{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_44035/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_44035","id":"gutenberg_44035","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44035","summary":null,"tags":["Baptists -- Doctrines","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Theology, Doctrinal"],"text":"Systematic Theology\n\n A Compendium and Commonplace-Book\n\n Designed For The Use Of Theological Students\n\n By\n\n Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.\n\nPresident and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological\n Seminary\n\n Revised and Enlarged\n\n In Three Volumes\n\n Volume 1\n\n The Doctrine of God\n\n The Judson Press\n\n Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Kansas City,\n Seattle, Toronto\n\n 1907\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPreface\nPart I. Prolegomena.\n Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.\n I. Definition of Theology.\n II. Aim of Theology.\n III. Possibility of Theology.\n 1. The existence of a God.\n 2. Man\u2019s capacity for the knowledge of God\n 3. God\u2019s revelation of himself to man.\n IV. Necessity of Theology.\n V. Relation of Theology to Religion.\n 1. Derivation.\n 2. False Conceptions.\n 3. Essential Idea.\n 4. Inferences.\n Chapter II. Material of Theology.\n I. Sources of Theology.\n 1. Scripture and Nature.\n 2. Scripture and Rationalism.\n 3. Scripture and Mysticism.\n 4. Scripture and Romanism.\n II. Limitations of Theology.\n III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.\n Chapter III. Method Of Theology.\n I. Requisites to the study of Theology.\n II. Divisions of Theology.\n III. History of Systematic Theology.\n IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.\n V. Text-Books in Theology.\nPart II. The Existence Of God.\n Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God\u2019s Existence.\n I. First Truths in General.\n II. The Existence of God a first truth.\n 1. Its universality.\n 2. Its necessity.\n 3. Its logical independence and priority.\n III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God\u2019s Existence.\n IV. Contents of this Intuition.\n Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God\u2019s Existence.\n I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.\n II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful\n Collocation in Nature.\n III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man\u2019s Mental and\n Moral Nature.\n IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and\n Necessary Ideas.\n Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.\n I. Materialism.\n II. Materialistic Idealism.\n III. Idealistic Pantheism.\n IV. Ethical Monism.\nPart III. The Scriptures A Revelation From God.\n Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.\n I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.\n II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.\n III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.\n 1. Definition of Miracle.\n 2. Possibility of Miracle.\n 3. Probability of Miracles.\n 4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.\n 5. Evidential force of Miracles.\n 6. Counterfeit Miracles.\n IV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.\n V. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a\n Divine Revelation.\n 1. As to documentary evidence.\n 2. As to testimony in general.\n Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine\n Revelation.\n I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.\n 1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.\n 1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).\n 2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).\n 3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).\n 4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).\n 2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.\n II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.\n III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.\n 1. Scripture teaching in general.\n 2. Moral System of the New Testament.\n 3. The person and character of Christ.\n 4. The testimony of Christ to himself\u2014as being a messenger from\n God and as being one with God.\n IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.\n Chapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.\n I. Definition of Inspiration.\n II. Proof of Inspiration.\n III. Theories of Inspiration.\n 1. The Intuition-theory.\n 2. The Illumination Theory.\n 3. The Dictation-theory.\n 4. The Dynamical Theory.\n IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.\n V. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.\n 1. Errors in matters of Science.\n 2. Errors in matters of History.\n 3. Errors in Morality.\n 4. Errors of Reasoning.\n 5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.\n 6. Errors in Prophecy.\n 7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.\n 8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the\n persons to whom they are ascribed.\n 9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.\n 10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture\n teachers and their writings.\nPart IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works Of God.\n Chapter I. The Attributes Of God.\n I. Definition of the term Attributes.\n II. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.\n III. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.\n IV. Classification of the Attributes.\n V. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.\n First division.\u2014Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.\n 1. Life.\n 2. Personality.\n Second Division.\u2014Infinity, and attributes therein involved.\n 1. Self-existence.\n 2. Immutability.\n 3. Unity.\n Third Division.\u2014Perfection, and attributes therein involved.\n 1. Truth.\n 2. Love.\n 3. Holiness.\n VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.\n First Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Time and Space.\n 1. Eternity.\n 2. Immensity.\n Second Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Creation.\n 1. Omnipresence.\n 2. Omniscience.\n 3. Omnipotence.\n Third Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.\n 1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.\n 2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.\n 3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.\n VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.\n 1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.\n 2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.\n Chapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.\n I. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.\n 1. Proofs from the New Testament.\n A. The Father is recognized as God.\n B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.\n C. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.\n 2. Intimations of the Old Testament.\n A. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the\n Godhead.\n B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.\n C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.\n D. Descriptions of the Messiah.\n II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled\n to conceive of them as distinct Persons.\n 1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.\n 2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.\n 3. The Holy Spirit is a person.\n III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic\n and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.\n 1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are\n eternal.\n 2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.\n A. The Sabellian.\n B. The Arian.\n IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three\n Persons, there is but one Essence.\n V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.\n 1. These titles belong to the Persons.\n 2. Qualified sense of these titles.\n 3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.\n VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes\n the Key to all other Doctrines.\n 1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.\n 2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.\n 3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other\n doctrines.\n Chapter III. The Decrees Of God.\n I. Definition of Decrees.\n II. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.\n 1. From Scripture.\n 2. From Reason.\n A. From the Divine Foreknowledge.\n B. From the Divine Wisdom.\n C. From the Divine Immutability.\n D. From the Divine Benevolence.\n III. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.\n 1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.\n 2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.\n 3. That they make God the author of sin.\n IV. Concluding Remarks.\n 1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.\n 2. True method of preaching the doctrine.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [Cover Art]\n\n[Transcriber\u2019s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter\nat Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]\n\n\n\n\n\nChristo Deo Salvatori.\n\n\u201cTHE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF\nSEEING.\u201d\u2014_Cicero._\n\n\u201cOPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY\nLAW.\u201d\u2014_Psalm 119:18._\n\n\u201cFOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE\nLIGHT.\u201d\u2014_Psalm 36:9._\n\n\u201cFOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS\nPERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.\u201d\u2014_1 Cor. 13:9,\n10._\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe present work is a revision and enlargement of my \u201cSystematic\nTheology,\u201d first published in 1886. Of the original work there have been\nprinted seven editions, each edition embodying successive corrections and\nsupposed improvements. During the twenty years which have intervened since\nits first publication I have accumulated much new material, which I now\noffer to the reader. My philosophical and critical point of view meantime\nhas also somewhat changed. While I still hold to the old doctrines, I\ninterpret them differently and expound them more clearly, because I seem\nto myself to have reached a fundamental truth which throws new light upon\nthem all. This truth I have tried to set forth in my book entitled \u201cChrist\nin Creation,\u201d and to that book I refer the reader for further information.\n\nThat Christ is the one and only Revealer of God, in nature, in humanity,\nin history, in science, in Scripture, is in my judgment the key to\ntheology. This view implies a monistic and idealistic conception of the\nworld, together with an evolutionary idea as to its origin and progress.\nBut it is the very antidote to pantheism, in that it recognizes evolution\nas only the method of the transcendent and personal Christ, who fills all\nin all, and who makes the universe teleological and moral from its centre\nto its circumference and from its beginning until now.\n\nNeither evolution nor the higher criticism has any terrors to one who\nregards them as parts of Christ\u2019s creating and educating process. The\nChrist in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge himself\nfurnishes all the needed safeguards and limitations. It is only because\nChrist has been forgotten that nature and law have been personified, that\nhistory has been regarded as unpurposed development, that Judaism has been\nreferred to a merely human origin, that Paul has been thought to have\nswitched the church off from its proper track even before it had gotten\nfairly started on its course, that superstition and illusion have come to\nseem the only foundation for the sacrifices of the martyrs and the\ntriumphs of modern missions. I believe in no such irrational and atheistic\nevolution as this. I believe rather in him in whom all things consist, who\nis with his people even to the end of the world, and who has promised to\nlead them into all the truth.\n\nPhilosophy and science are good servants of Christ, but they are poor\nguides when they rule out the Son of God. As I reach my seventieth year\nand write these words on my birthday, I am thankful for that personal\nexperience of union with Christ which has enabled me to see in science and\nphilosophy the teaching of my Lord. But this same personal experience has\nmade me even more alive to Christ\u2019s teaching in Scripture, has made me\nrecognize in Paul and John a truth profounder than that disclosed by any\nsecular writers, truth with regard to sin and atonement for sin, that\nsatisfies the deepest wants of my nature and that is self-evidencing and\ndivine.\n\nI am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because\nI believe them to be false to both science and religion. How men who have\never felt themselves to be lost sinners and who have once received pardon\nfrom their crucified Lord and Savior can thereafter seek to pare down his\nattributes, deny his deity and atonement, tear from his brow the crown of\nmiracle and sovereignty, relegate him to the place of a merely moral\nteacher who influences us only as does Socrates by words spoken across a\nstretch of ages, passes my comprehension. Here is my test of orthodoxy: Do\nwe pray to Jesus? Do we call upon the name of Christ, as did Stephen and\nall the early church? Is he our living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient,\nomnipotent? Is he divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is\nhe the only-begotten Son, God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the\nfulness of the Godhead bodily? What think ye of the Christ? is still the\ncritical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in\nthe face of the evidence he has furnished us, cannot answer the question\naright.\n\nUnder the influence of Ritschl and his Kantian relativism, many of our\nteachers and preachers have swung off into a practical denial of Christ\u2019s\ndeity and of his atonement. We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian\ndefection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse\nmanner than did that of Channing and Ware a century ago. American\nChristianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the\nauthority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We need a new\nvision of the Savior like that which Paul saw on the way to Damascus and\nJohn saw on the isle of Patmos, to convince us that Jesus is lifted above\nspace and time, that his existence antedated creation, that he conducted\nthe march of Hebrew history, that he was born of a virgin, suffered on the\ncross, rose from the dead, and now lives forevermore, the Lord of the\nuniverse, the only God with whom we have to do, our Savior here and our\nJudge hereafter. Without a revival of this faith our churches will become\nsecularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be\nremoved out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as\nit has been with the apostate churches of New England.\n\nI print this revised and enlarged edition of my \u201cSystematic Theology,\u201d in\nthe hope that its publication may do something to stem this fast advancing\ntide, and to confirm the faith of God\u2019s elect. I make no doubt that the\nvast majority of Christians still hold the faith that was once for all\ndelivered to the saints, and that they will sooner or later separate\nthemselves from those who deny the Lord who bought them. When the enemy\ncomes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard\nagainst him. I would do my part in raising up such a standard. I would\nlead others to avow anew, as I do now, in spite of the supercilious\nassumptions of modern infidelity, my firm belief, only confirmed by the\nexperience and reflection of a half-century, in the old doctrines of\nholiness as the fundamental attribute of God, of an original transgression\nand sin of the whole human race, in a divine preparation in Hebrew history\nfor man\u2019s redemption, in the deity, pre\u00ebxistence, virgin birth, vicarious\natonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his\nfuture coming to judge the quick and the dead. I believe that these are\ntruths of science as well as truths of revelation; that the supernatural\nwill yet be seen to be most truly natural; and that not the open-minded\ntheologian but the narrow-minded scientist will be obliged to hide his\nhead at Christ\u2019s coming.\n\nThe present volume, in its treatment of Ethical Monism, Inspiration, the\nAttributes of God, and the Trinity, contains an antidote to most of the\nfalse doctrine which now threatens the safety of the church. I desire\nespecially to call attention to the section on Perfection, and the\nAttributes therein involved, because I believe that the recent merging of\nHoliness in Love, and the practical denial that Righteousness is\nfundamental in God\u2019s nature, are responsible for the utilitarian views of\nlaw and the superficial views of sin which now prevail in some systems of\ntheology. There can be no proper doctrine of the atonement and no proper\ndoctrine of retribution, so long as Holiness is refused its pre\u00ebminence.\nLove must have a norm or standard, and this norm or standard can be found\nonly in Holiness. The old conviction of sin and the sense of guilt that\ndrove the convicted sinner to the cross are inseparable from a firm belief\nin the self-affirming attribute of God as logically prior to and as\nconditioning the self-communicating attribute. The theology of our day\nneeds a new view of the Righteous One. Such a view will make it plain that\nGod must be reconciled before man can be saved, and that the human\nconscience can be pacified only upon condition that propitiation is made\nto the divine Righteousness. In this volume I propound what I regard as\nthe true Doctrine of God, because upon it will be based all that follows\nin the volumes on the Doctrine of Man, and the Doctrine of Salvation.\n\nThe universal presence of Christ, the Light that lighteth every man, in\nheathen as well as in Christian lands, to direct or overrule all movements\nof the human mind, gives me confidence that the recent attacks upon the\nChristian faith will fail of their purpose. It becomes evident at last\nthat not only the outworks are assaulted, but the very citadel itself. We\nare asked to give up all belief in special revelation. Jesus Christ, it is\nsaid, has come in the flesh precisely as each one of us has come, and he\nwas before Abraham only in the same sense that we were. Christian\nexperience knows how to characterize such doctrine so soon as it is\nclearly stated. And the new theology will be of use in enabling even\nordinary believers to recognize soul-destroying heresy even under the mask\nof professed orthodoxy.\n\nI make no apology for the homiletical element in my book. To be either\ntrue or useful, theology must be a passion. _Pectus est quod theologum\nfacit_, and no disdainful cries of \u201cPectoral Theology!\u201d shall prevent me\nfrom maintaining that the eyes of the heart must be enlightened in order\nto perceive the truth of God, and that to know the truth it is needful to\ndo the truth. Theology is a science which can be successfully cultivated\nonly in connection with its practical application. I would therefore, in\nevery discussion of its principles, point out its relations to Christian\nexperience, and its power to awaken Christian emotions and lead to\nChristian decisions. Abstract theology is not really scientific. Only that\ntheology is scientific which brings the student to the feet of Christ.\n\nI would hasten the day when in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. I\nbelieve that, if any man serve Christ, him the Father will honor, and that\nto serve Christ means to honor him as I honor the Father. I would not\npride myself that I believe so little, but rather that I believe so much.\nFaith is God\u2019s measure of a man. Why should I doubt that God spoke to the\nfathers through the prophets? Why should I think it incredible that God\nshould raise the dead? The things that are impossible with men are\npossible with God. When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the\nearth? Let him at least find faith in us who profess to be his followers.\nIn the conviction that the present darkness is but temporary and that it\nwill be banished by a glorious sunrising, I give this new edition of my\n\u201cTheology\u201d to the public with the prayer that whatever of good seed is in\nit may bring forth fruit, and that whatever plant the heavenly Father has\nnot planted may be rooted up.\n\nROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,\nROCHESTER, N. Y., AUGUST 3, 1906.\n\n\n\n\n\nPART I. PROLEGOMENA.\n\n\n\n\nChapter I. Idea Of Theology.\n\n\n\nI. Definition of Theology.\n\n\nTheology is the science of God and of the relations between God and the\nuniverse.\n\n\n Though the word \u201ctheology\u201d is sometimes employed in dogmatic\n writings to designate that single department of the science which\n treats of the divine nature and attributes, prevailing usage,\n since Abelard (A. D. 1079-1142) entitled his general treatise\n \u201cTheologia Christiana,\u201d has included under that term the whole\n range of Christian doctrine. Theology, therefore, gives account,\n not only of God, but of those relations between God and the\n universe in view of which we speak of Creation, Providence and\n Redemption.\n\n John the Evangelist is called by the Fathers \u201cthe theologian,\u201d\n because he most fully treats of the internal relations of the\n persons of the Trinity. Gregory Nazianzen (328) received this\n designation because he defended the deity of Christ against the\n Arians. For a modern instance of this use of the term \u201ctheology\u201d\n in the narrow sense, see the title of Dr. Hodge\u2019s first volume:\n \u201cSystematic Theology, Vol. I: _Theology_.\u201d But theology is not\n simply \u201cthe science of God,\u201d nor even \u201cthe science of God and\n man.\u201d It also gives account of the relations between God and the\n universe.\n\n If the universe were God, theology would be the only science.\n Since the universe is but a manifestation of God and is distinct\n from God, there are sciences of nature and of mind. Theology is\n \u201cthe science of the sciences,\u201d not in the sense of including all\n these sciences, but in the sense of using their results and of\n showing their underlying ground; (see Wardlaw, Theology, 1:1, 2).\n Physical science is not a part of theology. As a mere physicist,\n Humboldt did not need to mention the name of God in his \u201cCosmos\u201d\n (but see Cosmos, 2:418, where Humboldt says: \u201cPsalm 104 presents\n an image of the whole Cosmos\u201d). Bishop of Carlisle: \u201cScience is\n atheous, and therefore cannot be atheistic.\u201d\n\n Only when we consider the relations of finite things to God, does\n the study of them furnish material for theology. Anthropology is a\n part of theology, because man\u2019s nature is the work of God and\n because God\u2019s dealings with man throw light upon the character of\n God. God is known through his works and his activities. Theology\n therefore gives account of these works and activities so far as\n they come within our knowledge. All other sciences require\n theology for their complete explanation. Proudhon: \u201cIf you go very\n deeply into politics, you are sure to get into theology.\u201d On the\n definition of theology, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik,\n 1:2; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Theology; H. B.\n Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 44; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., 10,\n 7, 4; 11, 6, 4; and Lactantius, De Ira Dei, 11.\n\n\n\nII. Aim of Theology.\n\n\nThe aim of theology is the ascertainment of the facts respecting God and\nthe relations between God and the universe, and the exhibition of these\nfacts in their rational unity, as connected parts of a formulated and\norganic system of truth.\n\n\n In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science\n does not create; it discovers. Theology answers to this\n description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it\n does not create them. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation,\n 141\u2014\u201cSchiller, referring to the ardor of Columbus\u2019s faith, says\n that if the great discoverer had not found a continent, he would\n have created one. But faith is not creative. Had Columbus not\n found the land\u2014had there been no real object answering to his\n belief\u2014his faith would have been a mere fancy.\u201d Because theology\n deals with objective facts, we refuse to define it as \u201cthe science\n of religion\u201d; _versus_ Am. Theol. Rev., 1850:101-126, and\n Thornwell, Theology, 1:139. Both the facts and the relations with\n which theology has to deal have an existence independent of the\n subjective mental processes of the theologian.\n\n Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and\n formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and\n explication of the relations between these facts, and the\n synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which\n unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic\n system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed\n arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living\n men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts +\n relations; Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I, Introd.,\n 43\u2014\u201cThere may be facts without science, as in the knowledge of the\n common quarryman; there may be thought without science, as in the\n early Greek philosophy.\u201d A. MacDonald: \u201cThe _a priori_ method is\n related to the _a posteriori_ as the sails to the ballast of the\n boat: the more philosophy the better, provided there are a\n sufficient number of facts; otherwise, there is danger of\n upsetting the craft.\u201d\n\n President Woodrow Wilson: \u201c \u2018Give us the facts\u2019 is the sharp\n injunction of our age to its historians ... But facts of\n themselves do not constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not\n concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation, of what\n things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings\n of facts as suggest meanings.\u201d Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith,\n 14\u2014\u201cThe pursuit of science is the pursuit of relations.\u201d Everett,\n Science of Thought, 3\u2014\u201cLogy\u201d (_e. g._, in \u201ctheology\u201d), from \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2,\n = word + reason, expression + thought, fact + idea; _cf._ _John\n 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the Word.\u201d\n\n As theology deals with objective facts and their relations, so its\n arrangement of these facts is not optional, but is determined by\n the nature of the material with which it deals. A true theology\n thinks over again God\u2019s thoughts and brings them into God\u2019s order,\n as the builders of Solomon\u2019s temple took the stones already hewn,\n and put them into the places for which the architect had designed\n them; Reginald Heber: \u201cNo hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;\n Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.\u201d Scientific men\n have no fear that the data of physics will narrow or cramp their\n intellects; no more should they fear the objective facts which are\n the data of theology. We cannot make theology, any more than we\n can make a law of physical nature. As the natural philosopher is\n \u201cNatur\u00e6 minister et interpres,\u201d so the theologian is the servant\n and interpreter of the objective truth of God. On the Idea of\n Theology as a System, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy,\n 126-166.\n\n\n\nIII. Possibility of Theology.\n\n\nThe possibility of theology has a threefold ground: 1. In the existence of\na God who has relations to the universe; 2. In the capacity of the human\nmind for knowing God and certain of these relations; and 3. In the\nprovision of means by which God is brought into actual contact with the\nmind, or in other words, in the provision of a revelation.\n\n\n Any particular science is possible only when three conditions\n combine, namely, the actual existence of the object with which the\n science deals, the subjective capacity of the human mind to know\n that object, and the provision of definite means by which the\n object is brought into contact with the mind. We may illustrate\n the conditions of theology from selenology\u2014the science, not of\n \u201clunar politics,\u201d which John Stuart Mill thought so vain a\n pursuit, but of lunar physics. Selenology has three conditions: 1.\n the objective existence of the moon; 2. the subjective capacity of\n the human mind to know the moon; and 3. the provision of some\n means (_e. g._, the eye and the telescope) by which the gulf\n between man and the moon is bridged over, and by which the mind\n can come into actual cognizance of the facts with regard to the\n moon.\n\n\n1. The existence of a God.\n\n\n_In the existence of a God who has relations to the universe._\u2014It has been\nobjected, indeed, that since God and these relations are objects\napprehended only by faith, they are not proper objects of knowledge or\nsubjects for science. We reply:\n\nA. Faith is knowledge, and a higher sort of knowledge.\u2014Physical science\nalso rests upon faith\u2014faith in our own existence, in the existence of a\nworld objective and external to us, and in the existence of other persons\nthan ourselves; faith in our primitive convictions, such as space, time,\ncause, substance, design, right; faith in the trustworthiness of our\nfaculties and in the testimony of our fellow men. But physical science is\nnot thereby invalidated, because this faith, though unlike\nsense-perception or logical demonstration, is yet a cognitive act of the\nreason, and may be defined as certitude with respect to matters in which\nverification is unattainable.\n\n\n The objection to theology thus mentioned and answered is expressed\n in the words of Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 44,\n 531\u2014\u201cFaith\u2014belief\u2014is the organ by which we apprehend what is\n beyond our knowledge.\u201d But science is knowledge, and what is\n beyond our knowledge cannot be matter for science. Pres. E. G.\n Robinson says well, that knowledge and faith cannot be severed\n from one another, like bulkheads in a ship, the first of which may\n be crushed in, while the second still keeps the vessel afloat. The\n mind is one,\u2014\u201cit cannot be cut in two with a hatchet.\u201d Faith is\n not antithetical to knowledge,\u2014it is rather a larger and more\n fundamental sort of knowledge. It is never opposed to reason, but\n only to sight. Tennyson was wrong when he wrote: \u201cWe have but\n faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see\u201d (In\n Memoriam, Introduction). This would make sensuous phenomena the\n only objects of knowledge. Faith in supersensible realities, on\n the contrary, is the highest exercise of reason.\n\n Sir William Hamilton consistently declares that the highest\n achievement of science is the erection of an altar \u201cTo the Unknown\n God.\u201d This, however, is not the representation of Scripture. _Cf._\n _John 17:3\u2014_\u201cthis is life eternal, that they should know thee, the\n only true God\u201d; and _Jer. 9:24\u2014_\u201clet him that glorieth glory in\n that he hath understanding and knoweth me.\u201d For criticism of\n Hamilton, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336. Fichte:\n \u201cWe are born in faith.\u201d Even Goethe called himself a believer in\n the five senses. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 277-295,\n shows that intuitive beliefs in space, time, cause, substance,\n right, are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge.\n Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 14\u2014\u201cIf theology is to be\n overthrown because it starts from some primary terms and\n propositions, then all other sciences are overthrown with it.\u201d\n Mozley, Miracles, defines faith as \u201cunverified reason.\u201d See A. H.\n Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 19-30.\n\n\nB. Faith is a knowledge conditioned by holy affection.\u2014The faith which\napprehends God\u2019s being and working is not opinion or imagination. It is\ncertitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of our\nrational nature and upon the testimony of God. Its only peculiarity as a\ncognitive act of the reason is that it is conditioned by holy affection.\nAs the science of \u00e6sthetics is a product of reason as including a power of\nrecognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and as\nthe science of ethics is a product of reason as including a power of\nrecognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the\nmorally right, so the science of theology is a product of reason, but of\nreason as including a power of recognizing God which is practically\ninseparable from a love for God.\n\n\n We here use the term \u201creason\u201d to signify the mind\u2019s whole power of\n knowing. Reason in this sense includes states of the sensibility,\n so far as they are indispensable to knowledge. We cannot know an\n orange by the eye alone; to the understanding of it, taste is as\n necessary as sight. The mathematics of sound cannot give us an\n understanding of music; we need also a musical ear. Logic alone\n cannot demonstrate the beauty of a sunset, or of a noble\n character; love for the beautiful and the right precedes knowledge\n of the beautiful and the right. Ullman draws attention to the\n derivation of _sapientia_, wisdom, from _sap\u0115re_, to taste. So we\n cannot know God by intellect alone; the heart must go with the\n intellect to make knowledge of divine things possible. \u201cHuman\n things,\u201d said Pascal, \u201cneed only to be known, in order to be\n loved; but divine things must first be loved, in order to be\n known.\u201d \u201cThis [religious] faith of the intellect,\u201d said Kant, \u201cis\n founded on the assumption of moral tempers.\u201d If one were utterly\n indifferent to moral laws, the philosopher continues, even then\n religious truths \u201cwould be supported by strong arguments from\n analogy, but not by such as an obstinate, sceptical heart might\n not overcome.\u201d\n\n Faith, then, is the highest knowledge, because it is the act of\n the integral soul, the insight, not of one eye alone, but of the\n two eyes of the mind, intellect and love to God. With one eye we\n can see an object as flat, but, if we wish to see around it and\n get the stereoptic effect, we must use both eyes. It is not the\n theologian, but the undevout astronomer, whose science is one-eyed\n and therefore incomplete. The errors of the rationalist are errors\n of defective vision. Intellect has been divorced from heart, that\n is, from a right disposition, right affections, right purpose in\n life. Intellect says: \u201cI cannot know God\u201d; and intellect is right.\n What intellect says, the Scripture also says: _1 Cor. 2:14\u2014_\u201cthe\n natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for\n they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because\n they are spiritually judged\u201d_; 1:21\u2014_\u201cin the wisdom of God the\n world through its wisdom knew not God.\u201d\n\n The Scripture on the other hand declares that \u201cby faith we know\u201d_\n (Heb. 11:3)_. By \u201cheart\u201d the Scripture means simply the governing\n disposition, or the sensibility + the will; and it intimates that\n the heart is an organ of knowledge: _Ex. 35:25\u2014_\u201cthe women that\n were wise-hearted\u201d; _Ps. 34:8\u2014_\u201cO taste and see that Jehovah is\n good\u201d = a right taste precedes correct sight; _Jer. 24:7\u2014_\u201cI will\n give them a heart to know me\u201d; _Mat. 5:8\u2014_\u201cBlessed are the pure in\n heart; for they shall see God\u201d; _Luke 24:25\u2014_\u201cslow of heart to\n believe\u201d; _John 7:17\u2014_\u201cIf any man willeth to do his will, he shall\n know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak\n from myself\u201d; _Eph. 1:18\u2014_\u201chaving the eyes of your heart\n enlightened, that ye may know\u201d; _1 John 4:7, 8\u2014_\u201cEvery one that\n loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not\n knoweth not God.\u201d See Frank, Christian Certainty, 303-324; Clarke,\n Christ. Theol., 362; Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality,\n 114-137; R. T. Smith, Man\u2019s Knowledge of Man and of God, 6;\n Fisher, Nat. and Method of Rev., 6; William James, The Will to\n Believe, 1-31; Geo. T. Ladd, on Lotze\u2019s view that love is\n essential to the knowledge of God, in New World, Sept.\n 1895:401-406; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 14, 15.\n\n\nC. Faith, therefore, can furnish, and only faith can furnish, fit and\nsufficient material for a scientific theology.\u2014As an operation of man\u2019s\nhigher rational nature, though distinct from ocular vision or from\nreasoning, faith is not only a kind, but the highest kind, of knowing. It\ngives us understanding of realities which to sense alone are inaccessible,\nnamely, God\u2019s existence, and some at least of the relations between God\nand his creation.\n\n\n Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:50, follows Gerhard in making faith the\n joint act of intellect and will. Hopkins, Outline Study of Man,\n 77, 78, speaks not only of \u201cthe \u00e6sthetic reason\u201d but of \u201cthe moral\n reason.\u201d Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 91, 109, 145,\n 191\u2014\u201cFaith is the certitude concerning matter in which\n verification is unattainable.\u201d Emerson, Essays, 2:96\u2014\u201cBelief\n consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul\u2014unbelief in\n rejecting them.\u201d Morell, Philos. of Religion, 38, 52, 53, quotes\n Coleridge: \u201cFaith consists in the synthesis of the reason and of\n the individual will, ... and by virtue of the former (that is,\n reason), faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of\n truth.\u201d Faith, then, is not to be pictured as a blind girl\n clinging to a cross\u2014faith is not blind\u2014\u201cElse the cross may just as\n well be a crucifix or an image of Gaudama.\u201d \u201cBlind unbelief,\u201d not\n blind faith, \u201cis sure to err, And scan his works in vain.\u201d As in\n conscience we recognize an invisible authority, and know the truth\n just in proportion to our willingness to \u201cdo the truth,\u201d so in\n religion only holiness can understand holiness, and only love can\n understand love (_cf._ _John 3:21\u2014_\u201che that doeth the truth cometh\n to the light\u201d).\n\n If a right state of heart be indispensable to faith and so to the\n knowledge of God, can there be any \u201ctheologia irregenitorum,\u201d or\n theology of the unregenerate? Yes, we answer; just as the blind\n man can have a science of optics. The testimony of others gives it\n claims upon him; the dim light penetrating the obscuring membrane\n corroborates this testimony. The unregenerate man can know God as\n power and justice, and can fear him. But this is not a knowledge\n of God\u2019s inmost character; it furnishes some material for a\n defective and ill-proportioned theology; but it does not furnish\n fit or sufficient material for a correct theology. As, in order to\n make his science of optics satisfactory and complete, the blind\n man must have the cataract removed from his eyes by some competent\n oculist, so, in order to any complete or satisfactory theology,\n the veil must be taken away from the heart by God himself (_cf._\n _2 Cor. 3:15, 16_\u2014\u201c_a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever\n it_ [marg. \u2018a man\u2019] _shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken\n away_\u201d).\n\n Our doctrine that faith is knowledge and the highest knowledge is\n to be distinguished from that of Ritschl, whose theology is an\n appeal to the heart to the _exclusion_ of the head\u2014to _fiducia_\n without _notitia_. But _fiducia_ includes _notitia_, else it is\n blind, irrational, and unscientific. Robert Browning, in like\n manner, fell into a deep speculative error, when, in order to\n substantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge\n as merely apparent. The appeal of both Ritschl and Browning from\n the head to the heart should rather be an appeal from the narrower\n knowledge of the mere intellect to the larger knowledge\n conditioned upon right affection. See A. H. Strong, The Great\n Poets and their Theology, 441. On Ritschl\u2019s postulates, see\n Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 274-280, and\n Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl\u2019sche Theologie. On the relation of love\n and will to knowledge, see Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology,\n 1900:717; Hovey, Manual Christ. Theol., 9; Foundations of our\n Faith, 12, 13; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:154-164; Presb. Quar., Oct.\n 1871, Oct. 1872, Oct. 1873; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 99, 117;\n Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 2-8; New Englander, July, 1873:481;\n Princeton Rev., 1864:122; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 124, 125; Grau,\n Glaube als h\u00f6chste Vernunft, in Beweis des Glaubens, 1865:110;\n Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 228; Newman, Univ. Sermons, 206;\n Hinton, Art of Thinking, Introd. by Hodgson, 5.\n\n\n2. Man\u2019s capacity for the knowledge of God\n\n\n_In the capacity of the human mind for knowing God and certain of these\nrelations._\u2014But it has urged that such knowledge is impossible for the\nfollowing reasons:\n\nA. Because we can know only phenomena. We reply: (_a_) We know mental as\nwell as physical phenomena. (_b_) In knowing phenomena, whether mental or\nphysical, we know substance as underlying the phenomena, as manifested\nthrough them, and as constituting their ground of unity. (_c_) Our minds\nbring to the observation of phenomena not only this knowledge of\nsubstance, but also knowledge of time, space, cause, and right, realities\nwhich are in no sense phenomenal. Since these objects of knowledge are not\nphenomenal, the fact that God is not phenomenal cannot prevent us from\nknowing him.\n\n\n What substance is, we need not here determine. Whether we are\n realists or idealists, we are compelled to grant that there cannot\n be phenomena without noumena, cannot be appearances without\n something that appears, cannot be qualities without something that\n is qualified. This something which underlies or stands under\n appearance or quality we call substance. We are Lotzeans rather\n than Kantians, in our philosophy. To say that we know, not the\n self, but only its manifestations in thought, is to confound self\n with its thinking and to teach psychology without a soul. To say\n that we know no external world, but only its manifestations in\n sensations, is to ignore the principle that binds these sensations\n together; for without a somewhat in which qualities inhere they\n can have no ground of unity. In like manner, to say that we know\n nothing of God but his manifestations, is to confound God with the\n world and practically to deny that there is a God.\n\n St\u00e4hlin, in his work on Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, 186-191, 218,\n 219, says well that \u201climitation of knowledge to phenomena involves\n the elimination from theology of all claim to know the objects of\n the Christian faith as they are in themselves.\u201d This criticism\n justly classes Ritschl with Kant, rather than with Lotze who\n maintains that knowing phenomena we know also the noumena\n manifested in them. While Ritschl professes to follow Lotze, the\n whole drift of his theology is in the direction of the Kantian\n identification of the world with our sensations, mind with our\n thoughts, and God with such activities of his as we can perceive.\n A divine nature apart from its activities, a preexistent Christ,\n an immanent Trinity, are practically denied. Assertions that God\n is self-conscious love and fatherhood become judgments of merely\n subjective value. On Ritschl, see the works of Orr, of Garvie, and\n of Swing; also Minton, in Pres. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1902:162-169,\n and C. W. Hodge, _ibid._, Apl. 1902:321-326; Flint, Agnosticism,\n 590-597; Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 92-99.\n\n We grant that we can know God only so far as his activities reveal\n him, and so far as our minds and hearts are receptive of his\n revelation. The appropriate faculties must be exercised\u2014not the\n mathematical, the logical, or the prudential, but the ethical and\n the religious. It is the merit of Ritschl that he recognizes the\n practical in distinction from the speculative reason; his error is\n in not recognizing that, when we do thus use the proper powers of\n knowing, we gain not merely subjective but also objective truth,\n and come in contact not simply with God\u2019s activities but also with\n God himself. Normal religious judgments, though dependent upon\n subjective conditions, are not simply \u201cjudgments of worth\u201d or\n \u201cvalue-judgments,\u201d\u2014they give us the knowledge of \u201cthings in\n themselves.\u201d Edward Caird says of his brother John Caird (Fund.\n Ideas of Christianity, Introd. cxxi)\u2014\u201cThe conviction that God can\n be known and is known, and that, in the deepest sense, all our\n knowledge is knowledge of him, was the corner-stone of his\n theology.\u201d\n\n Ritschl\u2019s phenomenalism is allied to the positivism of Comte, who\n regarded all so-called knowledge of other than phenomenal objects\n as purely negative. The phrase \u201cPositive Philosophy\u201d implies\n indeed that all knowledge of mind is negative; see Comte, Pos.\n Philosophy, Martineau\u2019s translation, 26, 28, 33\u2014\u201cIn order to\n observe, your intellect must pause from activity\u2014yet it is this\n very activity you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause,\n you cannot observe; if you do effect it, there is nothing to\n observe.\u201d This view is refuted by the two facts; (1)\n consciousness, and (2) memory; for consciousness is the knowing of\n the self side by side with the knowing of its thoughts, and memory\n is the knowing of the self side by side with the knowing of its\n past; see Martineau, Essays Philos. and Theol., 1:24-40, 207-212.\n By phenomena we mean \u201cfacts, in distinction from their ground,\n principle, or law\u201d; \u201cneither phenomena nor qualities, as such, are\n perceived, but objects, percepts, or beings; and it is by an\n after-thought or reflex process that these are connected as\n qualities and are referred to as substances\u201d; see Porter, Human\n Intellect, 51, 238, 520, 619-637, 640-645.\n\n Phenomena may be internal, _e. g._, thoughts; in this case the\n noumenon is the mind, of which these thoughts are the\n manifestations. Or, phenomena may be external, _e. g._, color,\n hardness, shape, size; in this case the noumenon is matter, of\n which these qualities are the manifestations. But qualities,\n whether mental or material, imply the existence of a substance to\n which they belong: they can no more be conceived of as existing\n apart from substance, than the upper side of a plank can be\n conceived of as existing without an under side; see Bowne, Review\n of Herbert Spencer, 47, 207-217; Martineau, Types of Ethical\n Theory, 1; 455, 456\u2014\u201cComte\u2019s assumption that mind cannot know\n itself or its states is exactly balanced by Kant\u2019s assumption that\n mind cannot know anything outside of itself.... It is precisely\n because all knowledge is of relations that it is not and cannot be\n of phenomena alone. The absolute cannot _per se_ be known, because\n in being known it would _ipso facto_ enter into relations and be\n absolute no more. But neither can the phenomenal _per se_ be\n known, _i. e._, be known as phenomenal, without simultaneous\n cognition of what is non-phenomenal.\u201d McCosh, Intuitions, 138-154,\n states the characteristics of substance as (1) being, (2) power,\n (3) permanence. Diman, Theistic Argument, 337, 363\u2014\u201cThe theory\n that disproves God, disproves an external world and the existence\n of the soul.\u201d We know something beyond phenomena, viz.: law,\n cause, force,\u2014or we can have no science; see Tulloch, on Comte, in\n Modern Theories, 53-73; see also Bib. Sac., 1874:211; Alden,\n Philosophy, 44; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 87; Fleming, Vocab.\n of Philosophy, art.: Phenomena; New Englander, July, 1875:537-539.\n\n\nB. Because we can know only that which bears analogy to our own nature or\nexperience. We reply: (_a_) It is not essential to knowledge that there be\nsimilarity of nature between the knower and the known. We know by\ndifference as well as by likeness. (_b_) Our past experience, though\ngreatly facilitating new acquisitions, is not the measure of our possible\nknowledge. Else the first act of knowledge would be inexplicable, and all\nrevelation of higher characters to lower would be precluded, as well as\nall progress to knowledge which surpasses our present attainments. (_c_)\nEven if knowledge depended upon similarity of nature and experience, we\nmight still know God, since we are made in God\u2019s image, and there are\nimportant analogies between the divine nature and our own.\n\n\n (_a_) The dictum of Empedocles, \u201cSimilia similibus percipiuntur,\u201d\n must be supplemented by a second dictum, \u201cSimilia dissimilibus\n percipiuntur.\u201d All things are alike, in being objects. But knowing\n is distinguishing, and there must be contrast between objects to\n awaken our attention. God knows sin, though it is the antithesis\n to his holy being. The ego knows the non-ego. We cannot know even\n self, without objectifying it, distinguishing it from its\n thoughts, and regarding it as another.\n\n (_b_) _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 79-82\u2014\u201cKnowledge\n is recognition and classification.\u201d But we reply that a thing must\n first be perceived in order to be recognized or compared with\n something else; and this is as true of the first sensation as of\n the later and more definite forms of knowledge,\u2014indeed there is no\n sensation which does not involve, as its complement, an at least\n incipient perception; see Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 351,\n 352; Porter, Human Intellect, 206.\n\n (_c_) Porter, Human Intellect, 486\u2014\u201cInduction is possible only\n upon the assumption that the intellect of man is a reflex of the\n divine intellect, or that man is made in the image of God.\u201d Note,\n however, that man is made in God\u2019s image, not God in man\u2019s. The\n painting is the image of the landscape, not, _vice versa_, the\n landscape the image of the painting; for there is much in the\n landscape that has nothing corresponding to it in the painting.\n Idolatry perversely makes God in the image of man, and so deifies\n man\u2019s weakness and impurity. Trinity in God may have no exact\n counterpart in man\u2019s present constitution, though it may disclose\n to us the goal of man\u2019s future development and the meaning of the\n increasing differentiation of man\u2019s powers. Gore, Incarnation,\n 116\u2014\u201cIf anthropomorphism as applied to God is false, yet\n theomorphism as applied to man is true; man is made in God\u2019s\n image, and his qualities are, not the measure of the divine, but\n their counterpart and real expression.\u201d See Murphy, Scientific\n Bases, 122; McCosh, in Internat. Rev., 1875:105; Bib. Sac.,\n 1867:624; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:4-8, and Study of\n Religion, 1:94.\n\n\nC. Because we know only that of which we can conceive, in the sense of\nforming an adequate mental image. We reply: (_a_) It is true that we know\nonly that of which we can conceive, if by the term \u201cconceive\u201d we mean our\ndistinguishing in thought the object known from all other objects. But,\n(_b_) The objection confounds conception with that which is merely its\noccasional accompaniment and help, namely, the picturing of the object by\nthe imagination. In this sense, conceivability is not a final test of\ntruth. (_c_) That the formation of a mental image is not essential to\nconception or knowledge, is plain when we remember that, as a matter of\nfact, we both conceive and know many things of which we cannot form a\nmental image of any sort that in the least corresponds to the reality; for\nexample, force, cause, law, space, our own minds. So we may know God,\nthough we cannot form an adequate mental image of him.\n\n\n The objection here refuted is expressed most clearly in the words\n of Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 25-36, 98\u2014\u201cThe reality\n underlying appearances is totally and forever inconceivable by\n us.\u201d Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, 77, 78 (_cf._ 26) suggests the\n source of this error in a wrong view of the nature of the concept:\n \u201cThe first distinguishing feature of a concept, viz.: that it\n cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination.\u201d Porter,\n Human Intellect, 392 (see also 429, 656)\u2014\u201cThe _concept_ is not a\n mental image\u201d\u2014only the _percept_ is. Lotze: \u201cColor in general is\n not representable by any image; it looks neither green nor red,\n but has no look whatever.\u201d The generic horse has no particular\n color, though the individual horse may be black, white, or bay. So\n Sir William Hamilton speaks of \u201cthe unpicturable notions of the\n intelligence.\u201d\n\n Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 39, 40\u2014\u201cThis doctrine of\n Nescience stands in exactly the same relation to causal power,\n whether you construe it as Material Force or as Divine Agency.\n Neither can be _observed_; one or the other must be _assumed_. If\n you admit to the category of knowledge only what we learn from\n observation, particular or generalized, then is Force unknown; if\n you extend the word to what is imported by the intellect itself\n into our cognitive acts, to make them such, then is God known.\u201d\n Matter, ether, energy, protoplasm, organism, life,\u2014no one of these\n can be portrayed to the imagination; yet Mr. Spencer deals with\n them as objects of Science. If these are not inscrutable, why\n should he regard the Power that gives unity to all things as\n inscrutable?\n\n Herbert Spencer is not in fact consistent with himself, for in\n divers parts of his writings he calls the inscrutable Reality back\n of phenomena the one, eternal, ubiquitous, infinite, ultimate,\n absolute Existence, Power and Cause. \u201cIt seems,\u201d says Father\n Dalgairns, \u201cthat a great deal is known about the Unknowable.\u201d\n Chadwick, Unitarianism, 75\u2014\u201cThe beggar phrase \u2018Unknowable\u2019\n becomes, after Spencer\u2019s repeated designations of it, as rich as\n Croesus with all saving knowledge.\u201d Matheson: \u201cTo know that we\n know nothing is already to have reached a fact of knowledge.\u201d If\n Mr. Spencer intended to exclude God from the realm of Knowledge,\n he should first have excluded him from the realm of Existence; for\n to grant that he is, is already to grant that we not only may know\n him, but that we actually to some extent do know him; see D. J.\n Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 22; McCosh, Intuitions, 186-189 (Eng.\n ed., 214); Murphy, Scientific Bases, 133; Bowne, Review of\n Spencer, 30-34; New Englander, July, 1875:543, 544; Oscar Craig,\n in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:594-602.\n\n\nD. Because we can know truly only that which we know in whole and not in\npart. We reply: (_a_) The objection confounds partial knowledge with the\nknowledge of a part. We know the mind in part, but we do not know a part\nof the mind. (_b_) If the objection were valid, no real knowledge of\nanything would be possible, since we know no single thing in all its\nrelations. We conclude that, although God is a being not composed of\nparts, we may yet have a partial knowledge of him, and this knowledge,\nthough not exhaustive, may yet be real, and adequate to the purposes of\nscience.\n\n\n (_a_) The objection mentioned in the text is urged by Mansel,\n Limits of Religious Thought, 97, 98, and is answered by Martineau,\n Essays, 1:291. The mind does not exist in space, and it has no\n parts: we cannot speak of its south-west corner, nor can we divide\n it into halves. Yet we find the material for mental science in\n partial knowledge of the mind. So, while we are not \u201cgeographers\n of the divine nature\u201d (Bowne, Review of Spencer, 72), we may say\n with Paul, not \u201cnow know we a part of God,\u201d but \u201cnow I know [God],\n in part\u201d_ (1 Cor. 13:12)_. We may know truly what we do not know\n exhaustively; see _Eph. 3:19\u2014_\u201cto know the love of Christ which\n passeth knowledge.\u201d I do not perfectly understand myself, yet I\n know myself in part; so I may know God, though I do not perfectly\n understand him.\n\n (_b_) The same argument that proves God unknowable proves the\n universe unknowable also. Since every particle of matter in the\n universe attracts every other, no one particle can be exhaustively\n explained without taking account of all the rest. Thomas Carlyle:\n \u201cIt is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my\n hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.\u201d Tennyson,\n Higher Pantheism: \u201cFlower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of\n the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little\n flower; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and\n all in all, I should know what God and man is.\u201d Schurman,\n Agnosticism, 119\u2014\u201cPartial as it is, this vision of the divine\n transfigures the life of man on earth.\u201d Pfleiderer, Philos.\n Religion, 1:167\u2014\u201cA faint-hearted agnosticism is worse than the\n arrogant and titanic gnosticism against which it protests.\u201d\n\n\nE. Because all predicates of God are negative, and therefore furnish no\nreal knowledge. We answer: (_a_) Predicates derived from our\nconsciousness, such as spirit, love, and holiness, are positive. (_b_) The\nterms \u201cinfinite\u201d and \u201cabsolute,\u201d moreover, express not merely a negative\nbut a positive idea\u2014the idea, in the former case, of the absence of all\nlimit, the idea that the object thus described goes on and on forever; the\nidea, in the latter case, of entire self-sufficiency. Since predicates of\nGod, therefore, are not merely negative, the argument mentioned above\nfurnishes no valid reason why we may not know him.\n\n\n _Versus_ Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 530\u2014\u201cThe absolute and\n the infinite can each only be conceived as a negation of the\n thinkable; in other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no\n conception at all.\u201d Hamilton here confounds the infinite, or the\n absence of _all_ limits, with the indefinite, or the absence of\n all _known_ limits. _Per contra_, see Calderwood, Moral\n Philosophy, 248, and Philosophy of the Infinite, 272\u2014\u201cNegation of\n one thing is possible only by affirmation of another.\u201d Porter,\n Human Intellect, 652\u2014\u201cIf the Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name,\n had called the ox a _not-hog_, the use of a negative appellation\n would not necessarily authorize the inference of a want of\n definite conceptions or positive knowledge.\u201d So with the infinite\n or not-finite, the unconditioned or not-conditioned, the\n independent or not-dependent,\u2014these names do not imply that we\n cannot conceive and know it as something positive. Spencer, First\n Principles, 92\u2014\u201cOur consciousness of the Absolute, indefinite\n though it is, is positive, and not negative.\u201d\n\n Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of \u201cthe farce of nescience\n playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science.\u201d \u201cThe\n agnostic,\u201d he says, \u201csets up the invisible picture of a _Grand\n \u00catre_, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from\n man and from the world\u2014blank within and void without\u2014its very\n existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing\n down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in\n lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and\n awful non-entity.... The truth is that the agnostic\u2019s abstraction\n of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal.\u201d See McCosh,\n Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is\n not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in\n every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of\n length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our\n doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately\n follows.\n\n\nF. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited,\nand the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (_a_) God is\nabsolute, not as existing in _no_ relation, but as existing in no\n_necessary_ relation; and (_b_) God is infinite, not as excluding all\ncoexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the\nfinite, and so unfettered by it. (_c_) God is actually limited by the\nunchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well\nas by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to\nhumanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in\nsuch a sense as to render knowledge of him possible.\n\n\n _Versus_ Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95;\n _cf._ Spinoza: \u201cOmnis determinatio est negatio;\u201d hence to define\n God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable\n from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least\n internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable\n attributes and personal distinctions, is God\u2019s perfection.\n Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so\n are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able\n thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all\n self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the\n greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God\u2019s 1.\n _Perfection_ involves his limitation to (_a_) personality, (_b_)\n trinity, (_c_) righteousness; 2. _Revelation_ involves his\n self-limitation in (_a_) decree, (_b_) creation, (_c_)\n preservation, (_d_) government, (_e_) education of the world; 3.\n _Redemption_ involves his infinite self-limitation in the (_a_)\n person and (_b_) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in\n Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1891:521-532.\n\n Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135\u2014\u201cThe infinite is not the\n quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated.... Both\n absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things.\u201d\n Julius M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10\u2014\u201cReligion has to do, not\n with _an_ Object that must let itself be known because its very\n existence is contingent upon its being known, but with _the_\n Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon\n him, and waiting until he manifest himself.\u201d James Martineau,\n Study of Religion, 1:346\u2014\u201cWe must not confound the _infinite_ with\n the _total_.... The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of\n self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal\n itself.... However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however\n sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in\n time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other\n terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite\n articulately speak in the finite.\u201d\n\n Perfect personality excludes, not _self_-determination, but\n determination _from without_, determination _by another_. God\u2019s\n self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore\n the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness\n but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution,\n gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The\n government of sinners by a holy God involves constant\n self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of\n divine forbearance; Herder: \u201cThe limitations of the pupil are\n limitations of the teacher also.\u201d In inspiration, God limits\n himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in\n the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation:\n Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and\n holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God\u2019s promises are also\n self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed\n restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by\n which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:189,\n 195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130;\n Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh, Intuitions, 186;\n Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion,\n 2:85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189-191.\n\n\nG. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what\nwe know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to\nour own senses and faculties. In reply: (_a_) We grant that we can know\nonly that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say\nthat we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we\nknow only what we know. But, (_b_) We deny that what we come into mental\ncontact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at\nall, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not\nmerely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things.\nWe conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that\nthe laws of our thought are laws of God\u2019s thought, and that the results of\nnormally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective\nreality.\n\n\n _Versus_ Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96-116, and Herbert Spencer,\n First Principles, 68-97. This doctrine of relativity is derived\n from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that _a priori_\n judgments are simply \u201cregulative.\u201d But we reply that when our\n primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will\n cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature.\n The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself\n furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence\n external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not _into_ nature,\n but _in_ nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make\n all the world _seem_ green: they are the lenses of a microscope,\n which enable us to see what is objectively _real_ (Royce, Spirit\n of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding \u201cthe\n legislator of nature.\u201d But it is so, only as discoverer of\n nature\u2019s laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose\n its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it\n interprets the real meaning of the universe.\n\n Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: \u201cAll judgment implies an objective\n truth according to which we judge, which constitutes the standard,\n and with which we have something in common, _i. e._, our minds are\n part of an infinite and eternal Mind.\u201d French aphorism: \u201cWhen you\n are right, you are more right than you think you are.\u201d God will\n not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote\n \u201cNo thoroughfare\u201d over the reason in its highest exercise.\n Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:135, 136\u2014\u201cOver against Kant\u2019s\n assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself,\n we may set Comte\u2019s equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind\n cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy\n without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms\n correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that\n they do not.... 79\u2014That our cognitive faculties correspond to\n things _as they are_, is much less surprising than that they\n should correspond to things _as they are not_.\u201d W. T. Harris, in\n Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer\u2019s\n self-contradiction: \u201cAll knowledge is, not absolute, but relative;\n our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but\n absolute.\u201d\n\n Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:16-21, sets out with\n a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his\n adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of\n Kant. Ritschl\u2019s statement may be summarized as follows: \u201cWe deal,\n not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God\n self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either\n things or God _apart from_ their phenomena or manifestations, as\n Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations\n _alone_, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed;\n but we do know both things and God _in_ their phenomena or\n manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with\n God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is\n always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human\n spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an\n intelligible order.\u201d\n\n But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl\u2019s Place in the History of Doctrine,\n has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His\n \u201cvalue-judgments\u201d are simply an application to theology of the\n \u201cregulative\u201d principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things\n not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We\n reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are\n in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ\u2019s\n preexistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics\n into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which\n we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union\n with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning\n Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives\n eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and\n his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely\n subjective value-judgment,\u2014it is a coming in contact with\n objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton\n and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:13; H.\n B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336; J. S. Mill, Examination,\n 1:113-134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.:\n \u201cHamilton,\u201d in Johnson\u2019s Encyclop\u00e6dia; McCosh, Intuitions,\n 139-146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97-123;\n Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy,\n 48-79, esp. 71-79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific\n Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868:341; Princeton Rev., 1864:122;\n Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev.,\n March, 1878:445-448; Mind, April, 1878:257; Carpenter, Mental\n Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109-113;\n Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of\n Religion, 1:79, 120, 121, 135, 136.\n\n\n3. God\u2019s revelation of himself to man.\n\n\n_In God\u2019s actual revelation of himself and certain of these relations._\u2014As\nwe do not in this place attempt a positive proof of God\u2019s existence or of\nman\u2019s capacity for the knowledge of God, so we do not now attempt to prove\nthat God has brought himself into contact with man\u2019s mind by revelation.\nWe shall consider the grounds of this belief hereafter. Our aim at present\nis simply to show that, granting the fact of revelation, a scientific\ntheology is possible. This has been denied upon the following grounds:\n\nA. That revelation, as a making known, is necessarily internal and\nsubjective\u2014either a mode of intelligence, or a quickening of man\u2019s\ncognitive powers\u2014and hence can furnish no objective facts such as\nconstitute the proper material for science.\n\n\n Morell, Philos. Religion, 128-131, 143\u2014\u201cThe Bible cannot in strict\n accuracy of language be called a revelation, since a revelation\n always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living\n mind.\u201d F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, 152\u2014\u201cOf our moral and\n spiritual God we know nothing without\u2014everything within.\u201d Theodore\n Parker: \u201cVerbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea\n like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion\u201d; see review of Parker\n in Bib. Sac., 18:24-27. James Martineau, Seat of Authority in\n Religion: \u201cAs many minds as there are that know God at first hand,\n so many revealing acts there have been, and as many as know him at\n second hand are strangers to revelation\u201d; so, assuming external\n revelation to be impossible, Martineau subjects all the proofs of\n such revelation to unfair destructive criticism. Pfleiderer,\n Philos. Religion, 1:185\u2014\u201cAs all revelation is originally an\n _inner_ living experience, the springing up of religious truth in\n the heart, no external event can belong in itself to revelation,\n no matter whether it be naturally or supernaturally brought\n about.\u201d Professor George M. Forbes: \u201cNothing can be revealed to us\n which we do not grasp with our reason. It follows that, so far as\n reason acts normally, it is a part of revelation.\u201d Ritchie, Darwin\n and Hegel, 30\u2014\u201cThe revelation of God is the growth of the idea of\n God.\u201d\n\n\nIn reply to this objection, urged mainly by idealists in philosophy, (_a_)\nWe grant that revelation, to be effective, must be the means of inducing a\nnew mode of intelligence, or in other words, must be understood. We grant\nthat this understanding of divine things is impossible without a\nquickening of man\u2019s cognitive powers. We grant, moreover, that revelation,\nwhen originally imparted, was often internal and subjective.\n\n\n Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 51-53, on _Gal. 1:16\u2014_\u201cto reveal\n his Son in me\u201d: \u201cThe revelation on the way to Damascus would not\n have enlightened Paul, had it been merely a vision to his eye.\n Nothing can be revealed _to_ us which has not been revealed _in_\n us. The eye does not see the beauty of the landscape, nor the ear\n hear the beauty of music. So flesh and blood do not reveal Christ\n to us. Without the teaching of the Spirit, the external facts will\n be only like the letters of a book to a child that cannot read.\u201d\n We may say with Channing: \u201cI am more sure that my rational nature\n is from God, than that any book is the expression of his will.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) But we deny that external revelation is therefore useless or\nimpossible. Even if religious ideas sprang wholly from within, an external\nrevelation might stir up the dormant powers of the mind. Religious ideas,\nhowever, do not spring wholly from within. External revelation can impart\nthem. Man can reveal himself to man by external communications, and, if\nGod has equal power with man, God can reveal himself to man in like\nmanner.\n\n\n Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, asks pointedly: \u201cIf Messrs.\n Morell and Newman can teach by a book, cannot God do the same?\u201d\n Lotze, Microcosmos, 2:660 (book 9, chap. 4), speaks of revelation\n as \u201ceither contained in some divine act of historic occurrence, or\n continually repeated in men\u2019s hearts.\u201d But in fact there is no\n alternative here; the strength of the Christian creed is that\n God\u2019s revelation is both external and internal; see Gore, in Lux\n Mundi, 338. Rainy, in Critical Review, 1:1-21, well says that\n Martineau unwarrantably _isolates_ the witness of God to the\n individual soul. The inward needs to be combined with the outward,\n in order to make sure that it is not a vagary of the imagination.\n We need to distinguish God\u2019s revelations from our own fancies.\n Hence, before giving the internal, God commonly gives us the\n external, as a standard by which to try our impressions. We are\n finite and sinful, and we need authority. The external revelation\n commends itself as authoritative to the heart which recognizes its\n own spiritual needs. External authority evokes the inward witness\n and gives added clearness to it, but only historical revelation\n furnishes indubitable proof that God is love, and gives us\n assurance that our longings after God are not in vain.\n\n\n(_c_) Hence God\u2019s revelation may be, and, as we shall hereafter see, it\nis, in great part, an external revelation in works and words. The universe\nis a revelation of God; God\u2019s works in nature precede God\u2019s words in\nhistory. We claim, moreover, that, in many cases where truth was\noriginally communicated internally, the same Spirit who communicated it\nhas brought about an external record of it, so that the internal\nrevelation might be handed down to others than those who first received\nit.\n\n\n We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures. The eternal Word\n antedated the written word, and through the eternal Word God is\n made known in nature and in history. Internal revelation is\n preceded by, and conditioned upon, external revelation. In point\n of time earth comes before man, and sensation before perception.\n Action best expresses character, and historic revelation is more\n by deeds than by words. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 1:231-264\u2014\u201cThe\n Word is not in the Scriptures alone. The whole creation reveals\n the Word. In nature God shows his power; in incarnation his grace\n and truth. Scripture testifies of these, but Scripture is not the\n essential Word. The Scripture is truly apprehended and\n appropriated when in it and through it we see the living and\n present Christ. It does not bind men to itself alone, but it\n points them to the Christ of whom it testifies. Christ is the\n authority. In the Scriptures he points us to himself and demands\n our faith in him. This faith, once begotten, leads us to new\n appropriation of Scripture, but also to new criticism of\n Scripture. We find Christ more and more in Scripture, and yet we\n judge Scripture more and more by the standard which we find in\n Christ.\u201d\n\n Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 71-82: \u201cThere is but one\n authority\u2014Christ. His Spirit works in many ways, but chiefly in\n two: first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, secondly, the\n leading of the church into the truth. The latter is not to be\n isolated or separated from the former. Scripture is law to the\n Christian consciousness, and Christian consciousness in time\n becomes law to the Scripture\u2014interpreting, criticizing, verifying\n it. The word and the spirit answer to each other. Scripture and\n faith are co\u00f6rdinate. Protestantism has exaggerated the first;\n Romanism the second. Martineau fails to grasp the co\u00f6rdination of\n Scripture and faith.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) With this external record we shall also see that there is given\nunder proper conditions a special influence of God\u2019s Spirit, so to quicken\nour cognitive powers that the external record reproduces in our minds the\nideas with which the minds of the writers were at first divinely filled.\n\n\n We may illustrate the need of internal revelation from Egyptology,\n which is impossible so long as the external revelation in the\n hieroglyphics is uninterpreted; from the ticking of the clock in a\n dark room, where only the lit candle enables us to tell the time;\n from the landscape spread out around the Rigi in Switzerland,\n invisible until the first rays of the sun touch the snowy mountain\n peaks. External revelation (\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03ad\u03c1\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, _Rom. 1:19, 20_) must be\n supplemented by internal revelation (\u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03c8\u03b9\u03c2, _1 Cor. 2:10,\n 12_). Christ is the organ of external, the Holy Spirit the organ\n of internal, revelation. In Christ (_2 Cor. 1:20_) are \u201cthe yea\u201d\n and \u201cthe Amen\u201d\u2014the objective certainty and the subjective\n certitude, the reality and the realization.\n\n Objective certainty must become subjective certitude in order to\n be a scientific theology. Before conversion we have the first, the\n external truth of Christ; only at conversion and after conversion\n do we have the second, \u201cChrist formed in us\u201d_ (Gal. 4:19)_. We\n have objective revelation at Sinai (_Ex. 20:22_); subjective\n revelation in Elisha\u2019s knowledge of Gehazi (_2 K. 5:26_). James\n Russell Lowell, Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire: \u201cTherefore with\n thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs\n Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time\u2019s shadows! and\n how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As\n when upon the anvil of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically\n wrought By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet\u2019s thought!\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) Internal revelations thus recorded, and external revelations thus\ninterpreted, both furnish objective facts which may serve as proper\nmaterial for science. Although revelation in its widest sense may include,\nand as constituting the ground of the possibility of theology does\ninclude, both insight and illumination, it may also be used to denote\nsimply a provision of the external means of knowledge, and theology has to\ndo with inward revelations only as they are expressed in, or as they agree\nwith, this objective standard.\n\n\n We have here suggested the vast scope and yet the insuperable\n limitations of theology. So far as God is revealed, whether in\n nature, history, conscience, or Scripture, theology may find\n material for its structure. Since Christ is not simply the\n incarnate Son of God but also the eternal Word, the only Revealer\n of God, there is no theology apart from Christ, and all theology\n is Christian theology. Nature and history are but the dimmer and\n more general disclosures of the divine Being, of which the Cross\n is the culmination and the key. God does not intentionally conceal\n himself. He wishes to be known. He reveals himself at all times\n just as fully as the capacity of his creatures will permit. The\n infantile intellect cannot understand God\u2019s boundlessness, nor can\n the perverse disposition understand God\u2019s disinterested affection.\n Yet all truth is in Christ and is open to discovery by the\n prepared mind and heart.\n\n The Infinite One, so far as he is unrevealed, is certainly\n unknowable to the finite. But the Infinite One, so far as he\n manifests himself, is knowable. This suggests the meaning of the\n declarations: _John 1:18\u2014_\u201cNo man hath seen God at any time; the\n only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath\n declared him\u201d; _14:9\u2014_\u201che that hath seen me hath seen the Father\u201d;\n _1 Tim. 6:16\u2014_\u201cwhom no man hath seen, nor can see.\u201d We therefore\n approve of the definition of Kaftan, Dogmatik, 1\u2014\u201cDogmatics is the\n science of the Christian truth which is believed and acknowledged\n in the church upon the ground of the divine revelation\u201d\u2014in so far\n as it limits the scope of theology to truth revealed by God and\n apprehended by faith. But theology presupposes both God\u2019s external\n and God\u2019s internal revelations, and these, as we shall see,\n include nature, history, conscience and Scripture. On the whole\n subject, see Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:37-43; Nitzsch, System Christ.\n Doct., 72; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 193; Auberlen, Div. Rev.,\n Introd., 29; Martineau, Essays, 1:171, 280; Bib. Sac., 1867:593,\n and 1872:428; Porter, Human Intellect, 373-375; C. M. Mead, in\n Boston Lectures, 1871:58.\n\n\nB. That many of the truths thus revealed are too indefinite to constitute\nthe material for science, because they belong to the region of the\nfeelings, because they are beyond our full understanding, or because they\nare destitute of orderly arrangement.\n\nWe reply:\n\n(_a_) Theology has to do with subjective feelings only as they can be\ndefined, and shown to be effects of objective truth upon the mind. They\nare not more obscure than are the facts of morals or of psychology, and\nthe same objection which would exclude such feelings from theology would\nmake these latter sciences impossible.\n\n\n See Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who regard theology as a mere\n account of devout Christian feelings, the grounding of which in\n objective historical facts is a matter of comparative indifference\n (Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:401-403). Schleiermacher therefore\n called his system of theology \u201cDer Christliche Glaube,\u201d and many\n since his time have called their systems by the name of\n \u201cGlaubenslehre.\u201d Ritschl\u2019s \u201cvalue-judgments,\u201d in like manner,\n render theology a merely subjective science, if any subjective\n science is possible. Kaftan improves upon Ritschl, by granting\n that we know, not only Christian feelings, but also Christian\n facts. Theology is the science of God, and not simply the science\n of faith. Allied to the view already mentioned is that of\n Feuerbach, to whom religion is a matter of subjective fancy; and\n that of Tyndall, who would remit theology to the region of vague\n feeling and aspiration, but would exclude it from the realm of\n science; see Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by\n Marian Evans (George Eliot); also Tyndall, Belfast Address.\n\n\n(_b_) Those facts of revelation which are beyond our full understanding\nmay, like the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the atomic theory in\nchemistry, or the doctrine of evolution in biology, furnish a principle of\nunion between great classes of other facts otherwise irreconcilable. We\nmay define our concepts of God, and even of the Trinity, at least\nsufficiently to distinguish them from all other concepts; and whatever\ndifficulty may encumber the putting of them into language only shows the\nimportance of attempting it and the value of even an approximate success.\n\n\n Horace Bushnell: \u201cTheology can never be a science, on account of\n the infirmities of language.\u201d But this principle would render void\n both ethical and political science. Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of\n Revelation, 145\u2014\u201cHume and Gibbon refer to faith as something too\n sacred to rest on proof. Thus religious beliefs are made to hang\n in mid-air, without any support. But the foundation of these\n beliefs is no less solid for the reason that empirical tests are\n not applicable to them. The data on which they rest are real, and\n the inferences from the data are fairly drawn.\u201d Hodgson indeed\n pours contempt on the whole intuitional method by saying:\n \u201cWhatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the\n explanation of everything else!\u201d Yet he would probably grant that\n he begins his investigations by assuming his own existence. The\n doctrine of the Trinity is not wholly comprehensible by us, and we\n accept it at the first upon the testimony of Scripture; the full\n proof of it is found in the fact that each successive doctrine of\n theology is bound up with it, and with it stands or falls. The\n Trinity is rational because it explains Christian experience as\n well as Christian doctrine.\n\n\n(_c_) Even though there were no orderly arrangement of these facts, either\nin nature or in Scripture, an accurate systematizing of them by the human\nmind would not therefore be proved impossible, unless a principle were\nassumed which would show all physical science to be equally impossible.\nAstronomy and geology are constructed by putting together multitudinous\nfacts which at first sight seem to have no order. So with theology. And\nyet, although revelation does not present to us a dogmatic system\nready-made, a dogmatic system is not only implicitly contained therein,\nbut parts of the system are wrought out in the epistles of the New\nTestament, as for example in Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; 8:6; 1 Tim.\n3:16; Heb. 6:1, 2.\n\n\n We may illustrate the construction of theology from the dissected\n map, two pieces of which a father puts together, leaving his child\n to put together the rest. Or we may illustrate from the physical\n universe, which to the unthinking reveals little of its order.\n \u201cNature makes no fences.\u201d One thing seems to glide into another.\n It is man\u2019s business to distinguish and classify and combine.\n Origen: \u201cGod gives us truth in single threads, which we must weave\n into a finished texture.\u201d Andrew Fuller said of the doctrines of\n theology that \u201cthey are united together like chain-shot, so that,\n whichever one enters the heart, the others must certainly follow.\u201d\n George Herbert: \u201cOh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And\n the configuration of their glory; Seeing not only how each verse\n doth shine, But all the constellations of the story!\u201d\n\n Scripture hints at the possibilities of combination, in _Rom.\n 5:12-19_, with its grouping of the facts of sin and salvation\n about the two persons, Adam and Christ; in _Rom. 4:24, 25_, with\n its linking of the resurrection of Christ and our justification;\n in _1 Cor. 3:6_, with its indication of the relations between the\n Father and Christ; in _1 Tim. 3:16_, with its poetical summary of\n the facts of redemption (see Commentaries of DeWette, Meyer,\n Fairbairn); in _Heb. 6:1, 2_, with its statement of the first\n principles of the Christian faith. God\u2019s furnishing of concrete\n facts in theology, which we ourselves are left to systematize, is\n in complete accordance with his method of procedure with regard to\n the development of other sciences. See Martineau, Essays, 1:29,\n 40; Am. Theol. Rev., 1859:101-126\u2014art. on the Idea, Sources and\n Uses of Christian Theology.\n\n\n\nIV. Necessity of Theology.\n\n\nThe necessity of theology has its grounds:\n\n(_a_) _In the organizing instinct of the human mind._ This organizing\nprinciple is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion\nor apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and\nunify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective; just\nin proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to\nsystematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of\nhuman inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since\nthe truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets\nthe deepest want of man\u2019s rational nature. Theology is a rational\nnecessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new\nsystems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law,\nthat those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a\ntheology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering.\nHostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for\nthe corruption of God\u2019s truth or in a naturally illogical structure of\nmind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the\nrestraints of a complete Scriptural system.\n\n\n President E. G. Robinson: \u201cEvery man has as much theology as he\n can hold.\u201d Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as\n naturally as we speak prose. \u201cSe moquer de la philosophie c\u2019est\n vraiment philosopher.\u201d Gore, Incarnation, 21\u2014\u201cChristianity became\n metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means\n that he must attempt \u2018to give account of things,\u2019 as Plato said,\n \u2018because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.\u2019 \u201d Men\n often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences\n of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself\n in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All\n other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the\n knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one\n science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In\n speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173,\n satirically exhorts us: \u201cTrust your genius; follow your noble\n heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and\n change your heart often,\u2014such is the practical creed of the\n romanticists.\u201d Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3\u2014\u201cJust those persons\n who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected\n with the disease they profess to abhor\u2014and not to know when they\n have it.\u201d See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy,\n Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.\n\n\n(_b_) _In the relation of systematic truth to the development of\ncharacter._ Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of\nChristian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of\nGod has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of\nspiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been\nobjected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from\ntheir sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths\nwhich are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other\nhand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon\nthe great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are\nthose which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can\nbe injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical,\nor mistaken.\n\n\n Some knowledge is necessary to conversion\u2014at least, knowledge of\n sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these\n two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth\n of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.\n _Col. 1:10\u2014\u03b1\u1f50\u03be\u03b1\u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 [omit \u1f10\u03bd] =\n _\u201cincreasing by the knowledge of God\u201d\u2014the instrumental dative\n represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures\n the growth of the plant; _cf._ _3 Pet. 3:18\u2014_\u201cgrow in the grace\n and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.\u201d For texts\n which represent truth as nourishment, see _Jer. 3:15\u2014_\u201cfeed you\n with knowledge and understanding\u201d; _Mat. 4:4\u2014_\u201cMan shall not live\n by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth\n of God\u201d; _1 Cor. 3:1, 2\u2014_\u201cbabes in Christ ... I fed you with milk,\n not with meat\u201d; _Heb. 5:14\u2014_\u201cbut solid food is for full-grown\n men.\u201d Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its\n foundation; see _1 Cor. 3:10-15\u2014_\u201cI laid a foundation, and another\n buildeth thereon.\u201d See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon,\n on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.\n\n Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot\n W. Chambers:\u2014\u201cDoctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty\n without doctrine is a tree without roots.\u201d Christian morality is a\n fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We\n cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the\n tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,\n 82\u2014\u201cNaturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes,\n the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.\u201d\n Kidd, Social Evolution, 214\u2014\u201cBecause the fruit survives for a time\n when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we\n say that it is independent of the tree?\u201d The twelve manner of\n fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,\u2014they never grew\n there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple\n swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again\n to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those\n who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal\n with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle: \u201cIt is the mistake\n and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought\n instead of causes.\u201d George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day,\n 28\u2014\u201cWithout the historical Christ and personal love for that\n Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a\n dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) _In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of\nChristian doctrine._ His chief intellectual qualification must be the\npower clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and\npowerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit\nin converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield \u201cthe sword of the\nSpirit, which is the word of God\u201d (Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only\nas he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers.\nNothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and\ninconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace\nobscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are\ncorrect and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard\nto God in their relations\u2014knowing them, in short, as parts of a system.\nWith this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is\nnot only sin against the Revealer of it,\u2014it may prove the ruin of men\u2019s\nsouls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is\nthe diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their\nrelations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology,\nthe person and work of Jesus Christ.\n\n\n The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires\n reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and\n eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong\n than of old,\u2014it is only more rational. Notice the progress from\n \u201cBuncombe\u201d, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and\n logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare\u2019s Merchant of Venice,\n 1:1:113\u2014\u201cGratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His\n reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.\u201d\n So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal\n are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to\n indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching.\n Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to \u201cthe knowledge\n of the truth\u201d_ (2 Tim. 2:25)_. The preacher must furnish the basis\n for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct\n before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know\n God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is\n absolutely necessary to his success.\n\n Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology,\n or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence?\n Professor Blackie: \u201cOne may as well expect to make a great patriot\n out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere\n rhetorician.\u201d The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a\n mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John\n Henry Newman: \u201cThe false preacher is one who has to say something;\n the true preacher is one who has something to say.\u201d Spurgeon,\n Autobiography, 1:167\u2014\u201cConstant change of creed is sure loss. If a\n tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not\n need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When\n people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring\n forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we\n have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a\n currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of\n superficial students.\u201d Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and\n erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician\u2019s prescription;\n by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending\n Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only\n after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on\n our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us.\n Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has. _2 Tim.\n 2:2\u2014_\u201cAnd the things which thou hast heard from me among many\n witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able\n to teach others also.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) _In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety\nand aggressive power of the church._ The safety and progress of the church\nis dependent upon her \u201cholding the pattern of sound words\u201d (2 Tim. 1:13),\nand serving as \u201cpillar and ground of the truth\u201d (1 Tim. 3:15). Defective\nunderstanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of\norganization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of\nChristian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not\nonly an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an\nindispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world\u2019s\nconversion.\n\n\n The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative\n curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of\n doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to\n express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who\n deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual\n acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them.\n The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of\n controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with\n regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up\n bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy: \u201cWhat\n converted the world was not the example of Christ\u2019s life,\u2014it was\n the dogma of his death.\u201d Coleridge: \u201cHe who does not withstand,\n has no standing ground of his own.\u201d Mrs. Browning: \u201cEntire\n intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.\u201d\n E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362\u2014\u201cA doctrine is but a\n precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a\n doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God\u2019s garden;\n its trees are trees of his planting; and \u2018all the trees of the\n Lord are full of sap\u2019_ (Ps. 104:16)._\u201d\n\n Bose, Ecumenical Councils: \u201cA creed is not catholic because a\n council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it\n expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and\n women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into\n those forms of words.\u201d Dorner: \u201cThe creeds are the precipitate of\n the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.\u201d Foster,\n Christ. Life and Theol., 162\u2014\u201cIt ordinarily requires the shock of\n some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and\n crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was\n given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the\n conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly\n as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when\n the containing vessel receives a blow.\u201d Balfour, Foundations of\n Belief, 287\u2014\u201cThe creeds were not explanations, but rather denials\n that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and\n declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the\n Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its\n inexplicable fulness.\u201d Denny, Studies in Theology, 192\u2014\u201cPagan\n philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and\n to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled\n to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to\n assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret\n in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.\u201d\n\n Professor Howard Osgood: \u201cA creed is like a backbone. A man does\n not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a\n backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a\n humpbacked Christian.\u201d Yet we must remember that creeds are\n _credita_, and not _credenda_; historical statements of what the\n church _has_ believed, not infallible prescriptions of what the\n church _must_ believe. George Dana Boardman, The Church,\n 98\u2014\u201cCreeds are apt to become cages.\u201d Schurman, Agnosticism,\n 151\u2014\u201cThe creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of\n religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their\n artillery against the citadel itself.\u201d T. H. Green: \u201cWe are told\n that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who\n knows what the Fathers believe now?\u201d George A. Gordon, Christ of\n To-day, 60\u2014\u201cThe assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned\n in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the\n intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of\n our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely\n essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his\n endeavor for man is a delusion.\u201d See Schaff, Creeds of\n Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity,\n 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick\n Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.\n\n\n(_e_) _In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture._ The Scripture\nurges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John\n5:39, marg.,\u2014\u201cSearch the Scriptures\u201d), the comparing and harmonizing of\nits different parts (1 Cor. 2:13\u2014\u201ccomparing spiritual things with\nspiritual\u201d), the gathering of all about the great central fact of\nrevelation (Col. 1:27\u2014\u201cwhich is Christ in you, the hope of glory\u201d), the\npreaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim.\n4:2\u2014\u201cPreach the word\u201d). The minister of the Gospel is called \u201ca scribe who\nhath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven\u201d (Mat. 13:52); the\n\u201cpastors\u201d of the churches are at the same time to be \u201cteachers\u201d (Eph.\n4:11); the bishop must be \u201capt to teach\u201d (1 Tim. 3:2), \u201chandling aright\nthe word of truth\u201d (2 Tim. 2:15), \u201cholding to the faithful word which is\naccording to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound\ndoctrine and to convict the gainsayers\u201d (Tit. 1:9).\n\n\n As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in\n his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the\n pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to\n expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The\n treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to\n be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid\n and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least\n one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical\n applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards\u2019s\n sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in\n Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not\n models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too\n scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too\n little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal\n preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed\n itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the\n other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count\n himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without\n regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of\n Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part,\n 4:7\u2014\u201cIgnorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith\n we fly to heaven.\u201d\n\n\n\nV. Relation of Theology to Religion.\n\n\nTheology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different\nspheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the\nsphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe,\nso religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of\nindividual and collective life. With regard to the term \u201creligion\u201d,\nnotice:\n\n\n1. Derivation.\n\n\n(_a_) The derivation from _relig\u0101re_, \u201cto bind back\u201d (man to God), is\nnegatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists;\nby the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms as\n_religio_, _religens_; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing\na fuller knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient\nworld.\n\n(_b_) The more correct derivation is from _releg\u0115re_, \u201cto go over again,\u201d\n\u201ccarefully to ponder.\u201d Its original meaning is therefore \u201creverent\nobservance\u201d (of duties due to the gods).\n\n\n For advocacy of the derivation of _religio_, as meaning \u201cbinding\n duty,\u201d from _relig\u0101re_, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This\n derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a\n Christian writer. To meet the objection that the form _religio_\n seems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange cites\n _rebellio_, from _rebell\u0101re_, and _optio_, from _opt\u0101re_. But we\n reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others,\n are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation.\n For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische\n Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. W\u00f6rterb. der indoger.\n Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. W\u00f6rterb., 2:829; Andrews,\n Latin Lexicon, _in voce_; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7;\n Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6;\n Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max\n M\u00fcller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.\n\n\n2. False Conceptions.\n\n\n(_a_) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would\nthen be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of\nknowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.\n\n\n In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is\n the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God\u2019s\n knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not\n utterly ignore other elements in religion. \u201cFeeling, intuition,\n and faith belong to it,\u201d he said, \u201cand mere cognition is\n one-sided.\u201d Yet he was always looking for the movement of\n _thought_ in all forms of life; God and the universe were but\n developments of the primordial _idea_. \u201cWhat knowledge is worth\n knowing,\u201d he asked, \u201cif God is unknowable? To know God is eternal\n life, and thinking is also true worship.\u201d Hegel\u2019s error was in\n regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding\n thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the\n bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly\n considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly\n religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love\n in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than\n he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge\n of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the\n intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional\n and voluntary nature.\n\n Goethe: \u201cHow can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking,\n but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what\n you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,\u2014you\n must use your fingers.\u201d So we can never come to know God by\n thinking alone. _John 7:17\u2014_\u201cIf any man willeth to do his will, he\n will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.\u201d The Gnostics,\n Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological\n knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth\u2019s maxim, \u201cThe Bible\n only, the religion of Protestants,\u201d is inadequate and inaccurate;\n for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a\n fetich and a snare: _John 5:39,40\u2014_\u201cYe search the Scriptures, ...\n and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.\u201d See Sterrett,\n Studies in Hegel\u2019s Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human\n Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos.,\n 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.\n\n\n(_b_) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of\ndependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless\nexercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.\n\n\n In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from\n the old rationalism to the evangelical faith. \u201cLike Lazarus, with\n the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his\n steps,\u201d yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the\n soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian\n feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks, \u201cEmotion is impotent\n unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there\n will be emotion which is potent to persuade.\u201d If Christianity is\n religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference\n between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the\n religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other\n religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes\n life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the\n cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith\n begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the\n worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of\n theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.\n\n Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher\u2019s passive\n element of _dependence_, the active element of _prayer_. Kaftan,\n Dogmatik, 10\u2014\u201cSchleiermacher regards God as the _Source_ of our\n being, but forgets that he is also our _End_.\u201d Fellowship and\n progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence;\n and fellowship must come before progress\u2014such fellowship as\n presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in\n neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his\n Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357.\n Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit\u2014a good thing for\n those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in.\n Dorner: \u201cThe Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his\n nurse.\u201d On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclop\u00e4die, _in\n voce_; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of\n Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius M\u00fcller, Doctrine\n of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570;\n Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.\n\n\n(_c_) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for\nmorality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is\nessentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing\nand to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.\n\n\n Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss: \u201cI know of but\n two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the\n sense of duty within my heart.\u201d But the mere sense of duty often\n distresses. We object to the word \u201cobey\u201d as the imperative of\n religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only;\n (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will;\n (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian\n a servant only, not a friend; _cf._ _John 15:15\u2014_\u201cNo longer do I\n call you servants ... but I have called you friends\u201d\u2014a relation\n not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_). The\n voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of\n law. We object also to Matthew Arnold\u2019s definition: \u201cReligion is\n ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched\n with emotion.\u201d This leaves out of view the receptive element in\n religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer\n statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as\n morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism,\n 251\u2014\u201cMorality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have\n recourse to religion\u201d; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142.\n Goethe: \u201cUnqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to\n bankruptcy\u201d; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69;\n Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of\n Religion, 19.\n\n\n3. Essential Idea.\n\n\nReligion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in\nrecognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the\nindwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as\nconsisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect,\naffection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and co\u00f6peration of\nall the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the\nunited working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must\nassign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in\nregeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving\nhim.\n\n\n See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man\u2014\u201cGod in man, and man in\n God\u201d\u2014in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79,\n and Religionsphilosophie, 255\u2014Religion is \u201cSache des ganzen\n Geisteslebens\u201d: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4\u2014\u201cReligion is the\n personal influence of the immanent God\u201d; Sterrett, Reason and\n Authority in Religion, 31, 32\u2014\u201cReligion is the reciprocal relation\n or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith\u201d;\n Dr. J. W. A. Stewart: \u201cReligion is fellowship with God\u201d; Pascal:\n \u201cPiety is God sensible to the heart\u201d; Ritschl, Justif. and\n Reconcil., 13\u2014\u201cChristianity is an ellipse with two foci\u2014Christ as\n Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us,\n redemption and morality, religion and ethics\u201d; Kaftan, Dogmatik,\n 8\u2014\u201cThe Christian religion is (1) the _kingdom of God_ as a goal\n above the world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)\n _reconciliation with God_ permitting attainment of this goal in\n spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in\n man\u2019s natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion, _i.\n e._, that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.\u201d\n\n Herbert Spencer: \u201cReligion is an _a priori_ theory of the\n universe\u201d; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds: \u201cwhich assumes\n intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe,\n science dealing with the _How_, the phenomenal process, religion\n dealing with the _Who_, the intelligent Personality who works\n through the process.\u201d Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27\u2014\u201cNatural life is\n the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition\u201d\u2014the\n recognition of the fact that God is in all things\u2014\u201cit is not yet,\n as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of\n a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.\u201d\n Dewey, Psychology, 283\u2014\u201cFeeling finds its absolutely universal\n expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or\n realization of self in a completely realized personality which\n unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of\n all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and\n rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which\n accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the\n complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its\n true life in God.\u201d Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262\u2014\u201cEthics is simply\n the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society,\n the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all\n men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend\n the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual\n relationship arising out of that unity of substance which\n constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.\u201d See Van\n Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, 2:227;\n Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths,\n 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.\n\n\n4. Inferences.\n\n\nFrom this definition of religion it follows:\n\n(_a_) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious\nbeing, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually\nreligious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God.\nFalse religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the\nimaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul\nin God.\n\n\n Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18\u2014\u201cIf Christianity\n be true, it is not _a_ religion, but _the_ religion. If Judaism be\n also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with\n Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the\n relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in\n other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions,\n but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became\n incorporated with fables and falsities.\u201d John Caird, Fund. Ideas\n of Christianity, 1:25\u2014\u201cYou can never get at the true idea or\n essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is\n common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that\n explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains\n all the lower religions.\u201d George P. Fisher: \u201cThe recognition of\n certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean\n that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by\n borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in\n fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion\n does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides\n illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and\n aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most\n spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.\u201d\n\n Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon on _Proverbs 20:27\u2014_\u201cThe spirit of man\n is the lamp of Jehovah\u201d\u2014\u201ca lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a\n lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame\u201d\u2014man has\n naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no\n means naturally and universally religious. All false religions\n have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained\n or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these\n elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a\n counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin\n washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad\n money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8\u2014\u201cSee Paul\u2019s methods of\n dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and\n in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and\n justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the\n light of God\u2019s self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen\n religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance\u201d; _cf._\n _Acts 14:16\u2014_\u201cWe ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn\n from these vain things unto a living God\u201d_;_ _17:22\u2014_\u201cI perceive\n that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities....\n What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto\n you.\u201d\n\n Matthew Arnold: \u201cChildren of men! the unseen Power whose eye\n Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion\n scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills\n how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like\n rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be\n born again?\u201d Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is\n absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other\n religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other\n religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored\n rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism,\n and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates.\n But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity\n is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson,\n Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342\u2014\u201cChristianity is\n reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it\n sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes\n the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure\n beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like\n Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the\n present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like\n Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity\n is the manifold wisdom of God.\u201d See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics,\n 88-93. Shakespeare: \u201cThere is some soul of goodness in things\n evil, Would men observingly distill it out\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The\nfacts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they\ncan be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought\ninto rational relation to each other.\n\n\n This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious\n fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is\n important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be\n identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the\n perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our\n fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with\n devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all\n these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion\n involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the\n God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between\n human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul\n upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of\n self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one\u2019s works and\n one\u2019s record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle\n in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks\n of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or\n Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we\n also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of\n the omnipresent Christ, \u201cthe light which lighteth every man\u201d_\n (John 1:9),_ and we see in them incipient repentance and faith,\n even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.\n _Christian_ fellowship must have a larger basis in accepted\n Christian truth, and _Church_ fellowship a still larger basis in\n common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.\n _Religious_ fellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact\n that \u201cGod is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that\n feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him\u201d_ (Acts\n 10:34, 35)_.\n\n\n(_c_) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is\nsimply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is\n\u201cformal communion between God and his people.\u201d In it God speaks to man,\nand man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture\nand preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the\npeople.\n\n\n Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166\u2014\u201cChristian worship\n is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.\u201d But there is more in\n true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in\n true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in\n worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But\n communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Sta\u00ebl, whom Heine called\n \u201ca whirlwind in petticoats,\u201d ended one of her brilliant\n soliloquies by saying: \u201cWhat a delightful conversation we have\n had!\u201d We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship\n in Thomas \u00e0 Kempis\u2019s dialogues between the saint and his Savior,\n in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe: \u201cAgainst the great superiority\n of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to\n put one\u2019s self on his level.\u201d If this be the effect of loving and\n praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God!\n Inscription in Grasmere Church: \u201cWhoever thou art that enterest\n this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself,\n for those who minister, and for those who worship here.\u201d In _James\n 1:27\u2014_\u201cPure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is\n this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and\n to keep oneself unspotted from the world\u201d\u2014\u201c_religion_,\u201d \u03b8\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03af\u03b1,\n is _cultus exterior_; and the meaning is that \u201cthe external\n service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a\n life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its\n inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to\n be inferred.\u201d On the relation between religion and worship, see\n Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison,\n Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to\n Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Material of Theology.\n\n\n\nI. Sources of Theology.\n\n\nGod himself, in the last analysis, must be the only source of knowledge\nwith regard to his own being and relations. Theology is therefore a\nsummary and explanation of the content of God\u2019s self-revelations. These\nare, first, the revelation of God in nature; secondly and supremely, the\nrevelation of God in the Scriptures.\n\n\n Ambrose: \u201cTo whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than\n to God himself?\u201d Von Baader: \u201cTo know God without God is\n impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime\n source of knowledge.\u201d C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8\u2014\u201cGod reveals truth\n in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of\n mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but\n above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.\u201d F. H. Johnson,\n What is Reality? 399\u2014\u201cThe teacher intervenes when needed.\n Revelation _helps_ reason and conscience, but is not a\n _substitute_ for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution\n for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like\n nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing\n ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.\u201d A. J. F. Behrends: \u201cThe\n Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars\n which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine\n to see the stars with our own eyes.\u201d Schurman, Agnosticism,\n 178\u2014\u201cThe Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But\n it is useless when you put your eyes out.\u201d\n\n We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The\n immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any\n more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from\n us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118\u2014\u201cThe word \u2018authority\u2019 is\n derived from _auctor_, _augeo_, \u2018to add.\u2019 Authority adds something\n to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element\n of _witness_. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which\n cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which\n results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own\n knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church,\n Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only\n original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is\n only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.\u201d Gore,\n Incarnation, 181\u2014\u201cAll legitimate authority represents the reason\n of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to\n it.... Man is made in God\u2019s image: he is, in his fundamental\n capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully,\n through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as\n Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better\n reason,\u2014to use Plato\u2019s beautiful expression, he can salute it by\n force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give\n intellectual account of it.\u201d\n\n Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 332-337, holds that there is no\n such thing as unassisted reason, and that, even if there were,\n natural religion is not one of its products. Behind all evolution\n of our own reason, he says, stands the Supreme Reason.\n \u201cConscience, ethical ideals, capacity for admiration, sympathy,\n repentance, righteous indignation, as well as our delight in\n beauty and truth, are all derived from God.\u201d Kaftan, in Am. Jour.\n Theology, 1900; 718, 719, maintains that there is no other\n principle for dogmatics than Holy Scripture. Yet he holds that\n knowledge never comes directly from Scripture, but from faith. The\n order is not: Scripture, doctrine, faith; but rather, Scripture,\n faith, doctrine. Scripture is no more a direct authority than is\n the church. Revelation is addressed to the whole man, that is, to\n the _will_ of the man, and it claims _obedience_ from him. Since\n all Christian knowledge is mediated through faith, it rests on\n obedience to the authority of revelation, and revelation is\n self-manifestation on the part of God. Kaftan should have\n recognized more fully that not simply Scripture, but all knowable\n truth, is a revelation from God, and that Christ is \u201cthe light\n which lighteth every man\u201d_ (John 1:9)_. Revelation is an organic\n whole, which begins in nature, but finds its climax and key in the\n historical Christ whom Scripture presents to us. See H. C.\n Minton\u2019s review of Martineau\u2019s Seat of Authority, in Presb. and\n Ref. Rev., Apr. 1900:203 _sq._\n\n\n1. Scripture and Nature.\n\n\nBy nature we here mean not only physical facts, or facts with regard to\nthe substances, properties, forces, and laws of the material world, but\nalso spiritual facts, or facts with regard to the intellectual and moral\nconstitution of man, and the orderly arrangement of human society and\nhistory.\n\n\n We here use the word \u201cnature\u201d in the ordinary sense, as including\n man. There is another and more proper use of the word \u201cnature,\u201d\n which makes it simply a complex of forces and beings under the law\n of cause and effect. To nature in this sense man belongs only as\n respects his body, while as immaterial and personal he is a\n supernatural being. Free will is not under the law of physical and\n mechanical causation. As Bushnell has said: \u201cNature and the\n supernatural together constitute the one system of God.\u201d Drummond,\n Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 232\u2014\u201cThings are natural or\n supernatural according to where we stand. Man is supernatural to\n the mineral; God is supernatural to the man.\u201d We shall in\n subsequent chapters use the term \u201cnature\u201d in the narrow sense. The\n universal use of the phrase \u201cNatural Theology,\u201d however, compels\n us in this chapter to employ the word \u201cnature\u201d in its broader\n sense as including man, although we do this under protest, and\n with this explanation of the more proper meaning of the term. See\n Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:183 _sq._\n\n E. G. Robinson: \u201cBushnell separates nature from the supernatural.\n Nature is a blind train of causes. God has nothing to do with it,\n except as he steps into it from without. Man is supernatural,\n because he is outside of nature, having the power of originating\n an independent train of causes.\u201d If this were the proper\n conception of nature, then we might be compelled to conclude with\n P. T. Forsyth, in Faith and Criticism, 100\u2014\u201cThere is no revelation\n in nature. There can be none, because there is no forgiveness. We\n cannot be sure about her. She is only aesthetic. Her ideal is\n harmony, not reconciliation.... For the conscience, stricken or\n strong, she has no word.... Nature does not contain her own\n teleology, and for the moral soul that refuses to be fancy-fed,\n Christ is the one luminous smile on the dark face of the world.\u201d\n But this is virtually to confine Christ\u2019s revelation to Scripture\n or to the incarnation. As there was an astronomy without the\n telescope, so there was a theology before the Bible. George\n Harris, Moral Evolution, 411\u2014\u201cNature is both evolution and\n revelation. As soon as the question _How_ is answered, the\n questions _Whence_ and _Why_ arise. Nature is to God what speech\n is to thought.\u201d The title of Henry Drummond\u2019s book should have\n been: \u201cSpiritual Law in the Natural World,\u201d for nature is but the\n free though regular activity of God; what we call the supernatural\n is simply his extraordinary working.\n\n\n(_a_) Natural theology.\u2014The universe is a source of theology. The\nScriptures assert that God has revealed himself in nature. There is not\nonly an outward witness to his existence and character in the constitution\nand government of the universe (Ps. 19; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:20), but an\ninward witness to his existence and character in the heart of every man\n(Rom. 1:17, 18, 19, 20, 32; 2:15). The systematic exhibition of these\nfacts, whether derived from observation, history or science, constitutes\nnatural theology.\n\n\n Outward witness: _Ps.19:1-6\u2014_\u201cThe heavens declare the glory of\n God\u201d; _Acts 14:17\u2014_\u201che left not himself without witness, in that\n he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons\u201d;\n _Rom. 1:20\u2014_\u201cfor the invisible things of him since the creation of\n the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things\n that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.\u201d Inward\n witness: _Rom. 1:19\u2014\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 = _\u201cthat which is known of\n God is manifest in them.\u201d Compare the \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03cd\u03c0\u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 of the gospel\n in verse 17, with the \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03cd\u03c0\u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 of wrath in verse 18\u2014two\n revelations, one of \u1f40\u03c1\u03b3\u03ae, the other of \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03c2; see Shedd,\n Homiletics, 11. _Rom. 1:32\u2014_\u201cknowing the ordinance of God\u201d;\n _2:15\u2014_\u201cthey show the work of the law written in their hearts.\u201d\n Therefore even the heathen are \u201cwithout excuse\u201d_ (Rom. 1:20)_.\n There are two books: Nature and Scripture\u2014one written, the other\n unwritten: and there is need of studying both. On the passages in\n Romans, see the Commentary of Hodge.\n\n Spurgeon told of a godly person who, when sailing down the Rhine,\n closed his eyes, lest the beauty of the scene should divert his\n mind from spiritual themes. The Puritan turned away from the\n moss-rose, saying that he would count nothing on earth lovely. But\n this is to despise God\u2019s works. J. H. Barrows: \u201cThe Himalayas are\n the raised letters upon which we blind children put our fingers to\n spell out the name of God.\u201d To despise the works of God is to\n despise God himself. God is present in nature, and is now\n speaking. _Ps. 19:1\u2014_\u201cThe heavens declare the glory of God, and\n the firmament showeth his handiwork\u201d\u2014present tenses. Nature is not\n so much a _book_, as a _voice_. Hutton, Essays, 2:236\u2014\u201cThe direct\n knowledge of spiritual communion must be supplemented by knowledge\n of God\u2019s ways gained from the study of nature. To neglect the\n study of the natural mysteries of the universe leads to an\n arrogant and illicit intrusion of moral and spiritual assumptions\n into a different world. This is the lesson of the book of Job.\u201d\n Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 85\u2014\u201cMan, the servant and interpreter of\n nature, is also, and is thereby, the servant and interpreter of\n the living God.\u201d Books of science are the record of man\u2019s past\n interpretations of God\u2019s works.\n\n\n(_b_) Natural theology supplemented.\u2014The Christian revelation is the chief\nsource of theology. The Scriptures plainly declare that the revelation of\nGod in nature does not supply all the knowledge which a sinner needs (Acts\n17:23; Eph. 3:9). This revelation is therefore supplemented by another, in\nwhich divine attributes and merciful provisions only dimly shadowed forth\nin nature are made known to men. This latter revelation consists of a\nseries of supernatural events and communications, the record of which is\npresented in the Scriptures.\n\n\n _Acts 17:23_\u2014Paul shows that, though the Athenians, in the\n erection of an altar to an unknown God, \u201cacknowledged a divine\n existence beyond any which the ordinary rites of their worship\n recognized, that Being was still unknown to them; they had no just\n conception of his nature and perfections\u201d (Hackett, _in loco_).\n _Eph. 3:9\u2014_\u201cthe mystery which hath been hid in God\u201d\u2014this mystery\n is in the gospel made known for man\u2019s salvation. Hegel, in his\n Philosophy of Religion, says that Christianity is the only\n revealed religion, because the Christian God is the only one from\n whom a revelation can come. We may add that as science is the\n record of man\u2019s progressive interpretation of God\u2019s revelation in\n the realm of nature, so Scripture is the record of man\u2019s\n progressive interpretation of God\u2019s revelation in the realm of\n spirit. The phrase \u201cword of God\u201d does not primarily denote a\n _record_,\u2014it is the _spoken_ word, the _doctrine_, the vitalizing\n _truth_, disclosed by Christ; see _Mat. 13:19\u2014_\u201cheareth the word\n of the kingdom\u201d; _Luke 5:1\u2014_\u201cheard the word of God\u201d; _Acts\n 8:25\u2014_\u201cspoken the word of the Lord\u201d; _13:48, 49\u2014_\u201cglorified the\n word of God: ... the word of the Lord was spread abroad\u201d; _19:10,\n 20\u2014_\u201cheard the word of the Lord, ... mightily grew the word of the\n Lord\u201d; _1 Cor. 1:18\u2014_\u201cthe word of the cross\u201d\u2014all designating not a\n document, but an unwritten word; _cf.__ Jer. 1:4\u2014_\u201cthe word of\n Jehovah came unto me\u201d; _Ez. 1:3\u2014_\u201cthe word of Jehovah came\n expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) The Scriptures the final standard of appeal.\u2014Science and Scripture\nthrow light upon each other. The same divine Spirit who gave both\nrevelations is still present, enabling the believer to interpret the one\nby the other and thus progressively to come to the knowledge of the truth.\nBecause of our finiteness and sin, the total record in Scripture of God\u2019s\npast communications is a more trustworthy source of theology than are our\nconclusions from nature or our private impressions of the teaching of the\nSpirit. Theology therefore looks to the Scripture itself as its chief\nsource of material and its final standard of appeal.\n\n\n There is an internal work of the divine Spirit by which the outer\n word is made an inner word, and its truth and power are manifested\n to the heart. Scripture represents this work of the Spirit, not as\n a giving of new truth, but as an illumination of the mind to\n perceive the fulness of meaning which lay wrapped up in the truth\n already revealed. Christ is \u201cthe truth\u201d_ (John 14:6)_; \u201cin whom\n are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden\u201d_ (Col.\n 2:3)_; the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, \u201cshall take of mine, and shall\n declare it unto you\u201d_ (John 16:14)_. The incarnation and the Cross\n express the heart of God and the secret of the universe; all\n discoveries in theology are but the unfolding of truth involved in\n these facts. The Spirit of Christ enables us to compare nature\n with Scripture, and Scripture with nature, and to correct mistakes\n in interpreting the one by light gained from the other. Because\n the church as a whole, by which we mean the company of true\n believers in all lands and ages, has the promise that it shall be\n guided \u201cinto all the truth\u201d_ (John 16:13)_, we may confidently\n expect the progress of Christian doctrine.\n\n Christian experience is sometimes regarded as an original source\n of religious truth. Experience, however, is but a testing and\n proving of the truth objectively contained in God\u2019s revelation.\n The word \u201cexperience\u201d is derived from _experior_, to test, to try.\n Christian consciousness is not \u201cnorma normans,\u201d but \u201cnorma\n normata.\u201d Light, like life, comes to us through the mediation of\n others. Yet the first comes from God as really as the last, of\n which without hesitation we say: \u201cGod made me,\u201d though we have\n human parents. As I get through the service-pipe in my house the\n same water which is stored in the reservoir upon the hillside, so\n in the Scriptures I get the same truth which the Holy Spirit\n originally communicated to prophets and apostles. Calvin,\n Institutes, book I, chap. 7\u2014\u201cAs nature has an immediate\n manifestation of God in conscience, a mediate in his works, so\n revelation has an immediate manifestation of God in the Spirit, a\n mediate in the Scriptures.\u201d \u201cMan\u2019s nature,\u201d said Spurgeon, \u201cis not\n an organized lie, yet his inner consciousness has been warped by\n sin, and though once it was an infallible guide to truth and duty,\n sin has made it very deceptive. The standard of infallibility is\n not in man\u2019s consciousness, but in the Scriptures. When\n consciousness in any matter is contrary to the word of God, we\n must know that it is not God\u2019s voice within us, but the devil\u2019s.\u201d\n Dr. George A. Gordon says that \u201cChristian history is a revelation\n of Christ additional to that contained in the New Testament.\u201d\n Should we not say \u201cillustrative,\u201d instead of \u201cadditional\u201d? On the\n relation between Christian experience and Scripture, see Stearns,\n Evidence of Christian Experience, 286-309: Twesten, Dogmatik,\n 1:344-348; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:15.\n\n H. H. Bawden: \u201cGod is the ultimate authority, but there are\n delegated authorities, such as family, state, church; instincts,\n feelings, conscience; the general experience of the race,\n traditions, utilities; revelation in nature and in Scripture. But\n the highest authority available for men in morals and religion is\n the truth concerning Christ contained in the Christian Scriptures.\n What the truth concerning Christ _is_, is determined by: (1) the\n human reason, conditioned by a right attitude of the feelings and\n the will; (2) in the light of all the truth derived from nature,\n including man; (3) in the light of the history of Christianity;\n (4) in the light of the origin and development of the Scriptures\n themselves. The authority of the generic reason and the authority\n of the Bible are co-relative, since they both have been developed\n in the providence of God, and since the latter is in large measure\n but the reflection of the former. This view enables us to hold a\n rational conception of the function of the Scripture in religion.\n This view, further, enables us to rationalize what is called the\n inspiration of the Bible, the nature and extent of inspiration,\n the Bible as history\u2014a record of the historic unfolding of\n revelation; the Bible as literature\u2014a compend of life-principles,\n rather than a book of rules; the Bible Christocentric\u2014an\n incarnation of the divine thought and will in human thought and\n language.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) The theology of Scripture not unnatural.\u2014Though we speak of the\nsystematized truths of nature as constituting natural theology, we are not\nto infer that Scriptural theology is unnatural. Since the Scriptures have\nthe same author as nature, the same principles are illustrated in the one\nas in the other. All the doctrines of the Bible have their reason in that\nsame nature of God which constitutes the basis of all material things.\nChristianity is a supplementary dispensation, not as contradicting, or\ncorrecting errors in, natural theology, but as more perfectly revealing\nthe truth. Christianity is indeed the ground-plan upon which the whole\ncreation is built\u2014the original and eternal truth of which natural theology\nis but a partial expression. Hence the theology of nature and the theology\nof Scripture are mutually dependent. Natural theology not only prepares\nthe way for, but it receives stimulus and aid from, Scriptural theology.\nNatural theology may now be a source of truth, which, before the\nScriptures came, it could not furnish.\n\n\n John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity. 23\u2014\u201cThere is no such\n thing as a natural religion or religion of reason distinct from\n revealed religion. Christianity is more profoundly, more\n comprehensively, rational, more accordant with the deepest\n principles of human nature and human thought than is natural\n religion; or, as we may put it, Christianity is natural religion\n elevated and transmuted into revealed.\u201d Peabody, Christianity the\n Religion of Nature, lecture 2\u2014\u201cRevelation is the unveiling,\n uncovering of what previously existed, and it excludes the idea of\n newness, invention, creation.... The revealed religion of earth is\n the natural religion of heaven.\u201d Compare _Rev. 13:8\u2014_\u201cthe Lamb\n that hath been slain from the foundation of the world\u201d = the\n coming of Christ was no make-shift; in a true sense the Cross\n existed in eternity; the atonement is a revelation of an eternal\n fact in the being of God.\n\n Note Plato\u2019s illustration of the cave which can be easily threaded\n by one who has previously entered it with a torch. Nature is the\n dim light from the cave\u2019s mouth; the torch is Scripture. Kant to\n Jacobi, in Jacobi\u2019s Werke, 3:523\u2014\u201cIf the gospel had not previously\n taught the universal moral laws, reason would not yet have\n obtained so perfect an insight into them.\u201d Alexander McLaren:\n \u201cNon-Christian thinkers now talk eloquently about God\u2019s love, and\n even reject the gospel in the name of that love, thus kicking down\n the ladder by which they have climbed. But it was the Cross that\n taught the world the love of God, and apart from the death of\n Christ men may hope that there is a heart at the centre of the\n universe, but they can never be sure of it.\u201d The parrot fancies\n that he taught men to talk. So Mr. Spencer fancies that he\n invented ethics. He is only using the twilight, after his sun has\n gone down. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 252, 253\u2014\u201cFaith, at the\n Reformation, first gave scientific certainty; it had God sure:\n hence it proceeded to banish scepticism in philosophy and\n science.\u201d See also Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 333; Bowen,\n Metaph. and Ethics, 442-463; Bib. Sac., 1874:436; A. H. Strong,\n Christ in Creation, 226, 227.\n\n\n2. Scripture and Rationalism.\n\n\nAlthough the Scriptures make known much that is beyond the power of man\u2019s\nunaided reason to discover or fully to comprehend, their teachings, when\ntaken together, in no way contradict a reason conditioned in its activity\nby a holy affection and enlightened by the Spirit of God. To reason in the\nlarge sense, as including the mind\u2019s power of cognizing God and moral\nrelations\u2014not in the narrow sense of mere reasoning, or the exercise of\nthe purely logical faculty\u2014the Scriptures continually appeal.\n\nA. The proper office of reason, in this large sense, is: (_a_) To furnish\nus with those primary ideas of space, time, cause, substance, design,\nright, and God, which are the conditions of all subsequent knowledge.\n(_b_) To judge with regard to man\u2019s need of a special and supernatural\nrevelation. (_c_) To examine the credentials of communications professing\nto be, or of documents professing to record, such a revelation. (_d_) To\nestimate and reduce to system the facts of revelation, when these have\nbeen found properly attested. (_e_) To deduce from these facts their\nnatural and logical conclusions. Thus reason itself prepares the way for a\nrevelation above reason, and warrants an implicit trust in such revelation\nwhen once given.\n\n\n Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 318\u2014\u201cReason terminates in the\n proposition: Look for revelation.\u201d Leibnitz: \u201cRevelation is the\n viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial\n assembly (reason), and then himself presides.\u201d Reason can\n recognize truth after it is made known, as for example in the\n demonstrations of geometry, although it could never discover that\n truth for itself. See Calderwood\u2019s illustration of the party lost\n in the woods, who wisely take the course indicated by one at the\n tree-top with a larger view than their own (Philosophy of the\n Infinite, 126). The novice does well to trust his guide in the\n forest, at least till he learns to recognise for himself the marks\n blazed upon the trees. Luthardt, Fund. Truths, lect. viii\u2014\u201cReason\n could never have invented a self-humiliating God, cradled in a\n manger and dying on a cross.\u201d Lessing, Zur Geschichte und\n Litteratur, 6:134\u2014\u201cWhat is the meaning of a revelation that\n reveals nothing?\u201d\n\n Ritschl denies the presuppositions of any theology based on the\n Bible as the infallible word of God on the one hand, and on the\n validity of the knowledge of God as obtained by scientific and\n philosophic processes on the other. Because philosophers,\n scientists, and even exegetes, are not agreed among themselves, he\n concludes that no trustworthy results are attainable by human\n reason. We grant that reason without love will fall into many\n errors with regard to God, and that faith is therefore the organ\n by which religious truth is to be apprehended. But we claim that\n this faith includes reason, and is itself reason in its highest\n form. Faith criticizes and judges the processes of natural science\n as well as the contents of Scripture. But it also recognizes in\n science and Scripture prior workings of that same Spirit of Christ\n which is the source and authority of the Christian life. Ritschl\n ignores Christ\u2019s world-relations and therefore secularizes and\n disparages science and philosophy. The faith to which he trusts as\n the source of theology is unwarrantably sundered from reason. It\n becomes a subjective and arbitrary standard, to which even the\n teaching of Scripture must yield precedence. We hold on the\n contrary, that there are ascertained results in science and in\n philosophy, as well as in the interpretation of Scripture as a\n whole, and that these results constitute an authoritative\n revelation. See Orr, The Theology of Ritschl; Dorner, Hist. Prot.\n Theol., 1:233\u2014\u201cThe unreasonable in the empirical reason is taken\n captive by faith, which is the nascent true reason that despairs\n of itself and trustfully lays hold of objective Christianity.\u201d\n\n\nB. Rationalism, on the other hand, holds reason to be the ultimate source\nof all religious truth, while Scripture is authoritative only so far as\nits revelations agree with previous conclusions of reason, or can be\nrationally demonstrated. Every form of rationalism, therefore, commits at\nleast one of the following errors: (_a_) That of confounding reason with\nmere reasoning, or the exercise of the logical intelligence. (_b_) That of\nignoring the necessity of a holy affection as the condition of all right\nreason in religious things. (_c_) That of denying our dependence in our\npresent state of sin upon God\u2019s past revelations of himself. (_d_) That of\nregarding the unaided reason, even its normal and unbiased state, as\ncapable of discovering, comprehending, and demonstrating all religious\ntruth.\n\n\n Reason must not be confounded with ratiocination, or mere\n reasoning. Shall we follow reason? Yes, but not individual\n reasoning, against the testimony of those who are better informed\n than we; nor by insisting on demonstration, where probable\n evidence alone is possible; nor by trusting solely to the evidence\n of the senses, when spiritual things are in question. Coleridge,\n in replying to those who argued that all knowledge comes to us\n from the senses, says: \u201cAt any rate we must bring to all facts the\n light in which we see them.\u201d This the Christian does. The light of\n love reveals much that would otherwise be invisible. Wordsworth,\n Excursion, book 5 (598)\u2014\u201cThe mind\u2019s repose On evidence is not to\n be ensured By act of naked reason. Moral truth Is no mechanic\n structure, built by rule.\u201d\n\n Rationalism is the mathematical theory of knowledge. Spinoza\u2019s\n Ethics is an illustration of it. It would deduce the universe from\n an axiom. Dr. Hodge very wrongly described rationalism as \u201can\n overuse of reason.\u201d It is rather the use of an abnormal,\n perverted, improperly conditioned reason; see Hodge, Syst. Theol.,\n 1:34, 39, 55, and criticism by Miller, in his Fetich in Theology.\n The phrase \u201csanctified intellect\u201d means simply intellect\n accompanied by right affections toward God, and trained to work\n under their influence. Bishop Butler: \u201cLet reason be kept to, but\n let not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting to an\n infinite scheme that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of\n all its parts, and call that reasoning.\u201d Newman Smyth, Death\u2019s\n Place in Evolution, 86\u2014\u201cUnbelief is a shaft sunk down into the\n darkness of the earth. Drive the shaft deep enough, and it would\n come out into the sunlight on the earth\u2019s other side.\u201d The most\n unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon\n reason, in the narrow sense. \u201cThe better to exalt reason, they\n make the world irrational.\u201d \u201cThe hen that has hatched ducklings\n walks with them to the water\u2019s edge, but there she stops, and she\n is amazed when they go on. So reason stops and faith goes on,\n finding its proper element in the invisible. Reason is the feet\n that stand on solid earth; faith is the wings that enable us to\n fly; and normal man is a creature with wings.\u201d Compare \u03b3\u03bd\u1ff6\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 (_1\n Tim. 6:20\u2014_\u201cthe knowledge which is falsely so called\u201d) with\n \u1f10\u03c0\u03af\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 (_2 Pet. 1:2\u2014_\u201cthe knowledge of God and of Jesus our\n Lord\u201d = full knowledge, or true knowledge). See Twesten, Dogmatik,\n 1:467-500; Julius M\u00fcller, Proof-texts, 4, 5; Mansel, Limits of\n Religious Thought, 96; Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution.\n\n\n3. Scripture and Mysticism.\n\n\nAs rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism\nrecognizes too much.\n\nA. True mysticism.\u2014We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds\nof all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new\nrevelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already\nrevealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work\nof the Spirit is therefore an opening of men\u2019s minds to understand\nChrist\u2019s previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of\nChristianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism\nis that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives\nthrough the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal\nmeans.\n\n\n \u201cMystic\u201d = one initiated, from \u03bc\u03cd\u03c9, \u201cto close the eyes\u201d\u2014probably\n in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine\n truth is a \u201cmystery,\u201d not only as something into which one must be\n initiated, but as \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03ac\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 (_Eph.\n 3:19_)\u2014surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer\n on _Rom. 11:25\u2014_\u201cI would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this\n mystery.\u201d The Germans have _Mystik_ with a favorable sense,\n _Mysticismus_ with an unfavorable sense,\u2014corresponding\n respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is\n intimated in _John 16:13\u2014_\u201cthe spirit of truth ... shall guide you\n into all the truth\u201d; _Eph. 3:9\u2014_\u201cdispensation of the mystery\u201d; _1\n Cor. 2:10\u2014_\u201cunto us God revealed them through the Spirit.\u201d\n Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35\u2014\u201cWhenever true religion\n revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, _i. e._, higher\n knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the\n heart.\u201d Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in _Acts\n 26:24, 25_, with his self-vindication in _2 Cor. 5:13\u2014_\u201cwhether we\n are beside ourselves, it is unto God.\u201d\n\n Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21\u2014\u201cHarnack speaks of mysticism as\n rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said\n reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental\n doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his\n individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the\n larger unity of God\u2019s being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates\n the race, the universe, Christ himself.\u201d _Ibid._, 5\u2014Mysticism is\n \u201cthe attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of\n the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.\n It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth;\n (2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the\n divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord;\n (4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The\n \u2018scala perfectionis\u2019 is (_a_) the purgative life; (_b_) the\n illuminative life; (_c_) the unitive life.\u201d Stevens, Johannine\n Theology, 239, 240\u2014\u201cThe mysticism of John ... is not a subjective\n mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery,\n but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of\n realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its\n experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its\n own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an\n acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is:\n Abiding in Christ.\u201d As the power press cannot dispense with the\n type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ\u2019s\n external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson,\n Christian Theology, 364\u2014\u201cThe word of God is a form or mould, into\n which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew\u201d; _cf.__\n Rom. 6:17\u2014_\u201cye became obedient from the heart to that form of\n teaching whereunto ye were delivered.\u201d\n\n\nB. False mysticism.\u2014Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs\nin holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct\ncommunication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities\ninto the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (_a_) the\noutward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (_b_) the\nactivity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge;\n(_c_) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.\n\n\n In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy\n Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and\n in Scripture (_Acts 14:17\u2014_\u201che left not himself without witness\u201d;\n _Rom. 1:20\u2014_\u201cthe invisible things of him since the creation of the\n world are clearly seen\u201d; _Acts 7:51\u2014_\u201cye do always resist the Holy\n Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye\u201d; _Eph. 6:17\u2014_\u201cthe sword of\n the Spirit, which is the word of God\u201d). By this truth already\n given we are to test all new communications which would contradict\n or supersede it (_1 John 4:1\u2014_\u201cbelieve not every spirit, but prove\n the spirits, whether they are of God\u201d; _Eph. 5:10\u2014_\u201cproving what\n is well pleasing unto the Lord\u201d). By these tests we may try\n Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical\n tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas \u00e0 Kempis, Madame Guyon,\n Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an\n unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a \u201cswallowing\n up of man in God.\u201d But Christ does not deprive us of reason and\n will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the\n selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their\n normal clearness and strength. Compare _Ps. 16:7\u2014_\u201cJehovah, who\n hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night\n seasons\u201d\u2014God teaches his people through the exercise of their own\n faculties.\n\n False mysticism is sometimes present though unrecognized. All\n expectation of results without the use of means partakes of it.\n Martineau, Seat of Authority, 288\u2014\u201cThe lazy will would like to\n have the vision while the eye that apprehends it sleeps.\u201d\n Preaching without preparation is like throwing ourselves down from\n a pinnacle of the temple and depending on God to send an angel to\n hold us up. Christian Science would trust to supernatural\n agencies, while casting aside the natural agencies God has already\n provided; as if a drowning man should trust to prayer while\n refusing to seize the rope. Using Scripture \u201cad aperturam libri\u201d\n is like guiding one\u2019s actions by a throw of the dice. Allen,\n Jonathan Edwards, 171, note\u2014\u201cBoth Charles and John Wesley were\n agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts as to\n some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and regarding\n the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revelation of\n God\u2019s will in the matter\u201d; _cf._ Wedgwood, Life of Wesley, 193;\n Southey, Life of Wesley, 1:216. J. G. Paton, Life, 2:74\u2014\u201cAfter\n many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I went alone before the\n Lord, and on my knees cast lots, with a solemn appeal to God, and\n the answer came: \u2018Go home!\u2019 \u201d He did this only once in his life,\n in overwhelming perplexity, and finding no light from human\n counsel. \u201cTo whomsoever this faith is given,\u201d he says, \u201clet him\n obey it.\u201d\n\n F. B. Meyer, Christian Living, 18\u2014\u201cIt is a mistake to seek a sign\n from heaven; to run from counsellor to counsellor; to cast a lot;\n or to trust in some chance coincidence. Not that God may not\n reveal his will thus; but because it is hardly the behavior of a\n child with its Father. There is a more excellent way,\u201d\u2014namely,\n appropriate Christ who is wisdom, and then go forward, sure that\n we shall be guided, as each new step must be taken, or word\n spoken, or decision made. Our service is to be \u201crational service\u201d_\n (Rom. 12:1)_; blind and arbitrary action is inconsistent with the\n spirit of Christianity. Such action makes us victims of temporary\n feeling and a prey to Satanic deception. In cases of perplexity,\n waiting for light and waiting upon God will commonly enable us to\n make an intelligent decision, while \u201cwhatsoever is not of faith is\n sin\u201d_ (Rom. 14:23)_.\n\n \u201cFalse mysticism reached its logical result in the Buddhistic\n theosophy. In that system man becomes most divine in the\n extinction of his own personality. Nirvana is reached by the\n eightfold path of right view, aspiration, speech, conduct,\n livelihood, effort, mindfulness, rapture; and Nirvana is the loss\n of ability to say: \u2018This is I,\u2019 and \u2018This is mine.\u2019 Such was\n Hypatia\u2019s attempt, by subjection of self, to be wafted away into\n the arms of Jove. George Eliot was wrong when she said: \u2018The\n happiest woman has no history.\u2019 Self-denial is not\n self-effacement. The cracked bell has no individuality. In Christ\n we become our complete selves.\u201d _Col 2:9, 10\u2014_\u201cFor in him dwelleth\n all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made\n full.\u201d\n\n Royce, World and Individual, 2:248, 249\u2014\u201cAssert the spiritual man;\n abnegate the natural man. The fleshly self is the root of all\n evil; the spiritual self belongs to a higher realm. But this\n spiritual self lies at first outside the soul; it becomes ours\n only by grace. Plato rightly made the eternal Ideas the source of\n all human truth and goodness. Wisdom comes into a man, like\n Aristotle\u2019s \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2.\u201d A. H. Bradford, The Inner Light, in making the\n direct teaching of the Holy Spirit the sufficient if not the sole\n source of religious knowledge, seems to us to ignore the principle\n of evolution in religion. God builds upon the past. His revelation\n to prophets and apostles constitutes the norm and corrective of\n our individual experience, even while our experience throws new\n light upon that revelation. On Mysticism, true and false, see\n Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4, 5, 11; Stearns, Evidence of\n Christian Experience, 289-294; Dorner, Geschichte d. prot. Theol.,\n 48-59, 243; Herzog, Encycl., art.: Mystik, by Lange; Vaughan,\n Hours with the Mystics, 1:199; Morell, Hist. Philos., 58, 191-215,\n 556-625, 726; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69, 97, 104; Fleming,\n Vocab. Philos., _in voce_; Tholuck, Introd. to Bl\u00fcthensammlung aus\n der morgenl\u00e4ndischen Mystik; William James, Varieties of Religious\n Experience, 379-429.\n\n\n4. Scripture and Romanism.\n\n\nWhile the history of doctrine, as showing the progressive apprehension and\nunfolding by the church of the truth contained in nature and Scripture, is\na subordinate source of theology, Protestantism recognizes the Bible as\nunder Christ the primary and final authority.\n\nRomanism, on the other hand, commits the two-fold error (_a_) Of making\nthe church, and not the Scriptures, the immediate and sufficient source of\nreligious knowledge; and (_b_) Of making the relation of the individual to\nChrist depend upon his relation to the church, instead of making his\nrelation to the church depend upon, follow, and express his relation to\nChrist.\n\n\n In Roman Catholicism there is a mystical element. The Scriptures\n are not the complete or final standard of belief and practice. God\n gives to the world from time to time, through popes and councils,\n new communications of truth. Cyprian: \u201cHe who has not the church\n for his mother, has not God for his Father.\u201d Augustine: \u201cI would\n not believe the Scripture, unless the authority of the church also\n influenced me.\u201d Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola both\n represented the truly obedient person as one dead, moving only as\n moved by his superior; the true Christian has no life of his own,\n but is the blind instrument of the church. John Henry Newman,\n Tracts, Theol. and Eccl., 287\u2014\u201cThe Christian dogmas were in the\n church from the time of the apostles,\u2014they were ever in their\n substance what they are now.\u201d But this is demonstrably untrue of\n the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary; of the treasury of\n merits to be distributed in indulgences; of the infallibility of\n the pope (see Gore, Incarnation, 186). In place of the true\n doctrine, \u201cUbi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia,\u201d Romanism substitutes her\n maxim, \u201cUbi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus.\u201d Luther saw in this the\n principle of mysticism, when he said: \u201cPapatus est merus\n enthusiasmus.\u201d See Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69.\n\n In reply to the Romanist argument that the church was before the\n Bible, and that the same body that gave the truth at the first can\n make additions to that truth, we say that the unwritten word was\n before the church and made the church possible. The word of God\n existed before it was written down, and by that word the first\n disciples as well as the latest were begotten (_1 Pet.\n 1:23\u2014_\u201cbegotten again ... through the word of God\u201d). The grain of\n truth in Roman Catholic doctrine is expressed in _1 Tim.\n 3:15\u2014_\u201cthe church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the\n truth\u201d = the church is God\u2019s appointed proclaimer of truth; _cf.__\n Phil. 2:16\u2014_\u201cholding forth the word of life.