,
    Northcote has three hundred fifty. The number of interments to
    correspond would be less than three millions. The Catacombs began
    to be deserted by the time of Jerome. The times when they were
    universally used by Christians could have been hardly more than
    two hundred years. They did not begin in sand-pits. There were
    three sorts of tufa: (1) rocky, used for quarrying and too hard
    for Christian purposes; (2) sandy, used for sand-pits, too soft to
    permit construction of galleries and tombs; (3) granular, that
    used by Christians. The existence of the Catacombs must have been
    well known to the heathen. After Pope Damasus the exaggerated
    reverence for them began. They were decorated and improved. Hence
    many paintings are of later date than 400, and testify to papal
    polity, not to that of early Christianity. The bottles contain,
    not blood, but wine of the eucharist celebrated at the funeral.

    Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 256-258, calls attention
    to Matthew Arnold’s description of the needs of the heathen world,
    yet his blindness to the true remedy: “On that hard pagan world
    disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust
    Made human life a hell. In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The
    Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the
    Appian Way; He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crowned
    his hair with flowers,—No easier nor no quicker passed The
    impracticable hours.” Yet with mingled pride and sadness, Mr.
    Arnold fastidiously rejects more heavenly nutriment. Of Christ he
    says: “Now he is dead! Far hence he lies, In the lorn Syrian town,
    And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.”
    He sees that the millions “Have such need of joy, And joy whose
    grounds are true, And joy that should all hearts employ As when
    the past was new!” The want of the world is: “One mighty wave of
    thought and joy, Lifting mankind amain.” But the poet sees no
    ground of hope: “Fools! that so often here, Happiness mocked our
    prayer, I think might make us fear A like event elsewhere,—Make us
    not fly to dreams, But moderate desire.” He sings of the time when
    Christianity was young: “Oh, had I lived in that great day, How
    had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My
    ravished spirit too!” But desolation of spirit does not bring with
    it any lowering of self-esteem, much less the humility which
    deplores the presence and power of evil in the soul, and sighs for
    deliverance. “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but
    they that are sick”_ (Mat. 9:12)_. Rejecting Christ, Matthew
    Arnold embodies in his verse “the sweetness, the gravity, the
    strength, the beauty, and the languor of death” (Hutton, Essays,
    302).


C. The wonder becomes yet greater when we consider the natural
insufficiency of the means used to secure this progress.

(_a_) The proclaimers of the gospel were in general unlearned men,
belonging to a despised nation. (_b_) The gospel which they proclaimed was
a gospel of salvation through faith in a Jew who had been put to an
ignominious death. (_c_) This gospel was one which excited natural
repugnance, by humbling men’s pride, striking at the root of their sins,
and demanding a life of labor and self-sacrifice. (_d_) The gospel,
moreover, was an exclusive one, suffering no rival and declaring itself to
be the universal and only religion.


    (_a_) The early Christians were more unlikely to make converts
    than modern Jews are to make proselytes, in vast numbers, in the
    principal cities of Europe and America. Celsus called Christianity
    “a religion of the rabble.” (_b_) The cross was the Roman
    gallows—the punishment of slaves. Cicero calls it “servitutis
    extremum summumque supplicium.” (_c_) There were many bad
    religions: why should the mild Roman Empire have persecuted the
    only good one? The answer is in part: Persecution did not
    originate with the official classes; it proceeded really from the
    people at large. Tacitus called Christians “haters of the human
    race.” Men recognized in Christianity a foe to all their previous
    motives, ideals, and aims. Altruism would break up the old
    society, for every effort that centered in self or in the present
    life was stigmatized by the gospel as unworthy. (_d_) Heathenism,
    being without creed or principle, did not care to propagate
    itself. “A man must be very weak,” said Celsus, “to imagine that
    Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, can ever unite
    under the same system of religion.” So the Roman government would
    allow no religion which did not participate in the worship of the
    State. “Keep yourselves from idols,” “We worship no other God,”
    was the Christian’s answer. Gibbon, Hist. Decline and Fall, 1:
    chap. 15, mentions as secondary causes: (1) the zeal of the Jews;
    (2) the doctrine of immortality; (3) miraculous powers; (4)
    virtues of early Christians; (5) privilege of participation in
    church government. But these causes were only secondary, and all
    would have been insufficient without an invincible persuasion of
    the truth of Christianity. For answer to Gibbon, see Perrone,
    Prelectiones Theologicæ, 1:133.

    Persecution destroys falsehood by leading its advocates to
    investigate the grounds of their belief; but it strengthens and
    multiplies truth by leading its advocates to see more clearly the
    foundations of their faith. There have been many conscientious
    persecutors: _John 16:2—_“They shall put you out of the
    synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall
    think that he offereth service unto God.” The Decretal of Pope
    Urban II reads: “For we do not count them to be homicides, to whom
    it may have happened, through their burning zeal against the
    excommunicated, to put any of them to death.” St. Louis, King of
    France, urged his officers “not to argue with the infidel, but to
    subdue unbelievers by thrusting the sword into them as far as it
    will go.” Of the use of the rack in England on a certain occasion,
    it was said that it was used with all the tenderness which the
    nature of the instrument would allow. This reminds us of Isaak
    Walton’s instruction as to the use of the frog: “Put the hook
    through his mouth and out at his gills; and, in so doing, use him
    as though you loved him.”

    Robert Browning, in his Easter Day, 275-288, gives us what
    purports to be A Martyr’s Epitaph, inscribed upon a wall of the
    Catacombs, which furnishes a valuable contrast to the sceptical
    and pessimistic strain of Matthew Arnold: “I was born sickly, poor
    and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl
    of price from Cæsar’s envy: therefore twice I fought with beasts,
    and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At length my
    own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at
    the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My
    soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me
    This testimony on the wall—For me, I have forgot it all.”


The progress of a religion so unprepossessing and uncompromising to
outward acceptance and dominion, within the space of three hundred years,
cannot be explained without supposing that divine power attended its
promulgation, and therefore that the gospel is a revelation from God.


    Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:527—“In the Kremlin Cathedral,
    whenever the Metropolitan advanced from the altar to give his
    blessing, there was always thrown under his feet a carpet
    embroidered with the eagle of old Pagan Rome, to indicate that the
    Christian Church and Empire of Constantinople had succeeded and
    triumphed over it.” On this whole section, see F. W. Farrar,
    Witness of History to Christ, 91; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy
    Scripture, 139.


2. _The beneficent influence of the Scripture doctrines and precepts,
wherever they have had sway, shows their divine origin._ Notice:

A. Their influence on civilization in general, securing a recognition of
principles which heathenism ignored, such as Garbett mentions: (_a_) the
importance of the individual; (_b_) the law of mutual love; (_c_) the
sacredness of human life; (_d_) the doctrine of internal holiness; (_e_)
the sanctity of home; (_f_) monogamy, and the religious equality of the
sexes; (_g_) identification of belief and practice.

The continued corruption of heathen lands shows that this change is not
due to any laws of merely natural progress. The confessions of ancient
writers show that it is not due to philosophy. Its only explanation is
that the gospel is the power of God.


    Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 177-186; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History
    to Christ, chap. on Christianity and the Individual; Brace, Gesta
    Christi, preface, vi—“Practices and principles implanted,
    stimulated or supported by Christianity, such as regard for the
    personality of the weakest and poorest; respect for woman; duty of
    each member of the fortunate classes to raise up the unfortunate;
    humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and
    even to the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty,
    oppression and slavery; the duty of personal purity, and the
    sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance; obligation of
    a more equitable division of the profits of labor, and of greater
    coöperation between employers and employed; the right of every
    human being to have the utmost opportunity of developing his
    faculties, and of all persons to enjoy equal political and social
    privileges; the principle that the injury of one nation is the
    injury of all, and the expediency and duty of unrestricted trade
    and intercourse between all countries; and finally, a profound
    opposition to war, a determination to limit its evils when
    existing, and to prevent its arising by means of international
    arbitration.”

    Max Müller: “The concept of humanity is the gift of Christ.”
    Guizot, History of Civilization, 1: Introd., tells us that in
    ancient times the individual existed for the sake of the State; in
    modern times the State exists for the sake of the individual. “The
    individual is a discovery of Christ.” On the relations between
    Christianity and Political Economy, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy
    and Religion, pages 443-460; on the cause of the changed view with
    regard to the relation of the individual to the State, see page
    207—“What has wrought the change? Nothing but the death of the Son
    of God. When it was seen that the smallest child and the lowest
    slave had a soul of such worth that Christ left his throne and
    gave up his life to save it, the world’s estimate of values
    changed, and modern history began.” Lucian, the Greek satirist and
    humorist, 160 A. D., said of the Christians: “Their first
    legislator [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they are all
    brothers.”

    It is this spirit of common brotherhood which has led in most
    countries to the abolition of cannibalism, infanticide,
    widow-burning, and slavery. Prince Bismarck: “For social
    well-being I ask nothing more than Christianity without
    phrases”—which means the religion of the deed rather than of the
    creed. Yet it is only faith in the historic revelation of God in
    Christ which has made Christian deeds possible. Shaler,
    Interpretation of Nature, 232-278—Aristotle, if he could look over
    society to-day, would think modern man a new species, in his going
    out in sympathy to distant peoples. This cannot be the result of
    natural selection, for self-sacrifice is not profitable to the
    individual. Altruistic emotions owe their existence to God.
    Worship of God has flowed back upon man’s emotions and has made
    them more sympathetic. Self-consciousness and sympathy, coming
    into conflict with brute emotions, originate the sense of sin.
    Then begins the war of the natural and the spiritual. Love of
    nature and absorption in others is the true _Nirvana_. Not
    physical science, but the humanities, are most needed in
    education.

    H. E. Hersey, Introd. to Browning’s Christmas Eve, 19— “Sidney
    Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries have spent their
    best power upon the development of personality. Literature,
    education, government, and religion, have learned to recognize the
    individual as the unit of force. Browning goes a step further. He
    declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very
    touch gives life and courage and potency. He turns to history for
    the inspiration of enduring virtue and the stimulus for sustained
    effort, and he finds both in Jesus Christ.” J. P. Cooke,
    Credentials of Science, 43—The change from the ancient philosopher
    to the modern investigator is the change from self-assertion to
    self-devotion, and the great revolution can be traced to the
    influence of Christianity and to the spirit of humility exhibited
    and inculcated by Christ. Lewes, Hist. Philos., 1:408—Greek
    morality never embraced any conception of humanity; no Greek ever
    attained to the sublimity of such a point of view.

    Kidd, Social Evolution, 165, 287—It is not intellect that has
    pushed forward the world of modern times: it is the altruistic
    feeling that originated in the cross and sacrifice of Christ. The
    French Revolution was made possible by the fact that humanitarian
    ideas had undermined the upper classes themselves, and effective
    resistance was impossible. Socialism would abolish the struggle
    for existence on the part of individuals. What security would be
    left for social progress? Removing all restrictions upon
    population ensures progressive deterioration. A non-socialist
    community would outstrip a socialist community where all the main
    wants of life were secure. The real tendency of society is to
    bring all the people into _rivalry_, not only on a footing of
    political equality, but on conditions of equal social
    opportunities. The State in future will interfere and control, in
    order to preserve or secure free competition, rather than to
    suspend it. The goal is not socialism or State management, but
    competition in which all shall have equal advantages. The
    evolution of human society is not primarily intellectual but
    religious. The winning races are the religious races. The Greeks
    had more intellect, but we have more civilization and progress.
    The Athenians were as far above us as we are above the negro race.
    Gladstone said that we are intellectually weaker than the men of
    the middle ages. When the intellectual development of any section
    of the race has for the time being outrun its ethical development,
    natural selection has apparently weeded it out, like any other
    unsuitable product. Evolution is developing _reverence_, with its
    allied qualities, mental energy, resolution, enterprise, prolonged
    and concentrated application, simple minded and single minded
    devotion to duty. Only religion can overpower selfishness and
    individualism and ensure social progress.


B. Their influence upon individual character and happiness, wherever they
have been tested in practice. This influence is seen (_a_) in the moral
transformations they have wrought—as in the case of Paul the apostle, and
of persons in every Christian community; (_b_) in the self-denying labors
for human welfare to which they have led—as in the case of Wilberforce and
Judson; (_c_) in the hopes they have inspired in times of sorrow and
death.

These beneficent fruits cannot have their source in merely natural causes,
apart from the truth and divinity of the Scriptures; for in that case the
contrary beliefs would be accompanied by the same blessings. But since we
find these blessings only in connection with Christian teaching, we may
justly consider this as their cause. This teaching, then, must be true,
and the Scriptures must be a divine revelation. Else God has made a lie to
be the greatest blessing to the race.


    The first Moravian missionaries to the West Indies walked six
    hundred miles to take ship, worked their passage, and then sold
    themselves as slaves, in order to get the privilege of preaching
    to the negroes.... The father of John G. Paton was a
    stocking-weaver. The whole family, with the exception of the very
    small children, worked from 6 a. m. to 10 p. m., with one hour for
    dinner at noon and a half hour each for breakfast and supper. Yet
    family prayer was regularly held twice a day. In these
    breathing-spells for daily meals John G. Paton took part of his
    time to study the Latin Grammar, that he might prepare himself for
    missionary work. When told by an uncle that, if he went to the New
    Hebrides, the cannibals would eat him, he replied: “You yourself
    will soon be dead and buried, and I had as lief be eaten by
    cannibals as by worms.” The Aneityumese raised arrow-root for
    fifteen years and sold it to pay the £1200 required for printing
    the Bible in their own language. Universal church-attendance and
    Bible-study make those South Sea Islands the most heavenly place
    on earth on the Sabbath-day.

    In 1839, twenty thousand negroes in Jamaica gathered to begin a
    life of freedom. Into a coffin were put the handcuffs and shackles
    of slavery, relics of the whipping-post and the scourge. As the
    clock struck twelve at night, a preacher cried with the first
    stroke: “The monster is dying!” and so with every stroke until the
    last, when he cried: “The monster is dead!” Then all rose from
    their knees and sang: “Praise God from whom all blessings
    flow!”... “What do you do that for?” said the sick Chinaman whom
    the medical missionary was tucking up in bed with a care which the
    patient had never received since he was a baby. The missionary
    took the opportunity to tell him of the love of Christ.... The
    aged Australian mother, when told that her two daughters,
    missionaries in China, had both of them been murdered by a heathen
    mob, only replied: “This decides me; I will go to China now
    myself, and try to teach those poor creatures what the love of
    Jesus means.”... Dr. William Ashmore: “Let one missionary die, and
    ten come to his funeral.” A shoemaker, teaching neglected boys and
    girls while he worked at his cobbler’s bench, gave the impulse to
    Thomas Guthrie’s life of faith.

    We must judge religions not by their ideals, but by their
    performances. Omar Khayyam and Mozoomdar give us beautiful
    thoughts, but the former is not Persia, nor is the latter India.
    “When the microscopic search of scepticism, which has hunted the
    heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a
    Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found
    on this planet a place ten miles square where a decent man can
    live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating
    his children, unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is
    reverenced, infancy protected, manhood respected, womanhood
    honored, and human life held in due regard—when sceptics can find
    such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of
    Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations
    and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order
    for the sceptical literati to move thither and to ventilate their
    views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the very
    religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may
    well hesitate before they rob the Christian of his hope and
    humanity of its faith in that Savior who alone has given that hope
    of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible,
    and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.” On the
    beneficent influence of the gospel, see Schmidt, Social Results of
    Early Christianity; D. J. Hill, The Social Influence of
    Christianity.




Chapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.



I. Definition of Inspiration.


Inspiration is that influence of the Spirit of God upon the minds of the
Scripture writers which made their writings the record of a progressive
divine revelation, sufficient, when taken together and interpreted by the
same Spirit who inspired them, to lead every honest inquirer to Christ and
to salvation.


    Notice the significance of each part of this definition: 1.
    Inspiration is an influence of the Spirit of God. It is not a
    merely naturalistic phenomenon or psychological vagary, but is
    rather the effect of the inworking of the personal divine Spirit.
    2. Yet inspiration is an influence upon the mind, and not upon the
    body. God secures his end by awakening man’s rational powers, and
    not by an external or mechanical communication. 3. The writings of
    inspired men are the record of a revelation. They are not
    themselves the revelation. 4. The revelation and the record are
    both progressive. Neither one is complete at the beginning. 5. The
    Scripture writings must be taken together. Each part must be
    viewed in connection with what precedes and with what follows. 6.
    The same Holy Spirit who made the original revelations must
    interpret to us the record of them, if we are to come to the
    knowledge of the truth. 7. So used and so interpreted, these
    writings are sufficient, both in quantity and in quality, for
    their religious purpose. 8. That purpose is, not to furnish us
    with a model history or with the facts of science, but to lead us
    to Christ and to salvation.


(_a_) Inspiration is therefore to be defined, not by its method, but by
its result. It is a general term including all those kinds and degrees of
the Holy Spirit’s influence which were brought to bear upon the minds of
the Scripture writers, in order to secure the putting into permanent and
written form of the truth best adapted to man’s moral and religious needs.

(_b_) Inspiration may often include revelation, or the direct
communication from God of truth to which man could not attain by his
unaided powers. It may include illumination, or the quickening of man’s
cognitive powers to understand truth already revealed. Inspiration,
however, does not necessarily and always include either revelation or
illumination. It is simply the divine influence which secures a
transmission of needed truth to the future, and, according to the nature
of the truth to be transmitted, it may be only an inspiration of
superintendence, or it may be also and at the same time an inspiration of
illumination or revelation.

(_c_) It is not denied, but affirmed, that inspiration may qualify for
oral utterance of truth, or for wise leadership and daring deeds. Men may
be inspired to render external service to God’s kingdom, as in the cases
of Bezalel and Samson; even though this service is rendered unwillingly or
unconsciously, as in the cases of Balaam and Cyrus. All human
intelligence, indeed, is due to the inbreathing of that same Spirit who
created man at the beginning. We are now concerned with inspiration,
however, only as it pertains to the authorship of Scripture.


    _Gen. 2:7—_“And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground,
    and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
    a living soul”; _Ex. 31:2, 3—_“I have called by name Bezalel ...
    and I have filled him with the Spirit of God ... in all manner of
    workmanship”; _Judges 13:24, 25—_“called his name Samson: and the
    child grew, and Jehovah blessed him. And the Spirit of Jehovah
    began to move him”; _Num. 23:5—_“And Jehovah put a word in
    Balaam’s mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus shalt thou
    speak”; _2 Chron. 36:22—_“Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus”;
    _Is. 44:28—_“that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd”; _45:5—_“I
    will gird thee, though thou hast not known me”; _Job 32:8—_“there
    is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them
    understanding.” These passages show the true meaning of 2 Tim.
    3:16—“Every scripture inspired of God.” The word θεόπνευστος is to
    be understood as alluding, not to the flute-player’s breathing
    into his instrument, but to God’s original inbreathing of life.
    The flute is passive, but man’s soul is active. The flute gives
    out only what it receives, but the inspired man under the divine
    influence is a conscious and free originator of thought and
    expression. Although the inspiration of which we are to treat is
    simply the inspiration of the Scripture writings, we can best
    understand this narrower use of the term by remembering that all
    real knowledge has in it a divine element, and that we are
    possessed of complete consciousness only as we live, move, and
    have our being in God. Since Christ, the divine Logos or Reason,
    is “the light which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_, a special
    influence of “the spirit of Christ which was in them”_ (1 Pet.
    1:11)_ rationally accounts for the fact that “men spake from God,
    being moved by the Holy Spirit”_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_.

    It may help our understanding of terms above employed if we adduce
    instances of

    (1) Inspiration without revelation, as in Luke or Acts, _Luke
                1:1-3_;
    (2) Inspiration including revelation, as in the Apocalypse, _Rev.
                1:1, 11_;
    (3) Inspiration without illumination, as in the prophets, _1 Pet.
                1:11_;
    (4) Inspiration including illumination, as in the case of Paul, _1
                Cor. 2:12_;
    (5) Revelation without inspiration, as in God’s words from Sinai,
                _Ex. 20:1, 22_;
    (6) Illumination without inspiration, as in modern preachers,
                _Eph. 2:20_.

    Other definitions are those of Park: “Inspiration is such an
    influence over the writers of the Bible that all their teachings
    which have a religious character are trustworthy”; of Wilkinson:
    “Inspiration is help from God to keep the report of divine
    revelation free from error. Help to whom? No matter to whom, so
    the result is secured. The final result, viz.: the record or
    report of revelation, this must be free from error. Inspiration
    may affect one or all of the agents employed”; of Hovey:
    “Inspiration was an influence of the Spirit of God on those powers
    of men which are concerned in the reception, retention and
    expression of religious truth—an influence so pervading and
    powerful that the teaching of inspired men was according to the
    mind of God. Their teaching did not in any instance embrace all
    truth in respect to God, or man, or the way of life; but it
    comprised just so much of the truth on any particular subject as
    could be received in faith by the inspired teacher and made useful
    to those whom he addressed. In this sense the teaching of the
    original documents composing our Bible may be pronounced free from
    error”; of G. B. Foster: “Revelation is the action of God in the
    soul of his child, resulting in divine self-expression there:
    Inspiration is the action of God in the soul of his child,
    resulting in apprehension and appropriation of the divine
    expression. Revelation has logical but not chronological
    priority”; of Horton, Inspiration and the Bible, 10-13—“We mean by
    Inspiration exactly those qualities or characteristics which are
    the marks or notes of the Bible.... We call our Bible inspired; by
    which we mean that by reading and studying it we find our way to
    God, we find his will for us, and we find how we can conform
    ourselves to his will.”

    Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, 496, while nobly setting
    forth the naturalness of revelation, has misconceived the relation
    of inspiration to revelation by giving priority to the former:
    “The idea of a written revelation may be said to be logically
    involved in the notion of a living God. Speech is natural to
    spirit; and if God is by nature spirit, it will be to him a matter
    of nature to reveal himself. But if he speaks to man, it will be
    through men; and those who hear best will be most possessed of
    God. This possession is termed ‘inspiration.’ God inspires, man
    reveals: revelation is the mode or form—word, character, or
    institution—in which man embodies what he has received. The terms,
    though not equivalent, are co-extensive, the one denoting the
    process on its inner side, the other on its outer.” This
    statement, although approved by Sanday, Inspiration, 124, 125,
    seems to us almost precisely to reverse the right meaning of the
    words. We prefer the view of Evans, Bib. Scholarship and
    Inspiration, 54—“God has first revealed himself, and then has
    inspired men to interpret, record and apply this revelation. In
    redemption, inspiration is the formal factor, as revelation is the
    material factor. The men are inspired, as Prof. Stowe said. The
    thoughts are inspired, as Prof. Briggs said. The words are
    inspired, as Prof. Hodge said. The warp and woof of the Bible is
    πνεῦμα: ‘the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit’_ (John
    6:63)_. Its fringes run off, as was inevitable, into the secular,
    the material, the psychic.” Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:351—“If the
    true revelation of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a
    revelation, but the history of a revelation. This is not only a
    fact but a necessity, for a person cannot be revealed in a book,
    but must find revelation, if at all, in a person. The centre and
    core of the Bible must therefore be the gospels, as the story of
    Jesus.”

    Some, like Priestley, have held that the gospels are authentic but
    not inspired. We therefore add to the proof of the genuineness and
    credibility of Scripture, the proof of its inspiration. Chadwick,
    Old and New Unitarianism, 11—“Priestley’s belief in supernatural
    revelation was intense. He had an absolute distrust of reason as
    qualified to furnish an adequate knowledge of religious things,
    and at the same time a perfect confidence in reason as qualified
    to prove that negative and to determine the contents of the
    revelation.” We might claim the historical truth of the gospels,
    even if we did not call them inspired. Gore, in Lux Mundi,
    341—“Christianity brings with it a doctrine of the inspiration of
    the Holy Scriptures, but is not based upon it.” Warfield and
    Hodge, Inspiration, 8—“While the inspiration of the Scriptures is
    true, and being true is fundamental to the adequate interpretation
    of Scripture, it nevertheless is not, in the first instance, a
    principle fundamental to the truth of the Christian religion.”

    On the idea of Revelation, see Ladd, in Journ. Christ. Philos.,
    Jan. 1883:156-178; on Inspiration, _ibid._, Apr. 1883:225-248. See
    Henderson on Inspiration (2nd ed.), 58, 205, 249, 303, 310. For
    other works on the general subject of Inspiration, see Lee,
    Bannerman, Jamieson, Macnaught; Garbett, God’s Word Written; Aids
    to Faith, essay on Inspiration. Also, Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
    1:205; Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, 27-65; Bib.
    Sac., 1:97; 4:154; 12:217; 15:29, 314; 25:192-198; Dr. Barrows, in
    Bib. Sac., 1867:593; 1872:428; Farrar, Science in Theology, 208;
    Hodge and Warfield, in Presb. Rev., Apr. 1881:225-261; Manly, The
    Bible Doctrine of Inspiration; Watts, Inspiration; Mead,
    Supernatural Revelation, 350; Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136; Hastings,
    Bible Dict., 1:296-299; Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration.



II. Proof of Inspiration.


1. Since we have shown that God has made a revelation of himself to man,
we may reasonably presume that he will not trust this revelation wholly to
human tradition and misrepresentation, but will also provide a record of
it essentially trustworthy and sufficient; in other words, that the same
Spirit who originally communicated the truth will preside over its
publication, so far as is needed to accomplish its religious purpose.


    Since all natural intelligence, as we have seen, presupposes God’s
    indwelling, and since in Scripture the all-prevailing atmosphere,
    with its constant pressure and effort to enter every cranny and
    corner of the world, is used as an illustration of the impulse of
    God’s omnipotent Spirit to vivify and energize every human soul
    (_Gen. 2:7_; _Job 32:8_), we may infer that, but for sin, all men
    would be morally and spiritually inspired (_Num. 11:29—_“Would
    that all Jehovah’s people were prophets, that Jehovah would put
    his Spirit upon them!” _Is. 59:2—_“your iniquities have separated
    between you and your God”). We have also seen that God’s method of
    communicating his truth in matters of religion is presumably
    analogous to his method of communicating secular truth, such as
    that of astronomy or history. There is an original delivery to a
    single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may
    through them be given to mankind. Sanday, Inspiration, 140—“There
    is a ‘purpose of God according to selection’_ (Rom. 9:11)_; there
    is an ‘election’ or ‘selection of grace’; and the object of that
    selection was Israel and those who take their name from Israel’s
    Messiah. If a tower is built in ascending tiers, those who stand
    upon the lower tiers are yet raised above the ground, and some may
    be raised higher than others, but the full and unimpeded view is
    reserved for those who mount upward to the top. And that is the
    place destined for us if we will take it.”

    If we follow the analogy of God’s working in other communications
    of knowledge, we shall reasonably presume that he will preserve
    the record of his revelations in written and accessible documents,
    handed down from those to whom these revelations were first
    communicated, and we may expect that these documents will be kept
    sufficiently correct and trustworthy to accomplish their religious
    purpose, namely, that of furnishing to the honest inquirer a guide
    to Christ and to salvation. The physician commits his
    prescriptions to writing; the Clerk of Congress records its
    proceedings; the State Department of our government instructs our
    foreign ambassadors, not orally, but by dispatches. There is yet
    greater need that revelation should be recorded, since it is to be
    transmitted to distant ages; it contains long discourses; it
    embraces mysterious doctrines. Jesus did not write himself; for he
    was the subject, not the mere channel, of revelation. His
    unconcern about the apostles’ immediately committing to writing
    what they saw and heard is inexplicable, if he did not expect that
    inspiration would assist them.

    We come to the discussion of Inspiration with a presumption quite
    unlike that of Kuenen and Wellhausen, who write in the interest of
    almost avowed naturalism. Kuenen, in the opening sentences of his
    Religion of Israel, does indeed assert the rule of God in the
    world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that “Kuenen keeps
    this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume
    of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel,
    London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were _not_ moved to
    speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.” The
    following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position which Dr.
    Kuenen really held: “We do not allow ourselves to be deprived of
    God’s presence in history. In the fortunes and development of
    nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the
    holy and all-wise Instructor of his human children. But the old
    _contrasts_ must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a
    separate part of Israel’s religious life directly from God, and
    allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in
    even one single point, so long also our view of the whole
    continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there
    necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents of
    the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural
    development alone which accounts for all the phenomena” (Kuenen,
    Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585).


2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a
messenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by
quoting it with the formula: “It is written”; by declaring that “one jot
or one tittle” of it “shall in no wise pass away,” and that “the Scripture
cannot be broken.”


    Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from
    the Psalms, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, “it
    is written”; see _Mat. 4:4, 6, 7_; _11:10_; _Mark 14:27_; _Luke
    4:4-12_. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation
    was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly
    regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of
    his day. He declared that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
    pass away from the law”_ (Mat. 5:18)_. He said that “the scripture
    cannot be broken”_ (John 10:35)_ = “the normative and judicial
    authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in
    the singular, ἡ γραφή] the idea of the unity of Scripture”
    (Meyer). And yet our Lord’s use of O. T. Scripture was wholly free
    from the superstitious literalism which prevailed among the Jews
    of his day. The phrases “word of God”_ (John 10:35; Mark 7:13)_,
    “wisdom of God”_ (Luke 11:49)_ and “oracles of God”_ (Rom. 3:2)_
    probably designate the original revelations of God and not the
    record of these in Scripture; _cf._ _1 Sam. 9:27_; _1 Chron.
    17:3_; _Is. 40:8_; _Mat. 13:19_; _Luke 3:2_; _Acts 8:25_. Jesus
    refuses assent to the O. T. law respecting the Sabbath (_Mark
    2:27_ _sq._), external defilements (_Mark 7:15_), divorce (_Mark
    10:2_ _sq._). He “came not to destroy but to fulfil”_ (Mat.
    5:17)_; yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit
    in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to
    its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5-35.

    The apostles quote the O. T. as the utterance of God (_Eph.
    4:8_—διὸ λέγει, _sc._ θεός). Paul’s insistence upon the form of
    even a single word, as in _Gal. 3:16_, and his use of the O. T.
    for purposes of allegory, as in _Gal 4:21-31_, show that in his
    view the O. T. text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in
    their interpretations of the O. T., fall continually into a
    “narrow and unhappy literalism.” “The N. T. does not indeed escape
    Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they
    seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through
    the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to
    the very heart of the O. T. teaching;” see Sanday, Bampton
    Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254.


3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a
supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises
made to the Old Testament prophets.


    _Mat. 28:19, 20—_“Go ye ... teaching ... and lo, I am with you.”
    Compare promises to Moses (_Ex. 3:12_), Jeremiah (_Jer. 1:5-8_),
    Ezekiel (_Ezek. 2_ and _3_). See also _Is. 44:3_ and _Joel
    2:28—_“I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed”; _Mat. 10:7—_“as ye
    go, preach”; _19—_“be not anxious how or what ye shall speak”;
    _John 14:26—_“the Holy Spirit ... shall teach you all things”;
    _15:26, 27—_“the Spirit of truth ... shall bear witness of me: and
    ye also bear witness” = the Spirit shall witness in and through
    you; _16:13—_“he shall guide you into all the truth” = (1)
    limitation—all _the_ truth of Christ, _i. e._, not of philosophy
    or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension—_all_ the truth
    within this limited range, _i. e._, sufficiency of Scripture as
    rule of faith and practice (Hovey); _17:8—_“the words which thou
    gavest me I have given unto them”; _Acts 1:4—_“he charged them ...
    to wait for the promise of the Father”; _John 20:22—_“he breathed
    on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” Here
    was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit.
    Compare _Mat. 10:19, 20—_“it shall be given you in that hour what
    ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of
    your Father that speaketh in you.” See Henderson, Inspiration,
    247, 248.

    Jesus’ testimony here is the testimony of God. In _Deut. 18:18_,
    it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great
    Prophet. In _John 12:49, 50_, Jesus says: “I spake not from
    myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a
    commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I
    know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore
    which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.”
    _John 17:7, 8—_“all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from
    thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.”
    _John 8:40—_“a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard
    from God.”


4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his
influence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a
level with the Old Testament Scriptures. We have not only direct
statements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were
supervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was
the case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and
epistles.


    _Statements_:—_1 Cor. 2:10, 13—_“unto us God revealed them through
    the Spirit.... Which things also we speak, not in words which
    man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth”; _11:23—_“I
    received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”; _12:8,
    28_—_the λόγος σοφίας was apparently a gift peculiar to the
    apostles_; _14:37, 38—_“the things which I write unto you ... they
    are the commandment of the Lord”; _Gal. 1:12—_“neither did I
    receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me
    through revelation of Jesus Christ”; _1 Thess. 4:2, 8—_“ye know
    what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus.... Therefore he
    that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy
    Spirit unto you.” The following passages put the teaching of the
    apostles on the same level with O. T. Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:11,
    12—_“Spirit of Christ which was in them” [O. T. prophets];—[N. T.
    preachers] “preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit”; _2
    Pet. 1:21_—O. T. prophets “spake from God, being moved by the Holy
    Spirit”; _3:2—_“remember the words which were spoken before by the
    holy prophets” [O. T.], “and the commandment of the Lord and
    Savior through your apostles” [N. T.]; 16—“wrest [Paul’s
    Epistles], _as they do also the_ _other scriptures_, unto their
    own destruction.” _Cf._ _Ex. 4:14-16_; _7:1_.

    _Implications_:—_2 Tim. 3:16—_“Every scripture inspired of God is
    also profitable”—a clear implication of inspiration, though not a
    direct statement of it = _there is a divinely inspired Scripture_.
    In _1 Cor. 5:3-5_, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with
    regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired.
    There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other
    writings of the same extent. Notice the continual asseveration of
    authority, as in _Gal. 1:1, 2_, and the declaration that disbelief
    of the record is sin, as in _1 John 5:10, 11_. _Jude 3—_“the faith
    which was once for all (ἅπαξ) delivered unto the saints.” See
    Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34,
    234; Conant, Genesis, Introd., xiii, note; Charteris, New
    Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, authority.

    The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished
    inspiration from their own unaided thinking. These inspired men
    claim that their inspiration is the same with that of the
    prophets. _Rev. 22:6—_“the Lord, the God of the spirits of the
    prophets, sent his angel to show unto his servants the things
    which must shortly come to pass” = inspiration gave them
    supernatural knowledge of the future. As inspiration in the O. T.
    was the work of the pre-incarnate Christ, so inspiration in the N.
    T. is the work of the ascended and glorified Christ by his Holy
    Spirit. On the Relative Authority of the Gospels, see Gerhardt, in
    Am. Journ. Theol., Apl. 1899:275-294, who shows that not the words
    of Jesus in the gospels are the final revelation, but rather the
    teaching of the risen and glorified Christ in the Acts and the
    Epistles. The Epistles are the posthumous works of Christ.
    Pattison, Making of the Sermon, 23—“The apostles, believing
    themselves to be inspired teachers, often preached without texts;
    and the fact that their successors did not follow their example
    shows that for themselves they made no such claim. Inspiration
    ceased, and henceforth authority was found in the use of the words
    of the now complete Scriptures.”


5. The apostolic writers of the New Testament, unlike professedly inspired
heathen sages and poets, gave attestation by miracles or prophecy that
they were inspired by God, and there is reason to believe that the
productions of those who were not apostles, such as Mark, Luke, Hebrews,
James, and Jude, were recommended to the churches as inspired, by
apostolic sanction and authority.


    The twelve wrought miracles (_Mat. 10:1_). Paul’s “signs of an
    apostle”_ (2 Cor. 13:12)_ = miracles. Internal evidence confirms
    the tradition that Mark was the “interpreter of Peter,” and that
    Luke’s gospel and the Acts had the sanction of Paul. Since the
    purpose of the Spirit’s bestowment was to qualify those who were
    to be the teachers and founders of the new religion, it is only
    fair to assume that Christ’s promise of the Spirit was valid not
    simply to the twelve but to all who stood in their places, and to
    these not simply as speakers, but, since in this respect they had
    a still greater need of divine guidance, to them as writers also.

    The epistle to the Hebrews, with the letters of James and Jude,
    appeared in the lifetime of some of the twelve, and passed
    unchallenged; and the fact that they all, with the possible
    exception of 2 Peter, were very early accepted by the churches
    founded and watched over by the apostles, is sufficient evidence
    that the apostles regarded them as inspired productions. As
    evidences that the writers regarded their writings as of universal
    authority, see _1 Cor. 1:2—_“unto the church of God which is at
    Corinth ... with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus
    Christ in every place,” etc.; _7:17—_“so ordain I in all the
    churches”; _Col. 4:16—_“And when this epistle hath been read among
    you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”;
    _2 Pet. 3:15, 16—_“our beloved brother Paul also, according to the
    wisdom given to him, wrote unto you.” See Bartlett, in Princeton
    Rev., Jan. 1880:23-57; Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:204, 205.

    Johnson, Systematic Theology, 40—“Miraculous gifts were bestowed
    at Pentecost on many besides apostles. Prophecy was not an
    uncommon gift during the apostolic period.” There is no antecedent
    improbability that inspiration should extend to others than to the
    principal leaders of the church, and since we have express
    instances of such inspiration in oral utterances (_Acts 11:28_;
    _21:9, 10_) it seems natural that there should have been instances
    of inspiration in written utterances also. In some cases this
    appears to have been only an inspiration of superintendence.
    Clement of Alexandria says only that Peter neither forbade nor
    encouraged Mark in his plan of writing the gospel. Irenæus tells
    us that Mark’s gospel was written after the death of Peter. Papias
    says that Mark wrote down what he remembered to have heard from
    Peter. Luke does not seem to have been aware of any miraculous aid
    in his writing, and his methods appear to have been those of the
    ordinary historian.


6. The chief proof of inspiration, however, must always be found in the
internal characteristics of the Scriptures themselves, as these are
disclosed to the sincere inquirer by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the
Holy Spirit combines with the teaching of the Bible to convince the
earnest reader that this teaching is as a whole and in all essentials
beyond the power of man to communicate, and that it must therefore have
been put into permanent and written form by special inspiration of God.


    Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 105—“The testimony of the
    Spirit is an argument from identity of effects—the doctrines of
    experience and the doctrines of the Bible—to identity of cause....
    God-wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible.... This covers
    the Bible as a whole, if not the whole of the Bible. It is true so
    far as I can test it. It is to be believed still further if there
    is no other evidence.” Lyman Abbott, in his Theology of an
    Evolutionist, 105, calls the Bible “a record of man’s laboratory
    work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the
    consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man.”
    This seems to us unduly subjective. We prefer to say that the
    Bible is also God’s witness to us of his presence and working in
    human hearts and in human history—a witness which proves its
    divine origin by awakening in us experiences similar to those
    which it describes, and which are beyond the power of man to
    originate.

    G. P. Fisher, in Mag. of Christ. Lit., Dec. 1892:239—“Is the Bible
    infallible? Not in the sense that all its statements extending
    even to minutiæ in matters of history and science are strictly
    accurate. Not in the sense that every doctrinal and ethical
    statement in all these books is incapable of amendment. The whole
    must sit in judgment on the parts. Revelation is progressive.
    There is a human factor as well as a divine. The treasure is in
    earthen vessels. But the Bible is infallible in the sense that
    whoever surrenders himself in a docile spirit to its teaching will
    fall into no hurtful error in matters of faith and charity. Best
    of all, he will find in it the secret of a new, holy and blessed
    life, ‘hidden with Christ in God’_ (Col. 3:3)_. The Scriptures are
    the witness to Christ.... Through the Scriptures he is truly and
    adequately made known to us.” Denney, Death of Christ, 314—“The
    unity of the Bible and its inspiration are correlative terms. If
    we can discern a real unity in it—and I believe we can when we see
    that it converges upon and culminates in a divine love bearing the
    sin of the world—then that unity and its inspiration are one and
    the same thing. And it is not only inspired as a whole, it is the
    only book that is inspired. It is the only book in the world to
    which God sets his seal in our hearts when we read in search of an
    answer to the question, How shall a sinful man be righteous with
    God?... The conclusion of our study of Inspiration should be the
    conviction that the Bible gives us a body of doctrine—a ‘faith
    which was once for all delivered unto the saints’_ (Jude 3)_.”



III. Theories of Inspiration.


1. The Intuition-theory.


This holds that inspiration is but a higher development of that natural
insight into truth which all men possess to some degree; a mode of
intelligence in matters of morals and religion which gives rise to sacred
books, as a corresponding mode of intelligence in matters of secular truth
gives rise to great works of philosophy or art. This mode of intelligence
is regarded as the product of man’s own powers, either without special
divine influence or with only the inworking of an impersonal God.


    This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and
    rationalistic views of man’s independence of God, or with
    pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest
    manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence.
    Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in
    America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos.
    of Religion, 127-179—“Inspiration is only a higher potency of what
    every man possesses in some degree.” See also Francis W. Newman
    (brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith (= phases of
    unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and
    Experiences as a Minister: “God is infinite; therefore he is
    immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet
    transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space;
    matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power
    to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts
    in man as much as in nature”—quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker,
    271. Hence Parker’s view of Inspiration: If the conditions are
    fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man’s gifts and to
    his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New
    Unitarianism, 68, says that “the Scriptures are inspired just so
    far as they are inspiring, and no more.”

    W. C. Gannett, Life of Ezra Stiles Gannett, 196—“Parker’s
    spiritualism affirmed, as the grand truth of religion, the
    immanence of an infinitely perfect God in matter and mind, and his
    activity in both spheres.” Martineau, Study of Religion,
    2:178-180—“Theodore Parker treats the regular results of the human
    faculties as an immediate working of God, and regards the
    Principia of Newton as inspired.... What then becomes of the human
    personality? He calls God not only omnipresent, but omniactive. Is
    then Shakespeare only by courtesy author of Macbeth?... If this
    were more than rhetorical, it would be unconditional pantheism.”
    Both nature and man are other names for God. Martineau is willing
    to grant that our intuitions and ideals are expressions of the
    Deity in us, but our personal reasoning and striving, he thinks,
    cannot be attributed to God. The word νοῦς has no plural:
    intellect, in whatever subject manifested, being all one, just as
    a truth is one and the same, in however many persons’
    consciousness it may present itself; see Martineau, Seat of
    Authority, 403. Palmer, Studies in Theological Definition, 27—“We
    can draw no sharp distinction between the human mind discovering
    truth, and the divine mind imparting revelation.” Kuenen belongs
    to this school.


With regard to this theory we remark:

(_a_) Man has, indeed, a certain natural insight into truth, and we grant
that inspiration uses this, so far as it will go, and makes it an
instrument in discovering and recording facts of nature or history.


    In the investigation, for example, of purely historical matters,
    such as Luke records, merely natural insight may at times have
    been sufficient. When this was the case, Luke may have been left
    to the exercise of his own faculties, inspiration only inciting
    and supervising the work. George Harris, Moral Evolution, 413—“God
    could not reveal himself _to_ man, unless he first revealed
    himself _in_ man. If it should be written in letters on the sky:
    ‘God is good,’—the words would have no meaning, unless goodness
    had been made known already in human volitions. Revelation is not
    by an occasional stroke, but by a continuous process. It is not
    superimposed, but inherent.... Genius is inspired; for the mind
    which perceives truth must be responsive to the Mind that made
    things the vehicles of thought.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures on
    Inspiration: “In claiming for the Bible inspiration, we do not
    exclude the possibility of other lower or more partial degrees of
    inspiration in other literatures. The Spirit of God has doubtless
    touched other hearts and other minds ... in such a way as to give
    insight into truth, besides those which could claim descent from
    Abraham.” Philo thought the LXX translators, the Greek
    philosophers, and at times even himself, to be inspired. Plato he
    regards as “most sacred” (ἱερωτατος), but all good men are in
    various degrees inspired. Yet Philo never quotes as authoritative
    any but the Canonical Books. He attributes to them an authority
    unique in its kind.


(_b_) In all matters of morals and religion, however, man’s insight into
truth is vitiated by wrong affections, and, unless a supernatural wisdom
can guide him, he is certain to err himself, and to lead others into
error.


    _1 Cor. 2:14—_“Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the
    Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot
    know them, because they are spiritually judged”; _10—_“But unto us
    God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all
    things, yea, the deep things of God.” See quotation from
    Coleridge, in Shairp, Culture and Religion, 114—“Water cannot rise
    higher than its source; neither can human reasoning”; Emerson,
    Prose Works, 1:474; 2:468—“’Tis curious we only believe as deep as
    we live”; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 183, 184. For this reason
    we hold to a communication of religious truth, at least at times,
    more direct and objective than is granted by George Adam Smith,
    Com. on Isaiah, 1:372—“To Isaiah inspiration was nothing more nor
    less than the possession of certain strong moral and religious
    convictions, which he felt he owed to the communication of the
    Spirit of God, and according to which he interpreted, and even
    dared to foretell, the history of his people and of the world. Our
    study completely dispels, on the evidence of the Bible itself,
    that view of inspiration and prediction so long held in the
    church.” If this is meant as a denial of any communication of
    truth other than the internal and subjective, we set over against
    it. _Num. 12:6-8—_“if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord
    will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him
    in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my
    house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and
    not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold.”


(_c_) The theory in question, holding as it does that natural insight is
the only source of religious truth, involves a self-contradiction;—if the
theory be true, then one man is inspired to utter what a second is
inspired to pronounce false. The Vedas, the Koran and the Bible cannot be
inspired to contradict each other.


    The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by
    works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be
    inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to
    reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have
    the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to
    steal was praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal.
    On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of
    God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer,
    in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with
    each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson we may
    grant that the leading idea of inspiration is “the growth of the
    divine through the capacities of the human,” while yet we deny
    that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment
    of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine
    working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the
    results of human sin.


(_d_) It makes moral and religious truth to be a purely subjective thing—a
matter of private opinion—having no objective reality independently of
men’s opinions regarding it.


    On this system truth is what men “trow”; things are what men
    “think”—words representing only the subjective. “Better the Greek
    ἀλήθεια = ‘the unconcealed’ (objective truth)”—Harris, Philos.
    Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing’s
    “search for truth” is the only thing left to us. But who will
    search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not
    eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits
    is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes
    convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton
    became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan,
    successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that “there is
    nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This same
    scepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the
    sayings: “Your religion is good for you, and mine for me”; “One
    man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.” See Dix,
    Pantheism, Introd., 12. Richter: “It is not the goal, but the
    course, that makes us happy.”


(_e_) It logically involves the denial of a personal God who is truth and
reveals truth, and so makes man to be the highest intelligence in the
universe. This is to explain inspiration by denying its existence; since,
if there be no personal God, inspiration is but a figure of speech for a
purely natural fact.


    The _animus_ of this theory is denial of the supernatural. Like
    the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of
    atheism or pantheism. The view in question, as Hutton in his
    Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord
    came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: “Go, write
    the history of the Decline and Fall!” But, replies Hutton: Such a
    view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend,
    in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, _i. e._, the
    influence of his memory. The inward impulse of genius,
    Shakespeare’s for example, is not properly denominated
    inspiration. See Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers,
    Eclipse of Faith, 73 _sq._ and 283 _sq._; Henderson, Inspiration
    (2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of
    Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau,
    by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20.


2. The Illumination Theory.


This regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the
religious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater
in degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. It
holds, not that the Bible is, but that it contains, the word of God, and
that not the writings, but only the writers, were inspired. The
illumination given by the Holy Spirit, however, puts the inspired writer
only in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate
objective truth beyond his ability to discover or understand.


    This theory naturally connects itself with Arminian views of mere
    coöperation with God. It differs from the Intuition-theory by
    containing several distinctively Christian elements: (1) the
    influence of a personal God; (2) an extraordinary work of the Holy
    Spirit; (3) the Christological character of the Scriptures,
    putting into form a revelation of which Christ is the centre
    (_Rev. 19:10_). But while it grants that the Scripture writers
    were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (φερόμενοι—_2 Pet. 1:21_), it
    ignores the complementary fact that the Scripture itself is
    “inspired of God” (θεόπνευστος—_2 Tim. 3:16_). Luther’s view
    resembles this; see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 236, 237.
    Schleiermacher, with the more orthodox Neander, Tholuck and
    Cremer, holds it; see Essays by Tholuck, in Herzog, Encyclopädie,
    and in Noyes, Theological Essays; Cremer, Lexicon N.T.,
    θεόπνευστος, and in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyc., 9:183-203. In
    France, Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 90, remarks: “Prophetic
    inspiration is piety raised to the second power”—it differs from
    the piety of common men only in intensity and energy. See also
    Godet, in Revue Chrétienne, Jan. 1878.

    In England Coleridge propounded this view in his Confessions of an
    Inquiring Spirit (Works, 5:669)—“Whatever _finds me_ bears witness
    that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit; in the Bible there is
    more that _finds me_ than I have experienced in all other books
    put together.” [Shall we then call Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest”
    inspired, while the Books of Chronicles are not?] See also F. W.
    Robertson, Sermon I; Life and Letters, letter 53, vol. 1:270;
    2:143-150—“The _other_ way, some twenty or thirty men in the
    world’s history have had special communication, miraculous and
    from God; in _this_ way, all may have it, and by devout and
    earnest cultivation of the mind and heart may have it illimitably
    increased.” Frederick W. H. Myers, Catholic Thoughts on the Bible
    and Theology, 10-20, emphasizes the idea that the Scriptures are,
    in their earlier parts, not merely inadequate, but partially
    untrue, and subsequently superseded by fuller revelations. The
    leading thought is that of _accommodation_; the record of
    revelation is not necessarily infallible. Allen, Religious
    Progress, 44, quotes Bishop Thirlwall: “If that Spirit by which
    every man spoke of old is a living and present Spirit, its later
    lessons may well transcend its earlier”;—Pascal’s “colossal man”
    is the race; the first men represented only infancy; _we_ are “the
    ancients”, and we are wiser than our fathers. See also Farrar,
    Critical History of Free Thought, 473, note 50; Martineau, Studies
    in Christianity: “One Gospel in Many Dialects.”

    Of American writers who favor this view, see J. F. Clarke,
    Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, 74; Curtis, Human Element in
    Inspiration; Whiton, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:63-72; Ladd, in Andover
    Review, July, 1885, in What is the Bible? and in Doctrine of
    Sacred Scripture, 1:759—“a large proportion of its writings
    inspired”; 2:178, 275, 497—“that fundamental misconception which
    identifies the Bible and the word of God”; 2:488—“Inspiration, as
    the subjective condition of Biblical revelation and the predicate
    of the word of God, is _specifically_ the same illumining,
    quickening, elevating and purifying work of the Holy Spirit as
    that which goes on in the persons of the entire believing
    community.” Professor Ladd therefore pares down all predictive
    prophecy, and regards _Isaiah 53_, not as directly and solely, but
    only as typically, Messianic. Clarke, Christian Theology,
    35-44—“Inspiration is exaltation, quickening of ability,
    stimulation of spiritual power; it is uplifting and enlargement of
    capacity for perception, comprehension and utterance; and all
    under the influence of a thought, a truth, or an ideal that has
    taken possession of the soul.... Inspiration to write was not
    different in kind from the common influence of God upon his
    people.... Inequality in the Scriptures is plain.... Even if we
    were convinced that some book would better have been omitted from
    the Canon, our confidence in the Scriptures would not thereby be
    shaken. The Canon did not make Scripture, but Scripture made the
    Canon. The inspiration of the Bible does not prove its excellence,
    but its excellence proves its inspiration. The Spirit brought the
    Scriptures to help Christ’s work, but not to take his place.
    Scripture says with Paul: ‘Not that we have lordship over your
    faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast’_
    (2 Cor. 1:24)_.”

    E. G. Robinson: “The office of the Spirit in inspiration is not
    different from that which he performed for Christians at the time
    the gospels were written.... When the prophets say: ‘Thus saith
    the Lord,’ they mean simply that they have divine authority for
    what they utter.” Calvin E. Stowe, History of Books of Bible,
    19—“It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is not
    the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It was the men who
    wrote the Bible who were inspired.” Thayer, Changed Attitude
    toward the Bible, 63—“It was not before the polemic spirit became
    rife in the controversies which followed the Reformation that the
    fundamental distinction between the word of God and the record of
    that word became obliterated, and the pestilent tenet gained
    currency that the Bible is absolutely free from every error of
    every sort.” Principal Cave, in Homiletical Review, Feb. 1892,
    admitting errors but none serious in the Bible, proposes a
    mediating statement for the present controversy, namely, that
    Revelation implies inerrancy, but that Inspiration does not.
    Whatever God reveals must be true, but many have become inspired
    without being rendered infallible. See also Mead, Supernatural
    Revelation, 291 _sq._


With regard to this theory we remark:

(_a_) There is unquestionably an illumination of the mind of every
believer by the Holy Spirit, and we grant that there may have been
instances in which the influence of the Spirit, in inspiration, amounted
only to illumination.


    Certain applications and interpretations of Old Testament
    Scripture, as for example, John the Baptist’s application to Jesus
    of Isaiah’s prophecy (_John 1:29—_“Behold, the Lamb of God, that
    taketh away [marg. “beareth”] the sin of the world”), and Peter’s
    interpretation of David’s words (_Acts 2:27—_“thou wilt not leave
    my soul unto Hades, Neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see
    corruption”), may have required only the illuminating influence of
    the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which we may say that the
    Scriptures are inspired only to those who are themselves inspired.
    The Holy Spirit must show us Christ before we recognize the work
    of the Spirit in Scripture. The doctrines of atonement and of
    justification perhaps did not need to be newly revealed to the N.
    T. writers; illumination as to earlier revelations may have
    sufficed. But that Christ existed before his incarnation, and that
    there are personal distinctions in the Godhead, probably required
    revelation. Edison says that “inspiration is simply perspiration.”
    Genius has been defined as “unlimited power to take pains.” But it
    is more—the power to do spontaneously and without effort what the
    ordinary man does by the hardest. Every great genius recognizes
    that this power is due to the inflowing into him of a Spirit
    greater than his own—the Spirit of divine wisdom and energy. The
    Scripture writers attribute their understanding of divine things
    to the Holy Spirit; see next paragraph. On genius, as due to
    “subliminal uprush,” see F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality,
    1:70-120.


(_b_) But we deny that this was the constant method of inspiration, or
that such an influence can account for the revelation of new truth to the
prophets and apostles. The illumination of the Holy Spirit gives no new
truth, but only a vivid apprehension of the truth already revealed. Any
original communication of truth must have required a work of the Spirit
different, not in degree, but in kind.


    The Scriptures clearly distinguish between revelation, or the
    communication of new truth, and illumination, or the quickening of
    man’s cognitive powers to perceive truth already revealed. No
    increase in the power of the eye or the telescope will do more
    than to bring into clear view what is already within its range.
    Illumination will not lift the veil that hides what is beyond.
    Revelation, on the other hand, is an “unveiling”—the raising of a
    curtain, or the bringing within our range of what was hidden
    before. Such a special operation of God is described in _2 Sam.
    23:2, 3—_“The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, And his word was upon
    my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to
    me”; _Mat. 10:20—_“For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of
    your Father that speaketh in you”; _1 Cor. 2:9-13—_“Things which
    eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the
    heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love
    him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the
    Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who
    among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man,
    which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the
    Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but
    the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that
    were freely given to us of God.”

    Clairvoyance and second sight, of which along with many cases of
    imposition and exaggeration there seems to be a small residuum of
    proved fact, show that there may be extraordinary operations of
    our natural powers. But, as in the case of miracle, the
    inspiration of Scripture necessitated an exaltation of these
    natural powers such as only the special influence of the Holy
    Spirit can explain. That the product is inexplicable as due to
    mere illumination seems plain when we remember that revelation
    sometimes _excluded_ illumination as to the meaning of that which
    was communicated, for the prophets are represented in _1 Pet.
    1:11_ as “searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of
    Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified
    beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should
    follow them.” Since no degree of illumination can account for the
    prediction of “things that are to come” (_John 16:13_), this
    theory tends to the denial of any immediate revelation in prophecy
    so-called, and the denial easily extends to any immediate
    revelation of doctrine.


(_c_) Mere illumination could not secure the Scripture writers from
frequent and grievous error. The spiritual perception of the Christian is
always rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining
depravity. The subjective element so predominates in this theory, that no
certainty remains even with regard to the trustworthiness of the
Scriptures as a whole.


    While we admit imperfections of detail in matters not essential to
    the moral and religious teaching of Scripture, we claim that the
    Bible furnishes a sufficient guide to Christ and to salvation. The
    theory we are considering, however, by making the measure of
    holiness to be the measure of inspiration, renders even the
    collective testimony of the Scripture writers an uncertain guide
    to truth. We point out therefore that inspiration is not
    absolutely limited by the moral condition of those who are
    inspired. Knowledge, in the Christian, may go beyond conduct.
    Balaam and Caiaphas were not holy men, yet they were inspired
    (_Num. 23:5; John 11:49-52_). The promise of Christ assured at
    least the essential trustworthiness of his witnesses (_Mat. 10:7,
    19, 20; John 14:26; 15:26, 27; 16:13; 17:8_). This theory that
    inspiration is a wholly subjective communication of truth leads to
    the practical rejection of important parts of Scripture, in fact
    to the rejection of all Scripture that professes to convey truth
    beyond the power of man to discover or to understand. Notice the
    progress from Thomas Arnold (Sermons, 2:185) to Matthew Arnold
    (Literature and Dogma, 134, 137). Notice also Swedenborg’s
    rejection of nearly one half the Bible (Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra,
    Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
    and the whole of the N. T. except the Gospels and the Apocalypse),
    connected with the claim of divine authority for his new
    revelation. “His interlocutors all Swedenborgize” (R. W. Emerson).
    On Swedenborg, see Hours with the Mystics, 2:230; Moehler,
    Symbolism, 436-466; New Englander, Jan. 1874:195; Baptist Review,
    1883:143-157; Pond, Swedenborgianism; Ireland, The Blot on the
    Brain, 1-129.


(_d_) The theory is logically indefensible, as intimating that
illumination with regard to truth can be imparted without imparting truth
itself, whereas God must first furnish objective truth to be perceived
before he can illuminate the mind to perceive the meaning of that truth.


    The theory is analogous to the views that preservation is a
    continued creation; knowledge is recognition; regeneration is
    increase of light. In order to preservation, something must first
    be created which can be preserved; in order to recognition,
    something must be known which can be recognized or known again; in
    order to make increase of light of any use, there must first be
    the power to see. In like manner, inspiration cannot be mere
    illumination, because the external necessarily precedes the
    internal, the objective precedes the subjective, the truth
    revealed precedes the apprehension of that truth. In the case of
    all truth that surpasses the normal powers of man to perceive or
    evolve, there must be special communication from God; revelation
    must go before inspiration; inspiration alone is not revelation.
    It matters not whether this communication of truth be from without
    or from within. As in creation, God can work from within, yet the
    new result is not explicable as mere reproduction of the past. The
    eye can see only as it receives and uses the external light
    furnished by the sun, even though it be equally true that without
    the eye the light of the sun would be nothing worth.

    Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 17-19, says that to Schleiermacher
    revelation is the original appearance of a proper religious life,
    which life is derived neither from external communication nor from
    invention and reflection, but from a divine impartation, which
    impartation can be regarded, not merely as an instructive
    influence upon man as an intellectual being, but as an endowment
    determining his whole personal existence—an endowment analogous to
    the higher conditions of poetic and heroic exaltation. Pfleiderer
    himself would give the name “revelation” to “every original
    experience in which man becomes aware of, and is seized by,
    supersensible truth, truth which does not come from external
    impartation nor from purposed reflection, but from the unconscious
    and undivided transcendental ground of the soul, and so is
    received as an impartation from God through the medium of the
    soul’s human activity.” Kaftan, Dogmatik, 51 _sq._—“We must put
    the conception of revelation in place of inspiration. Scripture is
    the record of divine revelation. We do not propose a new doctrine
    or inspiration, in place of the old. We need only revelation, and,
    here and there, providence. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is
    given, not to inspiration, but to revelation—the truths that touch
    the human spirit and have been historically revealed.”

    Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 182—Edwards held that spiritual life in
    the soul is given by God only to his favorites and dear children,
    while inspiration may be thrown out, as it were, to dogs and
    swine—a Balaam, Saul, and Judas. The greatest privilege of
    apostles and prophets was, not their inspiration, but their
    holiness. Better to have grace in the heart, than to be the mother
    of Christ (_Luke 11:27, 28_). Maltbie D. Babcock, in S. S. Times,
    1901:590—“The man who mourns because infallibility cannot be had
    in a church, or a guide, or a set of standards, does not know when
    he is well off. How could God develop our minds, our power of
    moral judgment, if there were no ‘spirit to be tried’ (_1 John
    4:1_), no necessity for discrimination, no discipline of search
    and challenge and choice? To give the right answer to a problem is
    to put him on the side of infallibility so far as that answer is
    concerned, but it is to do him an ineffable wrong touching his
    real education. The blessing of life’s schooling is not in knowing
    the right answer in advance, but in developing power through
    struggle.”

    Why did John Henry Newman surrender to the Church of Rome? Because
    he assumed that an external authority is absolutely essential to
    religion, and, when such an assumption is followed, Rome is the
    only logical terminus. “Dogma was,” he says, “the fundamental
    principle of my religion.” Modern ritualism is a return to this
    mediæval notion. “Dogmatic Christianity,” says Harnack, “is
    Catholic. It needs an inerrant Bible, and an infallible church to
    interpret that Bible. The dogmatic Protestant is of the same camp
    with the sacramental and infallible Catholic.” Lyman Abbott: “The
    new Reformation denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the
    Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the Church.
    There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is
    undesirable.... God has given us something far better,—life....
    The Bible is the record of the gradual manifestation of God to man
    in human experience, in moral laws and their applications, and in
    the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh.”

    Leighton Williams: “There is no inspiration apart from experience.
    Baptists are not sacramental, nor creedal, but experimental
    Christians”—not Romanists, nor Protestants, but believers in an
    inner light. “Life, as it develops, awakens into
    self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes the most
    reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is the
    development. Within the limits of its own sphere, its authority is
    supreme. Prophecy is the utterance of the soul in moments of deep
    religious experience. The inspiration of Scripture writers is not
    a peculiar thing,—it was given that the same inspiration might be
    perfected in those who read their writings.” Christ is the only
    ultimate authority, and he reveals himself in three ways, through
    Scripture, the Reason, and the Church. Only Life saves, and the
    Way leads through the Truth to the Life. Baptists stand nearer to
    the Episcopal system of life than to the Presbyterian system of
    creed. Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136—“The mistake is in looking to the
    Father above the world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit
    within the world, as the immediate source of revelation....
    Revelation is the unfolding of the life and thought of God within
    the world. One should not be troubled by finding errors in the
    Scriptures, any more than by finding imperfections in any physical
    work of God, as in the human eye.”


3. The Dictation-theory.


This theory holds that inspiration consisted in such a possession of the
minds and bodies of the Scripture writers by the Holy Spirit, that they
became passive instruments or amanuenses—pens, not penmen, of God.


    This theory naturally connects itself with that view of miracles
    which regards them as suspensions or violations of natural law.
    Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:624 (transl. 2:186-189), calls it a
    “docetic view of inspiration. It holds to the abolition of second
    causes, and to the perfect passivity of the human instrument;
    denies any inspiration of persons, and maintains inspiration of
    writings only. This exaggeration of the divine element led to the
    hypothesis of a multiform divine sense in Scripture, and, in
    assigning the spiritual meaning, a rationalizing spirit led the
    way.” Representatives of this view are Quenstedt, Theol. Didact.,
    1:76—“The Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those
    expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to
    themselves”; Hooker, Works, 2:383—“They neither spake nor wrote
    any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the
    Spirit put it into their mouths”; Gaussen, Theopneusty, 61—“The
    Bible is not a book which God charged men already enlightened to
    make under his protection; it is a book which God dictated to
    them”; Cunningham, Theol. Lectures, 349—“The verbal inspiration of
    the Scriptures [which he advocates] implies in general that the
    words of Scripture were suggested or dictated by the Holy Spirit,
    as well as the substance of the matter, and this, not only in some
    portion of the Scriptures, but through the whole.” This reminds us
    of the old theory that God created fossils in the rocks, as they
    would be had ancient seas existed.

    Sanday, Bamp. Lect. on Inspiration, 74, quotes Philo as saying: “A
    prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as
    interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and
    as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason
    departing from its place and yielding up the citadel of the soul,
    when the divine Spirit enters into it and dwells in it and strikes
    at the mechanism of the voice, sounding through it to the clear
    declaration of that which he prophesieth”; in _Gen. 15:12—_“About
    the setting of the sun a trance came upon Abram”—the sun is the
    light of human reason which sets and gives place to the Spirit of
    God. Sanday, 78, says also: “Josephus holds that even historical
    narratives, such as those at the beginning of the Pentateuch which
    were not written down by contemporary prophets, were obtained by
    direct inspiration from God. The Jews from their birth regard
    their Scripture as ‘the decrees of God,’ which they strictly
    observe, and for which if need be they are ready to die.” The
    Rabbis said that “Moses did not write one word out of his own
    knowledge.”

    The Reformers held to a much freer view than this. Luther said:
    “What does not carry Christ with it, is not apostolic, even though
    St. Peter or St. Paul taught it. If our adversaries fall back on
    the Scripture against Christ, we fall back on Christ against the
    Scripture.” Luther refused canonical authority to books not
    actually written by apostles or composed, like Mark and Luke,
    under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical
    authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. Even
    Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the
    book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote
    Commentaries, and also thus ignored the second and third epistles
    of John; see Prof. R. E. Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,
    1898:803, 804. The dictation-theory is post-Reformation. H. P.
    Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 85—“After the Council of
    Trent, the Roman Catholic polemic became sharper. It became the
    endeavor of that party to show the necessity of tradition and the
    untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led the Protestants to
    defend the Bible more tenaciously than before.” The Swiss Formula
    of Consensus in 1675 not only called the Scriptures “the very word
    of God,” but declared the Hebrew vowel-points to be inspired, and
    some theologians traced them back to Adam. John Owen held to the
    inspiration of the vowel-points; see Horton, Inspiration and
    Bible, 8. Of the age which produced the Protestant dogmatic
    theology, Charles Beard, in the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, says:
    “I know no epoch of Christianity to which I could more confidently
    point in illustration of the fact that where there is most
    theology, there is often least religion.”


Of this view we may remark:

(_a_) We grant that there are instances when God’s communications were
uttered in an audible voice and took a definite form of words, and that
this was sometimes accompanied with the command to commit the words to
writing.


    For examples, see _Ex. 3:4—_“God called unto him out of the midst
    of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses”; _20:22—_“Ye yourselves have
    seen that I have talked with you from heaven”; _cf._ _Heb.
    12:19—_“the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated
    that no word more should be spoken unto them”; _Numbers 7:89—_“And
    when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, then
    he heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat
    that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two
    cherubim: and he spake unto him”; _8:1—_“And Jehovah spake unto
    Moses, saying,” etc.; _Dan. 4:31—_“While the word was in the
    king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king
    Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from
    thee”; _Acts 9:5—_“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I
    am Jesus whom thou persecutest”; _Rev. 19:9—_“And he saith unto
    me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper
    of the Lamb”; _21:5—_“And he that sitteth on the throne said,
    Behold, I make all things new”; _cf._ _1:10, 11—_“and I heard
    behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest,
    write in a book and send it to the seven churches.” So the voice
    from heaven at the baptism, and at the transfiguration, of Jesus
    (_Mat. 3:17_, and _17:5_; see Broadus, Amer. Com., on these
    passages).


(_b_) The theory in question, however, rests upon a partial induction of
Scripture facts,—unwarrantably assuming that such occasional instances of
direct dictation reveal the invariable method of God’s communications of
truth to the writers of the Bible.


    Scripture nowhere declares that this immediate communication of
    the words was universal. On _1 Cor. 2:13—οὐκ ἐν διδακτοίς
    ανθρωπίνης σοφίας, λόγοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν διδακτοîς πνεύματος_, the text
    usually cited as proof of invariable dictation—Meyer says: “There
    is no dictation here; διδακτοîς excludes everything mechanical.”
    Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 333, 349—“As human wisdom did
    not dictate word for word, so the Spirit did not.” Paul claims for
    Scripture simply a general style of plainness which is due to the
    influence of the Spirit. Manly: “Dictation to an amanuensis is not
    _teaching_.” Our Revised Version properly translates the remainder
    of the verse, _1 Cor. 2:13—_“combining spiritual things with
    spiritual words.”


(_c_) It cannot account for the manifestly human element in the
Scriptures. There are peculiarities of style which distinguish the
productions of each writer from those of every other, and there are
variations in accounts of the same transaction which are inconsistent with
the theory of a solely divine authorship.


    Notice Paul’s anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and indignation
    (_Rom. 5:12 __sq._, _2 Cor. 11:1_ _sq._), and his ignorance of the
    precise number whom he had baptized (_1 Cor. 1:16_). One beggar or
    two (_Mat. 20:30_; _cf._ _Luke 18:35_); “about five and twenty or
    thirty furlongs”_ (John 6:19)_; “shed for many” (_Mat. 26:28_ has
    περί, _Mark 14:24_ and _Luke 22:20_ have ὑπέρ). Dictation of words
    which were immediately to be lost by imperfect transcription?
    Clarke, Christian Theology, 33-37—“We are under no obligation to
    maintain the complete inerrancy of the Scriptures. In them we have
    the freedom of life, rather than extraordinary precision of
    statement or accuracy of detail. We have become Christians in
    spite of differences between the evangelists. The Scriptures are
    various, progressive, free. There is no authority in Scripture for
    applying the word ’inspired’ to our present Bible as a whole, and
    theology is not bound to employ this word in defining the
    Scriptures. Christianity is founded in history, and will stand
    whether the Scriptures are inspired or not. If special inspiration
    were wholly disproved, Christ would still be the Savior of the
    world. But the divine element in the Scriptures will never be
    disproved.”


(_d_) It is inconsistent with a wise economy of means, to suppose that the
Scripture writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already,
or what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural
powers.


    Why employ eye-witnesses at all? Why not dictate the gospels to
    Gentiles living a thousand years before? God respects the
    instruments he has called into being, and he uses them according
    to their constitutional gifts. George Eliot represents
    Stradivarius as saying:—“If my hand slacked, I should rob
    God—since he is fullest good—Leaving a blank instead of violins.
    God cannot make Antonio Stradivari’s violins, Without Antonio.”
    _Mark 11:3—_“The Lord hath need of him,” may apply to man as well
    as beast.


(_e_) It contradicts what we know of the law of God’s working in the soul.
The higher and nobler God’s communications, the more fully is man in
possession and use of his own faculties. We cannot suppose that this
highest work of man under the influence of the Spirit was purely
mechanical.


    Joseph receives communication by vision (_Mat. 1:20_); Mary, by
    words of an angel spoken in her waking moments (_Luke 1:28_). The
    more advanced the recipient, the more conscious the communication.
    These four theories might almost be called the Pelagian, the
    Arminian, the Docetic, and the Dynamical. Sabatier, Philos.
    Religion, 41, 42, 87—“In the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Father
    says at the baptism to Jesus: ‘My Son, in all the prophets I was
    waiting for thee, that thou mightest come, and that I might rest
    in thee. For thou art my Rest.’ Inspiration becomes more and more
    internal, until in Christ it is continuous and complete. Upon the
    opposite Docetic view, the most perfect inspiration should have
    been that of Balaam’s ass.” Semler represents the Pelagian or
    Ebionitic view, as Quenstedt represents this Docetic view. Semler
    localizes and temporalizes the contents of Scripture. Yet, though
    he carried this to the extreme of excluding any divine authorship,
    he did good service in leading the way to the historical study of
    the Bible.


4. The Dynamical Theory.


The true view holds, in opposition to the first of these theories, that
inspiration is not simply a natural but also a supernatural fact, and that
it is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man.

It holds, in opposition to the second, that inspiration belongs, not only
to the men who wrote the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures which they
wrote, so that these Scriptures, when taken together, constitute a
trustworthy and sufficient record of divine revelation.

It holds, in opposition to the third theory, that the Scriptures contain a
human as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of
divinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human moulds and adapted
to ordinary human intelligence.

In short, inspiration is characteristically neither natural, partial, nor
mechanical, but supernatural, plenary, and dynamical. Further explanations
will be grouped under the head of The Union of the Divine and Human
Elements in Inspiration, in the section which immediately follows.


    If the small circle be taken as symbol of the human element in
    inspiration, and the large circle as symbol of the divine, then
    the Intuition-theory would be represented by the small circle
    alone; the Dictation-theory by the large circle alone; the
    Illumination-theory by the small circle external to the large, and
    touching it at only a single point; the Dynamical-theory by two
    concentric circles, the small included in the large. Even when
    inspiration is but the exaltation and intensification of man’s
    natural powers, it must be considered the work of God as well as
    of man. God can work from within as well as from without. As
    creation and regeneration are works of the immanent rather than of
    the transcendent God, so inspiration is in general a work within
    man’s soul, rather than a communication to him from without.
    Prophecy may be natural to perfect humanity. Revelation is an
    unveiling, and the Röntgen rays enable us to see through a veil.
    But the insight of the Scripture writers into truth so far beyond
    their mental and moral powers is inexplicable except by a
    supernatural influence upon their minds; in other words, except as
    they were lifted up into the divine Reason and endowed with the
    wisdom of God.

    Although we propose this Dynamical-theory as one which best
    explains the Scripture facts, we do not regard this or any other
    theory as of essential importance. No theory of inspiration is
    necessary to Christian faith. Revelation precedes inspiration.
    There was religion before the Old Testament, and an oral gospel
    before the New Testament. God might reveal without recording;
    might permit record without inspiration; might inspire without
    vouching for anything more than religious teaching and for the
    history, only so far as was necessary to that religious teaching.
    Whatever theory of inspiration we frame, should be the result of a
    strict induction of the Scripture facts, and not an a priori
    scheme to which Scripture must be conformed. The fault of many
    past discussions of the subject is the assumption that God must
    adopt some particular method of inspiration, or secure an absolute
    perfection of detail in matters not essential to the religious
    teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the best theory of inspiration is
    to have no theory.

    Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration, 8—“Very many religious and
    historical truths must be established before we come to the
    question of inspiration, as for instance the being and moral
    government of God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a
    redemptive scheme, the general historical truth of the Scriptures,
    and the validity and authority of the revelation of God’s will
    which they contain, i. e., the general truth of Christianity and
    of its doctrines. Hence it follows that while the inspiration of
    the Scriptures is true, and being true is a principle fundamental
    to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is
    not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth
    of the Christian religion.” Warfield, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,
    April, 1893:208—“We do not found the whole Christian system on the
    doctrine of inspiration.... Were there no such thing as
    inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential
    doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us”—in the gospels and in
    the living church. F. L. Patton, Inspiration, 22—“I must take
    exception to the disposition of some to stake the fortunes of
    Christianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to
    any one in profound conviction of the truth and importance of the
    doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the immense
    argumentative advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether
    from the inspiration of the documents on which it rests.” So argue
    also Sanday, Oracles of God, and Dale, The Living Christ.



IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.


1. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are
therefore never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine.

The mystery of inspiration consists in neither of these terms separately,
but in the union of the two. Of this, however, there are analogies in the
interpenetration of human powers by the divine efficiency in regeneration
and sanctification, and in the union of the divine and human natures in
the person of Jesus Christ.


    According to “Dalton’s law,” each gas is as a vacuum to every
    other: “Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as
    into vacua.” Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not
    furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen
    and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but
    they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine
    elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, “Mens humana capax divinæ,”
    is one of the most important principles of a true theology. “The
    Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and
    to receive himself. The Reformed think of the Deity as ever
    preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear
    pantheism and idolatry” (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
    Lord’s Knowledge, xx).

    Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 66—“That initial mystery, the relation
    in our consciousness between the individual and the universal
    element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and
    man,—how can we comprehend their coëxistence and their union, and
    yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man to-day who
    has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a
    glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our
    consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence,
    and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty
    cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and
    saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a
    universal and eternal Power? ‘In Deo vivimus, movemur, et
    sumus.’... This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it
    religion itself would no longer exist.” Quackenbos, in Harper’s
    Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that “hypnotic suggestion is but
    inspiration.” The analogy of human influence thus communicated may
    at least help us to some understanding of the divine.


2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be
conceived of as one of external impartation and reception.

On the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified
to do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as
from without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most
conscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of
intellect, emotion, and will.


    The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may
    rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the
    experience of the preacher who under the influence of God’s Spirit
    is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer
    apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than
    belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive
    vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in
    possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the
    Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination
    granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the
    truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This
    inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like
    miracles, inspiration may use man’s natural powers, but man’s
    natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John
    were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing
    Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration
    itself, but only the preparation for it.

    Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become
    inseparable.” E. G. Robinson; “Novelists do not _create_
    characters,—they reproduce with modifications material presented
    to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of
    Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231—“The Psalmists vacillate between
    the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of
    God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose
    themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they
    are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters,
    1:380—“Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process
    because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through
    which it was communicated”; 2:102—“You seem to me to transfer too
    much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern
    notions of _divine origin_.... Our notion, or rather, the modern
    Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force
    or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from
    those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental,
    Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those
    agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. _Our_ notions of
    inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute
    perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that
    inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity,
    contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182—“In inspiration the
    thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than
    the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is _in
    themselves_. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may
    be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used.
    Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This
    last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the
    true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may
    also communicate truth from without.


3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own
service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with
their defects of culture and literary style.

Every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may
exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God’s word, in the sense that it
presents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a
select class but for the common mind. Rightly understood, this very
humanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.


    Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.”
    Prof. Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a
    bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering
    forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran
    are called _ayat_, or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural
    elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart.
    The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made
    flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth
    Christ (_John 3:8_); he is known only by his effects—a pattern for
    preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (_2 Cor. 3:6_). See
    Conant on Genesis, 65.

    The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the
    agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very
    pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat
    of Authority, 289—“Though the pattern be divine, the web that
    bears it must still be human.” Jackson, James Martineau,
    255—“Paul’s metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’_ (2 Cor.
    4:7)_ you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the
    treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of
    the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only
    in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Syst.
    Theol., 1:157—“When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes,
    they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the
    tribute will be lost.”

    Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25—“The πνεῦμα of a
    dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the
    πνεῦμα of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing
    more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced,
    cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely
    manipulated automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much
    imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent
    with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end.
    Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and
    religious truth sufficient for men’s salvation, or an infallible
    and sufficient rule of _faith and practice_.” J. S. Wrightnour:
    “Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his
    instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes,
    peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all
    are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them
    selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the
    Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given
    us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual
    instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always
    given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best
    adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready
    stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and
    smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
    Friends, 274—“I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the
    human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God’s book, because
    it is man’s book.”


4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary
composition.

As we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and
fiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb;
of allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we
cannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of
communicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case
which of these methods he has adopted.


    In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works
    “in divers manners”_ (Heb. 1:1)_. The Scriptures, like the books
    of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their
    purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not
    be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and
    to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is
    personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical
    overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of
    important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even
    myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise
    apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is
    needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism
    is lacking in this literary sense.

    Denney, Studies in Theology, 218—“There is a stage in which the
    whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or
    history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us,
    in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God
    does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when
    it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings
    of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to
    itself by the child-mind of the race, may be made the medium of
    revelation.... But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis
    science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority
    in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical
    form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of
    God’s creative wisdom and power.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356—“The
    various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their
    different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie
    fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical
    stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a
    product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later
    product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet
    distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.” So Grote
    calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to
    which they belonged—the common root of all the history, poetry,
    philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and proceeded from
    it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in
    which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not
    deny that it exists. Robert Browning’s Clive and Andrea del Sarto
    are essentially correct representations of historical characters,
    though the details in each poem are imaginary.


5. The inspiring Spirit has given the Scriptures to the world by a process
of gradual evolution.

As in communicating the truths of natural science, God has communicated
the truths of religion by successive steps, germinally at first, more
fully as men have been able to comprehend them. The education of the race
is analogous to the education of the child. First came pictures,
object-lessons, external rites, predictions; then the key to these in
Christ, and then didactic exposition in the Epistles.


    There have been “divers portions,” as well as “divers manners”_
    (Heb. 1:1)_. The early prophecies like that of _Gen. 3:15_—the
    seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head—were but faint
    glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable
    of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses,
    David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and
    transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men
    of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As
    all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest
    mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped
    up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every
    scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may
    dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may
    demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the
    process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the
    demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these
    methods. But while there are instances of dictation and
    illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the
    general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of
    man’s powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for
    himself.

    A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339—“Inspiration is that,
    seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from
    the human side.... Every addition to knowledge, whether in the
    individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or
    theological, is due to a coöperation between the human soul which
    assimilates and the divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or
    could act, in independent isolation. For ‘unassisted reason’ is a
    fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even
    the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the
    configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled....
    Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.”
    The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There
    can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from
    thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history
    has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr,
    Problem of the O. T., 431-478.


6. Inspiration did not guarantee inerrancy in things not essential to the
main purpose of Scripture.

Inspiration went no further than to secure a trustworthy transmission by
the sacred writers of the truth they were commissioned to deliver. It was
not omniscience. It was a bestowal of various kinds and degrees of
knowledge and aid, according to need; sometimes suggesting new truth,
sometimes presiding over the collection of preëxisting material and
guarding from essential error in the final elaboration. As inspiration was
not omniscience, so it was not complete sanctification. It involved
neither personal infallibility, nor entire freedom from sin.


    God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does
    not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in
    nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration
    can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in
    some respects imperfect. God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew
    history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a
    progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not
    perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, “because he stood
    condemned”_ (Gal 2:11)_. But Peter differed from Paul, not in
    public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own
    teachings (_cf._ _Acts 15:6-11_); _versus_ Norman Fox, in Bap.
    Rev., 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an
    ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message.
    So with the apostles’ ignorance of the time of Christ’s second
    coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand
    Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once;
    their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and
    all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God
    saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many
    things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men
    uttered, they did not, when they uttered them, fully understand.

    Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 53, 54—“The word is divine-human in the
    sense that it has for its contents divine truth in human,
    historical, and individually conditioned form. The Holy Scripture
    contains the word of God in a way plain, and entirely sufficient
    to beget saving faith.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 87—“Inspiration
    is not a miraculous and therefore incredible thing, but normal and
    in accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and
    finite spirit, a divine inflowing of _mental_ light precisely
    analogous to that _moral_ influence which divines call grace. As
    every devout and obedient soul may expect to share in divine
    grace, so the devout and obedient souls of all the ages have
    shared, as Parker taught, in divine inspiration. And, as the
    reception of grace even in large measure does not render us
    _impeccable_, so neither does the reception of inspiration render
    us _infallible_.” We may concede to Miss Cobbe that inspiration
    consists with imperfection, while yet we grant to the Scripture
    writers an authority higher than our own.


7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct
communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.

Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes
words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy
Spirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to
publish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of
their own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single
exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of
wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration
is therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which
taken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted
into Scripture.


    Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought
    is possible without language. The concept may exist without words.
    See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan.
    1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker’s
    memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil’s hand only when
    it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk
    alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be
    rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever
    the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper
    material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the
    sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words.
    Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the
    suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all
    Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that
    divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of
    the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration
    (2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James,
    Psychology, 1:266 _sq._

    Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration:
    “The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine
    is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave
    language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke
    with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake
    from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_. So
    Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171—“Why the minute study of the
    _words_ of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search
    after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to
    the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring
    of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon
    thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe,
    Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.”
    Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.” But Broadus, an
    almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on _Mat. 3:17_,
    says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and
    _Luke 3:22—_“Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in
    theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some
    cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal
    inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T.
    quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the
    Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus’ own words are reported
    with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The
    Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.

    Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that
    there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F.
    Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four
    children of different mothers. All of these children were dumb,
    though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech
    were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never
    talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The
    children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract.
    So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings
    for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and
    contentious talk will not accomplish the result,—it must be the
    talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max
    Müller’s Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of Müller
    that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor’s
    reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a
    substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic,
    version of the General’s actual profane words. Each Scripture
    writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own
    experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving
    off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own
    heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching
    of what he had been taught, and by telling what God’s plan of
    mercy was to all. Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus
    Scripturæ”—“Scripture _is_ what Scripture _means_.” Among the
    theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as
    to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching,
    are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van
    Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.


8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading
inspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an
organic whole.

Since the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be
judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part.
The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human
productions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind.
Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with
the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the
life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is
part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in
the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the
Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is
the person and work of Jesus Christ.


    The Bible says: “There is no God”_ (Ps. 14:1)_; but then, this is
    to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.”
    Satan’s “it is written,”_ (Mat. 4:6)_ is supplemented by Christ’s
    “It is written again”_ (Mat. 4:7)_. Trivialities are like the hair
    and nails of the body—they have their place as parts of a complete
    and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which
    mentions Paul’s cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of
    genuineness—a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of
    temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the
    limits of inspiration,—even Paul must have books and parchments.
    _Col. 2:21—_“Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”—is to be
    interpreted by the context in _verse 20—_“why ... do ye subject
    yourselves to ordinances?” and by _verse 22—_“after the precepts
    and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164—“The difference
    between John’s gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that
    between man’s brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the
    life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like
    railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”

    Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies
    the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says
    that “A theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because
    the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from
    an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T.
    history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers
    at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents
    are yet to come. See Bp. Bull’s Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and
    Bruce, Apologetics, 323—“The literature of the early stages of
    revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it
    records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see
    the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T.
    as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of
    the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of To-morrow,
    224—Every part is to be modified by every other part. No verse is
    true _out of_ the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true.
    Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350—“To recognize the inspiration of the
    Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.”
    Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
    lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
    Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held
    tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr,
    Problem of the O. T., 27-51.


9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in
spite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose,
furnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.

The recognition of the Holy Spirit’s agency makes it rational and natural
to believe in the organic unity of Scripture. When the earlier parts are
taken in connection with the later, and when each part is interpreted by
the whole, most of the difficulties connected with inspiration disappear.
Taken together, with Christ as its culmination and explanation, the Bible
furnishes the Christian rule of faith and practice.


    The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and
    What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not
    invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The
    ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard
    to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of
    merely secular knowledge.—Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter,
    and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down
    principles which have been accepted as authority for generations.
    But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and
    science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In
    some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least
    affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional
    slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to
    be an authority in matters of his art?—The Duke of Wellington said
    once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of
    Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant,
    and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian
    gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at
    noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole
    account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle
    of Waterloo was ever fought at all?

    Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the
    same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is
    incomparably superior to all other books, and is “able to make
    thee wise unto salvation”_ (2 Tim. 3:15)_. Hooker, Eccl. Polity:
    “Whatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise
    than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as
    incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the
    credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take
    great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can
    have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which
    it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.” Baxter,
    Works, 21:349—“Those men who think that these human imperfections
    of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages
    of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith
    and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might
    enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of
    the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had
    not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any
    more than they were indefectible in life.”

    The Bible, says Beet, “contains possible errors in small details
    or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great
    facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these
    only, our faith is based.” Evans, Bib. Scholarship and
    Inspiration, 15, 18, 65—“Teach that the shell is part of the
    kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw
    away shell and kernel together.... This overstatement of
    inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll sceptics.... If in
    creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection
    why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can
    appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the _written_
    word?”

    We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic,
    71—“Let the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be
    adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its
    inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none
    will believe when they tell of heavenly things.” Watts adduces
    instances of Spinoza’s giving up the form while claiming to hold
    the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon
    of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no _a priori_ theory of
    perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of
    actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so
    in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect
    methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: “I
    observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries,
    because they are beside the way to which they have been so long
    used. _Resolved_, if ever I live to years, that I will be
    impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and
    receive them if rational, however long soever I have been used to
    another way of thinking.”

    Bowne, The Immanence of God, 109, 110—“Those who would find the
    source of certainty and the seat of authority in the Scriptures
    alone, or in the church alone, or reason and conscience alone,
    rather than in the complex and indivisible coworking of all these
    factors, should be reminded of the history of religious thought.
    The stiffest doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has not prevented
    warring interpretations; and those who would place the seat of
    authority in reason and conscience are forced to admit that
    outside illumination may do much for both. In some sense the
    religion of the spirit is a very important fact, but when it sets
    up in opposition to the religion of a book, the light that is in
    it is apt to turn to darkness.”


10. While inspiration constitutes Scripture an authority more trustworthy
than are individual reason or the creeds of the church, the only ultimate
authority is Christ himself.

Christ has not so constructed Scripture as to dispense with his personal
presence and teaching by his Spirit. The Scripture is the imperfect mirror
of Christ. It is defective, yet it reflects him and leads to him.
Authority resides not in it, but in him, and his Spirit enables the
individual Christian and the collective church progressively to
distinguish the essential from the non-essential, and so to perceive the
truth as it is in Jesus. In thus judging Scripture and interpreting
Scripture, we are not rationalists, but are rather believers in him who
promised to be with us alway even unto the end of the world and to lead us
by his Spirit into all the truth.


    James speaks of the law as a mirror (_James 1:23-25—_“like unto a
    man beholding his natural face in a mirror ... looketh into the
    perfect law”); the law convicts of sin because it reflects Christ.
    Paul speaks of the gospel as a mirror (_2 Cor. 3:18—_“we all,
    beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord”); the gospel
    transforms us because it reflects Christ. Yet both law and gospel
    are imperfect; they are like mirrors of polished metal, whose
    surface is often dim, and whose images are obscure; (_1 Cor.
    13:12—_“For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to
    face”); even inspired men know only in part, and prophesy only in
    part. Scripture itself is the conception and utterance of a child,
    to be done away when that which is perfect is come, and we see
    Christ as he is.

    Authority is the right to impose beliefs or to command obedience.
    The only ultimate authority is God, for he is truth, justice and
    love. But he can impose beliefs and command obedience only as he
    is known. Authority belongs therefore only to God revealed, and
    because Christ is God revealed he can say: “All authority hath
    been given unto me in heaven and on earth”_ (Mat. 28:18)_. The
    final authority in religion is Jesus Christ. Every one of his
    revelations of God is authoritative. Both nature and human nature
    are such revelations. He exercises his authority through delegated
    and subordinate authorities, such as parents and civil government.
    These rightfully claim obedience so long as they hold to their own
    respective spheres and recognize their relation of dependence upon
    him. “The powers that be are ordained of God”_ (Rom. 13:1)_, even
    though they are imperfect manifestations of his wisdom and
    righteousness. The decisions of the Supreme Court are
    authoritative even though the judges are fallible and come short
    of establishing absolute justice. Authority is not infallibility,
    in the government either of the family or of the state.

    The church of the middle ages was regarded as possessed of
    absolute authority. But the Protestant Reformation showed how vain
    were these pretensions. The church is an authority only as it
    recognizes and expresses the supreme authority of Christ. The
    Reformers felt the need of some external authority in place of the
    church. They substituted the Scripture. The phrase “the word of
    God,” which designates the truth orally uttered or affecting the
    minds of men, came to signify only a book. Supreme authority was
    ascribed to it. It often usurped the place of Christ. While we
    vindicate the proper authority of Scripture, we would show that
    its authority is not immediate and absolute, but mediate and
    relative, through human and imperfect records, and needing a
    supplementary and divine teaching to interpret them. The authority
    of Scripture is not apart from Christ or above Christ, but only in
    subordination to him and to his Spirit. He who inspired Scripture
    must enable us to interpret Scripture. This is not a doctrine of
    rationalism, for it holds to man’s absolute dependence upon the
    enlightening Spirit of Christ. It is not a doctrine of mysticism,
    for it holds that Christ teaches us only by opening to us the
    meaning of his past revelations. We do not expect any new worlds
    in our astronomy, nor do we expect any new Scriptures in our
    theology. But we do expect that the same Christ who gave the
    Scriptures will give us new insight into their meaning and will
    enable us to make new applications of their teachings.

    The right and duty of private judgment with regard to Scripture
    belong to no ecclesiastical caste, but are inalienable liberties
    of the whole church of Christ and of each individual member of
    that church. And yet this judgment is, from another point of view,
    no private judgment. It is not the judgment of arbitrariness or
    caprice. It does not make the Christian consciousness supreme, if
    we mean by this term the consciousness of Christians apart from
    the indwelling Christ. When once we come to Christ, he joins us to
    himself, he seats us with him upon his throne, he imparts to us
    his Spirit, he bids us use our reason in his service. In judging
    Scripture, we make not ourselves but Christ supreme, and recognize
    him as the only ultimate and infallible authority in matters of
    religion. We can believe that the total revelation of Christ in
    Scripture is an authority superior to individual reason or to any
    single affirmation of the church, while yet we believe that this
    very authority of Scripture has its limitation, and that Christ
    himself must teach us what this total revelation is. So the
    judgment which Scripture encourages us to pass upon its own
    limitations only induces a final and more implicit reliance upon
    the living and personal Son of God. He has never intended that
    Scripture should be a substitute for his own presence, and it is
    only his Spirit that is promised to lead us into all the truth.

    On the authority of Scripture, see A. H. Strong, Christ in
    Creation, 113-136—“The source of all authority is not Scripture,
    but Christ.... Nowhere are we told that the Scripture of itself is
    able to convince the sinner or to bring him to God. It is a
    glittering sword, but it is ‘the sword of the Spirit’_ (Eph.
    6:17)_; and unless the Spirit use it, it will never pierce the
    heart. It is a heavy hammer, but only the Spirit can wield it so
    that it breaks in pieces the flinty rock. It is the type locked in
    the form, but the paper will never receive an impression until the
    Spirit shall apply the power. No mere instrument shall have the
    glory that belongs to God. Every soul shall feel its entire
    dependence upon him. Only the Holy Spirit can turn the outer word
    into an inner word. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ.
    Christ comes into direct contact with the soul. He himself gives
    his witness to the truth. He bears testimony to Scripture, even
    more than Scripture bears testimony to him.”


11. The preceding discussion enables us at least to lay down three
cardinal principles and to answer three common questions with regard to
inspiration.

Principles: (_a_) The human mind can be inhabited and energized by God
while yet attaining and retaining its own highest intelligence and
freedom. (_b_) The Scriptures being the work of the one God, as well as of
the men in whom God moved and dwelt, constitute an articulated and organic
unity. (_c_) The unity and authority of Scripture as a whole are entirely
consistent with its gradual evolution and with great imperfection in its
non-essential parts.

Questions: (_a_) Is any part of Scripture uninspired? Answer: Every part
of Scripture is inspired in its connection and relation with every other
part. (_b_) Are there degrees of inspiration? Answer: There are degrees of
value, but not of inspiration. Each part in its connection with the rest
is made completely true, and completeness has no degrees. (_c_) How may we
know what parts are of most value and what is the teaching of the whole?
Answer: The same Spirit of Christ who inspired the Bible is promised to
take of the things of Christ, and, by showing them to us, to lead us
progressively into all the truth.


    Notice the value of the Old Testament, revealing as it does the
    natural attributes of God, as a basis and background for the
    revelation of mercy in the New Testament. Revelation was in many
    parts _(πολυμερῶς—Heb. 1:1)_ as well as in many ways. “Each
    individual oracle, taken by itself, was partial and incomplete”
    (Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Ch., 21). But the person and the
    words of Christ sum up and complete the revelation, so that, taken
    together and in their connection with him, the various parts of
    Scripture constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith
    and practice. See Browne, Inspiration of the N. T.; Bernard,
    Progress of Doctrine in the N. T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of
    the O. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of Doctrine. See A. H.
    Strong, on Method of Inspiration, in Philosophy and Religion,
    148-155.

    The divine influence upon the minds of post-biblical writers,
    leading to the composition of such allegories as Pilgrim’s
    Progress, and such dramas as Macbeth, is to be denominated
    illumination rather than inspiration, for the reasons that these
    writings contain error as well as truth in matters of religion and
    morals; that they add nothing essential to what the Scriptures
    give us; and that, even in their expression of truth previously
    made known, they are not worthy of a place in the sacred canon. W.
    H. P. Faunce: “How far is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress true to
    present Christian experience? It is untrue: 1. In its despair of
    this world. The Pilgrim has to leave this world in order to be
    saved. Modern experience longs to do God’s will _here_, and to
    save others instead of forsaking them. 2. In its agony over sin
    and frightful conflict. Bunyan illustrates modern experience
    better by Christiana and her children who go through the Valley
    and the Shadow of Death in the daytime, and without conflict with
    Apollyon. 3. In the constant uncertainty of the issue of the
    Pilgrim’s fight. Christian enters Doubting Castle and meets Giant
    Despair, even after he has won most of his victories. In modern
    experience, ‘at evening time there shall be light’_—(Zech. 14:7)_.
    4. In the constant conviction of an absent Christ. Bunyan’s Christ
    is never met this side of the Celestial City. The Cross at which
    the burden dropped is the symbol of a sacrificial act, but it is
    not the Savior himself. Modern experience has Christ living in us
    and with us alway, and not simply a Christ whom we hope to see at
    the end of the journey.”

    Beyschlag, N. T. Theol., 2:18—“Paul declares his own prophecy and
    inspiration to be essentially imperfect (_1 Cor. 13:9, 10, 12; cf.
    1 Cor. 12:10; 1 Thess. 5:19-21_). This admission justifies a
    Christian criticism even of his views. He can pronounce an
    anathema on those who preach ‘a different gospel’_ (Gal. 1:8, 9)_,
    for what belongs to simple faith, the facts of salvation, are
    absolutely certain. But where prophetic thought and speech go
    beyond these facts of salvation, wood and straw may be mingled
    with the gold, silver and precious stones built upon the one
    foundation. So he distinguishes his own modest γνώμη from the
    ἐπιταγὴ κυρίον (1 Cor. 7:25, 40).” Clarke, Christian Theology,
    44—“The authority of Scripture is not one that binds, but one that
    sets free. Paul is writing of Scripture when he says: ‘Not that we
    have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in
    faith ye stand fast’_ (2 Cor. 1:24)_.”

    Cremer, in Herzog, Realencyc., 183-203—“The church doctrine is
    _that_ the Scriptures are inspired, but it has never been
    determined by the church _how_ they are inspired.” Butler,
    Analogy, part II, chap. III—“The only question concerning the
    truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real revelation, not
    whether it be attended with every circumstance which we should
    have looked for; and concerning the authority of Scripture,
    whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of
    such sort, and so promulgated, as weak men are apt to fancy a book
    containing a divine revelation should. And therefore, neither
    obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various readings,
    nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any
    other things of the like kind, though they had been much more
    considerable than they are, could overthrow the authority of the
    Scripture; unless the prophets, apostles, or our Lord had promised
    that the book containing the divine revelation should be secure
    from these things.” W. Robertson Smith: “If am asked why I receive
    the Scriptures as the word of God and as the only perfect rule of
    faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant
    church: ‘Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming
    love of God; because in the Bible alone I find God drawing nigh to
    men in Jesus Christ, and declaring his will for our salvation. And
    the record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my
    heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God himself is
    able to speak such words to my soul.’ ” The gospel of Jesus Christ
    is the ἅπαξ λεγόμενον of the Almighty. See Marcus Dods, The Bible,
    its Origin and Nature; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 66-115.



V. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.


In connection with a divine-human work like the Bible, insoluble
difficulties may be expected to present themselves. So long, however, as
its inspiration is sustained by competent and sufficient evidence, these
difficulties cannot justly prevent our full acceptance of the doctrine,
any more than disorder and mystery in nature warrant us in setting aside
the proofs of its divine authorship. These difficulties are lessened with
time; some have already disappeared; many may be due to ignorance, and may
be removed hereafter; those which are permanent may be intended to
stimulate inquiry and to discipline faith.

It is noticeable that the common objections to inspiration are urged, not
so much against the religious teaching of the Scriptures, as against
certain errors in secular matters which are supposed to be interwoven with
it. But if these are proved to be errors indeed, it will not necessarily
overthrow the doctrine of inspiration; it will only compel us to give a
larger place to the human element in the composition of the Scriptures,
and to regard them more exclusively as a text-book of religion. As a rule
of religious faith and practice, they will still be the infallible word of
God. The Bible is to be judged as a book whose one aim is man’s rescue
from sin and reconciliation to God, and in these respects it will still be
found a record of substantial truth. This will appear more fully as we
examine the objections one by one.


    “The Scriptures are given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but
    how to go to heaven.” Their aim is certainly not to teach science
    or history, except so far as science or history is essential to
    their moral and religious purpose. Certain of their doctrines,
    like the virgin-birth of Christ and his bodily resurrection, are
    historical facts, and certain facts, like that of creation, are
    also doctrines. With regard to these great facts, we claim that
    inspiration has given us accounts that are essentially
    trustworthy, whatever may be their imperfections in detail. To
    undermine the scientific trustworthiness of the Indian Vedas is to
    undermine the religion which they teach. But this only because
    their scientific doctrine is an essential part of their religious
    teaching. In the Bible, religion is not dependent upon physical
    science. The Scriptures aim only to declare the creatorship and
    lordship of the personal God. The method of his working may be
    described pictorially without affecting this substantial truth.
    The Indian cosmogonies, on the other hand, polytheistic or
    pantheistic as they are, teach essential untruth, by describing
    the origin of things as due to a series of senseless
    transformations without basis of will or wisdom.

    So long as the difficulties of Scripture are difficulties of form
    rather than substance, of its incidental features rather than its
    main doctrine, we may say of its obscurities as Isocrates said of
    the work of Heraclitus: “What I understand of it is so excellent
    that I can draw conclusions from it concerning what I do not
    understand.” “If Bengel finds things in the Bible too hard for his
    critical faculty, he finds nothing too hard for his believing
    faculty.” With John Smyth, who died at Amsterdam in 1612, we may
    say: “I profess I have changed, and shall be ready still to
    change, for the better”; and with John Robinson, in his farewell
    address to the Pilgrim Fathers: “I am verily persuaded that the
    Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.” See
    Luthardt, Saving Truths, 205; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 205 _sq._;
    Bap. Rev., April, 1881: art. by O. P. Eaches; Cardinal Newman, in
    19th Century, Feb. 1884.


1. Errors in matters of Science.


Upon this objection we remark:

(_a_) We do not admit the existence of scientific error in the Scripture.
What is charged as such is simply truth presented in popular and
impressive forms.

The common mind receives a more correct idea of unfamiliar facts when
these are narrated in phenomenal language and in summary form than when
they are described in the abstract terms and in the exact detail of
science.


    The Scripture writers unconsciously observe Herbert Spencer’s
    principle of style: Economy of the reader’s or hearer’s
    attention,—the more energy is expended upon the form the less
    there remains to grapple with the substance (Essays, 1-47). Wendt,
    Teaching of Jesus, 1:130, brings out the principle of Jesus’
    style: “The greatest clearness in the smallest compass.” Hence
    Scripture uses the phrases of common life rather than scientific
    terminology. Thus the language of appearance is probably used in
    _Gen. 7:19—_“all the high mountains that were under the whole
    heaven were covered”—such would be the appearance, even if the
    deluge were local instead of universal; in _Josh. 10:12, 13—_“and
    the sun stood still”—such would be the appearance, even if the
    sun’s rays were merely refracted so as preternaturally to lengthen
    the day; in _Ps. 93:1—_“The world also is established, that it
    cannot be moved”—such is the appearance, even though the earth
    turns on its axis and moves round the sun. In narrative, to
    substitute for “sunset” some scientific description would divert
    attention from the main subject. Would it be preferable, in the O.
    T., if we should read: “When the revolution of the earth upon its
    axis caused the rays of the solar luminary to impinge horizontally
    upon the retina, _Isaac went out to meditate_” (_Gen. 24:63_)? “Le
    secret d’ennuyer est de tout dire.” Charles Dickens, in his
    American Notes, 72, describes a prairie sunset: “The decline of
    day here was very gorgeous, tinging the firmament deeply with red
    and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above us” (quoted by
    Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 97). Did Dickens therefore
    believe the firmament to be a piece of solid masonry?

    Canon Driver rejects the Bible story of creation because the
    distinctions made by modern science cannot be found in the
    primitive Hebrew. He thinks the fluid state of the earth’s
    substance should have been called “surging chaos,” instead of
    “waters”_ (Gen. 1:2)_. “An admirable phrase for modern and
    cultivated minds,” replies Mr. Gladstone, “but a phrase that would
    have left the pupils of the Mosaic writer in exactly the condition
    out of which it was his purpose to bring them, namely, a state of
    utter ignorance and darkness, with possibly a little ripple of
    bewilderment to boot”; see Sunday School Times, April 26, 1890.
    The fallacy of holding that Scripture gives in detail all the
    facts connected with a historical narrative has led to many
    curious arguments. The Gregorian Calendar which makes the year
    begin in January was opposed by representing that Eve was tempted
    at the outset by an apple, which was possible only in case the
    year began in September; see Thayer, Change of Attitude towards
    the Bible, 46.


(_b_) It is not necessary to a proper view of inspiration to suppose that
the human authors of Scripture had in mind the proper scientific
interpretation of the natural events they recorded.

It is enough that this was in the mind of the inspiring Spirit. Through
the comparatively narrow conceptions and inadequate language of the
Scripture writers, the Spirit of inspiration may have secured the
expression of the truth in such germinal form as to be intelligible to the
times in which it was first published, and yet capable of indefinite
expansion as science should advance. In the miniature picture of creation
in the first chapter of Genesis, and in its power of adjusting itself to
every advance of scientific investigation, we have a strong proof of
inspiration.


    The word “day” in _Genesis 1_ is an instance of this general mode
    of expression. It would be absurd to teach early races, that deal
    only in small numbers, about the myriads of years of creation. The
    child’s object-lesson, with its graphic summary, conveys to his
    mind more of truth than elaborate and exact statement would
    convey. Conant (_Genesis 2:10_) says of the description of Eden
    and its rivers: “Of course the author’s object is not a minute
    topographical description, but a general and impressive conception
    as a whole.” Yet the progress of science only shows that these
    accounts are not less but more true than was supposed by those who
    first received them. Neither the Hindu Shasters nor any heathen
    cosmogony can bear such comparison with the results of science.
    Why change our interpretations of Scripture so often? Answer: We
    do not assume to be original teachers of science, but only to
    interpret Scripture with the new lights we have. See Dana, Manual
    of Geology, 741-746; Guyot, in Bib. Sac., 1855:324; Dawson, Story
    of Earth and Man, 32.

    This conception of early Scripture teaching as elementary and
    suited to the childhood of the race would make it possible, if the
    facts so required, to interpret the early chapters of Genesis as
    mythical or legendary. God might condescend to “Kindergarten
    formulas.” Goethe said that “We should deal with children as God
    deals with us: we are happiest under the influence of innocent
    delusions.” Longfellow: “How beautiful is youth! how bright it
    gleams, With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of
    beginnings, story without end, Each maid a heroine, and each man a
    friend!” We might hold with Goethe and with Longfellow, if we only
    excluded from God’s teaching all essential error. The narratives
    of Scripture might be addressed to the imagination, and so might
    take mythical or legendary form, while yet they conveyed
    substantial truth that could in no other way be so well
    apprehended by early man; see Robert Browning’s poem,
    “Development,” in Asolando. The Koran, on the other hand, leaves
    no room for imagination, but fixes the number of the stars and
    declares the firmament to be solid. Henry Drummond: “Evolution has
    given us a new Bible.... The Bible is not a book which has been
    made,—it has grown.”

    Bagehot tells us that “One of the most remarkable of Father
    Newman’s Oxford sermons explains how science teaches that the
    earth goes round the sun, and how Scripture teaches that the sun
    goes round the earth; and it ends by advising the discreet
    believer to accept both.” This is mental bookkeeping by double
    entry; see Mackintosh, in Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:41.
    Lenormant, in Contemp. Rev., Nov. 1879—“While the tradition of the
    deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of
    all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts
    of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not
    afforded any, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm.” Lenormant
    here wrongly assumed that the language of Scripture is scientific
    language. If it is the language of appearance, then the deluge may
    be a local and not a universal catastrophe. G. F. Wright, Ice Age
    in North America, suggests that the numerous traditions of the
    deluge may have had their origin in the enormous floods of the
    receding glacier. In South-western Queensland, the standard gauge
    at the Meteorological Office registered 10-¾, 20, 35-¾, 10-¾
    inches of rainfall, in all 77-¼ inches, in four successive days.


(_c_) It may be safely said that science has not yet shown any fairly
interpreted passage of Scripture to be untrue.

With regard to the antiquity of the race, we may say that owing to the
differences of reading between the Septuagint and the Hebrew there is room
for doubt whether either of the received chronologies has the sanction of
inspiration. Although science has made probable the existence of man upon
the earth at a period preceding the dates assigned in these chronologies,
no statement of inspired Scripture is thereby proved false.


    Usher’s scheme of chronology, on the basis of the Hebrew, puts the
    creation 4004 years before Christ. Hales’s, on the basis of the
    Septuagint, puts it 5411 B. C. The Fathers followed the LXX. But
    the genealogies before and after the flood may present us only
    with the names of “leading and representative men.” Some of these
    names seem to stand, not for individuals, but for tribes, _e. g._:
    _Gen. 10:16_—where Canaan is said to have begotten the Jebusite
    and the Amorite; 29—Joktan begot Ophir and Havilah. In _Gen.
    10:6_, we read that Mizraim belonged to the sons of Ham. But
    Mizraim is a dual, coined to designate the two parts, Upper and
    Lower Egypt. Hence a son of Ham could not bear the name of
    Mizraim. _Gen. 10:13_ reads: “And Mizraim begat Ludim.” But Ludim
    is a plural form. The word signifies a whole nation, and “begat”
    is not employed in a literal sense. So in _verses 15, 16: _“Canaan
    begat ... the Jebusite,” a tribe; the ancestors of which would
    have been called Jebus. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, however, are
    names, not of tribes or nations, but of individuals; see Prof.
    Edward König, of Bonn, in S. S. Times, Dec. 14, 1901. E. G.
    Robinson: “We may pretty safely go back to the time of Abraham,
    but no further.” Bib. Sac., 1899:403—“The lists in Genesis may
    relate to families and not to individuals.”

    G. F. Wright, Ant. and Origin of Human Race, lect. II—“When in
    David’s time it is said that ‘Shebuel, the son of Gershom, the son
    of Moses, was ruler over the treasures’_ (1 Chron. 23:16; 26:24)_,
    Gershom was the immediate son of Moses, but Shebuel was separated
    by many generations from Gershom. So when Seth is said to have
    begotten Enosh when he was 105 years old (_Gen. 5:6_), it is,
    according to Hebrew usage, capable of meaning that Enosh was
    descended from the branch of Seth’s line which set off at the
    105th year, with any number of intermediate links omitted.” The
    appearance of completeness in the text may be due to alteration of
    the text in the course of centuries; see Bib. Com., 1:30. In the
    phrase “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham”_ (Mat.
    1:1)_ thirty-eight to forty generations are omitted. It may be so
    in some of the Old Testament genealogies. There is room for a
    hundred thousand years, if necessary (Conant). W. H. Green, in
    Bib. Sac., April, 1890:303, and in Independent, June 18, 1891—“The
    Scriptures furnish us with no data for a chronological computation
    prior to the life of Abraham. The Mosaic records do not fix, and
    were not intended to fix, the precise date of the Flood or of the
    Creation.... They give a series of specimen lives, with
    appropriate numbers attached, to show by selected examples what
    was the original term of human life. To make them a complete and
    continuous record, and to deduce from them the antiquity of the
    race, is to put them to a use they were never intended to serve.”

    Comparison with secular history also shows that no such length of
    time as 100,000 years for man’s existence upon earth seems
    necessary. Rawlinson, in Jour. Christ. Philosophy, 1883:339-364,
    dates the beginning of the Chaldean monarchy at 2400 B. C.
    Lenormant puts the entrance of the Sanskritic Indians into
    Hindustan at 2500 B. C. The earliest Vedas are between 1200 and
    1000 B. C. (Max Müller). Call of Abraham, probably 1945 B. C.
    Chinese history possibly began as early as 2356 B. C. (Legge). The
    old Empire in Egypt possibly began as early as 2650 B. C.
    Rawlinson puts the flood at 3600 B. C., and adds 2000 years
    between the deluge and the creation, making the age of the world
    1886 + 3600 + 2000 = 7486. S. R. Pattison, in Present Day Tracts,
    3: no. 13, concludes that “a term of about 8000 years is warranted
    by deductions from history, geology, and Scripture.” See also Duke
    of Argyll, Primeval Man, 76-128; Cowles on Genesis, 49-80; Dawson,
    Fossil Men, 246; Hicks, in Bap. Rev., July, 1884 (15000 years);
    Zöckler, Urgeschichte der Erde und des Menschen, 137-163. On the
    critical side, see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses, 80-102.

    Evidence of a geological nature seems to be accumulating, which
    tends to prove man’s advent upon earth at least ten thousand years
    ago. An arrowhead of tempered copper and a number of human bones
    were found in the Rocky Point mines, near Gilman, Colorado, 460
    feet beneath the surface of the earth, embedded in a vein of
    silver-bearing ore. More than a hundred dollars worth of ore clung
    to the bones when they were removed from the mine. On the age of
    the earth and the antiquity of man, see G. F. Wright, Man and the
    Glacial Epoch, lectures IV and X, and in McClure’s Magazine, June,
    1901, and Bib. Sac., 1903:31—“Charles Darwin first talked about
    300 million years as a mere trifle of geologic time. His son
    George limits it to 50 or 100 million; Croll and Young to 60 or 70
    million; Wallace to 28 million; Lord Kelvin to 24 million;
    Thompson and Newcomb to only 10 million.” Sir Archibald Geikie, at
    the British Association at Dover in 1899, said that 100 million
    years sufficed for that small portion of the earth’s history which
    is registered in the stratified rocks of the crust.

    Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 122, considers vegetable life to
    have existed on the planet for at least 100 million years. Warren
    Upham, in Pop. Science Monthly, Dec. 1893:153—“How old is the
    earth? 100 million years.” D. G. Brinton, in Forum, Dec. 1893:454,
    puts the minimum limit of man’s existence on earth at 50,000
    years. G. F. Wright does not doubt that man’s presence on this
    continent was preglacial, say eleven or twelve thousand years ago.
    He asserts that there has been a subsidence of Central Asia and
    Southern Russia since man’s advent, and that Arctic seals are
    still found in Lake Baikal in Siberia. While he grants that
    Egyptian civilization may go back to 5000 B. C., he holds that no
    more than 6000 or 7000 years before this are needed as preparation
    for history. Le Conte, Elements of Geology, 613—“Men saw the great
    glaciers of the second glacial epoch, but there is no reliable
    evidence of their existence before the first glacial epoch.
    Deltas, implements, lake shores, waterfalls, indicate only 7000 to
    10,000 years.” Recent calculations of Prof. Prestwich, the most
    eminent living geologist of Great Britain, tend to bring the close
    of the glacial epoch down to within 10,000 or 15,000 years.


(_d_) Even if error in matters of science were found in Scripture, it
would not disprove inspiration, since inspiration concerns itself with
science only so far as correct scientific views are necessary to morals
and religion.


    Great harm results from identifying Christian doctrine with
    specific theories of the universe. The Roman church held that the
    revolution of the sun around the earth was taught in Scripture,
    and that Christian faith required the condemnation of Galileo;
    John Wesley thought Christianity to be inseparable from a belief
    in witchcraft; opposers of the higher criticism regard the Mosaic
    authorship of the Pentateuch as “articulus stantis vel cadentis
    ecclesiæ.” We mistake greatly when we link inspiration with
    scientific doctrine. The purpose of Scripture is not to teach
    science, but to teach religion, and, with the exception of God’s
    creatorship and preserving agency in the universe, no scientific
    truth is essential to the system of Christian doctrine.
    Inspiration might leave the Scripture writers in possession of the
    scientific ideas of their time, while yet they were empowered
    correctly to declare both ethical and religious truth. A right
    spirit indeed gains some insight into the meaning of nature, and
    so the Scripture writers seem to be preserved from incorporating
    into their productions much of the scientific error of their day.
    But entire freedom from such error must not be regarded as a
    necessary accompaniment of inspiration.


2. Errors in matters of History.


To this objection we reply:

(_a_) What are charged as such are often mere mistakes in transcription,
and have no force as arguments against inspiration, unless it can first be
shown that inspired documents are by the very fact of their inspiration
exempt from the operation of those laws which affect the transmission of
other ancient documents.


    We have no right to expect that the inspiration of the original
    writer will be followed by a miracle in the case of every copyist.
    Why believe in infallible copyists, more than in infallible
    printers? God educates us to care for his word, and for its
    correct transmission. Reverence has kept the Scriptures more free
    from various readings than are other ancient manuscripts. None of
    the existing variations endanger any important article of faith.
    Yet some mistakes in transcription there probably are. In _1
    Chron. 22:14_, instead of 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000
    talents of silver (= $3,750,000,000), Josephus divides the sum by
    ten. Dr. Howard Osgood: “A French writer, Revillout, has accounted
    for the differing numbers in Kings and Chronicles, just as he
    accounts for the same differences in Egyptian and Assyrian later
    accounts, by the change in the value of money and debasement of
    issues. He shows the change all over Western Asia.” _Per contra_,
    see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 45.

    In _2 Chron. 13:3, 17_, where the numbers of men in the armies of
    little Palestine are stated as 400,000 and 800,000, and 500,000
    are said to have been slain in a single battle, “some ancient
    copies of the Vulgate and Latin translations of Josephus have
    40,000, 80,000, and 50,000”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible, _in
    loco_. In _2 Chron. 17:14-19_, Jehoshaphat’s army aggregates
    1,160,000, besides the garrisons of his fortresses. It is possible
    that by errors in transcription these numbers have been multiplied
    by ten. Another explanation however, and perhaps a more probable
    one, is given under (_d_) below. Similarly, compare _1 Sam. 6:19_,
    where 50,070 are slain, with the 70 of Josephus; _2 Sam.
    8:4—_“1,700 horsemen,” with _1 Chron. 18:4—_“7,000 horsemen”;
    _Esther 9:16_—75,000 slain by the Jews, with LXX—15,000. In _Mat.
    27:9_, we have “Jeremiah” for “Zechariah”—this Calvin allows to be
    a mistake; and, if a mistake, then one made by the first copyist,
    for it appears in all the uncials, all the manuscripts and all the
    versions except the Syriac Peshito where it is omitted, evidently
    on the authority of the individual transcriber and translator. In
    _Acts 7:16—_“the tomb that Abraham bought”—Hackett regards
    “Abraham” as a clerical error for “Jacob” (compare _Gen. 33:18,
    19_). See Bible Com., 3:165, 249, 251, 317.


(_b_) Other so-called errors are to be explained as a permissible use of
round numbers, which cannot be denied to the sacred writers except upon
the principle that mathematical accuracy was more important than the
general impression to be secured by the narrative.


    In _Numbers 25:9_, we read that there fell in the plague 24,000;
    _1 Cor. 10:8_ says 23,000. The actual number was possibly
    somewhere between the two. Upon a similar principle, we do not
    scruple to celebrate the Landing of the Pilgrims on December 22nd
    and the birth of Christ on December 25th. We speak of the battle
    of Bunker Hill, although at Bunker Hill no battle was really
    fought. In _Ex. 12:40, 41_, the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt
    is declared to be 430 years. Yet Paul, in _Gal. 3:17_, says that
    the giving of the law through Moses was 430 years after the call
    of Abraham, whereas the call of Abraham took place 215 years
    before Jacob and his sons went down into Egypt, and Paul should
    have said 645 years instead of 430. Franz Delitzsch: “The Hebrew
    Bible counts four centuries of Egyptian sojourn (_Gen. 15:13-16_),
    more accurately, 430 years (_Ex. 12:40_); but according to the LXX
    (_Ex. 12:40_) this number comprehends the sojourn in Canaan and
    Egypt, so that 215 years come to the pilgrimage in Canaan, and 215
    to the servitude in Egypt. This kind of calculation is not
    exclusively Hellenistic; it is also found in the oldest
    Palestinian Midrash. Paul stands on this side in _Gal. 3:17_,
    making, not the immigration into Egypt, but the covenant with
    Abraham the _terminus a quo_ of the 430 years which end in the
    Exodus from Egypt and in the legislation”; see also Hovey, Com. on
    _Gal. 3:17_. It was not Paul’s purpose to write chronology,—so he
    may follow the LXX, and call the time between the promise to
    Abraham and the giving of the law to Moses 430 years, rather than
    the actual 600. If he had given the larger number, it might have
    led to perplexity and discussion about a matter which had nothing
    to do with the vital question in hand. Inspiration may have
    employed current though inaccurate statements as to matters of
    history, because they were the best available means of impressing
    upon men’s minds truth of a more important sort. In _Gen. 15:13_
    the 430 years is called in round numbers 400 years, and so in
    _Acts 7:6_.


(_c_) Diversities of statement in accounts of the same event, so long as
they touch no substantial truth, may be due to the meagreness of the
narrative, and might be fully explained if some single fact, now
unrecorded, were only known. To explain these apparent discrepancies would
not only be beside the purpose of the record, but would destroy one
valuable evidence of the independence of the several writers or witnesses.


    On the Stokes trial, the judge spoke of two apparently conflicting
    testimonies as neither of them necessarily false. On the
    difference between Matthew and Luke as to the scene of the Sermon
    on the Mount (_Mat. 5:1_; _cf._ _Luke 6:17_) see Stanley, Sinai
    and Palestine, 360. As to one blind man or two (_Mat. 20:30_;
    _cf._ _Luke 18:35_) see Bliss, Com. on Luke, 275, and Gardiner, in
    Bib. Sac., July, 1879:513, 514; Jesus may have healed the blind
    men during a day’s excursion from Jericho, and it might be
    described as “when they went out,” or “as they drew nigh to
    Jericho.” Prof. M. B. Riddle: “_Luke 18:35_ describes the general
    movement towards Jerusalem and not the precise detail preceding
    the miracle; _Mat. 20:30_ intimates that the miracle occurred
    during an excursion from the city,—Luke afterwards telling of the
    final departure”; Calvin holds to two meetings; Godet to two
    cities; if Jesus healed two blind men, he certainly healed one,
    and Luke did not need to mention more than one, even if he knew of
    both; see Broadus on _Mat. 20:30_. In _Mat. 8:28_, where Matthew
    has two demoniacs at Gadara and Luke has only one at Gerasa,
    Broadus supposes that the village of Gerasa belonged to the
    territory of the city of Gadara, a few miles to the Southeast of
    the lake, and he quotes the case of Lafayette: “In the year 1824
    Lafayette visited the United States and was welcomed with honors
    and pageants. Some historians will mention only Lafayette, but
    others will relate the same visit as made and the same honors as
    enjoyed by two persons, namely, Lafayette and his son. Will not
    both be right?” On Christ’s last Passover, see Robinson, Harmony,
    212; E. H. Sears, Fourth Gospel, Appendix A; Edersheim, Life and
    Times of the Messiah, 2:507. Augustine: “Locutiones variæ, sed non
    contrariæ: dlversæ, sed non adversæ.”

    Bartlett, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1880:46, 47, gives the following
    modern illustrations: Winslow’s Journal (of Plymouth Plantation)
    speaks of a ship sent out “by Master Thomas Weston.” But Bradford
    in his far briefer narrative of the matter, mentions it as sent
    “by Mr. Weston and another.” John Adams, in his letters, tells the
    story of the daughter of Otis about her father’s destruction of
    his own manuscripts. At one time he makes her say: “In one of his
    unhappy moments he committed them all to the flames”; yet, in the
    second letter, she is made to say that “he was several days in
    doing it.” One newspaper says: President Hayes attended the
    Bennington centennial; another newspaper says: the President and
    Mrs. Hayes; a third: the President and his Cabinet; a fourth: the
    President, Mrs. Hayes and a majority of his Cabinet. Archibald
    Forbes, in his account of Napoleon III at Sedan, points out an
    agreement of narratives as to the salient points, combined with
    “the hopeless and bewildering discrepancies as to details,” even
    as these are reported by eye-witnesses, including himself,
    Bismarck, and General Sheridan who was on the ground, as well as
    others.

    Thayer, Change of Attitude, 52, speaks of Luke’s “plump
    anachronism in the matter of Theudas”—_Acts 5:36—_“For before
    those days rose up Theudas.” Josephus, Antiquities, 20:5:1,
    mentions an insurrectionary Theudas, but the date and other
    incidents do not agree with those of Luke. Josephus however may
    have mistaken the date as easily as Luke, or he may refer to
    another man of the same name. The inscription on the Cross is
    given in _Mark 15:26_, as “The King of the Jews”; in _Luke 23:38_,
    as “This is the King of the Jews”; in _Mat. 27:37_, as “This is
    Jesus the King of the Jews”; and in _John 19:19_, as “Jesus of
    Nazareth the King of the Jews.” The entire superscription, in
    Hebrew, Greek and Latin, may have contained every word given by
    the several evangelists combined, and may have read “This is Jesus
    of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” and each separate report may
    be entirely correct so far as it goes. See, on the general
    subject, Haley, Alleged Discrepancies; Fisher, Beginnings of
    Christianity, 406-412.


(_d_) While historical and archæological discovery in many important
particulars goes to sustain the general correctness of the Scripture
narratives, and no statement essential to the moral and religious teaching
of Scripture has been invalidated, inspiration is still consistent with
much imperfection in historical detail and its narratives “do not seem to
be exempted from possibilities of error.”


    The words last quoted are those of Sanday. In his Bampton Lectures
    on Inspiration, 400, he remarks that “Inspiration belongs to the
    historical books rather as conveying a religious lesson, than as
    histories; rather as interpreting, than as narrating plain matter
    of fact. The crucial issue is that in these last respects they do
    not seem to be exempted from possibilities of error.” R. V.
    Foster, Systematic Theology, (Cumberland Presbyterian): The
    Scripture writers “were not inspired to do otherwise than to take
    these statements as they found them.” Inerrancy is not freedom
    from misstatements, but from error defined as “that which misleads
    in any serious or important sense.” When we compare the accounts
    of _1_ and _2 Chronicles_ with those of _1_ and _2 Kings_ we find
    in the former an exaggeration of numbers, a suppression of
    material unfavorable to the writer’s purpose, and an emphasis upon
    that which is favorable, that contrasts strongly with the method
    of the latter. These characteristics are so continuous that the
    theory of mistakes in transcription does not seem sufficient to
    account for the facts. The author’s aim was to draw out the
    religious lessons of the story, and historical details are to him
    of comparative unimportance.

    H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 108—“Inspiration
    did not correct the Chronicler’s historical point of view, more
    than it corrected his scientific point of view, which no doubt
    made the earth the centre of the solar system. It therefore left
    him open to receive documents, and to use them, which idealized
    the history of the past, and described David and Solomon according
    to the ideas of later times and the priestly class. David’s sins
    are omitted, and numbers are multiplied, to give greater dignity
    to the earlier kingdom.” As Tennyson’s Idylls of the King give a
    nobler picture of King Arthur, and a more definite aspect to his
    history, than actual records justify, yet the picture teaches
    great moral and religious lessons, so the Chronicler seems to have
    manipulated his material in the interest of religion. Matters of
    arithmetic were minor matters. “Majoribus intentus est.”

    E. G. Robinson: “The numbers of the Bible are characteristic of a
    semi-barbarous age. The writers took care to guess enough. The
    tendency of such an age is always to exaggerate.” Two Formosan
    savages divide five pieces between them by taking two apiece and
    throwing one away. The lowest tribes can count only with the
    fingers of their hands; when they use their toes as well, it marks
    an advance in civilization. To the modern child a hundred is just
    as great a number as a million. So the early Scriptures seem to
    use numbers with a childlike ignorance as to their meaning.
    Hundreds of thousands can be substituted for tens of thousands,
    and the substitution seems only a proper tribute to the dignity of
    the subject. Gore, in Lux Mundi, 353—“This was not conscious
    perversion, but unconscious idealizing of history, the reading
    back into past records of a ritual development which was really
    later. Inspiration excludes conscious deception, but it appears to
    be quite consistent with this sort of idealizing; always supposing
    that the result read back into the earlier history does represent
    the real purpose of God and only anticipates the realization.”

    There are some who contend that these historical imperfections are
    due to transcription and that they did not belong to the original
    documents. Watts, New Apologetic, 71, 111, when asked what is
    gained by contending for infallible original autographs if they
    have been since corrupted, replies: “Just what we gain by
    contending for the original perfection of human nature, though man
    has since corrupted it. We must believe God’s own testimony about
    his own work. God may permit others to do what, as a holy
    righteous God, he cannot do himself.” When the objector declares
    it a matter of little consequence whether a pair of trousers were
    or were not originally perfect, so long as they are badly rent
    just now, Watts replies: “The tailor who made them would probably
    prefer to have it understood that the trousers did not leave his
    shop in their present forlorn condition. God drops no stitches and
    sends out no imperfect work.” Watts however seems dominated by an
    _a priori_ theory of inspiration, which blinds him to the actual
    facts of the Bible.

    Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 40—“Does the _present_
    error destroy the inspiration of the Bible as we have it? No. Then
    why should the _original_ error destroy the inspiration of the
    Bible, as it was first given? There are spots on yonder sun; do
    they stop its being the sun? Why, the sun is all the more a sun
    for the spots. So the Bible.” Inspiration seems to have permitted
    the gathering of such material as was at hand, very much as a
    modern editor might construct his account of an army movement from
    the reports of a number of observers; or as a modern historian
    might combine the records of a past age with all their
    imperfections of detail. In the case of the Scripture writers,
    however, we maintain that inspiration has permitted no sacrifice
    of moral and religious truth in the completed Scripture, but has
    woven its historical material together into an organic whole which
    teaches all the facts essential to the knowledge of Christ and of
    salvation.

    When we come to examine in detail what purport to be historical
    narratives, we must be neither credulous nor sceptical, but simply
    candid and open-minded. With regard for example to the great age
    of the Old Testament patriarchs, we are no more warranted in
    rejecting the Scripture accounts upon the ground that life in
    later times is so much shorter, than we are to reject the
    testimony of botanists as to trees of the Sequoia family between
    four and five hundred feet high, or the testimony of geologists as
    to Saurians a hundred feet long, upon the ground that the trees
    and reptiles with which we are acquainted are so much smaller.
    Every species at its introduction seems to exhibit the maximum of
    size and vitality. Weismann, Heredity, 6, 30—“Whales live some
    hundreds of years; elephants two hundred—their gestation taking
    two years. Giants prove that the plan upon which man is
    constructed can also be carried out on a scale far larger than the
    normal one.” E. Ray Lankester, Adv. of Science, 205-237,
    286—agrees with Weismann in his general theory. Sir George
    Cornewall Lewis long denied centenarism, but at last had to admit
    it.

    Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper’s Magazine, Jan. 1895, gives
    instances of men 137, 140, and 192 years old. The German Haller
    asserts that “the ultimate limit of human life does not exceed two
    centuries: to fix the exact number of years is exceedingly
    difficult.” J. Norman Lockyer, in Nature, regards the years of the
    patriarchs as lunar years. In Egypt, the sun being used, the unit
    of time was a year; but in Chaldea, the unit of time was a month,
    for the reason that the standard of time was the moon. Divide the
    numbers by twelve, and the lives of the patriarchs come out very
    much the same length with lives at the present day. We may ask,
    however, how this theory would work in shortening the lives
    between Noah and Moses. On the genealogies in Matthew and Luke,
    see Lord Harvey, Genealogies of our Lord, and his art, in Smith’s
    Bible Dictionary; _per contra_, see Andrews, Life of Christ, 55
    _sq._ On Quirinius and the enrollment for taxation (_Luke 2:2_),
    see Pres. Woolsey, in New Englander, 1869. On the general subject,
    see Rawlinson, Historical Evidences, and essay in Modern
    Scepticism, published by Christian Evidence Society, 1:265;
    Crooker, New Bible and New Uses, 102-126.


3. Errors in Morality.


(_a_) What are charged as such are sometimes evil acts and words of good
men—words and acts not sanctioned by God. These are narrated by the
inspired writers as simple matter of history, and subsequent results, or
the story itself, is left to point the moral of the tale.


    Instances of this sort are Noah’s drunkenness (_Gen. 9:20-27_);
    Lot’s incest (_Gen. 19:30-38_); Jacob’s falsehood (_Gen.
    27:19-24_); David’s adultery (_2 Sam. 11:1-4_); Peter’s denial
    (_Mat. 26:69-75_). See Lee, Inspiration, 265, note. Esther’s
    vindictiveness is not commended, nor are the characters of the
    Book of Esther said to have acted in obedience to a divine
    command. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 241—“In law and psalm and
    prophecy we behold the influence of Jehovah working as leaven
    among a primitive and barbarous people. Contemplating the Old
    Scriptures in this light, they become luminous with divinity, and
    we are furnished with the principle by which to discriminate
    between the divine and the human in the book. Particularly in
    David do we see a rugged, half-civilized, kingly man, full of
    gross errors, fleshly and impetuous, yet permeated with a divine
    Spirit that lifts him, struggling, weeping, and warring, up to
    some of the loftiest conceptions of Deity which the mind of man
    has conceived. As an angelic being, David is a caricature; as a
    man of God, as an example of God moving upon and raising up a most
    human man, he is a splendid example. The proof that the church is
    of God, is not its impeccability, but its progress.”


(_b_) Where evil acts appear at first sight to be sanctioned, it is
frequently some right intent or accompanying virtue, rather than the act
itself, upon which commendation is bestowed.


    As Rehab’s faith, not her duplicity (_Josh. 2:1-24_; _cf._ _Heb.
    11:31_ and _James 2:25_); Jael’s patriotism, not her treachery
    (_Judges 4:17-22_; _cf._ _5:24_). Or did they cast in their lot
    with Israel and use the common stratagems of war (see next
    paragraph)? Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are also
    limitations of the teacher.” While Dean Stanley praises Solomon
    for tolerating idolatry, James Martineau, Study, 2:137, remarks:
    “It would be a ridiculous pedantry to apply the Protestant pleas
    of private judgment to such communities as ancient Egypt and
    Assyria.... It is the survival of coercion, after conscience has
    been born to supersede it, that shocks and revolts us in
    persecution.”


(_c_) Certain commands and deeds are sanctioned as relatively
just—expressions of justice such as the age could comprehend, and are to
be judged as parts of a progressively unfolding system of morality whose
key and culmination we have in Jesus Christ.


    _Ex. 20:25—_“I gave them statutes that were not good”—as Moses’
    permission of divorce and retaliation (_Deut. 24:1_; _cf._ _Mat.
    5:31, 32; 19:7-9_; _Ex. 21:24_; _cf._ _Mat. 5:38, 39_). Compare
    Elijah’s calling down fire from heaven (_2 K. 1:10-12_) with
    Jesus’ refusal to do the same, and his intimation that the spirit
    of Elijah was not the spirit of Christ (_Luke 9:52-56_); _cf._
    Mattheson, Moments on the Mount, 253-255, on _Mat. 17:8—_“Jesus
    only”: “The strength of Elias paled before him. To shed the blood
    of enemies requires less strength than to shed one’s own blood,
    and to conquer by fire is easier than to conquer by love.” Hovey:
    “In divine revelation, it is first starlight, then dawn, finally
    day.” George Washington once gave directions for the
    transportation to the West Indies and the sale there of a
    refractory negro who had given him trouble. This was not at
    variance with the best morality of his time, but it would not suit
    the improved ethical standards of today. The use of force rather
    than moral suasion is sometimes needed by children and by
    barbarians. We may illustrate by the Sunday School scholar’s
    unruliness which was cured by his classmates during the week.
    “What did you say to him?” asked the teacher. “We didn’t say
    nothing; we just punched his head for him.” This was Old Testament
    righteousness. The appeal in the O. T. to the hope of earthly
    rewards was suitable to a stage of development not yet instructed
    as to heaven and hell by the coming and work of Christ; compare
    _Ex. 20:12_ with _Mat. 5:10; 25:46_. The Old Testament aimed to
    fix in the mind of a selected people the idea of the unity and
    holiness of God; in order to exterminate idolatry, much other
    teaching was postponed. See Peabody, Religion of Nature, 45;
    Mozley, Ruling Ideas of Early Ages; Green, in Presb. Quar., April,
    1877:221-252; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 328-368; Brit.
    and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:1-32; Martineau, Study, 2:137.

    When therefore we find in the inspired song of Deborah, the
    prophetess (_Judges 5:30_), an allusion to the common spoils of
    war—“a damsel, two damsels to every man” or in _Prov. 31:6,
    7—_“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine
    unto the bitter in soul. Let him drink, and forget his poverty,
    and remember his misery no more”—we do not need to maintain that
    these passages furnish standards for our modern conduct. Dr.
    Fisher calls the latter “the worst advice to a person in
    affliction, or dispirited by the loss of property.” They mark past
    stages in God’s providential leading of mankind. A higher stage
    indeed is already intimated in _Prov. 31:4—_“it is not for kings
    to drink wine, Nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink?” We
    see that God could use very imperfect instruments and could
    inspire very imperfect men. Many things were permitted for men’s
    “hardness of heart”_ (Mat. 19:8)_. The Sermon on the Mount is a
    great advance on the law of Moses (_Mat. 5:21—_“Ye have heard that
    it was said to them of old time”; _cf._ 22—“But I say unto you”).

    Robert G. Ingersoll would have lost his stock in trade if
    Christians had generally recognized that revelation is gradual,
    and is completed only in Christ. This gradualness of revelation is
    conceded in the common phrase: “the new dispensation.” Abraham
    Lincoln showed his wisdom by never going far ahead of the common
    sense of the people. God similarly adapted his legislation to the
    capacities of each successive age. The command to Abraham to
    sacrifice his son (_Gen. 22:1-19_) was a proper test of Abraham’s
    faith in a day when human sacrifice violated no common ethical
    standard because the Hebrew, like the Roman, “patria potestas” did
    not regard the child as having a separate individuality, but
    included the child in the parent and made the child equally
    responsible for the parent’s sin. But that very command was given
    _only_ as a test of faith, and with the intent to make the
    intended obedience the occasion of revealing God’s provision of a
    substitute and so of doing away with human sacrifice for all
    future time. We may well imitate the gradualness of divine
    revelation in our treatment of dancing and of the liquor traffic.


(_d_) God’s righteous sovereignty affords the key to other events. He has
the right to do what he will with his own, and to punish the transgressor
when and where he will; and he may justly make men the foretellers or
executors of his purposes.


    Foretellers, as in the imprecatory Psalms (_137:9_; _cf._ _Is.
    13:16-18_ and _Jer. 50:16, 29_); executors, as in the destruction
    of the Canaanites (_Deut. 7:2, 16_). In the former case the Psalm
    was not the ebullition of personal anger, but the expression of
    judicial indignation against the enemies of God. We must
    distinguish the substance from the form. The substance was the
    denunciation of God’s righteous judgments; the form was taken from
    the ordinary customs of war in the Psalmist’s time. See Park, in
    Bib. Sac., 1862:165; Cowles, Com. on Ps. 137; Perowne on Psalms,
    Introd., 61; Presb. and Ref. Rev., 1897:490-505; _cf._ _2 Tim.
    4:14—_“the Lord will render to him according to his works”—a
    prophecy, not a curse, ἀποδώσει, not ἀποδώη, as in A. V. In the
    latter case, an exterminating war was only the benevolent surgery
    that amputated the putrid limb, and so saved the religious life of
    the Hebrew nation and of the after-world. See Dr. Thomas Arnold,
    Essay on the Right Interpretation of Scripture; Fisher, Beginnings
    of Christianity, 11-24.

    Another interpretation of these events has been proposed, which
    would make them illustrations of the principle indicated in (_c_)
    above: E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 45—“It was not the
    imprecations of the Psalm that were inspired of God, but his
    purposes and ideas of which these were by the times the necessary
    vehicle; just as the adultery of David was not by divine command,
    though through it the purpose of God as to Christ’s descent was
    accomplished.” John Watson (Ian Maclaren), Cure of Souls,
    143—“When the massacre of the Canaanites and certain proceedings
    of David are flung in the face of Christians, it is no longer
    necessary to fall back on evasions or special pleading. It can now
    be frankly admitted that, from our standpoint in this year of
    grace, such deeds were atrocious, and that they never could have
    been according to the mind of God, but that they must be judged by
    their date, and considered the defects of elementary moral
    processes. The Bible is vindicated, because it is, on the whole, a
    steady ascent, and because it culminates in Christ.”

    Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 56—“Abraham mistook the
    voice of conscience, calling on him to consecrate his only son to
    God, and interpreted it as a command to slay his son as a burnt
    offering. Israel misinterpreted his righteous indignation at the
    cruel and lustful rites of the Canaanitish religion as a divine
    summons to destroy the worship by putting the worshipers to death;
    a people undeveloped in moral judgment could not distinguish
    between formal regulations respecting camp-life and eternal
    principles of righteousness, such as, Thou shalt love thy neighbor
    as thyself, but embodied them in the same code, and seemed to
    regard them as of equal authority.” Wilkinson, Epic of Paul,
    281—“If so be such man, so placed ... did in some part That
    utterance make his own, profaning it, To be his vehicle for sense
    not meant By the august supreme inspiring Will”—_i. e._, putting
    some of his own sinful anger into God’s calm predictions of
    judgment. Compare the stern last words of “Zechariah, the son of
    Jehoiada, the priest” when stoned to death in the temple court:
    “Jehovah look upon it and require it”_ (2 Chron. 24:20-22)_, with
    the last words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not
    what they do”_ (Luke 23:34)_ and of Stephen: “Lord, lay not this
    sin to their charge”_ (Acts 7:60)_.


(_e_) Other apparent immoralities are due to unwarranted interpretations.
Symbol is sometimes taken for literal fact; the language of irony is
understood as sober affirmation; the glow and freedom of Oriental
description are judged by the unimpassioned style of Western literature;
appeal to lower motives is taken to exclude, instead of preparing for, the
higher.


    In _Hosea 1:2, 3_, the command to the prophet to marry a harlot
    was probably received and executed in vision, and was intended
    only as symbolic: compare _Jer. 25:15-18—_“Take this cup ... and
    cause all the nations ... to drink.” Literal obedience would have
    made the prophet contemptible to those whom he would instruct, and
    would require so long a time as to weaken, if not destroy, the
    designed effect; see Ann. Par. Bible, _in loco_. In _2 K. 6:19_,
    Elisha’s deception, so called, was probably only ironical and
    benevolent; the enemy dared not resist, because they were
    completely in his power. In the _Song of Solomon_, we have, as
    Jewish writers have always held, a highly-wrought dramatic
    description of the union between Jehovah and his people, which we
    must judge by Eastern and not by Western literary standards.

    Francis W. Newman, in his Phases of Faith, accused even the New
    Testament of presenting low motives for human obedience. It is
    true that all right motives are appealed to, and some of these
    motives are of a higher sort than are others. Hope of heaven and
    fear of hell are not the highest motives, but they may be employed
    as preliminary incitements to action, even though only love for
    God and for holiness will ensure salvation. Such motives are urged
    both by Christ and by his apostles: _Mat. 6:20—_“lay up for
    yourselves treasures in heaven”; _10:28—_“fear him who is able to
    destroy both soul and body in hell”; _Jude 23—_“some save with
    fear, snatching them out of the fire.” In this respect the N. T.
    does not differ from the O. T. George Adam Smith has pointed out
    that the royalists got their texts, “the powers that be”_ (Rom.
    13:1)_ and “the king as supreme”_ (1 Pet. 2:13)_, from the N. T.,
    while the O. T. furnished texts for the defenders of liberty.
    While the O. T. deals with _national_ life, and the discharge of
    social and political functions, the N. T. deals in the main with
    _individuals_ and with their relations to God. On the whole
    subject, see Hessey, Moral Difficulties of the Bible; Jellett,
    Moral Difficulties of the O. T.; Faith and Free Thought (Lect. by
    Christ. Ev. Soc.), 2:173; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith; Butler,
    Analogy, part ii, chap. iii; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 465-483.


4. Errors of Reasoning.


(_a_) What are charged as such are generally to be explained as valid
argument expressed in highly condensed form. The appearance of error may
be due to the suppression of one or more links in the reasoning.


    In _Mat. 22:32_, Christ’s argument for the resurrection, drawn
    from the fact that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is
    perfectly and obviously valid, the moment we put in the suppressed
    premise that the living relation to God which is here implied
    cannot properly be conceived as something merely spiritual, but
    necessarily requires a new and restored life of the body. If God
    is the God of the living, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall
    rise from the dead. See more full exposition, under Eschatology.
    Some of the Scripture arguments are enthymemes, and an enthymeme,
    according to Arbuthnot and Pope, is “a syllogism in which the
    major is married to the minnor, and the marriage is kept secret.”


(_b_) Where we cannot see the propriety of the conclusions drawn from
given premises, there is greater reason to attribute our failure to
ignorance of divine logic on our part, than to accommodation or _ad
hominem_ arguments on the part of the Scripture writers.


    By divine logic we mean simply a logic whose elements and
    processes are correct, though not understood by us. In _Heb. 7:9,
    10_ (Levi’s paying tithes in Abraham), there is probably a
    recognition of the organic unity of the family, which in miniature
    illustrates the organic unity of the race. In _Gal. 3:20—_“a
    mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one”—the law, with
    its two contracting parties, is contrasted with the promise, which
    proceeds from the sole fiat of God and is therefore unchangeable.
    Paul’s argument here rests on Christ’s divinity as its
    foundation—otherwise Christ would have been a mediator in the same
    sense in which Moses was a mediator (see Lightfoot, _in loco_). In
    _Gal. 4:21-31_, Hagar and Ishmael on the one hand, and Sarah and
    Isaac on the other, illustrate the exclusion of the bondmen of the
    law from the privileges of the spiritual seed of Abraham.
    Abraham’s two wives, and the two classes of people in the two
    sons, represent the two covenants (so Calvin). In _John 10:34—_“I
    said, Ye are gods,” the implication is that Judaism was not a
    system of mere monotheism, but of theism tending to theanthropism,
    a real union of God and man (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_).
    Godet well remarks that he who doubts Paul’s logic will do well
    first to suspect his own.


(_c_) The adoption of Jewish methods of reasoning, where it could be
proved, would not indicate error on the part of the Scripture writers, but
rather an inspired sanction of the method as applied to that particular
case.


    In _Gal. 3:16—_“He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of
    one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” Here it is intimated that
    the very form of the expression in _Gen. 22:18_, which denotes
    unity, was selected by the Holy Spirit as significant of that one
    person, Christ, who was the true seed of Abraham and in whom all
    nations were to be blessed. Argument from the form of a single
    word is in this case correct, although the Rabbins often made more
    of single words than the Holy Spirit ever intended. Watts, New
    Apologetic, 69—“F. W. Farrar asserts that the plural of the Hebrew
    or Greek terms for ‘seed’ is never used by Hebrew or Greek writers
    as a designation of human offspring. But see Sophocles, Œdipus at
    Colonus, 599, 600—γῆς ἔμῆς ἀπηλάθην πρὸς τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ σπερμάτων—‘I
    was driven away from my own country by my own offspring.’ ” In _1
    Cor. 10:1-6—_“and the rock was Christ”—the Rabbinic tradition that
    the smitten rock followed the Israelites in their wanderings is
    declared to be only the absurd literalizing of a spiritual
    fact—the continual presence of Christ, as preëxistent Logos, with
    his ancient people. _Per contra_, see Row, Rev. and Mod. Theories,
    98-128.


(_d_) If it should appear however upon further investigation that
Rabbinical methods have been wrongly employed by the apostles in their
argumentation, we might still distinguish between the truth they are
seeking to convey and the arguments by which they support it. Inspiration
may conceivably make known the truth, yet leave the expression of the
truth to human dialectic as well as to human rhetoric.


    Johnson, Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T., 137, 138—“In the
    utter absence of all evidence to the contrary, we ought to suppose
    that the allegories of the N. T. are like the allegories of
    literature in general, merely luminous embodiments of the
    truth.... If these allegories are not presented by their writers
    as evidences, they are none the less precious, since they
    illuminate the truth otherwise evinced, and thus render it at once
    clear to the apprehension and attractive to the taste.” If however
    the purpose of the writers was to use these allegories for proof,
    we may still see shining through the rifts of their traditional
    logic the truth which they were striving to set forth. Inspiration
    may have put them in possession of this truth without altering
    their ordinary scholastic methods of demonstration and expression.
    Horton, Inspiration, 108—“Discrepancies and illogical reasonings
    were but inequalities or cracks in the mirrors, which did not
    materially distort or hide the Person” whose glory they sought to
    reflect. Luther went even further than this when he said that a
    certain argument in the epistle was “good enough for the
    Galatians.”


5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.


(_a_) What are charged as such are commonly interpretations of the meaning
of the original Scripture by the same Spirit who first inspired it.


    In _Eph. 5:14, _“arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon
    thee” is an inspired interpretation of _Is. 60:1—_“Arise, shine;
    for thy light is come.” _Ps. 68:18—_“Thou hast received gifts
    among men”—is quoted in _Eph. 4:8_ as “gave gifts to men.” The
    words in Hebrew are probably a concise expression for “thou hast
    taken spoil which thou mayest distribute as gifts to men.” _Eph.
    4:8_ agrees exactly with the sense, though not with the words, of
    the Psalm. In _Heb. 11:21, _“Jacob ... worshiped, leaning upon the
    top of his staff” (LXX); _Gen. 47:31_ has “bowed himself upon the
    bed’s head.” The meaning is the same, for the staff of the chief
    and the spear of the warrior were set at the bed’s head. Jacob,
    too feeble to rise, prayed in his bed. Here Calvin says that “the
    apostle does not hesitate to accommodate to his own purpose what
    was commonly received,—they were not so scrupulous” as to details.
    Even Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 177, speaks of “a reshaping
    of his own words by the Author of them.” We prefer, with Calvin,
    to see in these quotations evidence that the sacred writers were
    insistent upon the substance of the truth rather than upon the
    form, the spirit rather than the letter.


(_b_) Where an apparently false translation is quoted from the Septuagint,
the sanction of inspiration is given to it, as expressing a part at least
of the fulness of meaning contained in the divine original—a fulness of
meaning which two varying translations do not in some cases exhaust.


    _Ps. 4:4_—Heb.: “Tremble, and sin not” (= no longer); LXX: “Be ye
    angry, and sin not.”_ Eph. 4:26_ quotes the LXX. The words may
    originally have been addressed to David’s comrades, exhorting them
    to keep their anger within bounds. Both translations together are
    needed to bring out the meaning of the original. _Ps.
    40:6-8—_“Mine ears hast thou opened” is translated in _Heb.
    10:5-7—_“a body didst thou prepare for me.” Here the Epistle
    quotes from the LXX. But the Hebrew means literally: “Mine ears
    hast thou bored”—an allusion to the custom of pinning a slave to
    the doorpost of his master by an awl driven through his ear, in
    token of his complete subjection. The sense of the verse is
    therefore given in the Epistle: “Thou hast made me thine in body
    and soul—lo, I come to do thy will.” A. C. Kendrick: “David, just
    entering upon his kingdom after persecution, is a type of Christ
    entering on his earthly mission. Hence David’s words are put into
    the mouth of Christ. For ‘ears,’ the organs with which we hear and
    obey and which David conceived to be hollowed out for him by God,
    the author of the Hebrews substitutes the word ‘body,’ as the
    _general_ instrument of doing God’s will” (Com. on _Heb. 10:5-7_).


(_c_) The freedom of these inspired interpretations, however, does not
warrant us in like freedom of interpretation in the case of other passages
whose meaning has not been authoritatively made known.


    We have no reason to believe that the scarlet thread of Rahab
    (_Josh. 2:18_) was a designed prefiguration of the blood of
    Christ, nor that the three measures of meal in which the woman hid
    her leaven (_Mat. 13:33_) symbolized Shem, Ham and Japheth, the
    three divisions of the human race. C. H. M., in his notes on the
    tabernacle in Exodus, tells us that “the loops of blue = heavenly
    grace; the taches of gold = the divine energy of Christ; the rams’
    skins dyed red = Christ’s consecration and devotedness; the
    badgers’ skins = his holy vigilance against temptation”! The
    tabernacle was indeed a type of Christ (_John 1:14_—ἐσκήνωσεν.
    _2:19, 21—_“in three days I will raise it up ... but he spake of
    the temple of his body”); yet it does not follow that every detail
    of the structure was significant. So each parable teaches some one
    main lesson,—the particulars may be mere drapery; and while we may
    use the parables for illustration, we should never ascribe divine
    authority to our private impressions of their meaning.

    _Mat. 25:1-13_—the parable of the five wise and the five foolish
    virgins—has been made to teach that the number of the saved
    precisely equals the number of the lost. Augustine defended
    persecution from the words in _Luke 14:23—_“constrain them to come
    in.” The Inquisition was justified by _Mat. 13:30—_“bind them in
    bundles to burn them.” Innocent III denied the Scriptures to the
    laity, quoting _Heb. 12:20—_“If even a beast touch the mountain,
    it shall be stoned.” A Plymouth Brother held that he would be safe
    on an evangelizing journey because he read in _John 19:36—_“A bone
    of him shall not be broken.” _Mat. 17:8—_“they saw no one, save
    Jesus only”—has been held to mean that we should trust only Jesus.
    The Epistle of Barnabas discovered in Abraham’s 318 servants a
    prediction of the crucified Jesus, and others have seen in
    Abraham’s three days’ journey to Mount Moriah the three stages in
    the development of the soul. Clement of Alexandria finds the four
    natural elements in the four colors of the Jewish Tabernacle. All
    this is to make a parable “run on all fours.” While we call a hero
    a lion, we do not need to find in the man something to correspond
    to the lion’s mane and claws. See Toy, Quotations in the N. T.;
    Franklin Johnson, Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T.; Crooker,
    The New Bible and its New Uses, 126-136.


(_d_) While we do not grant that the New Testament writers in any proper
sense misquoted or misinterpreted the Old Testament, we do not regard
absolute correctness in these respects as essential to their inspiration.
The inspiring Spirit may have communicated truth, and may have secured in
the Scriptures as a whole a record of that truth sufficient for men’s
moral and religious needs, without imparting perfect gifts of scholarship
or exegesis.


    In answer to Toy, Quotations in the N. T., who takes a generally
    unfavorable view of the correctness of the N. T. writers, Johnson,
    Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T., maintains their
    correctness. On pages x, xi, of his Introduction, Johnson remarks:
    “I think it just to regard the writers of the Bible as the
    creators of a great literature, and to judge and interpret them by
    the laws of literature. They have produced all the chief forms of
    literature, as history, biography, anecdote, proverb, oratory,
    allegory, poetry, fiction. They have needed therefore all the
    resources of human speech, its sobriety and scientific precision
    on one page, its rainbow hues of fancy and imagination on another,
    its fires of passion on yet another. They could not have moved and
    guided men in the best manner had they denied themselves the
    utmost force and freedom of language; had they refused to employ
    its wide range of expressions, whether exact or poetic; had they
    not borrowed without stint its many forms of reason, of terror, of
    rapture, of hope, of joy, of peace. So also, they have needed the
    usual freedom of literary allusion and citation, in order to
    commend the gospel to the judgment, the tastes, and the feelings
    of their readers.”


6. Errors in Prophecy.


(_a_) What are charged as such may frequently be explained by remembering
that much of prophecy is yet unfulfilled.


    It is sometimes taken for granted that the book of Revelation, for
    example, refers entirely to events already past. Moses Stuart, in
    his Commentary, and Warren’s Parousia, represent this preterist
    interpretation. Thus judged, however, many of the predictions of
    the book might seem to have failed.


(_b_) The personal surmises of the prophets as to the meaning of the
prophecies they recorded may have been incorrect, while yet the prophecies
themselves are inspired.


    In _1 Pet. 1:10, 11_, the apostle declares that the prophets
    searched “what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ
    which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the
    sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them.” So
    Paul, although he does not announce it as certain, seems to have
    had some hope that he might live to witness Christ’s second
    coming. See _2 Cor. 5:4—_“not for that we would be unclothed, but
    that we would be clothed upon” (ἐπενδύσασθαι—put on the spiritual
    body, as over the present one, without the intervention of death);
    _1 Thess. 4:15, 17—_“we that are alive, that are left unto the
    coming of the Lord.” So _Mat. 2:15_ quotes from _Hosea 11:1—_“Out
    of Egypt did I call my son,” and applies the prophecy to Christ,
    although Hosea was doubtless thinking only of the exodus of the
    people of Israel.


(_c_) The prophet’s earlier utterances are not to be severed from the
later utterances which elucidate them, nor from the whole revelation of
which they form a part. It is unjust to forbid the prophet to explain his
own meaning.


    _2 Thessalonians_ was written expressly to correct wrong
    inferences as to the apostle’s teaching drawn from his peculiar
    mode of speaking in the first epistle. In _2 Thess. 2:2-5_ he
    removes the impression “that the day of the Lord is now present”
    or “just at hand”; declares that “it will not be, except the
    falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed”; reminds
    the Thessalonians: “when I was yet with you, I told you these
    things.” Yet still, in _verse 1_, he speaks of “the coming of our
    Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him.”

    These passages, taken together, show: (1) that the two epistles
    are one in their teaching; (2) that in neither epistle is there
    any prediction of the immediate coming of the Lord; (3) that in
    the second epistle great events are foretold as intervening before
    that coming; (4) that while Paul never taught that Christ would
    come during his own lifetime, he hoped at least during the earlier
    part of his life that it might be so—a hope that seems to have
    been dissipated in his later years. (See _2 Tim. 4:6—_“I am
    already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.”) We
    must remember, however, that there was a “coming of the Lord” in
    the destruction of Jerusalem within three or four years of Paul’s
    death. Henry Van Dyke: “The point of Paul’s teaching in _1_ and _2
    Thess._ is not that Christ is coming to-morrow, but that he is
    surely coming.” The absence of perspective in prophecy may explain
    Paul’s not at first defining the precise time of the end, and so
    leaving it to be misunderstood.

    The second Epistle to the Thessalonians, therefore, only makes
    more plain the meaning of the first, and adds new items of
    prediction. It is important to recognize in Paul’s epistles a
    progress in prophecy, in doctrine, in church polity. The full
    statement of the truth was gradually drawn out, under the
    influence of the Spirit, upon occasion of successive outward
    demands and inward experiences. Much is to be learned by studying
    the chronological order of Paul’s epistles, as well as of the
    other N. T. books. For evidence of similar progress in the
    epistles of Peter, compare _1 Pet. 4:7_ with _2 Pet. 3:4_ _sq._


(_d_) The character of prophecy as a rough general sketch of the future,
in highly figurative language, and without historical perspective, renders
it peculiarly probable that what at first sight seem to be errors are due
to a misinterpretation on our part, which confounds the drapery with the
substance, or applies its language to events to which it had no reference.


    _James 5:9_ and _Phil. 4:5_ are instances of that large prophetic
    speech which regards the distant future as near at hand, because
    so certain to the faith and hope of the church. Sanday,
    Inspiration, 376-378—“No doubt the Christians of the Apostolic age
    did live in immediate expectation of the Second Coming, and that
    expectation culminated at the crisis in which the Apocalypse was
    written. In the Apocalypse, as in every predictive prophecy, there
    is a double element, one part derived from the circumstances of
    the present and another pointing forwards to the future.... All
    these things, in an exact and literal sense have fallen through
    with the postponement of that great event in which they centre.
    From the first they were but meant as the imaginative pictorial
    and symbolical clothing of that event. What measure of real
    fulfilment the Apocalypse may yet be destined to receive we cannot
    tell. But in predictive prophecy, even when most closely verified,
    the essence lies less in the prediction than in the eternal laws
    of moral and religious truth which the fact predicted reveals or
    exemplifies.” Thus we recognize both the divinity and the freedom
    of prophecy, and reject the rationalistic theory which would
    relate the fall of the Beaconsfield government in Matthew’s way:
    “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Cromwell, saying:
    ‘Get you gone, and make room for honest men!’ ” See the more full
    statement of the nature of prophecy, on pages 132-141. Also
    Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the N. T.


7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.


(_a_) This charge may be shown, in each single case, to rest upon a
misapprehension of the aim and method of the book, and its connection with
the remainder of the Bible, together with a narrowness of nature or of
doctrinal view, which prevents the critic from appreciating the wants of
the peculiar class of men to which the book is especially serviceable.


    Luther called _James_ “a right strawy epistle.” His constant
    pondering of the doctrine of justification by faith alone made it
    difficult for him to grasp the complementary truth that we are
    justified only by such faith as brings forth good works, or to
    perceive the essential agreement of James and Paul. Prof. R. E.
    Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,1898:803, 804—“Luther refused
    canonical authority to books not actually written by apostles or
    composed (as Mark and Luke) under their direction. So he rejected
    from the rank of canonical authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2
    Peter, Revelation. Even Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2
    Peter, excluded the book of Revelation from the Scripture on which
    he wrote Commentaries, and also thus ignored 2 and 3 John.” G. P.
    Fisher in S. S. Times, Aug. 29, 1891—“Luther, in his preface to
    the N. T. (Edition of 1522), gives a list of what he considers as
    the principal books of the N. T. These are John’s Gospel and First
    Epistle, Paul’s Epistles, especially Romans and Galatians, and
    Peter’s First Epistle. Then he adds that ‘St. James’ Epistle is a
    right strawy Epistle _compared with them_’—‘_ein recht strohern
    Epistel gegen sie,_’ thus characterizing it not absolutely but
    only relatively.” Zwingle even said of the Apocalypse: “It is not
    a Biblical book.” So Thomas Arnold, with his exaggerated love for
    historical accuracy and definite outline, found the Oriental
    imagery and sweeping visions of the book of Revelation so bizarre
    and distasteful that he doubted their divine authority.


(_b_) The testimony of church history and general Christian experience to
the profitableness and divinity of the disputed books is of greater weight
than the personal impressions of the few who criticize them.


    Instance the testimonies of the ages of persecution to the worth
    of the prophecies, which assure God’s people that his cause shall
    surely triumph. Denney, Studies in Theology, 226—“It is at least
    as likely that the individual should be insensible to the divine
    message in a book, as that the church should have judged it to
    contain such a message if it did not do so.” Milton, Areopagitica:
    “The Bible brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against
    Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus.” Bruce,
    Apologetics, 329—“O. T. religion was querulous, vindictive,
    philolevitical, hostile toward foreigners, morbidly
    self-conscious, and tending to self-righteousness. Ecclesiastes
    shows us how we ought _not_ to feel. To go about crying _Vanitas!_
    is to miss the lesson it was meant to teach, namely, that the Old
    Covenant was vanity—proved to be vanity by allowing a son of the
    Covenant to get into so despairing a mood.” Chadwick says that
    Ecclesiastes got into the Canon only after it had received an
    orthodox postscript.

    Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:193—“Slavish fear and
    self-righteous reckoning with God are the unlovely features of
    this Jewish religion of law to which the ethical idealism of the
    prophets had degenerated, and these traits strike us most visibly
    in Pharsiaism.... It was this side of the O. T. religion to which
    Christianity took a critical and destroying attitude, while it
    revealed a new and higher knowledge of God. For, says Paul, ‘ye
    received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye
    received the spirit of adoption’_ (Rom. 8:15)_. In unity with God
    man does not lose his soul but preserves it. God not only commands
    but gives.” Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 144—“When
    the book of Ecclesiastes is referred to the days of the third
    century B. C., then its note is caught, and any man who has been
    wronged and embittered by political tyranny and social corruption
    has his bitter cry included in the book of God.”


(_c_) Such testimony can be adduced in favor of the value of each one of
the books to which exception is taken, such as Esther, Job, Song of
Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, James, Revelation.


    Esther is the book, next to the Pentateuch, held in highest
    reverence by the Jews. “Job was the discoverer of infinity, and
    the first to see the bearing of infinity on righteousness. It was
    the return of religion to nature. Job heard the voice beyond the
    Sinai-voice” (Shadow-Cross, 89). Inge, Christian Mysticism, 43—“As
    to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has
    been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honor of true love
    has been distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to
    hysterical emotions in which sexual imagery has been freely used
    to symbolize the relation between the soul and its Lord.” Chadwick
    says that the Song of Solomon got into the Canon only after it had
    received an allegorical interpretation. Gladden, Seven Puzzling
    Bible Books, 165, thinks it impossible that “the addition of one
    more inmate to the harem of that royal rake, King Solomon, should
    have been made the type of the spiritual affection between Christ
    and his church. Instead of this, the book is a glorification of
    pure love. The Shulamite, transported to the court of Solomon,
    remains faithful to her shepherd lover, and is restored to him.”

    Bruce, Apologetics, 321—“The Song of Solomon, literally
    interpreted as a story of true love, proof against the
    blandishments of the royal harem, is rightfully in the Canon as a
    buttress to the true religion; for whatever made for purity in the
    relations of the sexes made for the worship of Jehovah—Baal
    worship and impurity being closely associated.” Rutherford,
    McCheyne, and Spurgeon have taken more texts from the Song of
    Solomon than from any other portion of Scripture of like extent.
    Charles G. Finney, Autobiography, 378—“At this time it seemed as
    if my soul was wedded to Christ in a sense which I never had any
    thought or conception of before. The language of the Song of
    Solomon was as natural to me as my breath. I thought I could
    understand well the state he was in when he wrote that Song, and
    concluded then, as I have ever thought since, that that Song was
    written by him after he had been reclaimed from his great
    backsliding. I not only had all the fulness of my first love, but
    a vast accession to it. Indeed, the Lord lifted me up so much
    above anything that I had experienced before, and taught me so
    much of the meaning of the Bible, of Christ’s relations and power
    and willingness, that I found myself saying to him: I had not
    known or conceived that any such thing was true.” On Jonah, see R.
    W. Dale, in Expositor, July, 1892, advocating the non-historical
    and allegorical character of the book. Bib. Sac.,
    10:737-764—“Jonah represents the nation of Israel as emerging
    through a miracle from the exile, in order to carry out its
    mission to the world at large. It teaches that God is the God of
    the whole earth; that the Ninevites as well as the Israelites are
    dear to him; that his threatenings of penalty are conditional.”


8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the persons to
whom they are ascribed.


The objection rests upon a misunderstanding of the nature and object of
inspiration. It may be removed by considering that

(_a_) In the case of books made up from preëxisting documents, inspiration
simply preserved the compilers of them from selecting inadequate or
improper material. The fact of such compilation does not impugn their
value as records of a divine revelation, since these books supplement each
other’s deficiencies and together are sufficient for man’s religious
needs.


    Luke distinctly informs us that he secured the materials for his
    gospel from the reports of others who were eye-witnesses of the
    events he recorded (_Luke 1:1-4_). The book of Genesis bears marks
    of having incorporated documents of earlier times. The account of
    creation which begins with _Gen. 2:4_ is evidently written by a
    different hand from that which penned _1:1-31_ and _2:1-3_.
    Instances of the same sort may be found in the books of
    Chronicles. In like manner, Marshall’s Life of Washington
    incorporates documents by other writers. By thus incorporating
    them, Marshall vouches for their truth. See Bible Com., 1:2, 22.

    Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theology, 1:243—“Luther ascribes to faith
    critical authority with reference to the Canon. He denies the
    canonicity of James, without regarding it as spurious. So of
    Hebrews and Revelation, though later, in 1545, he passed a more
    favorable judgment upon the latter. He even says of a proof
    adduced by Paul in Galatians that it is too weak to hold. He
    allows that in external matters not only Stephen but even the
    sacred authors contain inaccuracies. The authority of the O. T.
    does not seem to him invalidated by the admission that several of
    its writings have passed through revising hands. What would it
    matter, he asks, if Moses did not write the Pentateuch? The
    prophets studied Moses and one another. If they built in much
    wood, hay and stubble along with the rest, still the foundation
    abides; the fire of the great day shall consume the former; for in
    this manner do we treat the writings of Augustine and others.
    Kings is far more to be believed than Chronicles. Ecclesiastes is
    forged and cannot come from Solomon. Esther is not canonical. The
    church may have erred in adopting a book into the Canon. Faith
    first requires proof. Hence he ejects the Apocryphal books of the
    O. T. from the Canon. So some parts of the N. T. receive only a
    secondary, deuterocanonical position. There is a difference
    between the word of God and the holy Scriptures, not merely in
    reference to the form, but also in reference to the subject
    matter.”

    H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 94—“The Editor of
    the Minor Prophets united in one roll the prophetic fragments
    which were in circulation in his time. Finding a fragment without
    an author’s name he inserted it in the series. It would not have
    been distinguished from the work of the author immediately
    preceding. So _Zech. 9:1-4_ came to go under the name of
    Zechariah, and _Is. 40-66_ under the name of Isaiah. Reuss called
    these ‘anatomical studies.’ ” On the authorship of the book of
    Daniel, see W. C. Wilkinson, in Homiletical Review, March,
    1902:208, and Oct. 1902:305; on Paul, see Hom. Rev., June,
    1902:501; on 110th Psalm, Hom. Rev., April, 1902:309.


(_b_) In the case of additions to Scripture books by later writers, it is
reasonable to suppose that the additions, as well as the originals, were
made by inspiration, and no essential truth is sacrificed by allowing the
whole to go under the name of the chief author.


    _Mark 16:9-20_ appears to have been added by a later hand (see
    English Revised Version). The Eng. Rev. Vers. also brackets or
    segregates a part of _verse 3_ and the whole of _verse 4_ in _John
    5_ (the moving of the water by the angel), and the whole passage
    _John 7:53-8:11_ (the woman taken in adultery). Westcott and Hort
    regard the latter passage as an interpolation, probably “Western”
    in its origin (so also _Mark 16:9-20_). Others regard it as
    authentic, though not written by John. The closing chapter of
    Deuteronomy was apparently added after Moses’ death—perhaps by
    Joshua. If criticism should prove other portions of the Pentateuch
    to have been composed after Moses’ time, the inspiration of the
    Pentateuch would not be invalidated, so long as Moses was its
    chief author or even the original source and founder of its
    legislation (_John 5:46—_“he wrote of me”). Gore, in Lux Mundi,
    355—“Deuteronomy may be a republication of the law, in the spirit
    and power of Moses, and put dramatically into his mouth.”

    At a spot near the Pool of Siloam, Manasseh is said to have
    ordered that Isaiah should be sawn asunder with a wooden saw. The
    prophet is again sawn asunder by the recent criticism. But his
    prophecy opens (_Is. 1:1_) with the statement that it was composed
    during a period which covered the reigns of four kings—Uzziah,
    Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah—nearly forty years. In so long a time
    the style of a writer greatly changes. _Chapters 40-66_ may have
    been written in Isaiah’s later age, after he had retired from
    public life. Compare the change in the style of Zechariah, John
    and Paul, with that in Thomas Carlyle and George William Curtis.
    On Isaiah, see Smyth, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ; Bib.
    Sac., Apr. 1881:230-253; also July, 1881; Stanley, Jewish Ch.,
    2:646, 647; Nägelsbach, Int. to Lange’s Isaiah.

    For the view that there were two Isaiahs, see George Adam Smith,
    Com. on Isaiah, 2:1-25: Isaiah flourished B. C. 740-700. The last
    27 chapters deal with the captivity (598-538) and with Cyrus
    (550), whom they name. The book is not one continuous prophecy,
    but a number of separate orations. Some of these claim to be
    Isaiah’s own, and have titles, such as “The vision of Isaiah the
    son of Amos”_ (1:1)_; “The word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw”_
    (2:1)_. But such titles describe only the individual prophecies
    they head. Other portions of the book, on other subjects and in
    different styles, have no titles at all. Chapters _40-66_ do not
    claim to be his. There are nine citations in the N. T. from the
    disputed chapters, but none by our Lord. None of these citations
    were given in answer to the question: Did Isaiah write chapters
    _44-66_? Isaiah’s name is mentioned only for the sake of
    reference. Chapters _44-66_ set forth the exile and captivity as
    already having taken place. Israel is addressed as ready for
    deliverance. Cyrus is named as deliverer. There is no grammar of
    the future like Jeremiah’s. Cyrus is pointed out as proof that
    _former_ prophecies of deliverance are at last coming to pass. He
    is not presented as a prediction, but as a proof that prediction
    is being fulfilled. The prophet could not have referred the
    heathen to Cyrus as proof that prophecy had been fulfilled, had he
    not been visible to them in all his weight of war. Babylon has
    still to fall before the exiles can go free. But chapters _40-66_
    speak of the coming of Cyrus as past, and of the fall of Babylon
    as yet to come. Why not use the prophetic perfect of both, if both
    were yet future? Local color, language and thought are all
    consistent with exilic authorship. All suits the exile, but all is
    foreign to the subjects and methods of Isaiah, for example, the
    use of the terms _righteous_ and _righteousness_. Calvin admits
    exilic authorship (on _Is. 55:3_). The passage _56:9-57_, however,
    is an exception and is preëxilic. _40-48_ are certainly by one
    hand, and may be dated 555-538. 2nd Isaiah is not a unity, but
    consists of a number of pieces written before, during, and after
    the exile, to comfort the people of God.


(_c_) It is unjust to deny to inspired Scripture the right exercised by
all historians of introducing certain documents and sayings as simply
historical, while their complete truthfulness is neither vouched for nor
denied.


    An instance in point is the letter of Claudius Lysias in _Acts
    23:26-30_—a letter which represents his conduct in a more
    favorable light than the facts would justify—for he had not
    learned that Paul was a Roman when he rescued him in the temple
    (_Acts 21:31-33; 22:26-29_). An incorrect statement may be
    correctly reported. A set of pamphlets printed in the time of the
    French Revolution might be made an appendix to some history of
    France without implying that the historian vouched for their
    truth. The sacred historians may similarly have been inspired to
    use only the material within their reach, leaving their readers by
    comparison with other Scriptures to judge of its truthfulness and
    value. This seems to have been the method adopted by the compiler
    of _1_ and _2 Chronicles_. The moral and religious lessons of the
    history are patent, even though there is inaccuracy in reporting
    some of the facts. So the assertions of the authors of the Psalms
    cannot be taken for absolute truth. The authors were not sinless
    models for the Christian,—only Christ is that. But the Psalms
    present us with a record of the actual experience of believers in
    the past. It has its human weakness, but we can profit by it, even
    though it expresses itself at times in imprecations. _Jeremiah
    20:7—_“O lord, thou hast deceived me”—may possibly be thus
    explained.


9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.


(_a_) Descriptions of human experience may be embraced in Scripture, not
as models for imitation, but as illustrations of the doubts, struggles,
and needs of the soul. In these cases inspiration may vouch, not for the
correctness of the views expressed by those who thus describe their mental
history, but only for the correspondence of the description with actual
fact, and for its usefulness as indirectly teaching important moral
lessons.


    The book of Ecclesiastes, for example, is the record of the mental
    struggles of a soul seeking satisfaction without God. If written
    by Solomon during the time of his religious declension, or near
    the close of it, it would constitute a most valuable commentary
    upon the inspired history. Yet it might be equally valuable,
    though composed by some later writer under divine direction and
    inspiration. H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 97—“To
    suppose Solomon the author of Ecclesiastes is like supposing
    Spenser to have written In Memoriam.” Luther, Keil, Delitzsch,
    Ginsburg, Hengstenberg all declare it to be a production of later
    times (330 B. C.). The book shows experience of misgovernment. An
    earlier writer cannot write in the style of a later one, though
    the later can imitate the earlier. The early Latin and Greek
    Fathers quoted the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon as by Solomon; see
    Plumptre, Introd. to Ecclesiastes, in Cambridge Bible. Gore, in
    Lux Mundi, 355—“Ecclesiastes, though like the book of Wisdom
    purporting to be by Solomon, may be by another author.... ‘A pious
    fraud’ cannot be inspired; an idealizing personification, as a
    normal type of literature, can be inspired.” Yet Bernhard Schäfer,
    Das Buch Koheleth, ably maintains the Solomonic authorship.


(_b_) Moral truth may be put by Scripture writers into parabolic or
dramatic form, and the sayings of Satan and of perverse men may form parts
of such a production. In such cases, inspiration may vouch, not for the
historical truth, much less for the moral truth of each separate
statement, but only for the correspondence of the whole with ideal fact;
in other words, inspiration may guarantee that the story is true to
nature, and is valuable as conveying divine instruction.


    It is not necessary to suppose that the poetical speeches of Job’s
    friends were actually delivered in the words that have come down
    to us. Though Job never had had a historical existence, the book
    would still be of the utmost value, and would convey to us a vast
    amount of true teaching with regard to the dealings of God and the
    problem of evil. Fact is local; truth is universal. Some novels
    contain more truth than can be found in some histories. Other
    books of Scripture, however, assure us that Job was an actual
    historical character (_Ez. 14:14_; _James 5:11_). Nor is it
    necessary to suppose that our Lord, in telling the parable of the
    Prodigal Son (_Luke 15:11-32_) or that of the Unjust Steward
    (_16:1-8_), had in mind actual persons of whom each parable was an
    exact description.

    Fiction is not an unworthy vehicle of spiritual truth. Parable,
    and even fable, may convey valuable lessons. In _Judges 9:14, 15_,
    the trees, the vine, the bramble, all talk. If truth can be
    transmitted in myth and legend, surely God may make use of these
    methods of communicating it, and even though _Gen. 1-3_ were
    mythical it might still be inspired. Aristotle said that poetry is
    truer than history. The latter only tells us that certain things
    happened. Poetry presents to us the permanent passions,
    aspirations and deeds of men which are behind all history and
    which make it what it is; see Dewey, Psychology, 197. Though Job
    were a drama and Jonah an apologue, both might be inspired. David
    Copperfield, the Apology of Socrates, Fra Lippo Lippi, were not
    the authors of the productions which bear their names, but
    Dickens, Plato and Browning, rather. Impersonation is a proper
    method in literature. The speeches of Herodotus and Thucydides
    might be analogues to those in Deuteronomy and in the Acts, and
    yet these last might be inspired.

    The book of Job could not have been written in patriarchal times.
    Walled cities, kings, courts, lawsuits, prisons, stocks, mining
    enterprises, are found in it. Judges are bribed by the rich to
    decide against the poor. All this belongs to the latter years of
    the Jewish Kingdom. Is then the book of Job all a lie? No more
    than Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the parable of the Good
    Samaritan are all a lie. The book of Job is a dramatic poem. Like
    Macbeth or the Ring and the Book, it is founded in fact. H. P.
    Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 101—“The value of the
    book of Job lies in the spectacle of a human soul in its direst
    affliction working through its doubts, and at last humbly
    confessing its weakness and sinfulness in the presence of its
    Maker. The inerrancy is not in Job’s words or in those of his
    friends, but in the truth of the picture presented. If Jehovah’s
    words at the end of the book are true, then the first thirty-five
    chapters are not infallible teaching.”

    Gore, in Lux Mundi, 355, suggests in a similar manner that the
    books of Jonah and of Daniel may be dramatic compositions worked
    up upon a basis of history. George Adam Smith, in the Expositors’
    Bible, tells us that Jonah flourished 780 B. C., in the reign of
    Jeroboam II. Nineveh fell in 606. The book implies that it was
    written after this (_3:3_—“Nineveh _was_ an exceeding great
    city”). The book does not claim to be written by Jonah, by an
    eye-witness, or by a contemporary. The language has Aramaic forms.
    The date is probably 300 B. C. There is an absence of precise
    data, such as the sin of Nineveh, the journey of the prophet
    thither, the place where he was cast out on land, the name of the
    Assyrian king. The book illustrates God’s mission of prophecy to
    the Gentiles, his care for them, their susceptibility to his word.
    Israel flies from duty, but is delivered to carry salvation to the
    heathen. Jeremiah had represented Israel as swallowed up and cast
    out (_Jer. 51:34, 44 __sq.__—_“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon
    hath devoured me ... he hath, like a monster, swallowed me up, he
    hath filled his maw with my delicacies; he hath cast me out.... I
    will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed
    up.”) Some tradition of Jonah’s proclaiming doom to Nineveh may
    have furnished the basis of the apologue. Our Lord uses the story
    as a mere illustration, like the homiletic use of Shakespeare’s
    dramas. “As Macbeth did,” “As Hamlet said,” do not commit us to
    the historical reality of Macbeth or of Hamlet. Jesus may say as
    to questions of criticism: “Man, who made me a judge or a divider
    over you?”_ _“I came not to judge the world, but to save the
    world”_ (Luke 12:14; John 12:47)_. He had no thought of
    confirming, or of not confirming, the historic character of the
    story. It is hard to conceive the compilation of a psalm by a man
    in Jonah’s position. It is not the prayer of one inside the fish,
    but of one already saved. More than forty years ago President
    Woolsey of Yale conceded that the book of Jonah was probably an
    apologue.


(_c_) In none of these cases ought the difficulty of distinguishing man’s
words from God’s words, or ideal truth from actual truth, to prevent our
acceptance of the fact of inspiration; for in this very variety of the
Bible, combined with the stimulus it gives to inquiry and the general
plainness of its lessons, we have the very characteristics we should
expect in a book whose authorship was divine.


    The Scripture is a stream in which “the lamb may wade and the
    elephant may swim.” There is need both of literary sense and of
    spiritual insight to interpret it. This sense and this insight can
    be given only by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, who
    inspired the various writings to witness of him in various ways,
    and who is present in the world to take of the things of Christ
    and show them to us (_Mat. 28:20_; _John 16:13, 14_). In a
    subordinate sense the Holy Spirit inspires us to recognize
    inspiration in the Bible. In the sense here suggested we may
    assent to the words of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst at the
    inauguration of William Adams Brown as Professor of Systematic
    Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, November 1,
    1898—“Unfortunately we have condemned the word ‘inspiration’ to a
    particular and isolated field of divine operation, and it is a
    trespass upon current usage to employ it in the full urgency of
    its Scriptural intent in connection with work like your own or
    mine. But the word voices a reality that lies so close to the
    heart of the entire Christian matter that we can ill afford to
    relegate it to any single or technical function. Just as much
    to-day as back at the first beginnings of Christianity, those who
    would _declare_ the truths of God must be inspired to _behold_ the
    truths of God.... The only irresistible persuasiveness is that
    which is born of vision, and it is _not_ vision to be able merely
    to describe what some seer has seen, though it were Moses or Paul
    that was the seer.”


10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture teachers and their
writings.


This charge rests mainly upon the misinterpretation of two particular
passages:

(_a_) Acts 23:5 (“I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest”) may
be explained either as the language of indignant irony: “I would not
recognize such a man as high priest”; or, more naturally, an actual
confession of personal ignorance and fallibility, which does not affect
the inspiration of any of Paul’s final teachings or writings.


    Of a more reprehensible sort was Peter’s dissimulation at Antioch,
    or practical disavowal of his convictions by separating or
    withdrawing himself from the Gentile Christians (_Gal. 2:11-13_).
    Here was no public teaching, but the influence of private example.
    But neither in this case, nor in that mentioned above, did God
    suffer the error to be a final one. Through the agency of Paul,
    the Holy Spirit set the matter right.


(_b_) 1 Cor. 7:12, 10 (“I, not the Lord”; “not I, but the Lord”). Here the
contrast is not between the apostle inspired and the apostle uninspired,
but between the apostle’s words and an actual saying of our Lord, as in
Mat. 5:32; 19:3-10; Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18 (Stanley on Corinthians). The
expressions may be paraphrased:—“With regard to this matter no express
command was given by Christ before his ascension. As one inspired by
Christ, however, I give you my command.”


    Meyer on _1 Cor. 7:10_—“Paul distinguishes, therefore, here and in
    verses 12, 25, not between _his own_ and _inspired_ commands, but
    between those which proceeded from his own (God-inspired)
    subjectivity and those which Christ himself supplied by his
    objective word.” “Paul knew from the living voice of tradition
    what commands Christ had given concerning divorce.” Or if it
    should be maintained that Paul here disclaims inspiration,—a
    supposition contradicted by the following δοκῶ—“I think that I
    also have the Spirit of God”_ (verse 40)_,—it only proves a single
    exception to his inspiration, and since it is expressly mentioned,
    and mentioned only once, it implies the inspiration of all the
    rest of his writings. We might illustrate Paul’s method, if this
    were the case, by the course of the New York Herald when it was
    first published. Other journals had stood by their own mistakes
    and had never been willing to acknowledge error. The Herald gained
    the confidence of the public by correcting every mistake of its
    reporters. The result was that, when there was no confession of
    error, the paper was regarded as absolutely trustworthy. So Paul’s
    one acknowledgment of non-inspiration might imply that in all
    other cases his words had divine authority. On Authority in
    Religion, see Wilfred Ward, in Hibbert Journal, July,
    1903:677-692.





PART IV. THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD.




Chapter I. The Attributes Of God.


In contemplating the words and acts of God, as in contemplating the words
and acts of individual men, we are compelled to assign uniform and
permanent effects to uniform and permanent causes. Holy acts and words, we
argue, must have their source in a principle of holiness; truthful acts
and words, in a settled proclivity to truth; benevolent acts and words, in
a benevolent disposition.

Moreover, these permanent and uniform sources of expression and action to
which we have applied the terms principle, proclivity, disposition, since
they exist harmoniously in the same person, must themselves inhere, and
find their unity, in an underlying spiritual substance or reality of which
they are the inseparable characteristics and partial manifestations.

Thus we are led naturally from the works to the attributes, and from the
attributes to the essence, of God.


    For all practical purposes we may use the words essence,
    substance, being, nature, as synonymous with each other. So, too,
    we may speak of attribute, quality, characteristic, principle,
    proclivity, disposition, as practically one. As, in cognizing
    matter, we pass from its effects in sensation to the qualities
    which produce the sensations, and then to the material substance
    to which the qualities belong; and as, in cognizing mind, we pass
    from its phenomena in thought and action to the faculties and
    dispositions which give rise to these phenomena, and then to the
    mental substance to which these faculties and dispositions belong;
    so, in cognizing God, we pass from his words and acts to his
    qualities or attributes, and then to the substance or essence to
    which these qualities or attributes belong.

    The teacher in a Young Ladies’ Seminary described substance as a
    cushion, into which the attributes as pins are stuck. But pins and
    cushion alike are substance,—neither one is quality. The opposite
    error is illustrated from the experience of Abraham Lincoln on the
    Ohio River. “What is this transcendentalism that we hear so much
    about?” asked Mr. Lincoln. The answer came: “You see those
    swallows digging holes in yonder bank? Well, take away the bank
    from around those holes, and what is left is transcendentalism.”
    Substance is often represented as being thus transcendental. If
    such representations were correct, metaphysics would indeed be
    “that, of which those who listen understand nothing, and which he
    who speaks does not himself understand,” and the metaphysician
    would be the fox who ran into the hole and then pulled in the hole
    after him. Substance and attributes are correlates,—neither one is
    possible without the other. There is no quality that does not
    qualify something; and there is no thing, either material or
    spiritual, that can be known or can exist without qualities to
    differentiate it from other things. In applying the categories of
    substance and attribute to God, we indulge in no merely curious
    speculation, but rather yield to the necessities of rational
    thought and show how we must think of God if we think at all. See
    Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:240; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:172-188.



I. Definition of the term Attributes.


The attributes of God are those distinguishing characteristics of the
divine nature which are inseparable from the idea of God and which
constitute the basis and ground for his various manifestations to his
creatures.

We call them attributes, because we are compelled to attribute them to God
as fundamental qualities or powers of his being, in order to give rational
account of certain constant facts in God’s self-revelations.



II. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.


1. _The attributes have an objective existence._ They are not mere names
for human conceptions of God—conceptions which have their only ground in
the imperfection of the finite mind. They are qualities objectively
distinguishable from the divine essence and from each other.

The nominalistic notion that God is a being of absolute simplicity, and
that in his nature there is no internal distinction of qualities or
powers, tends directly to pantheism; denies all reality of the divine
perfections; or, if these in any sense still exist, precludes all
knowledge of them on the part of finite beings. To say that knowledge and
power, eternity and holiness, are identical with the essence of God and
with each other, is to deny that we know God at all.

The Scripture declarations of the possibility of knowing God, together
with the manifestation of the distinct attributes of his nature, are
conclusive against this false notion of the divine simplicity.


    Aristotle says well that there is no such thing as a science of
    the unique, of that which has no analogies or relations. Knowing
    is distinguishing; what we cannot distinguish from other things we
    cannot know. Yet a false tendency to regard God as a being of
    absolute simplicity has come down from mediæval scholasticism, has
    infected much of the post-reformation theology, and is found even
    so recently as in Schleiermacher, Rothe, Olshausen, and Ritschl.
    E. G. Robinson defines the attributes as “our methods of
    conceiving of God.” But this definition is influenced by the
    Kantian doctrine of relativity and implies that we cannot know
    God’s essence, that is, the thing-in-itself, God’s real being.
    Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 141—“This notion of the divine
    simplicity reduces God to a rigid and lifeless stare.... The One
    is manifold without being many.”

    The divine simplicity is the starting-point of Philo: God is a
    being absolutely bare of quality. All quality in finite beings has
    limitation, and no limitation can be predicated of God who is
    eternal, unchangeable, simple substance, free, self-sufficient,
    better than the good and the beautiful. To predicate any quality
    of God would reduce him to the sphere of finite existence. Of him
    we can only say _that_ he is, not _what_ he is; see art. by
    Schürer, in Encyc. Brit., 18:761.

    Illustrations of this tendency are found in Scotus Erigena: “Deus
    nescit se quid est, quia non est quid”; and in Occam: The divine
    attributes are distinguished neither substantially nor logically
    from each other or from the divine essence; the only distinction
    is that of names; so Gerhard and Quenstedt. Charnock, the Puritan
    writer, identifies both knowledge and will with the simple essence
    of God. Schleiermacher makes all the attributes to be
    modifications of power or causality; in his system God and world =
    the “natura naturans” and “natura naturata” of Spinoza. There is
    no distinction of attributes and no succession of acts in God, and
    therefore no real personality or even spiritual being; see
    Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit Kant, 110. Schleiermacher said: “My
    God is the Universe.” God is causative force. Eternity,
    omniscience and holiness are simply aspects of causality. Rothe,
    on the other hand, makes omniscience to be the all-comprehending
    principle of the divine nature; and Olshausen, on _John 1:1_, in a
    similar manner attempts to prove that the Word of God must have
    objective and substantial being, by assuming that knowing =
    willing; whence it would seem to follow that, since God wills all
    that he knows, he must will moral evil. Bushnell and others
    identify righteousness in God with benevolence, and therefore
    cannot see that any atonement needs to be made to God. Ritschl
    also holds that love is the fundamental divine attribute, and that
    omnipotence and even personality are simply modifications of love;
    see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine, 8. Herbert
    Spencer only carries the principle further when he concludes God
    to be simple unknowable force.

    But to call God everything is the same as to call him nothing.
    With Dorner, we say that “definition is no limitation.” As we rise
    in the scale of creation from the mere jelly-sac to man, the
    homogeneous becomes the heterogeneous, there is differentiation of
    functions, complexity increases. We infer that God, the highest of
    all, instead of being simple force, is infinitely complex, that he
    has an infinite variety of attributes and powers. Tennyson, Palace
    of Art (lines omitted in the later editions): “All nature widens
    upward: evermore The simpler essence lower lies: More complex is
    more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.”

    _Jer. 10:10_—God is “the living God”; _John 5:26_—he “hath life in
    himself”—unsearchable riches of positive attributes; _John
    17:23—_“thou lovedst me”—manifoldness in unity. This complexity in
    God is the ground of blessedness for him and of progress for us:
    _1 Tim. 1:11—_“the blessed God”; _Jer. 9:23, 24—_“let him glory in
    this, that he knoweth me.” The complex nature of God permits anger
    at the sinner and compassion for him at the same moment: _Ps.
    7:11—_“a God that hath indignation every day”; _John 3:16—_“God so
    loved the world”; _Ps. 85:10, 11—_“mercy and truth are met
    together.” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:116 _sq._; Schweizer,
    Glaubenslehre, 1:229-235; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
    1:43, 50; Martensen, Dogmatics, 91—“If God were the simple One, τὸ
    ἁπλῶς ἕν, the mystic abyss in which every form of determination
    were extinguished, there would be nothing in the Unity to be
    known.” Hence “nominalism is incompatible with the idea of
    revelation. We teach, with realism, that the attributes of God are
    objective determinations in his revelation and as such are rooted
    in his inmost essence.”


2. _The attributes inhere in the divine essence._ They are not separate
existences. They are attributes of God.

While we oppose the nominalistic view which holds them to be mere names
with which, by the necessity of our thinking, we clothe the one simple
divine essence, we need equally to avoid the opposite realistic extreme of
making them separate parts of a composite God.

We cannot conceive of attributes except as belonging to an underlying
essence which furnishes their ground of unity. In representing God as a
compound of attributes, realism endangers the living unity of the Godhead.

Notice the analogous necessity of attributing the properties of matter to
an underlying substance, and the phenomena of thought to an underlying
spiritual essence; else matter is reduced to mere force, and mind, to mere
sensation,—in short, all things are swallowed up in a vast idealism. The
purely realistic explanation of the attributes tends to low and
polytheistic conceptions of God. The mythology of Greece was the result of
personifying the divine attributes. The _nomina_ were turned into
_numina_, as Max Müller says; see Taylor, Nature on the Basis of Realism,
293. Instance also Christmas Evans’s sermon describing a Council in the
Godhead, in which the attributes of Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, and Power
argue with one another. Robert Hall called Christmas Evans “the one-eyed
orator of Anglesey,” but added that his one eye could “light an army
through a wilderness”; see Joseph Cross, Life and Sermons of Christmas
Evans, 112-116; David Rhys Stephen, Memoirs of Christmas Evans, 168-176.
We must remember that “Realism may so exalt the attributes that no
personal subject is left to constitute the ground of unity. Looking upon
Personality as anthropomorphism, it falls into a worse personification,
that of omnipotence, holiness, benevolence, which are mere blind thoughts,
unless there is one who is the Omnipotent, the Holy, the Good.” See
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 70.

3. _The attributes belong to the divine essence as such._ They are to be
distinguished from those other powers or relations which do not appertain
to the divine essence universally.

The personal distinctions (_proprietates_) in the nature of the one God
are not to be denominated attributes; for each of these personal
distinctions belongs not to the divine essence as such and universally,
but only to the particular person of the Trinity who bears its name, while
on the contrary all of the attributes belong to each of the persons.

The relations which God sustains to the world (_predicata_), moreover,
such as creation, preservation, government, are not to be denominated
attributes; for these are accidental, not necessary or inseparable from
the idea of God. God would be God, if he had never created.


    To make creation eternal and necessary is to dethrone God and to
    enthrone a fatalistic development. It follows that the nature of
    the attributes is to be illustrated, not alone or chiefly from
    wisdom and holiness in man, which are not inseparable from man’s
    nature, but rather from intellect and will in man, without which
    he would cease to be man altogether. Only that is an attribute, of
    which it can be safely said that he who possesses it would, if
    deprived of it, cease to be God. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:335—“The
    attribute is the whole essence acting in a certain way. The centre
    of unity is not in any one attribute, but in the essence.... The
    difference between the divine attribute and the divine person is,
    that the person is a mode of the _existence_ of the essence, while
    the attribute is a mode either of the _relation_, or of the
    _operation_, of the essence.”


4. _The attributes manifest the divine essence._ The essence is revealed
only through the attributes. Apart from its attributes it is unknown and
unknowable.

But though we can know God only as he reveals to us his attributes, we do,
notwithstanding, in knowing these attributes, know the being to whom these
attributes belong. That this knowledge is partial does not prevent its
corresponding, so far as it goes, to objective reality in the nature of
God.

All God’s revelations are, therefore, revelations of himself in and
through his attributes. Our aim must be to determine from God’s works and
words what qualities, dispositions, determinations, powers of his
otherwise unseen and unsearchable essence he has actually made known to
us; or in other words, what are the revealed attributes of God.


    _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
    Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”; _1
    Tim. 6:16—_“whom no man hath seen, nor can see”; _Mat.
    5:8—_“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”;
    _11:27—_“neither doth any man know the Father, save the Son, and
    he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.” C. A. Strong:
    “Kant, not content with knowing the reality _in_ the phenomena,
    was trying to know the reality _apart from_ the phenomena; he was
    seeking to know, without fulfilling the conditions of knowledge;
    in short, he wished to know without knowing.” So Agnosticism
    perversely regards God as concealed by his own manifestation. On
    the contrary, in knowing the phenomena we know the object itself.
    J. C. C. Clarke, Self and the Father, 6—“In language, as in
    nature, there are no verbs without subjects, but we are always
    hunting for the noun that has no adjective, and the verb that has
    no subject, and the subject that has no verb. Consciousness is
    necessarily a consciousness of self. Idealism and monism would
    like to see all verbs solid with their subjects, and to write ‘I
    do’ or ‘I feel’ in the mazes of a monogram, but consciousness
    refuses, and before it says ‘Do’ or ‘Feel’ it finishes saying
    ‘I.’ ” J. G. Holland’s Katrina, to her lover: “God is not
    worshiped in his attributes. I do not love your attributes, but
    you. Your attributes all meet me otherwhere, Blended in other
    personalities, Nor do I love nor do I worship them, Nor those who
    bear them. E’en the spotted pard Will dare a danger which will
    make you pale; But shall his courage steal my heart from you? You
    cheat your conscience, for you know That I may like your
    attributes. Yet love not you.”



III. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.


We have seen that the existence of God is a first truth. It is presupposed
in all human thinking, and is more or less consciously recognized by all
men. This intuitive knowledge of God we have seen to be corroborated and
explicated by arguments drawn from nature and from mind. Reason leads us
to a causative and personal Intelligence upon whom we depend. This Being
of indefinite greatness we clothe, by a necessity of our thinking, with
all the attributes of perfection. The two great methods of determining
what these attributes are, are the Rational and the Biblical.

1. _The Rational method._ This is threefold:—(_a_) the _via negationis_,
or the way of negation, which consists in denying to God all imperfections
observed in created beings; (_b_) the _via eminentiæ_, or the way of
climax, which consists in attributing to God in infinite degree all the
perfections found in creatures; and (_c_) the _via causalitatis_, or the
way of causality, which consists in predicating of God those attributes
which are required in him to explain the world of nature and of mind.

This rational method explains God’s nature from that of his creation,
whereas the creation itself can be fully explained only from the nature of
God. Though the method is valuable, it has insuperable limitations, and
its place is a subordinate one. While we use it continually to confirm and
supplement results otherwise obtained, our chief means of determining the
divine attributes must be

2. _The Biblical method._ This is simply the inductive method, applied to
the facts with regard to God revealed in the Scriptures. Now that we have
proved the Scriptures to be a revelation from God, inspired in every part,
we may properly look to them as decisive authority with regard to God’s
attributes.


    The rational method of determining the attributes of God is
    sometimes said to have been originated by Dionysius the
    Areopagite, reputed to have been a judge at Athens at the time of
    Paul and to have died A. D. 95. It is more probably eclectic,
    combining the results attained by many theologians, and applying
    the intuitions of perfection and causality which lie at the basis
    of all religious thinking. It is evident from our previous study
    of the arguments for God’s existence, that from nature we cannot
    learn either the Trinity or the mercy of God, and that these
    deficiencies in our rational conclusions with respect to God must
    be supplied, if at all, by revelation. Spurgeon, Autobiography,
    166—“The old saying is ’Go from Nature up to Nature’s God.’ But it
    is hard work going up hill. The best thing is to go from Nature’s
    God down to Nature; and, if you once get to Nature’s God and
    believe him and love him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear
    music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the
    winds, and to see God everywhere.” See also Kahnis, Dogmatik,
    3:181.



IV. Classification of the Attributes.


The attributes may be divided into two great classes: Absolute or
Immanent, and Relative or Transitive.

By Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the
inner being of God, which are involved in God’s relations to himself, and
which belong to his nature independently of his connection with the
universe.

By Relative or Transitive Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the
outward revelation of God’s being, which are involved in God’s relations
to the creation, and which are exercised in consequence of the existence
of the universe and its dependence upon him.

Under the head of Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we make a three-fold
division into Spirituality, with the attributes therein involved, namely,
Life and Personality; Infinity, with the attributes therein involved,
namely, Self-existence, Immutability, and Unity; and Perfection, with the
attributes therein involved, namely, Truth, Love, and Holiness.

Under the head of Relative or Transitive Attributes, we make a three-fold
division, according to the order of their revelation, into Attributes
having relation to Time and Space, as Eternity and Immensity; Attributes
having relation to Creation, as Omnipresence, Omniscience, and
Omnipotence; and Attributes having relation to Moral Beings, as Veracity
and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth; Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive
Love; and Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.

This classification may be better understood from the following schedule:


    1. Absolute or Immanent Attributes:
    A. Spirituality, involving (a) Life, (b) Personality.
    B. Infinity,  involving (a) Self-existence, (b) Immutability, (c)
                Unity.
    C. Perfection, involving (a) Truth, (b) Love, (c) Holiness.

    2. Relative or Transitive Attributes:
    A. Related to Time and Space—(a) Eternity, (b) Immensity.
    B. Related to Creation—(a) Omnipresence, (b) Omniscience, (c)
                Omnipotence.
    C. Related to Moral Beings—(a) Veracity, (b) Mercy, (c) Justice.


    It will be observed, upon examination of the preceding schedule,
    that our classification presents God first as Spirit, then as the
    infinite Spirit, and finally as the perfect Spirit. This accords
    with our definition of the term God (see page 52). It also
    corresponds with the order in which the attributes commonly
    present themselves to the human mind. Our first thought of God is
    that of mere Spirit, mysterious and undefined, over against our
    own spirits. Our next thought is that of God’s greatness; the
    quantitative element suggests itself; his natural attributes rise
    before us; we recognize him as the infinite One. Finally comes the
    qualitative element; our moral natures recognize a moral God; over
    against our error, selfishness and impurity, we perceive his
    absolute perfection.

    It should also be observed that this moral perfection, as it is an
    immanent attribute, involves relation of God to himself. Truth,
    love and holiness, as they respectively imply an exercise in God
    of intellect, affection and will, may be conceived of as God’s
    self-knowing, God’s self-loving, and God’s self-willing. The
    significance of this will appear more fully in the discussion of
    the separate attributes.

    Notice the distinction between absolute and relative, between
    immanent and transitive, attributes. Absolute = existing in no
    necessary relation to things outside of God. Relative = existing
    in such relation. Immanent = “remaining within, limited to, God’s
    own nature in their activity and effect, inherent and indwelling,
    internal and subjective—opposed to emanent or transitive.”
    Transitive = having an object outside of God himself. We speak of
    transitive verbs, and we mean verbs that are followed by an
    object. God’s transitive attributes are so called, because they
    respect and affect things and beings outside of God.

    The aim of this classification into Absolute and Relative
    Attributes is to make plain the divine self-sufficiency. Creation
    is not a necessity, for there is a πλήρωμα in God (_Col. 1:19_),
    even before he makes the world or becomes incarnate. And πλήρωμα
    is not “the filling material,” nor “the vessel filled,” but “that
    which is complete in itself,” or, in other words, “plenitude,”
    “fulness,” “totality,” “abundance.” The whole universe is but a
    drop of dew upon the fringe of God’s garment, or a breath exhaled
    from his mouth. He could create a universe a hundred times as
    great. Nature is but the symbol of God. The tides of life that ebb
    and flow on the far shores of the universe are only faint
    expressions of his life. The Immanent Attributes show us how
    completely matters of grace are Creation and Redemption, and how
    unspeakable is the condescension of him who took our humanity and
    humbled himself to the death of the Cross. _Ps. 8:3, 4—_“When I
    consider thy heavens ... what is man that thou art mindful of
    him?” _113:5, 6—_“Who is like unto Jehovah our God, that hath his
    seat on high, that humbleth himself?” _Phil. 2:6, 7—_“Who,
    existing in the form of God, ... emptied himself, taking the form
    of a servant.”

    Ladd, Theory of Reality, 69—“I know _that_ I am, because, as the
    basis of all discriminations as to _what_ I am, and as the core of
    all such self-knowledge, I immediately know myself as _will_” So
    as to the non-ego, “that things actually are is a factor in my
    knowledge of them which springs from the root of an experience
    with myself as a _will_, at once active and inhibited, as an agent
    and yet opposed by another.” The ego and the non-ego as well are
    fundamentally and essentially _will_. “Matter must be, _per se_,
    Force. But this is ... to be a Will” (439). We know nothing of the
    atom apart from its force (442). Ladd quotes from G. E. Bailey:
    “The life-principle, varying only in degree, is omnipresent. There
    is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence,
    and this thrills through every atom of the whole Cosmos” (446).
    “Science has only made the Substrate of material things more and
    more completely self-like” (449). Spirit is the true and essential
    Being of what is called Nature (472). “The ultimate Being of the
    world is a self-conscious Mind and Will, which is the Ground of
    all objects made known in human experience” (550).

    On classification of attributes, see Luthardt, Compendium, 71;
    Rothe, Dogmatik, 71; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:162; Thomasius, Christi
    Person und Werk, 1:47, 52, 136. On the general subject, see
    Charnock, Attributes; Bruce, Eigenschaftslehre.



V. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.


First division.—Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.


In calling spirituality an attribute of God, we mean, not that we are
justified in applying to the divine nature the adjective “spiritual,” but
that the substantive “Spirit” describes that nature (John 4:24, marg.—“God
is spirit”; Rom. 1:20—“the invisible things of him”; 1 Tim.
1:17—“incorruptible, invisible”; Col. 1:15—“the invisible God”). This
implies, negatively, that (_a_) God is not matter. Spirit is not a refined
form of matter but an immaterial substance, invisible, uncompounded,
indestructible. (_b_) God is not dependent upon matter. It cannot be shown
that the human mind, in any other state than the present, is dependent for
consciousness upon its connection with a physical organism. Much less is
it true that God is dependent upon the material universe as his sensorium.
God is not only spirit, but he is pure spirit. He is not only not matter,
but he has no necessary connection with matter (Luke 24:39—“A spirit hath
not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”).


    John gives us the three characteristic attributes of God when he
    says that God is “spirit,”_ _“light,”_ _“love”_ (John 4:24; 1 John
    1:5; 4:8)_,—not _a_ spirit, _a_ light, _a_ love. Le Conte, in
    Royce’s Conception of God, 45—“God is spirit, for spirit is
    essential Life and essential Energy, and essential Love, and
    essential Thought; in a word, essential Person.” Biedermann,
    Dogmatik, 631—“Das Wesen des Geistes als des reinen Gegensatzes
    zur Materie, ist das _reine Sein_, das _in sich ist_, aber _nicht
    da ist_.” Martineau, Study, 2:366—“The subjective Ego is always
    _here_, as opposed to all else, which is variously _there_....
    Without local relations, therefore, the soul is inaccessible.”
    But, Martineau continues, “if matter be but centres of force, all
    the soul needs may be centres from which to act.” Romanes, Mind
    and Motion, 34—“Because within the limits of human experience mind
    is only known as associated with brain, it does not follow that
    mind cannot exist in any other mode.” La Place swept the heavens
    with his telescope, but could not find anywhere a God. “He might
    just as well,” says President Sawyer, “have swept his kitchen with
    a broom.” Since God is not a material being, he cannot be
    apprehended by any physical means.


Those passages of Scripture which seem to ascribe to God the possession of
bodily parts and organs, as eyes and hands, are to be regarded as
anthropomorphic and symbolic. “When God is spoken of as appearing to the
patriarchs and walking with them, the passages are to be explained as
referring to God’s temporary manifestations of himself in human
form—manifestations which prefigured the final tabernacling of the Son of
God in human flesh. Side by side with these anthropomorphic expressions
and manifestations, moreover, are specific declarations which repress any
materializing conceptions of God; as, for example, that heaven is his
throne and the earth his footstool (Is. 66:1), and that the heaven of
heavens cannot contain him (1 K. 8:27).”


    _Ex. 33:18-20_ declares that man cannot see God and live; _1 Cor.
    2:7-16_ intimates that without the teaching of God’s Spirit we
    cannot know God; all this teaches that God is above sensuous
    perception, in other words, that he is not a material being. The
    second command of the decalogue does not condemn sculpture and
    painting, but only the making of images of _God_. It forbids our
    conceiving God after the likeness of a _thing_, but it does not
    forbid our conceiving God after the likeness of our inward _self_,
    _i. e._, as _personal_. This again shows that God is a spiritual
    being. Imagination can be used in religion, and great help can be
    derived from it. Yet we do not know God by
    imagination,—imagination only helps us vividly to realize the
    presence of the God whom we already know. We may almost say that
    some men have not imagination enough to be religious. But
    imagination must not lose its wings. In its representations of
    God, it must not be confined to a picture, or a form, or a place.
    Humanity tends too much to rest in the material and the sensuous,
    and we must avoid all representations of God which would identify
    the Being who is worshiped with the helps used in order to realize
    his presence; _John 4:24—_“they that worship him must worship in
    spirit and truth.”

    An Egyptian Hymn to the Nile, dating from the 19th dynasty (14th
    century B. C.), contains these words: “His abode is not known; no
    shrine is found with painted figures; there is no building that
    can contain him” (Cheyne, Isaiah, 2:120). The repudiation of
    images among the ancient Persians (Herod. 1:131), as among the
    Japanese Shintos, indicates the remains of a primitive spiritual
    religion. The representation of Jehovah with body or form degrades
    him to the level of heathen gods. Pictures of the Almighty over
    the chancels of Romanist cathedrals confine the mind and degrade
    the conception of the worshiper. We may use imagination in prayer,
    picturing God as a benignant form holding out arms of mercy, but
    we should regard such pictures only as scaffolding for the
    building of our edifice of worship, while we recognize, with the
    Scripture, that the reality worshiped is immaterial and spiritual.
    Otherwise our idea of God is brought down to the low level of
    man’s material being. Even man’s spiritual nature may be
    misrepresented by physical images, as when mediæval artists
    pictured death, by painting a doll-like figure leaving the body at
    the mouth of the person dying.

    The longing for a tangible, incarnate God meets its satisfaction
    in Jesus Christ. Yet even pictures of Christ soon lose their
    power. Luther said: “If I have a picture of Christ in my heart,
    why not one upon canvas?” We answer: Because the picture in the
    heart is capable of change and improvement, as we ourselves change
    and improve; the picture upon canvas is fixed, and holds to old
    conceptions which we should outgrow. Thomas Carlyle: “Men never
    think of painting the face of Christ, till they lose the
    impression of him upon their hearts.” Swedenborg, in modern times,
    represents the view that God exists in the shape of a man—an
    anthropomorphism of which the making of idols is only a grosser
    and more barbarous form; see H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 9,
    10. This is also the doctrine of Mormonism; see Spencer, Catechism
    of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons teach that God is a man; that he
    has numerous wives by whom he peoples space with an infinite
    number of spirits. Christ was a favorite son by a favorite wife,
    but birth as man was the only way he could come into the enjoyment
    of real life. These spirits are all the sons of God, but they can
    realize and enjoy their sonship only through birth. They are about
    every one of us pleading to be born. Hence, polygamy.


We come now to consider the positive import of the term Spirit. The
spirituality of God involves the two attributes of Life and Personality.


1. Life.


The Scriptures represent God as the living God.

_Jer. 10:10—_“He is the living God”; _1 Thess. 1:9—_“turned unto God from
idols, to serve a living and true God”; _John 5:26-_“hath life in
himself”; _cf._ _14:6—_“I am ... the life,” and _Heb. 7:16—_“the power of
an endless life”; _Rev. 11:11—_“the Spirit of life.”

Life is a simple idea, and is incapable of real definition. We know it,
however, in ourselves, and we can perceive the insufficiency or
inconsistency of certain current definitions of it. We cannot regard life
in God as

(_a_) Mere _process_, without a subject; for we cannot conceive of a
divine life without a God to live it.


    _Versus_ Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 1:10—“Life and mind are
    processes; neither is a substance; neither is a force; ... the
    name given to the whole group of phenomena becomes the
    personification of the phenomena, and the product is supposed to
    have been the producer.” Here we have a product without any
    producer—a series of phenomena without any substance of which they
    are manifestations. In a similar manner we read in Dewey,
    Psychology, 247—“Self is an _activity_. It is not something which
    acts; it is activity.... It is constituted by activities....
    Through its activity the soul is.” Here it does not appear how
    there can be activity, without any subject or being that is
    active. The inconsistency of this view is manifest when Dewey goes
    on to say: “The activity may further or develop the self,” and
    when he speaks of “the organic activity of the self.” So Dr.
    Burdon Sanderson: “Life is a state of ceaseless change,—a state of
    change with permanence; living matter ever changes while it is
    ever the same.” “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” But
    this permanent thing in the midst of change is the subject, the
    self, the being, that _has_ life.


Nor can we regard life as

(_b_) Mere _correspondence_ with outward condition and environment; for
this would render impossible a life of God before the existence of the
universe.


    _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, Biology, 1:59-71—“Life is the definite
    combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and
    successive, in correspondence with external coëxistences and
    sequences.” Here we have, at best, a definition of physical and
    finite life; and even this is insufficient, because the definition
    recognizes no original source of activity within, but only a power
    of reaction in response to stimulus from without. We might as well
    say that the boiling tea-kettle is alive (Mark Hopkins). We find
    this defect also in Robert Browning’s lines in The Ring and the
    Book (The Pope, 1307): “O Thou—as represented here to me In such
    conception as my soul allows—Under thy measureless, my
    atom-width!—Man’s mind, what is it but a convex glass Wherein are
    gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of
    sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known Unknown,
    our God revealed to man?” Life is something more than a passive
    receptivity.


(_c_) Life is rather _mental energy_, or energy of intellect, affection,
and will. God is the living God, as having in his own being a source of
being and activity, both for himself and others.


    Life means energy, activity, movement. Aristotle: “Life is energy
    of mind.” Wordsworth, Excursion, book 5:602—“Life is love and
    immortality, The Being one, and one the element.... Life, I
    repeat, is energy of love Divine or human.” Prof. C. L. Herrick,
    on Critics of Ethical Monism, in Denison Quarterly, Dec.
    1896:248—“Force is energy under resistance, or self-limited
    energy, for all parts of the universe are derived from the energy.
    Energy manifesting itself under self-conditioning or differential
    forms is force. The change of pure energy into force is creation.”
    Prof. Herrick quotes from S. T. Coleridge, Anima Poetæ: “Space is
    the name for God; it is the most perfect image of soul—pure soul
    being to us nothing but unresisted action. Whenever action is
    resisted, limitation begins—and limitation is the first
    constituent of body; the more omnipresent it is in a given space,
    the more that space is body or matter; and thus all body
    presupposes soul, inasmuch as all resistance presupposes action.”
    Schelling: “Life is the tendency to individualism.”

    If spirit in man implies life, spirit in God implies endless and
    inexhaustible life. The total life of the universe is only a faint
    image of that moving energy which we call the life of God. Dewey,
    Psychology, 253—“The sense of being alive is much more vivid in
    childhood than afterwards. Leigh Hunt says that, when he was a
    child, the sight of certain palings painted red gave him keener
    pleasure than any experience of manhood.” Matthew Arnold: “Bliss
    was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.”
    The child’s delight in country scenes, and our intensified
    perceptions in brain fever, show us by contrast how shallow and
    turbid is the stream of our ordinary life. Tennyson, Two Voices:
    “’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for
    which we pant; More life, and fuller, that we want.” That life the
    needy human spirit finds only in the infinite God. Instead of
    Tyndall’s: “Matter has in it the promise and potency of every form
    of life,” we accept Sir William Crookes’s dictum: “Life has in it
    the promise and potency of every form of matter.” See A. H.
    Strong, on The Living God, in Philos. and Religion, 180-187.


2. Personality.


The Scriptures represent God as a personal being. By personality we mean
the power of self-consciousness and of self-determination. By way of
further explanation we remark:

(_a_) Self-consciousness is more than consciousness. This last the brute
may be supposed to possess, since the brute is not an automaton. Man is
distinguished from the brute by his power to objectify self. Man is not
only conscious of his own acts and states, but by abstraction and
reflection he recognizes the self which is the subject of these acts and
states. (_b_) Self-determination is more than determination. The brute
shows determination, but his determination is the result of influences
from without; there is no inner spontaneity. Man, by virtue of his
free-will, determines his action from within. He determines self in view
of motives, but his determination is not caused by motives; he himself is
the cause.

God, as personal, is in the highest degree self-conscious and
self-determining. The rise in our own minds of the idea of God, as
personal, depends largely upon our recognition of personality in
ourselves. Those who deny spirit in man place a bar in the way of the
recognition of this attribute of God.


    _Ex. 3:14—_“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said,
    Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me
    unto you.” God is not the everlasting “IT IS,” or “I WAS,” but the
    everlasting “I AM” (Morris, Philosophy and Christianity, 128); “I
    AM” implies both personality and presence. _1 Cor. 2:11—_“the
    things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”; _Eph.
    1:9—_“good pleasure which he purposed”; _11—_“the counsel of his
    will.” Definitions of personality are the following:
    Boethius—“Persona est animæ rationalis individua substantia”
    (quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415). F. W. Robertson, Genesis
    3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character.” Porter,
    Human Intellect, 626—“Distinct subsistence, either actually or
    latently self-conscious and self-determining.” Harris, Philos.
    Basis of Theism: Person = “being, conscious of self, subsisting in
    individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason,
    rational sensibility, and free-will.” See Harris, 98, 99,
    quotation from Mansel—“The freedom of the will is so far from
    being, as it is generally considered, a controvertible question in
    philosophy, that it is the fundamental postulate without which all
    action and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches and
    human consciousness itself, would be impossible.”

    One of the most astounding announcements in all literature is that
    of Matthew Arnold, in his “Literature and Dogma,” that the Hebrew
    Scriptures recognize in God only “the power, not ourselves, that
    makes for righteousness” = the God of pantheism. The “I AM” of
    _Ex. 3:14_ could hardly have been so misunderstood, if Matthew
    Arnold had not lost the sense of his own personality and
    responsibility. From free-will in man we rise to freedom in
    God—“That living Will that shall endure, When all that seems shall
    suffer shock.” Observe that personality needs to be accompanied by
    life—the power of self-consciousness and self-determination needs
    to be accompanied by activity—in order to make up our total idea
    of God as Spirit. Only this personality of God gives proper
    meaning to his punishments or to his forgiveness. See Bib. Sac.,
    April, 1884:217-233; Eichhorn, die Persönlichkeit Gottes.

    Illingworth, Divine and Human Personality, 1:25, shows that the
    sense of personality has had a gradual growth; that its
    pre-Christian recognition was imperfect; that its final definition
    has been due to Christianity. In 29-53, he notes the
    characteristics of personality as reason, love, will. The brute
    _perceives_; only the man _apperceives_, _i. e._, recognizes his
    perception as belonging to himself. In the German story,
    Dreiäuglein, the three-eyed child, had besides her natural pair of
    eyes one other to see what the pair did, and besides her natural
    will had an additional will to set the first to going right. On
    consciousness and self-consciousness, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:179-189—“In consciousness the object is another substance than
    the subject; but in self-consciousness the object is the same
    substance as the subject.” Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, speaks
    of “the abysmal depths of personality.” We do not fully know
    ourselves, nor yet our relation to God. But the divine
    consciousness embraces the whole divine content of being: “the
    Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God”_ (1 Cor.
    2:10)_.

    We are not fully masters of ourselves. Our self-determination is
    as limited as is our self-consciousness. But the divine will is
    absolutely without hindrance; God’s activity is constant, intense,
    infinite; _Job 23:13—_“What his soul desireth, even that he
    doeth”; _John 5:17—_“My Father worketh even until now, and I
    work.” Self-knowledge and self-mastery are the dignity of man;
    they are also the dignity of God; Tennyson: “Self-reverence,
    self-knowledge, self-control, These three lead life to sovereign
    power.” Robert Browning, The Last Ride Together: “What act proved
    all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen?”
    Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 6, 161, 216-255—“Perhaps the
    root of personality is capacity for affection.”... Our personality
    is incomplete; we reason truly only with God helping; our love in
    higher Love endures; we will rightly, only as God works in us to
    will and to do; to make us truly ourselves we need an infinite
    Personality to supplement and energize our own; we are complete
    only in Christ (_Col. 2:9, 10—_“In him dwelleth all the fulness of
    the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full.”)

    Webb, on the Idea of Personality as applied to God, in Jour.
    Theol. Studies, 2:50—“Self knows itself and what is not itself as
    two, just because both alike are embraced within the unity of its
    experience, stand out against this background, the apprehension of
    which is the very essence of that rationality or personality which
    distinguishes us from the lower animals. We find that background,
    God, present in us, or rather, we find ourselves present in it.
    But if I find myself present in it, then it, as more complete, is
    simply more personal than I. Our not-self is outside of us, so
    that we are finite and lonely, but God’s not-self is within him,
    so that there is a mutual inwardness of love and insight of which
    the most perfect communion among men is only a faint symbol. We
    are ’hermit-spirits,’ as Keble says, and we come to union with
    others only by realizing our union with God. Personality is not
    impenetrable in man, for ‘in him we live, and move, and have our
    being’_ (Acts 17:28)_, and ‘that which hath been made is life in
    him’_ (John 1:3, 4)_.” Palmer, Theologic Definition, 39—“That
    which has its cause without itself is a thing, while that which
    has its cause within itself is a person.”


Second Division.—Infinity, and attributes therein involved.


By infinity we mean, not that the divine nature has no known limits or
bounds, but that it has no limits or bounds. That which has simply no
known limits is the indefinite. The infinity of God implies that he is in
no way limited by the universe or confined to the universe; he is
transcendent as well as immanent. Transcendence, however, must not be
conceived as freedom from merely spatial restrictions, but rather as
unlimited resource, of which God’s glory is the expression.


    _Ps. 145:3—_“his greatness is unsearchable”; _Job 11:7-9—_“high as
    heaven ... deeper than Sheol”; _Is. 66:1—_“Heaven is my throne,
    and the earth is my footstool”; _1 K. 8:27—_“Heaven and the heaven
    of heavens cannot contain thee”; _Rom. 11:33—_“how unsearchable
    are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.” There can be no
    infinite number, since to any assignable number a unit can be
    added, which shows that this number was not infinite before. There
    can be no infinite universe, because an infinite universe is
    conceivable only as an infinite number of worlds or of minds. God
    himself is the only real Infinite, and the universe is but the
    finite expression or symbol of his greatness.

    We therefore object to the statement of Lotze, Microcosm,
    1:446—“The complete system, grasped in its totality, offers an
    expression of the whole nature of the One.... The Cause makes
    actual existence its complete manifestation.” In a similar way
    Schurman, Belief in God, 26, 173-178, grants infinity, but denies
    transcendence: “The infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the
    idea of a single organism embraces within a single life a
    plurality of members and functions.... The world is the expression
    of an ever active and inexhaustible will. That the external
    manifestation is as boundless as the life it expresses, science
    makes exceedingly probable. In any event, we have not the
    slightest reason to contrast the finitude of the world with the
    infinity of God.... If the natural order is eternal and infinite,
    as there seems no reason to doubt, it will be difficult to find a
    meaning for ‘beyond’ or ‘before.’ Of this illimitable,
    ever-existing universe, God is the Inner ground or substance.
    There is no evidence, neither does any religious need require us
    to believe, that the divine Being manifest in the universe has any
    actual or possible existence elsewhere, in some transcendent
    sphere.... The divine will can express itself only as it does,
    because no other expression would reveal what it is. Of such a
    will, the universe is the eternal expression.”


In explanation of the term infinity, we may notice:

(_a_) That infinity can belong to but one Being, and therefore cannot be
shared with the universe. Infinity is not a negative but a positive idea.
It does not take its rise from an impotence of thought, but is an
intuitive conviction which constitutes the basis of all other knowledge.


    See Porter, Human Intellect, 651, 652, and this Compendium, pages
    59-62. _Versus_ Mansel, Proleg. Logica, chap. 1—“Such negative
    notions ... imply at once an attempt to think, and a failure in
    that attempt.” On the contrary, the conception of the Infinite is
    perfectly distinguishable from that of the finite, and is both
    necessary and logically prior to that of the finite. This is not
    true of our idea of the universe, of which all we know is finite
    and dependent. We therefore regard such utterances as those of
    Lotze and Schurman above, and those of Chamberlin and Caird below,
    as pantheistic in tendency, although the belief of these writers
    in divine and human personality saves them from falling into other
    errors of pantheism.

    Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago: “It is not
    sufficient to the modern scientific thought to think of a Ruler
    outside of the universe, nor of a universe with the Ruler outside.
    A supreme Being who does not embrace all the activities and
    possibilities and potencies of the universe seems something less
    than the supremest Being, and a universe with a Ruler outside
    seems something less than a universe. And therefore the thought is
    growing on the minds of scientific thinkers that the supreme Being
    is the universal Being, embracing and comprehending all things.”
    Caird, Evolution of Religion, 2:62—“Religion, if it would continue
    to exist, must combine the monotheistic idea with that which it
    has often regarded as its greatest enemy, the spirit of
    pantheism.” We grant in reply that religion must appropriate the
    element of truth in pantheism, namely, that God is the only
    substance, ground and principle of being, but we regard it as
    fatal to religion to side with pantheism in its denials of God’s
    transcendence and of God’s personality.


(_b_) That the infinity of God does not involve his identity with “the
all,” or the sum of existence, nor prevent the coëxistence of derived and
finite beings to which he bears relation. Infinity implies simply that God
exists in no necessary relation to finite things or beings, and that
whatever limitation of the divine nature results from their existence is,
on the part of God, a self-limitation.


    _Ps. 113:5, 6—_“that humbleth himself to behold the things that
    are in heaven and in the earth.” It is involved in God’s infinity
    that there should be no barriers to his self-limitation in
    creation and redemption (see page 9, F.). Jacob Boehme said: “God
    is infinite, for God is all.” But this is to make God all
    imperfection, as well as all perfection. Harris, Philos. Basis
    Theism: “The relation of the absolute to the finite is not the
    mathematical relation of a total to its parts, but it is a
    dynamical and rational relation.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:189-191—“The infinite is not the total; ‘the all’ is a
    pseudo-infinite, and to assert that it is greater than the simple
    infinite is the same error that is committed in mathematics when
    it is asserted that an infinite number plus a vast finite number
    is greater than the simple infinite.” Fullerton, Conception of the
    Infinite, 90—“The Infinite, though it involves unlimited
    possibility of quantity, is not itself a quantitative but rather a
    qualitative conception.” Hovey, Studies of Ethics and Religion,
    39-47—“Any number of finite beings, minds, loves, wills, cannot
    reveal fully an infinite Being, Mind, Love, Will. God must be
    transcendent as well as immanent in the universe, or he is neither
    infinite nor an object of supreme worship.”

    Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“Great as the universe is, God is
    not limited to it, wholly absorbed by what he is doing in it, and
    capable of doing nothing more. God in the universe is not like the
    life of the tree in the tree, which does all that it is capable of
    in making the tree what it is. God in the universe is rather like
    the spirit of a man in his body, which is greater than his body,
    able to direct his body, and capable of activities in which his
    body has no share. God is a free spirit, personal, self-directing,
    unexhausted by his present activities.” The Persian poet said
    truly: “The world is a bud from his bower of beauty; the sun is a
    spark from the light of his wisdom; the sky is a bubble on the sea
    of his power.” Faber: “For greatness which is infinite makes room
    For all things in its lap to lie. We should be crushed by a
    magnificence Short of infinity. We share in what is infinite; ’tis
    ours, For we and it alike are Thine. What I enjoy, great God, by
    right of Thee, Is more than doubly mine.”


(_c_) That the infinity of God is to be conceived of as intensive, rather
than as extensive. We do not attribute to God infinite extension, but
rather infinite energy of spiritual life. That which acts up to the
measure of its power is simply natural and physical force. Man rises above
nature by virtue of his reserves of power. But in God the reserve is
infinite. There is a transcendent element in him, which no self-revelation
exhausts, whether creation or redemption, whether law or promise.


    Transcendence is not mere outsideness,—it is rather boundless
    supply within. God is not infinite by virtue of existing “extra
    flammantia mœnia mundi” (Lucretius) or of filling a space outside
    of space,—he is rather infinite by being the pure and perfect Mind
    that passes beyond all phenomena and constitutes the ground of
    them. The former conception of infinity is simply supra-cosmic,
    the latter alone is properly transcendent; see Hatch, Hibbert
    Lectures, 244. “God is the living God, and has not yet spoken his
    last word on any subject” (G. W. Northrup). God’s life “operates
    unspent.” There is “ever more to follow.” The legend stamped with
    the Pillars of Hercules upon the old coins of Spain was _Ne plus
    ultra_—“Nothing beyond,” but when Columbus discovered America the
    legend was fitly changed to _Plus ultra_—“More beyond.” So the
    motto of the University of Rochester is _Meliora_—“Better things.”

    Since God’s infinite resources are pledged to aid us, we may, as
    Emerson bids us, “hitch our wagon to a star,” and believe in
    progress. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “Men, my brothers, men the
    workers, ever reaping something new. That which they have done but
    earnest of the things that they shall do.” Millet’s L’Angelus is a
    witness to man’s need of God’s transcendence. Millet’s aim was to
    paint, not _air_ but _prayer_. We need a God who is not confined
    to nature. As Moses at the beginning of his ministry cried, “Show
    me, I pray thee, thy glory”_ (Ex. 33:18)_, so we need marked
    experiences at the beginning of the Christian life, in order that
    we may be living witnesses to the supernatural. And our Lord
    promises such manifestations of himself: _John 14:21—_“I will love
    him, and will manifest myself unto him.”

    _Ps. 71:15—_“My mouth shall tell of thy righteousness, And of thy
    salvation all the day; For I know not the numbers thereof” = it is
    infinite. _Ps. 89:2—_“Mercy shall be built up forever” = ever
    growing manifestations and cycles of fulfilment—first literal,
    then spiritual. _Ps. 113:4-6—_“Jehovah is high above all nations,
    And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto Jehovah our God,
    That hath his seat on high, That humbleth himself [stoopeth down]
    to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” _Mal.
    2:15—_“did he not make one, although he had the residue of the
    Spirit?” = he might have created many wives for Adam, though he
    did actually create but one. In this “residue of the Spirit,” says
    Caldwell, Cities of our Faith, 370, “there yet lies latent—as
    winds lie calm in the air of a summer noon, as heat immense lies
    cold and hidden in the mountains of coal—the blessing and the life
    of nations, the infinite enlargement of Zion.”

    _Is. 52:10—_“Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm” = nature does
    not exhaust or entomb God; nature is the mantle in which he
    commonly reveals himself; but he is not fettered by the robe he
    wears—he can thrust it aside, and make bare his arm in
    providential interpositions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty
    movements of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the
    setting up of his own kingdom. See also _John 1:16—_“of his
    fulness we all received, and grace for grace” = “Each blessing
    appropriated became the foundation of a greater blessing. To have
    realized and used one measure of grace was to have gained a larger
    measure in exchange for it χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος”; so Westcott, in
    Bib. Com., _in loco_. Christ can ever say to the believer, as he
    said to Nathanael _(John 1:50): _“thou shalt see greater things
    than these.”

    Because God is infinite, he can love each believer as much as if
    that single soul were the only one for whom he had to care. Both
    in providence and in redemption the whole heart of God is busy
    with plans for the interest and happiness of the single Christian.
    Threatenings do not half reveal God, nor his promises half express
    the “eternal weight of glory”_ (2 Cor. 4:17)_. Dante, Paradiso,
    19:40-63—God “Could not upon the universe so write The impress of
    his power, but that his word Must still be left in distance
    infinite.” To “limit the Holy One of Israel”_ (Ps. 78:41_—marg.)
    is falsehood as well as sin.

    This attribute of infinity, or of transcendence, qualifies all the
    other attributes, and so is the foundation for the representations
    of majesty and glory as belonging to God (see _Ex. 33:18_; _Ps.
    19:1_; _Is. 6:3_; _Mat. 6:13_; _Acts 7:2_; _Rom. 1:23_; _9:23_;
    _Heb. 1:3_; _1 Pet. 4:14_; _Rev. 21:23_). Glory is not itself a
    divine attribute; it is rather a result—an objective result—of the
    exercise of the divine attributes. This glory exists irrespective
    of the revelation and recognition of it in the creation (_John
    17:5_). Only God can worthily perceive and reverence his own
    glory. He does all for his own glory. All religion is founded on
    the glory of God. All worship is the result of this immanent
    quality of the divine nature. Kedney, Christian Doctrine,
    1:360-373, 2:354, apparently conceives of the divine glory as an
    eternal material environment of God, from which the universe is
    fashioned. This seems to contradict both the spirituality and the
    infinity of God. God’s infinity implies absolute completeness
    apart from anything external to himself. We proceed therefore to
    consider the attributes involved in infinity.


Of the attributes involved in Infinity, we mention:


1. Self-existence.


By self-existence we mean

(_a_) That God is “_causa sui_,” having the ground of his existence in
himself. Every being must have the ground of its existence either in or
out of itself. We have the ground of our existence outside of us. God is
not thus dependent. He is _a se_; hence we speak of the aseity of God.


    God’s self-existence is implied in the name “Jehovah”_ (Ex. 6:3)_
    and in the declaration “I AM THAT I AM” (_Ex. 3:14_), both of
    which signify that it is God’s nature to be. Self-existence is
    certainly incomprehensible to us, yet a self-existent person is no
    greater mystery than a self-existent thing, such as Herbert
    Spencer supposes the universe to be; indeed it is not so great a
    mystery, for it is easier to derive matter from mind than to
    derive mind from matter. See Porter, Human Intellect, 661. Joh.
    Angelus Silesius: “Gott ist das was Er ist; Ich was Ich durch Ihn
    bin; Doch kennst du Einen wohl, So kennst du mich und Ihn.”
    Martineau, Types, 1:302—“A _cause_ may be eternal, but nothing
    that is _caused_ can be so.” He protests against the phrase
    “_causa sui_.” So Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:338, objects to the
    phrase “God is his own cause,” because God is the uncaused Being.
    But when we speak of God as “_causa sui_,” we do not attribute to
    him beginning of existence. The phrase means rather that the
    ground of his existence is not outside of himself, but that he
    himself is the living spring of all energy and of all being.


But lest this should be misconstrued, we add

(_b_) That God exists by the necessity of his own being. It is his nature
to be. Hence the existence of God is not a contingent but a necessary
existence. It is grounded, not in his volitions, but in his nature.


    Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:126, 130, 170, seems to hold
    that God is primarily will, so that the essence of God is his act:
    “God’s essence does not precede his freedom”; “if the essence of
    God were for him something given, something already present, the
    question ‘from whence it was given?’ could not be evaded; God’s
    essence must in this case have its origin in something apart from
    him, and thus the true conception of God would be entirely swept
    away.” But this implies that truth, reason, love, holiness,
    equally with God’s essence, are all products of will. If God’s
    essence, moreover, were his act, it would be in the power of God
    to annihilate himself. Act presupposes essence; else there is no
    God to act. The will by which God exists, and in virtue of which
    he is _causa sui_, is therefore not will in the sense of volition,
    but will in the sense of the whole movement of his active being.
    With Müller’s view Thomasius and Delitzsch are agreed. For
    refutation of it, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:63.

    God’s essence is not his act, not only because this would imply
    that he could destroy himself, but also because before willing
    there must be being. Those who hold God’s essence to be simple
    activity are impelled to this view by the fear of postulating some
    dead thing in God which precedes all exercise of faculty. So
    Miller, Evolution of Love, 43—“Perfect action, conscious and
    volitional, is the highest generalization, the ultimate unit, the
    unconditioned nature, of infinite Being”; _i. e._, God’s nature is
    subjective action, while external nature is his objective action.
    A better statement, however, is that of Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
    170—“While there is a necessity in the soul, it becomes
    controlling only through freedom; and we may say that everyone
    must constitute himself a rational soul.... This is absolutely
    true of God.”


2. Immutability.


By this we mean that the nature, attributes, and will of God are exempt
from all change. Reason teaches us that no change is possible in God,
whether of increase or decrease, progress or deterioration, contraction or
development. All change must be to better or to worse. But God is absolute
perfection, and no change to better is possible. Change to worse would be
equally inconsistent with perfection. No cause for such change exists,
either outside of God or in God himself.


    _Psalm 102:27—_“thou art the same”; _Mal. 3:6—_“I, Jehovah, change
    not”; _James 1:17—_“with whom can be no variation, neither shadow
    that is cast by turning.” Spenser, Faerie Queen, Cantos of
    Mutability, 8:2—“Then ’gin I think on that which nature sayde, Of
    that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of
    all things, firmly stayed Upon the pillours of eternity; For all
    that moveth doth in change delight, But henceforth all shall rest
    eternally With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight; Oh thou great
    Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath’s sight!” Bowne, Philos. of
    Theism, 146, defines immutability as “the constancy and continuity
    of the divine nature which exists through all the divine acts as
    their law and source.”


The passages of Scripture which seem at first sight to ascribe change to
God are to be explained in one of three ways:

(_a_) As illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his
immutable truth and wisdom in creation.


    Mathematical principles receive new application with each
    successive stage of creation. The law of cohesion gives place to
    chemical law, and chemistry yields to vital forces, but through
    all these changes there is a divine truth and wisdom which is
    unchanging, and which reduces all to rational order. John Caird,
    Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:140—“Immutability is not
    stereotyped sameness, but impossibility of deviation by one hair’s
    breadth from the course which is best. A man of great force of
    character is continually finding new occasions for the
    manifestation and application of moral principle. In God infinite
    consistency is united with infinite flexibility. There is no
    iron-bound impassibility, but rather an infinite originality in
    him.”


(_b_) As anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God’s
unchanging attributes in the changing circumstances and varying moral
conditions of creatures.


    _Gen. 6:6—_“it repented Jehovah that he had made man”—is to be
    interpreted in the light of _Num. 23:19—_“God is not a man, that
    he should lie: neither the son of man, that he should repent.” So
    _cf._ _1 Sam. 15:11_ with _15:29_. God’s unchanging holiness
    requires him to treat the wicked differently from the righteous.
    When the righteous become wicked, his treatment of them must
    change. The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax
    but hardens the clay,—the change is not in the sun but in the
    objects it shines upon. The change in God’s treatment of men is
    described anthropomorphically, as if it were a change in God
    himself,—other passages in close conjunction with the first being
    given to correct any possible misapprehension. Threats not
    fulfilled, as in _Jonah 3:4, 10_, are to be explained by their
    conditional nature. Hence God’s immutability itself renders it
    certain that his love will adapt itself to every varying mood and
    condition of his children, so as to guide their steps, sympathize
    with their sorrows, answer their prayers. God responds to us more
    quickly than the mother’s face to the changing moods of her babe.
    Godet, in The Atonement, 338—“God is of all beings the most
    delicately and infinitely sensitive.”

    God’s immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal
    experience, but rather that of the column of mercury, that rises
    and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding
    atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and
    goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to
    change, though it is blowing just as it was before. The sinner
    struggles against the wind of prevenient grace until he seems to
    strike against a stone wall. Regeneration is God’s conquest of our
    wills by his power, and conversion is our beginning to turn round
    and to work with God rather than against God. Now we move without
    effort, because we have God at our back; _Phil. 2:12, 13—_“work
    out your own salvation ... for it is God who worketh in you.” God
    has not changed, but we have changed; _John 3:8—_“The wind bloweth
    where it will ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
    Jacob’s first wrestling with the Angel was the picture of his
    lifelong self-will, opposing God; his subsequent wrestling in
    prayer was the picture of a consecrated will, working with God
    (_Gen. 32:24-28_). We seem to conquer God, but he really conquers
    us. He seems to change, but it is we who change after all.


(_c_) As describing executions, in time, of purposes eternally existing in
the mind of God. Immutability must not be confounded with immobility. This
would deny all those imperative volitions of God by which he enters into
history. The Scriptures assure us that creation, miracles, incarnation,
regeneration, are immediate acts of God. Immutability is consistent with
constant activity and perfect freedom.


    The abolition of the Mosaic dispensation indicates no change in
    God’s plan; it is rather the execution of his plan. Christ’s
    coming and work were no sudden makeshift, to remedy unforeseen
    defects in the Old Testament scheme: Christ came rather in “the
    fulness of the time”_ (Gal. 4:4)_, to fulfill the “counsel” of God
    (_Acts 2:23_). _Gen. 8:1—_“God remembered Noah” = interposed by
    special act for Noah’s deliverance, showed that he remembered
    Noah. While we change, God does not. There is no fickleness or
    inconstancy in him. Where we once found him, there we may find him
    still, as Jacob did at Bethel (_Gen. 35:1, 6, 9_). Immutability is
    a consolation to the faithful, but a terror to God’s enemies
    (_Mal. 3:6—_“I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of
    Jacob, are not consumed”; _Ps. 7:11—_“a God that hath indignation
    every day”). It is consistent with constant activity in nature and
    in grace (_John 5:17—_“My Father worketh even until now, and I
    work”; _Job 23:13, 14—_“he is in one mind, and who can turn
    him?... For he performeth that which is appointed for me: and many
    such things are with him”). If God’s immutability were immobility,
    we could not worship him, any more than the ancient Greeks were
    able to worship Fate. Arthur Hugh Clough: “It fortifies my soul to
    know, That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe’er I stray
    and range, Whate’er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step
    when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.” On this
    attribute see Charnock, Attributes, 1:310-362; Dorner, Gesammelte
    Schriften, 188-377; translated in Bib. Sac., 1879:28-59, 209-223.


3. Unity.


By this we mean (_a_) that the divine nature is undivided and indivisible
(_unus_); and (_b_) that there is but one infinite and perfect Spirit
(_unicus_).


    _Deut. 6:4—_“Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah”; _Is.
    44:6—_“besides me there is no God”; _John 5:44—_“the only God”;
    _17:3—_“the only true God”; _1 Cor. 8:4—_“no God but one”; _1 Tim.
    1:17—_“the only God”; _6:15—_“the blessed and only Potentate”;
    _Eph. 4:5, 6—_“one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
    Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.” When
    we read in Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 25—“The unity of God is not
    numerical, denying the existence of a second; it is integral,
    denying the possibility of division,” we reply that the unity of
    God is both,—it includes both the numerical and the integral
    elements.

    Humboldt, in his Cosmos, has pointed out that the unity and
    creative agency of the heavenly Father have given unity to the
    order of nature, and so have furnished the impulse to modern
    physical science. Our faith in a “universe” rests historically
    upon the demonstration of God’s unity which has been given by the
    incarnation and death of Christ. Tennyson, In Memoriam: “That God
    who ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one
    far off divine event To which the whole creation moves.” See A. H.
    Strong, Christ in Creation, 184-187. Alexander McLaren: “The
    heathen have many gods because they have no one that satisfies
    hungry hearts or corresponds to their unconscious ideals.
    Completeness is not reached by piecing together many fragments.
    The wise merchantman will gladly barter a sack full of ‘goodly
    pearls’ for the one of great price. Happy they who turn away from
    the many to embrace the One!”


Against polytheism, tritheism, or dualism, we may urge that the notion of
two or more Gods is self-contradictory; since each limits the other and
destroys his godhood. In the nature of things, infinity and absolute
perfection are possible only to one. It is unphilosophical, moreover, to
assume the existence of two or more Gods, when one will explain all the
facts. The unity of God is, however, in no way inconsistent with the
doctrine of the Trinity; for, while this doctrine holds to the existence
of hypostatical, or personal, distinctions in the divine nature, it also
holds that this divine nature is numerically and eternally one.


    Polytheism is man’s attempt to rid himself of the notion of
    responsibility to one moral Lawgiver and Judge by dividing up his
    manifestations, and attributing them to separate wills. So Force,
    in the terminology of some modern theorizers, is only God with his
    moral attributes left out. “Henotheism” (says Max Müller, Origin
    and Growth of Religion, 285) “conceives of each individual god as
    unlimited by the power of other gods. Each is felt, at the time,
    as supreme and absolute, notwithstanding the limitations which to
    our minds must arise from his power being conditioned by the power
    of all the gods.”

    Even polytheism cannot rest in the doctrine of many gods, as an
    exclusive and all-comprehending explanation of the universe. The
    Greeks believed in one supreme Fate that ruled both gods and men.
    Aristotle: “God, though he is one, has many names, because he is
    called according to states into which he is ever entering anew.”
    The doctrine of God’s unity should teach men to give up hope of
    any other God, to reveal himself to them or to save them. They are
    in the hands of the one and only God, and therefore there is but
    one law, one gospel, one salvation; one doctrine, one duty, one
    destiny. We cannot rid ourselves of responsibility by calling
    ourselves mere congeries of impressions or mere victims of
    circumstance. As God is one, so the soul made in God’s image is
    one also. On the origin of polytheism, see articles by Tholuck, in
    Bib. Repos., 2:84, 246, 441, and Max Müller, Science of Religion,
    124.

    Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 83—“The Alpha and Omega, the
    beginning and end and sum and meaning of Being, is but One. We who
    believe in a personal God do not believe in a limited God. We do
    not mean one more, a bigger specimen of existences, amongst
    existences. Rather, we mean that the reality of existence itself
    is personal: that Power, that Law, that Life, that Thought, that
    Love, are ultimately, in their very reality, identified in one
    supreme, and that necessarily a personal Existence. Now such
    supreme Being cannot be multiplied: it is incapable of a plural:
    it cannot be a generic term. There cannot be more than one
    all-inclusive, more than one ultimate, more than one God. Nor has
    Christian thought, at any point, for any moment, dared or endured
    the least approach to such a thought or phrase as ‘two Gods.’ If
    the Father is God, and the Son God, they are both the same God
    wholly, unreservedly. God is a particular, an unique, not a
    general, term. Each is not only God, but is the very same
    ‘singularis unicus et totus Deus.’ They are not both _generically_
    God, as though ‘God’ could be an attribute or predicate; but both
    _identically_ God, the God, the one all-inclusive, indivisible,
    God.... If the thought that wishes to be orthodox had less
    tendency to become tritheistic, the thought that claims to be free
    would be less Unitarian.”


Third Division.—Perfection, and attributes therein involved.


By perfection we mean, not mere quantitative completeness, but qualitative
excellence. The attributes involved in perfection are moral attributes.
Right action among men presupposes a perfect moral organization, a normal
state of intellect, affection and will. So God’s activity presupposes a
principle of intelligence, of affection, of volition, in his inmost being,
and the existence of a worthy object for each of these powers of his
nature. But in eternity past there is nothing existing outside or apart
from God. He must find, and he does find, the sufficient object of
intellect, affection, and will, in himself. There is a self-knowing, a
self-loving, a self-willing, which constitute his absolute perfection. The
consideration of the immanent attributes is, therefore, properly concluded
with an account of that truth, love, and holiness, which render God
entirely sufficient to himself.


    _Mat. 5:48—_“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
    Father is perfect”; _Rom. 12:2—_“perfect will of God”; _Col.
    1:28—_“perfect in Christ”; _cf._ _Deut. 32:4—_“The Rock, his work
    is perfect”; _Ps. 18:30—_“As for God, his way is perfect.”


1. Truth.


By truth we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which
God’s being and God’s knowledge eternally conform to each other.

In further explanation we remark:

A. Negatively:

(_a_) The immanent truth of God is not to be confounded with that veracity
and faithfulness which partially manifest it to creatures. These are
transitive truth, and they presuppose the absolute and immanent attribute.


    _Deut 32:4—_“A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, Just and
    right is he”; _John 17:3—_“the only true God” (ἀληθινόν); _1 John
    5:20—_“we know him that is true” (τὸν ἀληθινόν). In both these
    passages ἀληθινός describes God as the genuine, the real, as
    distinguished from ἀληθής, the veracious (compare _John 6:32—_“the
    true bread”; _Heb. 8:2—_“the true tabernacle”). _John 14:6—_“I am
    ... the truth.” As “I am ... the life” signifies, not “I am the
    living one,” but rather “I am he who is life and the source of
    life,” so “_I am ... the truth_” signifies, not “I am the truthful
    one,” but “I am he who is truth and the source of truth”—in other
    words, truth of being, not merely truth of expression. So _1 John
    5:7—_“the Spirit is the truth.” _Cf._ 1 Esdras 1:38—“The truth
    abideth and is forever strong, and it liveth and ruleth forever” =
    personal truth? See Godet on _John 1:18_; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:181.

    Truth is God perfectly revealed and known. It may be likened to
    the electric current which manifests and measures the power of the
    dynamo. There is no realm of truth apart from the world-ground,
    just as there is no law of nature that is independent of the
    Author of nature. While we know ourselves only partially, God
    knows himself fully. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
    1:192—“In the life of God there are no unrealized possibilities.
    The presupposition of all our knowledge and activity is that
    absolute and eternal unity of knowing and being which is only
    another expression for the nature of God. In one sense, he is all
    reality, and the only reality, whilst all finite existence is but
    a _becoming_, which never _is_.” Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
    57-63—“Truth is reality revealed. Jesus is the Truth, because in
    him the sum of the qualities hidden in God is presented and
    revealed to the world, God’s nature in terms of an active force
    and in relation to his rational creation.” This definition however
    ignores the fact that God is truth, apart from and before all
    creation. As an immanent attribute, truth implies a conformity of
    God’s knowledge to God’s being, which antedates the universe; see
    B. (_b_) below.


(_b_) Truth in God is not a merely active attribute of the divine nature.
God is truth, not only in the sense that he is the being who truly knows,
but also in the sense that he is the truth that is known. The passive
precedes the active; truth of being precedes truth of knowing.


    Plato: “Truth is his (God’s) body, and light his shadow.” Hollaz
    (quoted in Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137) says that
    “truth is the conformity of the divine essence with the divine
    intellect.” See Gerhard, loc. ii:152; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:272,
    279; 3:193—“Distinguish in God the personal self-consciousness
    [spirituality, personality—see pages 252, 253] from the unfolding
    of this in the divine knowledge, which can have no other object
    but God himself. So far, now, as self-knowing in God is absolutely
    identical with his being is he the absolutely true. For truth is
    the knowledge which answers to the being, and the being which
    answers to the knowledge.”

    Royce, World and Individual, 1:270—“Truth either may mean that
    about which we judge, _or_ it may mean the correspondence between
    our ideas and their objects.” God’s truth is both object of his
    knowledge and knowledge of his object. Miss Clara French, The
    Dramatic Action and Motive of King John: “You spell Truth with a
    capital, and make it an independent existence to be sought for and
    absorbed; but, unless truth is God, what can it do for man? It is
    only a personality that can touch a personality.” So we assent to
    the poet’s declaration that “Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise
    again,” only because Truth is personal. Christ, the Revealer of
    God, is the Truth. He is not simply the medium but also the object
    of all knowledge; _Eph. 4:20—_“ye did not so learn Christ” = ye
    knew more than the doctrine about Christ,—ye knew Christ himself;
    _John 17:3—_“this is life eternal that they should know thee the
    only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.”