\u201d But the church can\n proclaim the truth, only as it is built upon the truth. So we may\n say that the American Republic is the pillar and ground of liberty\n in the world; but this is true only so far as the Republic is\n built upon the principle of liberty as its foundation. When the\n Romanist asks: \u201cWhere was your church before Luther?\u201d the\n Protestant may reply: \u201cWhere yours is not now\u2014in the word of God.\n Where was your face before it was washed? Where was the fine flour\n before the wheat went to the mill?\u201d Lady Jane Grey, three days\n before her execution, February 12, 1554, said: \u201cI ground my faith\n on God\u2019s word, and not upon the church; for, if the church be a\n good church, the faith of the church must be tried by God\u2019s word,\n and not God\u2019s word by the church, nor yet my faith.\u201d\n\n The Roman church would keep men in perpetual childhood\u2014coming to\n her for truth instead of going directly to the Bible; \u201clike the\n foolish mother who keeps her boy pining in the house lest he stub\n his toe, and would love best to have him remain a babe forever,\n that she might mother him still.\u201d Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,\n 30\u2014\u201cRomanism is so busy in building up a system of guarantees,\n that she forgets the truth of Christ which she would guarantee.\u201d\n George Herbert: \u201cWhat wretchedness can give him any room, Whose\n house is foul while he adores his broom!\u201d It is a semi-parasitic\n doctrine of safety without intelligence or spirituality. Romanism\n says: \u201cMan for the machine!\u201d Protestantism: \u201cThe machine for man!\u201d\n Catholicism strangles, Protestantism restores, individuality. Yet\n the Romanist principle sometimes appears in so-called Protestant\n churches. The Catechism published by the League of the Holy Cross,\n in the Anglican Church, contains the following: \u201cIt is to the\n priest only that the child must acknowledge his sins, if he\n desires that God should forgive him. Do you know why? It is\n because God, when on earth, gave to his priests and to them alone\n the power of forgiving sins. Go to the priest, who is the doctor\n of your soul, and who cures you in the name of God.\u201d But this\n contradicts _John 10:7_\u2014where Christ says \u201cI am the door\u201d; and _1\n Cor. 3:11\u2014_\u201cother foundation can no man lay than that which is\n laid, which is Jesus Christ\u201d = Salvation is attained by immediate\n access to Christ, and there is no door between the soul and him.\n See Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 227; Schleiermacher,\n Glaubenslehre, 1:24; Robinson, in Mad. Av. Lectures, 387; Fisher,\n Nat. and Method of Revelation, 10; Watkins, Bampton Lect. for\n 1890:149; Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World, 327.\n\n\n\nII. Limitations of Theology.\n\n\nAlthough theology derives its material from God\u2019s two-fold revelation, it\ndoes not profess to give an exhaustive knowledge of God and of the\nrelations between God and the universe. After showing what material we\nhave, we must show what material we have not. We have indicated the\nsources of theology; we now examine its limitations. Theology has its\nlimitations:\n\n(_a_) _In the finiteness of the human understanding._ This gives rise to a\nclass of necessary mysteries, or mysteries connected with the infinity and\nincomprehensibleness of the divine nature (Job 11:7; Rom. 11:33).\n\n\n _Job 11:7\u2014_\u201cCanst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find\n out the Almighty to perfection?\u201d _Rom. 11:33\u2014_\u201chow unsearchable\n are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!\u201d Every doctrine,\n therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning\n of Tertullian\u2019s sayings: \u201cCertum est, quia impossible est: quo\n absurdius, eo verius\u201d; that of Anselm: \u201cCredo, ut intelligam\u201d; and\n that of Abelard: \u201cQui credit cito, levis corde est.\u201d Drummond,\n Nat. Law in Spir. World: \u201cA science without mystery is unknown; a\n religion without mystery is absurd.\u201d E. G. Robinson: \u201cA finite\n being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.\u201d Hovey,\n Manual of Christ. Theol., 7\u2014\u201cTo infer from the perfection of God\n that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely\n and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God\n that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from\n the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;\u2014all\n these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to\n the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.\u201d See Calderwood,\n Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.\n\n\n(_b_) _In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical._\nThis gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which\nconsist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken\nseparately, are perfectly comprehensible.\n\n\n We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a\n _single_ point of truth as _two_. We see God and man, divine\n sovereignty and human freedom, Christ\u2019s divine nature and Christ\u2019s\n human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as\n two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but\n one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet\n they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at\n once in its little hand. Negro preacher: \u201cYou can\u2019t carry two\n watermelons under one arm.\u201d Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra,\n 1:2\u2014\u201cIn nature\u2019s infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.\u201d\n Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34\u2014\u201cMan\u2019s progress in knowledge has\n been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been\n gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all\n human history before.\u201d And yet we may say with D\u2019Arcy, Idealism\n and Theology, 248\u2014\u201cMan\u2019s position in the universe is eccentric.\n God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth\n completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us\n the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.\u201d William\n Watson, Collected Poems, 271\u2014\u201cThink not thy wisdom can illume away\n The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge\n both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things\n clear.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) _In the inadequacy of language._ Since language is the medium\nthrough which truth is expressed and formulated, the invention of a proper\nterminology in theology, as in every other science, is a condition and\ncriterion of its progress. The Scriptures recognize a peculiar difficulty\nin putting spiritual truths into earthly language (1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor.\n3:6; 12:4).\n\n\n _1 Cor. 2:13\u2014_\u201cnot in words which man\u2019s wisdom teacheth\u201d; _2 Cor.\n 3:6\u2014_\u201cthe letter killeth\u201d; _12:4\u2014_\u201cunspeakable words.\u201d God submits\n to conditions of revelation; _cf.__ John 16:12\u2014_\u201cI have yet many\n things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.\u201d Language has\n to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put\n to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they \u201cstagger under\n their weight of meaning\u201d\u2014_e. g._, the word \u201cday,\u201d in _Genesis 1_,\n and the word \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7 in _1 Cor. 13_. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on _1\n Cor. 13:12\u2014_\u201cnow we see in a mirror, darkly\u201d\u2014in a metallic mirror\n whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold\n Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect\n speech\u2014\u201cbut then face to face\u201d = immediately, without the\n intervention of an imperfect medium. \u201cAs fast as we tunnel into\n the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into\n walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless\n mine.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) _In the incompleteness of our knowledge of the Scriptures._ Since it\nis not the mere letter of the Scriptures that constitutes the truth, the\nprogress of theology is dependent upon hermeneutics, or the interpretation\nof the word of God.\n\n\n Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to\n grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott,\n Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: \u201cI am verily persuaded that the\n Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.\u201d\n Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion\n of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has\n been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an\n evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in\n the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and\n typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet\n we still need to offer the prayer of _Ps. 119:18\u2014_\u201cOpen thou mine\n eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.\u201d On New\n Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and\n Religion, 334-336.\n\n\n(_e_) _In the silence of written revelation._ For our discipline and\nprobation, much is probably hidden from us, which we might even with our\npresent powers comprehend.\n\n\n Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and\n death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his\n occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the\n atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and\n political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic\n virtues, governmental corruption. \u201cJesus was in heaven at the\n revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about\n heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of\n man, or death as the result of Adam\u2019s sin; and he says little of\n departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.\u201d It was better\n to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them.\n His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would\n not divert men\u2019s minds from pursuing the one thing needful; _cf.__\n Luke 13:23, 24\u2014_\u201cLord, are they few that are saved? And he said\n unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say\n unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.\u201d Paul\u2019s\n silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered\n with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John\n Foster spent his life, \u201cgathering questions for eternity\u201d; _cf.__\n John 13:7\u2014_\u201cWhat I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt\n understand hereafter.\u201d The most beautiful thing in a countenance\n is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well\n must omit well. Story: \u201cOf every noble work the silent part is\n best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.\u201d _Cf.__ 1\n Cor. 2:9\u2014_\u201cThings which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which\n entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared\n for them that love him\u201d; _Deut 29:29\u2014_\u201cThe secret things belong\n unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto\n us and to our children.\u201d For Luther\u2019s view, see Hagenbach, Hist.\n Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine\n Silence.\n\n\n(_f_) _In the lack of spiritual discernment caused by sin._ Since holy\naffection is a condition of religious knowledge, all moral imperfection in\nthe individual Christian and in the church serves as a hindrance to the\nworking out of a complete theology.\n\n\n _John 3:3\u2014_\u201cExcept one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of\n God.\u201d The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,\u2014witness\n the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century\n succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of\n Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay\u2019s transl.),\n 514\u2014\u201cScience is much under the influence of the will; and the\n truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The\n will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific\n evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the\n will.\u201d Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of\n science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without\n becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having\n become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large\n collections of facts, with the result of producing \u201catrophy of\n that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.\u201d But a\n similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and\n religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in\n his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: \u201cWe are\n very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the\n professors\u2019 chairs are all filled.\u201d\n\n\n\nIII. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.\n\n\n(_a_) _A perfect system of theology is impossible._ We do not expect to\nconstruct such a system. All science but reflects the present attainment\nof the human mind. No science is complete or finished. However it may be\nwith the sciences of nature and of man, the science of God will never\namount to an exhaustive knowledge. We must not expect to demonstrate all\nScripture doctrines upon rational grounds, or even in every case to see\nthe principle of connection between them. Where we cannot do this, we\nmust, as in every other science, set the revealed facts in their places\nand wait for further light, instead of ignoring or rejecting any of them\nbecause we cannot understand them or their relation to other parts of our\nsystem.\n\n\n Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed\n down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the\n trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr.\n Johnson: \u201cDictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than\n none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.\u201d Hood\n spoke of Dr. Johnson\u2019s \u201cContradictionary,\u201d which had both\n \u201cinteriour\u201d and \u201cexterior.\u201d Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at\n the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: \u201cOne word\n characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the\n advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through\n fifty-five years: that word is _failure_; I know no more of\n electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether,\n electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I\n knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty\n years ago in my first session as professor.\u201d Allen, Religious\n Progress, mentions three tendencies. \u201cThe first says: Destroy the\n new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy\n nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as\n Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can\n be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered\n by enforcing some \u2019via media.\u2019 Truth lies rather in the union of\n opposite propositions, as in Christ\u2019s divinity and humanity, and\n in grace and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity;\n Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John\n Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George\n Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would\n secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But\n if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress\n is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a\n larger appropriation of it.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) _Theology is nevertheless progressive._ It is progressive in the\nsense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God,\nand our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more\nperfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective\nfacts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we\nmay say: \u201cReligion has been reproached with not being progressive; it\nmakes amends by being imperishable.\u201d Though our knowledge may be\nimperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a\ntheology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of\nScripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all\ncohere about Christ, the central person and theme.\n\n\n The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not\n progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not\n man\u2019s creation of new planets, but man\u2019s discovery of planets that\n were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations\n between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles:\n \u201cOriginality is a habit of recurring to origins\u2014the habit of\n securing personal experience by personal application to original\n facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature,\n Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of\n resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal\n experiences which arise from contact with these facts.\u201d Fisher,\n Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48\u2014\u201cThe starry heavens are now what\n they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe,\n except that which comes through the increased power and use of the\n telescope.\u201d We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to\n steer, said he had \u201csailed _by_ that star.\u201d\n\n Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493\u2014\u201cMetaphysics, so far as they are true\n to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in\n charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always _is_....\n It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while\n disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the\n motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.\u201d\n Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79\u2014\u201cTrue conservatism\n is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its\n good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to\n the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So\n Jesus came not \u2018to destroy the law or the prophets\u2019; he \u2018came not\n to destroy, but to fulfil\u2019_ (Mat. 5:17)_.... The last book on\n Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.\u201d\n John Milton, Areopagitica: \u201cTruth is compared in the Scripture to\n a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual\n progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and\n tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.\u201d Paul in _Rom.\n 2:16_, and in _2 Tim. 2:8_\u2014speaks of \u201cmy gospel.\u201d It is the duty\n of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while\n he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: \u201cI\n that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that\n earth should stand at gaze like Joshua\u2019s moon at Ajalon.\u201d We do\n not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new\n Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of\n both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Method Of Theology.\n\n\n\nI. Requisites to the study of Theology.\n\n\nThe requisites to the successful study of theology have already in part\nbeen indicated in speaking of its limitations. In spite of some\nrepetition, however, we mention the following:\n\n(_a_) _A disciplined mind._ Only such a mind can patiently collect the\nfacts, hold in its grasp many facts at once, educe by continuous\nreflection their connecting principles, suspend final judgment until its\nconclusions are verified by Scripture and experience.\n\n\n Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)\u2014\u201cTruth nowhere\n lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet\n Evolveable from the whole: evolved at last Painfully, held\n tenaciously by me.\u201d Teachers and students may be divided into two\n classes: (1) those who know enough already; (2) those wish to\n learn more than they now know. Motto of Winchester School in\n England: \u201cDisce, aut discede.\u201d Butcher, Greek Genius, 213,\n 230\u2014\u201cThe Sophists fancied that they were imparting education, when\n they were only imparting results. Aristotle illustrates their\n method by the example of a shoemaker who, professing to teach the\n art of making painless shoes, puts into the apprentice\u2019s hand a\n large assortment of shoes ready-made. A witty Frenchman classes\n together those who would make science popular, metaphysics\n intelligible, and vice respectable. The word \u03c3\u03c7\u03cc\u03bb\u03b7, which first\n meant \u2018leisure,\u2019 then \u2018philosophical discussion,\u2019 and finally\n \u2018school,\u2019 shows the pure love of learning among the Greeks.\u201d\n Robert G. Ingersoll said that the average provincial clergyman is\n like the land of the upper Potomac spoken of by Tom Randolph, as\n almost worthless in its original state, and rendered wholly so by\n cultivation. Lotze, Metaphysics, 1:16\u2014\u201cthe constant whetting of\n the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with\n it.\u201d \u201cTo do their duty is their only holiday,\u201d is the description\n of Athenian character given by Thucydides. Chitty asked a father\n inquiring as to his son\u2019s qualifications for the law: \u201cCan your\n son eat sawdust without any butter?\u201d On opportunities for culture\n in the Christian ministry, see New Englander, Oct. 1875:644; A. H.\n Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 273-275; Christ in Creation,\n 318-320.\n\n\n(_b_) _An intuitional as distinguished from a merely logical habit of\nmind_,\u2014or, trust in the mind\u2019s primitive convictions, as well as in its\nprocesses of reasoning. The theologian must have insight as well as\nunderstanding. He must accustom himself to ponder spiritual facts as well\nas those which are sensible and material; to see things in their inner\nrelations as well as in their outward forms; to cherish confidence in the\nreality and the unity of truth.\n\n\n Vinet, Outlines of Philosophy, 39, 40\u2014\u201cIf I do not feel that good\n is good, who will ever prove it to me?\u201d Pascal: \u201cLogic, which is\n an abstraction, may shake everything. A being purely intellectual\n will be incurably sceptical.\u201d Calvin: \u201cSatan is an acute\n theologian.\u201d Some men can see a fly on a barn door a mile away,\n and yet can never see the door. Zeller, Outlines of Greek\n Philosophy, 93\u2014\u201cGorgias the Sophist was able to show\n metaphysically that nothing can exist; that what does exist cannot\n be known by us; and that what is known by us cannot be imparted to\n others\u201d (quoted by Wenley, Socrates and Christ, 28). Aristotle\n differed from those moderate men who thought it impossible to go\n over the same river twice,\u2014he held that it could not be done even\n once (_cf._ Wordsworth, Prelude, 536). Dove, Logic of the\n Christian Faith, 1-29, and especially 25, gives a demonstration of\n the impossibility of motion: A thing cannot move in the place\n where it is; it cannot move in the places where it is not; but the\n place where it is and the places where it is not are all the\n places that there are; therefore a thing cannot move at all.\n Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 109, shows that the bottom of\n a wheel does not move, since it goes backward as fast as the top\n goes forward. An instantaneous photograph makes the upper part a\n confused blur, while the spokes of the lower part are distinctly\n visible. Abp. Whately: \u201cWeak arguments are often thrust before my\n path; but, although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to\n destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut\n through a cushion with a sword.\u201d _Cf.__ 1 Tim. 6:20\u2014_\u201coppositions\n of the knowledge which is falsely so called\u201d; _3:2\u2014_\u201cthe bishop\n therefore must be ... sober-minded\u201d\u2014\u03c3\u03ce\u03c6\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd = \u201cwell balanced.\u201d The\n Scripture speaks of \u201csound [\u1f51\u03b3\u03b9\u03ae\u03c2 = healthful] doctrine\u201d_ (1 Tim.\n 1:10)_. Contrast _1 Tim. 6:4\u2014[\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u1ff6\u03bd = ailing] _\u201cdiseased about\n questionings and disputes of words.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) _An acquaintance with physical, mental, and moral science._ The\nmethod of conceiving and expressing Scripture truth is so affected by our\nelementary notions of these sciences, and the weapons with which theology\nis attacked and defended are so commonly drawn from them as arsenals, that\nthe student cannot afford to be ignorant of them.\n\n\n Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics:\n \u201cMein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie \u00fcber\u2019s Denken\n gedacht\u201d\u2014\u201cI have been wise in never thinking about thinking\u201d; he\n would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental\n principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets\n and their Theology, 296-299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1-18;\n also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 _sq._ Many a theological system\n has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations\n were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: \u201cNo difficulty arises in\n theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.\u201d N. W. Taylor:\n \u201cGive me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in\n theology.\u201d President Samson Talbot: \u201cI love metaphysics, because\n they have to do with realities.\u201d The maxim \u201cUbi tres medici, ibi\n duo athei,\u201d witnesses to the truth of Galen\u2019s words: \u1f04\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\n \u1f30\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03cc\u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03bf\u03c2\u2014\u201cthe best physician is also a philosopher.\u201d\n Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can\n dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: \u201cScience has not\n invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has\n modified the statement of many.... Physical Science will\n undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the\n sooner the better.\u201d There is great advantage to the preacher in\n taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after\n another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said,\n \u201clike iron into the blood.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) _A knowledge of the original languages of the Bible._ This is\nnecessary to enable us not only to determine the meaning of the\nfundamental terms of Scripture, such as holiness, sin, propitiation,\njustification, but also to interpret statements of doctrine by their\nconnections with the context.\n\n\n Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue,\n when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends\n replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E.\n G. Robinson: \u201cLanguage is a great organism, and no study so\n disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.\u201d\n Chrysostom: \u201cThis is the cause of all our evils\u2014our not knowing\n the Scriptures.\u201d Yet a modern scholar has said: \u201cThe Bible is the\n most dangerous of all God\u2019s gifts to men.\u201d It is possible to adore\n the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow\n interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon\n connecting phrases, as for example, the \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c4\u03bf and \u1f10\u03c6\u1fbd \u1fa7, in\n _Rom. 5:12_. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813-1853,\n said to his pupils: \u201cOne of the best preparations for death is a\n thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.\u201d The youthful Erasmus:\n \u201cWhen I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after\n that, some clothes.\u201d The dead languages are the only really living\n ones\u2014free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage.\n Divine Providence has put revelation into fixed forms in the\n Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330\u2014\u201cTo\n be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.\u201d On the true\n idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos.\n and Religion, 302-313.\n\n\n(_e_) _A holy affection toward God._ Only the renewed heart can properly\nfeel its need of divine revelation, or understand that revelation when\ngiven.\n\n\n _Ps. 25:14\u2014_\u201cThe secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him\u201d;\n _Rom. 12:2\u2014_\u201cprove what is the ... will of God\u201d; _cf._ _Ps.\n 36:1\u2014_\u201cthe transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an\n oracle.\u201d \u201cIt is the heart and not the brain That to the highest\n doth attain.\u201d To \u201clearn by heart\u201d is something more than to learn\n by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In\n Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress, Faithful does not go through the\n Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the\n fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into\n Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair. \u201cGreat thoughts\n come from the heart,\u201d said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like\n Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle: \u201cThe power of\n attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.\u201d\n Pascal: \u201cWe know truth, not only by the reason, but by the\n heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows\n nothing of.\u201d Hobbes: \u201cEven the axioms of geometry would be\n disputed, if men\u2019s passions were concerned in them.\u201d Macaulay:\n \u201cThe law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it\n interfered with vested interests.\u201d Nordau, Degeneracy:\n \u201cPhilosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for\n the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of\n time.\u201d\n\n Lord Bacon: \u201cA tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the\n wrong path.\u201d Goethe: \u201cAs are the inclinations, so also are the\n opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only\n with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us\n liberty.\u201d Fichte: \u201cOur system of thought is very often only the\n history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience....\n Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason\n according to their will.\u201d Neander\u2019s motto was: \u201cPectus est quod\n theologum facit\u201d\u2014\u201cIt is the heart that makes the theologian.\u201d John\n Stirling: \u201cThat is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a\n living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating\n vision,\u2014such was the eye of the Gorgons.\u201d But such an eye, we add,\n is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson: \u201cNever study theology in\n cold blood.\u201d W. C. Wilkinson: \u201cThe head is a magnetic needle with\n truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic\n iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the\n truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.\u201d See an\n affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle\u2019s enlightenment, after the\n death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord\u2019s Prayer, in\n Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of\n feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.\n\n\n(_f_) _The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit._ As only the Spirit\nfathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to\napprehend them.\n\n\n _1 Cor. 2:11, 12\u2014_\u201cthe things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit\n of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we\n might know.\u201d Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66\u2014\u201cNemo igitur vir magnus sine\n aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.\u201d Professor Beck of T\u00fcbingen:\n \u201cFor the student, there is no privileged path leading to the\n truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the\n unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination\n by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not\n only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.\u201d As all the truths of\n the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the\n simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the\n declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the\n protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot\n of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful\n hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are\n needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is\n needed to show us that the \u201cnew commandment\u201d illustrated by the\n death of Christ is only an \u201cold commandment which ye had from the\n beginning\u201d_ (1 John 2:7)_. The Principia of Newton is a revelation\n of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us\n to enter into the meaning of Christ\u2019s revelations in both\n Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to\n work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;\n _Mat. 13:52\u2014_\u201cTherefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple\n of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder,\n who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.\u201d See\n Adolph Monod\u2019s sermons on Christ\u2019s Temptation, addressed to the\n theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the\n French and German, 117-179.\n\n\n\nII. Divisions of Theology.\n\n\nTheology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and\nPractical.\n\n1. _Biblical Theology_ aims to arrange and classify the facts of\nrevelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and\ntreating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the\napostolic age.\n\n\n Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis;\n Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more\n of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical\n Theology. The third volume of Ritschl\u2019s Justification and\n Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the\n first and second volumes being little more than an historical\n introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and\n phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl\u2019s estimates and\n interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and\n rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical\n Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed\n from the rest, as Steudel\u2019s Biblical Theology of the Old\n Testament; Schmidt\u2019s Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and\n in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul.\n These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of\n Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there\n is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is\n conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the\n differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the\n theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous\n addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian\n Theology in the Apostolic Age.\n\n\n2. _Historical Theology_ traces the development of the Biblical doctrines\nfrom the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the\nresults of this development in the life of the church.\n\n\n By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and\n apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly\n contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the\n Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is\n called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and\n accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and\n inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance\n Cunningham\u2019s Historical Theology; Hagenbach\u2019s and Shedd\u2019s\n Histories of Doctrine; Neander\u2019s Church History. There is always a\n danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly\n reflected in the history of the church. Shedd\u2019s History of\n Christian Doctrine has been called \u201cThe History of Dr. Shedd\u2019s\n Christian Doctrine.\u201d But if Dr. Shedd\u2019s Augustinianism colors his\n History, Dr. Sheldon\u2019s Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher\u2019s\n History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial.\n See Neander\u2019s Introduction and Shedd\u2019s Philosophy of History.\n\n\n3. _Systematic Theology_ takes the material furnished by Biblical and by\nHistorical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an\norganic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations\nbetween God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived\nfrom nature or from the Scriptures.\n\n\n Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which\n Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and\n preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly\n distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in\n strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in\n the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in\n the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their\n rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand,\n not with the symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not\n what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God\u2019s\n revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which\n nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical\n Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters.\n Notice here the technical use of the word \u201csymbol,\u201d from \u03c3\u03c5\u03bc\u03b2\u03ac\u03bb\u03bb\u03c9,\n = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the\n essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed,\n consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.\n\n Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not,\n however, derived from \u201cdog,\u201d as Douglas Jerrold facetiously\n suggested, when he said that \u201cdogmatism is puppyism full grown,\u201d\n but from \u03b4\u03bf\u03ba\u03ad\u03c9 to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two\n principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of\n the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic,\n for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding.\n In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church,\n and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The\n Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides,\n and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher,\n Al. Schweizer thinks that the term \u201cDogmatik\u201d should be discarded\n as essentially unprotestant, and that \u201cGlaubenslehre\u201d should take\n its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that \u201cdogma has\n ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.\u201d\n While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology\n has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common\n faith\u2014\u201cthe faith which was once for all delivered unto the\n saints\u201d_ (Jude 3)_\u2014and the study of Systematic Theology has been\n one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.\n _Mat. 15:13, 14\u2014_\u201cEvery plant which my heavenly Father planted\n not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides\u201d =\n there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life.\n Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of\n themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.\n\n\n4. _Practical Theology_ is the system of truth considered as a means of\nrenewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its\npublication and enforcement.\n\n\n To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral\n Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the\n right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to\n bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee,\n Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon,\n and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R.\n W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John\n Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.\n\n It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of\n theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these,\n if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot\n properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so\n called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological\n ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be\n confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting,\n as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either\n extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy\n of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed,\n and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.\n \u201cSpeculative theology starts from certain _a priori_ principles,\n and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It\n deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from\n axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.\u201d Bib. Sac.,\n 1852:376\u2014\u201cSpeculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree\n with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries\n to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.\u201d\n Theological Encyclop\u00e6dia (the word signifies \u201cinstruction in a\n circle\u201d) is a general introduction to all the divisions of\n Theology, together with an account of the relations between them.\n Hegel\u2019s Encyclop\u00e6dia was an attempted exhibition of the principles\n and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst,\n Theological Encyclop\u00e6dia and Methodology; Z\u00f6ckler, Handb. der\n theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.\n\n The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been\n variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith\n and Philosophy, 18\u2014\u201cPhilosophy is a mode of human knowledge\u2014not\n the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it\u2014the knowing of\n things rationally.\u201d Science asks: \u201cWhat _do_ I know?\u201d Philosophy\n asks: \u201cWhat _can_ I know?\u201d William James, Psychology,\n 1:145\u2014\u201cMetaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort\n to think clearly.\u201d Aristotle: \u201cThe particular sciences are toiling\n workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are\n slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the\n sciences.\u201d With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon\n remarks: \u201cThose who have handled knowledge have been too much\n either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former\n are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to\n immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make\n cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle\n course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and\n the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a\n power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.\u201d\n Novalis: \u201cPhilosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God,\n freedom and immortality.\u201d Prof. DeWitt of Princeton: \u201cScience,\n philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing\n the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below\n second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,\u2014it becomes\n philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal\n it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this\n unity\u2014the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is\n the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving\n to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore\n starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.\u201d W. N. Clarke,\n Christian Theology, 48\u2014\u201cScience examines and classifies facts;\n philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks\n to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.\u201d\n\n Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7\u2014\u201cNatural science has for its\n subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic\n exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our\n knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal, _e. g._,\n God and the soul.\u201d Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81\u2014\u201cThe aim of\n the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws\n within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which\n they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand,\n is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending\n them. Its sphere is substance and essence.\u201d Bowne, Theory of\n Thought and Knowledge, 3-5\u2014\u201cPhilosophy = _doctrine of knowledge_\n (is mind passive or active in knowing?\u2014Epistemology) + _doctrine\n of being_ (is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or\n purposive and intelligent?\u2014Metaphysics). The systems of Locke,\n Hume, and Kant are pre\u00ebminently theories of knowing; the systems\n of Spinoza and Leibnitz are pre\u00ebminently theories of being.\n Historically theories of being come first, because the object is\n the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of\n philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or\n the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of\n knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.\u201d\n\n Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology: \u201cLocke and Kant\n represent the two tendencies in philosophy\u2014the empirical,\n physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational,\n metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for\n the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant\n for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two\n are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and\n Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme\n empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh\n represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusively\n _analytical_; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it\n represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary\n philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in\n America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a\n reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of\n Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian\n doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making\n all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark\n Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the\n influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated\n to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and\n processes. The only unity is the laws of their co\u00ebxistence and\n succession. There is nothing _a priori_. Wundt identifies\n apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle.\n K\u00fclpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat\n these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is\n psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusively\n _static_, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view.\n Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer,\n Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory,\n while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and\n M\u00fcnsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological\n Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude.\n The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater\n scope and more practical significance.\u201d On the relation of\n theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der\n Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclop\u00e4die, 109.\n\n\n\nIII. History of Systematic Theology.\n\n\n1. _In the Eastern Church_, Systematic Theology may be said to have had\nits beginning and end in John of Damascus (700-760).\n\n\n Ignatius (\u2020 115\u2014Ad Trall., c. 9) gives us \u201cthe first distinct\n statement of the faith drawn up in a series of propositions. This\n systematizing formed the basis of all later efforts\u201d (Prof. A. H.\n Newman). Origen of Alexandria (186-254) wrote his \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u1f08\u03c1\u03c7\u1ff6\u03bd;\n Athanasius of Alexandria (300-373) his Treatises on the Trinity\n and the Deity of Christ; and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia\n (332-398) his \u039b\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b7\u03c7\u03b7\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03bc\u03ad\u03b3\u03b1\u03c2. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures,\n 323, regards the \u201cDe Principiis\u201d of Origen as the \u201cfirst complete\n system of dogma,\u201d and speaks of Origen as \u201cthe disciple of Clement\n of Alexandria, the first great teacher of philosophical\n Christianity.\u201d But while the Fathers just mentioned seem to have\n conceived the plan of expounding the doctrines in order and of\n showing their relation to one another, it was John of Damascus\n (700-760) who first actually carried out such a plan. His \u1f1c\u03ba\u03b4\u03bf\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2\n \u1f00\u03ba\u03c1\u03b9\u03b2\u1f74\u03c2 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f40\u03c1\u03b8\u03bf\u03b4\u03cc\u03be\u03bf\u03c5 \u03a0\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2, or Summary of the Orthodox Faith,\n may be considered the earliest work of Systematic Theology.\n Neander calls it \u201cthe most important doctrinal text-book of the\n Greek Church.\u201d John, like the Greek Church in general, was\n speculative, theological, semi-pelagian, sacramentarian. The\n Apostles\u2019 Creed, so called, is, in its present form, not earlier\n than the fifth century; see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:19.\n Mr. Gladstone suggested that the Apostles\u2019 Creed was a development\n of the baptismal formula. McGiffert, Apostles\u2019 Creed, assigns to\n the meagre original form a date of the third quarter of the second\n century, and regards the Roman origin of the symbol as proved. It\n was framed as a baptismal formula, but specifically in opposition\n to the teachings of Marcion, which were at that time causing much\n trouble at Rome. Harnack however dates the original Apostles\u2019\n Creed at 150, and Zahn places it at 120. See also J. C. Long, in\n Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892: 89-101.\n\n\n2. _In the Western Church_, we may (with Hagenbach) distinguish three\nperiods:\n\n(_a_) The period of Scholasticism,\u2014introduced by Peter Lombard\n(1100-1160), and reaching its culmination in Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274)\nand Duns Scotus (1265-1308).\n\n\n Though Systematic Theology had its beginning in the Eastern\n Church, its development has been confined almost wholly to the\n Western. Augustine (353-430) wrote his \u201cEncheiridion ad\n Laurentium\u201d and his \u201cDe Civitate Dei,\u201d and John Scotus Erigena (\u2020\n 850), Roscelin (1092-1122), and Abelard (1079-1142), in their\n attempts at the rational explanation of the Christian doctrine\n foreshadowed the works of the great scholastic teachers. Anselm of\n Canterbury (1034-1109), with his \u201cProslogion de Dei Existentia\u201d\n and his \u201cCur Deus Homo,\u201d has sometimes, but wrongly, been called\n the founder of Scholasticism. Allen, in his Continuity of\n Christian Thought, represents the transcendence of God as the\n controlling principle of the Augustinian and of the Western\n theology. The Eastern Church, he maintains, had founded its\n theology on God\u2019s immanence. Paine, in his Evolution of\n Trinitarianism, shows that this is erroneous. Augustine was a\n theistic monist. He declares that \u201cDei voluntas rerum natura est,\u201d\n and regards God\u2019s upholding as a continuous creation. Western\n theology recognized the immanence of God as well as his\n transcendence.\n\n Peter Lombard, however, (1100-1160), the \u201cmagister sententiarum,\u201d\n was the first great systematizer of the Western Church, and his\n \u201cLibri Sententiarum Quatuor\u201d was the theological text-book of the\n Middle Ages. Teachers lectured on the \u201cSentences\u201d (_Sententia_ =\n sentence, _Satz_, _locus_, point, article of faith), as they did\n on the books of Aristotle, who furnished to Scholasticism its\n impulse and guide. Every doctrine was treated in the order of\n Aristotle\u2019s four causes: the material, the formal, the efficient,\n the final. (\u201cCause\u201d here = requisite: (1) matter of which a thing\n consists, _e. g._, bricks and mortar; (2) form it assumes, _e.\n g._, plan or design; (3) producing agent, _e. g._, builder; (4)\n end for which made, _e. g._, house.) The organization of physical\n as well as of theological science was due to Aristotle. Dante\n called him \u201cthe master of those who know.\u201d James Ten Broeke, Bap.\n Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-26\u2014\u201cThe Revival of Learning showed the\n world that the real Aristotle was much broader than the Scholastic\n Aristotle\u2014information very unwelcome to the Roman Church.\u201d For the\n influence of Scholasticism, compare the literary methods of\n Augustine and of Calvin,\u2014the former giving us his materials in\n disorder, like soldiers bivouacked for the night; the latter\n arranging them like those same soldiers drawn up in battle array;\n see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 4, and Christ in\n Creation, 188, 189.\n\n Candlish, art.: Dogmatic, in Encycl. Brit., 7:340\u2014\u201cBy and by a\n mighty intellectual force took hold of the whole collected\n dogmatic material, and reared out of it the great scholastic\n systems, which have been compared to the grand Gothic cathedrals\n that were the work of the same ages.\u201d Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274),\n the Dominican, \u201cdoctor angelicus,\u201d Augustinian and Realist,\u2014and\n Duns Scotus (1265-1308), the Franciscan, \u201cdoctor\n subtilis,\u201d\u2014wrought out the scholastic theology more fully, and\n left behind them, in their _Summ\u00e6_, gigantic monuments of\n intellectual industry and acumen. Scholasticism aimed at the proof\n and systematizing of the doctrines of the Church by means of\n Aristotle\u2019s philosophy. It became at last an illimitable morass of\n useless subtilities and abstractions, and it finally ended in the\n nominalistic scepticism of William of Occam (1270-1347). See\n Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.\n\n\n(_b_) The period of Symbolism,\u2014represented by the Lutheran theology of\nPhilip Melanchthon (1497-1560), and the Reformed theology of John Calvin\n(1509-1564); the former connecting itself with the Analytic theology of\nCalixtus (1585-1656), and the latter with the Federal theology of Cocceius\n(1603-1669).\n\n\n _The Lutheran Theology._\u2014Preachers precede theologians, and Luther\n (1485-1546) was preacher rather than theologian. But Melanchthon\n (1497-1560), \u201cthe preceptor of Germany,\u201d as he was called,\n embodied the theology of the Lutheran church in his \u201cLoci\n Communes\u201d = points of doctrine common to believers (first edition\n Augustinian, afterwards substantially Arminian; grew out of\n lectures on the Epistle to the Romans). He was followed by\n Chemnitz (1522-1586), \u201cclear and accurate,\u201d the most learned of\n the disciples of Melanchthon. Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), called\n \u201cLutherus redivivus,\u201d and John Gerhard (1582-1637) followed Luther\n rather than Melanchthon. \u201cFifty years after the death of\n Melanchthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of\n theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of\n Melanchthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait\n of the great Reformer, and trampled it under foot in the presence\n of the assemblage\u201d (E. D. Morris, paper at the 60th Anniversary of\n Lane Seminary). George Calixtus (1586-1656) followed Melanchthon\n rather than Luther. He taught a theology which recognized the good\n element in both the Reformed and the Romanist doctrine and which\n was called \u201cSyncretism.\u201d He separated Ethics from Systematic\n Theology, and applied the analytical method of investigation to\n the latter, beginning with the end, or final cause, of all things,\n viz.: blessedness. He was followed in his analytic method by\n Dannhauer (1603-1666), who treated theology allegorically,\n Calovius (1612-1686), \u201cthe most uncompromising defender of\n Lutheran orthodoxy and the most drastic polemicist against\n Calixtus,\u201d Quenstedt (1617-1688), whom Hovey calls \u201clearned,\n comprehensive and logical,\u201d and Hollaz (\u2020 1730). The Lutheran\n theology aimed to purify the _existing_ church, maintaining that\n what is not against the gospel is for it. It emphasized the\n material principle of the Reformation, justification by faith; but\n it retained many Romanist customs not expressly forbidden in\n Scripture. Kaftan, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:716\u2014\u201cBecause the\n medi\u00e6val school-philosophy mainly held sway, the Protestant\n theology representing the new faith was meanwhile necessarily\n accommodated to forms of knowledge thereby conditioned, that is,\n to forms essentially Catholic.\u201d\n\n _The Reformed Theology._\u2014The word \u201cReformed\u201d is here used in its\n technical sense, as designating that phase of the new theology\n which originated in Switzerland. Zwingle, the Swiss reformer\n (1484-1531), differing from Luther as to the Lord\u2019s Supper and as\n to Scripture, was more than Luther entitled to the name of\n systematic theologian. Certain writings of his may be considered\n the beginning of Reformed theology. But it was left to John Calvin\n (1509-1564), after the death of Zwingle, to arrange the principles\n of that theology in systematic form. Calvin dug channels for\n Zwingle\u2019s flood to flow in, as Melanchthon did for Luther\u2019s. His\n Institutes (\u201cInstitutio Religionis Christian\u00e6\u201d), is one of the\n great works in theology (superior as a systematic work to\n Melanchthon\u2019s \u201cLoci\u201d). Calvin was followed by Peter Martyr\n (1500-1562), Chamier (1565-1621), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605).\n Beza carried Calvin\u2019s doctrine of predestination to an extreme\n supralapsarianism, which is hyper-Calvinistic rather than\n Calvinistic. Cocceius (1603-1669), and after him Witsius\n (1626-1708), made theology centre about the idea of the covenants,\n and founded the Federal theology. Leydecker (1642-1721) treated\n theology in the order of the persons of the Trinity. Amyraldus\n (1596-1664) and Placeus of Saumur (1596-1632) modified the\n Calvinistic doctrine, the latter by his theory of mediate\n imputation, and the former by advocating the hypothetic\n universalism of divine grace. Turretin (1671-1737), a clear and\n strong theologian whose work is still a text-book at Princeton,\n and Pictet (1655-1725), both of them Federalists, showed the\n influence of the Cartesian philosophy. The Reformed theology aimed\n to build a _new_ church, affirming that what is not derived from\n the Bible is against it. It emphasized the formal principle of the\n Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture.\n\n In general, while the line between Catholic and Protestant in\n Europe runs from west to east, the line between Lutheran and\n Reformed runs from south to north, the Reformed theology flowing\n with the current of the Rhine northward from Switzerland to\n Holland and to England, in which latter country the Thirty-nine\n Articles represent the Reformed faith, while the Prayer-book of\n the English Church is substantially Arminian; see Dorner, Gesch.\n prot. Theologie, Einleit., 9. On the difference between Lutheran\n and Reformed doctrine, see Schaff, Germany, its Universities,\n Theology and Religion, 167-177. On the Reformed Churches of Europe\n and America, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 87-124.\n\n\n(_c_) The period of Criticism and Speculation,\u2014in its three divisions: the\nRationalistic, represented by Semler (1725-1791); the Transitional, by\nSchleiermacher (1768-1834); the Evangelical, by Nitzsch, M\u00fcller, Tholuck\nand Dorner.\n\n\n _First Division._ Rationalistic theologies: Though the Reformation\n had freed theology in great part from the bonds of scholasticism,\n other philosophies after a time took its place. The Leibnitz-\n (1646-1754) Wolffian (1679-1754) exaggeration of the powers of\n natural religion prepared the way for rationalistic systems of\n theology. Buddeus (1667-1729) combated the new principles, but\n Semler\u2019s (1725-1791) theology was built upon them, and represented\n the Scriptures as having a merely local and temporary character.\n Michaelis (1716-1784) and Doederlein (1714-1789) followed Semler,\n and the tendency toward rationalism was greatly assisted by the\n critical philosophy of Kant (1724-1804), to whom \u201crevelation was\n problematical, and positive religion merely the medium through\n which the practical truths of reason are communicated\u201d (Hagenbach,\n Hist. Doct., 2:397). Ammon (1766-1850) and Wegscheider (1771-1848)\n were representatives of this philosophy. Daub, Marheinecke and\n Strauss (1808-1874) were the Hegelian dogmatists. The system of\n Strauss resembled \u201cChristian theology as a cemetery resembles a\n town.\u201d Storr (1746-1805), Reinhard (1753-1812), and Knapp\n (1753-1825), in the main evangelical, endeavored to reconcile\n revelation with reason, but were more or less influenced by this\n rationalizing spirit. Bretschneider (1776-1828) and De Wette\n (1780-1849) may be said to have held middle ground.\n\n _Second Division._ Transition to a more Scriptural theology.\n Herder (1744-1803) and Jacobi (1743-1819), by their more spiritual\n philosophy, prepared the way for Schleiermacher\u2019s (1768-1834)\n grounding of doctrine in the facts of Christian experience. The\n writings of Schleiermacher constituted an epoch, and had great\n influence in delivering Germany from the rationalistic toils into\n which it had fallen. We may now speak of a\n\n _Third Division_\u2014and in this division we may put the names of\n Neander and Tholuck, Twesten and Nitzsch, M\u00fcller and Luthardt,\n Dorner and Philippi, Ebrard and Thomasius, Lange and Kahnis, all\n of them exponents of a far more pure and evangelical theology than\n was common in Germany a century ago. Two new forms of rationalism,\n however, have appeared in Germany, the one based upon the\n philosophy of Hegel, and numbering among its adherents Strauss and\n Baur, Biedermann, Lipsius and Pfleiderer; the other based upon the\n philosophy of Kant, and advocated by Ritschl and his followers,\n Harnack, Hermann and Kaftan; the former emphasizing the ideal\n Christ, the latter emphasizing the historical Christ; but neither\n of the two fully recognizing the living Christ present in every\n believer (see Johnson\u2019s Cyclop\u00e6dia, art.: Theology, by A. H.\n Strong).\n\n\n3. _Among theologians of views diverse from the prevailing Protestant\nfaith_, may be mentioned:\n\n(_a_) Bellarmine (1542-1621), the Roman Catholic.\n\n\n Besides Bellarmine, \u201cthe best controversial writer of his age\u201d\n (Bayle), the Roman Catholic Church numbers among its noted modern\n theologians:\u2014Petavius (1583-1652), whose dogmatic theology Gibbon\n calls \u201ca work of incredible labor and compass\u201d; Melchior Canus\n (1523-1560), an opponent of the Jesuits and their scholastic\n method; Bossuet (1627-1704), who idealized Catholicism in his\n Exposition of Doctrine, and attacked Protestantism in his History\n of Variations of Protestant Churches; Jansen (1585-1638), who\n attempted, in opposition to the Jesuits, to reproduce the theology\n of Augustine, and who had in this the powerful assistance of\n Pascal (1623-1662). Jansenism, so far as the doctrines of grace\n are concerned, but not as respects the sacraments, is virtual\n Protestantism within the Roman Catholic Church. Moehler\u2019s\n Symbolism, Perrone\u2019s \u201cPrelectiones Theologic\u00e6,\u201d and Hurter\u2019s\n \u201cCompendium Theologi\u00e6 Dogmatic\u00e6\u201d are the latest and most approved\n expositions of Roman Catholic doctrine.\n\n\n(_b_) Arminius (1560-1609), the opponent of predestination.\n\n\n Among the followers of Arminius (1560-1609) must be reckoned\n Episcopius (1583-1643), who carried Arminianism to almost Pelagian\n extremes; Hugo Grotius (1553-1645), the jurist and statesman,\n author of the governmental theory of the atonement; and Limborch\n (1633-1712), the most thorough expositor of the Arminian doctrine.\n\n\n(_c_) Laelius Socinus (1525-1562), and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), the\nleaders of the modern Unitarian movement.\n\n\n The works of Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew, Faustus\n Socinus (1539-1604) constituted the beginnings of modern\n Unitarianism. Laelius Socinus was the preacher and reformer, as\n Faustus Socinus was the theologian; or, as Baumgarten Crusius\n expresses it: \u201cthe former was the spiritual founder of\n Socinianism, and the latter the founder of the sect.\u201d Their\n writings are collected in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. The\n Racovian Catechism, taking its name from the Polish town Racow,\n contains the most succinct exposition of their views. In 1660, the\n Unitarian church of the Socini in Poland was destroyed by\n persecution, but its Hungarian offshoot has still more than a\n hundred congregations.\n\n\n4. _British Theology_, represented by:\n\n(_a_) The Baptists, John Bunyan (1628-1688), John Gill (1697-1771), and\nAndrew Fuller (1754-1815).\n\n\n Some of the best British theology is Baptist. Among John Bunyan\u2019s\n works we may mention his \u201cGospel Truths Opened,\u201d though his\n \u201cPilgrim\u2019s Progress\u201d and \u201cHoly War\u201d are theological treatises in\n allegorical form. Macaulay calls Milton and Bunyan the two great\n creative minds of England during the latter part of the 17th\n century. John Gill\u2019s \u201cBody of Practical Divinity\u201d shows much\n ability, although the Rabbinical learning of the author\n occasionally displays itself in a curious exegesis, as when on the\n word \u201cAbba\u201d he remarks: \u201cYou see that this word which means\n \u2019Father\u2019 reads the same whether we read forward or backward; which\n suggests that God is the same whichever way we look at him.\u201d\n Andrew Fuller\u2019s \u201cLetters on Systematic Divinity\u201d is a brief\n compend of theology. His treatises upon special doctrines are\n marked by sound judgment and clear insight. They were the most\n influential factor in rescuing the evangelical churches of England\n from antinomianism. They justify the epithets which Robert Hall,\n one of the greatest of Baptist preachers, gives him: \u201csagacious,\u201d\n \u201cluminous,\u201d \u201cpowerful.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The Puritans, John Owen (1616-1683), Richard Baxter (1615-1691),\nJohn Howe (1630-1705), and Thomas Ridgeley (1666-1734).\n\n\n Owen was the most rigid, as Baxter was the most liberal, of the\n Puritans. The Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica remarks: \u201cAs a theological\n thinker and writer, John Owen holds his own distinctly defined\n place among those titanic intellects with which the age abounded.\n Surpassed by Baxter in point and pathos, by Howe in imagination\n and the higher philosophy, he is unrivaled in his power of\n unfolding the rich meanings of Scripture. In his writings he was\n pre\u00ebminently the great theologian.\u201d Baxter wrote a \u201cMethodus\n Theologi\u00e6,\u201d and a \u201cCatholic Theology\u201d; John Howe is chiefly known\n by his \u201cLiving Temple\u201d; Thomas Ridgeley by his \u201cBody of Divinity.\u201d\n Charles H. Spurgeon never ceased to urge his students to become\n familiar with the Puritan Adams, Ambrose, Bowden, Manton and\n Sibbes.\n\n\n(_c_) The Scotch Presbyterians, Thomas Boston (1676-1732), John Dick\n(1764-1833), and Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).\n\n\n Of the Scotch Presbyterians, Boston is the most voluminous, Dick\n the most calm and fair, Chalmers the most fervid and popular.\n\n\n(_d_) The Methodists, John Wesley (1703-1791), and Richard Watson\n(1781-1833).\n\n\n Of the Methodists, John Wesley\u2019s doctrine is presented in\n \u201cChristian Theology,\u201d collected from his writings by the Rev.\n Thornley Smith. The great Methodist text-book, however, is the\n \u201cInstitutes\u201d of Watson, who systematized and expounded the\n Wesleyan theology. Pope, a recent English theologian, follows\n Watson\u2019s modified and improved Arminianism, while Whedon and\n Raymond, recent American writers, hold rather to a radical and\n extreme Arminianism.\n\n\n(_e_) The Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691), and Robert Barclay (1648-1690).\n\n\n As Jesus, the preacher and reformer, preceded Paul the theologian;\n as Luther preceded Melanchthon; as Zwingle preceded Calvin; as\n Laelius Socinus preceded Faustus Socinus; as Wesley preceded\n Watson; so Fox preceded Barclay. Barclay wrote an \u201cApology for the\n true Christian Divinity,\u201d which Dr. E. G. Robinson described as\n \u201cnot a formal treatise of Systematic Theology, but the ablest\n exposition of the views of the Quakers.\u201d George Fox was the\n reformer, William Penn the social founder, Robert Barclay the\n theologian, of Quakerism.\n\n\n(_f_) The English Churchmen, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), Gilbert Burnet\n(1643-1715), and John Pearson (1613-1686).\n\n\n The English church has produced no great systematic theologian\n (see reasons assigned in Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 470). The\n \u201cjudicious\u201d Hooker is still its greatest theological writer,\n although his work is only on \u201cEcclesiastical Polity.\u201d Bishop\n Burnet is the author of the \u201cExposition of the XXXIX Articles,\u201d\n and Bishop Pearson of the \u201cExposition of the Creed.\u201d Both these\n are common English text-books. A recent \u201cCompendium of Dogmatic\n Theology,\u201d by Litton, shows a tendency to return from the usual\n Arminianism of the Anglican church to the old Augustinianism; so\n also Bishop Moule\u2019s \u201cOutlines of Christian Doctrine,\u201d and Mason\u2019s\n \u201cFaith of the Gospel.\u201d\n\n\n5. _American theology_, running in two lines:\n\n(_a_) The Reformed system of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), modified\nsuccessively by Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803),\nTimothy Dwight (1752-1817), Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840), Leonard Woods\n(1774-1854), Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), Nathaniel W. Taylor\n(1786-1858), and Horace Bushnell (1802-1876). Calvinism, as thus modified,\nis often called the New England, or New School, theology.\n\n\n Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest of metaphysicians and\n theologians, was an idealist who held that God is the only real\n cause, either in the realm of matter or in the realm of mind. He\n regarded the chief good as happiness\u2014a form of sensibility. Virtue\n was voluntary choice of this good. Hence union with Adam in acts\n and exercises was sufficient. Thus God\u2019s will made identity of\n being with Adam. This led to the exercise-system of Hopkins and\n Emmons, on the one hand, and to Bellamy\u2019s and Dwight\u2019s denial of\n any imputation of Adam\u2019s sin or of inborn depravity, on the\n other\u2014in which last denial agree many other New England\n theologians who reject the exercise-scheme, as for example,\n Strong, Tyler, Smalley, Burton, Woods, and Park. Dr. N. W. Taylor\n added a more distinctly Arminian element, the power of contrary\n choice\u2014and with this tenet of the New Haven theology, Charles G.\n Finney, of Oberlin, substantially agreed. Horace Bushnell held to\n a practically Sabellian view of the Trinity, and to a\n moral-influence theory of the atonement. Thus from certain\n principles admitted by Edwards, who held in the main to an Old\n School theology, the New School theology has been gradually\n developed.\n\n Robert Hall called Edwards \u201cthe greatest of the sons of men.\u201d Dr.\n Chalmers regarded him as the \u201cgreatest of theologians.\u201d Dr.\n Fairbairn says: \u201cHe is not only the greatest of all the thinkers\n that America has produced, but also the highest speculative genius\n of the eighteenth century. In a far higher degree than Spinoza, he\n was a \u2019God-intoxicated man.\u2019\u201d His fundamental notion that there is\n no causality except the divine was made the basis of a theory of\n necessity which played into the hands of the deists whom he\n opposed and was alien not only to Christianity but even to theism.\n Edwards could not have gotten his idealism from Berkeley; it may\n have been suggested to him by the writings of Locke or Newton,\n Cudworth or Descartes, John Norris or Arthur Collier. See Prof. H.\n N. Gardiner, in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596; Prof. E. C.\n Smyth, in Am. Jour. Theol., Oct. 1897:956; Allen, Jonathan\n Edwards, 16, 308-310, and in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1891:767;\n Sanborn, in Jour. Spec. Philos., Oct. 1883:401-420; G. P. Fisher,\n Edwards on the Trinity, 18, 19.\n\n\n(_b_) The older Calvinism, represented by Charles Hodge the father\n(1797-1878) and A. A. Hodge the son (1823-1886), together with Henry B.\nSmith (1815-1877), Robert J. Breckinridge (1800-1871), Samuel J. Baird,\nand William G. T. Shedd (1820-1894). All these, although with minor\ndifferences, hold to views of human depravity and divine grace more nearly\nconformed to the doctrine of Augustine and Calvin, and are for this reason\ndistinguished from the New England theologians and their followers by the\npopular title of Old School.\n\n\n Old School theology, in its view of predestination, exalts God;\n New School theology, by emphasizing the freedom of the will,\n exalts man. It is yet more important to notice that Old School\n theology has for its characteristic tenet the guilt of inborn\n depravity. But among those who hold this view, some are\n federalists and creationists, and justify God\u2019s condemnation of\n all men upon the ground that Adam represented his posterity. Such\n are the Princeton theologians generally, including Charles Hodge,\n A. A. Hodge, and the brothers Alexander. Among those who hold to\n the Old School doctrine of the guilt of inborn depravity, however,\n there are others who are traducians, and who explain the\n imputation of Adam\u2019s sin to his posterity upon the ground of the\n natural union between him and them. Baird\u2019s \u201cElohim Revealed\u201d and\n Shedd\u2019s essay on \u201cOriginal Sin\u201d (Sin a Nature and that Nature\n Guilt) represent this realistic conception of the relation of the\n race to its first father. R. J. Breckinridge, R. L. Dabney, and J.\n H. Thornwell assert the fact of inherent corruption and guilt, but\n refuse to assign any _rationale_ for it, though they tend to\n realism. H. B. Smith holds guardedly to the theory of mediate\n imputation.\n\n On the history of Systematic Theology in general, see Hagenbach,\n History of Doctrine (from which many of the facts above given are\n taken), and Shedd, History of Doctrine; also, Ebrard, Dogmatik,\n 1:44-100; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:15-128; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus,\n 24-52. Gretillat, Th\u00e9ologie Syst\u00e9matique, 3:24-120, has given an\n excellent history of theology, brought down to the present time.\n On the history of New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions\n and Essays, 285-354.\n\n\n\nIV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.\n\n\n1. _Various methods of arranging the topics of a theological system._\n\n(_a_) The Analytical method of Calixtus begins with the assumed end of all\nthings, blessedness, and thence passes to the means by which it is\nsecured. (_b_) The Trinitarian method of Leydecker and Martensen regards\nChristian doctrine as a manifestation successively of the Father, Son and\nHoly Spirit. (_c_) The Federal method of Cocceius, Witsius, and Boston\ntreats theology under the two covenants. (_d_) The Anthropological method\nof Chalmers and Rothe; the former beginning with the Disease of Man and\npassing to the Remedy; the latter dividing his Dogmatik into the\nConsciousness of Sin and the Consciousness of Redemption. (_e_) The\nChristological method of Hase, Thomasius and Andrew Fuller treats of God,\nman, and sin, as presuppositions of the person and work of Christ. Mention\nmay also be made of (_f_) The Historical method, followed by Ursinus, and\nadopted in Jonathan Edwards\u2019s History of Redemption; and (_g_) The\nAllegorical method of Dannhauer, in which man is described as a wanderer,\nlife as a road, the Holy Spirit as a light, the church as a candlestick,\nGod as the end, and heaven as the home; so Bunyan\u2019s Holy War, and Howe\u2019s\nLiving Temple.\n\n\n See Calixtus, Epitome Theologi\u00e6; Leydecker, De \u0152conomia trium\n Personarum in Negotio Salutis human\u00e6; Martensen (1808-1884),\n Christian Dogmatics; Cocceius, Summa Theologi\u00e6, and Summa Doctrin\u00e6\n de F\u0153dere et Testamento Dei, in Works, vol. vi; Witsius, The\n Economy of the Covenants; Boston, A Complete Body of Divinity (in\n Works, vol. 1 and 2), Questions in Divinity (vol. 6), Human Nature\n in its Fourfold State (vol. 8); Chalmers, Institutes of Theology;\n Rothe (1799-1867), Dogmatik, and Theologische Ethik; Hase\n (1800-1890), Evangelische Dogmatik; Thomasius (1802-1875), Christi\n Person und Werk; Fuller, Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation (in\n Works, 2:328-416), and Letters on Systematic Divinity (1:684-711);\n Ursinus (1534-1583), Loci Theologici (in Works, 1:426-909);\n Dannhauer (1603-1666) Hodosophia Christiana, seu Theologia\n Positiva in Methodum redacta. Jonathan Edwards\u2019s so-called History\n of Redemption was in reality a system of theology in historical\n form. It \u201cwas to begin and end with eternity, all great events and\n epochs in time being viewed \u2018sub specie eternitatis.\u2019 The three\n worlds\u2014heaven, earth and hell\u2014were to be the scenes of this grand\n drama. It was to include the topics of theology as living factors,\n each in its own place,\u201d and all forming a complete and harmonious\n whole; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 379, 380.\n\n\n2. _The Synthetic Method_, which we adopt in this compendium, is both the\nmost common and the most logical method of arranging the topics of\ntheology. This method proceeds from causes to effects, or, in the language\nof Hagenbach (Hist. Doctrine, 2:152), \u201cstarts from the highest principle,\nGod, and proceeds to man, Christ, redemption, and finally to the end of\nall things.\u201d In such a treatment of theology we may best arrange our\ntopics in the following order:\n\n1st. The existence of God.\n2d. The Scriptures a revelation from God.\n3d. The nature, decrees and works of God.\n4th. Man, in his original likeness to God and subsequent apostasy.\n5th. Redemption, through the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.\n6th. The nature and laws of the Christian church.\n7th. The end of the present system of things.\n\n\n\nV. Text-Books in Theology.\n\n\n1. _Confessions_: Schaff, Creeds of Christendom.\n\n2. _Compendiums_: H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology; A. A. Hodge,\nOutlines of Theology; E. H. Johnson, Outline of Systematic Theology;\nHovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics; W. N. Clarke, Outline of Christian\nTheology; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik;\nKurtz, Religionslehre.\n\n3. _Extended Treatises_: Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine; Shedd,\nDogmatic Theology; Calvin, Institutes; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology;\nVan Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics; Baird, Elohim Revealed; Luthardt,\nFundamental, Saving, and Moral Truths; Phillippi, Glaubenslehre;\nThomasius, Christi Person und Werk.\n\n4. _Collected Works_: Jonathan Edwards; Andrew Fuller.\n\n5. _Histories of Doctrine_: Harnack; Hagenbach; Shedd; Fisher; Sheldon;\nOrr, Progress of Dogma.\n\n6. _Monographs_: Julius M\u00fcller, Doctrine of Sin; Shedd, Discourses and\nEssays; Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity; Dorner, History of the Doctrine of\nthe Person of Christ; Dale, Atonement; Strong, Christ in Creation; Upton,\nHibbert Lectures.\n\n7. _Theism_: Martineau, Study of Religion; Harris, Philosophical Basis of\nTheism; Strong, Philosophy and Religion; Bruce, Apologetics; Drummond,\nAscent of Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.\n\n8. _Christian Evidences_: Butler, Analogy of Natural and Revealed\nReligion; Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief; Row, Bampton\nLectures for 1877; Peabody, Evidences of Christianity; Mair, Christian\nEvidences; Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion; Matheson,\nSpiritual Development of St. Paul.\n\n9. _Intellectual Philosophy_: Stout, Handbook of Psychology; Bowne,\nMetaphysics; Porter, Human Intellect; Hill, Elements of Psychology; Dewey,\nPsychology.\n\n10. _Moral Philosophy_: Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality;\nSmyth, Christian Ethics; Porter, Elements of Moral Science; Calderwood,\nMoral Philosophy; Alexander, Moral Science; Robins, Ethics of the\nChristian Life.\n\n11. _General Science_: Todd, Astronomy; Wentworth and Hill, Physics;\nRemsen, Chemistry; Brigham, Geology; Parker, Biology; Martin, Physiology;\nWard, Fairbanks, or West, Sociology; Walker, Political Economy.\n\n12. _Theological Encyclop\u00e6dias_: Schaff-Herzog (English); McClintock and\nStrong; Herzog (Second German Edition).\n\n13. _Bible Dictionaries_: Hastings; Davis; Cheyne; Smith (edited by\nHackett).\n\n14. _Commentaries_: Meyer, on the New Testament; Philippi, Lange, Shedd,\nSanday, on the Epistle to the Romans; Godet, on John\u2019s Gospel; Lightfoot,\non Philippians and Colossians; Expositor\u2019s Bible, on the Old Testament\nbooks.\n\n15. _Bibles_: American Revision (standard edition); Revised Greek-English\nNew Testament (published by Harper & Brothers); Annotated Paragraph Bible\n(published by the London Religious Tract Society) Stier and Theile,\nPolyglotten-Bibel.\n\n\n An attempt has been made, in the list of text-books given above,\n to put first in each class the book best worth purchasing by the\n average theological student, and to arrange the books that follow\n this first one in the order of their value. German books, however,\n when they are not yet accessible in an English translation, are\n put last, simply because they are less likely to be used as books\n of reference by the average student.\n\n\n\n\n\nPART II. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.\n\n\n\n\nChapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God\u2019s Existence.\n\n\nGod is the infinite and perfect Spirit in whom all things have their\nsource, support, and end.\n\n\n On the definition of the term God, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:366.\n Other definitions are those of Calovius: \u201cEssentia spiritualis\n infinite\u201d; Ebrard: \u201cThe eternal source of all that is temporal\u201d;\n Kahnis: \u201cThe infinite Spirit\u201d; John Howe: \u201cAn eternal, uncaused,\n independent, necessary Being, that hath active power, life,\n wisdom, goodness, and whatsoever other supposable excellency, in\n the highest perfection, in and of itself\u201d; Westminster Catechism:\n \u201cA Spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom,\n power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth\u201d; Andrew Fuller: \u201cThe\n first cause and last end of all things.\u201d\n\n\nThe existence of God is a first truth; in other words, the knowledge of\nGod\u2019s existence is a rational intuition. Logically, it precedes and\nconditions all observation and reasoning. Chronologically, only reflection\nupon the phenomena of nature and of mind occasions its rise in\nconsciousness.\n\n\n The term intuition means simply direct knowledge. Lowndes (Philos.\n of Primary Beliefs, 78) and Mansel (Metaphysics, 52) would use the\n term only of our direct knowledge of substances, as self and body;\n Porter applies it by preference to our cognition of first truths,\n such as have been already mentioned. Harris (Philos. Basis of\n Theism, 44-151, but esp. 45, 46) makes it include both. He divides\n intuitions into two classes: 1. _Presentative_ intuitions, as\n self-consciousness (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of\n spirit and already come in contact with the supernatural), and\n sense-perception (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of\n matter, at least in my own organism, and come in contact with\n nature); 2. _Rational_ intuitions, as space, time, substance,\n cause, final cause, right, absolute being. We may accept this\n nomenclature, using the terms \u201cfirst truths\u201d and \u201crational\n intuitions\u201d as equivalent to each other, and classifying rational\n intuitions under the heads of (1) intuitions of relations, as\n space and time; (2) intuitions of principles, as substance, cause,\n final cause, right; and (3) intuition of absolute Being, Power,\n Reason, Perfection, Personality, as God. We hold that, as upon\n occasion of the senses cognizing (_a_) extended matter, (_b_)\n succession, (_c_) qualities, (_d_) change, (_e_) order, (_f_)\n action, respectively, the mind cognizes (_a_) space, (_b_) time,\n (_c_) substance, (_d_) cause, (_e_) design, (_f_) obligation, so\n upon occasion of our cognizing our finiteness, dependence and\n responsibility, the mind directly cognizes the existence of an\n Infinite and Absolute Authority, Perfection, Personality, upon\n whom we are dependent and to whom we are responsible.\n\n Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 60\u2014\u201cAs we walk in entire\n ignorance of our muscles, so we often think in entire ignorance of\n the principles which underlie and determine thinking. But as\n anatomy reveals that the apparently simple act of walking involves\n a highly complex muscular activity, so analysis reveals that the\n apparently simple act of thinking involves a system of mental\n principles.\u201d Dewey, Psychology, 238, 244\u2014\u201cPerception, memory,\n imagination, conception\u2014each of these is an act of intuition....\n Every concrete act of knowledge involves an intuition of God.\u201d\n Martineau, Types, 1:459\u2014The attempt to divest experience of either\n percepts or intuitions is \u201clike the attempt to peel a bubble in\n search for its colors and contents: in tenuem ex oculis evanuit\n auram\u201d; Study, 1:199\u2014\u201cTry with all your might to do something\n difficult, _e. g._, to shut a door against a furious wind, and you\n recognize Self and Nature\u2014causal will, over against external\n causality\u201d; 201\u2014\u201cHence our fellow-feeling with Nature\u201d; 65\u2014\u201cAs\n Perception gives us Will in the shape of Causality over against us\n in the non-ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of\n Authority over against us in the non-ego\u201d; Types, 2:5\u2014\u201cIn\n perception it is self and nature, in morals it is self and God,\n that stand face to face in the subjective and objective\n antithesis\u201d; Study, 2:2, 3\u2014\u201cIn volitional experience we meet with\n objective _causality_; in moral experience we meet with objective\n _authority_,\u2014both being objects of immediate knowledge, on the\n same footing of certainty with the apprehension of the external\n material world. I know of no logical advantage which the belief in\n finite objects around us can boast over the belief in the infinite\n and righteous Cause of all\u201d; 51\u2014\u201cIn recognition of God as Cause,\n we raise the University; in recognition of God as Authority, we\n raise the Church.\u201d\n\n Kant declares that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea\n of personality,\u2014personality consists in the freedom of the whole\n soul from the mechanism of nature. Lotze, Metaphysics, \u00a7 244\u2014\u201cSo\n far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as the identical\n subject of inward experience, it is, and is named simply for that\n reason, substance.\u201d Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine,\n 32\u2014\u201cOur conception of substance is derived, not from the physical,\n but from the mental world. Substance is first of all that which\n underlies our _mental_ affections and manifestations.\u201d James, Will\n to Believe, 80\u2014\u201cSubstance, as Kant says, means \u2018das Beharrliche,\u2019\n the abiding, that which will be as it has been, because its being\n is essential and eternal.\u201d In this sense we have an intuitive\n belief in an abiding substance which underlies our own thoughts\n and volitions, and this we call the soul. But we also have an\n intuitive belief in an abiding substance which underlies all\n natural phenomena and all the events of history, and this we call\n God. Among those who hold to this general view of an intuitive\n knowledge of God may be mentioned the following:\u2014Calvin,\n Institutes, book I, chap. 3; Nitzsch, System of Christian\n Doctrine, 15-26, 133-140; Julius M\u00fcller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:78-84;\n Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725; Porter, Human Intellect, 497;\n Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 58-89; Farrar, Science in Theology,\n 27-29; Bib. Sac., July, 1872:533, and January, 1873:204; Miller,\n Fetich in Theology, 110-122; Fisher, Essays, 565-572; Tulloch,\n Theism, 314-336; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:191-203;\n Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, 75, 76; Raymond,\n Syst. Theology, 1:247-262; Bascom, Science of Mind, 246, 247;\n Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 155-224; A. H. Strong,\n Philosophy and Religion, 76-89.\n\n\n\nI. First Truths in General.\n\n\n1. _Their nature._\n\nA. Negatively.\u2014A first truth is not (_a_) Truth written prior to\nconsciousness upon the substance of the soul\u2014for such passive knowledge\nimplies a materialistic view of the soul; (_b_) Actual knowledge of which\nthe soul finds itself in possession at birth\u2014for it cannot be proved that\nthe soul has such knowledge; (_c_) An idea, undeveloped at birth, but\nwhich has the power of self-development apart from observation and\nexperience\u2014for this is contrary to all we know of the laws of mental\ngrowth.\n\n\n Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1:17\u2014\u201cIntelligi necesse est esse deos,\n quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cogitationes habemus.\u201d\n Origen, Adv. Celsum, 1:4\u2014\u201cMen would not be guilty, if they did not\n carry in their minds common notions of morality, innate and\n written in divine letters.\u201d Calvin, Institutes, 1:3:3\u2014\u201cThose who\n rightly judge will always agree that there is an indelible sense\n of divinity engraven upon men\u2019s minds.\u201d Fleming, Vocab. of\n Philosophy, art.: \u201cInnate Ideas\u201d\u2014\u201cDescartes is supposed to have\n taught (and Locke devoted the first book of his Essays to refuting\n the doctrine) that these ideas are innate or connate with the\n soul; _i. e._, the intellect finds itself at birth, or as soon as\n it wakes to conscious activity, to be possessed of ideas to which\n it has only to attach the appropriate names, or of judgments which\n it only needs to express in fit propositions\u2014_i. e._, prior to any\n experience of individual objects.\u201d\n\n Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 77\u2014\u201cIn certain families,\n Descartes teaches, good breeding and the gout are innate. Yet, of\n course, the children of such families have to be instructed in\n deportment, and the infants just learning to walk seem happily\n quite free from gout. Even so geometry is innate in us, but it\n does not come to our consciousness without much trouble\u201d; 79\u2014Locke\n found no innate ideas. He maintained, in reply, that \u201cinfants,\n with their rattles, showed no sign of being aware that things\n which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.\u201d\n Schopenhauer said that \u201cJacobi had the trifling weakness of taking\n all he had learned and approved before his fifteenth year for\n inborn ideas of the human mind.\u201d Bowne, Principles of Ethics,\n 5\u2014\u201cThat the rational ideas are conditioned by the sense experience\n and are sequent to it, is unquestioned by any one; and that\n experience shows a successive order of manifestation is equally\n undoubted. But the sensationalist has always shown a curious\n blindness to the ambiguity of such a fact. He will have it that\n what comes after must be a modification of what went before;\n whereas it might be _that_, _and_ it might be a new, though\n conditioned, manifestation of an immanent nature or law. Chemical\n affinity is not gravity, although affinity cannot manifest itself\n until gravity has brought the elements into certain relations.\u201d\n\n Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:103\u2014\u201cThis principle was not\n from the beginning in the consciousness of men; for, in order to\n think ideas, reason must be clearly developed, which in the first\n of mankind it could just as little be as in children. This however\n does not exclude the fact that there was from the beginning the\n unconscious rational impulse which lay at the basis of the\n formation of the belief in God, however manifold may have been the\n direct motives which co-operated with it.\u201d Self is implied in the\n simplest act of knowledge. Sensation gives us two things, _e. g._,\n black and white; but I cannot compare them without asserting\n difference _for me_. Different sensations make no _knowledge_,\n without a _self_ to bring them together. Upton, Hibbert Lectures,\n lecture 2\u2014\u201cYou could as easily prove the existence of an external\n world to a man who had no senses to perceive it, as you could\n prove the existence of God to one who had no consciousness of\n God.\u201d\n\n\nB. Positively.\u2014A first truth is a knowledge which, though developed upon\noccasion of observation and reflection, is not derived from observation\nand reflection,\u2014a knowledge on the contrary which has such logical\npriority that it must be assumed or supposed, in order to make any\nobservation or reflection possible. Such truths are not, therefore,\nrecognized first in order of time; some of them are assented to somewhat\nlate in the mind\u2019s growth; by the great majority of men they are never\nconsciously formulated at all. Yet they constitute the necessary\nassumptions upon which all other knowledge rests, and the mind has not\nonly the inborn capacity to evolve them so soon as the proper occasions\nare presented, but the recognition of them is inevitable so soon as the\nmind begins to give account to itself of its own knowledge.\n\n\n Mansel, Metaphysics, 52, 279\u2014\u201cTo describe experience as the cause\n of the idea of space would be as inaccurate as to speak of the\n soil in which it was planted as the cause of the oak\u2014though the\n planting in the soil is the condition which brings into\n manifestation the latent power of the acorn.\u201d Coleridge: \u201cWe see\n before we know that we have eyes; but when once this is known, we\n perceive that eyes must have pre\u00ebxisted in order to enable us to\n see.\u201d Coleridge speaks of first truths as \u201cthose necessities of\n mind or forms of thinking, which, though revealed to us by\n experience, must yet have pre\u00ebxisted in order to make experience\n possible.\u201d McCosh, Intuitions, 48, 49\u2014Intuitions are \u201clike flower\n and fruit, which are in the plant from its embryo, but may not be\n actually formed till there have been a stalk and branches and\n leaves.\u201d Porter, Human Intellect, 501, 519\u2014\u201cSuch truths cannot be\n acquired or assented to first of all.\u201d Some are reached last of\n all. The moral intuition is often developed late, and sometimes,\n even then, only upon occasion of corporal punishment. \u201cEvery man\n is as lazy as circumstances will admit.\u201d Our physical laziness is\n occasional; our mental laziness frequent; our moral laziness\n incessant. We are too lazy to think, and especially to think of\n religion. On account of this depravity of human nature we should\n expect the intuition of God to be developed last of all. Men\n shrink from contact with God and from the thought of God. In fact,\n their dislike for the intuition of God leads them not seldom to\n deny all their other intuitions, even those of freedom and of\n right. Hence the modern \u201cpsychology without a soul.\u201d\n\n Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 105-115\u2014\u201cThe idea of God ...\n is latest to develop into clear consciousness ... and must be\n latest, for it is the unity of the difference of the self and the\n not-self, which are therefore presupposed.\u201d But \u201cit has not less\n validity in itself, it gives no less trustworthy assurance of\n actuality, than the consciousness of the self, or the\n consciousness of the not-self.... The consciousness of God is the\n logical _prius_ of the consciousness of self and of the world. But\n not, as already observed, the chronological; for, according to the\n profound observation of Aristotle, what in the nature of things is\n first, is in the order of development last. Just because God is\n the first principle of being and knowing, he is the last to be\n manifested and known.... The finite and the infinite are both\n known together, and it is as impossible to know one without the\n other as it is to apprehend an angle without the sides which\n contain it.\u201d For account of the relation of the intuitions to\n experience, see especially Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good,\n 39-64, and History of Philosophy, 2:199-245. Compare Kant,\n Critique of Pure Reason, Introd., 1. See also Bascom, in Bib.\n Sac., 23:1-47; 27:68-90.\n\n\n2. _Their criteria._ The criteria by which first truths are to be tested\nare three:\n\nA. Their universality. By this we mean, not that all men assent to them or\nunderstand them when propounded in scientific form, but that all men\nmanifest a practical belief in them by their language, actions, and\nexpectations.\n\nB. Their necessity. By this we mean, not that it is impossible to deny\nthese truths, but that the mind is compelled by its very constitution to\nrecognize them upon the occurrence of the proper conditions, and to employ\nthem in its arguments to prove their non-existence.\n\nC. Their logical independence and priority. By this we mean that these\ntruths can be resolved into no others, and proved by no others; that they\nare presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge, and can\ntherefore be derived from no other source than an original cognitive power\nof the mind.\n\n\n Instances of the professed and formal denial of first truths:\u2014the\n positivist denies causality; the idealist denies substance; the\n pantheist denies personality; the necessitarian denies freedom;\n the nihilist denies his own existence. A man may in like manner\n argue that there is no necessity for an atmosphere; but even while\n he argues, he breathes it. Instance the knock-down argument to\n demonstrate the freedom of the will. I grant my own existence in\n the very doubting of it; for \u201ccogito, ergo sum,\u201d as Descartes\n himself insisted, really means \u201ccogito, scilicet sum\u201d; H. B.\n Smith: \u201cThe statement is analysis, not proof.\u201d Ladd, Philosophy of\n Knowledge, 59\u2014\u201cThe _cogito_, in barbarous Latin = _cogitans sum_:\n thinking is self-conscious _being_.\u201d Bentham: \u201cThe word _ought_ is\n an authoritative imposture, and ought to be banished from the\n realm of morals.\u201d Spinoza and Hegel really deny self-consciousness\n when they make man a phenomenon of the infinite. Royce likens the\n denier of personality to the man who goes outside of his own house\n and declares that no one lives there because, when he looks in at\n the window, he sees no one inside.\n\n Professor James, in his Psychology, assumes the reality of a\n brain, but refuses to assume the reality of a soul. This is\n essentially the position of materialism. But this assumption of a\n brain is metaphysics, although the author claims to be writing a\n psychology without metaphysics. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 3\u2014\u201cThe\n materialist believes in causation proper so long as he is\n explaining the origin of mind from matter, but when he is asked to\n see in mind the cause of physical change he at once becomes a mere\n phenomenalist.\u201d Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 400\u2014\u201cI know\n that all beings, if only they can count, must find that three and\n two make five. Perhaps the angels cannot count; but, if they can,\n this axiom is true for them. If I met an angel who declared that\n his experience had occasionally shown him a three and two that did\n _not_ make five, I should know at once what sort of an angel he\n was.\u201d On the criteria of first truths, see Porter, Human\n Intellect, 510, 511. On denial of them, see Shedd, Dogmatic\n Theology, 1:213.\n\n\n\nII. The Existence of God a first truth.\n\n\n1. Its universality.\n\n\nThat _the knowledge of God\u2019s existence answers the first criterion of\nuniversality_, is evident from the following considerations:\n\nA. It is an acknowledged fact that the vast majority of men have actually\nrecognized the existence of a spiritual being or beings, upon whom they\nconceived themselves to be dependent.\n\n\n The Vedas declare: \u201cThere is but one Being\u2014no second.\u201d Max M\u00fcller,\n Origin and Growth of Religion, 34\u2014\u201cNot the visible sun, moon and\n stars are invoked, but something else that cannot be seen.\u201d The\n lowest tribes have conscience, fear death, believe in witches,\n propitiate or frighten away evil fates. Even the fetich-worshiper,\n who calls the stone or the tree a god, shows that he has already\n the idea of a God. We must not measure the ideas of the heathen by\n their capacity for expression, any more than we should judge the\n child\u2019s belief in the existence of his father by his success in\n drawing the father\u2019s picture. On heathenism, its origin and\n nature, see Tholuck, in Bib. Repos., 1832:86; Scholz, G\u00f6tzendienst\n und Zauberwesen.\n\n\nB. Those races and nations which have at first seemed destitute of such\nknowledge have uniformly, upon further investigation, been found to\npossess it, so that no tribe of men with which we have thorough\nacquaintance can be said to be without an object of worship. We may\npresume that further knowledge will show this to be true of all.\n\n\n Moffat, who reported that certain African tribes were destitute of\n religion, was corrected by the testimony of his son-in-law,\n Livingstone: \u201cThe existence of God and of a future life is\n everywhere recognized in Africa.\u201d Where men are most nearly\n destitute of any formulated knowledge of God, the conditions for\n the awakening of the idea are most nearly absent. An apple-tree\n may be so conditioned that it never bears apples. \u201cWe do not judge\n of the oak by the stunted, flowerless specimens on the edge of the\n Arctic Circle.\u201d The presence of an occasional blind, deaf or dumb\n man does not disprove the definition that man is a seeing, hearing\n and speaking creature. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 154\u2014\u201cWe need\n not tremble for mathematics, even if some tribes should be found\n without the multiplication-table.... Sub-moral and sub-rational\n existence is always with us in the case of young children; and, if\n we should find it elsewhere, it would have no greater\n significance.\u201d\n\n Victor Hugo: \u201cSome men deny the Infinite; some, too, deny the sun;\n they are the blind.\u201d Gladden, What is Left? 148\u2014\u201cA man may escape\n from his shadow by going into the dark; if he comes under the\n light of the sun, the shadow is there. A man may be so mentally\n undisciplined that he does not recognize these ideas; but let him\n learn the use of his reason, let him reflect on his own mental\n processes, and he will know that they are necessary ideas.\u201d On an\n original monotheism, see Diestel, in Jahrbuch f\u00fcr deutsche\n Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5:669; Max M\u00fcller, Chips, 1:337;\n Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, No. 11; Legge, Religions of\n China, 8-11; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:201-208. _Per contra_,\n see Asmus, Indogerm. Relig., 2:1-8; and synopsis in Bib. Sac.,\n Jan. 1877:167-172.\n\n\nC. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that those individuals, in\nheathen or in Christian lands, who profess themselves to be without any\nknowledge of a spiritual power or powers above them, do yet indirectly\nmanifest the existence of such an idea in their minds and its positive\ninfluence over them.\n\n\n Comte said that science would conduct God to the frontier and then\n bow him out, with thanks for his provisional services. But Herbert\n Spencer affirms the existence of a \u201cPower to which no limit in\n time or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena as presented\n in consciousness are manifestations.\u201d The intuition of God, though\n formally excluded, is implicitly contained in Spencer\u2019s system, in\n the shape of the \u201cirresistible belief\u201d in Absolute Being, which\n distinguishes his position from that of Comte; see H. Spencer, who\n says: \u201cOne truth must ever grow clearer\u2014the truth that there is an\n inscrutable existence everywhere manifested, to which we can\n neither find nor conceive beginning or end\u2014the one absolute\n certainty that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and\n eternal energy from which all things proceed.\u201d Mr. Spencer assumes\n unity in the underlying Reality. Frederick Harrison sneeringly\n asks him: \u201cWhy not say \u2018forces,\u2019 instead of \u2018force\u2019?\u201d While\n Harrison gives us a supreme moral ideal without a metaphysical\n ground, Spencer gives us an ultimate metaphysical principle\n without a final moral purpose. The idea of God is the synthesis of\n the two,\u2014\u201cThey are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Lord,\n art more than they\u201d (Tennyson, In Memoriam).\n\n Solon spoke of \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 and of \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b8\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd, and Sophocles of \u1f41 \u03bc\u03ad\u03b3\u03b1\u03c2\n \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2. The term for \u201cGod\u201d is identical in all the Indo-European\n languages, and therefore belonged to the time before those\n languages separated; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:201-208. In\n Virgil\u2019s \u00c6neid, Mezentius is an atheist, a despiser of the gods,\n trusting only in his spear and in his right arm; but, when the\n corpse of his son is brought to him, his first act is to raise his\n hands to heaven. Hume was a sceptic, but he said to Ferguson, as\n they walked on a starry night: \u201cAdam, there is a God!\u201d Voltaire\n prayed in an Alpine thunderstorm. Shelley wrote his name in the\n visitors\u2019 book of the inn at Montanvert, and added: \u201cDemocrat,\n philanthropist, atheist\u201d; yet he loved to think of a \u201cfine\n intellectual spirit pervading the universe\u201d; and he also wrote:\n \u201cThe One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven\u2019s light forever\n shines, Earth\u2019s shadows fly.\u201d Strauss worships the Cosmos, because\n \u201corder and law, reason and goodness\u201d are the soul of it. Renan\n trusts in goodness, design, ends. Charles Darwin, Life, 1:274\u2014\u201cIn\n my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist, in the\n sense of denying the existence of a God.\u201d\n\n\nD. This agreement among individuals and nations so widely separated in\ntime and place can be most satisfactorily explained by supposing that it\nhas its ground, not in accidental circumstances, but in the nature of man\nas man. The diverse and imperfectly developed ideas of the supreme Being\nwhich prevail among men are best accounted for as misinterpretations and\nperversions of an intuitive conviction common to all.\n\n\n Huxley, Lay Sermons, 163\u2014\u201cThere are savages without God, in any\n proper sense of the word; but there are none without ghosts.\u201d\n Martineau, Study, 2:353, well replies: \u201cInstead of turning other\n people into ghosts, and then appropriating one to ourselves [and\n attributing another to God, we may add] by way of imitation, we\n start from the sense of personal continuity, and then predicate\n the same of others, under the figures which keep most clear of the\n physical and perishable.\u201d Grant Allen describes the higher\n religions as \u201ca grotesque fungoid growth,\u201d that has gathered about\n a primitive thread of ancestor-worship. But this is to derive the\n greater from the less. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 358\u2014\u201cI can find no\n trace of ancestor-worship in the earliest literature of Babylonia\n which has survived to us\u201d\u2014this seems fatal to Huxley\u2019s and Allen\u2019s\n view that the idea of God is derived from man\u2019s prior belief in\n spirits of the dead. C. M. Tyler, in Am. Jour. Theo., Jan.\n 1899:144\u2014\u201cIt seems impossible to deify a dead man, unless there is\n embryonic in primitive consciousness a prior concept of Deity.\u201d\n\n Renouf, Religion of Ancient Egypt, 93\u2014\u201cThe whole mythology of\n Egypt ... turns on the histories of Ra and Osiris.... Texts are\n discovered which identify Osiris and Ra.... Other texts are known\n wherein Ra, Osiris, Amon, and all other gods disappear, except as\n simple _names_, and the unity of God is asserted in the noblest\n language of monotheistic religion.\u201d These facts are earlier than\n any known ancestor-worship. \u201cThey point to an original idea of\n divinity above humanity\u201d (see Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 317). We\n must add the idea of the superhuman, before we can turn any\n animism or ancestor-worship into a religion. This superhuman\n element was suggested to early man by all he saw of nature about\n him, especially by the sight of the heavens above, and by what he\n knew of causality within. For the evidence of a universal\n recognition of a superior power, see Flint, Anti-theistic\n Theories, 250-289, 522-533; Renouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879:100;\n Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:132-157; Peschel, Races of Men, 261; Ulrici,\n Leib und Seele, 688, and Gott und die Natur, 658-670, 758; Tylor,\n Primitive Culture, 1:377, 381, 418; Alexander, Evidences of\n Christianity, 22; Calderwood, Philosophy of the Infinite, 512;\n Liddon, Elements of Religion, 50; Methodist Quar. Rev., Jan.\n 1875:1; J. F. Clark, Ten Great Religions, 2:17-21.\n\n\n2. Its necessity.\n\n\nThat _the knowledge of God\u2019s existence answers the second criterion of\nnecessity_, will be seen by considering:\n\nA. That men, under circumstances fitted to call forth this knowledge,\ncannot avoid recognizing the existence of God. In contemplating finite\nexistence, there is inevitably suggested the idea of an infinite Being as\nits correlative. Upon occasion of the mind\u2019s perceiving its own\nfiniteness, dependence, responsibility, it immediately and necessarily\nperceives the existence of an infinite and unconditioned Being upon whom\nit is dependent and to whom it is responsible.\n\n\n We could not recognize the finite as finite, except by comparing\n it with an already existing standard\u2014the Infinite. Mansel, Limits\n of Religious Thought, lect. 3\u2014\u201cWe are compelled by the\n constitution of our minds to believe in the existence of an\n Absolute and Infinite Being\u2014a belief which appears forced upon us\n as the complement of our consciousness of the relative and\n finite.\u201d Fisher, Journ. Chr. Philos., Jan. 1883:113\u2014\u201cEgo and\n non-ego, each being conditioned by the other, presuppose\n unconditioned being on which both are dependent. Unconditioned\n being is the silent presupposition of all our knowing.\u201d Perceived\n dependent being implies an independent; independent being is\n perfectly self-determining; self-determination is personality;\n perfect self-determination is infinite Personality. John Watson,\n in Philos. Rev., Sept. 1893:526\u2014\u201cThere is no consciousness of self\n apart from the consciousness of other selves and things; and no\n consciousness of the world apart from the consciousness of the\n single Reality presupposed in both.\u201d E. Caird, Evolution of\n Religion, 64-68\u2014In every act of consciousness the primary elements\n are implied: \u201cthe idea of the object, or not-self; the idea of the\n subject, or self; and the idea of the unity which is presupposed\n in the difference of the self and not-self, and within which they\n act and react on each other.\u201d See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite,\n 46, and Moral Philos., 77; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 283-285;\n Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:211.\n\n\nB. That men, in virtue of their humanity, have a capacity for religion.\nThis recognized capacity for religion is proof that the idea of God is a\nnecessary one. If the mind upon proper occasion did not evolve this idea,\nthere would be nothing in man to which religion could appeal.\n\n\n \u201cIt is the suggestion of the Infinite that makes the line of the\n far horizon, seen over land or sea, so much more impressive than\n the beauties of any limited landscape.\u201d In times of sudden shock\n and danger, this rational intuition becomes a presentative\n intuition,\u2014men become more conscious of God\u2019s existence than of\n the existence of their fellow-men and they instinctively cry to\n God for help. In the commands and reproaches of the moral nature\n the soul recognizes a Lawgiver and Judge whose voice conscience\n merely echoes. Aristotle called man \u201ca political animal\u201d; it is\n still more true, as Sabatier declares, that \u201cman is incurably\n religious.\u201d St. Bernard: \u201cNoverim me, noverim te.\u201d O. P. Gifford:\n \u201cAs milk, from which under proper conditions cream does not rise,\n is not milk, so the man, who upon proper occasion shows no\n knowledge of God, is not man, but brute.\u201d We must not however\n expect cream from frozen milk. Proper environment and conditions\n are needed.\n\n It is the recognition of a divine Personality in nature which\n constitutes the greatest merit and charm of Wordsworth\u2019s poetry.\n In his Tintern Abbey, he speaks of \u201cA presence that disturbs me\n with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something\n far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting\n suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky and\n in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking\n things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.\u201d\n Robert Browning sees God in humanity, as Wordsworth sees God in\n nature. In his Hohenstiel-Schwangau he writes: \u201cThis is the glory,\n that in all conceived Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind\u2014Not\n mine, but like mine\u2014for the double joy Making all things for me,\n and me for Him.\u201d John Ruskin held that the foundation of beauty in\n the world is the presence of God in it. In his youth he tells us\n that he had \u201ca continual perception of sanctity in the whole of\n nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest\u2014an instinctive awe\n mixed with delight, an indefinable thrill such as we sometimes\n imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied spirit.\u201d But it\n was not a disembodied, but an embodied, Spirit that he saw.\n Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, \u00a7 7\u2014\u201cUnless education and culture\n were preceded by an innate consciousness of God as an operative\n predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture\n to work upon.\u201d On Wordsworth\u2019s recognition of a divine personality\n in nature, see Knight, Studies, 282-317, 405-426; Hutton, Essays,\n 2:113.\n\n\nC. That he who denies God\u2019s existence must tacitly assume that existence\nin his very argument, by employing logical processes whose validity rests\nupon the fact of God\u2019s existence. The full proof of this belongs under the\nnext head.\n\n\n \u201cI am an atheist, God knows\u201d\u2014was the absurd beginning of an\n argument to disprove the divine existence. Cutler, Beginnings of\n Ethics, 22\u2014\u201cEven the Nihilists, whose first principle is that God\n and duty are great bugbears to be abolished, assume that God and\n duty exist, and they are impelled by a sense of duty to abolish\n them.\u201d Mrs. Browning, The Cry of the Human: \u201c \u2018There is no God,\u2019\n the foolish saith; But none, \u2018There is no sorrow\u2019; And nature oft\n the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the\n preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised; And lips\n say, \u2018God be pitiful,\u2019 Who ne\u2019er said, \u2018God be praised.\u2019 \u201d Dr. W.\n W. Keen, when called to treat an Irishman\u2019s aphasia, said: \u201cWell,\n Dennis, how are you?\u201d \u201cOh, doctor, I cannot spake!\u201d \u201cBut, Dennis,\n you _are_ speaking.\u201d \u201cOh, doctor, it\u2019s many a word I cannot\n spake!\u201d \u201cWell, Dennis, now I will try you. See if you cannot say,\n \u2018Horse.\u2019 \u201d \u201cOh, doctor dear, \u2018horse\u2019 is the very word I cannot\n spake!\u201d On this whole section, see A. M. Fairbairn, Origin and\n Development of the Idea of God, in Studies in Philos. of Relig.\n and History; Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 45; Bishop\n Temple, Bampton Lectures, 1884:37-65.\n\n\n3. Its logical independence and priority.\n\n\nThat _the knowledge of God\u2019s existence answers the third criterion of\nlogical independence and priority_, may be shown as follows:\n\nA. It is presupposed in all other knowledge as its logical condition and\nfoundation. The validity of the simplest mental acts, such as\nsense-perception, self-consciousness, and memory, depends upon the\nassumption that a God exists who has so constituted our minds that they\ngive us knowledge of things as they are.\n\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88\u2014\u201cThe ground of science and\n of cognition generally is to be found neither in the subject nor\n in the object _per se_, but only in the divine thinking that\n combines the two, which, as the common ground of the forms of\n thinking in all finite minds, and of the forms of being in all\n things, makes possible the correspondence or agreement between the\n former and the latter, or in a word makes knowledge of truth\n possible.\u201d 91\u2014\u201cReligious belief is presupposed in all scientific\n knowledge as the basis of its possibility.\u201d This is the thought of\n _Psalm 36:10\u2014_\u201cIn thy light shall we see light.\u201d A. J. Balfour,\n Foundations of Belief, 303\u2014\u201cThe uniformity of nature cannot be\n proved from experience, for it is what makes proof from experience\n possible.... Assume it, and we shall find that facts conform to\n it.... 309\u2014The uniformity of nature can be established only by the\n aid of that principle itself, and is necessarily involved in all\n attempts to prove it.... There must be a God, to justify our\n confidence in innate ideas.\u201d\n\n Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 276\u2014\u201cReflection shows that\n the community of individual intelligences is possible only through\n an all-embracing Intelligence, the source and creator of finite\n minds.\u201d Science rests upon the postulate of a world-order. Huxley:\n \u201cThe object of science is the discovery of the rational order\n which pervades the universe.\u201d This rational order presupposes a\n rational Author. Dubois, in New Englander, Nov. 1890:468\u2014\u201cWe\n assume uniformity and continuity, or we can have no science. An\n intelligent Creative Will is a genuine scientific hypothesis\n [postulate?], suggested by analogy and confirmed by experience,\n not contradicting the fundamental law of uniformity but accounting\n for it.\u201d Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 18\u2014\u201cThat nature is a system,\n is the assumption underlying the earliest mythologies: to fill up\n this conception is the aim of the latest science.\u201d Royce, Relig.\n Aspect of Philosophy, 435\u2014\u201cThere is such a thing as error; but\n error is inconceivable unless there be such a thing as truth; and\n truth is inconceivable unless there be a seat of truth, an\n infinite all-including Thought or Mind; therefore such a Mind\n exists.\u201d\n\n\nB. The more complex processes of the mind, such as induction and\ndeduction, can be relied on only by presupposing a thinking Deity who has\nmade the various parts of the universe and the various aspects of truth to\ncorrespond to each other and to the investigating faculties of man.\n\n\n We argue from one apple to the others on the tree. Newton argued\n from the fall of an apple to gravitation in the moon and\n throughout the solar system. Rowland argued from the chemistry of\n our world to that of Sirius. In all such argument there is assumed\n a unifying thought and a thinking Deity. This is Tyndall\u2019s\n \u201cscientific use of the imagination.\u201d \u201cNourished,\u201d he says, \u201cby\n knowledge partially won, and bounded by co\u00f6perant reason,\n imagination is the mightiest instrument of the physical\n discoverer.\u201d What Tyndall calls \u201cimagination\u201d, is really insight\n into the thoughts of God, the great Thinker. It prepares the way\n for logical reasoning,\u2014it is not the product of mere reasoning.\n For this reason Goethe called imagination \u201cdie Vorschule des\n Denkens,\u201d or \u201cthought\u2019s preparatory school.\u201d\n\n Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 23\u2014\u201cInduction is\n syllogism, with the immutable attributes of God for a constant\n term.\u201d Porter, Hum. Intellect, 492\u2014\u201cInduction rests upon the\n assumption, as it demands for its ground, that a personal or\n thinking Deity exists\u201d; 658\u2014\u201cIt has no meaning or validity unless\n we assume that the universe is constituted in such a way as to\n presuppose an absolute and unconditioned originator of its forces\n and laws\u201d; 662\u2014\u201cWe analyze the several processes of knowledge into\n their underlying assumptions, and we find that the assumption\n which underlies them all is that of a self-existent Intelligence\n who not only can be known by man, but must be known by man in\n order that man may know anything besides\u201d; see also pages 486,\n 508, 509, 518, 519, 585, 616. Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism,\n 81\u2014\u201cThe processes of reflective thought imply that the universe is\n grounded in, and is the manifestation of, reason\u201d; 560\u2014\u201cThe\n existence of a personal God is a necessary datum of scientific\n knowledge.\u201d So also, Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of\n Christianity, 564, and in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:129,\n 130.\n\n\nC. Our primitive belief in final cause, or, in other words, our conviction\nthat all things have their ends, that design pervades the universe,\ninvolves a belief in God\u2019s existence. In assuming that there is a\nuniverse, that the universe is a rational whole, a system of\nthought-relations, we assume the existence of an absolute Thinker, of\nwhose thought the universe is an expression.\n\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:81\u2014\u201cThe real can only be\n thinkable if it is realized thought, a thought previously thought,\n which our thinking has only to think again. Therefore the real, in\n order to be thinkable for us, must be the realized thought of the\n creative thinking of an eternal divine Reason which is presented\n to our cognitive thinking.\u201d Royce, World and Individual,\n 2:41\u2014\u201cUniversal teleology constitutes the essence of all facts.\u201d\n A. H. Bradford, The Age of Faith, 142\u2014\u201cSuffering and sorrow are\n universal. Either God could prevent them and would not, and\n therefore he is neither beneficent nor loving; or else he cannot\n prevent them and therefore something is greater than God, and\n therefore there is no God? But here is the use of reason in the\n individual reasoning. Reasoning in the individual necessitates the\n absolute or universal reason. If there is the absolute reason,\n then the universe and history are ordered and administered in\n harmony with reason; then suffering and sorrow can be neither\n meaningless nor final, since that would be the contradiction of\n reason. That cannot be possible in the universal and absolute\n which contradicts reason in man.\u201d\n\n\nD. Our primitive belief in moral obligation, or, in other words, our\nconviction that right has universal authority, involves the belief in\nGod\u2019s existence. In assuming that the universe is a moral whole, we assume\nthe existence of an absolute Will, of whose righteousness the universe is\nan expression.\n\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88\u2014\u201cThe ground of moral\n obligation is found neither in the subject nor in society, but\n only in the universal or divine Will that combines both....\n 103\u2014The idea of God is the unity of the true and the good, or of\n the two highest ideas which our reason thinks as theoretical\n reason, but demands as practical reason.... In the idea of God we\n find the only synthesis of the world that _is_\u2014the world of\n science, and of the world that _ought to be_\u2014the world of\n religion.\u201d Seth, Ethical Principles, 425\u2014\u201cThis is not a\n mathematical demonstration. Philosophy never is an exact science.\n Rather is it offered as the only sufficient foundation of the\n moral life.... The life of goodness ... is a life based on the\n conviction that its source and its issues are in the Eternal and\n the Infinite.\u201d As finite truth and goodness are comprehensible\n only in the light of some absolute principle which furnishes for\n them an ideal standard, so finite beauty is inexplicable except as\n there exists a perfect standard with which it may be compared. The\n beautiful is more than the agreeable or the useful. Proportion,\n order, harmony, unity in diversity\u2014all these are characteristics\n of beauty. But they all imply an intellectual and spiritual Being,\n from whom they proceed and by whom they can be measured. Both\n physical and moral beauty, in finite things and beings, are\n symbols and manifestations of Him who is the author and lover of\n beauty, and who is himself the infinite and absolute Beauty. The\n beautiful in nature and in art shows that the idea of God\u2019s\n existence is logically independent and prior. See Cousin, The\n True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 140-153; Kant, Metaphysic of\n Ethics, who holds that belief in God is the necessary\n presupposition of the belief in duty.\n\n\nTo repeat these four points in another form\u2014the intuition of an Absolute\nReason is (_a_) the necessary presupposition of all other knowledge, so\nthat we cannot know anything else to exist except by assuming first of all\nthat God exists; (_b_) the necessary basis of all logical thought, so that\nwe cannot put confidence in any one of our reasoning processes except by\ntaking for granted that a thinking Deity has constructed our minds with\nreference to the universe and to truth; (_c_) the necessary implication of\nour primitive belief in design, so that we can assume all things to exist\nfor a purpose, only by making the prior assumption that a purposing God\nexists\u2014can regard the universe as a thought, only by postulating the\nexistence of an absolute Thinker; and (_d_) the necessary foundation of\nour conviction of moral obligation, so that we can believe in the\nuniversal authority of right, only by assuming that there exists a God of\nrighteousness who reveals his will both in the individual conscience and\nin the moral universe at large. We cannot _prove_ that God is; but we can\nshow that, in order to show the existence of any knowledge, thought,\nreason, conscience, in man, man must _assume_ that God is.\n\n\n As Jacobi said of the beautiful: \u201cEs kann gewiesen aber nicht\n bewiesen werden\u201d\u2014it can be shown, but not proved. Bowne,\n Metaphysics, 472\u2014\u201cOur objective knowledge of the finite must rest\n upon ethical trust in the infinite\u201d; 480\u2014\u201cTheism is the absolute\n postulate of all knowledge, science and philosophy\u201d; \u201cGod is the\n most certain fact of objective knowledge.\u201d Ladd, Bib. Sac., Oct.\n 1877:611-616\u2014\u201cCogito, ergo Deus est. We are obliged to postulate a\n not-ourselves which makes for rationality, as well as for\n righteousness.\u201d W. T. Harris: \u201cEven natural science is impossible,\n where philosophy has not yet taught that reason made the world,\n and that nature is a revelation of the rational.\u201d Whately, Logic,\n 270; New Englander, Oct. 1871, art. on Grounds of Confidence in\n Inductive Reasoning; Bib. Sac., 7:415-425; Dorner, Glaubenslehre,\n 1:197; Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, ch. \u201cZweck\u201d;\n Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, 540-626; Lachelier, Du Fondement de\n l\u2019Induction, 78. _Per contra_, see Janet, Final Causes, 174, note,\n and 457-464, who holds final cause to be, not an intuition, but\n the result of applying the principle of causality to cases which\n mechanical laws alone will not explain.\n\n Pascal: \u201cNature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and Reason confounds the\n Dogmatist. We have an incapacity of demonstration, which the\n former cannot overcome; we have a conception of truth which the\n latter cannot disturb.\u201d \u201cThere is no Unbelief! Whoever says.\n \u2018To-morrow,\u2019 \u2018The Unknown,\u2019 \u2018The Future,\u2019 trusts that Power alone.\n Nor dares disown.\u201d Jones, Robert Browning, 314\u2014\u201cWe cannot indeed\n prove God as the conclusion of a syllogism, for he is the primary\n hypothesis of all proof.\u201d Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau:\n \u201cI know that he is there, as I am here, By the same proof, which\n seems no proof at all, It so exceeds familiar forms of proof\u201d;\n Paracelsus, 27\u2014\u201cTo know Rather consists in opening out a way\n Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape Than in effecting\n entrance for a light Supposed to be without.\u201d Tennyson, Holy\n Grail: \u201cLet visions of the night or day Come as they will, and\n many a time they come.... In moments when he feels he cannot die,\n And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision,\n nor that One Who rose again\u201d; The Ancient Sage, 548\u2014\u201cThou canst\n not prove the Nameless, O my son! Nor canst thou prove the world\n thou movest in. Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor\n canst Thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove\n that thou art both in one. Thou canst not prove that thou art\n immortal, no, Nor yet that thou art mortal. Nay, my son, thou\n canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in\n converse with thyself. For nothing worthy proving can be proven,\n Nor yet disproven: Wherefore be thou wise, Cleave ever to the\n sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of\n Faith.\u201d\n\n\n\nIII. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God\u2019s Existence.\n\n\nOur proof that the idea of God\u2019s existence is a rational intuition will\nnot be complete, until we show that attempts to account in other ways for\nthe origin of the idea are insufficient, and require as their\npresupposition the very intuition which they would supplant or reduce to a\nsecondary place. We claim that it cannot be derived from any other source\nthan an original cognitive power of the mind.\n\n1. Not from external revelation,\u2014whether communicated (_a_) through the\nScriptures, or (_b_)through tradition; for, unless man had from another\nsource a previous knowledge of the existence of a God from whom such a\nrevelation might come, the revelation itself could have no authority for\nhim.\n\n\n (_a_) See Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 10; Ebrard,\n Dogmatik, 1:117; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18\u2014\u201cA\n revelation takes for granted that he to whom it is made has some\n knowledge of God, though it may enlarge and purify that\n knowledge.\u201d We cannot prove God from the authority of the\n Scriptures, and then also prove the Scriptures from the authority\n of God. The very idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes\n belief in a God who can make it. Newman Smyth, in New Englander,\n 1878:355\u2014We cannot derive from a sun-dial our knowledge of the\n existence of a sun. The sun-dial presupposes the sun, and cannot\n be understood without previous knowledge of the sun. Wuttke,\n Christian Ethics, 2:103\u2014\u201cThe voice of the divine ego does not\n first come to the consciousness of the individual ego from\n without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already\n this inner one; there must echo out from within man something\n kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized\n and accepted as divine.\u201d\n\n Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 21, 22\u2014\u201cIf man\n is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he\n must have what Schelling happily termed \u2018an original atheism of\n consciousness.\u2019 Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the\n nature of man,\u2014it must be implanted from without.\u201d Schurman,\n Belief in God, 78\u2014\u201cA primitive revelation of God could only mean\n that God had endowed man with the capacity of apprehending his\n divine original. This capacity, like every other, is innate, and\n like every other, it realizes itself only in the presence of\n appropriate conditions.\u201d Clarke, Christian Theology,\n 112\u2014\u201cRevelation cannot demonstrate God\u2019s existence, for it must\n assume it; but it will manifest his existence and character to\n men, and will serve them as the chief source of certainty\n concerning him, for it will teach them what they could not know by\n other means.\u201d\n\n (b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for\n \u201ctradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated\u201d\n (Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a\n primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies\u2014that\n very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and\n presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of\n a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge\n thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the\n reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally\n from reasoning\u2014an explanation which we consider further on. On the\n traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker,\n Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86-96; Fairbairn, Studies in\n Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics,\n 453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos.,\n 312-322.\n\n Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of\n man\u2019s belief in God: \u201cPrimus in orbe deos fecit timor\u201d;\n Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is\n a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused\n the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible?\n What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships,\n merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to\n say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it.\n There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external\n things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never\n impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature\n a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his\n representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of\n reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact\n that belief in God\u2019s existence gets a wider hold upon the race\n with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused\n belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear;\n indeed, \u201cthe fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom\u201d_ (Ps.\n 111:10)_.\n\n\n2. Not from experience,\u2014whether this mean (_a_) the sense-perception and\nreflection of the individual (Locke), (_b_) the accumulated results of the\nsensations and associations of past generations of the race (Herbert\nSpencer), or (_c_) the actual contact of our sensitive nature with God,\nthe supersensible reality, through the religious feeling (Newman Smyth).\n\nThe first form of this theory is inconsistent with the fact that the idea\nof God is not the idea of a sensible or material object, nor a combination\nof such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are direct opposites of\nthe material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our\nidea of the former.\n\n\n With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the\n passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke\u2019s\n \u201ctabula rasa\u201d theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas\n for their cause. To his statement: \u201cNihil est in intellectu nisi\n quod ante fuerit in sensu,\u201d Leibnitz replied: \u201cNisi intellectus\n ipse.\u201d Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our\n knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying\n knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source\n of any other knowledge. The German _Gottesbewusstsein_ = not\n \u201cconsciousness of God,\u201d but \u201cknowledge of God\u201d; _Bewusstsein_ here\n = not a \u201cconknowing,\u201d but a \u201cbeknowing\u201d; see Porter, Human\n Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.\n\n Fraser, Locke, 143-147\u2014Sensations are the bricks, and association\n the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and\n Knowledge, 47\u2014\u201cDevelope language by allowing sounds to associate\n and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel\n of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of\n sensation....52\u2014One who does not know how to read would look in\n vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to\n help his failure by using strong spectacles.\u201d Yet even if the idea\n of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in\n rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zo\u00f6logy,\n 132\u2014\u201cThere is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge\n to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason;\n between those who attribute the development of the germ to\n mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent\n potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature\n was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that\n everything in nature is immediately intended rather than\n predetermined.\u201d All these may be methods of the immanent God.\n\n\nThe second form of the theory is open to the objection that the very first\nexperience of the first man, equally with man\u2019s latest experience,\npresupposes this intuition, as well as the other intuitions, and therefore\ncannot be the cause of it. Moreover, even though this theory of its origin\nwere correct, it would still be impossible to think of the object of the\nintuition as not existing, and the intuition would still represent to us\nthe highest measure of certitude at present attainable by man. If the\nevolution of ideas is toward truth instead of falsehood, it is the part of\nwisdom to act upon the hypothesis that our primitive belief is veracious.\n\n\n Martineau, Study, 2:26\u2014\u201cNature is as worthy of trust in her\n processes, as in her gifts.\u201d Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163,\n 164\u2014\u201cAre we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in\n the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can\n indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great\n doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy\n cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances\n of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all\n truth must be declared impossible.\u201d See also Harris, Philos. Basis\n Theism, 137-142.\n\n Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death,\n referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: \u201cCan we\n trust to the convictions of a monkey\u2019s mind?\u201d We may reply: \u201cCan\n we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?\u201d Bowne,\n Ethics, 3\u2014\u201cThe genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its\n validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot\n be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical\n value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in\n astrology.... 11\u2014Even if man came from the ape, we need not\n tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the\n Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got\n it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any\n psychological theory.... 159\u2014We must not appeal to savages and\n babies to find what is natural to the human mind.... In the case\n of anything that is under the law of development we can find its\n true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by\n studying the finished outcome.\u201d Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution,\n 13\u2014\u201cIf the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we\n trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science\n and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere\n chance and unreason?\u201d Even though man came from the ape, there is\n no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: \u201cA man \u2019s a man\n for a\u2019 that.\u201d\n\n We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It\n matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how\n imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us\n correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the\n intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us\n knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that\n evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes,\n Study of Psychology, 122\u2014\u201cWe can understand the am\u0153ba and the\n polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.\u201d Seth,\n Ethical Principles, 429\u2014\u201cThe oak explains the acorn even more\n truly than the acorn explains the oak.\u201d Sidgwick: \u201cNo one appeals\n from the artist\u2019s sense of beauty to the child\u2019s. Higher\n mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only\n by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was\n _first_ felt or thought.\u201d Robert Browning, Paracelsus: \u201cMan, once\n descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things....\n A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior\n grades, explains Each back step in the circle.\u201d Man, with his\n higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to\n him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this\n highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.\n\n Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245\u2014\u201cEvolution simply gave man such\n _height_ that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth\n which had previously been below the horizon. This is very\n different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted\n products of the experiences of utility.... The germ of the idea of\n God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon\n as he became man,\u2014the brute\u2019s gaining it turned him into man.\n Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of\n experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns\n the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.\u201d Sir Charles\n Lyell: \u201cThe presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though\n liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The\n religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It\n existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before\n advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is\n to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was\n before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great\n truth.\u201d Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine:\n \u201cSecurus judicat orbis terrarum,\u201d and tells us that the intellect\n is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may\n have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is\n the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103\u2014\u201cTo\n Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural\n history, and force is supreme. To Christianity nature is only the\n beginning, and man the consummation. Which gives the higher\n revelation of the life of the tree\u2014the seed, or the fruit?\u201d\n\n\nThe third form of the theory seems to make God a sensuous object, to\nreverse the proper order of knowing and feeling, to ignore the fact that\nin all feeling there is at least some knowledge of an object, and to\nforget that the validity of this very feeling can be maintained only by\npreviously assuming the existence of a rational Deity.\n\n\n Newman Smyth tells us that feeling comes first; the idea is\n secondary. Intuitive ideas are not denied, but they are declared\n to be direct reflections, in thought, of the feelings. They are\n the mind\u2019s immediate perception of what it feels to exist. Direct\n knowledge of God by intuition is considered to be idealistic,\n reaching God by inference is regarded as rationalistic, in its\n tendency. See Smyth, The Religious Feeling; reviewed by Harris, in\n New Englander, Jan., 1878: reply by Smyth, in New Englander, May,\n 1878.\n\n We grant that, even in the case of unregenerate men, great peril,\n great joy, great sin often turn the rational intuition of God into\n a presentative intuition. The presentative intuition, however,\n cannot be affirmed to be common to all men. It does not furnish\n the foundation or explanation of a universal capacity for\n religion. Without the rational intuition, the presentative would\n not be possible, since it is only the rational that enables man to\n receive and to interpret the presentative. The very trust that we\n put in feeling presupposes an intuitive belief in a true and good\n God. Tennyson said in 1869: \u201cYes, it is true that there are\n moments when the flesh is nothing to me; when I know and feel the\n flesh to be the vision; God and the spiritual is the real; it\n belongs to me more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me\n that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my\n existence,\u2014I could believe you; but you never, never can convince\n me that the _I_ is not an eternal Reality, and that the spiritual\n is not the real and true part of me.\u201d\n\n\n3. Not from reasoning,\u2014because\n\n(_a_) The actual rise of this knowledge in the great majority of minds is\nnot the result of any conscious process of reasoning. On the other hand,\nupon occurrence of the proper conditions, it flashes upon the soul with\nthe quickness and force of an immediate revelation.\n\n(_b_) The strength of men\u2019s faith in God\u2019s existence is not proportioned\nto the strength of the reasoning faculty. On the other hand, men of\ngreatest logical power are often inveterate sceptics, while men of\nunwavering faith are found among those who cannot even understand the\narguments for God\u2019s existence.\n\n(_c_) There is more in this knowledge than reasoning could ever have\nfurnished. Men do not limit their belief in God to the just conclusions of\nargument. The arguments for the divine existence, valuable as they are for\npurposes to be shown hereafter, are not sufficient by themselves to\nwarrant our conviction that there exists an infinite and absolute Being.\nIt will appear upon examination that the _a priori_ argument is capable of\nproving only an abstract and ideal proposition, but can never conduct us\nto the existence of a real Being. It will appear that the _a posteriori_\narguments, from merely finite existence, can never demonstrate the\nexistence of the infinite. In the words of Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions,\n23)\u2014\u201cA demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically\nabsurd, as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is\nnot distributed in the premises\u201d\u2014in short, from finite premises we cannot\ndraw an infinite conclusion.\n\n\n Whately, Logic, 290-292; Jevons, Lessons in Logic, 81; Thompson,\n Outline Laws of Thought, sections 82-92; Calderwood, Philos. of\n Infinite, 60-69, and Moral Philosophy, 238; Turnbull, in Bap.\n Quarterly, July, 1872:271; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 239; Dove,\n Logic of Christian Faith, 21. Sir Wm. Hamilton: \u201cDeparting from\n the particular, we admit that we cannot, in our highest\n generalizations, rise above the finite.\u201d Dr. E. G. Robinson: \u201cThe\n human mind turns out larger grists than are ever put in at the\n hopper.\u201d There is more in the idea of God than could have come out\n so small a knot-hole as human reasoning. A single word, a chance\n remark, or an attitude of prayer, suggests the idea to a child.\n Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that\n there was a God, but that she had not known his name. Ladd,\n Philosophy of Mind, 119\u2014\u201cIt is a foolish assumption that nothing\n can be certainly known unless it be reached as the result of a\n conscious syllogistic process, or that the more complicated and\n subtle this process is, the more sure is the conclusion.\n Inferential knowledge is always dependent upon the superior\n certainty of immediate knowledge.\u201d George M. Duncan, in Memorial\n of Noah Porter, 246\u2014\u201cAll deduction rests either on the previous\n process of induction, or on the intuitions of time and space which\n involve the Infinite and Absolute.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) Neither do men arrive at the knowledge of God\u2019s existence by\ninference; for inference is condensed syllogism, and, as a form of\nreasoning, is equally open to the objection just mentioned. We have seen,\nmoreover, that all logical processes are based upon the assumption of\nGod\u2019s existence. Evidently that which is presupposed in all reasoning\ncannot itself be proved by reasoning.\n\n\n By inference, we of course mean mediate inference, for in\n immediate inference (_e. g._, \u201cAll good rulers are just; therefore\n no unjust rulers are good\u201d) there is no reasoning, and no progress\n in thought. Mediate inference is reasoning\u2014is condensed syllogism;\n and what is so condensed may be expanded into regular logical\n form. Deductive inference: \u201cA negro is a fellow-creature;\n therefore he who strikes a negro strikes a fellow-creature.\u201d\n Inductive inference: \u201cThe first finger is before the second;\n therefore it is before the third.\u201d On inference, see Martineau,\n Essays, 1:105-108; Porter, Human Intellect, 444-448; Jevons,\n Principles of Science, 1:14, 136-139, 168, 262.\n\n Flint, in his Theism, 77, and Herbert, in his Mod. Realism\n Examined, would reach the knowledge of God\u2019s existence by\n inference. The latter says God is not demonstrable, but his\n existence is inferred, like the existence of our fellow men. But\n we reply that in this last case we infer only the finite from the\n finite, while the difficulty in the case of God is in inferring\n the infinite from the finite. This very process of reasoning,\n moreover, presupposes the existence of God as the absolute Reason,\n in the way already indicated.\n\n Substantially the same error is committed by H. B. Smith, Introd.\n to Chr. Theol., 84-133, and by Diman, Theistic Argument, 316, 364,\n both of whom grant an intuitive element, but use it only to eke\n out the insufficiency of reasoning. They consider that the\n intuition gives us only an abstract idea, which contains in itself\n no voucher for the existence of an actual being corresponding to\n the idea, and that we reach real being only by inference from the\n facts of our own spiritual natures and of the outward world. But\n we reply, in the words of McCosh, that \u201cthe intuitions are\n primarily directed to individual objects.\u201d We know, not the\n infinite in the abstract, but infinite space and time, and the\n infinite God. See McCosh, Intuitions, 26, 199, who, however, holds\n the view here combated.\n\n Schurman, Belief in God, 43\u2014\u201cI am unable to assign to our belief\n in God a higher certainty than that possessed by the working\n hypotheses of science.... 57\u2014The nearest approach made by science\n to our hypothesis of the existence of God lies in the assertion of\n the universality of law ... based on the conviction of the unity\n and systematic connection of all reality.... 64\u2014This unity can be\n found only in self-conscious spirit.\u201d The fault of this reasoning\n is that it gives us nothing necessary or absolute. Instances of\n working hypotheses are the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the\n law of gravitation, the atomic theory in chemistry, the principle\n of evolution. No one of these is logically independent or prior.\n Each of them is provisional, and each may be superseded by new\n discovery. Not so with the idea of God. This idea is presupposed\n by all the others, as the condition of every mental process and\n the guarantee of its validity.\n\n\n\nIV. Contents of this Intuition.\n\n\n1. In this fundamental knowledge _that_ God is, it is necessarily implied\nthat to some extent men know intuitively _what_ God is, namely, (_a_) a\nReason in which their mental processes are grounded; (_b_) a Power above\nthem upon which they are dependent; (_c_) a Perfection which imposes law\nupon their moral natures; (_d_) a Personality which they may recognize in\nprayer and worship.\n\nIn maintaining that we have a rational intuition of God, we by no means\nimply that a presentative intuition of God is impossible. Such a\npresentative intuition was perhaps characteristic of unfallen man; it does\nbelong at times to the Christian; it will be the blessing of heaven (Mat.\n5:8\u2014\u201cthe pure in heart ... shall see God\u201d; Rev. 22:4\u2014\u201cthey shall see his\nface\u201d). Men\u2019s experiences of face-to-face apprehension of God, in danger\nand guilt, give some reason to believe that a presentative knowledge of\nGod is the normal condition of humanity. But, as this presentative\nintuition of God is not in our present state universal, we here claim only\nthat all men have a rational intuition of God.\n\nIt is to be remembered, however, that the loss of love to God has greatly\nobscured even this rational intuition, so that the revelation of nature\nand the Scriptures is needed to awaken, confirm and enlarge it, and the\nspecial work of the Spirit of Christ to make it the knowledge of\nfriendship and communion. Thus from knowing about God, we come to know God\n(John 17:3\u2014\u201cThis is life eternal, that they should know thee\u201d; 2 Tim.\n1:12\u2014\u201cI know him whom I have believed\u201d).\n\n\n Plato said, for substance, that there can be no \u1f45\u03c4\u03b9 \u03bf\u1f36\u03b4\u03b5\u03bd without\n something of the \u1f01 \u03bf\u1f36\u03b4\u03b5\u03bd. Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism,\n 208\u2014\u201cBy rational intuition man knows that absolute Being _exists_;\n his knowledge of _what_ it is, is progressive with his progressive\n knowledge of man and of nature.\u201d Hutton, Essays: \u201cA haunting\n presence besets man behind and before. He cannot evade it. It\n gives new meanings to his thoughts, new terror to his sins. It\n becomes intolerable. He is moved to set up some idol, carved out\n of his own nature, that will take its place\u2014a non-moral God who\n will not disturb his dream of rest. It is a righteous Life and\n Will, and not the mere _idea_ of righteousness that stirs men so.\u201d\n Porter, Hum. Int., 661\u2014\u201cThe Absolute is a thinking Agent.\u201d The\n intuition does not grow in certainty; what grows is the mind\u2019s\n quickness in applying it and power of expressing it. The intuition\n is not complex; what is complex is the Being intuitively cognized.\n See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 232; Lowndes, Philos. of Primary\n Beliefs, 108-112; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 157\u2014Latent faculty of\n speech is called forth by speech of others; the choked-up well\n flows again when debris is cleared away. Bowen, in Bib. Sac.,\n 33:740-754; Bowne, Theism, 79.\n\n Knowledge of a person is turned into personal knowledge by actual\n communication or revelation. First, comes the intuitive knowledge\n of God possessed by all men\u2014the assumption that there exists a\n Reason, Power, Perfection, Personality, that makes correct\n thinking and acting possible. Secondly, comes the knowledge of\n God\u2019s being and attributes which nature and Scripture furnish.\n Thirdly, comes the personal and presentative knowledge derived\n from actual reconciliation and intercourse with God, through\n Christ and the Holy Spirit. Stearns, Evidence of Christian\n Experience, 208\u2014\u201cChristian experience verifies the claims of\n doctrine by experiment,\u2014so transforming probable knowledge into\n real knowledge.\u201d Biedermann, quoted by Pfleiderer, Grundriss,\n 18\u2014\u201cGod reveals himself to the human spirit, 1. as its infinite\n _Ground_, in the reason; 2. as its infinite _Norm_, in the\n conscience; 3. as its infinite _Strength_, in elevation to\n religious truth, blessedness, and freedom.\u201d\n\n Shall I object to this Christian experience, because only\n comparatively few have it, and I am not among the number? Because\n I have not seen the moons of Jupiter, shall I doubt the testimony\n of the astronomer to their existence? Christian experience, like\n the sight of the moons of Jupiter, is attainable by all. Clarke,\n Christian Theology, 113\u2014\u201cOne who will have full proof of the good\n God\u2019s reality must put it to the experimental test. He must take\n the good God for real, and receive the confirmation that will\n follow. When faith reaches out after God, it finds him.... They\n who have found him will be the sanest and truest of their kind,\n and their convictions will be among the safest convictions of\n man.... Those who live in fellowship with the good God will grow\n in goodness, and will give practical evidence of his existence\n aside from their oral testimony.\u201d\n\n\n2. The Scriptures, therefore, do not attempt to prove the existence of\nGod, but, on the other hand, both assume and declare that the knowledge\nthat God is, is universal (Rom. 1:19-21, 28, 32; 2:15). God has inlaid the\nevidence of this fundamental truth in the very nature of man, so that\nnowhere is he without a witness. The preacher may confidently follow the\nexample of Scripture by assuming it. But he must also explicitly declare\nit, as the Scripture does. \u201cFor the invisible things of him since the\ncreation of the world are clearly seen\u201d (\u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03bf\u03c1\u1fb6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9\u2014spiritually viewed);\nthe organ given for this purpose is the \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 (\u03bd\u03bf\u03bf\u03cd\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b1); but then\u2014and this\nforms the transition to our next division of the subject\u2014they are\n\u201cperceived through the things that are made\u201d (\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, Rom. 1:20).\n\n\n On _Rom. 1:19-21_, see Weiss, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 251, note;\n also commentaries of Meyer, Alford, Tholuck, and Wordsworth; \u03c4\u1f78\n \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 = not \u201cthat which may be known\u201d (Rev. Vers.) but\n \u201cthat which is known\u201d of God; \u03bd\u03bf\u03bf\u03cd\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03bf\u03c1\u1fb6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 = are clearly\n seen in that they are perceived by the reason\u2014\u03bd\u03bf\u03bf\u03cd\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b1 expresses\n the manner of the \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03bf\u03c1\u1fb6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 (Meyer); compare _John 1:9_; _Acts\n 17:27_; _Rom. 1:28_; _2:15_. On _1 Cor. 15:34_, see Calderwood,\n Philos. of Inf., 466\u2014\u1f00\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\u03bd \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u1f72\u03c2 \u1f14\u03c7\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9 = do not possess\n the specially exalted knowledge of God which belongs to believers\n in Christ (_cf._ _1 Jo. 4:7\u2014_\u201cevery one that loveth is begotten of\n God, and knoweth God\u201d). On _Eph. 2:12_, see Pope, Theology,\n 1:240\u2014\u1f04\u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03b9 \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u1ff3 is opposed to being in Christ, and\n signifies rather forsaken of God, than denying him or entirely\n ignorant of him. On Scripture passages, see Schmid, Bib. Theol.\n des N. T., 486; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:62.\n\n E. G. Robinson: \u201cThe first statement of the Bible is, not that\n there is a God, but that \u2018In the beginning God created the heavens\n and the earth\u2019_ (Gen. 1:1)_. The belief in God never was and never\n can be the result of logical argument, else the Bible would give\n us proofs.\u201d Many texts relied upon as _proofs_ of God\u2019s existence\n are simply _explications_ of the idea of God, as for example: _Ps.\n 94:9, 10\u2014_\u201cHe that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that\n formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the nations,\n shall not he correct, even he that teacheth man knowledge?\u201d Plato\n says that God holds the soul by its roots,\u2014he therefore does not\n need to demonstrate to the soul the fact of his existence.\n Martineau, Seat of Authority, 308, says well that Scripture and\n preaching only interpret what is already in the heart which it\n addresses: \u201cFlinging a warm breath on the inward oracles hid in\n invisible ink, it renders them articulate and dazzling as the\n handwriting on the wall. The divine Seer does not convey to you\n _his_ revelation, but qualifies you to receive _your own_. This\n mutual relation is possible only through the common presence of\n God in the conscience of mankind.\u201d Shedd, Dogmatic Theology,\n 1:195-220\u2014\u201cThe earth and sky make the same sensible impressions on\n the organs of a brute that they do upon those of a man; but the\n brute never discerns the \u2018invisible things\u2019 of God, his \u2018eternal\n power and godhood\u2019_ (Rom. 1:20)_.\u201d\n\n Our subconscious activity, so far as it is normal, is under the\n guidance of the immanent Reason. Sensation, before it results in\n thought, has in it logical elements which are furnished by\n mind\u2014not ours, but that of the Infinite One. Christ, the Revealer\n of God, reveals God in every man\u2019s mental life, and the Holy\n Spirit may be the principle of self-consciousness in man as in\n God. Harris, God the Creator, tells us that \u201cman finds the Reason\n that is eternal and universal revealing itself in the exercise of\n his own reason.\u201d Savage, Life after Death, 268\u2014\u201cHow do you know\n that your subliminal consciousness does not tap Omniscience, and\n get at the facts of the universe?\u201d Savage negatives this\n suggestion, however, and wrongly favors the spirit-theory. For his\n own experience, see pages 295-329 of his book.\n\n C. M. Barrows, in Proceedings of Soc. for Psychical Research, vol.\n 12, part 30, pages 34-36\u2014\u201cThere is a subliminal agent. What if\n this is simply one intelligent Actor, filling the universe with\n his presence, as the ether fills space; the common Inspirer of all\n mankind, a skilled Musician, presiding over many pipes and keys,\n and playing through each what music he will? The subliminal self\n is a universal fountain of energy, and each man is an outlet of\n the stream. Each man\u2019s personal self is contained in it, and thus\n each man is made one with every other man. In that deep Force, the\n last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all psychical and\n bodily effects find their common origin.\u201d This statement needs to\n be qualified by the assertion of man\u2019s ethical nature and distinct\n personality; see section of this work on Ethical Monism, in\n chapter III. But there is truth here like that which Coleridge\n sought to express in his \u00c6olian Harp: \u201cAnd what if all of animated\n Nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into\n thought, as o\u2019er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual\n breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all?\u201d See F. W. H.\n Myers, Human Personality.\n\n Dorner, System of Theology, 1:75\u2014\u201cThe consciousness of God is the\n true fastness of our self-consciousness.... Since it is only in\n the God-conscious man that the innermost personality comes to\n light, in like manner, by means of the interweaving of that\n consciousness of God and of the world, the world is viewed in God\n (\u2018sub specie eternitatis\u2019), and the certainty of the world first\n obtains its absolute security for the spirit.\u201d Royce, Spirit of\n Mod. Philosophy, synopsis in N. Y. Nation: \u201cThe one indubitable\n fact is the existence of an infinite self, a Logos or World-mind\n (345). That it exists is clear, I. Because idealism shows that\n real things are nothing more nor less than ideas, or\n \u2018possibilities of experience\u2019; but a mere \u2018possibility\u2019, as such,\n is nothing, and a world of \u2018possible\u2019 experiences, in so far as it\n is real, must be a world of actual experience to some self (367).\n If then there be a real world, it has all the while existed as\n ideal and mental, even before it became known to the particular\n mind with which we conceive it as coming into connection (368).\n II. But there is such a real world; for, when I _think_ of an\n object, when I _mean_ it, I do not merely have in mind an idea\n resembling it, for I aim at the object, I pick it out, I already\n in some measure possess it. The object is then already present in\n essence to my hidden self (370). As truth consists in knowledge of\n the conformity of a cognition to its object, that alone can know a\n truth which includes within itself both idea and object. This\n inclusive Knower is the Infinite Self (374). With this I am in\n essence identical (371); it is my larger self (372); and this\n larger self alone _is_ (379). It includes all reality, and we know\n other finite minds, because we are one with them in its unity\u201d\n (409).\n\n The experience of George John Romanes is instructive. For years he\n could recognize no personal Intelligence controlling the universe.\n He made four mistakes: 1. _He forgot that only love can see_, that\n God is not disclosed to the mere intellect, but only to the whole\n man, to the integral mind, to what the Scripture calls \u201cthe eyes\n of your heart\u201d_ (Eph. 1:18)_. Experience of life taught him at\n last the weakness of mere reasoning, and led him to depend more\n upon the affections and intuitions. Then, as one might say, he\n gave the X-rays of Christianity a chance to photograph God upon\n his soul. 2. _He began at the wrong end_, with matter rather than\n with mind, with cause and effect rather than with right and wrong,\n and so got involved in the mechanical order and tried to interpret\n the moral realm by it. The result was that instead of recognizing\n freedom, responsibility, sin, guilt, he threw them out as\n pretenders. But study of conscience and will set him right. He\n learned to take what be found instead of trying to turn it into\n something else, and so came to interpret nature by spirit, instead\n of interpreting spirit by nature. 3. _He took the Cosmos by bits_,\n instead of regarding it as a whole. His early thinking insisted on\n finding design in each particular part, or nowhere. But his more\n mature thought recognized wisdom and reason in the ordered whole.\n As he realized that this is a universe, he could not get rid of\n the idea of an organizing Mind. He came to see that the Universe,\n as a thought, implies a Thinker. 4. _He fancied that nature\n excludes God_, instead of being only the method of God\u2019s working.\n When he learned how a thing was done, he at first concluded that\n God had not done it. His later thought recognized that God and\n nature are not mutually exclusive. So he came to find no\n difficulty even in miracles and inspiration; for the God who is in\n man and of whose mind and will nature is only the expression, can\n reveal himself, if need be, in special ways. So George John\n Romanes came back to prayer, to Christ, to the church.\n\n On the general subject of intuition as connected with our idea of\n God, see Ladd, in Bib. Sac., 1877:1-36, 611-616; 1878:619; Fisher,\n on Final Cause and Intuition, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan.\n 1883:113-134; Patton, on Genesis of Idea of God, in Jour. Christ.\n Philos., Apl. 1883:283-307; McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,\n 124-140; Mansel, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., vol. 14:604 and 615;\n Robert Hall, sermon on Atheism; Hutton, on Atheism, in Essays,\n 1:3-37; Shairp, in Princeton Rev., March, 1881:264.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God\u2019s Existence.\n\n\nAlthough the knowledge of God\u2019s existence is intuitive, it may be\nexplicated and confirmed by arguments drawn from the actual universe and\nfrom the abstract ideas of the human mind.\n\nRemark 1. These arguments are probable, not demonstrative. For this reason\nthey supplement each other, and constitute a series of evidences which is\ncumulative in its nature. Though, taken singly, none of them can be\nconsidered absolutely decisive, they together furnish a corroboration of\nour primitive conviction of God\u2019s existence, which is of great practical\nvalue, and is in itself sufficient to bind the moral action of men.\n\n\n Butler, Analogy, Introd., Bohn\u2019s ed., 72\u2014Probable evidence admits\n of degrees, from the highest moral certainty to the lowest\n presumption. Yet probability is the guide of life. In matters of\n morals and religion, we are not to expect mathematical or\n demonstrative, but only probable, evidence, and the slightest\n preponderance of such evidence may be sufficient to bind our moral\n action. The truth of our religion, like the truth of common\n matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence taken together; for\n probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence,\n but multiply it. Dove, Logic of Christ. Faith, 24\u2014Value of the\n arguments taken together is much greater than that of any single\n one. Illustrated from water, air and food, together but not\n separately, supporting life; value of \u00a31000 note, not in paper,\n stamp, writing, signature, taken separately. A whole bundle of\n rods cannot be broken, though each rod in the bundle may be broken\n separately. The strength of the bundle is the strength of the\n whole. Lord Bacon, Essay on Atheism: \u201cA little philosophy\n inclineth man\u2019s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth\n men\u2019s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh\n upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go\n no further, but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate\n and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.\u201d\n Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 221-223\u2014\u201cThe proof of a God and\n of a spiritual world which is to satisfy us must consist in a\n number of different but converging lines of proof.