B. Positively:

(_a_) All truth among men, whether mathematical, logical, moral, or
religious, is to be regarded as having its foundation in this immanent
truth of the divine nature and as disclosing facts in the being of God.


    There is a higher Mind than our mind. No apostle can say “I am the
    truth,” though each of them can say “I speak the truth.” Truth is
    not a scientific or moral, but a substantial, thing—“nicht
    Schulsache, sondern Lebenssache.” Here is the dignity of
    education, that knowledge of truth is knowledge of God. The laws
    of mathematics are disclosures to us, not of the divine reason
    merely, for this would imply truth outside of and before God, but
    of the divine nature. J. W. A. Stewart: “Science is possible
    because God is scientific.” Plato: “God geometrizes.” Bowne: “The
    heavens are crystalized mathematics.” The statement that two and
    two make four, or that virtue is commendable and vice condemnable,
    expresses an everlasting principle in the being of God. Separate
    statements of truth are inexplicable apart from the total
    revelation of truth, and this total revelation is inexplicable
    apart from One who is truth and who is thus revealed. The separate
    electric lights in our streets are inexplicable apart from the
    electric current which throbs through the wires, and this electric
    current is itself inexplicable apart from the hidden dynamo whose
    power it exactly expresses and measures. The separate lights of
    truth are due to the realizing agency of the Holy Spirit; the one
    unifying current which they partially reveal is the outgoing work
    of Christ, the divine Logos; Christ is the one and only Revealer
    of him who dwells “in light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen,
    nor can see”_ (1 Tim. 6:16)_.

    Prof. H. E. Webster began his lectures “by assuming the Lord Jesus
    Christ _and_ the multiplication-table.” But this was tautology,
    because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth, the only revealer of
    God, includes the multiplication-table. So Wendt, Teaching of
    Jesus, 1:257; 2:202, unduly narrows the scope of Christ’s
    revelation when he maintains that with Jesus truth is not the
    truth which corresponds to reality but rather the right conduct
    which corresponds to the duty prescribed by God. “Grace and
    truth”_ (John 1:17)_ then means the favor of God and the
    righteousness which God approves. To understand Jesus is
    impossible without being ethically like him. He is king of truth,
    in that he reveals this righteousness, and finds obedience for it
    among men. This ethical aspect of the truth, we would reply,
    important as it is, does not exclude but rather requires for its
    complement and presupposition that other aspect of the truth as
    the reality to which all being must conform and the conformity of
    all being to that reality. Since Christ is the truth of God, we
    are successful in our search for truth only as we recognize him.
    Whether all roads lead to Rome depends upon which way your face is
    turned. Follow a point of land out into the sea, and you find only
    ocean. With the back turned upon Jesus Christ all following after
    truth leads only into mist and darkness. Aristotle’s ideal man was
    “a hunter after truth.” But truth can never be found disjoined
    from love, nor can the loveless seeker discern it. “For the loving
    worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless God” (Robert
    Browning). Hence Christ can say: _John 18:37—_“Every one that is
    of the truth heareth my voice.”


(_b_) This attribute therefore constitutes the principle and guarantee of
all revelation, while it shows the possibility of an eternal divine
self-contemplation apart from and before all creation. It is to be
understood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.


    To all this doctrine, however, a great school of philosophers have
    opposed themselves. Duns Scotus held that God’s will made truth as
    well as right. Descartes said that God could have made it untrue
    that the radii of a circle are all equal. Lord Bacon said that
    Adam’s sin consisted in seeking a good in itself, instead of being
    content with the merely empirical good. Whedon, On the Will,
    316—“Infinite wisdom and infinite holiness consist in, and result
    from, God’s volitions eternally.” We reply that, to make truth and
    good matters of mere will, instead of regarding them as
    characteristics of God’s being, is to deny that anything is true
    or good in itself. If God can make truth to be falsehood, and
    injustice to be justice, then God is indifferent to truth or
    falsehood, to good or evil, and he ceases thereby to be God. Truth
    is not arbitrary,—it is matter of being—the being of God. There
    are no regulative principles of knowledge which are not
    transcendental also. God knows and wills truth, because he is
    truth. Robert Browning, A Soul’s Tragedy, 214—“Were’t not for God,
    I mean, what hope of truth—Speaking truth, hearing truth—would
    stay with Man?” God’s will does not make truth, but truth rather
    makes God’s will. God’s perfect knowledge in eternity past has an
    object. That object must be himself. He is the truth Known, as
    well as the truthful Knower. But a perfect objective must be
    personal. The doctrine of the Trinity is the necessary complement
    to the doctrine of the Attributes. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:183—“The
    pillar of cloud becomes a pillar of fire.” See A. H. Strong,
    Christ in Creation, 102-112.

    On the question whether it is ever right to deceive, see Paine,
    Ethnic Trinities, 300-339. Plato said that the use of such
    medicines should be restricted to physicians. The rulers of the
    state may lie for the public good, but private people not:
    “officiosum mendacium.” It is better to say that deception is
    justifiable only where the person deceived has, like a wild beast
    or a criminal or an enemy in war, put himself out of human society
    and deprived himself of the right to truth. Even then deception is
    a sad necessity which witnesses to an abnormal condition of human
    affairs. With James Martineau, when asked what answer he would
    give to an intending murderer when truth would mean death, we may
    say: “I suppose I should tell an untruth, and then should be sorry
    for it forever after.” On truth as an attribute of God, see Bib.
    Sac., Oct. 1877:735; Finney, Syst. Theol., 661; Janet, Final
    Causes, 416.


2. Love.


By love we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God
is eternally moved to self-communication.

_1 John 4:8—_“God is love”; _3:16—_“hereby know we love, because he laid
down his life for us”; _John 17:24—_“thou lovedst me before the foundation
of the world”; _Rom. 15:30—_“the love of the Spirit.”

In further explanation we remark:

A. Negatively:

(_a_) The immanent love of God is not to be confounded with mercy and
goodness toward creatures. These are its manifestations, and are to be
denominated transitive love.


    Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:138, 139—“God’s regard for
    the happiness of his creatures flows from this self-communicating
    attribute of his nature. Love, in the true sense of the word, is
    living good-will, with impulses to impartation and union;
    self-communication (bonum communicativum sui); devotion, merging
    of the _ego_ in another, in order to penetrate, fill, bless this
    other with itself, and in this other, as in another self, to
    possess itself, without giving up itself or losing itself. Love is
    therefore possible only between persons, and always presupposes
    personality. Only as Trinity has God love, absolute love; because
    as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he stands in perfect
    self-impartation, self-devotion, and communion with himself.”
    Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:136—“God has in himself the eternal
    and wholly adequate object of his love, independently of his
    relation to the world.”

    In the Greek mythology, Eros was one of the oldest and yet one of
    the youngest of the gods. So Dante makes the oldest angel to be
    the youngest, because nearest to God the fountain of life. In _1
    John 2:7, 8, _“the old commandment” of love is evermore “_a new
    commandment_,” because it reflects this eternal attribute of God.
    “There is a love unstained by selfishness, Th’ outpouring tide of
    self-abandonment, That loves to love, and deems its preciousness
    Repaid in loving, though no sentiment Of love returned reward its
    sacrament; Nor stays to question what the loved one will, But
    hymns its overture with blessings immanent; Rapt and sublimed by
    love’s exalting thrill, Loves on, through frown or smile, divine,
    immortal still.” Clara Elizabeth Ward: “If I could gather every
    look of love, That ever any human creature wore, And all the looks
    that joy is mother of, All looks of grief that mortals ever bore,
    And mingle all with God-begotten grace, Methinks that I should see
    the Savior’s face.”


(_b_) Love is not the all-inclusive ethical attribute of God. It does not
include truth, nor does it include holiness.


    Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 352, very properly denies that
    benevolence is the all-inclusive virtue. Justness and Truth, he
    remarks, are not reducible to benevolence. In a review of Ladd’s
    work in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903:185, C. M. Mead adds: “He comes to
    the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve all the virtues
    into the generic one of love or benevolence without either giving
    a definition of benevolence which is unwarranted and virtually
    nullifies the end aimed at, or failing to recognize certain
    virtues which are as genuinely virtues as benevolence itself.
    Particularly is it argued that the virtues of the will (courage,
    constancy, temperance), and the virtues of judgment (wisdom,
    justness, trueness), get no recognition in this attempt to subsume
    all virtues under the one virtue of love. ’The unity of the
    virtues is due to the unity of a personality, in active and varied
    relations with other persons’ (361). If benevolence means wishing
    _happiness_ to all men, then happiness is made the ultimate good,
    and eudæmonism is accepted as the true ethical philosophy. But if,
    on the other hand, in order to avoid this conclusion, benevolence
    is made to mean wishing the highest _welfare_ to all men, and the
    highest welfare is conceived as a life of virtue, then we come to
    the rather inane conclusion that the essence of virtue is to wish
    that men may be virtuous.” See also art. by Vos, in Presb. and
    Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-37.


(_c_) Nor is God’s love a mere regard for being in general, irrespective
of its moral quality.


    Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise On the Nature of Virtue, defines
    virtue as regard for being in general. He considers that God’s
    love is first of all directed toward himself as having the
    greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily directed toward
    his creatures whose quantity of being is infinitesimal as compared
    with his. But we reply that being in general is far too abstract a
    thing to elicit or justify love. Charles Hodge said truly that, if
    obligation is primarily due to being in general, then there is no
    more virtue in loving God than there is in loving Satan. Virtue,
    we hold, must consist, not in love for being in general, but in
    love for good being, that is, in love for God as holy. Love has no
    moral value except as it is placed upon a right object and is
    proportioned to the worth of that object. “Love of being in
    general” makes virtue an irrational thing, because it has no
    standard of conduct. Virtue is rather the love of God as right and
    as the source of right.

    G. S. Lee, The Shadow-cross, 38—“God is love, and law is the way
    he loves us. But it is also true that God is law, and love is the
    way he rules us.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 88—“Love is God’s
    desire to impart himself, and so all good, to other persons, and
    to possess them for his own spiritual fellowship.” The intent to
    communicate himself is the intent to communicate holiness, and
    this is the “terminus ad quem” of God’s administration. Drummond,
    in his Ascent of Man, shows that Love began with the first cell of
    life. Evolution is not a tale of battle, but a love-story. We
    gradually pass from selfism to otherism. Evolution is the object
    of nature, and altruism is the object of evolution. Man =
    nutrition, looking to his own things; Woman = reproduction,
    looking to the things of others. But the greatest of these is
    love. The mammalia = the mothers, last and highest, care for
    others. As the mother gives love, so the father gives
    righteousness. Law, once a latent thing, now becomes active. The
    father makes a sort of conscience for those beneath him. Nature,
    like Raphael, is producing a Holy Family.

    Jacob Boehme: “Throw open and throw out thy heart. For unless thou
    dost exercise thy heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man
    in the world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy envy, thy distaste,
    thy dislike, will still have dominion over thee.... In the name
    and in the strength of God, love all men. Love thy neighbor as
    thyself, and do to thy neighbor as thou doest to thyself. And do
    it now. For now is the accepted time, and now is the day of
    salvation.” These expressions are scriptural and valuable, if they
    are interpreted ethically, and are understood to inculcate the
    supreme duty of loving the Holy One, of being holy as he is holy,
    and of seeking to bring all intelligent beings into conformity
    with his holiness.


(_d_) God’s love is not a merely emotional affection, proceeding from
sense or impulse, nor is it prompted by utilitarian considerations.


    Of the two words for love in the N. T., φιλέω designates an
    emotional affection, which is not and cannot be commanded (_John
    11:36—_“Behold how he loved him!”), while ἀγαπάω expresses a
    rational and benevolent affection which springs from deliberate
    choice (_John 3:16—_“God so loved the world”; _Mat. 19:19—_“Thou
    shall love thy neighbor as thyself”; _5:44—_“Love your enemies”).
    Thayer, N. T. Lex., 653—Ἀγαπᾶν “properly denotes a love founded in
    admiration, veneration, esteem, like the Lat. _diligere_, to be
    kindly disposed to one, to wish one well; but φιλεîν denotes an
    inclination prompted by sense and emotion, Lat. _amare_.... Hence
    men are said ἀγαπᾶν God, not φιλεîν.” In this word ἀγάπη, when
    used of God, it is already implied that God loves, not for what he
    can get, but for what he can give. The rationality of his love
    involves moreover a subordination of the emotional element to a
    higher law than itself, namely, that of holiness. Even God’s
    self-love must have a reason and norm in the perfections of his
    own being.


B. Positively:

(_a_) The immanent love of God is a rational and voluntary affection,
grounded in perfect reason and deliberate choice.


    Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:277—“Love is will,
    aiming either at the appropriation of an object, or at the
    enrichment of its existence, because moved by a feeling of its
    worth.... Love is to persons; it is a constant will; it aims at
    the promotion of the other’s personal end, whether known or
    conjectured; it takes up the other’s personal end and makes it
    part of his own. Will, as love, does not give itself up for the
    other’s sake; it aims at closest fellowship with the other for a
    common end.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405—“Love is
    not rightfully independent of the other faculties, but is subject
    to regulation and control.... We sometimes say that religion
    consists in love.... It would be more strictly true to say that
    religion consists in a new direction of our love, a turning of the
    current toward God which once flowed toward self.... Christianity
    rectifies the affections, before excessive, impulsive,
    lawless,—gives them worthy and immortal objects, regulates their
    intensity in some due proportion to the value of the things they
    rest upon, and teaches the true methods of their manifestation. In
    true religion love forms a copartnership with reason.... God’s
    love is no arbitrary, wild, passionate torrent of emotion ... and
    we become like God by bringing our emotions, sympathies,
    affections, under the dominion of reason and conscience.”


(_b_) Since God’s love is rational, it involves a subordination of the
_emotional_ element to a higher law than itself, namely, that of truth and
holiness.

_Phil. 1:9—_“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more
in knowledge and all discernment.” True love among men illustrates God’s
love. It merges self in another instead of making that other an appendage
to self. It seeks the other’s true good, not merely his present enjoyment
or advantage. Its aim is to realize the divine idea in that other, and
therefore it is exercised for God’s sake and in the strength which God
supplies. Hence it is a love for holiness, and is under law to holiness.
So God’s love takes into account the highest interests, and makes infinite
sacrifice to secure them. For the sake of saving a world of sinners, God
“spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”_ (Rom. 8:32)_,
and “Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”_ (Is. 53:6)_. Love
requires a rule or standard for its regulation. This rule or standard is
the holiness of God. So once more we see that love cannot include
holiness, because it is subject to the law of holiness. Love desires only
the best for its object, and the best is _God_. The golden rule does not
bid us give what others desire, but what they need: _Rom. 15:2—_“Let each
one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying.”

(_c_) The immanent love of God therefore requires and finds a perfect
standard in his own holiness, and a personal object in the image of his
own infinite perfections. It is to be understood only in the light of the
doctrine of the Trinity.


    As there is a higher Mind than our mind, so there is a greater
    Heart than our heart. God is not simply the loving One—he is also
    the Love that is loved. There is an infinite life of sensibility
    and affection in God. God has feeling, and in an infinite degree.
    But feeling alone is not love. Love implies not merely receiving
    but giving, not merely emotion but impartation. So the love of God
    is shown in his eternal giving. _James 1:5—_“God, who giveth,” or
    “the giving God” (τοῦ διδόντος Θεοῦ) = giving is not an episode in
    his being—it is his nature to give. And not only to _give_, but to
    give _himself_. This he does eternally in the self-communications
    of the Trinity; this he does transitively and temporally in his
    giving of himself for us in Christ, and to us in the Holy Spirit.

    Jonathan Edwards, Essay on Trinity (ed. G. P. Fisher), 79—“That in
    John God is love shows that there are more persons than one in the
    Deity, for it shows love to be essential and necessary to the
    Deity, so that his nature consists in it, and this supposes that
    there is an eternal and necessary object, because all love
    respects another that is the beloved. By love here the apostle
    certainly means something beside that which is commonly called
    self-love: that is very improperly called love, and is a thing of
    an exceeding diverse nature from the affection or virtue of love
    the apostle is speaking of.” When Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
    226-239, makes the first characteristic of love to be
    self-affirmation, and when Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, makes
    self-assertion an essential part of love, they violate linguistic
    usage by including under love what properly belongs to holiness.


(_d_) The immanent love of God constitutes a ground of the divine
blessedness. Since there is an infinite and perfect object of love, as
well as of knowledge and will, in God’s own nature, the existence of the
universe is not necessary to his serenity and joy.


    Blessedness is not itself a divine attribute; it is rather a
    result of the exercise of the divine attributes. It is a
    subjective result of this exercise, as glory is an objective
    result. Perfect faculties, with perfect objects for their
    exercise, ensure God’s blessedness. But love is especially its
    source. _Acts 20:35—_“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
    Happiness (hap, happen) is grounded in circumstances; blessedness,
    in character. Love precedes creation and is the ground of
    creation. Its object therefore cannot be the universe, for that
    does not exist, and, if it did exist, could not be a proper object
    of love for the infinite God. The only sufficient object of his
    love is the image of his own perfections, for that alone is equal
    to himself. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 264—“Man most truly realizes
    his own nature, when he is ruled by rational, self-forgetful love.
    He cannot help inferring that the highest thing in the individual
    consciousness is the dominant thing in the universe at large.”
    Here we may assent, if we remember that not the love itself but
    that which is loved must be the dominant thing, and we shall see
    that to be not love but holiness.

    Jones, Robert Browning, 219—“Love is for Browning the highest,
    richest conception man can form. It is our idea of that which is
    perfect; we cannot even imagine anything better. And the idea of
    evolution necessarily explains the world as the return of the
    highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound.... All things
    are potentially spirit, and all the phenomena of the world are
    manifestations of love.... Man’s reason is not, but man’s love is,
    a direct emanation from the inmost being of God” (345). Browning
    should have applied to truth and holiness the same principle which
    he recognized with regard to love. But we gratefully accept his
    dicta: “He that created love, shall not he love?... God! thou art
    Love! I build my faith on that.”


(_e_) The love of God involves also the possibility of divine suffering,
and the suffering on account of sin which holiness necessitates on the
part of God is itself the atonement.


    Christ is “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of
    the world”_ (Rev. 13:8);_ _1 Pet. 1:19, 20—_“precious blood, as of
    a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ:
    who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”
    While holiness requires atonement, love provides it. The
    blessedness of God is consistent with sorrow for human misery and
    sin. God is passible, or capable of suffering. The permission of
    moral evil in the decree of creation was at cost to God. Scripture
    attributes to him emotions of grief and anger at human sin (_Gen.
    6:6—_“it grieved him at his heart”; _Rom. 1:18—_“wrath of God”;
    _Eph. 4:30—_“grieve not the Holy Spirit of God”); painful
    sacrifice in the gift of Christ (_Rom. 8:32—_“spared not his own
    son”; _cf._ _Gen. 22:16—_“hast not withheld thy son”) and
    participation in the suffering of his people (_Is. 63:9—_“in all
    their affliction he was afflicted”); Jesus Christ in his sorrow
    and sympathy, his tears and agony, is the revealer of God’s
    feelings toward the race, and we are urged to follow in his steps,
    that we may be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. We
    cannot, indeed, conceive of love without self-sacrifice, nor of
    self-sacrifice without suffering. It would seem, then, that as
    immutability is consistent with imperative volitions in human
    history, so the blessedness of God may be consistent with emotions
    of sorrow.

    But does God feel in proportion to his greatness, as the mother
    suffers more than the sick child whom she tends? Does God suffer
    infinitely in every suffering of his creatures? We must remember
    that God is infinitely greater than his creation, and that he sees
    all human sin and woe as part of his great plan. We are entitled
    to attribute to him only such passibleness as is consistent with
    infinite perfection. In combining passibleness with blessedness,
    then, we must allow blessedness to be the controlling element, for
    our fundamental idea of God is that of absolute perfection.
    Martensen, Dogmatics, 101—“This limitation is swallowed up in the
    inner life of perfection which God lives, in total independence of
    his creation, and in triumphant prospect of the fulfilment of his
    great designs. We may therefore say with the old theosophic
    writers: ‘In the outer chambers is sadness, but in the inner ones
    is unmixed joy.’ ” Christ was “_anointed ... with the oil of
    gladness above his fellows,_” and “for the joy that was set before
    him endured the cross”_ (Heb. 1:9; 12:2)_. Love rejoices even in
    pain, when this brings good to those beloved. “Though round its
    base the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on
    its head.”

    In George Adam Smith’s Life of Henry Drummond, 11, Drummond cries
    out after hearing the confessions of men who came to him: “I am
    sick of the sins of these men! How can God bear it?” Simon,
    Reconciliation, 338-343, shows that before the incarnation, the
    Logos was a sufferer from the sins of men. This suffering however
    was kept in check and counterbalanced by his consciousness as a
    factor in the Godhead, and by the clear knowledge that men were
    themselves the causes of this suffering. After he became incarnate
    he suffered without knowing whence all the suffering came. He had
    a subconscious life into which were interwoven elements due to the
    sinful conduct of the race whose energy was drawn from himself and
    with which in addition he had organically united himself. If this
    is limitation, it is also self-limitation which Christ could have
    avoided by not creating, preserving, and redeeming mankind. We
    rejoice in giving away a daughter in marriage, even though it
    costs pain. The highest blessedness in the Christian is coincident
    with agony for the souls of others. We partake of Christ’s joy
    only when we know the fellowship of his sufferings. Joy and sorrow
    can coëxist, like Greek fire, that burns under water.

    Abbé Gratry, La Morale et la Loi de l’Histoire, 165, 166—“What! Do
    you really suppose that the personal God, free and intelligent,
    loving and good, who knows every detail of human torture, and
    hears every sigh—this God who sees, who loves as we do, and more
    than we do—do you believe that he is present and looks pitilessly
    on what breaks your heart, and what to him must be the spectacle
    of Satan reveling in the blood of humanity? History teaches us
    that men so feel for sufferers that they have been drawn to die
    with them, so that their own executioners have become the next
    martyrs. And yet you represent God, the absolute goodness, as
    alone impassible? It is here that our evangelical faith comes in.
    Our God was made man to suffer and to die! Yes, here is the true
    God. He has suffered from the beginning in all who have suffered.
    He has been hungry in all who have hungered. He has been immolated
    in all and with all who have offered up their lives. He is the
    Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Similarly Alexander
    Vinet, Vital Christianity, 240, remarks that “The suffering God is
    not simply the teaching of modern divines. It is a New Testament
    thought, and it is one that answers all the doubts that arise at
    the sight of human suffering. To know that God is suffering with
    it makes that suffering more awful, but it gives strength and life
    and hope, for we know that, if God is in it, suffering is the road
    to victory. If he shares our suffering we shall share his crown,”
    and we can say with the _Psalmist, 68:19—_“Blessed be God, who
    daily beareth our burden, even the God who is our salvation,” and
    with _Isaiah 63:9—_“In all their affliction he was afflicted, and
    the angel of his presence saved them.”

    Borden P. Bowne, Atonement: “Something like this work of grace was
    a moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that
    was taken when our human race was launched with its fearful
    possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under
    infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections
    on his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing, only
    make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive God as
    sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not
    _love_ at all, but only a reflection of our selfishness and
    vulgarity. So long as we conceive him as bestowing blessing upon
    us out of his infinite fulness, but at no real cost to himself, he
    sinks below the moral heroes of our race. There is ever a higher
    thought possible, until we see God taking the world upon his
    heart, entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming
    the supreme burden bearer and leader in self-sacrifice. Then only
    are the possibilities of grace and condescension and love and
    moral heroism filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the
    work of Christ, so far as it was a historical event, must be
    viewed not merely as a piece of history, but also as a
    manifestation of that cross which was hidden in the divine love
    from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the
    existence of the human world at all.”

    Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 264—“The eternal resolution
    that, if the world _will_ be tragic, it _shall_ still, in Satan’s
    despite, be spiritual, is the very essence of the eternal joy of
    that World-Spirit of whose wisdom ours is but a fragmentary
    reflection.... When you suffer, your sufferings are God’s
    sufferings,—not his external work nor his external penalty, nor
    the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own personal woe. In
    you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and has all your
    reason for overcoming this grief.” Henry N. Dodge, Christus
    Victor: “O Thou, that from eternity Upon thy wounded heart hast
    borne Each pang and cry of misery Wherewith our human hearts are
    torn, Thy love upon the grievous cross Doth glow, the beacon-light
    of time, Forever sharing pain and loss With every man in every
    clime. How vast, how vast Thy sacrifice, As ages come and ages go,
    Still waiting till it shall suffice To draw the last cold heart
    and slow!”

    On the question, Is God passible? see Bennett Tyler, Sufferings of
    Christ; A Layman, Sufferings of Christ; Woods, Works, 1:299-317;
    Bib. Sac., 11:744; 17:422-424; Emmons, Works, 4:201-208;
    Fairbairn, Place of Christ, 483-487; Bushnell, Vic. Sacrifice,
    59-93; Kedney, Christ. Doctrine Harmonized, 1:185-245; Edward
    Beecher, Concord of Ages, 81-204; Young, Life and Light of Men,
    20-43, 147-150; Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:191; Crawford,
    Fatherhood of God, 43, 44; Anselm, Proslogion, cap. 8; Upton,
    Hibbert Lectures, 268; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
    2:117, 118, 137-142. _Per __ contra_, see Shedd, Essays and
    Addresses, 277, 279 note; Woods, in Lit. and Theol. Rev.,
    1834:43-61; Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, 1:201. On the
    Biblical conception of Love in general, see article by James Orr,
    in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.


3. Holiness.


Holiness is self-affirming purity. In virtue of this attribute of his
nature, God eternally wills and maintains his own moral excellence. In
this definition are contained three elements: first, purity; secondly,
purity willing; thirdly, purity willing itself.


    _Ex. 15:11—_“glorious in holiness”; _19:10-16_—the people of
    Israel must purify themselves before they come into the presence
    of God; _Is. 6:3—_“Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts”—notice
    the contrast with the unclean lips, that must be purged with a
    coal from the altar (_verses 5-7_); _2 Cor, 7:1—_“cleanse
    ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting
    holiness in the fear of God”; _1 Thess. 3:13—_“unblamable in
    holiness”; _4:7—_“God called us not for uncleanness, but in
    sanctification”; _Heb. 12:29—_“our God is a consuming fire”—to all
    iniquity. These passages show that holiness is the opposite to
    impurity, that it is itself purity. The development of the
    conception of holiness in Hebrew history was doubtless a gradual
    one. At first it may have included little more than the idea of
    separation from all that is common, small and mean. Physical
    cleanliness and hatred of moral evil were additional elements
    which in time became dominant. We must remember however that the
    proper meaning of a term is to be determined not by the earliest
    but by the latest usage. Human nature is ethical from the start,
    and seeks to express the thought of a rule or standard of
    obligation, and of a righteous Being who imposes that rule or
    standard. With the very first conceptions of majesty and
    separation which attach to the apprehension of divinity in the
    childhood of the race there mingles at least some sense of the
    contrast between God’s purity and human sin. The least developed
    man has a conscience which condemns some forms of wrong doing, and
    causes a feeling of separation from the power or powers above.
    Physical defilement becomes the natural symbol of moral evil.
    Places and vessels and rites are invested with dignity as
    associated with or consecrated to the Deity.

    That the conception of holiness clears itself of extraneous and
    unessential elements only gradually, and receives its full
    expression only in the New Testament revelation and especially in
    the life and work of Christ, should not blind us to the fact that
    the germs of the idea lie far back in the very beginnings of man’s
    existence upon earth. Even then the sense of wrong within had for
    its correlate a dimly recognized righteousness without. So soon as
    man knows himself as a sinner he knows something of the holiness
    of that God whom he has offended. We must take exception therefore
    to the remark of Schurman, Belief in God, 231—“The first gods were
    probably non-moral beings,” for Schurman himself had just said: “A
    God without moral character is no God at all.” Dillmann, in his O.
    T. Theology, very properly makes the fundamental thought of O. T.
    religion, not the unity or the majesty of God, but his holiness.
    This alone forms the ethical basis for freedom and law. E. G.
    Robinson, Christian Theology—“The one aim of Christianity is
    personal holiness. But personal holiness will be the one absorbing
    and attainable aim of man, only as he recognizes it to be the one
    preëminent attribute of God. Hence everything divine is holy—the
    temple, the Scriptures, the Spirit.” See articles on Holiness in
    O. T., by J. Skinner, and on Holiness in N. T., by G. B. Stevens,
    in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.

    The development of the idea of holiness as well as the idea of
    love was prepared for before the advent of man. A. H. Strong,
    Education and Optimism: “There was a time when the past history of
    life upon the planet seemed one of heartless and cruel slaughter.
    The survival of the fittest had for its obverse side the
    destruction of myriads. Nature was ‘red in tooth and claw with
    ravine.’ But further thought has shown that this gloomy view
    results from a partial induction of facts. Paleontological life
    was marked not only by a struggle for life, but by a struggle for
    the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to be seen in
    the instinct of reproduction, and in the care of offspring. In
    every lion’s den and tiger’s lair, in every mother eagle’s feeding
    of her young, there is a self-sacrifice which faintly shadows
    forth man’s subordination of personal interests to the interests
    of others. But in the ages before man can be found incipient
    justice as well as incipient love. The struggle for one’s own life
    has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of others.
    The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of right,
    righteousness, justice, and law, on earth. Every creature owes it
    to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an adumbration of
    morality even in the predatory and internecine warfare of the
    geologic ages. The immanent God was even then preparing the way
    for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of humanity.” And, we may
    add, was preparing the way for the understanding by men of his own
    fundamental attribute of holiness. See Henry Drummond, Ascent of
    Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.


In further explanation we remark:

A. Negatively, that holiness is not

(_a_) Justice, or purity demanding purity from creatures. Justice, the
relative or transitive attribute, is indeed the manifestation and
expression of the immanent attribute of holiness, but it is not to be
confounded with it.


    Quenstedt, Theol., 8:1:34, defines holiness as “summa omnisque
    labis expers to Deo puritas, puritatem debitam exigens a
    creaturis”—a definition of transitive holiness, or justice, rather
    than of the immanent attribute. _Is. 5:16—_“Jehovah of hosts is
    exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in
    righteousness”—Justice is simply God’s holiness in its judicial
    activity. Though holiness is commonly a term of separation and
    expresses the inherent opposition of God to all that is sinful, it
    is also used as a term of union, as in _Lev. 11:44—_“be ye holy;
    for I am holy.” When Jesus turned from the young ruler (_Mark
    10:23_) he illustrated the first; _John 8:29_ illustrates the
    second: “he that sent me is with me.” Lowrie, Doctrine of St.
    John, 51-57—“‘God is light’_ (1 John 1:5)_ indicates the character
    of God, moral purity as revealed, as producing joy and life, as
    contrasted with doing ill, walking in darkness, being in a state
    of perdition.”

    Universal human conscience is itself a revelation of the holiness
    of God, and the joining everywhere of suffering with sin is the
    revelation of God’s justice. The wrath, anger, jealousy of God
    show that this reaction of God’s nature is necessary. God’s nature
    is itself holy, just, and good. Holiness is not replaced by love,
    as Ritschl holds, since there is no self-impartation without
    self-affirmation. Holiness not simply _demands_ in law, but
    _imparts_ in the Holy Spirit; see Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
    79—_versus_ Ritschl’s doctrine that holiness is God’s exaltation,
    and that it includes love; see also Pfleiderer, Die Ritschlische
    Theologie, 53-63. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 69—“If perfection is
    the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground
    of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible
    conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground
    of faith in the supremacy of the good.” We would regard nature
    however as merely the symbol and expression of God, and so would
    regard beauty as a ground of faith in his supremacy. What
    Santayana says of beauty is even more true of holiness. Wherever
    we see it, we recognize in it a pledge of the possible conformity
    between the soul and God, and consequently a ground of faith in
    the supremacy of God.


(_b_) Holiness is not a complex term designating the aggregate of the
divine perfections. On the other hand, the notion of holiness is, both in
Scripture and in Christian experience, perfectly simple, and perfectly
distinct from that of other attributes.


    Dick, Theol., 1:275—Holiness = venerableness, _i. e._, “no
    particular attribute, but the general character of God as
    resulting from his moral attributes.” Wardlaw calls holiness the
    union of all the attributes, as pure white light is the union of
    all the colored rays of the spectrum (Theology, 1:618-634). So
    Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doct., 166; H. W. Beecher: “Holiness =
    wholeness.” Approaching this conception is the definition of W. N.
    Clarke, Christian Theology, 83—“Holiness is the glorious fulness
    of the goodness of God, consistently held as the principle of his
    own action, and the standard for his creatures.” This implies,
    according to Dr. Clarke, 1. An inward character of perfect
    goodness; 2. That character as the consistent principle of his own
    action; 3. The goodness which is the principle of his own action
    is also the standard for theirs. In other words, holiness is 1.
    character; 2. self-consistency; 3. requirement. We object to this
    definition that it fails to define. We are not told what is
    essential to this character; the definition includes in holiness
    that which properly belongs to love; it omits all mention of the
    most important elements in holiness, namely purity and right.

    A similar lack of clear definition appears in the statement of
    Mark Hopkins, Law of Love, 105—“It is this double aspect of love,
    revealing the whole moral nature, and turning every way like the
    flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life, that is
    termed holiness.” As has been shown above, holiness is contrasted
    in Scripture, not with mere finiteness or littleness or misfortune
    or poverty or even unreality, but only with uncleanness and
    sinfulness. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 80—“Holiness in man
    is the image of God’s. But it is clear that holiness in man is not
    in proportion to the other perfections of his being—to his power,
    his knowledge, his wisdom, though it is in proportion to his
    rectitude of will—and therefore cannot be the sum of all
    perfections.... To identify holiness with the sum of all
    perfections is to make it mean mere completeness of character.”


(_c_) Holiness is not God’s self-love, in the sense of supreme regard for
his own interest and happiness. There is no utilitarian element in
holiness.


    Buddeus, Theol. Dogmat., 2:1:36, defines holiness as God’s
    self-love. But God loves and affirms self, not as self, but as the
    holiest. There is no self-seeking in God. Not the seeking of God’s
    interests, but love for God as holy, is the principle and source
    of holiness in man. To call holiness God’s self-love is to say
    that God is holy because of what he can make by it, _i. e._, to
    deny that holiness has any independent existence. See Thomasius,
    Christi Person und Werk, 1:155.

    We would not deny, but would rather maintain, that there is a
    proper self-love which is not selfishness. This proper self-love,
    however, is not love at all. It is rather self-respect,
    self-preservation, self-vindication, and it constitutes an
    important characteristic of holiness. But to define holiness as
    merely God’s love for himself, is to leave out of the definition
    the reason for this love in the purity and righteousness of the
    divine nature. God’s self-respect implies that God respects
    himself for something in his own being. What is that something? Is
    holiness God’s “moral excellence” (Hopkins), or God’s “perfect
    goodness” (Clarke)? But what is this moral excellence or perfect
    goodness? We have here the method and the end described, but not
    the motive and ground. God does not love himself for his love, but
    he loves himself for his holiness. Those who maintain that love is
    self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that
    holiness is God’s love for himself, must still admit that this
    self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the
    standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence.

    G. B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 364, tells us that “God’s
    righteousness is the self-respect of perfect love.” Miller,
    Evolution of Love, 53—“Self-love is that kind of action which in a
    perfect being actualizes, in a finite being seeks to actualize, a
    perfect or ideal self.” In other words, love is self-affirmation.
    But we object that self-love is not _love_ at all, because there
    is in it no self-communicating. If holiness is in any sense a form
    or manifestation of love—a question which we have yet to
    consider—it is certainly not a unitarian and utilitarian
    self-love, which would be identical with selfishness, but rather
    an affection which implies trinitarian otherness and the
    maintenance of self as an ideal object. This appears to be the
    meaning of Jonathan Edwards, in his Essay on the Trinity (ed.
    Fisher), 79—“All love respects another that is the beloved. By
    love the apostle certainly means something beside that which is
    commonly called self-love: that is very improperly called love,
    and is a thing of an exceeding diverse nature from the affection
    or virtue of love the apostle is speaking of.” Yet we shall see
    that while Jonathan Edwards denies holiness to be a unitarian and
    utilitarian self-love, he regards its very essence to be God’s
    trinitarian love for himself as a being of perfect moral
    excellence.

    Ritschl’s lack of trinitarian conviction makes it impossible for
    him to furnish any proper ground for either love or holiness in
    the nature of God. Ritschl holds that Christ as a person is an end
    in himself; he realized his own ideal; he developed his own
    personality; he reached his own perfection in his work for man; he
    is not merely a means toward the end of man’s salvation. But when
    Ritschl comes to his doctrine of God, he is strangely inconsistent
    with all this, for he fails to represent God as having any end in
    himself, and deals with him simply as a means toward the kingdom
    of God as an end. Garvie, Ritschlian Theology, 256, 278, 279, well
    points out that personality means self-possession as well as
    self-communication, distinction from others as well as union with
    others. Ritschl does not see that God’s love is primarily directed
    towards his Son, and only secondarily directed toward the
    Christian community. So he ignores the immanent Trinity. Before
    self-communication there must be self-maintenance. Otherwise God
    gives up his independence and makes created existence necessary.


(_d_) Holiness is not identical with, or a manifestation of, love. Since
self-maintenance must precede self-impartation, and since benevolence has
its object, motive, standard and limit in righteousness, holiness the
self-affirming attribute can in no way be resolved into love the
self-communicating.


    That holiness is a form of love is the doctrine of Jonathan
    Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (ed. Fisher), 97—“’Tis in God’s
    infinite love to himself that his holiness consists. As all
    creature holiness is to be resolved into love, as the Scripture
    teaches us, so doth the holiness of God himself consist in
    infinite love to himself. God’s holiness is the infinite beauty
    and excellence of his nature, and God’s excellency consists in his
    love to himself.” In his treatise on The Nature of Virtue,
    Jonathan Edwards defines virtue as regard for being in general. He
    considers that God’s love is first of all directed toward himself
    as having the greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily
    directed towards his creatures whose quantity of being is
    infinitesimal as compared with his. God therefore finds his chief
    end in himself, and God’s self-love is his holiness. This
    principle has permeated and dominated subsequent New England
    theology, from Samuel Hopkins, Works, 2:9-66, who maintains that
    holiness = love of being in general, to Horace Bushnell, Vicarious
    Sacrifice, who declares: “Righteousness, transferred into a word
    of the affections, is love; and love, translated back into a word
    of the conscience, is righteousness; the eternal law of right is
    only another conception of the law of love; the two principles,
    right and love, appear exactly to measure each other.” So Park,
    Discourses, 155-180.

    Similar doctrine is taught by Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, 93,
    184—“Love unites existence for self with existence for others,
    self-assertion and self-impartation.... Self-love in God is not
    selfishness, because he is the original and necessary seat of good
    in general, universal good. God guards his honor even in giving
    himself to others.... Love is the power and desire to be one’s
    self while in another, and while one’s self to be in another who
    is taken into the heart as an end.... I am to love my neighbor
    only as myself.... Virtue however requires not only good will, but
    the willing of the right thing.” So Newman Smyth, Christian
    Ethics, 226-239, holds that 1. Love is self-affirmation. Hence he
    maintains that holiness or self-respect is involved in love.
    Righteousness is not an independent excellence to be contrasted
    with or put in opposition to benevolence; it is an essential part
    of love. 2. Love is self-impartation. The only limit is ethical.
    Here is an ever deepening immanence, yet always some transcendence
    of God, for God cannot deny himself. 3. Love is self-finding in
    another. Vicariousness belongs to love. We reply to both Dorner
    and Smyth that their acknowledgment that love has its condition,
    limit, motive, object and standard, shows that there is a
    principle higher than love, and which regulates love. This
    principle is recognized as ethical. It is identical with the
    right. God cannot deny himself because he is fundamentally the
    right. This self-affirmation is holiness, and holiness cannot be a
    part of love, or a form of love, because it conditions and
    dominates love. To call it benevolence is to ignore its majestic
    distinctness and to imperil its legitimate supremacy.

    God must first maintain his own being before he can give to
    another, and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive
    in the worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,
    because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a
    standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be
    itself love, but must be holiness. We agree with Clarke, Christian
    Theology, 92, that “love is the desire to impart holiness.” Love
    is a means to holiness, and holiness is therefore the supreme good
    and something higher than mere love. It is not true, _vice versa_,
    that holiness is the desire to impart love, or that holiness is a
    means to love. Instead then of saying, with Clarke, that “holiness
    is central in God, but love is central in holiness,” we should
    prefer to say: “Love is central in God, but holiness is central in
    love,” though in this case we should use the term love as
    including self-love. It is still better not to use the word love
    at all as referring to God’s regard for himself. In ordinary
    usage, love means only regard for another and self-communication
    to that other. To embrace in it God’s self-affirmation is to
    misinterpret holiness and to regard it as a means to an end,
    instead of making it what it really is, the superior object, and
    the regulative principle, of love.

    That which lays down the norm or standard for love must be the
    superior of love. When we forget that “Righteousness and justice
    are the foundation of his throne”_ (Ps. 97:2)_, we lose one of the
    chief landmarks of Christian doctrine and involve ourselves in a
    mist of error. _Rev. 4:3—_“there was a rainbow round about the
    throne” = in the midst of the rainbow of pardon and peace there is
    a throne of holiness and judgment. In _Mat. 6:9, 10, _“Thy kingdom
    come” is not the first petition, but rather, “Hallowed be thy
    name.” It is a false idea of the divine simplicity which would
    reduce the attributes to one. Self-assertion is not a form of
    self-impartation. Not sentiency, a state of the sensibility, even
    though it be the purest benevolence, is the fundamental thing, but
    rather activity of will and a right direction of that will. Hodge,
    Essays, 133-136, 262-273, shows well that holy love is a love
    controlled by holiness. Holiness is not a mere means to happiness.
    To be happy is not the ultimate reason for being holy. Right and
    wrong are not matters of profit and loss. To be told that God is
    only benevolence, and that he punishes only when the happiness of
    the universe requires it, destroys our whole allegiance to God and
    does violence to the constitution of our nature.

    That God is only love has been called “the doctrine of the
    papahood of God.” God is “a summer ocean of kindliness, never
    agitated by storms” (Dale, Ephesians, 59). But Jesus gives us the
    best idea of God, and in him we find, not only pity, but at times
    moral indignation. _John 17:11—_“Holy Father” = more than love.
    Love can be exercised by God only when it is right love. Holiness
    is the track on which the engine of love must run. The track
    cannot be the engine. If either includes the other, then it is
    holiness that includes love, since holiness is the maintenance of
    God’s perfection, and perfection involves love. He that is holy
    affirms himself also as the perfect love. If love were
    fundamental, there would be nothing to give, and so love would be
    vain and worthless. There can be no giving of self, without a
    previous self-affirming. God is not holy because he loves, but he
    loves because he is holy. Love cannot direct itself; it is under
    bonds to holiness. Justice is not dependent on love for its right
    to be. Stephen G. Barnes: “Mere good will is not the sole content
    of the law; it is insufficient in times of fiery trial; it is
    inadequate as a basis for retribution. Love needs justice, and
    justice needs love; both are commanded in God’s law and are
    perfectly revealed in God’s character.”

    There may be a friction between a man’s two hands, and there may
    be a conflict between a man’s conscience and his will, between his
    intellect and his affection. Force is God’s energy under
    resistance, the resistance as well as the energy being his. So,
    upon occasion of man’s sin, holiness and love in God become
    opposite poles or forces. The first and most serious effect of sin
    is not its effect upon man, but its effect upon God. Holiness
    necessarily requires suffering, and love endures it. This eternal
    suffering of God on account of sin is the atonement, and the
    incarnate Christ only shows what has been in the heart of God from
    the beginning. To make holiness a form of love is really to deny
    its existence, and with this to deny that any atonement is
    necessary for man’s salvation. If holiness is the same as love,
    how is it that the classic world, that knew of God’s holiness, did
    not also know of his love? The ethics here reminds one of Abraham
    Lincoln’s meat broth that was made of the shadow of a pigeon that
    died of starvation. Holiness that is only good will is not
    holiness at all, for it lacks the essential elements of purity and
    righteousness.

    At the railway switching grounds east of Rochester, there is a man
    whose duty it is to move a bar of iron two or three inches to the
    left or to the right. So he determines whether a train shall go
    toward New York or toward Washington, toward New Orleans or San
    Francisco. Our conclusion at this point in our theology will
    similarly determine what our future system will be. The principle
    that holiness is a manifestation of love, or a form of
    benevolence, leads to the conclusions that happiness is the only
    good, and the only end; that law is a mere expedient for the
    securing of happiness; that penalty is simply deterrent or
    reformatory in its aim; that no atonement needs to be offered to
    God for human sin; that eternal retribution cannot be vindicated,
    since there is no hope of reform. This view ignores the testimony
    of conscience and of Scripture that sin is intrinsically
    ill-deserving, and must be punished on that account, not because
    punishment will work good to the universe,—indeed, it could not
    work good to the universe, unless it were just and right in
    itself. It ignores the fact that mercy is optional with God, while
    holiness is invariable; that punishment is many times traced to
    God’s holiness, but never to God’s love; that God is not simply
    love but light—moral light—and therefore is “a consuming fire”_
    (Heb. 12:29)_ to all iniquity. Love chastens (_Heb. 12:6_), but
    only holiness punishes (_Jer. 10:24—_“correct me, but in measure;
    not in thine anger”; _Ez. 28:22—_“I shall have executed judgments
    in her, and shall be sanctified in her”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment
    “I do not this for your sake, but for my holy name”; _1 John
    1:5—_“God is light, and in him is no darkness”—moral darkness;
    _Rev. 15:1, 4—_“the wrath of God ... thou only art holy ... thy
    righteous acts have been made manifest”; _16:5—_“righteous art
    thou ... because thou didst thus judge”; _19:2—_“true and
    righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great
    harlot”_)._ See Hovey, God with Us, 187-221; Philippi,
    Glaubenslehre, 2:80-82; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 154,
    155, 346-353; Lange, Pos. Dogmatik, 203.


B. Positively, that holiness is

(_a_) Purity of substance.—In God’s moral nature, as necessarily acting,
there are indeed the two elements of willing and being. But the passive
logically precedes the active; being comes before willing; God _is_ pure
before he _wills_ purity. Since purity, however, in ordinary usage is a
negative term and means only freedom from stain or wrong, we must include
in it also the positive idea of moral rightness. God is holy in that he is
the source and standard of the right.


    E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 80—“Holiness is moral purity,
    not only in the sense of absence of all moral stain, but of
    complacency in all moral good.” Shedd, Dogm. Theology,
    1:362—“Holiness in God is conformity to his own perfect nature.
    The only rule for the divine will is the divine reason; and the
    divine reason prescribes everything that is befitting an infinite
    Being to do. God is not under law, nor above law. He _is_ law. He
    is righteous by nature and necessity.... God is the source and
    author of law for all moral beings.” We may better Shedd’s
    definition by saying that holiness is that attribute in virtue of
    which God’s being and God’s will eternally conform to each other.
    In thus maintaining that holy being logically precedes holy
    willing, we differ from the view of Lotze, Philos. of Religion,
    139—“Such will of God no more follows from his nature as secondary
    to it, or precedes it as primary to it than, in motion, direction
    can be antecedent or subsequent to velocity.” Bowne, Philos. of
    Theism, 16—“God’s nature = a fixed law of activity or mode of
    manifestation.... But laws of thought are no limitation, because
    they are simply modes of thought-activity. They do not _rule_
    intellect, but only express what intellect _is_.”

    In spite of these utterances of Lotze and of Bowne, we must
    maintain that, as truth of being logically precedes truth of
    knowing, and as a loving nature precedes loving emotions, so
    purity of substance precedes purity of will. The opposite doctrine
    leads to such utterances as that of Whedon (On the Will, 316):
    “God is holy, in that he freely chooses to make his own happiness
    in eternal right. Whether he could not make himself equally happy
    in wrong is more than we can say.... Infinite wisdom and infinite
    holiness consist in, and result from, God’s volitions eternally.”
    Whedon therefore believes, not in God’s _unchangeableness_, but in
    God’s _unchangingness_. He cannot say whether motives may not at
    some time prove strongest for divine apostasy to evil. The
    essential holiness of God affords no basis for certainty. Here we
    have to rely on our faith, more than on the object of faith; see
    H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and Philosophy, 355-399.
    As we said with regard to truth, so here we say with regard to
    holiness, that to make holiness a matter of mere will, instead of
    regarding it as a characteristic of God’s being, is to deny that
    anything is holy in itself. If God can make impurity to be purity,
    then God in himself is indifferent to purity or impurity, and he
    ceases therefore to be God. Robert Browning, A Soul’s Tragedy,
    223—“I trust in God—the Right shall be the Right And other than
    the Wrong, while He endures.” P. S. Moxom: “Revelation is a
    disclosure of the divine righteousness. We do not add to the
    thought when we say that it is also a disclosure of the divine
    love, for love is a manifestation or realization of that rightness
    of relations which righteousness is.” H. B. Smith, System,
    223-231—“Virtue = love for both happiness and holiness, yet
    holiness as ultimate,—love to the highest Person and to his ends
    and objects.”


(_b_) Energy of will.—This purity is not simply a passive and dead
quality; it is the attribute of a personal being; it is penetrated and
pervaded by will. Holiness is the free moral movement of the Godhead.


    As there is a higher Mind than our mind, and a greater Heart than
    our heart, so there is a grander Will than our will. Holiness
    contains this element of will, although it is a will which
    expresses nature, instead of causing nature. It is not a still and
    moveless purity, like the whiteness of the new-fallen snow, or the
    stainless blue of the summer sky. It is the most tremendous of
    energies, in unsleeping movement. It is “a glassy sea”_ (Rev.
    15:2)_, but “a glassy sea mingled with fire.” A. J. Gordon:
    “Holiness is not a dead-white purity, the perfection of the
    faultless marble statue. Life, as well as purity, enters into the
    idea of holiness. They who are ‘without fault before the throne’
    are they who ‘follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth’—holy
    activity attending and expressing their holy state.” Martensen,
    Christian Ethics, 62, 63—“God is the perfect unity of the
    ethically necessary and the ethically free”; “God cannot do
    otherwise than will his own essential nature.” See Thomasius,
    Christi Person und Werk, 141; and on the Holiness of Christ, see
    Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, 203-241.

    The centre of personality is will. Knowing has its end in feeling,
    and feeling has its end in willing. Hence I must make feeling
    subordinate to willing, and happiness to righteousness. I must
    will with God and for God, and must use all my influence over
    others to make them like God in holiness. William James, Will to
    Believe, 123—“Mind must first get its impression from the object;
    then define what that object is and what active measures its
    presence demands; and finally react.... All faiths and
    philosophies, moods and systems, subserve and pass into a third
    stage, the stage of action.” What is true of man is even more true
    of God. All the wills of men combined, aye, even the whole moving
    energy of humanity in all climes and ages, is as nothing compared
    with the extent and intensity of God’s willing. The whole momentum
    of God’s being is behind moral law. That law is his
    self-expression. His beneficent yet also his terrible arm is ever
    defending and enforcing it. God must maintain his holiness, for
    this is his very Godhead. If he did not maintain it, love would
    have nothing to give away, or to make others partakers of.

    Does God will the good because it is the good, or is the good good
    because God wills it? In the former case, there would seem to be a
    good above God; in the latter case, good is something arbitrary
    and changeable. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 186, 187, says that neither of
    these is true; he holds that there is no _a priori_ good before
    the willing of it, and he also holds that will without direction
    is not will; the good is good for God, not _before_, but _in_, his
    self-determination. Dorner, System Doctrine, 1:432, holds on the
    contrary that both these are true, because God has no mere simple
    form of being, whether necessary or free, but rather a manifoldly
    diverse being, absolutely correlated however, and reciprocally
    conditioning itself,—that is, a trinitarian being, both necessary
    and free. We side with Dorner here, and claim that the belief that
    God’s will is the executive of God’s being is necessary to a
    correct ethics and to a correct theology. Celsus justified
    polytheism by holding that whatever is a part of God reveals God,
    serves God, and therefore may rationally be worshiped.
    Christianity he excepted from this wide toleration, because it
    worshiped a jealous God who was not content to be one of many. But
    this jealousy really signifies that God is a Being to whom moral
    distinctions are real. The God of Celsus, the God of pantheism, is
    not jealous, because he is not the Holy One, but simply the
    Absolute. The category of the ethical is merged in the category of
    being; see Bruce, Apologetics, 16. The great lack of modern
    theology is precisely this ethical lack; holiness is merged in
    benevolence; there is no proper recognition of God’s
    righteousness. _John 17:25—_“O righteous Father, the world knew
    thee not”—is a text as true to-day as in Jesus’ time. See Issel,
    Begriff der Heiligkeit in N. T., 41, 84, who defines holiness in
    God as “the ethical perfection of God in its exaltation above all
    that is sinful,” and holiness in men as “the condition
    corresponding to that of God, in which man keeps himself pure from
    sin.”


(_c_) Self-affirmation.—Holiness is God’s self-willing. His own purity is
the supreme object of his regard and maintenance. God is holy, in that his
infinite moral excellence affirms and asserts itself as the highest
possible motive and end. Like truth and love, this attribute can be
understood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.


    Holiness is purity willing itself. We have an analogy in man’s
    duty of self-preservation, self-respect, self-assertion. Virtue is
    bound to maintain and defend itself, as in the case of Job. In his
    best moments, the Christian feels that purity is not simply the
    negation of sin, but the affirmation of an inward and divine
    principle of righteousness. Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
    1:137—“Holiness is the perfect agreement of the divine willing
    with the divine being; for as the personal creature is holy when
    it wills and determines itself as God wills, so is God the holy
    one because he wills himself as what he is (or, to be what he is).
    In virtue of this attribute, God excludes from himself everything
    that contradicts his nature, and affirms himself in his absolutely
    good being—his being like himself.” Tholuck on Romans, 5th ed.,
    151—“The term holiness should be used to indicate a relation of
    God to himself. That is holy which, undisturbed from without, is
    wholly like itself.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:456—“It is the
    part of goodness to protect goodness.” We shall see, when we
    consider the doctrine of the Trinity, that that doctrine has close
    relations to the doctrine of the immanent attributes. It is in the
    Son that God has a perfect object of will, as well as of knowledge
    and love.

    The object of God’s willing in eternity past can be nothing
    outside of himself. It must be the highest of all things. We see
    what it must be, only when we remember that the right is the
    unconditional imperative of our moral nature. Since we are made in
    his image we must conclude that God eternally wills righteousness.
    Not all God’s acts are acts of love, but all are acts of holiness.
    The self-respect, self-preservation, self-affirmation,
    self-assertion, self-vindication, which we call God’s holiness, is
    only faintly reflected in such utterances as _Job 27:5, 6—_“Till I
    die I will not put away mine integrity from me. My righteousness I
    hold fast, and will not let it go”; _31:37—_“I would declare unto
    him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him.”
    The fact that the Spirit of God is denominated the Holy Spirit
    should teach us what is God’s essential nature, and the
    requisition that we should be holy as he is holy should teach us
    what is the true standard of human duty and object of human
    ambition. God’s holiness moreover, since it is self-affirmation,
    furnishes the guarantee that God’s love will not fail to secure
    its end, and that all things will serve his purpose. _Rom.
    11:36—_“For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things.
    To him be the glory for ever. Amen.” On the whole subject of
    Holiness, as an attribute of God, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
    Religion, 188-200, and Christ in Creation, 388-405; Delitzsch,
    art. Heiligkeit, in Herzog, Realencyclop.; Baudissin, Begriff der
    Heiligkeit im A. T.,—synopsis in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:169;
    Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 224-234; E. B. Coe, in Presb.
    and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:42-47; and articles on Holiness in O. T.,
    and Holiness in N. T., in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.



VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.


First Division.—Attributes having relation to Time and Space.


1. Eternity.


By this we mean that God’s nature (_a_) is without beginning or end; (_b_)
is free from all succession of time; and (_c_) contains in itself the
cause of time.


    _Deut. 32:40—_“For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live
    forever....”; _Ps. 90:2—_“Before the mountains ... from
    everlasting ... thou art God”; _102:27—_“thy years shall have no
    end”; _Is. 41:4—_“I Jehovah, the first, and with the last”; _1
    Cor. 2:7_—πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων—“before the worlds” or “ages” = πρὸ
    καταβολῆς κόσμου—“before the foundation of the world”_ (Eph.
    1:4)_. _1 Tim. 1:17_—Βασιλεῖ τῶν αἰώνων—“King of the ages” (so
    also _Rev. 15:8_). _1 Tim. 6:16—_“who only hath immortality.”
    _Rev. 1:8—_“the Alpha and the Omega.” Dorner: “We must not make
    Kronos (time) and Uranos (space) earlier divinities before God.”
    They are among the “all things” that were “made by him ”_ (John
    1:3)_. Yet time and space are not _substances_; neither are they
    _attributes_ (qualities of substance); they are rather _relations_
    of finite existence. (Porter, Human Intellect, 568, prefers to
    call time and space “_correlates_ to beings and events.”) With
    finite existence they come into being; they are not mere
    regulative conceptions of our minds; they exist objectively,
    whether we perceive them or not. Ladd: “Time is the mental
    presupposition of the duration of events and of objects. Time is
    not an entity, or it would be necessary to suppose some other time
    in which it endures. We think of space and time as unconditional,
    because they furnish the conditions of our knowledge. The age of a
    son is conditioned on the age of his father. The conditions
    themselves cannot be conditioned. Space and time are mental forms,
    but not only that. There is an extra-mental something in the case
    of space and time, as in the case of sound.”

    _Ex. 3:14—_“I am”—involves eternity. _Ps. 102:12-14—_“But thou, O
    Jehovah, wilt abide forever.... Thou wilt arise, and have mercy
    upon Zion; for it is time to have pity upon her.... For thy
    servants ... have pity upon her dust” = because God is eternal, he
    will have compassion upon Zion: he will do this, for even we, her
    children, love her very dust. _Jude 25—_“glory, majesty, dominion
    and power, before all time, and now, and for evermore.”
    Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:165—“God is ‘King of the æons’_ (1
    Tim. 1:17)_, because he distinguishes, in his thinking, his
    eternal inner essence from his changeable working in the world. He
    is not merged in the process.” Edwards the younger describes
    timelessness as “the immediate and invariable possession of the
    whole unlimited life together and at once.” Tyler, Greek Poets,
    148—“The heathen gods had only existence without end. The Greeks
    seem never to have conceived of existence without beginning.” On
    precognition as connected with the so-called future already
    existing, and on apparent time progression as a subjective human
    sensation and not inherent in the universe as it exists in an
    infinite Mind, see Myers, Human Personality, 2:262 _sq._ Tennyson,
    Life, 1:322—“For was and is and will be are but is: And all
    creation is one act at once, The birth of light; but we that are
    not all, As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live
    perforce from thought to thought, and make The act a phantom of
    succession: there Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time.”

    Augustine: “Mundus non in tempore, sed cum tempore, factus est.”
    There is no meaning to the question: Why did creation take place
    when it did rather than earlier? or the question: What was God
    doing before creation? These questions presuppose an independent
    time in which God created—a time before time. On the other hand,
    creation did not take place at any time, but God gave both the
    world and time their existence. Royce, World and Individual,
    2:111-115—“Time is the form of the will, as space is the form of
    the intellect (_cf._ 124, 133). Time runs only in one direction
    (unlike space), toward fulfilment of striving or expectation. In
    pursuing its goals, the self lives in time. Every _now_ is also a
    succession, as is illustrated in any melody. To God the universe
    is ‘totum simul’, as to us any succession is one whole. 233—Death
    is a change in the time-span—the minimum of time in which a
    succession can appear as a completed whole. To God ‘a thousand
    years’ are ‘as one day’_ (2 Pet. 3:8)_. 419—God, In his totality
    as the Absolute Being, is conscious not, _in_ time, but _of_ time,
    and of all that infinite time contains. In time there follow, in
    their sequence, the chords of his endless symphony. For him is
    this whole symphony of life at once.... You unite present, past
    and future in a single consciousness whenever you hear any three
    successive words, for one is past, another is present, at the same
    time that a third is future. So God unites in timeless perception
    the whole succession of finite events.... The single notes are not
    lost in the melody. You are in God, but you are not lost in God.”
    Mozart, quoted in Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, 1:255—“All
    the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong
    dream. But the best of all is _the hearing of it all at once_.”


Eternity is infinity in its relation to time. It implies that God’s nature
is not subject to the law of time. God is not in time. It is more correct
to say that time is in God. Although there is logical succession in God’s
thoughts, there is no chronological succession.


    Time is duration measured by successions. Duration without
    succession would still be duration, though it would be
    immeasurable. Reid, Intellectual Powers, essay 3, chap. 5—“We may
    measure duration by the succession of thoughts in the mind, as we
    measure length by inches or feet, but the notion or idea of
    duration must be antecedent to the mensuration of it, as the
    notion of length is antecedent to its being measured.” God is not
    under the law of time. Solly, The Will, 254—“God looks through
    time as we look through space.” Murphy, Scientific Bases,
    90—“Eternity is not, as men believe, Before and after us, an
    endless line. No, ’tis a circle. Infinitely great—All the
    circumference with creations thronged: God at the centre dwells,
    beholding all. And as we move in this eternal round, The finite
    portion which alone we see Behind us, is the past; what lies
    before We call the future. But to him who dwells Far at the
    centre, equally remote From every point of the circumference, Both
    are alike, the future and the past.” Vaughan (1655): “I saw
    Eternity the other night. Like a great ring of pure and endless
    light. And calm as it was bright; and round beneath it Time in
    hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow
    moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled.”

    We cannot have derived from experience our idea of eternal
    duration in the past, for experience gives us only duration that
    has had beginning. The idea of duration as without beginning must
    therefore be given us by intuition. Case, Physical Realism, 379,
    380—“Time is the continuance, or continual duration, of the
    universe.” Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 39—Consider time as a
    stream—under a spatial form: “If you take time as a relation
    between units without duration, then the whole time has no
    duration, and is not time at all. But if you give duration to the
    whole time, then at once the units themselves are found to possess
    it, and they cease to be units.” The _now_ is not time, unless it
    turns past into future, and this is a process. The now then
    consists of nows, and these nows are undiscoverable. The unit is
    nothing but its own relation to something beyond, something not
    discoverable. Time therefore is not real, but is appearance.

    John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:185—“That which grasps and correlates
    objects in space cannot itself be one of the things of space; that
    which apprehends and connects events as succeeding each other in
    time must itself stand above the succession or stream of events.
    In being able to measure them, it cannot be flowing with them.
    There could not be for self-consciousness any such thing as time,
    if it were not, in one aspect of it, above time, if it did not
    belong to an order which is or has in it an element which is
    eternal.... As taken up into thought, succession is not
    successive.” A. H. Strong, Historical Discourse, May 9, 1900—“God
    is above space and time, and we are in God. We mark the passage of
    time, and we write our histories. But we can do this, only because
    in our highest being we do not belong to space and time, but have
    in us a bit of eternity. John Caird tells us that we could not
    perceive the flowing of the stream if we were ourselves a part of
    the current; only as we have our feet planted on solid rock, can
    we observe that the water rushes by. We belong to God; we are akin
    to God; and while the world passes away and the lust thereof, he
    that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” J. Estlin Carpenter
    and P. H. Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 10—“Dante speaks of God
    as him in whom ‘every _where_ and every _when_ are focused in a
    point’, that is, to whom every season is _now_ and every place is
    _here_.”

    Amiel’s Journal: “Time is the supreme illusion. It is the inner
    prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode by which we
    perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.... Time is the
    successive dispersion of being, just as speech is the successive
    analysis of an intuition, or of an act of the will. In itself it
    is relative and negative, and it disappears within the absolute
    Being.... Time and space are fragments of the Infinite for the use
    of finite creatures. God permits them that he may not be alone.
    They are the mode under which creatures are possible and
    conceivable.... If the universe subsists, it is because the
    eternal Mind loves to perceive its own content, in all its wealth
    and expression, especially in its stages of preparation.... The
    radiations of our mind are imperfect reflections from the great
    show of fireworks set in motion by Brahma, and great art is great
    only because of its conformities with the divine order—with that
    which is.”


Yet we are far from saying that time, now that it exists, has no objective
reality to God. To him, past, present, and future are “one eternal now,”
not in the sense that there is no distinction between them, but only in
the sense that he sees past and future as vividly as he sees the present.
With creation time began, and since the successions of history are
veritable successions, he who sees according to truth must recognize them.


    Thomas Carlyle calls God “the Eternal Now.” Mason, Faith of the
    Gospel, 30—“God is not contemptuous of time.... One day is with
    the Lord as a thousand years. He values the infinitesimal in time,
    even as he does in space. Hence the patience, the long-suffering,
    the expectation, of God.” We are reminded of the inscription on
    the sun-dial, in which it is said of the hours: “Pereunt et
    imputantur”—“They pass by, and they are charged to our account.” A
    certain preacher remarked on the wisdom of God which has so
    arranged that the moments of time come successively and not
    simultaneously, and thus prevent infinite confusion! Shedd, Dogm.
    Theol., 1:344, illustrates God’s eternity by the two ways in which
    a person may see a procession: first from a doorway in the street
    through which the procession is passing; and secondly, from the
    top of a steeple which commands a view of the whole procession at
    the same instant.

    S. E. Meze, quoted in Royce, Conception of God, 40—“As if all of
    us were cylinders, with their ends removed, moving through the
    waters of some placid lake. To the cylinders the waters seem to
    move. What has passed is a memory, what is to come is doubtful.
    But the lake knows that all the water is equally real, and that it
    is quiet, immovable, unruffled. Speaking technically, time is no
    reality. Things _seem_ past and future, and, in a sense,
    non-existent to us, but, in fact, they are just as genuinely real
    as the present is.” Yet even here there is an order. You cannot
    play a symphony backward and have music. This qualification at
    least must be put upon the words of Berkeley; “A succession of
    ideas I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible
    measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.”

    Finney, quoted in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1877:722—“Eternity to us means
    all past, present and future duration. But to God it means only
    now. Duration and space, as they respect his existence, mean
    infinitely different things from what they do when they respect
    our existence. God’s existence and his acts, as they respect
    finite existence, have relation to time and space. But as they
    respect his own existence, everything is _here_ and _now_. With
    respect to all finite existences, God can say: I was, I am, I
    shall be, I will do; but with respect to his own existence, all
    that he can say is: I am, I do.”

    Edwards the younger, Works, 1:386, 387—“There is no succession in
    the divine mind; therefore no new operations take place. All the
    divine acts are from eternity, nor is there any time with God. The
    _effects_ of these divine acts do indeed all take place in time
    and in a succession. If it should be said that on this supposition
    the effects take place not till long after the acts by which they
    are produced, I answer that they do so in our view, but not in the
    view of God. With him there is no time; no before or after with
    respect to time: nor has time any existence in the divine mind, or
    in the nature of things independently of the minds and perceptions
    of creatures; but it depends on the succession of those
    perceptions.” We must qualify this statement of the younger
    Edwards by the following from Julius Müller: “If God’s working can
    have no relation to time, then all bonds of union between God and
    the world are snapped asunder.”

    It is an interesting question whether the human spirit is capable
    of timeless existence, and whether the conception of time is
    purely physical. In dreams we seem to lose sight of succession; in
    extreme pain an age is compressed into a minute. Does this throw
    light upon the nature of prophecy? Is the soul of the prophet rapt
    into God’s timeless existence and vision? It is doubtful whether
    _Rev. 10:6—_“there shall be time no longer” can be relied upon to
    prove the affirmative; for the Rev. Vers. marg. and the American
    Revisers translate “there shall be delay no longer.” Julius
    Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:147—“All self-consciousness is a victory over
    time.” So with memory; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:471. On “the
    death-vision of one’s whole existence,” see Frances Kemble
    Butler’s experience in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:351—“Here there is
    succession and series, only so exceedingly rapid as to seem
    simultaneous.” This rapidity however is so great as to show that
    each man can at the last be judged in an instant. On space and
    time as unlimited, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 564-566. On the
    conception of eternity, see Mansel, Lectures, Essays and Reviews,
    111-126, and Modern Spiritualism, 255-292; New Englander, April,
    1875: art. on the Metaphysical Idea of Eternity. For practical
    lessons from the Eternity of God, see Park, Discourses, 137-154;
    Westcott, Some Lessons of the Rev. Vers., (Pott, N. Y., 1897),
    187—with comments on αἰῶνες in _Eph. 3:21_, _Heb. 11:3_, _Rev. 4_;
    _10, 11_—“the universe under the aspect of time.”


2. Immensity.


By this we mean that God’s nature (_a_) is without extension; (_b_) is
subject to no limitations of space; and (_c_) contains in itself the cause
of space.


    _1 Kings 8:27—_“behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot
    contain thee.” Space is a creation of God; _Rom. 8:39—_“nor height
    nor depth, nor any other creature.” Zahn, Bib. Dogmatik,
    149—“Scripture does not teach the immanence of God in the world,
    but the immanence of the world in God.” Dante does not put God,
    but Satan at the centre; and Satan, being at the centre, is
    crushed with the whole weight of the universe. God is the Being
    who encompasses all. All things exist in him. E. G. Robinson:
    “Space is a relation; God is the author of relations and of our
    modes of thought; therefore God is the author of space. Space
    conditions our thought, but it does not condition God’s thought.”

    Jonathan Edwards: “Place itself is mental, and within and without
    are mental conceptions.... When I say the material universe exists
    only in the mind, I mean that it is absolutely dependent on the
    conception of the mind for its existence, and does not exist as
    spirits do, whose existence does not consist in, nor in dependence
    on, the conception of other minds.” H. M. Stanley, on Space and
    Science, in Philosophical Rev., Nov. 1898:615—“Space is not full
    of things, but things are spaceful.... Space is a form of dynamic
    appearance.” Bradley carries the ideality of space to an extreme,
    when, in his Appearance and Reality, 35-38, he tells us: Space is
    not a mere relation, for it has parts, and what can be the parts
    of a relation? But space is nothing but a relation, for it is
    lengths of lengths of—nothing that we can find. We can find no
    terms either inside or outside. Space, to be space, must have
    space outside itself. Bradley therefore concludes that space is
    not reality but only appearance.


Immensity is infinity in its relation to space. God’s nature is not
subject to the law of space. God is not in space. It is more correct to
say that space is in God. Yet space has an objective reality to God. With
creation space began to be, and since God sees according to truth, he
recognizes relations of space in his creation.


    Many of the remarks made in explanation of time apply equally to
    space. Space is not a substance nor an attribute, but a relation.
    It exists so soon as extended matter exists, and exists as its
    necessary condition, whether our minds perceive it or not. Reid,
    Intellectual Powers, essay 2, chap. 9—“Space is not so properly an
    object of sense, as a necessary concomitant of the objects of
    sight and touch.” When we see or touch body, we get the idea of
    space in which the body exists, but the idea of space is not
    furnished by the sense; it is an _a priori_ cognition of the
    reason. Experience furnishes the occasion of its evolution, but
    the mind evolves the conception by its own native energy.

    Anselm, Proslogion, 19—“Nothing contains thee, but thou containest
    all things.” Yet it is not precisely accurate to say that space is
    in God, for this expression seems to intimate that God is a
    greater space which somehow includes the less. God is rather
    unspatial and is the Lord of space. The notion that space and the
    divine immensity are identical leads to a materialistic conception
    of God. Space is not an attribute of God, as Clarke maintained,
    and no argument for the divine existence can be constructed from
    this premise (see pages 85, 86). Martineau, Types, 1:138, 139,
    170—“Malebranche said that God is the place of all spirits, as
    space is the place of all bodies.... Descartes held that there is
    no such thing as empty space. _Nothing_ cannot possibly have
    extension. Wherever extension is, there must be _something_
    extended. Hence the doctrine of a _plenum_, A _vacuum_ is
    inconceivable.” Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 87—“According to
    the ordinary view ... space _exists_, and things exist _in it_;
    according to our view, only things exist, and _between them_
    nothing exists, but space exists _in them_.”

    Case, Physical Realism, 379, 380—“Space is the continuity, or
    continuous extension, of the universe as one substance.” Ladd: “Is
    space extended? Then it must be extended in some other space. That
    other space is the space we are talking about. Space then is not
    an entity, but a mental presupposition of the existence of
    extended substance. Space and time are neither finite nor
    infinite. Space has neither circumference nor centre,—its centre
    would be everywhere. We cannot _imagine_ space at all. It is
    simply a precondition of mind enabling us to perceive things.” In
    Bib. Sac., 1890:415-444, art.: Is Space a Reality? Prof. Mead
    opposes the doctrine that space is purely subjective, as taught by
    Bowne; also the doctrine that space is a certain order of
    relations among realities; that space is nothing apart from
    things; but that things, when they exist, exist in certain
    relations, and that the sum, or system, of these relations
    constitutes space.

    We prefer the view of Bowne, Metaphysics, 127, 137, 143, that
    “Space is the form of objective experience, and is nothing in
    abstraction from that experience.... It is a form of intuition,
    and not a mode of existence. According to this view, things are
    not in space and space-relations, but appear to be. In themselves
    they are essentially non-spatial; but by their interactions with
    one another, and with the mind, they give rise to the appearance
    of a world of extended things in a common space. Space-predicates,
    then, belong to phenomena only, and not to
    things-in-themselves.... Apparent reality exists spatially; but
    proper ontological reality exists spacelessly and without spatial
    predicates.” For the view that space is relative, see also Cocker,
    Theistic Conception of the World, 66-96; Calderwood, Philos. of
    the Infinite, 331-335. _Per contra_, see Porter, Human Intellect,
    662; Hazard, Letters on Causation in Willing, appendix; Bib. Sac.,
    Oct. 1877:723; Gear, in Bap. Rev., July, 1880:434; Lowndes,
    Philos. of Primary Beliefs, 144-161.


Second Division.—Attributes having relation to Creation.


1. Omnipresence.


By this we mean that God, in the totality of his essence, without
diffusion or expansion, multiplication or division, penetrates and fills
the universe in all its parts.


    _Ps. 139:7 __sq.__—_“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or
    whither shall I flee from thy presence?” _Jer. 23:23, 24—_“Am I a
    God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off?... Do not I
    fill heaven and earth?” _Acts 17:27, 28—_“he is not far from each
    one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
    Faber: “For God is never so far off As even to be near. He is
    within. Our spirit is The home he holds most dear. To think of him
    as by our side Is almost as untrue As to remove his shrine beyond
    Those skies of starry blue. So all the while I thought myself
    Homeless, forlorn and weary, Missing my joy, I walked the earth
    Myself God’s sanctuary.” Henri Amiel: “From every point on earth
    we are equally near to heaven and the infinite.” Tennyson, The
    Higher Pantheism: “Speak to him then, for he hears, and spirit
    with spirit can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than
    hands and feet.” “As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart.”

    The atheist wrote: “God is nowhere,” but his little daughter read
    it: “God is now here,” and it converted him. The child however
    sometimes asks: “If God is everywhere, how is there any room for
    us?” and the only answer is that God is not a material but a
    spiritual being, whose presence does not exclude finite existence
    but rather makes such existence possible. This universal presence
    of God had to be learned gradually. It required great faith in
    Abraham to go out from Ur of the Chaldees, and yet to hold that
    God would be with him in a distant land (_Heb. 11:8_). Jacob
    learned that the heavenly ladder followed him wherever he went
    (_Gen. 28:15_). Jesus taught that “neither in this mountain, nor
    in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father”_ (John 4:21)_. Our
    Lord’s mysterious comings and goings after his resurrection were
    intended to teach his disciples that he was with them “always,
    even unto the end of the world”_ (Mat. 28:20)_. The omnipresence
    of Jesus demonstrates, _a fortiori_, the omnipresence of God.


In explanation of this attribute we may say:

(_a_) God’s omnipresence is not potential but essential.—We reject the
Socinian representation that God’s essence is in heaven, only his power on
earth. When God is said to “dwell in the heavens,” we are to understand
the language either as a symbolic expression of exaltation above earthly
things, or as a declaration that his most special and glorious
self-manifestations are to the spirits of heaven.


    _Ps. 123:1—_“O thou that sittest in the heavens”; _113:5—_“That
    hath his seat on high”; _Is. 57:15—_“the high and lofty One that
    inhabiteth eternity.” Mere potential omnipresence is Deistic as
    well as Socinian. Like birds in the air or fish in the sea, “at
    home, abroad, We are surrounded still with God.” We do not need to
    go up to heaven to call him down, or into the abyss to call him up
    (_Rom. 10:6, 7_). The best illustration is found in the presence
    of the soul in every part of the body. Mind seems not confined to
    the brain. Natural realism in philosophy, as distinguished from
    idealism, requires that the mind should be at the point of contact
    with the outer world, instead of having reports and ideas brought
    to it in the brain; see Porter, Human Intellect, 149. All
    believers in a soul regard the soul as at least present in all
    parts of the brain, and this is a relative omnipresence no less
    difficult in principle than its presence in all parts of the body.
    An animal’s brain may be frozen into a piece solid as ice, yet,
    after thawing, it will act as before: although freezing of the
    whole body will cause death. If the immaterial principle were
    confined to the brain we should expect freezing of the brain to
    cause death. But if the soul may be omnipresent in the body or
    even in the brain, the divine Spirit may be omnipresent in the
    universe. Bowne, Metaphysics, 136—“If finite things are modes of
    the infinite, each thing must be a mode of the entire infinite;
    and the infinite must be present in its unity and completeness in
    every finite thing, just as the entire soul is present in all its
    acts.” This idealistic conception of the entire mind as present in
    all its thoughts must be regarded as the best analogue to God’s
    omnipresence in the universe. We object to the view that this
    omnipresence is merely potential, as we find it in Clarke,
    Christian Theology, 74—“We know, and only know, that God is able
    to put forth all his power of action, without regard to place....
    Omnipresence is an element in the immanence of God.... A local God
    would be no real God. If he is not everywhere, he is not true God
    anywhere. Omnipresence is implied in all providence, in all
    prayer, in all communion with God and reliance on God.”

    So long as it is conceded that consciousness is not confined to a
    single point in the brain, the question whether other portions of
    the brain or of the body are also the seat of consciousness may be
    regarded as a purely academic one, and the answer need not affect
    our present argument. The principle of omnipresence is granted
    when once we hold that the soul is conscious at more than one
    point of the physical organism. Yet the question suggested above
    is an interesting one and with regard to it psychologists are
    divided. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie (1892), 138-159,
    holds that consciousness is correlated with the sum-total of
    bodily processes, and with him agree Fechner and Wundt. “Pflüger
    and Lewes say that as the hemispheres of the brain owe their
    intelligence to the consciousness which we know to be there, so
    the intelligence of the spinal cord’s acts must really be due to
    the invisible presence of a consciousness lower in degree.”
    Professor Brewer’s rattlesnake, after several hours of
    decapitation, still struck at him with its bloody neck, when he
    attempted to seize it by the tail. From the reaction of the frog’s
    leg after decapitation may we not infer a certain consciousness?
    “Robin, on tickling the breast of a criminal an hour after
    decapitation, saw the arm and hand move toward the spot.” Hudson,
    Demonstration of a Future Life, 239-249, quotes from Hammond,
    Treatise on Insanity, chapter 2, to prove that the brain is not
    the sole organ of the mind. Instinct does not reside exclusively
    in the brain; it is seated in the _medulla oblongata_, or in the
    spinal cord, or in both these organs. Objective mind, as Hudson
    thinks, is the function of the physical brain, and it ceases when
    the brain loses its vitality. Instinctive acts are performed by
    animals after excision of the brain, and by human beings born
    without brain. Johnson, in Andover Rev., April, 1890:421—“The
    brain is not the only seat of consciousness. The same evidence
    that points to the brain as the _principal_ seat of consciousness
    points to the nerve-centres situated in the spinal cord or
    elsewhere as the seat of a more or less _subordinate_
    consciousness or intelligence.” Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 26—“I
    do not take it for proved that consciousness is entirely confined
    to the brain.”

    In spite of these opinions, however, we must grant that the
    general consensus among psychologists is upon the other side.
    Dewey, Psychology, 349—“The sensory and motor nerves have points
    of meeting in the spinal cord. When a stimulus is transferred from
    a sensory nerve to a motor without the conscious intervention of
    the mind, we have reflex action.... If something approaches the
    eye, the stimulus is transferred to the spinal cord, and instead
    of being continued to the brain and giving rise to a sensation, it
    is discharged into a motor nerve and the eye is immediately
    closed.... The reflex action in itself involves no consciousness.”
    William James, Psychology, 1:16, 66, 134, 214—“The cortex of the
    brain is the sole organ of consciousness in man.... If there be
    any consciousness pertaining to the lower centres, it is a
    consciousness of which the self knows nothing.... In lower animals
    this may not be so much the case.... The seat of the mind, so far
    as its dynamical relations are concerned, is somewhere in the
    cortex of the brain.” See also C. A. Strong, Why the Mind has a
    Body, 40-50.


(_b_) God’s omnipresence is not the presence of a part but of the whole of
God in every place.—This follows from the conception of God as incorporeal
We reject the materialistic representation that God is composed of
material elements which can be divided or sundered. There is no
multiplication or diffusion of his substance to correspond with the parts
of his dominions. The one essence of God is present at the same moment in
all.


    _1 Kings 8:27—_“the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot
    contain (circumscribe) thee.” God must be present in all his
    essence and all his attributes in every place. He is “totus in
    omni parte.” Alger, Poetry of the Orient: “Though God extends
    beyond Creation’s rim, Each smallest atom holds the whole of him.”
    From this it follows that the whole Logos can be united to and be
    present in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills
    and governs the whole universe; and so the whole Christ can be
    united to, and can be present in, the single believer, as fully as
    if that believer were the only one to receive of his fulness.

    A. J. Gordon: “In mathematics the whole is equal to the sum of its
    parts. But we know of the Spirit that every part is equal to the
    whole. Every church, every true body of Jesus Christ, has just as
    much of Christ as every other, and each has the whole Christ.”
    _Mat. 13:20—_“where two or three are gathered together in my name,
    there am I in the midst of them.” “The parish priest of austerity
    Climbed up in a high church steeple, To be nearer God so that he
    might Hand his word down to the people. And in sermon script he
    daily wrote What he thought was sent from heaven, And he dropt it
    down on the people’s heads Two times one day in seven. In his age
    God said, ‘Come down and die,’ And he cried out from the steeple,
    ‘Where art thou, Lord?’ And the Lord replied, ‘Down here among my
    people.’ ”


(_c_) God’s omnipresence is not necessary but free.—We reject the
pantheistic notion that God is bound to the universe as the universe is
bound to God. God is immanent in the universe, not by compulsion, but by
the free act of his own will, and this immanence is qualified by his
transcendence.


    God might at will cease to be omnipresent, for he could destroy
    the universe; but while the universe exists, he is and must be in
    all its parts. God is the life and law of the universe,—this is
    the truth in pantheism. But he is also personal and free,—this
    pantheism denies. Christianity holds to a free, as well as to an
    essential, omnipresence—qualified and supplemented, however, by
    God’s transcendence. The boasted truth in pantheism is an
    elementary principle of Christianity, and is only the
    stepping-stone to a nobler truth—God’s personal presence with his
    church. The Talmud contrasts the worship of an idol and the
    worship of Jehovah: “The idol seems so near, but is so far,
    Jehovah seems so far, but is so near!” God’s omnipresence assures
    us that he is present with us to hear, and present in every heart
    and in the ends of the earth to answer, prayer. See Rogers,
    Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 10; Bowne, Metaphysics, 136;
    Charnock, Attributes, 1:363-405.

    The Puritan turned from the moss-rose bud, saying: “I have learned
    to call nothing on earth lovely.” But this is to despise not only
    the workmanship but the presence of the Almighty. The least thing
    in nature is worthy of study because it is the revelation of a
    present God. The uniformity of nature and the reign of law are
    nothing but the steady will of the omnipresent God. Gravitation is
    God’s omnipresence in space, as evolution is God’s omnipresence in
    time. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:73-“God being omnipresent,
    contact with him may be sought at any moment in prayer and
    contemplation; indeed, it will always be true that we live and
    move and have our being in him, as the perennial and omnipresent
    source of our existence.” _Rom. 10:6-8—_“Say not in thy heart, Who
    shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, Who
    shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from
    the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth,
    and in thy heart.” Lotze, Metaphysics, § 256, quoted in
    Illingworth, Divine Immanence, 135, 136. Sunday-school scholar:
    “Is God in my pocket?” “Certainly.” “No, he isn’t, for I haven’t
    any pocket.” God is omnipresent so long as there is a universe,
    but he ceases to be omnipresent when the universe ceases to be.


2. Omniscience.


By this we mean God’s perfect and eternal knowledge of all things which
are objects of knowledge, whether they be actual or possible, past,
present, or future.


    God knows his inanimate creation: _Ps. 147:4—_“counteth the number
    of the stars; He calleth them all by their names.” He has
    knowledge of brute creatures: _Mat. 10:29_—sparrows—“not one of
    them shall fall on the ground without your Father.” Of men and
    their works: _Ps. 33:13-15—_“beholdeth all the sons of men ...
    considereth all their works.” Of hearts of men and their thoughts:
    _Acts 15:8—_“God, who knoweth the heart”; _Ps.
    139:2—_“understandest my thought afar off.” Of our wants: _Mat.
    6:8—_“knoweth what things ye have need of.” Of the least things:
    _Mat. 10:30—_“the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Of
    the past: _Mal. 3:16—_“book of remembrance.” Of the future: _Is.
    46:9, 10—_“declaring the end from the beginning.” Of men’s future
    free acts: _Is. 44:28—_“that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and
    shall perform all my pleasure.” Of men’s future evil acts: _Acts
    2:23—_“him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and
    foreknowledge of God.” Of the ideally possible: _1 Sam.
    23:12—_“Will the men of Keilah deliver up me and my men into the
    hands of Saul? And Jehovah said, They will deliver thee up” (_sc._
    if thou remainest); _Mat. 11:23—_“if the mighty works had been
    done in Sodom which were done in thee, it would have remained.”
    From eternity: _Acts 15:18—_“the Lord, who maketh these things
    known from of old.” Incomprehensible: _Ps. 139:6—_“Such knowledge
    is too wonderful for me”; _Rom. 11:33—_“O the depth of the riches
    both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.” Related to wisdom:
    _Ps. 104:24—_“In wisdom hast thou made them all”; _Eph.
    3:10—_“manifold wisdom of God.”

    _Job 7:20—_“O thou watcher of men”; _Ps. 56:8—_“Thou numberest my
    wanderings” = my whole life has been one continuous exile; “Put
    thou my tears into thy bottle” = the skin bottle of the
    east,—there are tears enough to fill one; “Are they not in thy
    book?” = no tear has fallen to the ground unnoted,—God has
    gathered them all. Paul Gerhardt: “Du zählst wie oft ein Christe
    wein’, Und was sein Kummer sei; Kein stilles Thränlein ist so
    klein, Du hebst und legst es bei.” _Heb. 4:13—_“there is no
    creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are
    naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to
    do”—τετραχηλισμένα—with head bent back and neck laid bare, as
    animals slaughtered in sacrifice, _or_ seized by the throat and
    thrown on the back, so that the priest might discover whether
    there was any blemish. Japanese proverb: “God has forgotten to
    forget.”


(_a_) The omniscience of God may be argued from his omnipresence, as well
as from his truth or self-knowledge, in which the plan of creation has its
eternal ground, and from prophecy, which expresses God’s omniscience.


    It is to be remembered that omniscience, as the designation of a
    relative and transitive attribute, does not include God’s
    self-knowledge. The term is used in the technical sense of God’s
    knowledge of all things that pertain to the universe of his
    creation. H. A. Gordon: “Light travels faster than sound. You can
    see the flash of fire from the cannon’s mouth, a mile away,
    considerably before the noise of the discharge reaches the ear.
    God flashed the light of prediction upon the pages of his word,
    and we see it. Wait a little and we see the event itself.”

    Royce, The Conception of God, 9—“An omniscient being would be one
    who simply found presented to him, not by virtue of fragmentary
    and gradually completed processes of inquiry, but by virtue of an
    all-embracing, direct and transparent insight into his own
    truth—who found thus presented to him, I say, the complete, the
    fulfilled answer to every genuinely rational question.”

    Browning, Ferishtah’s Fancies, Plot-culture: “How will it fare
    shouldst thou impress on me That certainly an Eye is over all And
    each, to make the minute’s deed, word, thought As worthy of reward
    and punishment? Shall I permit my sense an Eye-viewed shame, Broad
    daylight perpetration,—so to speak,—I had not dared to breathe
    within the Ear, With black night’s help around me?”


(_b_) Since it is free from all imperfection, God’s knowledge is
immediate, as distinguished from the knowledge that comes through sense or
imagination; simultaneous, as not acquired by successive observations, or
built up by processes of reasoning; distinct, as free from all vagueness
or confusion; true, as perfectly corresponding to the reality of things;
eternal, as comprehended in one timeless act of the divine mind.


    An infinite mind must always act, and must always act in an
    absolutely perfect manner. There is in God no sense, symbol,
    memory, abstraction, growth, reflection, reasoning,—his knowledge
    is all direct and without intermediaries. God was properly
    represented by the ancient Egyptians, not as having eye, but as
    being eye. His thoughts toward us are “more than can be numbered”_
    (Ps. 40:5)_, not because there is succession in them, now a
    remembering and now a forgetting, but because there is never a
    moment of our existence in which we are out of his mind; he is
    always thinking of us. See Charnock, Attributes, 1:406-497. _Gen.
    16:13—_“Thou art a God that seeth.” Mivart, Lessons from Nature,
    374—“Every creature of every order of existence, while its
    existence is sustained, is so complacently contemplated by God,
    that the intense and concentrated attention of all men of science
    together upon it could but form an utterly inadequate symbol of
    such divine contemplation.” So God’s scrutiny of every deed of
    darkness is more searching than the gaze of a whole Coliseum of
    spectators, and his eye is more watchful over the good than would
    be the united care of all his hosts in heaven and earth.

    Armstrong, God and the Soul: “God’s energy is concentrated
    attention, attention concentrated everywhere. We can attend to two
    or three things at once; the pianist plays and talks at the same
    time; the magician does one thing while he seems to do another.
    God attends to all things, does all things, at once.” Marie
    Corelli, Master Christian, 104—“The biograph is a hint that every
    scene of human life is reflected in a ceaseless moving panorama
    _some where_, for the beholding of _some one_.” Wireless
    telegraphy is a stupendous warning that from God no secrets are
    hid, that “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed;
    and hid, that shall not be known”_ (Mat. 10:26)_. The Röntgen
    rays, which take photographs of our insides, right through our
    clothes, and even in the darkness of midnight, show that to God
    “the night shineth as the day”_ (Ps. 139:12)_.

    Professor Mitchel’s equatorial telescope, slowly moving by
    clockwork, toward sunset, suddenly touched the horizon and
    disclosed a boy in a tree stealing apples, but the boy was all
    unconscious that he was under the gaze of the astronomer. Nothing
    was so fearful to the prisoner in the French _cachot_ as the eye
    of the guard that never ceased to watch him in perfect silence
    through the loophole in the door. As in the Roman empire the whole
    world was to a malefactor one great prison, and in his flight to
    the most distant lands the emperor could track him, so under the
    government of God no sinner can escape the eye of his Judge. But
    omnipresence is protective as well as detective. The text _Gen.
    16:13—_“Thou, God, seest me”—has been used as a restraint from
    evil more than as a stimulus to good. To the child of the devil it
    should certainly be the former. But to the child of God it should
    as certainly be the latter. God should not be regarded as an
    exacting overseer or a standing threat, but rather as one who
    understands us, loves us, and helps us. _Ps. 139:17, 18—_“How
    precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the
    sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than
    the sand: When I awake, I am still with thee.”


(_c_) Since God knows things as they are, he knows the necessary sequences
of his creation as necessary, the free acts of his creatures as free, the
ideally possible as ideally possible.


    God knows what would have taken place under circumstances not now
    present; knows what the universe would have been, had he chosen a
    different plan of creation; knows what our lives would have been,
    had we made different decisions in the past (_Is. 48:18—_“Oh that
    thou hadst hearkened ... then had thy peace been as a river”).
    Clarke, Christian Theology, 77—“God has a double knowledge of his
    universe. He knows it as it exists eternally in his mind, as his
    own idea; and he knows it as actually existing in time and space,
    a moving, changing, growing universe, with perpetual process of
    succession. In his own idea, he knows it all at once; but he is
    also aware of its perpetual becoming, and with reference to events
    as they occur he has foreknowledge, present knowledge, and
    knowledge afterwards.... He conceives of all things
    simultaneously, but observes all things in their succession.”

    Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—holds that God does not
    temporally foreknow anything except as he is expressed in finite
    beings, but yet that the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at
    one glance of the whole of the temporal order, present, past and
    future. This, he says, is not foreknowledge, but eternal
    knowledge. Priestley denied that any contingent event could be an
    object of knowledge. But Reid says the denial that any free action
    can be foreseen involves the denial of God’s own free agency,
    since God’s future actions can be foreseen by men; also that while
    God foresees his own free actions, this does not determine those
    actions necessarily. Tennyson, In Memoriam, 26—“And if that eye
    which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the
    green the mouldered tree, And towers fallen as soon as built—Oh,
    if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of
    life true life no more And Love the indifference to be, Then might
    I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That
    Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn.”


(_d_) The fact that there is nothing in the present condition of things
from which the future actions of free creatures necessarily follow by
natural law does not prevent God from foreseeing such actions, since his
knowledge is not mediate, but immediate. He not only foreknows the motives
which will occasion men’s acts, but he directly foreknows the acts
themselves. The possibility of such direct knowledge without assignable
grounds of knowledge is apparent if we admit that time is a form of finite
thought to which the divine mind is not subject.


    Aristotle maintained that there is no certain knowledge of
    contingent future events. Socinus, in like manner, while he
    admitted that God knows all things that are knowable, abridged the
    objects of the divine knowledge by withdrawing from the number
    those objects whose future existence he considered as uncertain,
    such as the determinations of free agents. These, he held, cannot
    be certainly foreknown, because there is nothing in the present
    condition of things from which they will necessarily follow by
    natural law. The man who makes a clock can tell when it will
    strike. But free-will, not being subject to mechanical laws,
    cannot have its acts predicted or foreknown. God knows things only
    in their causes—future events only in their antecedents. John
    Milton seems also to deny God’s foreknowledge of free acts: “So,
    without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably
    foreseen, They trespass.”

    With this Socinian doctrine some Arminians agree, as McCabe, in
    his Foreknowledge of God, and in his Divine Nescience of Future
    Contingencies a Necessity. McCabe, however, sacrifices the
    principle of free will, in defence of which he makes this
    surrender of God’s foreknowledge, by saying that in cases of
    fulfilled prophecy, like Peter’s denial and Judas’s betrayal, God
    brought special influences to bear to secure the result,—so that
    Peter’s and Judas’s wills acted irresponsibly under the law of
    cause and effect. He quotes Dr. Daniel Curry as declaring that
    “the denial of absolute divine foreknowledge is the essential
    complement of the Methodist theology, without which its
    philosophical incompleteness is defenceless against the logical
    consistency of Calvinism.” See also article by McCabe in Methodist
    Review, Sept. 1892:760-773. Also Simon, Reconciliation, 287—“God
    has constituted a creature, the actions of which he can only know
    as such when they are performed. In presence of man, to a certain
    extent, even the great God condescends to wait; nay more, has
    himself so ordained things that he must wait, inquiring, ‘What
    will he do?’ ”

    So Dugald Stewart: “Shall we venture to affirm that it exceeds the
    power of God to permit such a train of contingent events to take
    place as his own foreknowledge shall not extend to?” Martensen
    holds this view, and Rothe, Theologische Ethik, 1:212-234, who
    declares that the free choices of men are continually increasing
    the knowledge of God. So also Martineau, Study of Religion,
    2:279—“The belief in the divine foreknowledge of our future has no
    basis in philosophy. We no longer deem it true that even God knows
    the moment of my moral life that is coming next. Even he does not
    know whether I shall yield to the secret temptation at midday. To
    him life is a drama of which he knows not the conclusion.” Then,
    says Dr. A. J. Gordon, there is nothing so dreary and dreadful as
    to be living under the direction of such a God. The universe is
    rushing on like an express-train in the darkness without headlight
    or engineer; at any moment we may be plunged into the abyss. Lotze
    does not deny God’s foreknowledge of free human actions, but he
    regards as insoluble by the intellect the problem of the relation
    of time to God, and such foreknowledge as “one of those postulates
    as to which we know not how they can be fulfilled.” Bowne,
    Philosophy of Theism, 159—“Foreknowledge of a free act is a
    knowledge without assignable grounds of knowing. On the assumption
    of a real time, it is hard to find a way out of this
    difficulty.... The doctrine of the ideality of time helps us by
    suggesting the possibility of an all-embracing present, or an
    eternal now, for God. In that case the problem vanishes with time,
    its condition.”

    Against the doctrine of the divine nescience we urge not only our
    fundamental conviction of God’s perfection, but the constant
    testimony of Scripture. In _Is. 41:21, 22_, God makes his
    foreknowledge the test of his Godhead in the controversy with
    idols. If God cannot foreknow free human acts, then “the Lamb that
    hath been slain from the foundation of the world”_ (Rev. 13:8)_
    was only a sacrifice to be offered _in case_ Adam should fall, God
    not knowing whether he would or not, and _in case_ Judas should
    betray Christ, God not knowing whether he would or not. Indeed,
    since the course of nature is changed by man’s will when he burns
    towns and fells forests, God cannot on this theory predict even
    the course of nature. All prophecy is therefore a protest against
    this view.

    How God foreknows free human decisions we may not be able to say,
    but then the method of God’s knowledge in many other respects is
    unknown to us. The following explanations have been proposed. God
    may foreknow free acts:—

    1. _Mediately_, by foreknowing the motives of these acts, and this
    either because these motives induce the acts, (1) necessarily, or
    (2) certainly. This last “certainly” is to be accepted, if either;
    since motives are never _causes_, but are only _occasions_, of
    action. The cause is the will, or the man himself. But it may be
    said that foreknowing acts through their motives is not
    foreknowing at all, but is reasoning or inference rather.
    Moreover, although intelligent beings commonly act according to
    motives previously dominant, they also at critical epochs, as at
    the fall of Satan and of Adam, choose between motives, and in such
    cases knowledge of the motives which have hitherto actuated them
    gives no clue to their next decisions. Another statement is
    therefore proposed to meet these difficulties, namely, that God
    may foreknow free acts:—

    2. _Immediately_, by pure intuition, inexplicable to us. Julius
    Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:203, 225—“If God can know a future
    event as certain only by a calculation of causes, it must be
    allowed that he cannot with certainty foreknow any free act of
    man; for his foreknowledge would then be proof that the act in
    question was the necessary consequence of certain causes, and was
    not in itself free. If, on the contrary, the divine knowledge be
    regarded as _intuitive_, we see that it stands in the same
    immediate relation to the act itself as to its antecedents, and
    thus the difficulty is removed.” Even upon this view there still
    remains the difficulty of perceiving how there can be in God’s
    mind a subjective certitude with regard to acts in respect to
    which there is no assignable objective ground of certainty. Yet,
    in spite of this difficulty, we feel bound both by Scripture and
    by our fundamental idea of God’s perfection to maintain God’s
    perfect knowledge of the future free acts of his creatures. With
    President Pepper we say: “Knowledge of contingency is not
    necessarily contingent knowledge.” With Whedon: “It is not
    calculation, but pure knowledge.” See Dorner, System of Doct.,
    1:332-337; 2:58-62; Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 1858:601-605;
    Charnock, Attributes, 1:429-446; Solly, The Will, 240-254. For a
    valuable article on the whole subject, though advocating the view
    that God foreknows acts by foreknowing motives, see Bib. Sac.,
    Oct. 1883:655-694. See also Hill, Divinity, 517.


(_e_) Prescience is not itself causative. It is not to be confounded with
the predetermining will of God. Free actions do not take place because
they are foreseen, but they are foreseen because they are to take place.


    Seeing a thing in the future does not cause it to be, more than
    seeing a thing in the past causes it to be. As to future events,
    we may say with Whedon: “Knowledge _takes_ them, not _makes_
    them.” Foreknowledge may, and does, presuppose predetermination,
    but it is not itself predetermination. Thomas Aquinas, in his
    Summa, 1:38:1:1, says that “the knowledge of God is the cause of
    things”; but he is obliged to add: “God is not the cause of all
    things that are known by God, since evil things that are known by
    God are not from him.” John Milton, Paradise Lost, book
    3—“Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no
    less proved certain unforeknown.”


(_f_) Omniscience embraces the actual and the possible, but it does not
embrace the self-contradictory and the impossible, because these are not
objects of knowledge.


    God does not know what the result would be if two and two made
    five, nor does he know “whether a chimæra ruminating in a vacuum
    devoureth second intentions”; and that, simply for the reason that
    he cannot know self-contradiction and nonsense. These things are
    not objects of knowledge. Clarke, Christian Theology, 80—“Can God
    make an old man in a minute? Could he make it well with the wicked
    while they remained wicked? Could he create a world in which 2 + 2
    = 5?” Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 366—“Does God know the
    whole number that is the square root of 65? or what adjacent hills
    there are that have no valleys between them? Does God know round
    squares, and sugar salt-lumps, and Snarks and Boojums and
    Abracadabras?”


(_g_) Omniscience, as qualified by holy will, is in Scripture denominated
“wisdom.” In virtue of his wisdom God chooses the highest ends and uses
the fittest means to accomplish them.


    Wisdom is not simply “estimating all things at their proper value”
    (Olmstead); it has in it also the element of counsel and purpose.
    It has been defined as “the talent of using one’s talents.” It
    implies two things: first, choice of the highest end; secondly,
    choice of the best means to secure this end. J. C. C. Clarke, Self
    and the Father, 39—“Wisdom is not invented conceptions, or harmony
    of theories with theories; but is humble obedience of mind to the
    reception of facts that are found in things.” Thus man’s wisdom,
    obedience, faith, are all names for different aspects of the same
    thing. And wisdom in God is the moral choice which makes truth and
    holiness supreme. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 261—“Socialism
    pursues a laudable end by unwise or destructive means. It is not
    enough to mean well. Our methods must take some account of the
    nature of things, if they are to succeed. We cannot produce
    well-being by law. No legislation can remove inequalities of
    nature and constitution. Society cannot produce equality, any more
    than it can enable a rhinoceros to sing, or legislate a cat into a
    lion.”


3. Omnipotence.


By this we mean the power of God to do all things which are objects of
power, whether with or without the use of means.


    _Gen. 17:1—_“I am God Almighty.” He performs natural wonders:
    _Gen. 1:1-3—_“Let there be Light”; _Is. 44:24—_“stretcheth forth
    the heavens alone”; _Heb. 1:3—_“upholding all things by the word
    of his power.” Spiritual wonders: _2 Cor. 4:6—_“God, that said,
    Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts”;
    _Eph. 1:19—_“exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
    believe”; _Eph. 3:20—_“able to do exceeding abundantly.” Power to
    create new things: _Mat. 3:9—_“able of these stones to raise up
    children unto Abraham”. _Rom. 4:17—_“giveth life to the dead, and
    calleth the things that are not, as though they were.” After his
    own pleasure: _Ps. 115:3—_“He hath done whatsoever he hath
    pleased”; _Eph. 1:11—_“worketh all things after the counsel of his
    will.” Nothing impossible: _Gen 18:14—_“Is anything too hard for
    Jehovah?” _Mat. 19:26—_“with God all things are possible.” E. G.
    Robinson, Christian Theology, 73—“If all power in the universe is
    dependent on his creative will for its existence, it is impossible
    to conceive any limit to his power except that laid on it by his
    own will. But this is only negative proof; absolute omnipotence is
    not logically demonstrable, though readily enough recognized as a
    just conception of the infinite God, when propounded on the
    authority of a positive revelation.”

    The omnipotence of God is illustrated by the work of the Holy
    Spirit, which in Scripture is compared to wind, water and fire.
    The ordinary manifestations of these elements afford no criterion
    of the effects they are able to produce. The rushing mighty wind
    at Pentecost was the analogue of the wind-Spirit who bore
    everything before him on the first day of creation (_Gen. 1:2_;
    _John 3:8_; _Acts 2:2_). The pouring out of the Spirit is likened
    to the flood of Noah when the windows of heaven were opened and
    there was not room enough to receive that which fell (_Mal.
    3:10_). And the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like the fire that
    shall destroy all impurity at the end of the world (_Mat. 3:11_;
    _2 Pet. 3:7-13_). See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 307-310.


(_a_) Omnipotence does not imply power to do that which is not an object
of power; as, for example, that which is self-contradictory or
contradictory to the nature of God.


    Self-contradictory things: “facere factum infectum”—the making of
    a past event to have not occurred (hence the uselessness of
    praying: “May it be that much good was done”); drawing a shorter
    than a straight line between two given points; putting two
    separate mountains together without a valley between them. Things
    contradictory to the nature of God: for God to lie, to sin, to
    die. To do such things would not imply power, but impotence. God
    has all the power that is consistent with infinite perfection—all
    power to do what is worthy of himself. So no greater thing can be
    said by man than this: “I dare do all that may become a man; Who
    dares do more is none.” Even God cannot make wrong to be right,
    nor hatred of himself to be blessed. Some have held that the
    prevention of sin in a moral system is not an object of power, and
    therefore that God cannot prevent sin in a moral system. We hold
    the contrary; see this Compendium: Objections to the Doctrine of
    Decrees.

    Dryden, Imitation of Horace, 3:29:71—“Over the past not heaven
    itself has power; What has been has, and I have had my hour”—words
    applied by Lord John Russell to his own career. Emerson, The Past:
    “All is now secure and fast, Not the gods can shake the Past.”
    Sunday-school scholar: “Say, teacher, can God make a rock so big
    that he can’t lift it?” Seminary Professor: “Can God tell a lie?”
    Seminary student: “With God all things are possible.”


(_b_) Omnipotence does not imply the exercise of all his power on the part
of God. He has power over his power; in other words, his power is under
the control of wise and holy will. God can do all he will, but he will not
do all he can. Else his power is mere force acting necessarily, and God is
the slave of his own omnipotence.


    Schleiermacher held that nature not only is grounded in the divine
    causality, but fully expresses that causality; there is no
    causative power in God for anything that is not real and actual.
    This doctrine does not essentially differ from Spinoza’s _natura
    naturans_ and _natura naturata_. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
    2:62-66. But omnipotence is not instinctive; it is a power used
    according to God’s pleasure. God is by no means encompassed by the
    laws of nature, or shut up to a necessary evolution of his own
    being, as pantheism supposes. As Rothe has shown, God has a
    will-power over his nature-power, and is not compelled to do all
    that he can do. He is able from the stones of the street to “raise
    up children unto Abraham,” but he has not done it. In God are
    unopened treasures, an inexhaustible fountain of new beginnings,
    new creations, new revelations. To suppose that in creation he has
    expended all the inner possibilities of his being is to deny his
    omnipotence. So _Job 26:14—_“Lo, these are but the outskirts of
    his ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the
    thunder of his power who can understand?” See Rogers, Superhuman
    Origin of the Bible, 10; Hodgson, Time and Space, 579, 580.

    _1 Pet. 5:6—_“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of
    God”—his mighty hand of providence, salvation, blessing—“that he
    may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him,
    because he careth for you.” “The mighty powers held under mighty
    control”—this is the greatest exhibition of power. Unrestraint is
    not the highest freedom. Young men must learn that self-restraint
    is the true power. _Prov. 16:32—_“He that is slow to anger is
    better than the mighty; And he that ruleth his spirit, than he
    that taketh a city.” Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2:3—“We have power
    in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to
    do.” When dynamite goes off, it all goes off: there is no reserve.
    God uses as much of his power as he pleases: the remainder of
    wrath in himself, as well as in others, he restrains.


(_c_) Omnipotence in God does not exclude, but implies, the power of
self-limitation. Since all such self-limitation is free, proceeding from
neither external nor internal compulsion, it is the act and manifestation
of God’s power. Human freedom is not rendered impossible by the divine
omnipotence, but exists by virtue of it. It is an act of omnipotence when
God humbles himself to the taking of human flesh in the person of Jesus
Christ.


    Thomasius: “If God is to be over all and in all, he cannot himself
    be all.” _Ps. 113: 5, 6—_“Who is like unto Jehovah our God....
    That humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and
    in the earth?” _Phil. 2:7, 8—_“emptied himself ... humbled
    himself.” See Charnock, Attributes, 2:5-107. President Woolsey
    showed true power when he controlled his indignation and let an
    offending student go free. Of Christ on the cross, says Moberly,
    Atonement and Personality, 116—“It was the power [to retain his
    life, to escape suffering], with the will to hold it unused, which
    proved him to be what he was, the obedient and perfect man.” We
    are likest the omnipotent One when we limit ourselves for love’s
    sake. The attribute of omnipotence is the ground of trust, as well
    as of fear, on the part of God’s creatures. Isaac Watts: “His
    every word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The
    voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.”


Third Division.—Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.


1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.


By veracity and faithfulness we mean the transitive truth of God, in its
twofold relation to his creatures in general and to his redeemed people in
particular.


    _Ps. 138:2—_“I will ... give thanks unto thy name for thy
    lovingkindness and for thy truth: For thou hast magnified thy word
    above all thy name”; _John 3:33—_“hath set his seal to this, that
    God is true”; _Rom. 3:4—_“let God be found true, but every man a
    liar”; _Rom. 1:25—_“the truth of God”; _John 14:17—_“the Spirit of
    truth”; _1 John 5:7—_“the Spirit is the truth”; _1 Cor. 1:9—_“God
    is faithful”; _1 Thess. 5:24—_“faithful is he that calleth you”;
    _1 Pet. 4:19—_“a faithful Creator”; _2 Cor. 1:20—_“how many soever
    be the promises of God, in him is the yea”; _Num. 23:19—_“God is
    not a man that he should lie”; _Tit. 1:2—_“God, who cannot lie,
    promised”; _Heb. 6:18—_“in which it is impossible for God to lie.”


(_a_) In virtue of his veracity, all his revelations to creatures consist
with his essential being and with each other.


    In God’s veracity we have the guarantee that our faculties in
    their normal exercise do not deceive us; that the laws of thought
    are also laws of things; that the external world, and second
    causes in it, have objective existence; that the same causes will
    always produce the same effects; that the threats of the moral
    nature will be executed upon the unrepentant transgressor; that
    man’s moral nature is made in the image of God’s; and that we may
    draw just conclusions from what conscience is in us to what
    holiness is in him. We may therefore expect that all past
    revelations, whether in nature or in his word, will not only not
    be contradicted by our future knowledge, but will rather prove to
    have in them more of truth than we ever dreamed. Man’s word may
    pass away, but God’s word abides forever (_Mat. 5:18—_“one jot or
    one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law”; _Is.
    40:8—_“the word of God shall stand forever”).

    _Mat. 6:16—_“be not as the hypocrites.” In God the outer
    expression and the inward reality always correspond. Assyrian
    wills were written on a small tablet encased in another upon which
    the same thing was written over again. Breakage, or falsification,
    of the outer envelope could be corrected by reference to the
    inner. So our outer life should conform to the heart within, and
    the heart within to the outer life. On the duty of speaking the
    truth, and the limitations of the duty, see Newman Smyth,
    Christian Ethics, 386-403—“Give the truth always to those who in
    the bonds of humanity have a right to the truth; conceal it, or
    falsify it, only when the human right to the truth has been
    forfeited, or is held in abeyance, by sickness, weakness, or some
    criminal intent.”


(_b_) In virtue of his faithfulness, he fulfills all his promises to his
people, whether expressed in words or implied in the constitution he has
given them.


    In God’s faithfulness we have the sure ground of confidence that
    he will perform what his love has led him to promise to those who
    obey the gospel. Since his promises are based, not upon what we
    are or have done, but upon what Christ is and has done, our
    defects and errors do not invalidate them, so long as we are truly
    penitent and believing: _1 John 1:9—_“faithful and righteous to
    forgive us our sins” = faithful to his promise, and righteous to
    Christ. God’s faithfulness also ensures a supply for all the real
    wants of our being, both here and hereafter, since these wants are
    implicit promises of him who made us: _Ps. 84:11—_“No good thing
    will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”; _91:4—_“His truth
    is a shield and a buckler”; _Mat. 6:33—_“all these things shall be
    added unto you”; _1 Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear
    heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever
    things God prepared for them that love him.”

    Regulus goes back to Carthage to die rather than break his promise
    to his enemies. George William Curtis economizes for years, and
    gives up all hope of being himself a rich man, in order that he
    may pay the debts of his deceased father. When General Grant sold
    all the presents made to him by the crowned heads of Europe, and
    paid the obligations in which his insolvent son had involved him,
    he said: “Better poverty and honor, than wealth and disgrace.”
    Many a business man would rather die than fail to fulfil his
    promise and let his note go to protest. “Maxwelton braes are
    bonnie, Where early falls the dew, And ’twas there that Annie
    Laurie Gave me her promise true; Which ne’er forget will I; And
    for bonnie Annie Laurie I’d lay me down and dee.” Betray the man
    she loves? Not “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks
    melt wi’the sun.” God’s truth will not be less than that of mortal
    man. God’s veracity is the natural correlate to our faith.


2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.


By mercy and goodness we mean the transitive love of God in its two-fold
relation to the disobedient and to the obedient portions of his creatures.


    _Titus 3:4—_“his love toward man”; _Rom. 2:4—_“goodness of God”;
    _Mat. 5:44, 45—_“love your enemies ... that ye may be sons of your
    Father”; _John 3:16—_“God so loved the world”; _2 Pet.
    1:3—_“granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and
    godliness”; _Rom. 8:32—_“freely give us all things”; _John
    4:10—_“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
    us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”


(_a_) Mercy is that eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to
seek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed
themselves to his will, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice.


    Martensen: “Viewed in relation to sin, eternal love is
    compassionate grace.” God’s continued importation of natural life
    is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what he desires to do
    for his creatures in the higher sphere—the communication of
    spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When he bids us
    love our enemies, he only bids us follow his own example.
    Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 2:2—“Wilt thou draw near the nature
    of the gods? Draw near them, then, in being merciful.” Twelfth
    Night, 3:4—“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be
    called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty.”


(_b_) Goodness is the eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to
communicate of his own life and blessedness to those who are like him in
moral character. Goodness, therefore, is nearly identical with the love of
complacency; mercy, with the love of benevolence.


    Notice, however, that transitive love is but an outward
    manifestation of immanent love. The eternal and perfect object of
    God’s love is in his own nature. Men become subordinate objects of
    that love only as they become connected and identified with its
    principal object, the image of God’s perfections in Christ. Only
    in the Son do men become sons of God. To this is requisite an
    acceptance of Christ on the part of man. Thus it can be said that
    God imparts himself to men just so far as men are willing to
    receive him. And as God gives himself to men, in all his moral
    attributes, to answer for them and to renew them in character,
    there is truth in the statement of Nordell (Examiner, Jan. 17,
    1884) that “the maintenance of holiness is the function of divine
    justice; the diffusion of holiness is the function of divine
    love.” We may grant this as substantially true, while yet we deny
    that love is a mere form or manifestation of holiness.
    Self-impartation is different from self-affirmation. The attribute
    which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute
    which moves him to maintain. The two ideas of holiness and of love
    are as distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of
    generosity on the other. Park: “God loves Satan, in a certain
    sense, and we ought to.” Shedd: “This same love of compassion God
    feels toward the non-elect; but the expression of that compassion
    is forbidden for reasons which are sufficient for God, but are
    entirely unknown to the creature.” The goodness of God is the
    basis of _reward_, under God’s government. Faithfulness leads God
    to keep his promises; goodness leads him to make them.

    Edwards, Nature of Virtue, in Works, 2:263—Love of benevolence
    does not presuppose beauty in its object. Love of complacence does
    presuppose beauty. Virtue is not love to an object for its beauty.
    The beauty of intelligent beings does not consist in love for
    beauty, or virtue in love for virtue. Virtue is love for being in
    general, exercised in a general good will. This is the doctrine of
    Edwards. We prefer to say that virtue is love, not for being in
    general, but for good being, and so for God, the holy One. The
    love of compassion is perfectly compatible with hatred of evil and
    with indignation against one who commits it. Love does not
    necessarily imply approval, but it does imply desire that all
    creatures should fulfil the purpose of their existence by being
    morally conformed to the holy One; see Godet, in The Atonement,
    339.

    _Rom. 5:8—_“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while
    we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We ought to love our
    enemies, and Satan is our worst enemy. We ought to will the good
    of Satan, or cherish toward him the love of benevolence, though
    not the love of complacence. This does not involve a condoning of
    his sin, or an ignoring of his moral depravity, as seems implied
    in the verses of Wm. C. Gannett: “The poem hangs on the berry-bush
    When comes the poet’s eye; The street begins to masquerade When
    Shakespeare passes by. The Christ sees white in Judas’ heart And
    loves his traitor well; The God, to angel his new heaven, Explores
    his deepest hell.”


3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.


By justice and righteousness we mean the transitive holiness of God, in
virtue of which his treatment of his creatures conforms to the purity of
his nature,—righteousness demanding from all moral beings conformity to
the moral perfection of God, and justice visiting non-conformity to that
perfection with penal loss or suffering.


    _Gen. 18:25—_“shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
    _Deut. 32:4—_“All his ways are justice; A God of faithfulness and
    without iniquity, Just and right is he”; _Ps. 5:5—_“Thou hatest
    all workers of iniquity”; _7:9-12—_“the righteous God trieth the
    hearts ... saveth the upright ... is a righteous judge, Yea, a God
    that hath indignation every day”; _18:24-26—_“Jehovah recompensed
    me according to my righteousness.... With the merciful, thou wilt
    show thyself merciful ... with the perverse thou wilt show thyself
    froward”; _Mat. 5:48—_“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your
    heavenly Father is perfect”; _Rom. 2:6—_“will render to every man
    according to his works”; _1 Pet. 1:16—_“Ye shall be holy; for I am
    holy.” These passages show that God loves the same persons whom he
    hates. It is not true that he hates the sin, but loves the sinner;
    he both hates and loves the sinner himself, hates him as he is a
    living and wilful antagonist of truth and holiness, loves him as
    he is a creature capable of good and ruined by his transgression.

    There is no abstract sin that can be hated apart from the persons
    in whom that sin is represented and embodied. Thomas Fuller found
    it difficult to starve the profaneness but to feed the person of
    the impudent beggar who applied to him for food. Mr. Finney
    declared that he would kill the slave-catcher, but would love him
    with all his heart. In our civil war Dr. Kirk said: “God knows
    that we love the rebels, but God also knows that we will kill them
    if they do not lay down their arms.” The complex nature of God not
    only permits but necessitates this same double treatment of the
    sinner, and the earthly father experiences the same conflict of
    emotions when his heart yearns over the corrupt son whom he is
    compelled to banish from the household. Moberly, Atonement and
    Personality, 7—“It is the sinner who is punished, not the sin.”


(_a_) Since justice and righteousness are simply transitive
holiness—righteousness designating this holiness chiefly in its mandatory,
justice chiefly in its punitive, aspect,—they are not mere manifestations
of benevolence, or of God’s disposition to secure the highest happiness of
his creatures, nor are they grounded in the nature of things as something
apart from or above God.


    Cremer, N. T. Lexicon: δίκαιος = “the perfect coincidence existing
    between God’s nature, which is the standard for all, and his
    acts.” Justice and righteousness are simply holiness exercised
    toward creatures. The same holiness which exists in God in
    eternity past manifests itself as justice and righteousness, so
    soon as intelligent creatures come into being. Much that was said
    under Holiness as an immanent attribute of God is equally
    applicable here. The modern tendency to confound holiness with
    love shows itself in the merging of justice and righteousness in
    mere benevolence. Instances of this tendency are the following:
    Ritschl, Unterricht, § 16—“The righteousness of God denotes the
    manner in which God carries out his loving will in the redemption
    alike of humanity as a whole and of individual men; hence his
    righteousness is indistinguishable from his grace”; see also
    Ritschl, Rechtf. und Versöhnung, 2:113; 3:296. Prof. George M.
    Forbes: “Only right makes love moral; only love makes right
    moral.” Jones, Robert Browning, 70—“Is it not beneficence that
    places death at the heart of sin? Carlyle forgot this. God is not
    simply a great taskmaster. The power that imposes law is not an
    alien power.” D’Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 237-240—“How can
    self-realization be the realization of others? Why must the true
    good be always the common good? Why is the end of each the end of
    all?... We need a concrete universal which will unify all
    persons.”

    So also, Harris, Kingdom of Christ on Earth, 39-42; God the
    Creator, 287, 290, 302—“Love, as required and regulated by reason,
    may be called righteousness. Love is universal good will or
    benevolence, regulated in its exercise by righteousness. Love is
    the choice of God and man as the objects of trust and service.
    This choice involves the determination of the will to seek
    universal well-being, and in this aspect it is benevolence. It
    also involves the consent of the will to the reason, and the
    determination to regulate all action in seeking well-being by its
    truths, laws, and ideals; and in this aspect it is
    righteousness.... Justice is the consent of the will to the law of
    love, in its authority, its requirements, and its sanctions. God’s
    wrath is the necessary reaction of this law of love in the
    constitution and order of the universe against the wilful violator
    of it, and Christ’s sufferings atone for sin by asserting and
    maintaining the authority, universality, and inviolability of
    God’s law of love in his redemption of men and his forgiveness of
    their sins.... Righteousness cannot be the whole of love, for this
    would shut us up to the merely formal principle of the law without
    telling us what the law requires. Benevolence cannot be the whole
    of love, for this would shut us up to hedonism, in the form of
    utilitarianism, excluding righteousness from the character of God
    and man.”

    Newman Smyth also, in his Christian Ethics, 227-231, tells us that
    “love, as self-affirming, is righteousness; as self-imparting, is
    benevolence; as self-finding in others, is sympathy.
    Righteousness, as subjective regard for our own moral being, is
    holiness; as objective regard for the persons of others, is
    justice. Holiness is involved in love as its essential respect to
    itself; the heavenly Father is the holy Father (_John 17:11_).
    Love contains in its unity a trinity of virtue. Love affirms its
    own worthiness, imparts to others its good, and finds its life
    again in the well-being of others. The ethical limit of
    self-impartation is found in self-affirmation. Love in
    self-bestowal cannot become suicidal. The benevolence of love has
    its moral bounds in the holiness of love. True love in God
    maintains its transcendence, and excludes pantheism.”

    The above doctrine, quoted for substance from Newman Smyth, seems
    to us unwarrantably to include in love what properly belongs to
    holiness. It virtually denies that holiness has any independent
    existence as an attribute of God. To make holiness a manifestation
    of love seems to us as irrational as to say that self-affirmation
    is a form of self-impartation. The concession that holiness
    regulates and limits love shows that holiness cannot itself be
    love, but must be an independent and superior attribute. Right
    furnishes the rule and law for love, but it is not true that love
    furnishes the rule and law for right. There is no such double
    sovereignty as this theory would imply. The one attribute that is
    independent and supreme is holiness, and love is simply the
    impulse to communicate this holiness.

    William Ashmore: “Dr. Clarke lays great emphasis on the character
    of ‘a good God.’... But he is more than a merely _good_ God; he is
    a just God, and a righteous God, and a holy God—a God who is
    ‘angry with the wicked,’ even while ready to forgive them, if they
    are willing to repent in his way, and not in their own. He is the
    God who brought in a flood upon the world of the ungodly; who
    rained down fire and brimstone from heaven; and who is to come in
    ‘flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God’ and
    obey not the gospel of his son.... Paul reasoned about both the
    ‘goodness’ and the ‘severity’ of God.”


(_b_) Transitive holiness, as righteousness, imposes law in conscience and
Scripture, and may be called legislative holiness. As justice, it executes
the penalties of law, and may be called distributive or judicial holiness.
In righteousness God reveals chiefly his love of holiness; in justice,
chiefly his hatred of sin.


    The self-affirming purity of God demands a like purity in those
    who have been made in his image. As God wills and maintains his
    own moral excellence, so all creatures must will and maintain the
    moral excellence of God. There can be only one centre in the solar
    system,—the sun is its own centre and the centre for all the
    planets also. So God’s purity is the object of his own will,—it
    must be the object of all the wills of all his creatures also.
    Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 282—“It is not rational or safe for the
    hand to separate itself from the heart. This is a _universe_, and
    God is the heart of the great system. Altruism is not the result
    of society, but society is the result of altruism. It begins in
    creatures far below man. The animals which know how to combine
    have the greatest chance of survival. The unsociable animal dies
    out. The most perfect organism is the most sociable. Right is the
    debt which the part owes to the whole.” This seems to us but a
    partial expression of the truth. Right is more than a debt to
    others,—it is a debt to one’s self, and the self-affirming,
    self-preserving, self-respecting element constitutes the limit and
    standard of all outgoing activity. The sentiment of loyalty is
    largely a reverence for this principle of order and stability in
    government. _Ps. 145:5—_“Of the glorious majesty of thine honor,
    And of thy wondrous works, will I meditate”; _97:2—_“Clouds and
    darkness are round about him: Righteousness and justice are the
    foundation of his throne.”

    John Milton, Eikonoklastes: “Truth and justice are all one; for
    truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but truth in
    our practice.... For truth is properly no more than contemplation,
    and her utmost efficiency is but teaching; but justice in her very
    essence is all strength and activity, and hath a sword put into
    her hand to use against all violence and oppression on the earth.
    She it is who accepts no person, and exempts none from the
    severity of her stroke.” A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
    326—“Even the poet has not dared to represent Jupiter torturing
    Prometheus without the dim figure of Avenging Fate waiting
    silently in the background.... Evolution working out a nobler and
    nobler justice is proof that God is just. Here is ‘preferential
    action’.” S. S. Times, June 9, 1900—“The natural man is born with
    a wrong personal astronomy. Man should give up the conceit of
    being the centre of all things. He should accept the Copernican
    theory, and content himself with a place on the edge of things—the
    place he has always really had. We all laugh at John Jasper and
    his thesis that ‘the sun do move.’ The Copernican theory is
    leaking down into human relations, as appears from the current
    phrase: ‘There are others’.”


(_c_) Neither justice nor righteousness, therefore, is a matter of
arbitrary will. They are revelations of the inmost nature of God, the one
in the form of moral requirement, the other in the form of judicial
sanction. As God cannot but demand of his creatures that they be like him
in moral character, so he cannot but enforce the law which he imposes upon
them. Justice just as much binds God to punish as it binds the sinner to
be punished.


    All arbitrariness is excluded here. God is what he is—infinite
    purity. He cannot change. If creatures are to attain the end of
    their being, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice is
    nothing but the recognition and enforcement of this natural
    necessity. Law is only the transcript of God’s nature. Justice
    does not make law,—it only reveals law. Penalty is only the
    reaction of God’s holiness against that which is its opposite.
    Since righteousness and justice are only legislative and
    retributive holiness, God can cease to demand purity and to punish
    sin only when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases
    to be God. “Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.”

    Simon, Reconciliation, 141—“To claim the performance of duty is as
    truly obligatory as it is obligatory to perform the duty which is
    prescribed.” E. H. Johnson, Systematic Theology, 84—“Benevolence
    intends what is well for the creature; justice insists on what is
    fit. But the well-for-us and the fit-for-us precisely coincide.
    The only thing that is well for us is our normal employment and
    development; but to provide for this is precisely what is fitting
    and therefore due to us. In the divine nature the distinction
    between justice and benevolence is one of form.” We criticize this
    utterance as not sufficiently taking into account the nature of
    the right. The right is not merely the fit. Fitness is only
    general adaptation which may have in it no ethical element,
    whereas right is solely and exclusively ethical. The right
    therefore regulates the fit and constitutes its standard. The
    well-for-us is to be determined by the right-for-us, but not _vice
    versa_. George W. Northrup: “God is not bound to bestow the same
    endowments upon creatures, nor to keep all in a state of holiness
    forever, nor to redeem the fallen, nor to secure the greatest
    happiness of the universe. But he is bound to purpose and to do
    what his absolute holiness requires. He has no attribute, no will,
    no sovereignty, above this law of his being. He cannot lie, he
    cannot deny himself, he cannot look upon sin with complacency, he
    cannot acquit the guilty without an atonement.”


(_d_) Neither justice nor righteousness bestows rewards. This follows from
the fact that obedience is due to God, instead of being optional or a
gratuity. No creature can claim anything for his obedience. If God
rewards, he rewards in virtue of his goodness and faithfulness, not in
virtue of his justice or his righteousness. What the creature cannot
claim, however, Christ _can_ claim, and the rewards which are goodness to
the creature are righteousness to Christ. God rewards Christ’s work _for_
us and _in_ us.


    Bruch, Eigenschaftslehre, 280-282, and John Austin, Province of
    Jurisprudence, 1:88-93, 220-223, both deny, and rightly deny, that
    justice bestows rewards. Justice simply punishes infractions of
    law. In _Mat. 25:34—_“inherit the kingdom”—inheritance implies no
    merit; _46_—the wicked are adjudged to eternal punishment; the
    righteous, not to eternal reward, but to eternal life. _Luke
    17:7-10—_“when ye shall have done all the things that are
    commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done
    that which it was our duty to do.” _Rom. 6:23_—punishment is the
    “_wages of sin_”: but salvation is “_the gift of God_”; _2:6_—God
    rewards, not _on account of_ man’s work but “_according to his
    works_.” Reward is thus seen to be in Scripture a matter of grace
    to the creature; only to the Christ who works for us in atonement,
    and in us in regeneration and sanctification, is reward a matter
    of debt (see also _John 6:27_ and _2 John 8_). Martineau, Types,
    2:86, 244, 249—“Merit is toward man; virtue toward God.”

    All mere service is unprofitable, because it furnishes only an
    equivalent to duty, and there is no margin. Works of
    supererogation are impossible, because our all is due to God. He
    would have us rise into the region of friendship, realize that he
    has been treating us not as Master but as Father, enter into a
    relation of uncalculating love. With this proviso that rewards are
    matters of grace, not of debt, we may assent to the maxim of
    Solon: “A republic walks upon two feet—just punishment for the
    unworthy and due reward for the worthy.” George Harris, Moral
    Evolution, 139—“Love seeks righteousness, and is satisfied with
    nothing other than that.” But when Harris adopts the words of the
    poet: “The very wrath from pity grew, From love of men the hate of
    wrong,” he seems to us virtually to deny that God hates evil for
    any other reason than because of its utilitarian disadvantages,
    and to imply that good has no independent existence in his nature.
    Bowne, Ethics, 171—“Merit is desert of reward, or better, desert
    of moral approval.” Tennyson: “For merit lives from man to man,
    And not from man, O Lord, to thee.” Baxter: “_Desert_ is written
    over the gate of hell; but over the gate of heaven only, _The Gift
    of God_.”


(_e_) Justice in God, as the revelation of his holiness, is devoid of all
passion or caprice. There is in God no selfish anger. The penalties he
inflicts upon transgression are not vindictive but vindicative. They
express the revulsion of God’s nature from moral evil, the judicial
indignation of purity against impurity, the self-assertion of infinite
holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. But because its
decisions are calm, they are irreversible.


    Anger, within certain limits, is a duty of man. _Ps. 97:10—_“ye
    that love Jehovah, hate evil”; _Eph. 4:28—_“Be ye angry, and sin
    not.” The calm indignation of the judge, who pronounces sentence
    with tears, is the true image of the holy anger of God against
    sin. Weber, Zorn Gottes, 28, makes wrath only the jealousy of
    love. It is more truly the jealousy of holiness. Prof. W. A.
    Stevens, Com. on _1 Thess. 2:10_—“_Holily_ and _righteously_ are
    terms that describe the same conduct in two aspects; the former,
    as conformed to God’s character in itself; the latter, as
    conformed to his law; both are positive.” Lillie, on _2 Thess.
    1:6_—“Judgment is ‘_a righteous thing with God_.’ Divine justice
    requires it for its own satisfaction.” See Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:175-178, 365-385; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:180, 181.

    Of Gaston de Foix, the old chronicler admirably wrote: “He loved
    what ought to be loved, and hated what ought to be hated, and
    never had miscreant with him.” Compare _Ps. 101:5, 6—_“Him that
    hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer. Mine eyes
    shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with
    me.” Even Horace Bushnell spoke of the “wrath-principle” in God.
    _1 K. 11:9—_“And Jehovah was angry with Solomon” because of his
    polygamy. Jesus’ anger was no less noble than his love. The love
    of the right involved hatred of the wrong. Those may hate who hate
    evil for its hatefulness and for the sake of God. Hate sin in
    yourself first, and then you may hate it in itself and in the
    world. Be angry only in Christ and with the wrath of God. W. C.
    Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 264—“But we must purge ourselves of
    self-regard, Or we are sinful in abhorring sin.” Instance Judge
    Harris’s pity, as he sentenced the murderer; see A. H. Strong,
    Philosophy and Religion, 192, 193.

    Horace’s “Ira furor brevis est”—“Anger is a temporary madness”—is
    true only of selfish and sinful anger. Hence the man who is angry
    is popularly called “mad.” But anger, though apt to become sinful,
    is not necessarily so. Just anger is neither madness, nor is it
    brief. Instance the judicial anger of the church of Corinth in
    inflicting excommunication: _2 Cor. 7:11—_“what indignation, yea
    what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging!”
    The only revenge permissible to the Christian church is that in
    which it pursues and exterminates sin. To be incapable of moral
    indignation against wrong is to lack real love for the right. Dr.
    Arnold of Rugby was never sure of a boy who only loved good; till
    the boy also began to hate evil, Dr. Arnold did not feel that he
    was safe. Herbert Spencer said that good nature with Americans
    became a crime. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty: “There is one thing
    worse than corruption, and that is acquiescence in corruption.”

    Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 139—“Xenophon intends to say a very
    commendable thing of Cyrus the Younger, when he writes of him that
    no one had done more good to his friends or more harm to his
    enemies.” Luther said to a monkish antagonist: “I will break in
    pieces your heart of brass and pulverize your iron brains.” Shedd,
    Dogmatic Theology, 1:175-178—“Human character is worthless in
    proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of
    Charles II that ‘he felt no gratitude for benefits, and no
    resentment for wrongs; he did not love anyone, and he did not hate
    anyone.’ He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and the only
    feeling he had was contempt.” But see the death-bed scene of the
    “merry monarch,” as portrayed in Bp. Burnet, Evelyn’s Memoirs, or
    the Life of Bp. Ken. Truly “The end of mirth is heaviness”_ (Prov.
    14:13)_.

    Stout, Manual of Psychology, 22—“Charles Lamb tells us that his
    friend George Dyer could never be brought to say anything in
    condemnation of the most atrocious crimes, except that the
    criminal must have been very eccentric.” Professor Seeley: “No
    heart is pure that is not passionate.” D. W. Simon, Redemption of
    Man, 249, 250, says that God’s resentment “is a resentment of an
    essentially altruistic character.” If this means that it is
    perfectly consistent with love for the sinner, we can accept the
    statement; if it means that love is the only source of the
    resentment, we regard the statement as a misinterpretation of
    God’s justice, which is but the manifestation of his holiness and
    is not a mere expression of his love. See a similar statement of
    Lidgett, Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, 251—“Because God is
    love, his love coëxists with his wrath against sinners, is the
    very life of that wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath
    as its instrument, while at the same time it seeks and supplies a
    propitiation.” This statement ignores the fact that punishment is
    never in Scripture regarded as an expression of God’s love, but
    always of God’s holiness. When we say that we love God, let us
    make sure that it is the true God, the God of holiness, that we
    love, for only this love will make us like him.

    The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against
    moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened
    conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection
    of the awful revulsion of God’s infinite justice from the impurity
    and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic,
    necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in
    self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see _Jer. 44:4—_“Oh,
    do not this abominable thing that I hate!” _Num. 32:23—_“be sure
    your sin will find you out”; _Heb. 10:30, 31—_“For we know him
    that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And
    again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to
    fall into the hands of the living God.” On justice as an attribute
    of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government,
    2:253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works,
    10:483-624.



VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.


The attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection and
will in man, no one of them is to be conceived of as exercised separately
from the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others.
God’s love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God’s knowledge,
power, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high
rank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy
of higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God,
than the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
And yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and
of its supremacy we now proceed to speak.


    Water is not water unless composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen
    cannot be resolved into hydrogen, nor hydrogen into oxygen. Oxygen
    has its own character, though only in combination with hydrogen
    does it appear in water. Will in man never acts without intellect
    and sensibility, yet will, more than intellect or sensibility, is
    the manifestation of the man. So when God acts, he manifests not
    one attribute alone, but his total moral excellence. Yet holiness,
    as an attribute of God, has rights peculiar to itself; it
    determines the attitude of the affections; it more than any other
    faculty constitutes God’s moral being.

    Clarke, Christian Theology, 83,92—“God would not be holy if he
    were not love, and could not be love if he were not holy. Love is
    an element in holiness. If this were lacking, there would be no
    perfect character as principle of his own action or as standard
    for us. On the other hand only the perfect being can be love. God
    must be free from all taint of selfishness in order to be love.
    Holiness requires God to act as love, for holiness is God’s
    self-consistency. Love is the desire to impart holiness. Holiness
    makes God’s character the standard for his creatures; but love,
    desiring to impart the best good, does the same. All work of love
    is work of holiness, and all work of holiness is work of love.
    Conflict of attributes is impossible, because holiness always
    includes love, and love always expresses holiness. They never need
    reconciliation with each other.”

    The general correctness of the foregoing statement is impaired by
    the vagueness of its conception of holiness. The Scriptures do not
    regard holiness as including love, or make all the acts of
    holiness to be acts of love. Self-affirmation does not include
    self-impartation, and sin necessitates an exercise of holiness
    which is not also an exercise of love. But for the Cross, and
    God’s suffering for sin of which the Cross is the expression,
    there would be conflict between holiness and love. The wisdom of
    God is most shown, not in reconciling man and God, but in
    reconciling the holy God with the loving God.


1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.


That holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, is evident:

(_a_) From Scripture,—in which God’s holiness is not only most constantly
and powerfully impressed upon the attention of man, but is declared to be
the chief subject of rejoicing and adoration in heaven.


    It is God’s attribute of holiness that first and most prominently
    presents itself to the mind of the sinner, and conscience only
    follows the method of Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:16—_“Ye shall be holy;
    for I am holy”; _Heb. 12:14—_“the sanctification without which no
    man shall see the lord”_;_ _cf._ _Luke 5:8—_“Depart from me; for I
    am a sinful man, O Lord.” Yet this constant insistence upon
    holiness cannot be due simply to man’s present state of sin, for
    in heaven, where there is no sin, there is the same reiteration:
    _Is. 6:3—_“Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts”; _Rev.
    4:8—_“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty.” Of no other
    attribute is it said that God’s throne rests upon it: _Ps.
    97:2—_“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his
    throne”; _99:4, 5, 9—_“The king’s strength also loveth justice....
    Exalt ye Jehovah our God.... holy is he.” We would substitute the
    word holiness for the word love in the statement of Newman Smyth,
    Christian Ethics, 45—“We assume that love is lord in the divine
    will, not that the will of God is sovereign over his love. God’s
    omnipotence, as Dorner would say, exists for his love.”


(_b_) From our own moral constitution,—in which conscience asserts its
supremacy over every other impulse and affection of our nature. As we may
be kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be
merciful, but must be holy.


    See Bishop Butler’s Sermons upon Human Nature, Bohn’s ed.,
    385-414, showing “the supremacy of conscience in the moral
    constitution of man.” We must be just, before we are generous. So
    with God, justice must be done always; mercy is optional with him.
    He was not under obligation to provide a redemption for sinners:
    _2 Pet. 2:4—_“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast
    them down to hell.” Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt.
    Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 277-298—“The quality of justice is
    necessary exaction; but ‘the quality of mercy is not
    (con)strained’ ” [_cf._ Denham: “His mirth is forced and
    strained”]. God can apply the salvation, after he has wrought it
    out, to whomsoever he will: _Rom. 9:18—_“he hath mercy on whom he
    will.” Young, Night-Thoughts, 4:233—“A God all mercy is a God
    unjust.” Emerson: “Your goodness must have some edge to it; else
    it is none.” Martineau, Study, 2:100—“No one can be just without
    subordinating Pity to the sense of Right.”

    We may learn of God’s holiness _a priori_. Even the heathen could
    say “Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” or “pereat mundus.” But, for our
    knowledge of God’s mercy, we are dependent upon special
    revelation. Mercy, like omnipotence, may exist in God without
    being exercised. Mercy is not grace but debt, if God owes the
    exercise of it either to the sinner or to himself; _versus_ G. B.
    Stevens, in New Eng., 1888:421-443. “But justice is an attribute
    which not only _exists_ of necessity, but must be _exercised_ of
    necessity; because not to exercise it would be injustice”; see
    Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:218, 219, 389, 390; 2:402, and Sermons to
    Nat. Man, 366. If it be said that, by parity of reasoning, for God
    not to exercise mercy is to show himself unmerciful,—we reply that
    this is not true so long as higher interests require that exercise
    to be withheld. I am not unmerciful when I refuse to give the poor
    the money needed to pay an honest debt; nor is the Governor
    unmerciful when he refuses to pardon the condemned and unrepentant
    criminal. Mercy has its conditions, as we proceed to show, and it
    does not cease to _be_ when these conditions do not permit it to
    _be exercised_. Not so with justice: justice must always be
    exercised; when it ceases to _be exercised_, it also ceases to
    _be_.

    The story of the prodigal shows a love that ever reaches out after
    the son in the far country, but which is ever conditioned by the
    father’s holiness and restrained from acting until the son has
    voluntarily forsaken his riotous living. A just father may banish
    a corrupt son from the household, yet may love him so tenderly
    that his banishment causes exquisite pain. E. G. Robinson: “God,
    Christ and the Holy Spirit have a conscience, that is, they
    distinguish between right and wrong.” E. H. Johnson, Syst.
    Theology, 85, 86—“Holiness is primary as respects benevolence; for
    (_a_) Holiness is itself moral excellence, while the moral
    excellence of benevolence can be explained. (_b_) Holiness is an
    attribute of being, while benevolence is an attribute of action;
    but action presupposes and is controlled by being. (_c_)
    Benevolence must take counsel of holiness, since for a being to
    desire aught contrary to holiness would be to wish him harm, while
    that which holiness leads God to seek, benevolence finds best for
    the creature. (_d_) The Mosaic dispensation elaborately
    symbolized, and the Christian dispensation makes provision to
    meet, the requirements of holiness as supreme; _James
    3:17_—‘_First pure, then_ [by consequence] _peaceable_.’ ”

    We are “_to do justly_,” as well as “to love kindness, and to walk
    humbly with” our God (_Micah 6:8_). Dr. Samuel Johnson: “It is
    surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society
    contains.” There is a sinful mercy. A School Commissioner finds it
    terrible work to listen to the pleas of incompetent teachers
    begging that they may not be dismissed, and he can nerve himself
    for it only by remembering the children whose education may be
    affected by his refusal to do justice. Love and pity are not the
    whole of Christian duty, nor are they the ruling attributes of
    God.


(_c_) From the actual dealings of God,—in which holiness conditions and
limits the exercise of other attributes. Thus, for example, in Christ’s
redeeming work, though love makes the atonement, it is violated holiness
that requires it; and in the eternal punishment of the wicked, the demand
of holiness for self-vindication overbears the pleading of love for the
sufferers.


    Love cannot be the fundamental attribute of God, because love
    always requires a norm or standard, and this norm or standard is
    found only in holiness; _Phil. 1:9—_“And this I pray, that your
    love may abound yet more in knowledge and all discernment”; see A.
    H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405. That which conditions all
    is highest of all. Holiness shows itself higher than love, in that
    it conditions love. Hence God’s mercy does not consist in
    outraging his own law of holiness, but in enduring the penal
    affliction by which that law of holiness is satisfied. Conscience
    in man is but the reflex of holiness in God. Conscience demands
    either retribution or atonement. This demand Christ meets by his
    substituted suffering. His sacrifice assuages the thirst of
    conscience in man, as well as the demand of holiness in God: _John
    6:55—_“For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”
    See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 280, 291, 292; Dogmatic
    Theology, 1:377, 378—“The sovereignty and freedom of God in
    respect to justice relates not to the _abolition_, nor to the
    _relaxation_, but to the _substitution_, of punishment. It does
    not consist in any power to violate or waive legal claims. The
    exercise of the other attributes of God is regulated and
    conditioned by that of justice.... Where then is the mercy of God,
    in case justice is strictly satisfied by a vicarious person? There
    is mercy in _permitting_ another person to do for the sinner what
    the sinner is bound to do for himself; and greater mercy in
    _providing_ that person; and still greater mercy in _becoming_
    that person.”

    Enthusiasm, like fire, must not only burn, but must be controlled.
    Man invented chimneys to keep in the heat but to let out the
    smoke. We need the walls of discretion and self-control to guide
    the flaming of our love. The holiness of God is the regulating
    principle of his nature. The ocean of his mercy is bounded by the
    shores of his justice. Even if holiness be God’s self-love, in the
    sense of God’s self-respect or self-preservation, still this
    self-love must condition love to creatures. Only as God maintains
    himself in his holiness, can he have anything of worth to give;
    love indeed is nothing but the self-communication of holiness. And
    if we say, with J. M. Whiton, that self-affirmation in a universe
    in which God is immanent is itself a form of self-impartation,
    still this form of self-impartation must condition and limit that
    other form of self-impartation which we call love to creatures.
    See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137-155, 346-353;
    Patton, art. on Retribution and the Divine Goodness, in Princeton
    Rev., Jan. 1878:8-16; Owen, Dissertation on the Divine Justice, in
    Works, 10: 483-624.


(_d_) From God’s eternal purpose of salvation,—in which justice and mercy
are reconciled only through the foreseen and predetermined sacrifice of
Christ. The declaration that Christ is “the Lamb ... slain from the
foundation of the world” implies the existence of a principle in the
divine nature which requires satisfaction, before God can enter upon the
work of redemption. That principle can be none other than holiness.


    Since both mercy and justice are exercised toward sinners of the
    human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is
    removed only by the atoning death of the God-man. Their opposing
    claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the
    reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God. This is
    intimated in _Rev. 13:8—_“the Lamb that hath been slain from the
    foundation of the world.” This same reconciliation is alluded to
    in _Ps. 85:10—_“Mercy and truth are met together; Righteousness
    and peace have kissed each other”; and in _Rom. 3:26—_“that he
    might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in
    Jesus.” The atonement, then, if man was to be saved, was
    necessary, not primarily on man’s account, but on God’s account.
    Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 279—The sacrifice of Christ was an
    “atonement _ab intra_, a self-oblation on the part of Deity
    himself, by which to satisfy those immanent and eternal
    imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their
    satisfaction in the punishment of the transgressor, or else be
    outraged.” Thus God’s word of redemption, as well as his word of
    creation, is forever “settled in heaven”_ (Ps. 119:89)_. Its
    execution on the cross was “according to the pattern” on high. The
    Mosaic sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Christ; but the
    sacrifice of Christ was but the temporal disclosure of an eternal
    fact in the nature of God. See Kreibig, Versöhnung, 155, 156.

    God requires satisfaction because he is holiness, but he makes
    satisfaction because he is love. The Judge himself, with all his
    hatred of transgression, still loves the transgressor, and comes
    down from the bench to take the criminal’s place and bear his
    penalty. But this is an eternal provision and an eternal
    sacrifice. _Heb. 9:14—_“the blood of Christ, who through the
    eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God.”
    Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 215, 216—“Christ’s sacrifice was
    offered through the Spirit. It was not wrung from a reluctant soul
    through obedience to outward law; it came from the inner heart,
    from the impulse of undying love. It was a completed offering
    before Calvary began; it was seen by the Father before it was seen
    by the world. It was finished in the Spirit, ere it began in the
    flesh, finished in the hour when Christ exclaimed: ‘not as I will,
    but as thou wilt’_ (Mat. 26:39)._”

    Lang, Homer, 506—“Apollo is the bringer of pestilence and the
    averter of pestilence, in accordance with the well-known rule that
    the two opposite attributes should be combined in the same deity.”
    Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: “Neither angel, man nor world,
    could stand or can stand one moment in God’s sight without
    beholding the same in the face of a Mediator; and therefore before
    him, with whom all things are present, the Lamb of God was slain
    before all worlds; without which eternal counsel of his, it was
    impossible for him to have descended to any work of creation.”
    Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 819—“Creation is built
    on redemption lines”—which is to say that incarnation and
    atonement were included in God’s original design of the world.


2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.


A. Erroneous Views. The ground of moral obligation is not

(_a_) In power,—whether of civil law (Hobbes, Gassendi), or of divine will
(Occam, Descartes). We are not bound to obey either of these, except upon
the ground that they are right. This theory assumes that nothing is good
or right in itself, and that morality is mere prudence.


    _Civil law_: See Hobbes, Leviathan, part i, chap. 6 and 13; part
    ii, chap. 30; Gassendi, Opera, 6:120. Upon this view, might makes
    right; the laws of Nero are always binding; a man may break his
    promise when civil law permits; there is no obligation to obey a
    father, a civil governor, or God himself, when once it is certain
    that the disobedience will be hidden, or when the offender is
    willing to incur the punishment. Martineau, Seat of Authority,
    67—“Mere magnitude of scale carries no moral quality; nor could a
    whole population of devils by unanimous ballot confer
    righteousness upon their will, or make it binding upon a single
    Abdiel.” Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, xvii—“Justice, good, and
    truth were still Divine if, by some demon’s will, Hatred and wrong
    had been proclaimed Law through the world, and right misnamed.”

    _Divine will_: See Occam, lib. 2, quæs. 19 (quoted in Porter,
    Moral Science, 125); Descartes (referred to in Hickok, Moral
    Science, 27, 28); Martineau, Types, 148—“Descartes held that the
    will of God is not the revealer but the inventor of moral
    distinctions. God could have made Euclid a farrago of lies, and
    Satan a model of moral perfection.” Upon this view, right and
    wrong are variable quantities. Duns Scotus held that God’s will
    makes not only truth but right. God can make lying to be virtuous
    and purity to be wrong. If Satan were God, we should be bound to
    obey him. God is essentially indifferent to right and wrong, good
    and evil. We reply that behind the divine will is the divine
    nature, and that in the moral perfection of that nature lies the
    only ground of moral obligation. God pours forth his love and
    exerts his power in accordance with some determining principle in
    his own nature. That principle is not happiness. Finney, Syst.
    Theology, 936, 937—“Could God’s command make it obligatory upon us
    to will evil to him? If not, then his will is not the ground of
    moral obligation. The thing that is most valuable, namely, the
    highest good of God and of the universe must be both the end and
    the ground. It is the divine reason and not the divine will that
    perceives and affirms the law of conduct. The divine will
    publishes, but does not originate, the rule. God’s will could not
    make vice to be virtuous.”

    As between power or utility on the one hand, and right on the
    other hand, we must regard right as the more fundamental. We do
    not, however, as will be seen further on, place the ground of
    moral obligation even in right, considered as an abstract
    principle; but place it rather in the moral excellence of him who
    is the personal Right and therefore the source of right. Character
    obliges, and the master often bows in his heart to the servant,
    when this latter is the nobler man.


(_b_) Nor in utility,—whether our own happiness or advantage present or
eternal (Paley), for supreme regard for our own interest is not virtuous;
or the greatest happiness or advantage to being in general (Edwards), for
we judge conduct to be useful because it is right, not right because it is
useful. This theory would compel us to believe that in eternity past God
was holy only because of the good he got from it,—that is, there was no
such thing as holiness in itself, and no such thing as moral character in
God.


    _Our own happiness_: Paley, Mor. and Pol. Philos., book i, chap.
    vii—“Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will
    of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” This unites
    (_a_) and (_b_). John Stuart Mill and Dr. N. W. Taylor held that
    our own happiness is the supreme end. These writers indeed regard
    the highest happiness as attained only by living for others
    (Mill’s altruism), but they can assign no reason why one who knows
    no other happiness than the pleasures of sense should not adopt
    the maxim of Epicurus, who, according to Lucretius, taught that
    “ducit quemque voluptas.” This theory renders virtue impossible;
    for a virtue which is mere regard to our own interest is not
    virtue but prudence. “We have a sense of right and wrong
    independently of all considerations of happiness or its loss.”
    James Mill held that the utility is not the criterion of the
    morality but itself constitutes the morality. G. B. Foster well
    replies that virtue is not mere egoistic sagacity, and the moral
    act is not simply a clever business enterprise. All languages
    distinguish between virtue and prudence. To say that the virtues
    are great utilities is to confound the effect with the cause.
    Carlyle says that a man can do without happiness. Browning, Red
    Cotton Nightcap Country: “Thick heads ought to recognize The
    devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads
    Downward perhaps, but fiddles all the way.” This is the morality
    of Mother Goose: “He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And
    said, ‘What a good boy am I!’ ”

    E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 160—“Utility
    has nothing ultimate in itself, and therefore can furnish no
    ground of obligation. Utility is mere fitness of one thing to
    minister to something else.” To say that things are right because
    they are useful, is like saying that things are beautiful because
    they are pleasing. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:170, 511,
    556—“The moment the appetites pass into the self-conscious state,
    and become ends instead of impulses, they draw to themselves terms
    of censure.... So intellectual conscientiousness, or strict
    submission of the mind to evidence, has its inspiration in pure
    love of truth, and would not survive an hour if entrusted to the
    keeping either of providence or of social affection.... Instincts,
    which provide for they know not what, are proof that _want_ is the
    original impulse to action, instead of pleasure being the end.” On
    the happiness theory, appeals to self-interest on behalf of
    religion ought to be effective,—as a matter of fact few are moved
    by them.

    Dewey, Psychology, 300, 362—“Emotion turned inward eats up itself.
    Live on feelings rather than on the things to which feelings
    belong, and you defeat your own end, exhaust your power of
    feeling, commit emotional suicide. Hence arise cynicism, the _nil
    admirari_ spirit, restless searching for the latest sensation. The
    only remedy is to get outside of self, to devote self to some
    worthy object, not for feeling’s sake but for the sake of the
    object.... We do not desire an object because it gives us
    pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because it satisfies the
    impulse which, in connection with the idea of the object,
    constitutes the desire.... Pleasure is the accompaniment of the
    activity or development of the _self_.”

    Salter, First Steps in Philosophy, 150—“It is right to aim at
    happiness. Happiness is an end. Utilitarianism errs in making
    happiness the only and the highest end. It exalts a state of
    feeling into the supremely desirable thing. Intuitionalism gives
    the same place to a state of will. The truth includes both. The
    true end is the highest development of being, self and others, the
    realization of the divine idea, God in man.” Bowne, Principles of
    Ethics, 96—“The standard of appeal is not the actual happiness of
    the actual man but the normal happiness of the normal man....
    Happiness must have a law. But then also the law must lead to
    happiness.... The true ethical aim is to realize the good. But
    then the contents of this good have to be determined in accordance
    with an inborn ideal of human worth and dignity.... Not all good,
    but the true good, not the things which please, but the things
    which should please, are to be the aim of action.”

    Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 223—“The Utilitarian is really asking
    about the wisest method of embodying the ideal. He belongs to that
    second stage in which the moral artist considers through what
    material and in what form and color he may best realize his
    thought. What the ideal is, and why it is the highest, he does not
    tell us. Morality begins, not in feeling, but in reason. And
    reason is impersonal. It discerns the moral equality of
    personalities.” Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 20—Job speaks out
    his character like one of Robert Browning’s heroes. He teaches
    that “there is a service of God which is not work for reward: it
    is a heart-loyalty, a hunger after God’s presence, which survives
    loss and chastisement; which in spite of contradictory seeming
    cleaves to what is godlike as the needle seeks the pole; and which
    reaches up out of the darkness and hardness of this life into the
    light and love beyond.”

    _Greatest good of being_: Not only Edwards, but Priestley,
    Bentham, Dwight, Finney, Hopkins, Fairchild, hold this view. See
    Edwards, Works, 2:261-304—“Virtue is benevolence toward being in
    general”; Dwight, Theology, 3:150-162—“Utility the foundation of
    Virtue”; Hopkins, Law of Love, 7-28; Fairchild, Moral Philosophy;
    Finney, Syst. Theol., 42-135. This theory regards good as a mere
    state of the sensibility, instead of consisting in purity of
    being. It forgets that in eternity past “love for being in
    general” = simply God’s self-love, or God’s regard for his own
    happiness. This implies that God is holy only for a purpose; he is
    bound to be unholy, if greater good would result; that is,
    holiness has no independent existence in his nature. We grant that
    a thing is often known to be right by the fact that it is useful;
    but this is very different from saying that its usefulness makes
    it right. “Utility is only the setting of the diamond, which
    _marks_, but does not _make_, its value.” “If utility be a
    criterion of rectitude, it is only because it is a revelation of
    the divine nature.” See British Quarterly, July, 1877, on Matthew
    Arnold and Bishop Butler. Bp. Butler, Nature of Virtue, in Works,
    Bohn’s ed., 334—“Benevolence is the true self-love.” Love and
    holiness are obligatory in themselves, and not because they
    promote the general good. Cicero well said that they who
    confounded the _honestum_ with the _utile_ deserved to be banished
    from society. See criticism on Porter’s Moral Science, in Lutheran
    Quarterly, Apr. 1885:325-331; also F. L. Patton, on Metaphysics of
    Oughtness, in Presb. Rev., 1886:127-150.

    Encyc. Britannica, 7:690, on Jonathan Edwards—“Being in general,
    being without any qualities, is too abstract a thing to be the
    primary cause of love. The feeling which Edwards refers to is not
    love, but awe or reverence, and moreover necessarily a blind awe.
    Properly stated therefore, true virtue, according to Edwards,
    would consist in a blind awe of being in general,—only this would
    be inconsistent with his definition of virtue as existing in God.
    In reality, as he makes virtue merely the second object of love,
    his theory becomes identical with that utilitarian theory with
    which the names of Hume, Bentham and Mill are associated.” Hodge,
    Essays, 275—“If obligation is due primarily to being in general,
    then there is no more virtue in loving God—willing his good—than
    there is in loving Satan. But love to Christ differs in its nature
    from benevolence toward the devil.” Plainly virtue consists, not
    in love for mere being, but in love for good being, or in other
    words, in love for the holy God. Not the greatest good of being,
    but the holiness of God, is the ground of moral obligation.

    Dr. E. A. Park interprets the Edwardian theory as holding that
    virtue is love to all beings according to their value, love of the
    greater therefore more than the less, “love to particular beings
    in a proportion compounded of the degree of being and the degree
    of virtue or benevolence to being which they have.” Love is
    choice. Happiness, says Park, is not the sole good, much less the
    happiness of creatures. The _greatest_ good is holiness, though
    the _last_ good aimed at is happiness. Holiness is disinterested
    love—free choice of the general above the private good. But we
    reply that this gives us no reason or standard for virtue. It does
    not tell us what is good nor why we should choose it. Martineau,
    Types, 2:70, 77, 471, 484—“Why should I promote the general
    well-being? Why should I sacrifice myself for others? Only because
    this is godlike. It Would never have been prudent to do right, had
    it not been something infinitely more.... It is not fitness that
    makes an act moral, but it is its morality that makes it fit.”

    Herbert Spencer must be classed as a utilitarian. He says that
    justice requires that “every man be free to do as he wills
    provided he infringes not the equal freedom of every other man.”
    But, since this would permit injury to another by one willing to
    submit to injury in return, Mr. Spencer limits the freedom to
    “such actions as subserve life.” This is practically equivalent to
    saying that the greatest sum of happiness is the ultimate end. On
    Jonathan Edwards, see Robert Hall, Works, 1:43 sq.; Alexander,
    Moral Science, 194-198; Bib. Repertory (Princeton Review), 25:22;
    Bib. Sacra, 9:176, 197; 10:403, 705.


(_c_) Nor in the nature of things (Price),—whether by this we mean their
fitness (Clarke), truth (Wollaston), order (Jouffroy), relations
(Wayland), worthiness (Hickok), sympathy (Adam Smith), or abstract right
(Haven and Alexander); for this nature of things is not ultimate, but has
its ground in the nature of God. We are bound to worship the highest; if
anything exists beyond and above God, we are bound to worship that,—that
indeed is God.


    See Wayland, Moral Science, 33-48; Hickok, Moral Science, 27-34;
    Haven, Moral Philosophy, 27-50; Alexander, Moral Science, 159-198.
    In opposition to all the forms of this theory, we urge that
    nothing exists independently of or above God. “If the ground of
    morals exist independently of God, either it has ultimately no
    authority, or it usurps the throne of the Almighty. Any rational
    being who kept the law would be perfect without God, and the moral
    centre of all intelligences would be outside of God” (Talbot). God
    is not a Jupiter controlled by Fate. He is subject to no law but
    the law of his own nature. _Noblesse oblige_,—character
    rules,—purity is the highest. And therefore to holiness all
    creatures, voluntarily or involuntarily, are constrained to bow.
    Hopkins, Law of Love, 77—“Right and wrong have nothing to do with
    things, but only with actions; nothing to do with any nature of
    things existing necessarily, but only with the nature of persons.”
    Another has said: “The idea of right cannot be original, since
    right means conformity to some standard or rule.” This standard or
    rule is not an abstraction, but an existing being—the infinitely
    perfect God.

    Faber: “For right is right, since God is God; And right the day
    must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.”
    Tennyson: “And because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom
    in the scorn of consequence.” Right is right, and I should will
    the right, not because God _wills_ it, but because God _is_ it. E.
    G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 178-180—“Utility
    and relations simply reveal the constitution of things and so
    represent God. Moral law was not made for purposes of utility, nor
    do relations constitute the reason for obligation. They only show
    what the nature of God is who made the universe and revealed
    himself in it. In his nature is found the _reason_ for morality.”
    S. S. Times, Oct. 17, 1891—“Only that is level which conforms to
    the curvature of the earth’s surface. A straight line tangent to
    the earth’s curve would at its ends be much further from the
    earth’s centre than at its middle. Now equity means levelness. The
    standard of equity is not an impersonal thing, a ’nature of
    things’ outside of God. Equity or righteousness is no more to be
    conceived independently of the divine centre of the moral world
    than is levelness comprehensible apart from the earth’s centre.”

    Since God finds the rule and limitation of his action solely in
    his own being, and his love is conditioned by his holiness, we
    must differ from such views as that of Moxom: “Whether we define
    God’s nature as perfect holiness or perfect love is immaterial,
    since his nature is manifested only through his action, that is,
    through his relation to other beings. Most of our reasoning on the
    divine standard of righteousness, or the ultimate ground of moral
    obligation, is reasoning in a circle, since we must always go back
    to God for the principle of his action; which principle we can
    know only by means of his action. God, the perfectly righteous
    Being, is the ideal standard of human righteousness. Righteousness
    in man therefore is conformity to the nature of God. God, in
    agreement with his perfect nature, always wills the perfectly good
    toward man. His righteousness is an expression of his love; his
    love is a manifestation of his righteousness.”

    So Newman Smyth: “Righteousness is the eternal genuineness of the
    divine love. It is not therefore an independent excellence, to be
    contrasted with, or even put in opposition to, benevolence; it is
    an essential part of love.” In reply to which we urge as before
    that that which is the object of love, that which limits and
    conditions love, that which furnishes the norm and reason for
    love, cannot itself be love, nor hold merely equal rank with love.
    A double standard is as irrational in ethics as in commerce, and
    it leads in ethics to the same debasement of the higher values,
    and the same unsettling of relations, as has resulted in our
    currency from the attempt to make silver regulate gold at the same
    time that gold regulates silver.


B. The Scriptural View.—According to the Scriptures, the ground of moral
obligation is the holiness of God, or the moral perfection of the divine
nature, conformity to which is the law of our moral being (Robinson,
Chalmers, Calderwood, Gregory, Wuttke). We show this:

(_a_) From the commands: “Ye shall be holy,” where the ground of
obligation assigned is simply and only: “for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16); and
“Ye therefore shall be perfect,” where the standard laid down is: “as your
heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat. 5:48). Here we have an ultimate reason
and ground for being and doing right, namely, that God is right, or, in
other words, that holiness is his nature.

(_b_) From the nature of the love in which the whole law is summed up
(Mat. 22:37—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”; Rom. 13:10—“love therefore
is the fulfilment of the law”). This love is not regard for abstract right
or for the happiness of being, much less for one’s own interest, but it is
regard for God as the fountain and standard of moral excellence, or in
other words, love for God as holy. Hence this love is the principle and
source of holiness in man.

(_c_) From the example of Christ, whose life was essentially an exhibition
of supreme regard for God, and of supreme devotion to his holy will. As
Christ saw nothing good but what was in God (Mark 10:18—“none is good save
one, even God”), and did only what he saw the Father do (John 5:19; see
also 30—“I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”), so
for us, to be like God is the sum of all duty, and God’s infinite moral
excellence is the supreme reason why we should be like him.


    For statements of the correct view of the ground of moral
    obligation, see E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of
    Morality, 138-180; Chalmers, Moral Philosophy, 412-420;
    Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 112-122;
    Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:80-107; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena,
    in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274—“The ground of all moral law is
    the nature of God, or the ethical nature of God in relation to the
    like nature in man, or the imperativeness of the divine nature.”
    Plato: “The divine will is the fountain of all efficiency; the
    divine reason is the fountain, of all law; the divine nature is
    the fountain of all virtue.” If it be said that God is love as
    well as holiness, we ask: Love to what? And the only answer is:
    Love to the right, or to holiness. To ask why right is a good, is
    no more sensible than to ask why happiness is a good. There must
    be something ultimate. Schiller said there are people who want to
    know why ten is not twelve. We cannot study character apart from
    conduct, nor conduct apart from character. But this does not
    prevent us from recognizing that character is the fundamental
    thing and that conduct is only the expression of it.

    The moral perfection of the divine nature includes truth and love,
    but since it is holiness that conditions the exercise of every
    other attribute, we must conclude that holiness is the ground of
    moral obligation. Infinity also unites with holiness to make it
    the perfect ground, but since the determining element is holiness,
    we call this, and not infinity, the ground of obligation. J. H.
    Harris, Baccalaureate Sermon, Bucknell University, 1890—“As
    holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, so holiness is the
    supreme good of man. Aristotle perceived this when he declared the
    chief good of man to be energizing according to virtue.
    Christianity supplies the Holy Spirit and makes this energizing
    possible.” Holiness is the goal of man’s spiritual career; see _1
    Thess. 3:13—_“to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable
    in holiness before our God and Father.”

    Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his Friends,
    272—“Holiness and happiness are two notions of one thing....
    Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at one with the
    heart of God, it cannot but be miserable.” It is more true to say
    that holiness and happiness are, as cause and effect, inseparably
    bound together. Martineau, Types, 1:xvi; 2:70-77—“Two classes of
    facts it is indispensable for us to know: what are the springs of
    voluntary conduct, and what are its effects”; Study, 1:26—“Ethics
    must either perfect themselves in Religion, or disintegrate
    themselves into Hedonism.” William Law remarks: “Ethics are not
    external but internal. The essence of a moral act does not lie in
    its result, but in the motive from which it springs. And that
    again is good or bad, according as it conforms to the character of
    God.” For further discussion of the subject see our chapter on The
    Law of God. See also Thornwell, Theology, 1:363-373; Hinton, Art
    of Thinking, 47-62; Goldwin Smith, in Contemporary Review, March,
    1882, and Jan. 1884; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 195-231,
    esp. 223.




Chapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.


In the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions which
are represented to us under the figure of persons, and these three are
equal. This tripersonality of the Godhead is exclusively a truth of
revelation. It is clearly, though not formally, made known in the New
Testament, and intimations of it may be found in the Old.

The doctrine of the Trinity may be expressed in the six following
statements: 1. In Scripture there are three who are recognized as God. 2.
These three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to
conceive of them as distinct persons. 3. This tripersonality of the divine
nature is not merely economic and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.
4. This tripersonality is not tritheism; for while there are three
persons, there is but one essence. 5. The three persons, Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, are equal. 6. Inscrutable yet not self-contradictory, this
doctrine furnishes the key to all other doctrines.—These statements we
proceed now to prove and to elucidate.


    Reason shows us the Unity of God; only revelation shows us the
    Trinity of God, thus filling out the indefinite outlines of this
    Unity and vivifying it. The term “Trinity” is not found in
    Scripture, although the conception it expresses is Scriptural. The
    invention of the term is ascribed to Tertullian. The Montanists
    first defined the personality of the Spirit, and first formulated
    the doctrine of the Trinity. The term “Trinity” is not a
    metaphysical one. It is only a designation of four facts: (1) the
    Father is God; (2) the Son is God; (3) the Spirit is God; (4)
    there is but one God.

    Park: “The doctrine of the Trinity does not on the one hand assert
    that three persons are united in one person, or three beings in
    one being, or three Gods in one God (tritheism); nor on the other
    hand that God merely manifests himself in three different ways
    (modal trinity, or trinity of manifestations); but rather that
    there are three eternal distinctions in the substance of God.”
    Smyth, preface to Edwards, Observations on the Trinity: “The
    church doctrine of the Trinity affirms that there are in the
    Godhead three distinct hypostases or subsistences—the Father, the
    Son and the Holy Spirit—each possessing one and the same divine
    nature, though in a different manner. The essential points are (1)
    the unity of essence; (2) the reality of immanent or ontological
    distinctions.” See Park on Edwards’s View of the Trinity, in Bib.
    Sac., April, 1881:333. Princeton Essays, 1:28—“There is one God;
    Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are this one God; there is such a
    distinction between Father, Son and Holy Spirit as to lay a
    sufficient ground for the reciprocal use of the personal
    pronouns.” Joseph Cook: “(1) The Father, the Son, and the Holy
    Ghost are one God; (2) each has a peculiarity incommunicable to
    the others; (3) neither is God without the others; (4) each, with
    the others, is God.”

    We regard the doctrine of the Trinity as implicitly held by the
    apostles and as involved in the New Testament declarations with
    regard to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while we concede that the
    doctrine had not by the New Testament writers been formulated.
    They held it, as it were in solution; only time, reflection, and
    the shock of controversy and opposition, caused it to crystalize
    into definite and dogmatic form. Chadwick, Old and New
    Unitarianism, 59, 60, claims that the Jewish origin of
    Christianity shows that the Jewish Messiah could not originally
    have been conceived of as divine. If Jesus had claimed this, he
    would not have been taken before Pilate,—the Jews would have
    dispatched him. The doctrine of the Trinity, says Chadwick, was
    not developed until the Council of Nice, 325. E. G. Robinson:
    “There was no doctrine of the Trinity in the Patristic period, as
    there was no doctrine of the Atonement before Anselm.” The
    Outlook, Notes and Queries, March 30, 1901—“The doctrine of the
    Trinity cannot be said to have taken final shape before the
    appearance of the so-called Athanasian Creed in the 8th or 9th
    century. The Nicene Creed, formulated in the 4th century, is
    termed by Dr. Schaff, from the orthodox point of view,
    ‘semi-trinitarian.’ The earliest time known at which Jesus was
    deified was, after the New Testament writers, in the letters of
    Ignatius, at the beginning of the second century.”

    Gore, Incarnation, 179—“The doctrine of the Trinity is not so much
    heard, as overheard, in the statements of Scripture.” George P.
    Fisher quotes some able and pious friend of his as saying: “What
    meets us in the New Testament is the _disjecta membra_ of the
    Trinity.” G. B. Foster: “The doctrine of the Trinity is the
    Christian attempt to make intelligible the personality of God
    without dependence upon the world.” Charles Kingsley said that,
    whether the doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible or no, it
    ought to be there, because our spiritual nature cries out for it.
    Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:250—“Though the doctrine of the
    Trinity is not discoverable by human reason, it is susceptible of
    a rational defense, when revealed.” On New England Trinitarianism,
    see New World, June, 1896:272-295—art. by Levi L. Paine. He says
    that the last phase of it is represented by Phillips Brooks, James
    M. Whiton and George A. Gordon. These hold to the essential
    divineness of humanity and preëminently of Christ, the unique
    representative of mankind, who was, in this sense, a true
    incarnation of Deity. See also, L. L. Paine, Evolution of
    Trinitarianism, 141, 287.

    Neander declared that the Trinity is not a fundamental doctrine of
    Christianity. He was speaking however of the speculative,
    metaphysical form which the doctrine has assumed in theology. But
    he speaks very differently of the devotional and practical form in
    which the Scriptures present it, as in the baptismal formula and
    in the apostolic benediction. In regard to this he says: “We
    recognize therein the essential contents of Christianity summed up
    in brief.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 10, 11, 55, 91, 92—“God
    transcendent, the Father, is revealed by God immanent, the Son.
    This one nature belongs equally to God, to Christ, and to mankind,
    and in this fact is grounded the immutableness of moral
    distinctions and the possibility of moral progress.... The
    immanent life of the universe is one with the transcendent Power;
    the filial stream is one with its paternal Fount. To Christ
    supremely belongs the name of Son, which includes all that life
    that is begotten of God. In Christ the before unconscious Sonship
    of the world awakes to consciousness of the Father. The Father is
    the Life transcendent, above all; the Son is Life immanent,
    through all; the Holy Spirit is the Life individualized, in all.
    In Christ we have collectivism; in the Holy Spirit we have
    individualism; as Bunsen says: ‘The chief power in the world is
    personality.’ ”

    For treatment of the whole doctrine, see Dorner, System of
    Doctrine, 1:344-465; Twesten, Dogmatik, and translation in Bib.
    Sac., 3:502; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:145-199; Thomasius, Christi
    Person und Werk, 1:57-135; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:203-229; Shedd,
    Dogm. Theol., 1:248-333, and History of Doctrine, 1:246-385;
    Farrar, Science and Theology, 138; Schaff, Nicene Doctrine of the
    Holy Trinity, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:209. For the Unitarian view,
    see Norton, Statement of Reasons, and J. F. Clarke, Truths and
    Errors of Orthodoxy.



I. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.


1. Proofs from the New Testament.


A. The Father is recognized as God.


The Father is recognized as God,—and that in so great a number of passages
(such as John 6:27—“him the Father, even God, hath sealed,” and 1 Pet.
1:2—“foreknowledge of God the Father”) that we need not delay to adduce
extended proof.


B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.


(_a_) He is expressly called God.

In John 1:1—Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the absence of the article shows Θεός to be
the predicate (_cf._ 4:24—πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός). This predicate precedes the verb
by way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought = “the Logos was
not only with God, but was God” (see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm. _in loco_).
“Only ὁ λόγος can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the
question is, not who God is, but who the Logos is” (Godet).


    Westcott in Bible Commentary, _in loco_—“The predicate stands
    emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article,
    inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not
    identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say: ‘The
    Word was ὁ Θεός.’ Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in
    his absolute eternal being, (_a_) his existence: beyond time;
    (_b_) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (_c_)
    his nature: God in essence.” Marcus Dods, in Expositor’s Greek
    Testament, _in loco_: “The Word is distinguishable from God, yet
    Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος—the word was God, of divine nature; not ‘a God,’
    which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet
    identical with all that can be called God, for then the article
    would have been inserted (_cf._ 1 John 3:4).”


In John 1:18, μονογενὴς θεός—“the only begotten God”—must be regarded as
the correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to
Christ. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God
revealed.


    _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
    God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” In
    this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has μονογενὴς ὑιός,
    Westcott and Hort (with א*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read μονογενὴς Θεός and
    the Rev. Vers. puts “_the only begotten God_” in the margin,
    though it retains “_the only begotten Son_” in the text. Harnack
    says the reading μονογενὴς θεός is “established beyond
    contradiction”; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33.
    Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of
    Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only
    in _John 1:1_ and _20:28_, and that Paul never so recognizes him.
    But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the
    doxologies to Christ, in _2 Tim. 4:18_, _Heb. 13:21_ and _2 Pet.
    3:18_, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on Θεός, and on
    μονογενής.


In John 20:28, the address of Thomas Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου—“My Lord
and my God”—since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an
assertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.


    _John 20:28—_“Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my
    God.” This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God
    in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with
    profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of
    overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast
    the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were
    bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (_Acts
    14:11-18_). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ
    and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just
    acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and
    his God. Alford, Commentary, _in loco_: “The Socinian view that
    these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact
    that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the
    εἶπεν αὐτῷ; (3) by the impossibility of referring the ὁ κύριός μου
    to another than Jesus: see _verse 13_; (4) by the N. T. usage of
    expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by
    the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just
    convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should,
    instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6)
    by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case,
    the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly
    keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have
    recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate
    conjunction of πεπίστευκας.” _Cf._ _Mat. 5:34—_“Swear not ... by
    the heaven”—swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew
    did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter
    among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John’s gospel. The
    thesis “the Word was God”_ (John 1:1)_ has now become part of the
    life and consciousness of the apostles. _Chapter 21_ is only an
    Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error
    that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com., _in loco_. The
    Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood
    his Master. Lyman Beecher: “Jesus Christ is the acting Deity of
    the universe.”


In Rom. 9:5, the clause ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητός cannot be
translated “blessed be the God over all,” for ὢν is superfluous if the
clause is a doxology; “εὐλογητός precedes the name of God in a doxology,
but follows it, as here, in a description” (Hovey). The clause can
therefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature
of the Christ who had just been said, τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, or according to his
lower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com. _in
loco_).


    Sanday, Com. on _Rom. 9:5_—“The words would naturally refer to
    Christ, unless ‘_God_’ is so definitely a proper name that it
    would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not
    so.” Hence Sanday translates: “_of whom is the Christ as
    concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever_”. See
    President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55; _per
    contra_, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney,
    in Expositor’s Gk. Test., _in loco_.


In Titus 2:13, ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν
Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ we regard (with Ellicott) as “a direct, definite, and even
studied declaration of Christ’s divinity” = “the ... appearing of the
glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (so English Revised
Version). Ἐπιφάνεια is a term applied specially to the Son and never to
the Father, and μεγάλου is uncalled for if used of the Father, but
peculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must
interpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer’s Com.: “The
close juxtaposition indicates the author’s certainty of the oneness of God
and Jesus Christ”).


    _Titus 2:13—_“looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the
    glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”—so the English
    Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate: “the
    glory of the great God and Savior”; and Westcott and Hort bracket
    the word ἡμῶν. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of
    this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of
    argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott’s
    interpretation as given above.


In Heb. 1:8, πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν; ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is
quoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows—“Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth”—by applying to Christ
an Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that ὁ Θεός, in verse 8, is
used in the sense of absolute Godhead.


    It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to
    Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and
    even human judges are called gods, as representing God’s authority
    and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that
    the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and
    in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and
    secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ,
    it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which
    leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. See _Ex.
    4:16—_“thou shalt be to him as God”; _7:1—_“See, I have made thee
    as God to Pharaoh”; _22:28—_“Thou shalt not revile God, [marg.,
    _the judges_], nor curse a ruler of thy people”; _Ps. 82:1—_“God
    standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods”
    [among the mighty]; _6—_“I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons
    of the Most High”; _7—_“Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And
    fall like one of the princes.” _Cf._ _John 10:34-36—_“If he called
    them gods, unto whom the word of God came” (who were God’s
    commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper
    for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.

    As in _Ps. 82:7_ those who had been called gods are represented as
    dying, so in _Ps. 97:7—_“Worship him, all ye gods”—they are bidden
    to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible: “Although the
    deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often
    described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as
    bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.” This verse is quoted
    in _Heb. 1:6—_“let all the angels of God worship him”—_i. e._,
    Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is
    made from the Septuagint, which has “_angels_” for “_gods_.” “Its
    use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word,
    which includes all that human error might regard as objects of
    worship.” Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called
    “_gods_” are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the
    true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314;
    Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 10.


In 1 John 5:20—ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτος
ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεός—“it would be a flat repetition, after the Father had
been twice called ὁ ἀληθινός, to say now again: ‘this is ὁ ἀληθενὸς Θεός.’
Our being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it
more natural that οὖτος should be referred to υἱῷ. But ought not ὁ
ἀληθενός then to be without the article (as in John 1:1—Θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος)?
No, for it is John’s purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, not _what_ Christ is,
but _who_ he is. In declaring _what_ one is, the predicate must have no
article; in declaring _who_ one is, the predicate must have the article.
St. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests,
is this true God himself” (see Ebrard, Com. _in loco_).


    Other passages might be here adduced, as _Col. 2:9—_“in him
    dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”; _Phil
    2:6—_“existing in the form of God”; but we prefer to consider
    these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ’s divinity.
    Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the
    doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such are _Acts
    20:28_, where the correct reading is in all probability not
    ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, but ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου (so ACDE Tregelles
    and Tischendorf; B and א, however, have τοῦ Θεοῦ. The Rev. Vers.
    continues to read “_church of God_”; Amer. Revisers, however, read
    “church of the Lord”—see Ezra Abbot’s investigation in Bib. Sac.,
    1876: 313-352); and _1 Tim. 3:16_, where ὅς is unquestionably to
    be substituted for Θεός, though even here ἐφανερώθη intimates
    preëxistence.

    Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston,
    November, 1882—“Fifty years of study, thought and reading given
    largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly
    relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the
    book—taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed
    for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and
    infallible as a whole, and in all its contents—is an Orthodox
    book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast
    majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense,
    its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of
    its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that
    kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must
    add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make
    the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so
    called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of
    Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of
    creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by
    pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side,
    and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other—a
    controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty
    years ago more than did our recent political campaign—I am fully
    convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture
    exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the
    Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal
    party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their
    way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing
    upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it
    yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the
    whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible
    because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the
    Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as
    emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to
    the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be
    certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the
    fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can
    trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting,
    the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it
    readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which
    one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing
    his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty
    outside of them.”

    With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to
    compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman
    Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God,
    but everywhere calls him man, as in _1 Tim. 2:5—_“for there is one
    God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ
    Jesus.” On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New
    World, Dec. 1894—“That Paul ever confounded Christ with God
    himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a
    position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by
    the whole drift of his epistles.”


(_b_) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.

This application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to
God is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The
peculiar awe with which the term “Jehovah” was set apart by a nation of
strenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one
self-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the
Scripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate
and created being.


    _Mat. 3:3—_“Make ye ready the way of the Lord”—is a quotation from
    _Is. 40:3—_“Prepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.” _John
    12:41—_“These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he
    spake of him” [_i. e._, Christ]—refers to _Is. 6:1—_“In the year
    that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.” So in
    _Eph. 4:7, 8—_“measure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity
    captive”—is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah in
    _Ps. 68:18_. In _1 Pet. 3:15_, moreover, we read, with all the
    great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:
    “sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”; here the apostle borrows
    his language from _Is. 8:13_, where we read: “_Jehovah of hosts,
    him shall ye sanctify_.” When we remember that, with the Jews,
    God’s covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=
    “written”) _Jehovah_ there was always substituted the Keri (=
    “read”—imperative) _Adonai_, in order to avoid pronunciation of
    the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek
    equivalent of “Jehovah” should have been so constantly used of
    Christ. _Cf._ _Rom. 10:9—_“confess ... Jesus as Lord”; _1 Cor.
    12:3—_“no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.” We
    must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ’s
    assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare
    Goethe’s, “Wer darf ihn nennen?” with Carlyle’s, “the awful
    Unnameable of this Universe.” The Jews, it has been said, have
    always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the
    strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word ’Lord’ freely
    and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This
    would have been impossible if James had not believed in the
    community of essence between the Son and the Father.

    It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the
    word Θεός or κύριος, or any other direct designation of God unless
    it be οὐρανός (_cf._ “swear ... by the heaven”_—Mat. 5:34_). So
    the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though
    the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek,
    contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all
    eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange’s Commentary;
    Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 93; Max Müller on Semitic Monotheism,
    in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.


(_c_) He possesses the attributes of God.

Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness,
eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are
ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no
secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.


    _Life_: _John 1:4—_“In him was life”; _14:6—_“I am ... the life.”
    _Self-existence_: _John 5:26—_“have life in himself”; _Heb.
    7:16—_“power of an endless life.” _Immutability_: _Heb.
    13:8—_“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and
    forever.” _Truth_: _John 14:6—_“I am ... the truth”; _Rev.
    3:7—_“he that is true.” _Love_: _1 John 3:16—_“Hereby know we
    love” (τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)
    “_because he laid down his life for us_.” _Holiness_: _Luke
    1:35—_“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of
    God”; _John 6:69—_“thou art the Holy One of God”; _Heb.
    7:26—_“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”

    _Eternity_: _John 1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word.” Godet says
    ἐν ἀρχῇ = not “in eternity,” but “in the beginning of the
    creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the
    ἦν—the Word _was_, when the world was _created_: _cf._ _Gen.
    1:1—_“In the beginning God created.” But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here
    rises above the historical conception of “_in the beginning_” in
    Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the
    absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is
    something subsequent. He finds a parallel in _Prov. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ
    πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι_. The interpretation “in the beginning of
    the gospel” is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. So _John
    17:5—_“glory which I had with thee before the world was”; _Eph.
    1:4—_“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Dorner
    also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ in _John 1:1_ is not “the beginning of the
    world,” but designates the point back of which it is impossible to
    go, _i. e._, eternity; the world is first spoken of in _verse 3.
    John 8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am”; _cf._ _1:15_; _Col.
    1:17—_“he is before all things”; _Heb. 1:11_—the heavens “_shall
    perish; but thou continuest_”; _Rev. 21:6—_“I am the Alpha and the
    Omega, the beginning and the end.”

    _Omnipresence_: _Mat. 28:20—_“I am with you always”; _Eph.
    1:23—_“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” _Omniscience_:
    _Mat. 9:4—_“Jesus knowing their thoughts”; _John 2:24, 25—_“knew
    all men ... knew what was in man”; _16:30—_“knowest all things”;
    _Acts 1:24—_“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a
    prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the
    attitude of the disciples toward their Master; _1 Cor. 4:5—_“until
    the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of
    darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”; _Col.
    2:3—_“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
    hidden.” _Omnipotence_: _Mat. 27:18—_“All authority hath been
    given unto me in heaven and on earth”; _Rev. 1:8—_“the Lord God,
    which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”

    Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus’
    preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal
    conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and
    divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a
    heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly
    appearance; _e. g._: the tabernacle, in _Heb. 8:5_; Jerusalem, in
    _Gal. 4:25_ and _Rev. 21:10_; the kingdom of God in _Mat. 13:24_;
    much more the Messiah, in _John 6:62—_“ascending where he was
    before”; _8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am”; _17:4, 5—_“glory
    which I had with thee before the world was” _17:24—_“thou lovedst
    me before the foundation of the world.” This view that Jesus
    existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means
    simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted
    by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from
    an ideal, preëxistence.

    Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words ‘In the beginning’_
    (John 1:1)_ suggest that the author is about to write a second
    book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.” As creation
    presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is
    assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν
    indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of
    mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the
    Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into
    being, it is said that the Logos _was_, and that the Logos was
    _God_. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view
    we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham
    preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning
    of Jesus in _John 8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am”; _cf._
    _Col. 1:17—_“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the
    personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is
    absolute existence” (Lightfoot); _John 1:15—_“He that cometh after
    me is become before me: for he was before me” = not that Jesus was
    _born_ earlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months
    later, but that he _existed_ earlier. He stands before John in
    rank, because he existed long before John in time; _6:62—_“the Son
    of man ascending where he was before”; _16:28—_“I came out from
    the Father, and am come into the world.” So _Is. 9:6, 7_, calls
    Christ “_Everlasting Father_” = eternity is an attribute of the
    Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis,
    1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One, ‘whose goings forth
    have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’_ (Micah
    5:2). _‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no
    end,’ just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”


(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.

We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated
power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of
all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men.
Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are
characteristic of omnipotence.


    _Creation_: _John 1:3—_“All things were made through him”; _1 Cor.
    8:6—_“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”; _Col.
    1:16—_“all things have been created through him, and unto him”;
    _Heb, 1:10—_“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation
    of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”; _3:3,
    4—_“he that built all things is God” = Christ, the builder of the
    house of Israel, is the God who made all things; _Rev. 3:14—_“the
    beginning of the creation of God” (_cf._ Plato: “Mind is the ἀρχή
    of motion”). _Upholding_: _Col. 1:17—_“in him all things consist”
    (marg. “_hold together_”); _Heb. 1:3—_“upholding all things by the
    word of his power.” _Raising the dead and judging the world_:
    _John 5:27-29—_“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in
    the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”; _Mat.
    25:31, 32—_“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall
    be gathered all the nations.” If our argument were addressed
    wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ’s work in the world
    as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity.
    [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 153;
    _per contra_, see Examination of Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, 72.]

    Statements of Christ’s creative and of his upholding activity are
    combined in _John 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ
    ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—_“All things were made
    through him; and without him was not anything made. That which
    hath been made was life in him” (marg.). Westcott: “It would be
    difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities
    in favor of any reading than that which supports this
    punctuation.” Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that
    the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ’s being; 2. is
    not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge,
    Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as
    well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things
    were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,” but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.”
    Christian believers “Behind creation’s throbbing screen Catch
    movements of the great Unseen.”

    Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a
    philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce
    the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or
    other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of
    revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of
    God to our deep and reverential homage.” Would that such
    scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature,
    and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the
    Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ’s hand in the
    physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of
    the universe than all the mere scientists put together.

    _Col 1:17—_“In him all things consist,” or “hold together,” means
    nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the
    universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that
    the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as
    if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:
    “Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly
    according to certain laws.” Lightfoot: “Gravitation is an
    expression of the mind of Christ.” Evolution also is a method of
    his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and
    nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds
    together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak
    of a “universe.” Without him there would be no intellectual bond,
    no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of
    induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The
    medium of interaction between things is also the medium of
    intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws
    and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw
    and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself
    (_John 12:32_) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven
    and earth (_Col. 1:20_). In Christ “the law appears, Drawn out in
    living characters,” because he is the ground and source of all
    law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in
    Creation, 6-12.


(_e_) He receives honor and worship due only to God.

In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already
cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which
divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship
offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.


    _John 5:23—_“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the
    Father”; _14:14—_“If ye shall ask me [so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.]
    anything in my name, that will I do”; _Acts 7:59—_“Stephen,
    calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”
    (_cf._ _Luke 23:46_—Jesus’ words: “Father, into thy hands I
    commend my spirit”); _Rom. 10:9—_“confess with thy mouth Jesus as
    Lord”; _13—_“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
    be saved” (_cf._ _Gen. 4:26—_“Then began men to call upon the name
    of Jehovah”); _1 Cor. 11:24, 25—_“this do in remembrance of me” =
    worship of Christ; _Heb. 1:6—_“let all the angels of God worship
    him”; _Phil. 2:10, 11—_“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow
    ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”; _Rev.
    5:12-14—_“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the
    power....”; _2 Pet. 3:18—_“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be
    the glory”; _2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—_“to whom be the glory for
    ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply
    his deity. See also _1 Pet. 3:15—_“Sanctify in your hearts Christ
    as Lord,” and _Eph. 5:21—_“subjecting yourselves one to another in
    the fear of Christ.” Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards
    Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See
    Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 266, 366.

    Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic
    liturgy of the ‘Teaching’ we read: ‘Hosanna to the God of David’;
    Ignatius styles him repeatedly God ‘begotten and unbegotten, come
    in the flesh’; speaking once of ‘the blood of God’, in evident
    allusion to _Acts 20:28_; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the
    Pauline words and calls him the ‘architect and world-builder by
    whom [God] created the heavens’, and names him God (chap. vii);
    Hermas speaks of him as ‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created
    every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin,
    who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the
    second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read: ‘Brethren,
    it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as
    the Judge of the living and the dead.’ And Ignatius describes him
    as ‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was
    before the eternities with the Father.’ ”

    These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw
    in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the
    precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful
    massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish
    savages was heard to ask: “Who was that ‘Lord Jesus’ that they
    were calling to?” In their death agonies, the Christians, like
    Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning
    quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of
    Charles Lamb, when “in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he
    and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear
    suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion,
    ‘And if Christ entered this room?’ changed his tone at once and
    stuttered out as his manner was when moved: ‘You see—if Shakespere
    entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’ ” On
    prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in
    Hastings’ Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten
    Kirche, 9, 288.


(_f_) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.

We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for
the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the
formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages
in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon
God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the
Father.


    _The formula of baptism_: _Mat. 28:19—_“baptising them into the
    name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; _cf._
    _Acts 2:38—_“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus
    Christ”; _Rom. 6:3—_“baptized into Christ Jesus.” “In the common
    baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the
    Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.” It would be
    both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the
    Father and of Moses.

    _The apostolic benedictions_: _1 Cor. 1:3—_“Grace to you and peace
    from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; _2 Cor.
    13:14—_“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
    and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” “In the
    benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to
    impart it. But why do we find ‘God,’ instead of simply ‘the
    Father,’ as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the
    Father who does not become man or have a historical existence.
    Elsewhere he is specially called ‘_God the Father_,’ to
    distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (_Gal.
    1:3_; _Eph. 3:14_; _6:23_).”

    _Other passages_: _John 5:23—_“that all may honor the Son, even as
    they honor the Father”; _John 14:1—_“believe in God, believe also
    in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com., _in loco_);
    _17:3—_“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only
    true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”; _Mat.
    11:27—_“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any
    know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
    willeth to reveal him”; _1 Cor. 12:4-6—_“the same Spirit ... the
    same Lord [Christ] ... the same God” [the Father] bestow spiritual
    gifts, _e. g._, faith: _Rom. 10:17—_“belief cometh of hearing, and
    hearing by the word of Christ”; peace: _Col. 3:15—_“let the peace
    of Christ rule in your hearts.” _2 Thess. 2:16, 17—_“now our lord
    Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your
    hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness
    of the Father and the Son (Lillie). _Eph. 5:5—_“kingdom of Christ
    and God”; _Col. 3:1—_“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God”
    = participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern
    divan held not only the monarch but his son; _Rev. 20:6—_“priests
    of God and of Christ”; _22:3—_“the throne of God and of the Lamb”;
    _16—_“the root and the offspring of David” = both the Lord of
    David and his son. Hackett: “As the dying Savior said to the
    Father, ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’_ (Luke 23:46)_, so
    the dying Stephen said to the Savior, ‘receive my spirit’_ (Acts
    7:59)_.”


(_g_) Equality with God is expressly claimed.

Here we may refer to Jesus’ testimony to himself, already treated of among
the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see
pages 189, 190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by
Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.


    _John 5:18—_“called God his own Father, making himself equal with
    God”; _Phil. 2:6—_“who, existing in the form of God, counted not
    the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted
    not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ
    made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he
    claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass
    of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims
    to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived,
    and, in either case, _Christus, si non Deus, non bonus_. See
    Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.


(_h_) Further proof of Christ’s deity may be found in the application to
him of the phrases: “Son of God,” “Image of God”; in the declarations of
his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the
Godhead.


    _Mat. 26:63, 64—_“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell
    us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto
    him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies.
    _Col. 1:15—_“the image of the invisible God”; _Heb. 1:3—_“the
    effulgence of his [the Father’s] glory, and the very image of his
    substance”; _John 10:30—_“I and the Father are one”; _14:9—_“he
    that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; _17:11, 22—_“that they
    may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς; _unum_, not _unus_; one
    substance, not one person. “_Unum_ is antidote to the Arian,
    _sumus_ to the Sabellian heresy.” _Col. 2:9—_“in him dwelleth all
    the fulness of the Godhead bodily”; _cf._ _1:19—_“for it was the
    pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;”
    or (marg.) “_for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in
    him_.” _John 16:15—_“all things whatsoever the Father hath are
    mine”; _17:10—_“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are
    mine.”

    Meyer on _John 10:30—_“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian
    understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words
    ‘_are one_’ is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise
    of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words
    themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in
    them.” Dalman, The Words of Jesus: “Nowhere do we find that Jesus
    called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a
    merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which
    others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or
    were destined to acquire.” We may add that while in the lower
    sense there are many “_sons of God_,” there is but one “_only
    begotten Son_.”


(_i_) These proofs of Christ’s deity from the New Testament are
corroborated by Christian experience.

Christian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior,
perfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and
adoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian
experience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and
reconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was
alienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through
Jesus’s death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also
compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son
through whom we come to the Father.

Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to
Jesus’ claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the
Bible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has
saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the
lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of
Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ’s absolute Godhead. It is
the church’s consciousness of her Lord’s divinity, indeed, and not mere
speculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has
compelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.


    In the letter of Pliny to Trajan, it is said of the early
    Christians “quod essent soliti carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere
    invicem.” The prayers and hymns of the church show what the church
    has believed Scripture to teach. Dwight Moody is said to have
    received his first conviction of the truth of the gospel from
    hearing the concluding words of a prayer, “For Christ’s sake,
    Amen,” when awakened from physical slumber in Dr. Kirk’s church,
    Boston. These words, wherever uttered, imply man’s dependence and
    Christ’s deity. See New Englander, 1878:432. In _Eph. 4:32_, the
    Revised Version substitutes “_in Christ_” for “for Christ’s sake.”
    The exact phrase “for Christ’s sake” is not found in the N. T. in
    connection with prayer, although the O. T. phrase “for my name’s
    sake”_ (Ps. 25:11)_ passes into the N. T. phrase “in the name of
    Jesus”_ (Phil. 2:10)_; _cf._ _Ps. 72:15—_“men shall pray for him
    continually” = the words of the hymn: “For him shall endless
    prayer be made, And endless blessings crown his head.” All this is
    proof that the idea of prayer for Christ’s sake is in Scripture,
    though the phrase is absent.

    A caricature scratched on the wall of the Palatine palace in Rome,
    and dating back to the third century, represents a human figure
    with an ass’s head, hanging upon a cross, while a man stands
    before it in the attitude of worship. Under the effigy is this
    ill-spelled inscription: “Alexamenos adores his God.”

    This appeal to the testimony of Christian consciousness was first
    made by Schleiermacher. William E. Gladstone: “All I write, and
    all I think, and all I hope, is based upon the divinity of our
    Lord, the one central hope of our poor, wayward race.” E. G.
    Robinson: “When you preach salvation by faith in Christ, you
    preach the Trinity.” W. G. T. Shedd: “The construction of the
    doctrine of the Trinity started, not from the consideration of the
    three persons, but from belief in the deity of one of them.” On
    the worship of Christ in the authorized services of the Anglican
    church, see Stanley, Church and State, 333-335; Liddon, Divinity
    of our Lord, 514.


In contemplating passages apparently inconsistent with those now cited, in
that they impute to Christ weakness and ignorance, limitation and
subjection, we are to remember, first, that our Lord was truly man, as
well as truly God, and that this ignorance and weakness may be predicated
of him as the God-man in whom deity and humanity are united; secondly,
that the divine nature itself was in some way limited and humbled during
our Savior’s earthly life, and that these passages may describe him as he
was in his estate of humiliation, rather than in his original and present
glory; and, thirdly, that there is an order of office and operation which
is consistent with essential oneness and equality, but which permits the
Father to be spoken of as first and the Son as second. These statements
will be further elucidated in the treatment of the present doctrine and in
subsequent examination of the doctrine of the Person of Christ.


    There are certain things of which Christ was ignorant: _Mark
    13:32—_“of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the
    angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” He was subject
    to physical fatigue: _John 4:6—_“Jesus therefore, being wearied
    with his journey, sat thus by the well.” There was a limitation
    connected with Christ’s taking of human flesh: _Phil.
    2:7—_“emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in
    the likeness of men”; _John 14:28—_“the Father is greater than I.”
    There is a subjection, as respects order of office and operation,
    which is yet consistent with equality of essence and oneness with
    God; _1 Cor. 15:28—_“then shall the Son also himself be subjected
    to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all
    in all.” This must be interpreted consistently with _John
    17:5—_“glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I
    had with thee before the world was,” and with _Phil. 2:6_, where
    this glory is described as being “_the form of God_” and
    “_equality with God_.”

    Even in his humiliation, Christ was the Essential Truth, and
    ignorance in him never involved error or false teaching. Ignorance
    on his part might make his teaching at times incomplete,—it never
    in the smallest particular made his teaching false. Yet here we
    must distinguish between what he _intended_ to teach and what was
    merely _incidental_ to his teaching. When he said: Moses “wrote of
    me”_ (John 5:46)_ and “David in the Spirit called him Lord”_ (Mat.
    22:43)_, if his purpose was to teach the authorship of the
    Pentateuch and of the 110th Psalm, we should regard his words as
    absolutely authoritative. But it is possible that he intended only
    to _locate_ the passages referred to, and if so, his words cannot
    be used to exclude critical conclusions as to their authorship.
    Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 136—“If he spoke of Moses or David,
    it was only to identify the passage. The authority of the earlier
    dispensation did not rest upon its record being due to Moses, nor
    did the appropriateness of the Psalm lie in its being uttered by
    David. There is no evidence that the question of authorship ever
    came before him.” Adamson rather more precariously suggests that
    “there may have been a lapse of memory in Jesus’ mention of
    ‘Zachariah, son of Barachiah’_ (Mat. 23:35)_, since this was a
    matter of no spiritual import.”

    For assertions of Jesus’ knowledge, see _John 2:24, 25—_“he knew
    all men ... he needed not that any one should bear witness
    concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;
    _6:64—_“Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed
    not, and who it was that should betray him”; _12:33—_“this he
    said, signifying by what manner of death he should die”;
    _21:19—_“Now this he spake, signifying by what manner of death he
    [Peter] should glorify God”; _13:1—_“knowing that his hour was
    come that he should depart”; _Mat. 25:31—_“when the Son of man
    shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall
    he sit on the throne of his glory” = he knew that he was to act as
    final judge of the human race. Other instances are mentioned by
    Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49: 1. Jesus’ knowledge of Peter
    (_John 1:42_); 2. his finding Philip (_1:43_); 3. his recognition
    of Nathanael (_1:47-50_); 4. of the woman of Samaria (_4:17-19,
    39_); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (_Luke 5:6-9_; _John
    21:6_); 6. death of Lazarus (_John 11:14_); 7. the ass’s colt
    (_Mat. 21:2_); 8. of the upper room (_Mark 14:15_); 9. of Peter’s
    denial (_Mat. 26:34_); 10. of the manner of his own death (_John
    12:33_; _18:32_); 11. of the manner of Peter’s death (_John
    21:19_); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (_Mat. 24:2_).

    On the other hand there are assertions and implications of Jesus’
    ignorance: he did not know the day of the end (_Mark 13:32_),
    though even here he intimates his superiority to angels;
    _5:30-34—_“Who touched my garments?” though even here power had
    gone forth from him to heal; _John 11:34—_“Where have ye laid
    him?” though here he is about to raise Lazarus from the dead;
    _Mark 11:13—_“seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came,
    if haply he might find anything thereon” = he did not know that it
    had no fruit, yet he had power to curse it. With these evidences
    of the limitations of Jesus’ knowledge, we must assent to the
    judgment of Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 33—“We must decline to
    stake the authority of Jesus on a question of literary criticism”;
    and of Gore, Incarnation, 195—“That the use by our Lord of such a
    phrase as ‘_Moses wrote of me_’ binds us to the Mosaic authorship
    of the Pentateuch as a whole, I do not think we need to yield.”
    See our section on The Person of Christ; also Rush Rhees, Life of
    Jesus, 243, 244. _Per contra_, see Swayne, Our Lord’s Knowledge as
    Man; and Crooker, The New Bible, who very unwisely claims that
    belief in a Kenosis involves the surrender of Christ’s authority
    and atonement.

    It is inconceivable that any mere _creature_ should say, “God is
    greater than I am,” or should be spoken of as ultimately and in a
    mysterious way becoming “subject to God.” In his state of
    humiliation Christ was subject to the Spirit (_Acts 1:2—_“after
    that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit”;
    _10:38—_“God anointed him with the Holy Spirit ... for God was
    with him”; _Heb.9:14—_“through the eternal Spirit offered himself
    without blemish unto God”), but in his state of exaltation Christ
    is Lord of the Spirit (κυρίου πνεύματος—_2 Cor. 3:18_—Meyer),
    giving the Spirit and working through the Spirit. _Heb. 2:7_,
    marg.—“Thou madest him for a little while lower than the angels.”
    On the whole subject, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 262, 351;
    Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Liddon, Our Lord’s
    Divinity, 127, 207, 458; _per contra_, see Examination of Liddon,
    252, 294; Professors of Andover Seminary, Divinity of Christ.


C. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.


(_a_) He is spoken of as God; (_b_) the attributes of God are ascribed to
him, such as life, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence,
omniscience, omnipotence; (_c_) he does the works of God, such as
creation, regeneration, resurrection; (_d_) he receives honor due only to
God; (_e_) he is associated with God on a footing of equality, both in the
formula of baptism and in the apostolic benedictions.


    (_a_) _Spoken of as God._ _Acts 5:3, 4—_“lie to the Holy Spirit
    ... not lied unto men, but unto God”; _1 Cor. 3:16—_“ye are a
    temple of God ... the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”; _6:19—_“your
    body is a temple of the Holy Spirit”; _12:4-6 _“same Spirit ...
    same Lord ... same God, who worketh all things in all”—“The divine
    Trinity is here indicated in an ascending climax, in such a way
    that we pass from the Spirit who bestows the gifts to the Lord
    [Christ] who is served by means of them, and finally to God, who
    as the absolute first cause and possessor of all Christian powers
    works the entire sum of all charismatic gifts in all who are
    gifted” (Meyer in _loco_).

    (_b_) _Attributes of God._ Life: _Rom. 8:2—_“Spirit of life.”
    Truth: _John 16:13 _“Spirit of truth.” Love: _Rom. 15:30—_“love of
    the Spirit.” Holiness: _Eph. 4:30—_“the Holy Spirit of God.”
    Eternity: _Heb. 9:14—_“the eternal Spirit.” Omnipresence: _Ps.
    139:7—_“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?” Omniscience: _1 Cor.
    12:11—_“all these [including gifts of healings and miracles]
    worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one
    severally even as he will.”

    (_c_) _Works of God._ Creation: _Gen. 1:2_, marg.—“Spirit of God
    was brooding upon the face of the waters.” Casting out of demons:
    _Mat. 12:28—_“But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons.”
    Conviction of sin: _John 16:8—_“convict the world in respect of
    sin.” Regeneration: _John 3:8—_“born of the Spirit”; _Tit.
    3:5—_“renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Resurrection: _Rom.
    8:11—_“give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit”;
    _1 Cor. 15:45—_“The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

    (_d_) _Honor due to God._ _1 Cor. 3:16—_“ye are a temple of God
    ... the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”—he who inhabits the temple
    is the object of worship there. See also the next item.

    (_e_) _Associated with God._ Formula of baptism: _Mat.
    28:19—_“baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son
    and of the Holy Spirit.” If the baptismal formula is worship, then
    we have here worship paid to the Spirit. Apostolic benedictions:
    _2 Cor. 13:14—_“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of
    God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” If the
    apostolic benedictions are prayers, then we have here a prayer to
    the Spirit. _1 Pet. 1:2—_“foreknowledge of God the Father ...
    sanctification of the Spirit ... sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
    Christ.”

    On _Heb. 9:14_, Kendrick, Com. _in loco_, interprets: “Offers
    himself by virtue of an eternal spirit which dwells within him and
    imparts to his sacrifice a spiritual and an eternal efficacy. The
    ‘spirit’ here spoken of was not, then, the ‘Holy Spirit’; it was
    not his purely divine nature; it was that blending of his divine
    nature with his human personality which forms the mystery of his
    being, that ‘spirit of holiness’ by virtue of which he was
    declared ‘_the Son of God with power_,’ on account of his
    resurrection from the dead.” Hovey adds a note to Kendrick’s
    Commentary, _in loco_, as follows: “This adjective ‘_eternal_’
    naturally suggests that the word ‘_Spirit_’ refers to the higher
    and divine nature of Christ. His truly human nature, on its
    spiritual side, was indeed eternal as to the future, but so also
    is the spirit of every man. The unique and superlative value of
    Christ’s self-sacrifice seems to have been due to the impulse of
    the divine side of his nature.” The phrase “eternal spirit” would
    then mean his divinity. To both these interpretations we prefer
    that which makes the passage refer to the Holy Spirit, and we cite
    in support of this view _Acts 1:2—_“he had given commandment
    through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles”; _10:38—_“God anointed
    him with the Holy Spirit.” On _1 Cor. 2:10_, Mason, Faith of the
    Gospel, 63, remarks: “The Spirit of God finds nothing even in God
    which baffles his scrutiny. His ‘search’ is not a seeking for
    knowledge yet beyond him.... Nothing but God could search the
    depths of God.”


As spirit is nothing less than the inmost principle of life, and the
spirit of man is man himself, so the spirit of God must be God (see 1 Cor.
2:11—Meyer). Christian experience, moreover, expressed as it is in the
prayers and hymns of the church, furnishes an argument for the deity of
the Holy Spirit similar to that for the deity of Jesus Christ. When our
eyes are opened to see Christ as a Savior, we are compelled to recognize
the work in us of a divine Spirit who has taken of the things of Christ
and has shown them to us; and this divine Spirit we necessarily
distinguish both from the Father and from the Son. Christian experience,
however, is not an original and independent witness to the deity of the
Holy Spirit: it simply shows what the church has held to be the natural
and unforced interpretation of the Scriptures, and so confirms the
Scripture argument already adduced.


    The Holy Spirit is God himself personally present in the believer.
    E. G. Robinson: “If ‘Spirit of God’ no more implies deity than
    does ‘angel of God,’ why is not the Holy Spirit called simply the
    angel or messenger, of God?” Walker, The Spirit and the
    Incarnation, 337—“The Holy Spirit is God in his innermost being or
    essence, the principle of life of both the Father and the Son;
    that in which God, both as Father and Son, does everything, and in
    which he comes to us and is in us increasingly through his
    manifestations. Through the working and indwelling of this Holy
    Spirit, God in his person of Son was fully incarnate in Christ.”
    Gould, Am. Com. on _1 Cor. 2:11_—“For who among men knoweth the
    things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even
    so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”—“The
    analogy must not be pushed too far, as if the Spirit of God and
    God were coëxtensive terms, as the corresponding terms are,
    substantially, in man. The point of the analogy is evidently
    _self-knowledge_, and in both cases the contrast is between the
    spirit within and anything outside.” Andrew Murray, Spirit of
    Christ, 140—“We must not expect always to feel the power of the
    Spirit when it works. Scripture links power and weakness in a
    wonderful way, not as succeeding each other but as existing
    together. ‘I was with you in weakness ... my preaching was in
    power’_ (1 Cor. 2:3)_; ‘when I am weak then am I strong’_ (2 Cor.
    12:10)_. The power is the power of God given to faith, and faith
    grows strong in the dark.... He who would command nature must
    first and most absolutely obey her.... We want to get possession
    of the Power, and use it. God wants the Power to get possession of
    us, and use us.”


This proof of the deity of the Holy Spirit is not invalidated by the
limitations of his work under the Old Testament dispensation. John
7:39—“for the Holy Spirit was not yet”—means simply that the Holy Spirit
could not fulfill his peculiar office as Revealer of Christ until the
atoning work of Christ should be accomplished.


    _John 7:39_ is to be interpreted in the light of other Scriptures
    which assert the agency of the Holy Spirit under the old
    dispensation (_Ps. 51:11—_“take not thy holy Spirit from me”) and
    which describe his peculiar office under the new dispensation
    (_John 16:14, 15—_“he shall take of mine, and shall declare it
    unto you”). Limitation in the _manner_ of the Spirit’s work in the
    O. T. involved a limitation in the _extent_ and _power_ of it
    also. Pentecost was the flowing forth of a tide of spiritual
    influence which had hitherto been dammed up. Henceforth the Holy
    Spirit was the Spirit of Jesus Christ, taking of the things of
    Christ and showing them, applying his finished work to human
    hearts, and rendering the hitherto localized Savior omnipresent
    with his scattered followers to the end of time.

    Under the conditions of his humiliation, Christ was a servant. All
    authority in heaven and earth was given him only after his
    resurrection. Hence he could not send the Holy Spirit until he
    ascended. The mother can show off her son only when he is fully
    grown. The Holy Spirit could reveal Christ only when there was a
    complete Christ to reveal. The Holy Spirit could fully sanctify,
    only after the example and motive of holiness were furnished in
    Christ’s life and death. Archer Butler: “The divine Artist could
    not fitly descend to make the copy, before the original had been
    provided.”

    And yet the Holy Spirit is “the eternal Spirit”_ (Heb. 9:14)_, and
    he not only existed, but also wrought, in Old Testament times. _2
    Pet. 1:21—_“men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
    Spirit”—seems to fix the meaning of the phrase “the Holy Spirit,”
    where it appears in the O. T. Before Christ “the Holy Spirit was
    not yet”_ (John 7:39)_, just as before Edison electricity was not
    yet. There was just as much electricity in the world before Edison
    as there is now. Edison has only taught us its existence and how
    to use it. Still we can say that, before Edison, electricity, as a
    means of lighting, warming and transporting people, had no
    existence. So until Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, as the revealer of
    Christ, “_was not yet_.” Augustine calls Pentecost the _dies
    natalis_, or birthday, of the Holy Spirit; and for the same reason
    that we call the day when Mary brought forth her firstborn son the
    birthday of Jesus Christ, though before Abraham was born, Christ
    was. The Holy Spirit had been engaged in the creation, and had
    inspired the prophets, but _officially_, as Mediator between men
    and Christ, “_the Holy Spirit was not yet_.” He could not show the
    things of Christ until the things of Christ were ready to be
    shown. See Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 19-25; Prof. J. S.
    Gubelmann, Person and Work of the Holy Spirit in O. T. Times. For
    proofs of the deity of the Holy Spirit, see Walker, Doctrine of
    the Holy Spirit; Hare, Mission of the Comforter; Parker, The
    Paraclete; Cardinal Manning, Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost;
    Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350. Further references will be
    given in connection with the proof of the Holy Spirit’s
    personality.


2. Intimations of the Old Testament.


The passages which seem to show that even in the Old Testament there are
three who are implicitly recognized as God may be classed under four
heads:


A. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the Godhead.


(_a_) The plural noun אלהים is employed, and that with a plural verb—a use
remarkable, when we consider that the singular אל was also in existence;
(_b_) God uses plural pronouns in speaking of himself; (_c_) Jehovah
distinguishes himself from Jehovah; (_d_) a Son is ascribed to Jehovah;
(_e_) the Spirit of God is distinguished from God; (_f_) there are a
threefold ascription and a threefold benediction.


    (_a_) _Gen. 20:13—_“God caused [plural] me to wander from my
    father’s house”; _35:7—_“built there an altar, and called the
    place El-Beth-el; _because there God was revealed_ [plural] unto
    him.” (_b_) _Gen. 1:26—_“Let us make man in our image, after our
    likeness”; _3:22—_“Behold, the man is become as one of us”;
    _11:7—_“Come, let us go down, and there confound their language”;
    _Is. 6:8—_“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (_c_) _Gen.
    19:24—_“Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone
    and fire from Jehovah out of heaven”; _Hos. 1:7—_“I will have
    mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by Jehovah,
    their God”; _cf._ _2 Tim. 1:18—_“The Lord grant unto him to find
    mercy of the Lord in that day”—though Ellicott here decides
    adversely to the Trinitarian reference. (_d_) _Ps. 2:7—_“Thou art
    my son; this day have I begotten thee”; _Prov. 30:4—_“Who hath
    established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what
    is his son’s name, if thou knowest?” (_e_) _Gen. 1:1 and 2,
    marg.—_“God created ... the Spirit of God was brooding”; _Ps.
    33:6—_“By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the
    host of them by the breath [spirit] of his mouth”; _Is.
    48:16—_“the Lord Jehovah hath sent me, and his Spirit”; _63:7,
    10—_“loving kindnesses of Jehovah ... grieved his holy Spirit.”
    (_f_) _Is. 6:3_—the trisagion: “_Holy, holy, holy_”; _Num.
    6:24-26—_“Jehovah bless thee, and keep thee: Jehovah make his face
    to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: Jehovah lift up his
    countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

    It has been suggested that as Baal was worshiped in different
    places and under different names, as Baal-Berith, Baal-hanan,
    Baal-peor, Baal-zeebub, and his priests could call upon any one of
    these as possessing certain personified attributes of Baal, while
    yet the whole was called by the plural term “Baalim,” and Elijah
    could say: “Call ye upon your Gods,” so “Elohim” may be the
    collective designation of the God who was worshiped in different
    localities; see Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish
    Church, 229. But this ignores the fact that Baal is always
    addressed in the singular, never in the plural, while the plural
    “Elohim” is the term commonly used in addresses to God. This seems
    to show that “Baalim” is a collective term, while “Elohim” is not.
    So when Ewald, Lehre von Gott, 2:333, distinguishes five names of
    God, corresponding to five great periods of the history of Israel,
    _viz._, the “Almighty” of the Patriarchs, the “Jehovah” of the
    Covenant, the “God of Hosts” of the Monarchy, the “Holy One” of
    the Deuteronomist and the later prophetic age, and the “Our Lord”
    of Judaism, he ignores the fact that these designations are none
    of them confined to the times to which they are attributed, though
    they may have been predominantly used in those times.


The fact that אלהים is sometimes used in a narrower sense, as applicable
to the Son (Ps. 45:6; _cf._ Heb. 1:8), need not prevent us from believing
that the term was originally chosen as containing an allusion to a certain
plurality in the divine nature. Nor is it sufficient to call this plural a
simple _pluralis majestaticus_; since it is easier to derive this common
figure from divine usage than to derive the divine usage from this common
figure—especially when we consider the constant tendency of Israel to
polytheism.


    _Ps. 45:6_; _cf._ _Heb. 1:8—_“of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O
    God, is for ever and ever.” Here it is God who calls Christ
    “_God_” or “_Elohim_.” The term Elohim has here acquired the
    significance of a singular. It was once thought that the royal
    style of speech was a custom of a later date than the time of
    Moses. Pharaoh does not use it. In _Gen. 41:41-44_, he says: “I
    have set thee over all the land of Egypt ... I am Pharaoh.” But
    later investigations seem to prove that the plural for God was
    used by the Canaanites before the Hebrew occupation. The one
    Pharaoh is called “my gods” or “my god,” indifferently. The word
    “master” is usually found in the plural in the O. T. (_cf._ _Gen.
    24:9, 51_; _39:19_; _40:1_). The plural gives utterance to the
    sense of awe. It signifies magnitude or completeness. (See The
    Bible Student, Aug. 1900:67.)

    This ancient Hebrew application of the plural to God is often
    explained as a mere plural of dignity, = one who combines in
    himself many reasons for adoration (אלהים from אלה to fear, to
    adore). Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:128-130, calls it a
    “quantitative plural,” signifying unlimited greatness. The Hebrews
    had many plural forms, where we should use the singular, as
    “heavens” instead of “heaven,” “waters” instead of “water.” We too
    speak of “news,” “wages,” and say “you” instead of “thou”; see F.
    W. Robertson, on Genesis, 12. But the Church Fathers, such as
    Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Theophilus, Epiphanius, and
    Theodoret, saw in this plural an allusion to the Trinity, and we
    are inclined to follow them. When finite things were pluralized to
    express man’s reverence, it would be far more natural to pluralize
    the name of God. And God’s purpose in securing this pluralization
    may have been more far-reaching and intelligent than man’s. The
    Holy Spirit who presided over the development of revelation may
    well have directed the use of the plural in general, and even the
    adoption of the plural name Elohim in particular, with a view to
    the future unfolding of truth with regard to the Trinity.

    We therefore dissent from the view of Hill, Genetic Philosophy,
    323, 330—“The Hebrew religion, even much later than the time of
    Moses, as it existed in the popular mind, was, according to the
    prophetic writings, far removed from a real monotheism, and
    consisted in the wavering acceptance of the preëminence of a
    tribal God, with a strong inclination towards a general
    polytheism. It is impossible therefore to suppose that anything
    approaching the philosophical monotheism of modern theology could
    have been elaborated or even entertained by primitive man....
    ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’_ (Ex. 20:3)_, the first
    precept of Hebrew monotheism, was not understood at first as a
    denial of the hereditary polytheistic faith, but merely as an
    exclusive claim to worship and obedience.” E. G. Robinson says, in
    a similar strain, that “we can explain the idolatrous tendencies
    of the Jews only on the supposition that they had lurking notions
    that their God was a merely national god. Moses seems to have
    understood the doctrine of the divine unity, but the Jews did
    not.”

    To the views of both Hill and Robinson we reply that the primitive
    intuition of God is not that of many, but that of One. Paul tells
    us that polytheism is a later and retrogressive stage of
    development, due to man’s sin (_Rom. 1:19-25_). We prefer the
    statement of McLaren: “The plural Elohim is not a survival from a
    polytheistic stage, but expresses the divine nature in the
    manifoldness of its fulnesses and perfections, rather than in the
    abstract unity of its being”—and, we may add, expresses the divine
    nature in its essential fulness, as a complex of personalities.
    See Conant, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 108; Green, Hebrew Grammar,
    306; Girdlestone, O. T. Synonyms, 38, 53; Alexander on _Psalm
    11:7_; _29:1_; _58:11_.


B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.


(_a_) The angel of Jehovah identifies himself with Jehovah; (_b_) he is
identified with Jehovah by others; (_c_) he accepts worship due only to
God. Though the phrase “angel of Jehovah” is sometimes used in the later
Scriptures to denote a merely human messenger or created angel, it seems
in the Old Testament, with hardly more than a single exception, to
designate the pre-incarnate Logos, whose manifestations in angelic or
human form foreshadowed his final coming in the flesh.


    (_a_) _Gen. 22:11, 16—_“the angel of Jehovah called unto him
    [Abraham, when about to sacrifice Isaac] ... By myself have I
    sworn, saith Jehovah”; _31:11, 13—_“the angel of God said unto me
    [Jacob] ... I am the God of Beth-el.” (_b_) _Gen. 16:9, 13—_“angel
    of Jehovah said unto her ... and she called the name of Jehovah
    that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth”; _48:15, 16—_“the
    God who hath fed me ... the angel who hath redeemed me.” (_c_)
    _Ex. 3:2, 4, 5—_“the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him ... God
    called unto him out of the midst of the bush ... put off thy shoes
    from off thy feet”; _Judges 13:20-22—_“angel of Jehovah
    ascended.... Manoah and his wife ... fell on their faces ...
    Manoah said ... We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”

    The “_angel of the Lord_” appears to be a human messenger in
    _Haggai 1:13—_“Haggai, Jehovah’s messenger”; a created angel in
    _Mat. 1:20—_“an angel of the Lord [called Gabriel] appeared unto”
    Joseph; in _Acts 3:26—_“an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip”;
    and in _12:7—_“an angel of the Lord stood by him” (Peter). But
    commonly, in the O.T., the “angel of Jehovah” is a theophany, a
    self-manifestation of God. The only distinction is that between
    Jehovah in himself and Jehovah in manifestation. The appearances
    of “_the angel of Jehovah_” seem to be preliminary manifestations
    of the divine Logos, as in _Gen. 18:2, 13—_“three men stood over
    against him [Abraham] ... And Jehovah said unto Abraham”; _Dan.
    3:25, 28—_“the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods....
    Blessed be the God ... who hath sent his angel.” The N.T. “_angel
    of the Lord_” does not permit, the O.T. “_angel of the Lord_”
    requires, worship (_Rev. 22:8, 9—_“See thou do it not”; _cf._ _Ex.
    3:5—_“put off thy shoes”). As supporting this interpretation, see
    Hengstenberg, Christology, 1:107-123; J. Pye Smith, Scripture
    Testimony to the Messiah. As opposing it, see Hofmann,
    Schriftbeweis, 1:329, 378; Kurtz, History of Old Covenant, 1:181.
    On the whole subject, see Bib. Sac., 1879:593-615.


C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.


    (_a_) Wisdom is represented as distinct from God, and as eternally
    existing with God; (_b_) the Word of God is distinguished from
    God, as executor of his will from everlasting.

    (_a_) _Prov. 8:1—_“Doth not wisdom cry?” _Cf._ _Mat.
    11:19—_“wisdom is justified by her works”; _Luke 7:35—_“wisdom is
    justified of all her children”; _11:49—_“Therefore also said the
    wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles”;
    _Prov. 8:22, 30, 31—_“Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his
    way, Before his works of old.... I was by him, as a master
    workman: And I was daily his delight.... And my delight was with
    the sons of men”; _cf._ _3:19—_“Jehovah by wisdom founded the
    earth,” and _Heb. 1:2—_“his Son ... through whom ... he made the
    worlds.” (_b_) _Ps. 107:20—_“He sendeth his word, and healeth
    them”; _119:89—_“For ever, O Jehovah, Thy word is settled in
    heaven”; _147:15-18—_“He sendeth out his commandment.... He
    sendeth out his word.”

    In the Apocryphal book entitled Wisdom, 7:26, 28, wisdom is
    described as “the brightness of the eternal light,” “the unspotted
    mirror of God’s majesty,” and “the image of his
    goodness”—reminding us of _Heb. 1:3—_“the effulgence of his glory,
    and the very image of his substance.” In Wisdom, 9:9, 10, wisdom
    is represented as being present with God when he made the world,
    and the author of the book prays that wisdom may be sent to him
    out of God’s holy heavens and from the throne of his glory. In 1
    Esdras 4:35-38, Truth in a similar way is spoken of as personal:
    “Great is the Truth and stronger than all things. All the earth
    calleth upon the Truth, and the heaven blesseth it; all works
    shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing. As
    for the Truth, it endureth and is always strong; it liveth and
    conquereth forevermore.”


It must be acknowledged that in none of these descriptions is the idea of
personality clearly developed. Still less is it true that John the apostle
derived his doctrine of the Logos from the interpretations of these
descriptions in Philo Judæus. John’s doctrine (John 1:1-18) is radically
different from the Alexandrian Logos-idea of Philo. This last is a
Platonizing speculation upon the mediating principle between God and the
world. Philo seems at times to verge towards a recognition of personality
in the Logos, though his monotheistic scruples lead him at other times to
take back what he has given, and to describe the Logos either as the
thought of God or as its expression in the world. But John is the first to
present to us a consistent view of this personality, to identify the Logos
with the Messiah, and to distinguish the Word from the Spirit of God.


    Dorner, in his History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ,
    1:13-45, and in his System of Doctrine, 1:348, 349, gives the best
    account of Philo’s doctrine of the Logos. He says that Philo calls
    the Logos ἀρχάγγελος, ἀρχιερεύς, δεύτερος θεός. Whether this is
    anything more than personification is doubtful, for Philo also
    calls the Logos the κόσμος νοητός. Certainly, so far as he makes
    the Logos a distinct personality, he makes him also a subordinate
    being. It is charged that the doctrine of the Trinity owes its
    origin to the Platonic philosophy in its Alexandrian union with
    Jewish theology. But Platonism had no Trinity. The truth is that
    by the doctrine of the Trinity Christianity secured itself against
    false heathen ideas of God’s multiplicity and immanence, as well
    as against false Jewish ideas of God’s unity and transcendence. It
    owes nothing to foreign sources.

    We need not assign to John’s gospel a later origin, in order to
    account for its doctrine of the Logos, any more than we need to
    assign a later origin to the Synoptics in order to account for
    their doctrine of a suffering Messiah. Both doctrines were equally
    unknown to Philo. Philo’s Logos does not and cannot become man. So
    says Dorner. Westcott, in Bible Commentary on John, Introd.,
    xv-xviii, and on John 1:1—“The theological use of the term [in
    John’s gospel] appears to be derived directly from the Palestinian
    _Memra_, and not from the Alexandrian _Logos_.” Instead of Philo’s
    doctrine being a stepping-stone from Judaism to Christianity, it
    was a stumbling-stone. It had no doctrine of the Messiah or of the
    atonement. Bennett and Adeny, Bib. Introd., 340—“The difference
    between Philo and John may be stated thus: Philo’s Logos is
    Reason, while John’s is Word; Philo’s is impersonal, while John’s
    is personal; Philo’s is not incarnate, while John’s is incarnate;
    Philo’s is not the Messiah, while John’s is the Messiah.”

    Philo lived from B. C. 10 or 20 to certainly A. D. 40, when he
    went at the head of a Jewish embassy to Rome, to persuade the
    Emperor to abstain from claiming divine honor from the Jews. In
    his De Opifice Mundi he says: “The Word is nothing else but the
    intelligible world.” He calls the Word the “chainband,” “pilot,”
    “steersman,” of all things. Gore, Incarnation, 69—“Logos in Philo
    must be translated ‘Reason.’ But in the Targums, or early Jewish
    paraphrases of the O. T., the ‘Word’ of Jehovah (_Memra_, _Devra_)
    is constantly spoken of as the efficient instrument of the divine
    action, in cases where the O. T. speaks of Jehovah himself, ‘The
    Word of God’ had come to be used personally, as almost equivalent
    to God manifesting himself, or God in action.” George H. Gilbert,
    in Biblical World, Jan. 1899:44—“John’s use of the term Logos was
    suggested by Greek philosophy, while at the same time the content
    of the word is Jewish.”

    Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 174-208—“The Stoics invested the Logos
    with personality. They were Monists and they made λόγος and ὕλη
    the active and the passive forms of the one principle. Some made
    God a mode of matter—_natura naturata_; others made matter a mode
    of God—_natura naturans_ = the world a self-evolution of God. The
    Platonic forms, as manifold expressions of a single λόγος, were
    expressed by a singular term, Logos, rather than the Logoi, of
    God. From this Logos proceed all forms of mind or reason. So held
    Philo: ‘The mind is an offshoot from the divine and happy soul (of
    God), an offshoot not separated from him, for nothing divine is
    cut off and disjoined, but only extended.’ Philo’s Logos is not
    only form but force—God’s creative energy—the eldest-born of the
    ‘I am,’ which robes itself with the world as with a vesture, the
    high priest’s robe, embroidered with all the forces of the seen
    and unseen worlds.”

    Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:53—“Philo carries the transcendence of
    God to its logical conclusions. The Jewish doctrine of angels is
    expanded in his doctrine of the Logos. The Alexandrian
    philosophers afterwards represented Christianity as a
    spiritualized Judaism. But a philosophical system dominated by the
    idea of the divine transcendence never could have furnished a
    motive for missionary labors like those of Paul. Philo’s belief in
    transcendence abated his redemptive hopes. But, conversely, the
    redemptive hopes of orthodox Judaism saved it from some of the
    errors of exclusive transcendence.” See a quotation from
    Siegfried, in Schürer’s History of the Jewish People, article on
    Philo: “Philo’s doctrine grew out of God’s distinction and
    distance from the world. It was dualistic. Hence the need of
    mediating principles, some being less than God and more than
    creature. The cosmical significance of Christ bridged the gulf
    between Christianity and contemporary Greek thought. Christianity
    stands for a God who is revealed. But a Logos-doctrine like that
    of Philo may reveal less than it conceals. Instead of God
    incarnate for our salvation, we may have merely a mediating
    principle between God and the world, as in Arianism.”

    The preceding statement is furnished in substance by Prof. William
    Adams Brown. With it we agree, adding only the remark that the
    Alexandrian philosophy gave to Christianity, not the substance of
    its doctrine, but only the terminology for its expression. The
    truth which Philo groped after, the Apostle John seized and
    published, as only he could, who had heard, seen, and handled “the
    Word of life”_ (1 John 1:1)._ “The Christian doctrine of the Logos
    was perhaps before anything else an effort to express how Jesus
    Christ was God (Θεός), and yet in another sense was not God (ὁ
    θεός); that is to say, was not the whole Godhead” (quoted in
    Marcus Dods, Expositors’ Bible, on _John 1:1_). See also Kendrick,
    in Christian Review, 26:369-399; Gloag, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,
    1891:45-57; Réville, Doctrine of the Logos in John and Philo;
    Godet on John, Germ. transl., 13, 135; Cudworth, Intellectual
    System, 2:320-333; Pressensé, Life of Jesus Christ, 83; Hagenbach,
    Hist. Doct., 1:114-117; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 59-71; Conant
    on Proverbs, 53.


D. Descriptions of the Messiah.


(_a_) He is one with Jehovah; (_b_) yet he is in some sense distinct from
Jehovah.


    (_a_) _Is. 9:6—_“unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given
    ... and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”; _Micah 5:2—_“thou Bethlehem
    ... which art little ... out of thee shall one come forth unto me
    that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old,
    from everlasting.” (_b_) _Ps. 45:6, 7—_“Thy throne, O God, is for
    ever and ever.... Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee”;
    _Mal 3:1—_“I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way
    before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his
    temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire.”
    Henderson, in his Commentary on this passage, points out that the
    Messiah is here called “_the Lord_” or “_the Sovereign_”—a title
    nowhere given in this form (with the article) to any but Jehovah;
    that he is predicted as coming to the temple as its proprietor;
    and that he is identified with the angel of the covenant,
    elsewhere shown to be one with Jehovah himself.


It is to be remembered, in considering this, as well as other classes of
passages previously cited, that no Jewish writer before Christ’s coming
had succeeded in constructing from them a doctrine of the Trinity. Only to
those who bring to them the light of New Testament revelation do they show
their real meaning.

Our general conclusion with regard to the Old Testament intimations must
therefore be that, while they do not by themselves furnish a sufficient
basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, they contain the germ of it, and
may be used in confirmation of it when its truth is substantially proved
from the New Testament.


    That the doctrine of the Trinity is not plainly taught in the
    Hebrew Scriptures is evident from the fact that Jews unite with
    Mohammedans in accusing trinitarians of polytheism. It should not
    surprise us that the Old Testament teaching on this subject is
    undeveloped and obscure. The first necessity was that the Unity of
    God should be insisted on. Until the danger of idolatry was past,
    a clear revelation of the Trinity might have been a hindrance to
    religious progress. The child now, like the race then, must learn
    the unity of God before it can profitably be taught the
    Trinity,—else it will fall into tritheism; see Gardiner, O. T. and
    N. T., 49. We should not therefore begin our proof of the Trinity
    with a reference to passages in the Old Testament. We should speak
    of these passages, indeed, as furnishing intimations of the
    doctrine rather than proof of it. Yet, after having found proof of
    the doctrine in the New Testament, we may expect to find traces of
    it in the Old which will corroborate our conclusions. As a matter
    of fact, we shall see that traces of the idea of a Trinity are
    found not only in the Hebrew Scriptures but in some of the heathen
    religions as well. E. G. Robinson: “The doctrine of the Trinity
    underlay the O. T., unperceived by its writers, was first
    recognized in the economic revelation of Christianity, and was
    first clearly enunciated in the necessary evolution of Christian
    doctrine.”



II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to
conceive of them as distinct Persons.


1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.


(_a_) Christ distinguishes the Father from himself as “another”; (_b_) the
Father and the Son are distinguished as the begetter and the begotten;
(_c_) the Father and the Son are distinguished as the sender and the sent.


    (_a_) _John 5:32, 37—_“It is another that beareth witness of me
    ... the Father that sent me, he hath borne witness of me.” (_b_)
    _Ps. 2:7—_“Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee”; _John
    1:14—_“the only begotten from the Father”; _18—_“the only begotten
    Son”; _3:16—_“gave his only begotten Son.” (_c_) _John 10:36—_“say
    ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,
    Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”; _Gal
    4:4—_“when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son.”
    In these passages the Father is represented as objective to the
    Son, the Son to the Father, and both the Father and Son to the
    Spirit.


2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.


(_a_) Jesus distinguishes the Spirit from himself and from the Father;
(_b_) the Spirit proceeds from the Father; (_c_) the Spirit is sent by the
Father and by the Son.


    (_a_) _John 14:16, 17—_“I will pray the Father, and he shall give
    you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the
    Spirit of truth”—or “_Spirit of the truth_,” = he whose work it is
    to reveal and apply the truth, and especially to make manifest him
    who is the truth. Jesus had been their Comforter: he now promises
    them another Comforter. If he himself was a person, then the
    Spirit is a person. (_b_) _John 15:26—_“the Spirit of truth which
    proceedeth from the Father.” (_c_) _John 14:26—_“the Comforter,
    even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name”;
    _15:26—_“when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
    from the Father”; _Gal. 4:6—_“God sent forth the Spirit of his Son
    into our hearts.” The Greek church holds that the Spirit proceeds
    from the Father only; the Latin church, that the Spirit proceeds
    both from the Father and from the Son. The true formula is: The
    Spirit proceeds from the Father _through_ or _by_ (not “and”) the
    Son. See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 263. Moberly,
    Atonement and Personality, 195—“The _Filioque_ is a valuable
    defence of the truth that the Holy Spirit is not simply the
    abstract second Person of the Trinity, but rather the Spirit of
    the incarnate Christ, reproducing Christ in human hearts, and
    revealing in them the meaning of true manhood.”


3. The Holy Spirit is a person.


A. Designations proper to personality are given him.

(_a_) The masculine pronoun ἐκεῖνος, though πνεῦμα is neuter; (_b_) the
name παράκλητος, which cannot be translated by “comfort”, or be taken as
the name of any abstract influence. The Comforter, Instructor, Patron,
Guide, Advocate, whom this term brings before us, must be a person. This
is evident from its application to Christ in 1 John 2:1—“we have an
Advocate—παράκλητον—with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”


    (_a_) _John 16:14—_“He (ἐκεῖνος) shall glorify me”; in _Eph. 1:14_
    also, some of the best authorities, including Tischendorf (8th
    ed.), read ὄς, the masculine pronoun: “_who is an earnest of our
    inheritance_.” But in _John 14:16-18_, παράκλητος is followed by
    the neuters ὁ and αὐτό, because πνεῦμα had intervened. Grammatical
    and not theological considerations controlled the writer. See G.
    B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 189-217, especially on the
    distinction between Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is
    another person than Christ, in spite of Christ’s saying of the
    coming of the Holy Spirit: “_I come unto you_.” (_b_) _John
    16:7—_“if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.”
    The word παράκλητος, as appears from _1 John 2:1_, quoted above,
    is a term of broader meaning than merely “Comforter.” The Holy
    Spirit is, indeed, as has been said, “the mother-principle in the
    Godhead,” and “_as one whom his mother comforteth_” so God by his
    Spirit comforts his children (_Is. 66:13_). But the Holy Spirit is
    also an Advocate of God’s claims in the soul, and of the soul’s
    interests in prayer (_Rom. 8:26—_“maketh intercession for us”). He
    comforts not only by being our advocate, but by being our
    instructor, patron, and guide; and all these ideas are found
    attaching to the word παράκλητος in good Greek usage. The word
    indeed is a verbal adjective, signifying “called to one’s aid,”
    hence a “helper”; the idea of encouragement is included in it, as
    well as those of comfort and of advocacy. See Westcott, Bible
    Com., on _John 14:16_; Cremer, Lexicon of N. T. Greek, _in voce_.

    T. Dwight, in S. S. Times, on _John 14:16_—“The fundamental
    meaning of the word παράκλητος, which is a verbal adjective, is
    ‘called to one’s aid,’ and thus, when used as a noun, it conveys
    the idea of ‘helper.’ This more general sense probably attaches to
    its use in John’s Gospel, while in the Epistle (_1 John 2:1, 2_)
    it conveys the idea of Jesus acting as advocate on our behalf
    before God as a Judge.” So the Latin _advocatus_ signifies one
    “called to”—_i. e._, called in to aid, counsel, plead. In this
    connection Jesus says: “I will not leave you orphans”_ (John
    14:18)_. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit, 228—“As the orphaned
    family, in the day of the parent’s death, need some friend who
    shall lighten their sense of loss by his own presence with them,
    so the Holy Spirit is ‘called in’ to supply the present love and
    help which the Twelve are losing in the death of Jesus.” A. A.
    Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 237—“The Roman ‘client,’ the poor and
    dependent man, called in his ‘patron’ to help him in all his
    needs. The patron thought for, advised, directed, supported,
    defended, supplied, restored, comforted his client in all his
    complications. The client, though weak, with a powerful patron,
    was socially and politically secure forever.”


B. His name is mentioned in immediate connection with other persons, and
in such a way as to imply his own personality.

(_a_) In connection with Christians; (_b_) in connection with Christ;
(_c_) in connection with the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son
are persons, the Spirit must be a person also.


    (_a_) _Acts 15:28—_“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us.”
    (_b_) _John 16:14—_“He shall glorify me: for he shall take of
    mine, and shall declare it unto you”; _cf._ _17:4—_“I glorified
    thee on the earth.” (_c_) _Mat. 28:29—_“baptizing them into the
    name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; _2 Cor.
    13:14—_“the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
    and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”; _Jude
    21—_“praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of
    God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” _1 Pet. 1:1,
    2—_“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in
    sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the
    blood of Jesus Christ.” Yet it is noticeable in all these passages
    that there is no obtrusion of the Holy Spirit’s personality, as if
    he desired to draw attention to himself. The Holy Spirit shows,
    not himself, but Christ. Like John the Baptist, he is a mere
    voice, and so is an example to Christian preachers, who are
    themselves “made ... sufficient as ministers ... of the Spirit”_
    (2 Cor. 3:6)_. His leading is therefore often unperceived; he so
    joins himself to us that we infer his presence only from the new
    and holy exercises of our own minds; he continues to work in us
    even when his presence is ignored and his purity is outraged by
    our sins.


C. He performs acts proper to personality.

That which searches, knows, speaks, testifies, reveals, convinces,
commands, strives, moves, helps, guides, creates, recreates, sanctifies,
inspires, makes intercession, orders the affairs of the church, performs
miracles, raises the dead—cannot be a mere power, influence, efflux, or
attribute of God, but must be a person.


    _Gen. 1:2_, marg.—“_the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face
    of the waters_”; _6:3—_“My Spirit shalt not strive with man for
    ever”; _Luke 12:12—_“the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very
    hour what ye ought to say”; _John 3:8—_“born of the Spirit”—here
    Bengel translates: “_the Spirit breathes where he wills, and thou
    hearest his voice_”—see also Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;
    _16:8—_“convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness,
    and of judgment”; _Acts 2:4—_“the Spirit gave them utterance”;
    _8:29—_“the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near”; _10:19, 20—_“the
    Spirit said unto him [Peter], Behold, three men seek thee.... go
    with them ... for I have sent them”; _13:2—_“the Holy Spirit said,
    Separate me Barnabas and Saul”; _16:6, 7—_“forbidden of the Holy
    Spirit ... Spirit of Jesus suffered them not”; _Rom. 8:11—_“give
    life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit”; _26—_“the
    Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... maketh intercession for us”;
    _15:19—_“in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the
    Holy Spirit”; _1 Cor. 2:10, 11—_“the Spirit searcheth all
    things.... things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”;
    _12:8-11_—distributes spiritual gifts “to each one severally even
    as he will”—here Meyer calls attention to the words “as he will,”
    as proving the personality of the Spirit; _2 Pet. 1:21—_“men spake
    from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; _1 Pet.
    1:2—_“sanctification of the Spirit.” How can a person be given in
    various measures? We answer, by being permitted to work in our
    behalf with various degrees of power. Dorner: “To be power does
    not belong to the impersonal.”


D. He is affected as a person by the acts of others.

That which can be resisted, grieved, vexed, blasphemed, must be a person;
for only a person can perceive insult and be offended. The blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost cannot be merely blasphemy against a power or
attribute of God, since in that case blasphemy against God would be a less
crime than blasphemy against his power. That against which the
unpardonable sin can be committed must be a person.


    _Is. 63:10—_“they rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit”; _Mat.
    12:31—_“Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but
    the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven”; _Acts
    5:3, 4, 9—_“lie to the Holy Ghost ... thou hast not lied unto men
    but unto God.... agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord”;
    _7:51—_“ye do always resist the Holy Spirit”; _Eph. 4:30—_“grieve
    not the Holy Spirit of God.” Satan cannot be “grieved.”
    Selfishness can be angered, but only love can be grieved.
    Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is like blaspheming one’s own mother.
    The passages just quoted show the Spirit’s possession of an
    emotional nature. Hence we read of “the love of the Spirit”_ (Rom.
    15:30)_. The unutterable sighings of the Christian in intercessory
    prayer (_Rom. 8:26, 27_) reveal the mind of the Spirit, and show
    the infinite depths of feeling which are awakened in God’s heart
    by the sins and needs of men. These deep desires and emotions
    which are only partially communicated to us, and which only God
    can understand, are conclusive proof that the Holy Spirit is a
    person. They are only the overflow into us of the infinite
    fountain of divine love to which the Holy Spirit unites us.

    As Christ in the garden “began to be sorrowful and sore troubled”_
    (Mat. 26:37)_, so the Holy Spirit is sorrowful and sore troubled
    at the ignoring, despising, resisting of his work, on the part of
    those whom he is trying to rescue from sin and to lead out into
    the freedom and joy of the Christian life. Luthardt, in S. S.
    Times, May 26, 1888—“Every sin can be forgiven—even the sin
    against the Son of man—except the sin against the Holy Spirit. The
    sin against the Son of man can be forgiven because he can be
    misconceived. For he did not appear as that which he really was.
    Essence and appearance, truth and reality, contradicted each
    other.” Hence Jesus could pray: “Father, forgive them, for they
    know not what they do”_ (Luke 23:34)_. The office of the Holy
    Spirit, however, is to show to men the nature of their conduct,
    and to sin against him is to sin against light and without excuse.
    See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 297-313. Salmond, in
    Expositor’s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 4:30_—“What love is in us
    points truly, though tremulously, to what love is in God. But in
    us love, in proportion as it is true and sovereign, has both its
    _wrath-side_ and its _grief-side_; and so must it be with God,
    however difficult for us to think it out.”


E. He manifests himself in visible form as distinct from the Father and
the Son, yet in direct connection with personal acts performed by them.


    _Mat. 3:16, 17—_“Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway
    from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he
    saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him;
    and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved
    Son, in whom I am well pleased”; _Luke 3:21, 22—_“Jesus also
    having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the
    Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a
    voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am
    well pleased.” Here are the prayer of Jesus, the approving voice
    of the Father, and the Holy Spirit descending in visible form to
    anoint the Son of God for his work. “I ad Jordanem, et videbis
    Trinitatem.”


F. This ascription to the Spirit of a personal subsistence distinct from
that of the Father and of the Son cannot be explained as personification;
for:

(_a_) This would be to interpret sober prose by the canons of poetry. Such
sustained personification is contrary to the genius of even Hebrew poetry,
in which Wisdom itself is most naturally interpreted as designating a
personal existence. (_b_) Such an interpretation would render a multitude
of passages either tautological, meaningless, or absurd,—as can be easily
seen by substituting for the name Holy Spirit the terms which are wrongly
held to be its equivalents; such as the power, or influence, or efflux, or
attribute of God. (_c_) It is contradicted, moreover, by all those
passages in which the Holy Spirit is distinguished from his own gifts.


    (_a_) The Bible is not primarily a book of poetry, although there
    is poetry in it. It is more properly a book of history and law.
    Even if the methods of allegory were used by the Psalmists and the
    Prophets, we should not expect them largely to characterize the
    Gospels and Epistles; _1 Cor. 13:4—_“Love suffereth long, and is
    kind”—is a rare instance in which Paul’s style takes on the form
    of poetry. Yet it is the Gospels and Epistles which most
    constantly represent the Holy Spirit as a person. (_b_) _Acts
    10:38—_“God anointed him [Jesus] with the Holy Spirit and with
    power” = anointed him with power and with power? _Rom.
    15:13—_“abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the
    power of the power of God? _19—_“in the power of signs and
    wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the power of the
    power of God? _1 Cor. 2:4—_“demonstration of the Spirit and of
    power” = demonstration of power and of power? (_c_) _Luke
    1:35—_“the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the
    Most High shall overshadow thee”; _4:14—_“Jesus returned in the
    power of the Spirit into Galilee”; _1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11_—after
    mention of the gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge,
    faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits,
    tongues, interpretation of tongues, all these are traced to the
    Spirit who bestows them: “_all these worketh the one and the same
    Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will_.” Here is
    not only giving, but giving discreetly, in the exercise of an
    independent will such as belongs only to a person. _Rom.
    8:26—_“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us”—must be
    interpreted, if the Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the
    Father, as meaning that the Holy Spirit intercedes with himself.

    “The personality of the Holy Spirit was virtually rejected by the
    Arians, as it has since been by Schleiermacher, and it has been
    positively denied by the Socinians” (E. G. Robinson). Gould, Bib.
    Theol. N. T., 83, 96—“The Twelve represent the Spirit as sent by
    the Son, who has been exalted that he may send this new power out
    of the heavens. Paul represents the Spirit as bringing to us the
    Christ. In the Spirit Christ dwells in us. The Spirit is the
    historic Jesus translated into terms of universal Spirit. Through
    the Spirit we are in Christ and Christ in us. The divine Indweller
    is to Paul alternately Christ and the Spirit. The Spirit is the
    divine principle incarnate in Jesus and explaining his
    preëxistence (_2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). Jesus was an incarnation of the
    Spirit of God.”

    This seeming identification of the Spirit with Christ is to be
    explained upon the ground that the divine essence is common to
    both and permits the Father to dwell in and to work through the
    Son, and the Son to dwell in and to work through the Spirit. It
    should not blind us to the equally patent Scriptural fact that
    there are personal relations between Christ and the Holy Spirit,
    and work done by the latter in which Christ is the object and not
    the subject; _John 16:14—_“He shall glorify me: for he shall take
    of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The Holy Spirit is not
    some _thing_, but some _one_; not αὐτό, but Αὐτός; Christ’s _alter
    ego_, or other self. We should therefore make vivid our belief in
    the personality of Christ and of the Holy Spirit by addressing
    each of them frequently in the prayers we offer and in such hymns
    as “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and “Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly
    Dove!” On the personality of the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, in
    Works, 3:64-92; Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350.



III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic and
temporal, but is immanent and eternal.


1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are eternal.


We prove this (_a_) from those passages which speak of the existence of
the Word from eternity with the Father; (_b_) from passages asserting or
implying Christ’s preëxistence; (_c_) from passages implying intercourse
between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world; (_d_)
from passages asserting the creation of the world by Christ; (_e_) from
passages asserting or implying the eternity of the Holy Spirit.