\u201d\n\n In a case where only circumstantial evidence is attainable, many\n lines of proof sometimes converge, and though no one of the lines\n reaches the mark, the conclusion to which they all point becomes\n the only rational one. To doubt that there is a London, or that\n there was a Napoleon, would indicate insanity; yet London and\n Napoleon are proved by only probable evidence. There is no\n constraining efficacy in the arguments for God\u2019s existence; but\n the same can be said of all reasoning that is not demonstrative.\n Another interpretation of the facts is _possible_, but no other\n conclusion is so _satisfactory_, as that God is; see Fisher,\n Nature and Method of Revelation, 129. Prof. Rogers: \u201cIf in\n practical affairs we were to hesitate to act until we had absolute\n and demonstrative certainty, we should never begin to move at\n all.\u201d For this reason an old Indian official advised a young\n Indian judge \u201calways to give his verdict, but always to avoid\n giving the grounds of it.\u201d\n\n Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 11-14\u2014\u201cInstead of doubting everything\n that can be doubted, let us rather doubt nothing until we are\n compelled to doubt.... In society we get on better by assuming\n that men are truthful, and by doubting only for special reasons,\n than we should if we assumed that all men are liars, and believed\n them only when compelled. So in all our investigations we make\n more progress if we assume the truthfulness of the universe and of\n our own nature than we should if we doubted both.... The first\n method seems the more rigorous, but it can be applied only to\n mathematics, which is a purely subjective science. When we come to\n deal with reality, the method brings thought to a standstill....\n The law the logician lays down is this: Nothing may be believed\n which is not proved. The law the mind actually follows is this:\n Whatever the mind demands for the satisfaction of its subjective\n interests and tendencies may be assumed as real, in default of\n positive disproof.\u201d\n\n\nRemark 2. A consideration of these arguments may also serve to explicate\nthe contents of an intuition which has remained obscure and only half\nconscious for lack of reflection. The arguments, indeed, are the efforts\nof the mind that already has a conviction of God\u2019s existence to give to\nitself a formal account of its belief. An exact estimate of their logical\nvalue and of their relation to the intuition which they seek to express in\nsyllogistic form, is essential to any proper refutation of the prevalent\natheistic and pantheistic reasoning.\n\n\n Diman, Theistic Argument, 363\u2014\u201cNor have I claimed that the\n existence, even, of this Being can be demonstrated as we\n demonstrate the abstract truths of science. I have only claimed\n that the universe, as a great fact, demands a rational\n explanation, and that the most rational explanation that can\n possibly be given is that furnished in the conception of such a\n Being. In this conclusion reason rests, and refuses to rest in any\n other.\u201d R\u00fcckert: \u201cWer Gott nicht f\u00fchlt in sich und allen\n Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet ihr nicht ihn beweisen mit Beweisen.\u201d\n Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 307\u2014\u201cTheology depends on noetic\n and empirical science to give the occasion on which the idea of\n the Absolute Being arises, and to give content to the idea.\u201d\n Andrew Fuller, Part of Syst. of Divin., 4:283, questions \u201cwhether\n argumentation in favor of the existence of God has not made more\n sceptics than believers.\u201d So far as this is true, it is due to an\n overstatement of the arguments and an exaggerated notion of what\n is to be expected from them. See Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine,\n translation, 140; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:119, 120; Fisher, Essays on\n Supernatural Origin of Christianity, 572, 573; Van Oosterzee, 238,\n 241.\n\n \u201cEvidences of Christianity?\u201d said Coleridge, \u201cI am weary of the\n word.\u201d The more Christianity was _proved_, the less it was\n _believed_. The revival of religion under Whitefield and Wesley\n did what all the apologists of the eighteenth century could not\n do,\u2014it quickened men\u2019s intuitions into life, and made them\n practically recognize God. Martineau, Types, 2:231\u2014Men can \u201cbow\n the knee to the passing _Zeitgeist_, while turning the back to the\n consensus of all the ages\u201d; Seat of Authority, 312\u2014\u201cOur reasonings\n lead to explicit Theism because they start from implicit Theism.\u201d\n Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, 81\u2014\u201cThe proofs are ...\n attempts to account for and explain and justify something that\n already exists; to decompose a highly complex though immediate\n judgment into its constituent elements, none of which when\n isolated can have the completeness or the cogency of the original\n conviction taken as a whole.\u201d\n\n Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 31, 32\u2014\u201cDemonstration is only a\n makeshift for helping ignorance to insight.... When we come to an\n argument in which the whole nature is addressed, the argument must\n seem weak or strong, according as the nature is feebly, or fully,\n developed. The moral argument for theism cannot seem strong to one\n without a conscience. The argument from cognitive interests will\n be empty when there is no cognitive interest. Little souls find\n very little that calls for explanation or that excites surprise,\n and they are satisfied with a correspondingly small view of life\n and existence. In such a case we cannot hope for universal\n agreement. We can only proclaim the faith that is in us, in hope\n that this proclamation may not be without some response in other\n minds and hearts.... We have only probable evidence for the\n uniformity of nature or for the affection of friends. We cannot\n logically prove either. The deepest convictions are not the\n certainties of logic, but the certainties of life.\u201d\n\n\nRemark 3. The arguments for the divine existence may be reduced to four,\nnamely: I. The Cosmological; II. The Teleological; III. The\nAnthropological; and IV. The Ontological. We shall examine these in order,\nseeking first to determine the precise conclusions to which they\nrespectively lead, and then to ascertain in what manner the four may be\ncombined.\n\n\n\nI. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.\n\n\nThis is not properly an argument from effect to cause; for the proposition\nthat every effect must have a cause is simply identical, and means only\nthat every caused event must have a cause. It is rather an argument from\nbegun existence to a sufficient cause of that beginning, and may be\naccurately stated as follows:\n\nEverything begun, whether substance or phenomenon, owes its existence to\nsome producing cause. The universe, at least so far as its present form is\nconcerned, is a thing begun, and owes its existence to a cause which is\nequal to its production. This cause must be indefinitely great.\n\n\n It is to be noticed that this argument moves wholly in the realm\n of nature. The argument from man\u2019s constitution and beginning upon\n the planet is treated under another head (see Anthropological\n Argument). That the present form of the universe is not eternal in\n the past, but has begun to be, not only personal observation but\n the testimony of geology assures us. For statements of the\n argument, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn\u2019s transl.), 370;\n Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 8:34-44; Bib. Sac.,\n 1849:613; 1850:613; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 570; Herbert Spencer,\n First Principles, 93. It has often been claimed, as by Locke,\n Clarke, and Robert Hall, that this argument is sufficient to\n conduct the mind to an Eternal and Infinite First Cause. We\n proceed therefore to mention\n\n\n1. _The defects of the Cosmological Argument._\n\nA. It is impossible to show that the universe, so far as its substance is\nconcerned, has had a beginning. The law of causality declares, not that\neverything has a cause\u2014for then God himself must have a cause\u2014but rather\nthat everything begun has a cause, or in other words, that every event or\nchange has a cause.\n\n\n Hume, Philos. Works, 2:411 _sq._, urges with reason that we never\n saw a world made. Many philosophers in Christian lands, as\n Martineau, Essays, 1:206, and the prevailing opinions of\n ante-Christian times, have held matter to be eternal. Bowne,\n Metaphysics, 107\u2014\u201cFor being itself, the reflective reason never\n asks a cause, unless the being show signs of dependence. It is\n change that first gives rise to the demand for cause.\u201d Martineau,\n Types, 1:291\u2014\u201cIt is not existence, as such, that demands a cause,\n but the coming into existence of what did not exist before. The\n intellectual law of causality is a law for phenomena, and not for\n entity.\u201d See also McCosh, Intuitions, 225-241; Calderwood, Philos.\n of Infinite, 61. _Per contra_, see Murphy, Scient. Bases of Faith,\n 49, 195, and Habit and Intelligence, 1:55-67; Knight, Lect. on\n Metaphysics, lect. ii, p. 19.\n\n\nB. Granting that the universe, so far as its phenomena are concerned, has\nhad a cause, it is impossible to show that any other cause is required\nthan a cause within itself, such as the pantheist supposes.\n\n\n Flint, Theism, 65\u2014\u201cThe cosmological argument alone proves only\n force, and no mere force is God. Intelligence must go with power\n to make a Being that can be called God.\u201d Diman, Theistic Argument:\n \u201cThe cosmological argument alone cannot decide whether the force\n that causes change is permanent self-existent mind, or permanent\n self-existent matter.\u201d Only intelligence gives the basis for an\n answer. Only mind in the universe enables us to infer mind in the\n maker. But the argument from intelligence is not the Cosmological,\n but the Teleological, and to this last belong all proofs of Deity\n from order and combination in nature.\n\n Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 201-296\u2014Science has to do with those\n changes which one portion of the visible universe causes in\n another portion. Philosophy and theology deal with the Infinite\n Cause which brings into existence and sustains the entire series\n of finite causes. Do we ask the cause of the stars? Science says:\n Fire-mist, or an infinite regress of causes. Theology says:\n Granted; but this infinite regress demands for its explanation the\n belief in God. We must believe both in God, and in an endless\n series of finite causes. God is the cause of all causes, the soul\n of all souls: \u201cCentre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving\n heart how near!\u201d We do not need, as mere matter of science, to\n think of any beginning.\n\n\nC. Granting that the universe most have had a cause outside of itself, it\nis impossible to show that this cause has not itself been caused, _i. e._,\nconsists of an infinite series of dependent causes. The principle of\ncausality does not require that everything begun should be traced back to\nan uncaused cause; it demands that we should assign a cause, but not that\nwe should assign a first cause.\n\n\n So with the whole series of causes. The materialist is bound to\n find a cause for this series, only when the series is shown to\n have had a beginning. But the very hypothesis of an infinite\n series of causes excludes the idea of such a beginning. An\n infinite chain has no topmost link (_versus_ Robert Hall); an\n uncaused and eternal succession does not need a cause (_versus_\n Clarke and Locke). See Whately, Logic, 270; New Englander, Jan.\n 1874:75; Alexander, Moral Science, 221; Pfleiderer, Die Religion,\n 1:160-164; Calderwood, Moral Philos., 225; Herbert Spencer, First\n Principles, 37\u2014criticized by Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 36.\n Julius M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, 2:128, says that the causal principle is\n not satisfied till by regress we come to a cause which is not\n itself an effect\u2014to one who is _causa sui_; Aids to Study of\n German Theology, 15-17\u2014Even if the universe be eternal, its\n contingent and relative nature requires us to postulate an eternal\n Creator; Diman, Theistic Argument, 86\u2014\u201cWhile the law of causation\n does not lead logically up to the conclusion of a first cause, it\n compels us to affirm it.\u201d We reply that it is not the law of\n causation which compels us to affirm it, for this certainly \u201cdoes\n not lead logically up to the conclusion.\u201d If we infer an uncaused\n cause, we do it, not by logical process, but by virtue of the\n intuitive belief within us. So substantially Secretan, and\n Whewell, in Indications of a Creator, and in Hist. of Scientific\n Ideas, 2:321, 322\u2014\u201cThe mind takes refuge, in the assumption of a\n First Cause, from an employment inconsistent with its own nature\u201d;\n \u201cwe necessarily infer a First Cause, although the pal\u00e6tiological\n sciences only point toward it, but do not lead us to it.\u201d\n\n\nD. Granting that the cause of the universe has not itself been caused, it\nis impossible to show that this cause is not finite, like the universe\nitself. The causal principle requires a cause no greater than just\nsufficient to account for the effect.\n\n\n We cannot therefore infer an infinite cause, unless the universe\n is infinite\u2014which cannot be proved, but can only be assumed\u2014and\n this is assuming an infinite in order to prove an infinite. All we\n know of the universe is finite. An infinite universe implies\n infinite number. But no number can be infinite, for to any number,\n however great, a unit can be added, which shows that it was not\n infinite before. Here again we see that the most approved forms of\n the Cosmological Argument are obliged to avail themselves of the\n intuition of the infinite, to supplement the logical process.\n _Versus_ Martineau, Study, 1:416\u2014\u201cThough we cannot directly infer\n the infinitude of God from a limited creation, indirectly we may\n exclude every other position by resort to its unlimited scene of\n existence (space).\u201d But this would equally warrant our belief in\n the infinitude of our fellow men. Or, it is the argument of Clarke\n and Gillespie (see Ontological Argument below). Schiller, Die\n Gr\u00f6sse der Welt, seems to hold to a boundless universe. He\n represents a tired spirit as seeking the last limit of creation. A\n second pilgrim meets him from the spaces beyond with the words:\n \u201cSteh! du segelst umsonst,\u2014vor dir Unendlichkeit\u201d\u2014\u201cHold! thou\n journeyest in vain,\u2014before thee is only Infinity.\u201d On the law of\n parsimony, see Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 628.\n\n\n2. _The value of the Cosmological Argument_, then, is simply this,\u2014it\nproves the existence of some cause of the universe indefinitely great.\nWhen we go beyond this and ask whether this cause is a cause of being, or\nmerely a cause of change, to the universe; whether it is a cause apart\nfrom the universe, or one with it; whether it is an eternal cause, or a\ncause dependent upon some other cause; whether it is intelligent or\nunintelligent, infinite or finite, one or many,\u2014this argument cannot\nassure us.\n\n\n On the whole argument, see Flint, Theism, 93-130; Mozley, Essays,\n Hist. and Theol., 2:414-444; Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 148-154;\n Studien und Kritiken, 1876:9-31.\n\n\n\nII. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful\nCollocation in Nature.\n\n\nThis is not properly an argument from design to a designer; for that\ndesign implies a designer is simply an identical proposition. It may be\nmore correctly stated as follows: Order and useful collocation pervading a\nsystem respectively imply intelligence and purpose as the cause of that\norder and collocation. Since order and useful collocation pervade the\nuniverse, there must exist an intelligence adequate to the production of\nthis order, and a will adequate to direct this collocation to useful ends.\n\n\n Etymologically, \u201cteleological argument\u201d = argument to ends or\n final causes, that is, \u201ccauses which, beginning as a thought, work\n themselves out into a fact as an end or result\u201d (Porter, Hum.\n Intellect, 592-618);\u2014health, for example, is the final cause of\n exercise, while exercise is the efficient cause of health. This\n definition of the argument would be broad enough to cover the\n proof of a designing intelligence drawn from the constitution of\n man. This last, however, is treated as a part of the\n Anthropological Argument, which follows this, and the Teleological\n Argument covers only the proof of a designing intelligence drawn\n from nature. Hence Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn\u2019s trans.),\n 381, calls it the physico-theological argument. On methods of\n stating the argument, see Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:625. See also\n Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 155-185; Mozley, Essays Hist. and\n Theol., 2:365-413.\n\n Hicks, in his Critique of Design-Arguments, 347-389, makes two\n arguments instead of one: (1) the argument from _order_ to\n _intelligence_, to which he gives the name Eutaxiological; (2) the\n argument from _adaptation_ to _purpose_, to which he would\n restrict the name Teleological. He holds that teleology proper\n cannot prove _intelligence_, because in speaking of \u201cends\u201d at all,\n it must assume the very intelligence which it seeks to prove; that\n it actually does prove simply the _intentional exercise_ of an\n intelligence whose existence has been previously established.\n \u201cCircumstances, forces or agencies converging to a definite\n rational result imply volition\u2014imply that this result is\n intended\u2014is an end. This is the major premise of this new\n teleology.\u201d He objects to the term \u201cfinal cause.\u201d The end is not a\n cause at all\u2014it is a motive. The characteristic element of cause\n is power to produce an effect. Ends have no such power. The will\n may choose them or set them aside. As already assuming\n intelligence, ends cannot prove intelligence.\n\n With this in the main we agree, and count it a valuable help to\n the statement and understanding of the argument. In the very\n observation of _order_, however, as well as in arguing from it, we\n are obliged to assume the same all-arranging intelligence. We see\n no objection therefore to making Eutaxiology the first part of the\n Teleological Argument, as we do above. See review of Hicks, in\n Meth. Quar. Rev., July, 1883:569-576. We proceed however to\n certain\n\n\n1. _Further explanations._\n\nA. The major premise expresses a primitive conviction. It is not\ninvalidated by the objections: (_a_) that order and useful collocation may\nexist without being purposed\u2014for we are compelled by our very mental\nconstitution to deny this in all cases where the order and collocation\npervade a system: (_b_) that order and useful collocation may result from\nthe mere operation of physical forces and laws\u2014for these very forces and\nlaws imply, instead of excluding, an originating and superintending\nintelligence and will.\n\n\n Janet, in his work on Final Causes, 8, denies that finality is a\n primitive conviction, like causality, and calls it the result of\n an induction. He therefore proceeds from (1) marks of order and\n useful collocation to (2) finality in nature, and then to (3) an\n intelligent cause of this finality or \u201cpre-conformity to future\n event.\u201d So Diman, Theistic Argument, 105, claims simply that, as\n change requires cause, so orderly change requires intelligent\n cause. We have shown, however, that induction and argument of\n every kind presupposes intuitive belief in final cause. Nature\n does not give us final cause; but no more does she give us\n efficient cause. Mind gives us both, and gives them as clearly\n upon one experience as after a thousand. Ladd: \u201cThings have mind\n in them: else they could not be minded by us.\u201d The Duke of Argyll\n told Darwin that it seemed to him wholly impossible to ascribe the\n adjustments of nature to any other agency than that of mind.\n \u201cWell,\u201d said Darwin, \u201cthat impression has often come upon me with\n overpowering force. But then, at other times, it all seems\u2014;\u201d and\n then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to indicate the\n passing of a vision out of sight. Darwinism is not a refutation of\n ends in nature, but only of a particular theory with regard to the\n way in which ends are realized in the organic world. Darwin would\n begin with an infinitesimal germ, and make all the subsequent\n development unteleological; see Schurman, Belief in God, 193.\n\n (_a_) Illustration of unpurposed order in the single throwing of\n \u201cdouble sixes,\u201d\u2014constant throwing of double sixes indicates\n design. So arrangement of detritus at mouth of river, and warming\n pans sent to the West Indies,\u2014useful but not purposed. Momerie,\n Christianity and Evolution, 72\u2014\u201cIt is only within narrow limits\n that seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced by chance. And\n therefore, as the signs of purpose increase, the presumption in\n favor of their accidental origin diminishes.\u201d Elder, Ideas from\n Nature, 81, 82\u2014\u201cThe uniformity of a boy\u2019s marbles shows them to be\n products of design. A single one might be accidental, but a dozen\n cannot be. So atomic uniformity indicates manufacture.\u201d\n Illustrations of purposed order, in Beattie\u2019s garden, Tillotson\u2019s\n blind men, Kepler\u2019s salad. Dr. Carpenter: \u201cThe atheist is like a\n man examining the machinery of a great mill, who, finding that the\n whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from a brick wall, infers\n that the shaft is a sufficient explanation of what he sees, and\n that there is no moving power behind it.\u201d Lord Kelvin: \u201cThe\n atheistic idea is nonsensical.\u201d J. G. Paton, Life, 2:191\u2014The\n sinking of a well on the island of Aniwa convinces the cannibal\n chief Namakei that Jehovah God exists, the invisible One. See\n Chauncey Wright, in N. Y. Nation, Jan. 15, 1874; Murphy,\n Scientific Bases of Faith, 208.\n\n (_b_) Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 231-247\u2014\u201cLaw is _method_,\n not _cause_. A man cannot offer the very fact to be explained, as\n its sufficient explanation.\u201d Martineau, Essays, 1:144\u2014\u201cPatterned\n damask, made not by the weaver, but by the loom?\u201d Dr. Stevenson:\n \u201cHouse requires no architect, because it is built by stone-masons\n and carpenters?\u201d Joseph Cook: \u201cNatural law without God behind it\n is no more than a glove without a hand in it, and all that is done\n by the gloved hand of God in nature is done by the hand and not by\n the glove. Evolution is a process, not a power; a method of\n operation, not an operator. A book is not written _by_ the laws of\n spelling and grammar, but _according_ to those laws. So the book\n of the universe is not written by the laws of heat, electricity,\n gravitation, evolution, but according to those laws.\u201d G. F.\n Wright, Ant. and Orig. of Hum. Race, lecture IX\u2014\u201cIt is impossible\n for evolution to furnish evidence which shall drive design out of\n nature. It can only drive it back to an earlier point of entrance,\n thereby increasing our admiration for the power of the Creator to\n accomplish ulterior designs by unlikely means.\u201d\n\n Evolution is only the method of God. It has to do with the _how_,\n not with the _why_, of phenomena, and therefore is not\n inconsistent with design, but rather is a new and higher\n illustration of design. Henry Ward Beecher: \u201cDesign by wholesale\n is greater than design by retail.\u201d Frances Power Cobbe: \u201cIt is a\n singular fact that, whenever we find out _how_ a thing is done,\n our first conclusion seems to be that _God_ did not do it.\u201d Why\n should we say: \u201cThe more law, the less God?\u201d The theist refers the\n phenomena to a cause that knows itself and what it is doing; the\n atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself and\n what it is doing (Bowne). George John Romanes said that, if God be\n immanent, then all natural causation must appear to be mechanical,\n and it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing to\n prove it due to natural causation: \u201cCauses in nature do not\n obviate the necessity of a cause in nature.\u201d Shaler,\n Interpretation of Nature, 47\u2014Evolution shows that the direction of\n affairs is under control of something like our own intelligence:\n \u201cEvolution spells Purpose.\u201d Clarke, Christ. Theology, 105\u2014\u201cThe\n modern doctrine of evolution has been awake to the existence of\n innumerable ends _within_ the universe, but not to the one great\n end _for_ the universe itself.\u201d Huxley, Critiques and Addresses,\n 274, 275, 307\u2014\u201cThe teleological and mechanical views of the\n universe are not mutually exclusive.\u201d Sir William Hamilton,\n Metaphysics: \u201cIntelligence stands first in the order of existence.\n Efficient causes are preceded by final causes.\u201d See also Thornton,\n Old Fashioned Ethics, 199-265; Archbp. Temple, Bampton Lect.,\n 1884:99-123; Owen, Anat. of Vertebrates, 3:796; Peirce, Ideality\n in the Physical Sciences, 1-35; Newman Smyth, Through Science to\n Faith, 96; Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 135.\n\n\nB. The minor premise expresses a working-principle of all science, namely,\nthat all things have their uses, that order pervades the universe, and\nthat the methods of nature are rational methods. Evidences of this appear\nin the correlation of the chemical elements to each other; in the fitness\nof the inanimate world to be the basis and support of life; in the typical\nforms and unity of plan apparent in the organic creation; in the existence\nand co\u00f6peration of natural laws; in cosmical order and compensations.\n\nThis minor premise is not invalidated by the objections: (_a_) That we\nfrequently misunderstand the end actually subserved by natural events and\nobjects; for the principle is, not that we necessarily know the actual\nend, but that we necessarily believe that there is some end, in every case\nof systematic order and collocation. (_b_) That the order of the universe\nis manifestly imperfect; for this, if granted, would argue, not absence of\ncontrivance, but some special reason for imperfection, either in the\nlimitations of the contriving intelligence itself, or in the nature of the\nend sought (as, for example, correspondence with the moral state and\nprobation of sinners).\n\n\n The evidences of order and useful collocation are found both in\n the indefinitely small and the indefinitely great. The molecules\n are manufactured articles; and the compensations of the solar\n system which provide that a secular flattening of the earth\u2019s\n orbit shall be made up for by a secular rounding of that same\n orbit, alike show an intelligence far transcending our own; see\n Cooke, Religion and Chemistry, and Credentials of Science,\n 23\u2014\u201cBeauty is the harmony of relations which perfect fitness\n produces; law is the prevailing principle which underlies that\n harmony. Hence both beauty and law imply design. From energy,\n fitness, beauty, order, sacrifice, we argue might, skill,\n perfection, law, and love in a Supreme Intelligence. Christianity\n implies design, and is the completion of the design argument.\u201d\n Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:168\u2014\u201cA good definition of beauty\n is immanent purposiveness, the teleological ideal background of\n reality, the shining of the Idea through phenomena.\u201d\n\n Bowne, Philos. Theism, 85\u2014\u201cDesign is never causal. It is only\n ideal, and it demands an efficient cause for its realization. If\n ice is not to sink, and to freeze out life, there must be some\n molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of\n an equal weight of water.\u201d Jackson, Theodore Parker,\n 355\u2014\u201cRudimentary organs are like the silent letters in many\n words,\u2014both are witnesses to a past history; and there is\n intelligence in their preservation.\u201d Diman, Theistic Argument:\n \u201cNot only do we observe in the world the change which is the basis\n of the Cosmological Argument, but we perceive that this change\n proceeds according to a fixed and invariable rule. In inorganic\n nature, general order, or _regularity_; in organic nature, special\n order or _adaptation_.\u201d Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 113-115,\n 224-230: \u201cInductive science proceeds upon the postulate that the\n reasonable and the natural are one.\u201d This furnished the guiding\n clue to Harvey and Cuvier; see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences,\n 2:489-491. Kant: \u201cThe anatomist must assume that nothing in man is\n in vain.\u201d Aristotle: \u201cNature makes nothing in vain.\u201d On molecules\n as manufactured articles, see Maxfield, in Nature, Sept. 25, 1873.\n See also Tulloch, Theism, 116, 120; LeConte, Religion and Science,\n lect. 2 and 3; McCosh, Typical Forms, 81, 420; Agassiz, Essay on\n Classification, 9, 10; Bib. Sac., 1849:626 and 1850:613; Hopkins,\n in Princeton Review, 1882:181.\n\n (_a_) Design, in fact that rivers always run by large towns? that\n springs are always found at gambling places? Plants made for man,\n and man for worms? Voltaire: \u201cNoses are made for spectacles\u2014let us\n wear them!\u201d Pope: \u201cWhile man exclaims \u2018See all things for my use,\u2019\n \u2018See man for mine,\u2019 replies the pampered goose.\u201d Cherries do not\n ripen in the cold of winter when they do not taste as well, and\n grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer when the new wine would\n turn to vinegar? Nature divides melons into sections for\n convenience in family eating? Cork-tree made for bottle-stoppers?\n The child who was asked the cause of salt in the ocean, attributed\n it to codfish, thus dimly confounding final cause with efficient\n cause. Teacher: \u201cWhat are marsupials?\u201d Pupil: \u201cAnimals that have\n pouches in their stomachs.\u201d Teacher: \u201cAnd what do they have\n pouches for?\u201d Pupil: \u201cTo crawl into and conceal themselves in,\n when they are pursued.\u201d Why are the days longer in summer than in\n winter? Because it is the property of all natural objects to\n elongate under the influence of heat. A Jena professor held that\n doctors do not exist because of disease, but that diseases exist\n precisely in order that there may be doctors. Kepler was an\n astronomical Don Quixote. He discussed the claims of eleven\n different damsels to become his second wife, and he likened the\n planets to huge animals rushing through the sky. Many of the\n objections to design arise from confounding a part of the creation\n with the whole, or a structure in the process of development with\n a structure completed. For illustrations of mistaken ends, see\n Janet, Final Causes.\n\n (_b_) Alphonso of Castile took offense at the Ptolemaic System,\n and intimated that, if he had been consulted at the creation, he\n could have suggested valuable improvements. Lange, in his History\n of Materialism, illustrates some of the methods of nature by\n millions of gun barrels shot in all directions to kill a single\n hare; by ten thousand keys bought at haphazard to get into a shut\n room; by building a city in order to obtain a house. Is not the\n ice a little overdone about the poles? See John Stuart Mill\u2019s\n indictment of nature, in his posthumous Essays on Religion,\n 29\u2014\u201cNature impales men, breaks men as if on a wheel, casts them to\n be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the\n first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them\n with cold, poisons them with the quick or slow venom of her\n exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve,\n such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never\n surpassed.\u201d So argue Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.\n\n The doctrine of evolution answers many of these objections, by\n showing that order and useful collocation in the system as a whole\n is necessarily and cheaply purchased by imperfection and suffering\n in the initial stages of development. The question is: Does the\n system as a whole imply design? My opinion is of no value as to\n the usefulness of an intricate machine the purpose of which I do\n not know. If I stand at the beginning of a road and do not know\n whither it leads, it is presumptuous in me to point out a more\n direct way to its destination. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 20-22\u2014\u201cIn\n order to counterbalance the impressions which apparent disorder\n and immorality in nature make upon us, we have to assume that the\n universe at its root is not only rational, but good. This is\n faith, but it is an act on which our whole moral life depends.\u201d\n Metaphysics, 165\u2014\u201cThe same argument which would deny mind in\n nature denies mind in man.\u201d Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev.,\n 264\u2014\u201cFifty years ago, when the crane stood on top of the tower of\n unfinished Cologne Cathedral, was there no evidence of design in\n the whole structure?\u201d Yet we concede that, so long as we cannot\n with John Stuart Mill explain the imperfections of the universe by\n any limitations in the Intelligence which contrived it, we are\n shut up to regarding them as intended to correspond with the moral\n state and probation of sinners which God foresaw and provided for\n at the creation. Evil things in the universe are symbols of sin,\n and helps to its overthrow. See Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 264,\n 265; McCosh, Christ. and Positivism, 82 _sq._; Martineau, Essays,\n 1:50, and Study, 1:351-398; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 599; Mivart,\n Lessons from Nature, 366-371; Princeton Rev., 1878:272-303; Shaw,\n on Positivism.\n\n\n2. _Defects of the Teleological Argument._ These attach not to the\npremises but to the conclusion sought to be drawn therefrom.\n\nA. The argument cannot prove a personal God. The order and useful\ncollocations of the universe may be only the changing phenomena of an\nimpersonal intelligence and will, such as pantheism supposes. The finality\nmay be only immanent finality.\n\n\n There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality.\n National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee\n works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the\n world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8\u2014\u201cPlant the\n ship-builder\u2019s skill within the timber itself, and you have the\n mode in which nature produces.\u201d Here we see a dim anticipation of\n the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation\n from without. Neander: \u201cThe divine work goes on from within\n outward.\u201d John Fiske: \u201cThe argument from the watch has been\n superseded by the argument from the flower.\u201d Iverach, Theism,\n 91\u2014\u201cThe effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause\n from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent\n rational principle.\u201d Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350\u2014\u201cTheism is in no\n way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world ...\n nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give\n it externality.\u201d\n\n Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62-80\u2014\u201cThe universe exists in some\n all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of\n brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping\n themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building,\n adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last\n presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and\n finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of\n self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in\n size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron\n endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other\n locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new\n locomotives in their turn.\u201d So nature in its separate parts may\n seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not\n \u201cdisown a directive power,\u201d\u2014only this power is \u201cbehind the\n mechanism as its final cause ... it must be teleological.\u201d\n\n Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe\n as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light\n of evolution, we must still hold that nature alone cannot prove\n that this intelligence is personal. Hopkins, Miscellanies,\n 18-36\u2014\u201cSo long as there is such a thing as impersonal and adapting\n intelligence in the brute creation, we cannot necessarily infer\n from unchanging laws a free and personal God.\u201d See Fisher,\n Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 576-578. Kant shows that the\n argument does not prove intelligence apart from the world\n (Critique, 370). We must bring mind to the world, if we would find\n mind in it. Leave out man, and nature cannot be properly\n interpreted: the intelligence and will in nature may still be\n unconscious. But, taking in man, we are bound to get our idea of\n the intelligence and will in nature from the highest type of\n intelligence and will we know, and that is man\u2019s. \u201cNullus in\n microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus.\u201d \u201cWe receive but\n what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live.\u201d\n\n The Teleological Argument therefore needs to be supplemented by\n the Anthropological Argument, or the argument from the mental and\n moral constitution of man. By itself, it does not prove a Creator.\n See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 26; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos.,\n bk. 9, chap. 6; Foundations of our Faith, 38; Murphy, Scientific\n Bases, 215; Habit and Intelligence, 2:6, and chap. 27. On immanent\n finality, see Janet, Final Causes, 345-415; Diman, Theistic\n Argument, 201-203. Since righteousness belongs only to\n personality, this argument cannot prove righteousness in God.\n Flint, Theism, 66\u2014\u201cPower and Intelligence alone do not constitute\n God, though they be infinite. A being may have these, and, if\n lacking righteousness, may be a devil.\u201d Here again we see the need\n of the Anthropological Argument to supplement this.\n\n\nB. Even if this argument could prove personality in the intelligence and\nwill that originated the order of the universe, it could not prove either\nthe unity, the eternity, or the infinity of God; not the unity\u2014for the\nuseful collocations of the universe might be the result of oneness of\ncounsel, instead of oneness of essence, in the contriving intelligence;\nnot the eternity\u2014for a created demiurge might conceivably have designed\nthe universe; not the infinity\u2014since all marks of order and collocation\nwithin our observation are simply finite.\n\n\n Diman asserts (Theistic Argument, 114) that all the phenomena of\n the universe must be due to the same source\u2014since all alike are\n subject to the same method of sequence, _e. g._, gravitation\u2014and\n that the evidence points us irresistibly to some _one_ explanatory\n cause. We can regard this assertion only as the utterance of a\n primitive belief in a first cause, not as the conclusion of\n logical demonstration, for we know only an infinitesimal part of\n the universe. From the point of view of the intuition of an\n Absolute Reason, however, we can cordially assent to the words of\n F. L. Patton: \u201cWhen we consider Matthew Arnold\u2019s \u2018stream of\n tendency,\u2019 Spencer\u2019s \u2018unknowable,\u2019 Schopenhauer\u2019s \u2018world as will,\u2019\n and Hartmann\u2019s elaborate defence of finality as the product of\n unconscious intelligence, we may well ask if the theists, with\n their belief in one personal God, are not in possession of the\n only hypothesis that can save the language of these writers from\n the charge of meaningless and idiotic raving\u201d (Journ. Christ.\n Philos., April, 1883:283-307).\n\n The ancient world, which had only the light of nature, believed in\n many gods. William James, Will to Believe, 44\u2014\u201cIf there be a\n divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her, cannot\n possibly be its _ultimate word_ to man. Either there is no spirit\n revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there; and\n (as all the higher religions have assumed) what we call visible\n nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and surface-show whose\n full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen, or _other_ world.\u201d\n Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 234\u2014\u201cBut is not\n intelligence itself the mystery of mysteries?... No doubt,\n intellect is a great mystery.... But there is a choice in\n mysteries. Some mysteries leave other things clear, and some leave\n things as dark and impenetrable as ever. The former is the case\n with the mystery of intelligence. It makes possible the\n comprehension of everything but itself.\u201d\n\n\n3. _The value of the Teleological Argument_ is simply this,\u2014it proves from\ncertain useful collocations and instances of order which have clearly had\na beginning, or in other words, from the present harmony of the universe,\nthat there exists an intelligence and will adequate to its contrivance.\nBut whether this intelligence and will is personal or impersonal, creator\nor only fashioner, one or many, finite or infinite, eternal or owing its\nbeing to another, necessary or free, this argument cannot assure us.\n\nIn it, however, we take a step forward. The causative power which we have\nproved by the Cosmological Argument has now become an intelligent and\nvoluntary power.\n\n\n John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Theism, 168-170\u2014\u201cIn the present\n state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large\n balance of probability in favor of causation by intelligence.\u201d\n Ladd holds that, whenever one being acts upon its like, each being\n undergoes changes of state that belong to its own nature under the\n circumstances. Action of one body on another never consists in\n transferring the state of one being to another. Therefore there is\n no more difficulty in beings that are unlike acting on one another\n than in beings that are like. We do not transfer ideas to other\n minds,\u2014we only rouse them to develop their own ideas. So force\n also is positively not transferable. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 49,\n begins with \u201cthe conception of things interacting according to law\n and forming an intelligible system. Such a system cannot be\n construed by thought without the assumption of a unitary being\n which is the fundamental reality of the system. 53\u2014No passage of\n influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf, so long as the\n things are regarded as independent. 56\u2014The system itself cannot\n explain this interaction, for the system is only the members of\n it. There must be some being in them which is their reality, and\n of which they are in some sense phases or manifestations. In other\n words, there must be a basal monism.\u201d All this is substantially\n the view of Lotze, of whose philosophy see criticism in St\u00e4hlin\u2019s\n Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, 116-156, and especially 123.\n Falckenberg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 454, shows as to\n Lotze\u2019s view that his assumption of monistic unity and continuity\n does not explain how change of condition in one thing should, as\n equalization or compensation, follow change of condition in\n another thing. Lotze explains this _actuality_ by the ethical\n conception of an all-embracing Person. On the whole argument, see\n Bib. Sac., 1849:634; Murphy, Sci. Bases, 216; Flint, Theism,\n 131-210; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:164-174; W. R. Benedict, on\n Theism and Evolution, in Andover Rev., 1886:307-350, 607-622.\n\n\n\nIII. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man\u2019s Mental and Moral\nNature.\n\n\nThis is an argument from the mental and moral condition of man to the\nexistence of an Author, Lawgiver, and End. It is sometimes called the\nMoral Argument.\n\n\n The common title \u201cMoral Argument\u201d is much too narrow, for it seems\n to take account only of conscience in man, whereas the argument\n which this title so imperfectly designates really proceeds from\n man\u2019s intellectual and emotional, as well as from his moral,\n nature. In choosing the designation we have adopted, we desire,\n moreover, to rescue from the mere physicist the term\n \u201cAnthropology\u201d\u2014a term to which he has attached altogether too\n limited a signification, and which, in his use of it, implies that\n man is a mere animal,\u2014to him Anthropology is simply the study of\n _la b\u00eate humaine_. Anthropology means, not simply the science of\n man\u2019s physical nature, origin, and relations, but also the science\n which treats of his higher spiritual being. Hence, in Theology,\n the term Anthropology designates that division of the subject\n which treats of man\u2019s spiritual nature and endowments, his\n original state and his subsequent apostasy. As an argument,\n therefore, from man\u2019s mental and moral nature, we can with perfect\n propriety call the present argument the Anthropological Argument.\n\n\nThe argument is a complex one, and may be divided into three parts.\n\n1. Man\u2019s intellectual and moral nature must have had for its author an\nintellectual and moral Being. The elements of the proof are as\nfollows:\u2014(_a_) Man, as an intellectual and moral being, has had a\nbeginning upon the planet. (_b_) Material and unconscious forces do not\nafford a sufficient cause for man\u2019s reason, conscience, and free will.\n(_c_) Man, as an effect, can be referred only to a cause possessing\nself-consciousness and a moral nature, in other words, personality.\n\n\n This argument is is part an application to man of the principles\n of both the Cosmological and the Teleological Arguments. Flint,\n Theism, 74\u2014\u201cAlthough causality does not involve design, nor design\n goodness, yet design involves causality, and goodness both\n causality and design.\u201d Jacobi: \u201cNature conceals God; man reveals\n him.\u201d\n\n Man is an effect. The history of the geologic ages proves that man\n has not always existed, and even if the lower creatures were his\n progenitors, his intellect and freedom are not eternal _a parte\n ante_. We consider man, not as a physical, but as a spiritual,\n being. Thompson, Christian Theism, 75\u2014\u201cEvery true cause must be\n sufficient to account for the effect.\u201d Locke, Essay, book 4, chap.\n 10\u2014\u201cCogitable existence cannot be produced out of incogitable.\u201d\n Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:258 _sq._\n\n Even if man had always existed, however, we should not need to\n abandon the argument. We might start, not from beginning of\n existence, but from beginning of phenomena. I might see God in the\n world, just as I see thought, feeling, will, in my fellow men.\n Fullerton, Plain Argument for God: I do not infer you, as cause of\n the _existence_ of your body: I recognize you as present and\n _working_ through your body. Its changes of gesture and speech\n reveal a personality behind them. So I do not need to argue back\n to a Being who once _caused_ nature and history; I recognize a\n _present_ Being, exercising wisdom and power, by signs such as\n reveal personality in man. Nature is itself the Watchmaker\n manifesting himself in the very process of making the watch. This\n is the meaning of the noble Epilogue to Robert Browning\u2019s Dramatis\n Person\u00e6, 252\u2014\u201cThat one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or\n decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and\n knows.\u201d \u201cThat Face,\u201d said Mr. Browning to Mrs. Orr, \u201cThat Face is\n the face of Christ; that is how I feel him.\u201d Nature is an\n expression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an\n expression of my mind and will. But in both cases, behind and\n above the face is a personality, of which the face is but the\n partial and temporary expression.\n\n Bowne, Philos. Theism, 104, 107\u2014\u201cMy fellow beings act _as if_ they\n had thought, feeling, and will. So nature looks _as if_ thought,\n feeling, and will were behind it. If we deny mind in nature, we\n must deny mind in man. If there be no controlling mind in nature,\n moreover, there can be none in man, for if the basal power is\n blind and necessary, then all that depends upon it is necessitated\n also.\u201d LeConte, in Royce\u2019s Conception of God, 44\u2014\u201cThere is only\n one place in the world where we can get behind physical phenomena,\n behind the veil of matter, namely, in our own brain, and we find\n there a self, a person. Is it not reasonable that, if we could get\n behind the veil of nature, we should find the same, that is, a\n Person? But if so, we must conclude, an infinite Person, and\n therefore the only complete Personality that exists. Perfect\n personality is not only self-conscious, but self-existent. _They_\n are only imperfect images, and, as it were, separated fragments,\n of the infinite Personality of God.\u201d\n\n Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination in view of\n moral ends. The brute has intelligence and will, but has neither\n self-consciousness, conscience, nor free-will. See Julius M\u00fcller,\n Doctrine of Sin, 1:76 _sq._ Diman, Theistic Argument, 91,\n 251\u2014\u201cSuppose \u2018the intuitions of the moral faculty are the slowly\n organized results of experience received from the race\u2019; still,\n having found that the universe affords evidence of a supremely\n intelligent cause, we may believe that man\u2019s moral nature affords\n the highest illustration of its mode of working\u201d; 358\u2014\u201cShall we\n explain the lower forms of will by the higher, or the higher by\n the lower?\u201d\n\n\n2. Man\u2019s moral nature proves the existence of a holy Lawgiver and Judge.\nThe elements of the proof are:\u2014(_a_) Conscience recognizes the existence\nof a moral law which has supreme authority. (_b_) Known violations of this\nmoral law are followed by feelings of ill-desert and fears of judgment.\n(_c_) This moral law, since it is not self-imposed, and these threats of\njudgment, since they are not self-executing, respectively argue the\nexistence of a holy will that has imposed the law, and of a punitive power\nthat will execute the threats of the moral nature.\n\n\n See Bishop Butler\u2019s Sermons on Human Nature, in Works, Bohn\u2019s ed.,\n 385-414. Butler\u2019s great discovery was that of the supremacy of\n conscience in the moral constitution of man: \u201cHad it strength as\n it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would\n absolutely govern the world.\u201d Conscience = the moral judiciary of\n the soul\u2014not law, nor sheriff, but judge; see under Anthropology.\n Diman, Theistic Argument, 251\u2014\u201cConscience does not lay down a law;\n it warns us of the existence of a law; and not only of a law, but\n of a purpose\u2014not our own, but the purpose of another, which it is\n our mission to realize.\u201d See Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,\n 218 _sq._ It proves personality in the Lawgiver, because its\n utterances are not abstract, like those of reason, but are in the\n nature of command; they are not in the indicative, but in the\n imperative, mood; it says, \u201cthou shalt\u201d and \u201cthou shalt not.\u201d This\n argues _will_.\n\n Hutton, Essays, 1:11\u2014\u201cConscience is an ideal Moses, and thunders\n from an invisible Sinai\u201d; \u201cthe Atheist regards conscience not as a\n skylight, opened to let in upon human nature an infinite dawn from\n above, but as a polished arch or dome, completing and reflecting\n the whole edifice beneath.\u201d But conscience cannot be the mere\n reflection and expression of nature, for it represses and condemns\n nature. Tulloch, Theism: \u201cConscience, like the magnetic needle,\n indicates the existence of an unknown Power which from afar\n controls its vibrations and at whose presence it trembles.\u201d Nero\n spends nights of terror in wandering through the halls of his\n Golden House. Kant holds that faith in duty requires faith in a\n God who will defend and reward duty\u2014see Critique of Pure Reason,\n 359-387. See also Porter, Human Intellect, 524.\n\n Kant, in his Metaphysic of Ethics, represents the action of\n conscience as like \u201cconducting a case before a court,\u201d and he\n adds: \u201cNow that he who is accused before his conscience should be\n figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd\n representation of a tribunal; since, in such an event, the accuser\n would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to\n itself always some other than itself as Judge, unless it is to\n arrive at a contradiction with itself.\u201d See also his Critique of\n the Practical Reason, Werke, 8:214\u2014\u201cDuty, thou sublime and mighty\n name, that hast in thee nothing to attract or win, but challengest\n submission; and yet dost threaten nothing to sway the will by that\n which may arouse natural terror or aversion, but merely holdest\n forth a Law; a Law which of itself finds entrance into the mind,\n and even while we disobey, against our will compels our reverence,\n a Law in presence of which all inclinations grow dumb, even while\n they secretly rebel; what origin is there worthy of thee? Where\n can we find the root of thy noble descent, which proudly rejects\n all kinship with the inclinations?\u201d Archbishop Temple answers, in\n his Bampton Lectures, 58, 59, \u201cThis eternal Law is the Eternal\n himself, the almighty God.\u201d Robert Browning: \u201cThe sense within me\n that I owe a debt Assures me\u2014Somewhere must be Somebody, Ready to\n take his due. All comes to this: Where due is, there acceptance\n follows: find Him who accepts the due.\u201d\n\n Salter, Ethical Religion, quoted in Pfleiderer\u2019s article on\n Religionless Morality, Am. Jour. Theol., 3:237\u2014\u201cThe earth and the\n stars do not create the law of gravitation which they obey; no\n more does man, or the united hosts of rational beings in the\n universe, create the law of duty.\u201d The will expressed in the moral\n imperative is _superior_ to ours, for otherwise it would issue no\n commands. Yet it is _one_ with ours as the life of an organism is\n one with the life of its members. Theonomy is not heteronomy but\n the highest autonomy, the guarantee of our personal freedom\n against all servitude of man. Seneca: \u201cDeo parere libertas est.\u201d\n Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 272\u2014\u201cIn conscience we see an \u2018alter\n ego\u2019, in us yet not of us, another Personality behind our own.\u201d\n Martineau, Types, 2:105\u2014\u201cOver a person only a person can have\n authority.... A solitary being, with no other sentient nature in\n the universe, would feel no duty\u201d; Study, 1:26\u2014\u201cAs Perception\n gives us Will in the shape of _Causality_ over against us in the\n Non-Ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of _Authority_\n over against us in the Non-Ego.... 2:7\u2014We cannot deduce the\n phenomena of character from an agent who has none.\u201d Hutton,\n Essays, 1:41, 42\u2014\u201cWhen we disobey conscience, the Power which has\n therein ceased to _move_ us has retired only to _observe_\u2014to keep\n _watch_ over us as we mould ourselves.\u201d Cardinal Newman, Apologia,\n 377\u2014\u201cWere it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my\n conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist,\n or a polytheist, when I looked into the world.\u201d\n\n\n3. Man\u2019s emotional and voluntary nature proves the existence of a Being\nwho can furnish in himself a satisfying object of human affection and an\nend which will call forth man\u2019s highest activities and ensure his highest\nprogress.\n\nOnly a Being of power, wisdom, holiness, and goodness, and all these\nindefinitely greater than any that we know upon the earth, can meet this\ndemand of the human soul. Such a Being must exist. Otherwise man\u2019s\ngreatest need would be unsupplied, and belief in a lie be more productive\nof virtue than belief in the truth.\n\n\n Feuerbach calls God \u201cthe Brocken-shadow of man himself\u201d;\n \u201cconsciousness of God = self-consciousness\u201d; \u201creligion is a dream\n of the human soul\u201d; \u201call theology is anthropology\u201d; \u201cman made God\n in his own image.\u201d But conscience shows that man does not\n recognize in God simply his like, but also his opposite. Not as\n Galton: \u201cPiety = conscience + instability.\u201d The finest minds are\n of the leaning type; see Murphy, Scientific Bases, 370; Augustine,\n Confessions, 1:1\u2014\u201cThou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is\n restless till it finds rest in thee.\u201d On John Stuart Mill\u2014\u201ca mind\n that could not find God, and a heart that could not do without\n him\u201d\u2014see his Autobiography, and Browne, in Strivings for the Faith\n (Christ. Ev. Socy.), 259-287. Comte, in his later days,\n constructed an object of worship in Universal Humanity, and\n invented a ritual which Huxley calls \u201cCatholicism _minus_\n Christianity.\u201d See also Tyndall, Belfast Address: \u201cDid I not\n believe, said a great man to me once, that an Intelligence exists\n at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.\u201d\n Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1:505,506.\n\n The last line of Schiller\u2019s Pilgrim reads: \u201cUnd das Dort ist\n niemals hier.\u201d The finite never satisfies. Tennyson, Two Voices:\n \u201c\u2019Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for\n which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.\u201d Seth, Ethical\n Principles, 419\u2014\u201cA moral universe, an absolute moral Being, is the\n indispensable environment of the ethical life, without which it\n cannot attain to its perfect growth.... There is a moral _God_, or\n this is no _universe_.\u201d James, Will to Believe, 116\u2014\u201cA God is the\n most adequate possible object for minds framed like our own to\n conceive as lying at the root of the universe. Anything short of\n God is not a rational object, anything more than God is not\n possible, if man needs an object of knowledge, feeling, and will.\u201d\n\n Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 41\u2014\u201cTo speak of the Religion of the\n Unknowable, the Religion of Cosmism, the Religion of Humanity,\n where the personality of the First Cause is not recognized, is as\n unmeaning as it would be to speak of the love of a triangle or the\n rationality of the equator.\u201d It was said of Comte\u2019s system that,\n \u201cthe wine of the real presence being poured out, we are asked to\n adore the empty cup.\u201d \u201cWe want an object of devotion, and Comte\n presents us with a looking-glass\u201d (Martineau). Huxley said he\n would as soon adore a wilderness of apes as the Positivist\u2019s\n rationalized conception of humanity. It is only the ideal in\n humanity, the divine element in humanity that can be worshiped.\n And when we once conceive of this, we cannot be satisfied until we\n find it somewhere realized, as in Jesus Christ.\n\n Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 265-272\u2014Huxley believes that Evolution is\n \u201ca materialized logical process\u201d; that nothing endures save the\n flow of energy and \u201cthe rational order which pervades it.\u201d In the\n earlier part of this process, _nature_, there is no morality or\n benevolence. But the process ends by producing _man_, who can make\n progress only by waging moral war against the natural forces which\n impel him. He must be benevolent and just. Shall we not say, in\n spite of Mr. Huxley, that this shows what the nature of the system\n is, and that there must be a benevolent and just Being who\n ordained it? Martineau, Seat of Authority, 63-68\u2014\u201cThough the\n authority of the higher incentive is self-known, it cannot be\n self-created; for while it is in me, it is above me.... This\n authority to which conscience introduces me, though emerging in\n consciousness, is yet _objective_ to us all, and is necessarily\n referred to the nature of things, irrespective of the accidents of\n our mental constitution. It is not dependent on us, but\n independent. All minds born into the universe are ushered into the\n presence of a real righteousness, as surely as into a scene of\n actual space. Perception reveals _another_ than ourselves;\n conscience reveals _a higher_ than ourselves.\u201d\n\n We must freely grant, however, that this argument from man\u2019s\n aspirations has weight only upon the supposition that a wise,\n truthful, holy, and benevolent God exists, who has so constituted\n our minds that their thinking and their affections correspond to\n truth and to himself. An evil being might have so constituted us\n that all logic would lead us into error. The argument is therefore\n the development and expression of our intuitive idea of God.\n Luthardt, Fundamental Truths: \u201cNature is like a written document\n containing only consonants. It is we who must furnish the vowels\n that shall decipher it. Unless we bring with us the idea of God,\n we shall find nature but dumb.\u201d See also Pfleiderer, Die Religion,\n 1:174.\n\n\nA. _The defects of the Anthropological Argument are_: (_a_) It cannot\nprove a creator of the material universe. (_b_) It cannot prove the\ninfinity of God, since man from whom we argue is finite. (_c_) It cannot\nprove the mercy of God. But,\n\nB. _The value of the Argument_ is, that it assures us of the existence of\na personal Being, who rules us in righteousness, and who is the proper\nobject of supreme affection and service. But whether this Being is the\noriginal creator of all things, or merely the author of our own existence,\nwhether he is infinite or finite, whether he is a Being of simple\nrighteousness or also of mercy, this argument cannot assure us.\n\nAmong the arguments for the existence of God, however, we assign to this\nthe chief place, since it adds to the ideas of causative power (which we\nderived from the Cosmological Argument) and of contriving intelligence\n(which we derived from the Teleological Argument), the far wider ideas of\npersonality and righteous lordship.\n\n\n Sir Wm. Hamilton, Works of Reid, 2:974, note U; Lect. on Metaph.,\n 1:33\u2014\u201cThe only valid arguments for the existence of God and for\n the immortality of the soul rest upon the ground of man\u2019s moral\n nature\u201d; \u201ctheology is wholly dependent upon psychology, for with\n the proof of the moral nature of man stands or falls the proof of\n the existence of a Deity.\u201d But Diman, Theistic Argument, 244, very\n properly objects to making this argument from the nature of man\n the sole proof of Deity: \u201cIt should be rather used to show the\n attributes of the Being whose existence has been already proved\n from other sources\u201d; \u201chence the Anthropological Argument is as\n dependent upon the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments as they\n are upon it.\u201d\n\n Yet the Anthropological Argument is needed to supplement the\n conclusions of the two others. Those who, like Herbert Spencer,\n recognize an infinite and absolute Being, Power and Cause, may yet\n fail to recognize this being as spiritual and personal, simply\n because they do not recognize themselves as spiritual and personal\n beings, that is, do not recognize reason, conscience and free-will\n in man. Agnosticism in philosophy involves agnosticism in\n religion. R. K. Eccles: \u201cAll the most advanced languages\n capitalize the word \u2018God,\u2019 and the word \u2018I.\u2019 \u201d See Flint, Theism,\n 68; Mill, Criticism of Hamilton, 2:266; Dove, Logic of Christian\n Faith, 211-236, 261-299; Martineau, Types, Introd., 3; Cooke,\n Religion and Chemistry: \u201cGod is love; but nature could not prove\n it, and the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world in\n order to attest it.\u201d\n\n Everything in philosophy depends on where we begin, whether with\n nature or with self, whether with the necessary or with the free.\n In one sense, therefore, we should in practice begin with the\n Anthropological Argument, and then use the Cosmological and\n Teleological Arguments as warranting the application to nature of\n the conclusions which we have drawn from man. As God stands over\n against man in Conscience, and says to him: \u201cThou\u201d; so man stands\n over against God in Nature, and may say to him: \u201cThou.\u201d Mulford,\n Republic of God, 28\u2014\u201cAs the personality of man has its foundation\n in the personality of God, so the realization by man of his own\n personality always brings man nearer to God.\u201d Robert Browning:\n \u201cQuoth a young Sadducee: \u2018Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain\n we Have, as they tell us, souls?\u2019 \u2018Son, there is no reply!\u2019 The\n Rabbi bit his beard: \u2018Certain, a soul have _I_\u2014_We_ may have\n none,\u2019 he sneered. Thus Karshook, the Hiram\u2019s Hammer, The\n Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And\n struck the simple, solemn.\u201d\n\n It is very common at this place to treat of what are called the\n Historical and the Biblical Arguments for the existence of God\u2014the\n former arguing, from the unity of history, the latter arguing,\n from the unity of the Bible, that this unity must in each case\n have for its cause and explanation the existence of God. It is a\n sufficient reason for not discussing these arguments, that,\n without a previous belief in the existence of God, no one will see\n unity either in history or in the Bible. Turner, the painter,\n exhibited a picture which seemed all mist and cloud until he put a\n dab of scarlet into it. That gave the true point of view, and all\n the rest became intelligible. So Christ\u2019s coming and Christ\u2019s\n blood make intelligible both the Scriptures and human history. He\n carries in his girdle the key to all mysteries. Schopenhauer,\n knowing no Christ, admitted no philosophy of history. He regarded\n history as the mere fortuitous play of individual caprice. Pascal:\n \u201cJesus Christ is the centre of everything, and the object of\n everything, and he that does not know him knows nothing of nature,\n and nothing of himself.\u201d\n\n\n\nIV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and Necessary\nIdeas.\n\n\nThis argument infers the existence of God from the abstract and necessary\nideas of the human mind. It has three forms:\n\n1. That of Samuel Clarke. Space and time are attributes of substance or\nbeing. But space and time are respectively infinite and eternal. There\nmust therefore be an infinite and eternal substance or Being to whom these\nattributes belong.\n\nGillespie states the argument somewhat differently. Space and time are\nmodes of existence. But space and time are respectively infinite and\neternal. There must therefore be an infinite and eternal Being who\nsubsists in these modes. But we reply:\n\nSpace and time are neither attributes of substance nor modes of existence.\nThe argument, if valid, would prove that God is not mind but matter, for\nthat could not be mind, but only matter, of which space and time were\neither attributes or modes.\n\n\n The Ontological Argument is frequently called the _a priori_\n argument, that is, the argument from that which is logically\n prior, or earlier than experience, viz., our intuitive ideas. All\n the forms of the Ontological Argument are in this sense _a\n priori_. Space and time are _a priori_ ideas. See Samuel Clarke,\n Works, 2:521; Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God. _Per contra_,\n see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 364: Calderwood, Moral\n Philosophy, 226\u2014\u201cTo begin, as Clarke did, with the proposition\n that \u2018something has existed from eternity,\u2019 is virtually to\n propose an argument after having assumed what is to be proved.\n Gillespie\u2019s form of the _a priori_ argument, starting with the\n proposition \u2018infinity of extension is necessarily existing,\u2019 is\n liable to the same objection, with the additional disadvantage of\n attributing a property of matter to the Deity.\u201d\n\n H. B. Smith says that Brougham misrepresented Clarke: \u201cClarke\u2019s\n argument is in his sixth proposition, and supposes the existence\n proved in what goes before. He aims here to establish the\n infinitude and omnipresence of this First Being. He does not prove\n _existence_ from immensity.\u201d But we reply, neither can he prove\n the _infinity_ of God from the immensity of space. Space and time\n are neither substances nor attributes, but are rather relations;\n see Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 331-335; Cocker, Theistic\n Conception of the World, 66-96. The doctrine that space and time\n are attributes or modes of God\u2019s existence tends to materialistic\n pantheism like that of Spinoza, who held that \u201cthe one and simple\n substance\u201d (substantia una et unica) is known to us through the\n two attributes of thought and extension; mind = God in the mode of\n thought; matter = God in the mode of extension. Dove, Logic of the\n Christian Faith, 127, says well that an extended God is a material\n God; \u201cspace and time are attributes neither of matter nor mind\u201d;\n \u201cwe must carry the moral idea into the natural world, not the\n natural idea into the moral world.\u201d See also, Blunt, Dictionary\n Doct. and Hist. Theol., 740; Porter, Human Intellect, 567. H. M.\n Stanley, on Space and Science, in Philos. Rev., Nov.\n 1898:615\u2014\u201cSpace is not full of things, but things are spaceful....\n Space is a form of dynamic appearance.\u201d Prof. C. A. Strong: \u201cThe\n world composed of consciousness and other existences is not in\n space, though it may be in something of which space is the\n symbol.\u201d\n\n\n2. That of Descartes. We have the idea of an infinite and perfect Being.\nThis idea cannot be derived from imperfect and finite things. There must\ntherefore be an infinite and perfect Being who is its cause.\n\nBut we reply that this argument confounds the idea of the infinite with an\ninfinite idea. Man\u2019s idea of the infinite is not infinite but finite, and\nfrom a finite effect we cannot argue an infinite cause.\n\n\n This form of the Ontological Argument, while it is _a priori_, as\n based upon a necessary idea of the human mind, is, unlike the\n other forms of the same argument, _a posteriori_, as arguing from\n this idea, as an _effect_, to the existence of a Being who is its\n _cause_. _A posteriori_ argument = from that which is later to\n that which is earlier, that is, from effect to cause. The\n Cosmological, Teleological, and Anthropological Arguments are\n arguments _a posteriori_. Of this sort is the argument of\n Descartes; see Descartes, Meditation 3: \u201cH\u00e6c idea qu\u00e6 in nobis est\n requirit Deum pro causa; Deusque proinde existit.\u201d The idea in\n men\u2019s minds is the impression of the workman\u2019s name stamped\n indelibly on his work\u2014the shadow cast upon the human soul by that\n unseen One of whose being and presence it dimly informs us. Blunt,\n Dict. of Theol., 739; Saisset, Pantheism, 1:54\u2014\u201cDescartes sets out\n from a fact of consciousness, while Anselm sets out from an\n abstract conception\u201d; \u201cDescartes\u2019s argument might be considered a\n branch of the Anthropological or Moral Argument, but for the fact\n that this last proceeds from man\u2019s constitution rather than from\n his abstract ideas.\u201d See Bib. Sac., 1849:637.\n\n\n3. That of Anselm. We have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being. But\nexistence is an attribute of perfection. An absolutely perfect Being must\ntherefore exist.\n\nBut we reply that this argument confounds ideal existence with real\nexistence. Our ideas are not the measure of external reality.\n\n\n Anselm, Proslogion, 2\u2014\u201cId, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest\n esse in intellectu solo.\u201d See translation of the Proslogion, in\n Bib. Sac., 1851:529, 699; Kant, Critique, 368. The arguments of\n Descartes and Anselm, with Kant\u2019s reply, are given in their\n original form by Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:420-428. The\n major premise here is not that all perfect ideas imply the\n existence of the object which they represent, for then, as Kant\n objects, I might argue from my perfect idea of a $100 bill that I\n actually possessed the same, which would be far from the fact. So\n I have a perfect idea of a perfectly evil being, of a centaur, of\n nothing,\u2014but it does not follow that the evil being, that the\n centaur, that nothing, exists. The argument is rather from the\n idea of absolute and perfect Being\u2014of \u201cthat, no greater than which\n can be conceived.\u201d There can be but one such being, and there can\n be but one such idea.\n\n Yet, even thus understood, we cannot argue from the idea to the\n actual existence of such a being. Case, Physical Realism, 173\u2014\u201cGod\n is not an idea, and consequently cannot be inferred from mere\n ideas.\u201d Bowne, Philos. Theism, 43\u2014The Ontological Argument \u201conly\n points out that the idea of the perfect must include the idea of\n existence; but there is nothing to show that the self-consistent\n idea represents an objective reality.\u201d I can imagine the\n Sea-serpent, the Jinn of the Thousand and One Nights, \u201cThe\n Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their\n shoulders.\u201d The winged horse of Uhland possessed every possible\n virtue, and only one fault,\u2014it was dead. If every perfect idea\n implied the reality of its object, there might be horses with ten\n legs, and trees with roots in the air.\n\n \u201cAnselm\u2019s argument implies,\u201d says Fisher, in Journ. Christ.\n Philos., Jan. 1883:114, \u201cthat existence _in re_ is a constituent\n of the concept. It would conclude the existence of a being from\n the definition of a word. This inference is justified only on the\n basis of philosophical realism.\u201d Dove, Logic of the Christ. Faith,\n 141\u2014\u201cThe Ontological Argument is the algebraic formula of the\n universe, which leads to a valid conclusion with regard to real\n existence, only when we fill it in with objects with which we\n become acquainted in the arguments _a posteriori_.\u201d See also\n Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:331, Dogm. Theol., 1:221-241, and in Presb.\n Rev., April, 1884:212-227 (favoring the argument); Fisher, Essays,\n 574; Thompson, Christian Theism, 171; H. B. Smith, Introd. to\n Christ. Theol., 122; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:181-187; Studien\n und Kritiken, 1875:611-655.\n\n Dorner, in his Glaubenslehre, 1:197, gives us the best statement\n of the Ontological Argument: \u201cReason thinks of God as existing.\n Reason would not be reason, if it did not think of God as\n existing. Reason only is, upon the assumption that God is.\u201d But\n this is evidently not argument, but only vivid statement of the\n necessary assumption of the existence of an absolute Reason which\n conditions and gives validity to ours.\n\n\nAlthough this last must be considered the most perfect form of the\nOntological Argument, it is evident that it conducts us only to an ideal\nconclusion, not to real existence. In common with the two preceding forms\nof the argument, moreover, it tacitly assumes, as already existing in the\nhuman mind, that very knowledge of God\u2019s existence which it would derive\nfrom logical demonstration. It has value, therefore, simply as showing\nwhat God must be, if he exists at all.\n\nBut the existence of a Being indefinitely great, a personal Cause,\nContriver and Lawgiver, has been proved by the preceding arguments; for\nthe law of parsimony requires us to apply the conclusions of the first\nthree arguments to one Being, and not to many. To this one Being we may\nnow ascribe the infinity and perfection, the idea of which lies at the\nbasis of the Ontological Argument\u2014ascribe them, not because they are\ndemonstrably his, but because our mental constitution will not allow us to\nthink otherwise. Thus clothing him with all perfections which the human\nmind can conceive, and these in illimitable fullness, we have one whom we\nmay justly call God.\n\n\n McCosh, Div. Govt., 12, note\u2014\u201cIt is at this place, if we do not\n mistake, that the idea of the Infinite comes in. The capacity of\n the human mind to form such an idea, or rather its intuitive\n belief in an Infinite of which it feels that it cannot form an\n adequate conception, may be no proof (as Kant maintains) of the\n existence of an infinite Being; but it is, we are convinced, the\n means by which the mind is enabled to invest the Deity, shown on\n other grounds to exist, with the attributes of infinity, _i. e._,\n to look on his being, power, goodness, and all his perfections, as\n infinite.\u201d Even Flint, Theism, 68, who holds that we reach the\n existence of God by inference, speaks of \u201cnecessary conditions of\n thought and feeling, and ineradicable aspirations, which force on\n us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will\n neither permit us to deny these perfections to God, nor to ascribe\n them to any other being.\u201d Belief in God is not the conclusion of a\n demonstration, but the solution of a problem. Calderwood, Moral\n Philosophy, 226\u2014\u201cEither the whole question is assumed in starting,\n or the Infinite is not reached in concluding.\u201d\n\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 97-114, divides his proof into two\n parts: I. Evidence of the existence of God from the intellectual\n starting-point: The discovery of _Mind_ in the universe is made,\n 1. through the intelligibleness of the universe to us; 2. through\n the idea of cause; 3. through the presence of ends in the\n universe. II. Evidence of the existence of God from the religious\n starting-point: The discovery of the _good God_ is made, 1.\n through the religious nature of man; 2. through the great\n dilemma\u2014God the best, or the worst; 3. through the spiritual\n experience of men, especially in Christianity. So far as Dr.\n Clarke\u2019s proof is intended to be a statement, not of a primitive\n belief, but of a logical process, we must hold it to be equally\n defective with the three forms of proof which we have seen to\n furnish some corroborative evidence of God\u2019s existence. Dr. Clarke\n therefore does well to add: \u201cReligion was not produced by proof of\n God\u2019s existence, and will not be destroyed by its insufficiency to\n some minds. Religion existed before argument; in fact, it is the\n preciousness of religion that leads to the seeking for all\n possible confirmations of the reality of God.\u201d\n\n The three forms of proof already mentioned\u2014the Cosmological, the\n Teleological, and the Anthropological Arguments\u2014may be likened to\n the three arches of a bridge over a wide and rushing river. The\n bridge has only two defects, but these defects are very serious.\n The first is that one cannot get on to the bridge; the end toward\n the hither bank is wholly lacking; the bridge of logical argument\n cannot be entered upon except by assuming the validity of logical\n processes; this assumption takes for granted at the outset the\n existence of a God who has made our faculties to act correctly; we\n get on to the bridge, not by logical process, but only by a leap\n of intuition, and by assuming at the beginning the very thing\n which we set out to prove. The second defect of the so-called\n bridge of argument is that when one has once gotten on, he can\n never get off. The connection with the further bank is also\n lacking. All the premises from which we argue being finite, we are\n warranted in drawing only a finite conclusion. Argument cannot\n reach the Infinite, and only an infinite Being is worthy to be\n called God. We can get off from our logical bridge, not by logical\n process, but only by another and final leap of intuition, and by\n once more assuming the existence of the infinite Being whom we had\n so vainly sought to reach by mere argument. The process seems to\n be referred to in _Job 11:7\u2014_\u201cCanst thou by searching find out\n God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?\u201d\n\n\nAs a logical process this is indeed defective, since all logic as well as\nall observation depends for its validity upon the presupposed existence of\nGod, and since this particular process, even granting the validity of\nlogic in general, does not warrant the conclusion that God exists, except\nupon a second assumption that our abstract ideas of infinity and\nperfection are to be applied to the Being to whom argument has actually\nconducted us.\n\nBut although both ends of the logical bridge are confessedly wanting, the\nprocess may serve and does serve a more useful purpose than that of mere\ndemonstration, namely, that of awakening, explicating, and confirming a\nconviction which, though the most fundamental of all, may yet have been\npartially slumbering for lack of thought.\n\n\n Morell, Philos. Fragments, 177, 179\u2014\u201cWe can, in fact, no more\n prove the existence of a God by a logical argument, than we can\n prove the existence of an external world; but none the less may we\n obtain as strong a _practical_ conviction of the one, as the\n other.\u201d \u201cWe arrive at a scientific belief in the existence of God\n just as we do at any other possible human truth. We _assume_ it,\n as a hypothesis absolutely necessary to account for the phenomena\n of the universe; and then evidences from every quarter begin to\n converge upon it, until, in process of time, the common sense of\n mankind, cultivated and enlightened by ever accumulating\n knowledge, pronounces upon the validity of the hypothesis with a\n voice scarcely less decided and universal than it does in the case\n of our highest scientific convictions.\u201d\n\n Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 572\u2014\u201cWhat then is the\n purport and force of the several arguments for the existence of\n God? We reply that these proofs are the different modes in which\n faith expresses itself and seeks confirmation. In them faith, or\n the object of faith, is more exactly conceived and defined, and in\n them is found a corroboration, not arbitrary but substantial and\n valuable, of that faith which springs from the soul itself. Such\n proofs, therefore, are neither on the one hand sufficient to\n create and sustain faith, nor are they on the other hand to be set\n aside as of no value.\u201d A. J. Barrett: \u201cThe arguments are not so\n much a bridge in themselves, as they are guys, to hold firm the\n great suspension-bridge of intuition, by which we pass the gulf\n from man to God. Or, while they are not a ladder by which we may\n reach heaven, they are the Ossa on Pelion, from whose combined\n height we may descry heaven.\u201d\n\n Anselm: \u201cNegligentia mihi videtur, si postquam confirmati sumus in\n fide non studemus quod credimus intelligere.\u201d Bradley, Appearance\n and Reality: \u201cMetaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what\n we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an\n instinct.\u201d Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, lect.\n III\u2014\u201cBelief in a personal God is an instinctive judgment,\n progressively justified by reason.\u201d Knight, Essays in Philosophy,\n 241\u2014The arguments are \u201chistorical memorials of the efforts of the\n human race to vindicate to itself the existence of a reality of\n which it is conscious, but which it cannot perfectly define.\u201d H.\n Fielding, The Hearts of Men, 313\u2014\u201cCreeds are the grammar of\n religion. They are to religion what grammar is to speech. Words\n are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed\n afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse.\n As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must\n follow.\u201d Pascal: \u201cThe heart has reasons of its own which the\n reason does not know.\u201d Frances Power Cobbe: \u201cIntuitions are God\u2019s\n tuitions.\u201d On the whole subject, see Cudworth, Intel. System,\n 3:42; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 150 _sq._; Curtis, Human\n Element in Inspiration, 242; Peabody, in Andover Rev., July, 1884;\n Hahn, History of Arguments for Existence of God; Lotze, Philos. of\n Religion, 8-34; Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:53-71.\n\n Hegel, in his Logic, page 3, speaking of the disposition to regard\n the proofs of God\u2019s existence as the only means of producing faith\n in God, says: \u201cSuch a doctrine would find its parallel, if we said\n that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of\n the chemical, botanical and zo\u00f6logical qualities of our food; and\n that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of\n anatomy and physiology.\u201d It is a mistake to suppose that there can\n be no religious _life_ without a correct _theory_ of life. Must I\n refuse to drink water or to breathe air, until I can manufacture\n both for myself? Some things are given to us. Among these things\n are \u201cgrace and truth\u201d_ (John 1:17; __cf.__ 9)_. But there are ever\n those who are willing to take nothing as a free gift, and who\n insist on working out all knowledge, as well as all salvation, by\n processes of their own. Pelagianism, with its denial of the\n doctrines of grace, is but the further development of a\n rationalism which refuses to accept primitive truths unless these\n can be logically demonstrated. Since the existence of the soul, of\n the world, and of God cannot be proved in this way, rationalism is\n led to curtail, or to misinterpret, the deliverances of\n consciousness, and hence result certain systems now to be\n mentioned.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.\n\n\nAny correct explanation of the universe must postulate an intuitive\nknowledge of the existence of the external world, of self, and of God. The\ndesire for scientific unity, however, has occasioned attempts to reduce\nthese three factors to one, and according as one or another of the three\nhas been regarded as the all-inclusive principle, the result has been\nMaterialism, Materialistic Idealism, or Idealistic Pantheism. This\nscientific impulse is better satisfied by a system which we may designate\nas Ethical Monism.\n\n\n We may summarize the present chapter as follows: 1. _Materialism_:\n Universe = Atoms. Reply: Atoms can do nothing without force, and\n can be nothing (intelligible) without ideas. 2. _Materialistic\n Idealism_: Universe = Force + Ideas. Reply: Ideas belong to Mind,\n and Force can be exerted only by Will. 3. _Idealistic Pantheism_:\n Universe = Immanent and Impersonal Mind and Will. Reply: Spirit in\n man shows that the Infinite Spirit must be Transcendent and\n Personal Mind and Will. We are led from these three forms of error\n to a conclusion which we may denominate 4. _Ethical Monism_:\n Universe = Finite, partial, graded manifestation of the divine\n Life; Matter being God\u2019s self-limitation under the law of\n necessity, Humanity being God\u2019s self-limitation under the law of\n freedom, Incarnation and Atonement being God\u2019s self-limitations\n under the law of grace. Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of\n one Substance, Principle, or Ground of Being, is consistent with\n Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine that the soul is personally\n distinct from matter on the one hand and from God on the other.\n\n\n\nI. Materialism.\n\n\nMaterialism is that method of thought which gives priority to matter,\nrather than to mind, in its explanations of the universe. Upon this view,\nmaterial atoms constitute the ultimate and fundamental reality of which\nall things, rational and irrational, are but combinations and phenomena.\nForce is regarded as a universal and inseparable property of matter.\n\nThe element of truth in materialism is the reality of the external world.\nIts error is in regarding the external world as having original and\nindependent existence, and in regarding mind as its product.\n\n\n Materialism regards atoms as the bricks of which the material\n universe, the house we inhabit, is built. Sir William Thomson\n (Lord Kelvin) estimates that, if a drop of water were magnified to\n the size of our earth, the atoms of which it consists would\n certainly appear larger than boy\u2019s marbles, and yet would be\n smaller than billiard balls. Of these atoms, all things, visible\n and invisible, are made. Mind, with all its activities, is a\n combination or phenomenon of atoms. \u201cMan ist was er iszt: ohne\n Phosphor kein Gedanke\u201d\u2014\u201cOne _is_ what he _eats_: without\n phosphorus, no thought.\u201d Ethics is a bill of fare; and worship,\n like heat, is a mode of motion. Agassiz, however, wittily asked:\n \u201cAre fishermen, then, more intelligent than farmers, because they\n eat so much fish, and therefore take in more phosphorus?\u201d\n\n It is evident that much is here attributed to atoms which really\n belongs to force. Deprive atoms of force, and all that remains is\n extension, which = space = zero. Moreover, \u201cif atoms _are_\n extended, they cannot be ultimate, for extension implies\n divisibility, and that which is conceivably divisible cannot be a\n philosophical ultimate. But, if atoms _are not_ extended, then\n even an infinite multiplication and combination of them could not\n produce an extended substance. Furthermore, an atom that is\n neither extended substance nor thinking substance is\n inconceivable. The real ultimate is force, and this force cannot\n be exerted by nothing, but, as we shall hereafter see, can be\n exerted only by a personal Spirit, for this alone possesses the\n characteristics of reality, namely, definiteness, unity, and\n activity.\u201d\n\n Not only force but also intelligence must be attributed to atoms,\n before they can explain any operation of nature. Herschel says not\n only that \u201cthe force of gravitation seems like that of a universal\n will,\u201d but that the atoms themselves, in recognizing each other in\n order to combine, show a great deal of \u201cpresence of mind.\u201d Ladd,\n Introd. to Philosophy, 269\u2014\u201cA distinguished astronomer has said\n that every body in the solar system is behaving as if it knew\n precisely how it ought to behave in consistency with its own\n nature, and with the behavior of every other body in the same\n system.... Each atom has danced countless millions of miles, with\n countless millions of different partners, many of which required\n an important modification of its mode of motion, without ever\n departing from the correct step or the right time.\u201d J. P. Cooke,\n Credentials of Science, 104, 177, suggests that something more\n than atoms is needed to explain the universe. A correlating\n Intelligence and Will must be assumed. Atoms by themselves would\n be like a heap of loose nails which need to be magnetized if they\n are to hold together. All structures would be resolved, and all\n forms of matter would disappear, if the Presence which sustains\n them were withdrawn. The atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is\n \u201cparvus in suo genere deus\u201d\u2014\u201ca little god in its nature\u201d\u2014only\n because it is the expression of the mind and will of an immanent\n God.\n\n Plato speaks of men who are \u201cdazzled by too near a look at\n material things.\u201d They do not perceive that these very material\n things, since they can be interpreted only in terms of spirit,\n must themselves be essentially spiritual. Materialism is the\n explanation of a world of which we know something\u2014the world of\n mind\u2014by a world of which we know next to nothing\u2014the world of\n matter. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 297, 298\u2014\u201cHow about your material\n atoms and brain-molecules? They have no real existence save as\n objects of thought, and therefore the very thought, which you say\n your atoms produce, turns out to be the essential precondition of\n their own existence.\u201d With this agree the words of Dr. Ladd:\n \u201cKnowledge of matter involves repeated activities of sensation and\n reflection, of inductive and deductive inference, of intuitional\n belief in substance. These are all activities of mind. Only as the\n mind has a self-conscious life, is any knowledge of what matter\n is, or can do, to be gained.... Everything is real which is the\n permanent subject of changing states. That which touches, feels,\n sees, is more real than that which is touched, felt, seen.\u201d\n\n H. N. Gardner, Presb. Rev., 1885:301, 665, 666\u2014\u201cMind gives to\n matter its chief meaning,\u2014hence matter alone can never explain the\n universe.\u201d Gore, Incarnation, 31\u2014\u201cMind is not the _product_ of\n nature, but the necessary _constituent_ of nature, considered as\n an ordered knowable system.\u201d Fraser, Philos. of Theism: \u201cAn\n immoral act must originate in the immoral agent; a physical effect\n is not _known_ to originate in its physical cause.\u201d Matter,\n inorganic and organic, presupposes mind; but it is not true that\n mind presupposes matter. LeConte: \u201cIf I could remove your brain\n cap, what would I see? Only physical changes. But you\u2014what do you\n perceive? Consciousness, thought, emotion, will. Now take external\n nature, the Cosmos. The observer from the outside sees only\n physical phenomena. But must there not be in this case also\u2014on the\n other side\u2014psychical phenomena, a Self, a Person, a Will?\u201d\n\n The impossibility of finding in matter, regarded as mere atoms,\n any of the attributes of a cause, has led to a general abandonment\n of this old Materialism of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius,\n Condillac, Holbach, Feuerbach, B\u00fcchner; and Materialistic Idealism\n has taken its place, which instead of regarding force as a\n property of matter, regards matter as a manifestation of force.\n From this section we therefore pass to Materialistic Idealism, and\n inquire whether the universe can be interpreted simply as a system\n of force and of ideas. A quarter of a century ago, John Tyndall,\n in his opening address as President of the British Association at\n Belfast, declared that in matter was to be found the promise and\n potency of every form of life. But in 1898, Sir William Crookes,\n in his address as President of that same British Association,\n reversed the apothegm, and declared that in life he saw the\n promise and potency of every form of matter. See Lange, History of\n Materialism; Janet, Materialism; Fabri, Materialismus; Herzog,\n Encyclop\u00e4die, art.: Materialismus; but esp., Stallo, Modern\n Physics, 148-170.\n\n\nIn addition to the general error indicated above, we object to this system\nas follows:\n\n1. In knowing matter, the mind necessarily judges itself to be different\nin kind, and higher in rank, than the matter which it knows.\n\n\n We here state simply an intuitive conviction. The mind, in using\n its physical organism and through it bringing external nature into\n its service, recognizes itself as different from and superior to\n matter. See Martineau, quoted in Brit. Quar., April, 1882:173, and\n the article of President Thomas Hill in the Bibliotheca Sacra,\n April, 1852:353\u2014\u201cAll that is really given by the act of\n sense-perception is the existence of the conscious self, floating\n in boundless space and boundless time, surrounded and sustained by\n boundless power. The material moved, which we at first think the\n great reality, is only the shadow of a real being, which is\n immaterial.\u201d Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 317\u2014\u201cImagine an\n infinitesimal being in the brain, watching the action of the\n molecules, but missing the thought. So science observes the\n universe, but misses God.\u201d Hebberd, in Journ. Spec. Philos.,\n April, 1886:135.\n\n Robert Browning, \u201cthe subtlest assertor of the soul in song,\u201d\n makes the Pope, in The Ring and the Book, say: \u201cMind is not\n matter, nor from matter, but above.\u201d So President Francis Wayland:\n \u201cWhat is mind?\u201d \u201cNo matter.\u201d \u201cWhat is matter?\u201d \u201cNever mind.\u201d\n Sully, The Human Mind, 2:369\u2014\u201cConsciousness is a reality wholly\n disparate from material processes, and cannot therefore be\n resolved into these. Materialism makes that which is immediately\n known (our mental states) subordinate to that which is only\n indirectly or inferentially known (external things). Moreover, a\n material entity existing _per se_ out of relation to a cogitant\n mind is an absurdity.\u201d As materialists work out their theory,\n their so-called matter grows more and more ethereal, until at last\n a stage is reached when it cannot be distinguished from what\n others call spirit. Martineau: \u201cThe matter they describe is so\n exceedingly clever that it is up to anything, even to writing\n Hamlet and discovering its own evolution. In short, but for the\n spelling of its name, it does not seem to differ appreciably from\n our old friends, Mind and God.\u201d A. W. Momerie, in Christianity and\n Evolution, 54\u2014\u201cA being conscious of his unity cannot possibly be\n formed out of a number of atoms unconscious of their diversity.\n Any one who thinks this possible is capable of asserting that half\n a dozen fools might be compounded into a single wise man.\u201d\n\n\n2. Since the mind\u2019s attributes of (_a_) continuous identity, (_b_)\nself-activity, (_c_) unrelatedness to space, are different in kind and\nhigher in rank than the attributes of matter, it is rational to conclude\nthat mind is itself different in kind from matter and higher in rank than\nmatter.\n\n\n This is an argument from specific qualities to that which\n underlies and explains the qualities. (_a_) Memory proves personal\n identity. This is not an identity of material atoms, for atoms\n change. The molecules that come cannot remember those that depart.\n Some immutable part in the brain? organized or unorganized?\n Organized decays; unorganized = soul. (_b_) Inertia shows that\n matter is not self-moving. It acts only as it is acted upon. A\n single atom would never move. Two portions are necessary, and\n these, in order to useful action, require adjustment by a power\n which does not belong to matter. Evolution of the universe\n inexplicable, unless matter were first moved by some power outside\n itself. See Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, 92. (_c_) The highest\n activities of mind are independent of known physical conditions.\n Mind controls and subdues the body. It does not cease to grow when\n the growth of the body ceases. When the body nears dissolution,\n the mind often asserts itself most strikingly.\n\n Kant: \u201cUnity of apprehension is possible on account of the\n transcendental unity of self-consciousness.\u201d I get my idea of\n unity from the indivisible self. Stout, Manual of Psychology,\n 53\u2014\u201cSo far as matter exists independently of its presentation to a\n cognitive subject, it cannot have material properties, such as\n extension, hardness, color, weight, etc.... The world of material\n phenomena presupposes a system of immaterial agency. In this\n immaterial system the individual consciousness originates. This\n agency, some say, is _thought_, others _will_.\u201d A. J. Dubois, in\n Century Magazine, Dec. 1894:228\u2014Since each thought involves a\n molecular movement in the brain, and this moves the whole\n universe, mind is the secret of the universe, and we should\n interpret nature as the expression of underlying purpose. Science\n is mind following the traces of mind. There can be no mind without\n antecedent mind. That all human beings have the same mental modes\n shows that these modes are not due simply to environment. Bowne:\n \u201cThings act upon the mind and the mind reacts with knowledge.\n Knowing is not a passive receiving, but an active construing.\u201d\n Wundt: \u201cWe are compelled to admit that the physical development is\n not the cause, but much more the effect, of psychical\n development.\u201d\n\n Paul Carus, Soul of Man, 52-64, defines soul as \u201cthe form of an\n organism,\u201d and memory as \u201cthe psychical aspect of the preservation\n of form in living substance.\u201d This seems to give priority to the\n organism rather than to the soul, regardless of the fact that\n without soul no organism is conceivable. Clay cannot be the\n ancestor of the potter, nor stone the ancestor of the mason, nor\n wood the ancestor of the carpenter. W. N. Clarke, Christian\n Theology, 99\u2014\u201cThe intelligibleness of the universe to us is strong\n and ever present evidence that there is an all-pervading rational\n Mind, from which the universe received its character.\u201d We must add\n to the maxim, \u201cCogito, ergo sum,\u201d the other maxim, \u201cIntelligo,\n ergo Deus est.\u201d Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:273\u2014\u201cThe whole\n idealistic philosophy of modern times is in fact only the carrying\n out and grounding of the conviction that Nature is ordered by\n Spirit and for Spirit, as a subservient means for its eternal\n ends; that it is therefore not, as the heathen naturalism thought,\n the one and all, the last and highest of things, but has the\n Spirit, and the moral Ends over it, as its Lord and Master.\u201d The\n consciousness by which things are known precedes the things\n themselves, in the order of logic, and therefore cannot be\n explained by them or derived from them. See Porter, Human\n Intellect, 22, 131, 132. McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,\n chap. on Materialism; Divine Government, 71-94; Intuitions,\n 140-145. Hopkins, Study of Man, 53-56; Morell, Hist. of\n Philosophy, 318-334; Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 403; Theol.\n Eclectic, 6:555; Appleton, Works, 1:151-154; Calderwood, Moral\n Philos., 235; Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725, and synopsis, in\n Bap. Quar., July, 1873:380.\n\n\n3. Mind rather than matter must therefore be regarded as the original and\nindependent entity, unless it can be scientifically demonstrated that mind\nis material in its origin and nature. But all attempts to explain the\npsychical from the physical, or the organic from the inorganic, are\nacknowledged failures. The most that can be claimed is, that psychical are\nalways accompanied by physical changes, and that the inorganic is the\nbasis and support of the organic. Although the precise connection between\nthe mind and the body is unknown, the fact that the continuity of physical\nchanges is unbroken in times of psychical activity renders it certain that\nmind is not transformed physical force. If the facts of sensation indicate\nthe dependence of mind upon body, the facts of volition equally indicate\nthe dependence of body upon mind.\n\n\n The chemist can produce _organic_, but not _organized_,\n substances. The _life_ cannot be produced from matter. Even in\n living things progress is secured only by plan. Multiplication of\n desired advantage, in the Darwinian scheme, requires a selecting\n thought; in other words the natural selection is artificial\n selection after all. John Fiske, Destiny of the Creature,\n 109\u2014\u201cCerebral physiology tells us that, during the present life,\n although thought and feeling are always manifested in connection\n with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought\n and feeling be in any sense the product of matter. Nothing could\n be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis,\n that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is\n not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What\n goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular\n movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way\n correlated, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants.\u201d\n\n Leibnitz\u2019s \u201cpre\u00ebstablished harmony\u201d indicates the difficulty of\n defining the relation between mind and matter. They are like two\n entirely disconnected clocks, the one of which has a dial and\n indicates the hour by its hands, while the other without a dial\n simultaneously indicates the same hour by its striking apparatus.\n To Leibnitz the world is an aggregate of atomic souls leading\n absolutely separate lives. There is no real action of one upon\n another. Everything in the monad is the development of its\n individual unstimulated activity. Yet there is a pre\u00ebstablished\n harmony of them all, arranged from the beginning by the Creator.\n The internal development of each monad is so adjusted to that of\n all the other monads, as to produce the false impression that they\n are mutually influenced by each other (see Johnson, in Andover\n Rev., Apl. 1890:407, 408). Leibnitz\u2019s theory involves the complete\n rejection of the freedom of the human will in the libertarian\n sense. To escape from this arbitrary connection of mind and matter\n in Leibnitz\u2019s pre\u00ebstablished harmony, Spinoza rejected the\n Cartesian doctrine of two God-created substances, and maintained\n that there is but one fundamental substance, namely, God himself\n (see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 172).\n\n There is an increased flow of blood to the head in times of mental\n activity. Sometimes, in intense heat of literary composition, the\n blood fairly surges through the brain. No diminution, but further\n increase, of physical activity accompanies the greatest efforts of\n mind. Lay a man upon a balance; fire a pistol shot or inject\n suddenly a great thought into his mind; at once he will tip the\n balance, and tumble upon his head. Romanes, Mind and Motion,\n 21\u2014\u201cConsciousness causes physical changes, but not _vice versa_.\n To say that mind is a function of motion is to say that mind is a\n function of itself, since motion exists only for mind. Better\n suppose the physical and the psychical to be only one, as in the\n violin sound and vibration are one. Volition is a cause in nature\n because it has cerebration for its obverse and inseparable side.\n But if there is no motion without mind, then there can be no\n universe without God.\u201d... 34\u2014\u201cBecause within the limits of human\n experience mind is only known as associated with brain, it does\n not follow that mind cannot exist without brain. Helmholtz\u2019s\n explanation of the effect of one of Beethoven\u2019s sonatas on the\n brain may be perfectly correct, but the explanation of the effect\n given by a musician may be equally correct within its category.\u201d\n\n Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1:\u00a7 56\u2014\u201cTwo things,\n mind and nervous action, exist together, but we cannot imagine how\n they are related\u201d (see review of Spencer\u2019s Psychology, in N.\n Englander, July, 1873). Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 120\u2014\u201cThe\n passage from the physics of the brain to the facts of\n consciousness is unthinkable.\u201d Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion,\n 95\u2014\u201cThe metamorphosis of vibrations into conscious ideas is a\n miracle, in comparison with which the floating of iron or the\n turning of water into wine is easily credible.\u201d Bain, Mind and\n Body, 131\u2014There is no break in the physical continuity. See Brit.\n Quar., Jan. 1874; art. by Herbert, on Mind and the Science of\n Energy; McCosh, Intuitions, 145; Talbot, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1871.\n On Geulincx\u2019s \u201coccasional causes\u201d and Descartes\u2019s dualism, see\n Martineau, Types, 144, 145, 156-158, and Study, 2:77.\n\n\n4. The materialistic theory, denying as it does the priority of spirit,\ncan furnish no sufficient cause for the highest features of the existing\nuniverse, namely, its personal intelligences, its intuitive ideas, its\nfree-will, its moral progress, its beliefs in God and immortality.\n\n\n Herbert, Modern Realism Examined: \u201cMaterialism has no physical\n evidence of the existence of consciousness in others. As it\n declares our fellow men to be destitute of free volition, so it\n should declare them destitute of consciousness; should call them,\n as well as brutes, pure automata. If physics are all, there is no\n God, but there is also no man, existing.\u201d Some of the early\n followers of Descartes used to kick and beat their dogs, laughing\n meanwhile at their cries and calling them the \u201ccreaking of the\n machine.\u201d Huxley, who calls the brutes \u201cconscious automata,\u201d\n believes in the gradual banishment, from all regions of human\n thought, of what we call spirit and spontaneity: \u201cA spontaneous\n act is an absurdity; it is simply an effect that is uncaused.\u201d\n\n James, Psychology, 1:149\u2014\u201cThe girl in Midshipman Easy could not\n excuse the illegitimacy of her child by saying that \u2018it was a very\n small one.\u2019 And consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate\n birth in any philosophy that starts without it, and yet professes\n to explain all facts by continued evolution.... Materialism denies\n reality to almost all the impulses which we most cherish. Hence it\n will fail of universal adoption.\u201d Clerk Maxwell, Life, 391\u2014\u201cThe\n atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking\n about, and it is strange to find a number of them combining to\n form a man of feeling.... 426\u2014I have looked into most\n philosophical systems, and I have seen none that will work without\n a God.\u201d President E. B. Andrews: \u201cMind is the only substantive\n thing in this universe, and all else is adjective. Matter is not\n primordial, but is a function of spirit.\u201d Theodore Parker: \u201cMan is\n the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds\n nothing so tall or grand as himself, nothing so valuable to him.\n The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope\u2014the star\n that is looking, not looked after, nor looked at.\u201d\n\n Materialism makes men to be \u201ca serio-comic procession of wax\n figures or of cunning casts in clay\u201d (Bowne). Man is \u201cthe\n cunningest of clocks.\u201d But if there were nothing but matter, there\n could be no materialism, for a system of thought, like\n materialism, implies consciousness. Martineau, Types, preface,\n xii, xiii\u2014\u201cIt was the irresistible pleading of the moral\n consciousness which first drove me to rebel against the limits of\n the merely scientific conception. It became incredible to me that\n nothing was possible except the actual.... Is there then no _ought\n to be_, other than _what is_?\u201d Dewey, Psychology, 84\u2014\u201cA world\n without ideal elements would be one in which the home would be\n four walls and a roof to keep out cold and wet; the table a mess\n for animals; and the grave a hole in the ground.\u201d Omar Khayy\u00e1m,\n Rubaiyat, stanza 72\u2014\u201cAnd that inverted bowl they call the Sky,\n Whereunder crawling coop\u2019d we live and die, Lift not your hands to\n It for help\u2014for it As impotently moves as you or I.\u201d Victor Hugo:\n \u201cYou say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers?\n Why then is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to\n fail? Winter is on my head, and eternal spring is in my heart....\n The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear the immortal\n symphonies of the worlds which invite me.\u201d\n\n Diman, Theistic Argument, 348\u2014\u201cMaterialism can never explain the\n fact that matter is always combined with force. Co\u00f6rdinate\n principles? then dualism, instead of monism. Force cause of\n matter? then we preserve unity, but destroy materialism; for we\n trace matter to an immaterial source. Behind multiplicity of\n natural forces we must postulate some single power\u2014which can be\n nothing but co\u00f6rdinating mind.\u201d Mark Hopkins sums up Materialism\n in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1879:490\u2014\u201c1. Man, who is a person, is made\n by a thing, _i. e._, matter. 2. Matter is to be worshiped as man\u2019s\n maker, if anything is to be (_Rom. 1:25_). 3. Man is to worship\n himself\u2014his God is his belly.\u201d See also Martineau, Religion and\n Materialism, 25-31, Types, 1: preface, xii, xiii, and Study,\n 1:248, 250, 345; Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,\n 145-161; Buchanan, Modern Atheism, 247, 248; McCosh, in\n International Rev., Jan. 1895; Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1875, art.: Man\n Transcorporeal; Calderwood, Relations of Mind and Brain; Laycock,\n Mind and Brain; Diman, Theistic Argument, 358; Wilkinson, in\n Present Day Tracts, 3:no. 17; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:487-499; A.\n H. Strong, Philos. and Relig., 31-38.\n\n\n\nII. Materialistic Idealism.\n\n\nIdealism proper is that method of thought which regards all knowledge as\nconversant only with affections of the percipient mind.\n\nIts element of truth is the fact that these affections of the percipient\nmind are the conditions of our knowledge. Its error is in denying that\nthrough these and in these we know that which exists independently of our\nconsciousness.\n\nThe idealism of the present day is mainly a materialistic idealism. It\ndefines matter and mind alike in terms of sensation, and regards both as\nopposite sides or successive manifestations of one underlying and\nunknowable force.\n\n\n Modern subjective idealism is the development of a principle found\n as far back as Locke. Locke derived all our knowledge from\n sensation; the mind only combines ideas which sensation furnishes,\n but gives no material of its own. Berkeley held that externally we\n can be sure only of sensations,\u2014cannot be sure that any external\n world exists apart from mind. Berkeley\u2019s idealism, however, was\n objective; for he maintained that while things do not exist\n independently of consciousness, they do exist independently of\n _our_ consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a correct\n philosophy takes the place of a mindless external world as the\n cause of our ideas. Kant, in like manner, held to existences\n outside of our own minds, although he regarded these existences as\n unknown and unknowable. Over against these forms of objective\n idealism we must put the subjective idealism of Hume, who held\n that internally also we cannot be sure of anything but mental\n phenomena; we know thoughts, feelings and volitions, but we do not\n know mental substance within, any more than we know material\n substance without; our ideas are a string of beads, without any\n string; we need no cause for these ideas, in an external world, a\n soul, or God. Mill, Spencer, Bain and Tyndall are Humists, and it\n is their subjective idealism which we oppose.\n\n All these regard the material atom as a mere centre of force, or a\n hypothetical cause of sensations. Matter is therefore a\n manifestation of force, as to the old materialism force was a\n property of matter. But if matter, mind and God are nothing but\n sensations, then the body itself is nothing but sensations. There\n is no _body_ to have the sensations, and no _spirit_, either human\n or divine, to produce them. John Stuart Mill, in his Examination\n of Sir William Hamilton, 1:234-253, makes sensations the only\n original sources of knowledge. He defines matter as \u201ca permanent\n possibility of sensation,\u201d and mind as \u201ca series of feelings aware\n of itself.\u201d So Huxley calls matter \u201conly a name for the unknown\n cause of the states of consciousness\u201d; although he also declares:\n \u201cIf I am compelled to choose between the materialism of a man like\n B\u00fcchner and the idealism of Berkeley, I would have to agree with\n Berkeley.\u201d He would hold to the priority of matter, and yet regard\n matter as wholly ideal. Since John Stuart Mill, of all the\n materialistic idealists, gives the most precise definitions of\n matter and of mind, we attempt to show the inadequacy of his\n treatment.\n\n The most complete refutation of subjective idealism is that of Sir\n William Hamilton, in his Metaphysics, 348-372, and Theories of\n Sense-perception\u2014the reply to Brown. See condensed statement of\n Hamilton\u2019s view, with estimate and criticism, in Porter, Human\n Intellect, 236-240, and on Idealism, 129, 132. Porter holds that\n original perception gives us simply affections of our own\n sensorium; as cause of these, we gain knowledge of extended\n externality. So Sir William Hamilton: \u201cSensation proper has no\n object but a subject-object.\u201d But both Porter and Hamilton hold\n that through these sensations we know that which exists\n independently of our sensations. Hamilton\u2019s natural realism,\n however, was an exaggeration of the truth. Bowne, Introd. to\n Psych. Theory, 257, 258\u2014\u201cIn Sir William Hamilton\u2019s desire to have\n no go-betweens in perception, he was forced to maintain that every\n sensation is felt where it seems to be, and hence that the mind\n fills out the entire body. Likewise he had to affirm that the\n object in vision is not the thing, but the rays of light, and even\n the object itself had, at last, to be brought into consciousness.\n Thus he reached the absurdity that the true object in perception\n is something of which we are totally unconscious.\u201d Surely we\n cannot be immediately conscious of what is outside of\n consciousness. James, Psychology, 1:11\u2014\u201cThe terminal organs are\n telephones, and brain-cells are the receivers at which the mind\n listens.\u201d Berkeley\u2019s view is to be found in his Principles of\n Human Knowledge, \u00a7 18 _sq._ See also Presb. Rev., Apl.\n 1885:301-315; Journ. Spec. Philos., 1884:246-260, 383-399;\n Tulloch, Mod. Theories, 360, 361; Encyc. Britannica, art.:\n Berkeley.\n\n There is, however, an idealism which is not open to Hamilton\u2019s\n objections, and to which most recent philosophers give their\n adhesion. It is the objective idealism of Lotze. It argues that we\n know nothing of the extended world except through the forces which\n impress our nervous organism. These forces take the form of\n vibrations of air or ether, and we interpret them as sound, light,\n or motion, according as they affect our nerves of hearing, sight,\n or touch. But the only force which we immediately know is that of\n our own wills, and we can either not understand matter at all or\n we must understand it as the product of a will comparable to our\n own. Things are simply \u201cconcreted laws of action,\u201d or divine ideas\n to which permanent reality has been given by divine will. What we\n perceive in the normal exercise of our faculties has existence not\n only for us but for all intelligent beings and for God himself: in\n other words, our idealism is not subjective, but objective. We\n have seen in the previous section that atoms cannot explain the\n universe,\u2014they presuppose both ideas and force. We now see that\n this force presupposes will, and these ideas presuppose mind. But,\n as it still may be claimed that this mind is not self-conscious\n mind and that this will is not personal will, we pass in the next\n section to consider Idealistic Pantheism, of which these claims\n are characteristic. Materialistic Idealism, in truth, is but a\n half-way house between Materialism and Pantheism, in which no\n permanent lodging is to be found by the logical intelligence.\n\n Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 152\u2014\u201cThe objectivity of our\n cognition consists therefore in this, that it is not a meaningless\n play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a world whose\n coherency is ordered in pursuance of the injunction of the sole\n Reality in the world, to wit, the Good. Our cognition thus\n possesses more of truth than if it copied exactly a world that has\n no value in itself. Although it does not comprehend in what manner\n all that is phenomenon is presented to the view, still it\n understands what is the meaning of it all; and is like to a\n spectator who comprehends the \u00e6sthetic significance of that which\n takes place on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing\n essential if he were to see besides the machinery by means of\n which the changes are effected on the stage.\u201d Professor C. A.\n Strong: \u201cPerception is a shadow thrown upon the mind by a\n thing-in-itself. The shadow is the symbol of the thing; and, as\n shadows are soulless and dead, physical objects may seem soulless\n and dead, while the reality symbolized is never so soulful and\n alive. Consciousness is reality. The only existence of which we\n can conceive is mental in its nature. All existence _for_\n consciousness is existence _of_ consciousness. The horse\u2019s shadow\n accompanies him, but it does not help him to draw the cart. The\n brain-event is simply the mental state itself regarded from the\n point of view of the perception.\u201d\n\n Aristotle: \u201cSubstance is in its nature prior to relation\u201d = there\n can be no relation without things to be related. Fichte:\n \u201cKnowledge, just because it is knowledge, is not reality,\u2014it comes\n not first, but second.\u201d Veitch, Knowing and Being, 216, 217, 292,\n 293\u2014\u201cThought can do nothing, except as it is a synonym for\n Thinker.... Neither the finite nor the infinite consciousness,\n alone or together, can constitute an object external, or explain\n its existence. The existence of a thing logically precedes the\n perception of it. Perception is not creation. It is not the\n thinking that makes the ego, but the ego that makes the thinking.\u201d\n Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: \u201cDivine thoughts presuppose a\n divine Being. God\u2019s thoughts do not constitute the real world. The\n real force does not lie in them,\u2014it lies in the divine Being, as\n living, active Will.\u201d Here was the fundamental error of Hegel,\n that he regarded the Universe as mere Idea, and gave little\n thought to the Love and the Will that constitute it. See John\n Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, 1:75; 2:80; Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1872:\n art. on Huxley; Lowndes, Philos. Primary Beliefs, 115-143; Atwater\n (on Ferrier), in Princeton Rev., 1857:258, 280; Cousin, Hist.\n Philosophy, 2:239-343; Veitch\u2019s Hamilton, (Blackwood\u2019s Philos.\n Classics,) 176, 191; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 58-74.\n\n\nTo this view we make the following objections:\n\n1. Its definition of matter as a \u201cpermanent possibility of sensation\u201d\ncontradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of\nmatter, we have direct knowledge of substance as underlying phenomena, as\ndistinct from our sensations, and as external to the mind which\nexperiences these sensations.\n\n\n Bowne, Metaphysics, 432\u2014\u201cHow the possibility of an odor and a\n flavor can be the cause of the yellow color of an orange is\n probably unknowable, except to a mind that can see that two and\n two may make five.\u201d See Iverach\u2019s Philosophy of Spencer Examined,\n in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 29. Martineau, Study, 1:102-112\u2014\u201cIf\n external impressions are telegraphed to the brain, intelligence\n must receive the message at the beginning as well as deliver it at\n the end.... It is the external object which gives the possibility,\n not the possibility which gives the external object. The mind\n cannot make both its _cognita_ and its _cognitio_. It cannot\n dispense with standing-ground for its own feet, or with atmosphere\n for its own wings.\u201d Professor Charles A. Strong: \u201cKant held to\n things-in-themselves back of physical phenomena, as well as to\n things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena; he thought\n things-in-themselves back of physical might be identical with\n things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena. And since mental\n phenomena, on this theory, are not specimens of reality, and\n reality manifests itself indifferently through them and through\n physical phenomena, he naturally concluded that we have no ground\n for supposing reality to be like either\u2014that we must conceive of\n it as \u2018weder Materie noch ein denkend Wesen\u2019\u2014\u2018neither matter nor a\n thinking being\u2019\u2014a theory of the Unknowable. Would that it had been\n also the Unthinkable and the Unmentionable!\u201d Ralph Waldo Emerson\n was a subjective idealist; but, when called to inspect a farmer\u2019s\n load of wood, he said to his company: \u201cExcuse me a moment, my\n friends; we have to attend to these matters, just as if they were\n real.\u201d See Mivart, On Truth, 71-141.\n\n\n2. Its definition of mind as a \u201cseries of feelings aware of itself\u201d\ncontradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of mind,\nwe have direct knowledge of a spiritual substance of which these phenomena\nare manifestations, which retains its identity independently of our\nconsciousness, and which, in its knowing, instead of being the passive\nrecipient of impressions from without, always acts from within by a power\nof its own.\n\n\n James, Psychology, 1:226\u2014\u201cIt seems as if the elementary psychic\n fact were not _thought_, or _this thought_, or _that thought_, but\n _my thought_, every thought being owned. The universal conscious\n fact is not \u2018feelings and thoughts exist,\u2019 but \u2018I think,\u2019 and \u2018I\n feel.\u2019 \u201d Professor James is compelled to say this, even though he\n begins his Psychology without insisting upon the existence of a\n soul. Hamilton\u2019s Reid, 443\u2014\u201cShall I think that thought can stand\n by itself? or that ideas can feel pleasure or pain?\u201d R. T. Smith,\n Man\u2019s Knowledge, 44\u2014\u201cWe say \u2018my notions and my passions,\u2019 and when\n we use these phrases we imply that our central self is felt to be\n something different from the notions or passions which belong to\n it or characterize it for a time.\u201d Lichtenberg: \u201cWe should say,\n \u2018It thinks;\u2019 just as we say, \u2018It lightens,\u2019 or \u2018It rains.\u2019 In\n saying \u2018Cogito,\u2019 the philosopher goes too far if he translates it,\n \u2018I think.\u2019 \u201d Are the faculties, then, an army without a general,\n or an engine without a driver? In that case we should not _have_\n sensations,\u2014we should only _be_ sensations.\n\n Professor C. A. Strong: \u201cI have knowledge of _other minds_. This\n non-empirical knowledge\u2014transcendent knowledge of\n things-in-themselves, derived neither from experience nor\n reasoning, and assuming that like consequents (intelligent\n movements) must have like antecedents (thoughts and feelings), and\n also assuming instinctively that something exists outside of my\n own mind\u2014this refutes the post-Kantian phenomenalism. _Perception_\n and _memory_ also involve transcendence. In both I transcend the\n bounds of experience, as truly as in my knowledge of other minds.\n In memory I recognize a _past_, as distinguished from the present.\n In perception I cognize a possibility of _other_ experiences like\n the present, and this alone gives the sense of permanence and\n reality. Perception and memory refute phenomenalism.\n Things-in-themselves must be assumed in order to fill the gaps\n between individual minds, and to give coherence and\n intelligibility to the universe, and so to avoid pluralism. If\n matter can influence and even extinguish our minds, it must have\n some force of its own, some existence in itself. If consciousness\n is an evolutionary product, it must have arisen from simpler\n mental facts. But these simpler mental facts are only another name\n for things-in-themselves. A deep prerational instinct compels us\n to recognize them, for they cannot be logically demonstrated. We\n must assume them in order to give continuity and intelligibility\n to our conceptions of the universe.\u201d See, on Bain\u2019s Cerebral\n Psychology, Martineau\u2019s Essays, 1:265. On the physiological method\n of mental philosophy, see Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1871:1; Bowen, in\n Princeton Rev., March, 1878:423-450; Murray, Psychology, 279-287.\n\n\n3. In so far as this theory regards mind as the obverse side of matter, or\nas a later and higher development from matter, the mere reference of both\nmind and matter to an underlying force does not save the theory from any\nof the difficulties of pure materialism already mentioned; since in this\ncase, equally with that, force is regarded as purely physical, and the\npriority of spirit is denied.\n\n\n Herbert Spencer, Psychology, quoted by Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy,\n 2:80\u2014\u201cMind and nervous action are the subjective and objective\n faces of the same thing. Yet we remain utterly incapable of\n seeing, or even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind still\n continues to us a something without kinship to other things.\u201d\n Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, quoted by Talbot, Bap. Quar., Jan.\n 1871:5\u2014\u201cAll that I know of matter and mind in themselves is that\n the former is an external centre of force, and the latter an\n internal centre of force.\u201d New Englander, Sept. 1883:636\u2014\u201cIf the\n atom be a mere centre of force and not a real thing in itself,\n then the atom is a supersensual essence, an immaterial being. To\n make immaterial matter the source of conscious mind is to make\n matter as wonderful as an immortal soul or a personal Creator.\u201d\n See New Englander, July, 1875:532-535; Martineau, Study, 102-130,\n and Relig. and Mod. Materialism, 25\u2014\u201cIf it takes mind to construe\n the universe, how can the negation of mind constitute it?\u201d\n\n David J. Hill, in his Genetic Philosophy, 200, 201, seems to deny\n that thought precedes force, or that force precedes thought:\n \u201cObjects, or things in the external world, may be elements of a\n thought-process in a cosmic subject, without themselves being\n conscious.... A true analysis and a rational genesis require the\n equal recognition of both the objective and the subjective\n elements of experience, without priority in time, separation in\n space or disruption of being. So far as our minds can penetrate\n reality, as disclosed in the activities of thought, we are\n everywhere confronted with a Dynamic Reason.\u201d In Dr. Hill\u2019s\n account of the genesis of the universe, however, the unconscious\n comes first, and from it the conscious seems to be derived.\n Consciousness of the object is only the obverse side of the object\n of consciousness. This is, as Martineau, Study, 1:341, remarks,\n \u201cto take the sea on board the boat.\u201d We greatly prefer the view of\n Lotze, 2:641\u2014\u201cThings are acts of the Infinite wrought within minds\n alone, or states which the Infinite experiences nowhere but in\n minds.... Things and events are the sum of those actions which the\n highest Principle performs in all spirits so uniformly and\n coherently, that to these spirits there must seem to be a world of\n substantial and efficient things existing in space outside\n themselves.\u201d The data from which we draw our inferences as to the\n nature of the external world being mental and spiritual, it is\n more rational to attribute to that world a spiritual reality than\n a kind of reality of which our experience knows nothing. See also\n Schurman, Belief in God, 208, 225.\n\n\n4. In so far as this theory holds the underlying force of which matter and\nmind are manifestations to be in any sense intelligent or voluntary, it\nrenders necessary the assumption that there is an intelligent and\nvoluntary Being who exerts this force. Sensations and ideas, moreover, are\nexplicable only as manifestations of Mind.\n\n\n Many recent Christian thinkers, as Murphy, Scientific Bases of\n Faith, 13-15, 29-36, 42-52, would define mind as a function of\n matter, matter as a function of force, force as a function of\n will, and therefore as the power of an omnipresent and personal\n God. All force, except that of man\u2019s free will, is the will of\n God. So Herschel, Lectures, 460; Argyll, Reign of Law, 121-127;\n Wallace on Nat. Selection, 363-371; Martineau, Essays, 1:63, 121,\n 145, 265; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 146-162. These writers are\n led to their conclusion in large part by the considerations that\n nothing dead can be a proper cause; that will is the only cause of\n which we have immediate knowledge; that the forces of nature are\n intelligible only when they are regarded as exertions of will.\n Matter, therefore, is simply centres of force\u2014the regular and, as\n it were, automatic expression of God\u2019s mind and will. Second\n causes in nature are only secondary activities of the great First\n Cause.\n\n This view is held also by Bowne, in his Metaphysics. He regards\n only personality as real. Matter is phenomenal, although it is an\n activity of the divine will outside of us. Bowne\u2019s phenomenalism\n is therefore an objective idealism, greatly preferable to that of\n Berkeley who held to God\u2019s energizing indeed, but only within the\n soul. This idealism of Bowne is not pantheism, for it holds that,\n while there are no second causes in nature, man is a second cause,\n with a personality distinct from that of God, and lifted above\n nature by his powers of free will. Royce, however, in his\n Religious Aspect of Philosophy, and in his The World and the\n Individual, makes man\u2019s consciousness a part or aspect of a\n universal consciousness, and so, instead of making God come to\n consciousness in man, makes man come to consciousness in God.\n While this scheme seems, in one view, to save God\u2019s personality,\n it may be doubted whether it equally guarantees man\u2019s personality\n or leaves room for man\u2019s freedom, responsibility, sin and guilt.\n Bowne, Philos. Theism, 175\u2014\u201c \u2018Universal reason\u2019 is a class-term\n which denotes no possible existence, and which has reality only in\n the specific existences from which it is abstracted.\u201d Bowne claims\n that the impersonal finite has only such otherness as a thought or\n act has to its subject. There is no substantial existence except\n in persons. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: \u201cNeo-Kantianism\n erects into a God the mere form of self-consciousness in general,\n that is, confounds consciousness _\u00fcberhaupt_ with a _universal_\n consciousness.\u201d\n\n Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 318-343, esp. 328\u2014\u201cIs\n there anything in existence but myself? Yes. To escape solipsism I\n must admit at least other persons. Does the world of apparent\n objects exist for me only? No; it exists for others also, so that\n we live in a common world. Does this common world consist in\n anything more than a similarity of impressions in finite minds, so\n that the world apart from these is nothing? This view cannot be\n disproved, but it accords so ill with the impression of our total\n experience that it is practically impossible. Is then the world of\n things a continuous existence of some kind independent of finite\n thought and consciousness? This claim cannot be demonstrated, but\n it is the only view that does not involve insuperable\n difficulties. What is the nature and where is the place of this\n cosmic existence? That is the question between Realism and\n Idealism. Realism views things as existing in a real space, and as\n true ontological realities. Idealism views both them and the space\n in which they are supposed to be existing as existing only in and\n for a cosmic Intelligence, and apart from which they are absurd\n and contradictory. Things are independent of _our_ thought, but\n not independent of _all_ thought, in a lumpish materiality which\n is the antithesis and negation of consciousness.\u201d See also\n Martineau, Study, 1:214-230, 341. For advocacy of the substantive\n existence of second causes, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 582-588;\n Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:596; Alden, Philosophy, 48-80; Hodgson,\n Time and Space, 149-218; A. J. Balfour, in Mind, Oct. 1893: 430.\n\n\n\nIII. Idealistic Pantheism.\n\n\nPantheism is that method of thought which conceives of the universe as the\ndevelopment of one intelligent and voluntary, yet impersonal, substance,\nwhich reaches consciousness only in man. It therefore identifies God, not\nwith each individual object in the universe, but with the totality of\nthings. The current Pantheism of our day is idealistic.\n\nThe elements of truth in Pantheism are the intelligence and voluntariness\nof God, and his immanence in the universe; its error lies in denying God\u2019s\npersonality and transcendence.\n\n\n Pantheism denies the real existence of the finite, at the same\n time that it deprives the Infinite of self-consciousness and\n freedom. See Hunt, History of Pantheism; Manning, Half-truths and\n the Truth; Bayne, Christian Life, Social and Individual, 21-53;\n Hutton, on Popular Pantheism, in Essays, 1:55-76\u2014\u201cThe pantheist\u2019s\n \u2018I believe in God\u2019, is a contradiction. He says: \u2018I perceive the\n external as different from myself; but on further reflection, I\n perceive that this external was itself the percipient agency.\u2019 So\n the worshiped is really the worshiper after all.\u201d Harris,\n Philosophical Basis of Theism, 173\u2014\u201cMan is a bottle of the ocean\u2019s\n water, in the ocean, temporarily distinguishable by its limitation\n within the bottle, but lost again in the ocean, so soon as these\n fragile limits are broken.\u201d Martineau, Types, 1:23\u2014Mere immanency\n excludes Theism; transcendency leaves it still possible;\n 211-225\u2014Pantheism declares that \u201cthere is nothing but God; he is\n not only sole cause but entire effect; he is all in all.\u201d Spinoza\n has been falsely called \u201cthe God-intoxicated man.\u201d \u201cSpinoza, on\n the contrary, translated God into the universe; it was Malebranche\n who transfigured the universe into God.\u201d\n\n The later Brahmanism is pantheistic. Rowland Williams,\n Christianity and Hinduism, quoted in Mozley on Miracles, 284\u2014\u201cIn\n the final state personality vanishes. You will not, says the\n Brahman, accept the term \u2018void\u2019 as an adequate description of the\n mysterious nature of the soul, but you will clearly apprehend\n soul, in the final state, to be unseen and ungrasped being,\n thought, knowledge, joy\u2014no other than very God.\u201d Flint, Theism,\n 69\u2014\u201cWhere the will is without energy, and rest is longed for as\n the end of existence, as among the Hindus, there is marked\n inability to think of God as cause or will, and constant\n inveterate tendency to pantheism.\u201d\n\n Hegel denies God\u2019s transcendence: \u201cGod is not a spirit beyond the\n stars; he is spirit in all spirit\u201d; which means that God, the\n impersonal and unconscious Absolute, comes to consciousness only\n in man. If the eternal system of abstract thoughts were itself\n conscious, finite consciousness would disappear; hence the\n alternative is either _no God_, or _no man_. Stirling: \u201cThe Idea,\n so conceived, is a blind, dumb, invisible idol, and the theory is\n the most hopeless theory that has ever been presented to\n humanity.\u201d It is practical autolatry, or self-deification. The\n world is reduced to a mere process of logic; thought thinks; there\n is thought without a thinker. To this doctrine of Hegel we may\n well oppose the remarks of Lotze: \u201cWe cannot make mind the\n equivalent of the infinitive _to think_,\u2014we feel that it must be\n that which thinks; the essence of things cannot be either\n existence or activity,\u2014it must be that which exists and that which\n acts. Thinking means nothing, if it is not the thinking of a\n thinker; acting and working mean nothing, if we leave out the\n conception of a subject distinguishable from them and from which\n they proceed.\u201d To Hegel, Being _is_ Thought; to Spinoza, Being\n _has_ Thought + Extension; the truth seems to be that Being _has_\n Thought + Will, and _may_ reveal itself in Extension and Evolution\n (Creation).\n\n By other philosophers, however, Hegel is otherwise interpreted.\n Prof. H. Jones, in Mind, July, 1893: 289-306, claims that Hegel\u2019s\n fundamental Idea is not Thought, but Thinking: \u201cThe universe to\n him was not a system of thoughts, but a thinking reality,\n manifested most fully in man.... The fundamental reality is the\n universal intelligence whose operation we should seek to detect in\n all things. All reality is ultimately explicable as Spirit, or\n Intelligence,\u2014hence our ontology must be a Logic, and the laws of\n things must be laws of thinking.\u201d Sterrett, in like manner, in his\n Studies in Hegel\u2019s Philosophy of Religion, 17, quotes Hegel\u2019s\n Logic, Wallace\u2019s translation, 89, 91, 236: \u201cSpinoza\u2019s _Substance_\n is, as it were, a dark, shapeless abyss, which devours all\n definite content as utterly null, and produces from itself nothing\n that has positive subsistence in itself.... God is Substance,\u2014he\n is, however, no less the Absolute Person.\u201d This is essential to\n religion, but this, says Hegel, Spinoza never perceived:\n \u201cEverything depends upon the Absolute Truth being perceived, not\n merely as Substance, but as Subject.\u201d God is self-conscious and\n self-determining Spirit. Necessity is excluded. Man is free and\n immortal. Men are not mechanical parts of God, nor do they lose\n their identity, although they _find themselves_ truly only in him.\n With this estimate of Hegel\u2019s system, Caird, Erdmann and Mulford\n substantially agree. This is Tennyson\u2019s \u201cHigher Pantheism.\u201d\n\n Seth, Ethical Principles, 440\u2014\u201cHegel conceived the superiority of\n his system to Spinozism to lie in the substitution of Subject for\n Substance. The true Absolute must contain, instead of abolishing,\n relations; the true Monism must include, instead of excluding,\n Pluralism. A One which, like Spinoza\u2019s Substance, or the Hegelian\n Absolute, does not enable us to think the Many, cannot be the true\n One\u2014the unity of the Manifold.... Since evil exists, Schopenhauer\n substituted for Hegel\u2019s Panlogism, which asserted the identity of\n the rational and the real, a blind impulse of life,\u2014for absolute\n Reason he substituted a reasonless Will\u201d\u2014a system of practical\n pessimism. Alexander, Theories of Will, 5\u2014\u201cSpinoza recognized no\n distinction between will and intellectual affirmation or denial.\u201d\n John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:107\u2014\u201cAs there is no\n reason in the conception of pure space why any figures or forms,\n lines, surfaces, solids, should arise in it, so there is no reason\n in the pure colorless abstraction of Infinite Substance why any\n world of finite things and beings should ever come into existence.\n It is the grave of all things, the productive source of nothing.\u201d\n Hegel called Schelling\u2019s Identity or Absolute \u201cthe infinite night\n in which all cows are black\u201d\u2014an allusion to Goethe\u2019s Faust, part\n 2, act 1, where the words are added: \u201cand cats are gray.\u201d Although\n Hegel\u2019s preference of the term Subject, instead of the term\n Substance, has led many to maintain that he believed in a\n personality of God distinct from that of man, his over-emphasis of\n the Idea, and his comparative ignoring of the elements of Love and\n Will, leave it still doubtful whether his Idea was anything more\n than unconscious and impersonal intelligence\u2014less materialistic\n than that of Spinoza indeed, yet open to many of the same\n objections.\n\n\nWe object to this system as follows:\n\n1. Its idea of God is self-contradictory, since it makes him infinite, yet\nconsisting only of the finite; absolute, yet existing in necessary\nrelation to the universe; supreme, yet shut up to a process of\nself-evolution and dependent for self-consciousness on man; without\nself-determination, yet the cause of all that is.\n\n\n Saisset, Pantheism, 148\u2014\u201cAn imperfect God, yet perfection arising\n from imperfection.\u201d Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:13\u2014\u201cPantheism applies\n to God a principle of growth and imperfection, which belongs only\n to the finite.\u201d Calderwood, Moral Philos., 245\u2014\u201cIts first\n requisite is moment, or movement, which it assumes, but does not\n account for.\u201d Caro\u2019s sarcasm applies here: \u201cYour God is not yet\n made\u2014he is in process of manufacture.\u201d See H. B. Smith, Faith and\n Philosophy, 25. Pantheism is practical atheism, for impersonal\n spirit is only blind and necessary force. Angelus Silesius: \u201cWir\n beten \u2018Es gescheh, mein Herr und Gott, dein Wille\u2019; Und sieh\u2019, Er\n hat nicht Will\u2019,\u2014Er ist ein ew\u2019ge Stille\u201d\u2014which Max M\u00fcller\n translates as follows: \u201cWe pray, \u2018O Lord our God, Do thou thy holy\n Will\u2019; and see! God has no will; He is at peace and still.\u201d\n Angelus Silesius consistently makes God dependent for\n self-consciousness on man: \u201cI know that God cannot live An instant\n without me; He must give up the ghost, If I should cease to be.\u201d\n Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: \u201cHegelianism destroys both God\n and man. It reduces man to an object of the universal Thinker, and\n leaves this universal Thinker without any true personality.\u201d\n Pantheism is a game of solitaire, in which God plays both sides.\n\n\n2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it\ndirectly contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are\nnot parts and particles of God, but distinct personal subsistences.\n\n\n Martineau, Essays, 1:158\u2014\u201cEven for immanency, there must be\n something wherein to dwell, and for life, something whereon to\n act.\u201d Many systems of monism contradict consciousness; they\n confound harmony between two with absorption in one. \u201cIn Scripture\n we never find the universe called \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd, for this suggests the\n idea of a self-contained unity: we have everywhere \u03c4\u1f70 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\n instead.\u201d The Bible recognizes the element of truth in\n pantheism\u2014God is \u201c_through all_\u201d; also the element of truth in\n mysticism\u2014God is \u201c_in you all_\u201d; but it adds the element of\n transcendence which both these fail to recognize\u2014God is \u201cabove\n all\u201d_ (Eph. 4:6)_. See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of\n Christianity, 539. G. D. B. Pepper: \u201cHe who is over all and in all\n is yet distinct from all. If one is over a thing, he is not that\n very thing which he is over. If one is in something, he must be\n distinct from that something. And so the universe, over which and\n in which God is, must be thought of as something distinct from\n God. The creation cannot be identical with God, or a mere form of\n God.\u201d We add, however, that it may be a manifestation of God and\n dependent upon God, as our thoughts and acts are manifestations of\n our mind and will and dependent upon our mind and will, yet are\n not themselves our mind and will.\n\n Pope wrote: \u201cAll are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body\n nature is and God the soul.\u201d But Case, Physical Realism, 193,\n replies: \u201cNot so. Nature is to God as works are to a man; and as\n man\u2019s works are not his body, so neither is nature the body of\n God.\u201d Matthew Arnold, On Heine\u2019s Grave: \u201cWhat are we all but a\n mood, A single mood of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who\n alone is all things in one?\u201d Hovey, Studies, 51\u2014\u201cScripture\n recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, but it also teaches\n the existence of a world of things, animate and inanimate, in\n distinction from God. It represents men as prone to worship the\n creature more than the Creator. It describes them as sinners\n worthy of death ... moral agents.... It no more thinks of men as\n being literally parts of God, than it thinks of children as being\n parts of their parents, or subjects as being parts of their king.\u201d\n A. J. F. Behrends: \u201cThe true doctrine lies between the two\n extremes of a crass dualism which makes God and the world two\n self-contained entities, and a substantial monism in which the\n universe has only a phenomenal existence. There is no identity of\n substance nor division of the divine substance. The universe is\n eternally dependent, the product of the divine _Word_, not simply\n _manufactured_. Creation is primarily a spiritual act.\u201d Prof.\n George M. Forbes: \u201cMatter exists in subordinate dependence upon\n God; spirit in co\u00f6rdinate dependence upon God. The body of Christ\n was Christ externalized, made manifest to sense-perception. In\n apprehending matter, I am apprehending the mind and will of God.\n This is the highest sort of reality. Neither matter nor finite\n spirits, then, are mere phenomena.\u201d\n\n\n3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is\nhighest in rank, and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the\nexistence of personal intelligences. A substance which is itself\nunconscious, and under the law of necessity, cannot produce beings who are\nself-conscious and free.\n\n\n Gess, Foundations of our Faith, 36\u2014\u201cAnimal instinct, and the\n spirit of a nation working out its language, might furnish\n analogies, if they produced personalities as their result, but not\n otherwise. Nor were these tendencies self-originated, but received\n from an external source.\u201d McCosh, Intuitions, 215, 393, and\n Christianity and Positivism, 180. Seth, Freedom as an Ethical\n Postulate, 47\u2014\u201cIf man is an \u2018imperium in imperio,\u2019 not a person,\n but only an aspect or expression of the universe or God, then he\n cannot be free. Man may be depersonalized either into nature or\n into God. Through the conception of our own personality we reach\n that of God. To resolve our personality into that of God would be\n to negate the divine greatness itself by invalidating the\n conception through which it was reached.\u201d Bradley, Appearance and\n Reality, 551, is more ambiguous: \u201cThe positive relation of every\n appearance as an adjective to Reality; and the presence of Reality\n among its appearances in different degrees and with diverse\n values; this double truth we have found to be the centre of\n philosophy.\u201d He protests against both \u201can empty transcendence\u201d and\n \u201ca shallow pantheism.\u201d Hegelian immanence and knowledge, he\n asserts, identified God and man. But God is more than man or man\u2019s\n thought. He is spirit and life\u2014best understood from the human\n _self_, with its thoughts, feelings, volitions. Immanence needs to\n be qualified by transcendence. \u201cGod is not God till he has become\n all-in-all, and a God which is all-in-all is not the God of\n religion. God is an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance\n of the Absolute.\u201d Bradley\u2019s Absolute, therefore, is not so much\n personal as super-personal; to which we reply with Jackson, James\n Martineau, 416\u2014\u201cHigher than personality is lower; beyond it is\n regression from its height. From the equator we may travel\n northward, gaining ever higher and higher latitudes; but, if ever\n the pole is reached, pressing on from thence will be descending\n into lower latitudes, not gaining higher.... Do I say, I am a\n pantheist? Then, _ipso facto_, I deny pantheism; for, in the very\n assertion of the Ego, I imply all else as objective to me.\u201d\n\n\n4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious\nnatures by denying man\u2019s freedom and responsibility; by making God to\ninclude in himself all evil as well as all good; and by precluding all\nprayer, worship, and hope of immortality.\n\n\n Conscience is the eternal witness against pantheism. Conscience\n witnesses to our freedom and responsibility, and declares that\n moral distinctions are not illusory. Renouf, Hibbert Lect.,\n 234\u2014\u201cIt is only out of condescension to popular language that\n pantheistic systems can recognize the notions of right and wrong,\n of iniquity and sin. If everything really emanates from God, there\n can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have\n been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavored to harmonize\n these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral\n evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled \u2019Ethica\u2019;\n but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of\n Euclid.\u201d Hodge, System. Theology, 1:299-330\u2014\u201cPantheism is\n fatalistic. On this theory, duty = pleasure; right = might; sin =\n good in the making. Satan, as well as Gabriel, is a\n self-development of God. The practical effects of pantheism upon\n popular morals and life, wherever it has prevailed, as in Buddhist\n India and China, demonstrate its falsehood.\u201d See also Dove, Logic\n of the Christian Faith, 118; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,\n 202; Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:603-615; Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. On\n the fact of sin as refuting the pantheistic theory, see Bushnell,\n Nature and the Supernat., 140-164.\n\n Wordsworth: \u201cLook up to heaven! the industrious sun Already half\n his course hath run; He cannot halt or go astray; But our immortal\n spirits may.\u201d President John H. Harris; \u201cYou never ask a cyclone\u2019s\n opinion of the ten commandments.\u201d Bowne, Philos. of Theism,\n 245\u2014\u201cPantheism makes man an automaton. But how can an automaton\n have duties?\u201d Principles of Ethics, 18\u2014\u201cEthics is defined as the\n science of conduct, and the conventions of language are relied\n upon to cover up the fact that there is no \u2018conduct\u2019 in the case.\n If man be a proper automaton, we might as well speak of the\n conduct of the winds as of human conduct; and a treatise on\n planetary motions is as truly the ethics of the solar system as a\n treatise on human movements is the ethics of man.\u201d For lack of a\n clear recognition of personality, either human or divine, Hegel\u2019s\n Ethics is devoid of all spiritual nourishment,\u2014his\n \u201cRechtsphilosophie\u201d has been called \u201ca repast of bran.\u201d Yet\n Professor Jones, in Mind, July, 1893:304, tells us that Hegel\u2019s\n task was \u201cto discover what conception of the single principle or\n fundamental unity which alone _is_, is adequate to the differences\n which it carries within it. \u2018_Being_,\u2019 he found, leaves no room\n for differences,\u2014it is overpowered by them.... He found that the\n Reality can exist only as absolute Self-consciousness, as a\n Spirit, who is universal, and who knows himself in all things. In\n all this he is dealing, not simply with thoughts, but with\n Reality.\u201d Prof. Jones\u2019s vindication of Hegel, however, still\n leaves it undecided whether that philosopher regarded the divine\n self-consciousness as distinct from that of finite beings, or as\n simply inclusive of theirs. See John Caird, Fund. Ideas of\n Christianity, 1:109.\n\n\n5. Our intuitive conviction of the existence of a God of absolute\nperfection compels us to conceive of God as possessed of every highest\nquality and attribute of men, and therefore, especially, of that which\nconstitutes the chief dignity of the human spirit, its personality.\n\n\n Diman, Theistic Argument, 328\u2014\u201cWe have no right to represent the\n supreme Cause as inferior to ourselves, yet we do this when we\n describe it under phrases derived from physical causation.\u201d\n Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 351\u2014\u201cWe cannot conceive of anything\n as impersonal, yet of higher nature than our own,\u2014any being that\n has not knowledge and will must be indefinitely inferior to one\n who has them.\u201d Lotze holds truly, not that God is\n _supra_-personal, but that man is _infra_-personal, seeing that in\n the infinite Being alone is self-subsistence, and therefore\n perfect personality. Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 224\u2014\u201cThe\n radical feature of personality is the survival of a permanent\n self, under all the fleeting or deciduous phases of experience; in\n other words, the personal identity that is involved in the\n assertion \u2018I am.\u2019... Is limitation a necessary adjunct of that\n notion?\u201d Seth, Hegelianism: \u201cAs in us there is more _for\n ourselves_ than _for others_, so in God there is more of thought\n _for himself_ than he manifests _to us_. Hegel\u2019s doctrine is that\n of immanence without transcendence.\u201d Heinrich Heine was a pupil\n and intimate friend of Hegel. He says: \u201cI was young and proud, and\n it pleased my vain-glory when I learned from Hegel that the true\n God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God who lived in\n heaven, but was rather _myself upon the earth_.\u201d John Fiske, Idea\n of God, xvi\u2014\u201cSince our notion of force is purely a generalization\n from our subjective sensations of overcoming resistance, there is\n scarcely less anthropomorphism in the phrase \u2018Infinite Power\u2019 than\n in the phrase \u2018Infinite Person.\u2019 We must symbolize Deity in some\n form that has meaning to us; we cannot symbolize it as physical;\n we are bound to symbolize it as psychical. Hence we may say, God\n is Spirit. This implies God\u2019s personality.\u201d\n\n\n6. Its objection to the divine personality, that over against the Infinite\nthere can be in eternity past no non-ego to call forth self-consciousness,\nis refuted by considering that even man\u2019s cognition of the non-ego\nlogically presupposes knowledge of the ego, from which the non-ego is\ndistinguished; that, in an absolute mind, self-consciousness cannot be\nconditioned, as in the case of finite mind, upon contact with a not-self;\nand that, if the distinguishing of self from a not-self were an essential\ncondition of divine self-consciousness, the eternal personal distinctions\nin the divine nature or the eternal states of the divine mind might\nfurnish such a condition.\n\n\n Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:163, 190 _sq._\u2014\u201cPersonal\n self-consciousness is not primarily a distinguishing of the ego\n from the non-ego, but rather a distinguishing of itself from\n itself, _i. e._, of the unity of the self from the plurality of\n its contents.... Before the soul distinguishes self from the\n not-self, it must know self\u2014else it could not see the distinction.\n Its development is connected with the knowledge of the non-ego,\n but this is due, not to the fact of _personality_, but to the fact\n of _finite_ personality. The mature man can live for a long time\n upon his own resources. God needs no other, to stir him up to\n mental activity. Finiteness is a hindrance to the development of\n our personality. Infiniteness is necessary to the highest\n personality.\u201d Lotze, Microcosmos, vol. 3, chapter 4; transl. in N.\n Eng., March, 1881:191-200\u2014\u201cFinite spirit, not having conditions of\n existence in itself, can know the ego only upon occasion of\n knowing the non-ego. The Infinite is not so limited. He alone has\n an independent existence, neither introduced nor developed through\n anything not himself, but, in an inward activity without beginning\n or end, maintains himself in himself.\u201d See also Lotze, Philos. of\n Religion, 55-69; H. N. Gardiner on Lotze, in Presb. Rev.,\n 1885:669-673; Webb, in Jour. Theol. Studies, 2:49-61.\n\n Dorner, Glaubenslehre: \u201cAbsolute Personality = perfect\n consciousness of self, and perfect power over self. We need\n something external to waken our consciousness\u2014yet\n self-consciousness comes [logically] before consciousness of the\n world. It is the soul\u2019s act. Only after it has distinguished self\n from self, can it consciously distinguish self from another.\u201d\n British Quarterly, Jan. 1874:32, note; July, 1884:108\u2014\u201cThe ego is\n _thinkable_ only in relation to the non-ego; but the ego is\n _liveable_ long before any such relation.\u201d Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:185, 186\u2014In the pantheistic scheme, \u201cGod distinguishes himself\n from the _world_, and thereby finds the object required by the\n subject; ... in the Christian scheme, God distinguishes himself\n from _himself_, not from something that is not himself.\u201d See\n Julius M\u00fcller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:122-126; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt\n and Christ. Belief, 161-190; Hanne, Idee der absoluten\n Pers\u00f6nlichkeit; Eichhorn, Die Pers\u00f6nlichkeit Gottes; Seth,\n Hegelianism and Personality; Knight, on Personality and the\n Infinite, in Studies in Philos. and Lit., 70-118.\n\n On the whole subject of Pantheism, see Martineau, Study of\n Religion, 2:141-194, esp. 192\u2014\u201cThe _personality_ of God consists\n in his voluntary agency as free cause in an unpledged sphere, that\n is, a sphere transcending that of immanent law. But precisely this\n also it is that constitutes his _infinity_, extending his sway,\n after it has filled the actual, over all the possible, and giving\n command over indefinite alternatives. Though you might deny his\n infinity without prejudice to his personality, you cannot deny his\n personality without sacrificing his infinitude: for there is a\n mode of action\u2014the _preferential_, the very mode which\n distinguishes rational beings\u2014from which you exclude him\u201d;\n 341\u2014\u201cThe metaphysicians who, in their impatience of distinction,\n insist on taking the sea on board the boat, swamp not only it but\n the thought it holds, and leave an infinitude which, as it can\n look into no eye and whisper into no ear, they contradict in the\n very act of affirming.\u201d Jean Paul Richter\u2019s \u201cDream\u201d: \u201cI wandered\n to the farthest verge of Creation, and there I saw a _Socket_,\n where an _Eye_ should have been, and I heard the shriek of a\n Fatherless World\u201d (quoted in David Brown\u2019s Memoir of John Duncan,\n 49-70). Shelley, Beatrice Cenci: \u201cSweet Heaven, forgive weak\n thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth, in the\n void world\u2014The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!\u201d\n\n For the opposite view, see Biedermann, Dogmatik, 638-647\u2014\u201cOnly\n man, as finite spirit, is personal; God, as absolute spirit, is\n not personal. Yet in religion the mutual relations of intercourse\n and communion are always personal.... Personality is the only\n adequate term by which we can represent the theistic conception of\n God.\u201d Bruce, Providential Order, 76\u2014\u201cSchopenhauer does not level\n up cosmic force to the human, but levels down human will-force to\n the cosmic. Spinoza held intellect in God to be no more like man\u2019s\n than the dog-star is like a dog. Hartmann added intellect to\n Schopenhauer\u2019s will, but the intellect is unconscious and knows no\n moral distinctions.\u201d See also Bruce, Apologetics, 71-90; Bowne,\n Philos. of Theism, 128-134, 171-186; J. M. Whiton, Am. Jour.\n Theol., Apl. 1901:306\u2014Pantheism = God consists in all things;\n Theism = All things consist in God, their ground, not their sum.\n Spirit in man shows that the infinite Spirit must be personal and\n transcendent Mind and Will.\n\n\n\nIV. Ethical Monism.\n\n\nEthical Monism is that method of thought which holds to a single\nsubstance, ground, or principle of being, namely, God, but which also\nholds to the ethical facts of God\u2019s transcendence as well as his\nimmanence, and of God\u2019s personality as distinct from, and as guaranteeing,\nthe personality of man.\n\n\n Although we do not here assume the authority of the Bible,\n reserving our proof of this to the next following division on The\n Scriptures a Revelation from God, we may yet cite passages which\n show that our doctrine is not inconsistent with the teachings of\n holy Writ. The immanence of God is implied in all statements of\n his omnipresence, as for example: _Ps. 139:7 sq.\u2014_\u201cWhither shall I\n go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?\u201d\n _Jer. 23:23, 24\u2014_\u201cAm I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God\n afar off?... Do not I fill heaven and earth?\u201d _Acts 17:27, 28\u2014_\u201che\n is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and\n have our being.\u201d The transcendence of God is implied in such\n passages as: _1 Kings 8:27\u2014_\u201cthe heaven and the heaven of heavens\n cannot contain thee\u201d; _Ps. 113:5\u2014_\u201cthat hath his seat on high\u201d;\n _Is. 57:15\u2014_\u201cthe high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.\u201d\n\n This is the faith of Augustine: \u201cO God, thou hast made us for\n thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in thee.... I\n could not be, O my God, could not be at all, wert thou not in me;\n rather, were not I in thee, of whom are all things, by whom are\n all things, in whom are all things.\u201d And Anselm, in his\n Proslogion, says of the divine nature: \u201cIt is the essence of the\n being, the principle of the existence, of all things.... Without\n parts, without differences, without accidents, without changes, it\n might be said in a certain sense alone to exist, for in respect to\n it the other things which appear to be have no existence. The\n unchangeable Spirit is all that is, and it is this without limit,\n simply, interminably. It is the perfect and absolute Existence.\n The rest has come from non-entity, and thither returns if not\n supported by God. It does not exist by itself. In this sense the\n Creator alone exists; created things do not.\u201d\n\n\n1. While Ethical Monism embraces the one element of truth contained in\nPantheism\u2014the truth that God is in all things and that all things are in\nGod\u2014it regards this scientific unity as entirely consistent with the facts\nof ethics\u2014man\u2019s freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt; in other words,\nMetaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of one substance, ground, or\nprinciple of being, is qualified by Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine\nthat the soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand, and from\nGod on the other.\n\n\n Ethical Monism is a monism which holds to the ethical facts of the\n freedom of man and the transcendence and personality of God; it is\n the monism of free-will, in which personality, both human and\n divine, sin and righteousness, God and the world, remain\u2014two in\n one, and one in two\u2014in their moral antithesis as well as their\n natural unity. Ladd, Introd. to Philosophy: \u201cDualism is yielding,\n in history and in the judgment-halls of reason, to a monistic\n philosophy.... Some form of philosophical monism is indicated by\n the researches of psycho-physics, and by that philosophy of mind\n which builds upon the principles ascertained by these researches.\n Realities correlated as are the body and the mind must have, as it\n were, a common ground.... They have their reality in the ultimate\n one Reality; they have their interrelated lives as expressions of\n the one Life which is immanent in the two.... Only some form of\n monism that shall satisfy the facts and truths to which both\n realism and idealism appeal can occupy the place of the true and\n final philosophy.... Monism must so construct its tenets as to\n preserve, or at least as not to contradict and destroy, the truths\n implicated in the distinction between the _me_ and the _not-me_,\n ... between the morally good and the morally evil. No form of\n monism can persistently maintain itself which erects its system\n upon the ruins of fundamentally ethical principles and ideals.\u201d...\n Philosophy of Mind, 411\u2014\u201cDualism must be dissolved in some\n ultimate monistic solution. The Being of the world, of which all\n particular beings are but parts, must be so conceived of as that\n in it can be found the one ground of all interrelated existences\n and activities.... This one Principle is an Other and an Absolute\n Mind.\u201d\n\n Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, II, 3:101, 231\u2014\u201cThe unity of\n essence in God and man is the great discovery of the present\n age.... The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is\n the endeavor to point out the essential unity of the divine and\n human. To the theology of the present day, the divine and human\n are not mutually exclusive, but are connected magnitudes.... Yet\n faith postulates a difference between the world and God, between\n whom religion seeks an union. Faith does not wish to be a relation\n merely to itself, or to its own representations and thoughts; that\n would be a monologue,\u2014faith desires a dialogue. Therefore it does\n not consort with a monism which recognizes only God, or only the\n world; it opposes such a monism as this. Duality is, in fact, a\n condition of true and vital unity. But duality is not dualism. It\n has no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity.\u201d Professor\n Small of Chicago: \u201cWith rare exceptions on each side, all\n philosophy to-day is monistic in its ontological presumptions; it\n is dualistic in its methodological procedures.\u201d A. H. Bradford,\n Age of Faith, 71\u2014\u201cMen and God are the same in substance, though\n not identical as individuals.\u201d The theology of fifty years ago was\n merely individualistic, and ignored the complementary truth of\n solidarity. Similarly we think of the continents and islands of\n our globe as disjoined from one another. The dissociable sea is\n regarded as an absolute barrier between them. But if the ocean\n could be dried, we should see that all the while there had been\n submarine connections, and the hidden unity of all lands would\n appear. So the individuality of human beings, real as it is, is\n not the only reality. There is the profounder fact of a common\n life. Even the great mountain-peaks of personality are superficial\n distinctions, compared with the organic oneness in which they are\n rooted, into which they all dip down, and from which they all,\n like volcanoes, receive at times quick and overflowing impulses of\n insight, emotion and energy; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation\n and Ethical Monism, 189, 190.\n\n\n2. In contrast then with the two errors of Pantheism\u2014the denial of God\u2019s\ntranscendence and the denial of God\u2019s personality\u2014Ethical Monism holds\nthat the universe, instead of being one with God and conterminous with\nGod, is but a finite, partial and progressive manifestation of the divine\nLife: Matter being God\u2019s self-limitation under the law of Necessity;\nHumanity being God\u2019s self-limitation under the law of Freedom; Incarnation\nand Atonement being God\u2019s self-limitations under the law of Grace.\n\n\n The universe is related to God as my thoughts are related to me,\n the thinker. I am greater than my thoughts, and my thoughts vary\n in moral value. Ethical Monism traces the universe back to a\n beginning, while Pantheism regards the universe as co\u00ebternal with\n God. Ethical Monism asserts God\u2019s transcendence, while Pantheism\n regards God as imprisoned in the universe. Ethical Monism asserts\n that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, but that\n contrariwise the whole universe taken together, with its elements\n and forces, its suns and systems, is but a light breath from his\n mouth, or a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. Upton,\n Hibbert Lectures: \u201cThe Eternal is present in every finite thing,\n and is felt and known to be present in every rational soul; but\n still is not broken up into individualities, but ever remains one\n and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying\n principle, immanently and indivisibly present in every one of that\n countless plurality of finite individuals into which man\u2019s\n analyzing understanding dissects the Cosmos.\u201d James Martineau, in\n 19th Century, Apl. 1895:559\u2014\u201cWhat is Nature but the province of\n God\u2019s pledged and habitual causality? And what is Spirit, but the\n province of his free causality, responding to the needs and\n affections of his children?... God is not a retired architect, who\n may now and then be called in for repairs. Nature is not\n self-active, and God\u2019s agency is not intrusive.\u201d Calvin: Pie hoc\n potest dici, Deum esse Naturam.\n\n With this doctrine many poets show their sympathy. \u201cEvery fresh\n and new creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God\n proceeds.\u201d Robert Browning asserts God\u2019s immanence;\n Hohenstiel-Schwangau: \u201cThis is the glory that, in all conceived Or\n felt, or known, I recognize a Mind\u2014Not mine, but like mine\u2014for the\n double joy, Making all things for me, and me for him\u201d; Ring and\n Book, Pope: \u201cO thou, as represented to me here In such conception\n as my soul allows\u2014Under thy measureless, my atom-width! Man\u2019s\n mind, what is it but a convex glass, Wherein are gathered all the\n scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite\n there, be our heaven for earth, Our Known Unknown, our God\n revealed to man?\u201d But Browning also asserts God\u2019s transcendence:\n in Death in the Desert, we read: \u201cMan is not God, but hath God\u2019s\n end to serve, A Master to obey, a Cause to take, Somewhat to cast\n off, somewhat to become\u201d; in Christmas Eve, the poet derides \u201cThe\n important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one\n with the Creator\u201d; he tells us that it was God\u2019s plan to make man\n in his image: \u201cTo create man, and then leave him Able, his own\n word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him too, As a mere\n machine could never do That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its\n fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of\n course.... God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands\n away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly\n made to live And look at him from a place apart And use his gifts\n of brain and heart\u201d; \u201cLife\u2019s business being just the terrible\n choice.\u201d\n\n So Tennyson\u2019s Higher Pantheism: \u201cThe sun, the moon, the stars, the\n seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O soul, the vision\n of Him who reigns? Dark is the world to thee; thou thyself art the\n reason why; For is not He all but thou, that hast power to feel \u2018I\n am I\u2019? Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit\n can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and\n feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot\n see; But if we could see and hear, this vision\u2014were it not He?\u201d\n Also Tennyson\u2019s Ancient Sage: \u201cBut that one ripple on the\n boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself\n Forever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion\n of the deep\u201d; and In Memoriam: \u201cOne God, one law, one element, And\n one far-off divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves.\u201d\n Emerson: \u201cThe day of days, the greatest day in the feast of life,\n is that in which the inward eye opens to the unity of things\u201d; \u201cIn\n the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings.\u201d Mrs.\n Browning: \u201cEarth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush\n afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes.\u201d So\n manhood is itself potentially a divine thing. All life, in all its\n vast variety, can have but one Source. It is either one God, above\n all, through all, and in all, or it is no God at all. E. M.\n Poteat, On Chesapeake Bay: \u201cNight\u2019s radiant glory overhead, A\n softer glory there below, Deep answered unto deep, and said: A\n kindred fire in us doth glow. For life is one\u2014of sea and stars, Of\n God and man, of earth and heaven\u2014And by no theologic bars Shall my\n scant life from God\u2019s be riven.\u201d See Professor Henry Jones, Robert\n Browning.\n\n\n3. The immanence of God, as the one substance, ground and principle of\nbeing, does not destroy, but rather guarantees, the individuality and\nrights of each portion of the universe, so that there is variety of rank\nand endowment. In the case of moral beings, worth is determined by the\ndegree of their voluntary recognition and appropriation of the divine.\nWhile God is all, he is also in all; so making the universe a graded and\nprogressive manifestation of himself, both in his love for righteousness\nand his opposition to moral evil.\n\n\n It has been charged that the doctrine of monism necessarily\n involves moral indifference; that the divine presence in all\n things breaks down all distinctions of rank and makes each thing\n equal to every other; that the evil as well as the good is\n legitimated and consecrated. Of pantheistic monism all this is\n true,\u2014it is not true of ethical monism; for ethical monism is the\n monism that recognizes the ethical fact of personal intelligence\n and will in both God and man, and with these God\u2019s purpose in\n making the universe a varied manifestation of himself. The worship\n of cats and bulls and crocodiles in ancient Egypt, and the\n deification of lust in the Brahmanic temples of India, were\n expressions of a non-ethical monism, which saw in God no moral\n attributes, and which identified God with his manifestations. As\n an illustration of the mistakes into which the critics of monism\n may fall for lack of discrimination between monism that is\n pantheistic and monism that is ethical, we quote from Emma Marie\n Caillard: \u201cIntegral parts of God are, on monistic premises, liars,\n sensualists, murderers, evil livers and evil thinkers of every\n description. Their crimes and their passions enter intrinsically\n into the divine experience. The infinite Individual in his\n wholeness may reject them indeed, but none the less are these evil\n finite individuals constituent parts of him, even as the twigs of\n a tree, though they are not the tree, and though the tree\n transcends any or all of them, are yet constituent parts of it.\n Can he whose universal consciousness includes and defines all\n finite consciousnesses be other than responsible for all finite\n actions and motives?\u201d\n\n To this indictment we may reply in the words of Bowne, The Divine\n Immanence, 130-133\u2014\u201cSome weak heads have been so heated by the new\n wine of immanence as to put all things on the same level, and make\n men and mice of equal value. But there is nothing in the\n dependence of all things on God to remove their distinctions of\n value. One confused talker of this type was led to say that he had\n no trouble with the notion of a divine man, as he believed in a\n divine oyster. Others have used the doctrine to cancel moral\n differences; for if God be in all things, and if all things\n represent his will, then whatever is is right. But this too is\n hasty. Of course even the evil will is not independent of God, but\n lives and moves and has its being in and through the divine. But\n through its mysterious power of selfhood and self-determination\n the evil will is able to assume an attitude of hostility to the\n divine law, which forthwith vindicates itself by appropriate\n reactions.\n\n \u201cThese reactions are not divine in the highest or ideal sense.\n They represent nothing which God desires or in which he delights;\n but they are divine in the sense that they are things to be done\n under the circumstances. The divine reaction in the case of the\n good is distinct from the divine reaction against evil. Both are\n divine as representing God\u2019s action, but only the former is divine\n in the sense of representing God\u2019s approval and sympathy. All\n things serve, said Spinoza. The good serve, and are furthered by\n their service. The bad also serve and are used up in the serving.\n According to Jonathan Edwards, the wicked are useful \u2018in being\n acted upon and disposed of.\u2019 As \u2018vessels of dishonor\u2019 they may\n reveal the majesty of God. There is nothing therefore in the\n divine immanence, in its only tenable form, to cancel moral\n distinctions or to minify retribution. The divine reaction against\n iniquity is even more solemn in this doctrine. The besetting God\n is the eternal and unescapable environment; and only as we are in\n harmony with him can there be any peace.... What God thinks of\n sin, and what his will is concerning it can be plainly seen in the\n natural consequences which attend it.... In law itself we are face\n to face with God; and natural consequences have a supernatural\n meaning.\u201d\n\n\n4. Since Christ is the Logos of God, the immanent God, God revealed in\nNature, in Humanity, in Redemption, Ethical Monism recognizes the universe\nas created, upheld, and governed by the same Being who in the course of\nhistory was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by\nhis death on Calvary. The secret of the universe and the key to its\nmysteries are to be found in the Cross.\n\n\n _John 1:1-4 (marg.), 14, 18\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and\n the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the\n beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without\n him was not any thing made. That which hath been made was life in\n him; and the life was the light of men.... And the Word became\n flesh, and dwelt among us.... No man hath seen God at any time;\n the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath\n declared him.\u201d _Col. 1:16, 17\u2014_\u201cfor in him were all things\n created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and\n things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities\n or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him;\n and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.\u201d _Heb.\n 1:2, 3\u2014_\u201chis Son ... through whom also he made the worlds ...\n upholding all things by the word of his power\u201d; _Eph. 1:22,\n 23\u2014_\u201cthe church, which is his body, the fulness of him that\n filleth all in all\u201d = fills all things with all that they contain\n of truth, beauty, and goodness; _Col. 2:2, 3, 9\u2014_\u201cthe mystery of\n God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and\n knowledge hidden ... for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the\n Godhead bodily.\u201d\n\n This view of the relation of the universe to God lays the\n foundation for a Christian application of recent philosophical\n doctrine. Matter is no longer blind and dead, but is spiritual in\n its nature, not in the sense that it _is_ spirit, but in the sense\n that it is the continual _manifestation_ of spirit, just as my\n thoughts are a living and continual manifestation of myself. Yet\n matter does not consist simply in _ideas_, for ideas, deprived of\n an external object and of an internal subject, are left suspended\n in the air. Ideas are the product of Mind. But matter is known\n only as the operation of force, and force is the product of Will.\n Since this force works in rational ways, it can be the product\n only of Spirit. The system of forces which we call the universe is\n the immediate product of the mind and will of God; and, since\n Christ is the mind and will of God in exercise, Christ is the\n Creator and Upholder of the universe. Nature is the omnipresent\n Christ, manifesting God to creatures.\n\n Christ is the principle of cohesion, attraction, interaction, not\n only in the physical universe, but in the intellectual and moral\n universe as well. In all our knowing, the knower and known are\n \u201cconnected by some Being who is their reality,\u201d and this being is\n Christ, \u201cthe Light which lighteth every man\u201d_ (John 1:9)_. We\n _know_ in Christ, just as \u201cin him we live, and move, and have our\n being\u201d_ (Acts 17:28)_. As the attraction of gravitation and the\n principle of evolution are only other names for Christ, so he is\n the basis of inductive reasoning and the ground of moral unity in\n the creation. I am bound to love my neighbor as myself because he\n has in him the same life that is in me, the life of God in Christ.\n The Christ in whom all humanity is created, and in whom all\n humanity consists, holds together the moral universe, drawing all\n men to himself and so drawing them to God. Through him God\n \u201creconciles all things unto himself ... whether things upon the\n earth, or things in the heavens\u201d_ (Col. 1:20)_.\n\n As Pantheism = exclusive immanence = God imprisoned, so Deism =\n exclusive transcendence = God banished. Ethical Monism holds to\n the truth contained in each of these systems, while avoiding their\n respective errors. It furnishes the basis for a new interpretation\n of many theological as well as of many philosophical doctrines. It\n helps our understanding of the Trinity. If within the bounds of\n God\u2019s being there can exist multitudinous finite personalities, it\n becomes easier to comprehend how within those same bounds there\n can be three eternal and infinite personalities,\u2014indeed, the\n integration of plural consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine\n consciousness may find a valid analogy in the integration of\n subordinate consciousnesses in the unit-personality of man; see\n Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, 53, 54.\n\n Ethical Monism, since it is ethical, leaves room for human wills\n and for their freedom. While man could never break the natural\n bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond\n and introduce into creation a principle of discord and evil. Tie a\n cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger,\n diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. So there\n has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power,\n spiritually to isolate himself from God while yet he is naturally\n joined to God. As humanity is created in Christ and lives only in\n Christ, man\u2019s self-isolation is his moral separation from Christ.\n Simon, Redemption of Man, 339\u2014\u201cRejecting Christ is not so much\n refusal to _become_ one with Christ as it is refusal to _remain_\n one with him, refusal to let him be our life.\u201d All men are\n naturally one with Christ by physical birth, before they become\n morally one with him by spiritual birth. They may set themselves\n against him and may oppose him forever. This our Lord intimates,\n when he tells us that there are natural branches of Christ, which\n do not \u201cabide in the vine\u201d or \u201cbear fruit,\u201d and so are \u201ccast\n forth,\u201d \u201cwithered,\u201d and \u201cburned\u201d_ (John 15:4-6)_.\n\n Ethical Monism, however, since it is Monism, enables us to\n understand the principle of the Atonement. Though God\u2019s holiness\n binds him to punish sin, the Christ who has joined himself to the\n sinner must share the sinner\u2019s punishment. He who is the life of\n humanity must take upon his own heart the burden of shame and\n penalty that belongs to his members. Tie the cord about your\n finger; not only the finger suffers pain, but also the heart; the\n life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to\n untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member.\n Humanity is bound to Christ, as the finger to the body. Since\n human nature is one of the \u201call things\u201d that \u201cconsist\u201d or hold\n together in Christ (_Col 1:17_), and man\u2019s sin is a\n self-perversion of a part of Christ\u2019s own body, the whole must be\n injured by the self-inflicted injury of the part, and \u201cit must\n needs be that Christ should suffer\u201d_ (Acts 17:3)_. Simon,\n Redemption of Man, 321\u2014\u201cIf the Logos is the Mediator of the divine\n immanence in creation, especially in man; if men are\n differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos\n is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation\u2014_i.\n e._, the principle of all _form_\u2014must not the self-perversion of\n these human differentiations react on him who is their\n constitutive principle?\u201d A more full explanation of the relations\n of Ethical Monism to other doctrines must be reserved to our\n separate treatment of the Trinity, Creation, Sin, Atonement,\n Regeneration. Portions of the subject are treated by Upton,\n Hibbert Lectures; Le Conte, in Royce\u2019s Conception of God, 43-50;\n Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 297-301, 311-317, and\n Immanence of God, 5-32, 116-153; Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge,\n 574-590, and Theory of Reality, 525-529; Edward Caird, Evolution\n of Religion, 2:48; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:258-283;\n G\u00f6schel, quoted in Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:170. An\n attempt has been made to treat the whole subject by A. H. Strong,\n Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1-86, 141-162, 166-180,\n 186-208.\n\n\n\n\n\nPART III. THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD.\n\n\n\n\nChapter I. Preliminary Considerations.\n\n\n\nI. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.\n\n\n1. _Needs of man\u2019s nature._ Man\u2019s intellectual and moral nature requires,\nin order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its\nmoral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of\nreligious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its\npresent state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The\nproof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical.\n\nA. Psychological proof.\u2014(_a_) Neither reason nor intuition throws light\nupon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us;\nfor example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal\nexistence after death. (_b_) Even the truth to which we arrive by our\nnatural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses\nminds and wills perverted by sin. (_c_) To break this power of sin, and to\nfurnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the\nmerciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature.\n\n\n (_a_) Bremen Lectures, 72, 73; Plato, Second Alcibiades, 22, 23;\n Ph\u00e6do, 85\u2014\u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b8\u03b5\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2. Iamblicus, \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03a0\u03c5\u03b8\u03b1\u03b3\u03bf\u03c1\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b2\u03af\u03bf\u03c5,\n chap. 28. \u00c6schylus, in his Agamemnon, shows how completely reason\n and intuition failed to supply the knowledge of God which man\n needs: \u201cRenown is loud,\u201d he says, \u201cand not to lose one\u2019s senses is\n God\u2019s greatest gift.... The being praised outrageously Is grave;\n for at the eyes of such a one Is launched, from Zeus, the\n thunder-stone. Therefore do I decide For so much and no more\n prosperity Than of his envy passes unespied.\u201d Though the gods\n might have favorites, they did not love men as men, but rather,\n envied and hated them. William James, Is Life Worth Living? in\n Internat. Jour. Ethics, Oct. 1895:10\u2014\u201cAll we know of good and\n beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less all we know of\n evil.... To such a harlot we owe no moral allegiance.... If there\n be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her,\n cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no\n Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed\n there; and, as all the higher religions have assumed, what we call\n visible nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and\n surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen\n or _other_ world.\u201d\n\n (_b_) _Versus_ Socrates: Men will do right, if they only know the\n right. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:219\u2014\u201cIn opposition to the\n opinion of Socrates that badness rests upon ignorance, Aristotle\n already called the fact to mind that the doing of the good is not\n always combined with the knowing of it, seeing that it depends\n also on the passions. If badness consisted only in the want of\n knowledge, then those who are theoretically most cultivated must\n also be morally the best, which no one will venture to assert.\u201d W.\n S. Lilly, On Shibboleths: \u201cIgnorance is often held to be the root\n of all evil. But mere knowledge cannot transform character. It\n cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will\n from bad to good. It may turn crime into different channels, and\n render it less easy to detect. It does not change man\u2019s natural\n propensities or his disposition to gratify them at the expense of\n others. Knowledge makes the good man more powerful for good, the\n bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it can do.\u201d Gore,\n Incarnation, 174\u2014\u201cWe must not depreciate the method of argument,\n for Jesus and Paul occasionally used it in a Socratic fashion, but\n we must recognize that it is not the basis of the Christian system\n nor the primary method of Christianity.\u201d Martineau, in Nineteenth\n Century, 1:331, 531, and Types, 1:112\u2014\u201cPlato dissolved the idea of\n the right into that of the good, and this again was\n indistinguishably mingled with that of the true and the\n beautiful.\u201d See also Flint, Theism, 305.\n\n (_c_) _Versus_ Thomas Paine: \u201cNatural religion teaches us, without\n the possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary or proper\n to be known.\u201d Plato, Laws, 9:854, _c_, for substance: \u201cBe good;\n but, if you cannot, then kill yourself.\u201d Farrar, Darkness and\n Dawn, 75\u2014\u201cPlato says that man will never know God until God has\n revealed himself in the guise of suffering man, and that, when all\n is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the\n universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to\n order.\u201d Prometheus, the type of humanity, can never be delivered\n \u201cuntil some god descends for him into the black depths of\n Tartarus.\u201d Seneca in like manner teaches that man cannot save\n himself. He says: \u201cDo you wonder that men go to the gods? God\n comes _to_ men, yes, _into_ men.\u201d We are sinful, and God\u2019s\n thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways.\n Therefore he must make known his thoughts to us, teach us what we\n are, what true love is, and what will please him. Shaler,\n Interpretation of Nature, 227\u2014\u201cThe inculcation of moral truths can\n be successfully effected only in the personal way; ... it demands\n the influence of personality; ... the weight of the impression\n depends upon the voice and the eye of a teacher.\u201d In other words,\n we need not only the exercise of authority, but also the\n manifestation of love.\n\n\nB. Historical proof.\u2014(_a_) The knowledge of moral and religious truth\npossessed by nations and ages in which special revelation is unknown is\ngrossly and increasingly imperfect. (_b_) Man\u2019s actual condition in\nante-Christian times, and in modern heathen lands, is that of extreme\nmoral depravity. (_c_) With this depravity is found a general conviction\nof helplessness, and on the part of some nobler natures, a longing after,\nand hope of, aid from above.\n\n\n Pythagoras: \u201cIt is not easy to know [duties], except men were\n taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received\n them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some\n divine means.\u201d Socrates: \u201cWait with patience, till we know with\n certainty how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and man.\u201d\n Plato: \u201cWe will wait for one, be he a God or an inspired man, to\n instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our\n eyes.\u201d Disciple of Plato: \u201cMake probability our raft, while we\n sail through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe\n conveyance, such as some divine communication would be.\u201d Plato\n thanked God for three things: first, that he was born a rational\n soul; secondly, that he was born a Greek; and, thirdly, that he\n lived in the days of Socrates. Yet, with all these advantages, he\n had only probability for a raft, on which to navigate strange seas\n of thought far beyond his depth, and he longed for \u201ca more sure\n word of prophecy\u201d_ (2 Pet. 1:19)_. See references and quotations\n in Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 35, and in\n Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 156-172, 335-338; Farrar, Seekers\n after God; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 187.\n\n\n2. _Presumption of supply._ What we know of God, by nature, affords ground\nfor hope that these wants of our intellectual and moral being will be met\nby a corresponding supply, in the shape of a special divine revelation. We\nargue this:\n\n(_a_) From our necessary conviction of God\u2019s wisdom. Having made man a\nspiritual being, for spiritual ends, it may be hoped that he will furnish\nthe means needed to secure these ends. (_b_) From the actual, though\nincomplete, revelation already given in nature. Since God has actually\nundertaken to make himself known to men, we may hope that he will finish\nthe work he has begun. (_c_) From the general connection of want and\nsupply. The higher our needs, the more intricate and ingenious are, in\ngeneral, the contrivances for meeting them. We may therefore hope that the\nhighest want will be all the more surely met. (_d_) From analogies of\nnature and history. Signs of reparative goodness in nature and of\nforbearance in providential dealings lead us to hope that, while justice\nis executed, God may still make known some way of restoration for sinners.\n\n\n (_a_) There were two stages in Dr. John Duncan\u2019s escape from\n pantheism: 1. when he came first to believe in the existence of\n God, and \u201cdanced for joy upon the brig o\u2019 Dee\u201d; and 2. when, under\n Malan\u2019s influence, he came also to believe that \u201cGod meant that we\n should know him.\u201d In the story in the old Village Reader, the\n mother broke completely down when she found that her son was\n likely to grow up stupid, but her tears conquered him and made him\n intelligent. Laura Bridgman was blind, deaf and dumb, and had but\n small sense of taste or smell. When her mother, after long\n separation, went to her in Boston, the mother\u2019s heart was in\n distress lest the daughter should not recognize her. When at last,\n by some peculiar mother\u2019s sign, she pierced the veil of\n insensibility, it was a glad time for both. So God, our Father,\n tries to reveal himself to our blind, deaf and dumb souls. The\n agony of the Cross is the sign of God\u2019s distress over the\n insensibility of humanity which sin has caused. If he is the Maker\n of man\u2019s being, he will surely seek to fit it for that communion\n with himself for which it was designed.\n\n (_b_) Gore, Incarnation, 52, 53\u2014\u201cNature is a first volume, in\n itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is\n Christ.\u201d (_c_) R. T. Smith, Man\u2019s Knowledge of Man and of God,\n 228\u2014\u201cMendicants do not ply their calling for years in a desert\n where there are no givers. Enough of supply has been received to\n keep the sense of want alive.\u201d (_d_) In the natural arrangements\n for the healing of bruises in plants and for the mending of broken\n bones in the animal creation, in the provision of remedial agents\n for the cure of human diseases, and especially in the delay to\n inflict punishment upon the transgressor and the space given him\n for repentance, we have some indications, which, if uncontradicted\n by other evidence, might lead us to regard the God of nature as a\n God of forbearance and mercy. Plutarch\u2019s treatise \u201cDe Sera Numinis\n Vindicta\u201d is proof that this thought had occurred to the heathen.\n It may be doubted, indeed, whether a heathen religion could even\n continue to exist, without embracing in it some element of hope.\n Yet this very delay in the execution of the divine judgments gave\n its own occasion for doubting the existence of a God who was both\n good and just. \u201cTruth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on\n the throne,\u201d is a scandal to the divine government which only the\n sacrifice of Christ can fully remove.\n\n The problem presents itself also in the Old Testament. In Job 21,\n and in Psalms, 17, 37, 49, 73, there are partial answers; see _Job\n 21:7\u2014_\u201cWherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty\n in power?\u201d _24:1\u2014_\u201cWhy are not judgment times determined by the\n Almighty? And they that know him, why see they not his days?\u201d The\n New Testament intimates the existence of a witness to God\u2019s\n goodness among the heathen, while at the same time it declares\n that the full knowledge of forgiveness and salvation is brought\n only by Christ. Compare _Acts 14:17\u2014_\u201cAnd yet he left not himself\n without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven\n rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and\n gladness\u201d; _17:25-27\u2014_\u201che himself giveth to all life, and breath,\n and all things; and he made of one every nation of men ... that\n they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find\n him\u201d; _Rom. 2:4\u2014_\u201cthe goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance\u201d;\n _3:25\u2014_\u201cthe passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the\n forbearance of God\u201d; _Eph. 3:9\u2014_\u201cto make all men see what is the\n dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God\u201d;\n _2 Tim. 1:10\u2014_\u201cour Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and\n brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.\u201d See\n Hackett\u2019s edition of the treatise of Plutarch, as also Bowen,\n Metaph. and Ethics, 462-487; Diman, Theistic Argument, 371.\n\n\nWe conclude this section upon the reasons _a priori_ for expecting a\nrevelation from God with the acknowledgment that the facts warrant that\ndegree of expectation which we call hope, rather than that larger degree\nof expectation which we call assurance; and this, for the reason that,\nwhile conscience gives proof that God is a God of holiness, we have not,\nfrom the light of nature, equal evidence that God is a God of love. Reason\nteaches man that, as a sinner, he merits condemnation; but he cannot, from\nreason alone, know that God will have mercy upon him and provide\nsalvation. His doubts can be removed only by God\u2019s own voice, assuring him\nof \u201credemption ... the forgiveness of ... trespasses\u201d (Eph. 1:7) and\nrevealing to him the way in which that forgiveness has been rendered\npossible.\n\n\n Conscience knows no pardon, and no Savior. Hovey, Manual of\n Christian Theology, 9, seems to us to go too far when he says:\n \u201cEven natural affection and conscience afford some clue to the\n goodness and holiness of God, though much more is needed by one\n who undertakes the study of Christian theology.\u201d We grant that\n natural affection gives some clue to God\u2019s goodness, but we regard\n conscience as reflecting only God\u2019s holiness and his hatred of\n sin. We agree with Alexander McLaren: \u201cDoes God\u2019s love need to be\n proved? Yes, as all paganism shows. Gods vicious, gods careless,\n gods cruel, gods beautiful, there are in abundance; but where is\n there a god who loves?\u201d\n\n\n\nII. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.\n\n\n1. _As to its substance._ We may expect this later revelation not to\ncontradict, but to confirm and enlarge, the knowledge of God which we\nderive from nature, while it remedies the defects of natural religion and\nthrows light upon its problems.\n\n\n Isaiah\u2019s appeal is to God\u2019s previous communications of truth: _Is.\n 8:20\u2014_\u201cTo the law and to the testimony! if they speak not\n according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.\u201d And\n Malachi follows the example of Isaiah; _Mal. 4:4\u2014_\u201cRemember ye the\n law of Moses my servant.\u201d Our Lord himself based his claims upon\n the former utterances of God: _Luke 24:27\u2014_\u201cbeginning from Moses\n and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the\n scriptures the things concerning himself.\u201d\n\n\n2. _As to its method._ We may expect it to follow God\u2019s methods of\nprocedure in other communications of truth.\n\n\n Bishop Butler (Analogy, part ii, chap. iii) has denied that there\n is any possibility of judging _a priori_ how a divine revelation\n will be given. \u201cWe are in no sort judges beforehand,\u201d he says, \u201cby\n what methods, or in what proportion, it were to be expected that\n this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.\u201d But\n Bishop Butler somewhat later in his great work (part ii, chap. iv)\n shows that God\u2019s progressive plan in revelation has its analogy in\n the slow, successive steps by which God accomplishes his ends in\n nature. We maintain that the revelation in nature affords certain\n presumptions with regard to the revelation of grace, such for\n example as those mentioned below.\n\n Leslie Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891:180\u2014\u201cButler\n answered the argument of the deists, that the God of Christianity\n was unjust, by arguing that the God of nature was equally unjust.\n James Mill, admitting the analogy, refused to believe in either\n God. Dr. Martineau has said, for similar reasons, that Butler\n \u2018wrote one of the most terrible persuasives to atheism ever\n produced.\u2019 So J. H. Newman\u2019s \u2018kill or cure\u2019 argument is\n essentially that God has either revealed nothing, or has made\n revelations in some other places than in the Bible. His argument,\n like Butler\u2019s, may be as good a persuasive to scepticism as to\n belief.\u201d To this indictment by Leslie Stephen we reply that it has\n cogency only so long as we ignore the fact of human sin. Granting\n this fact, our world becomes a world of discipline, probation and\n redemption, and both the God of nature and the God of Christianity\n are cleared from all suspicion of injustice. The analogy between\n God\u2019s methods in the Christian system and his methods in nature\n becomes an argument in favor of the former.\n\n\n(_a_) That of continuous historical development,\u2014that it will be given in\ngerm to early ages, and will be more fully unfolded as the race is\nprepared to receive it.\n\n\n Instances of continuous development in God\u2019s impartations are\n found in geological history; in the growth of the sciences; in the\n progressive education of the individual and of the race. No other\n religion but Christianity shows \u201ca steady historical progress of\n the vision of one infinite Character unfolding itself to man\n through a period of many centuries.\u201d See sermon by Dr. Temple, on\n the Education of the World, in Essays and Reviews; Rogers,\n Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 374-384; Walker, Philosophy of the\n Plan of Salvation. On the gradualness of revelation, see Fisher,\n Nature and Method of Revelation, 46-86; Arthur H. Hallam, in John\n Brown\u2019s Rab and his Friends, 282\u2014\u201cRevelation is a gradual\n approximation of the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of\n finite humanity.\u201d A little fire can kindle a city or a world; but\n ten times the heat of that little fire, if widely diffused, would\n not kindle anything.\n\n\n(_b_) That of original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons\nin that nation, that it may through them be communicated to mankind.\n\n\n Each nation represents an idea. As the Greek had a genius for\n liberty and beauty, and the Roman a genius for organization and\n law, so the Hebrew nation had a \u201cgenius for religion\u201d (Renan);\n this last, however, would have been useless without special divine\n aid and superintendence, as witness other productions of this same\n Semitic race, such as Bel and the Dragon, in the Old Testament\n Apocrypha; the gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament; and later\n still, the Talmud and the Koran.\n\n The O. T. Apocrypha relates that, when Daniel was thrown a second\n time into the lions\u2019 den, an angel seized Habakkuk in Judea by the\n hair of his head and carried him with a bowl of pottage to give to\n Daniel for his dinner. There were seven lions, and Daniel was\n among them seven days and nights. Tobias starts from his father\u2019s\n house to secure his inheritance, and his little dog goes with him.\n On the banks of the great river a great fish threatens to devour\n him, but he captures and despoils the fish. He finally returns\n successful to his father\u2019s house, and his little dog goes in with\n him. In the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus carries water in his mantle\n when his pitcher is broken; makes clay birds on the Sabbath, and,\n when rebuked, causes them to fly; strikes a youthful companion\n with death, and then curses his accusers with blindness; mocks his\n teachers, and resents control. Later Moslem legends declare that\n Mohammed caused darkness at noon; whereupon the moon flew to him,\n went seven times around the Ka\u0101ba, bowed, entered his right\n sleeve, split into two halves after slipping out at the left, and\n the two halves, after retiring to the extreme east and west, were\n reunited. These products of the Semitic race show that neither the\n influence of environment nor a native genius for religion\n furnishes an adequate explanation of our Scriptures. As the flame\n on Elijah\u2019s altar was caused, not by the dead sticks, but by the\n fire from heaven, so only the inspiration of the Almighty can\n explain the unique revelation of the Old and New Testaments.\n\n The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression\n of their life we \u201cmust look beneath the surface, in the soul,\n where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face\n with God\u201d (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 28). But the Hebrew\n religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason,\n and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of\n knowledge, and the \u00e6sthetic sense. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek\n Genius, 34\u2014\u201cThe Ph\u0153nicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it\n was the Greeks who wrote.\u201d Aristotle was the beginner of science,\n and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the\n scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by\n striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would\n never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not\n been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has\n contributed her constitutional government, and America her manhood\n suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God\n is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to\n every other. _Acts 17:26_\u2014God \u201cmade of one every nation of men to\n dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their\n appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation\u201d; _Rom.\n 3:12\u2014_\u201cWhat advantage then hath the Jew?... first of all, that\n they were entrusted with the oracles of God.\u201d God\u2019s choice of the\n Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious\n truth, is analogous to his choice of other nations, as the\n repositories and communicators of \u00e6sthetic, scientific,\n governmental truth.\n\n Hegel: \u201cNo nation that has played a weighty and active part in the\n world\u2019s history has ever issued from the simple development of a\n single race along the unmodified lines of blood-relationship.\n There must be differences, conflicts, a composition of opposed\n forces.\u201d The conscience of the Hebrew, the thought of the Greek,\n the organization of the Latin, the personal loyalty of the Teuton,\n must all be united to form a perfect whole. \u201cWhile the Greek\n church was orthodox, the Latin church was Catholic; while the\n Greek treated of the two wills in Christ, the Latin treated of the\n harmony of our wills with God; while the Latin saved through a\n corporation, the Teuton saved through personal faith.\u201d Brereton,\n in Educational Review, Nov. 1901:339\u2014\u201cThe problem of France is\n that of the religious orders; that of Germany, the construction of\n society; that of America, capital and labor.\u201d Pfleiderer, Philos.\n Religion, 1:183, 184\u2014\u201cGreat ideas never come from the masses, but\n from marked individuals. These ideas, when propounded, however,\n awaken an echo in the masses, which shows that the ideas had been\n slumbering unconsciously in the souls of others.\u201d The hour\n strikes, and a Newton appears, who interprets God\u2019s will in\n nature. So the hour strikes, and a Moses or a Paul appears, who\n interprets God\u2019s will in morals and religion. The few grains of\n wheat found in the clasped hand of the Egyptian mummy would have\n been utterly lost if one grain had been sown in Europe, a second\n in Asia, a third in Africa, and a fourth in America; all being\n planted together in a flower-pot, and their product in a\n garden-bed, and the still later fruit in a farmer\u2019s field, there\n came at last to be a sufficient crop of new Mediterranean wheat to\n distribute to all the world. So God followed his ordinary method\n in giving religious truth first to a single nation and to chosen\n individuals in that nation, that through them it might be given to\n all mankind. See British Quarterly, Jan. 1874: art.: Inductive\n Theology.\n\n\n(_c_) That of preservation in written and accessible documents, handed\ndown from those to whom the revelation is first communicated.\n\n\n Alphabets, writing, books, are our chief dependence for the\n history of the past; all the great religions of the world are\n book-religions; the Karens expected their teachers in the new\n religion to bring to them a book. But notice that false religions\n have scriptures, but not Scripture; their sacred books lack the\n principle of unity which is furnished by divine inspiration. H. P.\n Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 68\u2014\u201cMohammed\n discovered that the Scriptures of the Jews were the source of\n their religion. He called them a \u2018book-people,\u2019 and endeavored to\n construct a similar code for his disciples. In it God is the only\n speaker; all its contents are made known to the prophet by direct\n revelation; its Arabic style is perfect; its text is\n incorruptible; it is absolute authority in law, science and\n history.\u201d The Koran is a grotesque human parody of the Bible; its\n exaggerated pretensions of divinity, indeed, are the best proof\n that it is of purely human origin. Scripture, on the other hand,\n makes no such claims for itself, but points to Christ as the sole\n and final authority. In this sense we may say with Clarke,\n Christian Theology, 20\u2014\u201cChristianity is not a book-religion, but a\n life-religion. The Bible does not give us Christ, but Christ gives\n us the Bible.\u201d Still it is true that for our knowledge of Christ\n we are almost wholly dependent upon Scripture. In giving his\n revelation to the world, God has followed his ordinary method of\n communicating and preserving truth by means of written documents.\n Recent investigations, however, now render it probable that the\n Karen expectation of a book was the survival of the teaching of\n the Nestorian missionaries, who as early as the eighth century\n penetrated the remotest parts of Asia, and left in the wall of the\n city of Singwadu in Northwestern China a tablet as a monument of\n their labors. On book-revelation, see Rogers, Eclipse of Faith,\n 73-96, 281-304.\n\n\n3. _As to its attestation._ We may expect that this revelation will be\naccompanied by evidence that its author is the same being whom we have\npreviously recognized as God of nature. This evidence must constitute\n(_a_) a manifestation of God himself; (_b_) in the outward as well as the\ninward world; (_c_) such as only God\u2019s power or knowledge can make; and\n(_d_) such as cannot be counterfeited by the evil, or mistaken by the\ncandid, soul. In short, we may expect God to attest by miracles and by\nprophecy, the divine mission and authority of those to whom he\ncommunicates a revelation. Some such outward sign would seem to be\nnecessary, not only to assure the original recipient that the supposed\nrevelation is not a vagary of his own imagination, but also to render the\nrevelation received by a single individual authoritative to all (compare\nJudges 6:17, 36-40\u2014Gideon asks a sign, for himself; 1 K. 18:36-38\u2014Elijah\nasks a sign, for others). But in order that our positive proof of a divine\nrevelation may not be embarrassed by the suspicion that the miraculous and\nprophetic elements in the Scripture history create a presumption against\nits credibility, it will be desirable to take up at this point the general\nsubject of miracles and prophecy.\n\n\n\nIII. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.\n\n\n1. Definition of Miracle.\n\n\nA. Preliminary Definition.\u2014A miracle is an event palpable to the senses,\nproduced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event\ntherefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of\nnature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent\nto explain.\n\nThis definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the\nmiracle:\u2014(_a_) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law;\nsince natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much\nas before. (_b_) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies\u2014a\nproduct merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect\nof a will outside of nature. (_c_) A miracle is not an event without a\ncause; since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (_d_) A\nmiracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of\nwisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so\nthat in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued.\n(_e_) A miracle is not contrary to experience; since it is not contrary to\nexperience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (_f_) A miracle\nis not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination;\nbut is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective\nproof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious\nteacher.\n\n\n For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and\n Christianity, 302. On the whole subject, see Mozley, Miracles;\n Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in\n Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A. H. Strong, Philosophy\n and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The\n definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the\n miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which\n profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New\n Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them\n either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or\n objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the\n former aspect they are called \u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1, \u201cwonders,\u201d and \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03b1,\n \u201csigns,\u201d_ (John 4:48; Acts 2:22)_. In the latter aspect they are\n called \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2, \u201cpowers,\u201d and \u1f14\u03c1\u03b3\u03b1, \u201cworks,\u201d_ (Mat 7:22; John\n 14:11)_. See H. B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp.\n 94\u2014\u201c\u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd, sign, marking the purpose or object, the moral end,\n placing the event in connection with revelation.\u201d The Bible Union\n Version uniformly and properly renders \u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2 by \u201cwonder,\u201d \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03b9\u03c2\n by \u201cmiracle,\u201d \u1f14\u03c1\u03b3\u03bf\u03bd by \u201cwork,\u201d and \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd by \u201csign.\u201d Goethe,\n Faust: \u201cAlles Verg\u00e4ngliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das\n Unzul\u00e4ngliche wird hier Ereigniss\u201d\u2014\u201cEverything transitory is but a\n parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.\u201d So the miracles\n of the New Testament are acted parables,\u2014Christ opens the eyes of\n the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies\n the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the\n dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and\n sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.\n\n A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is\n demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed\n interest of natural law. Such a modification is proposed by\n Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage\n illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine,\n which would present to the observer in regular succession the\n series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make\n a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million;\n Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock\n which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results\n are due simply to the original construction of the respective\n machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:591,\n 592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in\n Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A. H. Strong,\n Philosophy and Religion, 129-147. Babbage and Peabody would deny\n that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God,\n and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God\n is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted\n the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the\n appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this\n view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine\n working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the\n system, while it still holds God\u2019s work to be essential, not only\n to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the\n religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict\n the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the\n prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See\n Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.\n\n But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large\n degree the element of \u201csignality\u201d which is needed, if it is to\n accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which\n miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as\n an attestation of revelation\u2014the advantage, namely, that while\n special providence affords _some_ warrant that this revelation\n comes from God, miracle gives _full_ warrant that it comes from\n God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the\n knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and\n the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory\n far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example,\n could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun.\n Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse\n to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense\n in which the term nature is ordinarily used. Our Lord, moreover,\n seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: \u201cIf\n I by the finger of God cast out demons\u201d_ (Luke 11:20)_; _Mark\n 1:41\u2014_\u201cI will; be thou made clean.\u201d The view of Babbage is\n inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate\n exercise of _will_ in the miracle, but because it regards nature\n as a mere _machine_ which can operate apart from God\u2014a purely\n deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products\n of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be\n only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature,\n like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William\n Elder, Ideas from Nature: \u201cThe century-plant which we have seen\n growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our\n old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural\n notwithstanding.\u201d If, however, we interpret nature dynamically,\n rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of\n the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine,\n there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both\n natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has\n natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is\n produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to\n an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment\n combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles\n as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix-xxvi, 7,\n 143-166; Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, 333-336; Smith\u2019s and\n Hastings\u2019 Dict. of Bible, art.: Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton\n Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:541, 542.\n\n\nB. Alternative and Preferable Definition.\u2014A miracle is an event in nature,\nso extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command\nof a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on\nthe part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design\nof certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.\n\nThis definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the\npreliminary definition given above:\u2014(_a_) It recognizes the immanence of\nGod and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis\nbetween the laws of nature and the will of God. (_b_) It regards the\nmiracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already\npresent in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general\nplan. (_c_) It holds that natural law, as the method of God\u2019s regular\nactivity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these\nwill best secure his purpose in creation. (_d_) It leaves it possible that\nall miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be\ntraced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may\nbe only names for the one and self-same will of God. (_e_) It reconciles\nthe claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any\npossible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by\nmaintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself\nare to be interpreted as signs of God\u2019s special commission to him under\nwhose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.\n\n\n Augustine, who declares that \u201cDei voluntas rerum natura est,\u201d\n defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 21:8\u2014\u201cPortentum ergo fit\n non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.\u201d He says also\n that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is\n more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be,\n than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again.\n E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104\u2014\u201cThe natural is God\u2019s work.\n He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and\n the supernatural. The natural is supernatural. God works in\n everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means,\n is God\u2019s end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.\u201d Shaler,\n Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something\n exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in\n nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from\n the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel\n fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame.\n Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result\n of a regularly rising temperature. Nature may be God\u2019s regular\n action, miracle its unique result. God\u2019s regular action may be\n entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely\n natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt\n the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591\u2014\u201cEverything is\n miracle,\u2014therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is\n miracle,\u2014therefore science sees God nowhere.\u201d\n\n Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as\n infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles, 18\u2014\u201cThe\n Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the\n emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was\n all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.\u201d\n Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 4:117\u2014\u201cThe force of a miracle to us,\n arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew,\n because he had no notion of natural law.\u201d _Ps. 77:19, 20\u2014_\u201cThy way\n was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy\n footsteps were not known\u201d\u2014They knew not, and we know not, by what\n precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise\n track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is\n that \u201cThou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses\n and Aaron.\u201d J. M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion: \u201cThe\n supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very\n life; ... not an outside power interfering with the course of\n nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating\n through it.\u201d Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 35\u2014\u201cMiracle,\n instead of spelling \u2018monster\u2019, as Emerson said, simply bears\n witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the\n divine character.\u201d Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:533\u2014\u201cTo cause the sun to\n rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but\n the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike\n the manner in the other.\u201d\n\n Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural\n processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to\n deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go,\n in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of\n Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan,\n the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction\n of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when\n regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New\n Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves\n to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is\n turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and\n in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The\n virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of\n parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just\n demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life\n and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ\u2019s resurrection\n may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect\n human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the\n type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down\n our life and take it again. The scientist may yet find that his\n disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in\n science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are\n not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian\n argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would\n evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the\n impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his\n instrument.\n\n This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and\n irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by\n some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which\n minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as\n mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs\n to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig.,\n 1:295\u2014\u201cMiraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the\n idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the\n ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment\n the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power,\n wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a\n poetic realizing of religious ideas.\u201d Pfleiderer quotes Goethe\u2019s\n apothegm: \u201cMiracle is faith\u2019s dearest child.\u201d Foster, Finality of\n the Christian Religion, 128-138\u2014\u201cWe most honor biblical miraculous\n narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.\u201d Ritschl\n defines miracles as \u201cthose striking _natural_ occurrences with\n which the experience of God\u2019s special help is connected.\u201d He\n leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his\n school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl\u2019s Place in the History of\n Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ\u2019s resurrection as\n a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven\n Puzzling Books, 202\u2014\u201cIn the hands of perfect and spiritual man,\n the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in\n ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority\n of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may\n be perfectly in accordance with nature.\u201d Myers, Human Personality,\n 2:288\u2014\u201cI predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all\n reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of\n Christ.\u201d We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working\n of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation\n of the new life which he imparts: _John 14:12\u2014_\u201cHe that believeth\n on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works\n than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.\u201d\n\n We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to\n miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not\n to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: \u201cNature is\n not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.\u201d Shakespeare, All\u2019s Well\n that Ends Well, 2:3:1\u2014\u201cThey say miracles are past; and we have our\n philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things\n supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of\n terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we\n should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.\u201d Keats, Lamia: \u201cThere\n was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her\n texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.\u201d\n Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334\u2014\u201cBiological and psychological\n science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic,\n is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and\n that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity,\n there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a\n Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural\n agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the\n scientific mind.\u201d Theodore Parker: \u201cNo whim in God,\u2014therefore no\n miracle in nature.\u201d Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33\u2014\u201cThe miracle\n of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate\n power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not \u2018the great\n exception.\u2019 It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.\u201d\n Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320\u2014\u201cRedemption is not natural but\n supernatural\u2014supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature\n which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work\n of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God\n had designed.\u201d Abp. Trench: \u201cThe world of nature is throughout a\n witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand,\n growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very\n end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are\n not a common but a sacred writing,\u2014they are the hieroglyphics of\n God.\u201d Pascal: \u201cNature is the image of grace.\u201d President Mark\n Hopkins: \u201cChristianity and perfect Reason are identical.\u201d See\n Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard,\n in Hastings\u2019 Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view\n of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The\n Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of\n Science, 336.\n\n\n2. Possibility of Miracle.\n\n\nAn event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature.\nThis is evident from the following considerations:\n\n(_a_) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and\ntranscended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and\nchemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended\nor annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in\naccomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to\nthemselves.\n\n\n By nature we mean nature in the proper sense\u2014not \u201ceverything that\n is not God,\u201d but \u201ceverything that is not God or made in the image\n of God\u201d; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man\u2019s will\n does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the\n transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and\n Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel,\n 23\u2014\u201cIs it impossible that there should be unique things in the\n world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?\u201d Ladd,\n Philosophy of Knowledge, 406\u2014\u201cWhy does not the projecting part of\n the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation,\n from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the\n forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and\n oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now,\n after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and\n tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water\n forcibly expand at 32\u00b0 Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of\n cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its\n temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.\u201d Gore,\n Incarnation, 48\u2014\u201cEvolution views nature as a progressive order in\n which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena\n unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not\n resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature\u2014the\n creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new\n nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will\n radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are\n the proper accompaniments of his person.\u201d We may add that, as\n Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the\n same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the\n essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of\n that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony.\n William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156\u2014\u201cGod is not bound hopelessly\n to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature,\nand produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish,\nwhile yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still\noperates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the\nwater\u2014for the axe still has weight (_cf._ 2 K. 6:5-7).\n\n\n _Versus_ Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130\u2014\u201cA miracle is a violation of\n the laws of nature.\u201d Christian apologists have too often\n needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume\u2019s\n definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support\n the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts\n upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet\u2019s word, make the iron\n to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is\n miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27:\n After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high\n up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without\n altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant\n continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471;\n Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row,\n Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge:\n Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working\n or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not\n suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into\n the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the\n ball would not diminish and the ball would never return.\n \u201cGravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that\n attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or\n violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws,\n each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But\n men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force\n additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So\n spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature\u201d (Sunday\n School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60\u2014\u201cWherever you find\n thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the\n dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free\n personality.\u201d William James: \u201cWe need to substitute the _personal_\n view of life for the _impersonal_ and _mechanical_ view.\n Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of\n facts,\u2014it is not _science_.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts\nupon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his\nphysical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human\nwill can _use_ means, only because it has the power of acting initially\n_without_ means.\n\n\n See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept.\n 1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311\u2014\u201cNot Divinity\n alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its\n measure and degree, does the same.\u201d Each soul that acts in any way\n on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle.\n Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350\u2014\u201cThe making of all events miraculous\n is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world\n with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.\u201d George Adam Smith, on\n _Is. 33:14\u2014_\u201cdevouring fire ... everlasting burnings\u201d: \u201cIf we look\n at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings\n collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not\n the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not\n see God.\u201d P. S. Henson: \u201cThe current in an electric wire is\n invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and\n insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once\n you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is\n only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws,\n which thus gives light to the ages,\u201d\u2014or, let us say rather, the\n momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will\n of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss,\n 100\u2014\u201cSpinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische M\u00f6glichkeit, Hume ihre\n geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit,\n Schleiermacher ihre religi\u00f6se Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige\n Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische\n Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what\nthe chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to\naccomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God\ndwells in and controls the universe. If man\u2019s will can act directly upon\nmatter in his own physical organism, God\u2019s will can work immediately upon\nthe system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if\nthere be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The\nimpossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of\natheism or pantheism.\n\n\n See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an\n Argument and a Challenge: \u201cAnthropomorphism is preferable to\n hylomorphism.\u201d Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1\u2014\u201cA\n miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a\n use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher\n powers.\u201d See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und\n Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18,\n 19, 26; Andover Review, on \u201cRobert Elsmere,\u201d 1888:303; W. E.\n Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science\n and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32\u2014Three postulates:\n (1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man\u2019s\n will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding\n brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes\n throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec.\n 1894:229\u2014Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things\n are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of\n ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in\n unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of\n consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural;\n prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which _the Mind_\n in nature cannot ignore. _Cf.__ Ps. 115:3\u2014_\u201cour God is in the\n heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased\u201d = his almighty power\n and freedom do away with all _a priori_ objections to miracles. If\n God is not a mere _force_, but a _person_, then miracles are\n possible.\n\n\n(_e_) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in\nChrist none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos\nor divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make\nGod known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy.\nSince all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of\nlife, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of\nmiracle.\n\n\n See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166\u2014\u201cThis conception of\n evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose\n influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does\n not regard the universe as a _plenum_ to which nothing can be\n added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a\n plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of\n whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once\n imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its\n law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from\n the finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning\u2019s\n phrase, \u2018All\u2019s love, but all\u2019s law,\u2019 must be interpreted as\n meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the\n operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present\n God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a\n rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of\n unique and startling manifestations of power.\n\n \u201cThe idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is\n the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent\n with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the\n past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress\n there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces,\n and the new combination of forces can be explained only by some\n new force that causes the combination. This new force, moreover,\n must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the\n better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be\n continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase,\n nay, they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition\n of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new\n combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will.\n But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan\n the rationality of evolution depends.\n\n \u201cA man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and\n mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the\n superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which\n apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but\n of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and\n there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the\n bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would\n be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and\n superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly;\n imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and\n you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new\n beginnings.\n\n \u201cEvolution, then, depends on increments of force _plus_ continuity\n of plan. New creations are possible because the immanent God has\n not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far\n away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral\n universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are\n possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which\n the universe was built. If we were deists, believing in a distant\n God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be\n irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of\n which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy,\n evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of\n Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the\n fulness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.\u201d\n\n Lotze\u2019s own statement of his position may be found in his\n Microcosmos, 2:479 _sq._ Professor James Ten Broeke has\n interpreted him as follows: \u201cHe makes the possibility of the\n miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction\n between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of\n which the movements of the natural world are carried on only\n _through_ the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the\n general course of things, according to existing facts and the\n purpose of the divine Governor.\u201d\n\n\n3. Probability of Miracles.\n\n\nA. We acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature,\nthere is a presumption against miracles. Experience testifies to the\nuniformity of natural law. A general uniformity is needful, in order to\nmake possible a rational calculation of the future, and a proper ordering\nof life.\n\n\n See Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. ii; F. W. Farrar, Witness of\n History to Christ, 3-45; Modern Scepticism, 1:179-227; Chalmers,\n Christian Revelation, 1:47. G. D. B. Pepper: \u201cWhere there is no\n law, no settled order, there can be no miracle. The miracle\n presupposes the law, and the importance assigned to miracles is\n the recognition of the reign of law. But the making and launching\n of a ship may be governed by law, no less than the sailing of the\n ship after it is launched. So the introduction of a higher\n spiritual order into a merely natural order constitutes a new and\n unique event.\u201d Some Christian apologists have erred in affirming\n that the miracle was antecedently as probable as any other event,\n whereas only its antecedent improbability gives it value as a\n proof of revelation. Horace: \u201cNec deus intersit, nisi dignus\n vindice nodus Inciderit.\u201d\n\n\nB. But we deny that this uniformity of nature is absolute and universal.\n(_a_) It is not a truth of reason that can have no exceptions, like the\naxiom that a whole is greater than its parts. (_b_) Experience could not\nwarrant a belief in absolute and universal uniformity, unless experience\nwere identical with absolute and universal knowledge. (_c_) We know, on\nthe contrary, from geology, that there have been breaks in this\nuniformity, such as the introduction of vegetable, animal and human life,\nwhich cannot be accounted for, except by the manifestation in nature of a\nsupernatural power.\n\n\n (_a_) Compare the probability that the sun will rise to-morrow\n morning with the certainty that two and two make four. Huxley, Lay\n Sermons, 158, indignantly denies that there is any \u201cmust\u201d about\n the uniformity of nature: \u201cNo one is entitled to say _a priori_\n that any given so-called miraculous event is impossible.\u201d Ward,\n Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:84\u2014\u201cThere is no evidence for the\n statement that the mass of the universe is a definite and\n unchangeable quantity\u201d; 108, 109\u2014\u201cWhy so confidently assume that a\n rigid and monotonous uniformity is the only, or the highest,\n indication of order, the order of an ever living Spirit, above\n all? How is it that we depreciate machine-made articles, and\n prefer those in which the artistic impulse, or the fitness of the\n individual case, is free to shape and to make what is literally\n manufactured, hand-made?... Dangerous as teleological arguments in\n general may be, we may at least safely say the world was not\n designed to make science easy.... To call the verses of a poet,\n the politics of a statesman, or the award of a judge mechanical,\n implies, as Lotze has pointed out, marked disparagement, although\n it implies, too, precisely those characteristics\u2014exactness and\n invariability\u2014in which Maxwell would have us see a token of the\n divine.\u201d Surely then we must not insist that divine wisdom must\n always run in a rut, must ever repeat itself, must never exhibit\n itself in unique acts like incarnation and resurrection. See\n Edward Hitchcock, in Bib. Sac., 20:489-561, on \u201cThe Law of\n Nature\u2019s Constancy Subordinate to the Higher Law of Change\u201d;\n Jevons, Principles of Science, 2:430-438; Mozley, Miracles, 26.\n\n (_b_) S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 18 December, 1831\u2014\u201cThe light\n which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern of the ship,\n which shines only on the waves behind us.\u201d Hobbes: \u201cExperience\n concludeth nothing universally.\u201d Brooks, Foundations of Zo\u00f6logy,\n 131\u2014\u201cEvidence can tell us only what has happened, and it can never\n assure us that the future _must_ be like the past; 132\u2014Proof that\n all nature is mechanical would not be inconsistent with the belief\n that everything in nature is immediately sustained by Providence,\n and that my volition counts for something in determining the\n course of events.\u201d Royce, World and Individual, 2:204\u2014\u201cUniformity\n is not absolute. Nature is a vaster realm of life and meaning, of\n which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God\u2019s\n life. The rhythm of the heart-beat has its normal regularity, yet\n its limited persistence. Nature may be merely the _habits of free\n will_. Every region of this universally conscious world may be a\n centre whence issues new conscious life for communication to all\n the worlds.\u201d Principal Fairbairn: \u201cNature is Spirit.\u201d We prefer to\n say: \u201cNature is the manifestation of spirit, the regularities of\n freedom.\u201d\n\n (_c_) Other breaks in the uniformity of nature are the coming of\n Christ and the regeneration of a human soul. Harnack, What is\n Christianity, 18, holds that though there are no interruptions to\n the working of natural law, natural law is not yet fully known.\n While there are no miracles, there is plenty of the miraculous.\n The power of mind over matter is beyond our present conceptions.\n Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 210\u2014The effects are no more\n consequences of the laws than the laws are consequences of the\n effects = both laws and effects are exercises of divine will.\n King, Reconstruction in Theology, 56\u2014We must hold, not to the\n _uniformity_ of law, but to the _universality_ of law; for\n evolution has successive stages with new laws coming in and\n becoming dominant that had not before appeared. The new and higher\n stage is practically a miracle from the point of view of the\n lower. See British Quarterly Review, Oct. 1881:154; Martineau,\n Study, 2:200, 203, 209.\n\n\nC. Since the inworking of the moral law into the constitution and course\nof nature shows that nature exists, not for itself, but for the\ncontemplation and use of moral beings, it is probable that the God of\nnature will produce effects aside from those of natural law, whenever\nthere are sufficiently important moral ends to be served thereby.\n\n\n Beneath the expectation of uniformity is the intuition of final\n cause; the former may therefore give way to the latter. See\n Porter, Human Intellect, 592-615\u2014Efficient causes and final causes\n may conflict, and then the efficient give place to the final. This\n is miracle. See Hutton, in Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1885, and\n Channing, Evidences of Revealed Religion, quoted in Shedd, Dogm.\n Theol., 1:534, 535\u2014\u201cThe order of the universe is a means, not an\n end, and like all other means must give way when the end can be\n best promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an\n idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of\n business when they clog instead of advancing it.\u201d Balfour,\n Foundations of Belief, 357\u2014\u201cThe stability of the heavens is in the\n sight of God of less importance than the moral growth of the human\n spirit.\u201d This is proved by the Incarnation. The Christian sees in\n this little earth the scene of God\u2019s greatest revelation. The\n superiority of the spiritual to the physical helps us to see our\n true dignity in the creation, to rule our bodies, to overcome our\n sins. Christ\u2019s suffering shows us that God is no indifferent\n spectator of human pain. He subjects himself to our conditions, or\n rather in this subjection reveals to us God\u2019s own eternal\n suffering for sin. The atonement enables us to solve the problem\n of sin.\n\n\nD. The existence of moral disorder consequent upon the free acts of man\u2019s\nwill, therefore, changes the presumption against miracles into a\npresumption in their favor. The non-appearance of miracles, in this case,\nwould be the greatest of wonders.\n\n\n Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 331-335\u2014So a man\u2019s\n personal consciousness of sin, and above all his personal\n experience of regenerating grace, will constitute the best\n preparation for the study of miracles. \u201cChristianity cannot be\n proved except to a bad conscience.\u201d The dying Vinet said well:\n \u201cThe greatest miracle that I know of is that of my conversion. I\n was dead, and I live; I was blind, and I see; I was a slave, and I\n am free; I was an enemy of God, and I love him; prayer, the Bible,\n the society of Christians, these were to me a source of profound\n _ennui_; whilst now it is the pleasures of the world that are\n wearisome to me, and piety is the source of all my joy. Behold the\n miracle! And if God has been able to work that one, there are none\n of which he is not capable.\u201d\n\n Yet the physical and the moral are not \u201csundered as with an axe.\u201d\n Nature is but the lower stage or imperfect form of the revelation\n of God\u2019s truth and holiness and love. It prepares the way for the\n miracle by suggesting, though more dimly, the same essential\n characteristics of the divine nature. Ignorance and sin\n necessitate a larger disclosure. G. S. Lee, The Shadow Christ,\n 84\u2014\u201cThe pillar of cloud was the dim night-lamp that Jehovah kept\n burning over his infant children, to show them that he was there.\n They did not know that the night itself was God.\u201d Why do we have\n Christmas presents in Christian homes? Because the parents do not\n love their children at other times? No; but because the mind\n becomes sluggish in the presence of merely regular kindness, and\n special gifts are needed to wake it to gratitude. So our sluggish\n and unloving minds need special testimonies of the divine mercy.\n Shall God alone be shut up to dull uniformities of action? Shall\n the heavenly Father alone be unable to make special communications\n of love? Why then are not miracles and revivals of religion\n constant and uniform? Because uniform blessings would be regarded\n simply as workings of a machine. See Mozley, Miracles, preface,\n xxiv; Turner, Wish and Will, 291-315; N. W. Taylor, Moral\n Government, 2:388-423.\n\n\nE. As belief in the possibility of miracles rests upon our belief in the\nexistence of a personal God, so belief in the probability of miracles\nrests upon our belief that God is a moral and benevolent being. He who has\nno God but a God of physical order will regard miracles as an impertinent\nintrusion upon that order. But he who yields to the testimony of\nconscience and regards God as a God of holiness, will see that man\u2019s\nunholiness renders God\u2019s miraculous interposition most necessary to man\nand most becoming to God. Our view of miracles will therefore be\ndetermined by our belief in a moral, or in a non-moral, God.\n\n\n Philo, in his Life of Moses, 1:88, speaking of the miracles of the\n quails and of the water from the rock, says that \u201call these\n unexpected and extraordinary things are amusements or playthings\n of God.\u201d He believes that there is room for arbitrariness in the\n divine procedure. Scripture however represents miracle as an\n extraordinary, rather than as an arbitrary, act. It is \u201chis work,\n his strange work ... his act, his strange act\u201d_ (Is. 28:21)_.\n God\u2019s ordinary method is that of regular growth and development.\n Chadwick, Unitarianism, 72\u2014\u201cNature is economical. If she wants an\n apple, she develops a leaf; if she wants a brain, she develops a\n vertebra. We always thought well of backbone; and, if Goethe\u2019s was\n a sound suggestion, we think better of it now.\u201d\n\n It is commonly, but very erroneously, taken for granted that\n miracle requires a greater exercise of power than does God\u2019s\n upholding of the ordinary processes of nature. But to an\n omnipotent Being our measures of power have no application. The\n question is not a question of power, but of rationality and love.\n Miracle implies self-restraint, as well as self-unfolding, on the\n part of him who works it. It is therefore not God\u2019s common method\n of action; it is adopted only when regular methods will not\n suffice; it often seems accompanied by a sacrifice of feeling on\n the part of Christ _Mat. 17:17\u2014_\u201cO faithless and perverse\n generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear\n with you? bring him hither to me\u201d; _Mark 7:34\u2014_\u201clooking up to\n heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be\n opened\u201d; _cf.__ Mat. 12:39\u2014_\u201cAn evil and adulterous generation\n seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but\n the sign of Jonah the prophet.\u201d\n\n\nF. From the point of view of ethical monism the probability of miracle\nbecomes even greater. Since God is not merely the intellectual but the\nmoral Reason of the world, the disturbances of the world-order which are\ndue to sin are the matters which most deeply affect him. Christ, the life\nof the whole system and of humanity as well, must suffer; and, since we\nhave evidence that he is merciful as well as just, it is probable that he\nwill rectify the evil by extraordinary means, when merely ordinary means\ndo not avail.\n\n\n Like creation and providence, like inspiration and regeneration,\n miracle is a work in which God limits himself, by a new and\n peculiar exercise of his power,\u2014limits himself as part of a\n process of condescending love and as a means of teaching\n sense-environed and sin-burdened humanity what it would not learn\n in any other way. Self-limitation, however, is the very perfection\n and glory of God, for without it no self-sacrificing love would be\n possible (see page 9, F.). The probability of miracles is\n therefore argued not only from God\u2019s holiness but also from his\n love. His desire to save men from their sins must be as infinite\n as his nature. The incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection,\n when once made known to us, commend themselves, not only as\n satisfying our human needs, but as worthy of a God of moral\n perfection.\n\n An argument for the probability of the miracle might be drawn from\n the concessions of one of its chief modern opponents, Thomas H.\n Huxley. He tells us in different places that the object of science\n is \u201cthe discovery of the rational order that pervades the\n universe,\u201d which in spite of his professed agnosticism is an\n unconscious testimony to Reason and Will at the basis of all\n things. He tells us again that there is no necessity in the\n uniformities of nature: \u201cWhen we change \u2018will\u2019 into \u2018must,\u2019 we\n introduce an idea of necessity which has no warrant in the\n observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover\n elsewhere.\u201d He speaks of \u201cthe infinite wickedness that has\n attended the course of human history.\u201d Yet he has no hope in man\u2019s\n power to save himself: \u201cI would as soon adore a wilderness of\n apes,\u201d as the Pantheist\u2019s rationalized conception of humanity. He\n grants that Jesus Christ is \u201cthe noblest ideal of humanity which\n mankind has yet worshiped.\u201d Why should he not go further and\n concede that Jesus Christ most truly represents the infinite\n Reason at the heart of things, and that his purity and love,\n demonstrated by suffering and death, make it probable that God\n will use extraordinary means for man\u2019s deliverance? It is doubtful\n whether Huxley recognized his own personal sinfulness as fully as\n he recognized the sinfulness of humanity in general. If he had\n done so, he would have been willing to accept miracle upon even a\n slight preponderance of historical proof. As a matter of fact, he\n rejected miracle upon the grounds assigned by Hume, which we now\n proceed to mention.\n\n\n4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.\n\n\n_The amount of testimony necessary to prove a miracle_ is no greater than\nthat which is requisite to prove the occurrence of any other unusual but\nconfessedly possible event.\n\nHume, indeed, argued that a miracle is so contradictory of all human\nexperience that it is more reasonable to believe any amount of testimony\nfalse than to believe a miracle to be true.\n\n\n The original form of the argument can be found in Hume\u2019s\n Philosophical Works, 4:124-150. See also Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:615.\n For the most recent and plausible statement of it, see\n Supernatural Religion, 1:55-94. The argument maintains for\n substance that things are impossible because improbable. It\n ridicules the credulity of those who \u201cthrust their fists against\n the posts, And still insist they see the ghosts,\u201d and holds with\n the German philosopher who declared that he would not believe in a\n miracle, even if he saw one with his own eyes. Christianity is so\n miraculous that it takes a miracle to make one believe it.\n\n\nThe argument is fallacious, because\n\n(_a_) It is chargeable with a _petitio principii_, in making our own\npersonal experience the measure of all human experience. The same\nprinciple would make the proof of any absolutely new fact impossible. Even\nthough God should work a miracle, he could never prove it.\n\n(_b_) It involves a self-contradiction, since it seeks to overthrow our\nfaith in human testimony by adducing to the contrary the general\nexperience of men, of which we know only from testimony. This general\nexperience, moreover, is merely negative, and cannot neutralize that which\nis positive, except upon principles which would invalidate all testimony\nwhatever.\n\n(_c_) It requires belief in a greater wonder than those which it would\nescape. That multitudes of intelligent and honest men should against all\ntheir interests unite in deliberate and persistent falsehood, under the\ncircumstances narrated in the New Testament record, involves a change in\nthe sequences of nature far more incredible than the miracles of Christ\nand his apostles.\n\n\n (_a_) John Stuart Mill, Essays on Theism, 216-241, grants that,\n even if a miracle were wrought, it would be impossible to prove\n it. In this he only echoes Hume, Miracles, 112\u2014\u201cThe ultimate\n standard by which we determine all disputes that may arise is\n always derived from experience and observation.\u201d But here our own\n personal experience is made the standard by which to judge all\n human experience. Whately, Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon\n Buonaparte, shows that the same rule would require us to deny the\n existence of the great Frenchman, since Napoleon\u2019s conquests were\n contrary to all experience, and civilized nations had never before\n been so subdued. The London Times for June 18, 1888, for the first\n time in at least a hundred years or in 31,200 issues, was\n misdated, and certain pages read June 17, although June 17 was\n Sunday. Yet the paper would have been admitted in a court of\n justice as evidence of a marriage. The real wonder is, not the\n break in experience, but the continuity without the break.\n\n (_b_) Lyman Abbott: \u201cIf the Old Testament told the story of a\n naval engagement between the Jewish people and a pagan people, in\n which all the ships of the pagan people were absolutely destroyed\n and not a single man was killed among the Jews, all the sceptics\n would have scorned the narrative. Every one now believes it,\n except those who live in Spain.\u201d There are people who in a similar\n way refuse to investigate the phenomena of hypnotism, second\n sight, clairvoyance, and telepathy, declaring _a priori_ that all\n these things are impossible. Prophecy, in the sense of prediction,\n is discredited. Upon the same principle wireless telegraphy might\n be denounced as an imposture. The son of Erin charged with murder\n defended himself by saying: \u201cYour honor, I can bring fifty people\n who did not see me do it.\u201d Our faith in testimony cannot be due to\n experience.\n\n (_c_) On this point, see Chalmers, Christian Revelation, 3:70;\n Starkie on Evidence, 739; De Quincey, Theological Essays,\n 1:162-188; Thornton, Old-fashioned Ethics, 143-153; Campbell on\n Miracles. South\u2019s sermon on The Certainty of our Savior\u2019s\n Resurrection had stated and answered this objection long before\n Hume propounded it.\n\n\n5. Evidential force of Miracles.\n\n\n(_a_) Miracles are the natural accompaniments and attestations of new\ncommunications from God. The great epochs of miracles\u2014represented by\nMoses, the prophets, the first and second comings of Christ\u2014are coincident\nwith the great epochs of revelation. Miracles serve to draw attention to\nnew truth, and cease when this truth has gained currency and foothold.\n\n\n Miracles are not scattered evenly over the whole course of\n history. Few miracles are recorded during the 2500 years from Adam\n to Moses. When the N. T. Canon is completed and the internal\n evidence of Scripture has attained its greatest strength, the\n external attestations by miracle are either wholly withdrawn or\n begin to disappear. The spiritual wonders of regeneration remain,\n and for these the way has been prepared by the long progress from\n the miracles of power wrought by Moses to the miracles of grace\n wrought by Christ. Miracles disappeared because newer and higher\n proofs rendered them unnecessary. Better things than these are now\n in evidence. Thomas Fuller: \u201cMiracles are the swaddling-clothes of\n the infant church.\u201d John Foster: \u201cMiracles are the great bell of\n the universe, which draws men to God\u2019s sermon.\u201d Henry Ward\n Beecher: \u201cMiracles are the midwives of great moral truths; candles\n lit before the dawn but put out after the sun has risen.\u201d\n Illingworth, in Lux Mundi, 210\u2014\u201cWhen we are told that miracles\n contradict experience, we point to the daily occurrence of the\n spiritual miracle of regeneration and ask: \u2018Which is easier to\n say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise and walk?\u2019_ (Mat.\n 9:5)_.\u201d\n\n Miracles and inspiration go together; if the former remain in the\n church, the latter should remain also; see Marsh, in Bap. Quar.\n Rev., 1887:225-242. On the cessation of miracles in the early\n church, see Henderson, Inspiration, 443-490; B\u00fcckmann, in Zeitsch.\n f. luth. Theol. u. Kirche, 1878:216. On miracles in the second\n century, see Barnard, Literature of the Second Century, 139-180.\n A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 167\u2014\u201cThe apostles were\n commissioned to speak for Christ till the N. T. Scriptures, his\n authoritative voice, were completed. In the apostolate we have a\n provisional inspiration; in the N. T. a stereotyped inspiration;\n the first being endowed with authority _ad interim_ to forgive\n sins, and the second having this authority _in perpetuo_.\u201d Dr.\n Gordon draws an analogy between coal, which is fossil sunlight,\n and the New Testament, which is fossil inspiration. Sabatier,\n Philos. Religion, 74\u2014\u201cThe Bible is very free from the senseless\n prodigies of oriental mythology. The great prophets, Isaiah, Amos,\n Micah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, work no miracles. Jesus\u2019\n temptation in the wilderness is a victory of the moral\n consciousness over the religion of mere physical prodigy.\u201d Trench\n says that miracles cluster about the _foundation_ of the\n theocratic kingdom under Moses and Joshua, and about the\n _restoration_ of that kingdom under Elijah and Elisha. In the O.\n T., miracles confute the gods of Egypt under Moses, the Ph\u0153nician\n Baal under Elijah and Elisha, and the gods of Babylon under\n Daniel. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 376, and art.: Miracle, by\n Bernard, in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary.\n\n\n(_b_) Miracles generally certify to the truth of doctrine, not directly,\nbut indirectly; otherwise a new miracle must needs accompany each new\ndoctrine taught. Miracles primarily and directly certify to the divine\ncommission and authority of a religious teacher, and therefore warrant\nacceptance of his doctrines and obedience to his commands as the doctrines\nand commands of God, whether these be communicated at intervals or all\ntogether, orally or in written documents.\n\n\n The exceptions to the above statement are very few, and are found\n only in cases where the whole commission and authority of Christ,\n and not some fragmentary doctrine, are involved. Jesus appeals to\n his miracles as proof of the truth of his teaching in _Mat. 9:5,\n 6\u2014_\u201cWhich is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say,\n Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath\n authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of\n the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house\u201d;\n _12:28\u2014_\u201cif I by the spirit of God cast out demons, then is the\n kingdom of God come upon you.\u201d So Paul in _Rom. 1:4_, says that\n Jesus \u201cwas declared to be the Son of God with power, ... by the\n resurrection from the dead.\u201d Mair, Christian Evidences, 223,\n quotes from Natural Religion, 181\u2014\u201cIt is said that the\n theo-philanthropist Lar\u00e9velli\u00e8re-L\u00e9peaux once confided to\n Talleyrand his disappointment at the ill success of his attempt to\n bring into vogue a sort of improved Christianity, a sort of\n benevolent rationalism which he had invented to meet the wants of\n a benevolent age. \u2018His propaganda made no way,\u2019 he said. \u2018What was\n he to do?\u2019 he asked. The ex-bishop Talleyrand politely condoled\n with him, feared it was a difficult task to found a new religion,\n more difficult than he had imagined, so difficult that he hardly\n knew what to advise. \u2018Still,\u2019\u2014so he went on after a moment\u2019s\n reflection,\u2014\u2018there is one plan which you might at least try: I\n should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third\n day.\u2019 \u201d See also Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 147-167;\n Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:168-172.\n\n\n(_c_) Miracles, therefore, do not stand alone as evidences. Power alone\ncannot prove a divine commission. Purity of life and doctrine must go with\nthe miracles to assure us that a religious teacher has come from God. The\nmiracles and the doctrine in this manner mutually support each other, and\nform parts of one whole. The internal evidence for the Christian system\nmay have greater power over certain minds and over certain ages than the\nexternal evidence.\n\n\n Pascal\u2019s aphorism that \u201cdoctrines must be judged by miracles,\n miracles by doctrine,\u201d needs to be supplemented by Mozley\u2019s\n statement that \u201ca supernatural fact is the proper proof of a\n supernatural doctrine, while a supernatural doctrine is not the\n proper proof of a supernatural fact.\u201d E. G. Robinson, Christian\n Theology, 107, would \u201cdefend miracles, but would not buttress up\n Christianity by them.... No amount of miracles could convince a\n good man of the divine commission of a known bad man; nor, on the\n other hand, could any degree of miraculous power suffice to\n silence the doubts of an evil-minded man.... The miracle is a\n certification only to him who can perceive its significance....\n The Christian church has the resurrection written all over it. Its\n very existence is proof of the resurrection. Twelve men could\n never have founded the church, if Christ had remained in the tomb.\n The living church is the burning bush that is not consumed.\u201d Gore,\n Incarnation, 57\u2014\u201cJesus did not appear after his resurrection to\n unbelievers, but to believers only,\u2014which means that this crowning\n miracle was meant to confirm an existing faith, not to create one\n where it did not exist.\u201d\n\n Christian Union, July 11, 1891\u2014\u201cIf the anticipated resurrection of\n Joseph Smith were to take place, it would add nothing whatever to\n the authority of the Mormon religion.\u201d Schurman, Agnosticism and\n Religion, 57\u2014\u201cMiracles are merely the bells to call primitive\n peoples to church. Sweet as the music they once made, modern ears\n find them jangling and out of tune, and their dissonant notes\n scare away pious souls who would fain enter the temple of\n worship.\u201d A new definition of miracle which recognizes their\n possible classification as extraordinary occurrences in nature,\n yet sees in all nature the working of the living God, may do much\n to remove this prejudice. Bishop of Southampton, Place of Miracle,\n 53\u2014\u201cMiracles alone could not produce conviction. The Pharisees\n ascribed them to Beelzebub. Though Jesus had done so many signs,\n yet they believed not.... Though miracles were frequently wrought,\n they were rarely appealed to as evidence of the truth of the\n gospel. They are simply signs of God\u2019s presence in his world. By\n itself a miracle had no evidential force. The only test for\n distinguishing divine from Satanic miracles is that of the moral\n character and purpose of the worker; and therefore miracles depend\n for all their force upon a previous appreciation of the character\n and personality of Christ (79). The earliest apologists make no\n use of miracles. They are of no value except in connection with\n prophecy. Miracles _are_ the revelation of God, not the _proof_ of\n revelation.\u201d _Versus_ Supernatural Religion, 1:23, and Stearns, in\n New Englander, Jan. 1882:80. See Mozley, Miracles, 15; Nicoll,\n Life of Jesus Christ, 133; Mill, Logic, 374-382; H. B. Smith, Int.\n to Christ. Theology, 167-169; Fisher, in Journ. Christ. Philos.,\n April, 1883:270-283.\n\n\n(_d_) Yet the Christian miracles do not lose their value as evidence in\nthe process of ages. The loftier the structure of Christian life and\ndoctrine the greater need that its foundation be secure. The authority of\nChrist as a teacher of supernatural truth rests upon his miracles, and\nespecially upon the miracle of his resurrection. That one miracle to which\nthe church looks back as the source of her life carries with it\nirresistibly all the other miracles of the Scripture record; upon it alone\nwe may safely rest the proof that the Scriptures are an authoritative\nrevelation from God.\n\n\n The miracles of Christ are simple correlates of the\n Incarnation\u2014proper insignia of his royalty and divinity. By mere\n external evidence however we can more easily prove the\n resurrection than the incarnation. In our arguments with sceptics,\n we should not begin with the ass that spoke to Balaam, or the fish\n that swallowed Jonah, but with the resurrection of Christ; that\n conceded, all other Biblical miracles will seem only natural\n preparations, accompaniments, or consequences. G. F. Wright, in\n Bib. Sac., 1889:707\u2014\u201cThe difficulties created by the miraculous\n character of Christianity may be compared to those assumed by a\n builder when great permanence is desired in the structure erected.\n It is easier to lay the foundation of a temporary structure than\n of one which is to endure for the ages.\u201d Pressens\u00e9: \u201cThe empty\n tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the church, and if in this\n foundation of her faith the church has been mistaken, she must\n needs lay herself down by the side of the mortal remains, I say,\n not of a man, but of a religion.\u201d\n\n President Schurman believes the resurrection of Christ to be \u201can\n obsolete picture of an eternal truth\u2014the fact of a continued life\n with God.\u201d Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 102, thinks no\n consistent union of the gospel accounts of Christ\u2019s resurrection\n can be attained; apparently doubts a literal and bodily rising;\n yet traces Christianity back to an invincible faith in Christ\u2019s\n conquering of death and his continued life. But why believe the\n gospels when they speak of the sympathy of Christ, yet disbelieve\n them when they speak of his miraculous power? We have no right to\n trust the narrative when it gives us Christ\u2019s words \u201cWeep not\u201d to\n the widow of Nain, (_Luke 7:13_), and then to distrust it when it\n tells us of his raising the widow\u2019s son. The words \u201cJesus wept\u201d\n belong inseparably to a story of which \u201cLazarus, come forth!\u201d\n forms a part (_John 11:35, 43_). It is improbable that the\n disciples should have believed so stupendous a miracle as Christ\u2019s\n resurrection, if they had not previously seen other manifestations\n of miraculous power on the part of Christ. Christ himself is the\n great miracle. The conception of him as the risen and glorified\n Savior can be explained only by the fact that he did so rise. E.\n G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 109\u2014\u201cThe Church attests the fact of\n the resurrection quite as much as the resurrection attests the\n divine origin of the church. Resurrection, as an evidence, depends\n on the existence of the church which proclaims it.\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ\u2014by which we mean his\ncoming forth from the sepulchre in body as well as in spirit\u2014is\ndemonstrated by evidence as varied and as conclusive as that which proves\nto us any single fact of ancient history. Without it Christianity itself\nis inexplicable, as is shown by the failure of all modern rationalistic\ntheories to account for its rise and progress.\n\n\n In discussing the evidence of Jesus\u2019 resurrection, we are\n confronted with three main rationalistic theories:\n\n I. The _Swoon-theory_ of Strauss. This holds that Jesus did not\n really die. The cold and the spices of the sepulchre revived him.\n We reply that the blood and water, and the testimony of the\n centurion (_Mark 15:45_), proved actual death (see Bib. Sac.,\n April, 1889:228; Forrest, Christ of History and Experience,\n 137-170). The rolling away of the stone, and Jesus\u2019 power\n immediately after, are inconsistent with immediately preceding\n swoon and suspended animation. How was his life preserved? where\n did he go? when did he die? His not dying implies deceit on his\n own part or on that of his disciples.\n\n II. The _Spirit-theory_ of Keim. Jesus really died, but only his\n spirit appeared. The spirit of Jesus gave the disciples a sign of\n his continued life, a telegram from heaven. But we reply that the\n telegram was untrue, for it asserted that his body had risen from\n the tomb. The tomb was empty and the linen cloths showed an\n orderly departure. Jesus himself denied that he was a bodiless\n spirit: \u201ca spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me having\u201d_\n (Luke 24:39)_. Did \u201chis flesh see corruption\u201d_ (Acts 2:31)_? Was\n the penitent thief raised from the dead as much as he? Godet,\n Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith, lect. i: A dilemma for\n those who deny the fact of Christ\u2019s resurrection: Either his body\n remained in the hands of his disciples, or it was given up to the\n Jews. If the disciples retained it, they were impostors: but this\n is not maintained by modern rationalists. If the Jews retained it,\n why did they not produce it as conclusive evidence against the\n disciples?\n\n III. The _Vision-theory_ of Renan. Jesus died, and there was no\n objective appearance even of his spirit. Mary Magdalene was the\n victim of subjective hallucination, and her hallucination became\n contagious. This was natural because the Jews expected that the\n Messiah would work miracles and would rise from the dead. We reply\n that the disciples did not expect Jesus\u2019 resurrection. The women\n went to the sepulchre, not to see a risen Redeemer, but to embalm\n a dead body. Thomas and those at Emmaus had given up all hope.\n Four hundred years had passed since the days of miracles; John the\n Baptist \u201cdid no miracle\u201d_ (John 10:41)_; the Sadducees said \u201cthere\n is no resurrection\u201d_ (Mat. 22:23)_. There were thirteen different\n appearances, to: 1. the Magdalen; 2. other women; 3. Peter; 4.\n Emmaus; 5. the Twelve; 6. the Twelve after eight days; 7. Galilee\n seashore; 8. Galilee mountain; 9. Galilee five hundred; 10. James;\n 11. ascension at Bethany; 12. Stephen; 13. Paul on way to\n Damascus. Paul describes Christ\u2019s appearance to him as something\n objective, and he implies that Christ\u2019s previous appearances to\n others were objective also: \u201clast of all [these bodily\n appearances], ... he appeared to me also\u201d_ (1 Cor. 15:8)_. Bruce,\n Apologetics, 396\u2014\u201cPaul\u2019s interest and intention in classing the\n two together was to level his own vision [of Christ] up to the\n objectivity of the early Christophanies. He believed that the\n eleven, that Peter in particular, had seen the risen Christ with\n the eye of the body, and he meant to claim for himself a vision of\n the same kind.\u201d Paul\u2019s was a sane, strong nature. Subjective\n visions do not transform human lives; the resurrection moulded the\n apostles; they did not create the resurrection (see Gore,\n Incarnation, 76). These appearances soon ceased, unlike the law of\n hallucinations, which increase in frequency and intensity. It is\n impossible to explain the ordinances, the Lord\u2019s day, or\n Christianity itself, if Jesus did not rise from the dead.\n\n The resurrection of our Lord teaches three important lessons: (1)\n It showed that his work of atonement was completed and was stamped\n with the divine approval; (2) It showed him to be Lord of all and\n gave the one sufficient external proof of Christianity; (3) It\n furnished the ground and pledge of our own resurrection, and thus\n \u201cbrought life and immortality to light\u201d_ (2 Tim. 1:10)_. It must\n be remembered that the resurrection was the one sign upon which\n Jesus himself staked his claims\u2014\u201cthe sign of Jonah\u201d_ (Luke\n 11:29)_; and that the resurrection is proof, not simply of God\u2019s\n power, but of Christ\u2019s own power: _John 10:18\u2014_\u201cI have power to\n lay it down, and I have power to take it again\u201d; _2:19\u2014_\u201cDestroy\n this temple, and in three days I will raise it up\u201d.... _21\u2014_\u201che\n spake of the temple of his body.\u201d See Alexander, Christ and\n Christianity, 9, 158-224, 302; Mill, Theism, 216; Auberlen, Div.\n Revelation, 56; Boston Lectures, 203-239; Christlieb, Modern Doubt\n and Christian Belief, 448-503; Row, Bampton Lectures,\n 1887:358-423; Hutton, Essays, 1:119; Schaff, in Princeton Rev.,\n May, 1880; 411-419; Fisher, Christian Evidences, 41-46, 82-85;\n West, in Defence and Conf. of Faith, 80-129; also special works on\n the Resurrection of our Lord, by Milligan, Morrison, Kennedy, J.\n Baldwin Brown.\n\n\n6. Counterfeit Miracles.\n\n\nSince only an act directly wrought by God can properly be called a\nmiracle, it follows that surprising events brought about by evil spirits\nor by men, through the use of natural agencies beyond our knowledge, are\nnot entitled to this appellation. The Scriptures recognize the existence\nof such, but denominate them \u201clying wonders\u201d (2 Thess. 2:9).\n\nThese counterfeit miracles in various ages argue that the belief in\nmiracles is natural to the race, and that somewhere there must exist the\ntrue. They serve to show that not all supernatural occurrences are divine,\nand to impress upon us the necessity of careful examination before we\naccept them as divine.\n\nFalse miracles may commonly be distinguished from the true by (_a_) their\naccompaniments of immoral conduct or of doctrine contradictory to truth\nalready revealed\u2014as in modern spiritualism; (_b_) their internal\ncharacteristics of inanity and extravagance\u2014as in the liquefaction of the\nblood of St. Januarius, or the miracles of the Apocryphal New Testament;\n(_c_) the insufficiency of the object which they are designed to\nfurther\u2014as in the case of Apollonius of Tyana, or of the miracles said to\naccompany the publication of the doctrines of the immaculate conception\nand of the papal infallibility; (_d_) their lack of substantiating\nevidence\u2014as in medi\u00e6val miracles, so seldom attested by contemporary and\ndisinterested witnesses; (_e_) their denial or undervaluing of God\u2019s\nprevious revelation of himself in nature\u2014as shown by the neglect of\nordinary means, in the cases of Faith-cure and of so-called Christian\nScience.\n\n\n Only what is valuable is counterfeited. False miracles presuppose\n the true. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 283\u2014\u201cThe\n miracles of Jesus originated faith in him, while medi\u00e6val miracles\n follow established faith. The testimony of the apostles was given\n in the face of incredulous Sadducees. They were ridiculed and\n maltreated on account of it. It was no time for devout dreams and\n the invention of romances.\u201d The blood of St. Januarius at Naples\n is said to be contained in a vial, one side of which is of thick\n glass, while the other side is of thin. A similar miracle was\n wrought at Hales in Gloucestershire. St. Alban, the first martyr\n of Britain, after his head is cut off, carries it about in his\n hand. In Ireland the place is shown where St. Patrick in the fifth\n century drove all the toads and snakes over a precipice into the\n nether regions. The legend however did not become current until\n some hundreds of years after the saint\u2019s bones had crumbled to\n dust at Saul, near Downpatrick (see Hemphill, Literature of the\n Second Century, 180-182). Compare the story of the book of Tobit\n (6-8), which relates the expulsion of a demon by smoke from the\n burning heart and liver of a fish caught in the Tigris, and the\n story of the Apocryphal New Testament (I, Infancy), which tells of\n the expulsion of Satan in the form of a mad dog from Judas by the\n child Jesus. On counterfeit miracles in general, see Mozley,\n Miracles, 15, 161; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 72;\n A. S. Farrar, Science and Theology, 208; Tholuck, Vermischte\n Schriften, 1:27; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:630; Presb. Rev.,\n 1881:687-719.\n\n Some modern writers have maintained that the gift of miracles\n still remains in the church. Bengel: \u201cThe reason why _many_\n miracles are not now wrought is not so much because _faith_ is\n established, as because _unbelief_ reigns.\u201d Christlieb: \u201cIt is the\n want of faith in our age which is the greatest hindrance to the\n stronger and more marked appearance of that miraculous power which\n is working here and there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the\n final and most important reason for the retrogression of\n miracles.\u201d Edward Irving, Works, 5:464\u2014\u201cSickness is sin apparent\n in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of\n corruption. Now, as Christ came to destroy death, and will yet\n redeem the body from the bondage of corruption, if the church is\n to have a first fruits or earnest of this power, it must be by\n receiving power over diseases that are the first fruits and\n earnest of death.\u201d Dr. A. J. Gordon, in his Ministry of Healing,\n held to this view. See also Boys, Proofs of the Miraculous in the\n Experience of the Church; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural,\n 446-492; Review of Gordon, by Vincent, in Presb. Rev.,\n 1883:473-502; Review of Vincent, in Presb. Rev., 1884:49-79.\n\n In reply to the advocates of faith-cure in general, we would grant\n that nature is plastic in God\u2019s hand; that he can work miracle\n when and where it pleases him; and that he has given promises\n which, with certain Scriptural and rational limitations, encourage\n believing prayer for healing in cases of sickness. But we incline\n to the belief that in these later ages God answers such prayer,\n not by miracle, but by special providence, and by gifts of\n courage, faith and will, thus acting by his Spirit directly upon\n the soul and only indirectly upon the body. The laws of nature are\n generic volitions of God, and to ignore them and disuse means is\n presumption and disrespect to God himself. The Scripture promise\n to faith is always expressly or impliedly conditioned upon our use\n of means: we are to work out our own salvation, for the very\n reason that it is God who works in us; it is vain for the drowning\n man to pray, so long as he refuses to lay hold of the rope that is\n thrown to him. Medicines and physicians are the rope thrown to us\n by God; we cannot expect miraculous help, while we neglect the\n help God has already given us; to refuse this help is practically\n to deny Christ\u2019s revelation in nature. Why not live without\n eating, as well as recover from sickness without medicine?\n Faith-feeding is quite as rational as faith-healing. To except\n cases of disease from this general rule as to the use of means has\n no warrant either in reason or in Scripture. The atonement has\n purchased complete salvation, and some day salvation shall be\n ours. But death and depravity still remain, not as penalty, but as\n chastisement. So disease remains also. Hospitals for Incurables,\n and the deaths even of advocates of faith-cure, show that they too\n are compelled to recognize some limit to the application of the\n New Testament promise.\n\n In view of the preceding discussion we must regard the so-called\n Christian Science as neither Christian nor scientific. Mrs. Mary\n Baker G. Eddy denies the authority of all that part of revelation\n which God has made to man in nature, and holds that the laws of\n nature may be disregarded with impunity by those who have proper\n faith; see G. F. Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1899:375. Bishop\n Lawrence of Massachusetts: \u201cOne of the errors of Christian Science\n is its neglect of accumulated knowledge, of the fund of\n information stored up for these Christian centuries. That\n knowledge is just as much God\u2019s gift as is the knowledge obtained\n from direct revelation. In rejecting accumulated knowledge and\n professional skill, Christian Science rejects the gift of God.\u201d\n Most of the professed cures of Christian Science are explicable by\n the influence of the mind upon the body, through hypnosis or\n suggestion; (see A. A. Bennett, in Watchman, Feb. 13, 1903).\n Mental disturbance may make the mother\u2019s milk a poison to the\n child; mental excitement is a common cause of indigestion; mental\n depression induces bowel disorders; depressed mental and moral\n conditions render a person more susceptible to grippe, pneumonia,\n typhoid fever. Reading the account of an accident in which the\n body is torn or maimed, we ourselves feel pain in the same spot;\n when the child\u2019s hand is crushed, the mother\u2019s hand, though at a\n distance, becomes swollen; the medi\u00e6val _stigmata_ probably\n resulted from continuous brooding upon the sufferings of Christ\n (see Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 676-690).\n\n But mental states may help as well as harm the body. Mental\n expectancy facilitates cure in cases of sickness. The physician\n helps the patient by inspiring hope and courage. Imagination works\n wonders, especially in the case of nervous disorders. The diseases\n said to be cured by Christian Science are commonly of this sort.\n In every age fakirs, mesmerists, and quacks have availed\n themselves of these underlying mental forces. By inducing\n expectancy, imparting courage, rousing the paralyzed will, they\n have indirectly caused bodily changes which have been mistaken for\n miracle. Tacitus tells us of the healing of a blind man by the\n Emperor Vespasian. Undoubted cures have been wrought by the royal\n touch in England. Since such wonders have been performed by Indian\n medicine-men, we cannot regard them as having any specific\n Christian character, and when, as in the present case, we find\n them used to aid in the spread of false doctrine with regard to\n sin, Christ, atonement, and the church, we must class them with\n the \u201clying wonders\u201d of which we are warned in _2 Thess. 2:9_. See\n Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism, 381-386; Buckley,\n Faith-Healing, and in Century Magazine, June, 1886:221-236; Bruce,\n Miraculous Element in Gospels, lecture 8; Andover Review,\n 1887:249-264.\n\n\n\nIV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.\n\n\nWe here consider prophecy in its narrow sense of mere prediction,\nreserving to a subsequent chapter the consideration of prophecy as\ninterpretation of the divine will in general.\n\n1. _Definition._ Prophecy is the foretelling of future events by virtue of\ndirect communication from God\u2014a foretelling, therefore, which, though not\ncontravening any laws of the human mind, those laws, if fully known, would\nnot, without this agency of God, be sufficient to explain.\n\n\n In discussing the subject of prophecy, we are met at the outset by\n the contention that there is not, and never has been, any real\n foretelling of future events beyond that which is possible to\n natural prescience. This is the view of Kuenen, Prophets and\n Prophecy in Israel. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 2:42, denies any\n direct prediction. Prophecy in Israel, he intimates, was simply\n the consciousness of God\u2019s righteousness, proclaiming its ideals\n of the future, and declaring that the will of God is the moral\n ideal of the good and the law of the world\u2019s history, so that the\n fates of nations are conditioned by their bearing toward this\n moral purpose of God: \u201cThe fundamental error of the vulgar\n apologetics is that it confounds prophecy with heathen\n soothsaying\u2014national salvation without character.\u201d W. Robertson\n Smith, in Encyc. Britannica, 19:821, tells us that \u201cdetailed\n prediction occupies a very secondary place in the writings of the\n prophets; or rather indeed what seem to be predictions in detail\n are usually only free poetical illustrations of historical\n principles, which neither received nor demanded exact fulfilment.\u201d\n\n As in the case of miracles, our faith in an immanent God, who is\n none other than the Logos or larger Christ, gives us a point of\n view from which we may reconcile the contentions of the\n naturalists and supernaturalists. Prophecy is an immediate act of\n God; but, since all natural genius is also due to God\u2019s\n energizing, we do not need to deny the employment of man\u2019s natural\n gifts in prophecy. The instances of telepathy, presentiment, and\n second sight which the Society for Psychical Research has\n demonstrated to be facts show that prediction, in the history of\n divine revelation, may be only an intensification, under the\n extraordinary impulse of the divine Spirit, of a power that is in\n some degree latent in all men. The author of every great work of\n creative imagination knows that a higher power than his own has\n possessed him. In all human reason there is a natural activity of\n the divine Reason or Logos, and he is \u201cthe light which lighteth\n every man\u201d_ (John 1:9)_. So there is a natural activity of the\n Holy Spirit, and he who completes the circle of the divine\n consciousness completes also the circle of human consciousness,\n gives self-hood to every soul, makes available to man the natural\n as well as the spiritual gifts of Christ; _cf.__ John 16:14\u2014_\u201che\n shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.\u201d The same\n Spirit who in the beginning \u201cbrooded over the face of the waters\u201d_\n (Gen. 1:2)_ also broods over humanity, and it is he who, according\n to Christ\u2019s promise, was to \u201cdeclare unto you the things that are\n to come\u201d_ (John 16:13)_. The gift of prophecy may have its natural\n side, like the gift of miracles, yet may be finally explicable\n only as the result of an extraordinary working of that Spirit of\n Christ who to some degree manifests himself in the reason and\n conscience of every man; _cf.__ 1 Pet 1:11\u2014_\u201csearching what time\n or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did\n point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ,\n and the glories that should follow them.\u201d See Myers, Human\n Personality, 2:262-292.\n\n A. B. Davidson, in his article on Prophecy and Prophets, in\n Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary, 4:120, 121, gives little weight to\n this view that prophecy is based on a natural power of the human\n mind: \u201cThe arguments by which Giesebrecht, Berufsgabung, 13 ff.,\n supports the theory of a \u2018faculty of presentiment\u2019 have little\n cogency. This faculty is supposed to reveal itself particularly on\n the approach of death (_Gen. 28_ and _49_). The contemporaries of\n most great religious personages have attributed to them a\n prophetic gift. The answer of John Knox to those who credited him\n with such a gift is worth reading: \u2018My assurances are not marvels\n of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecy. But\n _first_, the plain truth of God\u2019s word; _second_, the invincible\n justice of the everlasting God; and _third_, the ordinary course\n of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my\n assurances and grounds.\u2019 \u201d While Davidson grants the fulfilment of\n certain specific predictions of Scripture, to be hereafter\n mentioned, he holds that \u201csuch presentiments as we can observe to\n be authentic are chiefly products of the conscience or moral\n reason. True prophecy is based on moral grounds. Everywhere the\n menacing future is connected with the evil past by \u2018therefore\u2019_\n (Micah 3:12; Is. 5:13; Amos 1:2)_.\u201d We hold with Davidson to the\n moral element in prophecy, but we also recognize a power in normal\n humanity which he would minimize or deny. We claim that the human\n mind even in its ordinary and secular working gives occasional\n signs of transcending the limitations of the present. Believing in\n the continual activity of the divine Reason in the reason of man,\n we have no need to doubt the possibility of an extraordinary\n insight into the future, and such insight is needed at the great\n epochs of religious history. Expositor\u2019s Gk. Test.,\n 2:34\u2014\u201cSavonarola foretold as early as 1496 the capture of Rome,\n which happened in 1527, and he did this not only in general terms\n but in detail; his words were realized to the letter when the\n sacred churches of St. Peter and St. Paul became, as the prophet\n foretold, stables for the conquerors\u2019 horses.\u201d On the general\n subject, see Payne-Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ;\n Alexander, Christ and Christianity; Farrar, Science and Theology,\n 106; Newton on Prophecy; Fairbairn on Prophecy.\n\n\n2. _Relation of Prophecy to Miracles._ Miracles are attestations of\nrevelation proceeding from divine power; prophecy is an attestation of\nrevelation proceeding from divine knowledge. Only God can know the\ncontingencies of the future. The possibility and probability of prophecy\nmay be argued upon the same grounds upon which we argue the possibility\nand probability of miracles. As an evidence of divine revelation, however,\nprophecy possesses two advantages over miracles, namely: (_a_) The proof,\nin the case of prophecy, is not derived from ancient testimony, but is\nunder our eyes. (_b_) The evidence of miracles cannot become stronger,\nwhereas every new fulfilment adds to the argument from prophecy.\n\n3. _Requirements in Prophecy, considered as an Evidence of Revelation._\n(_a_) The utterance must be distant from the event. (_b_) Nothing must\nexist to suggest the event to merely natural prescience. (_c_) The\nutterance must be free from ambiguity. (_d_) Yet it must not be so precise\nas to secure its own fulfilment. (_e_) It must be followed in due time by\nthe event predicted.\n\n\n Hume: \u201cAll prophecies are real miracles, and only as such can be\n admitted as proof of any revelation.\u201d See Wardlaw, Syst. Theol.,\n 1:347. (_a_) Hundreds of years intervened between certain of the\n O. T. predictions and their fulfilment. (_b_) Stanley instances\n the natural sagacity of Burke, which enabled him to predict the\n French Revolution. But Burke also predicted in 1793 that France\n would be partitioned like Poland among a confederacy of hostile\n powers. Canning predicted that South American colonies would grow\n up as the United States had grown. D\u2019Israeli predicted that our\n Southern Confederacy would become an independent nation. Ingersoll\n predicted that within ten years there would be two theatres for\n one church. (_c_) Illustrate ambiguous prophecies by the Delphic\n oracle to Cr\u0153sus: \u201cCrossing the river, thou destroyest a great\n nation\u201d\u2014whether his own or his enemy\u2019s the oracle left\n undetermined. \u201cIbis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello.\u201d (_d_)\n Strauss held that O. T. prophecy itself determined either the\n events or the narratives of the gospels. See Greg, Creed of\n Christendom, chap. 4. (_e_) Cardan, the Italian mathematician,\n predicted the day and hour of his own death, and committed suicide\n at the proper time to prove the prediction true. Jehovah makes the\n fulfilment of his predictions the proof of his deity in the\n controversy with false gods: _Is. 41:23\u2014_\u201cDeclare the things that\n are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods\u201d;\n _42:9\u2014_\u201cBehold, the former things are come to pass and new things\n do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.\u201d\n\n\n4. _General Features of Prophecy in the Scriptures._ (_a_) Its large\namount\u2014occupying a great portion of the Bible, and extending over many\nhundred years. (_b_) Its ethical and religious nature\u2014the events of the\nfuture being regarded as outgrowths and results of men\u2019s present attitude\ntoward God. (_c_) Its unity in diversity\u2014finding its central point in\nChrist the true servant of God and deliverer of his people. (_d_) Its\nactual fulfilment as regards many of its predictions\u2014while seeming\nnon-fulfilments are explicable from its figurative and conditional nature.\n\n\n A. B. Davidson, in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary, 4:125, has\n suggested reasons for the apparent non-fulfilment of certain\n predictions. Prophecy is poetical and figurative; its details are\n not to be pressed; they are only drapery, needed for the\n expression of the idea. In _Isa. 13:16\u2014_\u201cTheir infants shall be\n dashed in pieces ... and their wives ravished\u201d\u2014the prophet gives\n an ideal picture of the sack of a city; these things did not\n actually happen, but Cyrus entered Babylon \u201cin peace.\u201d Yet the\n essential truth remained that the city fell into the enemy\u2019s\n hands. The prediction of Ezekiel with regard to Tyre, _Ez.\n 26:7-14_, is recognized in _Ez. 29:17-20_ as having been fulfilled\n not in its details but in its essence\u2014the actual event having been\n the breaking of the power of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. _Is.\n 17:1\u2014_\u201cBehold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it\n shall be a ruinous heap\u201d\u2014must be interpreted as predicting the\n blotting out of its dominion, since Damascus has probably never\n ceased to be a city. The conditional nature of prophecy explains\n other seeming non-fulfilments. Predictions were often threats,\n which might be revoked upon repentance. _Jer. 26:13\u2014_\u201camend your\n ways ... and the Lord will repent him of the evil which he hath\n pronounced against you.\u201d _Jonah 3:4\u2014_\u201cYet forty days, and Nineveh\n shall be overthrown ...\u201d _10\u2014God saw their works, that they turned\n from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he said\n he would do unto them; and he did it not_; _cf.__ Jer. 18:8_;\n _26:19_.\n\n Instances of actual fulfilment of prophecy are found, according to\n Davidson, in Samuel\u2019s prediction of some things that would happen\n to Saul, which the history declares did happen (_1 Sam. 1_ and\n _10_). Jeremiah predicted the death of Hananiah within the year,\n which took place (_Jer. 28_). Micaiah predicted the defeat and\n death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead (_1 Kings 22_). Isaiah predicted\n the failure of the northern coalition to subdue Jerusalem (_Is.\n 7_); the overthrow in two or three years of Damascus and Northern\n Israel before the Assyrians (_Is. 8 and 17_); the failure of\n Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem, and the melting away of his army\n (_Is. 37:34-37_). \u201cAnd in general, apart from details, the main\n predictions of the prophets regarding Israel and the nations were\n verified in history, for example, _Amos 1_ and _2_. The chief\n predictions of the prophets relate to the imminent downfall of the\n kingdoms of Israel and Judah; to what lies beyond this, namely,\n the restoration of the kingdom of God; and to the state of the\n people in their condition of final felicity.\u201d For predictions of\n the exile and the return of Israel, see especially _Amos\n 9:9\u2014_\u201cFor, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel\n among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet\n shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth.... _14\u2014_And I will\n bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall\n build the waste cities and inhabit them.\u201d Even if we accept the\n theory of composite authorship of the book of Isaiah, we still\n have a foretelling of the sending back of the Jews from Babylon,\n and a designation of Cyrus as God\u2019s agent, in _Is. 44:28\u2014_\u201cthat\n saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my\n pleasure: even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the\n temple, Thy foundation shall be laid\u201d; see George Adam Smith, in\n Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary, 2:493. Frederick the Great said to his\n chaplain: \u201cGive me in one word a proof of the divine origin of the\n Bible\u201d; and the chaplain well replied: \u201cThe Jews, your Majesty.\u201d\n In the case of the Jews we have even now the unique phenomena of a\n people without a land, and a land without a people,\u2014yet both these\n were predicted centuries before the event.\n\n\n5. _Messianic Prophecy in general._ (_a_) Direct predictions of events\u2014as\nin Old Testament prophecies of Christ\u2019s birth, suffering and subsequent\nglory. (_b_) General prophecy of the Kingdom in the Old Testament, and of\nits gradual triumph. (_c_) Historical types in a nation and in\nindividuals\u2014as Jonah and David. (_d_) Prefigurations of the future in\nrites and ordinances\u2014as in sacrifice, circumcision, and the passover.\n\n6. _Special Prophecies uttered by Christ._ (_a_) As to his own death and\nresurrection. (_b_) As to events occurring between his death and the\ndestruction of Jerusalem (multitudes of impostors; wars and rumors of\nwars; famine and pestilence). (_c_) As to the destruction of Jerusalem and\nthe Jewish polity (Jerusalem compassed with armies; abomination of\ndesolation in the holy place; flight of Christians; misery; massacre;\ndispersion). (_d_) As to the world-wide diffusion of his gospel (the Bible\nalready the most widely circulated book in the world).\n\n\n The most important feature in prophecy is its Messianic element;\n see _Luke 24:27\u2014_\u201cbeginning from Moses and from all the prophets,\n he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning\n himself\u201d; _Acts 10:43\u2014_\u201cto him bear all the prophets witness\u201d;\n _Rev. 19:10\u2014_\u201cthe testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.\u201d\n Types are intended resemblances, designed prefigurations; for\n example, Israel is a type of the Christian church; outside nations\n are types of the hostile world; Jonah and David are types of\n Christ. The typical nature of Israel rests upon the deeper fact of\n the community of life. As the life of God the Logos lies at the\n basis of universal humanity and interpenetrates it in every part,\n so out of this universal humanity grows Israel in general; out of\n Israel as a nation springs the spiritual Israel, and out of\n spiritual Israel Christ according to the flesh,\u2014the upward rising\n pyramid finds its apex and culmination in him. Hence the\n predictions with regard to \u201cthe servant of Jehovah\u201d_ (Is.\n 42:1-7)_, and \u201cthe Messiah\u201d_ (Is. 61:1; John 1:41)_, have partial\n fulfilment in Israel, but perfect fulfilment only in Christ; so\n Delitzsch, Oehler, and Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253. Sabatier, Philos.\n Religion, 59\u2014\u201cIf humanity were not potentially and in some degree\n Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its\n bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.\u201d Gardiner, O. T.\n and N. T. in their Mutual Relations, 170-194.\n\n In the O. T., Jehovah is the Redeemer of his people. He works\n through judges, prophets, kings, but he himself remains the\n Savior; \u201cit is only the Divine in them that saves\u201d; \u201cSalvation is\n of Jehovah\u201d_ (Jonah 2:9)_. Jehovah is manifested in the Davidic\n King under the monarchy; in Israel, the Servant of the Lord,\n during the exile; and in the Messiah, or Anointed One, in the\n post-exilian period. Because of its conscious identification with\n Jehovah, Israel is always a forward-looking people. Each new\n judge, king, prophet is regarded as heralding the coming reign of\n righteousness and peace. These earthly deliverers are saluted with\n rapturous expectation; the prophets express this expectation in\n terms that transcend the possibilities of the present; and, when\n this expectation fails to be fully realized, the Messianic hope is\n simply transferred to a larger future. Each separate prophecy has\n its drapery furnished by the prophet\u2019s immediate surroundings, and\n finds its occasion in some event of contemporaneous history. But\n by degrees it becomes evident that only an ideal and perfect King\n and Savior can fill out the requirements of prophecy. Only when\n Christ appears, does the real meaning of the various Old Testament\n predictions become manifest. Only then are men able to combine the\n seemingly inconsistent prophecies of a priest who is also a king\n (_Psalm 110_), and of a royal but at the same time a suffering\n Messiah (_Isaiah 53_). It is not enough for us to ask what the\n prophet himself meant, or what his earliest hearers understood, by\n his prophecy. This is to regard prophecy as having only a single,\n and that a human, author. With the spirit of man co\u00f6perated the\n Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit (_1 Pet. 1:11\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of\n Christ which was in them\u201d; _2 Pet. 1:21\u2014_\u201cno prophecy ever came by\n the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy\n Spirit\u201d). All prophecy has a twofold authorship, human and divine;\n the same Christ who spoke through the prophets brought about the\n fulfilment of their words.\n\n It is no wonder that he who through the prophets uttered\n predictions with regard to himself should, when he became\n incarnate, be the prophet _par excellence_ (_Deut. 18:15_; _Acts\n 3:22\u2014_\u201cMoses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up\n from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken\u201d).\n In the predictions of Jesus we find the proper key to the\n interpretation of prophecy in general, and the evidence that while\n no one of the three theories\u2014the preterist, the continuist, the\n futurist\u2014furnishes an exhaustive explanation, each one of these\n has its element of truth. Our Lord made the fulfilment of the\n prediction of his own resurrection a test of his divine\n commission: it was \u201cthe sign of Jonah the prophet\u201d_ (Mat. 12:39)_.\n He promised that his disciples should have prophetic gifts: _John\n 15:15\u2014_\u201cNo longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth\n not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all\n things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you\u201d;\n _16:13\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of truth ... he shall declare unto you the\n things that are to come.\u201d Agabus predicted the famine and Paul\u2019s\n imprisonment (_Acts 11:28_; _21:10_); Paul predicted heresies\n (_Acts 20:29, 30_), shipwreck (_Acts 27:10, 21-26_), \u201cthe man of\n sin\u201d_ (2 Thess. 2:3)_, Christ\u2019s second coming, and the\n resurrection of the saints (_1 Thess. 4:15-17_).\n\n\n7. On the double sense of Prophecy.\n\n(_a_) Certain prophecies apparently contain a fulness of meaning which is\nnot exhausted by the event to which they most obviously and literally\nrefer. A prophecy which had a partial fulfilment at a time not remote from\nits utterance, may find its chief fulfilment in an event far distant.\nSince the principles of God\u2019s administration find ever recurring and ever\nenlarging illustration in history, prophecies which have already had a\npartial fulfilment may have whole cycles of fulfilment yet before them.\n\n\n In prophecy there is an absence of perspective; as in Japanese\n pictures the near and the far appear equally distant; as in\n dissolving views, the immediate future melts into a future\n immeasurably far away. The candle that shines through a narrow\n aperture sends out its light through an ever-increasing area;\n sections of the triangle correspond to each other, but the more\n distant are far greater than the near. The ch\u00e2let on the\n mountain-side may turn out to be only a black cat on the woodpile,\n or a speck upon the window pane. \u201cA hill which appears to rise\n close behind another is found on nearer approach to have receded a\n great way from it.\u201d The painter, by foreshortening, brings\n together things or parts that are relatively distant from each\n other. The prophet is a painter whose foreshortenings are\n supernatural; he seems freed from the law of space and time, and,\n rapt into the timelessness of God, he views the events of history\n \u201csub specie eternitatis.\u201d Prophecy was the sketching of an\n outline-map. Even the prophet could not fill up the outline. The\n absence of perspective in prophecy may account for Paul\u2019s being\n misunderstood by the Thessalonians, and for the necessity of his\n explanations in _2 Thess. 2:1, 2_. In _Isaiah 10_ and _11_, the\n fall of Lebanon (the Assyrian) is immediately connected with the\n rise of the Branch (Christ); in _Jeremiah 51:41_, the first\n capture and the complete destruction of Babylon are connected with\n each other, without notice of the interval of a thousand years\n between them.\n\n Instances of the double sense of prophecy may be found in _Is.\n 7:14-16_; _9:6, 7\u2014_\u201ca virgin shall conceive and bear a son, ...\n unto us a son is given\u201d\u2014compared with _Mat. 1:22, 23_, where the\n prophecy is applied to Christ (see Meyer, _in loco_); _Hos.\n 11:1\u2014_\u201cI ... called my son out of Egypt\u201d\u2014referring originally to\n the calling of the nation out of Egypt\u2014is in _Mat. 2:15_ referred\n to Christ, who embodied and consummated the mission of Israel;\n _Psalm 118:22, 23\u2014_\u201cThe stone which the builders rejected is\n become the head of the corner\u201d\u2014which primarily referred to the\n Jewish nation, conquered, carried away, and flung aside as of no\n use, but divinely destined to a future of importance and grandeur,\n is in _Mat. 21:42_ referred by Jesus to himself, as the true\n embodiment of Israel. William Arnold Stevens, on The Man of Sin,\n in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360\u2014As in _Daniel 11:36_, the\n great enemy of the faith, who \u201cshall exalt himself, and magnify\n himself above every god,\u201d is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes,\n so \u201cthe man of lawlessness\u201d described by Paul in _2 Thess. 2:3_ is\n the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age. This had its\n seat in the temple of God, but was doomed to destruction when the\n Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But even this second\n fulfilment of the prophecy does not preclude a future and final\n fulfilment. Broadus on Mat., page 480\u2014In _Isaiah 41:8_ to _chapter\n 53_, the predictions with regard to \u201cthe servant of Jehovah\u201d make\n a gradual transition from Israel to the Messiah, the former alone\n being seen in _41:8_, the Messiah also appearing in _42:1 __sq._,\n and Israel quite sinking out of sight in _chapter 53_.\n\n The most marked illustration of the double sense of prophecy\n however is to be found in _Matthew 24_ and _25_, especially\n _24:34_ and _25:31_, where Christ\u2019s prophecy of the destruction of\n Jerusalem passes into a prophecy of the end of the world. Adamson,\n The Mind in Christ, 183\u2014\u201cTo him history was the robe of God, and\n therefore a constant repetition of positions really similar,\n kaleidoscopic combining of a few truths, as the facts varied in\n which they were to be embodied.\u201d A. J. Gordon: \u201cProphecy has no\n sooner become history, than history in turn becomes prophecy.\u201d\n Lord Bacon: \u201cDivine prophecies have springing and germinant\n accomplishment through many ages, though the height or fulness of\n them may refer to some one age.\u201d In a similar manner there is a\n manifoldness of meaning in Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy. C. E. Norton,\n Inferno, xvi\u2014\u201cThe narrative of the poet\u2019s spiritual journey is so\n vivid and consistent that it has all the reality of an account of\n an actual experience; but within and beneath runs a stream of\n allegory not less consistent and hardly less continuous than the\n narrative itself.\u201d A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their\n Theology, 116\u2014\u201cDante himself has told us that there are four\n separate senses which he intends his story to convey. There are\n the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the analogical. In\n _Psalm 114:1_ we have the words, \u2018When Israel went forth out of\n Egypt.\u2019 This, says the poet, may be taken literally, of the actual\n deliverance of God\u2019s ancient people; or allegorically, of the\n redemption of the world through Christ; or morally, of the rescue\n of the sinner from the bondage of his sin; or anagogically, of the\n passage of both soul and body from the lower life of earth to the\n higher life of heaven. So from Scripture Dante illustrates the\n method of his poem.\u201d See further, our treatment of Eschatology.\n See also Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Sermons on the Interpretation of\n Scripture, Appendix A, pages 441-454; Aids to Faith, 449-462;\n Smith\u2019s Bible Dict., 4:2727. _Per contra_, see Elliott, Hor\u00e6\n Apocalyptic\u00e6, 4:662. Gardiner, O. T. and N. T., 262-274, denies\n double sense, but affirms manifold applications of a single sense.\n Broadus, on _Mat. 24:1_, denies double sense, but affirms the use\n of types.\n\n\n(_b_) The prophet was not always aware of the meaning of his own\nprophecies (1 Pet. 1:11). It is enough to constitute his prophecies a\nproof of divine revelation, if it can be shown that the correspondences\nbetween them and the actual events are such as to indicate divine wisdom\nand purpose in the giving of them\u2014in other words, it is enough if the\ninspiring Spirit knew their meaning, even though the inspired prophet did\nnot.\n\n\n It is not inconsistent with this view, but rather confirms it,\n that the near event, and not the distant fulfilment, was often\n chiefly, if not exclusively, in the mind of the prophet when he\n wrote. Scripture declares that the prophets did not always\n understand their own predictions: _1 Pet. 1:11\u2014_\u201csearching what\n time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them\n did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of\n Christ, and the glories that should follow them.\u201d Emerson:\n \u201cHimself from God he could not free; He builded better than he\n knew.\u201d Keble: \u201cAs little children lisp and tell of heaven, So\n thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given.\u201d\n Westcott: Preface to Com. on Hebrews, vi\u2014\u201cNo one would limit the\n teaching of a poet\u2019s words to that which was definitely present to\n his mind. Still less can we suppose that he who is inspired to\n give a message of God to all ages sees himself the completeness of\n the truth which all life serves to illuminate.\u201d Alexander McLaren:\n \u201cPeter teaches that Jewish prophets foretold the events of\n Christ\u2019s life and especially his sufferings; that they did so as\n organs of God\u2019s Spirit; that they were so completely organs of a\n higher voice that they did not understand the significance of\n their own words, but were wiser than they knew and had to search\n what were the date and the characteristics of the strange things\n which they foretold; and that by further revelation they learned\n that \u2018the vision is yet for many days\u2019_ (Is. 24:22; Dan. 10:14)_.\n If Peter was right in his conception of the nature of Messianic\n prophecy, a good many learned men of to-day are wrong.\u201d Matthew\n Arnold, Literature and Dogma: \u201cMight not the prophetic ideals be\n poetic dreams, and the correspondence between them and the life of\n Jesus, so far as real, only a curious historical phenomenon?\u201d\n Bruce, Apologetics, 359, replies: \u201cSuch scepticism is possible\n only to those who have no faith in a living God who works out\n purposes in history.\u201d It is comparable only to the unbelief of the\n materialist who regards the physical constitution of the universe\n as explicable by the fortuitous concourse of atoms.\n\n\n8. _Purpose of Prophecy\u2014so far as it is yet unfulfilled._ (_a_) Not to\nenable us to map out the details of the future; but rather (_b_) To give\ngeneral assurance of God\u2019s power and foreseeing wisdom, and of the\ncertainty of his triumph; and (_c_) To furnish, after fulfilment, the\nproof that God saw the end from the beginning.\n\n\n _Dan. 12:8, 9\u2014_\u201cAnd I heard, but I understood not; then said I, O\n my Lord, what shall be the issue of these things? And he said, Go\n thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the\n time of the end\u201d; _2 Pet. 1:19_\u2014prophecy is \u201ca lamp shining in a\n dark place, until the day dawn\u201d\u2014not until day dawns can distant\n objects be seen; _20\u2014_\u201cno prophecy of scripture is of private\n interpretation\u201d\u2014only God, by the event, can interpret it. Sir\n Isaac Newton: \u201cGod gave the prophecies, not to gratify men\u2019s\n curiosity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they\n were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own\n providence, not the interpreter\u2019s, be thereby manifested to the\n world.\u201d Alexander McLaren: \u201cGreat tracts of Scripture are dark to\n us till life explains them, and then they come on us with the\n force of a new revelation, like the messages which of old were\n sent by a strip of parchment coiled upon a b\u00e2ton and then written\n upon, and which were unintelligible unless the receiver had a\n corresponding b\u00e2ton to wrap them round.\u201d A. H. Strong, The Great\n Poets and their Theology, 23\u2014\u201cArchilochus, a poet of about 700 B.\n C., speaks of \u2018a grievous _scytale_\u2019\u2014the _scytale_ being the staff\n on which a strip of leather for writing purposes was rolled\n slantwise, so that the message inscribed upon the strip could not\n be read until the leather was rolled again upon another staff of\n the same size; since only the writer and the receiver possessed\n staves of the proper size, the _scytale_ answered all the ends of\n a message in cypher.\u201d\n\n Prophecy is like the German sentence,\u2014it can be understood only\n when we have read its last word. A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the\n Spirit, 48\u2014\u201cGod\u2019s providence is like the Hebrew Bible; we must\n begin at the end and read backward, in order to understand it.\u201d\n Yet Dr. Gordon seems to assert that such understanding is possible\n even before fulfilment: \u201cChrist did not know the day of the end\n when here in his state of humiliation; but he does know now. He\n has shown his knowledge in the Apocalypse, and we have received\n \u2018The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto\n his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass\u2019_\n (Rev. 1:1)_.\u201d A study however of the multitudinous and conflicting\n views of the so-called interpreters of prophecy leads us to prefer\n to Dr. Gordon\u2019s view that of Briggs, Messianic Prophecies, 49\u2014\u201cThe\n first advent is the resolver of all Old Testament prophecy; ...\n the second advent will give the key to New Testament prophecy. It\n is \u2018the Lamb that hath been slain\u2019_ (Rev. 5:12)_ ... who alone\n opens the sealed book, solves the riddles of time, and resolves\n the symbols of prophecy.\u201d\n\n Nitzsch: \u201cIt is the essential condition of prophecy that it should\n not disturb man\u2019s relation to history.\u201d In so far as this is\n forgotten, and it is falsely assumed that the purpose of prophecy\n is to enable us to map out the precise events of the future before\n they occur, the study of prophecy ministers to a diseased\n imagination and diverts attention from practical Christian duty.\n Calvin: \u201cAut insanum inveniet aut faciet\u201d; or, as Lord Brougham\n translated it: \u201cThe study of prophecy either finds a man crazy, or\n it leaves him so.\u201d Second Adventists do not often seek\n conversions. Dr. Cumming warned the women of his flock that they\n must not study prophecy so much as to neglect their household\n duties. Paul has such in mind in _2 Thess. 2:1, 2\u2014_\u201ctouching the\n coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ... that ye be not quickly shaken\n from your mind ... as that the day of the Lord is just at hand\u201d;\n _3:11\u2014_\u201cFor we hear of some that walk among you disorderly.\u201d\n\n\n9. _Evidential force of Prophecy\u2014so far as it is fulfilled._ Prophecy,\nlike miracles, does not stand alone as evidence of the divine commission\nof the Scripture writers and teachers. It is simply a corroborative\nattestation, which unites with miracles to prove that a religious teacher\nhas come from God and speaks with divine authority. We cannot, however,\ndispense with this portion of the evidences,\u2014for unless the death and\nresurrection of Christ are events foreknown and foretold by himself, as\nwell as by the ancient prophets, we lose one main proof of his authority\nas a teacher sent from God.\n\n\n Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 338\u2014\u201cThe Christian\u2019s\n own life is the progressive fulfilment of the prophecy that\n whoever accepts Christ\u2019s grace shall be born again, sanctified,\n and saved. Hence the Christian can believe in God\u2019s power to\n predict, and in God\u2019s actual predictions.\u201d See Stanley Leathes, O.\n T. Prophecy, xvii\u2014\u201cUnless we have access to the supernatural, we\n have no access to God.\u201d In our discussions of prophecy, we are to\n remember that before making the truth of Christianity stand or\n fall with any particular passage that has been regarded as\n prediction, we must be certain that the passage is meant as\n prediction, and not as merely figurative description. Gladden,\n Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 195\u2014\u201cThe book of Daniel is not a\n prophecy,\u2014it is an apocalypse.... The author [of such books] puts\n his words into the mouth of some historical or traditional writer\n of eminence. Such are the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses,\n Baruch, 1 and 2 Esdras, and the Sibylline Oracles. Enigmatic form\n indicates persons without naming them, and historic events as\n animal forms or as operations of nature.... The book of Daniel is\n not intended to teach us history. It does not look forward from\n the sixth century before Christ, but backward from the second\n century before Christ. It is a kind of story which the Jews called\n Haggada. It is aimed at Antiochus Epiphanes, who, from his\n occasional fits of melancholy, was called Epimanes, or Antiochus\n the Mad.\u201d\n\n Whatever may be our conclusion as to the authorship of the book of\n Daniel, we must recognize in it an element of prediction which has\n been actually fulfilled. The most radical interpreters do not\n place its date later than 163 B. C. Our Lord sees in the book\n clear reference to himself (_Mat. 26:64\u2014_\u201cthe Son of man, sitting\n at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven\u201d;\n _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_); and he repeats with emphasis certain\n predictions of the prophet which were yet unfulfilled (_Mat.\n 24:15\u2014_\u201cWhen ye see the abomination of desolation, which was\n spoken of through Daniel the prophet\u201d; _cf._ _Dan. 9:27_; _11:31_;\n _12:11_). The book of Daniel must therefore be counted profitable\n not only for its moral and spiritual lessons, but also for its\n actual predictions of Christ and of the universal triumph of his\n kingdom (_Dan. 2:45\u2014_\u201ca stone cut out of the mountain without\n hands\u201d). See on Daniel, Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary; Farrar, in\n Expositor\u2019s Bible. On the general subject see Annotated Paragraph\n Bible, Introd. to Prophetical Books; Cairns, on Present State of\n Christian Argument from Prophecy, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no.\n 27; Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Briggs, Messianic Prophecy;\n Redford, Prophecy, its Nature and Evidence; Willis J. Beecher, the\n Prophet and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 455-465.\n\n\nHaving thus removed the presumption originally existing against miracles\nand prophecy, we may now consider the ordinary laws of evidence and\ndetermine the rules to be followed in estimating the weight of the\nScripture testimony.\n\n\n\nV. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a Divine\nRevelation.\n\n\nPRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE APPLICABLE TO THE PROOF OF A DIVINE\nREVELATION (mainly derived from Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists,\nand from Starkie on Evidence).\n\n\n1. As to documentary evidence.\n\n\n(_a_) Documents apparently ancient, not bearing upon their face the marks\nof forgery, and found in proper custody, are presumed to be genuine until\nsufficient evidence is brought to the contrary. The New Testament\ndocuments, since they are found in the custody of the church, their\nnatural and legitimate depository, must by this rule be presumed to be\ngenuine.\n\n\n The Christian documents were not found, like the Book of Mormon,\n in a cave, or in the custody of angels. Martineau, Seat of\n Authority, 322\u2014\u201cThe Mormon prophet, who cannot tell God from devil\n close at hand, is well up with the history of both worlds, and\n commissioned to get ready the second promised land.\u201d Washington\n Gladden, Who wrote the Bible?\u2014\u201cAn angel appeared to Smith and told\n him where he would find this book; he went to the spot designated\n and found in a stone box a volume six inches thick, composed of\n thin gold plates, eight inches by seven, held together by three\n gold rings; these plates were covered with writing, in the\n \u2018Reformed Egyptian tongue\u2019; with this book were the \u2018Urim and\n Thummim\u2019, a pair of supernatural spectacles, by means of which he\n was able to read and translate this \u2018Reformed Egyptian\u2019 language.\u201d\n Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 113\u2014\u201cIf the ledger of a business\n firm has always been received and regarded as a ledger, its value\n is not at all impeached if it is impossible to tell which\n particular clerk kept this ledger.... The epistle to the Hebrews\n would be no less valuable as evidence, if shown not to have been\n written by Paul.\u201d See Starkie on Evidence, 480 _sq._; Chalmers,\n Christian Revelation, in Works, 3:147-171.\n\n\n(_b_) Copies of ancient documents, made by those most interested in their\nfaithfulness, are presumed to correspond with the originals, even although\nthose originals no longer exist. Since it was the church\u2019s interest to\nhave faithful copies, the burden of proof rests upon the objector to the\nChristian documents.\n\n\n Upon the evidence of a copy of its own records, the originals\n having been lost, the House of Lords decided a claim to the\n peerage; see Starkie on Evidence, 51. There is no manuscript of\n Sophocles earlier than the tenth century, while at least two\n manuscripts of the N. T. go back to the fourth century. Frederick\n George Kenyon, Handbook to Textual Criticism of N. T.: \u201cWe owe our\n knowledge of most of the great works of Greek and Latin\n literature\u2014\u00c6schylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Horace, Lucretius,\n Tacitus, and many more\u2014to manuscripts written from 900 to 1500\n years after their authors\u2019 deaths; while of the N. T. we have two\n excellent and approximately complete copies at an interval of only\n 250 years. Again, of the classical writers we have as a rule only\n a few score of copies (often less), of which one or two stand out\n as decisively superior to all the rest; but of the N. T. we have\n more than 3000 copies (besides a very large number of versions),\n and many of these have distinct and independent value.\u201d The mother\n of Tischendorf named him Lobgott, because her fear that her babe\n would be born blind had not come true. No man ever had keener\n sight than he. He spent his life in deciphering old manuscripts\n which other eyes could not read. The Sinaitic manuscript which he\n discovered takes us back within three centuries of the time of the\n apostles.\n\n\n(_c_) In determining matters of fact, after the lapse of considerable\ntime, documentary evidence is to be allowed greater weight than oral\ntestimony. Neither memory nor tradition can long be trusted to give\nabsolutely correct accounts of particular facts. The New Testament\ndocuments, therefore, are of greater weight in evidence than tradition\nwould be, even if only thirty years had elapsed since the death of the\nactors in the scenes they relate.\n\n\n See Starkie on Evidence, 51, 730. The Roman Catholic Church, in\n its legends of the saints, shows how quickly mere tradition can\n become corrupt. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, yet\n sermons preached to-day on the anniversary of his birth make him\n out to be Unitarian, Universalist, or Orthodox, according as the\n preacher himself believes.\n\n\n2. As to testimony in general.\n\n\n(_a_) In questions as to matters of fact, the proper inquiry is not\nwhether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there\nis sufficient probability that it is true. It is unfair, therefore, to\nallow our examination of the Scripture witnesses to be prejudiced by\nsuspicion, merely because their story is a sacred one.\n\n\n There must be no prejudice against, there must be open-mindedness\n to, truth; there must be a normal aspiration after the signs of\n communication from God. Telepathy, forty days fasting,\n parthenogenesis, all these might once have seemed antecedently\n incredible. Now we see that it would have been more rational to\n admit their existence on presentation of appropriate evidence.\n\n\n(_b_) A proposition of fact is proved when its truth is established by\ncompetent and satisfactory evidence. By competent evidence is meant such\nevidence as the nature of the thing to be proved admits. By satisfactory\nevidence is meant that amount of proof which ordinarily satisfies an\nunprejudiced mind beyond a reasonable doubt. Scripture facts are therefore\nproved when they are established by that kind and degree of evidence which\nwould in the affairs of ordinary life satisfy the mind and conscience of a\ncommon man. When we have this kind and degree of evidence it is\nunreasonable to require more.\n\n\n In matters of morals and religion competent evidence need not be\n mathematical or even logical. The majority of cases in criminal\n courts are decided upon evidence that is circumstantial. We do not\n determine our choice of friends or of partners in life by strict\n processes of reasoning. The heart as well as the head must be\n permitted a voice, and competent evidence includes considerations\n arising from the moral needs of the soul. The evidence, moreover,\n does not require to be demonstrative. Even a slight balance of\n probability, when nothing more certain is attainable, may suffice\n to constitute rational proof and to bind our moral action.\n\n\n(_c_) In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every\nwitness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the\nburden of impeaching his testimony lying upon the objector. The principle\nwhich leads men to give true witness to facts is stronger than that which\nleads them to give false witness. It is therefore unjust to compel the\nChristian to establish the credibility of his witnesses before proceeding\nto adduce their testimony, and it is equally unjust to allow the\nuncorroborated testimony of a profane writer to outweigh that of a\nChristian writer. Christian witnesses should not be considered interested,\nand therefore untrustworthy; for they became Christians against their\nworldly interests, and because they could not resist the force of\ntestimony. Varying accounts among them should be estimated as we estimate\nthe varying accounts of profane writers.\n\n\n John\u2019s account of Jesus differs from that of the synoptic gospels;\n but in a very similar manner, and probably for a very similar\n reason, Plato\u2019s account of Socrates differs from that of Xenophon.\n Each saw and described that side of his subject which he was by\n nature best fitted to comprehend,\u2014compare the Venice of Canaletto\n with the Venice of Turner, the former the picture of an expert\n draughtsman, the latter the vision of a poet who sees the palaces\n of the Doges glorified by air and mist and distance. In Christ\n there was a \u201chiding of his power\u201d_ (Hab. 3:4)_; \u201chow small a\n whisper do we hear of him!\u201d_ (Job 26:14)_; he, rather than\n Shakespeare, is \u201cthe myriad-minded\u201d; no one evangelist can be\n expected to know or describe him except \u201cin part\u201d_ (1 Cor.\n 13:12)_. Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 2:402\u2014\u201cAll of us human beings\n resemble diamonds, in having several distinct facets to our\n characters; and, as we always turn one of these to one person and\n another to another, there is generally some fresh side to be seen\n in a particularly brilliant gem.\u201d E. P. Tenney, Coronation,\n 45\u2014\u201cThe secret and powerful life he [the hero of the story] was\n leading was like certain solitary streams, deep, wide, and swift,\n which run unseen through vast and unfrequented forests. So wide\n and varied was this man\u2019s nature, that whole courses of life might\n thrive in its secret places,\u2014and his neighbors might touch him and\n know him only on that side on which he was like them.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) A slight amount of positive testimony, so long as it is\nuncontradicted, outweighs a very great amount of testimony that is merely\nnegative. The silence of a second witness, or his testimony that he did\nnot see a certain alleged occurrence, cannot counterbalance the positive\ntestimony of a first witness that he did see it. We should therefore\nestimate the silence of profane writers with regard to facts narrated in\nScripture precisely as we should estimate it if the facts about which they\nare silent were narrated by other profane writers, instead of being\nnarrated by the writers of Scripture.