    (_a_) _John 1:1, 2—_“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
    was with God, and the Word was God”; _cf._ _Gen. 1:1—_“In the
    beginning God created the heavens and the earth”; _Phil.
    2:6—_“existing in the form of God ... on an equality with God.”
    (_b_) _John 8:58—_“before Abraham was born, I am”; _1:18—_“the
    only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (R. V.);
    _Col. 1:15-17—_“firstborn of all creation” or “before every
    creature ... he is before all things.” In these passages “_am_”
    and “_is_” indicate an eternal fact; the present tense expresses
    permanent being. _Rev. 22:13, 14—_“I am the Alpha and the Omega,
    the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (_c_) _John
    17:5—_“Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
    which I had with thee before the world was”; _24—_“Thou lovedst me
    before the foundation of the world.” (_d_) _John 1:3—_“All things
    were made through him”; _1 Cor. 8:6—_“one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    through whom are all things”; _Col. 1:16—_“all things have been
    created through him and unto him”; _Heb. 1:2—_“through whom also
    he made the worlds”; _10—_“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay
    the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy
    hands.” (_e_) _Gen. 1:2—_“the Spirit of God was brooding”—existed
    therefore before creation; _Ps. 33:6—_“by the word of Jehovah were
    the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit]
    of his mouth”; _Heb. 9:14—_“through the eternal Spirit.”

    With these passages before us, we must dissent from the statement
    of Dr. E. G. Robinson: “About the ontologic Trinity we know
    absolutely nothing. The Trinity we can contemplate is simply a
    revealed one, one of economic manifestations. We may _suppose_
    that the ontologic underlies the economic.” Scripture compels us,
    in our judgment, to go further than this, and to maintain that
    there are personal relations between the Father, the Son, and the
    Holy Spirit independently of creation and of time; in other words
    we maintain that Scripture reveals to us a social Trinity and an
    intercourse of love apart from and before the existence of the
    universe. Love before time implies distinctions of personality
    before time. There are three eternal consciousnesses and three
    eternal wills in the divine nature. We here state only the
    fact,—the explanation of it, and its reconciliation with the
    fundamental unity of God is treated in our next section. We now
    proceed to show that the two varying systems which ignore this
    tripersonality are unscriptural and at the same time exposed to
    philosophical objection.


2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.


A. The Sabellian.


Sabellius (of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, 250) held that Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are mere developments or revelations to creatures, in time, of
the otherwise concealed Godhead—developments which, since creatures will
always exist, are not transitory, but which at the same time are not
eternal _a parte ante_. God as united to the creation is Father; God as
united to Jesus Christ is Son; God as united to the church is Holy Spirit.
The Trinity of Sabellius is therefore an economic and not an immanent
Trinity—a Trinity of forms or manifestations, but not a necessary and
eternal Trinity in the divine nature.

Some have interpreted Sabellius as denying that the Trinity is eternal _a
parte post_, as well as _a parte ante_, and as holding that, when the
purpose of these temporary manifestations is accomplished, the Triad is
resolved into the Monad. This view easily merges in another, which makes
the persons of the Trinity mere names for the ever shifting phases of the
divine activity.


    The best statement of the Sabellian doctrine, according to the
    interpretation first mentioned, is that of Schleiermacher,
    translated with comments by Moses Stuart, in Biblical Repository,
    6:1-16. The one unchanging God is differently reflected from the
    world on account of the world’s different receptivities. Praxeas
    of Rome (200) Noetus of Smyrna (230), and Beryl of Arabia (250)
    advocated substantially the same views. They were called
    Monarchians (μόνη ἀρχή), because they believed not in the Triad,
    but only in the Monad. They were called Patripassians, because
    they held that, as Christ is only God in human form, and this God
    suffers, therefore the Father suffers. Knight, Colloquia
    Peripatetica, xlii, suggests a connection between Sabellianism and
    Emanationism. See this Compendium, on Theories which oppose
    Creation.

    A view similar to that of Sabellius was held by Horace Bushnell,
    in his God in Christ, 113-115, 130 sq., 172-175, and Christ in
    Theology, 119, 120—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, being incidental
    to the revelation of God, may be and probably are from eternity to
    eternity, inasmuch as God may have revealed himself from eternity,
    and certainly will reveal himself so long as there are minds to
    know him. It may be, in fact, the nature of God to reveal himself,
    as truly as it is of the sun to shine or of living mind to think.”
    He does not deny the immanent Trinity, but simply says we know
    nothing about it. Yet a Trinity of Persons in the divine essence
    itself he called plain tritheism. He prefers “instrumental
    Trinity” to “modal Trinity” as a designation of his doctrine. The
    difference between Bushnell on the one hand, and Sabellius and
    Schleiermacher on the other, seems then to be the following:
    Sabellius and Schleiermacher hold that the One _becomes_ three in
    the process of revelation, and the three are only _media_ or
    _modes_ of revelation. Father, Son, and Spirit are mere names
    applied to these modes of the divine action, there being no
    internal distinctions in the divine nature. This is modalism, or a
    modal Trinity. Bushnell stands by the Trinity of revelation alone,
    and protests against any constructive reasonings with regard to
    the immanent Trinity. Yet in his later writings he reverts to
    Athanasius and speaks of God as eternally “threeing himself”; see
    Fisher, Edwards on the Trinity, 73.

    Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook, proposes as illustration of the
    Trinity, 1. the artist working on his pictures; 2. the same man
    teaching pupils how to paint; 3. the same man entertaining his
    friends at home. He has not taken on these types of conduct. They
    are not masks (_personæ_), nor offices, which he takes up and lays
    down. There is a threefold _nature_ in him: he is artist, teacher,
    friend. God is complex, and not simple. I do not know him, till I
    know him in all these relations. Yet it is evident that Dr.
    Abbott’s view provides no basis for love or for society within the
    divine nature. The three persons are but three successive aspects
    or activities of the one God. General Grant, when in office, was
    but one person, even though he was a father, a President, and a
    commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.


It is evident that this theory, in whatever form it may be held, is far
from satisfying the demands of Scripture. Scripture speaks of the second
person of the Trinity as existing and acting before the birth of Jesus
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit as existing and acting before the formation
of the church. Both have a personal existence, eternal in the past as well
as in the future—which this theory expressly denies.


    A revelation that is not a self-revelation of God is not honest.
    Stuart: Since God is revealed as three, he must be essentially or
    immanently three, back of revelation; else the revelation would
    not be true. Dorner: A Trinity of revelation is a
    misrepresentation, if there is not behind it a Trinity of nature.
    Twesten properly arrives at the threeness by considering, not so
    much what is involved in the revelation of God to us, as what is
    involved in the revelation of God to himself. The unscripturalness
    of the Sabellian doctrine is plain, if we remember that upon this
    view the Three cannot exist at once: when the Father says “Thou
    art my beloved Son”_ (Luke 3:22)_, he is simply speaking to
    himself; when Christ sends the Holy Spirit, he only sends himself.
    _John 1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
    God, and the Word was God”—“sets aside the false notion that the
    Word become _personal_ first at the time of creation, or at the
    incarnation” (Westcott, Bib. Com. _in loco_).

    Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 50, 51—“Sabellius claimed that the
    Unity became a Trinity by expansion. Fatherhood began with the
    world. God is not eternally Father, nor does he love eternally. We
    have only an impersonal, unintelligible God, who has played upon
    us and confused our understanding by showing himself to us under
    three disguises. Before creation there is no Fatherhood, even in
    germ.”

    According to Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:269, Origen held that
    the Godhead might be represented by three concentric circles; the
    widest, embracing the whole being, is that of the Father; the
    next, that of the Son, which extends to the rational creation; and
    the narrowest is that of the Spirit, who rules in the holy men of
    the church. King, Reconstruction of Theology, 192, 194—“To affirm
    social relations in the Godhead is to assert absolute
    Tritheism.... Unitarianism emphasizes the humanity of Christ, to
    preserve the unity of God; the true view emphasizes the divinity
    of Christ, to preserve the unity.”

    L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 141, 287, says that New
    England Trinitarianism is characterized by three things: 1.
    Sabellian Patripassianism; Christ is all the Father there is, and
    the Holy Spirit is Christ’s continued life; 2. Consubstantiality,
    or community of essence, of God and man; unlike the essential
    difference between the created and the uncreated which Platonic
    dualism maintained, this theory turns _moral_ likeness into
    _essential_ likeness; 3. Philosophical monism, matter itself being
    but an evolution of Spirit.... In the next form of the scientific
    doctrine of evolution, the divineness of man becomes a vital
    truth, and out of it arises a Christology that removes Jesus of
    Nazareth indeed out of the order of absolute Deity, but at the
    same time exalts him to a place of moral eminence that is secure
    and supreme.

    Against this danger of regarding Christ as a merely economic and
    temporary manifestation of God we can guard only by maintaining
    the Scriptural doctrine of an immanent Trinity. Moberly, Atonement
    and Personality, 86, 165—“We cannot incur any Sabellian peril
    while we maintain—what is fatal to Sabellianism—that that which is
    revealed within the divine Unity is not only a distinction of
    aspects or of names, but a real reciprocity of mutual relation.
    One ‘aspect’ cannot contemplate, or be loved by, another....
    Sabellianism degrades the persons of Deity into aspects. But there
    can be no mutual relation between aspects. The heat and the light
    of flame cannot severally contemplate and be in love with one
    another.” See Bushnell’s doctrine reviewed by Hodge, Essays and
    Reviews, 433-473. On the whole subject, see Dorner, Hist. Doct.
    Person of Christ, 2:152-169; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:259; Baur,
    Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, 1:256-305; Thomasius, Christi Person
    und Werk 1:83.


B. The Arian.


Arius (of Alexandria; condemned by Council of Nice, 325) held that the
Father is the only divine being absolutely without beginning; the Son and
the Holy Spirit, through whom God creates and recreates, having been
themselves created out of nothing before the world was; and Christ being
called God, because he is next in rank to God, and is endowed by God with
divine power to create.

The followers of Arius have differed as to the precise rank and claims of
Christ. While Socinus held with Arius that worship of Christ was
obligatory, the later Unitarians have perceived the impropriety of
worshiping even the highest of created beings, and have constantly tended
to a view of the Redeemer which regards him as a mere man, standing in a
peculiarly intimate relation to God.


    For statement of the Arian doctrine, see J. Freeman Clarke,
    Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors. _Per contra_, see Schäffer, in
    Bib. Sac., 21:1, article on Athanasius and the Arian controversy.
    The so-called Athanasian Creed, which Athanasius never wrote, is
    more properly designated as the _Symbolum Quicumque_. It has also
    been called, though facetiously, “the Anathemasian Creed.” Yet no
    error in doctrine can be more perilous or worthy of condemnation
    than the error of Arius (_1 Cor. 16:22—_“If any man loveth not the
    Lord, let him be anathema”; _1 John 2:23—_“Whosoever denieth the
    Son, the same hath not the Father”; _4:3—_“every spirit that
    confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the
    antichrist”). It regards Christ as called God only by courtesy,
    much as we give to a Lieutenant Governor the title of Governor.
    Before the creation of the Son, the love of God, if there could be
    love, was expended on himself. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism: “The
    Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen idol, invented to maintain a
    heathenish Supreme in heathen isolation from the world. The nearer
    the Son is pulled down towards man by the attenuation of his
    Godhead, the more remote from man becomes the unshared Godhead of
    the Father. You have an _Être Suprême_ who is practically
    unapproachable, a mere One-and-all, destitute of personality.”

    Gore, Incarnation, 90, 91, 110, shows the immense importance of
    the controversy with regard to ὁμοούσιον and ὁμοιούσιον. Carlyle
    once sneered that “the Christian world was torn in pieces over a
    diphthong.” But Carlyle afterwards came to see that Christianity
    itself was at stake, and that it would have dwindled away to a
    legend, if the Arians had won. Arius appealed chiefly to logic,
    not to Scripture. He claimed that a Son must be younger than his
    Father. But he was asserting the principle of heathenism and
    idolatry, in demanding worship for a creature. The Goths were
    easily converted to Arianism. Christ was to them a hero-god, a
    demigod, and the later Goths could worship Christ and heathen
    idols impartially.


It is evident that the theory of Arius does not satisfy the demands of
Scripture. A created God, a God whose existence had a beginning and
therefore may come to an end, a God made of a substance which once was
not, and therefore a substance different from that of the Father, is not
God, but a finite creature. But the Scripture speaks of Christ as being in
the beginning God, with God, and equal with God.


    Luther, alluding to _John 1:1_, says: “‘The Word was God’ is
    against Arius; ‘the Word was with God’ is against Sabellius.” The
    Racovian Catechism, Quaes. 183, 184, 211, 236, 237, 245, 246,
    teaches that Christ is to be truly worshiped, and they are denied
    to be Christians who refuse to adore him. Davidis was persecuted
    and died in prison for refusing to worship Christ; and Socinus was
    charged, though probably unjustly, with having caused his
    imprisonment. Bartholomew Legate, an Essexman and an Arian, was
    burned to death at Smithfield, March 13, 1613. King James I asked
    him whether he did not pray to Christ. Legate’s answer was that
    “indeed he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but
    not for these last seven years”; which so shocked James that “he
    spurned at him with his foot.” At the stake Legate still refused
    to recant, and so was burned to ashes amid a vast conflux of
    people. The very next month another Arian named Whiteman was
    burned at Burton-on-Trent.

    It required courage, even a generation later, for John Milton, in
    his Christian Doctrine, to declare himself a high Arian. In that
    treatise he teaches that “the Son of God did not exist from all
    eternity, is not coëval or coëssential or coëqual with the Father,
    but came into existence by the will of God to be the next being to
    himself, the first-born and best beloved, the Logos or Word
    through whom all creation should take its beginnings.” So Milton
    regards the Holy Spirit as a created being, inferior to the Son
    and possibly confined to our heavens and earth. Milton’s Arianism,
    however, is characteristic of his later, rather than his earlier,
    writings; compare the Ode on Christ’s Nativity with Paradise Lost,
    3:383-391; and see Masson’s Life of Milton, 1:39; 6:823, 824; A.
    H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 260-262.

    Dr. Samuel Clarke, when asked whether the Father who had created
    could not also destroy the Son, said that he had not considered
    the question. Ralph Waldo Emerson broke with his church and left
    the ministry because he could not celebrate the Lord’s Supper,—it
    implied a profounder reverence for Jesus than he could give him.
    He wrote: “It seemed to me at church to-day, that the Communion
    Service, as it is now and here celebrated, is a document of the
    dullness of the race. How these, my good neighbors, the bending
    deacons, with their cups and plates, would have straightened
    themselves to sturdiness, if the proposition came before them to
    honor thus a fellow-man”; see Cabot’s Memoir, 314. Yet Dr. Leonard
    Bacon said of the Unitarians that “it seemed as if their exclusive
    contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the
    example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional
    beauty and Christlikeness of living.”

    Chadwick, Old and New Unitarian Belief, 20, speaks of Arianism as
    exalting Christ to a degree of inappreciable difference from God,
    while Socinus looked upon him only as a miraculously endowed man,
    and believed in an infallible book. The term “Unitarians,” he
    claims, is derived from the “Uniti,” a society in Transylvania, in
    support of mutual toleration between Calvinists, Romanists, and
    Socinians. The name stuck to the advocates of the divine Unity,
    because they were its most active members. B. W. Lockhart:
    “Trinity guarantees God’s knowableness. Arius taught that Jesus
    was neither human nor divine, but created in some grade of being
    between the two, essentially unknown to man. An absentee God made
    Jesus his messenger, God himself not touching the world directly
    at any point, and unknown and unknowable to it. Athanasius on the
    contrary asserted that God did not send a messenger in Christ, but
    came himself, so that to know Christ is really to know God who is
    essentially revealed in him. This gave the Church the doctrine of
    God immanent, or Immanuel, God knowable and actually known by men,
    because actually present.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present
    Age, 14—“The world was never further from Unitarianism than it is
    to-day; we may add that Unitarianism was never further from
    itself.” On the doctrines of the early Socinians, see Princeton
    Essays, 1:195. On the whole subject, see Blunt, Dict. of Heretical
    Sects, art.: Arius; Guericke, Hist. Doctrine, 1:313, 319. See also
    a further account of Arianism in the chapter of this Compendium on
    the Person of Christ.



IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three
Persons, there is but one Essence.


(_a_) The term “person” only approximately represents the truth. Although
this word, more nearly than any other single word, expresses the
conception which the Scriptures give us of the relation between the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is not itself used in this
connection in Scripture, and we employ it in a qualified sense, not in the
ordinary sense in which we apply the word “person” to Peter, Paul, and
John.


    The word “person” is only the imperfect and inadequate expression
    of a fact that transcends our experience and comprehension.
    Bunyan: “My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold The truth, as
    cabinets encase the gold.” Three Gods, limiting each other, would
    deprive each other of Deity. While we show that the unity is
    articulated by the persons, it is equally important to remember
    that the persons are limited by the unity. With us personality
    implies entire separation from all others—distinct individuality.
    But in the one God there can be no such separation. The personal
    distinctions in him must be such as are consistent with essential
    unity. This is the merit of the statement in the _Symbolum
    Quicumque_ (or Athanasian Creed, wrongly so called): “The Father
    is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; and yet there are
    not three Gods but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the
    Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord; yet there are not three Lords
    but one Lord. For as we are compelled by Christian truth to
    acknowledge each person by himself to be God and Lord, so we are
    forbidden by the same truth to say that there are three Gods or
    three Lords.” See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:270. We add
    that the personality of the Godhead as a whole is separate and
    distinct from all others, and in this respect is more fully
    analogous to man’s personality than is the personality of the
    Father or of the Son.

    The church of Alexandria in the second century chanted together:
    “One only is holy, the Father; One only is holy, the Son; One only
    is holy, the Spirit.” Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 154,
    167, 168—“The three persons are neither three Gods, nor three
    parts of God. Rather are they God threefoldly, tri-personally....
    The personal distinction in Godhead is a distinction within, and
    of, Unity: not a distinction which qualifies Unity, or usurps the
    place of it, or destroys it. It is not a relation of mutual
    exclusiveness, but of mutual inclusiveness. No one person is or
    can be without the others.... The personality of the supreme or
    absolute Being cannot be without self-contained mutuality of
    relations such as Will and Love. But the mutuality would not be
    real, unless the subject which becomes object, and the object
    which becomes subject, were on each side alike and equally
    Personal.... The Unity of all-comprehending inclusiveness is a
    higher mode of unity than the unity of singular
    distinctiveness.... The disciples are not to have the presence of
    the Spirit instead of the Son, but to have the Spirit is to have
    the Son. We mean by the Personal God not a limited alternative to
    unlimited abstracts, such as Law, Holiness, Love, but the
    transcendent and inclusive completeness of them all. The terms
    Father and Son are certainly terms which rise more immediately out
    of the temporal facts of the incarnation than out of the eternal
    relations of the divine Being. They are metaphors, however, which
    mean far more in the spiritual than they do in the material
    sphere. Spiritual hunger is more intense than physical hunger. So
    sin, judgment, grace, are metaphors. But in _John 1:1-18_ ‘Son’ is
    not used, but ‘Word.’ ”


(_b_) The necessary qualification is that, while three persons among men
have only a _specific_ unity of nature or essence—that is, have the same
_species_ of nature or essence,—the persons of the Godhead have a
_numerical_ unity of nature or essence—that is, have the _same_ nature or
essence. The undivided essence of the Godhead belongs equally to each of
the persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each possesses all the
substance and all the attributes of Deity. The plurality of the Godhead is
therefore not a plurality of essence, but a plurality of hypostatical, or
personal, distinctions. God is not three and one, but three in one. The
one indivisible essence has three modes of subsistence.


    The Trinity is not simply a partnership, in which each member can
    sign the name of the firm; for this is unity of council and
    operation only, not of essence. God’s nature is not an abstract
    but an organic unity. God, as living, cannot be a mere Monad.
    Trinity is the organism of the Deity. The one divine Being exists
    in three modes. The life of the vine makes itself known in the
    life of the branches, and this union between vine and branches
    Christ uses to illustrate the union between the Father and
    himself. (See _John 15:10—_“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall
    abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments,
    and abide in his love”; _cf._ _verse 5—_“I am the vine, ye are the
    branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth
    much fruit”; _17:22, 23—_“That they may be one, even as we are
    one; I in them, and thou in me.”) So, in the organism of the body,
    the arm has its own life, a different life from that of the head
    or the foot, yet has this only by partaking of the life of the
    whole. See Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:450-453—“The one divine
    personality is so present in each of the distinctions, that these,
    which singly and by themselves would not be personal, yet do
    participate in the one divine personality, each in its own manner.
    This one divine personality is the unity of the three modes of
    subsistence which participate in itself. Neither is personal
    without the others. In each, in its manner, is the whole Godhead.”

    The human body is a complex rather than a simple organism, a unity
    which embraces an indefinite number of subsidiary and dependent
    organisms. The one life of the body manifests itself in the life
    of the nervous system, the life of the circulatory system, and the
    life of the digestive system. The complete destruction of either
    one of these systems destroys the other two. Psychology as well as
    physiology reveals to us the possibility of a three-fold life
    within the bounds of a single being. In the individual man there
    is sometimes a double and even a triple consciousness. Herbert
    Spencer, Autobiography, 1:459; 2:204—“Most active minds have, I
    presume, more or less frequent experiences of double
    consciousness—one consciousness seeming to take note of what the
    other is about, and to applaud or blame.” He mentions an instance
    in his own experience. “May there not be possible a bi-cerebral
    thinking, as there is a binocular vision?... In these cases it
    seems as though there were going on, quite apart from the
    consciousness which seemed to constitute myself, some process of
    elaborating coherent thoughts—as though one part of myself was an
    independent originator over whose sayings and doings I had no
    control, and which were nevertheless in great measure consistent;
    while the other part of myself was a passive spectator or
    listener, quite unprepared for many of the things that the first
    part said, and which were nevertheless, though unexpected, not
    illogical.” This fact that there can be more than one
    consciousness in the same personality among men should make us
    slow to deny that there can be three consciousnesses in the one
    God.

    Humanity at large is also an organism, and this fact lends new
    confirmation to the Pauline statement of organic interdependence.
    Modern sociology is the doctrine of one life constituted by the
    union of many. “Unus homo, nullus homo” is a principle of ethics
    as well as of sociology. No man can have a conscience to himself.
    The moral life of one results from and is interpenetrated by the
    moral life of all. All men moreover live, move and have their
    being in God. Within the bounds of the one universal and divine
    consciousness there are multitudinous _finite_ consciousnesses.
    Why then should it be thought incredible that in the nature of
    this one God there should be three _infinite_ consciousnesses?
    Baldwin, Psychology, 53, 54—“The integration of finite
    consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine consciousness may find
    a valid analogy in the integration of subordinate consciousnesses
    in the unit-personality of man. In the hypnotic state, multiple
    consciousnesses may be induced in the same nervous organism. In
    insanity there is a secondary consciousness at war with that which
    normally dominates.” Schurman, Belief in God, 26, 161—“The
    infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the idea of a single
    organism embraces within a single life a plurality of members and
    functions.... All souls are parts or functions of the eternal life
    of God, who is above all, and through all, and in all, and in whom
    we live, and move, and have our being.” We would draw the
    conclusion that, as in the body and soul of man, both as an
    individual and as a race, there is diversity in unity, so in the
    God in whose image man is made, there is diversity in unity, and a
    triple consciousness and will are consistent with, and even find
    their perfection in, a single essence.

    By the personality of God we mean more than we mean when we speak
    of the personality of the Son and the personality of the Spirit.
    The personality of the Godhead is distinct and separate from all
    others, and is, in this respect, like that of man. Hence Shedd,
    Dogm. Theol., 1:194, says “it is preferable to speak of the
    _personality_ of the essence rather than of the _person_ of the
    essence; because the essence is not one person, but three
    persons.... The divine essence cannot be at once three persons and
    one person, if ‘person’ is employed in one signification; but it
    can be at once three persons and one personal Being.” While we
    speak of the one God as having a personality in which there are
    three persons, we would not call this personality a
    superpersonality, if this latter term is intended to intimate that
    God’s personality is less than the personality of man. The
    personality of the Godhead is inclusive rather than exclusive.

    With this qualification we may assent to the words of D’Arcy,
    Idealism and Theology, 93, 94, 218, 230, 236, 254—“The innermost
    truth of things, God, must be conceived as personal; but the
    ultimate Unity, which is his, must be believed to be
    superpersonal. It is a unity of persons, not a personal unity. For
    us personality is the ultimate form of unity. It is not so in him.
    For in him all persons live and move and have their being.... God
    is personal and also superpersonal. In him there is a transcendent
    unity that can embrace a personal multiplicity.... There is in God
    an ultimate superpersonal unity in which all persons are one—[all
    human persons and the three divine persons].... Substance is more
    real than quality, and subject is more real than substance. The
    most real of all is the concrete totality, the all-inclusive
    Universal.... What human love strives to accomplish—the overcoming
    of the opposition of person to person—is perfectly attained in the
    divine Unity.... The presupposition on which philosophy is driven
    back—[that persons have an underlying ground of unity] is
    identical with that which underlies Christian theology.” See
    Pfleiderer and Lotze on personality, in this Compendium, p. 104.


(_c_) This oneness of essence explains the fact that, while Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, as respects their personality, are distinct subsistences,
there is an intercommunion of persons and an immanence of one divine
person in another which permits the peculiar work of one to be ascribed,
with a single limitation, to either of the others, and the manifestation
of one to be recognized in the manifestation of another. The limitation is
simply this, that although the Son was sent by the Father, and the Spirit
by the Father and the Son, it cannot be said _vice versa_ that the Father
is sent either by the Son, or by the Spirit. The Scripture representations
of this intercommunion prevent us from conceiving of the distinctions
called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as involving separation between them.


    Dorner adds that “in one is each of the others.” This is true with
    the limitation mentioned in the text above. Whatever Christ does,
    God the Father can be said to do; for God acts only in and through
    Christ the Revealer. Whatever the Holy Spirit does, Christ can be
    said to do; for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. The
    Spirit is the omnipresent Jesus, and Bengel’s dictum is true: “Ubi
    Spiritus, ibi Christus.” Passages illustrating this intercommunion
    are the following: _Gen. 1:1—_“God created”; _cf._ _Heb.
    1:2—_“through whom [the Son] also he made the worlds”; _John 5:17,
    19—_“My Father worketh even until now, and I work.... The Son can
    do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing; for
    what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like
    manner”; _14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;
    _11—_“I am in the Father and the Father in me”; _18—_“I will not
    leave you desolate: I come unto you” (by the Holy Spirit);
    _15:26—_“when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
    from the Father, even the Spirit of truth”; _17:21—_“that they may
    all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee”; _2
    Cor. 5:19—_“God was in Christ reconciling”; _Titus 2:10—_“God our
    Savior”; _Heb. 12:23—_“God the Judge of all”; _cf._ _John
    5:22—_“neither doth the father judge any man, but he hath given
    all judgment unto the Son”; _Acts 17:31—_“judge the world in
    righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained.”

    It is this intercommunion, together with the order of personality
    and operation to be mentioned hereafter, which explains the
    occasional use of the term “Father” for the whole Godhead; as in
    _Eph. 4:6—_“one God and Father of all, who is over all through all
    [in Christ], and in you all” [by the Spirit]. This intercommunion
    also explains the designation of Christ as “_the Spirit_,” and of
    the Spirit as “_the Spirit of Christ_,” as in _1 Cor. 15:45—_“the
    last Adam became a life-giving Spirit”; _2 Cor. 3:17—_“Now the
    Lord is the Spirit”; _Gal. 4:6—_“sent forth the Spirit of his
    Son”; _Phil. 1:19—_“supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (see
    Alford and Lange on _2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). So the Lamb, in _Rev.
    5:6_, has “_seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven
    Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth_” = the Holy Spirit,
    with his manifold powers, is the Spirit of the omnipotent,
    omniscient, and omnipresent Christ. Theologians have designated
    this intercommunion by the terms περιχώρησις, _circumincessio_,
    _intercommunicatio_, _circulatio_, _inexistentia_. The word οὐσία
    was used to denote essence, substance, nature, being; and the
    words πρόσωπον and ὑπόστασις for person, distinction, mode of
    subsistence. On the changing uses of the words πρόσωπον and
    ὑπόστασις see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:321, note 2. On the meaning
    of the word ’person’ in connection with the Trinity, see John
    Howe, Calm Discourse of the Trinity; Jonathan Edwards,
    Observations on the Trinity; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:194, 267-275,
    299, 300.

    The Holy Spirit is Christ’s _alter ego_, or other self. When Jesus
    went away, it was an exchange of his presence for his
    omnipresence; an exchange of limited for unlimited power; an
    exchange of companionship for indwelling. Since Christ comes to
    men in the Holy Spirit, he speaks through the apostles as
    authoritatively as if his own lips uttered the words. Each
    believer, in having the Holy Spirit, has the whole Christ for his
    own; see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit. Gore, Incarnation,
    218—“The persons of the Holy Trinity are not separable
    individuals. Each involves the others; the coming of each is the
    coming of the others. Thus the coming of the Spirit must have
    involved the coming of the Son. But the specialty of the
    Pentecostal gift appears to be the coming of the Holy Spirit out
    of the uplifted and glorified _manhood_ of the incarnate Son. The
    Spirit is the life-giver, but the life with which he works in the
    church is the life of the _Incarnate_, the life of Jesus.”

    Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 85—“For centuries upon
    centuries, the essential unity of God had been burnt and branded
    in upon the consciousness of Israel. It had to be completely
    established first, as a basal element of thought, indispensable,
    unalterable, before there could begin the disclosure to man of the
    reality of the eternal relations within the one indivisible being
    of God. And when the disclosure came, it came not as modifying,
    but as further interpreting and illumining, that unity which it
    absolutely presupposed.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology,
    238—“There is extreme difficulty in giving any statement of a
    triunity that shall not verge upon tritheism on the one hand, or
    upon mere modalism on the other. It was very natural that Calvin
    should be charged with Sabellianism, and John Howe with
    tritheism.”



V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.


In explanation, notice that:


1. These titles belong to the Persons.


(_a_) The Father is not God as such; for God is not only Father, but also
Son and Holy Spirit. The term “Father” designates that hypostatical
distinction in the divine nature in virtue of which God is related to the
Son, and through the Son and the Spirit to the church and the world. As
author of the believer’s spiritual as well as natural life, God is doubly
his Father; but this relation which God sustains to creatures is not the
ground of the title. God is Father primarily in virtue of the relation
which he sustains to the eternal Son; only as we are spiritually united to
Jesus Christ do we become children of God.

(_b_) The Son is not God as such; for God is not only Son, but also Father
and Holy Spirit. “The Son” designates that distinction in virtue of which
God is related to the Father, is sent by the Father to redeem the world,
and with the Father sends the Holy Spirit.

(_c_) The Holy Spirit is not God as such; for God is not only Holy Spirit,
but also Father and Son. “The Holy Spirit” designates that distinction in
virtue of which God is related to the Father and the Son, and is sent by
them to accomplish the work of renewing the ungodly and of sanctifying the
church.


    Neither of these names designates the Monad as such. Each
    designates rather that personal distinction which forms the
    eternal basis and ground for a particular self-revelation. In the
    sense of being the Author and Provider of men’s natural life, God
    is the Father of all. But even this natural sonship is mediated by
    Jesus Christ; see _1 Cor. 8:6—_“one Lord, Jesus Christ through
    whom are all things, and we through him.” The phrase “_Our
    Father_,” however, can be used with the highest truth only by the
    regenerate, who have been newly born of God by being united to
    Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. See _Gal. 3:26—_“For
    ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Jesus Christ”;
    _4:4-6—_“God sent forth his Son ... that we might receive the
    adoption of sons ... sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our
    hearts, crying, Abba, Father”; _Eph. 1:5—_“foreordained as unto
    adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” God’s love for Christ is
    the measure of his love for those who are one with Christ. Human
    nature in Christ is lifted up into the life and communion of the
    eternal Trinity. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:306-310.

    Human fatherhood is a reflection of the divine, not, _vice versa_,
    the divine a reflection of the human; _cf._ _Eph. 3:14, 15—_“the
    Father, from whom every fatherhood πατριά in heaven and on earth
    is named.” Chadwick, Unitarianism, 77-83, makes the name “Father”
    only a symbol for the great Cause of organic evolution, the Author
    of all being. But we may reply with Stearns, Evidence of Christian
    Experience, 177—“to know God outside of the sphere of redemption
    is not to know him in the deeper meaning of the term ‘Father’. It
    is only through the Son that we know the Father: _Mat.
    11:27—_‘Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to
    whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’”

    Whiton, Gloria Patri, 38—“The Unseen can be known only by the seen
    which comes forth from it. The all-generating or Paternal Life
    which is hidden from us can be known only by the generated or
    Filial Life in which it reveals itself. The goodness and
    righteousness which inhabits eternity can be known only by the
    goodness and righteousness which issues from it in the successive
    births of time. God above the world is made known only by God in
    the world. God transcendent, the Father, is revealed by God
    immanent, the Son.” Faber: “O marvellous, O worshipful! No song or
    sound is heard, But everywhere and every hour, In love, in wisdom
    and in power, the Father speaks his dear eternal Word.” We may
    interpret this as meaning that self-expression is a necessity of
    nature to an infinite Mind. The Word is therefore eternal. Christ
    is the mirror from which are flashed upon us the rays of the
    hidden Luminary. So Principal Fairbairn says: “Theology must be on
    its historical side Christocentric, but on its doctrinal side
    Theocentric.”

    Salmond, Expositor’s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 1:5_—“By ‘adoption’
    Paul does not mean the bestowal of the full privileges of the
    family on those who are sons by nature, but the acceptance into
    the family of those who are not sons originally and by right in
    the relation proper of those who are sons by birth. Hence υἱοθεσία
    is never affirmed of Christ, for he alone is Son of God by nature.
    So Paul regards our sonship, not as lying in the natural relation
    in which men stand to God as his children, but as implying a new
    relation of grace, founded on a covenant relation of God and on
    the work of Christ (_Gal. 4:5_ _sq._).”


2. Qualified sense of these titles.


Like the word “person”, the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not to
be confined within the precise limitations of meaning which would be
required if they were applied to men.

(_a_) The Scriptures enlarge our conceptions of Christ’s Sonship by giving
to him in his preëxistent state the names of the Logos, the Image, and the
Effulgence of God.—The term “Logos” combines in itself the two ideas of
thought and word, of reason and expression. While the Logos as divine
thought or reason is one with God, the Logos as divine word or expression
is distinguishable from God. Words are the means by which personal beings
express or reveal themselves. Since Jesus Christ was “the Word” before
there were any creatures to whom revelations could be made, it would seem
to be only a necessary inference from this title that in Christ God must
be from eternity expressed or revealed to himself; in other words, that
the Logos is the principle of truth, or self-consciousness, in God.—The
term “Image” suggests the ideas of copy or counterpart. Man is the image
of God only relatively and derivatively. Christ is the Image of God
absolutely and archetypally. As the perfect representation of the Father’s
perfections, the Son would seem to be the object and principle of love in
the Godhead.—The term “Effulgence,” finally, is an allusion to the sun and
its radiance. As the effulgence of the sun manifests the sun’s nature,
which otherwise would be unrevealed, yet is inseparable from the sun and
ever one with it, so Christ reveals God, but is eternally one with God.
Here is a principle of movement, of will, which seems to connect itself
with the holiness, or self-asserting purity, of the divine nature.


    Smyth, Introd. to Edwards’ Observations on the Trinity: “The
    ontological relations of the persons of the Trinity are not a mere
    blank to human thought.” _John 1:1—_“In the beginning was the
    Word”—means more than “in the beginning was the _x_, or the zero.”
    Godet indeed says that Logos = “reason” only in philosophical
    writings, but never in the Scriptures. He calls this a Hegelian
    notion. But both Plato and Philo had made this signification a
    common one. On λόγος as = reason + speech, see Lightfoot on
    Colossians, 143, 144. Meyer interprets it as “personal
    subsistence, the self-revelation of the divine essence, before all
    time immanent in God.” Neander, Planting and Training, 369—Logos =
    “the eternal Revealer of the divine essence.” Bushnell: “Mirror of
    creative imagination”; “form of God.”

    Word = 1. Expression; 2. Definite expression; 3. Ordered
    expression; 4. Complete expression. We make thought definite by
    putting it into language. So God’s wealth of ideas is in the Word
    formed into an ordered Kingdom, a true Cosmos; see Mason, Faith of
    the Gospel, 76. Max Müller: “A word is simply a spoken thought
    made audible as sound. Take away from a word the sound, and what
    is left is simply the thought of it.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 72,
    73—“The Greek saw in the word the abiding thought behind the
    passing form. The Word was God and yet finite—finite only as to
    form, infinite as to what the form suggests or expresses. By Word
    some form must be meant, and any form is finite. The Word is the
    form taken by the infinite Intelligence which transcends all
    forms.” We regard this identification of the Word with the finite
    manifestation of the Word as contradicted by _John 1:1_, where the
    Word is represented as being with God before creation, and by
    _Phil. 2:6_, where the Word is represented as existing in the form
    of God before his self-limitation in human nature. Scripture
    requires us to believe in an objectification of God to himself in
    the person of the Word prior to any finite manifestation of God to
    men. Christ existed as the Word, and the Word was with God, before
    the Word was made flesh and before the world came into being; in
    other words, the Logos was the eternal principle of truth or
    self-consciousness in the nature of God.

    Passages representing Christ as the Image of God are _Col.
    1:15—_“who is the image of the invisible God”; _2 Cor.
    4:4—_“Christ, who is the image of God” (εἰκών); _Heb. 1:3—_“the
    very image of his substance” (χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ); here
    χαρακτήρ means “impress,” “counterpart.” Christ is the perfect
    image of God, as men are not. He therefore has consciousness and
    will. He possesses all the attributes and powers of God. The word
    “Image” suggests the perfect equality with God which the title
    “Son” might at first seem to deny. The living Image of God which
    is equal to himself and is the object of his infinite love can be
    nothing less than personal. As the bachelor can never satisfy his
    longing for companionship by lining his room with mirrors which
    furnish only a lifeless reflection of himself, so God requires for
    his love a personal as well as an infinite object. The Image is
    not precisely the _repetition_ of the original. The stamp from the
    seal is not precisely the _reproduction_ of the seal. The letters
    on the seal run backwards and can be easily read only when the
    impression is before us. So Christ is the only interpretation and
    revelation of the hidden Godhead. As only in love do we come to
    know the depths of our own being, so it is only in the Son that
    “God is love”_ (1 John 4:8)_.

    Christ is spoken of as the Effulgence of God in _Heb. 1:3—_“who
    being the effulgence of his glory” (ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης); _cf._ _2
    Cor. 4:6—_“shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
    knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Notice
    that the radiance of the sun is as old as the sun itself, and
    without it the sun would not be sun. So Christ is coëqual and
    coëternal with the Father. _Ps. 84:11—_“Jehovah God is a sun.” But
    we cannot see the sun except by the sunlight. Christ is the
    sunlight which streams forth from the Sun and which makes the Sun
    visible. If there be an eternal Sun, there must be also an eternal
    Sunlight, and Christ must be eternal. Westcott on _Hebrews
    1:3_—“The use of the absolute timeless term ὤν, ‘_being_’, guards
    against the thought that the Lord’s sonship was by adoption, and
    not by nature. ἀπαύγασμα does not express personality, and
    χαρακτήρ does not express coëssentiality. The two words are
    related exactly as ὁμοούσιος and μονογενής, and like those must be
    combined to give the fulness of the truth. The truth expressed
    thus antithetically holds good absolutely.... In Christ the
    essence of God is made distinct; in Christ the revelation of God’s
    character is seen.” On Edwards’s view of the Trinity, together
    with his quotations from Ramsey’s Philosophical Principles, from
    which he seems to have derived important suggestions, see Allen,
    Jonathan Edwards, 338-376; G. P. Fisher, Edwards’s Essay on the
    Trinity, 110-116.


(_b_) The names thus given to the second person of the Trinity, if they
have _any_ significance, bring him before our minds in the general aspect
of Revealer, and suggest a relation of the doctrine of the Trinity to
God’s immanent attributes of truth, love, and holiness. The prepositions
used to describe the internal relations of the second person to the first
are not prepositions of rest, but prepositions of direction and movement.
The Trinity, as the organism of Deity, secures a life-movement of the
Godhead, a process in which God evermore objectifies himself and in the
Son gives forth of his fulness. Christ represents the centrifugal action
of the deity. But there must be centripetal action also. In the Holy
Spirit the movement is completed, and the divine activity and thought
returns into itself. True religion, in reuniting us to God, reproduces in
us, in our limited measure, this eternal process of the divine mind.
Christian experience witnesses that God in himself is unknown; Christ is
the organ of external revelation; the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal
revelation—only he can give us an inward apprehension or realization of
the truth. It is “through the eternal Spirit” that Christ “offered himself
without blemish unto God,” and it is only through the Holy Spirit that the
church has access to the Father, or fallen creatures can return to God.


    Here we see that God is Life, self-sufficient Life, Infinite Life,
    of which the life of the universe is but a faint reflection, a
    rill from the fountain, a drop from the ocean. Since Christ is the
    only Revealer, the only outgoing principle in the Godhead, it is
    he in whom the whole creation comes to be and holds together. He
    is the Life of nature: all natural beauty and grandeur, all forces
    molecular and molar, all laws of gravitation and evolution, are
    the work and manifestation of the omnipresent Christ. He is the
    Life of humanity: the intellectual and moral impulses of man, so
    far as they are normal and uplifting, are due to Christ; he is the
    principle of progress and improvement in history. He is the Life
    of the church: the one and only Redeemer and spiritual Head of the
    race is also its Teacher and Lord.

    All objective revelation of God is the work of Christ. But all
    subjective manifestation of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. As
    Christ is the principle of outgoing, so the Holy Spirit is the
    principle of return to God. God would take up finite creatures
    into himself, would breath into them his breath, would teach them
    to launch their little boats upon the infinite current of his
    life. Our electric cars can go up hill at great speed so long as
    they grip the cable. Faith is the grip which connects us with the
    moving energy of God. “The universe is homeward bound,” because
    the Holy Spirit is ever turning objective revelation into
    subjective revelation, and is leading men consciously or
    unconsciously to appropriate the thought and love and purpose of
    Him in whom all things find their object and end; “for of him and
    through him, and unto him, are all things”_ (Rom. 11:36)_,—here
    there is allusion to the Father as the source, the Son as the
    medium, and the Spirit as the perfecting and completing agent, in
    God’s operations. But all these external processes are only signs
    and finite reflections of a life-process internal to the nature of
    God.

    Meyer on _John 1:1—_“the Word was with God”: “πρὸς τὸν θεόν does
    not = παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, but expresses the existence of the Logos in God
    in respect of intercourse. The moral essence of this essential
    fellowship is love, which excludes any merely modalistic
    conception.” Marcus Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, _in loco_:
    “This preposition implies intercourse and therefore separate
    personality.”

    Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 62—“_And the Word was toward God_” =
    his face is not outwards, as if he were merely revealing, or
    waiting to reveal, God to the creation. His face is turned
    inwards. His whole Person is directed toward God, motion
    corresponding to motion, thought to thought.... In him God stands
    revealed to himself. Contrast the attitude of fallen Adam, with
    his face averted from God. Godet, on _John 1:1_—“Πρὸς τὸν θεόν
    intimates not only personality but movement.... The tendency of
    the Logos _ad extra_ rests upon an anterior and essential relation
    _ad intra_. To reveal God, one must know him; to project him
    outwardly, one must have plunged into his bosom.” Compare _John
    1:18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”
    (R. V.) where we find, not ἐν τῷ κόλπῷ, but εἰς τὸν κόλπον. As ἦν
    εἰς τὴν πόλιν means “went into the city and was there,” so the use
    of these prepositions indicates in the Godhead movement as well as
    rest. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:193, translates πρός by
    “_hingewandt zu_,” or “turned toward.” The preposition would then
    imply that the Revealer, who existed in the beginning, was ever
    over against God, in the life-process of the Trinity, as the
    perfect objectification of himself. “Das Aussichselbstsein kraft
    des Durchsichselbstsein mit dem Fürsichselbstsein
    zusammenschliesst.” Dorner speaks of “das
    Aussensichoderineinemandernsein; Sichgeltendmachen des
    Ausgeschlossenen; Sichnichtsogesetzthaben; Stehenbleibenwollen.”

    There is in all human intelligence a threefoldness which points
    toward a trinitarian life in God. We can distinguish a _Wissen_, a
    _Bewusstsein_, a _Selbstbewusstein_. In complete
    self-consciousness there are the three elements: 1. We are
    ourselves; 2. We form a picture of ourselves; 3. We recognize this
    picture as the picture of ourselves. The little child speaks of
    himself in the third person: “Baby did it.” The objective comes
    before the subject; “me” comes first, and “I” is a later
    development; “himself” still holds its place, rather than
    “heself.” But this duality belongs only to undeveloped
    intelligence; it is characteristic of the animal creation; we
    revert to it in our dreams; the insane are permanent victims of
    it; and since sin is moral insanity, the sinner has no hope until,
    like the prodigal, he “comes to himself”_ (Luke 15:17)_. The
    insane person is _mente alienatus_, and we call physicians for the
    insane by the name of _alienists_. Mere duality gives us only the
    notion of separation. Perfect self-consciousness whether in man or
    in God requires a third unifying element. And in God mediation
    between the “I” and the “Thou” must be the work of a Person also,
    and the Person who mediates between the two must be in all
    respects the equal of either, or he could not adequately interpret
    the one to the other; see Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 57-59.

    Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:179-189, 276-283—“It is one of the effects
    of conviction by the Holy Spirit to convert consciousness into
    self-consciousness.... Conviction of sin is the consciousness of
    self as the guilty author of sin. Self-consciousness is trinal,
    while mere consciousness is dual.... One and the same human spirit
    subsists in two modes or distinctions—subject and object ... The
    three hypostatical consciousnesses in their combination and unity
    constitute the one consciousness of God ... as the three persons
    make one essence.”

    Dorner considers the internal relations of the Trinity (System,
    1:412 _sq._) in three aspects: 1. Physical. God is _causa sui_.
    But effect that equals cause must itself be causative. Here would
    be duality, were it not for a third principle of unity. Trinitas
    dualitatem ad unitatem reducit. 2. Logical. Self-consciousness
    sets self over against self. Yet the thinker must not regard self
    as one of many, and call himself “he,” as children do; for the
    thinker would then be, not _self_-conscious, but _mente
    alienatus_, “beside himself.” He therefore “comes to himself” in a
    third, as the brute cannot. 3. Ethical. God—self-willing right.
    But right based on arbitrary will is not right. Right based on
    passive nature is not right either. Right as _being_—Father. Right
    as _willing_—Son. Without the latter principle of freedom, we have
    a dead ethic, a dead God, an enthroned necessity. The unity of
    necessity and freedom is found by God, as by the Christian, in the
    Holy Spirit. The Father—I; the Son—Me; the Spirit the unity of the
    two; see C. C. Everett, Essays, Theological and Literary, 32.
    There must be not only Sun and Sunlight, but an Eye to behold the
    Light. William James, in his Psychology, distinguishes the _Me_,
    the self as known, from the _I_, the self as knower.

    But we need still further to distinguish a third principle, a
    subject-object, from both subject and object. The subject cannot
    recognize the object as one with itself except through a unifying
    principle which can be distinguished from both. We may therefore
    regard the Holy Spirit as the principle of self-consciousness in
    man as well as in God. As there was a natural union of Christ with
    humanity prior to his redeeming work, so there is a natural union
    of the Holy Spirit with all men prior to his regenerating work:
    _Job 32:18—_“there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the
    Almighty giveth them understanding.” Kuyper, Work of the Holy
    Spirit, teaches that the Holy Spirit constitutes the principle of
    life in all living things, and animates all rational beings, as
    well as regenerates and sanctifies the elect of God. Matheson,
    Voices of the Spirit, 75, remarks on _Job 34:14, 15—_“If he gather
    unto himself his Spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish
    together”—that the Spirit is not only necessary to man’s
    salvation, but also to keep up even man’s natural life.

    Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:172, speaks of the Son as the centrifugal,
    while the Holy Spirit is the centripetal movement of the Godhead.
    God apart from Christ is unrevealed (_John 1:18—_“No man hath seen
    God at any time”); Christ is the organ of external revelation
    (_18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
    he hath declared him”); the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal
    revelation (_1 Cor. 2:10—_“unto us Christ revealed them through
    the Spirit”). That the Holy Spirit is the principle of all
    movement towards God appears from _Heb. 9:14_—Christ “_through the
    eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _Eph.
    2:28—_“access in one Spirit unto the Father”; _Rom. 8:26—_“the
    Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... the Spirit himself maketh
    intercession for us”; _John 4:24—_“God is a Spirit: and they that
    worship him must worship in spirit”; _16:8-11—_“convict the world
    in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” See
    Twesten, Dogmatik, on the Trinity; also Thomasius, Christi Person
    und Werk, 1:111. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 68—“It is the joy of
    the Son to receive, his gladness to welcome most those wishes of
    the Father which will cost most to himself. The Spirit also has
    his joy in making known,—in perfecting fellowship and keeping the
    eternal love alive by that incessant sounding of the deeps which
    makes the heart of the Father known to the Son, and the heart of
    the Son known to the Father.” We may add that the Holy Spirit is
    the organ of internal revelation even to the Father and to the
    Son.


(_c_) In the light of what has been said, we may understand somewhat more
fully the characteristic differences between the work of Christ and that
of the Holy Spirit. We may sum them up in the four statements that, first,
all outgoing seems to be the work of Christ, all return to God the work of
the Spirit; secondly, Christ is the organ of external revelation, the Holy
Spirit the organ of internal revelation; thirdly, Christ is our advocate
in heaven, the Holy Spirit is our advocate in the soul; fourthly, in the
work of Christ we are passive, in the work of the Spirit we are active. Of
the work of Christ we shall treat more fully hereafter, in speaking of his
Offices as Prophet, Priest, and King. The work of the Holy Spirit will be
treated when we come to speak of the Application of Redemption in
Regeneration and Sanctification. Here it is sufficient to say that the
Holy Spirit is represented in the Scriptures as the author of life—in
creation, in the conception of Christ, in regeneration, in resurrection;
and as the giver of light—in the inspiration of Scripture writers, in the
conviction of sinners, in the illumination and sanctification of
Christians.


    _Gen. 1:2—_“The Spirit of God was brooding”; _Luke 1:35_—to Mary:
    “_The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee_”, _John 3:8—_“born of the
    Spirit”; _Ps. 37:9, 14—_“Come from the four winds, O breath.... I
    will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live”; _Rom. 8:11—_“give
    life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit.” _1 John
    2:1—_“an advocate (παράκλητον) with the Father, Jesus Christ the
    righteous”; _John 14:16, 17—_“another Comforter (παράκλητον), that
    he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth”; _Rom.
    8:26—_“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us.” _2 Pet.
    1:21—_“men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; _John
    16:8—_“convict the world in respect of sin”; _13—_“when he, the
    Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth”;
    _Rom. 8:14—_“as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
    sons of God.”

    McCosh: The works of the Spirit are Conviction, Conversion,
    Sanctification, Comfort. Donovan: The Spirit is the Spirit of
    conviction, enlightenment, quickening, in the sinner; and of
    revelation, remembrance, witness, sanctification, consolation, to
    the saint. The Spirit enlightens the sinner, as the flash of
    lightning lights the traveler stumbling on the edge of a precipice
    at night; enlightens the Christian, as the rising sun reveals a
    landscape which was all there before, but which was hidden from
    sight until the great luminary made it visible. “The morning light
    did not create The lovely prospect it revealed; It only showed the
    real state Of what the darkness had concealed.” Christ’s advocacy
    before the throne is like that of legal counsel pleading in our
    stead; the Holy Spirit’s advocacy in the heart is like the
    mother’s teaching her child to pray for himself.

    J. W. A. Stewart: “Without the work of the Holy Spirit redemption
    would have been impossible, as impossible as that fuel should warm
    without being lighted, or that bread should nourish without being
    eaten. Christ is God entering into human history, but without the
    Spirit Christianity would be only history. The Holy Spirit is God
    entering into human hearts. The Holy Spirit turns creed into life.
    Christ is the physician who leaves the remedy and then departs.
    The Holy Spirit is the nurse who applies and administers the
    remedy, and who remains with the patient until the cure is
    completed.” Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 78—“It is in vain that
    the mirror exists in the room, if it is lying on its face; the
    sunbeams cannot reach it till its face is upturned to them. Heaven
    lies about thee not only in thine infancy but at all times. But it
    is not enough that a place is prepared for thee; thou must be
    prepared for the place. It is not enough that thy light has come;
    thou thyself must arise and shine. No outward shining can reveal,
    unless thou art thyself a reflector of its glory. The Spirit must
    set thee on thy feet, that thou mayest hear him that speaks to
    thee (Ez. 2:2).”

    The Holy Spirit reveals not himself but Christ. _John 16:14—_“He
    shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it
    unto you.” So should the servants of the Spirit hide themselves
    while they make known Christ. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit,
    40—“Some years ago a large steam engine all of glass was exhibited
    about the country. When it was at work one would see the piston
    and the valves go; but no one could see what made them go. When
    steam is hot enough to be a continuous elastic vapor, it is
    invisible.” So we perceive the presence of the Holy Spirit, not by
    visions or voices, but by the effect he produces within us in the
    shape of new knowledge, new love, and new energy of our own
    powers. Denney, Studies in Theology, 161—“No man can bear witness
    to Christ and to himself at the same time. _Esprit_ is fatal to
    unction; no man can give the impression that he himself is clever
    and also that Christ is mighty to save. The power of the Holy
    Spirit is felt only when the witness is unconscious of self, and
    when others remain unconscious of him.” Moule, Veni Creator,
    8—“The Holy Spirit, as Tertullian says, is the vicar of Christ.
    The night before the Cross, the Holy Spirit was present to the
    mind of Christ as a person.”

    Gore, in Lux Mundi, 318—“It was a point in the charge against
    Origen that his language seemed to involve an exclusion of the
    Holy Spirit from nature, and a limitation of his activity to the
    church. The whole of life is certainly his. And yet, because his
    special attribute is holiness, it is in rational natures, which
    alone are capable of holiness, that he exerts his special
    influence. A special inbreathing of the divine Spirit gave to man
    his proper being.” See _Gen. 2:7—_“Jehovah God ... breathed into
    his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”;
    _John 3:8—_“The Spirit breatheth where it will ... so is every one
    that is born of the Spirit.” E. H. Johnson, on The Offices of the
    Holy Spirit, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:381-382—“Why is he specially
    called the Holy, when Father and Son are also holy, unless because
    he produces holiness, _i. e._, makes the holiness of God to be
    ours individually? Christ is the principle of collectivism, the
    Holy Spirit the principle of individualism. The Holy Spirit shows
    man the Christ in him. God above all = Father; God through all =
    Son; God in all = Holy Spirit (_Eph. 4:6_).”

    The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has never yet been scientifically
    unfolded. No treatise on it has appeared comparable to Julius
    Müller’s Doctrine of Sin, or to I. A. Dorner’s History of the
    Doctrine of the Person of Christ. The progress of doctrine in the
    past has been marked by successive stages. Athanasius treated of
    the Trinity; Augustine of sin; Anselm of the atonement; Luther of
    justification; Wesley of regeneration; and each of these
    unfoldings of doctrine has been accompanied by religious
    awakening. We still wait for a complete discussion of the doctrine
    of the Holy Spirit, and believe that widespread revivals will
    follow the recognition of the omnipotent Agent in revivals. On the
    relations of the Holy Spirit to Christ, see Owen, in Works,
    3:152-159; on the Holy Spirit’s nature and work, see works by
    Faber, Smeaton, Tophel, G. Campbell Morgan, J. D. Robertson,
    Biederwolf; also C. E. Smith, The Baptism of Fire; J. D. Thompson,
    The Holy Comforter; Bushnell, Forgiveness and Law, last chapter;
    Bp. Andrews, Works, 3:107-400; James S. Candlish, Work of the Holy
    Spirit; Redford, Vox Dei; Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ; A.
    J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit; Kuyper, Work of the Holy
    Spirit; J. E. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit; Lechler, Lehre
    vom Heiligen Geiste; Arthur, Tongue of Fire; A. H. Strong,
    Philosophy and Religion, 250-258, and Christ in Creation, 297-313.


3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.


That the Sonship of Christ is eternal, is intimated in Psalm 2:7. “This
day have I begotten thee” is most naturally interpreted as the declaration
of an eternal fact in the divine nature. Neither the incarnation, the
baptism, the transfiguration, nor the resurrection marks the beginning of
Christ’s Sonship, or constitutes him Son of God. These are but
recognitions or manifestations of a preëxisting Sonship, inseparable from
his Godhood. He is “born before every creature” (while yet no created
thing existed—see Meyer on Col. 1:15) and “by the resurrection of the
dead” is not _made_ to be, but only “_declared_ to be,” “according to the
Spirit of holiness” (= according to his divine nature) “the Son of God
with power” (see Philippi and Alford on Rom. 1:3, 4). This Sonship is
unique—not predicable of, or shared with, any creature. The Scriptures
intimate, not only an eternal generation of the Son, but an eternal
procession of the Spirit.


    _Psalm 2:7—_“I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou
    art my Son; This day I have begotten thee” see Alexander, Com. _in
    loco_; also Com. on _Acts 13:33_—“‘To-day’ refers to the date of
    the decree itself; but this, as a divine act, was eternal,—and so
    must be the Sonship which it affirms.” Philo says that “to-day”
    with God means “forever.” This begetting of which the Psalm speaks
    is not the resurrection, for while Paul in _Acts 13:33_ refers to
    this Psalm to establish the fact of Jesus’ Sonship, he refers in
    _Acts 13:34, 35_ to another Psalm, the _sixteenth_, to establish
    the fact that this Son of God was to rise from the dead. Christ is
    shown to be Son of God by his incarnation (_Heb. 1:5, 6—_“when he
    again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let
    all the angels of God worship him”), his baptism (_Mat.
    3:17—_“This is my beloved Son”), his transfiguration (_Mat.
    17:5—_“This is my beloved Son”), his resurrection (_Acts 13:34,
    35—_“as concerning that he raised him up from the dead ... he
    saith also in another psalm, Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to
    see corruption”). _Col. 1:15—_“the firstborn of all
    creation”—πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως = “begotten first before all
    creation” (Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 14); or “first-born before
    every creature, _i. e._, begotten, and that antecedently to
    everything that was created” (Ellicott, Com. _in loco_). “Herein”
    (says Luthardt, Compend. Dogmatik, 81, on _Col. 1:15_) “is
    indicated an antemundane origin from God—a relation internal to
    the divine nature.” Lightfoot, on _Col. 1:15_, says that in Rabbi
    Bechai God is called the “_primogenitus mundi_.”

    On _Rom. 1:4_ (ὁρισθέντος = “manifested to be the mighty Son of
    God”) see Lange’s Com., notes by Schaff on pages 56 and 61. Bruce,
    Apologetics, 404—“The resurrection was the actual introduction of
    Christ into the full possession of divine Sonship so far as
    thereto belonged, not only the _inner_ of a holy spiritual
    essence, but also the _outer_ of an existence in power and
    heavenly glory.” Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 353, 354—“Calvin waves
    aside eternal generation as an ‘absurd fiction.’ But to maintain
    the deity of Christ merely on the ground that it is essential to
    his making an adequate atonement for sin, is to involve the
    rejection of his deity if ever the doctrine of atonement becomes
    obnoxious.... Such was the process by which, in the mind of the
    last century, the doctrine of the Trinity was undermined. Not to
    ground the distinctions of the divine essence by some immanent
    eternal necessity was to make easy the denial of what has been
    called the ontological Trinity, and then the rejection of the
    economical Trinity was not difficult or far away.”

    If Westcott and Hort’s reading ὁ μονογενὴς Θεός, “_the only
    begotten God_,” in _John 1:18_, is correct, we have a new proof of
    Christ’s eternal Sonship. Meyer explains ἑαυτοῦ in _Rom.
    8:3—_“God, sending his own Son,” as an allusion to the
    metaphysical Sonship. That this Sonship is unique, is plain from
    _John 1:14, 18—_“the only begotten from the Father ... the only
    begotten Son who is in the bosom of the father”; _Rom. 8:32—_“his
    own Son”; _Gal. 4:4—_“sent forth his Son”; _cf._ _Prov.
    8:22-31—_“When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I
    was by him as a master workman”; _30:4—_“Who hath established all
    the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s
    name, if thou knowest?” The eternal procession of the Spirit seems
    to be implied in _John 15:26—_“the Spirit of truth which
    proceedeth from the Father”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_;
    _Heb. 9:14—_“the eternal Spirit.” Westcott here says that παρά
    (not ἐξ) shows that the reference is to the temporal mission of
    the Holy Spirit, not to the eternal procession. At the same time
    he maintains that the temporal corresponds to the eternal.


The Scripture terms “generation” and “procession,” as applied to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit, are but approximate expressions of the truth, and
we are to correct by other declarations of Scripture any imperfect
impressions which we might derive solely from them. We use these terms in
a special sense, which we explicitly state and define as excluding all
notion of inequality between the persons of the Trinity. The eternal
generation of the Son to which we hold is

(_a_) Not creation, but the Father’s communication of himself to the Son.
Since the names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not applicable to the
divine essence, but are only applicable to its hypostatical distinctions,
they imply no derivation of the essence of the Son from the essence of the
Father.


    The error of the Nicene Fathers was that of explaining Sonship as
    derivation of essence. The Father cannot impart his essence to the
    Son and yet retain it. The Father is _fons trinitatis_, not _fons
    deitatis_. See Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:308-311, and Dogm. Theol.,
    1:287-299; _per contra_, see Bib. Sac., 41:698-760.


(_b_) Not a commencement of existence, but an eternal relation to the
Father,—there never having been a time when the Son began to be, or when
the Son did not exist as God with the Father.


    If there had been an eternal sun, it is evident that there must
    have been an eternal sunlight also. Yet an eternal sunlight must
    have evermore proceeded from the sun. When Cyril was asked whether
    the Son existed before generation, he answered: “The generation of
    the Son did not precede his existence, but he always existed, and
    that by generation.”


(_c_) Not an act of the Father’s will, but an internal necessity of the
divine nature,—so that the Son is no more dependent upon the Father than
the Father is dependent upon the Son, and so that, if it be consistent
with deity to be Father, it is equally consistent with deity to be Son.


    The sun is as dependent upon the sunlight as the sunlight is upon
    the sun; for without sunlight the sun is no true sun. So God the
    Father is as dependent upon God the Son, as God the Son is
    dependent upon God the Father; for without Son the Father would be
    no true Father. To say that aseity belongs only to the Father is
    logically Arianism and Subordinationism proper, for it implies a
    subordination of the essence of the Son to the Father. Essential
    subordination would be inconsistent with equality. See Thomasius,
    Christi Person und Werk, 1:115. Palmer, Theol. Definitions, 66,
    67, says that Father = independent life; Son begotten =
    independent life voluntarily brought under limitations; Spirit =
    necessary consequence of existence of the other two.... The words
    and actions whereby we design to affect others are “begotten.” The
    atmosphere of unconscious influence is not “begotten,” but
    “proceeding.”


(_d_) Not a relation in any way analogous to physical derivation, but a
life-movement of the divine nature, in virtue of which Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, while equal in essence and dignity, stand to each other in an
order of personality, office, and operation, and in virtue of which the
Father works through the Son, and the Father and the Son through the
Spirit.


    The subordination of the _person_ of the Son to the _person_ of
    the Father, or in other words an order of personality, office, and
    operation which permits the Father to be officially first, the Son
    second, and the Spirit third, is perfectly consistent with
    equality. Priority is not necessarily superiority. The possibility
    of an order, which yet involves no inequality, may be illustrated
    by the relation between man and woman. In office man is first and
    woman second, but woman’s soul is worth as much as man’s; see _1
    Cor. 11:3—_“the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the
    woman is the man: and the head of Christ is God.” On _John
    14:28—_“the Father is greater than I”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in
    loco_.

    Edwards, Observations on the Trinity (edited by Smyth), 22—“In the
    Son the whole deity and glory of the Father is as it were repeated
    or duplicated. Everything in the Father is repeated or expressed
    again, and that fully, so that there is properly no inferiority.”
    Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (edited by Fisher), 110-116—“The
    Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated, and
    most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The
    Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an
    Idea of himself and subsisting in that Idea. The Holy Ghost is the
    Deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and
    breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in himself.
    And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly
    subsist both in the divine Idea and in the divine Love, and each
    of them are properly distinct persons.... We find no other
    attributes of which it is said in Scripture that they are God, or
    that God is they, but λόγος and ἀγάπη, the Reason and the Love of
    God, Light not being different from Reason.... Understanding may
    be predicated of this Love.... It is not a blind Love.... The
    Father has Wisdom or Reason by the Son’s being in him....
    Understanding is in the Holy Spirit, because the Son is in him.”
    Yet Dr. Edwards A. Park declared eternal generation to be “eternal
    nonsense,” and is thought to have hid Edwards’s unpublished Essay
    on the Trinity for many years because it taught this doctrine.

    The New Testament calls Christ θεός, but not ὁ θεός. We frankly
    recognize an eternal subordination of Christ to the Father, but we
    maintain at the same time that this subordination is a
    subordination of order, office, and operation, not a subordination
    of essence. “Non de essentia dicitur, sed de ministeriis.” E. G.
    Robinson: “An eternal generation is necessarily an eternal
    subordination and dependence. This seems to be fully admitted even
    by the most orthodox of the Anglican writers, such as Pearson and
    Hooker. Christ’s subordination to the Father is merely official,
    not essential.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 42, 96—“The early
    Trinitarians by eternal Sonship meant, first, that it is of the
    very nature of Deity to issue forth into visible expression. Thus
    next, that this outward expression of God is not something other
    than God, but God himself, in a self-expression as divine as the
    hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip’s cry, ‘show us the
    Father, and it sufficeth us’_ (John 14:8)_, and thus they affirmed
    Jesus’ declaration, they secured Paul’s faith that God has never
    left himself without witness. They meant, ‘he that hath seen me
    hath seen the Father’_ (John 14:9)_.... The Father is the Life
    transcendent, the divine Source, ‘_above all_’; the Son is the
    Life immanent, the divine Stream, ‘_through all_’; the Holy Spirit
    is the Life individualized, ‘in all’_ (Eph. 4:6)_. The Holy Spirit
    has been called ‘the executive of the Godhead.’ ” Whiton is here
    speaking of the economic Trinity; but all this is even more true
    of the immanent Trinity. On the Eternal Sonship, see Weiss, Bib.
    Theol. N. T., 424, note; Treffrey, Eternal Sonship of our Lord;
    Princeton Essays, 1:30-56; Watson, Institutes, 1:530-577; Bib.
    Sac., 27:268. On the procession of the Spirit, see Shedd, Dogm.
    Theol., 1:300-304, and History of Doctrine, 1:387; Dick, Lectures
    on Theology, 1:347-350.


The same principles upon which we interpret the declaration of Christ’s
eternal Sonship apply to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
through the Son, and show this to be not inconsistent with the Spirit’s
equal dignity and glory.

We therefore only formulate truth which is concretely expressed in
Scripture, and which is recognized by all ages of the church in hymns and
prayers addressed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when we assert that in
the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions, which are
best described as persons, and each of which is the proper and equal
object of Christian worship.

We are also warranted in declaring that, in virtue of these personal
distinctions or modes of subsistence, God exists in the relations,
respectively, first, of Source, Origin, Authority, and in this relation is
the Father; secondly, of Expression, Medium, Revelation, and in this
relation is the Son; thirdly, of Apprehension, Accomplishment,
Realization, and in this relation is the Holy Spirit.


    John Owen, Works, 3:64-92—“The office of the Holy Spirit is that
    of concluding, completing, perfecting. To the Father we assign
    _opera naturæ_; to the Son, _opera gratiæ procuratæ_; to the
    Spirit, _opera gratiæ applicatæ_.” All God’s revelations are
    through the Son or the Spirit, and the latter includes the former.
    Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit, designates the three offices
    respectively as those of Causation, Construction, Consummation;
    the Father brings forth, the Son arranges, the Spirit perfects.
    Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 365-373—“God is Life, Light, Love. As the
    Fathers regarded Reason both in God and man as the personal,
    omnipresent second Person of the Trinity, so Jonathan Edwards
    regarded Love both in God and in man as the personal, omnipresent
    third Person of the Trinity. Hence the Father is never said to
    love the Spirit as he is said to love the Son—for this love _is_
    the Spirit. The Father and the Son are said to love men, but the
    Holy Spirit is never said to love them, for love _is_ the Holy
    Spirit. But why could not Edwards also hold that the Logos or
    divine Reason also dwelt in humanity, so that manhood was
    constituted in Christ and shared with him in the consubstantial
    image of the Father? Outward nature reflects God’s light and has
    Christ in it,—why not universal humanity?”

    Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 136, 202, speaks of “1. God,
    the Eternal, the Infinite, in his infinity, as himself; 2. God, as
    self-expressed within the nature and faculties of man—body, soul,
    and spirit—the consummation and interpretation and revelation of
    what true manhood means and is, in its very truth, in its relation
    to God; 3. God, as Spirit of Beauty and Holiness, which are
    himself present in things created, animate and inanimate, and
    constituting in them their divine response to God; constituting
    above all in created personalities the full reality of their
    personal response. Or again: 1. What a man is invisibly in
    himself; 2. his outward material projection or expression as body;
    and 3. the response which that which he is through his bodily
    utterance or operation makes to him, as the true echo or
    expression of himself.” Moberly seeks thus to find in man’s nature
    an analogy to the inner processes of the divine.



VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes the
Key to all other Doctrines.


1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.


It is inscrutable because there are no analogies to it in our finite
experience. For this reason all attempts are vain adequately to represent
it;

(_a_) From inanimate things—as the fountain, the stream, and the rivulet
trickling from it (Athanasius); the cloud, the rain, and the rising mist
(Boardman); color, shape, and size (F. W. Robertson); the actinic,
luminiferous, and calorific principles in the ray of light (Solar
Hieroglyphics, 34).


    Luther: “When logic objects to this doctrine that it does not
    square with her rules, we must say; ‘Mulier taceat in ecclesia.’ ”
    Luther called the Trinity a flower, in which might be
    distinguished its form, its fragrance, and its medicinal efficacy;
    see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 189. In Bap. Rev., July,
    1880:434, Geer finds an illustration of the Trinity in infinite
    space with its three dimensions. For analogy of the cloud, rain,
    mist, see W. E. Boardman, Higher Christian Life. Solar
    Hieroglyphics, 34 (reviewed in New Englander, Oct. 1874:789)—“The
    Godhead is a tripersonal unity, and the light is a trinity. Being
    immaterial and homogeneous, and thus essentially one in its
    nature, the light includes a plurality of constituents, or in
    other words is essentially three in its constitution, its
    constituent principles being the actinic, the luminiferous, and
    the calorific; and in glorious manifestation the light is one, and
    is the created, constituted, and ordained emblem of the
    tripersonal God”—of whom it is said that “God is light, and in him
    is no darkness at all”_ (1 John 1:5)_. The actinic rays are in
    themselves invisible; only as the luminiferous manifest them, are
    they seen; only as the calorific accompany them, are they felt.

    Joseph Cook: “Sunlight, rainbow, heat—one solar radiance; Father,
    Son, Holy Spirit, one God. As the rainbow shows what light is when
    unfolded, so Christ reveals the nature of God. As the rainbow is
    unraveled light, so Christ is unraveled God, and the Holy Spirit,
    figured by heat, is Christ’s continued life.” Ruder illustrations
    are those of Oom Paul Krüger: the fat, the wick, the flame, in the
    candle; and of Augustine: the root, trunk, branches, all of one
    wood, in the tree. In Geer’s illustration, mentioned above, from
    the three dimensions of space, we cannot demonstrate that there is
    not a fourth, but besides length, breadth, and thickness, we
    cannot conceive of its existence. As these three exhaust, so far
    as we know, all possible modes of material being, so we cannot
    conceive of any fourth person in the Godhead.


(_b_) From the constitution or processes of our own minds—as the
psychological unity of intellect, affection, and will (substantially held
by Augustine); the logical unity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis
(Hegel); the metaphysical unity of subject, object, and subject-object
(Melanchthon, Olshausen, Shedd).


    Augustine: “Mens meminit sui, intelligit se, diligit se; si hoc
    cernimus, Trinitatem cernimus.”... I exist, I am conscious, I
    will; I exist as conscious and willing, I am conscious of existing
    and willing, I will to exist and be conscious; and these three
    functions, though distinct, are inseparable and form one life, one
    mind, one essence.... “Amor autem alicujus amantis est, et amore
    aliquid amatur. Ecce tria sunt, amans, et quod amatur, et amor.
    Quid est ergo amor, nisi quædam vita duo aliqua copulans, vel
    copulare appetans, amantem scilicet et quod amatur.” Calvin speaks
    of Augustine’s view as “a speculation far from solid.” But
    Augustine himself had said: “If asked to define the Trinity, we
    can only say that it is not this or that.” John of Damascus: “All
    we know of the divine nature is that it is not to be known.” By
    this, however, both Augustine and John of Damascus meant only that
    the precise _mode_ of God’s triune existence is unrevealed and
    inscrutable.

    Hegel, Philos. Relig., transl., 3:99, 100—“God is, but is at the
    same time the Other, the self-differentiating, the Other in the
    sense that this Other is God himself and has potentially the
    Divine nature in it, and that the abolishing of this difference,
    of this otherness, this return, this love, is Spirit.” Hegel calls
    God “the absolute Idea, the unity of Life and Cognition, the
    Universal that thinks itself and thinkingly recognizes itself in
    an infinite Actuality, from which, as its Immediacy, it no less
    distinguishes itself again”; see Schwegler, History of Philosophy,
    321, 331. Hegel’s general doctrine is that the highest unity is to
    be reached only through the fullest development and reconciliation
    of the deepest and widest antagonism. Pure being is pure nothing;
    we must die to live. Light is thesis, Darkness is antithesis,
    Shadow is synthesis, or union of both. Faith is thesis, Unbelief
    is antithesis, Doubt is synthesis, or union of both. _Zweifel_
    comes from _Zwei_, as doubt from δύο. Hegel called Napoleon “ein
    Weltgeist zu Pferde”—“a world-spirit on horseback.” Ladd, Introd.
    to Philosophy, 202, speaks of “the monotonous tit-tat-too of the
    Hegelian logic.” Ruskin speaks of it as “pure, definite, and
    highly finished nonsense.” On the Hegelian principle good and evil
    cannot be contradictory to each other; without evil there could be
    no good. Stirling well entitled his exposition of the Hegelian
    Philosophy “The Secret of Hegel,” and his readers have often
    remarked that, if Stirling discovered the secret, he never made it
    known.

    Lord Coleridge told Robert Browning that he could not understand
    all his poetry. “Ah, well,” replied the poet, “if a reader of your
    calibre understands ten per cent. of what I write, he ought to be
    content.” When Wordsworth was told that Mr. Browning had married
    Miss Barrett, he said: “It is a good thing that these two
    understand each other, for no one else understands them.” A pupil
    once brought to Hegel a passage in the latter’s writings and asked
    for an interpretation. The philosopher examined it and replied:
    “When that passage was written, there were two who knew its
    meaning—God and myself. Now, alas! there is but one, and that is
    God.” Heinrich Heine, speaking of the effect of Hegelianism upon
    the religious life of Berlin, says: “I could accommodate myself to
    the very enlightened Christianity, filtrated from all
    superstition, which could then be had in the churches, and which
    was free from the divinity of Christ, like turtle soup without
    turtle.” When German systems of philosophy die, their ghosts take
    up their abode in Oxford. But if I see a ghost sitting in a chair
    and then sit down boldly in the chair, the ghost will take offence
    and go away. Hegel’s doctrine of God as the only begotten Son is
    translated in the Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:395-404.

    The most satisfactory exposition of the analogy of subject,
    object, and subject-object is to be found in Shedd, History of
    Doctrine, 1:365, note 2. See also Olshausen on John 1:1; H. N.
    Day, Doctrine of Trinity in Light of Recent Psychology, in
    Princeton Rev., Sept. 1882:156-179; Morris, Philosophy and
    Christianity, 122-163. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 174,
    has a similar analogy: 1. A man’s invisible self; 2. the visible
    expression of himself in a picture or poem; 3. the response of
    this picture or poem to himself. The analogy of the family is held
    to be even better, because no man’s personality is complete in
    itself; husband, wife, and child are all needed to make perfect
    unity. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 372, says that in the early church
    the Trinity was a doctrine of reason; in the Middle Ages it was a
    mystery; in the 18th century it was a meaningless or irrational
    dogma; again in the 19th century it becomes a doctrine of the
    reason, a truth essential to the nature of God. To Allen’s
    characterization of the stages in the history of the doctrine we
    would add that even in our day we cannot say that a complete
    exposition of the Trinity is possible. Trinity is a unique fact,
    different aspects of which may be illustrated, while, as a whole,
    it has no analogies. The most we can say is that human nature, in
    its processes and powers, points towards something higher than
    itself, and that Trinity in God is needed in order to constitute
    that perfection of being which man seeks as an object of love,
    worship and service.


No one of these furnishes any proper analogue of the Trinity, since in no
one of them is there found the essential element of tripersonality. Such
illustrations may sometimes be used to disarm objection, but they furnish
no positive explanation of the mystery of the Trinity, and, unless
carefully guarded, may lead to grievous error.


2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.


This it would be, only if it declared God to be three in the same
numerical sense in which he is said to be one. This we do not assert. We
assert simply that the same God who is one with respect to his essence is
three with respect to the internal distinctions of that essence, or with
respect to the modes of his being. The possibility of this cannot be
denied, except by assuming that the human mind is in all respects the
measure of the divine.

The fact that the ascending scale of life is marked by increasing
differentiation of faculty and function should rather lead us to expect in
the highest of all beings a nature more complex than our own. In man many
faculties are united in one intelligent being, and the more intelligent
man is, the more distinct from each other these faculties become; until
intellect and affection, conscience and will assume a relative
independence, and there arises even the possibility of conflict between
them. There is nothing irrational or self-contradictory in the doctrine
that in God the leading functions are yet more markedly differentiated, so
that they become personal, while at the same time these personalities are
united by the fact that they each and equally manifest the one indivisible
essence.


    Unity is as essential to the Godhead as threeness. The same God
    who in one respect is three, in another respect is one. We do not
    say that one God is three Gods, nor that one person is three
    persons, nor that three Gods are one God, but only that there is
    one God with three distinctions in his being. We do not refer to
    the faculties of man as furnishing any proper analogy to the
    persons of the Godhead; we rather deny that man’s nature furnishes
    any such analogy. Intellect, affection, and will in man are not
    distinct personalities. If they were personalized, they might
    furnish such an analogy. F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 3:58, speaks of
    the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as best conceived under the
    figure of personalized intellect, affection and will. With this
    agrees the saying of Socrates, who called thought the soul’s
    conversation with itself. See D. W. Simon, in Bib. Sac., Jan.
    1887.

    _Ps. 86:11—_“Unite my heart to fear thy name”—intimates a
    complexity of powers in man, and a possible disorganization due to
    sin. Only the fear and love of God can reduce our faculties to
    order and give us peace, purity, and power. When William after a
    long courtship at length proposed marriage, Mary said that she
    “unanimously consented.” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
    all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
    and with all thy mind”_ (Luke 10:27)._ Man must not lead a dual
    life, a double life, like that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The
    good life is the unified life. H. H. Bawden: “Theoretically,
    symmetrical development is the complete criterion. This is the old
    Greek conception of the perfect life. The term which we translate
    ‘temperance’ or ‘self-control’ is better expressed by
    ‘whole-mindedness.’ ”

    Illingworth, Personality Divine and Human, 54-80—“Our sense of
    divine personality culminates in the doctrine of the Trinity.
    Man’s personality is essentially triune, because it consists of a
    subject, an object, and their relation. What is potential and
    unrealized triunity in man is complete in God.... Our own
    personality is triune, but it is a potential unrealized triunity,
    which is incomplete in itself and must go beyond itself for
    completion, as for example in the family.... But God’s personality
    has nothing potential or unrealized about it.... Trinity is the
    most intelligible mode of conceiving of God as personal.”

    John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:59, 80—“The parts
    of a stone are all precisely alike; the parts of a skilful
    mechanism are all different from one another. In which of the two
    cases is the unity more real—in that in which there is an absence
    of distinction, or in that in which there is essential difference
    of form and function, each separate part having an individuality
    and activity of its own? The highest unities are not simple but
    complex.” Gordon, Christ of To-day, 106—“All things and persons
    are modes of one infinite consciousness. Then it is not incredible
    that there should be three consciousnesses in God. Over against
    the multitudinous finite personalities are three infinite
    personalities. This socialism in Deity may be the ground of human
    society.”

    The phenomena of double and even of triple consciousness in one
    and the same individual confirm this view. This fact of more than
    one consciousness in a finite creature points towards the
    possibility of a threefold consciousness in the nature of God.
    Romanes, Mind and Motion, 102, intimates that the social organism,
    if it attained the highest level of psychical perfection, might be
    endowed with personality, and that it now has something resembling
    it—phenomena of thought and conduct which compel us to conceive of
    families and communities and nations as having a sort of moral
    personality which implies responsibility and accountability. “The
    _Zeitgeist_,” he says, “is the product of a kind of collective
    psychology, which is something other than the sum of all the
    individual minds of a generation.” We do not maintain that any one
    of these fragmentary or collective consciousnesses attains
    personality in man, at least in the present life. We only maintain
    that they indicate that a larger and more complex life is possible
    than that of which we have common experience, and that there is no
    necessary contradiction in the doctrine that in the nature of the
    one and perfect God there are three personal distinctions. R. H.
    Hutton: “A voluntary self-revelation of the divine mind may be
    expected to reveal even deeper complexities of spiritual relations
    in his eternal nature and essence than are found to exist in our
    humanity—the simplicity of a harmonized complexity, not the
    simplicity of absolute unity.”


3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other doctrines.


A. It is essential to any proper theism.

Neither God’s independence nor God’s blessedness can be maintained upon
grounds of absolute unity. Anti-trinitarianism almost necessarily makes
creation indispensable to God’s perfection, tends to a belief in the
eternity of matter, and ultimately leads, as in Mohammedanism, and in
modern Judaism and Unitarianism, to Pantheism. “Love is an impossible
exercise to a solitary being.” Without Trinity we cannot hold to a living
Unity in the Godhead.


    Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1882:35-63—“The problem is to
    find a _perfect objective_, congruous and fitting, for a perfect
    intelligence, and the answer is: ‘_a perfect intelligence_.’ ” The
    author of this article quotes James Martineau, the Unitarian
    philosopher, as follows: “There is only one resource left for
    completing the needful Objectivity for God, _viz._, to admit in
    some form the coëval existence of matter, as the condition or
    medium of the divine agency or manifestation. Failing the proof
    [of the absolute origination of matter] we are left with the
    _divine cause_, and the _material condition_ of all nature, in
    eternal co-presence and relation, as supreme object and
    rudimentary object.” See also Martineau, Study, 1:405—“In denying
    that a plurality of self-existences is possible, I mean to speak
    only of self-existent _causes_. A self-existence which is _not_ a
    cause is by no means excluded, so far as I can see, by a
    self-existence which _is_ a cause; nay, is even required for the
    exercise of its causality.” Here we see that Martineau’s
    Unitarianism logically drove him into Dualism. But God’s
    blessedness, upon this principle, requires not merely an eternal
    universe but an infinite universe, for nothing less will afford
    fit object for an infinite mind. Yet a God who is necessarily
    bound to the universe, or by whose side a universe, which is not
    himself, eternally exists, is not infinite, independent, or free.
    The only exit from this difficulty is in denying God’s
    self-consciousness and self-determination, or in other words,
    exchanging our theism for dualism, and our dualism for pantheism.