\n\n\n Egyptian monuments make no mention of the destruction of Pharaoh\n and his army; but then, Napoleon\u2019s dispatches also make no mention\n of his defeat at Trafalgar. At the tomb of Napoleon in the\n Invalides of Paris, the walls are inscribed with names of a\n multitude of places where his battles were fought, but Waterloo,\n the scene of his great defeat, is not recorded there. So\n Sennacherib, in all his monuments, does not refer to the\n destruction of his army in the time of Hezekiah. Napoleon gathered\n 450,000 men at Dresden to invade Russia. At Moscow the\n soft-falling snow conquered him. In one night 20,000 horses\n perished with cold. Not without reason at Moscow, on the\n anniversary of the retreat of the French, the exultation of the\n prophet over the fall of Sennacherib is read in the churches.\n James Robertson, Early History of Israel, 395, note\u2014\u201cWhately, in\n his Historic Doubts, draws attention to the fact that the\n principal Parisian journal in 1814, on the very day on which the\n allied armies entered Paris as conquerors, makes no mention of any\n such event. The battle of Poictiers in 732, which effectually\n checked the spread of Mohammedanism across Europe, is not once\n referred to in the monastic annals of the period. Sir Thomas\n Browne lived through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, yet\n there is no syllable in his writings with regard to them. Sale\n says that circumcision is regarded by Mohammedans as an ancient\n divine institution, the rite having been in use many years before\n Mohammed, yet it is not so much as once mentioned in the Koran.\u201d\n\n Even though we should grant that Josephus does not mention Jesus,\n we should have a parallel in Thucydides, who never once mentions\n Socrates, the most important character of the twenty years\n embraced in his history. Wieseler, however, in Jahrbuch f. d.\n Theologie, 23:98, maintains the essential genuineness of the\n commonly rejected passage with regard to Jesus in Josephus,\n Antiq., 18:3:3, omitting, however, as interpolations, the phrases:\n \u201cif it be right to call him man\u201d; \u201cthis was the Christ\u201d; \u201che\n appeared alive the third day according to prophecy\u201d; for these, if\n genuine, would prove Josephus a Christian, which he, by all\n ancient accounts, was not. Josephus lived from A. D. 34 to\n possibly 114. He does elsewhere speak of Christ; for he records\n (20:9:1) that Albinus \u201cassembled the Sanhedrim of judges, and\n brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,\n whose name was James, and some others ... and delivered them to be\n stoned.\u201d See Niese\u2019s new edition of Josephus; also a monograph on\n the subject by Gustav Adolph M\u00fcller, published at Innsbruck, 1890.\n Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 22\u2014\u201cTo mention Jesus more\n fully would have required some approval of his life and teaching.\n This would have been a condemnation of his own people whom he\n desired to commend to Gentile regard, and he seems to have taken\n the cowardly course of silence concerning a matter more\n noteworthy, for that generation, than much else of which he writes\n very fully.\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) \u201cThe credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon: first,\ntheir ability; secondly, their honesty; thirdly, their number and the\nconsistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their\ntestimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony\nwith collateral circumstances.\u201d We confidently submit the New Testament\nwitnesses to each and all of these tests.\n\n\n See Starkie on Evidence, 726.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation.\n\n\n\nI. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.\n\n\nTHE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS, or proof that the books of the\nOld and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned\nand by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.\n\n\n Our present discussion comprises the first part, and only the\n first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bd\u03ce\u03bd, a measuring-reed;\n hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the\n determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred\n Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We\n do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or\n Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils\n received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings\n of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they\n are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to\n in _1 Cor. 5:9_ should be discovered and be universally judged\n authentic, it could be placed with Paul\u2019s other letters and could\n form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800\n years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321\u2014\u201cAbstractly the Canon is an open\n question. It can never be anything else on the principles of\n Protestantism which forbid us to accept the decisions of church\n councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the\n question of the Canon is closed.\u201d The Westminster Confession says\n that the authority of the word of God \u201cdoes not rest upon historic\n evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does\n not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the\n matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our\n hearts concerning its divine authority.\u201d Clarke, Christian\n Theology, 24\u2014\u201cThe value of the Scriptures to us does not depend\n upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O. T. half its pages are\n of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism\n is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation.\n The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they\n describe the entrance of God into the life of man.\u201d\n\n Saintine, Picciola, 782\u2014\u201cHas not a feeble reed provided man with\n his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?\u201d\n Hugh Macmillan: \u201cThe idea of stringed instruments was first\n derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot\n his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest\n music of peace were invented by those who first heard this\n inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no\n music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning\n everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the\n heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts\n its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord\u2019s song of infinite\n forgiveness.\u201d George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of\n O. T., 5\u2014\u201cThe church has never renounced her liberty to revise the\n Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the\n liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders\n of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the\n Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed\n extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound\n the church to believe all the teachings of the O. T. Christ\n discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its\n contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our\n sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false.\n Their judgment was that much in the O. T. was rudimentary. This\n opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the\n attempt to fix the historic order. The N. T. criticism of the O.\n T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the\n obligation of it. O. T. criticism is not, like Baur\u2019s of the N.\n T., the result of _a priori_ Hegelian reasoning. From the time of\n Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to\n miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when it is\n treated as a parable. The O. T. is a gradual ethical revelation of\n God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant\n for her Canon of the O. T. than she has for her Canon of the N. T.\n The O. T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that\n word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at\n any time revise.\u201d\n\n We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility\n and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their\n genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious\n books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero\u2019s\n Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we\n use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (_i. e._,\n truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist.\n Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which are\n written in whole or in part by persons other than they whose names\n they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class. The\n Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine,\n because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition\n of Deut. 34, after Moses\u2019 death, does not invalidate the\n genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later\n Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of\n that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were\n made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the\n genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine,\n Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity;\n also Archibald, The Bible Verified.\n\n\n1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.\n\n\nWe do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New\nTestament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of\nthem which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third\ncentury, references to them have been inwoven into all history and\nliterature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents\nnot only existed, but were generally accepted as genuine, before the close\nof the second century.\n\n\n Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that\n Origen\u2019s works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New\n Testament. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12\u2014\u201cThe early years of\n Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our\n lives.... Those early years are the most important in our\n education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and\n struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to\n measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by\n unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our\n maturity.... It was in some such unconscious way that the\n Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the\n form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed\n manhood of the fourth century.\u201d\n\n\nA. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of 2\nPeter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less\ncollected form, in the latter half of the second century. These\ncollections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the\nlong continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to\nfix their origin later than the first half of the second century.\n\n(_a_) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the \u201cNew Testament\u201d as made up of\nthe \u201cGospels\u201d and \u201cApostles.\u201d He vouches for the genuineness of the four\ngospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the\nApocalypse; in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our\nCanon.\n\n\n Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first\n three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of\n Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite\n origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four\n gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional\n authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ, 40\u2014\u201cThe\n oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier\n one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and\n Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East\n(having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New\nTestament writings mutually complement each other\u2019s slight deficiencies,\nand together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our\npresent New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as\ngenuine.\n\n\n Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50\u2014\u201cThe fragment on the\n Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about\n 170 A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence\n which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to\n speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who\n did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by\n John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow\n disciples and his elders.\u201d Bacon, N. T. Introduction, 50, gives\n the Muratorian Canon in full; 30\u2014\u201cTheophilus of Antioch (181-190)\n is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting _John 1:1_ as from\n \u2018John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.\u2019 \u201d On the\n Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito\n Version, see Schaff, Introd. to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N. T., xxxvii;\n Smith\u2019s Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389.\n\n\n(_c_) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but\nthat of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul\u2019s, shows, nevertheless,\nthat at that early day \u201capostolic writings were regarded as a complete\noriginal rule of doctrine.\u201d Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the\ngenuineness of those writings which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.\n\n\n Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded\n the God of the O. T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different\n from the God of the N. T. Marcion was \u201cipso Paulo paulinior\u201d\u2014\u201cplus\n loyal que le roi.\u201d He held that Christianity was something\n entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went\n before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the \u201cGospel\u201d (Luke,\n with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements)\n and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to\n Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas,\n shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from\n Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion\u2019s view had\n prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian\n Church. God\u2019s revelation would have been deprived of its proof\n from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of\n Jewish history, would have been denied. But without the Old\n Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would\n lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to\n God\u2019s natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be\n removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would\n seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or\n inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there\n is above; so the O. T. roots of God\u2019s revelation are as extensive\n and necessary as are its N. T. trunk and branches and leaves. See\n Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, and\n art.: Canon, in Smith\u2019s Bible Dictionary. Also Reuss, History of\n Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.\n\n\nB. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the\nsecond century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but\ntestify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are\ntherefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to\nthe first century, when the apostles lived.\n\n(_a_) Iren\u00e6us (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and\namong them the gospel according to John: \u201cAfterwards John, the disciple of\nthe Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel,\nwhile he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.\u201d And Iren\u00e6us was the disciple and\nfriend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of\nthe Apostle John. The testimony of Iren\u00e6us is virtually the evidence of\nPolycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the\ngospels was written by the person whose name it bears.\n\n\n To this testimony it is objected that Iren\u00e6us says there are four\n gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four\n living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Iren\u00e6us is\n here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four\n gospels, but what he conceives to be God\u2019s reason for ordaining\n that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that\n he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of\n testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.\n\n Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a\n chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he\n shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So\n Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four\n cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early\n attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to\n demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of\n Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the\n authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle\n died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Iren\u00e6us confounded the two\n Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished\u2014John the Apostle and\n John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have\n been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we\n reply that the testimony of Iren\u00e6us implies a long continued\n previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels,\n 145\u2014\u201cReligious veneration such as that with which Iren\u00e6us regarded\n these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place\n in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.\u201d\n See Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary, 2:695.\n\n\n(_b_) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of \u201cmemoirs (\u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03b5\u03cd\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1) of\nJesus Christ,\u201d and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are\nevidently cited from our gospels.\n\n\n To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the\n term \u201cmemoirs\u201d instead of \u201cgospels.\u201d We reply that he elsewhere\n uses the term \u201cgospels\u201d and identifies the \u201cmemoirs\u201d with them:\n Apol., 1:66\u2014\u201cThe apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which\n are called gospels,\u201d _i. e._, not memoirs, but gospels, was the\n proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the\n heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses\n the term \u201cmemoirs\u201d, or \u201cmemorabilia\u201d, which Xenophon had used as\n the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may\n avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may\n commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that\n Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin\u2019s repeated\n statement that there were \u201cmemoirs\u201d of our Lord \u201cwritten by\n apostles,\u201d and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his\n further statement that these memoirs were compiled by \u201chis\n apostles and those who followed them.\u201d Analogous to Justin\u2019s use\n of the word \u201cmemoirs\u201d is his use of the term \u201cSunday\u201d, instead of\n Sabbath: Apol. 1:67\u2014\u201cOn the day called Sunday, all who live in\n cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the\n memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.\u201d\n Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal\n authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly\n quotes the words and acts of Jesus\u2019 life from a written source,\n using the word \u03b3\u03ad\u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill,\n Literature of Second Century, 234.\n\n To Justin\u2019s testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the\n words spoken from heaven at the Savior\u2019s baptism, he makes them to\n be: \u201cMy son, this day have I begotten thee,\u201d so quoting _Psalm\n 2:7_, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel,\n _Mat. 3:17_. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory,\n quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the\n cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the\n Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should\n not argue from this that he did not possess our present\n Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace,\n and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their\n genuineness,\u2014yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after\n Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels.\n Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the\n different evangelists\u2014a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably\n followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr\u2019s\n testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49,\n note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as \u201cwriting\n _circa_ 155 A. D.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Papias (80-164), whom Iren\u00e6us calls a \u201chearer of John,\u201d testifies\nthat Matthew \u201cwrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (\u03c4\u1f70 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03b9\u03b1),\u201d\nand that \u201cMark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (\u1f55\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd\n\u03a0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u1ff3) [or under Peter\u2019s direction], an unsystematic account (\u03bf\u1f50 \u03c4\u03ac\u03be\u03b5\u03b9)\u201d\nof the same events and discourses.\n\n\n To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have\n had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We\n reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a\n Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the\n original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew,\n while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same.\n Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James,\n might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the\n writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives\n that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember\n stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths\n at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work\n of Papias had for its title \u039b\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03c9\u03bd \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10\u03be\u03ae\u03b3\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2\u2014\u201cExposition\n of Oracles relating to the Lord\u201d = Commentaries on the Gospels.\n Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss\n mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the\n quotations from the O. T. in Jesus\u2019 discourses in Matthew are all\n taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott\n answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his\n Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral\n version of Christ\u2019s discourses the version of these already\n existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis\n of true teaching, the \u201cdeposit\u201d\u2014\u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u2014committed to Timothy\n (_1 Tim. 6:20_; _2 Tim. 1:12, 14_), the same story told many times\n and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew,\n Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic\n testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly,\n written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems\n probable from the fact that the Oriental name for \u201ctares,\u201d\n _zaw\u0101n_, (_Mat. 13:25_) has been transliterated into Greek,\n \u03b6\u03b9\u03b6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b9\u03b1. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally\n wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the\n Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and\n partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the\n so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own\n gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew.\n Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the\n original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he\n afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill,\n Literature of the Second Century, 267.\n\n To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is\n the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a\n true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far\n as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as\n logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the\n evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping\n which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a\n life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus\u2019\n teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and\n 9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and\n 12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this\n opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel\n describes our Lord\u2019s preparation for his death, his progress to\n Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the\n resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of\n material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently\n unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of\n J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life\n of Jesus, 1:27-39.\n\n\n(_d_) The Apostolic Fathers,\u2014Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of\nAntioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),\u2014companions and friends of\nthe apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations\nfrom or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every\nbook, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is\nrepresented.\n\n\n Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they\n are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day,\n and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves.\n \u201cLike banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain\n range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous\n bodies below.\u201d In an article by P. W. Calkins, McClintock and\n Strong\u2019s Encyclop\u00e6dia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic\n Fathers in great numbers are put side by side with the New\n Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude.\n An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that\n these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our\n New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer,\n in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation,\n 11\u2014\u201cIgnatius says to Polycarp: \u2018The times call for thee, as the\n winds call for the pilot.\u2019 So do the times call for reverent,\n fearless scholarship in the church.\u201d Such scholarship, we are\n persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N. T.\n documents.\n\n\n(_e_) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the\nfulfilment of Christ\u2019s prophecies with regard to the destruction of\nJerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the\noccurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally\nattributed to Luke, we have an allusion to \u201cthe former treatise\u201d, or the\ngospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before\nthe end of Paul\u2019s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help\nand sanction of that apostle.\n\n\n _Acts 1:1\u2014_\u201cThe former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning\n all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.\u201d If the Acts was\n written A. D. 63, two years after Paul\u2019s arrival at Rome, then\n \u201cthe former treatise,\u201d the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be\n dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took\n place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at\n least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still\n living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus\u2019 life.\n Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180\u2014\u201cAt any considerably\n later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent\n conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the\n Parousia would have been avoided or explained.... Matthew, in its\n present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle\n of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark\u2019s gospel\n was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the\n Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he\n wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition\n that it was long after.\u201d See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels;\n Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.\n\n\nC. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament\ndocuments as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for\ngood and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this\npresumption is corroborated by the following considerations:\n\n(_a_) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure\nthemselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.\n\n\n Evidences of care are the following:\u2014Paul, in _2 Thess. 2:2_,\n urged the churches to use care, \u201cto the end that ye be not quickly\n shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or\n by word, or by epistle as from us\u201d; _1 Cor. 5:9\u2014_\u201cI wrote unto you\n in my epistle to have no company with fornicators\u201d; _Col.\n 4:16\u2014_\u201cwhen this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it\n be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also\n read the epistle from Laodicea.\u201d Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis,\n who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as\n Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon\n of the O. T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the\n Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O. T., 203\u2014\u201cMelito, the Bishop of\n Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O. T. Scriptures which he\n professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling\n in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew\n Canon, save in the omission of Esther.\u201d Serapion, Bishop of\n Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: \u201cWe receive Peter and other\n apostles as Christ, but as skilful men we reject those writings\n which are falsely ascribed to them.\u201d Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist\n Congress, 1899:94\u2014\u201cSerapion, after permitting the reading of the\n Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it,\n not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because\n he thought it was not written by Peter.\u201d Tertullian (160-230)\n gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor\n for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De\n Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner,\n Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences, 92.\n\n\n(_b_) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete\ncorrespondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they\nprofess to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to\nthe apostolic age.\n\n\n Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in \u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03bb\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03c1 (_Mark\n 6:27_) and \u03ba\u03b5\u03bd\u03c4\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03c9\u03bd (_Mark 15:39_); of Greek and Aram\u00e6an, as in\n \u03c0\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u03af (_Mark 6:40_) and \u03b2\u03b4\u03ad\u03bb\u03c5\u03b3\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c1\u03b7\u03bc\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 (_Mat.\n 24:15_); this could hardly have occurred after the first century.\n Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray\u2019s\n \u201cHenry Esmond,\u201d which, in spite of the author\u2019s special studies\n and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had\n originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors\n that Macaulay in his most remiss moments would hardly have made.\n James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that \u201cdifferent to\u201d was not a\n century old. \u201cHang it, no!\u201d replied Thackeray. In view of this\n failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to\n construct a story purporting to be written a century before his\n time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may\n well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a\n practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after,\n the apostolic age. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37;\n Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354.\n\n\n(_c_) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that\nTatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it\nwithout naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels\nwhich he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus\n(150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.\n\n\n The sceptical work entitled \u201cSupernatural Religion\u201d said in 1874;\n \u201cNo one seems to have seen Tatian\u2019s Harmony, probably for the very\n simple reason that there was no such work\u201d; and \u201cThere is no\n evidence whatever connecting Tatian\u2019s Gospel with those of our\n Canon.\u201d In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in\n Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the\n commencement of it was: \u201cIn the beginning was the Word\u201d_ (John\n 1:1)_. In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in\n the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century\n from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris, in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800\n _sq._, says that the recovery of Tatian\u2019s Diatessaron has\n indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced\n critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of\n the facts they discuss. The gospels must have been well\n established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to\n combine them. Mrs. A. S. Lewis, in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904\u2014\u201cThe\n gospels were translated into Syriac before A. D. 160. It follows\n that the Greek document from which they were translated was older\n still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did\n the other.\u201d Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231,\n gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his\n Diatessaron as 172 A. D.\n\n The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of\n John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during\n John\u2019s exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John\n had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He\n had hitherto spoken Aram\u00e6an, and Greek was comparatively\n unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after,\n probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother\n tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; _per contra_, see\n Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas which indicate\n a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel are the\n following: \u201cthe Lamb of God,\u201d \u201cthe Word of God,\u201d \u201cthe True\u201d as an\n epithet applied to Christ, \u201cthe Jews\u201d as enemies of God, \u201cmanna,\u201d\n \u201chim whom they pierced\u201d; see Elliott, Hor\u00e6 Apocalyptic\u00e6, 1:4, 5.\n In the fourth gospel we have \u1f00\u03bc\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2, in Apoc. \u1f00\u03c1\u03bd\u03af\u03bf\u03bd, perhaps\n better to distinguish \u201cthe Lamb\u201d from the diminutive \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b8\u03b7\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03bd,\n \u201cthe beast.\u201d Common to both Gospel and Rev. are \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd, \u201cto do\u201d\n [the truth]; \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd, of moral conduct; \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2, \u201cgenuine\u201d;\n \u03b4\u03b9\u03c8\u1fb7\u03bd, \u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u1fb7\u03bd, of the higher wants of the soul; \u03c3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd,\n \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd, \u1f41\u03b4\u03b7\u03b3\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd; also \u201covercome,\u201d \u201ctestimony,\u201d \u201cBridegroom,\u201d\n \u201cShepherd,\u201d \u201cWater of life.\u201d In the Revelation there are\n grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4\u2014\u1f00\u03c0\u1f78 \u1f41 \u1f64\u03bd;\n nominative for accusative, 7:9\u2014\u03b5\u1f36\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd ... \u1f44\u03c7\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03cd\u03c2; accusative\n for nominative, 20:2\u2014\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b4\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u1f41 \u1f44\u03c6\u03b9\u03c2. Similarly we have in\n _Rom. 12:5_\u2014\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u1fbd \u03b5\u1f36\u03c2 instead of \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u1fbd \u1f15\u03bd\u03b1, where \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70\n has lost its regimen\u2014a frequent solecism in later Greek writers;\n see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that\n the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to\n show that Emerson was wrong.\n\n The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third\n person, \u201cand scorned to blot it with a name.\u201d But so does C\u00e6sar\n speak of himself in his Commentaries. Harnack regards both the\n fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter\n or Elder, the former written not later than about 110 A. D.; the\n latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more\n underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of\n the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his\n article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary,\n 4:239-266. \u201cIt is the obvious advantage of the Vischer-Harnack\n hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its\n revised and Christianized edition under Domitian.\u201d (Sanday,\n Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as\n raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the\n Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of\n Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents\n the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the\n Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document\n of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and\n issued not earlier than 136: \u201cHow strange that we should ever have\n thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of\n Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic\n conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the\n blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the\n war-march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the\n deluge of blood rises to the horses\u2019 bits, with the speculative\n Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a\n feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at\n the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to\n Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen!\u201d\n\n The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we\n consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of\n the \u201cBoanerges, which is, Sons of thunder\u201d_ (Mark 3:17)_, but\n became in his later years the apostle of love: _1 John\n 4:7\u2014_\u201cBeloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.\u201d The\n likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was\n undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same\n authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that \u201cthe discovery of\n the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of\n discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests\n indubitably all four of our canonical books.\u201d Riddle, in Popular\n Com., 1:25\u2014\u201cIf a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub\n has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.\u201d On\n the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introd. to N. T.,\n 1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33,\n also Beginnings of Christianity, 320-362, and Grounds of Theistic\n and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth\n Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century, and Criticism of the Fourth\n Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80-87;\n Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249-287; British\n Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25;\n Westcott, in Bib. Com. on John\u2019s Gospel, Introd., xxviii-xxxii;\n Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W. L. Ferguson, in Bib. Sac.,\n 1896:1-27.\n\n\n(_d_) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the\nfirst century after it was written (so Clement of Borne, Justin Martyr,\nand the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in\nthe Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal\ncharacteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline\nauthorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Iren\u00e6us,\nMuratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the\nevidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third\nCouncil of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin\nchurches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was\nfinally and forever removed.\n\n\n The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that\n of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an\n Alexandrian Jew, \u201ca learned man\u201d and \u201cmighty in the Scriptures\u201d_\n (Acts 18:24)_; but it may notwithstanding have been written at the\n suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially\n Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points\n out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and\n only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of\n the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free\n from anacolutha, and is always dominated by emotion. He holds that\n these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast\n also Paul\u2019s method of quoting the O. T.: \u201cit is written\u201d_ (Rom.\n 11:8; 1 Cor. 1:31; Gal. 3:10)_ with that of the Hebrews: \u201che\n saith\u201d_ (8:5, 13)_, \u201che hath said\u201d_ (4:4)_. Paul quotes the O. T.\n fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. _Heb.\n 2:3\u2014_\u201cwhich having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was\n confirmed unto us by them that heard\u201d\u2014shows that the writer did\n not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly\n saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he\n always insisted on the primary and independent character of his\n gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas\n to Christians at Rome, A. D. 81-96. More recently however he\n attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint\n authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable\n to this view. William T. C. Hanna: \u201cThe words of the author ...\n are marshalled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or\n with the swell of a tidal wave\u201d; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations\n in N. T. from O. T., xii. Plumptre, Introd. to N. T., 37, and in\n Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same\n with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being\n composed before, the former after, the writer\u2019s conversion to\n Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen:\n \u201cGod only knows who wrote it.\u201d Harnack however remarks: \u201cThe time\n in which our ancient Christian literature, the N. T. included, was\n considered as a web of delusions and falsifications, is past. The\n oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in\n most of its details, true and trustworthy.\u201d See articles on\n Hebrews, in Smith\u2019s and in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionaries.\n\n\n(_e_) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently\nheld to be spurious, we may say that, although we have no conclusive\nexternal evidence earlier than A. D. 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none\nearlier than A. D. 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their\ngenuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and\nmoral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third\ncentury as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names\nthey bear.\n\n\n Firmilianus (250), Bishop of C\u00e6sarea in Cappadocia, is the first\n clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but, in naming\n it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of\n Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very\n gradual recognition and acceptance of 2 Peter, compare the loss of\n the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after\n his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were\n recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; De\n Wette\u2019s first publication of certain letters of Luther after the\n lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to\n their genuineness; or the concealment of Milton\u2019s Treatise on\n Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in\n London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir\n William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth,\n Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to\n their editors, biographers and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of\n the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures\n and Reviews, 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was\n probably sent from the East shortly before Peter\u2019s martyrdom;\n distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation\n in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114\u2014\u201cA ledger\n may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted,\n but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as\n any other part of the _res gest\u00e6_.\u201d See Plumptre, Epistles of\n Peter, Introd., 73-81; Alford on 2 Peter, 4: Prolegomena, 157;\n Westcott, on Canon, in Smith\u2019s Bib. Dict., 1:370, 373; Blunt,\n Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Canon.\n\n It is urged by those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the\n epistle speaks of \u201cyour apostles\u201d_ (3:2)_, just as _Jude 17_\n speaks of \u201cthe apostles,\u201d as if the writer did not number himself\n among them. But 2 Peter begins with \u201cSimon Peter, a servant and\n apostle of Jesus Christ,\u201d and Jude, \u201cbrother of James\u201d_ (verse 1)_\n was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introd. to\n N. T., xxxi\u2014\u201cThe earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter\n appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman\n Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian\n homily from the middle of the second century.\u201d Origen (born 186)\n testifies that Peter left one epistle, \u201cand perhaps a second, for\n that is disputed.\u201d He also says: \u201cJohn wrote the Apocalypse, and\n an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a\n third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.\u201d He quotes also\n from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was\n doubted.\n\n Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written\n respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to\n whom they are ascribed\u2014the ascriptions to these authors being\n later additions. Hort remarks: \u201cIf I were asked, I should say that\n the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I\n had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.\u201d\n Sanday, Oracles of God, 73 note, considers the arguments in favor\n of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot\n get beyond a _non liquet_. He refers to Salmon, Introd. to N. T.,\n 529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later\n conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on\n Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter \u201cis probably at least to\n this extent a counterfeit, that it appears under a name which is\n not that of its true author.\u201d\n\n Chase, in Hastings\u2019 Bib. Dict., 3:806-817, says that \u201cthe first\n piece of _certain_ evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from\n Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that\n the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria.... We find no\n trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic\n days was still living.... It was not the work of the apostle but\n of the second century ... put forward without any sinister motive\n ... the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device\n rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of\n such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord\u2019s promise\n of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of\n infallibility.\u201d Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and\n spiritual value of 2 Peter\u2014internal evidence which in our judgment\n causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic\n authorship.\n\n\n(_f_) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the\ngeneral acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century,\nand of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the\nsecond century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere\ncollections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide\ncirculation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their\nblood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither\nhave been deceived as to their previous non-existence, nor have been\ninduced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine.\nInasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with\ntheir genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length\nthe most important of these opposing views.\n\n\n The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be\n demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of\n its books. It does not matter that 2nd Alcibiades was not written\n by Plato, or Pericles by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in\n 397 gave a place in the Canon to the O. T. Apocrypha, but the\n Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: \u201cIt is not\n a Biblical book,\u201d and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of\n James. The judgment of Christendom at large is more trustworthy\n than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To\n hold the books of the N. T. to be written in the second century by\n other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to\n forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been\n several forgers at work, and, since their writings wonderfully\n agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able\n men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of\n the second century have been preserved.\n\n G. F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343\u2014\u201cIn\n civil law there are \u2018statutes of limitations\u2019 which provide that\n the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain\n period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for\n example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for\n a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid\n claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.\u201d Mair,\n Evidences, 99\u2014\u201cWe probably have not a tenth part of the evidence\n upon which the early churches accepted the N. T. books as the\n genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict.\u201d\n Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58\u2014\u201cThose who gave up\n the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as\n \u2018traditores,\u2019 traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought\n to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were\n not equally sacred. Some were essential, and some were\n non-essential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between\n _canonical_ and _non-canonical_. The general consciousness of\n Christians grew into a distinct registration.\u201d Such registration\n is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof\n upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity,\n Introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary\n on N. T.\n\n\nD. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are\nattempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament\nrecords, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of\nnaturalism.\n\nAgainst them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in\ntheir principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New\nTestament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural\ndevelopment, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make\nhistory a matter, not of testimony, but of _a priori_ speculation. It\nindeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since\nthe witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can\nno longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ\u2019s\nlife or doctrine.\n\n\n In Germany, half a century ago, \u201ca man was famous according as he\n had lifted up axes upon the thick trees\u201d_ (Ps. 74:5, A. V.)_, just\n as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could\n not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other;\n see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79\u2014on Homer. Nicoll, The\n Church\u2019s One Foundation, 15\u2014\u201cLike the mummers of old, sceptical\n critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear\n of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of\n the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is\n impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the\n criticism begins to operate in earnest.\u201d Matthew Arnold: \u201cOur\n popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and\n death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of\n miracle,\u2014and _miracles do not happen_.\u201d This presupposition\n influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in\n his article on the Gospels in the Encyc. Britannica. We give\n special attention to four of the theories based upon this\n assumption.\n\n\n1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).\n\n\nAccording to this view, the gospels are crystallizations into story of\nMessianic ideas which had for several generations filled the minds of\nimaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas\nare unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and\ndeliberate deception is absent.\n\n\n This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his\n name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which\n extended the meaning of the word \u201cmyths\u201d so as to include all\n narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted\n the existence of \u201cpious frauds\u201d in the gospels. Baur, he says,\n first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had \u201cnot\n unfrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere\n fictions.\u201d The animating spirit of both the old view and the new\n is the same. Strauss says: \u201cWe know with certainty what Jesus was\n _not_, and what he has _not_ done, namely, nothing superhuman and\n supernatural.\u201d \u201cNo gospel can claim that degree of historic\n credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our\n reason to the point of believing miracles.\u201d He calls the\n resurrection of Christ \u201cein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug.\u201d \u201cIf the\n gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle\n from the life-story of Jesus;\u201d see Strauss, Life of Jesus, 17; New\n Life of Jesus, 1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A. T., 210,\n 211, distinguishes the myth from the _saga_ or legend: The\n criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible,\n while the _saga_ is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has\n in it the element only of belief, the _saga_ has in it an element\n of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 37\u2014\u201cA myth is false in\n appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the\n fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasonings. When the\n heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of\n truth to shine through. And does not childhood run on into\n maturity and old age?\u201d\n\n It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the\n animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that\n of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the\n supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the\n previous objections of sceptics to the gospel narrative and hurled\n them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus\u2019\n trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and\n insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered\n straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and\n saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that \u201csomehow she never\n could get interested\u201d in Strauss\u2019s Leben Jesu, which her sceptical\n son had given her for religious reading. The work was almost\n altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss\u2019s\n own view of what Jesus was.\n\n If Luther\u2019s dictum is true that \u201cthe heart is the best\n theologian,\u201d Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main\n qualification for his task. Encyc. Britannica, 22:592\u2014\u201cStrauss\u2019s\n mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth\n of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical\n sympathy. His work was rarely constructive, and, save when he was\n dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian,\n biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe\u2019s\n profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for\n productive criticism.\u201d Pfleiderer, Strauss\u2019s Life of Jesus,\n xix\u2014\u201cStrauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions\n about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not\n show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was\n the Messiah.\u201d See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato,\n 1:249.\n\n\nWe object to the Myth-theory of Strauss, that\n\n(_a_) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the\ngospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such\nmythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman\nand Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries.\n\n(_b_) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was\npossible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age\nof historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.\n\n\n Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of\n the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that \u201cEsse\n aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt.\u201d Arnold of\n Rugby: \u201cThe idea of men writing mythic histories between the times\n of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for\n realities!\u201d Pilate\u2019s sceptical inquiry, \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d_ (John\n 18:38)_, better represented the age. \u201cThe mythical age is past\n when an idea is presented abstractly\u2014apart from narrative.\u201d The\n Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit\n was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the\n Baptist, _Mat. 11:3\u2014_\u201cArt thou he that cometh, or look we for\n another?\u201d and our Lord\u2019s answer, _Mat. 11:4, 5\u2014_\u201cGo and tell John\n the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight ...\n the dead are raised up,\u201d show that the Jews expected miracles to\n be wrought by the Messiah; yet _John 10:41\u2014_\u201cJohn indeed did no\n sign\u201d shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular\n teachers with miraculous powers; see E. G. Robinson, Christian\n Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman\n Origin of the Bible, 61; Cox, Miracles, 50.\n\n\n(_c_) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and\nexpectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter\nto these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of\nthe Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could\ntheir expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a\nsuffering Messiah.\n\n\n The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews.\n 2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world \u201cfor _our_\n sakes\u201d; other peoples, though they \u201calso come from Adam,\u201d to the\n Eternal \u201care nothing, but be like unto spittle.\u201d The whole\n multitude of them are only, before him, \u201clike a single foul drop\n that oozes out of a cask\u201d (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ\u2019s\n kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its\n _spirituality_ and its _universality_ (Bruce, Apologetics, 3).\n There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other\n hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his\n god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The\n Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would\n have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to\n depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the\n Second Century, 99-136).\n\n\n(_d_) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what\nwe know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the\napostles.\n\n(_e_) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels\namong the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations.\n\n(_f_) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ\u2019s\ncrucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these\nfacts.\n\n\n (_d_) Witness Thomas\u2019s doubting, and Paul\u2019s shipwrecks and\n scourgings. _Cf._ _2 Pet. 1:16_\u2014\u03bf\u1f50 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u03c3\u03b5\u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u03bc\u03cd\u03b8\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2\n \u1f10\u03be\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 = \u201cwe have not been on the false track of myths\n artificially elaborated.\u201d See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to\n Christ, 49-88. (_e_) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel\n Narratives are Mythical,\u2014What Then? and, But How,\u2014if the Gospels\n are Historic? (_f_) As the existence of the American Republic is\n proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of\n Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the\n seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have\n come about in a nation so Sabbatarian, had not the first day been\n the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish\n Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lord\u2019s\n Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and\n remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian\n church. See Muir, on the Lord\u2019s Supper an abiding Witness to the\n Death of Christ, In Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and\n his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of\n Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief,\n 379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith,\n in Faith and Philosophy, 442-468; Bayne, Review of Strauss\u2019s New\n Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern\n Scepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art. by Prof.\n W. A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264;\n Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity,\n 92-126; A. P. Peabody, in Smith\u2019s Bible Dict., 2:954-958.\n\n\n2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).\n\n\nThis maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second\ncentury, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling\nopposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. \u201cThese great\nnational tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding\nto them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.\u201d\n\n\n Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 A. D.; Matthew at 130;\n Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was.\n He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the\n documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining\n the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the\n presupposition of his investigations, when he says: \u201cThe principal\n argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain\n this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they\n give an account of the life of Jesus which involves\n impossibilities\u201d\u2014_i. e._, miracles. He would therefore remove\n their authorship far enough from Jesus\u2019 time to permit regarding\n the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united\n the universalistic spirit of the new religion, _and_ the\n particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his\n disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first\n conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the\n T\u00fcbingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in\n Bruce, Apologetics, 360. E. G. Robinson interprets Baur as\n follows: \u201cPaul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James =\n ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity. Protestant preaching\n should dwell more on the ethical\u2014cases of conscience\u2014and less on\n mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.\u201d\n\n Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the\n real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers\n wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory:\n \u201cHis was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs\n or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations\n of Christianity.\u201d The estimate of posterity is probably expressed\n in the judgment with regard to the T\u00fcbingen school by Harnack:\n \u201cThe _possible_ picture it sketched was not the _real_, and the\n key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice\n for the most simple.... The T\u00fcbingen views have indeed been\n compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the\n development of the church in the second century, it may safely be\n said that the hypotheses of the T\u00fcbingen school have proved\n themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are to-day\n held by only a very few scholars.\u201d See Baur, Die kanonischen\n Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural\n Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for\n 1885. For accounts of Baur\u2019s position, see Herzog, Encyclop\u00e4die,\n art.: Baur; Clarke\u2019s transl. of Hase\u2019s Life of Jesus, 34-36;\n Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.\n\n\nWe object to the Tendency-theory of Baur, that\n\n(_a_) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if\napplied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of\nthe past, and render all history impossible.\n\n\n The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid\n examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry\n evidences of a hidden _animus_ in the most simple and ingenuous\n literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of\n \u201cJack and Jill.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies which it professes to find in\nthe several gospels are more satisfactorily explained as varied but\nconsistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.\n\n\n Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between\n the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian,\n but was the first preacher to the Gentiles, and his doctrine\n appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable\n extent by Paul\u2019s (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-69). Paul was not an\n exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the\n gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The\n evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view.\n As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a\n dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points\n of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark,\n Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life\n of Christ. The deeper reality which makes reconciliation of the\n different views possible is the actual historical Christ. Marcus\n Dods, Expositor\u2019s Greek Testament, 1:675\u2014\u201cThey are not two\n Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the\n profile and front face, but one another\u2019s complement rather than\n contradiction.\u201d\n\n Godet, Introd. to Gospel Collection, 272\u2014Matthew shows the\n greatness of Jesus\u2014his full-length portrait; Mark his\n indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his\n essential divinity. Matthew first wrote Aram\u00e6an Logia. This was\n translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry\n of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation\n was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E.\n D. Burton: Matthew = fulfilment of past prophecy; Mark =\n manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy;\n Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most\n impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to\n Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition\n alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other\n fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts\n and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F.\n W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 61.\n\n\n(_c_) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty\nreligious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of\nthe second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been\npublished under assumed names and for covert ends.\n\n\n The general character of the literature of the second century is\n illustrated by Ignatius\u2019s fanatical desire for martyrdom, the\n value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories\n of Barnabas, Clement of Rome\u2019s belief in the ph\u0153nix, and the\n absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth\n gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a\n mountain among mole-hills. Wynne, Literature of the Second\n Century, 60\u2014\u201cThe apostolic and the sub-apostolic writers differ\n from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of\n quartz with veins of the precious metal gleaming through it.\u201d\n Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92\u2014\u201cInstead of the writers\n of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or\n developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century\n shows great retrogression,\u2014its writers were not able to retain or\n comprehend all that had been given them.\u201d Martineau, Seat of\n Authority, 291\u2014\u201cWriters not only barbarous in speech and rude in\n art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper,\n and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of\n Hermas, the imbecility of Iren\u00e6us, the fury of Tertullian, the\n rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of\n Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if\n he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of\n thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of\n the church.\u201d We can apply to the writers of the second century the\n question of R. G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy:\n \u201cIs it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on\n Shakespeare\u2019s doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home?\u201d\n On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith,\n 73-108.\n\n\n(_d_) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a\nfaithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of\nfabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the\nground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles.\n\n\n \u201cA genial set of Jesuitical religionists\u201d\u2014with mind and heart\n enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same\n time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their\n writings every trace of the developments of church authority\n belonging to the second century. The newly discovered \u201cTeaching of\n the Twelve Apostles,\u201d if dating from the early part of that\n century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical\n theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not\n possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,\n 12\u2014\u201cIf St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius\n of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange\n to the original apostles.\u201d Fairbairn has well shown that if\n Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human\n Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the\n Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been\n simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it\n would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or\n Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son\n of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be\n and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy\n of the Christian Religion, 4, 15\u2014\u201cWithout the personal charm of\n the historical Jesus, the \u0153cumenical creeds would never have been\n either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical\n conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have\n ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so\n powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has\n been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The\n two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name\n \u2018Jesus Christ.\u2019 \u201d\n\n\n(_e_) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the\ngospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated\ncommunities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of\northodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents\ninstantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.\n\n\n Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The\n Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle\n of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of\n that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the\n Logos, but to successive \u201c\u00c6ons.\u201d How did the Gnostics, without\n \u201cpeep or mutter,\u201d come to accept as genuine what had only in their\n own time been first sprung upon the churches? While Basilides\n (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the\n fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that\n it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur\n \u201cHe believed in the all-sufficiency of the Hegelian theory of\n development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere.\n Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and\n teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development,\n must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels\n claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the\n utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought\n could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.\u201d But such a\n conception certainly existed in the second century, and it\n directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F. W.\n Farrar, on _Hebrews 1:2_\u2014\u201cThe word _\u00e6on_ was used by the later\n Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at\n once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and\n the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the\n Incarnation, when he wrote: \u2018The Word became flesh\u2019_ (John\n 1:14)_.\u201d A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings\n could not in the second century have been quoted by the Gnostics\n themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not\n been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle\n John.\n\n\n(_f_) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans,\nGalatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is\nfatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at\nthe period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus\u2019\nlife and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long\nacknowledged in the Christian church.\n\n\n Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276\u2014\u201cThere never has been the slightest\n suspicion of unauthenticity cast on these epistles (Gal., 1 and 2\n Cor., Rom.), and they bear so incontestably the character of\n Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the\n assertion of critical doubts in their case.\u201d Baur, in discussing\n the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains\n the outward from the inward: Paul translated intense and sudden\n conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward\n scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by\n Paul\u2019s companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here\n mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144;\n Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures\n for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss,\n Life of Jesus, 1:157 _sq._; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ.\n Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic,\n 5:1-42; Auberlen, Div. Revelation; Bib. Sac., 19:75; Answers to\n Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, 4th ed.,\n Introd.; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan.\n 1875; Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day\n Tracts, 7: no. 38.\n\n\n3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).\n\n\nThis theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all\nbelong to the century following Jesus\u2019 death. \u201cAccording to\u201d Matthew,\nMark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these\ngospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus\u2019 life were so\nsublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the\ngospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine,\u2014in short, the\ngospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a\nfoundation in fact.\n\n\n The _animus_ of this theory is plainly shown in Renan\u2019s Life of\n Jesus, preface to 13th ed.\u2014\u201cIf miracles and the inspiration of\n certain books are realities, my method is detestable. If miracles\n and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my\n method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is\n decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration\n that there is no room for believing in a thing of which the world\n offers no experimental trace.\u201d \u201cOn the whole,\u201d says Renan, \u201cI\n admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion,\n date from the first century, and the authors are, generally\n speaking, those to whom they are attributed.\u201d He regards Gal., 1\n and 2 Cor., and Rom., as \u201cindisputable and undisputed.\u201d He speaks\n of them as \u201cbeing texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete\n sincerity, and without legends\u201d (Les Ap\u00f4tres, xxix; Les \u00c9vangiles,\n xi). Yet he denies to Jesus \u201csincerity with himself\u201d; attributes\n to him \u201cinnocent artifice\u201d and the toleration of pious fraud, as\n for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own\n resurrection. \u201cTo conceive the good is not sufficient: it must be\n made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be\n followed.... Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost\n somewhat of its original purity,\u2014his mission overwhelmed him....\n Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own\n greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artizan?\u201d So\n Renan \u201cpictures Christ\u2019s later life as a misery and a lie, yet he\n requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior,\n Sakya-Mouni, as demigods\u201d (see Nicoll, The Church\u2019s One\n Foundation, 62, 63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary\n Magdalene, he says: \u201cO divine power of love! sacred moments, in\n which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a\n resuscitated God!\u201d See Renan, Life of Jesus, 21.\n\n\nTo this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that\n\n(_a_) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian\ndocuments. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but\ninterpolated _ad libitum_, is contradicted by the essential agreement of\nthe manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.\n\n\n Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew\n at 84 A. D.; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark\n a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur.\n Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism,\n attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the\n Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus\u2019s Refutation of all Heresies, the\n Clementine Homilies, and Tatian\u2019s Diatessaron: \u201cAccording to Baur\n and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the\n N. T. belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the\n present head of the Baur school, we have somewhat less than three\n quarters belonging to the first century, while substantially the\n same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann. According to\n Renan, we have distinctly more than three quarters of the N. T.\n falling within the first century, and therefore within the\n apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and\n extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur\u2019s grand assault, that\n is, within the last fifty years.\u201d We may add that the concession\n of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan\u2019s\n hypothesis that the N. T. documents have been so enlarged by pious\n fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such\n events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so\n fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in\n substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral\n tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much\n longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai\n can repeat after the lapse of twenty years portions of the Hindu\n sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old\n Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the\n Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept\n the gospel narratives free from the corruption which Renan\n supposes.\n\n\n(_b_) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of\nromantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are\nutterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their\nlives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.\n\n\n On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A. H. Strong,\n Christ in Creation, 332-363, especially 356\u2014\u201cRenan attributes the\n origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a\n constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to\n him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender\n impulses and passionate ardors, whose native genius it was to play\n upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference\n to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer\n feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions,\n melting moods, these were the secrets of his power. Religion was a\n beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion\u2014excellent as a balm and\n solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if\n they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced\n back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed\n out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to\n be a sort of maudlin monasticism.... How different from the strong\n and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing\n them to the truth, and which claims men\u2019s imitation only because,\n without love for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How\n inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has\n everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every\n revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty\n forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by\n mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic\n skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters\n of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of\n puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth\n suffered by the martyrs witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of\n his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can\n believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to\n greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence\n over all ages by resigning themselves to semi-idiocy.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a\nsystem directly opposed to men\u2019s natural tastes and prepossessions\u2014a\nsystem which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.\n\n\n A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 358\u2014\u201cAnd if the later triumphs\n of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can\n we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by\n women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his\n gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the\n sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power\n which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally\n gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by\n opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young\n rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce\n revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him\n to the Cross,\u2014what is there in _him_ to account for the moral\n wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire\n in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus\u2019\n first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second\n period, according to Renan\u2019s gospel, furnish any rational\n explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the\n earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.\u201d\n\n Berdoe, Browning, 47\u2014\u201cIf Christ were not God, his life at that\n stage of the world\u2019s history could by no possibility have had the\n vitalizing force and love-compelling power that Renan\u2019s pages\n everywhere disclose. Renan has strengthened faith in Christ\u2019s\n deity while laboring to destroy it.\u201d\n\n Renan, in discussing Christ\u2019s appearance to Paul on the way to\n Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely\n reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of\n lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an\n appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and\n reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have\n made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified\n Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his\n own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy,\n the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the\n earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and\n Contemp. Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and\n Philosophy, 401-441; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressens\u00e9,\n in Theol. Eclectic, 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life\n of Jesus, 1-33; Bib. Sac, 22:207; 23:353, 529; Present Day Tracts,\n 3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences,\n 43-48; A. H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905.\n\n\n4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).\n\n\nThis holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs which\nwere devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and\nthe original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the\nMount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy,\nadded to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so\nchanged Christianity from a life into a doctrine.\n\n\n Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70; Luke at 78-93; the\n fourth gospel at 80-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the\n book of Revelation as the works, not of John the Apostle, but of\n John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the fourth gospel\n from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface\n added after its original composition in order to enable the\n Hellenistic reader to understand it. \u201cThe gospel itself,\u201d says\n Harnack, \u201ccontains no Logos-idea; it did not develop out of a\n Logos-idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects\n itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the\n historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This\n historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of\n speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still\n too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The\n Logos-idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism,\n the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the \u2019Son of\n man\u2019 in the book of Daniel.... The fourth gospel, which does not\n proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be\n used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word....\n The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed\n occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them;\n has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated\n lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it\n is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly\n lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere\n be taken into account; only little can be taken from it, and that\n with caution.... On the other hand it is a source of the first\n rank for the answer of the question what living views of the\n person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has\n brought into being.\u201d See Harnack\u2019s article in Zeitschrift f\u00fcr\n Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums, 13.\n Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with\n Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97,\n that as the result of the Logos-speculation, \u201cthe centre of\n gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who\n founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal\n Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.\u201d This\n view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on\n the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.\n\n\nWe object to the Development-theory of Harnack, that\n\n(_a_) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its\noriginal form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits\nthe Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is pre\u00ebminently the gospel of the\nmiracle-worker.\n\n(_b_) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus\u2019 life and ethical\nteaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ\u2019s\ndeity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his\nuniversal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his\nomnipresence (28:20), while the phrase \u201cSon of man\u201d implies that he is\nalso \u201cSon of God.\u201d\n\n\n _Mat. 11:27\u2014_\u201cAll things have been delivered unto me of my Father:\n and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know\n the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to\n reveal him\u201d; _25:32\u2014_\u201cand before him shall be gathered all the\n nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the\n shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats\u201d; _28:18\u2014_\u201cAll\n authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth\u201d;\n _28:20\u2014_\u201clo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the\n world.\u201d These sayings of Jesus in Matthew\u2019s gospel show that the\n conception of Christ\u2019s greatness was not peculiar to John: \u201cI am\u201d\n transcends time; \u201cwith you\u201d transcends space. Jesus speaks \u201csub\n specie eternitatis\u201d; his utterance is equivalent to that of _John\n 8:58\u2014_\u201cBefore Abraham was born, I am,\u201d and to that of _Hebrews\n 13:8\u2014_\u201cJesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for\n ever.\u201d He is, as Paul declares in _Eph. 1:23_, one \u201cthat filleth\n all in all,\u201d that is, who is omnipresent.\n\n A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206\u2014The phrase \u201cSon of man\u201d\n intimates that Christ was more than man: \u201cSuppose I were to go\n about proclaiming myself \u2018Son of man.\u2019 Who does not see that it\n would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more.\n \u2018Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call\n himself the same?\u2019 When one takes the title \u2018Son of man\u2019 for his\n characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is\n something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his\n original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his\n part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of\n man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to\n inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked \u2018What\n think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?\u2019 we must answer, not\n simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.\u201d On Son of\n man, see Driver; on Son of God, see Sanday; both in Hastings\u2019\n Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday: \u201cThe Son is so called primarily\n as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation\n must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have\n its roots in the eternity of Godhead.\u201d Gore, Incarnation, 65,\n 73\u2014\u201cChrist, the final Judge, of the synoptics, is not dissociable\n from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) The pre\u00ebxistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as\naccretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul\nwho wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated\nthe Logos-doctrine of John.\n\n(_d_) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian\nphilosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already\npresent in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the\nmicroscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the\nsubstance of the faith.\n\n\n Gore, Incarnation, 62\u2014\u201cThe divinity, incarnation, resurrection of\n Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the\n apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized\n as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of\n Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had\n seen the risen Christ were still alive.\u201d The Alexandrian\n philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the\n form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it\n which brought out its meaning. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,\n 146\u2014\u201cWhen we come to John\u2019s gospel, therefore, we find in it the\n mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world\n for at least sixty years.... If the Platonizing philosophy of\n Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian\n doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help\n to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers.\n Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their\n philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into\n clear view the truth that was there already.\u201d\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126\u2014\u201cThe metaphysical conception\n of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according\n to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the\n cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of\n salvation.\u201d See Kilpatrick\u2019s article on Philosophy, in Hastings\u2019\n Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the\n self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in\n its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before\n Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual\n peculiarities of the N. T. writers conceptions which Paul insists\n are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that\n the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning\n and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended\n Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after\n which Greek philosophy was vainly groping.\n\n\n(_e_) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin-birth because his story is\nlimited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus\u2019 deeds, Matthew\napparently gives us Joseph\u2019s story and Luke gives Mary\u2019s story\u2014both\nstories naturally published only after Jesus\u2019 resurrection.\n\n(_f_) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus\u2019 death was itself\npredicted by our Lord (John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his\nteachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the\napostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun (Acts\n1:1).\n\n\n _John 16:12, 13\u2014_\u201cI have yet many things to say unto you, but ye\n cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is\n come, he shall guide you into all the truth\u201d; _Acts 1:1\u2014_\u201cThe\n former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus\n began to do and to teach.\u201d A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,\n 146\u2014\u201cThat the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation\n upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh,\n should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that\n wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,\u2014it is precisely\n what Jesus himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to\n his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that\n the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and\n his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is\n the whole secret of what are called accretions to original\n Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are\n inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and\n inventions. They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain\n imaginings, but correct interpretations.... When the later\n theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as\n coming not from Jesus but from Paul\u2019s epistles and from the fourth\n gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and\n authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making\n us see the fulness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.\u201d\n\n While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul\n contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally\n possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that\n gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des\n Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated\n Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical\n theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have\n regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority\n have seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did\n most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first\n comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished\n redemption and a present salvation\u2014the crucified and risen Christ\n as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2)\n as something new, which does away with the religion of the law;\n (3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as\n superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not\n simply Greek but also human,\u2014Paul made the gospel comprehensible\n to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion\n still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at\n home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman empire, and\n inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local\n into a universal religion. His influence however, according to\n Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma\n and O. T. inspiration\u2014points in which, in our judgment, Paul took\n sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world.\n\n\n2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.\n\n\nSince nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and\ncertain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters\nonly by way of convenient classification or of literary personification,\nwe here mean by genuineness honesty of purpose and freedom from anything\ncounterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the\nauthorship of the documents.\n\nWe show the genuineness of the Old Testament books:\n\n(_a_) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of\nthe Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.\n\n\n The N. T. shows coincidences of language with the O. T. Apocryphal\n books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while,\n with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther,\n Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either\n for illustration or proof. The single Apocryphal quotation is\n found in _Jude 14_ and is in all probability taken from the book\n of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 A.\n D., and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same\n primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch\n afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to\n the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 B.\n C., and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary:\n Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95. \u201cIf Paul\n could quote from Gentile poets (_Acts 17:28_; _Titus 1:12_), it is\n hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was\n certainly in high standing among the faithful\u201d; see Schodde, Book\n of Enoch, 41, with the Introd. by Ezra Abbot. While _Jude 14_\n gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal\n book, _Jude 6_ and _9_ contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and\n to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses, 62.\n In _Hebrews 1:3_, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and\n _Hebrews 11:34-38_ is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees.\n\n\n(_b_) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who\ndeclare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books, that are now\ncomprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.\n\n\n Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books \u201cwhich are justly\n accredited\u201d (omit \u03b8\u03b5\u1fd6\u03b1\u2014Niese, and Hastings\u2019 Dict., 3:607). Our\n present Hebrew Bible makes twenty-four, by separating Ruth from\n Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah. See Josephus, Against\n Apion, 1:8; Smith\u2019s Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359,\n 360. Philo (born 20 B. C.) never quotes an Apocryphal book,\n although he does quote from nearly all the books of the O. T.; see\n Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern\n Criticism and Preaching, 7\u2014\u201cThe theory which ascribed the Canon of\n the O. T. to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of\n its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of\n the O. T. Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 B. C.,\n with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption\n of the whole Law, or first five books of the O. T., under Nehemiah\n in 445 B. C. Then came the prophets before 200 B. C., and the\n Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict\n definition of the last division was not complete by the time of\n Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the\n Psalms; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation\n from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last\n of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools.\n But while Christ is the chief authority for the O. T., he was also\n its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was\n indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh\n commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission\n of divorce; touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful;\n broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath-day; left no\n commands about sacrifice, temple-worship, circumcision, but, by\n institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the\n Old. The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.\u201d Gladden,\n Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96\u2014\u201cDoubts were entertained in our\n Lord\u2019s day as to the canonicity of several parts of the O. T.,\n especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) From the testimony of the Septuagint translation, dating from the\nfirst half of the third century, or from 280 to 180 B. C.\n\n\n MSS. of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the O. T. Apocrypha, but\n the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a\n level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct\n from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also\n 24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; 2 Mac. 6:23; 1 Esd. 1:28; 6:1; Baruch\n 2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange\u2019s\n Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to\n the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of \u201cthe Law and the\n Prophets and the rest of the books,\u201d which shows that as early as\n 130 B. C., the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold\n division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the\n author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a\n completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this\n connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9\n (80-90 B. C.) speaks of \u201cthe sacred books which are now in our\n hands.\u201d Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611\u2014\u201cThe O. T. was the\n result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the\n Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the\n decisions of the Council of Jamnia\u201d\u2014Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh,\n 7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins\n at some time between 90 to 118 A. D. This Council decided in favor\n of Canticles and Ecclesiastes, and closed the O. T. Canon.\n\n The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the\n Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and\n by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or\n 280 B. C. \u201cThe legend is that it was made by seventy-two persons\n in seventy-two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics\n that this version of the several books is the work not only of\n different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at\n first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books\n gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed\n by the second century B. C.\u201d (Century Dictionary, _in voce_). It\n therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our\n O. T. documents. Driver, Introd. to O. T. Lit., xxxi\u2014\u201cFor the\n opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the O.\n T. was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra\u2019s time, there is no foundation\n in antiquity whatever.... All that can reasonably be treated as\n historical in the accounts of Ezra\u2019s literary labors is limited to\n the Law.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the\ntimes of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.), the Pentateuch together with\nthe book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as\nauthoritative.\n\n\n 2 Mac, 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and\n there is a tradition that a \u201cGreat Synagogue\u201d was gathered in his\n time to determine the Canon. But Hastings\u2019 Dictionary, 4:644,\n asserts that \u201cthe Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and\n not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told\n about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the\n later Jews.\u201d In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the\n tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures\n that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says:\n \u201cSince the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar,\n Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the\n time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired\n in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the\n ancient Scriptures.\u201d But the work now divided into 1 and 2\n Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (_Neh.\n 12:22_), whose date is 336 B. C. The utmost the tradition proves\n is that about 300 B. C. the Pentateuch was in some sense\n attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bib. Sac.,\n 1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dict., art.: Pentateuch;\n Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible,\n 398-403. On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright,\n Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475-477.\n\n\n(_e_) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time\nof Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.).\n\n\n The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from\n \u201cBabylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and\n Sepharvaim\u201d_ (2 K. 17:6, 24, 26)_, to take the place of the people\n of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land.\n The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the\n incursions of wild beasts which the intermission of tillage\n occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was\n against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent\n to teach them \u201cthe law of the god of the land\u201d and he \u201ctaught them\n how they should fear Jehovah\u201d_ (2 K. 17:27, 28)_. The result was\n that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of\n Jehovah with that of their graven images (_verse 33_). When the\n Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of\n Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was\n indignantly refused (_Ezra 4_ and _Nehemiah 4_). Hostility arose\n between Jews and Samaritans\u2014a hostility which continued not only\n to the time of Christ (_John 4:9_), but even to the present day.\n Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the\n Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at\n which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It\n witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its\n present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.\n\n Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 44, 45\u2014\u201cAfter being\n repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim\n of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the\n Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.\u201d W.\n Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Brit., 21:244\u2014\u201cThe priestly law, which\n is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem\n before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was\n first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion.\n The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from\n the Jews after Ezra\u2019s reforms, _i. e._, after 444 B. C. Before\n that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all\n similar to that which we know; but there must have been a\n community ready to accept the Pentateuch.\u201d See Smith\u2019s Bible\n Dictionary, art.: Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible\n Dictionary, art.: Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O.\n T., 1-41.\n\n\n(_f_) From the finding of \u201cthe book of the law\u201d in the temple, in the\neighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 B. C.\n\n\n _2 K. 22:8\u2014_\u201cAnd Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the\n scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.\u201d\n _23:2\u2014_\u201cThe book of the covenant\u201d was read before the people by\n the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in\n Hastings\u2019 Bible Dict., 3:596\u2014\u201cThe earliest written law or book of\n divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic\n account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented\n as found in the temple in the 18th year of king Josiah (B. C. 621)\n and proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time\n forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was\n commanded to ponder day and night (_Joshua 1:8_; _Ps. 1:2_); and\n thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in\n Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic\n principles.\u201d Ryle, in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dict., 1:602\u2014\u201cThe law of\n Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient\n code contained in _Exodus 20-23_, and precedes the final\n formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its\n ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the\n Pentateuch.\u201d\n\n Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor\u2019s Bible: \u201cDeuteronomy\n does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in\n the third person in the introduction and historical framework,\n while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions\n where the author speaks for himself, the phrase \u2019beyond Jordan\u2019\n means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase \u2018beyond\n Jordan\u2019 means west of Jordan; and the only exception is _Deut.\n 3:8_, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of\n Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd\n person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a\n later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the\n Pentateuch. Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives\n Moses\u2019 words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy\n covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but\n not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and\n contributes to it an account of Joshua\u2019s death. JE speaks of kings\n in Israel (_Gen. 36:31-39_). Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the\n early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.\u201d\n\n Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 43-49\u2014\u201cThe Deuteronomic law was so\n short that Shaphan could read it aloud before the king (_2 K.\n 22:10_) and the king could read \u2018the whole of it\u2019 before the\n people (_23:2_); compare the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole\n week (_Neh. 8:2-18_). It was in the form of a covenant; it was\n distinguished by curses; it was an expansion and modification,\n fully within the legitimate province of the prophet, of a Torah of\n Moses codified from the traditional form of at least a century\n before. Such a Torah existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now\n incorporated as \u2018the book of the covenant\u2019 in _Exodus 20_ to _24_.\n The year 620 is therefore the _terminus a quo_ of Deuteronomy. The\n date of the priestly code is 444 B. C.\u201d Sanday, Bampton Lectures\n for 1893, grants \u201c(1) the presence in the Pentateuch of a\n considerable element which in its present shape is held by many to\n be not earlier than the captivity; (2) the composition of the book\n of Deuteronomy, not long, or at least not very long, before its\n promulgation by king Josiah in the year 621, which thus becomes a\n pivot-date in the history of Hebrew literature.\u201d\n\n\n(_g_) From references in the prophets Hosea (B. C. 743-737) and Amos\n(759-745) to a course of divine teaching and revelation extending far back\nof their day.\n\n\n _Hosea 8:12\u2014_\u201cI wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law\u201d;\n here is asserted the existence prior to the time of the prophet,\n not only of a law, but of a written law. All critics admit the\n book of Hosea to be a genuine production of the prophet, dating\n from the eighth century B. C.; see Green, in Presb. Rev.,\n 1886:585-608. _Amos 2:4\u2014_\u201cthey have rejected the law of Jehovah,\n and have not kept his statutes\u201d; here is proof that, more than a\n century before the finding of Deuteronomy in the temple, Israel\n was acquainted with God\u2019s law. Fisher, Nature and Method of\n Revelation, 26, 27\u2014\u201cThe lofty plane reached by the prophets was\n not reached at a single bound.... There must have been a tap-root\n extending far down into the earth.\u201d Kurtz remarks that \u201cthe later\n books of the O. T. would be a tree without roots, if the\n composition of the Pentateuch were transferred to a later period\n of Hebrew history.\u201d If we substitute for the word \u201cPentateuch\u201d the\n words \u201cBook of the covenant,\u201d we may assent to this dictum of\n Kurtz. There is sufficient evidence that, before the times of\n Hosea and Amos, Israel possessed a written law\u2014the law embraced in\n _Exodus 20-24_\u2014but the Pentateuch as we now have it, including\n Leviticus, seems to date no further back than the time of\n Jeremiah, 445 B. C. The Levitical law however was only the\n codification of statutes and customs whose origin lay far back in\n the past and which were believed to be only the natural expansion\n of the principles of Mosaic legislation.\n\n Leathes, Structure of O. T., 54\u2014\u201cZeal for the restoration of the\n temple after the exile implied that it had long before been the\n centre of the national polity, that there had been a ritual and a\n law before the exile.\u201d Present Day Tracts, 3:52\u2014Levitical\n institutions could not have been first established by David. It is\n inconceivable that he \u201ccould have taken a whole tribe, and no\n trace remain of so revolutionary a measure as the dispossessing\n them of their property to make them ministers of religion.\u201d James\n Robertson, Early History of Israel: \u201cThe varied literature of\n 850-750 B. C. implies the existence of reading and writing for\n some time before. Amos and Hosea hold, for the period succeeding\n Moses, the same scheme of history which modern critics pronounce\n late and unhistorical. The eighth century B. C. was a time of\n broad historic day, when Israel had a definite account to give of\n itself and of its history. The critics appeal to the prophets, but\n they reject the prophets when these tell us that other teachers\n taught the same truth before them, and when they declare that\n their nation had been taught a better religion and had declined\n from it, in other words, that there had been law long before their\n day. The kings did not _give law_. The priests _presupposed_ it.\n There must have been a formal system of law much earlier than the\n critics admit, and also an earlier reference in their worship to\n the great events which made them a separate people.\u201d And Dillman\n goes yet further back and declares that the entire work of Moses\n presupposes \u201ca preparatory stage of higher religion in Abraham.\u201d\n\n\n(_h_) From the repeated assertions of Scripture that Moses himself wrote a\nlaw for his people, confirmed as these are by evidence of literary and\nlegislative activity in other nations far antedating his time.\n\n\n _Ex. 24:4\u2014_\u201cAnd Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah\u201d;\n _34:27\u2014_\u201cAnd Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for\n after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee\n and with Israel\u201d; _Num. 33:2\u2014_\u201cAnd Moses wrote their goings out\n according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah\u201d; _Deut.\n 31:9\u2014_\u201cAnd Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests\n the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah,\n and unto all the elders of Israel\u201d; _22\u2014_\u201cSo Moses wrote this song\n the same day, and taught it the children of Israel\u201d; _24-26\u2014_\u201cAnd\n it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words\n of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses\n commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of\n Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side\n of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be\n there for a witness against thee.\u201d The law here mentioned may\n possibly be only \u201cthe book of the covenant\u201d_ (Ex. 20-24)_, and the\n speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy may have been orally handed down.\n But the fact that Moses was \u201cinstructed in all the wisdom of the\n Egyptians\u201d_ (Acts 7:22)_, together with the fact that the art of\n writing was known in Egypt for many hundred years before his time,\n make it more probable that a larger portion of the Pentateuch was\n of his own composition.\n\n Kenyon, in Hastings\u2019 Dict., art.: Writing, dates the Proverbs of\n Ptah-hotep, the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, at\n 3580-3536 B. C., and asserts the free use of writing among the\n Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia as early as 4000 B. C. The\n statutes of Hammurabi king of Babylon compare for extent with\n those of Leviticus, yet they date back to the time of Abraham,\n 2200 B. C.,\u2014indeed Hammurabi is now regarded by many as the\n Amraphel of _Gen. 14:1_. Yet these statutes antedate Moses by 700\n years. It is interesting to observe that Hammurabi professes to\n have received his statutes directly from the Sun-god of Sippar,\n his capital city. See translation by Winckler, in Der alte Orient,\n 97; Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws; Kelso, in Princeton Theol.\n Rev., July, 1905:399-412\u2014Facts \u201cauthenticate the traditional date\n of the Book of the Covenant, overthrow the formula Prophets and\n Law, restore the old order Law and Prophets, and put into\n historical perspective the tradition that Moses was the author of\n the Sinaitic legislation.\u201d\n\n\nAs the controversy with regard to the genuineness of the Old Testament\nbooks has turned of late upon the claims of the Higher Criticism in\ngeneral, and upon the claims of the Pentateuch in particular, we subjoin\nseparate notes upon these subjects.\n\n\n _The Higher Criticism in general._ Higher Criticism does not mean\n criticism in any invidious sense, any more than Kant\u2019s Critique of\n Pure Reason was an unfavorable or destructive examination. It is\n merely a dispassionate investigation of the authorship, date and\n purpose of Scripture books, in the light of their composition,\n style and internal characteristics. As the Lower Criticism is a\n text-critique, the Higher Criticism is a structure-critique. A\n bright Frenchman described a literary critic as one who rips open\n the doll to get at the sawdust there is in it. This can be done\n with a sceptical and hostile spirit, and there can be little doubt\n that some of the higher critics of the Old Testament have begun\n their studies with prepossessions against the supernatural, which\n have vitiated all their conclusions. These presuppositions are\n often unconscious, but none the less influential. When Bishop\n Colenso examined the Pentateuch and Joshua, he disclaimed any\n intention of assailing the miraculous narratives as such; as if he\n had said: \u201cMy dear little fish, you need not fear me; I do not\n wish to catch you; I only intend to drain the pond in which you\n live.\u201d To many scholars the waters at present seem very low in the\n Hexateuch and indeed throughout the whole Old Testament.\n\n Shakespeare made over and incorporated many old Chronicles of\n Plutarch and Holinshed, and many Italian tales and early tragedies\n of other writers; but Pericles and Titus Andronicus still pass\n current under the name of Shakespeare. We speak even now of\n \u201cGesenius\u2019 Hebrew Grammar,\u201d although of its twenty-seven editions\n the last fourteen have been published since his death, and more of\n it has been written by other editors than Gesenius ever wrote\n himself. We speak of \u201cWebster\u2019s Dictionary,\u201d though there are in\n the \u201cUnabridged\u201d thousands of words and definitions that Webster\n never saw. Francis Brown: \u201cA modern writer masters older records\n and writes a wholly new book. Not so with eastern historians. The\n latest comer, as Renan says, \u2018absorbs his predecessors without\n assimilating them, so that the most recent has in its belly the\n fragments of the previous works in a raw state.\u2019 The Diatessaron\n of Tatian is a parallel to the composite structure of the O. T.\n books. One passage yields the following: _Mat. 21:12a_; _John\n 2:14a_; _Mat. 21:12b_; _John 2:14b, 15_; _Mat. 21:12c, 13_; _John\n 2:16_; _Mark 11:16_; _John 2:17-22_; all succeeding each other\n without a break.\u201d Gore, Lux Mundi, 353\u2014\u201cThere is nothing\n materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in\n attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the divine\n command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the\n collection of Psalms to David, and of Proverbs to Solomon.\u201d\n\n The opponents of the Higher Criticism have much to say in reply.\n Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, holds that the early chapters\n of Genesis were copied from Babylonian sources, but he insists\n upon a Mosaic or pre-Mosaic date for the copying. Hilprecht\n however declares that the monotheistic faith of Israel could never\n have proceeded \u201cfrom the Babylonian mountain of gods\u2014that\n charnel-house full of corruption and dead men\u2019s bones.\u201d Bissell,\n Genesis Printed in Colors, Introd., iv\u2014\u201cIt is improbable that so\n many documentary histories existed so early, or if existing that\n the compiler should have attempted to combine them. Strange that\n the earlier should be J and should use the word \u2018Jehovah,\u2019 while\n the later P should use the word \u2018Elohim,\u2019 when \u2018Jehovah\u2019 would\n have far better suited the Priests\u2019 Code.... xiii\u2014The Babylonian\n tablets contain in a continuous narrative the more prominent facts\n of both the alleged Elohistic and Jehovistic sections of Genesis,\n and present them mainly in the Biblical order. Several hundred\n years before Moses what the critics call _two_ were already _one_.\n It is absurd to say that the unity was due to a redactor at the\n period of the exile, 444 B. C. He who believes that God revealed\n himself to primitive man as one God, will see in the Akkadian\n story a polytheistic corruption of the original monotheistic\n account.\u201d We must not estimate the antiquity of a pair of boots by\n the last patch which the cobbler has added; nor must we estimate\n the antiquity of a Scripture book by the glosses and explanations\n added by later editors. As the London Spectator remarks on the\n Homeric problem: \u201cIt is as impossible that a first-rate poem or\n work of art should be produced without a great master-mind which\n first conceives the whole, as that a fine living bull should be\n developed out of beef-sausages.\u201d As we shall proceed to show,\n however, these utterances overestimate the unity of the Pentateuch\n and ignore some striking evidences of its gradual growth and\n composite structure.\n\n _The Authorship of the Pentateuch in particular._ Recent critics,\n especially Kuenen and Robertson Smith, have maintained that the\n Pentateuch is Mosaic only in the sense of being a gradually\n growing body of traditional law, which was codified as late as the\n time of Ezekiel, and, as the development of the spirit and\n teachings of the great law-giver, was called by a legal fiction\n after the name of Moses and was attributed to him. The actual\n order of composition is therefore: (1) Book of the Covenant\n (_Exodus 20-23_); (2) Deuteronomy; (3) Leviticus. Among the\n reasons assigned for this view are the facts (_a_) that\n Deuteronomy ends with an account of Moses\u2019 death, and therefore\n could not have been written by Moses; (_b_) that in Leviticus\n Levites are mere servants to the priests, while in Deuteronomy the\n priests are officiating Levites, or, in other words, all the\n Levites are priests; (_c_) that the books of Judges and of 1\n Samuel, with their record of sacrifices offered in many places,\n give no evidence that either Samuel or the nation of Israel had\n any knowledge of a law confining worship to a local sanctuary. See\n Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Wellhausen, Geschichte\n Israels, Band 1; and art.: Israel, in Encyc. Brit., 13:398, 399,\n 415; W. Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Church, 306, 386, and\n Prophets of Israel; Hastings, Bible Dict., arts.: Deuteronomy,\n Hexateuch, and Canon of the O. T.\n\n It has been urged in reply, (1) that Moses may have written, not\n autographically, but through a scribe (perhaps Joshua), and that\n this scribe may have completed the history in Deuteronomy with the\n account of Moses\u2019 death; (2) that Ezra or subsequent prophets may\n have subjected the whole Pentateuch to recension, and may have\n added explanatory notes; (3) that documents of previous ages may\n have been incorporated, in course of its composition by Moses, or\n subsequently by his successors; (4) that the apparent lack of\n distinction between the different classes of Levites in\n Deuteronomy may be explained by the fact that, while Leviticus was\n written with exact detail for the priests, Deuteronomy is the\n record of a brief general and oral summary of the law, addressed\n to the people at large and therefore naturally mentioning the\n clergy as a whole; (5) that the silence of the book of Judges as\n to the Mosaic ritual may be explained by the design of the book to\n describe only general history, and by the probability that at the\n tabernacle a ritual was observed of which the people in general\n were ignorant. Sacrifices in other places only accompanied special\n divine manifestations which made the recipient temporarily a\n priest. Even if it were proved that the law with regard to a\n central sanctuary was not observed, it would not show that the law\n did not exist, any more than violation of the second commandment\n by Solomon proves his ignorance of the decalogue, or the medi\u00e6val\n neglect of the N. T. by the Roman church proves that the N. T. did\n not then exist. We cannot argue that \u201cwhere there was\n transgression, there was no law\u201d (Watts, New Apologetic, 83, and\n The Newer Criticism).\n\n In the light of recent research, however, we cannot regard these\n replies as satisfactory. Woods, in his article on the Hexateuch,\n Hastings\u2019 Dictionary, 2:365, presents a moderate statement of the\n results of the higher criticism which commends itself to us as\n more trustworthy. He calls it a theory of stratification, and\n holds that \u201ccertain more or less independent documents, dealing\n largely with the same series of events, were composed at different\n periods, or, at any rate, under different auspices, and were\n afterwards combined, so that our present Hexateuch, which means\n our Pentateuch with the addition of Joshua, contains these several\n different literary strata.... The main grounds for accepting this\n hypothesis of stratification are (1) that the various literary\n pieces, with very few exceptions, will be found on examination to\n arrange themselves by common characteristics into comparatively\n few groups; (2) that an original consecution of narrative may be\n frequently traced between what in their present form are isolated\n fragments.\n\n \u201cThis will be better understood by the following illustration. Let\n us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patchwork quilt,\n explain the character of the original pieces out of which the bits\n of stuff composing the quilt were cut. First, we notice that,\n however well the colors may blend, however nice and complete the\n whole may look, many of the adjoining pieces do not agree in\n material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, they have\n been made up out of very different pieces of stuff.... But suppose\n we further discover that many of the bits, though now separated,\n are like one another in material, texture, etc., we may conjecture\n that these have been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this\n beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits when unpicked\n fit together, so that the pattern of one is continued in the\n other; and, moreover, that if all of like character are sorted\n out, they form, say, four groups, each of which was evidently once\n a single piece of stuff, though parts of each are found missing,\n because, no doubt, they have not been required to make the whole.\n But we make the analogy of the Hexateuch even closer, if we\n further suppose that in certain parts of the quilt the bits\n belonging to, say, two of these groups are so combined as to form\n a subsidiary pattern within the larger pattern of the whole quilt,\n and had evidently been sewed together before being connected with\n other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer still, if\n we suppose that, besides the more important bits of stuff, smaller\n embellishments, borderings, and the like, had been added so as to\n improve the general effect of the whole.\u201d\n\n The author of this article goes on to point out three main\n portions of the Hexateuch which essentially differ from each\n other. There are three distinct codes: the Covenant code (C\u2014_Ex.\n 20:22_ to _23:33_, and _24:3-8_), the Deuteronomic code (D), and\n the Priestly code (P). These codes have peculiar relations to the\n narrative portions of the Hexateuch. In Genesis, for example, \u201cthe\n greater part of the book is divided into groups of longer or\n shorter pieces, generally paragraphs or chapters, distinguished\n respectively by the almost exclusive use of Elohim or Jehovah as\n the name of God.\u201d Let us call these portions J and E. But we find\n such close affinities between C and JE, that we may regard them as\n substantially one. \u201cWe shall find that the larger part of the\n narratives, as distinct from the laws, of Exodus and Numbers\n belong to JE; whereas, with special exceptions, the legal portions\n belong to P. In the last chapters of Deuteronomy and in the whole\n of Joshua we find elements of JE. In the latter book we also find\n elements which connect it with D.\n\n \u201cIt should be observed that not only do we find here and there\n _separate pieces_ in the Hexateuch, shown by their characters to\n belong to these three sources, JE, D, and P, but the pieces will\n often be found connected together by an obvious continuity of\n subject when pieced together, like the bits of patchwork in the\n illustration with which we started. For example, if we read\n continuously _Gen. 11:27-33_; _12:4b, 5_; _13:6a, 11b, 12a_;\n _16:1a, 3, 15, 16_; _17_; _19:29_; _21:1a, 2b-5_; _23_;\n _25:7-11a_\u2014passages mainly, on other grounds, attributed to P, we\n get an almost continuous and complete, though very concise,\n account of Abraham\u2019s life.\u201d We may concede the substantial\n correctness of the view thus propounded. It simply shows God\u2019s\n actual method in making up the record of his revelation. We may\n add that any scholar who grants that Moses did not himself write\n the account of his own death and burial in the last chapter of\n Deuteronomy, or who recognizes two differing accounts of creation\n in _Genesis 1_ and _2_, has already begun an analysis of the\n Pentateuch and has accepted the essential principles of the higher\n criticism.\n\n In addition to the literature already referred to mention may also\n be made of Driver\u2019s Introd. to O. T., 118-150, and Deuteronomy,\n Introd.; W. R. Harper, in Hebraica, Oct.-Dec. 1888, and W. H.\n Green\u2019s reply in Hebraica. Jan.-Apr. 1889; also Green, The Unity\n of the Book of Genesis, Moses and the Prophets, Hebrew Feasts, and\n Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch; with articles by Green in\n Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882 and Oct. 1886; Howard Osgood, in Essays on\n Pentateuchal Criticism, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1888, and July,\n 1893; Watts, The Newer Criticism, and New Apologetic, 83; Presb.\n Rev., arts. by H. P. Smith, April, 1882, and by F. L. Patton,\n 1883:341-410; Bib. Sac., April, 1882:291-344, and by G. F. Wright,\n July, 1898:515-525; Brit. Quar., July, 1881:123; Jan.\n 1884:138-143; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 373-385; Stebbins, A\n Study in the Pentateuch; Bissell, Historic Origin of the Bible,\n 277-342, and The Pentateuch, its Authorship and Structure;\n Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 180-216, and The\n Veracity of the Hexateuch; Murray, Origin and Growth of the\n Psalms, 58; Payne-Smith, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 15;\n Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Kurtz, Hist. Old Covenant, 1:46;\n Perowne, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. and Feb. 1888; Chambers, Moses and\n his Recent Critics; Terry, Moses and the Prophets; Davis,\n Dictionary of the Bible, art.: Pentateuch; Willis J. Beecher, The\n Prophets and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 326-329.\n\n\n\nII. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.\n\n\nWe shall attempt to prove this only of the writers of the gospels; for if\nthey are credible witnesses, the credibility of the Old Testament, to\nwhich they bore testimony, follows as a matter of course.\n\n1. _They are capable or competent witnesses_,\u2014that is, they possessed\nactual knowledge with regard to the facts they professed to relate. (_a_)\nThey had opportunities of observation and inquiry. (_b_) They were men of\nsobriety and discernment, and could not have been themselves deceived.\n(_c_) Their circumstances were such as to impress deeply upon their minds\nthe events of which they were witnesses.\n\n2. _They are honest witnesses._ This is evident when we consider that:\n(_a_) Their testimony imperiled all their worldly interests. (_b_) The\nmoral elevation of their writings, and their manifest reverence for truth\nand constant inculcation of it, show that they were not wilful deceivers,\nbut good men. (_c_) There are minor indications of the honesty of these\nwriters in the circumstantiality of their story, in the absence of any\nexpectation that their narratives would be questioned, in their freedom\nfrom all disposition to screen themselves or the apostles from censure.\n\n\n Lessing says that Homer never calls Helen beautiful, but he gives\n the reader an impression of her surpassing loveliness by\n portraying the effect produced by her presence. So the evangelists\n do not describe Jesus\u2019 appearance or character, but lead us to\n conceive the cause that could produce such effects. Gore,\n Incarnation, 77\u2014\u201cPilate, Caiaphas, Herod, Judas, are not\n abused,\u2014they are photographed. The sin of a Judas and a Peter is\n told with equal simplicity. Such fairness, wherever you find it,\n belongs to a trustworthy witness.\u201d\n\n\n3. _The writings of the evangelists mutually support each other._ We argue\ntheir credibility upon the ground of their number and of the consistency\nof their testimony. While there is enough of discrepancy to show that\nthere has been no collusion between them, there is concurrence enough to\nmake the falsehood of them all infinitely improbable. Four points under\nthis head deserve mention: (_a_) The evangelists are independent\nwitnesses. This is sufficiently shown by the futility of the attempts to\nprove that any one of them has abridged or transcribed another. (_b_) The\ndiscrepancies between them are none of them irreconcilable with the truth\nof the recorded facts, but only present those facts in new lights or with\nadditional detail. (_c_) That these witnesses were friends of Christ does\nnot lessen the value of their united testimony, since they followed Christ\nonly because they were convinced that these facts were true. (_d_) While\none witness to the facts of Christianity might establish its truth, the\ncombined evidence of four witnesses gives us a warrant for faith in the\nfacts of the gospel such as we possess for no other facts in ancient\nhistory whatsoever. The same rule which would refuse belief in the events\nrecorded in the gospels \u201cwould throw doubt on any event in history.\u201d\n\n\n No man does or can write his own signature twice precisely alike.\n When two signatures, therefore, purporting to be written by the\n same person, are precisely alike, it is safe to conclude that one\n of them is a forgery. Compare the combined testimony of the\n evangelists with the combined testimony of our five senses. \u201cLet\n us assume,\u201d says Dr. C. E. Rider, \u201cthat the chances of deception\n are as one to ten when we use our eyes alone, one to twenty when\n we use our ears alone, and one to forty when we use our sense of\n touch alone; what are the chances of mistake when we use all these\n senses simultaneously? The true result is obtained by multiplying\n these proportions together. This gives one to eight thousand.\u201d\n\n\n4. _The conformity of the gospel testimony with experience._ We have\nalready shown that, granting the fact of sin and the need of an attested\nrevelation from God, miracles can furnish no presumption against the\ntestimony of those who record such a revelation, but, as essentially\nbelonging to such a revelation, miracles may be proved by the same kind\nand degree of evidence as is required in proof of any other extraordinary\nfacts. We may assert, then, that in the New Testament histories there is\nno record of facts contrary to experience, but only a record of facts not\nwitnessed in ordinary experience\u2014of facts, therefore, in which we may\nbelieve, if the evidence in other respects is sufficient.\n\n5. _Coincidence of this testimony with collateral facts and\ncircumstances._ Under this head we may refer to (_a_) the numberless\ncorrespondences between the narratives of the evangelists and contemporary\nhistory; (_b_) the failure of every attempt thus far to show that the\nsacred history is contradicted by any single fact derived from other\ntrustworthy sources; (_c_) the infinite improbability that this minute and\ncomplete harmony should ever have been secured in fictitious narratives.\n\n6. _Conclusion from the argument for the credibility of the writers of the\ngospels._ These writers having been proved to be credible witnesses, their\nnarratives, including the accounts of the miracles and prophecies of\nChrist and his apostles, must be accepted as true. But God would not work\nmiracles or reveal the future to attest the claims of false teachers.\nChrist and his apostles must, therefore, have been what they claimed to\nbe, teachers sent from God, and their doctrine must be what they claimed\nit to be, a revelation from God to men.\n\n\n On the whole subject, see Ebrard, Wissensch. Kritik der evang.\n Geschichte; Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists, 30, 31;\n Starkie on Evidence, 734; Whately, Historic Doubts as to Napoleon\n Buonaparte; Haley, Examination of Alleged Discrepancies; Smith\u2019s\n Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; Paley, Horse Paulin\u00e6; Birks, in\n Strivings for the Faith, 37-72\u2014\u201cDiscrepancies are like the slight\n diversities of the different pictures of the stereoscope.\u201d Renan\n calls the land of Palestine a fifth gospel. Weiss contrasts the\n Apocryphal Gospels, where there is no historical setting and all\n is in the air, with the evangelists, where time and place are\n always stated.\n\n No modern apologist has stated the argument for the credibility of\n the New Testament with greater clearness and force than\n Paley,\u2014Evidences, chapters 8 and 10\u2014\u201cNo historical fact is more\n certain than that the original propagators of the gospel\n voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and\n suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of\n the undertaking, the character of the persons employed in it, the\n opposition of their tenets to the fixed expectations of the\n country in which they at first advanced them, their undissembled\n condemnation of the religion of all other countries, their total\n want of power, authority, or force, render it in the highest\n degree _probable_ that this must have been the case.\n\n \u201cThe probability is increased by what we know of the fate of the\n Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt,\n and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to\n the institution within thirty years after its commencement\u2014both\n which points are attested by heathen writers, and, being once\n admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries\n of the religion who exercised their ministry first amongst the\n people who had destroyed their Master, and afterwards amongst\n those who persecuted their converts, should themselves escape with\n impunity or pursue their purpose in ease and safety.\n\n \u201cThis probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is\n advanced, I think, to historical certainty by the evidence of our\n own books, by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of\n the persons whose sufferings he relates, by the letters of the\n persons themselves, by predictions of persecutions, ascribed to\n the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been\n inserted in this history, much less, studiously dwelt upon, if\n they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely\n ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed because the\n event suggested them; lastly, by incessant exhortations to\n fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness, repetition and\n urgency upon the subject which were unlikely to have appeared, if\n there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the\n exercise of such virtues. It is also made out, I think, with\n sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the\n religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new\n course of life and conduct.\n\n \u201cThe next great question is, what they did this _for_. It was for\n a miraculous story of some kind, since for the proof that Jesus of\n Nazareth ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger\n for God, they neither had nor could have anything but miracles to\n stand upon.... If this be so, the religion must be true. These men\n could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might\n have avoided all these sufferings and lived quietly. Would men in\n such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw,\n assert facts which they had no knowledge of, go about lying to\n teach virtue, and though not only convinced of Christ\u2019s being an\n impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his\n crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on, and so persist as to\n bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of\n the consequences, enmity and hatred, danger and death?\u201d\n\n Those who maintain this, moreover, require us to believe that the\n Scripture writers were \u201cvillains for no end but to teach honesty,\n and martyrs without the least prospect of honor or advantage.\u201d\n Imposture must have a motive. The self-devotion of the apostles is\n the strongest evidence of their truth, for even Hume declares that\n \u201cwe cannot make use of a more convincing argument in proof of\n honesty than to prove that the actions ascribed to any persons are\n contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in\n such circumstances, could ever induce them to such conduct.\u201d\n\n\n\nIII. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.\n\n\n1. Scripture teaching in general.\n\n\nA. The Bible is the work of one mind.\n\n(_a_) In spite of its variety of authorship and the vast separation of its\nwriters from one another in point of time, there is a unity of subject,\nspirit, and aim throughout the whole.\n\n\n We here begin a new department of Christian evidences. We have\n thus far only adduced external evidence. We now turn our attention\n to internal evidence. The relation of external to internal\n evidence seems to be suggested in Christ\u2019s two questions in _Mark\n 8:27, 29\u2014_\u201cWho do _men_ say that I am?... who say _ye_ that I am?\u201d\n The unity in variety displayed in Scripture is one of the chief\n internal evidences. This unity is indicated in our word \u201cBible,\u201d\n in the singular number. Yet the original word was \u201cBiblia,\u201d a\n plural number. The world has come to see a unity in what were once\n scattered fragments: the many \u201cBiblia\u201d have become one \u201cBible.\u201d In\n one sense R. W. Emerson\u2019s contention is true: \u201cThe Bible is not a\n book,\u2014it is a literature.\u201d But we may also say, and with equal\n truth: \u201cThe Bible is not simply a collection of books,\u2014it is a\n book.\u201d The Bible is made up of sixty-six books, by forty writers,\n of all ranks,\u2014shepherds, fishermen, priests, warriors, statesmen,\n kings,\u2014composing their works at intervals through a period of\n seventeen centuries. Evidently no collusion between them is\n possible. Scepticism tends ever to ascribe to the Scriptures\n greater variety of authorship and date, but all this only\n increases the wonder of the Bible\u2019s unity. If unity in a half\n dozen writers is remarkable, in forty it is astounding. \u201cThe many\n diverse instruments of this orchestra play one perfect tune: hence\n we feel that they are led by one master and composer.\u201d Yet it\n takes the same Spirit who inspired the Bible to teach its unity.\n The union is not an external or superficial one, but one that is\n internal and spiritual.\n\n\n(_b_) Not one moral or religious utterance of all these writers has been\ncontradicted or superseded by the utterances of those who have come later,\nbut all together constitute a consistent system.\n\n\n Here we must distinguish between the external form and the moral\n and religious substance. Jesus declares in _Mat. 5:21, 22, 27, 28,\n 33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44, _\u201cYe have heard that it was said to them\n of old time ... but I say unto you,\u201d and then he seems at first\n sight to abrogate certain original commands. But he also declares\n in this connection, _Mat. 5:17, 18\u2014_\u201cThink not I am come to\n destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to\n fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass\n away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the\n law, till all things be accomplished.\u201d Christ\u2019s new commandments\n only bring out the inner meaning of the old. He fulfils them not\n in their literal form but in their essential spirit. So the New\n Testament completes the revelation of the Old Testament and makes\n the Bible a perfect unity. In this unity the Bible stands alone.\n Hindu, Persian, and Chinese religious books contain no consistent\n system of faith. There is progress in revelation from the earlier\n to the later books of the Bible, but this is not progress through\n successive steps of falsehood; it is rather progress from a less\n to a more clear and full unfolding of the truth. The whole truth\n lay germinally in the _protevangelium_ uttered to our first\n parents (_Gen. 3:15_\u2014the seed of the woman should bruise the\n serpent\u2019s head).\n\n\n(_c_) Each of these writings, whether early or late, has represented moral\nand religious ideas greatly in advance of the age in which it has\nappeared, and these ideas still lead the world.\n\n\n All our ideas of progress, with all the forward-looking spirit of\n modern Christendom, are due to Scripture. The classic nations had\n no such ideas and no such spirit, except as they caught them from\n the Hebrews. Virgil\u2019s prophecy, in his fourth Eclogue, of a coming\n virgin and of the reign of Saturn and of the return of the golden\n age, was only the echo of the Sibylline books and of the hope of a\n Redeemer with which the Jews had leavened the whole Roman world;\n see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 94-96.\n\n\n(_d_) It is impossible to account for this unity without supposing such a\nsupernatural suggestion and control that the Bible, while in its various\nparts written by human agents, is yet equally the work of a superhuman\nintelligence.\n\n\n We may contrast with the harmony between the different Scripture\n writers the contradictions and refutations which follow merely\n human philosophies\u2014_e. g._, the Hegelian idealism and the\n Spencerian materialism. Hegel is \u201ca name to swear at, as well as\n to swear by.\u201d Dr. Stirling, in his Secret of Hegel, \u201ckept all the\n secret to himself, if he ever knew it.\u201d A certain Frenchman once\n asked Hegel if he could not gather up and express his philosophy\n in one sentence for him. \u201cNo,\u201d Hegel replied, \u201cat least not in\n French.\u201d If Talleyrand\u2019s maxim be true that whatever is not\n intelligible is not French, Hegel\u2019s answer was a correct one.\n Hegel said of his disciples: \u201cThere is only one man living who\n understands me, and he does not.\u201d\n\n Goeschel, Gabler, Daub, Marheinecke, Erdmann, are Hegel\u2019s right\n wing, or orthodox representatives and followers in theology; see\n Sterrett, Hegel\u2019s Philosophy of Religion. Hegel is followed by\n Alexander and Bradley in England, but is opposed by Seth and\n Schiller. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 279-300, gives a valuable\n estimate of his position and influence: Hegel is all thought and\n no will. Prayer has no effect on God,\u2014it is a purely psychological\n phenomenon. There is no free-will, and man\u2019s sin as much as man\u2019s\n holiness is a manifestation of the Eternal. Evolution is a fact,\n but it is only fatalistic evolution. Hegel notwithstanding did\n great service by substituting knowledge of reality for the\n oppressive Kantian relativity, and by banishing the old notion of\n matter as a mysterious substance wholly unlike and incompatible\n with the properties of mind. He did great service also by showing\n that the interactions of matter and mind are explicable only by\n the presence of the Absolute Whole in every part, though he erred\n greatly by carrying that idea of the unity of God and man beyond\n its proper limits, and by denying that God has given to the will\n of man any power to put itself into antagonism to His Will. Hegel\n did great service by showing that we cannot know even the part\n without knowing the whole, but he erred in teaching, as T. H.\n Green did, that the _relations_ constitute the _reality_ of the\n thing. He deprives both physical and psychical existences of that\n degree of selfhood or independent reality which is essential to\n both science and religion. We want real force, and not the mere\n idea of force; real will, and not mere thought.\n\n\nB. This one mind that made the Bible is the same mind that made the soul,\nfor the Bible is divinely adapted to the soul,\n\n(_a_) It shows complete acquaintance with the soul.\n\n\n The Bible addresses all parts of man\u2019s nature. There are Law and\n Epistles for man\u2019s reason; Psalms and Gospels for his affections;\n Prophets and Revelations for his imagination. Hence the popularity\n of the Scriptures. Their variety holds men. The Bible has become\n interwoven into modern life. Law, literature, art, all show its\n moulding influence.\n\n\n(_b_) It judges the soul\u2014contradicting its passions, revealing its guilt,\nand humbling its pride.\n\n\n No product of mere human nature could thus look down upon human\n nature and condemn it. The Bible speaks to us from a higher level.\n The Samaritan woman\u2019s words apply to the whole compass of divine\n revelation; it tells us all things that ever we did (_John 4:29_).\n The Brahmin declared that _Romans 1_, with its description of\n heathen vices, must have been forged after the missionaries came\n to India.\n\n\n(_c_) It meets the deepest needs of the soul\u2014by solutions of its problems,\ndisclosures of God\u2019s character, presentations of the way of pardon,\nconsolations and promises for life and death.\n\n\n Neither Socrates nor Seneca sets forth the nature, origin and\n consequences of sin as committed against the holiness of God, nor\n do they point out the way of pardon and renewal. The Bible teaches\n us what nature cannot, viz.: God\u2019s creatorship, the origin of\n evil, the method of restoration, the certainty of a future state,\n and the principle of rewards and punishments there.\n\n\n(_d_) Yet it is silent upon many questions for which writings of merely\nhuman origin seek first to provide solutions.\n\n\n Compare the account of Christ\u2019s infancy in the gospels with the\n fables of the Apocryphal New Testament; compare the scant\n utterances of Scripture with regard to the future state with\n Mohammed\u2019s and Swedenborg\u2019s revelations of Paradise. See Alexander\n McLaren\u2019s sermon on The Silence of Scripture, in his book\n entitled: Christ in the Heart, 131-141.\n\n\n(_e_) There are infinite depths and inexhaustible reaches of meaning in\nScripture, which difference it from all other books, and which compel us\nto believe that its author must be divine.\n\n\n Sir Walter Scott, on his death bed: \u201cBring me the Book!\u201d \u201cWhat\n book?\u201d said Lockhart, his son-in-law. \u201cThere is but one book!\u201d\n said the dying man. R\u00e9ville concludes an Essay in the Revue des\n deux Mondes (1864): \u201cOne day the question was started, in an\n assembly, what book a man condemned to lifelong imprisonment, and\n to whom but one book would be permitted, had better take into his\n cell with him. The company consisted of Catholics, Protestants,\n philosophers and even materialists, but all agreed that their\n choice would fall only on the Bible.\u201d\n\n On the whole subject, see Garbett, God\u2019s Word Written, 3-56;\n Luthardt, Saving Truths, 210; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of Bible,\n 155-181; W. L. Alexander, Connection and Harmony of O. T. and N.\n T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O. T.; Bernard, Progress of\n Doctrine in the N. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of\n Doctrine; Titcomb, in Strivings for the Faith; Immer,\n Hermeneutics, 91; Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 23; 5: no. 28; 6: no.\n 31; Lee on Inspiration, 26-32.\n\n\n2. Moral System of the New Testament.\n\n\nThe perfection of this system is generally conceded. All will admit that\nit greatly surpasses any other system known among men. Among its\ndistinguishing characteristics may be mentioned:\n\n(_a_) Its comprehensiveness,\u2014including all human duties in its code, even\nthe most generally misunderstood and neglected, while it permits no vice\nwhatsoever.\n\n\n Buddhism regards family life as sinful. Suicide was commended by\n many ancient philosophers. Among the Spartans to steal was\n praiseworthy,\u2014only to be caught stealing was criminal. Classic\n times despised humility. Thomas Paine said that Christianity\n cultivated \u201cthe spirit of a spaniel,\u201d and John Stuart Mill\n asserted that Christ ignored duty to the state. Yet Peter urges\n Christians to add to their faith manliness, courage, heroism (_2\n Pet. 1:5\u2014_\u201cin your faith supply virtue\u201d), and Paul declares the\n state to be God\u2019s ordinance (_Rom. 13:1\u2014_\u201cLet every soul be in\n subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God;\n and the powers that be are ordained of God\u201d). Patriotic defence of\n a nation\u2019s unity and freedom has always found its chief incitement\n and ground in these injunctions of Scripture. E. G. Robinson:\n \u201cChristian ethics do not contain a particle of chaff,\u2014all is pure\n wheat.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Its spirituality,\u2014accepting no merely external conformity to right\nprecepts, but judging all action by the thoughts and motives from which it\nsprings.\n\n\n The superficiality of heathen morals is well illustrated by the\n treatment of the corpse of a priest in Siam: the body is covered\n with gold leaf, and then is left to rot and shine. Heathenism\n divorces religion from ethics. External and ceremonial observances\n take the place of purity of heart. The Sermon on the Mount on the\n other hand pronounces blessing only upon inward states of the\n soul. _Ps. 51:6\u2014_\u201cBehold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts,\n and in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom\u201d; _Micah\n 6:8\u2014_\u201cwhat doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to\n love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Its simplicity,\u2014inculcating principles rather than imposing rules;\nreducing these principles to an organic system; and connecting this system\nwith religion by summing up all human duty in the one command of love to\nGod and man.\n\n\n Christianity presents no extensive code of rules, like that of the\n Pharisees or of the Jesuits. Such codes break down of their own\n weight. The laws of the State of New York alone constitute a\n library of themselves, which only the trained lawyer can master.\n It is said that Mohammedanism has recorded sixty-five thousand\n special instances in which the reader is directed to do right. It\n is the merit of Jesus\u2019 system that all its requisitions are\n reduced to unity. _Mark 12:29-31\u2014_\u201cHear, O Israel; The Lord our\n God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with\n all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and\n with all thy strength. The second is this: Thou shalt love thy\n neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than\n these.\u201d Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:384-814, calls attention to\n the inner unity of Jesus\u2019 teaching. The doctrine that God is a\n loving Father is applied with unswerving consistency. Jesus\n confirmed whatever was true in the O. T., and he set aside the\n unworthy. He taught not so much about God, as about the kingdom of\n God, and about the ideal fellowship between God and men. Morality\n was the necessary and natural expression of religion. In Christ\n teaching and life were perfectly blended. He was the\n representative of the religion which he taught.\n\n\n(_d_) Its practicality,\u2014exemplifying its precepts in the life of Jesus\nChrist; and, while it declares man\u2019s depravity and inability in his own\nstrength to keep the law, furnishing motives to obedience, and the divine\naid of the Holy Spirit to make this obedience possible.\n\n\n Revelation has two sides: Moral law, and provision for fulfilling\n the moral law that has been broken. Heathen systems can incite to\n temporary reformations, and they can terrify with fears of\n retribution. But only God\u2019s regenerating grace can make the tree\n good, in such a way that its fruit will be good also (_Mat.\n 12:33_). There is a difference between touching the pendulum of\n the clock and winding it up,\u2014the former may set it temporarily\n swinging, but only the latter secures its regular and permanent\n motion. The moral system of the N. T. is not simply law,\u2014it is\n also grace: _John 1:17\u2014_\u201cthe law was given through Moses; grace\n and truth came through Jesus Christ.\u201d Dr. William Ashmore\u2019s tract\n represents a Chinaman in a pit. Confucius looks into the pit and\n says: \u201cIf you had done as I told you, you would never have gotten\n in.\u201d Buddha looks into the pit and says: \u201cIf you were up here I\n would show you what to do.\u201d So both Confucius and Buddha pass on.\n But Jesus leaps down into the pit and helps the poor Chinaman out.\n\n At the Parliament of Religions in Chicago there were many ideals\n of life propounded, but no religion except Christianity attempted\n to show that there was any power given to realize these ideals.\n When Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the ancient religions\n to answer Lady Macbeth\u2019s question: \u201cHow cleanse this red right\n hand?\u201d the priests were dumb. But Christianity declares that \u201cthe\n blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin\u201d_ (1 John 1:7)_.\n E. G. Robinson: Christianity differs from all other religions in\n being (1) a historical religion; (2) in turning abstract law into\n a person to be loved; (3) in furnishing a demonstration of God\u2019s\n love in Christ; (4) in providing atonement for sin and forgiveness\n for the sinner; (5) in giving a power to fulfil the law and\n sanctify the life. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 249\u2014\u201cChristianity, by\n making the moral law the expression of a holy Will, brought that\n law out of its impersonal abstraction, and assured its ultimate\n triumph. Moral principles may be what they were before, but moral\n practice is forever different. Even the earth itself has another\n look, now that it has heaven above it.\u201d Frances Power Cobbe, Life,\n 92\u2014\u201cThe achievement of Christianity was not the inculcation of a\n _new_, still less of a _systematic_, morality; but the\n introduction of a new _spirit_ into morality; as Christ himself\n said, a leaven into the lump.\u201d\n\n\nWe may justly argue that a moral system so pure and perfect, since it\nsurpasses all human powers of invention and runs counter to men\u2019s natural\ntastes and passions, must have had a supernatural, and if a supernatural,\nthen a divine, origin.\n\n\n Heathen systems of morality are in general defective, in that they\n furnish for man\u2019s moral action no sufficient example, rule,\n motive, or end. They cannot do this, for the reason that they\n practically identify God with nature, and know of no clear\n revelation of his holy will. Man is left to the law of his own\n being, and since he is not conceived of as wholly responsible and\n free, the lower impulses are allowed sway as well as the higher,\n and selfishness is not regarded as sin. As heathendom does not\n recognize man\u2019s depravity, so it does not recognize his dependence\n upon divine grace, and its virtue is self-righteousness.\n Heathenism is man\u2019s vain effort to lift himself to God;\n Christianity is God\u2019s coming down to man to save him; see\n Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 11, 12. Martineau, 1:15, 16, calls\n attention to the difference between the physiological ethics of\n heathendom and the psychological ethics of Christianity.\n Physiological ethics begins with nature; and, finding in nature\n the uniform rule of necessity and the operation of cause and\n effect, it comes at last to man and applies the same rule to him,\n thus extinguishing all faith in personality, freedom,\n responsibility, sin and guilt. Psychological ethics, on the\n contrary, wisely begins with what we know best, with man; and\n finding in him free-will and a moral purpose, it proceeds outward\n to nature and interprets nature as the manifestation of the mind\n and will of God.\n\n \u201cPsychological ethics are altogether peculiar to Christendom....\n Other systems begin outside and regard the soul as a homogeneous\n part of the _universe_, applying to the soul the principle of\n necessity that prevails outside of it.... In the Christian\n religion, on the other hand, the interest, the mystery of the\n world are concentrated in _human nature_.... The sense of sin\u2014a\n sentiment that left no trace in Athens\u2014involves a consciousness of\n personal alienation from the Supreme Goodness; the aspiration\n after holiness directs itself to a union of affection and will\n with the source of all Perfection; the agency for transforming men\n from their old estrangement to new reconciliation is a Person, in\n whom the divine and human historically blend; and the sanctifying\n Spirit by which they are sustained at the height of their purer\n life is a living link of communion between their minds and the\n Soul of souls.... So Nature, to the Christian consciousness, sank\n into the accidental and the neutral.\u201d Measuring ourselves by human\n standards, we nourish pride; measuring ourselves by divine\n standards, we nourish humility. Heathen nations, identifying God\n with nature or with man, are unprogressive. The flat architecture\n of the Parthenon, with its lines parallel to the earth, is the\n type of heathen religion; the aspiring arches of the Gothic\n cathedral symbolize Christianity.\n\n Sterrett, Studies in Hegel, 33, says that Hegel characterized the\n Chinese religion as that of Measure, or temperate conduct;\n Brahmanism as that of Phantasy, or inebriate dream-life; Buddhism\n as that of Self-involvement; that of Egypt as the imbruted\n religion of Enigma, symbolized by the Sphynx; that of Greece, as\n the religion of Beauty; the Jewish as that of Sublimity; and\n Christianity as the Absolute religion, the fully revealed religion\n of truth and freedom. In all this Hegel entirely fails to grasp\n the elements of Will, Holiness, Love, Life, which characterize\n Judaism and Christianity, and distinguish them from all other\n religions. R. H. Hutton: \u201cJudaism taught us that Nature must be\n interpreted by our knowledge of God, not God by our knowledge of\n Nature.\u201d Lyman Abbott: \u201cChristianity is not a new _life_, but a\n new _power_; not a _summons_ to a new life, but an _offer_ of new\n life; not a re\u00ebnactment of the old law, but a power of God unto\n salvation; not love to God and man, but Christ\u2019s message that God\n loves us, and will help us to the life of love.\u201d\n\n Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 5, 6\u2014\u201cChristianity postulates an\n opening of the heart of the eternal God to the heart of man coming\n to meet him. Heathendom shows us the heart of man blunderingly\n grasping the hem of God\u2019s garment, and mistaking Nature, his\n majestic raiment, for himself. Only in the Bible does man press\n beyond God\u2019s external manifestations to God himself.\u201d See Wuttke,\n Christian Ethics, 1:37-173; Porter, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no.\n 19, pp. 33-64: Blackie, Four Phases of Morals; Faiths of the World\n (St. Giles Lectures, second series); J. F. Clarke, Ten Great\n Religions, 2:280-317; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith; Farrar, Witness of\n History to Christ, 134, and Seekers after God, 181, 182, 320;\n Curtis on Inspiration, 288. For denial of the all-comprehensive\n character of Christian Morality, see John Stuart Mill, on Liberty;\n _per contra_, see Review of Mill, in Theol. Eclectic, 6:508-512;\n Row, in Strivings for the Faith, pub. by Christian Evidence\n Society, 181-220; also, Bampton Lectures, 1877:130-176; Fisher,\n Beginnings of Christianity, 28-38, 174.\n\n\nIn contrast with the Christian system of morality the defects of heathen\nsystems are so marked and fundamental, that they constitute a strong\ncorroborative evidence of the divine origin of the Scripture revelation.\nWe therefore append certain facts and references with regard to particular\nheathen systems.\n\n\n 1. _Confucianism._ Confucius (_Kung-fu-tse_), B. C. 551-478,\n contemporary with Pythagoras and Buddha. Socrates was born ten\n years after Confucius died. Mencius (371-278) was a disciple of\n Confucius. Matheson, in Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures),\n 73-108, claims that Confucianism was \u201can attempt to substitute a\n morality for theology.\u201d Legge, however, in Present Day Tracts, 3:\n no. 18, shows that this is a mistake. Confucius simply left\n religion where he found it. God, or Heaven, is worshiped in China,\n but only by the Emperor. Chinese religion is apparently a survival\n of the worship of the patriarchal family. The father of the family\n was its only head and priest. In China, though the family widened\n into the tribe, and the tribe into the nation, the father still\n retained his sole authority, and, as the father of his people, the\n Emperor alone officially offered sacrifice to God. Between God and\n the people the gulf has so widened that the people may be said to\n have no practical knowledge of God or communication with him. Dr.\n W. A. P. Martin: \u201cConfucianism has degenerated into a pantheistic\n medley, and renders worship to an impersonal \u2018anima mundi,\u2019 under\n the leading forms of visible nature.\u201d\n\n Dr. William Ashmore, private letter: \u201cThe common people of China\n have: (1) Ancestor-worship, and the worship of deified heroes: (2)\n Geomancy, or belief in the controlling power of the elements of\n nature; but back of these, and antedating them, is (3) the worship\n of Heaven and Earth, or Father and Mother, a very ancient dualism;\n this belongs to the common people also, though once a year the\n Emperor, as a sort of high-priest of his people, offers sacrifice\n on the altar of Heaven; in this he acts alone. \u2018Joss\u2019 is not a\n Chinese word at all. It is the corrupted form of the Portuguese\n word \u2018Deos.\u2019 The word \u2018pidgin\u2019 is similarly an attempt to say\n \u2018business\u2019 (big-i-ness or bidgin). \u2018Joss-pidgin\u2019 therefore means\n simply \u2018divine service,\u2019 or service offered to Heaven and Earth,\n or to spirits of any kind, good or bad. There are many gods, a\n Queen of Heaven, King of Hades, God of War, god of literature,\n gods of the hills, valleys, streams, a goddess of small-pox, of\n child-bearing, and all the various trades have their gods. The\n most lofty expression the Chinese have is \u2018Heaven,\u2019 or \u2018Supreme\n Heaven,\u2019 or \u2018Azure Heaven.\u2019 This is the surviving indication that\n in the most remote times they had knowledge of one supreme,\n intelligent and personal Power who ruled over all.\u201d Mr. Yugoro\n Chiba has shown that the Chinese classics permit sacrifice by all\n the people. But it still remains true that sacrifice to \u201cSupreme\n Heaven\u201d is practically confined to the Emperor, who like the\n Jewish high-priest offers for his people once a year.\n\n Confucius did nothing to put morality upon a religious basis. In\n practice, the relations between man and man are the only relations\n considered. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom,\n sincerity, are enjoined, but not a word is said with regard to\n man\u2019s relations to God. Love to God is not only not commanded\u2014it\n is not thought of as possible. Though man\u2019s being is theoretically\n an ordinance of God, man is practically a law to himself. The\n first commandment of Confucius is that of filial piety. But this\n includes worship of dead ancestors, and is so exaggerated as to\n bury from sight the related duties of husband to wife and of\n parent to child. Confucius made it the duty of a son to slay his\n father\u2019s murderer, just as Moses insisted on a strictly\n retaliatory penalty for bloodshed; see J. A. Farrer, Primitive\n Manners and Customs, 80. He treated invisible and superior beings\n with respect, but held them at a distance. He recognized the\n \u201cHeaven\u201d of tradition; but, instead of adding to our knowledge of\n it, he stifled inquiry. Dr. Legge: \u201cI have been reading Chinese\n books for more than forty years, and any general requirement to\n love God, or the mention of any one as actually loving him, has\n yet to come for the first time under my eye.\u201d\n\n Ezra Abbot asserts that Confucius gave the golden rule in positive\n as well as negative form; see Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism,\n 222. This however seems to be denied by Dr. Legge, Religions of\n China, 1-58. Wu Ting Fang, former Chinese minister to Washington,\n assents to the statement that Confucius gave the golden rule only\n in its negative form, and he says this difference is the\n difference between a passive and an aggressive civilization, which\n last is therefore dominant. The golden rule, as Confucius gives\n it, is: \u201cDo not unto others that which you would not they should\n do unto you.\u201d Compare with this, Isocrates: \u201cBe to your parents\n what you would have your children be to you.... Do not to others\n the things which make you angry when others do them to you\u201d;\n Herodotus: \u201cWhat I punish in another man, I will myself, as far as\n I can, refrain from\u201d; Aristotle: \u201cWe should behave toward our\n friends as we should wish them to behave toward us\u201d; Tobit,\n 4:15\u2014\u201cWhat thou hatest, do to no one\u201d; Philo: \u201cWhat one hates to\n endure, let him not do\u201d; Seneca bids us \u201cgive as we wish to\n receive\u201d; Rabbi Hillel: \u201cWhatsoever is hateful to you, do not to\n another; this is the whole law, and all the rest is explanation.\u201d\n\n Broadus, in Am. Com. on Matthew, 161\u2014\u201cThe sayings of Confucius,\n Isocrates, and the three Jewish teachers, are merely negative;\n that of Seneca is confined to giving, and that of Aristotle to the\n treatment of friends. Christ lays down a rule for positive action,\n and that toward all men.\u201d He teaches that I am bound to do to\n others all that they could rightly desire me to do to them. The\n golden rule therefore requires a supplement, to show what others\n can rightly desire, namely, God\u2019s glory first, and their good as\n second and incidental thereto. Christianity furnishes this divine\n and perfect standard; Confucianism is defective in that it has no\n standard higher than human convention. While Confucianism excludes\n polytheism, idolatry, and deification of vice, it is a shallow and\n tantalizing system, because it does not recognize the hereditary\n corruption of human nature, or furnish any remedy for moral evil\n except the \u201cdoctrines of the sages.\u201d \u201cThe heart of man,\u201d it says,\n \u201cis naturally perfectly upright and correct.\u201d Sin is simply \u201ca\n disease, to be cured by self-discipline; a debt, to be canceled by\n meritorious acts; an ignorance, to be removed by study and\n contemplation.\u201d See Bib. Sac., 1883:292, 293; N. Englander,\n 1883:565; Marcus Dods, in Erasmus and other Essays, 239.\n\n 2. THE INDIAN SYSTEMS. _Brahmanism_, as expressed in the Vedas,\n dates back to 1000-1500 B. C. As Caird (in Faiths of the World,\n St. Giles Lectures, lecture 1) has shown, it originated in the\n contemplation of the power in nature apart from the moral\n Personality that works in and through nature. Indeed we may say\n that all heathenism is man\u2019s choice of a non-moral in place of a\n moral God. Brahmanism is a system of pantheism, \u201ca false or\n illegitimate consecration of the finite.\u201d All things are a\n manifestation of Brahma. Hence evil is deified as well as good.\n And many thousand gods are worshiped as partial representations of\n the living principle which moves through all. \u201cHow many gods have\n the Hindus?\u201d asked Dr. Duff of his class. Henry Drummond thought\n there were about twenty-five. \u201cTwenty-five?\u201d responded the\n indignant professor; \u201ctwenty-five millions of millions!\u201d While the\n early Vedas present a comparatively pure nature-worship, later\n Brahmanism becomes a worship of the vicious and the vile, of the\n unnatural and the cruel. Juggernaut and the suttee did not belong\n to original Hindu religion.\n\n Bruce, Apologetics, 15\u2014\u201cPantheism in theory always means\n polytheism in practice.\u201d The early Vedas are hopeful in spirit;\n later Brahmanism is a religion of disappointment. Caste is fixed\n and consecrated as a manifestation of God. Originally intended to\n express, in its four divisions of priest, soldier, agriculturist,\n slave, the different degrees of unworldliness and divine\n indwelling, it becomes an iron fetter to prevent all aspiration\n and progress. Indian religion sought to exalt receptivity, the\n unity of existence, and rest from self-determination and its\n struggles. Hence it ascribed to its gods the same character as\n nature-forces. God was the common source of good and of evil. Its\n ethics is an ethics of moral indifference. Its charity is a\n charity for sin, and the temperance it desires is a temperance\n that will let the intemperate alone. Mozoomdar, for example, is\n ready to welcome everything in Christianity but its reproof of sin\n and its demand for righteousness. Brahmanism degrades woman, but\n it deifies the cow.\n\n _Buddhism_, beginning with Buddha, 600 B. C., \u201crecalls the mind to\n its elevation above the finite,\u201d from which Brahmanism had fallen\n away. Buddha was in certain respects a reformer. He protested\n against caste, and proclaimed that truth and morality are for all.\n Hence Buddhism, through its possession of this one grain of truth,\n appealed to the human heart, and became, next to Christianity, the\n greatest missionary religion. Notice then, first, its\n _universalism_. But notice also that this is a false universalism,\n for it ignores individualism and leads to universal stagnation and\n slavery. While Christianity is a religion of history, of will, of\n optimism, Buddhism is a religion of illusion, of quietism, of\n pessimism; see Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 107-109. In\n characterizing Buddhism as a missionary religion, we must notice,\n secondly, its element of _altruism_. But this altruism is one\n which destroys the self, instead of preserving it. The future\n Buddha, out of compassion for a famished tiger, permits the tiger\n to devour him. \u201cIncarnated as a hare, he jumps into the fire to\n cook himself for a meal for a beggar,\u2014having previously shaken\n himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should\n perish with him\u201d; see William James, Varieties of Religious\n Experience, 283. Buddha would deliver man, not by philosophy, nor\n by asceticism, but by self-renunciation. All isolation and\n personality are sin, the guilt of which rests, however, not on\n man, but on existence in general.\n\n While Brahmanism is pantheistic, Buddhism is atheistic in its\n spirit. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:285\u2014\u201cThe Brahmanic\n Akosmism, that had explained the world as mere seeming, led to the\n Buddhistic Atheism.\u201d Finiteness and separateness are evil, and the\n only way to purity and rest is by ceasing to exist. This is\n essential pessimism. The highest morality is to endure that which\n must be, and to escape from reality and from personal existence as\n soon as possible. Hence the doctrine of _Nirvana_. Rhys Davids, in\n his Hibbert Lectures, claims that early Buddhism meant by\n _Nirvana_, not annihilation, but the extinction of the self-life,\n and that this was attainable during man\u2019s present mortal\n existence. But the term _Nirvana_ now means, to the great mass of\n those who use it, the loss of all personality and consciousness,\n and absorption into the general life of the universe. Originally\n the term denoted only freedom from individual desire, and those\n who had entered into _Nirvana_ might again come out of it; see\n Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 238. But even in its original form,\n _Nirvana_ was sought only from a selfish motive. Self-renunciation\n and absorption in the whole was not the enthusiasm of\n benevolence,\u2014it was the refuge of despair. It is a religion\n without god or sacrifice. Instead of communion with a personal\n God, Buddhism has in prospect only an extinction of personality,\n as reward for untold ages of lonely self-conquest, extending\n through many transmigrations. Of Buddha it has been truly said\n \u201cThat all the all he had for needy man Was nothing, and his best\n of being was But not to be.\u201d Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 296\u2014\u201cHe by\n his own act dying all the time, In ceaseless effort utterly to\n cease, Will willing not to will, desire desiring To be desire no\n more, until at last The fugitive go free, emancipate But by\n becoming naught.\u201d Of Christ Bruce well says: \u201cWhat a contrast this\n Healer of disease and Preacher of pardon to the worst, to Buddha,\n with his religion of despair!\u201d\n\n Buddhism is also fatalistic. It inculcates submission and\n compassion\u2014merely negative virtues. But it knows nothing of manly\n freedom, or of active love\u2014the positive virtues of Christianity.\n It leads men to spare others, but not to help them. Its morality\n revolves around self, not around God. It has in it no organizing\n principle, for it recognizes no God, no inspiration, no soul, no\n salvation, no personal immortality. Buddhism would save men only\n by inducing them to flee from existence. To the Hindu, family life\n involves sin. The perfect man must forsake wife and children. All\n gratification of natural appetites and passions is evil. Salvation\n is not from sin, but from desire, and from this men can be saved\n only by escaping from life itself. Christianity buries sin, but\n saves the man; Buddha would save the man by killing him.\n Christianity symbolizes the convert\u2019s entrance upon a new life by\n raising him from the baptismal waters; the baptism of Buddhism\n should be immersion without emersion. The fundamental idea of\n Brahmanism, extinction of personality, remains the same in\n Buddhism; the only difference being that the result is secured by\n active atonement in the former, by passive contemplation in the\n latter. Virtue, and the knowledge that everything earthly is a\n vanishing spark of the original light, delivers man from existence\n and from misery.\n\n Prof. G. H. Palmer, of Harvard, in The Outlook, June 19,\n 1897\u2014\u201cBuddhism is unlike Christianity in that it abolishes misery\n by abolishing desire; denies personality instead of asserting it;\n has many gods, but no one God who is living and conscious; makes a\n shortening of existence rather than a lengthening of it to be the\n reward of righteousness. Buddhism makes no provision for family,\n church, state, science, or art. It gives us a religion that is\n little, when we want one that is large.\u201d Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews:\n \u201cSchopenhauer and Spencer are merely teachers of Buddhism. They\n regard the central source of all as unknowable force, instead of\n regarding it as a Spirit, living and holy. This takes away all\n impulse to scientific investigation. We need to start from a\n Person, and not from a thing.\u201d\n\n For comparison of the sage of India, Sakya Muni, more commonly\n called Buddha (properly \u201cthe Buddha\u201d = the enlightened; but who,\n in spite of Edwin Arnold\u2019s \u201cLight of Asia,\u201d is represented as not\n pure from carnal pleasures before he began his work), with Jesus\n Christ, see Bib. Sac., July, 1882:458-498; W. C. Wilkinson, Edwin\n Arnold, Poetizer and Paganizer; Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the\n Light of the World. Buddhism and Christianity are compared in\n Presb. Rev., July, 1883:505-548; Wuttke, Christian Ethics,\n 1:47-54; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 33. See also\n Oldenberg, Buddha; Lillie, Popular Life of Buddha; Beal, Catena of\n Buddhist Scriptures, 153\u2014\u201cBuddhism declares itself ignorant of any\n mode of personal existence compatible with the idea of spiritual\n perfection, and so far it is ignorant of God\u201d; 157\u2014\u201cThe earliest\n idea of _Nirvana_ seems to have included in it no more than the\n enjoyment of a state of rest consequent on the extinction of all\n causes of sorrow.\u201d The impossibility of satisfying the human heart\n with a system of atheism is shown by the fact that the Buddha\n himself has been apotheosized to furnish an object of worship.\n Thus Buddhism has reverted to Brahmanism.\n\n Monier Williams: \u201cMohammed has as much claim to be \u2018the Light of\n Asia\u2019 as Buddha has. What light from Buddha? Not about the heart\u2019s\n depravity, or the origin of sin, or the goodness, justice,\n holiness, fatherhood of God, or the remedy for sin, but only the\n ridding self from suffering by ridding self from life\u2014a doctrine\n of merit, of self-trust, of pessimism, and annihilation of\n personality.\u201d Christ, himself personal, loving and holy, shows\n that God is a person of holiness and love. Robert Browning: \u201cHe\n that created love, shall not he love?\u201d Only because Jesus is God,\n have we a gospel for the world. The claim that Buddha is \u201cthe\n Light of Asia\u201d reminds one of the man who declared the moon to be\n of greater value than the sun, because it gives light in the\n darkness when it is needed, while the sun gives light in the\n daytime when it is not needed.\n\n 3. THE GREEK SYSTEMS. _Pythagoras_ (584-504) based morality upon\n the principle of numbers. \u201cMoral good was identified with unity;\n evil with multiplicity; virtue was harmony of the soul and its\n likeness to God. The aim of life was to make it represent the\n beautiful order of the Universe. The whole practical tendency of\n Pythagoreanism was ascetic, and included a strict self-control and\n an earnest culture.\u201d Here already we seem to see the defect of\n Greek morality in confounding the good with the beautiful, and in\n making morality a mere self-development. Matheson, Messages of the\n Old Religions: Greece reveals the intensity of the hour, the value\n of the present life, the beauty of the world that now is. Its\n religion is the religion of beautiful humanity. It anticipates the\n new heaven and the new earth. Rome on the other hand stood for\n union, incorporation, a universal kingdom. But its religion\n deified only the Emperor, not all humanity. It was the religion,\n not of love, but of power, and it identified the church with the\n state.\n\n _Socrates_ (469-400) made knowledge to be virtue. Morality\n consisted in subordinating irrational desires to rational\n knowledge. Although here we rise above a subjectively determined\n good as the goal of moral effort, we have no proper sense of sin.\n Knowledge, and not love, is the motive. If men know the right,\n they will do the right. This is a great overvaluing of knowledge.\n With Socrates, teaching is a sort of midwifery\u2014not depositing\n information in the mind, but drawing out the contents of our own\n inner consciousness. Lewis Morris describes it as the life-work of\n Socrates to \u201cdoubt our doubts away.\u201d Socrates holds it right to\n injure one\u2019s enemies. He shows proud self-praise in his dying\n address. He warns against pederasty, yet compromises with it. He\n does not insist upon the same purity of family life which Homer\n describes in Ulysses and Penelope. Charles Kingsley, in Alton\n Locke, remarks that the spirit of the Greek tragedy was \u2019man\n mastered by circumstance\u2019; that of modern tragedy is \u201cman\n mastering circumstance.\u201d But the Greek tragedians, while showing\n man thus mastered, do still represent him as inwardly free, as in\n the case of Prometheus, and this sense of human freedom and\n responsibility appears to some extent in Socrates.\n\n _Plato_ (430-348) held that morality is pleasure in the good, as\n the truly beautiful, and that knowledge produces virtue. The good\n is likeness to God,\u2014here we have glimpses of an extra-human goal\n and model. The body, like all matter, being inherently evil, is a\n hindrance to the soul,\u2014here we have a glimpse of hereditary\n depravity. But Plato \u201creduced moral evil to the category of\n natural evil.\u201d He failed to recognize God as creator and master of\n matter; failed to recognize man\u2019s depravity as due to his own\n apostasy from God; failed to found morality on the divine will\n rather than on man\u2019s own consciousness. He knew nothing of a\n common humanity, and regarded virtue as only for the few. As there\n was no common sin, so there was no common redemption. Plato\n thought to reach God by intellect alone, when only conscience and\n heart could lead to him. He believed in a freedom of the soul in a\n pre\u00ebxistent state where a choice was made between good and evil,\n but he believed that, after that antemundane decision had been\n made, the fates determined men\u2019s acts and lives irreversibly.\n Reason drives two horses, appetite and emotion, but their course\n has been predetermined.\n\n Man acts as reason prompts. All sin is ignorance. There is nothing\n in this life but determinism. Martineau, Types, 13, 48, 49, 78,\n 88\u2014Plato in general has no proper notion of responsibility; he\n reduces moral evil to the category of natural evil. His Ideas with\n one exception are not causes. Cause is mind, and mind is the Good.\n The Good is the apex and crown of Ideas. The Good is the highest\n Idea, and this highest Idea is a Cause. Plato has a feeble\n conception of personality, whether in God or in man. Yet God is a\n person in whatever sense man is a person, and man\u2019s personality is\n reflective self-consciousness. Will in God or man is not so clear.\n The Right is dissolved into the Good. Plato advocated infanticide\n and the killing off of the old and the helpless.\n\n _Aristotle_ (384-322) leaves out of view even the element of\n God-likeness and antemundane evil which Plato so dimly recognized,\n and makes morality the fruit of mere rational self-consciousness.\n He grants evil proclivities, but he refuses to call them immoral.\n He advocates a certain freedom of will, and he recognizes inborn\n tendencies which war against this freedom, but how these\n tendencies originated he cannot say, nor how men may be delivered\n from them. Not all can be moral; the majority must be restrained\n by fear. He finds in God no motive, and love to God is not so much\n as mentioned as the source of moral action. A proud, composed,\n self-centered, and self-contained man is his ideal character. See\n Nicomachean Ethics, 7:6, and 10:10; Wuttke, Christian Ethics,\n 1:92-126. Alexander, Theories of Will, 39-54\u2014Aristotle held that\n desire and reason are the springs of action. Yet he did not hold\n that knowledge of itself would make men virtuous. He was a\n determinist. Actions are free only in the sense of being devoid of\n external compulsion. He viewed slavery as both rational and right.\n Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 76\u2014\u201cWhile Aristotle attributed\n to the State a more complete personality than it really possessed,\n he did not grasp the depth and meaning of the personality of the\n individual.\u201d A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 289\u2014Aristotle had\n no conception of the unity of humanity. His doctrine of unity did\n not extend beyond the State. \u201cHe said that \u2018the whole is before\n the parts,\u2019 but he meant by \u2018the whole\u2019 only the pan-Hellenic\n world, the commonwealth of Greeks; he never thought of humanity,\n and the word \u2018mankind\u2019 never fell from his lips. He could not\n understand the unity of humanity, because he knew nothing of\n Christ, its organizing principle.\u201d On Aristotle\u2019s conception of\n God, see James Ten Broeke, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892\u2014God is\n recognized as personal, yet he is only the Greek Reason, and not\n the living, loving, providential Father of the Hebrew revelation.\n Aristotle substitutes the logical for the dynamical in his dealing\n with the divine causality. God is thought, not power.\n\n _Epicurus_ (342-270) regarded happiness, the subjective feeling of\n pleasure, as the highest criterion of truth and good. A prudent\n calculating for prolonged pleasure is the highest wisdom. He\n regards only this life. Concern for retribution and for a future\n existence is folly. If there are gods, they have no concern for\n men. \u201cEpicurus, on pretense of consulting for their ease,\n complimented the gods, and bowed them out of existence.\u201d Death is\n the falling apart of material atoms and the eternal cessation of\n consciousness. The miseries of this life are due to imperfection\n in the fortuitously constructed universe. The more numerous these\n undeserved miseries, the greater our right to seek pleasure.\n Alexander, Theories of the Will, 55-75\u2014The Epicureans held that\n the soul is composed of atoms, yet that the will is free. The\n atoms of the soul are excepted from the law of cause and effect.\n An atom may decline or deviate in the universal descent, and this\n is the Epicurean idea of freedom. This indeterminism was held by\n all the Greek sceptics, materialists though they were.\n\n _Zeno_, the founder of the Stoic philosophy (340-264), regarded\n virtue as the only good. Thought is to subdue nature. The free\n spirit is self-legislating, self-dependent, self-sufficient.\n Thinking, not feeling, is the criterion of the true and the good.\n Pleasure is the consequence, not the end of moral action. There is\n an irreconcilable antagonism of existence. Man cannot reform the\n world, but he can make himself perfect. Hence an unbounded pride\n in virtue. The sage never repents. There is not the least\n recognition of the moral corruption of mankind. There is no\n objective divine ideal, or revealed divine will. The Stoic\n discovers moral law only within, and never suspects his own moral\n perversion. Hence he shows self-control and justice, but never\n humility or love. He needs no compassion or forgiveness, and he\n grants none to others. Virtue is not an actively outworking\n character, but a passive resistance to irrational reality. Man may\n retreat into himself. The Stoic is indifferent to pleasure and\n pain, not because he believes in a divine government, or in a\n divine love for mankind, but as a proud defiance of the irrational\n world. He has no need of God or of redemption. As the Epicurean\n gives himself to enjoyment of the world, the Stoic gives himself\n to contempt of the world. In all afflictions, each can say, \u201cThe\n door is open.\u201d To the Epicurean, the refuge is intoxication; to\n the Stoic, the refuge is suicide: \u201cIf the house smokes, quit it.\u201d\n Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:62-161, from whom much of this account\n of the Greeks systems is condensed, describes Epicureanism and\n Stoicism as alike making morality subjective, although\n Epicureanism regarded spirit as determined by nature, while\n Stoicism regarded nature as determined by spirit.\n\n The Stoics were materialists and pantheists. Though they speak of\n a personal God, this is a figure of speech. False opinion is at\n the root of all vice. Chrysippus denied what we now call the\n liberty of indifference, saying that there could not be an effect\n without a cause. Man is enslaved to passion. The Stoics could not\n explain how a vicious man could become virtuous. The result is\n apathy. Men act only according to character, and this a doctrine\n of fate. The Stoic indifference or apathy in misfortune is not a\n bearing of it at all, but rather a cowardly retreat from it. It is\n in the actual suffering of evil that Christianity finds \u201cthe soul\n of good.\u201d The office of misfortune is disciplinary and purifying;\n see Seth, Ethical Principles, 417. \u201cThe shadow of the sage\u2019s self,\n projected on vacancy, was called God, and, as the sage had long\n since abandoned interest in practical life, he expected his\n Divinity to do the same.\u201d\n\n The Stoic reverenced God just because of his unapproachable\n majesty. Christianity sees in God a Father, a Redeemer, a carer\n for our minute wants, a deliverer from our sin. It teaches us to\n see in Christ the humanity of the divine, affinity with God, God\u2019s\n supreme interest in his handiwork. For the least of his creatures\n Christ died. Kinship with God gives dignity to man. The\n individuality that Stoicism lost in the whole, Christianity makes\n the end of the creation. The State exists to develop and promote\n it. Paul took up and infused new meaning into certain phrases of\n the Stoic philosophy about the freedom and royalty of the wise\n man, just as John adopted and glorified certain phrases of\n Alexandrian philosophy about the Word. Stoicism was lonely and\n pessimistic. The Stoics said that the best thing was not to be\n born; the next best thing was to die. Because Stoicism had no God\n of helpfulness and sympathy, its virtue was mere conformity to\n nature, majestic egoism and self-complacency. In the Roman\n _Epictetus_ (89), _Seneca_ (65), and _Marcus Aurelius_ (121-180),\n the religious element comes more into the foreground, and virtue\n appears once more as God-likeness; but it is possible that this\n later Stoicism was influenced by Christianity. On Marcus Aurelius,\n see New Englander, July, 1881:415-431; Capes, Stoicism.\n\n 4. SYSTEMS OF WESTERN ASIA. _Zoroaster_ (1000 B. C. ?), the\n founder of the Parsees, was a dualist, at least so far as to\n explain the existence of evil and of good by the original presence\n in the author of all things of two opposing principles. Here is\n evidently a limit put upon the sovereignty and holiness of God.\n Man is not perfectly dependent upon him, nor is God\u2019s will an\n unconditional law for his creatures. As opposed to the Indian\n systems, Zoroaster\u2019s insistence upon the divine personality\n furnished a far better basis for a vigorous and manly morality.\n Virtue was to be won by hard struggle of free beings against evil.\n But then, on the other hand, this evil was conceived as originally\n due, not to finite beings themselves, but either to an evil deity\n who warred against the good, or to an evil principle in the one\n deity himself. The burden of guilt is therefore shifted from man\n to his maker. Morality becomes subjective and unsettled. Not love\n to God or imitation of God, but rather self-love and\n self-development, furnish the motive and aim of morality. No\n fatherhood or love is recognized in the deity, and other things\n besides God (_e. g._, fire) are worshiped. There can be no depth\n to the consciousness of sin, and no hope of divine deliverance.\n\n It is the one merit of Parseeism that it recognizes the moral\n conflict of the world; its error is that it carries this moral\n conflict into the very nature of God. We can apply to Parseeism\n the words of the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards to the\n Buddhists of Japan: \u201cAll religions are expressions of man\u2019s sense\n of dependence, but only one provides fellowship with God. All\n religions speak of a higher truth, but only one speaks of that\n truth as found in a loving personal God, our Father. All religions\n show man\u2019s helplessness, but only one tells of a divine Savior,\n who offers to man forgiveness of sin, and salvation through his\n death, and who is now a living person, working in and with all who\n believe in him, to make them holy and righteous and pure.\u201d\n Matheson, Messages of Old Religions, says that Parseeism\n recognizes an obstructive element in the nature of God himself.\n Moral evil is reality; but there is no reconciliation, nor is it\n shown that all things work together for good. See Wuttke,\n Christian Ethics, 1:47-54; Faiths of the World (St. Giles\n Lectures), 109-144; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 25;\n Whitney on the Avesta, in Oriental and Linguistic Studies.\n\n _Mohammed_ (570-632 A. D.), the founder of Islam, gives us in the\n Koran a system containing four dogmas of fundamental immorality,\n namely, polygamy, slavery, persecution, and suppression of private\n judgement. Mohammedanism is heathenism in monotheistic form. Its\n good points are its conscientiousness and its relation to God. It\n has prospered because it has preached the unity of God, and\n because it is a book-religion. But both these it got from Judaism\n and Christianity. It has appropriated the Old Testament saints and\n even Jesus. But it denies the death of Christ and sees no need of\n atonement. The power of sin is not recognized. The idea of sin, in\n Moslems, is emptied of all positive content. Sin is simply a\n falling short, accounted for by the weakness and shortsightedness\n of man, inevitable in the fatalistic universe, or not remembered\n in wrath by the indulgent and merciful Father. Forgiveness is\n indulgence, and the conception of God is emptied of the quality of\n justice. Evil belongs only to the individual, not to the race. Man\n attains the favor of God by good works, based on prophetic\n teaching. Morality is not a fruit of salvation, but a means. There\n is no penitence or humility, but only self-righteousness; and this\n self-righteousness is consistent with great sensuality, unlimited\n divorce, and with absolute despotism in family, civil and\n religious affairs. There is no knowledge of the fatherhood of God\n or of the brotherhood of man. In all the Koran, there is no such\n declaration as that \u201cGod so loved the world\u201d_ (John 3:16)_.\n\n The submission of Islam is submission to an arbitrary will, not to\n a God of love. There is no basing of morality in love. The highest\n good is the sensuous happiness of the individual. God and man are\n external to one another. Mohammed is a teacher but not a priest.\n Mozley, Miracles, 140, 141\u2014\u201cMohammed had no faith in human nature.\n There were two things which he thought men could do, and would do,\n for the glory of God\u2014transact religious _forms_, and _fight_, and\n upon these two points he was severe; but within the sphere of\n common practical life, where man\u2019s great trial lies, his code\n exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accomodates his\n rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by\n the accommodation which he adopts.... \u2018Human nature is weak,\u2019 said\n he.\u201d Lord Houghton: The Koran is all wisdom, all law, all\n religion, for all time. Dead men bow before a dead God. \u201cThough\n the world rolls on from change to change, And realms of thought\n expand, The letter stands without expanse or range, Stiff as a\n dead man\u2019s hand.\u201d Wherever Mohammedanism has gone, it has either\n found a desert or made one. Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., Dec.\n 1882:866\u2014\u201cThe Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey is to\n abandon progress.\u201d Muir, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no.\n 14\u2014\u201cMohammedanism reduces men to a dead level of social\n depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism. Islam is the work of\n man; Christianity of God.\u201d See also Faiths of the World (St. Giles\n Lectures, Second Series), 361-396; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great\n Religions, 1:448-488; 280-317; Great Religions of the World,\n published by the Harpers; Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God.\n\n\n3. The person and character of Christ.\n\n\nA. The conception of Christ\u2019s person as presenting deity and humanity\nindissolubly united, and the conception of Christ\u2019s character, with its\nfaultless and all-comprehending excellence, cannot be accounted for upon\nany other hypothesis than that they were historical realities.\n\n\n The stylobate of the Parthenon at Athens rises about three inches\n in the middle of the 101 feet of the front, and four inches in the\n middle of the 228 feet of the flanks. A nearly parallel line is\n found in the entablature. The axes of the columns lean inward\n nearly three inches in their height of 34 feet, thus giving a sort\n of pyramidal character to the structure. Thus the architect\n overcame the apparent sagging of horizontal lines, and at the same\n time increased the apparent height of the edifice; see Murray,\n Handbook of Greece, 5th ed., 1884, 1:308, 309; Ferguson, Handbook\n of Architecture, 268-270. The neglect to counteract this optical\n illusion has rendered the Madeleine in Paris a stiff and\n ineffective copy of the Parthenon. The Galilean peasant who should\n minutely describe these peculiarities of the Parthenon would\n prove, not only that the edifice was a historical reality, but\n that he had actually seen it. Bruce, Apologetics, 343\u2014\u201cIn reading\n the memoirs of the evangelists, you feel as one sometimes feels in\n a picture-gallery. Your eye alights on the portrait of a person\n whom you do not know. You look at it intently for a few moments\n and then remark to a companion: \u2018That must be like the\n original,\u2014it is so life-like.\u2019 \u201d Theodore Parker: \u201cIt would take a\n Jesus to forge a Jesus.\u201d See Row, Bampton Lectures, 1877:178-219,\n and in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 22; F. W. Farrar, Witness of\n History to Christ; Barry, Boyle Lecture on Manifold Witness for\n Christ.\n\n\n(_a_) No source can be assigned from which the evangelists could have\nderived such a conception. The Hindu avatars were only temporary unions of\ndeity with humanity. The Greeks had men half-deified, but no unions of God\nand man. The monotheism of the Jews found the person of Christ a perpetual\nstumbling-block. The Essenes were in principle more opposed to\nChristianity than the Rabbinists.\n\n\n Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, 279\u2014\u201cThe co\u00ebxistence of a perfect\n man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two\n co\u00ebxist, the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical\n standard sought.\u201d We must conclude that the perfect manhood of\n Christ is a miracle, and the greatest of miracles. Bruce,\n Apologetics, 346, 351\u2014\u201cWhen Jesus asks: \u2018Why callest thou me\n good?\u2019 he means: \u2018Learn first what goodness is, and call no man\n good till you are sure that he deserves it.\u2019 Jesus\u2019 goodness was\n entirely free from religious scrupulosity; it was distinguished by\n humanity; it was full of modesty and lowliness.... Buddhism has\n flourished 2000 years, though little is known of its founder.\n Christianity might have been so perpetuated, but it is not so. I\n want to be sure that the ideal has been embodied in an actual\n life. Otherwise it is only poetry, and the obligation to conform\n to it ceases.\u201d For comparison of Christ\u2019s incarnation with Hindu,\n Greek, Jewish, and Essene ideas, see Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of\n Christ, Introduction. On the Essenes, see Herzog, Encyclop., art,:\n Essener; Pressens\u00e9, Jesus Christ, Life, Times and Work, 84-87;\n Lightfoot on Colossians, 349-419; Godet, Lectures in Defence of\n the Christian Faith.\n\n\n(_b_) No mere human genius, and much less the genius of Jewish fishermen,\ncould have originated this conception. Bad men invent only such characters\nas they sympathize with. But Christ\u2019s character condemns badness. Such a\nportrait could not have been drawn without supernatural aid. But such aid\nwould not have been given to fabrication. The conception can be explained\nonly by granting that Christ\u2019s person and character were historical\nrealities.\n\n\n Between Pilate and Titus 30,000 Jews are said to have been\n crucified around the walls of Jerusalem. Many of these were young\n men. What makes one of them stand out on the pages of history?\n There are two answers: The character of Jesus was a perfect\n character, and, He was God as well as man. Gore, Incarnation,\n 63\u2014\u201cThe Christ of the gospels, if he be not true to history,\n represents a combined effort of the creative imagination without\n parallel in literature. But the literary characteristics of\n Palestine in the first century make the hypothesis of such an\n effort morally impossible.\u201d The Apocryphal gospels show us what\n mere imagination was capable of producing. That the portrait of\n Christ is not puerile, inane, hysterical, selfishly assertive, and\n self-contradictory, can be due only to the fact that it is the\n photograph from real life.\n\n For a remarkable exhibition of the argument from the character of\n Jesus, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332.\n Bushnell mentions the originality and vastness of Christ\u2019s plan,\n yet its simplicity and practical adaptation; his moral traits of\n independence, compassion, meekness, wisdom, zeal, humility,\n patience; the combination in him of seemingly opposite qualities.\n With all his greatness, he was condescending and simple; he was\n unworldly, yet not austere; he had strong feelings, yet was\n self-possessed; he had indignation toward sin, yet compassion\n toward the sinner; he showed devotion to his work, yet calmness\n under opposition; universal philanthropy, yet susceptibility to\n private attachments; the authority of a Savior and Judge, yet the\n gratitude and the tenderness of a son; the most elevated devotion,\n yet a life of activity and exertion. See chapter on The Moral\n Miracle, in Bruce, Miraculous Element of the Gospels, 43-78.\n\n\nB. The acceptance and belief in the New Testament descriptions of Jesus\nChrist cannot be accounted for except upon the ground that the person and\ncharacter described had an actual existence.\n\n(_a_) If these descriptions were false, there were witnesses still living\nwho had known Christ and who would have contradicted them. (_b_) There was\nno motive to induce acceptance of such false accounts, but every motive to\nthe contrary. (_c_) The success of such falsehoods could be explained only\nby supernatural aid, but God would never have thus aided falsehood. This\nperson and character, therefore, must have been not fictitious but real;\nand if real, then Christ\u2019s words are true, and the system of which his\nperson and character are a part is a revelation from God.\n\n\n \u201cThe counterfeit may for a season Deceive the wide earth; But the\n lie waxing great comes to labor, And truth has its birth.\u201d Matthew\n Arnold, The Better Part: \u201cWas Christ a man like us? Ah, let us\n see, If we then too can be Such men as he!\u201d When the blatant\n sceptic declared: \u201cI do not believe that such a man as Jesus\n Christ ever lived,\u201d George Warren merely replied: \u201cI wish I were\n like him!\u201d Dwight L. Moody was called a hypocrite, but the\n stalwart evangelist answered: \u201cWell, suppose I am. How does that\n make your case any better? I know some pretty mean things about\n myself; but you cannot say anything against my Master.\u201d Goethe:\n \u201cLet the culture of the spirit advance forever; let the human\n spirit broaden itself as it will; yet it will never go beyond the\n height and moral culture of Christianity, as it glitters and\n shines in the gospels.\u201d\n\n Renan, Life of Jesus: \u201cJesus founded the absolute religion,\n excluding nothing, determining nothing, save its essence.... The\n foundation of the true religion is indeed his work. After him,\n there is nothing left but to develop and fructify.\u201d And a\n Christian scholar has remarked: \u201cIt is an astonishing proof of the\n divine guidance vouchsafed to the evangelists that no man, of\n their time or since, has been able to touch the picture of Christ\n without debasing it.\u201d We may find an illustration of this in the\n words of Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism, 207\u2014\u201cJesus\u2019 doctrine\n of marriage was ascetic, his doctrine of property was communistic,\n his doctrine of charity was sentimental, his doctrine of\n non-resistance was such as commends itself to Tolstoi, but not to\n many others of our time. With the example of Jesus, it is the same\n as with his teachings. Followed unreservedly, would it not justify\n those who say: \u2018The hope of the race is in its extinction\u2019; and\n bring all our joys and sorrows to a sudden end?\u201d To this we may\n answer in the words of Huxley, who declares that Jesus Christ is\n \u201cthe noblest ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshiped.\u201d\n Gordon, Christ of To-Day, 179\u2014\u201cThe question is not whether Christ\n is good enough to represent the Supreme Being, but whether the\n Supreme Being is good enough to have Christ for his\n representative. John Stuart Mill looks upon the Christian religion\n as the worship of Christ, rather than the worship of God, and in\n this way he explains the beneficence of its influence.\u201d\n\n John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 254\u2014\u201cThe most valuable part\n of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by\n holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model\n for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and\n can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than\n God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of\n perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the\n God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so\n great and salutary hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may\n be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left:\n a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his\n followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal\n preaching.... Who among his disciples, or among their proselytes,\n was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of\n imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?... About\n the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal\n originality combined with profundity of insight which, if we\n abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where\n something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of\n Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in\n his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime\n genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre\u00ebminent genius\n is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral\n reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth,\n religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on\n this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor\n even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a\n better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into\n the concrete than the endeavor so to live that Christ would\n approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of\n the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ\n actually was ... a man charged with a special, express and unique\n commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may\n well conclude that the influences of religion on the character,\n which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost\n against the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and\n that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a\n firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and\n rectitude of the morality they sanction.\u201d See also Ullmann,\n Sinlessness of Jesus; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 129-157;\n Schaff, Person of Christ; Young, The Christ in History; George\n Dana Boardman, The Problem of Jesus.\n\n\n4. The testimony of Christ to himself\u2014as being a messenger from God and as\nbeing one with God.\n\n\nOnly one personage in history has claimed to teach absolute truth, to be\none with God, and to attest his divine mission by works such as only God\ncould perform.\n\nA. This testimony cannot be accounted for upon the hypothesis that Jesus\nwas an intentional deceiver: for (_a_) the perfectly consistent holiness\nof his life; (_b_) the unwavering confidence with which he challenged\ninvestigation of his claims and staked all upon the result; (_c_) the vast\nimprobability of a lifelong lie in the avowed interests of truth; and\n(_d_) the impossibility that deception should have wrought such blessing\nto the world,\u2014all show that Jesus was no conscious impostor.\n\n\n Fisher, Essays on the Supernat. Origin of Christianity,\n 515-538\u2014Christ knew how vast his claims were, yet he staked all\n upon them. Though others doubted, he never doubted himself. Though\n persecuted unto death, he never ceased his consistent testimony.\n Yet he lays claim to humility: _Mat. 11:29\u2014_\u201cI am meek and lowly\n in heart.\u201d How can we reconcile with humility his constant\n self-assertion? We answer that Jesus\u2019 self-assertion was\n absolutely essential to his mission, for he and the truth were\n one: he could not assert the truth without asserting himself, and\n he could not assert himself without asserting the truth. Since he\n was the truth, he needed to say so, for men\u2019s sake and for the\n truth\u2019s sake, and he could be meek and lowly in heart in saying\n so. Humility is not self-depreciation, but only the judging of\n ourselves according to God\u2019s perfect standard. \u201cHumility\u201d is\n derived from \u201c_humus_\u201d. It is the coming down from airy and vain\n self-exploitation to the solid ground, the hard-pan, of actual\n fact.\n\n God requires of us only so much humility as is consistent with\n truth. The self-glorification of the egotist is nauseating,\n because it indicates gross ignorance or misrepresentation of self.\n But it is a duty to be self-asserting, just so far as we represent\n the truth and righteousness of God. There is a noble\n self-assertion which is perfectly consistent with humility. Job\n must stand for his integrity. Paul\u2019s humility was not of the Uriah\n Heep variety. When occasion required, he could assert his manhood\n and his rights, as at Philippi and at the Castle of Antonia. So\n the Christian should frankly say out the truth that is in him.\n Each Christian has an experience of his own, and should tell it to\n others. In testifying to the truth he is only following the\n example of \u201cChrist Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the\n good confession\u201d_ (1 Tim. 6:13)_.\n\n\nB. Nor can Jesus\u2019 testimony to himself be explained upon the hypothesis\nthat he was self-deceived: for this would argue (_a_) a weakness and folly\namounting to positive insanity. But his whole character and life exhibit a\ncalmness, dignity, equipoise, insight, self-mastery, utterly inconsistent\nwith such a theory. Or it would argue (_b_) a self-ignorance and\nself-exaggeration which could spring only from the deepest moral\nperversion. But the absolute purity of his conscience, the humility of his\nspirit, the self-denying beneficence of his life, show this hypothesis to\nbe incredible.\n\n\n Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 39\u2014If he were man, then to\n demand that all the world should bow down to him would be worthy\n of scorn like that which we feel for some straw-crowned monarch of\n Bedlam. Forrest, The Christ of History and of Experience, 22,\n 76\u2014Christ never united with his disciples in prayer. He went up\n into the mountain to pray, but not to pray _with them_: _Luke\n 9:18\u2014_\u201cas he was alone praying, his disciples were with him.\u201d The\n consciousness of pre\u00ebxistence is the indispensable precondition of\n the total demand which he makes in the Synoptics. Adamson, The\n Mind in Christ, 81, 82\u2014We value the testimony of Christians to\n their communion with God. Much more should we value the testimony\n of Christ. Only one who, first being divine, also knew that he was\n divine, could reveal heavenly things with the clearness and\n certainty that belong to the utterances of Jesus. In him we have\n something very different from the momentary flashes of insight\n which leave us in all the greater darkness.\n\n Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 5\u2014\u201cSelf-respect is bottomed upon the\n ability to become what one desires to be; and, if the ability\n steadily falls short of the task, the springs of self-respect dry\n up; the motives of happy and heroic action wither. Science, art,\n generous civic life, and especially religion, come to man\u2019s\n rescue,\u201d\u2014showing him his true greatness and breadth of being in\n God. The State is the individual\u2019s larger self. Humanity, and even\n the universe, are parts of him. It is the duty of man to enable\n all men to be men. It is possible for men not only truthfully but\n also rationally to assert themselves, even in earthly affairs.\n Chatham to the Duke of Devonshire: \u201cMy Lord, I believe I can save\n this country, and that no one else can.\u201d Leonardo da Vinci, in his\n thirtieth year, to the Duke of Milan: \u201cI can carry through every\n kind of work in sculpture, in clay, marble, and bronze; also in\n painting I can execute everything that can be demanded, as well as\n any one whosoever.\u201d\n\n Horace: \u201cExegi monumentum \u00e6re perennius.\u201d Savage, Life beyond\n Death, 209\u2014A famous old minister said once, when a young and\n zealous enthusiast tried to get him to talk, and failing, burst\n out with, \u201cHave you no religion at all?\u201d \u201cNone _to speak of_,\u201d was\n the reply. When Jesus perceived a tendency in his disciples to\n self-glorification, he urged silence; but when he saw the tendency\n to introspection and inertness, he bade them proclaim what he had\n done for them (_Mat. 8:4_; _Mark 5:19_). It is never right for the\n Christian to proclaim himself; but, if Christ had not proclaimed\n himself, the world could never have been saved. Rush Rhees. Life\n of Jesus of Nazareth, 235-237\u2014\u201cIn the teaching of Jesus, two\n topics have the leading place\u2014the Kingdom of God, and himself. He\n sought to be Lord, rather than Teacher only. Yet the Kingdom is\n not one of power, national and external, but one of fatherly love\n and of mutual brotherhood.\u201d\n\n Did Jesus do anything for effect, or as a mere example? Not so.\n His baptism had meaning for him as a consecration of himself to\n death for the sins of the world, and his washing of the disciples\u2019\n feet was the fit beginning of the paschal supper and the symbol of\n his laying aside his heavenly glory to purify us for the marriage\n supper of the Lamb. Thomas \u00e0 Kempis: \u201cThou art none the holier\n because thou art praised, and none the worse because thou art\n censured. What thou art, that thou art, and it avails thee naught\n to be called any better than thou art in the sight of God.\u201d Jesus\u2019\n consciousness of his absolute sinlessness and of his perfect\n communion with God is the strongest of testimonies to his divine\n nature and mission. See Theological Eclectic, 4:137; Liddon, Our\n Lord\u2019s Divinity, 153; J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, 253; Young,\n Christ of History; Divinity of Jesus Christ, by Andover\n Professors, 37-62.\n\n\nIf Jesus, then, cannot be charged with either mental or moral unsoundness,\nhis testimony must be true, and he himself must be one with God and the\nrevealer of God to men.\n\n\n Neither Confucius nor Buddha claimed to be divine, or the organs\n of divine revelation, though both were moral teachers and\n reformers. Zoroaster and Pythagoras apparently believed themselves\n charged with a divine mission, though their earliest biographers\n wrote centuries after their death. Socrates claimed nothing for\n himself which was beyond the power of others. Mohammed believed\n his extraordinary states of body and soul to be due to the action\n of celestial beings; he gave forth the Koran as \u201ca warning to all\n creatures,\u201d and sent a summons to the King of Persia and the\n Emperor of Constantinople, as well as to other potentates, to\n accept the religion of Islam; yet he mourned when he died that he\n could not have opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Koran\n and of his own life. For Confucius or Buddha, Zoroaster or\n Pythagoras, Socrates or Mohammed to claim all power in heaven and\n earth, would show insanity or moral perversion. But this is\n precisely what Jesus claimed. He was either mentally or morally\n unsound, or his testimony is true. See Baldensperger,\n Selbstbewusstsein Jesu; E. Ballentine, Christ his own Witness.\n\n\n\nIV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.\n\n\n1. _The rapid progress of the gospel in the first centuries of our era\nshows its divine origin._\n\nA. That Paganism should have been in three centuries supplanted by\nChristianity, is an acknowledged wonder of history.\n\n\n The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was the most\n astonishing revolution of faith and worship ever known. Fifty\n years after the death of Christ, there were churches in all the\n principal cities of the Roman Empire. Nero (37-68) found (as\n Tacitus declares) an \u201cingens multitudo\u201d of Christians to\n persecute. Pliny writes to Trajan (52-117) that they \u201cpervaded not\n merely the cities but the villages and country places, so that the\n temples were nearly deserted.\u201d Tertullian (160-230) writes: \u201cWe\n are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your places, your\n cities, your islands, your castles, your towns, your\n council-houses, even your camps, your tribes, your senate, your\n forum. We have left you nothing but your temples.\u201d In the time of\n the emperor Valerian (253-268), the Christians constituted half\n the population of Rome. The conversion of the emperor Constantine\n (272-337) brought the whole empire, only 300 years after Jesus\u2019\n death, under the acknowledged sway of the gospel. See McIlvaine\n and Alexander, Evidences of Christianity.\n\n\nB. The wonder is the greater when we consider the obstacles to the\nprogress of Christianity:\n\n(_a_) The scepticism of the cultivated classes; (_b_) the prejudice and\nhatred of the common people; and (_c_) the persecutions set on foot by\ngovernment.\n\n\n (_a_) Missionaries even now find it difficult to get a hearing\n among the cultivated classes of the heathen. But the gospel\n appeared in the most enlightened age of antiquity\u2014the Augustan age\n of literature and historical inquiry. Tacitus called the religion\n of Christ \u201cexitiabilis superstitio\u201d\u2014\u201cquos per flagitia invisos\n vulgus Christianos appellabat.\u201d Pliny: \u201cNihil aliud inveni quam\n superstitionem pravam et immodicam.\u201d If the gospel had been false,\n its preachers would not have ventured into the centres of\n civilization and refinement; or if they had, they would have been\n detected. (_b)_ Consider the interweaving of heathen religions\n with all the relations of life. Christians often had to meet the\n furious zeal and blind rage of the mob,\u2014as at Lystra and Ephesus.\n (_c_) Rawlinson, in his Historical Evidences, claims that the\n Catacombs of Rome comprised nine hundred miles of streets and\n seven millions of graves within a period of four hundred years\u2014a\n far greater number than could have died a natural death\u2014and that\n vast multitudes of these must have been massacred for their faith.\n The Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica, however, calls the estimate of De\n Marchi, which Rawlinson appears to have taken as authority, a\n great exaggeration. Instead of nine hundred miles of streets,\n Northcote has three hundred fifty. The number of interments to\n correspond would be less than three millions. The Catacombs began\n to be deserted by the time of Jerome. The times when they were\n universally used by Christians could have been hardly more than\n two hundred years. They did not begin in sand-pits. There were\n three sorts of tufa: (1) rocky, used for quarrying and too hard\n for Christian purposes; (2) sandy, used for sand-pits, too soft to\n permit construction of galleries and tombs; (3) granular, that\n used by Christians. The existence of the Catacombs must have been\n well known to the heathen. After Pope Damasus the exaggerated\n reverence for them began. They were decorated and improved. Hence\n many paintings are of later date than 400, and testify to papal\n polity, not to that of early Christianity. The bottles contain,\n not blood, but wine of the eucharist celebrated at the funeral.\n\n Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 256-258, calls attention\n to Matthew Arnold\u2019s description of the needs of the heathen world,\n yet his blindness to the true remedy: \u201cOn that hard pagan world\n disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust\n Made human life a hell. In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The\n Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the\n Appian Way; He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crowned\n his hair with flowers,\u2014No easier nor no quicker passed The\n impracticable hours.\u201d Yet with mingled pride and sadness, Mr.\n Arnold fastidiously rejects more heavenly nutriment. Of Christ he\n says: \u201cNow he is dead! Far hence he lies, In the lorn Syrian town,\n And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.\u201d\n He sees that the millions \u201cHave such need of joy, And joy whose\n grounds are true, And joy that should all hearts employ As when\n the past was new!\u201d The want of the world is: \u201cOne mighty wave of\n thought and joy, Lifting mankind amain.\u201d But the poet sees no\n ground of hope: \u201cFools! that so often here, Happiness mocked our\n prayer, I think might make us fear A like event elsewhere,\u2014Make us\n not fly to dreams, But moderate desire.\u201d He sings of the time when\n Christianity was young: \u201cOh, had I lived in that great day, How\n had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My\n ravished spirit too!\u201d But desolation of spirit does not bring with\n it any lowering of self-esteem, much less the humility which\n deplores the presence and power of evil in the soul, and sighs for\n deliverance. \u201cThey that are whole have no need of a physician, but\n they that are sick\u201d_ (Mat. 9:12)_. Rejecting Christ, Matthew\n Arnold embodies in his verse \u201cthe sweetness, the gravity, the\n strength, the beauty, and the languor of death\u201d (Hutton, Essays,\n 302).\n\n\nC. The wonder becomes yet greater when we consider the natural\ninsufficiency of the means used to secure this progress.\n\n(_a_) The proclaimers of the gospel were in general unlearned men,\nbelonging to a despised nation. (_b_) The gospel which they proclaimed was\na gospel of salvation through faith in a Jew who had been put to an\nignominious death. (_c_) This gospel was one which excited natural\nrepugnance, by humbling men\u2019s pride, striking at the root of their sins,\nand demanding a life of labor and self-sacrifice. (_d_) The gospel,\nmoreover, was an exclusive one, suffering no rival and declaring itself to\nbe the universal and only religion.\n\n\n (_a_) The early Christians were more unlikely to make converts\n than modern Jews are to make proselytes, in vast numbers, in the\n principal cities of Europe and America. Celsus called Christianity\n \u201ca religion of the rabble.\u201d (_b_) The cross was the Roman\n gallows\u2014the punishment of slaves. Cicero calls it \u201cservitutis\n extremum summumque supplicium.\u201d (_c_) There were many bad\n religions: why should the mild Roman Empire have persecuted the\n only good one? The answer is in part: Persecution did not\n originate with the official classes; it proceeded really from the\n people at large. Tacitus called Christians \u201chaters of the human\n race.\u201d Men recognized in Christianity a foe to all their previous\n motives, ideals, and aims. Altruism would break up the old\n society, for every effort that centered in self or in the present\n life was stigmatized by the gospel as unworthy. (_d_) Heathenism,\n being without creed or principle, did not care to propagate\n itself. \u201cA man must be very weak,\u201d said Celsus, \u201cto imagine that\n Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, can ever unite\n under the same system of religion.\u201d So the Roman government would\n allow no religion which did not participate in the worship of the\n State. \u201cKeep yourselves from idols,\u201d \u201cWe worship no other God,\u201d\n was the Christian\u2019s answer. Gibbon, Hist. Decline and Fall, 1:\n chap. 15, mentions as secondary causes: (1) the zeal of the Jews;\n (2) the doctrine of immortality; (3) miraculous powers; (4)\n virtues of early Christians; (5) privilege of participation in\n church government. But these causes were only secondary, and all\n would have been insufficient without an invincible persuasion of\n the truth of Christianity. For answer to Gibbon, see Perrone,\n Prelectiones Theologic\u00e6, 1:133.\n\n Persecution destroys falsehood by leading its advocates to\n investigate the grounds of their belief; but it strengthens and\n multiplies truth by leading its advocates to see more clearly the\n foundations of their faith. There have been many conscientious\n persecutors: _John 16:2\u2014_\u201cThey shall put you out of the\n synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall\n think that he offereth service unto God.\u201d The Decretal of Pope\n Urban II reads: \u201cFor we do not count them to be homicides, to whom\n it may have happened, through their burning zeal against the\n excommunicated, to put any of them to death.\u201d St. Louis, King of\n France, urged his officers \u201cnot to argue with the infidel, but to\n subdue unbelievers by thrusting the sword into them as far as it\n will go.\u201d Of the use of the rack in England on a certain occasion,\n it was said that it was used with all the tenderness which the\n nature of the instrument would allow. This reminds us of Isaak\n Walton\u2019s instruction as to the use of the frog: \u201cPut the hook\n through his mouth and out at his gills; and, in so doing, use him\n as though you loved him.\u201d\n\n Robert Browning, in his Easter Day, 275-288, gives us what\n purports to be A Martyr\u2019s Epitaph, inscribed upon a wall of the\n Catacombs, which furnishes a valuable contrast to the sceptical\n and pessimistic strain of Matthew Arnold: \u201cI was born sickly, poor\n and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl\n of price from C\u00e6sar\u2019s envy: therefore twice I fought with beasts,\n and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At length my\n own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at\n the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My\n soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me\n This testimony on the wall\u2014For me, I have forgot it all.\u201d\n\n\nThe progress of a religion so unprepossessing and uncompromising to\noutward acceptance and dominion, within the space of three hundred years,\ncannot be explained without supposing that divine power attended its\npromulgation, and therefore that the gospel is a revelation from God.\n\n\n Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:527\u2014\u201cIn the Kremlin Cathedral,\n whenever the Metropolitan advanced from the altar to give his\n blessing, there was always thrown under his feet a carpet\n embroidered with the eagle of old Pagan Rome, to indicate that the\n Christian Church and Empire of Constantinople had succeeded and\n triumphed over it.\u201d On this whole section, see F. W. Farrar,\n Witness of History to Christ, 91; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy\n Scripture, 139.\n\n\n2. _The beneficent influence of the Scripture doctrines and precepts,\nwherever they have had sway, shows their divine origin._ Notice:\n\nA. Their influence on civilization in general, securing a recognition of\nprinciples which heathenism ignored, such as Garbett mentions: (_a_) the\nimportance of the individual; (_b_) the law of mutual love; (_c_) the\nsacredness of human life; (_d_) the doctrine of internal holiness; (_e_)\nthe sanctity of home; (_f_) monogamy, and the religious equality of the\nsexes; (_g_) identification of belief and practice.\n\nThe continued corruption of heathen lands shows that this change is not\ndue to any laws of merely natural progress. The confessions of ancient\nwriters show that it is not due to philosophy. Its only explanation is\nthat the gospel is the power of God.\n\n\n Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 177-186; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History\n to Christ, chap. on Christianity and the Individual; Brace, Gesta\n Christi, preface, vi\u2014\u201cPractices and principles implanted,\n stimulated or supported by Christianity, such as regard for the\n personality of the weakest and poorest; respect for woman; duty of\n each member of the fortunate classes to raise up the unfortunate;\n humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and\n even to the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty,\n oppression and slavery; the duty of personal purity, and the\n sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance; obligation of\n a more equitable division of the profits of labor, and of greater\n co\u00f6peration between employers and employed; the right of every\n human being to have the utmost opportunity of developing his\n faculties, and of all persons to enjoy equal political and social\n privileges; the principle that the injury of one nation is the\n injury of all, and the expediency and duty of unrestricted trade\n and intercourse between all countries; and finally, a profound\n opposition to war, a determination to limit its evils when\n existing, and to prevent its arising by means of international\n arbitration.\u201d\n\n Max M\u00fcller: \u201cThe concept of humanity is the gift of Christ.\u201d\n Guizot, History of Civilization, 1: Introd., tells us that in\n ancient times the individual existed for the sake of the State; in\n modern times the State exists for the sake of the individual. \u201cThe\n individual is a discovery of Christ.\u201d On the relations between\n Christianity and Political Economy, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy\n and Religion, pages 443-460; on the cause of the changed view with\n regard to the relation of the individual to the State, see page\n 207\u2014\u201cWhat has wrought the change? Nothing but the death of the Son\n of God. When it was seen that the smallest child and the lowest\n slave had a soul of such worth that Christ left his throne and\n gave up his life to save it, the world\u2019s estimate of values\n changed, and modern history began.\u201d Lucian, the Greek satirist and\n humorist, 160 A. D., said of the Christians: \u201cTheir first\n legislator [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they are all\n brothers.\u201d\n\n It is this spirit of common brotherhood which has led in most\n countries to the abolition of cannibalism, infanticide,\n widow-burning, and slavery. Prince Bismarck: \u201cFor social\n well-being I ask nothing more than Christianity without\n phrases\u201d\u2014which means the religion of the deed rather than of the\n creed. Yet it is only faith in the historic revelation of God in\n Christ which has made Christian deeds possible. Shaler,\n Interpretation of Nature, 232-278\u2014Aristotle, if he could look over\n society to-day, would think modern man a new species, in his going\n out in sympathy to distant peoples. This cannot be the result of\n natural selection, for self-sacrifice is not profitable to the\n individual. Altruistic emotions owe their existence to God.\n Worship of God has flowed back upon man\u2019s emotions and has made\n them more sympathetic. Self-consciousness and sympathy, coming\n into conflict with brute emotions, originate the sense of sin.\n Then begins the war of the natural and the spiritual. Love of\n nature and absorption in others is the true _Nirvana_. Not\n physical science, but the humanities, are most needed in\n education.\n\n H. E. Hersey, Introd. to Browning\u2019s Christmas Eve, 19\u2014 \u201cSidney\n Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries have spent their\n best power upon the development of personality. Literature,\n education, government, and religion, have learned to recognize the\n individual as the unit of force. Browning goes a step further. He\n declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very\n touch gives life and courage and potency. He turns to history for\n the inspiration of enduring virtue and the stimulus for sustained\n effort, and he finds both in Jesus Christ.\u201d J. P. Cooke,\n Credentials of Science, 43\u2014The change from the ancient philosopher\n to the modern investigator is the change from self-assertion to\n self-devotion, and the great revolution can be traced to the\n influence of Christianity and to the spirit of humility exhibited\n and inculcated by Christ. Lewes, Hist. Philos., 1:408\u2014Greek\n morality never embraced any conception of humanity; no Greek ever\n attained to the sublimity of such a point of view.\n\n Kidd, Social Evolution, 165, 287\u2014It is not intellect that has\n pushed forward the world of modern times: it is the altruistic\n feeling that originated in the cross and sacrifice of Christ. The\n French Revolution was made possible by the fact that humanitarian\n ideas had undermined the upper classes themselves, and effective\n resistance was impossible. Socialism would abolish the struggle\n for existence on the part of individuals. What security would be\n left for social progress? Removing all restrictions upon\n population ensures progressive deterioration. A non-socialist\n community would outstrip a socialist community where all the main\n wants of life were secure. The real tendency of society is to\n bring all the people into _rivalry_, not only on a footing of\n political equality, but on conditions of equal social\n opportunities. The State in future will interfere and control, in\n order to preserve or secure free competition, rather than to\n suspend it. The goal is not socialism or State management, but\n competition in which all shall have equal advantages. The\n evolution of human society is not primarily intellectual but\n religious. The winning races are the religious races. The Greeks\n had more intellect, but we have more civilization and progress.\n The Athenians were as far above us as we are above the negro race.\n Gladstone said that we are intellectually weaker than the men of\n the middle ages. When the intellectual development of any section\n of the race has for the time being outrun its ethical development,\n natural selection has apparently weeded it out, like any other\n unsuitable product. Evolution is developing _reverence_, with its\n allied qualities, mental energy, resolution, enterprise, prolonged\n and concentrated application, simple minded and single minded\n devotion to duty. Only religion can overpower selfishness and\n individualism and ensure social progress.\n\n\nB. Their influence upon individual character and happiness, wherever they\nhave been tested in practice. This influence is seen (_a_) in the moral\ntransformations they have wrought\u2014as in the case of Paul the apostle, and\nof persons in every Christian community; (_b_) in the self-denying labors\nfor human welfare to which they have led\u2014as in the case of Wilberforce and\nJudson; (_c_) in the hopes they have inspired in times of sorrow and\ndeath.\n\nThese beneficent fruits cannot have their source in merely natural causes,\napart from the truth and divinity of the Scriptures; for in that case the\ncontrary beliefs would be accompanied by the same blessings. But since we\nfind these blessings only in connection with Christian teaching, we may\njustly consider this as their cause. This teaching, then, must be true,\nand the Scriptures must be a divine revelation. Else God has made a lie to\nbe the greatest blessing to the race.\n\n\n The first Moravian missionaries to the West Indies walked six\n hundred miles to take ship, worked their passage, and then sold\n themselves as slaves, in order to get the privilege of preaching\n to the negroes.... The father of John G. Paton was a\n stocking-weaver. The whole family, with the exception of the very\n small children, worked from 6 a. m. to 10 p. m., with one hour for\n dinner at noon and a half hour each for breakfast and supper. Yet\n family prayer was regularly held twice a day. In these\n breathing-spells for daily meals John G. Paton took part of his\n time to study the Latin Grammar, that he might prepare himself for\n missionary work. When told by an uncle that, if he went to the New\n Hebrides, the cannibals would eat him, he replied: \u201cYou yourself\n will soon be dead and buried, and I had as lief be eaten by\n cannibals as by worms.\u201d The Aneityumese raised arrow-root for\n fifteen years and sold it to pay the \u00a31200 required for printing\n the Bible in their own language. Universal church-attendance and\n Bible-study make those South Sea Islands the most heavenly place\n on earth on the Sabbath-day.\n\n In 1839, twenty thousand negroes in Jamaica gathered to begin a\n life of freedom. Into a coffin were put the handcuffs and shackles\n of slavery, relics of the whipping-post and the scourge. As the\n clock struck twelve at night, a preacher cried with the first\n stroke: \u201cThe monster is dying!\u201d and so with every stroke until the\n last, when he cried: \u201cThe monster is dead!\u201d Then all rose from\n their knees and sang: \u201cPraise God from whom all blessings\n flow!\u201d... \u201cWhat do you do that for?\u201d said the sick Chinaman whom\n the medical missionary was tucking up in bed with a care which the\n patient had never received since he was a baby. The missionary\n took the opportunity to tell him of the love of Christ.... The\n aged Australian mother, when told that her two daughters,\n missionaries in China, had both of them been murdered by a heathen\n mob, only replied: \u201cThis decides me; I will go to China now\n myself, and try to teach those poor creatures what the love of\n Jesus means.\u201d... Dr. William Ashmore: \u201cLet one missionary die, and\n ten come to his funeral.\u201d A shoemaker, teaching neglected boys and\n girls while he worked at his cobbler\u2019s bench, gave the impulse to\n Thomas Guthrie\u2019s life of faith.\n\n We must judge religions not by their ideals, but by their\n performances. Omar Khayyam and Mozoomdar give us beautiful\n thoughts, but the former is not Persia, nor is the latter India.\n \u201cWhen the microscopic search of scepticism, which has hunted the\n heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a\n Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found\n on this planet a place ten miles square where a decent man can\n live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating\n his children, unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is\n reverenced, infancy protected, manhood respected, womanhood\n honored, and human life held in due regard\u2014when sceptics can find\n such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of\n Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations\n and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order\n for the sceptical literati to move thither and to ventilate their\n views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the very\n religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may\n well hesitate before they rob the Christian of his hope and\n humanity of its faith in that Savior who alone has given that hope\n of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible,\n and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.\u201d On the\n beneficent influence of the gospel, see Schmidt, Social Results of\n Early Christianity; D. J. Hill, The Social Influence of\n Christianity.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.\n\n\n\nI. Definition of Inspiration.\n\n\nInspiration is that influence of the Spirit of God upon the minds of the\nScripture writers which made their writings the record of a progressive\ndivine revelation, sufficient, when taken together and interpreted by the\nsame Spirit who inspired them, to lead every honest inquirer to Christ and\nto salvation.\n\n\n Notice the significance of each part of this definition: 1.\n Inspiration is an influence of the Spirit of God. It is not a\n merely naturalistic phenomenon or psychological vagary, but is\n rather the effect of the inworking of the personal divine Spirit.\n 2. Yet inspiration is an influence upon the mind, and not upon the\n body. God secures his end by awakening man\u2019s rational powers, and\n not by an external or mechanical communication. 3. The writings of\n inspired men are the record of a revelation. They are not\n themselves the revelation. 4. The revelation and the record are\n both progressive. Neither one is complete at the beginning. 5. The\n Scripture writings must be taken together. Each part must be\n viewed in connection with what precedes and with what follows. 6.\n The same Holy Spirit who made the original revelations must\n interpret to us the record of them, if we are to come to the\n knowledge of the truth. 7. So used and so interpreted, these\n writings are sufficient, both in quantity and in quality, for\n their religious purpose. 8. That purpose is, not to furnish us\n with a model history or with the facts of science, but to lead us\n to Christ and to salvation.\n\n\n(_a_) Inspiration is therefore to be defined, not by its method, but by\nits result. It is a general term including all those kinds and degrees of\nthe Holy Spirit\u2019s influence which were brought to bear upon the minds of\nthe Scripture writers, in order to secure the putting into permanent and\nwritten form of the truth best adapted to man\u2019s moral and religious needs.\n\n(_b_) Inspiration may often include revelation, or the direct\ncommunication from God of truth to which man could not attain by his\nunaided powers. It may include illumination, or the quickening of man\u2019s\ncognitive powers to understand truth already revealed. Inspiration,\nhowever, does not necessarily and always include either revelation or\nillumination. It is simply the divine influence which secures a\ntransmission of needed truth to the future, and, according to the nature\nof the truth to be transmitted, it may be only an inspiration of\nsuperintendence, or it may be also and at the same time an inspiration of\nillumination or revelation.\n\n(_c_) It is not denied, but affirmed, that inspiration may qualify for\noral utterance of truth, or for wise leadership and daring deeds. Men may\nbe inspired to render external service to God\u2019s kingdom, as in the cases\nof Bezalel and Samson; even though this service is rendered unwillingly or\nunconsciously, as in the cases of Balaam and Cyrus. All human\nintelligence, indeed, is due to the inbreathing of that same Spirit who\ncreated man at the beginning. We are now concerned with inspiration,\nhowever, only as it pertains to the authorship of Scripture.\n\n\n _Gen. 2:7\u2014_\u201cAnd Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground,\n and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became\n a living soul\u201d; _Ex. 31:2, 3\u2014_\u201cI have called by name Bezalel ...\n and I have filled him with the Spirit of God ... in all manner of\n workmanship\u201d; _Judges 13:24, 25\u2014_\u201ccalled his name Samson: and the\n child grew, and Jehovah blessed him. And the Spirit of Jehovah\n began to move him\u201d; _Num. 23:5\u2014_\u201cAnd Jehovah put a word in\n Balaam\u2019s mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus shalt thou\n speak\u201d; _2 Chron. 36:22\u2014_\u201cJehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus\u201d;\n _Is. 44:28\u2014_\u201cthat saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd\u201d; _45:5\u2014_\u201cI\n will gird thee, though thou hast not known me\u201d; _Job 32:8\u2014_\u201cthere\n is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them\n understanding.\u201d These passages show the true meaning of 2 Tim.\n 3:16\u2014\u201cEvery scripture inspired of God.\u201d The word \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 is to\n be understood as alluding, not to the flute-player\u2019s breathing\n into his instrument, but to God\u2019s original inbreathing of life.\n The flute is passive, but man\u2019s soul is active. The flute gives\n out only what it receives, but the inspired man under the divine\n influence is a conscious and free originator of thought and\n expression. Although the inspiration of which we are to treat is\n simply the inspiration of the Scripture writings, we can best\n understand this narrower use of the term by remembering that all\n real knowledge has in it a divine element, and that we are\n possessed of complete consciousness only as we live, move, and\n have our being in God. Since Christ, the divine Logos or Reason,\n is \u201cthe light which lighteth every man\u201d_ (John 1:9)_, a special\n influence of \u201cthe spirit of Christ which was in them\u201d_ (1 Pet.\n 1:11)_ rationally accounts for the fact that \u201cmen spake from God,\n being moved by the Holy Spirit\u201d_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_.\n\n It may help our understanding of terms above employed if we adduce\n instances of\n\n (1) Inspiration without revelation, as in Luke or Acts, _Luke\n 1:1-3_;\n (2) Inspiration including revelation, as in the Apocalypse, _Rev.\n 1:1, 11_;\n (3) Inspiration without illumination, as in the prophets, _1 Pet.\n 1:11_;\n (4) Inspiration including illumination, as in the case of Paul, _1\n Cor. 2:12_;\n (5) Revelation without inspiration, as in God\u2019s words from Sinai,\n _Ex. 20:1, 22_;\n (6) Illumination without inspiration, as in modern preachers,\n _Eph. 2:20_.\n\n Other definitions are those of Park: \u201cInspiration is such an\n influence over the writers of the Bible that all their teachings\n which have a religious character are trustworthy\u201d; of Wilkinson:\n \u201cInspiration is help from God to keep the report of divine\n revelation free from error. Help to whom? No matter to whom, so\n the result is secured. The final result, viz.: the record or\n report of revelation, this must be free from error. Inspiration\n may affect one or all of the agents employed\u201d; of Hovey:\n \u201cInspiration was an influence of the Spirit of God on those powers\n of men which are concerned in the reception, retention and\n expression of religious truth\u2014an influence so pervading and\n powerful that the teaching of inspired men was according to the\n mind of God. Their teaching did not in any instance embrace all\n truth in respect to God, or man, or the way of life; but it\n comprised just so much of the truth on any particular subject as\n could be received in faith by the inspired teacher and made useful\n to those whom he addressed. In this sense the teaching of the\n original documents composing our Bible may be pronounced free from\n error\u201d; of G. B. Foster: \u201cRevelation is the action of God in the\n soul of his child, resulting in divine self-expression there:\n Inspiration is the action of God in the soul of his child,\n resulting in apprehension and appropriation of the divine\n expression. Revelation has logical but not chronological\n priority\u201d; of Horton, Inspiration and the Bible, 10-13\u2014\u201cWe mean by\n Inspiration exactly those qualities or characteristics which are\n the marks or notes of the Bible.... We call our Bible inspired; by\n which we mean that by reading and studying it we find our way to\n God, we find his will for us, and we find how we can conform\n ourselves to his will.\u201d\n\n Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, 496, while nobly setting\n forth the naturalness of revelation, has misconceived the relation\n of inspiration to revelation by giving priority to the former:\n \u201cThe idea of a written revelation may be said to be logically\n involved in the notion of a living God. Speech is natural to\n spirit; and if God is by nature spirit, it will be to him a matter\n of nature to reveal himself. But if he speaks to man, it will be\n through men; and those who hear best will be most possessed of\n God. This possession is termed \u2018inspiration.\u2019 God inspires, man\n reveals: revelation is the mode or form\u2014word, character, or\n institution\u2014in which man embodies what he has received. The terms,\n though not equivalent, are co-extensive, the one denoting the\n process on its inner side, the other on its outer.\u201d This\n statement, although approved by Sanday, Inspiration, 124, 125,\n seems to us almost precisely to reverse the right meaning of the\n words. We prefer the view of Evans, Bib. Scholarship and\n Inspiration, 54\u2014\u201cGod has first revealed himself, and then has\n inspired men to interpret, record and apply this revelation. In\n redemption, inspiration is the formal factor, as revelation is the\n material factor. The men are inspired, as Prof. Stowe said. The\n thoughts are inspired, as Prof. Briggs said. The words are\n inspired, as Prof. Hodge said. The warp and woof of the Bible is\n \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1: \u2018the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit\u2019_ (John\n 6:63)_. Its fringes run off, as was inevitable, into the secular,\n the material, the psychic.\u201d Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:351\u2014\u201cIf the\n true revelation of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a\n revelation, but the history of a revelation. This is not only a\n fact but a necessity, for a person cannot be revealed in a book,\n but must find revelation, if at all, in a person. The centre and\n core of the Bible must therefore be the gospels, as the story of\n Jesus.\u201d\n\n Some, like Priestley, have held that the gospels are authentic but\n not inspired. We therefore add to the proof of the genuineness and\n credibility of Scripture, the proof of its inspiration. Chadwick,\n Old and New Unitarianism, 11\u2014\u201cPriestley\u2019s belief in supernatural\n revelation was intense. He had an absolute distrust of reason as\n qualified to furnish an adequate knowledge of religious things,\n and at the same time a perfect confidence in reason as qualified\n to prove that negative and to determine the contents of the\n revelation.\u201d We might claim the historical truth of the gospels,\n even if we did not call them inspired. Gore, in Lux Mundi,\n 341\u2014\u201cChristianity brings with it a doctrine of the inspiration of\n the Holy Scriptures, but is not based upon it.\u201d Warfield and\n Hodge, Inspiration, 8\u2014\u201cWhile the inspiration of the Scriptures is\n true, and being true is fundamental to the adequate interpretation\n of Scripture, it nevertheless is not, in the first instance, a\n principle fundamental to the truth of the Christian religion.\u201d\n\n On the idea of Revelation, see Ladd, in Journ. Christ. Philos.,\n Jan. 1883:156-178; on Inspiration, _ibid._, Apr. 1883:225-248. See\n Henderson on Inspiration (2nd ed.), 58, 205, 249, 303, 310. For\n other works on the general subject of Inspiration, see Lee,\n Bannerman, Jamieson, Macnaught; Garbett, God\u2019s Word Written; Aids\n to Faith, essay on Inspiration. Also, Philippi, Glaubenslehre,\n 1:205; Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, 27-65; Bib.\n Sac., 1:97; 4:154; 12:217; 15:29, 314; 25:192-198; Dr. Barrows, in\n Bib. Sac., 1867:593; 1872:428; Farrar, Science in Theology, 208;\n Hodge and Warfield, in Presb. Rev., Apr. 1881:225-261; Manly, The\n Bible Doctrine of Inspiration; Watts, Inspiration; Mead,\n Supernatural Revelation, 350; Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136; Hastings,\n Bible Dict., 1:296-299; Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration.\n\n\n\nII. Proof of Inspiration.\n\n\n1. Since we have shown that God has made a revelation of himself to man,\nwe may reasonably presume that he will not trust this revelation wholly to\nhuman tradition and misrepresentation, but will also provide a record of\nit essentially trustworthy and sufficient; in other words, that the same\nSpirit who originally communicated the truth will preside over its\npublication, so far as is needed to accomplish its religious purpose.\n\n\n Since all natural intelligence, as we have seen, presupposes God\u2019s\n indwelling, and since in Scripture the all-prevailing atmosphere,\n with its constant pressure and effort to enter every cranny and\n corner of the world, is used as an illustration of the impulse of\n God\u2019s omnipotent Spirit to vivify and energize every human soul\n (_Gen. 2:7_; _Job 32:8_), we may infer that, but for sin, all men\n would be morally and spiritually inspired (_Num. 11:29\u2014_\u201cWould\n that all Jehovah\u2019s people were prophets, that Jehovah would put\n his Spirit upon them!\u201d _Is. 59:2\u2014_\u201cyour iniquities have separated\n between you and your God\u201d). We have also seen that God\u2019s method of\n communicating his truth in matters of religion is presumably\n analogous to his method of communicating secular truth, such as\n that of astronomy or history. There is an original delivery to a\n single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may\n through them be given to mankind. Sanday, Inspiration, 140\u2014\u201cThere\n is a \u2018purpose of God according to selection\u2019_ (Rom. 9:11)_; there\n is an \u2018election\u2019 or \u2018selection of grace\u2019; and the object of that\n selection was Israel and those who take their name from Israel\u2019s\n Messiah. If a tower is built in ascending tiers, those who stand\n upon the lower tiers are yet raised above the ground, and some may\n be raised higher than others, but the full and unimpeded view is\n reserved for those who mount upward to the top. And that is the\n place destined for us if we will take it.\u201d\n\n If we follow the analogy of God\u2019s working in other communications\n of knowledge, we shall reasonably presume that he will preserve\n the record of his revelations in written and accessible documents,\n handed down from those to whom these revelations were first\n communicated, and we may expect that these documents will be kept\n sufficiently correct and trustworthy to accomplish their religious\n purpose, namely, that of furnishing to the honest inquirer a guide\n to Christ and to salvation. The physician commits his\n prescriptions to writing; the Clerk of Congress records its\n proceedings; the State Department of our government instructs our\n foreign ambassadors, not orally, but by dispatches. There is yet\n greater need that revelation should be recorded, since it is to be\n transmitted to distant ages; it contains long discourses; it\n embraces mysterious doctrines. Jesus did not write himself; for he\n was the subject, not the mere channel, of revelation. His\n unconcern about the apostles\u2019 immediately committing to writing\n what they saw and heard is inexplicable, if he did not expect that\n inspiration would assist them.\n\n We come to the discussion of Inspiration with a presumption quite\n unlike that of Kuenen and Wellhausen, who write in the interest of\n almost avowed naturalism. Kuenen, in the opening sentences of his\n Religion of Israel, does indeed assert the rule of God in the\n world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that \u201cKuenen keeps\n this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume\n of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel,\n London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were _not_ moved to\n speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.\u201d The\n following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position which Dr.\n Kuenen really held: \u201cWe do not allow ourselves to be deprived of\n God\u2019s presence in history. In the fortunes and development of\n nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the\n holy and all-wise Instructor of his human children. But the old\n _contrasts_ must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a\n separate part of Israel\u2019s religious life directly from God, and\n allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in\n even one single point, so long also our view of the whole\n continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there\n necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents of\n the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural\n development alone which accounts for all the phenomena\u201d (Kuenen,\n Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585).\n\n\n2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a\nmessenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by\nquoting it with the formula: \u201cIt is written\u201d; by declaring that \u201cone jot\nor one tittle\u201d of it \u201cshall in no wise pass away,\u201d and that \u201cthe Scripture\ncannot be broken.\u201d\n\n\n Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from\n the Psalms, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, \u201cit\n is written\u201d; see _Mat. 4:4, 6, 7_; _11:10_; _Mark 14:27_; _Luke\n 4:4-12_. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation\n was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly\n regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of\n his day. He declared that \u201cone jot or one tittle shall in no wise\n pass away from the law\u201d_ (Mat. 5:18)_. He said that \u201cthe scripture\n cannot be broken\u201d_ (John 10:35)_ = \u201cthe normative and judicial\n authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in\n the singular, \u1f21 \u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03c6\u03ae] the idea of the unity of Scripture\u201d\n (Meyer). And yet our Lord\u2019s use of O. T. Scripture was wholly free\n from the superstitious literalism which prevailed among the Jews\n of his day. The phrases \u201cword of God\u201d_ (John 10:35; Mark 7:13)_,\n \u201cwisdom of God\u201d_ (Luke 11:49)_ and \u201coracles of God\u201d_ (Rom. 3:2)_\n probably designate the original revelations of God and not the\n record of these in Scripture; _cf._ _1 Sam. 9:27_; _1 Chron.\n 17:3_; _Is. 40:8_; _Mat. 13:19_; _Luke 3:2_; _Acts 8:25_. Jesus\n refuses assent to the O. T. law respecting the Sabbath (_Mark\n 2:27_ _sq._), external defilements (_Mark 7:15_), divorce (_Mark\n 10:2_ _sq._). He \u201ccame not to destroy but to fulfil\u201d_ (Mat.\n 5:17)_; yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit\n in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to\n its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5-35.\n\n The apostles quote the O. T. as the utterance of God (_Eph.\n 4:8_\u2014\u03b4\u03b9\u1f78 \u03bb\u03ad\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9, _sc._ \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2). Paul\u2019s insistence upon the form of\n even a single word, as in _Gal. 3:16_, and his use of the O. T.\n for purposes of allegory, as in _Gal 4:21-31_, show that in his\n view the O. T. text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in\n their interpretations of the O. T., fall continually into a\n \u201cnarrow and unhappy literalism.\u201d \u201cThe N. T. does not indeed escape\n Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they\n seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through\n the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to\n the very heart of the O. T. teaching;\u201d see Sanday, Bampton\n Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254.\n\n\n3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a\nsupernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises\nmade to the Old Testament prophets.\n\n\n _Mat. 28:19, 20\u2014_\u201cGo ye ... teaching ... and lo, I am with you.\u201d\n Compare promises to Moses (_Ex. 3:12_), Jeremiah (_Jer. 1:5-8_),\n Ezekiel (_Ezek. 2_ and _3_). See also _Is. 44:3_ and _Joel\n 2:28\u2014_\u201cI will pour my Spirit upon thy seed\u201d; _Mat. 10:7\u2014_\u201cas ye\n go, preach\u201d; _19\u2014_\u201cbe not anxious how or what ye shall speak\u201d;\n _John 14:26\u2014_\u201cthe Holy Spirit ... shall teach you all things\u201d;\n _15:26, 27\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of truth ... shall bear witness of me: and\n ye also bear witness\u201d = the Spirit shall witness in and through\n you; _16:13\u2014_\u201che shall guide you into all the truth\u201d = (1)\n limitation\u2014all _the_ truth of Christ, _i. e._, not of philosophy\n or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension\u2014_all_ the truth\n within this limited range, _i. e._, sufficiency of Scripture as\n rule of faith and practice (Hovey); _17:8\u2014_\u201cthe words which thou\n gavest me I have given unto them\u201d; _Acts 1:4\u2014_\u201che charged them ...\n to wait for the promise of the Father\u201d; _John 20:22\u2014_\u201che breathed\n on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.\u201d Here\n was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit.\n Compare _Mat. 10:19, 20\u2014_\u201cit shall be given you in that hour what\n ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of\n your Father that speaketh in you.\u201d See Henderson, Inspiration,\n 247, 248.\n\n Jesus\u2019 testimony here is the testimony of God. In _Deut. 18:18_,\n it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great\n Prophet. In _John 12:49, 50_, Jesus says: \u201cI spake not from\n myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a\n commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I\n know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore\n which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.\u201d\n _John 17:7, 8\u2014_\u201call things whatsoever thou hast given me are from\n thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.\u201d\n _John 8:40\u2014_\u201ca man that hath told you the truth, which I heard\n from God.\u201d\n\n\n4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his\ninfluence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a\nlevel with the Old Testament Scriptures. We have not only direct\nstatements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were\nsupervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was\nthe case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and\nepistles.\n\n\n _Statements_:\u2014_1 Cor. 2:10, 13\u2014_\u201cunto us God revealed them through\n the Spirit.... Which things also we speak, not in words which\n man\u2019s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth\u201d; _11:23\u2014_\u201cI\n received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you\u201d; _12:8,\n 28_\u2014_the \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 was apparently a gift peculiar to the\n apostles_; _14:37, 38\u2014_\u201cthe things which I write unto you ... they\n are the commandment of the Lord\u201d; _Gal. 1:12\u2014_\u201cneither did I\n receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me\n through revelation of Jesus Christ\u201d; _1 Thess. 4:2, 8\u2014_\u201cye know\n what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus.... Therefore he\n that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy\n Spirit unto you.\u201d The following passages put the teaching of the\n apostles on the same level with O. T. Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:11,\n 12\u2014_\u201cSpirit of Christ which was in them\u201d [O. T. prophets];\u2014[N. T.\n preachers] \u201cpreached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit\u201d; _2\n Pet. 1:21_\u2014O. T. prophets \u201cspake from God, being moved by the Holy\n Spirit\u201d; _3:2\u2014_\u201cremember the words which were spoken before by the\n holy prophets\u201d [O. T.], \u201cand the commandment of the Lord and\n Savior through your apostles\u201d [N. T.]; 16\u2014\u201cwrest [Paul\u2019s\n Epistles], _as they do also the_ _other scriptures_, unto their\n own destruction.\u201d _Cf._ _Ex. 4:14-16_; _7:1_.\n\n _Implications_:\u2014_2 Tim. 3:16\u2014_\u201cEvery scripture inspired of God is\n also profitable\u201d\u2014a clear implication of inspiration, though not a\n direct statement of it = _there is a divinely inspired Scripture_.\n In _1 Cor. 5:3-5_, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with\n regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired.\n There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other\n writings of the same extent. Notice the continual asseveration of\n authority, as in _Gal. 1:1, 2_, and the declaration that disbelief\n of the record is sin, as in _1 John 5:10, 11_. _Jude 3\u2014_\u201cthe faith\n which was once for all (\u1f05\u03c0\u03b1\u03be) delivered unto the saints.\u201d See\n Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34,\n 234; Conant, Genesis, Introd., xiii, note; Charteris, New\n Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, authority.\n\n The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished\n inspiration from their own unaided thinking. These inspired men\n claim that their inspiration is the same with that of the\n prophets. _Rev. 22:6\u2014_\u201cthe Lord, the God of the spirits of the\n prophets, sent his angel to show unto his servants the things\n which must shortly come to pass\u201d = inspiration gave them\n supernatural knowledge of the future. As inspiration in the O. T.\n was the work of the pre-incarnate Christ, so inspiration in the N.\n T. is the work of the ascended and glorified Christ by his Holy\n Spirit. On the Relative Authority of the Gospels, see Gerhardt, in\n Am. Journ. Theol., Apl. 1899:275-294, who shows that not the words\n of Jesus in the gospels are the final revelation, but rather the\n teaching of the risen and glorified Christ in the Acts and the\n Epistles. The Epistles are the posthumous works of Christ.\n Pattison, Making of the Sermon, 23\u2014\u201cThe apostles, believing\n themselves to be inspired teachers, often preached without texts;\n and the fact that their successors did not follow their example\n shows that for themselves they made no such claim. Inspiration\n ceased, and henceforth authority was found in the use of the words\n of the now complete Scriptures.\u201d\n\n\n5. The apostolic writers of the New Testament, unlike professedly inspired\nheathen sages and poets, gave attestation by miracles or prophecy that\nthey were inspired by God, and there is reason to believe that the\nproductions of those who were not apostles, such as Mark, Luke, Hebrews,\nJames, and Jude, were recommended to the churches as inspired, by\napostolic sanction and authority.\n\n\n The twelve wrought miracles (_Mat. 10:1_). Paul\u2019s \u201csigns of an\n apostle\u201d_ (2 Cor. 13:12)_ = miracles. Internal evidence confirms\n the tradition that Mark was the \u201cinterpreter of Peter,\u201d and that\n Luke\u2019s gospel and the Acts had the sanction of Paul. Since the\n purpose of the Spirit\u2019s bestowment was to qualify those who were\n to be the teachers and founders of the new religion, it is only\n fair to assume that Christ\u2019s promise of the Spirit was valid not\n simply to the twelve but to all who stood in their places, and to\n these not simply as speakers, but, since in this respect they had\n a still greater need of divine guidance, to them as writers also.\n\n The epistle to the Hebrews, with the letters of James and Jude,\n appeared in the lifetime of some of the twelve, and passed\n unchallenged; and the fact that they all, with the possible\n exception of 2 Peter, were very early accepted by the churches\n founded and watched over by the apostles, is sufficient evidence\n that the apostles regarded them as inspired productions. As\n evidences that the writers regarded their writings as of universal\n authority, see _1 Cor. 1:2\u2014_\u201cunto the church of God which is at\n Corinth ... with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus\n Christ in every place,\u201d etc.; _7:17\u2014_\u201cso ordain I in all the\n churches\u201d; _Col. 4:16\u2014_\u201cAnd when this epistle hath been read among\n you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans\u201d;\n _2 Pet. 3:15, 16\u2014_\u201cour beloved brother Paul also, according to the\n wisdom given to him, wrote unto you.\u201d See Bartlett, in Princeton\n Rev., Jan. 1880:23-57; Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:204, 205.\n\n Johnson, Systematic Theology, 40\u2014\u201cMiraculous gifts were bestowed\n at Pentecost on many besides apostles. Prophecy was not an\n uncommon gift during the apostolic period.\u201d There is no antecedent\n improbability that inspiration should extend to others than to the\n principal leaders of the church, and since we have express\n instances of such inspiration in oral utterances (_Acts 11:28_;\n _21:9, 10_) it seems natural that there should have been instances\n of inspiration in written utterances also. In some cases this\n appears to have been only an inspiration of superintendence.\n Clement of Alexandria says only that Peter neither forbade nor\n encouraged Mark in his plan of writing the gospel. Iren\u00e6us tells\n us that Mark\u2019s gospel was written after the death of Peter. Papias\n says that Mark wrote down what he remembered to have heard from\n Peter. Luke does not seem to have been aware of any miraculous aid\n in his writing, and his methods appear to have been those of the\n ordinary historian.\n\n\n6. The chief proof of inspiration, however, must always be found in the\ninternal characteristics of the Scriptures themselves, as these are\ndisclosed to the sincere inquirer by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the\nHoly Spirit combines with the teaching of the Bible to convince the\nearnest reader that this teaching is as a whole and in all essentials\nbeyond the power of man to communicate, and that it must therefore have\nbeen put into permanent and written form by special inspiration of God.\n\n\n Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 105\u2014\u201cThe testimony of the\n Spirit is an argument from identity of effects\u2014the doctrines of\n experience and the doctrines of the Bible\u2014to identity of cause....\n God-wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible.... This covers\n the Bible as a whole, if not the whole of the Bible. It is true so\n far as I can test it. It is to be believed still further if there\n is no other evidence.\u201d Lyman Abbott, in his Theology of an\n Evolutionist, 105, calls the Bible \u201ca record of man\u2019s laboratory\n work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the\n consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man.\u201d\n This seems to us unduly subjective. We prefer to say that the\n Bible is also God\u2019s witness to us of his presence and working in\n human hearts and in human history\u2014a witness which proves its\n divine origin by awakening in us experiences similar to those\n which it describes, and which are beyond the power of man to\n originate.\n\n G. P. Fisher, in Mag. of Christ. Lit., Dec. 1892:239\u2014\u201cIs the Bible\n infallible? Not in the sense that all its statements extending\n even to minuti\u00e6 in matters of history and science are strictly\n accurate. Not in the sense that every doctrinal and ethical\n statement in all these books is incapable of amendment. The whole\n must sit in judgment on the parts. Revelation is progressive.\n There is a human factor as well as a divine. The treasure is in\n earthen vessels. But the Bible is infallible in the sense that\n whoever surrenders himself in a docile spirit to its teaching will\n fall into no hurtful error in matters of faith and charity. Best\n of all, he will find in it the secret of a new, holy and blessed\n life, \u2018hidden with Christ in God\u2019_ (Col. 3:3)_. The Scriptures are\n the witness to Christ.... Through the Scriptures he is truly and\n adequately made known to us.\u201d Denney, Death of Christ, 314\u2014\u201cThe\n unity of the Bible and its inspiration are correlative terms. If\n we can discern a real unity in it\u2014and I believe we can when we see\n that it converges upon and culminates in a divine love bearing the\n sin of the world\u2014then that unity and its inspiration are one and\n the same thing. And it is not only inspired as a whole, it is the\n only book that is inspired. It is the only book in the world to\n which God sets his seal in our hearts when we read in search of an\n answer to the question, How shall a sinful man be righteous with\n God?... The conclusion of our study of Inspiration should be the\n conviction that the Bible gives us a body of doctrine\u2014a \u2018faith\n which was once for all delivered unto the saints\u2019_ (Jude 3)_.\u201d\n\n\n\nIII. Theories of Inspiration.\n\n\n1. The Intuition-theory.\n\n\nThis holds that inspiration is but a higher development of that natural\ninsight into truth which all men possess to some degree; a mode of\nintelligence in matters of morals and religion which gives rise to sacred\nbooks, as a corresponding mode of intelligence in matters of secular truth\ngives rise to great works of philosophy or art. This mode of intelligence\nis regarded as the product of man\u2019s own powers, either without special\ndivine influence or with only the inworking of an impersonal God.\n\n\n This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and\n rationalistic views of man\u2019s independence of God, or with\n pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest\n manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence.\n Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in\n America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos.\n of Religion, 127-179\u2014\u201cInspiration is only a higher potency of what\n every man possesses in some degree.\u201d See also Francis W. Newman\n (brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith (= phases of\n unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and\n Experiences as a Minister: \u201cGod is infinite; therefore he is\n immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet\n transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space;\n matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power\n to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts\n in man as much as in nature\u201d\u2014quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker,\n 271. Hence Parker\u2019s view of Inspiration: If the conditions are\n fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man\u2019s gifts and to\n his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New\n Unitarianism, 68, says that \u201cthe Scriptures are inspired just so\n far as they are inspiring, and no more.\u201d\n\n W. C. Gannett, Life of Ezra Stiles Gannett, 196\u2014\u201cParker\u2019s\n spiritualism affirmed, as the grand truth of religion, the\n immanence of an infinitely perfect God in matter and mind, and his\n activity in both spheres.\u201d Martineau, Study of Religion,\n 2:178-180\u2014\u201cTheodore Parker treats the regular results of the human\n faculties as an immediate working of God, and regards the\n Principia of Newton as inspired.... What then becomes of the human\n personality? He calls God not only omnipresent, but omniactive. Is\n then Shakespeare only by courtesy author of Macbeth?... If this\n were more than rhetorical, it would be unconditional pantheism.\u201d\n Both nature and man are other names for God. Martineau is willing\n to grant that our intuitions and ideals are expressions of the\n Deity in us, but our personal reasoning and striving, he thinks,\n cannot be attributed to God. The word \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 has no plural:\n intellect, in whatever subject manifested, being all one, just as\n a truth is one and the same, in however many persons\u2019\n consciousness it may present itself; see Martineau, Seat of\n Authority, 403. Palmer, Studies in Theological Definition, 27\u2014\u201cWe\n can draw no sharp distinction between the human mind discovering\n truth, and the divine mind imparting revelation.\u201d Kuenen belongs\n to this school.\n\n\nWith regard to this theory we remark:\n\n(_a_) Man has, indeed, a certain natural insight into truth, and we grant\nthat inspiration uses this, so far as it will go, and makes it an\ninstrument in discovering and recording facts of nature or history.\n\n\n In the investigation, for example, of purely historical matters,\n such as Luke records, merely natural insight may at times have\n been sufficient. When this was the case, Luke may have been left\n to the exercise of his own faculties, inspiration only inciting\n and supervising the work. George Harris, Moral Evolution, 413\u2014\u201cGod\n could not reveal himself _to_ man, unless he first revealed\n himself _in_ man. If it should be written in letters on the sky:\n \u2018God is good,\u2019\u2014the words would have no meaning, unless goodness\n had been made known already in human volitions. Revelation is not\n by an occasional stroke, but by a continuous process. It is not\n superimposed, but inherent.... Genius is inspired; for the mind\n which perceives truth must be responsive to the Mind that made\n things the vehicles of thought.\u201d Sanday, Bampton Lectures on\n Inspiration: \u201cIn claiming for the Bible inspiration, we do not\n exclude the possibility of other lower or more partial degrees of\n inspiration in other literatures. The Spirit of God has doubtless\n touched other hearts and other minds ... in such a way as to give\n insight into truth, besides those which could claim descent from\n Abraham.\u201d Philo thought the LXX translators, the Greek\n philosophers, and at times even himself, to be inspired. Plato he\n regards as \u201cmost sacred\u201d (\u1f31\u03b5\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2), but all good men are in\n various degrees inspired. Yet Philo never quotes as authoritative\n any but the Canonical Books. He attributes to them an authority\n unique in its kind.\n\n\n(_b_) In all matters of morals and religion, however, man\u2019s insight into\ntruth is vitiated by wrong affections, and, unless a supernatural wisdom\ncan guide him, he is certain to err himself, and to lead others into\nerror.\n\n\n _1 Cor. 2:14\u2014_\u201cNow the natural man receiveth not the things of the\n Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot\n know them, because they are spiritually judged\u201d; _10\u2014_\u201cBut unto us\n God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all\n things, yea, the deep things of God.\u201d See quotation from\n Coleridge, in Shairp, Culture and Religion, 114\u2014\u201cWater cannot rise\n higher than its source; neither can human reasoning\u201d; Emerson,\n Prose Works, 1:474; 2:468\u2014\u201c\u2019Tis curious we only believe as deep as\n we live\u201d; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 183, 184. For this reason\n we hold to a communication of religious truth, at least at times,\n more direct and objective than is granted by George Adam Smith,\n Com. on Isaiah, 1:372\u2014\u201cTo Isaiah inspiration was nothing more nor\n less than the possession of certain strong moral and religious\n convictions, which he felt he owed to the communication of the\n Spirit of God, and according to which he interpreted, and even\n dared to foretell, the history of his people and of the world. Our\n study completely dispels, on the evidence of the Bible itself,\n that view of inspiration and prediction so long held in the\n church.\u201d If this is meant as a denial of any communication of\n truth other than the internal and subjective, we set over against\n it. _Num. 12:6-8\u2014_\u201cif there be a prophet among you, I the Lord\n will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him\n in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my\n house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and\n not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) The theory in question, holding as it does that natural insight is\nthe only source of religious truth, involves a self-contradiction;\u2014if the\ntheory be true, then one man is inspired to utter what a second is\ninspired to pronounce false. The Vedas, the Koran and the Bible cannot be\ninspired to contradict each other.\n\n\n The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by\n works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be\n inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to\n reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have\n the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to\n steal was praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal.\n On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of\n God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer,\n in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with\n each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson we may\n grant that the leading idea of inspiration is \u201cthe growth of the\n divine through the capacities of the human,\u201d while yet we deny\n that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment\n of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine\n working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the\n results of human sin.\n\n\n(_d_) It makes moral and religious truth to be a purely subjective thing\u2014a\nmatter of private opinion\u2014having no objective reality independently of\nmen\u2019s opinions regarding it.\n\n\n On this system truth is what men \u201ctrow\u201d; things are what men\n \u201cthink\u201d\u2014words representing only the subjective. \u201cBetter the Greek\n \u1f00\u03bb\u03ae\u03b8\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1 = \u2018the unconcealed\u2019 (objective truth)\u201d\u2014Harris, Philos.\n Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing\u2019s\n \u201csearch for truth\u201d is the only thing left to us. But who will\n search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not\n eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits\n is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes\n convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton\n became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan,\n successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that \u201cthere is\n nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.\u201d This same\n scepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the\n sayings: \u201cYour religion is good for you, and mine for me\u201d; \u201cOne\n man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.\u201d See Dix,\n Pantheism, Introd., 12. Richter: \u201cIt is not the goal, but the\n course, that makes us happy.\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) It logically involves the denial of a personal God who is truth and\nreveals truth, and so makes man to be the highest intelligence in the\nuniverse. This is to explain inspiration by denying its existence; since,\nif there be no personal God, inspiration is but a figure of speech for a\npurely natural fact.\n\n\n The _animus_ of this theory is denial of the supernatural. Like\n the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of\n atheism or pantheism. The view in question, as Hutton in his\n Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord\n came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: \u201cGo, write\n the history of the Decline and Fall!\u201d But, replies Hutton: Such a\n view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend,\n in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, _i. e._, the\n influence of his memory. The inward impulse of genius,\n Shakespeare\u2019s for example, is not properly denominated\n inspiration. See Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers,\n Eclipse of Faith, 73 _sq._ and 283 _sq._; Henderson, Inspiration\n (2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of\n Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau,\n by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20.\n\n\n2. The Illumination Theory.\n\n\nThis regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the\nreligious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater\nin degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. It\nholds, not that the Bible is, but that it contains, the word of God, and\nthat not the writings, but only the writers, were inspired. The\nillumination given by the Holy Spirit, however, puts the inspired writer\nonly in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate\nobjective truth beyond his ability to discover or understand.\n\n\n This theory naturally connects itself with Arminian views of mere\n co\u00f6peration with God. It differs from the Intuition-theory by\n containing several distinctively Christian elements: (1) the\n influence of a personal God; (2) an extraordinary work of the Holy\n Spirit; (3) the Christological character of the Scriptures,\n putting into form a revelation of which Christ is the centre\n (_Rev. 19:10_). But while it grants that the Scripture writers\n were \u201cmoved by the Holy Spirit\u201d (\u03c6\u03b5\u03c1\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u2014_2 Pet. 1:21_), it\n ignores the complementary fact that the Scripture itself is\n \u201cinspired of God\u201d (\u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\u2014_2 Tim. 3:16_). Luther\u2019s view\n resembles this; see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 236, 237.\n Schleiermacher, with the more orthodox Neander, Tholuck and\n Cremer, holds it; see Essays by Tholuck, in Herzog, Encyclop\u00e4die,\n and in Noyes, Theological Essays; Cremer, Lexicon N.T.,\n \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, and in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyc., 9:183-203. In\n France, Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 90, remarks: \u201cProphetic\n inspiration is piety raised to the second power\u201d\u2014it differs from\n the piety of common men only in intensity and energy. See also\n Godet, in Revue Chr\u00e9tienne, Jan. 1878.\n\n In England Coleridge propounded this view in his Confessions of an\n Inquiring Spirit (Works, 5:669)\u2014\u201cWhatever _finds me_ bears witness\n that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit; in the Bible there is\n more that _finds me_ than I have experienced in all other books\n put together.\u201d [Shall we then call Baxter\u2019s \u201cSaints\u2019 Rest\u201d\n inspired, while the Books of Chronicles are not?] See also F. W.\n Robertson, Sermon I; Life and Letters, letter 53, vol. 1:270;\n 2:143-150\u2014\u201cThe _other_ way, some twenty or thirty men in the\n world\u2019s history have had special communication, miraculous and\n from God; in _this_ way, all may have it, and by devout and\n earnest cultivation of the mind and heart may have it illimitably\n increased.\u201d Frederick W. H. Myers, Catholic Thoughts on the Bible\n and Theology, 10-20, emphasizes the idea that the Scriptures are,\n in their earlier parts, not merely inadequate, but partially\n untrue, and subsequently superseded by fuller revelations. The\n leading thought is that of _accommodation_; the record of\n revelation is not necessarily infallible. Allen, Religious\n Progress, 44, quotes Bishop Thirlwall: \u201cIf that Spirit by which\n every man spoke of old is a living and present Spirit, its later\n lessons may well transcend its earlier\u201d;\u2014Pascal\u2019s \u201ccolossal man\u201d\n is the race; the first men represented only infancy; _we_ are \u201cthe\n ancients\u201d, and we are wiser than our fathers. See also Farrar,\n Critical History of Free Thought, 473, note 50; Martineau, Studies\n in Christianity: \u201cOne Gospel in Many Dialects.\u201d\n\n Of American writers who favor this view, see J. F. Clarke,\n Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, 74; Curtis, Human Element in\n Inspiration; Whiton, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:63-72; Ladd, in Andover\n Review, July, 1885, in What is the Bible? and in Doctrine of\n Sacred Scripture, 1:759\u2014\u201ca large proportion of its writings\n inspired\u201d; 2:178, 275, 497\u2014\u201cthat fundamental misconception which\n identifies the Bible and the word of God\u201d; 2:488\u2014\u201cInspiration, as\n the subjective condition of Biblical revelation and the predicate\n of the word of God, is _specifically_ the same illumining,\n quickening, elevating and purifying work of the Holy Spirit as\n that which goes on in the persons of the entire believing\n community.\u201d Professor Ladd therefore pares down all predictive\n prophecy, and regards _Isaiah 53_, not as directly and solely, but\n only as typically, Messianic. Clarke, Christian Theology,\n 35-44\u2014\u201cInspiration is exaltation, quickening of ability,\n stimulation of spiritual power; it is uplifting and enlargement of\n capacity for perception, comprehension and utterance; and all\n under the influence of a thought, a truth, or an ideal that has\n taken possession of the soul.... Inspiration to write was not\n different in kind from the common influence of God upon his\n people.... Inequality in the Scriptures is plain.... Even if we\n were convinced that some book would better have been omitted from\n the Canon, our confidence in the Scriptures would not thereby be\n shaken. The Canon did not make Scripture, but Scripture made the\n Canon. The inspiration of the Bible does not prove its excellence,\n but its excellence proves its inspiration. The Spirit brought the\n Scriptures to help Christ\u2019s work, but not to take his place.\n Scripture says with Paul: \u2018Not that we have lordship over your\n faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast\u2019_\n (2 Cor. 1:24)_.\u201d\n\n E. G. Robinson: \u201cThe office of the Spirit in inspiration is not\n different from that which he performed for Christians at the time\n the gospels were written.... When the prophets say: \u2018Thus saith\n the Lord,\u2019 they mean simply that they have divine authority for\n what they utter.\u201d Calvin E. Stowe, History of Books of Bible,\n 19\u2014\u201cIt is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is not\n the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It was the men who\n wrote the Bible who were inspired.\u201d Thayer, Changed Attitude\n toward the Bible, 63\u2014\u201cIt was not before the polemic spirit became\n rife in the controversies which followed the Reformation that the\n fundamental distinction between the word of God and the record of\n that word became obliterated, and the pestilent tenet gained\n currency that the Bible is absolutely free from every error of\n every sort.\u201d Principal Cave, in Homiletical Review, Feb. 1892,\n admitting errors but none serious in the Bible, proposes a\n mediating statement for the present controversy, namely, that\n Revelation implies inerrancy, but that Inspiration does not.\n Whatever God reveals must be true, but many have become inspired\n without being rendered infallible. See also Mead, Supernatural\n Revelation, 291 _sq._\n\n\nWith regard to this theory we remark:\n\n(_a_) There is unquestionably an illumination of the mind of every\nbeliever by the Holy Spirit, and we grant that there may have been\ninstances in which the influence of the Spirit, in inspiration, amounted\nonly to illumination.\n\n\n Certain applications and interpretations of Old Testament\n Scripture, as for example, John the Baptist\u2019s application to Jesus\n of Isaiah\u2019s prophecy (_John 1:29\u2014_\u201cBehold, the Lamb of God, that\n taketh away [marg. \u201cbeareth\u201d] the sin of the world\u201d), and Peter\u2019s\n interpretation of David\u2019s words (_Acts 2:27\u2014_\u201cthou wilt not leave\n my soul unto Hades, Neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see\n corruption\u201d), may have required only the illuminating influence of\n the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which we may say that the\n Scriptures are inspired only to those who are themselves inspired.\n The Holy Spirit must show us Christ before we recognize the work\n of the Spirit in Scripture. The doctrines of atonement and of\n justification perhaps did not need to be newly revealed to the N.\n T. writers; illumination as to earlier revelations may have\n sufficed. But that Christ existed before his incarnation, and that\n there are personal distinctions in the Godhead, probably required\n revelation. Edison says that \u201cinspiration is simply perspiration.\u201d\n Genius has been defined as \u201cunlimited power to take pains.\u201d But it\n is more\u2014the power to do spontaneously and without effort what the\n ordinary man does by the hardest. Every great genius recognizes\n that this power is due to the inflowing into him of a Spirit\n greater than his own\u2014the Spirit of divine wisdom and energy. The\n Scripture writers attribute their understanding of divine things\n to the Holy Spirit; see next paragraph. On genius, as due to\n \u201csubliminal uprush,\u201d see F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality,\n 1:70-120.\n\n\n(_b_) But we deny that this was the constant method of inspiration, or\nthat such an influence can account for the revelation of new truth to the\nprophets and apostles. The illumination of the Holy Spirit gives no new\ntruth, but only a vivid apprehension of the truth already revealed. Any\noriginal communication of truth must have required a work of the Spirit\ndifferent, not in degree, but in kind.\n\n\n The Scriptures clearly distinguish between revelation, or the\n communication of new truth, and illumination, or the quickening of\n man\u2019s cognitive powers to perceive truth already revealed. No\n increase in the power of the eye or the telescope will do more\n than to bring into clear view what is already within its range.\n Illumination will not lift the veil that hides what is beyond.\n Revelation, on the other hand, is an \u201cunveiling\u201d\u2014the raising of a\n curtain, or the bringing within our range of what was hidden\n before. Such a special operation of God is described in _2 Sam.\n 23:2, 3\u2014_\u201cThe Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, And his word was upon\n my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to\n me\u201d; _Mat. 10:20\u2014_\u201cFor it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of\n your Father that speaketh in you\u201d; _1 Cor. 2:9-13\u2014_\u201cThings which\n eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the\n heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love\n him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the\n Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who\n among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man,\n which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the\n Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but\n the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that\n were freely given to us of God.\u201d\n\n Clairvoyance and second sight, of which along with many cases of\n imposition and exaggeration there seems to be a small residuum of\n proved fact, show that there may be extraordinary operations of\n our natural powers. But, as in the case of miracle, the\n inspiration of Scripture necessitated an exaltation of these\n natural powers such as only the special influence of the Holy\n Spirit can explain. That the product is inexplicable as due to\n mere illumination seems plain when we remember that revelation\n sometimes _excluded_ illumination as to the meaning of that which\n was communicated, for the prophets are represented in _1 Pet.\n 1:11_ as \u201csearching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of\n Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified\n beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should\n follow them.\u201d Since no degree of illumination can account for the\n prediction of \u201cthings that are to come\u201d (_John 16:13_), this\n theory tends to the denial of any immediate revelation in prophecy\n so-called, and the denial easily extends to any immediate\n revelation of doctrine.\n\n\n(_c_) Mere illumination could not secure the Scripture writers from\nfrequent and grievous error. The spiritual perception of the Christian is\nalways rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining\ndepravity. The subjective element so predominates in this theory, that no\ncertainty remains even with regard to the trustworthiness of the\nScriptures as a whole.\n\n\n While we admit imperfections of detail in matters not essential to\n the moral and religious teaching of Scripture, we claim that the\n Bible furnishes a sufficient guide to Christ and to salvation. The\n theory we are considering, however, by making the measure of\n holiness to be the measure of inspiration, renders even the\n collective testimony of the Scripture writers an uncertain guide\n to truth. We point out therefore that inspiration is not\n absolutely limited by the moral condition of those who are\n inspired. Knowledge, in the Christian, may go beyond conduct.\n Balaam and Caiaphas were not holy men, yet they were inspired\n (_Num. 23:5; John 11:49-52_). The promise of Christ assured at\n least the essential trustworthiness of his witnesses (_Mat. 10:7,\n 19, 20; John 14:26; 15:26, 27; 16:13; 17:8_). This theory that\n inspiration is a wholly subjective communication of truth leads to\n the practical rejection of important parts of Scripture, in fact\n to the rejection of all Scripture that professes to convey truth\n beyond the power of man to discover or to understand. Notice the\n progress from Thomas Arnold (Sermons, 2:185) to Matthew Arnold\n (Literature and Dogma, 134, 137). Notice also Swedenborg\u2019s\n rejection of nearly one half the Bible (Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra,\n Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,\n and the whole of the N. T. except the Gospels and the Apocalypse),\n connected with the claim of divine authority for his new\n revelation. \u201cHis interlocutors all Swedenborgize\u201d (R. W. Emerson).\n On Swedenborg, see Hours with the Mystics, 2:230; Moehler,\n Symbolism, 436-466; New Englander, Jan. 1874:195; Baptist Review,\n 1883:143-157; Pond, Swedenborgianism; Ireland, The Blot on the\n Brain, 1-129.\n\n\n(_d_) The theory is logically indefensible, as intimating that\nillumination with regard to truth can be imparted without imparting truth\nitself, whereas God must first furnish objective truth to be perceived\nbefore he can illuminate the mind to perceive the meaning of that truth.\n\n\n The theory is analogous to the views that preservation is a\n continued creation; knowledge is recognition; regeneration is\n increase of light. In order to preservation, something must first\n be created which can be preserved; in order to recognition,\n something must be known which can be recognized or known again; in\n order to make increase of light of any use, there must first be\n the power to see. In like manner, inspiration cannot be mere\n illumination, because the external necessarily precedes the\n internal, the objective precedes the subjective, the truth\n revealed precedes the apprehension of that truth. In the case of\n all truth that surpasses the normal powers of man to perceive or\n evolve, there must be special communication from God; revelation\n must go before inspiration; inspiration alone is not revelation.\n It matters not whether this communication of truth be from without\n or from within. As in creation, God can work from within, yet the\n new result is not explicable as mere reproduction of the past. The\n eye can see only as it receives and uses the external light\n furnished by the sun, even though it be equally true that without\n the eye the light of the sun would be nothing worth.\n\n Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 17-19, says that to Schleiermacher\n revelation is the original appearance of a proper religious life,\n which life is derived neither from external communication nor from\n invention and reflection, but from a divine impartation, which\n impartation can be regarded, not merely as an instructive\n influence upon man as an intellectual being, but as an endowment\n determining his whole personal existence\u2014an endowment analogous to\n the higher conditions of poetic and heroic exaltation. Pfleiderer\n himself would give the name \u201crevelation\u201d to \u201cevery original\n experience in which man becomes aware of, and is seized by,\n supersensible truth, truth which does not come from external\n impartation nor from purposed reflection, but from the unconscious\n and undivided transcendental ground of the soul, and so is\n received as an impartation from God through the medium of the\n soul\u2019s human activity.\u201d Kaftan, Dogmatik, 51 _sq._\u2014\u201cWe must put\n the conception of revelation in place of inspiration. Scripture is\n the record of divine revelation. We do not propose a new doctrine\n or inspiration, in place of the old. We need only revelation, and,\n here and there, providence. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is\n given, not to inspiration, but to revelation\u2014the truths that touch\n the human spirit and have been historically revealed.\u201d\n\n Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 182\u2014Edwards held that spiritual life in\n the soul is given by God only to his favorites and dear children,\n while inspiration may be thrown out, as it were, to dogs and\n swine\u2014a Balaam, Saul, and Judas. The greatest privilege of\n apostles and prophets was, not their inspiration, but their\n holiness. Better to have grace in the heart, than to be the mother\n of Christ (_Luke 11:27, 28_). Maltbie D. Babcock, in S. S. Times,\n 1901:590\u2014\u201cThe man who mourns because infallibility cannot be had\n in a church, or a guide, or a set of standards, does not know when\n he is well off. How could God develop our minds, our power of\n moral judgment, if there were no \u2018spirit to be tried\u2019 (_1 John\n 4:1_), no necessity for discrimination, no discipline of search\n and challenge and choice? To give the right answer to a problem is\n to put him on the side of infallibility so far as that answer is\n concerned, but it is to do him an ineffable wrong touching his\n real education. The blessing of life\u2019s schooling is not in knowing\n the right answer in advance, but in developing power through\n struggle.\u201d\n\n Why did John Henry Newman surrender to the Church of Rome? Because\n he assumed that an external authority is absolutely essential to\n religion, and, when such an assumption is followed, Rome is the\n only logical terminus. \u201cDogma was,\u201d he says, \u201cthe fundamental\n principle of my religion.\u201d Modern ritualism is a return to this\n medi\u00e6val notion. \u201cDogmatic Christianity,\u201d says Harnack, \u201cis\n Catholic. It needs an inerrant Bible, and an infallible church to\n interpret that Bible. The dogmatic Protestant is of the same camp\n with the sacramental and infallible Catholic.\u201d Lyman Abbott: \u201cThe\n new Reformation denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the\n Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the Church.\n There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is\n undesirable.... God has given us something far better,\u2014life....\n The Bible is the record of the gradual manifestation of God to man\n in human experience, in moral laws and their applications, and in\n the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh.\u201d\n\n Leighton Williams: \u201cThere is no inspiration apart from experience.\n Baptists are not sacramental, nor creedal, but experimental\n Christians\u201d\u2014not Romanists, nor Protestants, but believers in an\n inner light. \u201cLife, as it develops, awakens into\n self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes the most\n reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is the\n development. Within the limits of its own sphere, its authority is\n supreme. Prophecy is the utterance of the soul in moments of deep\n religious experience. The inspiration of Scripture writers is not\n a peculiar thing,\u2014it was given that the same inspiration might be\n perfected in those who read their writings.\u201d Christ is the only\n ultimate authority, and he reveals himself in three ways, through\n Scripture, the Reason, and the Church. Only Life saves, and the\n Way leads through the Truth to the Life. Baptists stand nearer to\n the Episcopal system of life than to the Presbyterian system of\n creed. Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136\u2014\u201cThe mistake is in looking to the\n Father above the world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit\n within the world, as the immediate source of revelation....\n Revelation is the unfolding of the life and thought of God within\n the world. One should not be troubled by finding errors in the\n Scriptures, any more than by finding imperfections in any physical\n work of God, as in the human eye.\u201d\n\n\n3. The Dictation-theory.\n\n\nThis theory holds that inspiration consisted in such a possession of the\nminds and bodies of the Scripture writers by the Holy Spirit, that they\nbecame passive instruments or amanuenses\u2014pens, not penmen, of God.\n\n\n This theory naturally connects itself with that view of miracles\n which regards them as suspensions or violations of natural law.\n Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:624 (transl. 2:186-189), calls it a\n \u201cdocetic view of inspiration. It holds to the abolition of second\n causes, and to the perfect passivity of the human instrument;\n denies any inspiration of persons, and maintains inspiration of\n writings only. This exaggeration of the divine element led to the\n hypothesis of a multiform divine sense in Scripture, and, in\n assigning the spiritual meaning, a rationalizing spirit led the\n way.\u201d Representatives of this view are Quenstedt, Theol. Didact.,\n 1:76\u2014\u201cThe Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those\n expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to\n themselves\u201d; Hooker, Works, 2:383\u2014\u201cThey neither spake nor wrote\n any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the\n Spirit put it into their mouths\u201d; Gaussen, Theopneusty, 61\u2014\u201cThe\n Bible is not a book which God charged men already enlightened to\n make under his protection; it is a book which God dictated to\n them\u201d; Cunningham, Theol. Lectures, 349\u2014\u201cThe verbal inspiration of\n the Scriptures [which he advocates] implies in general that the\n words of Scripture were suggested or dictated by the Holy Spirit,\n as well as the substance of the matter, and this, not only in some\n portion of the Scriptures, but through the whole.\u201d This reminds us\n of the old theory that God created fossils in the rocks, as they\n would be had ancient seas existed.\n\n Sanday, Bamp. Lect. on Inspiration, 74, quotes Philo as saying: \u201cA\n prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as\n interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and\n as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason\n departing from its place and yielding up the citadel of the soul,\n when the divine Spirit enters into it and dwells in it and strikes\n at the mechanism of the voice, sounding through it to the clear\n declaration of that which he prophesieth\u201d; in _Gen. 15:12\u2014_\u201cAbout\n the setting of the sun a trance came upon Abram\u201d\u2014the sun is the\n light of human reason which sets and gives place to the Spirit of\n God. Sanday, 78, says also: \u201cJosephus holds that even historical\n narratives, such as those at the beginning of the Pentateuch which\n were not written down by contemporary prophets, were obtained by\n direct inspiration from God. The Jews from their birth regard\n their Scripture as \u2018the decrees of God,\u2019 which they strictly\n observe, and for which if need be they are ready to die.\u201d The\n Rabbis said that \u201cMoses did not write one word out of his own\n knowledge.\u201d\n\n The Reformers held to a much freer view than this. Luther said:\n \u201cWhat does not carry Christ with it, is not apostolic, even though\n St. Peter or St. Paul taught it. If our adversaries fall back on\n the Scripture against Christ, we fall back on Christ against the\n Scripture.\u201d Luther refused canonical authority to books not\n actually written by apostles or composed, like Mark and Luke,\n under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical\n authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. Even\n Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the\n book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote\n Commentaries, and also thus ignored the second and third epistles\n of John; see Prof. R. E. Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,\n 1898:803, 804. The dictation-theory is post-Reformation. H. P.\n Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 85\u2014\u201cAfter the Council of\n Trent, the Roman Catholic polemic became sharper. It became the\n endeavor of that party to show the necessity of tradition and the\n untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led the Protestants to\n defend the Bible more tenaciously than before.\u201d The Swiss Formula\n of Consensus in 1675 not only called the Scriptures \u201cthe very word\n of God,\u201d but declared the Hebrew vowel-points to be inspired, and\n some theologians traced them back to Adam. John Owen held to the\n inspiration of the vowel-points; see Horton, Inspiration and\n Bible, 8. Of the age which produced the Protestant dogmatic\n theology, Charles Beard, in the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, says:\n \u201cI know no epoch of Christianity to which I could more confidently\n point in illustration of the fact that where there is most\n theology, there is often least religion.\u201d\n\n\nOf this view we may remark:\n\n(_a_) We grant that there are instances when God\u2019s communications were\nuttered in an audible voice and took a definite form of words, and that\nthis was sometimes accompanied with the command to commit the words to\nwriting.\n\n\n For examples, see _Ex. 3:4\u2014_\u201cGod called unto him out of the midst\n of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses\u201d; _20:22\u2014_\u201cYe yourselves have\n seen that I have talked with you from heaven\u201d; _cf._ _Heb.\n 12:19\u2014_\u201cthe voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated\n that no word more should be spoken unto them\u201d; _Numbers 7:89\u2014_\u201cAnd\n when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, then\n he heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat\n that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two\n cherubim: and he spake unto him\u201d; _8:1\u2014_\u201cAnd Jehovah spake unto\n Moses, saying,\u201d etc.; _Dan. 4:31\u2014_\u201cWhile the word was in the\n king\u2019s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king\n Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from\n thee\u201d; _Acts 9:5\u2014_\u201cAnd he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I\n am Jesus whom thou persecutest\u201d; _Rev. 19:9\u2014_\u201cAnd he saith unto\n me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper\n of the Lamb\u201d; _21:5\u2014_\u201cAnd he that sitteth on the throne said,\n Behold, I make all things new\u201d; _cf._ _1:10, 11\u2014_\u201cand I heard\n behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest,\n write in a book and send it to the seven churches.\u201d So the voice\n from heaven at the baptism, and at the transfiguration, of Jesus\n (_Mat. 3:17_, and _17:5_; see Broadus, Amer. Com., on these\n passages).\n\n\n(_b_) The theory in question, however, rests upon a partial induction of\nScripture facts,\u2014unwarrantably assuming that such occasional instances of\ndirect dictation reveal the invariable method of God\u2019s communications of\ntruth to the writers of the Bible.\n\n\n Scripture nowhere declares that this immediate communication of\n the words was universal. On _1 Cor. 2:13\u2014\u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f10\u03bd \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03bf\u03af\u03c2\n \u03b1\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03af\u03bd\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03af\u03b1\u03c2, \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2, \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u1fbd \u1f10\u03bd \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03bf\u00ee\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03cd\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2_, the text\n usually cited as proof of invariable dictation\u2014Meyer says: \u201cThere\n is no dictation here; \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03bf\u00ee\u03c2 excludes everything mechanical.\u201d\n Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 333, 349\u2014\u201cAs human wisdom did\n not dictate word for word, so the Spirit did not.\u201d Paul claims for\n Scripture simply a general style of plainness which is due to the\n influence of the Spirit. Manly: \u201cDictation to an amanuensis is not\n _teaching_.\u201d Our Revised Version properly translates the remainder\n of the verse, _1 Cor. 2:13\u2014_\u201ccombining spiritual things with\n spiritual words.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) It cannot account for the manifestly human element in the\nScriptures. There are peculiarities of style which distinguish the\nproductions of each writer from those of every other, and there are\nvariations in accounts of the same transaction which are inconsistent with\nthe theory of a solely divine authorship.\n\n\n Notice Paul\u2019s anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and indignation\n (_Rom. 5:12 __sq._, _2 Cor. 11:1_ _sq._), and his ignorance of the\n precise number whom he had baptized (_1 Cor. 1:16_). One beggar or\n two (_Mat. 20:30_; _cf._ _Luke 18:35_); \u201cabout five and twenty or\n thirty furlongs\u201d_ (John 6:19)_; \u201cshed for many\u201d (_Mat. 26:28_ has\n \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03af, _Mark 14:24_ and _Luke 22:20_ have \u1f51\u03c0\u03ad\u03c1). Dictation of words\n which were immediately to be lost by imperfect transcription?\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 33-37\u2014\u201cWe are under no obligation to\n maintain the complete inerrancy of the Scriptures. In them we have\n the freedom of life, rather than extraordinary precision of\n statement or accuracy of detail. We have become Christians in\n spite of differences between the evangelists. The Scriptures are\n various, progressive, free. There is no authority in Scripture for\n applying the word \u2019inspired\u2019 to our present Bible as a whole, and\n theology is not bound to employ this word in defining the\n Scriptures. Christianity is founded in history, and will stand\n whether the Scriptures are inspired or not. If special inspiration\n were wholly disproved, Christ would still be the Savior of the\n world. But the divine element in the Scriptures will never be\n disproved.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) It is inconsistent with a wise economy of means, to suppose that the\nScripture writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already,\nor what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural\npowers.\n\n\n Why employ eye-witnesses at all? Why not dictate the gospels to\n Gentiles living a thousand years before? God respects the\n instruments he has called into being, and he uses them according\n to their constitutional gifts. George Eliot represents\n Stradivarius as saying:\u2014\u201cIf my hand slacked, I should rob\n God\u2014since he is fullest good\u2014Leaving a blank instead of violins.\n God cannot make Antonio Stradivari\u2019s violins, Without Antonio.\u201d\n _Mark 11:3\u2014_\u201cThe Lord hath need of him,\u201d may apply to man as well\n as beast.\n\n\n(_e_) It contradicts what we know of the law of God\u2019s working in the soul.\nThe higher and nobler God\u2019s communications, the more fully is man in\npossession and use of his own faculties. We cannot suppose that this\nhighest work of man under the influence of the Spirit was purely\nmechanical.\n\n\n Joseph receives communication by vision (_Mat. 1:20_); Mary, by\n words of an angel spoken in her waking moments (_Luke 1:28_). The\n more advanced the recipient, the more conscious the communication.\n These four theories might almost be called the Pelagian, the\n Arminian, the Docetic, and the Dynamical. Sabatier, Philos.\n Religion, 41, 42, 87\u2014\u201cIn the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Father\n says at the baptism to Jesus: \u2018My Son, in all the prophets I was\n waiting for thee, that thou mightest come, and that I might rest\n in thee. For thou art my Rest.\u2019 Inspiration becomes more and more\n internal, until in Christ it is continuous and complete. Upon the\n opposite Docetic view, the most perfect inspiration should have\n been that of Balaam\u2019s ass.\u201d Semler represents the Pelagian or\n Ebionitic view, as Quenstedt represents this Docetic view. Semler\n localizes and temporalizes the contents of Scripture. Yet, though\n he carried this to the extreme of excluding any divine authorship,\n he did good service in leading the way to the historical study of\n the Bible.\n\n\n4. The Dynamical Theory.\n\n\nThe true view holds, in opposition to the first of these theories, that\ninspiration is not simply a natural but also a supernatural fact, and that\nit is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man.\n\nIt holds, in opposition to the second, that inspiration belongs, not only\nto the men who wrote the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures which they\nwrote, so that these Scriptures, when taken together, constitute a\ntrustworthy and sufficient record of divine revelation.\n\nIt holds, in opposition to the third theory, that the Scriptures contain a\nhuman as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of\ndivinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human moulds and adapted\nto ordinary human intelligence.\n\nIn short, inspiration is characteristically neither natural, partial, nor\nmechanical, but supernatural, plenary, and dynamical. Further explanations\nwill be grouped under the head of The Union of the Divine and Human\nElements in Inspiration, in the section which immediately follows.\n\n\n If the small circle be taken as symbol of the human element in\n inspiration, and the large circle as symbol of the divine, then\n the Intuition-theory would be represented by the small circle\n alone; the Dictation-theory by the large circle alone; the\n Illumination-theory by the small circle external to the large, and\n touching it at only a single point; the Dynamical-theory by two\n concentric circles, the small included in the large. Even when\n inspiration is but the exaltation and intensification of man\u2019s\n natural powers, it must be considered the work of God as well as\n of man. God can work from within as well as from without. As\n creation and regeneration are works of the immanent rather than of\n the transcendent God, so inspiration is in general a work within\n man\u2019s soul, rather than a communication to him from without.\n Prophecy may be natural to perfect humanity. Revelation is an\n unveiling, and the R\u00f6ntgen rays enable us to see through a veil.\n But the insight of the Scripture writers into truth so far beyond\n their mental and moral powers is inexplicable except by a\n supernatural influence upon their minds; in other words, except as\n they were lifted up into the divine Reason and endowed with the\n wisdom of God.\n\n Although we propose this Dynamical-theory as one which best\n explains the Scripture facts, we do not regard this or any other\n theory as of essential importance. No theory of inspiration is\n necessary to Christian faith. Revelation precedes inspiration.\n There was religion before the Old Testament, and an oral gospel\n before the New Testament. God might reveal without recording;\n might permit record without inspiration; might inspire without\n vouching for anything more than religious teaching and for the\n history, only so far as was necessary to that religious teaching.\n Whatever theory of inspiration we frame, should be the result of a\n strict induction of the Scripture facts, and not an a priori\n scheme to which Scripture must be conformed. The fault of many\n past discussions of the subject is the assumption that God must\n adopt some particular method of inspiration, or secure an absolute\n perfection of detail in matters not essential to the religious\n teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the best theory of inspiration is\n to have no theory.\n\n Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration, 8\u2014\u201cVery many religious and\n historical truths must be established before we come to the\n question of inspiration, as for instance the being and moral\n government of God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a\n redemptive scheme, the general historical truth of the Scriptures,\n and the validity and authority of the revelation of God\u2019s will\n which they contain, i. e., the general truth of Christianity and\n of its doctrines. Hence it follows that while the inspiration of\n the Scriptures is true, and being true is a principle fundamental\n to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is\n not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth\n of the Christian religion.\u201d Warfield, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,\n April, 1893:208\u2014\u201cWe do not found the whole Christian system on the\n doctrine of inspiration.... Were there no such thing as\n inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential\n doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us\u201d\u2014in the gospels and in\n the living church. F. L. Patton, Inspiration, 22\u2014\u201cI must take\n exception to the disposition of some to stake the fortunes of\n Christianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to\n any one in profound conviction of the truth and importance of the\n doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the immense\n argumentative advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether\n from the inspiration of the documents on which it rests.\u201d So argue\n also Sanday, Oracles of God, and Dale, The Living Christ.\n\n\n\nIV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.\n\n\n1. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are\ntherefore never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine.\n\nThe mystery of inspiration consists in neither of these terms separately,\nbut in the union of the two. Of this, however, there are analogies in the\ninterpenetration of human powers by the divine efficiency in regeneration\nand sanctification, and in the union of the divine and human natures in\nthe person of Jesus Christ.\n\n\n According to \u201cDalton\u2019s law,\u201d each gas is as a vacuum to every\n other: \u201cGases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as\n into vacua.\u201d Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not\n furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen\n and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but\n they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine\n elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, \u201cMens humana capax divin\u00e6,\u201d\n is one of the most important principles of a true theology. \u201cThe\n Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and\n to receive himself. The Reformed think of the Deity as ever\n preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear\n pantheism and idolatry\u201d (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our\n Lord\u2019s Knowledge, xx).\n\n Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 66\u2014\u201cThat initial mystery, the relation\n in our consciousness between the individual and the universal\n element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and\n man,\u2014how can we comprehend their co\u00ebxistence and their union, and\n yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man to-day who\n has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a\n glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our\n consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence,\n and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty\n cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and\n saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a\n universal and eternal Power? \u2018In Deo vivimus, movemur, et\n sumus.\u2019... This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it\n religion itself would no longer exist.\u201d Quackenbos, in Harper\u2019s\n Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that \u201chypnotic suggestion is but\n inspiration.\u201d The analogy of human influence thus communicated may\n at least help us to some understanding of the divine.\n\n\n2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be\nconceived of as one of external impartation and reception.\n\nOn the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified\nto do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as\nfrom without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most\nconscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of\nintellect, emotion, and will.\n\n\n The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may\n rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the\n experience of the preacher who under the influence of God\u2019s Spirit\n is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer\n apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than\n belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive\n vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in\n possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the\n Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination\n granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the\n truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This\n inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like\n miracles, inspiration may use man\u2019s natural powers, but man\u2019s\n natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John\n were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing\n Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration\n itself, but only the preparation for it.\n\n Beyschlag: \u201cWith John, remembrance and exposition had become\n inseparable.\u201d E. G. Robinson; \u201cNovelists do not _create_\n characters,\u2014they reproduce with modifications material presented\n to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of\n Christ.\u201d Hutton, Essays, 2:231\u2014\u201cThe Psalmists vacillate between\n the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of\n God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose\n themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they\n are again recalled to themselves.\u201d Stanley, Life and Letters,\n 1:380\u2014\u201cRevelation is not resolved into a mere human process\n because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through\n which it was communicated\u201d; 2:102\u2014\u201cYou seem to me to transfer too\n much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern\n notions of _divine origin_.... Our notion, or rather, the modern\n Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force\n or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from\n those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental,\n Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those\n agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. _Our_ notions of\n inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute\n perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that\n inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity,\n contradiction.\u201d Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182\u2014\u201cIn inspiration the\n thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than\n the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is _in\n themselves_. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may\n be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used.\n Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.\u201d This\n last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the\n true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may\n also communicate truth from without.\n\n\n3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own\nservice, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with\ntheir defects of culture and literary style.\n\nEvery imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may\nexist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God\u2019s word, in the sense that it\npresents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a\nselect class but for the common mind. Rightly understood, this very\nhumanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.\n\n\n Locke: \u201cWhen God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.\u201d\n Prof. Day: \u201cThe bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a\n bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering\n forth the majesty of the mind of God.\u201d The paragraphs of the Koran\n are called _ayat_, or \u201csign,\u201d from their supposed supernatural\n elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart.\n The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made\n flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth\n Christ (_John 3:8_); he is known only by his effects\u2014a pattern for\n preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (_2 Cor. 3:6_). See\n Conant on Genesis, 65.\n\n The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the\n agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very\n pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat\n of Authority, 289\u2014\u201cThough the pattern be divine, the web that\n bears it must still be human.\u201d Jackson, James Martineau,\n 255\u2014\u201cPaul\u2019s metaphor of the \u2018treasure in earthen vessels\u2019_ (2 Cor.\n 4:7)_ you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the\n treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of\n the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only\n in its spirit, but also in its letter.\u201d Charles Hodge, Syst.\n Theol., 1:157\u2014\u201cWhen God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes,\n they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the\n tribute will be lost.\u201d\n\n Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25\u2014\u201cThe \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 of a\n dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the\n \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing\n more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced,\n cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely\n manipulated automaton\u201d; \u201cIn Scripture there may be as much\n imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent\n with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end.\n Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and\n religious truth sufficient for men\u2019s salvation, or an infallible\n and sufficient rule of _faith and practice_.\u201d J. S. Wrightnour:\n \u201cInspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his\n instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes,\n peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all\n are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them\n selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the\n Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given\n us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual\n instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always\n given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best\n adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready\n stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and\n smelted.\u201d Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown\u2019s Rab and his\n Friends, 274\u2014\u201cI see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the\n human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God\u2019s book, because\n it is man\u2019s book.\u201d\n\n\n4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary\ncomposition.\n\nAs we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and\nfiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb;\nof allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we\ncannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of\ncommunicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case\nwhich of these methods he has adopted.\n\n\n In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works\n \u201cin divers manners\u201d_ (Heb. 1:1)_. The Scriptures, like the books\n of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their\n purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not\n be made to \u201cgo on all fours,\u201d when it was meant to walk erect and\n to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is\n personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical\n overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of\n important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even\n myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise\n apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is\n needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism\n is lacking in this literary sense.\n\n Denney, Studies in Theology, 218\u2014\u201cThere is a stage in which the\n whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or\n history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us,\n in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God\n does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when\n it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings\n of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to\n itself by the child-mind of the race, may be made the medium of\n revelation.... But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis\n science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority\n in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical\n form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of\n God\u2019s creative wisdom and power.\u201d Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356\u2014\u201cThe\n various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their\n different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie\n fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical\n stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a\n product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later\n product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet\n distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.