    E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:379, quotes from Oxenham’s
    Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, 108, 109—“Forty years ago
    James Martineau wrote to George Macdonald: ‘Neither my
    intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with
    the Unitarian heroes, sects or productions, of any age. Ebionites,
    Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with
    their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought far less worthy,
    on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity.’ In his paper
    entitled A Way out of the Unitarian Controversy, Martineau says
    that the Unitarian worships the Father; the Trinitarian worships
    the Son: ‘But he who is the Son in one creed is the Father in the
    other.... The two creeds are agreed in that which constitutes the
    pith and kernel of both. The Father is God in his primeval
    essence. But God, as manifested, is the Son.’ ” Dr. Johnson adds:
    “So Martineau, after a lifelong service in a Unitarian pulpit and
    professorship, at length publicly accepts for truth the substance
    of that doctrine which, in common with the church, he has found so
    profitable, and tells Unitarians that they and we alike worship
    the Son, because all that we know of God was revealed by act of
    the Son.” After he had reached his eightieth year, Martineau
    withdrew from the Unitarian body, though he never formally united
    with any Trinitarian church.

    H. C. Minton, in Princeton Rev., 1903:655-659, has quoted some of
    Martineau’s most significant utterances, such as the following:
    “The great strength of the orthodox doctrine lies, no doubt, in
    the appeal it makes to the inward ‘sense of sin,’—that sad weight
    whose burden oppresses every serious soul. And the great weakness
    of Unitarianism has been its insensibility to this abiding sorrow
    of the human consciousness. But the orthodox remedy is surely the
    most terrible of all mistakes, _viz._, _to get rid_ of the burden,
    by throwing it on Christ or permitting him to take it.... For
    myself I own that the literature to which I turn for the nurture
    and inspiration of Faith, Hope and Love is almost exclusively the
    product of orthodox versions of the Christian religion. The Hymns
    of the Wesleys, the Prayers of the Friends, the Meditations of Law
    and Tauler, have a quickening and elevating power which I rarely
    feel in the books on our Unitarian shelves.... Yet I can less than
    ever appropriate, or even intellectually excuse, any distinctive
    article of the Trinitarian scheme of salvation.”

    Whiton, Gloria Patri, 23-26, seeks to reconcile the two forms of
    belief by asserting that “both Trinitarians and Unitarians are
    coming to regard human nature as essentially one with the divine.
    The Nicene Fathers builded better than they knew, when they
    declared Christ _homoousios_ with the Father. We assert the same
    of mankind.” But here Whiton goes beyond the warrant of Scripture.
    Of none but the only begotten Son can it be said that before
    Abraham was born he was, and that in him dwelleth all the fulness
    of the Godhead bodily (_John 8:57_; _Col. 2:9_).

    Unitarianism has repeatedly demonstrated its logical insufficiency
    by this “facilis descensus Averno,” this lapse from theism into
    pantheism. In New England the high Arianism of Channing
    degenerated into the half-fledged pantheism of Theodore Parker,
    and the full-fledged pantheism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern
    Judaism is pantheistic in its philosophy, and such also was the
    later Arabic philosophy of Mohammedanism. Single personality is
    felt to be insufficient to the mind’s conception of Absolute
    Perfection. We shrink from the thought of an eternally lonely God.
    “We take refuge in the term ‘Godhead.’ The literati find relief in
    speaking of ‘the gods.’ ” Twesten (translated in Bib. Sac.,
    3:502)—“There may be in polytheism an element of truth, though
    disfigured and misunderstood. John of Damascus boasted that the
    Christian Trinity stood midway between the abstract monotheism of
    the Jews and the idolatrous polytheism of the Greeks.” Twesten,
    quoted in Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:255—“There is a πλήρωμα in God.
    Trinity does not contradict Unity, but only that solitariness
    which is inconsistent with the living plenitude and blessedness
    ascribed to God in Scripture, and which God possesses in himself
    and independently of the finite.” Shedd himself remarks: “The
    attempt of the Deist and the Socinian to construct the doctrine of
    divine _Unity_ is a failure, because it fails to construct the
    doctrine of the divine _Personality_. It contends by implication
    that God can be self-knowing as a single subject merely, without
    an object; without the distinctions involved in the subject
    contemplating, the object contemplated, and the perception of the
    identity of both.”

    Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 75—“God is no sterile and motionless
    unit.” Bp. Phillips Brooks: “Unitarianism has got the notion of
    God as tight and individual as it is possible to make it, and is
    dying of its meagre Deity.” Unitarianism is not the doctrine of
    one God—for the Trinitarian holds to this; it is rather the
    unipersonality of this one God. The divine nature demands either
    an eternal Christ or an eternal creation. Dr. Calthorp, the
    Unitarian, of Syracuse, therefore consistently declares that
    “Nature and God are the same.” It is the old worship of Baal and
    Ashtaroth—the deification of power and pleasure. For “Nature”
    includes everything—all bad impulses as well as good. When a man
    discovers gravity, he has not discovered God, but only one of the
    manifestations of God.

    Gordon, Christ of To-day, 112—“The supreme divinity of Jesus
    Christ is but the sovereign expression in human history of the
    great law of difference in identity that runs through the entire
    universe and that has its home in the heart of the Godhead.” Even
    James Freeman Clarke, in his Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors,
    436, admits that “there is an essential truth hidden in the idea
    of the Trinity. While the church doctrine, in every form which it
    has taken, has failed to satisfy the human intellect, the human
    heart has clung to the substance contained in them all.” William
    Adams Brown: “If God is by nature love, he must be by nature
    social. Fatherhood and Sonship must be immanent in him. In him the
    limitations of finite personality are removed.” But Dr. Brown
    wrongly adds: “Not the mysteries of God’s being, as he is in
    himself, but as he is revealed, are opened to us in this
    doctrine.” Similarly P. S. Moxom: “I do not know how it is
    possible to predicate any moral quality of a person who is
    absolutely out of relation to other persons. If God were conceived
    of as solitary in the universe, he could not be characterized as
    righteous.” But Dr. Moxom erroneously thinks that these other
    moral personalities must be outside of God. We maintain that
    righteousness, like love, requires only plurality of persons
    within the God-head. See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
    1:105, 156. For the pantheistic view, see Strauss, Glaubenslehre,
    1:462-524.

    W. L. Walker, Christian Theism, 317, quotes Dr. Paul Carus, Primer
    of Philosophy, 101—“We cannot even conceive of God without
    attributing trinity to him. An absolute unity would be
    non-existence. God, if thought of as real and active, involves an
    antithesis, which may be formulated as God and World, or _natura
    naturans_ and _natura naturata_, or in some other way. This
    antithesis implies already the trinity-conception. When we think
    of God, not only as that which is eternal and immutable in
    existence, but also as that which changes, grows, and evolves, we
    cannot escape the result and we must progress to a triune
    God-idea. The conception of a God-man, of a Savior, of God
    revealed in evolution, brings out the antithesis of God Father and
    God Son, and the very conception of this relation implies God the
    Spirit that proceeds from both.” This confession of an economic
    Trinity is a rational one only as it implies a Trinity immanent
    and eternal.


B. It is essential to any proper revelation.

If there be no Trinity, Christ is not God, and cannot perfectly know or
reveal God. Christianity is no longer the one, all-inclusive, and final
revelation, but only one of many conflicting and competing systems, each
of which has its portion of truth, but also its portion of error. So too
with the Holy Spirit. “As God can be revealed only through God, so also
can he be appropriated only through God. If the Holy Spirit be not God,
then the love and self-communication of God to the human soul are not a
reality.” In other words, without the doctrine of the Trinity we go back
to mere natural religion and the far-off God of deism,—and this is
ultimately exchanged for pantheism in the way already mentioned.


    Martensen, Dogmatics, 104; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
    156. If Christ be not God, he cannot perfectly know himself, and
    his testimony to himself has no independent authority. In prayer
    the Christian has practical evidence of the Trinity, and can see
    the value of the doctrine; for he comes to God the Father,
    pleading the name of Christ, and taught how to pray aright by the
    Holy Spirit. It is impossible to identify the Father with either
    the Son or the Spirit. See _Rom. 8:27—_“he that searcheth the
    hearts [_i. e._, God] knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
    because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the
    will of God.” See also Godet on _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God
    at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
    Father, he hath declared him”; notice here the relation between ὁ
    ὤν and ἐξηγήσατο. Napoleon I: “Christianity says with simplicity,
    ‘No man hath seen God, except God.’ ” _John 16:15—_“All things
    whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he
    taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you”; here Christ claims
    for himself all that belongs to God, and then declares that the
    Holy Spirit shall reveal him. Only a divine Spirit can do this,
    even as only a divine Christ can put out an unpresumptuous hand to
    take all that belongs to the Father. See also Westcott, on _John
    14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou,
    Show us the Father?”

    The agnostic is perfectly correct in his conclusions, if there be
    no Christ, no medium of communication, no principle of revelation
    in the Godhead. Only the Son has revealed the Father. Even Royce,
    in his Spirit of Modern Philosophy, speaks of the existence of an
    infinite Self, or Logos, or World-mind, of which all individual
    minds are parts or bits, and of whose timeless choice we partake.
    Some such principle in the divine nature must be assumed, if
    Christianity is the complete and sufficient revelation of God’s
    will to men. The Unitarian view regards the religion of Christ as
    only “one of the day’s works of humanity”—an evanescent moment in
    the ceaseless advance of the race. The Christian on the other hand
    regards Christ as the only Revealer of God, the only God with whom
    we have to do, the final authority in religion, the source of all
    truth and the judge of all mankind. “Heaven and earth shall pass
    away, but my words shall not pass away”_ (Mat. 24:35)._ The
    resurrection of just and unjust shall be his work (_John 5:28_),
    and future retribution shall be “the wrath of the Lamb”_ (Rev.
    6:16)_. Since God never thinks, says, or does any thing, except
    through Christ, and since Christ does his work in human hearts
    only through the Holy Spirit, we may conclude that the doctrine of
    the Trinity is essential to any proper revelation.


C. It is essential to any proper redemption.

If God be absolutely and simply one, there can be no mediation or
atonement, since between God and the most exalted creature the gulf is
infinite. Christ cannot bring us nearer to God than he is himself. Only
one who is God can reconcile us to God. So, too, only one who is God can
purify our souls. A God who is only unity, but in whom is no plurality,
may be our Judge, but, so far as we can see, cannot be our Savior or our
Sanctifier.


    “God is the way to himself.” “Nothing human holds good before God,
    and nothing but God himself can satisfy God.” The best method of
    arguing with Unitarians, therefore, is to rouse the sense of sin;
    for the soul that has any proper conviction of its sins feels that
    only an infinite Redeemer can ever save it. On the other hand, a
    slight estimate of sin is logically connected with a low view of
    the dignity of Christ. Twesten, translated in Bib. Sac., 3:510—“It
    would seem to be not a mere accident that Pelagianism, when
    logically carried out, as for example among the Socinians, has
    also always led to Unitarianism.” In the reverse order, too, it is
    manifest that rejection of the deity of Christ must tend to render
    more superficial men’s views of the sin and guilt and punishment
    from which Christ came to save them, and with this to deaden
    religious feeling and to cut the sinews of all evangelistic and
    missionary effort (_John 12:44_; _Heb. 10:26_). See Arthur, on the
    Divinity of our Lord in relation to his work of Atonement, in
    Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 35; Ellis, quoted by Watson, Theol.
    Inst., 23; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 13—“We have tried to
    see God in the light of nature, while he said: ‘In thy light shall
    we see light’_ (Ps. 36:9)_.” We should see nature in the light of
    Christ. Eternal life is attained only through the knowledge of God
    in Christ (_John 16:9_). Hence to accept Christ is to accept God;
    to reject Christ is to turn one’s back on God: _John 12:44—_“He
    that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent
    me”; _Heb. 10:26, 29—_“there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sin
    ... [for him] who hath trodden under foot the Son of God.”

    In The Heart of Midlothian, Jeanie Deans goes to London to secure
    pardon for her sister. She cannot in her peasant attire go direct
    to the King, for he will not receive her. She goes to a Scotch
    housekeeper in London; through him to the Duke of Argyle; through
    him to the Queen; through the Queen she gets pardon from the King,
    whom she never sees. This was mediæval mediatorship. But now we
    come directly to Christ, and this suffices us, because he is
    himself God (The Outlook). A man once went into the cell of a
    convicted murderer, at the request of the murderer’s wife and
    pleaded with him to confess his crime and accept Christ, but the
    murderer refused. The seeming clergyman was the Governor, with a
    pardon which he had designed to bestow in case he found the
    murderer penitent. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 86—“I have
    heard that, during our Civil War, a swaggering, drunken,
    blaspheming officer insulted and almost drove from the dock at
    Alexandria, a plain unoffending man in citizen’s dress; but I have
    also heard that that same officer turned pale, fell on his knees,
    and begged for mercy, when the plain man demanded his sword, put
    him under arrest and made himself known as General Grant. So we
    may abuse and reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and fancy that we can
    ignore his claims and disobey his commands with impunity; but it
    will seem a more serious thing when we find at the last that he
    whom we have abused and rejected is none other than the living God
    before whose judgment bar we are to stand.”

    Henry B. Smith began life under Unitarian influences, and had
    strong prejudices against evangelical doctrine, especially the
    doctrines of human depravity and of the divinity of Christ. In his
    Senior year in College he was converted. Cyrus Hamlin says: “I
    regard Smith’s conversion as the most remarkable event in College
    in my day.” Doubts of depravity vanished with one glimpse into his
    own heart; and doubts about Christ’s divinity could not hold their
    own against the confession: “Of one thing I feel assured: I need
    an infinite Savior.” Here is the ultimate strength of Trinitarian
    doctrine. When the Holy Spirit convinces a man of his sin, and
    brings him face to face with the outraged holiness and love of
    God, he is moved to cry from the depths of his soul: “None but an
    infinite Savior can ever save me!” Only in a divine Christ—Christ
    _for_ us upon the Cross, and Christ _in_ us by his Spirit—can the
    convicted soul find peace and rest. And so every revival of true
    religion gives a new impulse to the Trinitarian doctrine. Henry B.
    Smith wrote in his later life: “When the doctrine of the Trinity
    was abandoned, other articles of the faith, such as the atonement
    and regeneration, have almost always followed, by logical
    necessity, as, when one draws the wire from a necklace of gems,
    the gems all fall asunder.”


D. It is essential to any proper model for human life.

If there be no Trinity immanent in the divine nature, then Fatherhood in
God has had a beginning and it may have an end; Sonship, moreover, is no
longer a perfection, but an imperfection, ordained for a temporary
purpose. But if fatherly giving and filial receiving are eternal in God,
then the law of love requires of us conformity to God in both these
respects as the highest dignity of our being.


    See Hutton, Essays, 1:232—“The Trinity tells us something of God’s
    absolute and essential nature; not simply what he is _to us_, but
    what he is _in himself_. If Christ is the eternal Son of the
    Father, God is indeed and in essence a Father; the social nature,
    the spring of love is of the very essence of the eternal Being;
    the communication of life, the reciprocation of affection dates
    from beyond time, belongs to the very being of God. The Unitarian
    idea of a solitary God profoundly affects our conception of God,
    reduces it to mere power, identifies God with abstract cause and
    thought. Love is grounded in power, not power in love. The Father
    is merged in the omniscient and omnipotent genius of the
    universe.” Hence _1 John 2:23—_“Whosoever denieth the Son, the
    same hath not the Father.” D’Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 204—“If
    God be simply one great person, then we have to think of him as
    waiting until the whole process of creation has been accomplished
    before his love can find an object upon which to bestow itself.
    His love belongs, in that case, not to his inmost essence, but to
    his relation to some of his creatures. The words ‘God is love’_ (1
    John 4:8)_ become a rhetorical exaggeration, rather than the
    expression of a truth about the divine nature.”

    Hutton, Essays, 1:239—“We need also the inspiration and help of a
    perfect filial will. We cannot conceive of the Father as sharing
    in that dependent attitude of spirit which is our chief spiritual
    want. It is a Father’s perfection to originate—a Son’s to receive.
    We need sympathy and aid in this _receptive_ life; hence, the help
    of the true Son. Humility, self-sacrifice, submission, are
    heavenly, eternal, divine. Christ’s filial life to the root of all
    filial life in us. See _Gal. 2:19, 20—_‘it is no longer I that
    live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in
    the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
    who loved me, and gave himself up for me.’” Thomas Erskine of
    Linlathen, The Spiritual Order, 233—“There is nothing degrading in
    this dependence, for we share it with the eternal Son.” Gore,
    Incarnation, 162—“God can limit himself by the conditions of
    manhood, because the Godhead contains in itself eternally the
    prototype of human self-sacrifice and self-limitation, for God is
    love.” On the practical lessons and uses of the doctrine of the
    Trinity, see Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct 1902:524-550—art. by R. M.
    Edgar; also sermon by Ganse, in South Church Lectures, 300-310. On
    the doctrine in general, see Robie, in Bib. Sac., 27:262-289;
    Pease, Philosophy of Trinitarian Doctrine; N. W. Taylor, Revealed
    Theology, 1:133; Schultz, Lehre von der Gottheit Christi.

    On heathen trinities, see Bib. Repos., 6:116; Christlieb, Mod.
    Doubt and Christian Belief, 266, 267—“Lao-tse says, 600 B. C.,
    ‘Tao, the intelligent principle of all being, is by nature one;
    the first begat the second; both together begat the third; these
    three made all things.’ ” The Egyptian triad of Abydos was Osiris,
    Isis his wife, and Horus their Son. But these were no true
    persons; for not only did the Son proceed from the Father, but the
    Father proceeded from the Son; the Egyptian trinity was
    pantheistic in its meaning. See Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 29;
    Rawlinson, Religions of the Ancient World, 46, 47. The Trinity of
    the Vedas was Dyaus, Indra, Agni. Derived from the three
    dimensions of space? Or from the family—father, mother, son? Man
    creates God in his own image, and sees family life in the Godhead?

    The Brahman Trimurti or Trinity, to the members of which are given
    the names Brahma, Vishnu, Siva—source, supporter, end—is a
    personification of the pantheistic All, which dwells equally in
    good and evil, in god and man. The three are represented in the
    three mystic letters of the syllable _Om_, or _Aum_, and by the
    image at Elephanta of three heads and one body; see Hardwick,
    Christ and Other Masters, 1:276. The places of the three are
    interchangeable. Williams: “In the three persons the one God is
    shown; Each first in place, each last, not one alone; Of Siva,
    Vishnu, Brahma, each may be, First, second, third, among the
    blessed three.” There are ten incarnations of Vishnu for men’s
    salvation in various times of need; and the one Spirit which
    temporarily invests itself with the qualities of matter is reduced
    to its original essence at the end of the æon (Kalpa). This is
    only a grosser form of Sabellianism, or of a modal Trinity.
    According to Renouf it is not older than A. D. 1400. Buddhism in
    later times had its triad. Buddha, or Intelligence, the first
    principle, associated with Dharma, or Law, the principle of
    matter, through the combining influence of Sangha, or Order, the
    mediating principle. See Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the Light
    of the World, 184, 355. It is probably from a Christian source.

    The Greek trinity was composed of Zeus, Athena, and Apollo. Apollo
    or Loxias (λόγος) utters the decisions of Zeus. “These three
    surpass all the other gods in moral character and in providential
    care over the universe. They sustain such intimate and endearing
    relations to each other, that they may be said to ‘agree in
    one’ ”; see Tyler, Theol. of Greek Poets, 170, 171; Gladstone,
    Studies of Homer, vol. 2, sec. 2. Yet the Greek trinity, while it
    gives us three persons, does not give us oneness of essence. It is
    a system of tritheism. Plotinus, 300 A. D., gives us a
    philosophical Trinity in his τὸ ἔν, ὁ νοῦς, ἡ ψυχή.

    Watts, New Apologetic, 195—The heathen trinities are “residuary
    fragments of the lost knowledge of God, not different stages in a
    process of theological evolution, but evidence of a moral and
    spiritual degradation.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
    92—“In the Vedas the various individual divinities are separated
    by no hard and fast distinction from each other. They are only
    names for one indivisible whole, of which the particular divinity
    invoked at any one time is the type or representative. There is a
    latent recognition of a unity beneath all the multiplicity of the
    objects of adoration. The personal or anthropomorphic element is
    never employed as it is in the Greek and Roman mythology. The
    personality ascribed to Mitra or Varuna or Indra or Agni is
    scarcely more real than our modern smiling heaven or whispering
    breeze or sullen moaning restless sea. ‘There is but one,’ they
    say, ‘though the poets call him by different names.’ The
    all-embracing heaven, mighty nature, is the reality behind each of
    these partial manifestations. The pantheistic element which was
    implicit in the Vedic phase of Indian religion becomes explicit in
    Brahmanism, and in particular in the so-called Indian systems of
    philosophy and in the great Indian epic poems. They seek to find
    in the flux and variety of things the permanent underlying
    essence. That is Brahma. So Spinoza sought rest in the one eternal
    substance, and he wished to look at all things ‘under the form of
    eternity.’ All things and beings are forms of one whole, of the
    infinite substance which we call God.” See also L. L. Paine,
    Ethnic Trinities.

    The gropings of the heathen religions after a trinity in God,
    together with their inability to construct a consistent scheme of
    it, are evidence of a rational want in human nature which only the
    Christian doctrine is able to supply. This power to satisfy the
    inmost needs of the believer is proof of its truth. We close our
    treatment with the words of Jeremy Taylor: “He who goes about to
    speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words and
    names of man’s invention, talking of essence and existences,
    hypostases and personalities, priority in coëquality, and unity in
    pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head,
    and talk something—he knows not what; but the renewed man, that
    feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom,
    sanctification, and redemption, in whose heart the love of the
    Spirit of God is shed abroad—this man, though he understand
    nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands
    the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.”




Chapter III. The Decrees Of God.



I. Definition of Decrees.


By the decrees of God we mean that eternal plan by which God has rendered
certain all the events of the universe, past, present, and future. Notice
in explanation that:

(_a_) The decrees are many only to our finite comprehension; in their own
nature they are but one plan, which embraces not only effects but also
causes, not only the ends to be secured but also the means needful to
secure them.


    In _Rom. 8:28—_“called according to his purpose”—the many decrees
    for the salvation of many individuals are represented as forming
    but one purpose of God. _Eph. 1:11—_“foreordained according to the
    purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his
    will”—notice again the word “_purpose_,” in the singular. _Eph.
    3:11—_“according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in
    Christ Jesus our Lord.” This one purpose or plan of God includes
    both means and ends, prayer and its answer, labor and its fruit.
    Tyrolese proverb: “God has his plan for every man.” Every man, as
    well as Jean Paul, is “der Einzige”—the unique. There is a single
    plan which embraces all things; “we use the word ‘decree’ when we
    think of it partitively” (Pepper). See Hodge, Outlines of
    Theology, 1st ed., 165; 2d ed., 200—“In fact, no event is
    isolated—to determine one involves determination of the whole
    concatenation of causes and effects which constitutes the
    universe.” The word “plan” is preferable to the word “decrees,”
    because “plan” excludes the ideas of (1) plurality, (2)
    short-sightedness, (3) arbitrariness, (4) compulsion.


(_b_) The decrees, as the eternal act of an infinitely perfect will,
though they have logical relations to each other, have no chronological
relation. They are not therefore the result of deliberation, in any sense
that implies short-sightedness or hesitancy.


    Logically, in God’s decree the sun precedes the sunlight, and the
    decree to bring into being a father precedes the decree that there
    shall be a son. God decrees man before he decrees man’s act; he
    decrees the creation of man before he decrees man’s existence. But
    there is no chronological succession. “_Counsel_” in _Eph.
    1:11—_“the counsel of his will”—means, not deliberation, but
    wisdom.


(_c_) Since the will in which the decrees have their origin is a free
will, the decrees are not a merely instinctive or necessary exercise of
the divine intelligence or volition, such as pantheism supposes.


    It belongs to the perfection of God that he have a plan, and the
    best possible plan. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty
    that infinite wisdom will act wisely. God’s decrees are not God;
    they are not identical with his essence; they do not flow from his
    being in the same necessary way in which the eternal Son proceeds
    from the eternal Father. There is free will in God, which acts
    with infinite certainty, yet without necessity. To call even the
    decree of salvation necessary is to deny grace, and to make an
    unfree God. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:355; lect. 34.


(_d_) The decrees have reference to things outside of God. God does not
decree to be holy, nor to exist as three persons in one essence.


    Decrees are the preparation for external events—the embracing of
    certain things and acts in a plan. They do not include those
    processes and operations within the Godhead which have no
    reference to the universe.


(_e_) The decrees primarily respect the acts of God himself, in Creation,
Providence, and Grace; secondarily, the acts of free creatures, which he
foresees will result therefrom.


    While we deny the assertion of Whedon, that “the divine plan
    embraces _only_ divine actions,” we grant that God’s plan has
    reference _primarily_ to his own actions, and that the sinful acts
    of men, in particular, are the objects, not of a decree that God
    will efficiently produce them, but of a decree that God will
    permit men, in the exercise of their own free will, to produce
    them.


(_f_) The decree to act is not the act. The decrees are an internal
exercise and manifestation of the divine attributes, and are not to be
confounded with Creation, Providence, and Redemption, which are the
execution of the decrees.


    The decrees are the first operation of the attributes, and the
    first manifestation of personality of which we have any knowledge
    within the Godhead. They presuppose those essential acts or
    movements within the divine nature which we call generation and
    procession. They involve by way of consequence that execution of
    the decrees which we call Creation, Providence, and Redemption,
    but they are not to be confounded with either of these.


(_g_) The decrees are therefore not addressed to creatures; are not of the
nature of statute law; and lay neither compulsion nor obligation upon the
wills of men.

So ordering the universe that men _will_ pursue a given course of action
is a very different thing from declaring, ordering, or commanding that
they _shall_. “Our acts are in accordance with the decrees, but not
_necessarily_ so—we _can_ do otherwise and often _should_” (Park). The
Frenchman who fell into the water and cried: “I will, drown,—no one shall
help me!” was very naturally permitted to drown; if he had said: “I shall
drown,—no one will help me!” he might perchance have called some friendly
person to his aid.

(_h_) All human acts, whether evil or good, enter into the divine plan and
so are objects of God’s decrees, although God’s actual agency with regard
to the evil is only a permissive agency.


    No decree of God reads: “You shall sin.” For (1) no decree is
    addressed to _you_; (2) no decree with respect to you says
    _shall_; (3) God cannot cause _sin_, or decree to cause it. He
    simply decrees to create, and himself to act, in such a way that
    you will, of your own free choice, commit sin. God determines upon
    his own acts, foreseeing what the results will be in the free acts
    of his creatures, and so he determines those results. This
    permissive decree is the only decree of God with respect to sin.
    Man of himself is capable of producing sin. Of himself he is not
    capable of producing holiness. In the production of holiness two
    powers must concur, God’s will and man’s will, and God’s will must
    act first. The decree of good, therefore, is not simply a
    permissive decree, as in the case of evil. God’s decree, in the
    former case, is a decree to bring to bear positive agencies for
    its production, such as circumstances, motives, influences of his
    Spirit. But, in the case of evil, God’s decrees are simply his
    arrangement that man may do as he pleases, God all the while
    foreseeing the result.

    Permissive agency should not be confounded with conditional
    agency, nor permissive decree with conditional decree. God
    foreordained sin only indirectly. The machine is constructed not
    for the sake of the friction, but in spite of it. In the parable
    _Mat. 13:24-30_, the question “_Whence then hath it tares?_” is
    answered, not by saying, “I decreed the tares.” but by saying:
    “_An enemy hath done this_.” Yet we must take exception to
    Principal Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Theology, 456, when he
    says: “God did not _permit_ sin to be; it is, in its essence, the
    transgression of his law, and so his only attitude toward it is
    one of opposition. It _is_, because man has contradicted and
    resisted his will.” Here the truth of God’s opposition to sin is
    stated so sharply as almost to deny the decree of sin in any
    sense. We maintain that God does decree sin in the sense of
    embracing in his plan the foreseen transgressions of men, while at
    the same time we maintain that these foreseen transgressions are
    chargeable wholly to men and not at all to God.


(_i_) While God’s total plan with regard to creatures is called
predestination, or foreordination, his purpose so to act that certain will
believe and be saved is called election, and his purpose so to act that
certain will refuse to believe and be lost is called reprobation. We
discuss election and reprobation, in a later chapter, as a part of the
Application of Redemption.


    God’s decrees may be divided into decrees with respect to nature,
    and decrees with respect to moral beings. These last we call
    foreordination, or predestination; and of these decrees with
    respect to moral beings there are two kinds, the decree of
    election, and the decree of reprobation; see our treatment of the
    doctrine of Election. George Herbert: “We all acknowledge both thy
    power and love To be exact, transcendent, and divine; Who dost so
    strongly and so sweetly move. While all things have their will—yet
    none but thine. For either thy _command_ or thy _permission_ Lays
    hands on all; they are thy right and left. The first puts on with
    speed and expedition; The other curbs sin’s stealing pace and
    theft. Nothing escapes them both; all must appear And be disposed
    and dressed and tuned by thee Who sweetly temperest all. If we
    could hear Thy skill and art, what music it would be!” On the
    whole doctrine, see Shedd, Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:1-25.



II. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.


1. From Scripture.


A. The Scriptures declare that all things are included in the divine
decrees. B. They declare that special things and events are decreed; as,
for example, (_a_) the stability of the physical universe; (_b_) the
outward circumstances of nations; (_c_) the length of human life; (_d_)
the mode of our death; (_e_) the free acts of men, both good acts and evil
acts. C. They declare that God has decreed (_a_) the salvation of
believers; (_b_) the establishment of Christ’s kingdom; (_c_) the work of
Christ and of his people in establishing it.


    A. _Is. 14:26, 27—_“This is the purpose that is purposed upon the
    whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all
    the nations; for Jehovah of hosts hath purposed ... and his hand
    is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?” _46:10,
    11—_“declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times
    the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand,
    and I will do all my pleasure ... yea, I have spoken, I will also
    bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it.” _Dan.
    4:35—_“doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and
    among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or
    say unto him, What doest thou?” _Eph. 1:11—_“the purpose of him
    who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.”

    B. (_a_) _Ps. 119:89-91—_“For ever, O Jehovah, thy word is settled
    in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: Thou hast
    established the earth and it abideth. They abide this day
    according to thine ordinances; For all things are thy servants.”
    (_b_) _Acts 17:26—_“he made of one every nation of men to dwell on
    all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed
    seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; _cf._ _Zach.
    5:1—_“came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the
    mountains were mountains of brass”—the fixed decrees from which
    proceed God’s providential dealings? (_c_) _Job 14:5—_“Seeing his
    days are determined, The number of his months is with thee, And
    thou hast determined his bounds that he cannot pass.” (_d_) _John
    21:19—_“this he spake, signifying by what manner of death he
    should glorify God.” (_e_) Good acts: _Is. 44:28—_“that saith of
    Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure, even
    saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy
    foundation shall be laid”; _Eph. 2:10—_“For we are his
    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
    afore prepared that we should walk in them.” Evil acts: _Gen.
    50:20—_“as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for
    good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people
    alive”; _1 K. 12:15—_“So the king hearkened not unto the people,
    for it was a thing brought about of Jehovah”; _24—_“for this thing
    is of me”; _Luke 22:23—_“For the Son of man indeed goeth, as it
    hath been determined: but woe unto that man through whom he is
    betrayed”; _Acts 2:23—_“him, being delivered up by the determinate
    counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men
    did crucify and slay”; _4:27, 28—_“of a truth in this city against
    thy holy Servant Jesus, who thou didst anoint, both Herod and
    Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were
    gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
    foreordained to come to pass”; _Rom. 9:17—_“For the scripture
    saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up,
    that I might show in thee my power”; _1 Pet 2:3—_“They stumble at
    the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;
    _Rev. 17:17—_“For God did put in their hearts to do his mind, and
    to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast,
    until the words of God should be accomplished.”

    C. (_a_) _1 Cor. 2:7—_“the wisdom which hath been hidden, which
    God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory”; _Eph 3:10,
    11—_“manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose
    which he purposed in Christ Jesus our lord.” _Ephesians 1_ is a
    pæan in praise of God’s decrees. (_b_) The greatest decree of all
    is the decree to give the world to Christ. _Ps. 2:7, 8—_“I will
    tell of the decree:... I will give thee the nations for thine
    inheritance”; _cf._ _verse 6—_“I have set my king Upon my holy
    hill of Zion”; _1 Cor. 15:25—_“he must reign, till he hath put all
    his enemies under his feet.” (_c_) This decree we are to convert
    into our decree; God’s will is to be executed through our wills.
    _Phil. 2:12, 13—_“work out your own salvation with fear and
    trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to
    work, for his good pleasure.” _Rev. 5:1, 7—_“I saw in the right
    hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on
    the back, close sealed with seven seals.... And he [the Lamb]
    came, and he taketh it out of the right hand of him that sat on
    the throne”; _verse 9—_“Worthy art thou to take the book, and to
    open the seals thereof”—Christ alone has the omniscience to know,
    and the omnipotence to execute, the divine decrees. When John
    weeps because there is none in heaven or earth to loose the seals
    and to read the book of God’s decrees, the Lion of the tribe of
    Judah prevails to open it. Only Christ conducts the course of
    history to its appointed end. See A. H. Strong, Christ in
    Creation, 268-283, on The Decree of God as the Great Encouragement
    to Missions.


2. From Reason.


A. From the Divine Foreknowledge.


Foreknowledge implies fixity, and fixity implies decree.—From eternity God
foresaw all the events of the universe as fixed and certain. This fixity
and certainty could not have had its ground either in blind fate or in the
variable wills of men, since neither of these had an existence. It could
have had its ground in nothing outside the divine mind, for in eternity
nothing existed besides the divine mind. But for this fixity there must
have been a cause; if anything in the future was fixed, something must
have fixed it. This fixity could have had its ground only in the plan and
purpose of God. In fine, if God foresaw the future as certain, it must
have been because there was something in himself which made it certain;
or, in other words, because he had decreed it.


    We object therefore to the statement of E. G. Robinson, Christian
    Theology, 74—“God’s knowledge and God’s purposes both being
    eternal, one cannot be conceived as the ground of the other, nor
    can either be predicated to the exclusion of the other as the
    cause of things, but, correlative and eternal, they must be
    coequal quantities in thought.” We reply that while decree does
    not chronologically precede, it does logically precede,
    foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is not of possible events, but of
    what is certain to be. The certainty of future events which God
    foreknew could have had its ground only in his decree, since he
    alone existed to be the ground and explanation of this certainty.
    Events were fixed only because God had fixed them. Shedd, Dogm.
    Theol., 1:397—“An event must be _made_ certain, before it can be
    _known_ as a certain event.” Turretin, Inst. Theol., loc. 3,
    quaes. 12, 18—“Præcipuum fundamentum scientiæ divinæ circa futura
    contingentia est deoretum solum.”


Decreeing creation implies decreeing the foreseen results of creation.—To
meet the objection that God might have foreseen the events of the
universe, not because he had decreed each one, but only because he had
decreed to create the universe and institute its laws, we may put the
argument in another form. In eternity there could have been no cause of
the future existence of the universe, outside of God himself, since no
being existed but God himself. In eternity God foresaw that the creation
of the world and the institution of its laws would make certain its actual
history even to the most insignificant details. But God decreed to create
and to institute these laws. In so decreeing he necessarily decreed all
that was to come. In fine, God foresaw the future events of the universe
as certain, because he had decreed to create; but this determination to
create involved also a determination of all the actual results of that
creation; or, in other words, God decreed those results.


    E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 84—“The existence of divine
    decrees may be inferred from the existence of natural law.” Law =
    certainty = God’s will. Positivists express great contempt for the
    doctrine of the eternal purpose of God, yet they consign us to the
    iron necessity of physical forces and natural laws. Dr. Robinson
    also points out that decrees are “implied in the prophecies. We
    cannot conceive that all events should have converged toward the
    one great event—the death of Christ—without the intervention of an
    eternal purpose.” E. H. Johnson, Outline Syst. Theol., 2d ed.,
    251, note—“Reason is confronted by the paradox that the divine
    decrees are at once absolute and conditional; the resolution of
    the paradox is that God absolutely decreed a conditional system—a
    system, however, the workings of which he thoroughly foreknows.”
    The rough unhewn stone and the statue into which it will be
    transformed are both and equally included in the plan of the
    sculptor.


No undecreed event can be foreseen.—We grant that God decrees primarily
and directly his own acts of creation, providence, and grace; but we claim
that this involves also a secondary and indirect decreeing of the acts of
free creatures which he foresees will result therefrom. There is therefore
no such thing in God as _scientia media_, or knowledge of an event that is
to be, though it does not enter into the divine plan; for to say that God
foresees an undecreed event, is to say that he views as future an event
that is merely possible; or, in other words, that he views an event not as
it is.


    We recognize only two kinds of knowledge: (1) Knowledge of
    undecreed possibles, and (2) foreknowledge of decreed actuals.
    _Scientia media_ is a supposed intermediate knowledge between
    these two, namely (3) foreknowledge of undecreed actuals. See
    further explanations below. We deny the existence of this third
    sort of knowledge. We hold that sin is decreed in the sense of
    being _rendered certain_ by God’s determining upon a system in
    which it was foreseen that sin would exist. The sin of man can be
    foreknown, while yet God is not the immediate cause of it. God
    knows possibilities, without having decreed them at all. But God
    cannot foreknow actualities unless he has by his decree made them
    to be certainties of the future. He cannot foreknow that which is
    not there to be foreknown. Royce, World and Individual, 2:374,
    maintains that God has, not _fore_knowledge, but only _eternal_
    knowledge, of temporal things. But we reply that to foreknow how a
    moral being _will_ act is no more impossible than to know how a
    moral being in given circumstances _would_ act.


Only knowledge of that which is decreed is foreknowledge.—Knowledge of a
plan as ideal or possible may precede decree; but knowledge of a plan as
actual or fixed must follow decree. Only the latter knowledge is properly
_fore_knowledge. God therefore foresees creation, causes, laws, events,
consequences, because he has decreed creation, causes, laws, events,
consequences; that is, because he has embraced all these in his plan. The
denial of decrees logically involves the denial of God’s foreknowledge of
free human actions; and to this Socinians, and some Arminians, are
actually led.


    An Arminian example of this denial is found in McCabe,
    Foreknowledge of God, and Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies
    a Necessity. _Per contra_, see notes on God’s foreknowledge, in
    this Compendium, pages 283-286. Pepper: “Divine volition stands
    logically between two divisions and kinds of divine knowledge.”
    God knew free human actions as _possible_, _before_ he decreed
    them; he knew them as _future_, _because_ he decreed them.
    Logically, though not chronologically, decree comes before
    foreknowledge. When I say, “I know what I will do,” it is evident
    that I have determined already, and that my knowledge does not
    precede determination, but follows it and is based upon it. It is
    therefore not correct to say that God foreknows his decrees. It is
    more true to say that he decrees his foreknowledge. He foreknows
    the future which he has decreed, and he foreknows it because he
    has decreed it. His decrees are eternal, and nothing that is
    eternal can be the object of foreknowledge. G. F. Wright, in Bib.
    Sac., 1877:723—“The _knowledge_ of God comprehended the details
    and incidents of every possible plan. The _choice_ of a plan made
    his knowledge determinate as _fore_knowledge.”

    There are therefore two kinds of divine knowledge: (1) knowledge
    of what may be—of the possible (_scientia simplicis
    intelligentiæ_); and (2) knowledge of what is, and is to be,
    because God has decreed it (_scientia visionis_). Between these
    two Molina, the Spanish Jesuit, wrongly conceived that there was
    (3) a middle knowledge of things which were to be, although God
    had not decreed them (_scientia media_). This would of course be a
    knowledge which God derived, not from himself, but from his
    creatures! See Dick, Theology, 1:351. A. S. Carman: “It is
    difficult to see how God’s knowledge can be caused from eternity
    by something that has no existence until a definite point of
    time.” If it be said that what is to be will be “in the nature of
    things,” we reply that there is no “nature of things” apart from
    God, and that the ground of the objective certainty, as well as of
    the subjective certitude corresponding to it, is to be found only
    in God himself.

    But God’s decreeing to create, when he foresees that certain free
    acts of men will follow, is a decreeing of those free acts, in the
    only sense in which we use the word decreeing, _viz._, a rendering
    certain, or embracing in his plan. No Arminian who believes in
    God’s foreknowledge of free human acts has good reason for denying
    God’s decrees as thus explained. Surely God did not foreknow that
    Adam would exist and sin, whether God determined to create him or
    not. Omniscience, then, becomes _fore_knowledge only on condition
    of God’s decree. That God’s foreknowledge of free acts is
    intuitive does not affect this conclusion. We grant that, while
    man can predict free action only so far as it is rational (_i.
    e._, in the line of previously dominant motive), God can predict
    free action whether it is rational or not. But even God cannot
    predict what is not certain to be. God can have intuitive
    foreknowledge of free human acts only upon condition of his own
    decree to create; and this decree to create, in foresight of all
    that will follow, is a decree of what follows. For the Arminian
    view, see Watson, Institutes, 2:375-398, 422-448. _Per contra_,
    see Hill, Divinity, 512-582; Fiske, in Bib. Sac., April, 1862;
    Bennett Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 214-254; Edwards the younger,
    1:398-420; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 98-101.


B. From the Divine Wisdom.


It is the part of wisdom to proceed in every undertaking according to a
plan. The greater the undertaking, the more needful a plan. Wisdom,
moreover, shows itself in a careful provision for all possible
circumstances and emergencies that can arise in the execution of its plan.
That many such circumstances and emergencies are uncontemplated and
unprovided for in the plans of men, is due only to the limitations of
human wisdom. It belongs to infinite wisdom, therefore, not only to have a
plan, but to embrace all, even the minutest details, in the plan of the
universe.


    No architect would attempt to build a Cologne cathedral without a
    plan; he would rather, if possible, have a design for every stone.
    The great painter does not study out his picture as he goes along;
    the plan is in his mind from the start; preparations for the last
    effects have to be made from the beginning. So in God’s work every
    detail is foreseen and provided for; sin and Christ entered into
    the original plan of the universe. Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:156,
    says this implies that God cannot govern the world unless all
    things be reduced to the condition of machinery; and that it
    cannot be true, for the reason that God’s government is a
    government of persons and not of things. But we reply that the
    wise statesman governs persons and not things, yet just in
    proportion to his wisdom he conducts his administration according
    to a preconceived plan. God’s power might, but God’s wisdom would
    not, govern the universe without embracing all things, even the
    least human action, in his plan.


C. From the Divine Immutability.


What God does, he always purposed to do. Since with him there is no
increase of knowledge or power, such as characterizes finite beings, it
follows that what under any given circumstances he permits or does, he
must have eternally decreed to permit or do. To suppose that God has a
multitude of plans, and that he changes his plan with the exigencies of
the situation, is to make him infinitely dependent upon the varying wills
of his creatures, and to deny to him one necessary element of perfection,
namely, immutability.


    God has been very unworthily compared to a chess-player, who will
    checkmate his opponent whatever moves he may make (George Harris).
    So Napoleon is said to have had a number of plans before each
    battle, and to have betaken himself from one to another as fortune
    demanded. Not so with God. _Job 23:13—_“he is in one mind, and who
    can turn him?” _James 1:17-_“the Father of lights, with whom can
    be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” Contrast
    with this Scripture McCabe’s statement in his Foreknowledge of
    God, 62—“This new factor, the godlike liberty of the human will,
    is capable of thwarting, and in uncounted instances does thwart,
    the divine will, and compel the great I AM to modify his actions,
    his purposes, and his plans, in the treatment of individuals and
    of communities.”


D. From the Divine Benevolence.


The events of the universe, if not determined by the divine decrees, must
be determined either by chance or by the wills of creatures. It is
contrary to any proper conception of the divine benevolence to suppose
that God permits the course of nature and of history, and the ends to
which both these are moving, to be determined for myriads of sentient
beings by any other force or will than his own. Both reason and
revelation, therefore, compel us to accept the doctrine of the Westminster
Confession, that “God did from all eternity, by the most just and holy
counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes
to pass.”


    It would not be benevolent for God to put out of his own power
    that which was so essential to the happiness of the universe.
    Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 231-243—“The denial of decrees
    involves denial of the essential attributes of God, such as
    omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence; exhibits him as a
    disappointed and unhappy being; implies denial of his universal
    providence; leads to a denial of the greater part of our own duty
    of submission; weakens the obligations of gratitude.” We give
    thanks to God for blessings which come to us through the free acts
    of others; but unless God has purposed these blessings, we owe our
    thanks to these others and not to God. Dr. A. J. Gordon said well
    that a universe without decrees would be as irrational and
    appalling as would be an express-train driving on in the darkness
    without headlight or engineer, and with no certainty that the next
    moment it might not plunge into the abyss. And even Martineau,
    Study, 2:108, in spite of his denial of God’s foreknowledge of
    man’s free acts, is compelled to say: “It cannot be left to mere
    created natures to play unconditionally with the helm of even a
    single world and steer it uncontrolled into the haven or on to the
    reefs; and some security must be taken for keeping the deflections
    within tolerable bounds.” See also Emmons, Works, 4:273-401: and
    Princeton Essays, 1:57-73.



III. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.


1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.


To this we reply that:

A. The objection confounds the decrees with the execution of the decrees.
The decrees are, like foreknowledge, an act eternal to the divine nature,
and are no more inconsistent with free agency than foreknowledge is. Even
foreknowledge of events implies that those events are fixed. If this
absolute fixity and foreknowledge is not inconsistent with free agency,
much less can that which is more remote from man’s action, namely, the
hidden cause of this fixity and foreknowledge—God’s decrees—be
inconsistent with free agency. If anything be inconsistent with man’s free
agency, it must be, not the decrees themselves, but the execution of the
decrees in creation and providence.


    On this objection, see Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 244-249;
    Forbes, Predestination and Free Will, 3—“All things are
    _predestinated_ by God, both good and evil, but not
    _prenecessitated_, that is, causally preördained by him—unless we
    would make God the author of sin. Predestination is thus an
    indifferent word, in so far as the originating author of anything
    is concerned; God being the originator of good, but the creature,
    of evil. Predestination therefore means that God included in his
    plan of the world every act of every creature, good or bad. Some
    acts he predestined causally, others permissively. The certainty
    of the fulfilment of all God’s purposes ought to be distinguished
    from their necessity.” This means simply that God’s decree is not
    the _cause_ of any act or event. God’s decrees may be executed by
    the causal efficiency of his creatures, or they may be executed by
    his own efficiency. In either case it is, if anything, the
    execution, and not the decree, that is inconsistent with human
    freedom.


B. The objection rests upon a false theory of free agency—namely, that
free agency implies indeterminateness or uncertainty; in other words, that
free agency cannot coëxist with certainty as to the results of its
exercise. But it is necessity, not certainty, with which free agency is
inconsistent. Free agency is the power of self-determination in view of
motives, or man’s power (_a_) to chose between motives, and (_b_) to
direct his subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen.
Motives are never a cause, but only an occasion; they influence, but never
compel; the man is the cause, and herein is his freedom. But it is also
true that man is never in a state of indeterminateness; never acts without
motive, or contrary to all motives; there is always a reason why he acts,
and herein is his rationality. Now, so far as man acts according to
previously dominant motive—see (_b_) above—we may by knowing his motive
predict his action, and our certainty what that action will be in no way
affects his freedom. We may even bring motives to bear upon others, the
influence of which we foresee, yet those who act upon them may act in
perfect freedom. But if man, influenced by man, may still be free, then
man, influenced by divinely foreseen motives, may still be free, and the
divine decrees, which simply render certain man’s actions, may also be
perfectly consistent with man’s freedom.


    We must not assume that decreed ends can be secured only by
    compulsion. Eternal purposes do not necessitate efficient
    causation on the part of the purposer. Freedom may be the very
    means of fulfilling the purpose. E. G. Robinson, Christian
    Theology, 74—“Absolute certainty of events, which is all that
    omniscience determines respecting them, is not identical with
    their necessitation.” John Milton, Christian Doctrine: “Future
    events which God has foreseen will happen certainly, but not of
    necessity. They will happen certainly, because the divine
    prescience will not be deceived; but they will not happen
    necessarily, because prescience can have no influence on the
    object foreknown, inasmuch as it is only an intransitive action.”


There is, however, a smaller class of human actions by which character is
changed, rather than expressed, and in which the man acts according to a
motive different from that which has previously been dominant—see (_a_)
above. These actions also are foreknown by God, although they cannot be
predicted by man. Man’s freedom in them would be inconsistent with God’s
decrees, if the previous certainty of their occurrence were, not
certainty, but necessity; or, in other words, if God’s decrees were in all
cases decrees efficiently to produce the acts of his creatures. But this
is not the case. God’s decrees may be executed by man’s free causation, as
easily as by God’s; and God’s decreeing this free causation, in decreeing
to create a universe of which he foresees that this causation will be a
part, in no way interferes with the freedom of such causation, but rather
secures and establishes it. Both consciousness and conscience witness that
God’s decrees are not executed by laying compulsion upon the free wills of
men.


    The farmer who, after hearing a sermon on God’s decrees, took the
    break-neck road instead of the safe one to his home and broke his
    wagon in consequence, concluded before the end of his journey that
    he at any rate had been predestinated to be a fool, and that he
    had made his calling and election sure. Ladd, Philosophy of
    Conduct, 146, 187, shows that the will is free, first, by man’s
    consciousness of ability, and, secondly, by man’s consciousness of
    imputability. By nature, he is _potentially_ self-determining; as
    matter of fact, he often _becomes_ self-determining.

    Allen, Religious Progress, 110—“The coming church must embrace the
    sovereignty of God and the freedom of the will; total depravity
    and the divinity of human nature; the unity of God and the triune
    distinctions in the Godhead; gnosticism and agnosticism; the
    humanity of Christ and his incarnate deity; the freedom of the
    Christian man and the authority of the church; individualism and
    solidarity; reason and faith; science and theology; miracle and
    uniformity of law; culture and piety; the authority of the Bible
    as the word of God with absolute freedom of Biblical criticism;
    the gift of administration as in the historic episcopate and the
    gift of prophecy as the highest sanction of the ministerial
    commission; the apostolic succession but also the direct and
    immediate call which knows only the succession of the Holy Ghost.”
    Without assenting to these latter clauses we may commend the
    comprehensive spirit of this utterance, especially with reference
    to the vexed question of the relation of divine sovereignty to
    human freedom.


It may aid us, in estimating the force of this objection, to note the four
senses in which the term “freedom” may be used. It may be used as
equivalent to (1) _physical_ freedom, or absence of outward constraint;
(2) _formal_ freedom, or a state of moral indeterminateness; (3) _moral_
freedom, or self-determinateness in view of motives; (4) _real_ freedom,
or ability to conform to the divine standard. With the first of these we
are not now concerned, since all agree that the decrees lay no outward
constraint upon men. Freedom in the second sense has no existence, since
all men have character. Free agency, or freedom in the third sense, has
just been shown to be consistent with the decrees. Freedom in the fourth
sense, or real freedom, is the special gift of God, and is not to be
confounded with free agency. The objection mentioned above rests wholly
upon the second of these definitions of free agency. This we have shown to
be false, and with this the objection itself falls to the ground.


    Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 133-188, gives a good
    definition of this fourth kind of freedom: “Freedom is
    self-determination by universal ideals. Limiting our ends to those
    of family or country is a refined or idealized selfishness.
    Freedom is self-determination by universal love for man or by the
    kingdom of God. But the free man must then be dependent on God in
    everything, because the kingdom of God is a revelation of God.”
    John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:133—“In being
    determined by God we are self-determined; _i. e._, determined by
    nothing alien to us, but by our noblest, truest self. The
    universal life lives in us. The eternal consciousness becomes our
    own; for ‘he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth
    in him’_ (1 John 4:16)_.”

    Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 226—“Free will is not the
    independence of the creature, but is rather his self-realization
    in perfect dependence. Freedom is self-identity with goodness.
    Both goodness and freedom are, in their perfectness, in God.
    Goodness in a creature is not distinction from, but correspondence
    with, the goodness of God. Freedom in a creature is correspondence
    with God’s own self-identity with goodness. It is to realize and
    to find _himself_, his _true_ self, in Christ, so that God’s love
    in us has become a divine response, adequate to, because truly
    mirroring, God.” G. S. Lee, The Shadow Christ, 32—.“The ten
    commandments could not be chanted. The Israelites sang about
    Jehovah and what he had done, but they did not sing about what he
    told them to do, and that is why they never did it. The conception
    of duty that cannot sing must weep until it learns to sing. This
    is Hebrew history.”

    “There is a liberty, unsung By poets and by senators unpraised,
    Which monarchs cannot grant nor all the powers Of earth and hell
    confederate take away; A liberty which persecution, fraud,
    Oppressions, prisons, have no power to bind; Which whoso tastes
    can be enslaved no more. ’T is liberty of heart, derived from
    heaven, Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind, And sealed
    with the same token.” Robert Herrick: “Stone walls do not a prison
    make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for
    a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free,
    Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty.”

    A more full discussion of the doctrine of the Will is given under
    Anthropology, Vol. II. It is sufficient here to say that the
    Arminian objections to the decrees arise almost wholly from
    erroneously conceiving of freedom as the will’s power to decide,
    in any given case, against its own character and all the motives
    brought to bear upon it. As we shall hereafter see, this is
    practically to deny that man has character, or that the will by
    its right or wrong moral action gives to itself, as well as to the
    intellect and affections, a permanent bent or predisposition to
    good or evil. It is to extend the power of contrary choice, a
    power which belongs to the sphere of transient volition, over all
    those permanent states of intellect, affection, and will which we
    call the moral character, and to say that we can change directly
    by a single volition that which, as a matter of fact, we can
    change only indirectly through process and means. Yet even this
    exaggerated view of freedom would seem not to exclude God’s
    decrees, or prevent a practical reconciliation of the Arminian and
    Calvinistic views, so long as the Arminian grants God’s
    foreknowledge of free human acts, and the Calvinist grants that
    God’s decree of these acts is not necessarily a decree that God
    will efficiently produce them. For a close approximation of the
    two views, see articles by Raymond and by A. A. Hodge,
    respectively, on the Arminian and the Calvinistic Doctrines of the
    Will, in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, 10:989, 992.

    We therefore hold to the certainty of human action, and so part
    company with the Arminian. We cannot with Whedon (On the Will),
    and Hazard (Man a Creative First Cause), attribute to the will the
    freedom of indifference, or the power to act without motive. We
    hold with Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 188, that action without
    motive, or an act of pure will, is unknown in consciousness (see,
    however, an inconsistent statement of Calderwood on page 188 of
    the same work). Every future human act will not only be performed
    with a motive, but will certainly be one thing rather than
    another; and God knows what it will be. Whatever may be the method
    of God’s foreknowledge, and whether it be derived from motives or
    be intuitive, that foreknowledge presupposes God’s decree to
    create, and so presupposes the making certain of the free acts
    that follow creation.

    But this certainty is not necessity. In reconciling God’s decrees
    with human freedom, we must not go to the other extreme, and
    reduce human freedom to mere determinism, or the power of the
    agent to act out his character in the circumstances which environ
    him. Human action is not simply the expression of previously
    dominant affections; else Neither Satan nor Adam could have
    fallen, nor could the Christian ever sin. We therefore part
    company with Jonathan Edwards and his Treatise on the Freedom of
    the Will, as well as with the younger Edwards (Works, 1:420),
    Alexander (Moral Science, 107), and Charles Hodge (Syst. Theology,
    2:278), all of whom follow Jonathan Edwards in identifying
    sensibility with the will, in regarding affections as the causes
    of volitions, and in speaking of the connection between motive and
    action as a necessary one. We hold, on the contrary, that
    sensibility and will are two distinct powers, that affections are
    occasions but never causes of volitions, and that, while motives
    may infallibly persuade, they never compel the will. The power to
    make the decision other than it is resides in the will, though it
    may never be exercised. With Charnock, the Puritan (Attributes,
    1:448-450), we say that “man hath a power to do otherwise than
    that which God foreknows he will do.” Since, then, God’s decrees
    are not executed by laying compulsion upon human wills, they are
    not inconsistent with man’s freedom. See Martineau, Study, 2:237,
    249, 258, 261; also article by A. H. Strong, on Modified
    Calvinism, or Remainders of Freedom in Man, in Baptist Review,
    1883:219-243; reprinted in the author’s Philosophy and Religion,
    114-128.


2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.


To this we reply that:

(_a_) They cannot thus influence men, since they are not addressed to men,
are not the rule of human action, and become known only after the event.
This objection is therefore the mere excuse of indolence and disobedience.


    Men rarely make this excuse in any enterprise in which their hopes
    and their interests are enlisted. It is mainly in matters of
    religion that men use the divine decrees as an apology for their
    sloth and inaction. The passengers on an ocean steamer do not deny
    their ability to walk to starboard or to larboard, upon the plea
    that they are being carried to their destination by forces beyond
    their control. Such a plea would be still more irrational in a
    case where the passengers’ inaction, as in case of fire, might
    result in destruction to the ship.


(_b_) The objection confounds the decrees of God with fate. But it is to
be observed that fate is unintelligent, while the decrees are framed by a
personal God in infinite wisdom; fate is indistinguishable from material
causation and leaves no room for human freedom, while the decrees exclude
all notion of physical necessity; fate embraces no moral ideas or ends,
while the decrees make these controlling in the universe.


    North British Rev., April, 1870—“Determinism and predestination
    spring from premises which lie in quite separate regions of
    thought. The predestinarian is obliged by his theology to admit
    the existence of a free will in God, and, as a matter of fact, he
    does admit it in the devil. But the final consideration which puts
    a great gulf between the determinist and the predestinarian is
    this, that the latter asserts the reality of the vulgar notion of
    moral desert. Even if he were not obliged by his interpretation of
    Scripture to assert this, he would be obliged to assert it in
    order to help out his doctrine of eternal reprobation.”

    Hawthorne expressed his belief in human freedom when be said that
    destiny itself had often been worsted in the attempt to get him
    out to dinner. Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, quotes the
    Indian’s excuse for getting drunk: “The Great Spirit made all
    things for some use, and whatsoever use they were made for, to
    that use they must be put. The Great Spirit made rum for Indians
    to get drunk with, and so it must be.” Martha, in Isabel Carnaby,
    excuses her breaking of dishes by saying: “It seems as if it was
    to be. It is the thin edge of the wedge that in time will turn
    again and rend you.” Seminary professor: “Did a man ever die
    before his time?” Seminary student: “I never knew of such a case.”
    The decrees of God, considered as God’s all-embracing plan, leave
    room for human freedom.


(_c_) The objection ignores the logical relation between the decree of the
end and the decree of the means to secure it. The decrees of God not only
ensure the end to be obtained, but they ensure free human action as
logically prior thereto. All conflict between the decrees and human
exertion must therefore be apparent and not real. Since consciousness and
Scripture assure us that free agency exists, it must exist by divine
decree; and though we may be ignorant of the method in which the decrees
are executed, we have no right to doubt either the decrees or the freedom.
They must be held to be consistent, until one of them is proved to be a
delusion.


    The man who carries a vase of gold-fish does not prevent the fish
    from moving unrestrainedly within the vase. The double track of a
    railway enables a formidable approaching train to slip by without
    colliding with our own. Our globe takes us with it, as it rushes
    around the sun, yet we do our ordinary work without interruption.
    The two movements which at first sight seem inconsistent with each
    other are really parts of one whole. God’s plan and man’s effort
    are equally in harmony. Myers, Human Personality, 2:272, speaks of
    “molecular motion amid molar calm.”

    Dr. Duryea: “The way of life has two fences. There is an Arminian
    fence to keep us out of Fatalism; and there is a Calvinistic fence
    to keep us out of Pelagianism. Some good brethren like to walk on
    the fences. But it is hard in that way to keep one’s balance. And
    it is needless, for there is plenty of room between the fences.
    For my part I prefer to walk in the road.” Archibald Alexander’s
    statement is yet better: “Calvinism is the broadest of systems. It
    regards the divine sovereignty and the freedom of the human will
    as the two sides of a roof which come together at a ridgepole
    above the clouds. Calvinism accepts both truths. A system which
    denies either one of the two has only half a roof over its head.”

    Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:176, and The Best Bread, 109—“The
    system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one
    straight line but two, and no man will ever get a right view of
    the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once....
    These two facts [of divine sovereignty and of human freedom] are
    parallel lines; I cannot make them unite, but you cannot make them
    cross each other.” John A. Broadus: “You can see only two sides of
    a building at once; if you go around it, you see two different
    sides, but the first two are hidden. This is true if you are on
    the ground. But if you get up upon the roof or in a balloon, you
    can see that there are four sides, and you can see them all
    together. So our finite minds can take in sovereignty and freedom
    alternately, but not simultaneously. God from above can see them
    both, and from heaven we too may be able to look down and see.”


(_d_) Since the decrees connect means and ends together, and ends are
decreed only as the result of means, they encourage effort instead of
discouraging it. Belief in God’s plan that success shall reward toil,
incites to courageous and persevering effort. Upon the very ground of
God’s decree, the Scripture urges us to the diligent use of means.


    God has decreed the harvest only as the result of man’s labor in
    sowing and reaping; God decrees wealth to the man who works and
    saves; so answers are decreed to prayer, and salvation to faith.
    Compare Paul’s declaration of God’s purpose (_Acts 27:22,
    24—_“there shall be no loss of life among you.... God hath granted
    thee all them that sail with thee”) with his warning to the
    centurion and sailors to use the means of safety (_verse
    31—_“Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved”). See
    also _Phil. 2:12, 13—_“work out your own salvation with fear and
    trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to
    work, for his good pleasure”; _Eph. 2:10—_“we are his workmanship,
    created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared
    that we should walk in them”; _Deut. 29:29—_“the secret things
    belong unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed
    belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all
    the words of this law.” See Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures,
    252-354.

    _Ps. 59:10 (A. V.)—_“The God of my mercy shall prevent me”—shall
    anticipate, or go before, me; _Is. 65:24—_“before they call, I
    will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear”; _Ps.
    23:2—_“He leadeth me”; _John 10:3—_“calleth his own sheep by name,
    and leadeth them out.” These texts describe prevenient grace in
    prayer, in conversion, and in Christian work. Plato called reason
    and sensibility a mismatched pair, one of which was always getting
    ahead of the other. Decrees and freedom _seem_ to be mismatched,
    but they are not so. Even Jonathan Edwards, with his deterministic
    theory of the will, could, in his sermon on Pressing into the
    Kingdom, insist on the use of means, and could appeal to men as if
    they had the power to choose between the motives of self and of
    God. God’s sovereignty and human freedom are like the positive and
    the negative poles of the magnet,—they are inseparable from one
    another, and are both indispensable elements in the attraction of
    the gospel.

    Peter Damiani, the great monk-cardinal, said that the sin he found
    it hardest to uproot was his disposition to laughter. The homage
    paid to asceticism is the homage paid to the conqueror. But not
    all conquests are worthy of homage. Better the words of Luther:
    “If our God may make excellent large pike and good Rhenish wine, I
    may very well venture to eat and drink. Thou mayest enjoy every
    pleasure in the world that is not sinful; thy God forbids thee
    not, but rather wills it. And it is pleasing to the dear God
    whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.”
    But our freedom has its limits. Martha Baker Dunn: “A man fishing
    for pickerel baits his hook with a live minnow and throws him into
    the water. The little minnow seems to be swimming gaily at his own
    free will, but just the moment he attempts to move out of his
    appointed course he begins to realize that there is a hook in his
    back. That is what we find out when we try to swim against the
    stream of God’s decrees.”


3. That they make God the author of sin.


To this we reply:

(_a_) They make God, not the author of sin, but the author of free beings
who are themselves the authors of sin. God does not decree efficiently to
work evil desires or choices in men. He decrees sin only in the sense of
decreeing to create and preserve those who will sin; in other words, he
decrees to create and preserve human wills which, in their own self-chosen
courses, will be and do evil. In all this, man attributes sin to himself
and not to God, and God hates, denounces, and punishes sin.


    Joseph’s brethren were none the less wicked for the fact that God
    meant their conduct to result in good (_Gen. 50:20_). Pope Leo X
    and his indulgences brought on the Reformation, but he was none
    the less guilty. Slaveholders would have been no more excusable,
    even if they had been able to prove that the negro race was cursed
    in the curse of Canaan (_Gen. 9:25—_“Cursed be Canaan; a servant
    of servants shall he be unto his brethren”). Fitch, in Christian
    Spectator, 3:601—“There can be and is a purpose of God which is
    not an _efficient_ purpose. It embraces the voluntary acts of
    moral beings, without creating those acts by divine efficiency.”
    See Martineau, Study, 2:107, 136.

    _Mat. 26:24—_“The Son of man goeth even as it is written of him:
    but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed!
    good were it for that man if he had not been born.” It was
    appointed that Christ should suffer, but that did not make men
    less free agents, nor diminish the guilt of their treachery and
    injustice. Robert G. Ingersoll asked: “Why did God create the
    devil?” We reply that God did not create the devil,—it was the
    devil who made the devil. God made a holy and free spirit who
    abused his liberty, himself created sin, and so made himself a
    devil.

    Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:299—“Evil has been referred to 1.
    an extra-divine principle—to one or many evil spirits, or to fate,
    or to matter—at all events to a principle limiting the divine
    power; 2. a want or defect in the Deity himself, either his
    imperfect wisdom or his imperfect goodness; 3. human culpability,
    either a universal imperfection of human nature, or particular
    transgressions of the first men.” The third of these explanations
    is the true one: the first is irrational; the second is
    blasphemous. Yet this second is the explanation of Omar Khayyám,
    Rubáiyat, stanzas 80, 81—“Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with
    gin Beset the road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with
    predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin. Oh
    Thou, who man of baser earth didst make, And ev’n with Paradise
    devise the snake: For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is
    blackened—man’s forgiveness give—and take!” And David Harum
    similarly says: “If I’ve done anything to be sorry for, I’m
    willing to be forgiven.”


(_b_) The decree to permit sin is therefore not an efficient but a
permissive decree, or a decree to permit, in distinction from a decree to
produce by his own efficiency. No difficulty attaches to such a decree to
permit sin, which does not attach to the actual permission of it. But God
does actually permit sin, and it must be right for him to permit it. It
must therefore be right for him to decree to permit it. If God’s holiness
and wisdom and power are not impugned by the actual existence of moral
evil, they are not impugned by the original decree that it should exist.


    Jonathan Edwards, Works, 2:100—“The sun is not the _cause_ of the
    darkness that follows its setting, but only the _occasion_”;
    254—“If by the author of sin be meant the sinner, the agent, or
    the actor of sin, or the doer of a wicked thing—so it would be a
    reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin....
    But if by author of sin is meant the permitter or non-hinderer of
    sin, and at the same time a disposer of the state of events in
    such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and
    purposes, _that sin_, if it be permitted and not hindered, _will
    most certainly follow_, I do not deny that God is the author of
    sin: it is no reproach to the Most High to be _thus_ the author of
    sin.” On the objection that the doctrine of decrees imputes to God
    two wills, and that he has foreordained what he has forbidden, see
    Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 250-252—“A ruler may forbid
    treason; but his command does not oblige him to do all in his
    power to prevent disobedience to it. It may promote the good of
    his kingdom to suffer the treason to be committed, and the traitor
    to be punished according to law. That in view of this resulting
    good he chooses not to prevent the treason, does not imply any
    contradiction or opposition of will in the monarch.”

    An ungodly editor excused his vicious journalism by saying that he
    was not ashamed to describe anything which Providence had
    permitted to happen. But “permitted” here had an implication of
    causation. He laid the blame of the evil upon Providence. He was
    ashamed to describe many things that were good and which God
    actually caused, while he was not ashamed to describe the immoral
    things which God did not cause, but only permitted men to cause.
    In this sense we may assent to Jonathan Edwards’s words: “The
    divine Being is not the author of sin, but only disposes things in
    such a manner that sin will certainly ensue.” These words are
    found in his treatise on Original Sin. In his Essay on Freedom of
    the Will, he adds a doctrine of causation which we must repudiate:
    “The essence of virtue and vice, as they exist in the disposition
    of the heart, and are manifested in the acts of the will, lies not
    in their _Cause_ but in their _Nature_.” We reply that sin could
    not be condemnable in its nature, if God and not man were its
    cause.

    Robert Browning, Mihrab Shah: “Wherefore should any evil hap to
    man—From ache of flesh to agony of soul—Since God’s All-mercy
    mates All-potency? Nay, why permits he evil to himself—man’s sin,
    accounted such? Suppose a world purged of all pain, with fit
    inhabitant—Man pure of evil in thought, word and deed—were it not
    well? Then, wherefore otherwise?” Fairbairn answers the question,
    as follows, in his Christ in Modern Theology, 456—“Evil once
    intended may be vanquished by being allowed; but were it hindered
    by an act of annihilation, then the victory would rest with the
    evil which had compelled the Creator to retrace his steps. And, to
    carry the prevention backward another stage, if the possibility of
    evil had hindered the creative action of God, then he would have
    been, as it were, overcome by its very shadow. But why did he
    create a being capable of sinning? Only so could he create a being
    capable of obeying. The ability to do good implies the capability
    of doing evil. The engine can neither obey nor disobey, and the
    creature who was without this double ability might be a machine,
    but could be no child. Moral perfection can be attained, but
    cannot be created; God can make a being capable of moral action,
    but not a being with all the fruits of moral action garnered
    within him.”


(_c_) The difficulty is therefore one which in substance clings to all
theistic systems alike—the question why moral evil is permitted under the
government of a God infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and good. This
problem is, to our finite powers, incapable of full solution, and must
remain to a great degree shrouded in mystery. With regard to it we can
only say:

Negatively,—that God does not permit moral evil because he is not
unalterably opposed to sin; nor because moral evil was unforeseen and
independent of his will; nor because he could not have prevented it in a
moral system. Both observation and experience, which testify to multiplied
instances of deliverance from sin without violation of the laws of man’s
being, forbid as to limit the power of God.

Positively,—we seem constrained to say that God permits moral evil because
moral evil, though in itself abhorrent to his nature, is yet the incident
of a system adapted to his purpose of self-revelation; and further,
because it is his wise and sovereign will to institute and maintain this
system of which moral evil is an incident, rather than to withhold his
self-revelation or to reveal himself through another system in which moral
evil should be continually prevented by the exercise of divine power.


    There are four questions which neither Scripture nor reason
    enables us completely to solve and to which we may safely say that
    only the higher knowledge of the future state will furnish the
    answers. These questions are, first, how can a holy God permit
    moral evil? secondly, how could a being created pure ever fall?
    thirdly, how can we be responsible for inborn depravity? fourthly,
    how could Christ justly suffer? The first of these questions now
    confronts us. A complete theodicy (Θεός, God, and δική, justice)
    would be a vindication of the justice of God in permitting the
    natural and moral evil that exists under his government. While a
    complete theodicy is beyond our powers, we throw some light upon
    God’s permission of moral evil by considering (1) that freedom of
    will is necessary to virtue; (2) that God suffers from sin more
    than does the sinner; (3) that, with the permission of sin, God
    provided a redemption; and, (4) that God will eventually overrule
    all evil for good.

    It is possible that the elect angels belong to a moral system in
    which sin is prevented by constraining motives. We cannot deny
    that God could prevent sin in a moral system. But it is very
    doubtful whether God could prevent sin in the _best_ moral system.
    The most perfect freedom is indispensable to the attainment of the
    highest virtue. Spurgeon: “There could have been no moral
    government without permission to sin. God could have created
    blameless puppets, but they could have had no virtue.” Behrends:
    “If moral beings were incapable of perversion, man would have had
    all the virtue of a planet,—that is, no virtue at all.” Sin was
    permitted, then, only because it could be overruled for the
    greatest good. This greatest good, we may add, is not simply the
    highest nobility and virtue of the creature, but also the
    revelation of the Creator. But for sin, God’s justice and God’s
    mercy alike would have been unintelligible to the universe. E. G.
    Robinson: “God could not have revealed his character so well
    without moral evil as with moral evil.”

    Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, tells us that it was God’s plan to
    make man in his own image: “To create man, and then leave him
    Able, his own word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him
    too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all
    unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made
    perfect as a thing of course.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 268-270,
    324, holds that sin and wickedness is an absolute evil, but an
    evil permitted to exist because the effacement of it would mean
    the effacement at the same time both for God and man, of the
    possibility of reaching the highest spiritual good. See also
    Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:108; Momerie, Origin of Evil; St.
    Clair, Evil Physical and Moral; Voysey, Mystery of Pain, Death and
    Sin.

    C. G. Finney, Skeletons of a Course of Theological Studies, 26,
    27—“Infinite goodness, knowledge and power imply only that, if a
    universe were made, it would be the best that was naturally
    possible.” To say that God could not be the author of a universe
    in which there is so much of evil, he says, “assumes that a better
    universe, upon the whole, was a natural possibility. It assumes
    that a universe of moral beings could, under a moral government
    administered in the wisest and best manner, be wholly restrained
    from sin; but this needs proof, and never can be proved.... The
    best possible universe may not be the best conceivable universe.
    Apply the legal maxim, ‘The defendant is to have the benefit of
    the doubt, and that in proportion to the established character of
    his reputation.’ There is so much clearly indicating the
    benevolence of God, that we may _believe_ in his benevolence,
    where we cannot _see_ it.”

    For advocacy of the view that God cannot prevent evil in a moral
    system, see Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 17; Young, The Mystery,
    or Evil not from God; Bledsoe, Theodicy; N. W. Taylor, Moral
    Government, 1:288-349; 2:327-356. According to Dr. Taylor’s view,
    God has not a complete control over the moral universe; moral
    agents can do wrong under every possible influence to prevent it;
    God prefers, all things considered, that all his creatures should
    be holy and happy, and does all in his power to make them so; the
    existence of sin is not on the whole for the best; sin exists
    because God cannot prevent it in a moral system; the blessedness
    of God is actually impaired by the disobedience of his creatures.
    For criticism of these views, see Tyler, Letters on the New Haven
    Theology, 129, 219. Tyler argues that election and non-election
    imply power in God to prevent sin; that _permitting_ is not mere
    _submitting_ to something which he could not possibly prevent. We
    would add that as a matter of fact God has preserved holy angels,
    and that there are “just men” who have been “made perfect” (_Heb.
    12:23_) without violating the laws of moral agency. We infer that
    God could have so preserved Adam. The history of the church leads
    us to believe that there is no sinner so stubborn that God cannot
    renew his heart,—even a Saul can be turned into a Paul. We
    hesitate therefore to ascribe limits to God’s power. While Dr.
    Taylor held that God could not prevent sin in _a_ moral system,
    that is, in _any_ moral system, Dr. Park is understood to hold the
    greatly preferable view that God cannot prevent sin in the _best_
    moral system. Flint, Christ’s Kingdom upon Earth, 59—“The
    alternative is, not evil or no evil, but evil or the miraculous
    prevention of evil.” See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:406-422.

    But even granting that the present is the best moral system, and
    that in such a system evil cannot be prevented consistently with
    God’s wisdom and goodness, the question still remains how the
    decree to initiate such a system can consist with God’s
    fundamental attribute of holiness. Of this insoluble mystery we
    must say as Dr. John Brown, in Spare Hours, 273, says of Arthur H.
    Hallam’s Theodicæa Novissima: “As was to be expected, the
    tremendous subject remains where he found it. His glowing love and
    genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom, but it is as
    brief as the lightning in the collied night—the jaws of darkness
    do devour it up—this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and
    dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, ‘all
    dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,’ no steady ray has ever or will
    ever come; over its face its own darkness must brood, till he to
    whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the
    night shineth as the day, says ‘Let there be light!’ ”

    We must remember, however, that the decree of redemption is as old
    as the decree of the apostasy. The provision of salvation in
    Christ shows at how great a cost to God was permitted the fall of
    the race in Adam. He who ordained sin ordained also an atonement
    for sin and a way of escape from it. Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
    1:388—“The permission of sin has cost God more than it has man. No
    sacrifice and suffering on account of sin has been undergone by
    any man, equal to that which has been endured by an incarnate God.
    This shows that God is not acting selfishly in permitting it.” On
    the permission of moral evil, see Butler, Analogy, Bohn’s ed.,
    177, 232—“The Government of God, and Christianity, as Schemes
    imperfectly Comprehended”; Hill, System of Divinity, 528-559;
    Ulrici, art.: Theodicée, in Herzog’s Encyclopädie; Cunningham,
    Historical Theology, 2:416-489; Patton, on Retribution and the
    Divine Purpose, in Princeton Rev., 1878:16-23; Bib. Sac,
    20:471-488; Wood, The Witness of Sin.



IV. Concluding Remarks.


1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.


(_a_) It inspires humility by its representation of God’s unsearchable
counsels and absolute sovereignty. (_b_) It teaches confidence in him who
has wisely ordered our birth, our death, and our surroundings, even to the
minutest particulars, and has made all things work together for the
triumph of his kingdom and the good of those who love him; (_c_) It shows
the enemies of God that, as their sins have been foreseen and provided for
in God’s plan, so they can never, while remaining in their sins, hope to
escape their decreed and threatened penalty. (_d_) It urges the sinner to
avail himself of the appointed means of grace, if he would be counted
among the number of those for whom God has decreed salvation.


    This doctrine is one of those advanced teachings of Scripture
    which requires for its understanding a matured mind and a deep
    experience. The beginner in the Christian life may not see its
    value or even its truth, but with increasing years it will become
    a staff to lean upon. In times of affliction, obloquy, and
    persecution, the church has found in the decrees of God, and in
    the prophecies in which these decrees are published, her strong
    consolation. It is only upon the basis of the decrees that we can
    believe that “all things work together for good”_ (Rom. 8:28)_ or
    pray “Thy will be done”_ (Mat. 6:10)_.

    It is a striking evidence of the truth of the doctrine that even
    Arminians pray and sing like Calvinists. Charles Wesley, the
    Arminian, can write: “He wills that I should holy be—What can
    withstand his will? The counsel of his grace in me He surely will
    fulfill.” On the Arminian theory, prayer that God will soften hard
    hearts is out of place,—the prayer should be offered to the
    sinner; for it is his will, not God’s, that is in the way of his
    salvation. And yet this doctrine of Decrees, which at first sight
    might seem to discourage effort, is the greatest, in fact is the
    only effectual, incentive to effort. For this reason Calvinists
    have been the most strenuous advocates of civil liberty. Those who
    submit themselves most unreservedly to the sovereignty of God are
    most delivered from the fear of man. Whitefield the Calvinist, and
    not Wesley the Arminian, originated the great religious movement
    in which the Methodist church was born (see McFetridge, Calvinism
    in History, 153), and Spurgeon’s ministry has been as fruitful in
    conversions as Finney’s. See Froude, Essay on Calvinism; Andrew
    Fuller, Calvinism and Socinianism compared in their Practical
    Effects; Atwater, Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton
    Review, 1876:73; J. A. Smith, Historical Lectures.

    Calvinism logically requires the separation of Church and State:
    though Calvin did not see this, the Calvinist Roger Williams did.
    Calvinism logically requires a republican form of government:
    Calvin introduced laymen into the government of the church, and
    the same principle requires civil liberty as its correlate.
    Calvinism holds to individualism and the direct responsibility of
    the individual to God. In the Netherlands, in Scotland, in
    England, in America, Calvinism has powerfully influenced the
    development of civil liberty. Ranke: “John Calvin was virtually
    the founder of America.” Motley: “To the Calvinists more than to
    any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland,
    England and America are due.” John Fiske, The Beginnings of New
    England: “Perhaps not one of the mediæval popes was more despotic
    than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of
    his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken
    towards personal freedom.... It was a religion fit to inspire men
    who were to be called to fight for freedom, whether in the marshes
    of the Netherlands or on the moors of Scotland.”

    Æsop, when asked what was the occupation of Zeus, replied: “To
    humble the exalted and to exalt the humble.” “I accept the
    universe,” said Margaret Fuller. Some one reported this remark to
    Thomas Carlyle. “Gad! she’d better!” he replied. Dr. John Watson
    (Ian McLaren): “The greatest reinforcement religion could have in
    our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the
    sovereignty of God.” Whittier: “All is of God that is and is to
    be, And God is good. Let this suffice us still Resting in
    childlike trust upon his will Who moves to his great ends
    unthwarted by the ill.” Every true minister preaches Arminianism
    and prays Calvinism. This means simply that there is more, in
    God’s love and in God’s purposes, than man can state or
    comprehend. Beecher called Spurgeon a camel with one
    hump—Calvinism. Spurgeon called Beecher a camel without any hump:
    “He does not know what he believes, and you never know where to
    find him.”

    Arminians sing: “Other refuge have I none; Hangs my helpless soul
    on thee”; yet John Wesley wrote to the Calvinist Toplady, the
    author of the hymn: “Your God is my devil.” Calvinists replied
    that it was better to have the throne of the universe vacant than
    to have it filled by such a pitiful nonentity as the Arminians
    worshiped. It was said of Lord Byron that all his life he believed
    in Calvinism, and hated it. Oliver Wendell Holmes similarly, in
    all his novels except Elsie Venner, makes the orthodox thinblooded
    and weakkneed, while his heretics are all strong in body. Dale,
    Ephesians, 52—“Of the two extremes, the suppression of man which
    was the offense of Calvinism, and the suppression of God which was
    the offense against which Calvinism so fiercely protested, the
    fault and error of Calvinism was the nobler and grander.... The
    most heroic forms of human courage, strength and righteousness
    have been found in men who in their theology seemed to deny the
    possibility of human virtue and made the will of God the only real
    force in the universe.”


2. True method of preaching the doctrine.


(_a_) We should most carefully avoid exaggeration or unnecessarily
obnoxious statement. (_b_) We should emphasize the fact that the decrees
are not grounded in arbitrary will, but in infinite wisdom. (_c_) We
should make it plain that whatever God does or will do, he must from
eternity have purposed to do. (_d_) We should illustrate the doctrine so
far as possible by instances of completeness and far-sightedness in human
plans of great enterprises. (_e_) We may then make extended application of
the truth to the encouragement of the Christian and the admonition of the
unbeliever.


    For illustrations of foresight, instance Louis Napoleon’s planning
    the Suez Canal, and declaring his policy as Emperor, long before
    he ascended the throne of France. For instances of practical
    treatment of the theme in preaching, see Bushnell, Sermon on Every
    Man’s Life a Plan of God, in Sermons for the New Life; Nehemiah
    Adams, Evenings with the Doctrines, 243; Spurgeon’s Sermon on _Ps.
    44:3—_“Because thou hadst a favor unto them.” Robert Browning,
    Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,
    The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in
    his hand Who saith ‘A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust
    God: See all nor be afraid!’ ”

    Shakespeare, King Lear, 1:2—“This is the excellent foppery of the
    world that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our
    own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon
    and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by
    heavenly compulsion, and all that we are evil in by a divine
    thrusting on; an admirable evasion of man to lay his disposition
    to the charge of a star!” All’s Well: “Our remedies oft in
    ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives
    us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we
    ourselves are dull.” Julius Cæsar, 1:2—“Men at some time are
    masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our
    stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”