\u201d So Grote\n calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to\n which they belonged\u2014the common root of all the history, poetry,\n philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and proceeded from\n it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in\n which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not\n deny that it exists. Robert Browning\u2019s Clive and Andrea del Sarto\n are essentially correct representations of historical characters,\n though the details in each poem are imaginary.\n\n\n5. The inspiring Spirit has given the Scriptures to the world by a process\nof gradual evolution.\n\nAs in communicating the truths of natural science, God has communicated\nthe truths of religion by successive steps, germinally at first, more\nfully as men have been able to comprehend them. The education of the race\nis analogous to the education of the child. First came pictures,\nobject-lessons, external rites, predictions; then the key to these in\nChrist, and then didactic exposition in the Epistles.\n\n\n There have been \u201cdivers portions,\u201d as well as \u201cdivers manners\u201d_\n (Heb. 1:1)_. The early prophecies like that of _Gen. 3:15_\u2014the\n seed of the woman bruising the serpent\u2019s head\u2014were but faint\n glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable\n of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses,\n David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and\n transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men\n of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As\n all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest\n mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped\n up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every\n scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may\n dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may\n demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the\n process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the\n demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these\n methods. But while there are instances of dictation and\n illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the\n general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of\n man\u2019s powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for\n himself.\n\n A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339\u2014\u201cInspiration is that,\n seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from\n the human side.... Every addition to knowledge, whether in the\n individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or\n theological, is due to a co\u00f6peration between the human soul which\n assimilates and the divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or\n could act, in independent isolation. For \u2018unassisted reason\u2019 is a\n fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even\n the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the\n configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled....\n Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.\u201d\n The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There\n can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from\n thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history\n has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr,\n Problem of the O. T., 431-478.\n\n\n6. Inspiration did not guarantee inerrancy in things not essential to the\nmain purpose of Scripture.\n\nInspiration went no further than to secure a trustworthy transmission by\nthe sacred writers of the truth they were commissioned to deliver. It was\nnot omniscience. It was a bestowal of various kinds and degrees of\nknowledge and aid, according to need; sometimes suggesting new truth,\nsometimes presiding over the collection of pre\u00ebxisting material and\nguarding from essential error in the final elaboration. As inspiration was\nnot omniscience, so it was not complete sanctification. It involved\nneither personal infallibility, nor entire freedom from sin.\n\n\n God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does\n not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in\n nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration\n can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in\n some respects imperfect. God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew\n history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a\n progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not\n perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, \u201cbecause he stood\n condemned\u201d_ (Gal 2:11)_. But Peter differed from Paul, not in\n public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own\n teachings (_cf._ _Acts 15:6-11_); _versus_ Norman Fox, in Bap.\n Rev., 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an\n ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message.\n So with the apostles\u2019 ignorance of the time of Christ\u2019s second\n coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand\n Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once;\n their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and\n all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God\n saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many\n things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men\n uttered, they did not, when they uttered them, fully understand.\n\n Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 53, 54\u2014\u201cThe word is divine-human in the\n sense that it has for its contents divine truth in human,\n historical, and individually conditioned form. The Holy Scripture\n contains the word of God in a way plain, and entirely sufficient\n to beget saving faith.\u201d Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 87\u2014\u201cInspiration\n is not a miraculous and therefore incredible thing, but normal and\n in accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and\n finite spirit, a divine inflowing of _mental_ light precisely\n analogous to that _moral_ influence which divines call grace. As\n every devout and obedient soul may expect to share in divine\n grace, so the devout and obedient souls of all the ages have\n shared, as Parker taught, in divine inspiration. And, as the\n reception of grace even in large measure does not render us\n _impeccable_, so neither does the reception of inspiration render\n us _infallible_.\u201d We may concede to Miss Cobbe that inspiration\n consists with imperfection, while yet we grant to the Scripture\n writers an authority higher than our own.\n\n\n7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct\ncommunication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.\n\nThought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes\nwords. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy\nSpirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to\npublish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of\ntheir own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single\nexception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of\nwrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration\nis therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which\ntaken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted\ninto Scripture.\n\n\n Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought\n is possible without language. The concept may exist without words.\n See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan.\n 1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker\u2019s\n memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil\u2019s hand only when\n it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk\n alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be\n rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever\n the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper\n material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the\n sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words.\n Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the\n suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all\n Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that\n divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of\n the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration\n (2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James,\n Psychology, 1:266 _sq._\n\n Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration:\n \u201cThe bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine\n is sure to be spilled\u201d; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave\n language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke\n with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but \u201cspake\n from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit\u201d_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_. So\n Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171\u2014\u201cWhy the minute study of the\n _words_ of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search\n after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to\n the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring\n of mood and tense and accent?\u201d Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon\n thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe,\n Dogmatics, 238, speaks of \u201ca language of the Holy Ghost.\u201d\n Oetinger: \u201cIt is the style of the heavenly court.\u201d But Broadus, an\n almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on _Mat. 3:17_,\n says that the difference between \u201cThis is my beloved Son,\u201d and\n _Luke 3:22\u2014_\u201cThou art my beloved Son,\u201d should make us cautious in\n theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some\n cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal\n inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T.\n quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the\n Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus\u2019 own words are reported\n with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The\n Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.\n\n Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that\n there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F.\n Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four\n children of different mothers. All of these children were dumb,\n though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech\n were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never\n talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The\n children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract.\n So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings\n for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and\n contentious talk will not accomplish the result,\u2014it must be the\n talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max\n M\u00fcller\u2019s Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of M\u00fcller\n that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor\u2019s\n reply to Santa Anna: \u201cGeneral Taylor never surrenders!\u201d was a\n substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic,\n version of the General\u2019s actual profane words. Each Scripture\n writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own\n experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving\n off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own\n heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching\n of what he had been taught, and by telling what God\u2019s plan of\n mercy was to all. Augustine: \u201cScriptura est sensus\n Scriptur\u00e6\u201d\u2014\u201cScripture _is_ what Scripture _means_.\u201d Among the\n theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as\n to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching,\n are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van\n Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.\n\n\n8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading\ninspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an\norganic whole.\n\nSince the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be\njudged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part.\nThe Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human\nproductions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind.\nSeemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with\nthe whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the\nlife of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is\npart of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in\nthe New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the\nBible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is\nthe person and work of Jesus Christ.\n\n\n The Bible says: \u201cThere is no God\u201d_ (Ps. 14:1)_; but then, this is\n to be taken with the context: \u201cThe fool hath said in his heart.\u201d\n Satan\u2019s \u201cit is written,\u201d_ (Mat. 4:6)_ is supplemented by Christ\u2019s\n \u201cIt is written again\u201d_ (Mat. 4:7)_. Trivialities are like the hair\n and nails of the body\u2014they have their place as parts of a complete\n and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which\n mentions Paul\u2019s cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of\n genuineness\u2014a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of\n temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the\n limits of inspiration,\u2014even Paul must have books and parchments.\n _Col. 2:21\u2014_\u201cHandle not, nor taste, nor touch\u201d\u2014is to be\n interpreted by the context in _verse 20\u2014_\u201cwhy ... do ye subject\n yourselves to ordinances?\u201d and by _verse 22\u2014_\u201cafter the precepts\n and doctrines of men.\u201d Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164\u2014\u201cThe difference\n between John\u2019s gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that\n between man\u2019s brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the\n life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.\u201d Like\n railway coupons, Scripture texts are \u201cNot good if detached.\u201d\n\n Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies\n the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says\n that \u201cA theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because\n the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.\u201d These denials proceed from\n an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T.\n history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers\n at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents\n are yet to come. See Bp. Bull\u2019s Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and\n Bruce, Apologetics, 323\u2014\u201cThe literature of the early stages of\n revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it\n records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see\n the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T.\n as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of\n the universe in the fiery cloud.\u201d Crane, Religion of To-morrow,\n 224\u2014Every part is to be modified by every other part. No verse is\n true _out of_ the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true.\n Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350\u2014\u201cTo recognize the inspiration of the\n Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.\u201d\n Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)\u2014\u201cTruth nowhere\n lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet\n Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held\n tenaciously by me.\u201d On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr,\n Problem of the O. T., 27-51.\n\n\n9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in\nspite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose,\nfurnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.\n\nThe recognition of the Holy Spirit\u2019s agency makes it rational and natural\nto believe in the organic unity of Scripture. When the earlier parts are\ntaken in connection with the later, and when each part is interpreted by\nthe whole, most of the difficulties connected with inspiration disappear.\nTaken together, with Christ as its culmination and explanation, the Bible\nfurnishes the Christian rule of faith and practice.\n\n\n The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and\n What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not\n invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The\n ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard\n to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of\n merely secular knowledge.\u2014Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter,\n and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down\n principles which have been accepted as authority for generations.\n But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and\n science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In\n some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least\n affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional\n slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to\n be an authority in matters of his art?\u2014The Duke of Wellington said\n once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of\n Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant,\n and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian\n gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at\n noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole\n account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle\n of Waterloo was ever fought at all?\n\n Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the\n same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is\n incomparably superior to all other books, and is \u201cable to make\n thee wise unto salvation\u201d_ (2 Tim. 3:15)_. Hooker, Eccl. Polity:\n \u201cWhatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise\n than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as\n incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the\n credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take\n great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can\n have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which\n it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.\u201d Baxter,\n Works, 21:349\u2014\u201cThose men who think that these human imperfections\n of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages\n of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith\n and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might\n enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of\n the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had\n not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any\n more than they were indefectible in life.\u201d\n\n The Bible, says Beet, \u201ccontains possible errors in small details\n or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great\n facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these\n only, our faith is based.\u201d Evans, Bib. Scholarship and\n Inspiration, 15, 18, 65\u2014\u201cTeach that the shell is part of the\n kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw\n away shell and kernel together.... This overstatement of\n inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll sceptics.... If in\n creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection\n why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can\n appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the _written_\n word?\u201d\n\n We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic,\n 71\u2014\u201cLet the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be\n adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its\n inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none\n will believe when they tell of heavenly things.\u201d Watts adduces\n instances of Spinoza\u2019s giving up the form while claiming to hold\n the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon\n of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no _a priori_ theory of\n perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of\n actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so\n in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect\n methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: \u201cI\n observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries,\n because they are beside the way to which they have been so long\n used. _Resolved_, if ever I live to years, that I will be\n impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and\n receive them if rational, however long soever I have been used to\n another way of thinking.\u201d\n\n Bowne, The Immanence of God, 109, 110\u2014\u201cThose who would find the\n source of certainty and the seat of authority in the Scriptures\n alone, or in the church alone, or reason and conscience alone,\n rather than in the complex and indivisible coworking of all these\n factors, should be reminded of the history of religious thought.\n The stiffest doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has not prevented\n warring interpretations; and those who would place the seat of\n authority in reason and conscience are forced to admit that\n outside illumination may do much for both. In some sense the\n religion of the spirit is a very important fact, but when it sets\n up in opposition to the religion of a book, the light that is in\n it is apt to turn to darkness.\u201d\n\n\n10. While inspiration constitutes Scripture an authority more trustworthy\nthan are individual reason or the creeds of the church, the only ultimate\nauthority is Christ himself.\n\nChrist has not so constructed Scripture as to dispense with his personal\npresence and teaching by his Spirit. The Scripture is the imperfect mirror\nof Christ. It is defective, yet it reflects him and leads to him.\nAuthority resides not in it, but in him, and his Spirit enables the\nindividual Christian and the collective church progressively to\ndistinguish the essential from the non-essential, and so to perceive the\ntruth as it is in Jesus. In thus judging Scripture and interpreting\nScripture, we are not rationalists, but are rather believers in him who\npromised to be with us alway even unto the end of the world and to lead us\nby his Spirit into all the truth.\n\n\n James speaks of the law as a mirror (_James 1:23-25\u2014_\u201clike unto a\n man beholding his natural face in a mirror ... looketh into the\n perfect law\u201d); the law convicts of sin because it reflects Christ.\n Paul speaks of the gospel as a mirror (_2 Cor. 3:18\u2014_\u201cwe all,\n beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord\u201d); the gospel\n transforms us because it reflects Christ. Yet both law and gospel\n are imperfect; they are like mirrors of polished metal, whose\n surface is often dim, and whose images are obscure; (_1 Cor.\n 13:12\u2014_\u201cFor now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to\n face\u201d); even inspired men know only in part, and prophesy only in\n part. Scripture itself is the conception and utterance of a child,\n to be done away when that which is perfect is come, and we see\n Christ as he is.\n\n Authority is the right to impose beliefs or to command obedience.\n The only ultimate authority is God, for he is truth, justice and\n love. But he can impose beliefs and command obedience only as he\n is known. Authority belongs therefore only to God revealed, and\n because Christ is God revealed he can say: \u201cAll authority hath\n been given unto me in heaven and on earth\u201d_ (Mat. 28:18)_. The\n final authority in religion is Jesus Christ. Every one of his\n revelations of God is authoritative. Both nature and human nature\n are such revelations. He exercises his authority through delegated\n and subordinate authorities, such as parents and civil government.\n These rightfully claim obedience so long as they hold to their own\n respective spheres and recognize their relation of dependence upon\n him. \u201cThe powers that be are ordained of God\u201d_ (Rom. 13:1)_, even\n though they are imperfect manifestations of his wisdom and\n righteousness. The decisions of the Supreme Court are\n authoritative even though the judges are fallible and come short\n of establishing absolute justice. Authority is not infallibility,\n in the government either of the family or of the state.\n\n The church of the middle ages was regarded as possessed of\n absolute authority. But the Protestant Reformation showed how vain\n were these pretensions. The church is an authority only as it\n recognizes and expresses the supreme authority of Christ. The\n Reformers felt the need of some external authority in place of the\n church. They substituted the Scripture. The phrase \u201cthe word of\n God,\u201d which designates the truth orally uttered or affecting the\n minds of men, came to signify only a book. Supreme authority was\n ascribed to it. It often usurped the place of Christ. While we\n vindicate the proper authority of Scripture, we would show that\n its authority is not immediate and absolute, but mediate and\n relative, through human and imperfect records, and needing a\n supplementary and divine teaching to interpret them. The authority\n of Scripture is not apart from Christ or above Christ, but only in\n subordination to him and to his Spirit. He who inspired Scripture\n must enable us to interpret Scripture. This is not a doctrine of\n rationalism, for it holds to man\u2019s absolute dependence upon the\n enlightening Spirit of Christ. It is not a doctrine of mysticism,\n for it holds that Christ teaches us only by opening to us the\n meaning of his past revelations. We do not expect any new worlds\n in our astronomy, nor do we expect any new Scriptures in our\n theology. But we do expect that the same Christ who gave the\n Scriptures will give us new insight into their meaning and will\n enable us to make new applications of their teachings.\n\n The right and duty of private judgment with regard to Scripture\n belong to no ecclesiastical caste, but are inalienable liberties\n of the whole church of Christ and of each individual member of\n that church. And yet this judgment is, from another point of view,\n no private judgment. It is not the judgment of arbitrariness or\n caprice. It does not make the Christian consciousness supreme, if\n we mean by this term the consciousness of Christians apart from\n the indwelling Christ. When once we come to Christ, he joins us to\n himself, he seats us with him upon his throne, he imparts to us\n his Spirit, he bids us use our reason in his service. In judging\n Scripture, we make not ourselves but Christ supreme, and recognize\n him as the only ultimate and infallible authority in matters of\n religion. We can believe that the total revelation of Christ in\n Scripture is an authority superior to individual reason or to any\n single affirmation of the church, while yet we believe that this\n very authority of Scripture has its limitation, and that Christ\n himself must teach us what this total revelation is. So the\n judgment which Scripture encourages us to pass upon its own\n limitations only induces a final and more implicit reliance upon\n the living and personal Son of God. He has never intended that\n Scripture should be a substitute for his own presence, and it is\n only his Spirit that is promised to lead us into all the truth.\n\n On the authority of Scripture, see A. H. Strong, Christ in\n Creation, 113-136\u2014\u201cThe source of all authority is not Scripture,\n but Christ.... Nowhere are we told that the Scripture of itself is\n able to convince the sinner or to bring him to God. It is a\n glittering sword, but it is \u2018the sword of the Spirit\u2019_ (Eph.\n 6:17)_; and unless the Spirit use it, it will never pierce the\n heart. It is a heavy hammer, but only the Spirit can wield it so\n that it breaks in pieces the flinty rock. It is the type locked in\n the form, but the paper will never receive an impression until the\n Spirit shall apply the power. No mere instrument shall have the\n glory that belongs to God. Every soul shall feel its entire\n dependence upon him. Only the Holy Spirit can turn the outer word\n into an inner word. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ.\n Christ comes into direct contact with the soul. He himself gives\n his witness to the truth. He bears testimony to Scripture, even\n more than Scripture bears testimony to him.\u201d\n\n\n11. The preceding discussion enables us at least to lay down three\ncardinal principles and to answer three common questions with regard to\ninspiration.\n\nPrinciples: (_a_) The human mind can be inhabited and energized by God\nwhile yet attaining and retaining its own highest intelligence and\nfreedom. (_b_) The Scriptures being the work of the one God, as well as of\nthe men in whom God moved and dwelt, constitute an articulated and organic\nunity. (_c_) The unity and authority of Scripture as a whole are entirely\nconsistent with its gradual evolution and with great imperfection in its\nnon-essential parts.\n\nQuestions: (_a_) Is any part of Scripture uninspired? Answer: Every part\nof Scripture is inspired in its connection and relation with every other\npart. (_b_) Are there degrees of inspiration? Answer: There are degrees of\nvalue, but not of inspiration. Each part in its connection with the rest\nis made completely true, and completeness has no degrees. (_c_) How may we\nknow what parts are of most value and what is the teaching of the whole?\nAnswer: The same Spirit of Christ who inspired the Bible is promised to\ntake of the things of Christ, and, by showing them to us, to lead us\nprogressively into all the truth.\n\n\n Notice the value of the Old Testament, revealing as it does the\n natural attributes of God, as a basis and background for the\n revelation of mercy in the New Testament. Revelation was in many\n parts _(\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03bc\u03b5\u03c1\u1ff6\u03c2\u2014Heb. 1:1)_ as well as in many ways. \u201cEach\n individual oracle, taken by itself, was partial and incomplete\u201d\n (Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Ch., 21). But the person and the\n words of Christ sum up and complete the revelation, so that, taken\n together and in their connection with him, the various parts of\n Scripture constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith\n and practice. See Browne, Inspiration of the N. T.; Bernard,\n Progress of Doctrine in the N. T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of\n the O. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of Doctrine. See A. H.\n Strong, on Method of Inspiration, in Philosophy and Religion,\n 148-155.\n\n The divine influence upon the minds of post-biblical writers,\n leading to the composition of such allegories as Pilgrim\u2019s\n Progress, and such dramas as Macbeth, is to be denominated\n illumination rather than inspiration, for the reasons that these\n writings contain error as well as truth in matters of religion and\n morals; that they add nothing essential to what the Scriptures\n give us; and that, even in their expression of truth previously\n made known, they are not worthy of a place in the sacred canon. W.\n H. P. Faunce: \u201cHow far is Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress true to\n present Christian experience? It is untrue: 1. In its despair of\n this world. The Pilgrim has to leave this world in order to be\n saved. Modern experience longs to do God\u2019s will _here_, and to\n save others instead of forsaking them. 2. In its agony over sin\n and frightful conflict. Bunyan illustrates modern experience\n better by Christiana and her children who go through the Valley\n and the Shadow of Death in the daytime, and without conflict with\n Apollyon. 3. In the constant uncertainty of the issue of the\n Pilgrim\u2019s fight. Christian enters Doubting Castle and meets Giant\n Despair, even after he has won most of his victories. In modern\n experience, \u2018at evening time there shall be light\u2019_\u2014(Zech. 14:7)_.\n 4. In the constant conviction of an absent Christ. Bunyan\u2019s Christ\n is never met this side of the Celestial City. The Cross at which\n the burden dropped is the symbol of a sacrificial act, but it is\n not the Savior himself. Modern experience has Christ living in us\n and with us alway, and not simply a Christ whom we hope to see at\n the end of the journey.\u201d\n\n Beyschlag, N. T. Theol., 2:18\u2014\u201cPaul declares his own prophecy and\n inspiration to be essentially imperfect (_1 Cor. 13:9, 10, 12; cf.\n 1 Cor. 12:10; 1 Thess. 5:19-21_). This admission justifies a\n Christian criticism even of his views. He can pronounce an\n anathema on those who preach \u2018a different gospel\u2019_ (Gal. 1:8, 9)_,\n for what belongs to simple faith, the facts of salvation, are\n absolutely certain. But where prophetic thought and speech go\n beyond these facts of salvation, wood and straw may be mingled\n with the gold, silver and precious stones built upon the one\n foundation. So he distinguishes his own modest \u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03bc\u03b7 from the\n \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c4\u03b1\u03b3\u1f74 \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03bd (1 Cor. 7:25, 40).\u201d Clarke, Christian Theology,\n 44\u2014\u201cThe authority of Scripture is not one that binds, but one that\n sets free. Paul is writing of Scripture when he says: \u2018Not that we\n have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in\n faith ye stand fast\u2019_ (2 Cor. 1:24)_.\u201d\n\n Cremer, in Herzog, Realencyc., 183-203\u2014\u201cThe church doctrine is\n _that_ the Scriptures are inspired, but it has never been\n determined by the church _how_ they are inspired.\u201d Butler,\n Analogy, part II, chap. III\u2014\u201cThe only question concerning the\n truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real revelation, not\n whether it be attended with every circumstance which we should\n have looked for; and concerning the authority of Scripture,\n whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of\n such sort, and so promulgated, as weak men are apt to fancy a book\n containing a divine revelation should. And therefore, neither\n obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various readings,\n nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any\n other things of the like kind, though they had been much more\n considerable than they are, could overthrow the authority of the\n Scripture; unless the prophets, apostles, or our Lord had promised\n that the book containing the divine revelation should be secure\n from these things.\u201d W. Robertson Smith: \u201cIf am asked why I receive\n the Scriptures as the word of God and as the only perfect rule of\n faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant\n church: \u2018Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming\n love of God; because in the Bible alone I find God drawing nigh to\n men in Jesus Christ, and declaring his will for our salvation. And\n the record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my\n heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God himself is\n able to speak such words to my soul.\u2019 \u201d The gospel of Jesus Christ\n is the \u1f05\u03c0\u03b1\u03be \u03bb\u03b5\u03b3\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd of the Almighty. See Marcus Dods, The Bible,\n its Origin and Nature; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 66-115.\n\n\n\nV. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.\n\n\nIn connection with a divine-human work like the Bible, insoluble\ndifficulties may be expected to present themselves. So long, however, as\nits inspiration is sustained by competent and sufficient evidence, these\ndifficulties cannot justly prevent our full acceptance of the doctrine,\nany more than disorder and mystery in nature warrant us in setting aside\nthe proofs of its divine authorship. These difficulties are lessened with\ntime; some have already disappeared; many may be due to ignorance, and may\nbe removed hereafter; those which are permanent may be intended to\nstimulate inquiry and to discipline faith.\n\nIt is noticeable that the common objections to inspiration are urged, not\nso much against the religious teaching of the Scriptures, as against\ncertain errors in secular matters which are supposed to be interwoven with\nit. But if these are proved to be errors indeed, it will not necessarily\noverthrow the doctrine of inspiration; it will only compel us to give a\nlarger place to the human element in the composition of the Scriptures,\nand to regard them more exclusively as a text-book of religion. As a rule\nof religious faith and practice, they will still be the infallible word of\nGod. The Bible is to be judged as a book whose one aim is man\u2019s rescue\nfrom sin and reconciliation to God, and in these respects it will still be\nfound a record of substantial truth. This will appear more fully as we\nexamine the objections one by one.\n\n\n \u201cThe Scriptures are given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but\n how to go to heaven.\u201d Their aim is certainly not to teach science\n or history, except so far as science or history is essential to\n their moral and religious purpose. Certain of their doctrines,\n like the virgin-birth of Christ and his bodily resurrection, are\n historical facts, and certain facts, like that of creation, are\n also doctrines. With regard to these great facts, we claim that\n inspiration has given us accounts that are essentially\n trustworthy, whatever may be their imperfections in detail. To\n undermine the scientific trustworthiness of the Indian Vedas is to\n undermine the religion which they teach. But this only because\n their scientific doctrine is an essential part of their religious\n teaching. In the Bible, religion is not dependent upon physical\n science. The Scriptures aim only to declare the creatorship and\n lordship of the personal God. The method of his working may be\n described pictorially without affecting this substantial truth.\n The Indian cosmogonies, on the other hand, polytheistic or\n pantheistic as they are, teach essential untruth, by describing\n the origin of things as due to a series of senseless\n transformations without basis of will or wisdom.\n\n So long as the difficulties of Scripture are difficulties of form\n rather than substance, of its incidental features rather than its\n main doctrine, we may say of its obscurities as Isocrates said of\n the work of Heraclitus: \u201cWhat I understand of it is so excellent\n that I can draw conclusions from it concerning what I do not\n understand.\u201d \u201cIf Bengel finds things in the Bible too hard for his\n critical faculty, he finds nothing too hard for his believing\n faculty.\u201d With John Smyth, who died at Amsterdam in 1612, we may\n say: \u201cI profess I have changed, and shall be ready still to\n change, for the better\u201d; and with John Robinson, in his farewell\n address to the Pilgrim Fathers: \u201cI am verily persuaded that the\n Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.\u201d See\n Luthardt, Saving Truths, 205; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 205 _sq._;\n Bap. Rev., April, 1881: art. by O. P. Eaches; Cardinal Newman, in\n 19th Century, Feb. 1884.\n\n\n1. Errors in matters of Science.\n\n\nUpon this objection we remark:\n\n(_a_) We do not admit the existence of scientific error in the Scripture.\nWhat is charged as such is simply truth presented in popular and\nimpressive forms.\n\nThe common mind receives a more correct idea of unfamiliar facts when\nthese are narrated in phenomenal language and in summary form than when\nthey are described in the abstract terms and in the exact detail of\nscience.\n\n\n The Scripture writers unconsciously observe Herbert Spencer\u2019s\n principle of style: Economy of the reader\u2019s or hearer\u2019s\n attention,\u2014the more energy is expended upon the form the less\n there remains to grapple with the substance (Essays, 1-47). Wendt,\n Teaching of Jesus, 1:130, brings out the principle of Jesus\u2019\n style: \u201cThe greatest clearness in the smallest compass.\u201d Hence\n Scripture uses the phrases of common life rather than scientific\n terminology. Thus the language of appearance is probably used in\n _Gen. 7:19\u2014_\u201call the high mountains that were under the whole\n heaven were covered\u201d\u2014such would be the appearance, even if the\n deluge were local instead of universal; in _Josh. 10:12, 13\u2014_\u201cand\n the sun stood still\u201d\u2014such would be the appearance, even if the\n sun\u2019s rays were merely refracted so as preternaturally to lengthen\n the day; in _Ps. 93:1\u2014_\u201cThe world also is established, that it\n cannot be moved\u201d\u2014such is the appearance, even though the earth\n turns on its axis and moves round the sun. In narrative, to\n substitute for \u201csunset\u201d some scientific description would divert\n attention from the main subject. Would it be preferable, in the O.\n T., if we should read: \u201cWhen the revolution of the earth upon its\n axis caused the rays of the solar luminary to impinge horizontally\n upon the retina, _Isaac went out to meditate_\u201d (_Gen. 24:63_)? \u201cLe\n secret d\u2019ennuyer est de tout dire.\u201d Charles Dickens, in his\n American Notes, 72, describes a prairie sunset: \u201cThe decline of\n day here was very gorgeous, tinging the firmament deeply with red\n and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above us\u201d (quoted by\n Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 97). Did Dickens therefore\n believe the firmament to be a piece of solid masonry?\n\n Canon Driver rejects the Bible story of creation because the\n distinctions made by modern science cannot be found in the\n primitive Hebrew. He thinks the fluid state of the earth\u2019s\n substance should have been called \u201csurging chaos,\u201d instead of\n \u201cwaters\u201d_ (Gen. 1:2)_. \u201cAn admirable phrase for modern and\n cultivated minds,\u201d replies Mr. Gladstone, \u201cbut a phrase that would\n have left the pupils of the Mosaic writer in exactly the condition\n out of which it was his purpose to bring them, namely, a state of\n utter ignorance and darkness, with possibly a little ripple of\n bewilderment to boot\u201d; see Sunday School Times, April 26, 1890.\n The fallacy of holding that Scripture gives in detail all the\n facts connected with a historical narrative has led to many\n curious arguments. The Gregorian Calendar which makes the year\n begin in January was opposed by representing that Eve was tempted\n at the outset by an apple, which was possible only in case the\n year began in September; see Thayer, Change of Attitude towards\n the Bible, 46.\n\n\n(_b_) It is not necessary to a proper view of inspiration to suppose that\nthe human authors of Scripture had in mind the proper scientific\ninterpretation of the natural events they recorded.\n\nIt is enough that this was in the mind of the inspiring Spirit. Through\nthe comparatively narrow conceptions and inadequate language of the\nScripture writers, the Spirit of inspiration may have secured the\nexpression of the truth in such germinal form as to be intelligible to the\ntimes in which it was first published, and yet capable of indefinite\nexpansion as science should advance. In the miniature picture of creation\nin the first chapter of Genesis, and in its power of adjusting itself to\nevery advance of scientific investigation, we have a strong proof of\ninspiration.\n\n\n The word \u201cday\u201d in _Genesis 1_ is an instance of this general mode\n of expression. It would be absurd to teach early races, that deal\n only in small numbers, about the myriads of years of creation. The\n child\u2019s object-lesson, with its graphic summary, conveys to his\n mind more of truth than elaborate and exact statement would\n convey. Conant (_Genesis 2:10_) says of the description of Eden\n and its rivers: \u201cOf course the author\u2019s object is not a minute\n topographical description, but a general and impressive conception\n as a whole.\u201d Yet the progress of science only shows that these\n accounts are not less but more true than was supposed by those who\n first received them. Neither the Hindu Shasters nor any heathen\n cosmogony can bear such comparison with the results of science.\n Why change our interpretations of Scripture so often? Answer: We\n do not assume to be original teachers of science, but only to\n interpret Scripture with the new lights we have. See Dana, Manual\n of Geology, 741-746; Guyot, in Bib. Sac., 1855:324; Dawson, Story\n of Earth and Man, 32.\n\n This conception of early Scripture teaching as elementary and\n suited to the childhood of the race would make it possible, if the\n facts so required, to interpret the early chapters of Genesis as\n mythical or legendary. God might condescend to \u201cKindergarten\n formulas.\u201d Goethe said that \u201cWe should deal with children as God\n deals with us: we are happiest under the influence of innocent\n delusions.\u201d Longfellow: \u201cHow beautiful is youth! how bright it\n gleams, With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of\n beginnings, story without end, Each maid a heroine, and each man a\n friend!\u201d We might hold with Goethe and with Longfellow, if we only\n excluded from God\u2019s teaching all essential error. The narratives\n of Scripture might be addressed to the imagination, and so might\n take mythical or legendary form, while yet they conveyed\n substantial truth that could in no other way be so well\n apprehended by early man; see Robert Browning\u2019s poem,\n \u201cDevelopment,\u201d in Asolando. The Koran, on the other hand, leaves\n no room for imagination, but fixes the number of the stars and\n declares the firmament to be solid. Henry Drummond: \u201cEvolution has\n given us a new Bible.... The Bible is not a book which has been\n made,\u2014it has grown.\u201d\n\n Bagehot tells us that \u201cOne of the most remarkable of Father\n Newman\u2019s Oxford sermons explains how science teaches that the\n earth goes round the sun, and how Scripture teaches that the sun\n goes round the earth; and it ends by advising the discreet\n believer to accept both.\u201d This is mental bookkeeping by double\n entry; see Mackintosh, in Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:41.\n Lenormant, in Contemp. Rev., Nov. 1879\u2014\u201cWhile the tradition of the\n deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of\n all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts\n of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not\n afforded any, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm.\u201d Lenormant\n here wrongly assumed that the language of Scripture is scientific\n language. If it is the language of appearance, then the deluge may\n be a local and not a universal catastrophe. G. F. Wright, Ice Age\n in North America, suggests that the numerous traditions of the\n deluge may have had their origin in the enormous floods of the\n receding glacier. In South-western Queensland, the standard gauge\n at the Meteorological Office registered 10-\u00be, 20, 35-\u00be, 10-\u00be\n inches of rainfall, in all 77-\u00bc inches, in four successive days.\n\n\n(_c_) It may be safely said that science has not yet shown any fairly\ninterpreted passage of Scripture to be untrue.\n\nWith regard to the antiquity of the race, we may say that owing to the\ndifferences of reading between the Septuagint and the Hebrew there is room\nfor doubt whether either of the received chronologies has the sanction of\ninspiration. Although science has made probable the existence of man upon\nthe earth at a period preceding the dates assigned in these chronologies,\nno statement of inspired Scripture is thereby proved false.\n\n\n Usher\u2019s scheme of chronology, on the basis of the Hebrew, puts the\n creation 4004 years before Christ. Hales\u2019s, on the basis of the\n Septuagint, puts it 5411 B. C. The Fathers followed the LXX. But\n the genealogies before and after the flood may present us only\n with the names of \u201cleading and representative men.\u201d Some of these\n names seem to stand, not for individuals, but for tribes, _e. g._:\n _Gen. 10:16_\u2014where Canaan is said to have begotten the Jebusite\n and the Amorite; 29\u2014Joktan begot Ophir and Havilah. In _Gen.\n 10:6_, we read that Mizraim belonged to the sons of Ham. But\n Mizraim is a dual, coined to designate the two parts, Upper and\n Lower Egypt. Hence a son of Ham could not bear the name of\n Mizraim. _Gen. 10:13_ reads: \u201cAnd Mizraim begat Ludim.\u201d But Ludim\n is a plural form. The word signifies a whole nation, and \u201cbegat\u201d\n is not employed in a literal sense. So in _verses 15, 16: _\u201cCanaan\n begat ... the Jebusite,\u201d a tribe; the ancestors of which would\n have been called Jebus. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, however, are\n names, not of tribes or nations, but of individuals; see Prof.\n Edward K\u00f6nig, of Bonn, in S. S. Times, Dec. 14, 1901. E. G.\n Robinson: \u201cWe may pretty safely go back to the time of Abraham,\n but no further.\u201d Bib. Sac., 1899:403\u2014\u201cThe lists in Genesis may\n relate to families and not to individuals.\u201d\n\n G. F. Wright, Ant. and Origin of Human Race, lect. II\u2014\u201cWhen in\n David\u2019s time it is said that \u2018Shebuel, the son of Gershom, the son\n of Moses, was ruler over the treasures\u2019_ (1 Chron. 23:16; 26:24)_,\n Gershom was the immediate son of Moses, but Shebuel was separated\n by many generations from Gershom. So when Seth is said to have\n begotten Enosh when he was 105 years old (_Gen. 5:6_), it is,\n according to Hebrew usage, capable of meaning that Enosh was\n descended from the branch of Seth\u2019s line which set off at the\n 105th year, with any number of intermediate links omitted.\u201d The\n appearance of completeness in the text may be due to alteration of\n the text in the course of centuries; see Bib. Com., 1:30. In the\n phrase \u201cJesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham\u201d_ (Mat.\n 1:1)_ thirty-eight to forty generations are omitted. It may be so\n in some of the Old Testament genealogies. There is room for a\n hundred thousand years, if necessary (Conant). W. H. Green, in\n Bib. Sac., April, 1890:303, and in Independent, June 18, 1891\u2014\u201cThe\n Scriptures furnish us with no data for a chronological computation\n prior to the life of Abraham. The Mosaic records do not fix, and\n were not intended to fix, the precise date of the Flood or of the\n Creation.... They give a series of specimen lives, with\n appropriate numbers attached, to show by selected examples what\n was the original term of human life. To make them a complete and\n continuous record, and to deduce from them the antiquity of the\n race, is to put them to a use they were never intended to serve.\u201d\n\n Comparison with secular history also shows that no such length of\n time as 100,000 years for man\u2019s existence upon earth seems\n necessary. Rawlinson, in Jour. Christ. Philosophy, 1883:339-364,\n dates the beginning of the Chaldean monarchy at 2400 B. C.\n Lenormant puts the entrance of the Sanskritic Indians into\n Hindustan at 2500 B. C. The earliest Vedas are between 1200 and\n 1000 B. C. (Max M\u00fcller). Call of Abraham, probably 1945 B. C.\n Chinese history possibly began as early as 2356 B. C. (Legge). The\n old Empire in Egypt possibly began as early as 2650 B. C.\n Rawlinson puts the flood at 3600 B. C., and adds 2000 years\n between the deluge and the creation, making the age of the world\n 1886 + 3600 + 2000 = 7486. S. R. Pattison, in Present Day Tracts,\n 3: no. 13, concludes that \u201ca term of about 8000 years is warranted\n by deductions from history, geology, and Scripture.\u201d See also Duke\n of Argyll, Primeval Man, 76-128; Cowles on Genesis, 49-80; Dawson,\n Fossil Men, 246; Hicks, in Bap. Rev., July, 1884 (15000 years);\n Z\u00f6ckler, Urgeschichte der Erde und des Menschen, 137-163. On the\n critical side, see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses, 80-102.\n\n Evidence of a geological nature seems to be accumulating, which\n tends to prove man\u2019s advent upon earth at least ten thousand years\n ago. An arrowhead of tempered copper and a number of human bones\n were found in the Rocky Point mines, near Gilman, Colorado, 460\n feet beneath the surface of the earth, embedded in a vein of\n silver-bearing ore. More than a hundred dollars worth of ore clung\n to the bones when they were removed from the mine. On the age of\n the earth and the antiquity of man, see G. F. Wright, Man and the\n Glacial Epoch, lectures IV and X, and in McClure\u2019s Magazine, June,\n 1901, and Bib. Sac., 1903:31\u2014\u201cCharles Darwin first talked about\n 300 million years as a mere trifle of geologic time. His son\n George limits it to 50 or 100 million; Croll and Young to 60 or 70\n million; Wallace to 28 million; Lord Kelvin to 24 million;\n Thompson and Newcomb to only 10 million.\u201d Sir Archibald Geikie, at\n the British Association at Dover in 1899, said that 100 million\n years sufficed for that small portion of the earth\u2019s history which\n is registered in the stratified rocks of the crust.\n\n Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 122, considers vegetable life to\n have existed on the planet for at least 100 million years. Warren\n Upham, in Pop. Science Monthly, Dec. 1893:153\u2014\u201cHow old is the\n earth? 100 million years.\u201d D. G. Brinton, in Forum, Dec. 1893:454,\n puts the minimum limit of man\u2019s existence on earth at 50,000\n years. G. F. Wright does not doubt that man\u2019s presence on this\n continent was preglacial, say eleven or twelve thousand years ago.\n He asserts that there has been a subsidence of Central Asia and\n Southern Russia since man\u2019s advent, and that Arctic seals are\n still found in Lake Baikal in Siberia. While he grants that\n Egyptian civilization may go back to 5000 B. C., he holds that no\n more than 6000 or 7000 years before this are needed as preparation\n for history. Le Conte, Elements of Geology, 613\u2014\u201cMen saw the great\n glaciers of the second glacial epoch, but there is no reliable\n evidence of their existence before the first glacial epoch.\n Deltas, implements, lake shores, waterfalls, indicate only 7000 to\n 10,000 years.\u201d Recent calculations of Prof. Prestwich, the most\n eminent living geologist of Great Britain, tend to bring the close\n of the glacial epoch down to within 10,000 or 15,000 years.\n\n\n(_d_) Even if error in matters of science were found in Scripture, it\nwould not disprove inspiration, since inspiration concerns itself with\nscience only so far as correct scientific views are necessary to morals\nand religion.\n\n\n Great harm results from identifying Christian doctrine with\n specific theories of the universe. The Roman church held that the\n revolution of the sun around the earth was taught in Scripture,\n and that Christian faith required the condemnation of Galileo;\n John Wesley thought Christianity to be inseparable from a belief\n in witchcraft; opposers of the higher criticism regard the Mosaic\n authorship of the Pentateuch as \u201carticulus stantis vel cadentis\n ecclesi\u00e6.\u201d We mistake greatly when we link inspiration with\n scientific doctrine. The purpose of Scripture is not to teach\n science, but to teach religion, and, with the exception of God\u2019s\n creatorship and preserving agency in the universe, no scientific\n truth is essential to the system of Christian doctrine.\n Inspiration might leave the Scripture writers in possession of the\n scientific ideas of their time, while yet they were empowered\n correctly to declare both ethical and religious truth. A right\n spirit indeed gains some insight into the meaning of nature, and\n so the Scripture writers seem to be preserved from incorporating\n into their productions much of the scientific error of their day.\n But entire freedom from such error must not be regarded as a\n necessary accompaniment of inspiration.\n\n\n2. Errors in matters of History.\n\n\nTo this objection we reply:\n\n(_a_) What are charged as such are often mere mistakes in transcription,\nand have no force as arguments against inspiration, unless it can first be\nshown that inspired documents are by the very fact of their inspiration\nexempt from the operation of those laws which affect the transmission of\nother ancient documents.\n\n\n We have no right to expect that the inspiration of the original\n writer will be followed by a miracle in the case of every copyist.\n Why believe in infallible copyists, more than in infallible\n printers? God educates us to care for his word, and for its\n correct transmission. Reverence has kept the Scriptures more free\n from various readings than are other ancient manuscripts. None of\n the existing variations endanger any important article of faith.\n Yet some mistakes in transcription there probably are. In _1\n Chron. 22:14_, instead of 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000\n talents of silver (= $3,750,000,000), Josephus divides the sum by\n ten. Dr. Howard Osgood: \u201cA French writer, Revillout, has accounted\n for the differing numbers in Kings and Chronicles, just as he\n accounts for the same differences in Egyptian and Assyrian later\n accounts, by the change in the value of money and debasement of\n issues. He shows the change all over Western Asia.\u201d _Per contra_,\n see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 45.\n\n In _2 Chron. 13:3, 17_, where the numbers of men in the armies of\n little Palestine are stated as 400,000 and 800,000, and 500,000\n are said to have been slain in a single battle, \u201csome ancient\n copies of the Vulgate and Latin translations of Josephus have\n 40,000, 80,000, and 50,000\u201d; see Annotated Paragraph Bible, _in\n loco_. In _2 Chron. 17:14-19_, Jehoshaphat\u2019s army aggregates\n 1,160,000, besides the garrisons of his fortresses. It is possible\n that by errors in transcription these numbers have been multiplied\n by ten. Another explanation however, and perhaps a more probable\n one, is given under (_d_) below. Similarly, compare _1 Sam. 6:19_,\n where 50,070 are slain, with the 70 of Josephus; _2 Sam.\n 8:4\u2014_\u201c1,700 horsemen,\u201d with _1 Chron. 18:4\u2014_\u201c7,000 horsemen\u201d;\n _Esther 9:16_\u201475,000 slain by the Jews, with LXX\u201415,000. In _Mat.\n 27:9_, we have \u201cJeremiah\u201d for \u201cZechariah\u201d\u2014this Calvin allows to be\n a mistake; and, if a mistake, then one made by the first copyist,\n for it appears in all the uncials, all the manuscripts and all the\n versions except the Syriac Peshito where it is omitted, evidently\n on the authority of the individual transcriber and translator. In\n _Acts 7:16\u2014_\u201cthe tomb that Abraham bought\u201d\u2014Hackett regards\n \u201cAbraham\u201d as a clerical error for \u201cJacob\u201d (compare _Gen. 33:18,\n 19_). See Bible Com., 3:165, 249, 251, 317.\n\n\n(_b_) Other so-called errors are to be explained as a permissible use of\nround numbers, which cannot be denied to the sacred writers except upon\nthe principle that mathematical accuracy was more important than the\ngeneral impression to be secured by the narrative.\n\n\n In _Numbers 25:9_, we read that there fell in the plague 24,000;\n _1 Cor. 10:8_ says 23,000. The actual number was possibly\n somewhere between the two. Upon a similar principle, we do not\n scruple to celebrate the Landing of the Pilgrims on December 22nd\n and the birth of Christ on December 25th. We speak of the battle\n of Bunker Hill, although at Bunker Hill no battle was really\n fought. In _Ex. 12:40, 41_, the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt\n is declared to be 430 years. Yet Paul, in _Gal. 3:17_, says that\n the giving of the law through Moses was 430 years after the call\n of Abraham, whereas the call of Abraham took place 215 years\n before Jacob and his sons went down into Egypt, and Paul should\n have said 645 years instead of 430. Franz Delitzsch: \u201cThe Hebrew\n Bible counts four centuries of Egyptian sojourn (_Gen. 15:13-16_),\n more accurately, 430 years (_Ex. 12:40_); but according to the LXX\n (_Ex. 12:40_) this number comprehends the sojourn in Canaan and\n Egypt, so that 215 years come to the pilgrimage in Canaan, and 215\n to the servitude in Egypt. This kind of calculation is not\n exclusively Hellenistic; it is also found in the oldest\n Palestinian Midrash. Paul stands on this side in _Gal. 3:17_,\n making, not the immigration into Egypt, but the covenant with\n Abraham the _terminus a quo_ of the 430 years which end in the\n Exodus from Egypt and in the legislation\u201d; see also Hovey, Com. on\n _Gal. 3:17_. It was not Paul\u2019s purpose to write chronology,\u2014so he\n may follow the LXX, and call the time between the promise to\n Abraham and the giving of the law to Moses 430 years, rather than\n the actual 600. If he had given the larger number, it might have\n led to perplexity and discussion about a matter which had nothing\n to do with the vital question in hand. Inspiration may have\n employed current though inaccurate statements as to matters of\n history, because they were the best available means of impressing\n upon men\u2019s minds truth of a more important sort. In _Gen. 15:13_\n the 430 years is called in round numbers 400 years, and so in\n _Acts 7:6_.\n\n\n(_c_) Diversities of statement in accounts of the same event, so long as\nthey touch no substantial truth, may be due to the meagreness of the\nnarrative, and might be fully explained if some single fact, now\nunrecorded, were only known. To explain these apparent discrepancies would\nnot only be beside the purpose of the record, but would destroy one\nvaluable evidence of the independence of the several writers or witnesses.\n\n\n On the Stokes trial, the judge spoke of two apparently conflicting\n testimonies as neither of them necessarily false. On the\n difference between Matthew and Luke as to the scene of the Sermon\n on the Mount (_Mat. 5:1_; _cf._ _Luke 6:17_) see Stanley, Sinai\n and Palestine, 360. As to one blind man or two (_Mat. 20:30_;\n _cf._ _Luke 18:35_) see Bliss, Com. on Luke, 275, and Gardiner, in\n Bib. Sac., July, 1879:513, 514; Jesus may have healed the blind\n men during a day\u2019s excursion from Jericho, and it might be\n described as \u201cwhen they went out,\u201d or \u201cas they drew nigh to\n Jericho.\u201d Prof. M. B. Riddle: \u201c_Luke 18:35_ describes the general\n movement towards Jerusalem and not the precise detail preceding\n the miracle; _Mat. 20:30_ intimates that the miracle occurred\n during an excursion from the city,\u2014Luke afterwards telling of the\n final departure\u201d; Calvin holds to two meetings; Godet to two\n cities; if Jesus healed two blind men, he certainly healed one,\n and Luke did not need to mention more than one, even if he knew of\n both; see Broadus on _Mat. 20:30_. In _Mat. 8:28_, where Matthew\n has two demoniacs at Gadara and Luke has only one at Gerasa,\n Broadus supposes that the village of Gerasa belonged to the\n territory of the city of Gadara, a few miles to the Southeast of\n the lake, and he quotes the case of Lafayette: \u201cIn the year 1824\n Lafayette visited the United States and was welcomed with honors\n and pageants. Some historians will mention only Lafayette, but\n others will relate the same visit as made and the same honors as\n enjoyed by two persons, namely, Lafayette and his son. Will not\n both be right?\u201d On Christ\u2019s last Passover, see Robinson, Harmony,\n 212; E. H. Sears, Fourth Gospel, Appendix A; Edersheim, Life and\n Times of the Messiah, 2:507. Augustine: \u201cLocutiones vari\u00e6, sed non\n contrari\u00e6: dlvers\u00e6, sed non advers\u00e6.\u201d\n\n Bartlett, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1880:46, 47, gives the following\n modern illustrations: Winslow\u2019s Journal (of Plymouth Plantation)\n speaks of a ship sent out \u201cby Master Thomas Weston.\u201d But Bradford\n in his far briefer narrative of the matter, mentions it as sent\n \u201cby Mr. Weston and another.\u201d John Adams, in his letters, tells the\n story of the daughter of Otis about her father\u2019s destruction of\n his own manuscripts. At one time he makes her say: \u201cIn one of his\n unhappy moments he committed them all to the flames\u201d; yet, in the\n second letter, she is made to say that \u201che was several days in\n doing it.\u201d One newspaper says: President Hayes attended the\n Bennington centennial; another newspaper says: the President and\n Mrs. Hayes; a third: the President and his Cabinet; a fourth: the\n President, Mrs. Hayes and a majority of his Cabinet. Archibald\n Forbes, in his account of Napoleon III at Sedan, points out an\n agreement of narratives as to the salient points, combined with\n \u201cthe hopeless and bewildering discrepancies as to details,\u201d even\n as these are reported by eye-witnesses, including himself,\n Bismarck, and General Sheridan who was on the ground, as well as\n others.\n\n Thayer, Change of Attitude, 52, speaks of Luke\u2019s \u201cplump\n anachronism in the matter of Theudas\u201d\u2014_Acts 5:36\u2014_\u201cFor before\n those days rose up Theudas.\u201d Josephus, Antiquities, 20:5:1,\n mentions an insurrectionary Theudas, but the date and other\n incidents do not agree with those of Luke. Josephus however may\n have mistaken the date as easily as Luke, or he may refer to\n another man of the same name. The inscription on the Cross is\n given in _Mark 15:26_, as \u201cThe King of the Jews\u201d; in _Luke 23:38_,\n as \u201cThis is the King of the Jews\u201d; in _Mat. 27:37_, as \u201cThis is\n Jesus the King of the Jews\u201d; and in _John 19:19_, as \u201cJesus of\n Nazareth the King of the Jews.\u201d The entire superscription, in\n Hebrew, Greek and Latin, may have contained every word given by\n the several evangelists combined, and may have read \u201cThis is Jesus\n of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,\u201d and each separate report may\n be entirely correct so far as it goes. See, on the general\n subject, Haley, Alleged Discrepancies; Fisher, Beginnings of\n Christianity, 406-412.\n\n\n(_d_) While historical and arch\u00e6ological discovery in many important\nparticulars goes to sustain the general correctness of the Scripture\nnarratives, and no statement essential to the moral and religious teaching\nof Scripture has been invalidated, inspiration is still consistent with\nmuch imperfection in historical detail and its narratives \u201cdo not seem to\nbe exempted from possibilities of error.\u201d\n\n\n The words last quoted are those of Sanday. In his Bampton Lectures\n on Inspiration, 400, he remarks that \u201cInspiration belongs to the\n historical books rather as conveying a religious lesson, than as\n histories; rather as interpreting, than as narrating plain matter\n of fact. The crucial issue is that in these last respects they do\n not seem to be exempted from possibilities of error.\u201d R. V.\n Foster, Systematic Theology, (Cumberland Presbyterian): The\n Scripture writers \u201cwere not inspired to do otherwise than to take\n these statements as they found them.\u201d Inerrancy is not freedom\n from misstatements, but from error defined as \u201cthat which misleads\n in any serious or important sense.\u201d When we compare the accounts\n of _1_ and _2 Chronicles_ with those of _1_ and _2 Kings_ we find\n in the former an exaggeration of numbers, a suppression of\n material unfavorable to the writer\u2019s purpose, and an emphasis upon\n that which is favorable, that contrasts strongly with the method\n of the latter. These characteristics are so continuous that the\n theory of mistakes in transcription does not seem sufficient to\n account for the facts. The author\u2019s aim was to draw out the\n religious lessons of the story, and historical details are to him\n of comparative unimportance.\n\n H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 108\u2014\u201cInspiration\n did not correct the Chronicler\u2019s historical point of view, more\n than it corrected his scientific point of view, which no doubt\n made the earth the centre of the solar system. It therefore left\n him open to receive documents, and to use them, which idealized\n the history of the past, and described David and Solomon according\n to the ideas of later times and the priestly class. David\u2019s sins\n are omitted, and numbers are multiplied, to give greater dignity\n to the earlier kingdom.\u201d As Tennyson\u2019s Idylls of the King give a\n nobler picture of King Arthur, and a more definite aspect to his\n history, than actual records justify, yet the picture teaches\n great moral and religious lessons, so the Chronicler seems to have\n manipulated his material in the interest of religion. Matters of\n arithmetic were minor matters. \u201cMajoribus intentus est.\u201d\n\n E. G. Robinson: \u201cThe numbers of the Bible are characteristic of a\n semi-barbarous age. The writers took care to guess enough. The\n tendency of such an age is always to exaggerate.\u201d Two Formosan\n savages divide five pieces between them by taking two apiece and\n throwing one away. The lowest tribes can count only with the\n fingers of their hands; when they use their toes as well, it marks\n an advance in civilization. To the modern child a hundred is just\n as great a number as a million. So the early Scriptures seem to\n use numbers with a childlike ignorance as to their meaning.\n Hundreds of thousands can be substituted for tens of thousands,\n and the substitution seems only a proper tribute to the dignity of\n the subject. Gore, in Lux Mundi, 353\u2014\u201cThis was not conscious\n perversion, but unconscious idealizing of history, the reading\n back into past records of a ritual development which was really\n later. Inspiration excludes conscious deception, but it appears to\n be quite consistent with this sort of idealizing; always supposing\n that the result read back into the earlier history does represent\n the real purpose of God and only anticipates the realization.\u201d\n\n There are some who contend that these historical imperfections are\n due to transcription and that they did not belong to the original\n documents. Watts, New Apologetic, 71, 111, when asked what is\n gained by contending for infallible original autographs if they\n have been since corrupted, replies: \u201cJust what we gain by\n contending for the original perfection of human nature, though man\n has since corrupted it. We must believe God\u2019s own testimony about\n his own work. God may permit others to do what, as a holy\n righteous God, he cannot do himself.\u201d When the objector declares\n it a matter of little consequence whether a pair of trousers were\n or were not originally perfect, so long as they are badly rent\n just now, Watts replies: \u201cThe tailor who made them would probably\n prefer to have it understood that the trousers did not leave his\n shop in their present forlorn condition. God drops no stitches and\n sends out no imperfect work.\u201d Watts however seems dominated by an\n _a priori_ theory of inspiration, which blinds him to the actual\n facts of the Bible.\n\n Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 40\u2014\u201cDoes the _present_\n error destroy the inspiration of the Bible as we have it? No. Then\n why should the _original_ error destroy the inspiration of the\n Bible, as it was first given? There are spots on yonder sun; do\n they stop its being the sun? Why, the sun is all the more a sun\n for the spots. So the Bible.\u201d Inspiration seems to have permitted\n the gathering of such material as was at hand, very much as a\n modern editor might construct his account of an army movement from\n the reports of a number of observers; or as a modern historian\n might combine the records of a past age with all their\n imperfections of detail. In the case of the Scripture writers,\n however, we maintain that inspiration has permitted no sacrifice\n of moral and religious truth in the completed Scripture, but has\n woven its historical material together into an organic whole which\n teaches all the facts essential to the knowledge of Christ and of\n salvation.\n\n When we come to examine in detail what purport to be historical\n narratives, we must be neither credulous nor sceptical, but simply\n candid and open-minded. With regard for example to the great age\n of the Old Testament patriarchs, we are no more warranted in\n rejecting the Scripture accounts upon the ground that life in\n later times is so much shorter, than we are to reject the\n testimony of botanists as to trees of the Sequoia family between\n four and five hundred feet high, or the testimony of geologists as\n to Saurians a hundred feet long, upon the ground that the trees\n and reptiles with which we are acquainted are so much smaller.\n Every species at its introduction seems to exhibit the maximum of\n size and vitality. Weismann, Heredity, 6, 30\u2014\u201cWhales live some\n hundreds of years; elephants two hundred\u2014their gestation taking\n two years. Giants prove that the plan upon which man is\n constructed can also be carried out on a scale far larger than the\n normal one.\u201d E. Ray Lankester, Adv. of Science, 205-237,\n 286\u2014agrees with Weismann in his general theory. Sir George\n Cornewall Lewis long denied centenarism, but at last had to admit\n it.\n\n Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper\u2019s Magazine, Jan. 1895, gives\n instances of men 137, 140, and 192 years old. The German Haller\n asserts that \u201cthe ultimate limit of human life does not exceed two\n centuries: to fix the exact number of years is exceedingly\n difficult.\u201d J. Norman Lockyer, in Nature, regards the years of the\n patriarchs as lunar years. In Egypt, the sun being used, the unit\n of time was a year; but in Chaldea, the unit of time was a month,\n for the reason that the standard of time was the moon. Divide the\n numbers by twelve, and the lives of the patriarchs come out very\n much the same length with lives at the present day. We may ask,\n however, how this theory would work in shortening the lives\n between Noah and Moses. On the genealogies in Matthew and Luke,\n see Lord Harvey, Genealogies of our Lord, and his art, in Smith\u2019s\n Bible Dictionary; _per contra_, see Andrews, Life of Christ, 55\n _sq._ On Quirinius and the enrollment for taxation (_Luke 2:2_),\n see Pres. Woolsey, in New Englander, 1869. On the general subject,\n see Rawlinson, Historical Evidences, and essay in Modern\n Scepticism, published by Christian Evidence Society, 1:265;\n Crooker, New Bible and New Uses, 102-126.\n\n\n3. Errors in Morality.\n\n\n(_a_) What are charged as such are sometimes evil acts and words of good\nmen\u2014words and acts not sanctioned by God. These are narrated by the\ninspired writers as simple matter of history, and subsequent results, or\nthe story itself, is left to point the moral of the tale.\n\n\n Instances of this sort are Noah\u2019s drunkenness (_Gen. 9:20-27_);\n Lot\u2019s incest (_Gen. 19:30-38_); Jacob\u2019s falsehood (_Gen.\n 27:19-24_); David\u2019s adultery (_2 Sam. 11:1-4_); Peter\u2019s denial\n (_Mat. 26:69-75_). See Lee, Inspiration, 265, note. Esther\u2019s\n vindictiveness is not commended, nor are the characters of the\n Book of Esther said to have acted in obedience to a divine\n command. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 241\u2014\u201cIn law and psalm and\n prophecy we behold the influence of Jehovah working as leaven\n among a primitive and barbarous people. Contemplating the Old\n Scriptures in this light, they become luminous with divinity, and\n we are furnished with the principle by which to discriminate\n between the divine and the human in the book. Particularly in\n David do we see a rugged, half-civilized, kingly man, full of\n gross errors, fleshly and impetuous, yet permeated with a divine\n Spirit that lifts him, struggling, weeping, and warring, up to\n some of the loftiest conceptions of Deity which the mind of man\n has conceived. As an angelic being, David is a caricature; as a\n man of God, as an example of God moving upon and raising up a most\n human man, he is a splendid example. The proof that the church is\n of God, is not its impeccability, but its progress.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Where evil acts appear at first sight to be sanctioned, it is\nfrequently some right intent or accompanying virtue, rather than the act\nitself, upon which commendation is bestowed.\n\n\n As Rehab\u2019s faith, not her duplicity (_Josh. 2:1-24_; _cf._ _Heb.\n 11:31_ and _James 2:25_); Jael\u2019s patriotism, not her treachery\n (_Judges 4:17-22_; _cf._ _5:24_). Or did they cast in their lot\n with Israel and use the common stratagems of war (see next\n paragraph)? Herder: \u201cThe limitations of the pupil are also\n limitations of the teacher.\u201d While Dean Stanley praises Solomon\n for tolerating idolatry, James Martineau, Study, 2:137, remarks:\n \u201cIt would be a ridiculous pedantry to apply the Protestant pleas\n of private judgment to such communities as ancient Egypt and\n Assyria.... It is the survival of coercion, after conscience has\n been born to supersede it, that shocks and revolts us in\n persecution.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Certain commands and deeds are sanctioned as relatively\njust\u2014expressions of justice such as the age could comprehend, and are to\nbe judged as parts of a progressively unfolding system of morality whose\nkey and culmination we have in Jesus Christ.\n\n\n _Ex. 20:25\u2014_\u201cI gave them statutes that were not good\u201d\u2014as Moses\u2019\n permission of divorce and retaliation (_Deut. 24:1_; _cf._ _Mat.\n 5:31, 32; 19:7-9_; _Ex. 21:24_; _cf._ _Mat. 5:38, 39_). Compare\n Elijah\u2019s calling down fire from heaven (_2 K. 1:10-12_) with\n Jesus\u2019 refusal to do the same, and his intimation that the spirit\n of Elijah was not the spirit of Christ (_Luke 9:52-56_); _cf._\n Mattheson, Moments on the Mount, 253-255, on _Mat. 17:8\u2014_\u201cJesus\n only\u201d: \u201cThe strength of Elias paled before him. To shed the blood\n of enemies requires less strength than to shed one\u2019s own blood,\n and to conquer by fire is easier than to conquer by love.\u201d Hovey:\n \u201cIn divine revelation, it is first starlight, then dawn, finally\n day.\u201d George Washington once gave directions for the\n transportation to the West Indies and the sale there of a\n refractory negro who had given him trouble. This was not at\n variance with the best morality of his time, but it would not suit\n the improved ethical standards of today. The use of force rather\n than moral suasion is sometimes needed by children and by\n barbarians. We may illustrate by the Sunday School scholar\u2019s\n unruliness which was cured by his classmates during the week.\n \u201cWhat did you say to him?\u201d asked the teacher. \u201cWe didn\u2019t say\n nothing; we just punched his head for him.\u201d This was Old Testament\n righteousness. The appeal in the O. T. to the hope of earthly\n rewards was suitable to a stage of development not yet instructed\n as to heaven and hell by the coming and work of Christ; compare\n _Ex. 20:12_ with _Mat. 5:10; 25:46_. The Old Testament aimed to\n fix in the mind of a selected people the idea of the unity and\n holiness of God; in order to exterminate idolatry, much other\n teaching was postponed. See Peabody, Religion of Nature, 45;\n Mozley, Ruling Ideas of Early Ages; Green, in Presb. Quar., April,\n 1877:221-252; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 328-368; Brit.\n and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:1-32; Martineau, Study, 2:137.\n\n When therefore we find in the inspired song of Deborah, the\n prophetess (_Judges 5:30_), an allusion to the common spoils of\n war\u2014\u201ca damsel, two damsels to every man\u201d or in _Prov. 31:6,\n 7\u2014_\u201cGive strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine\n unto the bitter in soul. Let him drink, and forget his poverty,\n and remember his misery no more\u201d\u2014we do not need to maintain that\n these passages furnish standards for our modern conduct. Dr.\n Fisher calls the latter \u201cthe worst advice to a person in\n affliction, or dispirited by the loss of property.\u201d They mark past\n stages in God\u2019s providential leading of mankind. A higher stage\n indeed is already intimated in _Prov. 31:4\u2014_\u201cit is not for kings\n to drink wine, Nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink?\u201d We\n see that God could use very imperfect instruments and could\n inspire very imperfect men. Many things were permitted for men\u2019s\n \u201chardness of heart\u201d_ (Mat. 19:8)_. The Sermon on the Mount is a\n great advance on the law of Moses (_Mat. 5:21\u2014_\u201cYe have heard that\n it was said to them of old time\u201d; _cf._ 22\u2014\u201cBut I say unto you\u201d).\n\n Robert G. Ingersoll would have lost his stock in trade if\n Christians had generally recognized that revelation is gradual,\n and is completed only in Christ. This gradualness of revelation is\n conceded in the common phrase: \u201cthe new dispensation.\u201d Abraham\n Lincoln showed his wisdom by never going far ahead of the common\n sense of the people. God similarly adapted his legislation to the\n capacities of each successive age. The command to Abraham to\n sacrifice his son (_Gen. 22:1-19_) was a proper test of Abraham\u2019s\n faith in a day when human sacrifice violated no common ethical\n standard because the Hebrew, like the Roman, \u201cpatria potestas\u201d did\n not regard the child as having a separate individuality, but\n included the child in the parent and made the child equally\n responsible for the parent\u2019s sin. But that very command was given\n _only_ as a test of faith, and with the intent to make the\n intended obedience the occasion of revealing God\u2019s provision of a\n substitute and so of doing away with human sacrifice for all\n future time. We may well imitate the gradualness of divine\n revelation in our treatment of dancing and of the liquor traffic.\n\n\n(_d_) God\u2019s righteous sovereignty affords the key to other events. He has\nthe right to do what he will with his own, and to punish the transgressor\nwhen and where he will; and he may justly make men the foretellers or\nexecutors of his purposes.\n\n\n Foretellers, as in the imprecatory Psalms (_137:9_; _cf._ _Is.\n 13:16-18_ and _Jer. 50:16, 29_); executors, as in the destruction\n of the Canaanites (_Deut. 7:2, 16_). In the former case the Psalm\n was not the ebullition of personal anger, but the expression of\n judicial indignation against the enemies of God. We must\n distinguish the substance from the form. The substance was the\n denunciation of God\u2019s righteous judgments; the form was taken from\n the ordinary customs of war in the Psalmist\u2019s time. See Park, in\n Bib. Sac., 1862:165; Cowles, Com. on Ps. 137; Perowne on Psalms,\n Introd., 61; Presb. and Ref. Rev., 1897:490-505; _cf._ _2 Tim.\n 4:14\u2014_\u201cthe Lord will render to him according to his works\u201d\u2014a\n prophecy, not a curse, \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03b4\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9, not \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03b4\u03ce\u03b7, as in A. V. In the\n latter case, an exterminating war was only the benevolent surgery\n that amputated the putrid limb, and so saved the religious life of\n the Hebrew nation and of the after-world. See Dr. Thomas Arnold,\n Essay on the Right Interpretation of Scripture; Fisher, Beginnings\n of Christianity, 11-24.\n\n Another interpretation of these events has been proposed, which\n would make them illustrations of the principle indicated in (_c_)\n above: E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 45\u2014\u201cIt was not the\n imprecations of the Psalm that were inspired of God, but his\n purposes and ideas of which these were by the times the necessary\n vehicle; just as the adultery of David was not by divine command,\n though through it the purpose of God as to Christ\u2019s descent was\n accomplished.\u201d John Watson (Ian Maclaren), Cure of Souls,\n 143\u2014\u201cWhen the massacre of the Canaanites and certain proceedings\n of David are flung in the face of Christians, it is no longer\n necessary to fall back on evasions or special pleading. It can now\n be frankly admitted that, from our standpoint in this year of\n grace, such deeds were atrocious, and that they never could have\n been according to the mind of God, but that they must be judged by\n their date, and considered the defects of elementary moral\n processes. The Bible is vindicated, because it is, on the whole, a\n steady ascent, and because it culminates in Christ.\u201d\n\n Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 56\u2014\u201cAbraham mistook the\n voice of conscience, calling on him to consecrate his only son to\n God, and interpreted it as a command to slay his son as a burnt\n offering. Israel misinterpreted his righteous indignation at the\n cruel and lustful rites of the Canaanitish religion as a divine\n summons to destroy the worship by putting the worshipers to death;\n a people undeveloped in moral judgment could not distinguish\n between formal regulations respecting camp-life and eternal\n principles of righteousness, such as, Thou shalt love thy neighbor\n as thyself, but embodied them in the same code, and seemed to\n regard them as of equal authority.\u201d Wilkinson, Epic of Paul,\n 281\u2014\u201cIf so be such man, so placed ... did in some part That\n utterance make his own, profaning it, To be his vehicle for sense\n not meant By the august supreme inspiring Will\u201d\u2014_i. e._, putting\n some of his own sinful anger into God\u2019s calm predictions of\n judgment. Compare the stern last words of \u201cZechariah, the son of\n Jehoiada, the priest\u201d when stoned to death in the temple court:\n \u201cJehovah look upon it and require it\u201d_ (2 Chron. 24:20-22)_, with\n the last words of Jesus: \u201cFather, forgive them, for they know not\n what they do\u201d_ (Luke 23:34)_ and of Stephen: \u201cLord, lay not this\n sin to their charge\u201d_ (Acts 7:60)_.\n\n\n(_e_) Other apparent immoralities are due to unwarranted interpretations.\nSymbol is sometimes taken for literal fact; the language of irony is\nunderstood as sober affirmation; the glow and freedom of Oriental\ndescription are judged by the unimpassioned style of Western literature;\nappeal to lower motives is taken to exclude, instead of preparing for, the\nhigher.\n\n\n In _Hosea 1:2, 3_, the command to the prophet to marry a harlot\n was probably received and executed in vision, and was intended\n only as symbolic: compare _Jer. 25:15-18\u2014_\u201cTake this cup ... and\n cause all the nations ... to drink.\u201d Literal obedience would have\n made the prophet contemptible to those whom he would instruct, and\n would require so long a time as to weaken, if not destroy, the\n designed effect; see Ann. Par. Bible, _in loco_. In _2 K. 6:19_,\n Elisha\u2019s deception, so called, was probably only ironical and\n benevolent; the enemy dared not resist, because they were\n completely in his power. In the _Song of Solomon_, we have, as\n Jewish writers have always held, a highly-wrought dramatic\n description of the union between Jehovah and his people, which we\n must judge by Eastern and not by Western literary standards.\n\n Francis W. Newman, in his Phases of Faith, accused even the New\n Testament of presenting low motives for human obedience. It is\n true that all right motives are appealed to, and some of these\n motives are of a higher sort than are others. Hope of heaven and\n fear of hell are not the highest motives, but they may be employed\n as preliminary incitements to action, even though only love for\n God and for holiness will ensure salvation. Such motives are urged\n both by Christ and by his apostles: _Mat. 6:20\u2014_\u201clay up for\n yourselves treasures in heaven\u201d; _10:28\u2014_\u201cfear him who is able to\n destroy both soul and body in hell\u201d; _Jude 23\u2014_\u201csome save with\n fear, snatching them out of the fire.\u201d In this respect the N. T.\n does not differ from the O. T. George Adam Smith has pointed out\n that the royalists got their texts, \u201cthe powers that be\u201d_ (Rom.\n 13:1)_ and \u201cthe king as supreme\u201d_ (1 Pet. 2:13)_, from the N. T.,\n while the O. T. furnished texts for the defenders of liberty.\n While the O. T. deals with _national_ life, and the discharge of\n social and political functions, the N. T. deals in the main with\n _individuals_ and with their relations to God. On the whole\n subject, see Hessey, Moral Difficulties of the Bible; Jellett,\n Moral Difficulties of the O. T.; Faith and Free Thought (Lect. by\n Christ. Ev. Soc.), 2:173; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith; Butler,\n Analogy, part ii, chap. iii; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 465-483.\n\n\n4. Errors of Reasoning.\n\n\n(_a_) What are charged as such are generally to be explained as valid\nargument expressed in highly condensed form. The appearance of error may\nbe due to the suppression of one or more links in the reasoning.\n\n\n In _Mat. 22:32_, Christ\u2019s argument for the resurrection, drawn\n from the fact that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is\n perfectly and obviously valid, the moment we put in the suppressed\n premise that the living relation to God which is here implied\n cannot properly be conceived as something merely spiritual, but\n necessarily requires a new and restored life of the body. If God\n is the God of the living, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall\n rise from the dead. See more full exposition, under Eschatology.\n Some of the Scripture arguments are enthymemes, and an enthymeme,\n according to Arbuthnot and Pope, is \u201ca syllogism in which the\n major is married to the minnor, and the marriage is kept secret.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Where we cannot see the propriety of the conclusions drawn from\ngiven premises, there is greater reason to attribute our failure to\nignorance of divine logic on our part, than to accommodation or _ad\nhominem_ arguments on the part of the Scripture writers.\n\n\n By divine logic we mean simply a logic whose elements and\n processes are correct, though not understood by us. In _Heb. 7:9,\n 10_ (Levi\u2019s paying tithes in Abraham), there is probably a\n recognition of the organic unity of the family, which in miniature\n illustrates the organic unity of the race. In _Gal. 3:20\u2014_\u201ca\n mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one\u201d\u2014the law, with\n its two contracting parties, is contrasted with the promise, which\n proceeds from the sole fiat of God and is therefore unchangeable.\n Paul\u2019s argument here rests on Christ\u2019s divinity as its\n foundation\u2014otherwise Christ would have been a mediator in the same\n sense in which Moses was a mediator (see Lightfoot, _in loco_). In\n _Gal. 4:21-31_, Hagar and Ishmael on the one hand, and Sarah and\n Isaac on the other, illustrate the exclusion of the bondmen of the\n law from the privileges of the spiritual seed of Abraham.\n Abraham\u2019s two wives, and the two classes of people in the two\n sons, represent the two covenants (so Calvin). In _John 10:34\u2014_\u201cI\n said, Ye are gods,\u201d the implication is that Judaism was not a\n system of mere monotheism, but of theism tending to theanthropism,\n a real union of God and man (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_).\n Godet well remarks that he who doubts Paul\u2019s logic will do well\n first to suspect his own.\n\n\n(_c_) The adoption of Jewish methods of reasoning, where it could be\nproved, would not indicate error on the part of the Scripture writers, but\nrather an inspired sanction of the method as applied to that particular\ncase.\n\n\n In _Gal. 3:16\u2014_\u201cHe saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of\n one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.\u201d Here it is intimated that\n the very form of the expression in _Gen. 22:18_, which denotes\n unity, was selected by the Holy Spirit as significant of that one\n person, Christ, who was the true seed of Abraham and in whom all\n nations were to be blessed. Argument from the form of a single\n word is in this case correct, although the Rabbins often made more\n of single words than the Holy Spirit ever intended. Watts, New\n Apologetic, 69\u2014\u201cF. W. Farrar asserts that the plural of the Hebrew\n or Greek terms for \u2018seed\u2019 is never used by Hebrew or Greek writers\n as a designation of human offspring. But see Sophocles, \u0152dipus at\n Colonus, 599, 600\u2014\u03b3\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f14\u03bc\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c0\u03b7\u03bb\u03ac\u03b8\u03b7\u03bd \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10\u03bc\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd\u2014\u2018I\n was driven away from my own country by my own offspring.\u2019 \u201d In _1\n Cor. 10:1-6\u2014_\u201cand the rock was Christ\u201d\u2014the Rabbinic tradition that\n the smitten rock followed the Israelites in their wanderings is\n declared to be only the absurd literalizing of a spiritual\n fact\u2014the continual presence of Christ, as pre\u00ebxistent Logos, with\n his ancient people. _Per contra_, see Row, Rev. and Mod. Theories,\n 98-128.\n\n\n(_d_) If it should appear however upon further investigation that\nRabbinical methods have been wrongly employed by the apostles in their\nargumentation, we might still distinguish between the truth they are\nseeking to convey and the arguments by which they support it. Inspiration\nmay conceivably make known the truth, yet leave the expression of the\ntruth to human dialectic as well as to human rhetoric.\n\n\n Johnson, Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T., 137, 138\u2014\u201cIn the\n utter absence of all evidence to the contrary, we ought to suppose\n that the allegories of the N. T. are like the allegories of\n literature in general, merely luminous embodiments of the\n truth.... If these allegories are not presented by their writers\n as evidences, they are none the less precious, since they\n illuminate the truth otherwise evinced, and thus render it at once\n clear to the apprehension and attractive to the taste.\u201d If however\n the purpose of the writers was to use these allegories for proof,\n we may still see shining through the rifts of their traditional\n logic the truth which they were striving to set forth. Inspiration\n may have put them in possession of this truth without altering\n their ordinary scholastic methods of demonstration and expression.\n Horton, Inspiration, 108\u2014\u201cDiscrepancies and illogical reasonings\n were but inequalities or cracks in the mirrors, which did not\n materially distort or hide the Person\u201d whose glory they sought to\n reflect. Luther went even further than this when he said that a\n certain argument in the epistle was \u201cgood enough for the\n Galatians.\u201d\n\n\n5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.\n\n\n(_a_) What are charged as such are commonly interpretations of the meaning\nof the original Scripture by the same Spirit who first inspired it.\n\n\n In _Eph. 5:14, _\u201carise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon\n thee\u201d is an inspired interpretation of _Is. 60:1\u2014_\u201cArise, shine;\n for thy light is come.\u201d _Ps. 68:18\u2014_\u201cThou hast received gifts\n among men\u201d\u2014is quoted in _Eph. 4:8_ as \u201cgave gifts to men.\u201d The\n words in Hebrew are probably a concise expression for \u201cthou hast\n taken spoil which thou mayest distribute as gifts to men.\u201d _Eph.\n 4:8_ agrees exactly with the sense, though not with the words, of\n the Psalm. In _Heb. 11:21, _\u201cJacob ... worshiped, leaning upon the\n top of his staff\u201d (LXX); _Gen. 47:31_ has \u201cbowed himself upon the\n bed\u2019s head.\u201d The meaning is the same, for the staff of the chief\n and the spear of the warrior were set at the bed\u2019s head. Jacob,\n too feeble to rise, prayed in his bed. Here Calvin says that \u201cthe\n apostle does not hesitate to accommodate to his own purpose what\n was commonly received,\u2014they were not so scrupulous\u201d as to details.\n Even Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 177, speaks of \u201ca reshaping\n of his own words by the Author of them.\u201d We prefer, with Calvin,\n to see in these quotations evidence that the sacred writers were\n insistent upon the substance of the truth rather than upon the\n form, the spirit rather than the letter.\n\n\n(_b_) Where an apparently false translation is quoted from the Septuagint,\nthe sanction of inspiration is given to it, as expressing a part at least\nof the fulness of meaning contained in the divine original\u2014a fulness of\nmeaning which two varying translations do not in some cases exhaust.\n\n\n _Ps. 4:4_\u2014Heb.: \u201cTremble, and sin not\u201d (= no longer); LXX: \u201cBe ye\n angry, and sin not.\u201d_ Eph. 4:26_ quotes the LXX. The words may\n originally have been addressed to David\u2019s comrades, exhorting them\n to keep their anger within bounds. Both translations together are\n needed to bring out the meaning of the original. _Ps.\n 40:6-8\u2014_\u201cMine ears hast thou opened\u201d is translated in _Heb.\n 10:5-7\u2014_\u201ca body didst thou prepare for me.\u201d Here the Epistle\n quotes from the LXX. But the Hebrew means literally: \u201cMine ears\n hast thou bored\u201d\u2014an allusion to the custom of pinning a slave to\n the doorpost of his master by an awl driven through his ear, in\n token of his complete subjection. The sense of the verse is\n therefore given in the Epistle: \u201cThou hast made me thine in body\n and soul\u2014lo, I come to do thy will.\u201d A. C. Kendrick: \u201cDavid, just\n entering upon his kingdom after persecution, is a type of Christ\n entering on his earthly mission. Hence David\u2019s words are put into\n the mouth of Christ. For \u2018ears,\u2019 the organs with which we hear and\n obey and which David conceived to be hollowed out for him by God,\n the author of the Hebrews substitutes the word \u2018body,\u2019 as the\n _general_ instrument of doing God\u2019s will\u201d (Com. on _Heb. 10:5-7_).\n\n\n(_c_) The freedom of these inspired interpretations, however, does not\nwarrant us in like freedom of interpretation in the case of other passages\nwhose meaning has not been authoritatively made known.\n\n\n We have no reason to believe that the scarlet thread of Rahab\n (_Josh. 2:18_) was a designed prefiguration of the blood of\n Christ, nor that the three measures of meal in which the woman hid\n her leaven (_Mat. 13:33_) symbolized Shem, Ham and Japheth, the\n three divisions of the human race. C. H. M., in his notes on the\n tabernacle in Exodus, tells us that \u201cthe loops of blue = heavenly\n grace; the taches of gold = the divine energy of Christ; the rams\u2019\n skins dyed red = Christ\u2019s consecration and devotedness; the\n badgers\u2019 skins = his holy vigilance against temptation\u201d! The\n tabernacle was indeed a type of Christ (_John 1:14_\u2014\u1f10\u03c3\u03ba\u03ae\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd.\n _2:19, 21\u2014_\u201cin three days I will raise it up ... but he spake of\n the temple of his body\u201d); yet it does not follow that every detail\n of the structure was significant. So each parable teaches some one\n main lesson,\u2014the particulars may be mere drapery; and while we may\n use the parables for illustration, we should never ascribe divine\n authority to our private impressions of their meaning.\n\n _Mat. 25:1-13_\u2014the parable of the five wise and the five foolish\n virgins\u2014has been made to teach that the number of the saved\n precisely equals the number of the lost. Augustine defended\n persecution from the words in _Luke 14:23\u2014_\u201cconstrain them to come\n in.\u201d The Inquisition was justified by _Mat. 13:30\u2014_\u201cbind them in\n bundles to burn them.\u201d Innocent III denied the Scriptures to the\n laity, quoting _Heb. 12:20\u2014_\u201cIf even a beast touch the mountain,\n it shall be stoned.\u201d A Plymouth Brother held that he would be safe\n on an evangelizing journey because he read in _John 19:36\u2014_\u201cA bone\n of him shall not be broken.\u201d _Mat. 17:8\u2014_\u201cthey saw no one, save\n Jesus only\u201d\u2014has been held to mean that we should trust only Jesus.\n The Epistle of Barnabas discovered in Abraham\u2019s 318 servants a\n prediction of the crucified Jesus, and others have seen in\n Abraham\u2019s three days\u2019 journey to Mount Moriah the three stages in\n the development of the soul. Clement of Alexandria finds the four\n natural elements in the four colors of the Jewish Tabernacle. All\n this is to make a parable \u201crun on all fours.\u201d While we call a hero\n a lion, we do not need to find in the man something to correspond\n to the lion\u2019s mane and claws. See Toy, Quotations in the N. T.;\n Franklin Johnson, Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T.; Crooker,\n The New Bible and its New Uses, 126-136.\n\n\n(_d_) While we do not grant that the New Testament writers in any proper\nsense misquoted or misinterpreted the Old Testament, we do not regard\nabsolute correctness in these respects as essential to their inspiration.\nThe inspiring Spirit may have communicated truth, and may have secured in\nthe Scriptures as a whole a record of that truth sufficient for men\u2019s\nmoral and religious needs, without imparting perfect gifts of scholarship\nor exegesis.\n\n\n In answer to Toy, Quotations in the N. T., who takes a generally\n unfavorable view of the correctness of the N. T. writers, Johnson,\n Quotations of the N. T. from the O. T., maintains their\n correctness. On pages x, xi, of his Introduction, Johnson remarks:\n \u201cI think it just to regard the writers of the Bible as the\n creators of a great literature, and to judge and interpret them by\n the laws of literature. They have produced all the chief forms of\n literature, as history, biography, anecdote, proverb, oratory,\n allegory, poetry, fiction. They have needed therefore all the\n resources of human speech, its sobriety and scientific precision\n on one page, its rainbow hues of fancy and imagination on another,\n its fires of passion on yet another. They could not have moved and\n guided men in the best manner had they denied themselves the\n utmost force and freedom of language; had they refused to employ\n its wide range of expressions, whether exact or poetic; had they\n not borrowed without stint its many forms of reason, of terror, of\n rapture, of hope, of joy, of peace. So also, they have needed the\n usual freedom of literary allusion and citation, in order to\n commend the gospel to the judgment, the tastes, and the feelings\n of their readers.\u201d\n\n\n6. Errors in Prophecy.\n\n\n(_a_) What are charged as such may frequently be explained by remembering\nthat much of prophecy is yet unfulfilled.\n\n\n It is sometimes taken for granted that the book of Revelation, for\n example, refers entirely to events already past. Moses Stuart, in\n his Commentary, and Warren\u2019s Parousia, represent this preterist\n interpretation. Thus judged, however, many of the predictions of\n the book might seem to have failed.\n\n\n(_b_) The personal surmises of the prophets as to the meaning of the\nprophecies they recorded may have been incorrect, while yet the prophecies\nthemselves are inspired.\n\n\n In _1 Pet. 1:10, 11_, the apostle declares that the prophets\n searched \u201cwhat time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ\n which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the\n sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them.\u201d So\n Paul, although he does not announce it as certain, seems to have\n had some hope that he might live to witness Christ\u2019s second\n coming. See _2 Cor. 5:4\u2014_\u201cnot for that we would be unclothed, but\n that we would be clothed upon\u201d (\u1f10\u03c0\u03b5\u03bd\u03b4\u03cd\u03c3\u03b1\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9\u2014put on the spiritual\n body, as over the present one, without the intervention of death);\n _1 Thess. 4:15, 17\u2014_\u201cwe that are alive, that are left unto the\n coming of the Lord.\u201d So _Mat. 2:15_ quotes from _Hosea 11:1\u2014_\u201cOut\n of Egypt did I call my son,\u201d and applies the prophecy to Christ,\n although Hosea was doubtless thinking only of the exodus of the\n people of Israel.\n\n\n(_c_) The prophet\u2019s earlier utterances are not to be severed from the\nlater utterances which elucidate them, nor from the whole revelation of\nwhich they form a part. It is unjust to forbid the prophet to explain his\nown meaning.\n\n\n _2 Thessalonians_ was written expressly to correct wrong\n inferences as to the apostle\u2019s teaching drawn from his peculiar\n mode of speaking in the first epistle. In _2 Thess. 2:2-5_ he\n removes the impression \u201cthat the day of the Lord is now present\u201d\n or \u201cjust at hand\u201d; declares that \u201cit will not be, except the\n falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed\u201d; reminds\n the Thessalonians: \u201cwhen I was yet with you, I told you these\n things.\u201d Yet still, in _verse 1_, he speaks of \u201cthe coming of our\n Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him.\u201d\n\n These passages, taken together, show: (1) that the two epistles\n are one in their teaching; (2) that in neither epistle is there\n any prediction of the immediate coming of the Lord; (3) that in\n the second epistle great events are foretold as intervening before\n that coming; (4) that while Paul never taught that Christ would\n come during his own lifetime, he hoped at least during the earlier\n part of his life that it might be so\u2014a hope that seems to have\n been dissipated in his later years. (See _2 Tim. 4:6\u2014_\u201cI am\n already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.\u201d) We\n must remember, however, that there was a \u201ccoming of the Lord\u201d in\n the destruction of Jerusalem within three or four years of Paul\u2019s\n death. Henry Van Dyke: \u201cThe point of Paul\u2019s teaching in _1_ and _2\n Thess._ is not that Christ is coming to-morrow, but that he is\n surely coming.\u201d The absence of perspective in prophecy may explain\n Paul\u2019s not at first defining the precise time of the end, and so\n leaving it to be misunderstood.\n\n The second Epistle to the Thessalonians, therefore, only makes\n more plain the meaning of the first, and adds new items of\n prediction. It is important to recognize in Paul\u2019s epistles a\n progress in prophecy, in doctrine, in church polity. The full\n statement of the truth was gradually drawn out, under the\n influence of the Spirit, upon occasion of successive outward\n demands and inward experiences. Much is to be learned by studying\n the chronological order of Paul\u2019s epistles, as well as of the\n other N. T. books. For evidence of similar progress in the\n epistles of Peter, compare _1 Pet. 4:7_ with _2 Pet. 3:4_ _sq._\n\n\n(_d_) The character of prophecy as a rough general sketch of the future,\nin highly figurative language, and without historical perspective, renders\nit peculiarly probable that what at first sight seem to be errors are due\nto a misinterpretation on our part, which confounds the drapery with the\nsubstance, or applies its language to events to which it had no reference.\n\n\n _James 5:9_ and _Phil. 4:5_ are instances of that large prophetic\n speech which regards the distant future as near at hand, because\n so certain to the faith and hope of the church. Sanday,\n Inspiration, 376-378\u2014\u201cNo doubt the Christians of the Apostolic age\n did live in immediate expectation of the Second Coming, and that\n expectation culminated at the crisis in which the Apocalypse was\n written. In the Apocalypse, as in every predictive prophecy, there\n is a double element, one part derived from the circumstances of\n the present and another pointing forwards to the future.... All\n these things, in an exact and literal sense have fallen through\n with the postponement of that great event in which they centre.\n From the first they were but meant as the imaginative pictorial\n and symbolical clothing of that event. What measure of real\n fulfilment the Apocalypse may yet be destined to receive we cannot\n tell. But in predictive prophecy, even when most closely verified,\n the essence lies less in the prediction than in the eternal laws\n of moral and religious truth which the fact predicted reveals or\n exemplifies.\u201d Thus we recognize both the divinity and the freedom\n of prophecy, and reject the rationalistic theory which would\n relate the fall of the Beaconsfield government in Matthew\u2019s way:\n \u201cThat it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Cromwell, saying:\n \u2018Get you gone, and make room for honest men!\u2019 \u201d See the more full\n statement of the nature of prophecy, on pages 132-141. Also\n Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the N. T.\n\n\n7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.\n\n\n(_a_) This charge may be shown, in each single case, to rest upon a\nmisapprehension of the aim and method of the book, and its connection with\nthe remainder of the Bible, together with a narrowness of nature or of\ndoctrinal view, which prevents the critic from appreciating the wants of\nthe peculiar class of men to which the book is especially serviceable.\n\n\n Luther called _James_ \u201ca right strawy epistle.\u201d His constant\n pondering of the doctrine of justification by faith alone made it\n difficult for him to grasp the complementary truth that we are\n justified only by such faith as brings forth good works, or to\n perceive the essential agreement of James and Paul. Prof. R. E.\n Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,1898:803, 804\u2014\u201cLuther refused\n canonical authority to books not actually written by apostles or\n composed (as Mark and Luke) under their direction. So he rejected\n from the rank of canonical authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2\n Peter, Revelation. Even Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2\n Peter, excluded the book of Revelation from the Scripture on which\n he wrote Commentaries, and also thus ignored 2 and 3 John.\u201d G. P.\n Fisher in S. S. Times, Aug. 29, 1891\u2014\u201cLuther, in his preface to\n the N. T. (Edition of 1522), gives a list of what he considers as\n the principal books of the N. T. These are John\u2019s Gospel and First\n Epistle, Paul\u2019s Epistles, especially Romans and Galatians, and\n Peter\u2019s First Epistle. Then he adds that \u2018St. James\u2019 Epistle is a\n right strawy Epistle _compared with them_\u2019\u2014\u2018_ein recht strohern\n Epistel gegen sie,_\u2019 thus characterizing it not absolutely but\n only relatively.\u201d Zwingle even said of the Apocalypse: \u201cIt is not\n a Biblical book.\u201d So Thomas Arnold, with his exaggerated love for\n historical accuracy and definite outline, found the Oriental\n imagery and sweeping visions of the book of Revelation so bizarre\n and distasteful that he doubted their divine authority.\n\n\n(_b_) The testimony of church history and general Christian experience to\nthe profitableness and divinity of the disputed books is of greater weight\nthan the personal impressions of the few who criticize them.\n\n\n Instance the testimonies of the ages of persecution to the worth\n of the prophecies, which assure God\u2019s people that his cause shall\n surely triumph. Denney, Studies in Theology, 226\u2014\u201cIt is at least\n as likely that the individual should be insensible to the divine\n message in a book, as that the church should have judged it to\n contain such a message if it did not do so.\u201d Milton, Areopagitica:\n \u201cThe Bible brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against\n Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus.\u201d Bruce,\n Apologetics, 329\u2014\u201cO. T. religion was querulous, vindictive,\n philolevitical, hostile toward foreigners, morbidly\n self-conscious, and tending to self-righteousness. Ecclesiastes\n shows us how we ought _not_ to feel. To go about crying _Vanitas!_\n is to miss the lesson it was meant to teach, namely, that the Old\n Covenant was vanity\u2014proved to be vanity by allowing a son of the\n Covenant to get into so despairing a mood.\u201d Chadwick says that\n Ecclesiastes got into the Canon only after it had received an\n orthodox postscript.\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:193\u2014\u201cSlavish fear and\n self-righteous reckoning with God are the unlovely features of\n this Jewish religion of law to which the ethical idealism of the\n prophets had degenerated, and these traits strike us most visibly\n in Pharsiaism.... It was this side of the O. T. religion to which\n Christianity took a critical and destroying attitude, while it\n revealed a new and higher knowledge of God. For, says Paul, \u2018ye\n received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye\n received the spirit of adoption\u2019_ (Rom. 8:15)_. In unity with God\n man does not lose his soul but preserves it. God not only commands\n but gives.\u201d Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 144\u2014\u201cWhen\n the book of Ecclesiastes is referred to the days of the third\n century B. C., then its note is caught, and any man who has been\n wronged and embittered by political tyranny and social corruption\n has his bitter cry included in the book of God.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Such testimony can be adduced in favor of the value of each one of\nthe books to which exception is taken, such as Esther, Job, Song of\nSolomon, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, James, Revelation.\n\n\n Esther is the book, next to the Pentateuch, held in highest\n reverence by the Jews. \u201cJob was the discoverer of infinity, and\n the first to see the bearing of infinity on righteousness. It was\n the return of religion to nature. Job heard the voice beyond the\n Sinai-voice\u201d (Shadow-Cross, 89). Inge, Christian Mysticism, 43\u2014\u201cAs\n to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has\n been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honor of true love\n has been distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to\n hysterical emotions in which sexual imagery has been freely used\n to symbolize the relation between the soul and its Lord.\u201d Chadwick\n says that the Song of Solomon got into the Canon only after it had\n received an allegorical interpretation. Gladden, Seven Puzzling\n Bible Books, 165, thinks it impossible that \u201cthe addition of one\n more inmate to the harem of that royal rake, King Solomon, should\n have been made the type of the spiritual affection between Christ\n and his church. Instead of this, the book is a glorification of\n pure love. The Shulamite, transported to the court of Solomon,\n remains faithful to her shepherd lover, and is restored to him.\u201d\n\n Bruce, Apologetics, 321\u2014\u201cThe Song of Solomon, literally\n interpreted as a story of true love, proof against the\n blandishments of the royal harem, is rightfully in the Canon as a\n buttress to the true religion; for whatever made for purity in the\n relations of the sexes made for the worship of Jehovah\u2014Baal\n worship and impurity being closely associated.\u201d Rutherford,\n McCheyne, and Spurgeon have taken more texts from the Song of\n Solomon than from any other portion of Scripture of like extent.\n Charles G. Finney, Autobiography, 378\u2014\u201cAt this time it seemed as\n if my soul was wedded to Christ in a sense which I never had any\n thought or conception of before. The language of the Song of\n Solomon was as natural to me as my breath. I thought I could\n understand well the state he was in when he wrote that Song, and\n concluded then, as I have ever thought since, that that Song was\n written by him after he had been reclaimed from his great\n backsliding. I not only had all the fulness of my first love, but\n a vast accession to it. Indeed, the Lord lifted me up so much\n above anything that I had experienced before, and taught me so\n much of the meaning of the Bible, of Christ\u2019s relations and power\n and willingness, that I found myself saying to him: I had not\n known or conceived that any such thing was true.\u201d On Jonah, see R.\n W. Dale, in Expositor, July, 1892, advocating the non-historical\n and allegorical character of the book. Bib. Sac.,\n 10:737-764\u2014\u201cJonah represents the nation of Israel as emerging\n through a miracle from the exile, in order to carry out its\n mission to the world at large. It teaches that God is the God of\n the whole earth; that the Ninevites as well as the Israelites are\n dear to him; that his threatenings of penalty are conditional.\u201d\n\n\n8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the persons to\nwhom they are ascribed.\n\n\nThe objection rests upon a misunderstanding of the nature and object of\ninspiration. It may be removed by considering that\n\n(_a_) In the case of books made up from pre\u00ebxisting documents, inspiration\nsimply preserved the compilers of them from selecting inadequate or\nimproper material. The fact of such compilation does not impugn their\nvalue as records of a divine revelation, since these books supplement each\nother\u2019s deficiencies and together are sufficient for man\u2019s religious\nneeds.\n\n\n Luke distinctly informs us that he secured the materials for his\n gospel from the reports of others who were eye-witnesses of the\n events he recorded (_Luke 1:1-4_). The book of Genesis bears marks\n of having incorporated documents of earlier times. The account of\n creation which begins with _Gen. 2:4_ is evidently written by a\n different hand from that which penned _1:1-31_ and _2:1-3_.\n Instances of the same sort may be found in the books of\n Chronicles. In like manner, Marshall\u2019s Life of Washington\n incorporates documents by other writers. By thus incorporating\n them, Marshall vouches for their truth. See Bible Com., 1:2, 22.\n\n Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theology, 1:243\u2014\u201cLuther ascribes to faith\n critical authority with reference to the Canon. He denies the\n canonicity of James, without regarding it as spurious. So of\n Hebrews and Revelation, though later, in 1545, he passed a more\n favorable judgment upon the latter. He even says of a proof\n adduced by Paul in Galatians that it is too weak to hold. He\n allows that in external matters not only Stephen but even the\n sacred authors contain inaccuracies. The authority of the O. T.\n does not seem to him invalidated by the admission that several of\n its writings have passed through revising hands. What would it\n matter, he asks, if Moses did not write the Pentateuch? The\n prophets studied Moses and one another. If they built in much\n wood, hay and stubble along with the rest, still the foundation\n abides; the fire of the great day shall consume the former; for in\n this manner do we treat the writings of Augustine and others.\n Kings is far more to be believed than Chronicles. Ecclesiastes is\n forged and cannot come from Solomon. Esther is not canonical. The\n church may have erred in adopting a book into the Canon. Faith\n first requires proof. Hence he ejects the Apocryphal books of the\n O. T. from the Canon. So some parts of the N. T. receive only a\n secondary, deuterocanonical position. There is a difference\n between the word of God and the holy Scriptures, not merely in\n reference to the form, but also in reference to the subject\n matter.\u201d\n\n H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 94\u2014\u201cThe Editor of\n the Minor Prophets united in one roll the prophetic fragments\n which were in circulation in his time. Finding a fragment without\n an author\u2019s name he inserted it in the series. It would not have\n been distinguished from the work of the author immediately\n preceding. So _Zech. 9:1-4_ came to go under the name of\n Zechariah, and _Is. 40-66_ under the name of Isaiah. Reuss called\n these \u2018anatomical studies.\u2019 \u201d On the authorship of the book of\n Daniel, see W. C. Wilkinson, in Homiletical Review, March,\n 1902:208, and Oct. 1902:305; on Paul, see Hom. Rev., June,\n 1902:501; on 110th Psalm, Hom. Rev., April, 1902:309.\n\n\n(_b_) In the case of additions to Scripture books by later writers, it is\nreasonable to suppose that the additions, as well as the originals, were\nmade by inspiration, and no essential truth is sacrificed by allowing the\nwhole to go under the name of the chief author.\n\n\n _Mark 16:9-20_ appears to have been added by a later hand (see\n English Revised Version). The Eng. Rev. Vers. also brackets or\n segregates a part of _verse 3_ and the whole of _verse 4_ in _John\n 5_ (the moving of the water by the angel), and the whole passage\n _John 7:53-8:11_ (the woman taken in adultery). Westcott and Hort\n regard the latter passage as an interpolation, probably \u201cWestern\u201d\n in its origin (so also _Mark 16:9-20_). Others regard it as\n authentic, though not written by John. The closing chapter of\n Deuteronomy was apparently added after Moses\u2019 death\u2014perhaps by\n Joshua. If criticism should prove other portions of the Pentateuch\n to have been composed after Moses\u2019 time, the inspiration of the\n Pentateuch would not be invalidated, so long as Moses was its\n chief author or even the original source and founder of its\n legislation (_John 5:46\u2014_\u201che wrote of me\u201d). Gore, in Lux Mundi,\n 355\u2014\u201cDeuteronomy may be a republication of the law, in the spirit\n and power of Moses, and put dramatically into his mouth.\u201d\n\n At a spot near the Pool of Siloam, Manasseh is said to have\n ordered that Isaiah should be sawn asunder with a wooden saw. The\n prophet is again sawn asunder by the recent criticism. But his\n prophecy opens (_Is. 1:1_) with the statement that it was composed\n during a period which covered the reigns of four kings\u2014Uzziah,\n Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah\u2014nearly forty years. In so long a time\n the style of a writer greatly changes. _Chapters 40-66_ may have\n been written in Isaiah\u2019s later age, after he had retired from\n public life. Compare the change in the style of Zechariah, John\n and Paul, with that in Thomas Carlyle and George William Curtis.\n On Isaiah, see Smyth, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ; Bib.\n Sac., Apr. 1881:230-253; also July, 1881; Stanley, Jewish Ch.,\n 2:646, 647; N\u00e4gelsbach, Int. to Lange\u2019s Isaiah.\n\n For the view that there were two Isaiahs, see George Adam Smith,\n Com. on Isaiah, 2:1-25: Isaiah flourished B. C. 740-700. The last\n 27 chapters deal with the captivity (598-538) and with Cyrus\n (550), whom they name. The book is not one continuous prophecy,\n but a number of separate orations. Some of these claim to be\n Isaiah\u2019s own, and have titles, such as \u201cThe vision of Isaiah the\n son of Amos\u201d_ (1:1)_; \u201cThe word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw\u201d_\n (2:1)_. But such titles describe only the individual prophecies\n they head. Other portions of the book, on other subjects and in\n different styles, have no titles at all. Chapters _40-66_ do not\n claim to be his. There are nine citations in the N. T. from the\n disputed chapters, but none by our Lord. None of these citations\n were given in answer to the question: Did Isaiah write chapters\n _44-66_? Isaiah\u2019s name is mentioned only for the sake of\n reference. Chapters _44-66_ set forth the exile and captivity as\n already having taken place. Israel is addressed as ready for\n deliverance. Cyrus is named as deliverer. There is no grammar of\n the future like Jeremiah\u2019s. Cyrus is pointed out as proof that\n _former_ prophecies of deliverance are at last coming to pass. He\n is not presented as a prediction, but as a proof that prediction\n is being fulfilled. The prophet could not have referred the\n heathen to Cyrus as proof that prophecy had been fulfilled, had he\n not been visible to them in all his weight of war. Babylon has\n still to fall before the exiles can go free. But chapters _40-66_\n speak of the coming of Cyrus as past, and of the fall of Babylon\n as yet to come. Why not use the prophetic perfect of both, if both\n were yet future? Local color, language and thought are all\n consistent with exilic authorship. All suits the exile, but all is\n foreign to the subjects and methods of Isaiah, for example, the\n use of the terms _righteous_ and _righteousness_. Calvin admits\n exilic authorship (on _Is. 55:3_). The passage _56:9-57_, however,\n is an exception and is pre\u00ebxilic. _40-48_ are certainly by one\n hand, and may be dated 555-538. 2nd Isaiah is not a unity, but\n consists of a number of pieces written before, during, and after\n the exile, to comfort the people of God.\n\n\n(_c_) It is unjust to deny to inspired Scripture the right exercised by\nall historians of introducing certain documents and sayings as simply\nhistorical, while their complete truthfulness is neither vouched for nor\ndenied.\n\n\n An instance in point is the letter of Claudius Lysias in _Acts\n 23:26-30_\u2014a letter which represents his conduct in a more\n favorable light than the facts would justify\u2014for he had not\n learned that Paul was a Roman when he rescued him in the temple\n (_Acts 21:31-33; 22:26-29_). An incorrect statement may be\n correctly reported. A set of pamphlets printed in the time of the\n French Revolution might be made an appendix to some history of\n France without implying that the historian vouched for their\n truth. The sacred historians may similarly have been inspired to\n use only the material within their reach, leaving their readers by\n comparison with other Scriptures to judge of its truthfulness and\n value. This seems to have been the method adopted by the compiler\n of _1_ and _2 Chronicles_. The moral and religious lessons of the\n history are patent, even though there is inaccuracy in reporting\n some of the facts. So the assertions of the authors of the Psalms\n cannot be taken for absolute truth. The authors were not sinless\n models for the Christian,\u2014only Christ is that. But the Psalms\n present us with a record of the actual experience of believers in\n the past. It has its human weakness, but we can profit by it, even\n though it expresses itself at times in imprecations. _Jeremiah\n 20:7\u2014_\u201cO lord, thou hast deceived me\u201d\u2014may possibly be thus\n explained.\n\n\n9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.\n\n\n(_a_) Descriptions of human experience may be embraced in Scripture, not\nas models for imitation, but as illustrations of the doubts, struggles,\nand needs of the soul. In these cases inspiration may vouch, not for the\ncorrectness of the views expressed by those who thus describe their mental\nhistory, but only for the correspondence of the description with actual\nfact, and for its usefulness as indirectly teaching important moral\nlessons.\n\n\n The book of Ecclesiastes, for example, is the record of the mental\n struggles of a soul seeking satisfaction without God. If written\n by Solomon during the time of his religious declension, or near\n the close of it, it would constitute a most valuable commentary\n upon the inspired history. Yet it might be equally valuable,\n though composed by some later writer under divine direction and\n inspiration. H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 97\u2014\u201cTo\n suppose Solomon the author of Ecclesiastes is like supposing\n Spenser to have written In Memoriam.\u201d Luther, Keil, Delitzsch,\n Ginsburg, Hengstenberg all declare it to be a production of later\n times (330 B. C.). The book shows experience of misgovernment. An\n earlier writer cannot write in the style of a later one, though\n the later can imitate the earlier. The early Latin and Greek\n Fathers quoted the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon as by Solomon; see\n Plumptre, Introd. to Ecclesiastes, in Cambridge Bible. Gore, in\n Lux Mundi, 355\u2014\u201cEcclesiastes, though like the book of Wisdom\n purporting to be by Solomon, may be by another author.... \u2018A pious\n fraud\u2019 cannot be inspired; an idealizing personification, as a\n normal type of literature, can be inspired.\u201d Yet Bernhard Sch\u00e4fer,\n Das Buch Koheleth, ably maintains the Solomonic authorship.\n\n\n(_b_) Moral truth may be put by Scripture writers into parabolic or\ndramatic form, and the sayings of Satan and of perverse men may form parts\nof such a production. In such cases, inspiration may vouch, not for the\nhistorical truth, much less for the moral truth of each separate\nstatement, but only for the correspondence of the whole with ideal fact;\nin other words, inspiration may guarantee that the story is true to\nnature, and is valuable as conveying divine instruction.\n\n\n It is not necessary to suppose that the poetical speeches of Job\u2019s\n friends were actually delivered in the words that have come down\n to us. Though Job never had had a historical existence, the book\n would still be of the utmost value, and would convey to us a vast\n amount of true teaching with regard to the dealings of God and the\n problem of evil. Fact is local; truth is universal. Some novels\n contain more truth than can be found in some histories. Other\n books of Scripture, however, assure us that Job was an actual\n historical character (_Ez. 14:14_; _James 5:11_). Nor is it\n necessary to suppose that our Lord, in telling the parable of the\n Prodigal Son (_Luke 15:11-32_) or that of the Unjust Steward\n (_16:1-8_), had in mind actual persons of whom each parable was an\n exact description.\n\n Fiction is not an unworthy vehicle of spiritual truth. Parable,\n and even fable, may convey valuable lessons. In _Judges 9:14, 15_,\n the trees, the vine, the bramble, all talk. If truth can be\n transmitted in myth and legend, surely God may make use of these\n methods of communicating it, and even though _Gen. 1-3_ were\n mythical it might still be inspired. Aristotle said that poetry is\n truer than history. The latter only tells us that certain things\n happened. Poetry presents to us the permanent passions,\n aspirations and deeds of men which are behind all history and\n which make it what it is; see Dewey, Psychology, 197. Though Job\n were a drama and Jonah an apologue, both might be inspired. David\n Copperfield, the Apology of Socrates, Fra Lippo Lippi, were not\n the authors of the productions which bear their names, but\n Dickens, Plato and Browning, rather. Impersonation is a proper\n method in literature. The speeches of Herodotus and Thucydides\n might be analogues to those in Deuteronomy and in the Acts, and\n yet these last might be inspired.\n\n The book of Job could not have been written in patriarchal times.\n Walled cities, kings, courts, lawsuits, prisons, stocks, mining\n enterprises, are found in it. Judges are bribed by the rich to\n decide against the poor. All this belongs to the latter years of\n the Jewish Kingdom. Is then the book of Job all a lie? No more\n than Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress and the parable of the Good\n Samaritan are all a lie. The book of Job is a dramatic poem. Like\n Macbeth or the Ring and the Book, it is founded in fact. H. P.\n Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 101\u2014\u201cThe value of the\n book of Job lies in the spectacle of a human soul in its direst\n affliction working through its doubts, and at last humbly\n confessing its weakness and sinfulness in the presence of its\n Maker. The inerrancy is not in Job\u2019s words or in those of his\n friends, but in the truth of the picture presented. If Jehovah\u2019s\n words at the end of the book are true, then the first thirty-five\n chapters are not infallible teaching.\u201d\n\n Gore, in Lux Mundi, 355, suggests in a similar manner that the\n books of Jonah and of Daniel may be dramatic compositions worked\n up upon a basis of history. George Adam Smith, in the Expositors\u2019\n Bible, tells us that Jonah flourished 780 B. C., in the reign of\n Jeroboam II. Nineveh fell in 606. The book implies that it was\n written after this (_3:3_\u2014\u201cNineveh _was_ an exceeding great\n city\u201d). The book does not claim to be written by Jonah, by an\n eye-witness, or by a contemporary. The language has Aramaic forms.\n The date is probably 300 B. C. There is an absence of precise\n data, such as the sin of Nineveh, the journey of the prophet\n thither, the place where he was cast out on land, the name of the\n Assyrian king. The book illustrates God\u2019s mission of prophecy to\n the Gentiles, his care for them, their susceptibility to his word.\n Israel flies from duty, but is delivered to carry salvation to the\n heathen. Jeremiah had represented Israel as swallowed up and cast\n out (_Jer. 51:34, 44 __sq.__\u2014_\u201cNebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon\n hath devoured me ... he hath, like a monster, swallowed me up, he\n hath filled his maw with my delicacies; he hath cast me out.... I\n will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed\n up.\u201d) Some tradition of Jonah\u2019s proclaiming doom to Nineveh may\n have furnished the basis of the apologue. Our Lord uses the story\n as a mere illustration, like the homiletic use of Shakespeare\u2019s\n dramas. \u201cAs Macbeth did,\u201d \u201cAs Hamlet said,\u201d do not commit us to\n the historical reality of Macbeth or of Hamlet. Jesus may say as\n to questions of criticism: \u201cMan, who made me a judge or a divider\n over you?\u201d_ _\u201cI came not to judge the world, but to save the\n world\u201d_ (Luke 12:14; John 12:47)_. He had no thought of\n confirming, or of not confirming, the historic character of the\n story. It is hard to conceive the compilation of a psalm by a man\n in Jonah\u2019s position. It is not the prayer of one inside the fish,\n but of one already saved. More than forty years ago President\n Woolsey of Yale conceded that the book of Jonah was probably an\n apologue.\n\n\n(_c_) In none of these cases ought the difficulty of distinguishing man\u2019s\nwords from God\u2019s words, or ideal truth from actual truth, to prevent our\nacceptance of the fact of inspiration; for in this very variety of the\nBible, combined with the stimulus it gives to inquiry and the general\nplainness of its lessons, we have the very characteristics we should\nexpect in a book whose authorship was divine.\n\n\n The Scripture is a stream in which \u201cthe lamb may wade and the\n elephant may swim.\u201d There is need both of literary sense and of\n spiritual insight to interpret it. This sense and this insight can\n be given only by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, who\n inspired the various writings to witness of him in various ways,\n and who is present in the world to take of the things of Christ\n and show them to us (_Mat. 28:20_; _John 16:13, 14_). In a\n subordinate sense the Holy Spirit inspires us to recognize\n inspiration in the Bible. In the sense here suggested we may\n assent to the words of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst at the\n inauguration of William Adams Brown as Professor of Systematic\n Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, November 1,\n 1898\u2014\u201cUnfortunately we have condemned the word \u2018inspiration\u2019 to a\n particular and isolated field of divine operation, and it is a\n trespass upon current usage to employ it in the full urgency of\n its Scriptural intent in connection with work like your own or\n mine. But the word voices a reality that lies so close to the\n heart of the entire Christian matter that we can ill afford to\n relegate it to any single or technical function. Just as much\n to-day as back at the first beginnings of Christianity, those who\n would _declare_ the truths of God must be inspired to _behold_ the\n truths of God.... The only irresistible persuasiveness is that\n which is born of vision, and it is _not_ vision to be able merely\n to describe what some seer has seen, though it were Moses or Paul\n that was the seer.\u201d\n\n\n10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture teachers and their\nwritings.\n\n\nThis charge rests mainly upon the misinterpretation of two particular\npassages:\n\n(_a_) Acts 23:5 (\u201cI wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest\u201d) may\nbe explained either as the language of indignant irony: \u201cI would not\nrecognize such a man as high priest\u201d; or, more naturally, an actual\nconfession of personal ignorance and fallibility, which does not affect\nthe inspiration of any of Paul\u2019s final teachings or writings.\n\n\n Of a more reprehensible sort was Peter\u2019s dissimulation at Antioch,\n or practical disavowal of his convictions by separating or\n withdrawing himself from the Gentile Christians (_Gal. 2:11-13_).\n Here was no public teaching, but the influence of private example.\n But neither in this case, nor in that mentioned above, did God\n suffer the error to be a final one. Through the agency of Paul,\n the Holy Spirit set the matter right.\n\n\n(_b_) 1 Cor. 7:12, 10 (\u201cI, not the Lord\u201d; \u201cnot I, but the Lord\u201d). Here the\ncontrast is not between the apostle inspired and the apostle uninspired,\nbut between the apostle\u2019s words and an actual saying of our Lord, as in\nMat. 5:32; 19:3-10; Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18 (Stanley on Corinthians). The\nexpressions may be paraphrased:\u2014\u201cWith regard to this matter no express\ncommand was given by Christ before his ascension. As one inspired by\nChrist, however, I give you my command.\u201d\n\n\n Meyer on _1 Cor. 7:10_\u2014\u201cPaul distinguishes, therefore, here and in\n verses 12, 25, not between _his own_ and _inspired_ commands, but\n between those which proceeded from his own (God-inspired)\n subjectivity and those which Christ himself supplied by his\n objective word.\u201d \u201cPaul knew from the living voice of tradition\n what commands Christ had given concerning divorce.\u201d Or if it\n should be maintained that Paul here disclaims inspiration,\u2014a\n supposition contradicted by the following \u03b4\u03bf\u03ba\u1ff6\u2014\u201cI think that I\n also have the Spirit of God\u201d_ (verse 40)_,\u2014it only proves a single\n exception to his inspiration, and since it is expressly mentioned,\n and mentioned only once, it implies the inspiration of all the\n rest of his writings. We might illustrate Paul\u2019s method, if this\n were the case, by the course of the New York Herald when it was\n first published. Other journals had stood by their own mistakes\n and had never been willing to acknowledge error. The Herald gained\n the confidence of the public by correcting every mistake of its\n reporters. The result was that, when there was no confession of\n error, the paper was regarded as absolutely trustworthy. So Paul\u2019s\n one acknowledgment of non-inspiration might imply that in all\n other cases his words had divine authority. On Authority in\n Religion, see Wilfred Ward, in Hibbert Journal, July,\n 1903:677-692.\n\n\n\n\n\nPART IV. THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD.\n\n\n\n\nChapter I. The Attributes Of God.\n\n\nIn contemplating the words and acts of God, as in contemplating the words\nand acts of individual men, we are compelled to assign uniform and\npermanent effects to uniform and permanent causes. Holy acts and words, we\nargue, must have their source in a principle of holiness; truthful acts\nand words, in a settled proclivity to truth; benevolent acts and words, in\na benevolent disposition.\n\nMoreover, these permanent and uniform sources of expression and action to\nwhich we have applied the terms principle, proclivity, disposition, since\nthey exist harmoniously in the same person, must themselves inhere, and\nfind their unity, in an underlying spiritual substance or reality of which\nthey are the inseparable characteristics and partial manifestations.\n\nThus we are led naturally from the works to the attributes, and from the\nattributes to the essence, of God.\n\n\n For all practical purposes we may use the words essence,\n substance, being, nature, as synonymous with each other. So, too,\n we may speak of attribute, quality, characteristic, principle,\n proclivity, disposition, as practically one. As, in cognizing\n matter, we pass from its effects in sensation to the qualities\n which produce the sensations, and then to the material substance\n to which the qualities belong; and as, in cognizing mind, we pass\n from its phenomena in thought and action to the faculties and\n dispositions which give rise to these phenomena, and then to the\n mental substance to which these faculties and dispositions belong;\n so, in cognizing God, we pass from his words and acts to his\n qualities or attributes, and then to the substance or essence to\n which these qualities or attributes belong.\n\n The teacher in a Young Ladies\u2019 Seminary described substance as a\n cushion, into which the attributes as pins are stuck. But pins and\n cushion alike are substance,\u2014neither one is quality. The opposite\n error is illustrated from the experience of Abraham Lincoln on the\n Ohio River. \u201cWhat is this transcendentalism that we hear so much\n about?\u201d asked Mr. Lincoln. The answer came: \u201cYou see those\n swallows digging holes in yonder bank? Well, take away the bank\n from around those holes, and what is left is transcendentalism.\u201d\n Substance is often represented as being thus transcendental. If\n such representations were correct, metaphysics would indeed be\n \u201cthat, of which those who listen understand nothing, and which he\n who speaks does not himself understand,\u201d and the metaphysician\n would be the fox who ran into the hole and then pulled in the hole\n after him. Substance and attributes are correlates,\u2014neither one is\n possible without the other. There is no quality that does not\n qualify something; and there is no thing, either material or\n spiritual, that can be known or can exist without qualities to\n differentiate it from other things. In applying the categories of\n substance and attribute to God, we indulge in no merely curious\n speculation, but rather yield to the necessities of rational\n thought and show how we must think of God if we think at all. See\n Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:240; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:172-188.\n\n\n\nI. Definition of the term Attributes.\n\n\nThe attributes of God are those distinguishing characteristics of the\ndivine nature which are inseparable from the idea of God and which\nconstitute the basis and ground for his various manifestations to his\ncreatures.\n\nWe call them attributes, because we are compelled to attribute them to God\nas fundamental qualities or powers of his being, in order to give rational\naccount of certain constant facts in God\u2019s self-revelations.\n\n\n\nII. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.\n\n\n1. _The attributes have an objective existence._ They are not mere names\nfor human conceptions of God\u2014conceptions which have their only ground in\nthe imperfection of the finite mind. They are qualities objectively\ndistinguishable from the divine essence and from each other.\n\nThe nominalistic notion that God is a being of absolute simplicity, and\nthat in his nature there is no internal distinction of qualities or\npowers, tends directly to pantheism; denies all reality of the divine\nperfections; or, if these in any sense still exist, precludes all\nknowledge of them on the part of finite beings. To say that knowledge and\npower, eternity and holiness, are identical with the essence of God and\nwith each other, is to deny that we know God at all.\n\nThe Scripture declarations of the possibility of knowing God, together\nwith the manifestation of the distinct attributes of his nature, are\nconclusive against this false notion of the divine simplicity.\n\n\n Aristotle says well that there is no such thing as a science of\n the unique, of that which has no analogies or relations. Knowing\n is distinguishing; what we cannot distinguish from other things we\n cannot know. Yet a false tendency to regard God as a being of\n absolute simplicity has come down from medi\u00e6val scholasticism, has\n infected much of the post-reformation theology, and is found even\n so recently as in Schleiermacher, Rothe, Olshausen, and Ritschl.\n E. G. Robinson defines the attributes as \u201cour methods of\n conceiving of God.\u201d But this definition is influenced by the\n Kantian doctrine of relativity and implies that we cannot know\n God\u2019s essence, that is, the thing-in-itself, God\u2019s real being.\n Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 141\u2014\u201cThis notion of the divine\n simplicity reduces God to a rigid and lifeless stare.... The One\n is manifold without being many.\u201d\n\n The divine simplicity is the starting-point of Philo: God is a\n being absolutely bare of quality. All quality in finite beings has\n limitation, and no limitation can be predicated of God who is\n eternal, unchangeable, simple substance, free, self-sufficient,\n better than the good and the beautiful. To predicate any quality\n of God would reduce him to the sphere of finite existence. Of him\n we can only say _that_ he is, not _what_ he is; see art. by\n Sch\u00fcrer, in Encyc. Brit., 18:761.\n\n Illustrations of this tendency are found in Scotus Erigena: \u201cDeus\n nescit se quid est, quia non est quid\u201d; and in Occam: The divine\n attributes are distinguished neither substantially nor logically\n from each other or from the divine essence; the only distinction\n is that of names; so Gerhard and Quenstedt. Charnock, the Puritan\n writer, identifies both knowledge and will with the simple essence\n of God. Schleiermacher makes all the attributes to be\n modifications of power or causality; in his system God and world =\n the \u201cnatura naturans\u201d and \u201cnatura naturata\u201d of Spinoza. There is\n no distinction of attributes and no succession of acts in God, and\n therefore no real personality or even spiritual being; see\n Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit Kant, 110. Schleiermacher said: \u201cMy\n God is the Universe.\u201d God is causative force. Eternity,\n omniscience and holiness are simply aspects of causality. Rothe,\n on the other hand, makes omniscience to be the all-comprehending\n principle of the divine nature; and Olshausen, on _John 1:1_, in a\n similar manner attempts to prove that the Word of God must have\n objective and substantial being, by assuming that knowing =\n willing; whence it would seem to follow that, since God wills all\n that he knows, he must will moral evil. Bushnell and others\n identify righteousness in God with benevolence, and therefore\n cannot see that any atonement needs to be made to God. Ritschl\n also holds that love is the fundamental divine attribute, and that\n omnipotence and even personality are simply modifications of love;\n see Mead, Ritschl\u2019s Place in the History of Doctrine, 8. Herbert\n Spencer only carries the principle further when he concludes God\n to be simple unknowable force.\n\n But to call God everything is the same as to call him nothing.\n With Dorner, we say that \u201cdefinition is no limitation.\u201d As we rise\n in the scale of creation from the mere jelly-sac to man, the\n homogeneous becomes the heterogeneous, there is differentiation of\n functions, complexity increases. We infer that God, the highest of\n all, instead of being simple force, is infinitely complex, that he\n has an infinite variety of attributes and powers. Tennyson, Palace\n of Art (lines omitted in the later editions): \u201cAll nature widens\n upward: evermore The simpler essence lower lies: More complex is\n more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.\u201d\n\n _Jer. 10:10_\u2014God is \u201cthe living God\u201d; _John 5:26_\u2014he \u201chath life in\n himself\u201d\u2014unsearchable riches of positive attributes; _John\n 17:23\u2014_\u201cthou lovedst me\u201d\u2014manifoldness in unity. This complexity in\n God is the ground of blessedness for him and of progress for us:\n _1 Tim. 1:11\u2014_\u201cthe blessed God\u201d; _Jer. 9:23, 24\u2014_\u201clet him glory in\n this, that he knoweth me.\u201d The complex nature of God permits anger\n at the sinner and compassion for him at the same moment: _Ps.\n 7:11\u2014_\u201ca God that hath indignation every day\u201d; _John 3:16\u2014_\u201cGod so\n loved the world\u201d; _Ps. 85:10, 11\u2014_\u201cmercy and truth are met\n together.\u201d See Julius M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, 2:116 _sq._; Schweizer,\n Glaubenslehre, 1:229-235; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,\n 1:43, 50; Martensen, Dogmatics, 91\u2014\u201cIf God were the simple One, \u03c4\u1f78\n \u1f01\u03c0\u03bb\u1ff6\u03c2 \u1f15\u03bd, the mystic abyss in which every form of determination\n were extinguished, there would be nothing in the Unity to be\n known.\u201d Hence \u201cnominalism is incompatible with the idea of\n revelation. We teach, with realism, that the attributes of God are\n objective determinations in his revelation and as such are rooted\n in his inmost essence.\u201d\n\n\n2. _The attributes inhere in the divine essence._ They are not separate\nexistences. They are attributes of God.\n\nWhile we oppose the nominalistic view which holds them to be mere names\nwith which, by the necessity of our thinking, we clothe the one simple\ndivine essence, we need equally to avoid the opposite realistic extreme of\nmaking them separate parts of a composite God.\n\nWe cannot conceive of attributes except as belonging to an underlying\nessence which furnishes their ground of unity. In representing God as a\ncompound of attributes, realism endangers the living unity of the Godhead.\n\nNotice the analogous necessity of attributing the properties of matter to\nan underlying substance, and the phenomena of thought to an underlying\nspiritual essence; else matter is reduced to mere force, and mind, to mere\nsensation,\u2014in short, all things are swallowed up in a vast idealism. The\npurely realistic explanation of the attributes tends to low and\npolytheistic conceptions of God. The mythology of Greece was the result of\npersonifying the divine attributes. The _nomina_ were turned into\n_numina_, as Max M\u00fcller says; see Taylor, Nature on the Basis of Realism,\n293. Instance also Christmas Evans\u2019s sermon describing a Council in the\nGodhead, in which the attributes of Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, and Power\nargue with one another. Robert Hall called Christmas Evans \u201cthe one-eyed\norator of Anglesey,\u201d but added that his one eye could \u201clight an army\nthrough a wilderness\u201d; see Joseph Cross, Life and Sermons of Christmas\nEvans, 112-116; David Rhys Stephen, Memoirs of Christmas Evans, 168-176.\nWe must remember that \u201cRealism may so exalt the attributes that no\npersonal subject is left to constitute the ground of unity. Looking upon\nPersonality as anthropomorphism, it falls into a worse personification,\nthat of omnipotence, holiness, benevolence, which are mere blind thoughts,\nunless there is one who is the Omnipotent, the Holy, the Good.\u201d See\nLuthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 70.\n\n3. _The attributes belong to the divine essence as such._ They are to be\ndistinguished from those other powers or relations which do not appertain\nto the divine essence universally.\n\nThe personal distinctions (_proprietates_) in the nature of the one God\nare not to be denominated attributes; for each of these personal\ndistinctions belongs not to the divine essence as such and universally,\nbut only to the particular person of the Trinity who bears its name, while\non the contrary all of the attributes belong to each of the persons.\n\nThe relations which God sustains to the world (_predicata_), moreover,\nsuch as creation, preservation, government, are not to be denominated\nattributes; for these are accidental, not necessary or inseparable from\nthe idea of God. God would be God, if he had never created.\n\n\n To make creation eternal and necessary is to dethrone God and to\n enthrone a fatalistic development. It follows that the nature of\n the attributes is to be illustrated, not alone or chiefly from\n wisdom and holiness in man, which are not inseparable from man\u2019s\n nature, but rather from intellect and will in man, without which\n he would cease to be man altogether. Only that is an attribute, of\n which it can be safely said that he who possesses it would, if\n deprived of it, cease to be God. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:335\u2014\u201cThe\n attribute is the whole essence acting in a certain way. The centre\n of unity is not in any one attribute, but in the essence.... The\n difference between the divine attribute and the divine person is,\n that the person is a mode of the _existence_ of the essence, while\n the attribute is a mode either of the _relation_, or of the\n _operation_, of the essence.\u201d\n\n\n4. _The attributes manifest the divine essence._ The essence is revealed\nonly through the attributes. Apart from its attributes it is unknown and\nunknowable.\n\nBut though we can know God only as he reveals to us his attributes, we do,\nnotwithstanding, in knowing these attributes, know the being to whom these\nattributes belong. That this knowledge is partial does not prevent its\ncorresponding, so far as it goes, to objective reality in the nature of\nGod.\n\nAll God\u2019s revelations are, therefore, revelations of himself in and\nthrough his attributes. Our aim must be to determine from God\u2019s works and\nwords what qualities, dispositions, determinations, powers of his\notherwise unseen and unsearchable essence he has actually made known to\nus; or in other words, what are the revealed attributes of God.\n\n\n _John 1:18\u2014_\u201cNo man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten\n Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him\u201d; _1\n Tim. 6:16\u2014_\u201cwhom no man hath seen, nor can see\u201d; _Mat.\n 5:8\u2014_\u201cBlessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God\u201d;\n _11:27\u2014_\u201cneither doth any man know the Father, save the Son, and\n he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.\u201d C. A. Strong:\n \u201cKant, not content with knowing the reality _in_ the phenomena,\n was trying to know the reality _apart from_ the phenomena; he was\n seeking to know, without fulfilling the conditions of knowledge;\n in short, he wished to know without knowing.\u201d So Agnosticism\n perversely regards God as concealed by his own manifestation. On\n the contrary, in knowing the phenomena we know the object itself.\n J. C. C. Clarke, Self and the Father, 6\u2014\u201cIn language, as in\n nature, there are no verbs without subjects, but we are always\n hunting for the noun that has no adjective, and the verb that has\n no subject, and the subject that has no verb. Consciousness is\n necessarily a consciousness of self. Idealism and monism would\n like to see all verbs solid with their subjects, and to write \u2018I\n do\u2019 or \u2018I feel\u2019 in the mazes of a monogram, but consciousness\n refuses, and before it says \u2018Do\u2019 or \u2018Feel\u2019 it finishes saying\n \u2018I.\u2019 \u201d J. G. Holland\u2019s Katrina, to her lover: \u201cGod is not\n worshiped in his attributes. I do not love your attributes, but\n you. Your attributes all meet me otherwhere, Blended in other\n personalities, Nor do I love nor do I worship them, Nor those who\n bear them. E\u2019en the spotted pard Will dare a danger which will\n make you pale; But shall his courage steal my heart from you? You\n cheat your conscience, for you know That I may like your\n attributes. Yet love not you.\u201d\n\n\n\nIII. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.\n\n\nWe have seen that the existence of God is a first truth. It is presupposed\nin all human thinking, and is more or less consciously recognized by all\nmen. This intuitive knowledge of God we have seen to be corroborated and\nexplicated by arguments drawn from nature and from mind. Reason leads us\nto a causative and personal Intelligence upon whom we depend. This Being\nof indefinite greatness we clothe, by a necessity of our thinking, with\nall the attributes of perfection. The two great methods of determining\nwhat these attributes are, are the Rational and the Biblical.\n\n1. _The Rational method._ This is threefold:\u2014(_a_) the _via negationis_,\nor the way of negation, which consists in denying to God all imperfections\nobserved in created beings; (_b_) the _via eminenti\u00e6_, or the way of\nclimax, which consists in attributing to God in infinite degree all the\nperfections found in creatures; and (_c_) the _via causalitatis_, or the\nway of causality, which consists in predicating of God those attributes\nwhich are required in him to explain the world of nature and of mind.\n\nThis rational method explains God\u2019s nature from that of his creation,\nwhereas the creation itself can be fully explained only from the nature of\nGod. Though the method is valuable, it has insuperable limitations, and\nits place is a subordinate one. While we use it continually to confirm and\nsupplement results otherwise obtained, our chief means of determining the\ndivine attributes must be\n\n2. _The Biblical method._ This is simply the inductive method, applied to\nthe facts with regard to God revealed in the Scriptures. Now that we have\nproved the Scriptures to be a revelation from God, inspired in every part,\nwe may properly look to them as decisive authority with regard to God\u2019s\nattributes.\n\n\n The rational method of determining the attributes of God is\n sometimes said to have been originated by Dionysius the\n Areopagite, reputed to have been a judge at Athens at the time of\n Paul and to have died A. D. 95. It is more probably eclectic,\n combining the results attained by many theologians, and applying\n the intuitions of perfection and causality which lie at the basis\n of all religious thinking. It is evident from our previous study\n of the arguments for God\u2019s existence, that from nature we cannot\n learn either the Trinity or the mercy of God, and that these\n deficiencies in our rational conclusions with respect to God must\n be supplied, if at all, by revelation. Spurgeon, Autobiography,\n 166\u2014\u201cThe old saying is \u2019Go from Nature up to Nature\u2019s God.\u2019 But it\n is hard work going up hill. The best thing is to go from Nature\u2019s\n God down to Nature; and, if you once get to Nature\u2019s God and\n believe him and love him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear\n music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the\n winds, and to see God everywhere.\u201d See also Kahnis, Dogmatik,\n 3:181.\n\n\n\nIV. Classification of the Attributes.\n\n\nThe attributes may be divided into two great classes: Absolute or\nImmanent, and Relative or Transitive.\n\nBy Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the\ninner being of God, which are involved in God\u2019s relations to himself, and\nwhich belong to his nature independently of his connection with the\nuniverse.\n\nBy Relative or Transitive Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the\noutward revelation of God\u2019s being, which are involved in God\u2019s relations\nto the creation, and which are exercised in consequence of the existence\nof the universe and its dependence upon him.\n\nUnder the head of Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we make a three-fold\ndivision into Spirituality, with the attributes therein involved, namely,\nLife and Personality; Infinity, with the attributes therein involved,\nnamely, Self-existence, Immutability, and Unity; and Perfection, with the\nattributes therein involved, namely, Truth, Love, and Holiness.\n\nUnder the head of Relative or Transitive Attributes, we make a three-fold\ndivision, according to the order of their revelation, into Attributes\nhaving relation to Time and Space, as Eternity and Immensity; Attributes\nhaving relation to Creation, as Omnipresence, Omniscience, and\nOmnipotence; and Attributes having relation to Moral Beings, as Veracity\nand Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth; Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive\nLove; and Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.\n\nThis classification may be better understood from the following schedule:\n\n\n 1. Absolute or Immanent Attributes:\n A. Spirituality, involving (a) Life, (b) Personality.\n B. Infinity, involving (a) Self-existence, (b) Immutability, (c)\n Unity.\n C. Perfection, involving (a) Truth, (b) Love, (c) Holiness.\n\n 2. Relative or Transitive Attributes:\n A. Related to Time and Space\u2014(a) Eternity, (b) Immensity.\n B. Related to Creation\u2014(a) Omnipresence, (b) Omniscience, (c)\n Omnipotence.\n C. Related to Moral Beings\u2014(a) Veracity, (b) Mercy, (c) Justice.\n\n\n It will be observed, upon examination of the preceding schedule,\n that our classification presents God first as Spirit, then as the\n infinite Spirit, and finally as the perfect Spirit. This accords\n with our definition of the term God (see page 52). It also\n corresponds with the order in which the attributes commonly\n present themselves to the human mind. Our first thought of God is\n that of mere Spirit, mysterious and undefined, over against our\n own spirits. Our next thought is that of God\u2019s greatness; the\n quantitative element suggests itself; his natural attributes rise\n before us; we recognize him as the infinite One. Finally comes the\n qualitative element; our moral natures recognize a moral God; over\n against our error, selfishness and impurity, we perceive his\n absolute perfection.\n\n It should also be observed that this moral perfection, as it is an\n immanent attribute, involves relation of God to himself. Truth,\n love and holiness, as they respectively imply an exercise in God\n of intellect, affection and will, may be conceived of as God\u2019s\n self-knowing, God\u2019s self-loving, and God\u2019s self-willing. The\n significance of this will appear more fully in the discussion of\n the separate attributes.\n\n Notice the distinction between absolute and relative, between\n immanent and transitive, attributes. Absolute = existing in no\n necessary relation to things outside of God. Relative = existing\n in such relation. Immanent = \u201cremaining within, limited to, God\u2019s\n own nature in their activity and effect, inherent and indwelling,\n internal and subjective\u2014opposed to emanent or transitive.\u201d\n Transitive = having an object outside of God himself. We speak of\n transitive verbs, and we mean verbs that are followed by an\n object. God\u2019s transitive attributes are so called, because they\n respect and affect things and beings outside of God.\n\n The aim of this classification into Absolute and Relative\n Attributes is to make plain the divine self-sufficiency. Creation\n is not a necessity, for there is a \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 in God (_Col. 1:19_),\n even before he makes the world or becomes incarnate. And \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1\n is not \u201cthe filling material,\u201d nor \u201cthe vessel filled,\u201d but \u201cthat\n which is complete in itself,\u201d or, in other words, \u201cplenitude,\u201d\n \u201cfulness,\u201d \u201ctotality,\u201d \u201cabundance.\u201d The whole universe is but a\n drop of dew upon the fringe of God\u2019s garment, or a breath exhaled\n from his mouth. He could create a universe a hundred times as\n great. Nature is but the symbol of God. The tides of life that ebb\n and flow on the far shores of the universe are only faint\n expressions of his life. The Immanent Attributes show us how\n completely matters of grace are Creation and Redemption, and how\n unspeakable is the condescension of him who took our humanity and\n humbled himself to the death of the Cross. _Ps. 8:3, 4\u2014_\u201cWhen I\n consider thy heavens ... what is man that thou art mindful of\n him?\u201d _113:5, 6\u2014_\u201cWho is like unto Jehovah our God, that hath his\n seat on high, that humbleth himself?\u201d _Phil. 2:6, 7\u2014_\u201cWho,\n existing in the form of God, ... emptied himself, taking the form\n of a servant.\u201d\n\n Ladd, Theory of Reality, 69\u2014\u201cI know _that_ I am, because, as the\n basis of all discriminations as to _what_ I am, and as the core of\n all such self-knowledge, I immediately know myself as _will_\u201d So\n as to the non-ego, \u201cthat things actually are is a factor in my\n knowledge of them which springs from the root of an experience\n with myself as a _will_, at once active and inhibited, as an agent\n and yet opposed by another.\u201d The ego and the non-ego as well are\n fundamentally and essentially _will_. \u201cMatter must be, _per se_,\n Force. But this is ... to be a Will\u201d (439). We know nothing of the\n atom apart from its force (442). Ladd quotes from G. E. Bailey:\n \u201cThe life-principle, varying only in degree, is omnipresent. There\n is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence,\n and this thrills through every atom of the whole Cosmos\u201d (446).\n \u201cScience has only made the Substrate of material things more and\n more completely self-like\u201d (449). Spirit is the true and essential\n Being of what is called Nature (472). \u201cThe ultimate Being of the\n world is a self-conscious Mind and Will, which is the Ground of\n all objects made known in human experience\u201d (550).\n\n On classification of attributes, see Luthardt, Compendium, 71;\n Rothe, Dogmatik, 71; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:162; Thomasius, Christi\n Person und Werk, 1:47, 52, 136. On the general subject, see\n Charnock, Attributes; Bruce, Eigenschaftslehre.\n\n\n\nV. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.\n\n\nFirst division.\u2014Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.\n\n\nIn calling spirituality an attribute of God, we mean, not that we are\njustified in applying to the divine nature the adjective \u201cspiritual,\u201d but\nthat the substantive \u201cSpirit\u201d describes that nature (John 4:24, marg.\u2014\u201cGod\nis spirit\u201d; Rom. 1:20\u2014\u201cthe invisible things of him\u201d; 1 Tim.\n1:17\u2014\u201cincorruptible, invisible\u201d; Col. 1:15\u2014\u201cthe invisible God\u201d). This\nimplies, negatively, that (_a_) God is not matter. Spirit is not a refined\nform of matter but an immaterial substance, invisible, uncompounded,\nindestructible. (_b_) God is not dependent upon matter. It cannot be shown\nthat the human mind, in any other state than the present, is dependent for\nconsciousness upon its connection with a physical organism. Much less is\nit true that God is dependent upon the material universe as his sensorium.\nGod is not only spirit, but he is pure spirit. He is not only not matter,\nbut he has no necessary connection with matter (Luke 24:39\u2014\u201cA spirit hath\nnot flesh and bones, as ye behold me having\u201d).\n\n\n John gives us the three characteristic attributes of God when he\n says that God is \u201cspirit,\u201d_ _\u201clight,\u201d_ _\u201clove\u201d_ (John 4:24; 1 John\n 1:5; 4:8)_,\u2014not _a_ spirit, _a_ light, _a_ love. Le Conte, in\n Royce\u2019s Conception of God, 45\u2014\u201cGod is spirit, for spirit is\n essential Life and essential Energy, and essential Love, and\n essential Thought; in a word, essential Person.\u201d Biedermann,\n Dogmatik, 631\u2014\u201cDas Wesen des Geistes als des reinen Gegensatzes\n zur Materie, ist das _reine Sein_, das _in sich ist_, aber _nicht\n da ist_.\u201d Martineau, Study, 2:366\u2014\u201cThe subjective Ego is always\n _here_, as opposed to all else, which is variously _there_....\n Without local relations, therefore, the soul is inaccessible.\u201d\n But, Martineau continues, \u201cif matter be but centres of force, all\n the soul needs may be centres from which to act.\u201d Romanes, Mind\n and Motion, 34\u2014\u201cBecause within the limits of human experience mind\n is only known as associated with brain, it does not follow that\n mind cannot exist in any other mode.\u201d La Place swept the heavens\n with his telescope, but could not find anywhere a God. \u201cHe might\n just as well,\u201d says President Sawyer, \u201chave swept his kitchen with\n a broom.\u201d Since God is not a material being, he cannot be\n apprehended by any physical means.\n\n\nThose passages of Scripture which seem to ascribe to God the possession of\nbodily parts and organs, as eyes and hands, are to be regarded as\nanthropomorphic and symbolic. \u201cWhen God is spoken of as appearing to the\npatriarchs and walking with them, the passages are to be explained as\nreferring to God\u2019s temporary manifestations of himself in human\nform\u2014manifestations which prefigured the final tabernacling of the Son of\nGod in human flesh. Side by side with these anthropomorphic expressions\nand manifestations, moreover, are specific declarations which repress any\nmaterializing conceptions of God; as, for example, that heaven is his\nthrone and the earth his footstool (Is. 66:1), and that the heaven of\nheavens cannot contain him (1 K. 8:27).\u201d\n\n\n _Ex. 33:18-20_ declares that man cannot see God and live; _1 Cor.\n 2:7-16_ intimates that without the teaching of God\u2019s Spirit we\n cannot know God; all this teaches that God is above sensuous\n perception, in other words, that he is not a material being. The\n second command of the decalogue does not condemn sculpture and\n painting, but only the making of images of _God_. It forbids our\n conceiving God after the likeness of a _thing_, but it does not\n forbid our conceiving God after the likeness of our inward _self_,\n _i. e._, as _personal_. This again shows that God is a spiritual\n being. Imagination can be used in religion, and great help can be\n derived from it. Yet we do not know God by\n imagination,\u2014imagination only helps us vividly to realize the\n presence of the God whom we already know. We may almost say that\n some men have not imagination enough to be religious. But\n imagination must not lose its wings. In its representations of\n God, it must not be confined to a picture, or a form, or a place.\n Humanity tends too much to rest in the material and the sensuous,\n and we must avoid all representations of God which would identify\n the Being who is worshiped with the helps used in order to realize\n his presence; _John 4:24\u2014_\u201cthey that worship him must worship in\n spirit and truth.\u201d\n\n An Egyptian Hymn to the Nile, dating from the 19th dynasty (14th\n century B. C.), contains these words: \u201cHis abode is not known; no\n shrine is found with painted figures; there is no building that\n can contain him\u201d (Cheyne, Isaiah, 2:120). The repudiation of\n images among the ancient Persians (Herod. 1:131), as among the\n Japanese Shintos, indicates the remains of a primitive spiritual\n religion. The representation of Jehovah with body or form degrades\n him to the level of heathen gods. Pictures of the Almighty over\n the chancels of Romanist cathedrals confine the mind and degrade\n the conception of the worshiper. We may use imagination in prayer,\n picturing God as a benignant form holding out arms of mercy, but\n we should regard such pictures only as scaffolding for the\n building of our edifice of worship, while we recognize, with the\n Scripture, that the reality worshiped is immaterial and spiritual.\n Otherwise our idea of God is brought down to the low level of\n man\u2019s material being. Even man\u2019s spiritual nature may be\n misrepresented by physical images, as when medi\u00e6val artists\n pictured death, by painting a doll-like figure leaving the body at\n the mouth of the person dying.\n\n The longing for a tangible, incarnate God meets its satisfaction\n in Jesus Christ. Yet even pictures of Christ soon lose their\n power. Luther said: \u201cIf I have a picture of Christ in my heart,\n why not one upon canvas?\u201d We answer: Because the picture in the\n heart is capable of change and improvement, as we ourselves change\n and improve; the picture upon canvas is fixed, and holds to old\n conceptions which we should outgrow. Thomas Carlyle: \u201cMen never\n think of painting the face of Christ, till they lose the\n impression of him upon their hearts.\u201d Swedenborg, in modern times,\n represents the view that God exists in the shape of a man\u2014an\n anthropomorphism of which the making of idols is only a grosser\n and more barbarous form; see H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 9,\n 10. This is also the doctrine of Mormonism; see Spencer, Catechism\n of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons teach that God is a man; that he\n has numerous wives by whom he peoples space with an infinite\n number of spirits. Christ was a favorite son by a favorite wife,\n but birth as man was the only way he could come into the enjoyment\n of real life. These spirits are all the sons of God, but they can\n realize and enjoy their sonship only through birth. They are about\n every one of us pleading to be born. Hence, polygamy.\n\n\nWe come now to consider the positive import of the term Spirit. The\nspirituality of God involves the two attributes of Life and Personality.\n\n\n1. Life.\n\n\nThe Scriptures represent God as the living God.\n\n_Jer. 10:10\u2014_\u201cHe is the living God\u201d; _1 Thess. 1:9\u2014_\u201cturned unto God from\nidols, to serve a living and true God\u201d; _John 5:26-_\u201chath life in\nhimself\u201d; _cf._ _14:6\u2014_\u201cI am ... the life,\u201d and _Heb. 7:16\u2014_\u201cthe power of\nan endless life\u201d; _Rev. 11:11\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of life.\u201d\n\nLife is a simple idea, and is incapable of real definition. We know it,\nhowever, in ourselves, and we can perceive the insufficiency or\ninconsistency of certain current definitions of it. We cannot regard life\nin God as\n\n(_a_) Mere _process_, without a subject; for we cannot conceive of a\ndivine life without a God to live it.\n\n\n _Versus_ Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 1:10\u2014\u201cLife and mind are\n processes; neither is a substance; neither is a force; ... the\n name given to the whole group of phenomena becomes the\n personification of the phenomena, and the product is supposed to\n have been the producer.\u201d Here we have a product without any\n producer\u2014a series of phenomena without any substance of which they\n are manifestations. In a similar manner we read in Dewey,\n Psychology, 247\u2014\u201cSelf is an _activity_. It is not something which\n acts; it is activity.... It is constituted by activities....\n Through its activity the soul is.\u201d Here it does not appear how\n there can be activity, without any subject or being that is\n active. The inconsistency of this view is manifest when Dewey goes\n on to say: \u201cThe activity may further or develop the self,\u201d and\n when he speaks of \u201cthe organic activity of the self.\u201d So Dr.\n Burdon Sanderson: \u201cLife is a state of ceaseless change,\u2014a state of\n change with permanence; living matter ever changes while it is\n ever the same.\u201d \u201cPlus \u00e7a change, plus c\u2019est la m\u00eame chose.\u201d But\n this permanent thing in the midst of change is the subject, the\n self, the being, that _has_ life.\n\n\nNor can we regard life as\n\n(_b_) Mere _correspondence_ with outward condition and environment; for\nthis would render impossible a life of God before the existence of the\nuniverse.\n\n\n _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, Biology, 1:59-71\u2014\u201cLife is the definite\n combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and\n successive, in correspondence with external co\u00ebxistences and\n sequences.\u201d Here we have, at best, a definition of physical and\n finite life; and even this is insufficient, because the definition\n recognizes no original source of activity within, but only a power\n of reaction in response to stimulus from without. We might as well\n say that the boiling tea-kettle is alive (Mark Hopkins). We find\n this defect also in Robert Browning\u2019s lines in The Ring and the\n Book (The Pope, 1307): \u201cO Thou\u2014as represented here to me In such\n conception as my soul allows\u2014Under thy measureless, my\n atom-width!\u2014Man\u2019s mind, what is it but a convex glass Wherein are\n gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of\n sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known Unknown,\n our God revealed to man?\u201d Life is something more than a passive\n receptivity.\n\n\n(_c_) Life is rather _mental energy_, or energy of intellect, affection,\nand will. God is the living God, as having in his own being a source of\nbeing and activity, both for himself and others.\n\n\n Life means energy, activity, movement. Aristotle: \u201cLife is energy\n of mind.\u201d Wordsworth, Excursion, book 5:602\u2014\u201cLife is love and\n immortality, The Being one, and one the element.... Life, I\n repeat, is energy of love Divine or human.\u201d Prof. C. L. Herrick,\n on Critics of Ethical Monism, in Denison Quarterly, Dec.\n 1896:248\u2014\u201cForce is energy under resistance, or self-limited\n energy, for all parts of the universe are derived from the energy.\n Energy manifesting itself under self-conditioning or differential\n forms is force. The change of pure energy into force is creation.\u201d\n Prof. Herrick quotes from S. T. Coleridge, Anima Poet\u00e6: \u201cSpace is\n the name for God; it is the most perfect image of soul\u2014pure soul\n being to us nothing but unresisted action. Whenever action is\n resisted, limitation begins\u2014and limitation is the first\n constituent of body; the more omnipresent it is in a given space,\n the more that space is body or matter; and thus all body\n presupposes soul, inasmuch as all resistance presupposes action.\u201d\n Schelling: \u201cLife is the tendency to individualism.\u201d\n\n If spirit in man implies life, spirit in God implies endless and\n inexhaustible life. The total life of the universe is only a faint\n image of that moving energy which we call the life of God. Dewey,\n Psychology, 253\u2014\u201cThe sense of being alive is much more vivid in\n childhood than afterwards. Leigh Hunt says that, when he was a\n child, the sight of certain palings painted red gave him keener\n pleasure than any experience of manhood.\u201d Matthew Arnold: \u201cBliss\n was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.\u201d\n The child\u2019s delight in country scenes, and our intensified\n perceptions in brain fever, show us by contrast how shallow and\n turbid is the stream of our ordinary life. Tennyson, Two Voices:\n \u201c\u2019Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for\n which we pant; More life, and fuller, that we want.\u201d That life the\n needy human spirit finds only in the infinite God. Instead of\n Tyndall\u2019s: \u201cMatter has in it the promise and potency of every form\n of life,\u201d we accept Sir William Crookes\u2019s dictum: \u201cLife has in it\n the promise and potency of every form of matter.\u201d See A. H.\n Strong, on The Living God, in Philos. and Religion, 180-187.\n\n\n2. Personality.\n\n\nThe Scriptures represent God as a personal being. By personality we mean\nthe power of self-consciousness and of self-determination. By way of\nfurther explanation we remark:\n\n(_a_) Self-consciousness is more than consciousness. This last the brute\nmay be supposed to possess, since the brute is not an automaton. Man is\ndistinguished from the brute by his power to objectify self. Man is not\nonly conscious of his own acts and states, but by abstraction and\nreflection he recognizes the self which is the subject of these acts and\nstates. (_b_) Self-determination is more than determination. The brute\nshows determination, but his determination is the result of influences\nfrom without; there is no inner spontaneity. Man, by virtue of his\nfree-will, determines his action from within. He determines self in view\nof motives, but his determination is not caused by motives; he himself is\nthe cause.\n\nGod, as personal, is in the highest degree self-conscious and\nself-determining. The rise in our own minds of the idea of God, as\npersonal, depends largely upon our recognition of personality in\nourselves. Those who deny spirit in man place a bar in the way of the\nrecognition of this attribute of God.\n\n\n _Ex. 3:14\u2014_\u201cAnd God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said,\n Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me\n unto you.\u201d God is not the everlasting \u201cIT IS,\u201d or \u201cI WAS,\u201d but the\n everlasting \u201cI AM\u201d (Morris, Philosophy and Christianity, 128); \u201cI\n AM\u201d implies both personality and presence. _1 Cor. 2:11\u2014_\u201cthe\n things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God\u201d; _Eph.\n 1:9\u2014_\u201cgood pleasure which he purposed\u201d; _11\u2014_\u201cthe counsel of his\n will.\u201d Definitions of personality are the following:\n Boethius\u2014\u201cPersona est anim\u00e6 rationalis individua substantia\u201d\n (quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415). F. W. Robertson, Genesis\n 3\u2014\u201cPersonality = self-consciousness, will, character.\u201d Porter,\n Human Intellect, 626\u2014\u201cDistinct subsistence, either actually or\n latently self-conscious and self-determining.\u201d Harris, Philos.\n Basis of Theism: Person = \u201cbeing, conscious of self, subsisting in\n individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason,\n rational sensibility, and free-will.\u201d See Harris, 98, 99,\n quotation from Mansel\u2014\u201cThe freedom of the will is so far from\n being, as it is generally considered, a controvertible question in\n philosophy, that it is the fundamental postulate without which all\n action and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches and\n human consciousness itself, would be impossible.\u201d\n\n One of the most astounding announcements in all literature is that\n of Matthew Arnold, in his \u201cLiterature and Dogma,\u201d that the Hebrew\n Scriptures recognize in God only \u201cthe power, not ourselves, that\n makes for righteousness\u201d = the God of pantheism. The \u201cI AM\u201d of\n _Ex. 3:14_ could hardly have been so misunderstood, if Matthew\n Arnold had not lost the sense of his own personality and\n responsibility. From free-will in man we rise to freedom in\n God\u2014\u201cThat living Will that shall endure, When all that seems shall\n suffer shock.\u201d Observe that personality needs to be accompanied by\n life\u2014the power of self-consciousness and self-determination needs\n to be accompanied by activity\u2014in order to make up our total idea\n of God as Spirit. Only this personality of God gives proper\n meaning to his punishments or to his forgiveness. See Bib. Sac.,\n April, 1884:217-233; Eichhorn, die Pers\u00f6nlichkeit Gottes.\n\n Illingworth, Divine and Human Personality, 1:25, shows that the\n sense of personality has had a gradual growth; that its\n pre-Christian recognition was imperfect; that its final definition\n has been due to Christianity. In 29-53, he notes the\n characteristics of personality as reason, love, will. The brute\n _perceives_; only the man _apperceives_, _i. e._, recognizes his\n perception as belonging to himself. In the German story,\n Drei\u00e4uglein, the three-eyed child, had besides her natural pair of\n eyes one other to see what the pair did, and besides her natural\n will had an additional will to set the first to going right. On\n consciousness and self-consciousness, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:179-189\u2014\u201cIn consciousness the object is another substance than\n the subject; but in self-consciousness the object is the same\n substance as the subject.\u201d Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, speaks\n of \u201cthe abysmal depths of personality.\u201d We do not fully know\n ourselves, nor yet our relation to God. But the divine\n consciousness embraces the whole divine content of being: \u201cthe\n Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God\u201d_ (1 Cor.\n 2:10)_.\n\n We are not fully masters of ourselves. Our self-determination is\n as limited as is our self-consciousness. But the divine will is\n absolutely without hindrance; God\u2019s activity is constant, intense,\n infinite; _Job 23:13\u2014_\u201cWhat his soul desireth, even that he\n doeth\u201d; _John 5:17\u2014_\u201cMy Father worketh even until now, and I\n work.\u201d Self-knowledge and self-mastery are the dignity of man;\n they are also the dignity of God; Tennyson: \u201cSelf-reverence,\n self-knowledge, self-control, These three lead life to sovereign\n power.\u201d Robert Browning, The Last Ride Together: \u201cWhat act proved\n all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen?\u201d\n Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 6, 161, 216-255\u2014\u201cPerhaps the\n root of personality is capacity for affection.\u201d... Our personality\n is incomplete; we reason truly only with God helping; our love in\n higher Love endures; we will rightly, only as God works in us to\n will and to do; to make us truly ourselves we need an infinite\n Personality to supplement and energize our own; we are complete\n only in Christ (_Col. 2:9, 10\u2014_\u201cIn him dwelleth all the fulness of\n the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full.\u201d)\n\n Webb, on the Idea of Personality as applied to God, in Jour.\n Theol. Studies, 2:50\u2014\u201cSelf knows itself and what is not itself as\n two, just because both alike are embraced within the unity of its\n experience, stand out against this background, the apprehension of\n which is the very essence of that rationality or personality which\n distinguishes us from the lower animals. We find that background,\n God, present in us, or rather, we find ourselves present in it.\n But if I find myself present in it, then it, as more complete, is\n simply more personal than I. Our not-self is outside of us, so\n that we are finite and lonely, but God\u2019s not-self is within him,\n so that there is a mutual inwardness of love and insight of which\n the most perfect communion among men is only a faint symbol. We\n are \u2019hermit-spirits,\u2019 as Keble says, and we come to union with\n others only by realizing our union with God. Personality is not\n impenetrable in man, for \u2018in him we live, and move, and have our\n being\u2019_ (Acts 17:28)_, and \u2018that which hath been made is life in\n him\u2019_ (John 1:3, 4)_.\u201d Palmer, Theologic Definition, 39\u2014\u201cThat\n which has its cause without itself is a thing, while that which\n has its cause within itself is a person.\u201d\n\n\nSecond Division.\u2014Infinity, and attributes therein involved.\n\n\nBy infinity we mean, not that the divine nature has no known limits or\nbounds, but that it has no limits or bounds. That which has simply no\nknown limits is the indefinite. The infinity of God implies that he is in\nno way limited by the universe or confined to the universe; he is\ntranscendent as well as immanent. Transcendence, however, must not be\nconceived as freedom from merely spatial restrictions, but rather as\nunlimited resource, of which God\u2019s glory is the expression.\n\n\n _Ps. 145:3\u2014_\u201chis greatness is unsearchable\u201d; _Job 11:7-9\u2014_\u201chigh as\n heaven ... deeper than Sheol\u201d; _Is. 66:1\u2014_\u201cHeaven is my throne,\n and the earth is my footstool\u201d; _1 K. 8:27\u2014_\u201cHeaven and the heaven\n of heavens cannot contain thee\u201d; _Rom. 11:33\u2014_\u201chow unsearchable\n are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.\u201d There can be no\n infinite number, since to any assignable number a unit can be\n added, which shows that this number was not infinite before. There\n can be no infinite universe, because an infinite universe is\n conceivable only as an infinite number of worlds or of minds. God\n himself is the only real Infinite, and the universe is but the\n finite expression or symbol of his greatness.\n\n We therefore object to the statement of Lotze, Microcosm,\n 1:446\u2014\u201cThe complete system, grasped in its totality, offers an\n expression of the whole nature of the One.... The Cause makes\n actual existence its complete manifestation.\u201d In a similar way\n Schurman, Belief in God, 26, 173-178, grants infinity, but denies\n transcendence: \u201cThe infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the\n idea of a single organism embraces within a single life a\n plurality of members and functions.... The world is the expression\n of an ever active and inexhaustible will. That the external\n manifestation is as boundless as the life it expresses, science\n makes exceedingly probable. In any event, we have not the\n slightest reason to contrast the finitude of the world with the\n infinity of God.... If the natural order is eternal and infinite,\n as there seems no reason to doubt, it will be difficult to find a\n meaning for \u2018beyond\u2019 or \u2018before.\u2019 Of this illimitable,\n ever-existing universe, God is the Inner ground or substance.\n There is no evidence, neither does any religious need require us\n to believe, that the divine Being manifest in the universe has any\n actual or possible existence elsewhere, in some transcendent\n sphere.... The divine will can express itself only as it does,\n because no other expression would reveal what it is. Of such a\n will, the universe is the eternal expression.\u201d\n\n\nIn explanation of the term infinity, we may notice:\n\n(_a_) That infinity can belong to but one Being, and therefore cannot be\nshared with the universe. Infinity is not a negative but a positive idea.\nIt does not take its rise from an impotence of thought, but is an\nintuitive conviction which constitutes the basis of all other knowledge.\n\n\n See Porter, Human Intellect, 651, 652, and this Compendium, pages\n 59-62. _Versus_ Mansel, Proleg. Logica, chap. 1\u2014\u201cSuch negative\n notions ... imply at once an attempt to think, and a failure in\n that attempt.\u201d On the contrary, the conception of the Infinite is\n perfectly distinguishable from that of the finite, and is both\n necessary and logically prior to that of the finite. This is not\n true of our idea of the universe, of which all we know is finite\n and dependent. We therefore regard such utterances as those of\n Lotze and Schurman above, and those of Chamberlin and Caird below,\n as pantheistic in tendency, although the belief of these writers\n in divine and human personality saves them from falling into other\n errors of pantheism.\n\n Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago: \u201cIt is not\n sufficient to the modern scientific thought to think of a Ruler\n outside of the universe, nor of a universe with the Ruler outside.\n A supreme Being who does not embrace all the activities and\n possibilities and potencies of the universe seems something less\n than the supremest Being, and a universe with a Ruler outside\n seems something less than a universe. And therefore the thought is\n growing on the minds of scientific thinkers that the supreme Being\n is the universal Being, embracing and comprehending all things.\u201d\n Caird, Evolution of Religion, 2:62\u2014\u201cReligion, if it would continue\n to exist, must combine the monotheistic idea with that which it\n has often regarded as its greatest enemy, the spirit of\n pantheism.\u201d We grant in reply that religion must appropriate the\n element of truth in pantheism, namely, that God is the only\n substance, ground and principle of being, but we regard it as\n fatal to religion to side with pantheism in its denials of God\u2019s\n transcendence and of God\u2019s personality.\n\n\n(_b_) That the infinity of God does not involve his identity with \u201cthe\nall,\u201d or the sum of existence, nor prevent the co\u00ebxistence of derived and\nfinite beings to which he bears relation. Infinity implies simply that God\nexists in no necessary relation to finite things or beings, and that\nwhatever limitation of the divine nature results from their existence is,\non the part of God, a self-limitation.\n\n\n _Ps. 113:5, 6\u2014_\u201cthat humbleth himself to behold the things that\n are in heaven and in the earth.\u201d It is involved in God\u2019s infinity\n that there should be no barriers to his self-limitation in\n creation and redemption (see page 9, F.). Jacob Boehme said: \u201cGod\n is infinite, for God is all.\u201d But this is to make God all\n imperfection, as well as all perfection. Harris, Philos. Basis\n Theism: \u201cThe relation of the absolute to the finite is not the\n mathematical relation of a total to its parts, but it is a\n dynamical and rational relation.\u201d Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:189-191\u2014\u201cThe infinite is not the total; \u2018the all\u2019 is a\n pseudo-infinite, and to assert that it is greater than the simple\n infinite is the same error that is committed in mathematics when\n it is asserted that an infinite number plus a vast finite number\n is greater than the simple infinite.\u201d Fullerton, Conception of the\n Infinite, 90\u2014\u201cThe Infinite, though it involves unlimited\n possibility of quantity, is not itself a quantitative but rather a\n qualitative conception.\u201d Hovey, Studies of Ethics and Religion,\n 39-47\u2014\u201cAny number of finite beings, minds, loves, wills, cannot\n reveal fully an infinite Being, Mind, Love, Will. God must be\n transcendent as well as immanent in the universe, or he is neither\n infinite nor an object of supreme worship.\u201d\n\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 117\u2014\u201cGreat as the universe is, God is\n not limited to it, wholly absorbed by what he is doing in it, and\n capable of doing nothing more. God in the universe is not like the\n life of the tree in the tree, which does all that it is capable of\n in making the tree what it is. God in the universe is rather like\n the spirit of a man in his body, which is greater than his body,\n able to direct his body, and capable of activities in which his\n body has no share. God is a free spirit, personal, self-directing,\n unexhausted by his present activities.\u201d The Persian poet said\n truly: \u201cThe world is a bud from his bower of beauty; the sun is a\n spark from the light of his wisdom; the sky is a bubble on the sea\n of his power.\u201d Faber: \u201cFor greatness which is infinite makes room\n For all things in its lap to lie. We should be crushed by a\n magnificence Short of infinity. We share in what is infinite; \u2019tis\n ours, For we and it alike are Thine. What I enjoy, great God, by\n right of Thee, Is more than doubly mine.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) That the infinity of God is to be conceived of as intensive, rather\nthan as extensive. We do not attribute to God infinite extension, but\nrather infinite energy of spiritual life. That which acts up to the\nmeasure of its power is simply natural and physical force. Man rises above\nnature by virtue of his reserves of power. But in God the reserve is\ninfinite. There is a transcendent element in him, which no self-revelation\nexhausts, whether creation or redemption, whether law or promise.\n\n\n Transcendence is not mere outsideness,\u2014it is rather boundless\n supply within. God is not infinite by virtue of existing \u201cextra\n flammantia m\u0153nia mundi\u201d (Lucretius) or of filling a space outside\n of space,\u2014he is rather infinite by being the pure and perfect Mind\n that passes beyond all phenomena and constitutes the ground of\n them. The former conception of infinity is simply supra-cosmic,\n the latter alone is properly transcendent; see Hatch, Hibbert\n Lectures, 244. \u201cGod is the living God, and has not yet spoken his\n last word on any subject\u201d (G. W. Northrup). God\u2019s life \u201coperates\n unspent.\u201d There is \u201cever more to follow.\u201d The legend stamped with\n the Pillars of Hercules upon the old coins of Spain was _Ne plus\n ultra_\u2014\u201cNothing beyond,\u201d but when Columbus discovered America the\n legend was fitly changed to _Plus ultra_\u2014\u201cMore beyond.\u201d So the\n motto of the University of Rochester is _Meliora_\u2014\u201cBetter things.\u201d\n\n Since God\u2019s infinite resources are pledged to aid us, we may, as\n Emerson bids us, \u201chitch our wagon to a star,\u201d and believe in\n progress. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: \u201cMen, my brothers, men the\n workers, ever reaping something new. That which they have done but\n earnest of the things that they shall do.\u201d Millet\u2019s L\u2019Angelus is a\n witness to man\u2019s need of God\u2019s transcendence. Millet\u2019s aim was to\n paint, not _air_ but _prayer_. We need a God who is not confined\n to nature. As Moses at the beginning of his ministry cried, \u201cShow\n me, I pray thee, thy glory\u201d_ (Ex. 33:18)_, so we need marked\n experiences at the beginning of the Christian life, in order that\n we may be living witnesses to the supernatural. And our Lord\n promises such manifestations of himself: _John 14:21\u2014_\u201cI will love\n him, and will manifest myself unto him.\u201d\n\n _Ps. 71:15\u2014_\u201cMy mouth shall tell of thy righteousness, And of thy\n salvation all the day; For I know not the numbers thereof\u201d = it is\n infinite. _Ps. 89:2\u2014_\u201cMercy shall be built up forever\u201d = ever\n growing manifestations and cycles of fulfilment\u2014first literal,\n then spiritual. _Ps. 113:4-6\u2014_\u201cJehovah is high above all nations,\n And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto Jehovah our God,\n That hath his seat on high, That humbleth himself [stoopeth down]\n to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?\u201d _Mal.\n 2:15\u2014_\u201cdid he not make one, although he had the residue of the\n Spirit?\u201d = he might have created many wives for Adam, though he\n did actually create but one. In this \u201cresidue of the Spirit,\u201d says\n Caldwell, Cities of our Faith, 370, \u201cthere yet lies latent\u2014as\n winds lie calm in the air of a summer noon, as heat immense lies\n cold and hidden in the mountains of coal\u2014the blessing and the life\n of nations, the infinite enlargement of Zion.\u201d\n\n _Is. 52:10\u2014_\u201cJehovah hath made bare his holy arm\u201d = nature does\n not exhaust or entomb God; nature is the mantle in which he\n commonly reveals himself; but he is not fettered by the robe he\n wears\u2014he can thrust it aside, and make bare his arm in\n providential interpositions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty\n movements of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the\n setting up of his own kingdom. See also _John 1:16\u2014_\u201cof his\n fulness we all received, and grace for grace\u201d = \u201cEach blessing\n appropriated became the foundation of a greater blessing. To have\n realized and used one measure of grace was to have gained a larger\n measure in exchange for it \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03c4\u1f76 \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\u201d; so Westcott, in\n Bib. Com., _in loco_. Christ can ever say to the believer, as he\n said to Nathanael _(John 1:50): _\u201cthou shalt see greater things\n than these.\u201d\n\n Because God is infinite, he can love each believer as much as if\n that single soul were the only one for whom he had to care. Both\n in providence and in redemption the whole heart of God is busy\n with plans for the interest and happiness of the single Christian.\n Threatenings do not half reveal God, nor his promises half express\n the \u201ceternal weight of glory\u201d_ (2 Cor. 4:17)_. Dante, Paradiso,\n 19:40-63\u2014God \u201cCould not upon the universe so write The impress of\n his power, but that his word Must still be left in distance\n infinite.\u201d To \u201climit the Holy One of Israel\u201d_ (Ps. 78:41_\u2014marg.)\n is falsehood as well as sin.\n\n This attribute of infinity, or of transcendence, qualifies all the\n other attributes, and so is the foundation for the representations\n of majesty and glory as belonging to God (see _Ex. 33:18_; _Ps.\n 19:1_; _Is. 6:3_; _Mat. 6:13_; _Acts 7:2_; _Rom. 1:23_; _9:23_;\n _Heb. 1:3_; _1 Pet. 4:14_; _Rev. 21:23_). Glory is not itself a\n divine attribute; it is rather a result\u2014an objective result\u2014of the\n exercise of the divine attributes. This glory exists irrespective\n of the revelation and recognition of it in the creation (_John\n 17:5_). Only God can worthily perceive and reverence his own\n glory. He does all for his own glory. All religion is founded on\n the glory of God. All worship is the result of this immanent\n quality of the divine nature. Kedney, Christian Doctrine,\n 1:360-373, 2:354, apparently conceives of the divine glory as an\n eternal material environment of God, from which the universe is\n fashioned. This seems to contradict both the spirituality and the\n infinity of God. God\u2019s infinity implies absolute completeness\n apart from anything external to himself. We proceed therefore to\n consider the attributes involved in infinity.\n\n\nOf the attributes involved in Infinity, we mention:\n\n\n1. Self-existence.\n\n\nBy self-existence we mean\n\n(_a_) That God is \u201c_causa sui_,\u201d having the ground of his existence in\nhimself. Every being must have the ground of its existence either in or\nout of itself. We have the ground of our existence outside of us. God is\nnot thus dependent. He is _a se_; hence we speak of the aseity of God.\n\n\n God\u2019s self-existence is implied in the name \u201cJehovah\u201d_ (Ex. 6:3)_\n and in the declaration \u201cI AM THAT I AM\u201d (_Ex. 3:14_), both of\n which signify that it is God\u2019s nature to be. Self-existence is\n certainly incomprehensible to us, yet a self-existent person is no\n greater mystery than a self-existent thing, such as Herbert\n Spencer supposes the universe to be; indeed it is not so great a\n mystery, for it is easier to derive matter from mind than to\n derive mind from matter. See Porter, Human Intellect, 661. Joh.\n Angelus Silesius: \u201cGott ist das was Er ist; Ich was Ich durch Ihn\n bin; Doch kennst du Einen wohl, So kennst du mich und Ihn.\u201d\n Martineau, Types, 1:302\u2014\u201cA _cause_ may be eternal, but nothing\n that is _caused_ can be so.\u201d He protests against the phrase\n \u201c_causa sui_.\u201d So Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:338, objects to the\n phrase \u201cGod is his own cause,\u201d because God is the uncaused Being.\n But when we speak of God as \u201c_causa sui_,\u201d we do not attribute to\n him beginning of existence. The phrase means rather that the\n ground of his existence is not outside of himself, but that he\n himself is the living spring of all energy and of all being.\n\n\nBut lest this should be misconstrued, we add\n\n(_b_) That God exists by the necessity of his own being. It is his nature\nto be. Hence the existence of God is not a contingent but a necessary\nexistence. It is grounded, not in his volitions, but in his nature.\n\n\n Julius M\u00fcller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:126, 130, 170, seems to hold\n that God is primarily will, so that the essence of God is his act:\n \u201cGod\u2019s essence does not precede his freedom\u201d; \u201cif the essence of\n God were for him something given, something already present, the\n question \u2018from whence it was given?\u2019 could not be evaded; God\u2019s\n essence must in this case have its origin in something apart from\n him, and thus the true conception of God would be entirely swept\n away.\u201d But this implies that truth, reason, love, holiness,\n equally with God\u2019s essence, are all products of will. If God\u2019s\n essence, moreover, were his act, it would be in the power of God\n to annihilate himself. Act presupposes essence; else there is no\n God to act. The will by which God exists, and in virtue of which\n he is _causa sui_, is therefore not will in the sense of volition,\n but will in the sense of the whole movement of his active being.\n With M\u00fcller\u2019s view Thomasius and Delitzsch are agreed. For\n refutation of it, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:63.\n\n God\u2019s essence is not his act, not only because this would imply\n that he could destroy himself, but also because before willing\n there must be being. Those who hold God\u2019s essence to be simple\n activity are impelled to this view by the fear of postulating some\n dead thing in God which precedes all exercise of faculty. So\n Miller, Evolution of Love, 43\u2014\u201cPerfect action, conscious and\n volitional, is the highest generalization, the ultimate unit, the\n unconditioned nature, of infinite Being\u201d; _i. e._, God\u2019s nature is\n subjective action, while external nature is his objective action.\n A better statement, however, is that of Bowne, Philos. of Theism,\n 170\u2014\u201cWhile there is a necessity in the soul, it becomes\n controlling only through freedom; and we may say that everyone\n must constitute himself a rational soul.... This is absolutely\n true of God.\u201d\n\n\n2. Immutability.\n\n\nBy this we mean that the nature, attributes, and will of God are exempt\nfrom all change. Reason teaches us that no change is possible in God,\nwhether of increase or decrease, progress or deterioration, contraction or\ndevelopment. All change must be to better or to worse. But God is absolute\nperfection, and no change to better is possible. Change to worse would be\nequally inconsistent with perfection. No cause for such change exists,\neither outside of God or in God himself.\n\n\n _Psalm 102:27\u2014_\u201cthou art the same\u201d; _Mal. 3:6\u2014_\u201cI, Jehovah, change\n not\u201d; _James 1:17\u2014_\u201cwith whom can be no variation, neither shadow\n that is cast by turning.\u201d Spenser, Faerie Queen, Cantos of\n Mutability, 8:2\u2014\u201cThen \u2019gin I think on that which nature sayde, Of\n that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of\n all things, firmly stayed Upon the pillours of eternity; For all\n that moveth doth in change delight, But henceforth all shall rest\n eternally With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight; Oh thou great\n Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath\u2019s sight!\u201d Bowne, Philos. of\n Theism, 146, defines immutability as \u201cthe constancy and continuity\n of the divine nature which exists through all the divine acts as\n their law and source.\u201d\n\n\nThe passages of Scripture which seem at first sight to ascribe change to\nGod are to be explained in one of three ways:\n\n(_a_) As illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his\nimmutable truth and wisdom in creation.\n\n\n Mathematical principles receive new application with each\n successive stage of creation. The law of cohesion gives place to\n chemical law, and chemistry yields to vital forces, but through\n all these changes there is a divine truth and wisdom which is\n unchanging, and which reduces all to rational order. John Caird,\n Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:140\u2014\u201cImmutability is not\n stereotyped sameness, but impossibility of deviation by one hair\u2019s\n breadth from the course which is best. A man of great force of\n character is continually finding new occasions for the\n manifestation and application of moral principle. In God infinite\n consistency is united with infinite flexibility. There is no\n iron-bound impassibility, but rather an infinite originality in\n him.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) As anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God\u2019s\nunchanging attributes in the changing circumstances and varying moral\nconditions of creatures.\n\n\n _Gen. 6:6\u2014_\u201cit repented Jehovah that he had made man\u201d\u2014is to be\n interpreted in the light of _Num. 23:19\u2014_\u201cGod is not a man, that\n he should lie: neither the son of man, that he should repent.\u201d So\n _cf._ _1 Sam. 15:11_ with _15:29_. God\u2019s unchanging holiness\n requires him to treat the wicked differently from the righteous.\n When the righteous become wicked, his treatment of them must\n change. The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax\n but hardens the clay,\u2014the change is not in the sun but in the\n objects it shines upon. The change in God\u2019s treatment of men is\n described anthropomorphically, as if it were a change in God\n himself,\u2014other passages in close conjunction with the first being\n given to correct any possible misapprehension. Threats not\n fulfilled, as in _Jonah 3:4, 10_, are to be explained by their\n conditional nature. Hence God\u2019s immutability itself renders it\n certain that his love will adapt itself to every varying mood and\n condition of his children, so as to guide their steps, sympathize\n with their sorrows, answer their prayers. God responds to us more\n quickly than the mother\u2019s face to the changing moods of her babe.\n Godet, in The Atonement, 338\u2014\u201cGod is of all beings the most\n delicately and infinitely sensitive.\u201d\n\n God\u2019s immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal\n experience, but rather that of the column of mercury, that rises\n and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding\n atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and\n goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to\n change, though it is blowing just as it was before. The sinner\n struggles against the wind of prevenient grace until he seems to\n strike against a stone wall. Regeneration is God\u2019s conquest of our\n wills by his power, and conversion is our beginning to turn round\n and to work with God rather than against God. Now we move without\n effort, because we have God at our back; _Phil. 2:12, 13\u2014_\u201cwork\n out your own salvation ... for it is God who worketh in you.\u201d God\n has not changed, but we have changed; _John 3:8\u2014_\u201cThe wind bloweth\n where it will ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.\u201d\n Jacob\u2019s first wrestling with the Angel was the picture of his\n lifelong self-will, opposing God; his subsequent wrestling in\n prayer was the picture of a consecrated will, working with God\n (_Gen. 32:24-28_). We seem to conquer God, but he really conquers\n us. He seems to change, but it is we who change after all.\n\n\n(_c_) As describing executions, in time, of purposes eternally existing in\nthe mind of God. Immutability must not be confounded with immobility. This\nwould deny all those imperative volitions of God by which he enters into\nhistory. The Scriptures assure us that creation, miracles, incarnation,\nregeneration, are immediate acts of God. Immutability is consistent with\nconstant activity and perfect freedom.\n\n\n The abolition of the Mosaic dispensation indicates no change in\n God\u2019s plan; it is rather the execution of his plan. Christ\u2019s\n coming and work were no sudden makeshift, to remedy unforeseen\n defects in the Old Testament scheme: Christ came rather in \u201cthe\n fulness of the time\u201d_ (Gal. 4:4)_, to fulfill the \u201ccounsel\u201d of God\n (_Acts 2:23_). _Gen. 8:1\u2014_\u201cGod remembered Noah\u201d = interposed by\n special act for Noah\u2019s deliverance, showed that he remembered\n Noah. While we change, God does not. There is no fickleness or\n inconstancy in him. Where we once found him, there we may find him\n still, as Jacob did at Bethel (_Gen. 35:1, 6, 9_). Immutability is\n a consolation to the faithful, but a terror to God\u2019s enemies\n (_Mal. 3:6\u2014_\u201cI, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of\n Jacob, are not consumed\u201d; _Ps. 7:11\u2014_\u201ca God that hath indignation\n every day\u201d). It is consistent with constant activity in nature and\n in grace (_John 5:17\u2014_\u201cMy Father worketh even until now, and I\n work\u201d; _Job 23:13, 14\u2014_\u201che is in one mind, and who can turn\n him?... For he performeth that which is appointed for me: and many\n such things are with him\u201d). If God\u2019s immutability were immobility,\n we could not worship him, any more than the ancient Greeks were\n able to worship Fate. Arthur Hugh Clough: \u201cIt fortifies my soul to\n know, That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe\u2019er I stray\n and range, Whate\u2019er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step\n when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.\u201d On this\n attribute see Charnock, Attributes, 1:310-362; Dorner, Gesammelte\n Schriften, 188-377; translated in Bib. Sac., 1879:28-59, 209-223.\n\n\n3. Unity.\n\n\nBy this we mean (_a_) that the divine nature is undivided and indivisible\n(_unus_); and (_b_) that there is but one infinite and perfect Spirit\n(_unicus_).\n\n\n _Deut. 6:4\u2014_\u201cHear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah\u201d; _Is.\n 44:6\u2014_\u201cbesides me there is no God\u201d; _John 5:44\u2014_\u201cthe only God\u201d;\n _17:3\u2014_\u201cthe only true God\u201d; _1 Cor. 8:4\u2014_\u201cno God but one\u201d; _1 Tim.\n 1:17\u2014_\u201cthe only God\u201d; _6:15\u2014_\u201cthe blessed and only Potentate\u201d;\n _Eph. 4:5, 6\u2014_\u201cone Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and\n Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.\u201d When\n we read in Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 25\u2014\u201cThe unity of God is not\n numerical, denying the existence of a second; it is integral,\n denying the possibility of division,\u201d we reply that the unity of\n God is both,\u2014it includes both the numerical and the integral\n elements.\n\n Humboldt, in his Cosmos, has pointed out that the unity and\n creative agency of the heavenly Father have given unity to the\n order of nature, and so have furnished the impulse to modern\n physical science. Our faith in a \u201cuniverse\u201d rests historically\n upon the demonstration of God\u2019s unity which has been given by the\n incarnation and death of Christ. Tennyson, In Memoriam: \u201cThat God\n who ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one\n far off divine event To which the whole creation moves.\u201d See A. H.\n Strong, Christ in Creation, 184-187. Alexander McLaren: \u201cThe\n heathen have many gods because they have no one that satisfies\n hungry hearts or corresponds to their unconscious ideals.\n Completeness is not reached by piecing together many fragments.\n The wise merchantman will gladly barter a sack full of \u2018goodly\n pearls\u2019 for the one of great price. Happy they who turn away from\n the many to embrace the One!\u201d\n\n\nAgainst polytheism, tritheism, or dualism, we may urge that the notion of\ntwo or more Gods is self-contradictory; since each limits the other and\ndestroys his godhood. In the nature of things, infinity and absolute\nperfection are possible only to one. It is unphilosophical, moreover, to\nassume the existence of two or more Gods, when one will explain all the\nfacts. The unity of God is, however, in no way inconsistent with the\ndoctrine of the Trinity; for, while this doctrine holds to the existence\nof hypostatical, or personal, distinctions in the divine nature, it also\nholds that this divine nature is numerically and eternally one.\n\n\n Polytheism is man\u2019s attempt to rid himself of the notion of\n responsibility to one moral Lawgiver and Judge by dividing up his\n manifestations, and attributing them to separate wills. So Force,\n in the terminology of some modern theorizers, is only God with his\n moral attributes left out. \u201cHenotheism\u201d (says Max M\u00fcller, Origin\n and Growth of Religion, 285) \u201cconceives of each individual god as\n unlimited by the power of other gods. Each is felt, at the time,\n as supreme and absolute, notwithstanding the limitations which to\n our minds must arise from his power being conditioned by the power\n of all the gods.\u201d\n\n Even polytheism cannot rest in the doctrine of many gods, as an\n exclusive and all-comprehending explanation of the universe. The\n Greeks believed in one supreme Fate that ruled both gods and men.\n Aristotle: \u201cGod, though he is one, has many names, because he is\n called according to states into which he is ever entering anew.\u201d\n The doctrine of God\u2019s unity should teach men to give up hope of\n any other God, to reveal himself to them or to save them. They are\n in the hands of the one and only God, and therefore there is but\n one law, one gospel, one salvation; one doctrine, one duty, one\n destiny. We cannot rid ourselves of responsibility by calling\n ourselves mere congeries of impressions or mere victims of\n circumstance. As God is one, so the soul made in God\u2019s image is\n one also. On the origin of polytheism, see articles by Tholuck, in\n Bib. Repos., 2:84, 246, 441, and Max M\u00fcller, Science of Religion,\n 124.\n\n Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 83\u2014\u201cThe Alpha and Omega, the\n beginning and end and sum and meaning of Being, is but One. We who\n believe in a personal God do not believe in a limited God. We do\n not mean one more, a bigger specimen of existences, amongst\n existences. Rather, we mean that the reality of existence itself\n is personal: that Power, that Law, that Life, that Thought, that\n Love, are ultimately, in their very reality, identified in one\n supreme, and that necessarily a personal Existence. Now such\n supreme Being cannot be multiplied: it is incapable of a plural:\n it cannot be a generic term. There cannot be more than one\n all-inclusive, more than one ultimate, more than one God. Nor has\n Christian thought, at any point, for any moment, dared or endured\n the least approach to such a thought or phrase as \u2018two Gods.\u2019 If\n the Father is God, and the Son God, they are both the same God\n wholly, unreservedly. God is a particular, an unique, not a\n general, term. Each is not only God, but is the very same\n \u2018singularis unicus et totus Deus.\u2019 They are not both _generically_\n God, as though \u2018God\u2019 could be an attribute or predicate; but both\n _identically_ God, the God, the one all-inclusive, indivisible,\n God.... If the thought that wishes to be orthodox had less\n tendency to become tritheistic, the thought that claims to be free\n would be less Unitarian.\u201d\n\n\nThird Division.\u2014Perfection, and attributes therein involved.\n\n\nBy perfection we mean, not mere quantitative completeness, but qualitative\nexcellence. The attributes involved in perfection are moral attributes.\nRight action among men presupposes a perfect moral organization, a normal\nstate of intellect, affection and will. So God\u2019s activity presupposes a\nprinciple of intelligence, of affection, of volition, in his inmost being,\nand the existence of a worthy object for each of these powers of his\nnature. But in eternity past there is nothing existing outside or apart\nfrom God. He must find, and he does find, the sufficient object of\nintellect, affection, and will, in himself. There is a self-knowing, a\nself-loving, a self-willing, which constitute his absolute perfection. The\nconsideration of the immanent attributes is, therefore, properly concluded\nwith an account of that truth, love, and holiness, which render God\nentirely sufficient to himself.\n\n\n _Mat. 5:48\u2014_\u201cYe therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly\n Father is perfect\u201d; _Rom. 12:2\u2014_\u201cperfect will of God\u201d; _Col.\n 1:28\u2014_\u201cperfect in Christ\u201d; _cf._ _Deut. 32:4\u2014_\u201cThe Rock, his work\n is perfect\u201d; _Ps. 18:30\u2014_\u201cAs for God, his way is perfect.\u201d\n\n\n1. Truth.\n\n\nBy truth we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which\nGod\u2019s being and God\u2019s knowledge eternally conform to each other.\n\nIn further explanation we remark:\n\nA. Negatively:\n\n(_a_) The immanent truth of God is not to be confounded with that veracity\nand faithfulness which partially manifest it to creatures. These are\ntransitive truth, and they presuppose the absolute and immanent attribute.\n\n\n _Deut 32:4\u2014_\u201cA God of faithfulness and without iniquity, Just and\n right is he\u201d; _John 17:3\u2014_\u201cthe only true God\u201d (\u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03bd); _1 John\n 5:20\u2014_\u201cwe know him that is true\u201d (\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03bd). In both these\n passages \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2 describes God as the genuine, the real, as\n distinguished from \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03ae\u03c2, the veracious (compare _John 6:32\u2014_\u201cthe\n true bread\u201d; _Heb. 8:2\u2014_\u201cthe true tabernacle\u201d). _John 14:6\u2014_\u201cI am\n ... the truth.\u201d As \u201cI am ... the life\u201d signifies, not \u201cI am the\n living one,\u201d but rather \u201cI am he who is life and the source of\n life,\u201d so \u201c_I am ... the truth_\u201d signifies, not \u201cI am the truthful\n one,\u201d but \u201cI am he who is truth and the source of truth\u201d\u2014in other\n words, truth of being, not merely truth of expression. So _1 John\n 5:7\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit is the truth.\u201d _Cf._ 1 Esdras 1:38\u2014\u201cThe truth\n abideth and is forever strong, and it liveth and ruleth forever\u201d =\n personal truth? See Godet on _John 1:18_; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:181.\n\n Truth is God perfectly revealed and known. It may be likened to\n the electric current which manifests and measures the power of the\n dynamo. There is no realm of truth apart from the world-ground,\n just as there is no law of nature that is independent of the\n Author of nature. While we know ourselves only partially, God\n knows himself fully. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,\n 1:192\u2014\u201cIn the life of God there are no unrealized possibilities.\n The presupposition of all our knowledge and activity is that\n absolute and eternal unity of knowing and being which is only\n another expression for the nature of God. In one sense, he is all\n reality, and the only reality, whilst all finite existence is but\n a _becoming_, which never _is_.\u201d Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,\n 57-63\u2014\u201cTruth is reality revealed. Jesus is the Truth, because in\n him the sum of the qualities hidden in God is presented and\n revealed to the world, God\u2019s nature in terms of an active force\n and in relation to his rational creation.\u201d This definition however\n ignores the fact that God is truth, apart from and before all\n creation. As an immanent attribute, truth implies a conformity of\n God\u2019s knowledge to God\u2019s being, which antedates the universe; see\n B. (_b_) below.\n\n\n(_b_) Truth in God is not a merely active attribute of the divine nature.\nGod is truth, not only in the sense that he is the being who truly knows,\nbut also in the sense that he is the truth that is known. The passive\nprecedes the active; truth of being precedes truth of knowing.\n\n\n Plato: \u201cTruth is his (God\u2019s) body, and light his shadow.\u201d Hollaz\n (quoted in Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137) says that\n \u201ctruth is the conformity of the divine essence with the divine\n intellect.\u201d See Gerhard, loc. ii:152; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:272,\n 279; 3:193\u2014\u201cDistinguish in God the personal self-consciousness\n [spirituality, personality\u2014see pages 252, 253] from the unfolding\n of this in the divine knowledge, which can have no other object\n but God himself. So far, now, as self-knowing in God is absolutely\n identical with his being is he the absolutely true. For truth is\n the knowledge which answers to the being, and the being which\n answers to the knowledge.\u201d\n\n Royce, World and Individual, 1:270\u2014\u201cTruth either may mean that\n about which we judge, _or_ it may mean the correspondence between\n our ideas and their objects.\u201d God\u2019s truth is both object of his\n knowledge and knowledge of his object. Miss Clara French, The\n Dramatic Action and Motive of King John: \u201cYou spell Truth with a\n capital, and make it an independent existence to be sought for and\n absorbed; but, unless truth is God, what can it do for man? It is\n only a personality that can touch a personality.\u201d So we assent to\n the poet\u2019s declaration that \u201cTruth, crushed to earth, shall rise\n again,\u201d only because Truth is personal. Christ, the Revealer of\n God, is the Truth. He is not simply the medium but also the object\n of all knowledge; _Eph. 4:20\u2014_\u201cye did not so learn Christ\u201d = ye\n knew more than the doctrine about Christ,\u2014ye knew Christ himself;\n _John 17:3\u2014_\u201cthis is life eternal that they should know thee the\n only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.\u201d\n\n\nB. Positively:\n\n(_a_) All truth among men, whether mathematical, logical, moral, or\nreligious, is to be regarded as having its foundation in this immanent\ntruth of the divine nature and as disclosing facts in the being of God.\n\n\n There is a higher Mind than our mind. No apostle can say \u201cI am the\n truth,\u201d though each of them can say \u201cI speak the truth.\u201d Truth is\n not a scientific or moral, but a substantial, thing\u2014\u201cnicht\n Schulsache, sondern Lebenssache.\u201d Here is the dignity of\n education, that knowledge of truth is knowledge of God. The laws\n of mathematics are disclosures to us, not of the divine reason\n merely, for this would imply truth outside of and before God, but\n of the divine nature. J. W. A. Stewart: \u201cScience is possible\n because God is scientific.\u201d Plato: \u201cGod geometrizes.\u201d Bowne: \u201cThe\n heavens are crystalized mathematics.\u201d The statement that two and\n two make four, or that virtue is commendable and vice condemnable,\n expresses an everlasting principle in the being of God. Separate\n statements of truth are inexplicable apart from the total\n revelation of truth, and this total revelation is inexplicable\n apart from One who is truth and who is thus revealed. The separate\n electric lights in our streets are inexplicable apart from the\n electric current which throbs through the wires, and this electric\n current is itself inexplicable apart from the hidden dynamo whose\n power it exactly expresses and measures. The separate lights of\n truth are due to the realizing agency of the Holy Spirit; the one\n unifying current which they partially reveal is the outgoing work\n of Christ, the divine Logos; Christ is the one and only Revealer\n of him who dwells \u201cin light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen,\n nor can see\u201d_ (1 Tim. 6:16)_.\n\n Prof. H. E. Webster began his lectures \u201cby assuming the Lord Jesus\n Christ _and_ the multiplication-table.\u201d But this was tautology,\n because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth, the only revealer of\n God, includes the multiplication-table. So Wendt, Teaching of\n Jesus, 1:257; 2:202, unduly narrows the scope of Christ\u2019s\n revelation when he maintains that with Jesus truth is not the\n truth which corresponds to reality but rather the right conduct\n which corresponds to the duty prescribed by God. \u201cGrace and\n truth\u201d_ (John 1:17)_ then means the favor of God and the\n righteousness which God approves. To understand Jesus is\n impossible without being ethically like him. He is king of truth,\n in that he reveals this righteousness, and finds obedience for it\n among men. This ethical aspect of the truth, we would reply,\n important as it is, does not exclude but rather requires for its\n complement and presupposition that other aspect of the truth as\n the reality to which all being must conform and the conformity of\n all being to that reality. Since Christ is the truth of God, we\n are successful in our search for truth only as we recognize him.\n Whether all roads lead to Rome depends upon which way your face is\n turned. Follow a point of land out into the sea, and you find only\n ocean. With the back turned upon Jesus Christ all following after\n truth leads only into mist and darkness. Aristotle\u2019s ideal man was\n \u201ca hunter after truth.\u201d But truth can never be found disjoined\n from love, nor can the loveless seeker discern it. \u201cFor the loving\n worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless God\u201d (Robert\n Browning). Hence Christ can say: _John 18:37\u2014_\u201cEvery one that is\n of the truth heareth my voice.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) This attribute therefore constitutes the principle and guarantee of\nall revelation, while it shows the possibility of an eternal divine\nself-contemplation apart from and before all creation. It is to be\nunderstood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.\n\n\n To all this doctrine, however, a great school of philosophers have\n opposed themselves. Duns Scotus held that God\u2019s will made truth as\n well as right. Descartes said that God could have made it untrue\n that the radii of a circle are all equal. Lord Bacon said that\n Adam\u2019s sin consisted in seeking a good in itself, instead of being\n content with the merely empirical good. Whedon, On the Will,\n 316\u2014\u201cInfinite wisdom and infinite holiness consist in, and result\n from, God\u2019s volitions eternally.\u201d We reply that, to make truth and\n good matters of mere will, instead of regarding them as\n characteristics of God\u2019s being, is to deny that anything is true\n or good in itself. If God can make truth to be falsehood, and\n injustice to be justice, then God is indifferent to truth or\n falsehood, to good or evil, and he ceases thereby to be God. Truth\n is not arbitrary,\u2014it is matter of being\u2014the being of God. There\n are no regulative principles of knowledge which are not\n transcendental also. God knows and wills truth, because he is\n truth. Robert Browning, A Soul\u2019s Tragedy, 214\u2014\u201cWere\u2019t not for God,\n I mean, what hope of truth\u2014Speaking truth, hearing truth\u2014would\n stay with Man?\u201d God\u2019s will does not make truth, but truth rather\n makes God\u2019s will. God\u2019s perfect knowledge in eternity past has an\n object. That object must be himself. He is the truth Known, as\n well as the truthful Knower. But a perfect objective must be\n personal. The doctrine of the Trinity is the necessary complement\n to the doctrine of the Attributes. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:183\u2014\u201cThe\n pillar of cloud becomes a pillar of fire.\u201d See A. H. Strong,\n Christ in Creation, 102-112.\n\n On the question whether it is ever right to deceive, see Paine,\n Ethnic Trinities, 300-339. Plato said that the use of such\n medicines should be restricted to physicians. The rulers of the\n state may lie for the public good, but private people not:\n \u201cofficiosum mendacium.\u201d It is better to say that deception is\n justifiable only where the person deceived has, like a wild beast\n or a criminal or an enemy in war, put himself out of human society\n and deprived himself of the right to truth. Even then deception is\n a sad necessity which witnesses to an abnormal condition of human\n affairs. With James Martineau, when asked what answer he would\n give to an intending murderer when truth would mean death, we may\n say: \u201cI suppose I should tell an untruth, and then should be sorry\n for it forever after.\u201d On truth as an attribute of God, see Bib.\n Sac., Oct. 1877:735; Finney, Syst. Theol., 661; Janet, Final\n Causes, 416.\n\n\n2. Love.\n\n\nBy love we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God\nis eternally moved to self-communication.\n\n_1 John 4:8\u2014_\u201cGod is love\u201d; _3:16\u2014_\u201chereby know we love, because he laid\ndown his life for us\u201d; _John 17:24\u2014_\u201cthou lovedst me before the foundation\nof the world\u201d; _Rom. 15:30\u2014_\u201cthe love of the Spirit.\u201d\n\nIn further explanation we remark:\n\nA. Negatively:\n\n(_a_) The immanent love of God is not to be confounded with mercy and\ngoodness toward creatures. These are its manifestations, and are to be\ndenominated transitive love.\n\n\n Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:138, 139\u2014\u201cGod\u2019s regard for\n the happiness of his creatures flows from this self-communicating\n attribute of his nature. Love, in the true sense of the word, is\n living good-will, with impulses to impartation and union;\n self-communication (bonum communicativum sui); devotion, merging\n of the _ego_ in another, in order to penetrate, fill, bless this\n other with itself, and in this other, as in another self, to\n possess itself, without giving up itself or losing itself. Love is\n therefore possible only between persons, and always presupposes\n personality. Only as Trinity has God love, absolute love; because\n as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he stands in perfect\n self-impartation, self-devotion, and communion with himself.\u201d\n Julius M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, 2:136\u2014\u201cGod has in himself the eternal\n and wholly adequate object of his love, independently of his\n relation to the world.\u201d\n\n In the Greek mythology, Eros was one of the oldest and yet one of\n the youngest of the gods. So Dante makes the oldest angel to be\n the youngest, because nearest to God the fountain of life. In _1\n John 2:7, 8, _\u201cthe old commandment\u201d of love is evermore \u201c_a new\n commandment_,\u201d because it reflects this eternal attribute of God.\n \u201cThere is a love unstained by selfishness, Th\u2019 outpouring tide of\n self-abandonment, That loves to love, and deems its preciousness\n Repaid in loving, though no sentiment Of love returned reward its\n sacrament; Nor stays to question what the loved one will, But\n hymns its overture with blessings immanent; Rapt and sublimed by\n love\u2019s exalting thrill, Loves on, through frown or smile, divine,\n immortal still.\u201d Clara Elizabeth Ward: \u201cIf I could gather every\n look of love, That ever any human creature wore, And all the looks\n that joy is mother of, All looks of grief that mortals ever bore,\n And mingle all with God-begotten grace, Methinks that I should see\n the Savior\u2019s face.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Love is not the all-inclusive ethical attribute of God. It does not\ninclude truth, nor does it include holiness.\n\n\n Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 352, very properly denies that\n benevolence is the all-inclusive virtue. Justness and Truth, he\n remarks, are not reducible to benevolence. In a review of Ladd\u2019s\n work in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903:185, C. M. Mead adds: \u201cHe comes to\n the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve all the virtues\n into the generic one of love or benevolence without either giving\n a definition of benevolence which is unwarranted and virtually\n nullifies the end aimed at, or failing to recognize certain\n virtues which are as genuinely virtues as benevolence itself.\n Particularly is it argued that the virtues of the will (courage,\n constancy, temperance), and the virtues of judgment (wisdom,\n justness, trueness), get no recognition in this attempt to subsume\n all virtues under the one virtue of love. \u2019The unity of the\n virtues is due to the unity of a personality, in active and varied\n relations with other persons\u2019 (361). If benevolence means wishing\n _happiness_ to all men, then happiness is made the ultimate good,\n and eud\u00e6monism is accepted as the true ethical philosophy. But if,\n on the other hand, in order to avoid this conclusion, benevolence\n is made to mean wishing the highest _welfare_ to all men, and the\n highest welfare is conceived as a life of virtue, then we come to\n the rather inane conclusion that the essence of virtue is to wish\n that men may be virtuous.\u201d See also art. by Vos, in Presb. and\n Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-37.\n\n\n(_c_) Nor is God\u2019s love a mere regard for being in general, irrespective\nof its moral quality.\n\n\n Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise On the Nature of Virtue, defines\n virtue as regard for being in general. He considers that God\u2019s\n love is first of all directed toward himself as having the\n greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily directed toward\n his creatures whose quantity of being is infinitesimal as compared\n with his. But we reply that being in general is far too abstract a\n thing to elicit or justify love. Charles Hodge said truly that, if\n obligation is primarily due to being in general, then there is no\n more virtue in loving God than there is in loving Satan. Virtue,\n we hold, must consist, not in love for being in general, but in\n love for good being, that is, in love for God as holy. Love has no\n moral value except as it is placed upon a right object and is\n proportioned to the worth of that object. \u201cLove of being in\n general\u201d makes virtue an irrational thing, because it has no\n standard of conduct. Virtue is rather the love of God as right and\n as the source of right.\n\n G. S. Lee, The Shadow-cross, 38\u2014\u201cGod is love, and law is the way\n he loves us. But it is also true that God is law, and love is the\n way he rules us.\u201d Clarke, Christian Theology, 88\u2014\u201cLove is God\u2019s\n desire to impart himself, and so all good, to other persons, and\n to possess them for his own spiritual fellowship.\u201d The intent to\n communicate himself is the intent to communicate holiness, and\n this is the \u201cterminus ad quem\u201d of God\u2019s administration. Drummond,\n in his Ascent of Man, shows that Love began with the first cell of\n life. Evolution is not a tale of battle, but a love-story. We\n gradually pass from selfism to otherism. Evolution is the object\n of nature, and altruism is the object of evolution. Man =\n nutrition, looking to his own things; Woman = reproduction,\n looking to the things of others. But the greatest of these is\n love. The mammalia = the mothers, last and highest, care for\n others. As the mother gives love, so the father gives\n righteousness. Law, once a latent thing, now becomes active. The\n father makes a sort of conscience for those beneath him. Nature,\n like Raphael, is producing a Holy Family.\n\n Jacob Boehme: \u201cThrow open and throw out thy heart. For unless thou\n dost exercise thy heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man\n in the world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy envy, thy distaste,\n thy dislike, will still have dominion over thee.... In the name\n and in the strength of God, love all men. Love thy neighbor as\n thyself, and do to thy neighbor as thou doest to thyself. And do\n it now. For now is the accepted time, and now is the day of\n salvation.\u201d These expressions are scriptural and valuable, if they\n are interpreted ethically, and are understood to inculcate the\n supreme duty of loving the Holy One, of being holy as he is holy,\n and of seeking to bring all intelligent beings into conformity\n with his holiness.\n\n\n(_d_) God\u2019s love is not a merely emotional affection, proceeding from\nsense or impulse, nor is it prompted by utilitarian considerations.\n\n\n Of the two words for love in the N. T., \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03ad\u03c9 designates an\n emotional affection, which is not and cannot be commanded (_John\n 11:36\u2014_\u201cBehold how he loved him!\u201d), while \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u03ac\u03c9 expresses a\n rational and benevolent affection which springs from deliberate\n choice (_John 3:16\u2014_\u201cGod so loved the world\u201d; _Mat. 19:19\u2014_\u201cThou\n shall love thy neighbor as thyself\u201d; _5:44\u2014_\u201cLove your enemies\u201d).\n Thayer, N. T. Lex., 653\u2014\u1f08\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd \u201cproperly denotes a love founded in\n admiration, veneration, esteem, like the Lat. _diligere_, to be\n kindly disposed to one, to wish one well; but \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u00ee\u03bd denotes an\n inclination prompted by sense and emotion, Lat. _amare_.... Hence\n men are said \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd God, not \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u00ee\u03bd.\u201d In this word \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7, when\n used of God, it is already implied that God loves, not for what he\n can get, but for what he can give. The rationality of his love\n involves moreover a subordination of the emotional element to a\n higher law than itself, namely, that of holiness. Even God\u2019s\n self-love must have a reason and norm in the perfections of his\n own being.\n\n\nB. Positively:\n\n(_a_) The immanent love of God is a rational and voluntary affection,\ngrounded in perfect reason and deliberate choice.\n\n\n Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:277\u2014\u201cLove is will,\n aiming either at the appropriation of an object, or at the\n enrichment of its existence, because moved by a feeling of its\n worth.... Love is to persons; it is a constant will; it aims at\n the promotion of the other\u2019s personal end, whether known or\n conjectured; it takes up the other\u2019s personal end and makes it\n part of his own. Will, as love, does not give itself up for the\n other\u2019s sake; it aims at closest fellowship with the other for a\n common end.\u201d A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405\u2014\u201cLove is\n not rightfully independent of the other faculties, but is subject\n to regulation and control.... We sometimes say that religion\n consists in love.... It would be more strictly true to say that\n religion consists in a new direction of our love, a turning of the\n current toward God which once flowed toward self.... Christianity\n rectifies the affections, before excessive, impulsive,\n lawless,\u2014gives them worthy and immortal objects, regulates their\n intensity in some due proportion to the value of the things they\n rest upon, and teaches the true methods of their manifestation. In\n true religion love forms a copartnership with reason.... God\u2019s\n love is no arbitrary, wild, passionate torrent of emotion ... and\n we become like God by bringing our emotions, sympathies,\n affections, under the dominion of reason and conscience.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Since God\u2019s love is rational, it involves a subordination of the\n_emotional_ element to a higher law than itself, namely, that of truth and\nholiness.\n\n_Phil. 1:9\u2014_\u201cAnd this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more\nin knowledge and all discernment.\u201d True love among men illustrates God\u2019s\nlove. It merges self in another instead of making that other an appendage\nto self. It seeks the other\u2019s true good, not merely his present enjoyment\nor advantage. Its aim is to realize the divine idea in that other, and\ntherefore it is exercised for God\u2019s sake and in the strength which God\nsupplies. Hence it is a love for holiness, and is under law to holiness.\nSo God\u2019s love takes into account the highest interests, and makes infinite\nsacrifice to secure them. For the sake of saving a world of sinners, God\n\u201cspared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all\u201d_ (Rom. 8:32)_,\nand \u201cJehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all\u201d_ (Is. 53:6)_. Love\nrequires a rule or standard for its regulation. This rule or standard is\nthe holiness of God. So once more we see that love cannot include\nholiness, because it is subject to the law of holiness. Love desires only\nthe best for its object, and the best is _God_. The golden rule does not\nbid us give what others desire, but what they need: _Rom. 15:2\u2014_\u201cLet each\none of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying.\u201d\n\n(_c_) The immanent love of God therefore requires and finds a perfect\nstandard in his own holiness, and a personal object in the image of his\nown infinite perfections. It is to be understood only in the light of the\ndoctrine of the Trinity.\n\n\n As there is a higher Mind than our mind, so there is a greater\n Heart than our heart. God is not simply the loving One\u2014he is also\n the Love that is loved. There is an infinite life of sensibility\n and affection in God. God has feeling, and in an infinite degree.\n But feeling alone is not love. Love implies not merely receiving\n but giving, not merely emotion but impartation. So the love of God\n is shown in his eternal giving. _James 1:5\u2014_\u201cGod, who giveth,\u201d or\n \u201cthe giving God\u201d (\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6) = giving is not an episode in\n his being\u2014it is his nature to give. And not only to _give_, but to\n give _himself_. This he does eternally in the self-communications\n of the Trinity; this he does transitively and temporally in his\n giving of himself for us in Christ, and to us in the Holy Spirit.\n\n Jonathan Edwards, Essay on Trinity (ed. G. P. Fisher), 79\u2014\u201cThat in\n John God is love shows that there are more persons than one in the\n Deity, for it shows love to be essential and necessary to the\n Deity, so that his nature consists in it, and this supposes that\n there is an eternal and necessary object, because all love\n respects another that is the beloved. By love here the apostle\n certainly means something beside that which is commonly called\n self-love: that is very improperly called love, and is a thing of\n an exceeding diverse nature from the affection or virtue of love\n the apostle is speaking of.\u201d When Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,\n 226-239, makes the first characteristic of love to be\n self-affirmation, and when Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, makes\n self-assertion an essential part of love, they violate linguistic\n usage by including under love what properly belongs to holiness.\n\n\n(_d_) The immanent love of God constitutes a ground of the divine\nblessedness. Since there is an infinite and perfect object of love, as\nwell as of knowledge and will, in God\u2019s own nature, the existence of the\nuniverse is not necessary to his serenity and joy.\n\n\n Blessedness is not itself a divine attribute; it is rather a\n result of the exercise of the divine attributes. It is a\n subjective result of this exercise, as glory is an objective\n result. Perfect faculties, with perfect objects for their\n exercise, ensure God\u2019s blessedness. But love is especially its\n source. _Acts 20:35\u2014_\u201cIt is more blessed to give than to receive.\u201d\n Happiness (hap, happen) is grounded in circumstances; blessedness,\n in character. Love precedes creation and is the ground of\n creation. Its object therefore cannot be the universe, for that\n does not exist, and, if it did exist, could not be a proper object\n of love for the infinite God. The only sufficient object of his\n love is the image of his own perfections, for that alone is equal\n to himself. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 264\u2014\u201cMan most truly realizes\n his own nature, when he is ruled by rational, self-forgetful love.\n He cannot help inferring that the highest thing in the individual\n consciousness is the dominant thing in the universe at large.\u201d\n Here we may assent, if we remember that not the love itself but\n that which is loved must be the dominant thing, and we shall see\n that to be not love but holiness.\n\n Jones, Robert Browning, 219\u2014\u201cLove is for Browning the highest,\n richest conception man can form. It is our idea of that which is\n perfect; we cannot even imagine anything better. And the idea of\n evolution necessarily explains the world as the return of the\n highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound.... All things\n are potentially spirit, and all the phenomena of the world are\n manifestations of love.... Man\u2019s reason is not, but man\u2019s love is,\n a direct emanation from the inmost being of God\u201d (345). Browning\n should have applied to truth and holiness the same principle which\n he recognized with regard to love. But we gratefully accept his\n dicta: \u201cHe that created love, shall not he love?... God! thou art\n Love! I build my faith on that.\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) The love of God involves also the possibility of divine suffering,\nand the suffering on account of sin which holiness necessitates on the\npart of God is itself the atonement.\n\n\n Christ is \u201cthe Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of\n the world\u201d_ (Rev. 13:8);_ _1 Pet. 1:19, 20\u2014_\u201cprecious blood, as of\n a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ:\n who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.\u201d\n While holiness requires atonement, love provides it. The\n blessedness of God is consistent with sorrow for human misery and\n sin. God is passible, or capable of suffering. The permission of\n moral evil in the decree of creation was at cost to God. Scripture\n attributes to him emotions of grief and anger at human sin (_Gen.\n 6:6\u2014_\u201cit grieved him at his heart\u201d; _Rom. 1:18\u2014_\u201cwrath of God\u201d;\n _Eph. 4:30\u2014_\u201cgrieve not the Holy Spirit of God\u201d); painful\n sacrifice in the gift of Christ (_Rom. 8:32\u2014_\u201cspared not his own\n son\u201d; _cf._ _Gen. 22:16\u2014_\u201chast not withheld thy son\u201d) and\n participation in the suffering of his people (_Is. 63:9\u2014_\u201cin all\n their affliction he was afflicted\u201d); Jesus Christ in his sorrow\n and sympathy, his tears and agony, is the revealer of God\u2019s\n feelings toward the race, and we are urged to follow in his steps,\n that we may be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. We\n cannot, indeed, conceive of love without self-sacrifice, nor of\n self-sacrifice without suffering. It would seem, then, that as\n immutability is consistent with imperative volitions in human\n history, so the blessedness of God may be consistent with emotions\n of sorrow.\n\n But does God feel in proportion to his greatness, as the mother\n suffers more than the sick child whom she tends? Does God suffer\n infinitely in every suffering of his creatures? We must remember\n that God is infinitely greater than his creation, and that he sees\n all human sin and woe as part of his great plan. We are entitled\n to attribute to him only such passibleness as is consistent with\n infinite perfection. In combining passibleness with blessedness,\n then, we must allow blessedness to be the controlling element, for\n our fundamental idea of God is that of absolute perfection.\n Martensen, Dogmatics, 101\u2014\u201cThis limitation is swallowed up in the\n inner life of perfection which God lives, in total independence of\n his creation, and in triumphant prospect of the fulfilment of his\n great designs. We may therefore say with the old theosophic\n writers: \u2018In the outer chambers is sadness, but in the inner ones\n is unmixed joy.\u2019 \u201d Christ was \u201c_anointed ... with the oil of\n gladness above his fellows,_\u201d and \u201cfor the joy that was set before\n him endured the cross\u201d_ (Heb. 1:9; 12:2)_. Love rejoices even in\n pain, when this brings good to those beloved. \u201cThough round its\n base the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on\n its head.\u201d\n\n In George Adam Smith\u2019s Life of Henry Drummond, 11, Drummond cries\n out after hearing the confessions of men who came to him: \u201cI am\n sick of the sins of these men! How can God bear it?\u201d Simon,\n Reconciliation, 338-343, shows that before the incarnation, the\n Logos was a sufferer from the sins of men. This suffering however\n was kept in check and counterbalanced by his consciousness as a\n factor in the Godhead, and by the clear knowledge that men were\n themselves the causes of this suffering. After he became incarnate\n he suffered without knowing whence all the suffering came. He had\n a subconscious life into which were interwoven elements due to the\n sinful conduct of the race whose energy was drawn from himself and\n with which in addition he had organically united himself. If this\n is limitation, it is also self-limitation which Christ could have\n avoided by not creating, preserving, and redeeming mankind. We\n rejoice in giving away a daughter in marriage, even though it\n costs pain. The highest blessedness in the Christian is coincident\n with agony for the souls of others. We partake of Christ\u2019s joy\n only when we know the fellowship of his sufferings. Joy and sorrow\n can co\u00ebxist, like Greek fire, that burns under water.\n\n Abb\u00e9 Gratry, La Morale et la Loi de l\u2019Histoire, 165, 166\u2014\u201cWhat! Do\n you really suppose that the personal God, free and intelligent,\n loving and good, who knows every detail of human torture, and\n hears every sigh\u2014this God who sees, who loves as we do, and more\n than we do\u2014do you believe that he is present and looks pitilessly\n on what breaks your heart, and what to him must be the spectacle\n of Satan reveling in the blood of humanity? History teaches us\n that men so feel for sufferers that they have been drawn to die\n with them, so that their own executioners have become the next\n martyrs. And yet you represent God, the absolute goodness, as\n alone impassible? It is here that our evangelical faith comes in.\n Our God was made man to suffer and to die! Yes, here is the true\n God. He has suffered from the beginning in all who have suffered.\n He has been hungry in all who have hungered. He has been immolated\n in all and with all who have offered up their lives. He is the\n Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.\u201d Similarly Alexander\n Vinet, Vital Christianity, 240, remarks that \u201cThe suffering God is\n not simply the teaching of modern divines. It is a New Testament\n thought, and it is one that answers all the doubts that arise at\n the sight of human suffering. To know that God is suffering with\n it makes that suffering more awful, but it gives strength and life\n and hope, for we know that, if God is in it, suffering is the road\n to victory. If he shares our suffering we shall share his crown,\u201d\n and we can say with the _Psalmist, 68:19\u2014_\u201cBlessed be God, who\n daily beareth our burden, even the God who is our salvation,\u201d and\n with _Isaiah 63:9\u2014_\u201cIn all their affliction he was afflicted, and\n the angel of his presence saved them.\u201d\n\n Borden P. Bowne, Atonement: \u201cSomething like this work of grace was\n a moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that\n was taken when our human race was launched with its fearful\n possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under\n infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections\n on his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing, only\n make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive God as\n sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not\n _love_ at all, but only a reflection of our selfishness and\n vulgarity. So long as we conceive him as bestowing blessing upon\n us out of his infinite fulness, but at no real cost to himself, he\n sinks below the moral heroes of our race. There is ever a higher\n thought possible, until we see God taking the world upon his\n heart, entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming\n the supreme burden bearer and leader in self-sacrifice. Then only\n are the possibilities of grace and condescension and love and\n moral heroism filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the\n work of Christ, so far as it was a historical event, must be\n viewed not merely as a piece of history, but also as a\n manifestation of that cross which was hidden in the divine love\n from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the\n existence of the human world at all.\u201d\n\n Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 264\u2014\u201cThe eternal resolution\n that, if the world _will_ be tragic, it _shall_ still, in Satan\u2019s\n despite, be spiritual, is the very essence of the eternal joy of\n that World-Spirit of whose wisdom ours is but a fragmentary\n reflection.... When you suffer, your sufferings are God\u2019s\n sufferings,\u2014not his external work nor his external penalty, nor\n the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own personal woe. In\n you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and has all your\n reason for overcoming this grief.\u201d Henry N. Dodge, Christus\n Victor: \u201cO Thou, that from eternity Upon thy wounded heart hast\n borne Each pang and cry of misery Wherewith our human hearts are\n torn, Thy love upon the grievous cross Doth glow, the beacon-light\n of time, Forever sharing pain and loss With every man in every\n clime. How vast, how vast Thy sacrifice, As ages come and ages go,\n Still waiting till it shall suffice To draw the last cold heart\n and slow!\u201d\n\n On the question, Is God passible? see Bennett Tyler, Sufferings of\n Christ; A Layman, Sufferings of Christ; Woods, Works, 1:299-317;\n Bib. Sac., 11:744; 17:422-424; Emmons, Works, 4:201-208;\n Fairbairn, Place of Christ, 483-487; Bushnell, Vic. Sacrifice,\n 59-93; Kedney, Christ. Doctrine Harmonized, 1:185-245; Edward\n Beecher, Concord of Ages, 81-204; Young, Life and Light of Men,\n 20-43, 147-150; Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:191; Crawford,\n Fatherhood of God, 43, 44; Anselm, Proslogion, cap. 8; Upton,\n Hibbert Lectures, 268; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,\n 2:117, 118, 137-142. _Per __ contra_, see Shedd, Essays and\n Addresses, 277, 279 note; Woods, in Lit. and Theol. Rev.,\n 1834:43-61; Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, 1:201. On the\n Biblical conception of Love in general, see article by James Orr,\n in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary.\n\n\n3. Holiness.\n\n\nHoliness is self-affirming purity. In virtue of this attribute of his\nnature, God eternally wills and maintains his own moral excellence. In\nthis definition are contained three elements: first, purity; secondly,\npurity willing; thirdly, purity willing itself.\n\n\n _Ex. 15:11\u2014_\u201cglorious in holiness\u201d; _19:10-16_\u2014the people of\n Israel must purify themselves before they come into the presence\n of God; _Is. 6:3\u2014_\u201cHoly, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts\u201d\u2014notice\n the contrast with the unclean lips, that must be purged with a\n coal from the altar (_verses 5-7_); _2 Cor, 7:1\u2014_\u201ccleanse\n ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting\n holiness in the fear of God\u201d; _1 Thess. 3:13\u2014_\u201cunblamable in\n holiness\u201d; _4:7\u2014_\u201cGod called us not for uncleanness, but in\n sanctification\u201d; _Heb. 12:29\u2014_\u201cour God is a consuming fire\u201d\u2014to all\n iniquity. These passages show that holiness is the opposite to\n impurity, that it is itself purity. The development of the\n conception of holiness in Hebrew history was doubtless a gradual\n one. At first it may have included little more than the idea of\n separation from all that is common, small and mean. Physical\n cleanliness and hatred of moral evil were additional elements\n which in time became dominant. We must remember however that the\n proper meaning of a term is to be determined not by the earliest\n but by the latest usage. Human nature is ethical from the start,\n and seeks to express the thought of a rule or standard of\n obligation, and of a righteous Being who imposes that rule or\n standard. With the very first conceptions of majesty and\n separation which attach to the apprehension of divinity in the\n childhood of the race there mingles at least some sense of the\n contrast between God\u2019s purity and human sin. The least developed\n man has a conscience which condemns some forms of wrong doing, and\n causes a feeling of separation from the power or powers above.\n Physical defilement becomes the natural symbol of moral evil.\n Places and vessels and rites are invested with dignity as\n associated with or consecrated to the Deity.\n\n That the conception of holiness clears itself of extraneous and\n unessential elements only gradually, and receives its full\n expression only in the New Testament revelation and especially in\n the life and work of Christ, should not blind us to the fact that\n the germs of the idea lie far back in the very beginnings of man\u2019s\n existence upon earth. Even then the sense of wrong within had for\n its correlate a dimly recognized righteousness without. So soon as\n man knows himself as a sinner he knows something of the holiness\n of that God whom he has offended. We must take exception therefore\n to the remark of Schurman, Belief in God, 231\u2014\u201cThe first gods were\n probably non-moral beings,\u201d for Schurman himself had just said: \u201cA\n God without moral character is no God at all.\u201d Dillmann, in his O.\n T. Theology, very properly makes the fundamental thought of O. T.\n religion, not the unity or the majesty of God, but his holiness.\n This alone forms the ethical basis for freedom and law. E. G.\n Robinson, Christian Theology\u2014\u201cThe one aim of Christianity is\n personal holiness. But personal holiness will be the one absorbing\n and attainable aim of man, only as he recognizes it to be the one\n pre\u00ebminent attribute of God. Hence everything divine is holy\u2014the\n temple, the Scriptures, the Spirit.\u201d See articles on Holiness in\n O. T., by J. Skinner, and on Holiness in N. T., by G. B. Stevens,\n in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary.\n\n The development of the idea of holiness as well as the idea of\n love was prepared for before the advent of man. A. H. Strong,\n Education and Optimism: \u201cThere was a time when the past history of\n life upon the planet seemed one of heartless and cruel slaughter.\n The survival of the fittest had for its obverse side the\n destruction of myriads. Nature was \u2018red in tooth and claw with\n ravine.\u2019 But further thought has shown that this gloomy view\n results from a partial induction of facts. Paleontological life\n was marked not only by a struggle for life, but by a struggle for\n the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to be seen in\n the instinct of reproduction, and in the care of offspring. In\n every lion\u2019s den and tiger\u2019s lair, in every mother eagle\u2019s feeding\n of her young, there is a self-sacrifice which faintly shadows\n forth man\u2019s subordination of personal interests to the interests\n of others. But in the ages before man can be found incipient\n justice as well as incipient love. The struggle for one\u2019s own life\n has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of others.\n The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of right,\n righteousness, justice, and law, on earth. Every creature owes it\n to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an adumbration of\n morality even in the predatory and internecine warfare of the\n geologic ages. The immanent God was even then preparing the way\n for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of humanity.\u201d And, we may\n add, was preparing the way for the understanding by men of his own\n fundamental attribute of holiness. See Henry Drummond, Ascent of\n Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.\n\n\nIn further explanation we remark:\n\nA. Negatively, that holiness is not\n\n(_a_) Justice, or purity demanding purity from creatures. Justice, the\nrelative or transitive attribute, is indeed the manifestation and\nexpression of the immanent attribute of holiness, but it is not to be\nconfounded with it.\n\n\n Quenstedt, Theol., 8:1:34, defines holiness as \u201csumma omnisque\n labis expers to Deo puritas, puritatem debitam exigens a\n creaturis\u201d\u2014a definition of transitive holiness, or justice, rather\n than of the immanent attribute. _Is. 5:16\u2014_\u201cJehovah of hosts is\n exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in\n righteousness\u201d\u2014Justice is simply God\u2019s holiness in its judicial\n activity. Though holiness is commonly a term of separation and\n expresses the inherent opposition of God to all that is sinful, it\n is also used as a term of union, as in _Lev. 11:44\u2014_\u201cbe ye holy;\n for I am holy.\u201d When Jesus turned from the young ruler (_Mark\n 10:23_) he illustrated the first; _John 8:29_ illustrates the\n second: \u201che that sent me is with me.\u201d Lowrie, Doctrine of St.\n John, 51-57\u2014\u201c\u2018God is light\u2019_ (1 John 1:5)_ indicates the character\n of God, moral purity as revealed, as producing joy and life, as\n contrasted with doing ill, walking in darkness, being in a state\n of perdition.\u201d\n\n Universal human conscience is itself a revelation of the holiness\n of God, and the joining everywhere of suffering with sin is the\n revelation of God\u2019s justice. The wrath, anger, jealousy of God\n show that this reaction of God\u2019s nature is necessary. God\u2019s nature\n is itself holy, just, and good. Holiness is not replaced by love,\n as Ritschl holds, since there is no self-impartation without\n self-affirmation. Holiness not simply _demands_ in law, but\n _imparts_ in the Holy Spirit; see Pfleiderer, Grundriss,\n 79\u2014_versus_ Ritschl\u2019s doctrine that holiness is God\u2019s exaltation,\n and that it includes love; see also Pfleiderer, Die Ritschlische\n Theologie, 53-63. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 69\u2014\u201cIf perfection is\n the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground\n of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible\n conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground\n of faith in the supremacy of the good.\u201d We would regard nature\n however as merely the symbol and expression of God, and so would\n regard beauty as a ground of faith in his supremacy. What\n Santayana says of beauty is even more true of holiness. Wherever\n we see it, we recognize in it a pledge of the possible conformity\n between the soul and God, and consequently a ground of faith in\n the supremacy of God.\n\n\n(_b_) Holiness is not a complex term designating the aggregate of the\ndivine perfections. On the other hand, the notion of holiness is, both in\nScripture and in Christian experience, perfectly simple, and perfectly\ndistinct from that of other attributes.\n\n\n Dick, Theol., 1:275\u2014Holiness = venerableness, _i. e._, \u201cno\n particular attribute, but the general character of God as\n resulting from his moral attributes.\u201d Wardlaw calls holiness the\n union of all the attributes, as pure white light is the union of\n all the colored rays of the spectrum (Theology, 1:618-634). So\n Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doct., 166; H. W. Beecher: \u201cHoliness =\n wholeness.\u201d Approaching this conception is the definition of W. N.\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 83\u2014\u201cHoliness is the glorious fulness\n of the goodness of God, consistently held as the principle of his\n own action, and the standard for his creatures.\u201d This implies,\n according to Dr. Clarke, 1. An inward character of perfect\n goodness; 2. That character as the consistent principle of his own\n action; 3. The goodness which is the principle of his own action\n is also the standard for theirs. In other words, holiness is 1.\n character; 2. self-consistency; 3. requirement. We object to this\n definition that it fails to define. We are not told what is\n essential to this character; the definition includes in holiness\n that which properly belongs to love; it omits all mention of the\n most important elements in holiness, namely purity and right.\n\n A similar lack of clear definition appears in the statement of\n Mark Hopkins, Law of Love, 105\u2014\u201cIt is this double aspect of love,\n revealing the whole moral nature, and turning every way like the\n flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life, that is\n termed holiness.\u201d As has been shown above, holiness is contrasted\n in Scripture, not with mere finiteness or littleness or misfortune\n or poverty or even unreality, but only with uncleanness and\n sinfulness. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 80\u2014\u201cHoliness in man\n is the image of God\u2019s. But it is clear that holiness in man is not\n in proportion to the other perfections of his being\u2014to his power,\n his knowledge, his wisdom, though it is in proportion to his\n rectitude of will\u2014and therefore cannot be the sum of all\n perfections.... To identify holiness with the sum of all\n perfections is to make it mean mere completeness of character.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Holiness is not God\u2019s self-love, in the sense of supreme regard for\nhis own interest and happiness. There is no utilitarian element in\nholiness.\n\n\n Buddeus, Theol. Dogmat., 2:1:36, defines holiness as God\u2019s\n self-love. But God loves and affirms self, not as self, but as the\n holiest. There is no self-seeking in God. Not the seeking of God\u2019s\n interests, but love for God as holy, is the principle and source\n of holiness in man. To call holiness God\u2019s self-love is to say\n that God is holy because of what he can make by it, _i. e._, to\n deny that holiness has any independent existence. See Thomasius,\n Christi Person und Werk, 1:155.\n\n We would not deny, but would rather maintain, that there is a\n proper self-love which is not selfishness. This proper self-love,\n however, is not love at all. It is rather self-respect,\n self-preservation, self-vindication, and it constitutes an\n important characteristic of holiness. But to define holiness as\n merely God\u2019s love for himself, is to leave out of the definition\n the reason for this love in the purity and righteousness of the\n divine nature. God\u2019s self-respect implies that God respects\n himself for something in his own being. What is that something? Is\n holiness God\u2019s \u201cmoral excellence\u201d (Hopkins), or God\u2019s \u201cperfect\n goodness\u201d (Clarke)? But what is this moral excellence or perfect\n goodness? We have here the method and the end described, but not\n the motive and ground. God does not love himself for his love, but\n he loves himself for his holiness. Those who maintain that love is\n self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that\n holiness is God\u2019s love for himself, must still admit that this\n self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the\n standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence.\n\n G. B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 364, tells us that \u201cGod\u2019s\n righteousness is the self-respect of perfect love.\u201d Miller,\n Evolution of Love, 53\u2014\u201cSelf-love is that kind of action which in a\n perfect being actualizes, in a finite being seeks to actualize, a\n perfect or ideal self.\u201d In other words, love is self-affirmation.\n But we object that self-love is not _love_ at all, because there\n is in it no self-communicating. If holiness is in any sense a form\n or manifestation of love\u2014a question which we have yet to\n consider\u2014it is certainly not a unitarian and utilitarian\n self-love, which would be identical with selfishness, but rather\n an affection which implies trinitarian otherness and the\n maintenance of self as an ideal object. This appears to be the\n meaning of Jonathan Edwards, in his Essay on the Trinity (ed.\n Fisher), 79\u2014\u201cAll love respects another that is the beloved. By\n love the apostle certainly means something beside that which is\n commonly called self-love: that is very improperly called love,\n and is a thing of an exceeding diverse nature from the affection\n or virtue of love the apostle is speaking of.\u201d Yet we shall see\n that while Jonathan Edwards denies holiness to be a unitarian and\n utilitarian self-love, he regards its very essence to be God\u2019s\n trinitarian love for himself as a being of perfect moral\n excellence.\n\n Ritschl\u2019s lack of trinitarian conviction makes it impossible for\n him to furnish any proper ground for either love or holiness in\n the nature of God. Ritschl holds that Christ as a person is an end\n in himself; he realized his own ideal; he developed his own\n personality; he reached his own perfection in his work for man; he\n is not merely a means toward the end of man\u2019s salvation. But when\n Ritschl comes to his doctrine of God, he is strangely inconsistent\n with all this, for he fails to represent God as having any end in\n himself, and deals with him simply as a means toward the kingdom\n of God as an end. Garvie, Ritschlian Theology, 256, 278, 279, well\n points out that personality means self-possession as well as\n self-communication, distinction from others as well as union with\n others. Ritschl does not see that God\u2019s love is primarily directed\n towards his Son, and only secondarily directed toward the\n Christian community. So he ignores the immanent Trinity. Before\n self-communication there must be self-maintenance. Otherwise God\n gives up his independence and makes created existence necessary.\n\n\n(_d_) Holiness is not identical with, or a manifestation of, love. Since\nself-maintenance must precede self-impartation, and since benevolence has\nits object, motive, standard and limit in righteousness, holiness the\nself-affirming attribute can in no way be resolved into love the\nself-communicating.\n\n\n That holiness is a form of love is the doctrine of Jonathan\n Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (ed. Fisher), 97\u2014\u201c\u2019Tis in God\u2019s\n infinite love to himself that his holiness consists. As all\n creature holiness is to be resolved into love, as the Scripture\n teaches us, so doth the holiness of God himself consist in\n infinite love to himself. God\u2019s holiness is the infinite beauty\n and excellence of his nature, and God\u2019s excellency consists in his\n love to himself.\u201d In his treatise on The Nature of Virtue,\n Jonathan Edwards defines virtue as regard for being in general. He\n considers that God\u2019s love is first of all directed toward himself\n as having the greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily\n directed towards his creatures whose quantity of being is\n infinitesimal as compared with his. God therefore finds his chief\n end in himself, and God\u2019s self-love is his holiness. This\n principle has permeated and dominated subsequent New England\n theology, from Samuel Hopkins, Works, 2:9-66, who maintains that\n holiness = love of being in general, to Horace Bushnell, Vicarious\n Sacrifice, who declares: \u201cRighteousness, transferred into a word\n of the affections, is love; and love, translated back into a word\n of the conscience, is righteousness; the eternal law of right is\n only another conception of the law of love; the two principles,\n right and love, appear exactly to measure each other.\u201d So Park,\n Discourses, 155-180.\n\n Similar doctrine is taught by Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, 93,\n 184\u2014\u201cLove unites existence for self with existence for others,\n self-assertion and self-impartation.... Self-love in God is not\n selfishness, because he is the original and necessary seat of good\n in general, universal good. God guards his honor even in giving\n himself to others.... Love is the power and desire to be one\u2019s\n self while in another, and while one\u2019s self to be in another who\n is taken into the heart as an end.... I am to love my neighbor\n only as myself.... Virtue however requires not only good will, but\n the willing of the right thing.\u201d So Newman Smyth, Christian\n Ethics, 226-239, holds that 1. Love is self-affirmation. Hence he\n maintains that holiness or self-respect is involved in love.\n Righteousness is not an independent excellence to be contrasted\n with or put in opposition to benevolence; it is an essential part\n of love. 2. Love is self-impartation. The only limit is ethical.\n Here is an ever deepening immanence, yet always some transcendence\n of God, for God cannot deny himself. 3. Love is self-finding in\n another. Vicariousness belongs to love. We reply to both Dorner\n and Smyth that their acknowledgment that love has its condition,\n limit, motive, object and standard, shows that there is a\n principle higher than love, and which regulates love. This\n principle is recognized as ethical. It is identical with the\n right. God cannot deny himself because he is fundamentally the\n right. This self-affirmation is holiness, and holiness cannot be a\n part of love, or a form of love, because it conditions and\n dominates love. To call it benevolence is to ignore its majestic\n distinctness and to imperil its legitimate supremacy.\n\n God must first maintain his own being before he can give to\n another, and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive\n in the worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,\n because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a\n standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be\n itself love, but must be holiness. We agree with Clarke, Christian\n Theology, 92, that \u201clove is the desire to impart holiness.\u201d Love\n is a means to holiness, and holiness is therefore the supreme good\n and something higher than mere love. It is not true, _vice versa_,\n that holiness is the desire to impart love, or that holiness is a\n means to love. Instead then of saying, with Clarke, that \u201choliness\n is central in God, but love is central in holiness,\u201d we should\n prefer to say: \u201cLove is central in God, but holiness is central in\n love,\u201d though in this case we should use the term love as\n including self-love. It is still better not to use the word love\n at all as referring to God\u2019s regard for himself. In ordinary\n usage, love means only regard for another and self-communication\n to that other. To embrace in it God\u2019s self-affirmation is to\n misinterpret holiness and to regard it as a means to an end,\n instead of making it what it really is, the superior object, and\n the regulative principle, of love.\n\n That which lays down the norm or standard for love must be the\n superior of love. When we forget that \u201cRighteousness and justice\n are the foundation of his throne\u201d_ (Ps. 97:2)_, we lose one of the\n chief landmarks of Christian doctrine and involve ourselves in a\n mist of error. _Rev. 4:3\u2014_\u201cthere was a rainbow round about the\n throne\u201d = in the midst of the rainbow of pardon and peace there is\n a throne of holiness and judgment. In _Mat. 6:9, 10, _\u201cThy kingdom\n come\u201d is not the first petition, but rather, \u201cHallowed be thy\n name.\u201d It is a false idea of the divine simplicity which would\n reduce the attributes to one. Self-assertion is not a form of\n self-impartation. Not sentiency, a state of the sensibility, even\n though it be the purest benevolence, is the fundamental thing, but\n rather activity of will and a right direction of that will. Hodge,\n Essays, 133-136, 262-273, shows well that holy love is a love\n controlled by holiness. Holiness is not a mere means to happiness.\n To be happy is not the ultimate reason for being holy. Right and\n wrong are not matters of profit and loss. To be told that God is\n only benevolence, and that he punishes only when the happiness of\n the universe requires it, destroys our whole allegiance to God and\n does violence to the constitution of our nature.\n\n That God is only love has been called \u201cthe doctrine of the\n papahood of God.\u201d God is \u201ca summer ocean of kindliness, never\n agitated by storms\u201d (Dale, Ephesians, 59). But Jesus gives us the\n best idea of God, and in him we find, not only pity, but at times\n moral indignation. _John 17:11\u2014_\u201cHoly Father\u201d = more than love.\n Love can be exercised by God only when it is right love. Holiness\n is the track on which the engine of love must run. The track\n cannot be the engine. If either includes the other, then it is\n holiness that includes love, since holiness is the maintenance of\n God\u2019s perfection, and perfection involves love. He that is holy\n affirms himself also as the perfect love. If love were\n fundamental, there would be nothing to give, and so love would be\n vain and worthless. There can be no giving of self, without a\n previous self-affirming. God is not holy because he loves, but he\n loves because he is holy. Love cannot direct itself; it is under\n bonds to holiness. Justice is not dependent on love for its right\n to be. Stephen G. Barnes: \u201cMere good will is not the sole content\n of the law; it is insufficient in times of fiery trial; it is\n inadequate as a basis for retribution. Love needs justice, and\n justice needs love; both are commanded in God\u2019s law and are\n perfectly revealed in God\u2019s character.\u201d\n\n There may be a friction between a man\u2019s two hands, and there may\n be a conflict between a man\u2019s conscience and his will, between his\n intellect and his affection. Force is God\u2019s energy under\n resistance, the resistance as well as the energy being his. So,\n upon occasion of man\u2019s sin, holiness and love in God become\n opposite poles or forces. The first and most serious effect of sin\n is not its effect upon man, but its effect upon God. Holiness\n necessarily requires suffering, and love endures it. This eternal\n suffering of God on account of sin is the atonement, and the\n incarnate Christ only shows what has been in the heart of God from\n the beginning. To make holiness a form of love is really to deny\n its existence, and with this to deny that any atonement is\n necessary for man\u2019s salvation. If holiness is the same as love,\n how is it that the classic world, that knew of God\u2019s holiness, did\n not also know of his love? The ethics here reminds one of Abraham\n Lincoln\u2019s meat broth that was made of the shadow of a pigeon that\n died of starvation. Holiness that is only good will is not\n holiness at all, for it lacks the essential elements of purity and\n righteousness.\n\n At the railway switching grounds east of Rochester, there is a man\n whose duty it is to move a bar of iron two or three inches to the\n left or to the right. So he determines whether a train shall go\n toward New York or toward Washington, toward New Orleans or San\n Francisco. Our conclusion at this point in our theology will\n similarly determine what our future system will be. The principle\n that holiness is a manifestation of love, or a form of\n benevolence, leads to the conclusions that happiness is the only\n good, and the only end; that law is a mere expedient for the\n securing of happiness; that penalty is simply deterrent or\n reformatory in its aim; that no atonement needs to be offered to\n God for human sin; that eternal retribution cannot be vindicated,\n since there is no hope of reform. This view ignores the testimony\n of conscience and of Scripture that sin is intrinsically\n ill-deserving, and must be punished on that account, not because\n punishment will work good to the universe,\u2014indeed, it could not\n work good to the universe, unless it were just and right in\n itself. It ignores the fact that mercy is optional with God, while\n holiness is invariable; that punishment is many times traced to\n God\u2019s holiness, but never to God\u2019s love; that God is not simply\n love but light\u2014moral light\u2014and therefore is \u201ca consuming fire\u201d_\n (Heb. 12:29)_ to all iniquity. Love chastens (_Heb. 12:6_), but\n only holiness punishes (_Jer. 10:24\u2014_\u201ccorrect me, but in measure;\n not in thine anger\u201d; _Ez. 28:22\u2014_\u201cI shall have executed judgments\n in her, and shall be sanctified in her\u201d; _36:21, 22_\u2014in judgment\n \u201cI do not this for your sake, but for my holy name\u201d; _1 John\n 1:5\u2014_\u201cGod is light, and in him is no darkness\u201d\u2014moral darkness;\n _Rev. 15:1, 4\u2014_\u201cthe wrath of God ... thou only art holy ... thy\n righteous acts have been made manifest\u201d; _16:5\u2014_\u201crighteous art\n thou ... because thou didst thus judge\u201d; _19:2\u2014_\u201ctrue and\n righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great\n harlot\u201d_)._ See Hovey, God with Us, 187-221; Philippi,\n Glaubenslehre, 2:80-82; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 154,\n 155, 346-353; Lange, Pos. Dogmatik, 203.\n\n\nB. Positively, that holiness is\n\n(_a_) Purity of substance.\u2014In God\u2019s moral nature, as necessarily acting,\nthere are indeed the two elements of willing and being. But the passive\nlogically precedes the active; being comes before willing; God _is_ pure\nbefore he _wills_ purity. Since purity, however, in ordinary usage is a\nnegative term and means only freedom from stain or wrong, we must include\nin it also the positive idea of moral rightness. God is holy in that he is\nthe source and standard of the right.\n\n\n E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 80\u2014\u201cHoliness is moral purity,\n not only in the sense of absence of all moral stain, but of\n complacency in all moral good.\u201d Shedd, Dogm. Theology,\n 1:362\u2014\u201cHoliness in God is conformity to his own perfect nature.\n The only rule for the divine will is the divine reason; and the\n divine reason prescribes everything that is befitting an infinite\n Being to do. God is not under law, nor above law. He _is_ law. He\n is righteous by nature and necessity.... God is the source and\n author of law for all moral beings.\u201d We may better Shedd\u2019s\n definition by saying that holiness is that attribute in virtue of\n which God\u2019s being and God\u2019s will eternally conform to each other.\n In thus maintaining that holy being logically precedes holy\n willing, we differ from the view of Lotze, Philos. of Religion,\n 139\u2014\u201cSuch will of God no more follows from his nature as secondary\n to it, or precedes it as primary to it than, in motion, direction\n can be antecedent or subsequent to velocity.\u201d Bowne, Philos. of\n Theism, 16\u2014\u201cGod\u2019s nature = a fixed law of activity or mode of\n manifestation.... But laws of thought are no limitation, because\n they are simply modes of thought-activity. They do not _rule_\n intellect, but only express what intellect _is_.\u201d\n\n In spite of these utterances of Lotze and of Bowne, we must\n maintain that, as truth of being logically precedes truth of\n knowing, and as a loving nature precedes loving emotions, so\n purity of substance precedes purity of will. The opposite doctrine\n leads to such utterances as that of Whedon (On the Will, 316):\n \u201cGod is holy, in that he freely chooses to make his own happiness\n in eternal right. Whether he could not make himself equally happy\n in wrong is more than we can say.... Infinite wisdom and infinite\n holiness consist in, and result from, God\u2019s volitions eternally.\u201d\n Whedon therefore believes, not in God\u2019s _unchangeableness_, but in\n God\u2019s _unchangingness_. He cannot say whether motives may not at\n some time prove strongest for divine apostasy to evil. The\n essential holiness of God affords no basis for certainty. Here we\n have to rely on our faith, more than on the object of faith; see\n H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and Philosophy, 355-399.\n As we said with regard to truth, so here we say with regard to\n holiness, that to make holiness a matter of mere will, instead of\n regarding it as a characteristic of God\u2019s being, is to deny that\n anything is holy in itself. If God can make impurity to be purity,\n then God in himself is indifferent to purity or impurity, and he\n ceases therefore to be God. Robert Browning, A Soul\u2019s Tragedy,\n 223\u2014\u201cI trust in God\u2014the Right shall be the Right And other than\n the Wrong, while He endures.\u201d P. S. Moxom: \u201cRevelation is a\n disclosure of the divine righteousness. We do not add to the\n thought when we say that it is also a disclosure of the divine\n love, for love is a manifestation or realization of that rightness\n of relations which righteousness is.\u201d H. B. Smith, System,\n 223-231\u2014\u201cVirtue = love for both happiness and holiness, yet\n holiness as ultimate,\u2014love to the highest Person and to his ends\n and objects.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Energy of will.\u2014This purity is not simply a passive and dead\nquality; it is the attribute of a personal being; it is penetrated and\npervaded by will. Holiness is the free moral movement of the Godhead.\n\n\n As there is a higher Mind than our mind, and a greater Heart than\n our heart, so there is a grander Will than our will. Holiness\n contains this element of will, although it is a will which\n expresses nature, instead of causing nature. It is not a still and\n moveless purity, like the whiteness of the new-fallen snow, or the\n stainless blue of the summer sky. It is the most tremendous of\n energies, in unsleeping movement. It is \u201ca glassy sea\u201d_ (Rev.\n 15:2)_, but \u201ca glassy sea mingled with fire.\u201d A. J. Gordon:\n \u201cHoliness is not a dead-white purity, the perfection of the\n faultless marble statue. Life, as well as purity, enters into the\n idea of holiness. They who are \u2018without fault before the throne\u2019\n are they who \u2018follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth\u2019\u2014holy\n activity attending and expressing their holy state.\u201d Martensen,\n Christian Ethics, 62, 63\u2014\u201cGod is the perfect unity of the\n ethically necessary and the ethically free\u201d; \u201cGod cannot do\n otherwise than will his own essential nature.\u201d See Thomasius,\n Christi Person und Werk, 141; and on the Holiness of Christ, see\n Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, 203-241.\n\n The centre of personality is will. Knowing has its end in feeling,\n and feeling has its end in willing. Hence I must make feeling\n subordinate to willing, and happiness to righteousness. I must\n will with God and for God, and must use all my influence over\n others to make them like God in holiness. William James, Will to\n Believe, 123\u2014\u201cMind must first get its impression from the object;\n then define what that object is and what active measures its\n presence demands; and finally react.... All faiths and\n philosophies, moods and systems, subserve and pass into a third\n stage, the stage of action.\u201d What is true of man is even more true\n of God. All the wills of men combined, aye, even the whole moving\n energy of humanity in all climes and ages, is as nothing compared\n with the extent and intensity of God\u2019s willing. The whole momentum\n of God\u2019s being is behind moral law. That law is his\n self-expression. His beneficent yet also his terrible arm is ever\n defending and enforcing it. God must maintain his holiness, for\n this is his very Godhead. If he did not maintain it, love would\n have nothing to give away, or to make others partakers of.\n\n Does God will the good because it is the good, or is the good good\n because God wills it? In the former case, there would seem to be a\n good above God; in the latter case, good is something arbitrary\n and changeable. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 186, 187, says that neither of\n these is true; he holds that there is no _a priori_ good before\n the willing of it, and he also holds that will without direction\n is not will; the good is good for God, not _before_, but _in_, his\n self-determination. Dorner, System Doctrine, 1:432, holds on the\n contrary that both these are true, because God has no mere simple\n form of being, whether necessary or free, but rather a manifoldly\n diverse being, absolutely correlated however, and reciprocally\n conditioning itself,\u2014that is, a trinitarian being, both necessary\n and free. We side with Dorner here, and claim that the belief that\n God\u2019s will is the executive of God\u2019s being is necessary to a\n correct ethics and to a correct theology. Celsus justified\n polytheism by holding that whatever is a part of God reveals God,\n serves God, and therefore may rationally be worshiped.\n Christianity he excepted from this wide toleration, because it\n worshiped a jealous God who was not content to be one of many. But\n this jealousy really signifies that God is a Being to whom moral\n distinctions are real. The God of Celsus, the God of pantheism, is\n not jealous, because he is not the Holy One, but simply the\n Absolute. The category of the ethical is merged in the category of\n being; see Bruce, Apologetics, 16. The great lack of modern\n theology is precisely this ethical lack; holiness is merged in\n benevolence; there is no proper recognition of God\u2019s\n righteousness. _John 17:25\u2014_\u201cO righteous Father, the world knew\n thee not\u201d\u2014is a text as true to-day as in Jesus\u2019 time. See Issel,\n Begriff der Heiligkeit in N. T., 41, 84, who defines holiness in\n God as \u201cthe ethical perfection of God in its exaltation above all\n that is sinful,\u201d and holiness in men as \u201cthe condition\n corresponding to that of God, in which man keeps himself pure from\n sin.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Self-affirmation.\u2014Holiness is God\u2019s self-willing. His own purity is\nthe supreme object of his regard and maintenance. God is holy, in that his\ninfinite moral excellence affirms and asserts itself as the highest\npossible motive and end. Like truth and love, this attribute can be\nunderstood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.\n\n\n Holiness is purity willing itself. We have an analogy in man\u2019s\n duty of self-preservation, self-respect, self-assertion. Virtue is\n bound to maintain and defend itself, as in the case of Job. In his\n best moments, the Christian feels that purity is not simply the\n negation of sin, but the affirmation of an inward and divine\n principle of righteousness. Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,\n 1:137\u2014\u201cHoliness is the perfect agreement of the divine willing\n with the divine being; for as the personal creature is holy when\n it wills and determines itself as God wills, so is God the holy\n one because he wills himself as what he is (or, to be what he is).\n In virtue of this attribute, God excludes from himself everything\n that contradicts his nature, and affirms himself in his absolutely\n good being\u2014his being like himself.\u201d Tholuck on Romans, 5th ed.,\n 151\u2014\u201cThe term holiness should be used to indicate a relation of\n God to himself. That is holy which, undisturbed from without, is\n wholly like itself.\u201d Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:456\u2014\u201cIt is the\n part of goodness to protect goodness.\u201d We shall see, when we\n consider the doctrine of the Trinity, that that doctrine has close\n relations to the doctrine of the immanent attributes. It is in the\n Son that God has a perfect object of will, as well as of knowledge\n and love.\n\n The object of God\u2019s willing in eternity past can be nothing\n outside of himself. It must be the highest of all things. We see\n what it must be, only when we remember that the right is the\n unconditional imperative of our moral nature. Since we are made in\n his image we must conclude that God eternally wills righteousness.\n Not all God\u2019s acts are acts of love, but all are acts of holiness.\n The self-respect, self-preservation, self-affirmation,\n self-assertion, self-vindication, which we call God\u2019s holiness, is\n only faintly reflected in such utterances as _Job 27:5, 6\u2014_\u201cTill I\n die I will not put away mine integrity from me. My righteousness I\n hold fast, and will not let it go\u201d; _31:37\u2014_\u201cI would declare unto\n him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him.\u201d\n The fact that the Spirit of God is denominated the Holy Spirit\n should teach us what is God\u2019s essential nature, and the\n requisition that we should be holy as he is holy should teach us\n what is the true standard of human duty and object of human\n ambition. God\u2019s holiness moreover, since it is self-affirmation,\n furnishes the guarantee that God\u2019s love will not fail to secure\n its end, and that all things will serve his purpose. _Rom.\n 11:36\u2014_\u201cFor of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things.\n To him be the glory for ever. Amen.\u201d On the whole subject of\n Holiness, as an attribute of God, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and\n Religion, 188-200, and Christ in Creation, 388-405; Delitzsch,\n art. Heiligkeit, in Herzog, Realencyclop.; Baudissin, Begriff der\n Heiligkeit im A. T.,\u2014synopsis in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:169;\n Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 224-234; E. B. Coe, in Presb.\n and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:42-47; and articles on Holiness in O. T.,\n and Holiness in N. T., in Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary.\n\n\n\nVI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.\n\n\nFirst Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Time and Space.\n\n\n1. Eternity.\n\n\nBy this we mean that God\u2019s nature (_a_) is without beginning or end; (_b_)\nis free from all succession of time; and (_c_) contains in itself the\ncause of time.\n\n\n _Deut. 32:40\u2014_\u201cFor I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live\n forever....\u201d; _Ps. 90:2\u2014_\u201cBefore the mountains ... from\n everlasting ... thou art God\u201d; _102:27\u2014_\u201cthy years shall have no\n end\u201d; _Is. 41:4\u2014_\u201cI Jehovah, the first, and with the last\u201d; _1\n Cor. 2:7_\u2014\u03c0\u03c1\u1f78 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b1\u1f30\u03ce\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd\u2014\u201cbefore the worlds\u201d or \u201cages\u201d = \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\n \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u2014\u201cbefore the foundation of the world\u201d_ (Eph.\n 1:4)_. _1 Tim. 1:17_\u2014\u0392\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u1fd6 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b1\u1f30\u03ce\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd\u2014\u201cKing of the ages\u201d (so\n also _Rev. 15:8_). _1 Tim. 6:16\u2014_\u201cwho only hath immortality.\u201d\n _Rev. 1:8\u2014_\u201cthe Alpha and the Omega.\u201d Dorner: \u201cWe must not make\n Kronos (time) and Uranos (space) earlier divinities before God.\u201d\n They are among the \u201call things\u201d that were \u201cmade by him \u201d_ (John\n 1:3)_. Yet time and space are not _substances_; neither are they\n _attributes_ (qualities of substance); they are rather _relations_\n of finite existence. (Porter, Human Intellect, 568, prefers to\n call time and space \u201c_correlates_ to beings and events.\u201d) With\n finite existence they come into being; they are not mere\n regulative conceptions of our minds; they exist objectively,\n whether we perceive them or not. Ladd: \u201cTime is the mental\n presupposition of the duration of events and of objects. Time is\n not an entity, or it would be necessary to suppose some other time\n in which it endures. We think of space and time as unconditional,\n because they furnish the conditions of our knowledge. The age of a\n son is conditioned on the age of his father. The conditions\n themselves cannot be conditioned. Space and time are mental forms,\n but not only that. There is an extra-mental something in the case\n of space and time, as in the case of sound.\u201d\n\n _Ex. 3:14\u2014_\u201cI am\u201d\u2014involves eternity. _Ps. 102:12-14\u2014_\u201cBut thou, O\n Jehovah, wilt abide forever.... Thou wilt arise, and have mercy\n upon Zion; for it is time to have pity upon her.... For thy\n servants ... have pity upon her dust\u201d = because God is eternal, he\n will have compassion upon Zion: he will do this, for even we, her\n children, love her very dust. _Jude 25\u2014_\u201cglory, majesty, dominion\n and power, before all time, and now, and for evermore.\u201d\n Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:165\u2014\u201cGod is \u2018King of the \u00e6ons\u2019_ (1\n Tim. 1:17)_, because he distinguishes, in his thinking, his\n eternal inner essence from his changeable working in the world. He\n is not merged in the process.\u201d Edwards the younger describes\n timelessness as \u201cthe immediate and invariable possession of the\n whole unlimited life together and at once.\u201d Tyler, Greek Poets,\n 148\u2014\u201cThe heathen gods had only existence without end. The Greeks\n seem never to have conceived of existence without beginning.\u201d On\n precognition as connected with the so-called future already\n existing, and on apparent time progression as a subjective human\n sensation and not inherent in the universe as it exists in an\n infinite Mind, see Myers, Human Personality, 2:262 _sq._ Tennyson,\n Life, 1:322\u2014\u201cFor was and is and will be are but is: And all\n creation is one act at once, The birth of light; but we that are\n not all, As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live\n perforce from thought to thought, and make The act a phantom of\n succession: there Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time.\u201d\n\n Augustine: \u201cMundus non in tempore, sed cum tempore, factus est.\u201d\n There is no meaning to the question: Why did creation take place\n when it did rather than earlier? or the question: What was God\n doing before creation? These questions presuppose an independent\n time in which God created\u2014a time before time. On the other hand,\n creation did not take place at any time, but God gave both the\n world and time their existence. Royce, World and Individual,\n 2:111-115\u2014\u201cTime is the form of the will, as space is the form of\n the intellect (_cf._ 124, 133). Time runs only in one direction\n (unlike space), toward fulfilment of striving or expectation. In\n pursuing its goals, the self lives in time. Every _now_ is also a\n succession, as is illustrated in any melody. To God the universe\n is \u2018totum simul\u2019, as to us any succession is one whole. 233\u2014Death\n is a change in the time-span\u2014the minimum of time in which a\n succession can appear as a completed whole. To God \u2018a thousand\n years\u2019 are \u2018as one day\u2019_ (2 Pet. 3:8)_. 419\u2014God, In his totality\n as the Absolute Being, is conscious not, _in_ time, but _of_ time,\n and of all that infinite time contains. In time there follow, in\n their sequence, the chords of his endless symphony. For him is\n this whole symphony of life at once.... You unite present, past\n and future in a single consciousness whenever you hear any three\n successive words, for one is past, another is present, at the same\n time that a third is future. So God unites in timeless perception\n the whole succession of finite events.... The single notes are not\n lost in the melody. You are in God, but you are not lost in God.\u201d\n Mozart, quoted in Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, 1:255\u2014\u201cAll\n the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong\n dream. But the best of all is _the hearing of it all at once_.\u201d\n\n\nEternity is infinity in its relation to time. It implies that God\u2019s nature\nis not subject to the law of time. God is not in time. It is more correct\nto say that time is in God. Although there is logical succession in God\u2019s\nthoughts, there is no chronological succession.\n\n\n Time is duration measured by successions. Duration without\n succession would still be duration, though it would be\n immeasurable. Reid, Intellectual Powers, essay 3, chap. 5\u2014\u201cWe may\n measure duration by the succession of thoughts in the mind, as we\n measure length by inches or feet, but the notion or idea of\n duration must be antecedent to the mensuration of it, as the\n notion of length is antecedent to its being measured.\u201d God is not\n under the law of time. Solly, The Will, 254\u2014\u201cGod looks through\n time as we look through space.\u201d Murphy, Scientific Bases,\n 90\u2014\u201cEternity is not, as men believe, Before and after us, an\n endless line. No, \u2019tis a circle. Infinitely great\u2014All the\n circumference with creations thronged: God at the centre dwells,\n beholding all. And as we move in this eternal round, The finite\n portion which alone we see Behind us, is the past; what lies\n before We call the future. But to him who dwells Far at the\n centre, equally remote From every point of the circumference, Both\n are alike, the future and the past.\u201d Vaughan (1655): \u201cI saw\n Eternity the other night. Like a great ring of pure and endless\n light. And calm as it was bright; and round beneath it Time in\n hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow\n moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled.\u201d\n\n We cannot have derived from experience our idea of eternal\n duration in the past, for experience gives us only duration that\n has had beginning. The idea of duration as without beginning must\n therefore be given us by intuition. Case, Physical Realism, 379,\n 380\u2014\u201cTime is the continuance, or continual duration, of the\n universe.\u201d Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 39\u2014Consider time as a\n stream\u2014under a spatial form: \u201cIf you take time as a relation\n between units without duration, then the whole time has no\n duration, and is not time at all. But if you give duration to the\n whole time, then at once the units themselves are found to possess\n it, and they cease to be units.\u201d The _now_ is not time, unless it\n turns past into future, and this is a process. The now then\n consists of nows, and these nows are undiscoverable. The unit is\n nothing but its own relation to something beyond, something not\n discoverable. Time therefore is not real, but is appearance.\n\n John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:185\u2014\u201cThat which grasps and correlates\n objects in space cannot itself be one of the things of space; that\n which apprehends and connects events as succeeding each other in\n time must itself stand above the succession or stream of events.\n In being able to measure them, it cannot be flowing with them.\n There could not be for self-consciousness any such thing as time,\n if it were not, in one aspect of it, above time, if it did not\n belong to an order which is or has in it an element which is\n eternal.... As taken up into thought, succession is not\n successive.\u201d A. H. Strong, Historical Discourse, May 9, 1900\u2014\u201cGod\n is above space and time, and we are in God. We mark the passage of\n time, and we write our histories. But we can do this, only because\n in our highest being we do not belong to space and time, but have\n in us a bit of eternity. John Caird tells us that we could not\n perceive the flowing of the stream if we were ourselves a part of\n the current; only as we have our feet planted on solid rock, can\n we observe that the water rushes by. We belong to God; we are akin\n to God; and while the world passes away and the lust thereof, he\n that doeth the will of God abideth forever.\u201d J. Estlin Carpenter\n and P. H. Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 10\u2014\u201cDante speaks of God\n as him in whom \u2018every _where_ and every _when_ are focused in a\n point\u2019, that is, to whom every season is _now_ and every place is\n _here_.\u201d\n\n Amiel\u2019s Journal: \u201cTime is the supreme illusion. It is the inner\n prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode by which we\n perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.... Time is the\n successive dispersion of being, just as speech is the successive\n analysis of an intuition, or of an act of the will. In itself it\n is relative and negative, and it disappears within the absolute\n Being.... Time and space are fragments of the Infinite for the use\n of finite creatures. God permits them that he may not be alone.\n They are the mode under which creatures are possible and\n conceivable.... If the universe subsists, it is because the\n eternal Mind loves to perceive its own content, in all its wealth\n and expression, especially in its stages of preparation.... The\n radiations of our mind are imperfect reflections from the great\n show of fireworks set in motion by Brahma, and great art is great\n only because of its conformities with the divine order\u2014with that\n which is.\u201d\n\n\nYet we are far from saying that time, now that it exists, has no objective\nreality to God. To him, past, present, and future are \u201cone eternal now,\u201d\nnot in the sense that there is no distinction between them, but only in\nthe sense that he sees past and future as vividly as he sees the present.\nWith creation time began, and since the successions of history are\nveritable successions, he who sees according to truth must recognize them.\n\n\n Thomas Carlyle calls God \u201cthe Eternal Now.\u201d Mason, Faith of the\n Gospel, 30\u2014\u201cGod is not contemptuous of time.... One day is with\n the Lord as a thousand years. He values the infinitesimal in time,\n even as he does in space. Hence the patience, the long-suffering,\n the expectation, of God.\u201d We are reminded of the inscription on\n the sun-dial, in which it is said of the hours: \u201cPereunt et\n imputantur\u201d\u2014\u201cThey pass by, and they are charged to our account.\u201d A\n certain preacher remarked on the wisdom of God which has so\n arranged that the moments of time come successively and not\n simultaneously, and thus prevent infinite confusion! Shedd, Dogm.\n Theol., 1:344, illustrates God\u2019s eternity by the two ways in which\n a person may see a procession: first from a doorway in the street\n through which the procession is passing; and secondly, from the\n top of a steeple which commands a view of the whole procession at\n the same instant.\n\n S. E. Meze, quoted in Royce, Conception of God, 40\u2014\u201cAs if all of\n us were cylinders, with their ends removed, moving through the\n waters of some placid lake. To the cylinders the waters seem to\n move. What has passed is a memory, what is to come is doubtful.\n But the lake knows that all the water is equally real, and that it\n is quiet, immovable, unruffled. Speaking technically, time is no\n reality. Things _seem_ past and future, and, in a sense,\n non-existent to us, but, in fact, they are just as genuinely real\n as the present is.\u201d Yet even here there is an order. You cannot\n play a symphony backward and have music. This qualification at\n least must be put upon the words of Berkeley; \u201cA succession of\n ideas I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible\n measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.\u201d\n\n Finney, quoted in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1877:722\u2014\u201cEternity to us means\n all past, present and future duration. But to God it means only\n now. Duration and space, as they respect his existence, mean\n infinitely different things from what they do when they respect\n our existence. God\u2019s existence and his acts, as they respect\n finite existence, have relation to time and space. But as they\n respect his own existence, everything is _here_ and _now_. With\n respect to all finite existences, God can say: I was, I am, I\n shall be, I will do; but with respect to his own existence, all\n that he can say is: I am, I do.\u201d\n\n Edwards the younger, Works, 1:386, 387\u2014\u201cThere is no succession in\n the divine mind; therefore no new operations take place. All the\n divine acts are from eternity, nor is there any time with God. The\n _effects_ of these divine acts do indeed all take place in time\n and in a succession. If it should be said that on this supposition\n the effects take place not till long after the acts by which they\n are produced, I answer that they do so in our view, but not in the\n view of God. With him there is no time; no before or after with\n respect to time: nor has time any existence in the divine mind, or\n in the nature of things independently of the minds and perceptions\n of creatures; but it depends on the succession of those\n perceptions.\u201d We must qualify this statement of the younger\n Edwards by the following from Julius M\u00fcller: \u201cIf God\u2019s working can\n have no relation to time, then all bonds of union between God and\n the world are snapped asunder.\u201d\n\n It is an interesting question whether the human spirit is capable\n of timeless existence, and whether the conception of time is\n purely physical. In dreams we seem to lose sight of succession; in\n extreme pain an age is compressed into a minute. Does this throw\n light upon the nature of prophecy? Is the soul of the prophet rapt\n into God\u2019s timeless existence and vision? It is doubtful whether\n _Rev. 10:6\u2014_\u201cthere shall be time no longer\u201d can be relied upon to\n prove the affirmative; for the Rev. Vers. marg. and the American\n Revisers translate \u201cthere shall be delay no longer.\u201d Julius\n M\u00fcller, Doct. Sin, 2:147\u2014\u201cAll self-consciousness is a victory over\n time.\u201d So with memory; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:471. On \u201cthe\n death-vision of one\u2019s whole existence,\u201d see Frances Kemble\n Butler\u2019s experience in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:351\u2014\u201cHere there is\n succession and series, only so exceedingly rapid as to seem\n simultaneous.\u201d This rapidity however is so great as to show that\n each man can at the last be judged in an instant. On space and\n time as unlimited, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 564-566. On the\n conception of eternity, see Mansel, Lectures, Essays and Reviews,\n 111-126, and Modern Spiritualism, 255-292; New Englander, April,\n 1875: art. on the Metaphysical Idea of Eternity. For practical\n lessons from the Eternity of God, see Park, Discourses, 137-154;\n Westcott, Some Lessons of the Rev. Vers., (Pott, N. Y., 1897),\n 187\u2014with comments on \u03b1\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2 in _Eph. 3:21_, _Heb. 11:3_, _Rev. 4_;\n _10, 11_\u2014\u201cthe universe under the aspect of time.\u201d\n\n\n2. Immensity.\n\n\nBy this we mean that God\u2019s nature (_a_) is without extension; (_b_) is\nsubject to no limitations of space; and (_c_) contains in itself the cause\nof space.\n\n\n _1 Kings 8:27\u2014_\u201cbehold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot\n contain thee.\u201d Space is a creation of God; _Rom. 8:39\u2014_\u201cnor height\n nor depth, nor any other creature.\u201d Zahn, Bib. Dogmatik,\n 149\u2014\u201cScripture does not teach the immanence of God in the world,\n but the immanence of the world in God.\u201d Dante does not put God,\n but Satan at the centre; and Satan, being at the centre, is\n crushed with the whole weight of the universe. God is the Being\n who encompasses all. All things exist in him. E. G. Robinson:\n \u201cSpace is a relation; God is the author of relations and of our\n modes of thought; therefore God is the author of space. Space\n conditions our thought, but it does not condition God\u2019s thought.\u201d\n\n Jonathan Edwards: \u201cPlace itself is mental, and within and without\n are mental conceptions.... When I say the material universe exists\n only in the mind, I mean that it is absolutely dependent on the\n conception of the mind for its existence, and does not exist as\n spirits do, whose existence does not consist in, nor in dependence\n on, the conception of other minds.\u201d H. M. Stanley, on Space and\n Science, in Philosophical Rev., Nov. 1898:615\u2014\u201cSpace is not full\n of things, but things are spaceful.... Space is a form of dynamic\n appearance.\u201d Bradley carries the ideality of space to an extreme,\n when, in his Appearance and Reality, 35-38, he tells us: Space is\n not a mere relation, for it has parts, and what can be the parts\n of a relation? But space is nothing but a relation, for it is\n lengths of lengths of\u2014nothing that we can find. We can find no\n terms either inside or outside. Space, to be space, must have\n space outside itself. Bradley therefore concludes that space is\n not reality but only appearance.\n\n\nImmensity is infinity in its relation to space. God\u2019s nature is not\nsubject to the law of space. God is not in space. It is more correct to\nsay that space is in God. Yet space has an objective reality to God. With\ncreation space began to be, and since God sees according to truth, he\nrecognizes relations of space in his creation.\n\n\n Many of the remarks made in explanation of time apply equally to\n space. Space is not a substance nor an attribute, but a relation.\n It exists so soon as extended matter exists, and exists as its\n necessary condition, whether our minds perceive it or not. Reid,\n Intellectual Powers, essay 2, chap. 9\u2014\u201cSpace is not so properly an\n object of sense, as a necessary concomitant of the objects of\n sight and touch.\u201d When we see or touch body, we get the idea of\n space in which the body exists, but the idea of space is not\n furnished by the sense; it is an _a priori_ cognition of the\n reason. Experience furnishes the occasion of its evolution, but\n the mind evolves the conception by its own native energy.\n\n Anselm, Proslogion, 19\u2014\u201cNothing contains thee, but thou containest\n all things.\u201d Yet it is not precisely accurate to say that space is\n in God, for this expression seems to intimate that God is a\n greater space which somehow includes the less. God is rather\n unspatial and is the Lord of space. The notion that space and the\n divine immensity are identical leads to a materialistic conception\n of God. Space is not an attribute of God, as Clarke maintained,\n and no argument for the divine existence can be constructed from\n this premise (see pages 85, 86). Martineau, Types, 1:138, 139,\n 170\u2014\u201cMalebranche said that God is the place of all spirits, as\n space is the place of all bodies.... Descartes held that there is\n no such thing as empty space. _Nothing_ cannot possibly have\n extension. Wherever extension is, there must be _something_\n extended. Hence the doctrine of a _plenum_, A _vacuum_ is\n inconceivable.\u201d Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 87\u2014\u201cAccording to\n the ordinary view ... space _exists_, and things exist _in it_;\n according to our view, only things exist, and _between them_\n nothing exists, but space exists _in them_.\u201d\n\n Case, Physical Realism, 379, 380\u2014\u201cSpace is the continuity, or\n continuous extension, of the universe as one substance.\u201d Ladd: \u201cIs\n space extended? Then it must be extended in some other space. That\n other space is the space we are talking about. Space then is not\n an entity, but a mental presupposition of the existence of\n extended substance. Space and time are neither finite nor\n infinite. Space has neither circumference nor centre,\u2014its centre\n would be everywhere. We cannot _imagine_ space at all. It is\n simply a precondition of mind enabling us to perceive things.\u201d In\n Bib. Sac., 1890:415-444, art.: Is Space a Reality? Prof. Mead\n opposes the doctrine that space is purely subjective, as taught by\n Bowne; also the doctrine that space is a certain order of\n relations among realities; that space is nothing apart from\n things; but that things, when they exist, exist in certain\n relations, and that the sum, or system, of these relations\n constitutes space.\n\n We prefer the view of Bowne, Metaphysics, 127, 137, 143, that\n \u201cSpace is the form of objective experience, and is nothing in\n abstraction from that experience.... It is a form of intuition,\n and not a mode of existence. According to this view, things are\n not in space and space-relations, but appear to be. In themselves\n they are essentially non-spatial; but by their interactions with\n one another, and with the mind, they give rise to the appearance\n of a world of extended things in a common space. Space-predicates,\n then, belong to phenomena only, and not to\n things-in-themselves.... Apparent reality exists spatially; but\n proper ontological reality exists spacelessly and without spatial\n predicates.\u201d For the view that space is relative, see also Cocker,\n Theistic Conception of the World, 66-96; Calderwood, Philos. of\n the Infinite, 331-335. _Per contra_, see Porter, Human Intellect,\n 662; Hazard, Letters on Causation in Willing, appendix; Bib. Sac.,\n Oct. 1877:723; Gear, in Bap. Rev., July, 1880:434; Lowndes,\n Philos. of Primary Beliefs, 144-161.\n\n\nSecond Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Creation.\n\n\n1. Omnipresence.\n\n\nBy this we mean that God, in the totality of his essence, without\ndiffusion or expansion, multiplication or division, penetrates and fills\nthe universe in all its parts.\n\n\n _Ps. 139:7 __sq.__\u2014_\u201cWhither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or\n whither shall I flee from thy presence?\u201d _Jer. 23:23, 24\u2014_\u201cAm I a\n God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off?... Do not I\n fill heaven and earth?\u201d _Acts 17:27, 28\u2014_\u201che is not far from each\n one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being.\u201d\n Faber: \u201cFor God is never so far off As even to be near. He is\n within. Our spirit is The home he holds most dear. To think of him\n as by our side Is almost as untrue As to remove his shrine beyond\n Those skies of starry blue. So all the while I thought myself\n Homeless, forlorn and weary, Missing my joy, I walked the earth\n Myself God\u2019s sanctuary.\u201d Henri Amiel: \u201cFrom every point on earth\n we are equally near to heaven and the infinite.\u201d Tennyson, The\n Higher Pantheism: \u201cSpeak to him then, for he hears, and spirit\n with spirit can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than\n hands and feet.\u201d \u201cAs full, as perfect, in a hair as heart.\u201d\n\n The atheist wrote: \u201cGod is nowhere,\u201d but his little daughter read\n it: \u201cGod is now here,\u201d and it converted him. The child however\n sometimes asks: \u201cIf God is everywhere, how is there any room for\n us?\u201d and the only answer is that God is not a material but a\n spiritual being, whose presence does not exclude finite existence\n but rather makes such existence possible. This universal presence\n of God had to be learned gradually. It required great faith in\n Abraham to go out from Ur of the Chaldees, and yet to hold that\n God would be with him in a distant land (_Heb. 11:8_). Jacob\n learned that the heavenly ladder followed him wherever he went\n (_Gen. 28:15_). Jesus taught that \u201cneither in this mountain, nor\n in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father\u201d_ (John 4:21)_. Our\n Lord\u2019s mysterious comings and goings after his resurrection were\n intended to teach his disciples that he was with them \u201calways,\n even unto the end of the world\u201d_ (Mat. 28:20)_. The omnipresence\n of Jesus demonstrates, _a fortiori_, the omnipresence of God.\n\n\nIn explanation of this attribute we may say:\n\n(_a_) God\u2019s omnipresence is not potential but essential.\u2014We reject the\nSocinian representation that God\u2019s essence is in heaven, only his power on\nearth. When God is said to \u201cdwell in the heavens,\u201d we are to understand\nthe language either as a symbolic expression of exaltation above earthly\nthings, or as a declaration that his most special and glorious\nself-manifestations are to the spirits of heaven.\n\n\n _Ps. 123:1\u2014_\u201cO thou that sittest in the heavens\u201d; _113:5\u2014_\u201cThat\n hath his seat on high\u201d; _Is. 57:15\u2014_\u201cthe high and lofty One that\n inhabiteth eternity.\u201d Mere potential omnipresence is Deistic as\n well as Socinian. Like birds in the air or fish in the sea, \u201cat\n home, abroad, We are surrounded still with God.\u201d We do not need to\n go up to heaven to call him down, or into the abyss to call him up\n (_Rom. 10:6, 7_). The best illustration is found in the presence\n of the soul in every part of the body. Mind seems not confined to\n the brain. Natural realism in philosophy, as distinguished from\n idealism, requires that the mind should be at the point of contact\n with the outer world, instead of having reports and ideas brought\n to it in the brain; see Porter, Human Intellect, 149. All\n believers in a soul regard the soul as at least present in all\n parts of the brain, and this is a relative omnipresence no less\n difficult in principle than its presence in all parts of the body.\n An animal\u2019s brain may be frozen into a piece solid as ice, yet,\n after thawing, it will act as before: although freezing of the\n whole body will cause death. If the immaterial principle were\n confined to the brain we should expect freezing of the brain to\n cause death. But if the soul may be omnipresent in the body or\n even in the brain, the divine Spirit may be omnipresent in the\n universe. Bowne, Metaphysics, 136\u2014\u201cIf finite things are modes of\n the infinite, each thing must be a mode of the entire infinite;\n and the infinite must be present in its unity and completeness in\n every finite thing, just as the entire soul is present in all its\n acts.\u201d This idealistic conception of the entire mind as present in\n all its thoughts must be regarded as the best analogue to God\u2019s\n omnipresence in the universe. We object to the view that this\n omnipresence is merely potential, as we find it in Clarke,\n Christian Theology, 74\u2014\u201cWe know, and only know, that God is able\n to put forth all his power of action, without regard to place....\n Omnipresence is an element in the immanence of God.... A local God\n would be no real God. If he is not everywhere, he is not true God\n anywhere. Omnipresence is implied in all providence, in all\n prayer, in all communion with God and reliance on God.\u201d\n\n So long as it is conceded that consciousness is not confined to a\n single point in the brain, the question whether other portions of\n the brain or of the body are also the seat of consciousness may be\n regarded as a purely academic one, and the answer need not affect\n our present argument. The principle of omnipresence is granted\n when once we hold that the soul is conscious at more than one\n point of the physical organism. Yet the question suggested above\n is an interesting one and with regard to it psychologists are\n divided. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie (1892), 138-159,\n holds that consciousness is correlated with the sum-total of\n bodily processes, and with him agree Fechner and Wundt. \u201cPfl\u00fcger\n and Lewes say that as the hemispheres of the brain owe their\n intelligence to the consciousness which we know to be there, so\n the intelligence of the spinal cord\u2019s acts must really be due to\n the invisible presence of a consciousness lower in degree.\u201d\n Professor Brewer\u2019s rattlesnake, after several hours of\n decapitation, still struck at him with its bloody neck, when he\n attempted to seize it by the tail. From the reaction of the frog\u2019s\n leg after decapitation may we not infer a certain consciousness?\n \u201cRobin, on tickling the breast of a criminal an hour after\n decapitation, saw the arm and hand move toward the spot.\u201d Hudson,\n Demonstration of a Future Life, 239-249, quotes from Hammond,\n Treatise on Insanity, chapter 2, to prove that the brain is not\n the sole organ of the mind. Instinct does not reside exclusively\n in the brain; it is seated in the _medulla oblongata_, or in the\n spinal cord, or in both these organs. Objective mind, as Hudson\n thinks, is the function of the physical brain, and it ceases when\n the brain loses its vitality. Instinctive acts are performed by\n animals after excision of the brain, and by human beings born\n without brain. Johnson, in Andover Rev., April, 1890:421\u2014\u201cThe\n brain is not the only seat of consciousness. The same evidence\n that points to the brain as the _principal_ seat of consciousness\n points to the nerve-centres situated in the spinal cord or\n elsewhere as the seat of a more or less _subordinate_\n consciousness or intelligence.\u201d Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 26\u2014\u201cI\n do not take it for proved that consciousness is entirely confined\n to the brain.\u201d\n\n In spite of these opinions, however, we must grant that the\n general consensus among psychologists is upon the other side.\n Dewey, Psychology, 349\u2014\u201cThe sensory and motor nerves have points\n of meeting in the spinal cord. When a stimulus is transferred from\n a sensory nerve to a motor without the conscious intervention of\n the mind, we have reflex action.... If something approaches the\n eye, the stimulus is transferred to the spinal cord, and instead\n of being continued to the brain and giving rise to a sensation, it\n is discharged into a motor nerve and the eye is immediately\n closed.... The reflex action in itself involves no consciousness.\u201d\n William James, Psychology, 1:16, 66, 134, 214\u2014\u201cThe cortex of the\n brain is the sole organ of consciousness in man.... If there be\n any consciousness pertaining to the lower centres, it is a\n consciousness of which the self knows nothing.... In lower animals\n this may not be so much the case.... The seat of the mind, so far\n as its dynamical relations are concerned, is somewhere in the\n cortex of the brain.\u201d See also C. A. Strong, Why the Mind has a\n Body, 40-50.\n\n\n(_b_) God\u2019s omnipresence is not the presence of a part but of the whole of\nGod in every place.\u2014This follows from the conception of God as incorporeal\nWe reject the materialistic representation that God is composed of\nmaterial elements which can be divided or sundered. There is no\nmultiplication or diffusion of his substance to correspond with the parts\nof his dominions. The one essence of God is present at the same moment in\nall.\n\n\n _1 Kings 8:27\u2014_\u201cthe heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot\n contain (circumscribe) thee.\u201d God must be present in all his\n essence and all his attributes in every place. He is \u201ctotus in\n omni parte.\u201d Alger, Poetry of the Orient: \u201cThough God extends\n beyond Creation\u2019s rim, Each smallest atom holds the whole of him.\u201d\n From this it follows that the whole Logos can be united to and be\n present in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills\n and governs the whole universe; and so the whole Christ can be\n united to, and can be present in, the single believer, as fully as\n if that believer were the only one to receive of his fulness.\n\n A. J. Gordon: \u201cIn mathematics the whole is equal to the sum of its\n parts. But we know of the Spirit that every part is equal to the\n whole. Every church, every true body of Jesus Christ, has just as\n much of Christ as every other, and each has the whole Christ.\u201d\n _Mat. 13:20\u2014_\u201cwhere two or three are gathered together in my name,\n there am I in the midst of them.\u201d \u201cThe parish priest of austerity\n Climbed up in a high church steeple, To be nearer God so that he\n might Hand his word down to the people. And in sermon script he\n daily wrote What he thought was sent from heaven, And he dropt it\n down on the people\u2019s heads Two times one day in seven. In his age\n God said, \u2018Come down and die,\u2019 And he cried out from the steeple,\n \u2018Where art thou, Lord?\u2019 And the Lord replied, \u2018Down here among my\n people.\u2019 \u201d\n\n\n(_c_) God\u2019s omnipresence is not necessary but free.\u2014We reject the\npantheistic notion that God is bound to the universe as the universe is\nbound to God. God is immanent in the universe, not by compulsion, but by\nthe free act of his own will, and this immanence is qualified by his\ntranscendence.\n\n\n God might at will cease to be omnipresent, for he could destroy\n the universe; but while the universe exists, he is and must be in\n all its parts. God is the life and law of the universe,\u2014this is\n the truth in pantheism. But he is also personal and free,\u2014this\n pantheism denies. Christianity holds to a free, as well as to an\n essential, omnipresence\u2014qualified and supplemented, however, by\n God\u2019s transcendence. The boasted truth in pantheism is an\n elementary principle of Christianity, and is only the\n stepping-stone to a nobler truth\u2014God\u2019s personal presence with his\n church. The Talmud contrasts the worship of an idol and the\n worship of Jehovah: \u201cThe idol seems so near, but is so far,\n Jehovah seems so far, but is so near!\u201d God\u2019s omnipresence assures\n us that he is present with us to hear, and present in every heart\n and in the ends of the earth to answer, prayer. See Rogers,\n Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 10; Bowne, Metaphysics, 136;\n Charnock, Attributes, 1:363-405.\n\n The Puritan turned from the moss-rose bud, saying: \u201cI have learned\n to call nothing on earth lovely.\u201d But this is to despise not only\n the workmanship but the presence of the Almighty. The least thing\n in nature is worthy of study because it is the revelation of a\n present God. The uniformity of nature and the reign of law are\n nothing but the steady will of the omnipresent God. Gravitation is\n God\u2019s omnipresence in space, as evolution is God\u2019s omnipresence in\n time. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:73-\u201cGod being omnipresent,\n contact with him may be sought at any moment in prayer and\n contemplation; indeed, it will always be true that we live and\n move and have our being in him, as the perennial and omnipresent\n source of our existence.\u201d _Rom. 10:6-8\u2014_\u201cSay not in thy heart, Who\n shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, Who\n shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from\n the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth,\n and in thy heart.\u201d Lotze, Metaphysics, \u00a7 256, quoted in\n Illingworth, Divine Immanence, 135, 136. Sunday-school scholar:\n \u201cIs God in my pocket?\u201d \u201cCertainly.\u201d \u201cNo, he isn\u2019t, for I haven\u2019t\n any pocket.\u201d God is omnipresent so long as there is a universe,\n but he ceases to be omnipresent when the universe ceases to be.\n\n\n2. Omniscience.\n\n\nBy this we mean God\u2019s perfect and eternal knowledge of all things which\nare objects of knowledge, whether they be actual or possible, past,\npresent, or future.\n\n\n God knows his inanimate creation: _Ps. 147:4\u2014_\u201ccounteth the number\n of the stars; He calleth them all by their names.\u201d He has\n knowledge of brute creatures: _Mat. 10:29_\u2014sparrows\u2014\u201cnot one of\n them shall fall on the ground without your Father.\u201d Of men and\n their works: _Ps. 33:13-15\u2014_\u201cbeholdeth all the sons of men ...\n considereth all their works.\u201d Of hearts of men and their thoughts:\n _Acts 15:8\u2014_\u201cGod, who knoweth the heart\u201d; _Ps.\n 139:2\u2014_\u201cunderstandest my thought afar off.\u201d Of our wants: _Mat.\n 6:8\u2014_\u201cknoweth what things ye have need of.\u201d Of the least things:\n _Mat. 10:30\u2014_\u201cthe very hairs of your head are all numbered.\u201d Of\n the past: _Mal. 3:16\u2014_\u201cbook of remembrance.\u201d Of the future: _Is.\n 46:9, 10\u2014_\u201cdeclaring the end from the beginning.\u201d Of men\u2019s future\n free acts: _Is. 44:28\u2014_\u201cthat saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and\n shall perform all my pleasure.\u201d Of men\u2019s future evil acts: _Acts\n 2:23\u2014_\u201chim, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and\n foreknowledge of God.\u201d Of the ideally possible: _1 Sam.\n 23:12\u2014_\u201cWill the men of Keilah deliver up me and my men into the\n hands of Saul? And Jehovah said, They will deliver thee up\u201d (_sc._\n if thou remainest); _Mat. 11:23\u2014_\u201cif the mighty works had been\n done in Sodom which were done in thee, it would have remained.\u201d\n From eternity: _Acts 15:18\u2014_\u201cthe Lord, who maketh these things\n known from of old.\u201d Incomprehensible: _Ps. 139:6\u2014_\u201cSuch knowledge\n is too wonderful for me\u201d; _Rom. 11:33\u2014_\u201cO the depth of the riches\n both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.\u201d Related to wisdom:\n _Ps. 104:24\u2014_\u201cIn wisdom hast thou made them all\u201d; _Eph.\n 3:10\u2014_\u201cmanifold wisdom of God.\u201d\n\n _Job 7:20\u2014_\u201cO thou watcher of men\u201d; _Ps. 56:8\u2014_\u201cThou numberest my\n wanderings\u201d = my whole life has been one continuous exile; \u201cPut\n thou my tears into thy bottle\u201d = the skin bottle of the\n east,\u2014there are tears enough to fill one; \u201cAre they not in thy\n book?\u201d = no tear has fallen to the ground unnoted,\u2014God has\n gathered them all. Paul Gerhardt: \u201cDu z\u00e4hlst wie oft ein Christe\n wein\u2019, Und was sein Kummer sei; Kein stilles Thr\u00e4nlein ist so\n klein, Du hebst und legst es bei.\u201d _Heb. 4:13\u2014_\u201cthere is no\n creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are\n naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to\n do\u201d\u2014\u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c7\u03b7\u03bb\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u2014with head bent back and neck laid bare, as\n animals slaughtered in sacrifice, _or_ seized by the throat and\n thrown on the back, so that the priest might discover whether\n there was any blemish. Japanese proverb: \u201cGod has forgotten to\n forget.\u201d\n\n\n(_a_) The omniscience of God may be argued from his omnipresence, as well\nas from his truth or self-knowledge, in which the plan of creation has its\neternal ground, and from prophecy, which expresses God\u2019s omniscience.\n\n\n It is to be remembered that omniscience, as the designation of a\n relative and transitive attribute, does not include God\u2019s\n self-knowledge. The term is used in the technical sense of God\u2019s\n knowledge of all things that pertain to the universe of his\n creation. H. A. Gordon: \u201cLight travels faster than sound. You can\n see the flash of fire from the cannon\u2019s mouth, a mile away,\n considerably before the noise of the discharge reaches the ear.\n God flashed the light of prediction upon the pages of his word,\n and we see it. Wait a little and we see the event itself.\u201d\n\n Royce, The Conception of God, 9\u2014\u201cAn omniscient being would be one\n who simply found presented to him, not by virtue of fragmentary\n and gradually completed processes of inquiry, but by virtue of an\n all-embracing, direct and transparent insight into his own\n truth\u2014who found thus presented to him, I say, the complete, the\n fulfilled answer to every genuinely rational question.\u201d\n\n Browning, Ferishtah\u2019s Fancies, Plot-culture: \u201cHow will it fare\n shouldst thou impress on me That certainly an Eye is over all And\n each, to make the minute\u2019s deed, word, thought As worthy of reward\n and punishment? Shall I permit my sense an Eye-viewed shame, Broad\n daylight perpetration,\u2014so to speak,\u2014I had not dared to breathe\n within the Ear, With black night\u2019s help around me?\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Since it is free from all imperfection, God\u2019s knowledge is\nimmediate, as distinguished from the knowledge that comes through sense or\nimagination; simultaneous, as not acquired by successive observations, or\nbuilt up by processes of reasoning; distinct, as free from all vagueness\nor confusion; true, as perfectly corresponding to the reality of things;\neternal, as comprehended in one timeless act of the divine mind.\n\n\n An infinite mind must always act, and must always act in an\n absolutely perfect manner. There is in God no sense, symbol,\n memory, abstraction, growth, reflection, reasoning,\u2014his knowledge\n is all direct and without intermediaries. God was properly\n represented by the ancient Egyptians, not as having eye, but as\n being eye. His thoughts toward us are \u201cmore than can be numbered\u201d_\n (Ps. 40:5)_, not because there is succession in them, now a\n remembering and now a forgetting, but because there is never a\n moment of our existence in which we are out of his mind; he is\n always thinking of us. See Charnock, Attributes, 1:406-497. _Gen.\n 16:13\u2014_\u201cThou art a God that seeth.\u201d Mivart, Lessons from Nature,\n 374\u2014\u201cEvery creature of every order of existence, while its\n existence is sustained, is so complacently contemplated by God,\n that the intense and concentrated attention of all men of science\n together upon it could but form an utterly inadequate symbol of\n such divine contemplation.\u201d So God\u2019s scrutiny of every deed of\n darkness is more searching than the gaze of a whole Coliseum of\n spectators, and his eye is more watchful over the good than would\n be the united care of all his hosts in heaven and earth.\n\n Armstrong, God and the Soul: \u201cGod\u2019s energy is concentrated\n attention, attention concentrated everywhere. We can attend to two\n or three things at once; the pianist plays and talks at the same\n time; the magician does one thing while he seems to do another.\n God attends to all things, does all things, at once.\u201d Marie\n Corelli, Master Christian, 104\u2014\u201cThe biograph is a hint that every\n scene of human life is reflected in a ceaseless moving panorama\n _some where_, for the beholding of _some one_.\u201d Wireless\n telegraphy is a stupendous warning that from God no secrets are\n hid, that \u201cthere is nothing covered that shall not be revealed;\n and hid, that shall not be known\u201d_ (Mat. 10:26)_. The R\u00f6ntgen\n rays, which take photographs of our insides, right through our\n clothes, and even in the darkness of midnight, show that to God\n \u201cthe night shineth as the day\u201d_ (Ps. 139:12)_.\n\n Professor Mitchel\u2019s equatorial telescope, slowly moving by\n clockwork, toward sunset, suddenly touched the horizon and\n disclosed a boy in a tree stealing apples, but the boy was all\n unconscious that he was under the gaze of the astronomer. Nothing\n was so fearful to the prisoner in the French _cachot_ as the eye\n of the guard that never ceased to watch him in perfect silence\n through the loophole in the door. As in the Roman empire the whole\n world was to a malefactor one great prison, and in his flight to\n the most distant lands the emperor could track him, so under the\n government of God no sinner can escape the eye of his Judge. But\n omnipresence is protective as well as detective. The text _Gen.\n 16:13\u2014_\u201cThou, God, seest me\u201d\u2014has been used as a restraint from\n evil more than as a stimulus to good. To the child of the devil it\n should certainly be the former. But to the child of God it should\n as certainly be the latter. God should not be regarded as an\n exacting overseer or a standing threat, but rather as one who\n understands us, loves us, and helps us. _Ps. 139:17, 18\u2014_\u201cHow\n precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the\n sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than\n the sand: When I awake, I am still with thee.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Since God knows things as they are, he knows the necessary sequences\nof his creation as necessary, the free acts of his creatures as free, the\nideally possible as ideally possible.\n\n\n God knows what would have taken place under circumstances not now\n present; knows what the universe would have been, had he chosen a\n different plan of creation; knows what our lives would have been,\n had we made different decisions in the past (_Is. 48:18\u2014_\u201cOh that\n thou hadst hearkened ... then had thy peace been as a river\u201d).\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 77\u2014\u201cGod has a double knowledge of his\n universe. He knows it as it exists eternally in his mind, as his\n own idea; and he knows it as actually existing in time and space,\n a moving, changing, growing universe, with perpetual process of\n succession. In his own idea, he knows it all at once; but he is\n also aware of its perpetual becoming, and with reference to events\n as they occur he has foreknowledge, present knowledge, and\n knowledge afterwards.... He conceives of all things\n simultaneously, but observes all things in their succession.\u201d\n\n Royce, World and Individual, 2:374\u2014holds that God does not\n temporally foreknow anything except as he is expressed in finite\n beings, but yet that the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at\n one glance of the whole of the temporal order, present, past and\n future. This, he says, is not foreknowledge, but eternal\n knowledge. Priestley denied that any contingent event could be an\n object of knowledge. But Reid says the denial that any free action\n can be foreseen involves the denial of God\u2019s own free agency,\n since God\u2019s future actions can be foreseen by men; also that while\n God foresees his own free actions, this does not determine those\n actions necessarily. Tennyson, In Memoriam, 26\u2014\u201cAnd if that eye\n which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the\n green the mouldered tree, And towers fallen as soon as built\u2014Oh,\n if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of\n life true life no more And Love the indifference to be, Then might\n I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That\n Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) The fact that there is nothing in the present condition of things\nfrom which the future actions of free creatures necessarily follow by\nnatural law does not prevent God from foreseeing such actions, since his\nknowledge is not mediate, but immediate. He not only foreknows the motives\nwhich will occasion men\u2019s acts, but he directly foreknows the acts\nthemselves. The possibility of such direct knowledge without assignable\ngrounds of knowledge is apparent if we admit that time is a form of finite\nthought to which the divine mind is not subject.\n\n\n Aristotle maintained that there is no certain knowledge of\n contingent future events. Socinus, in like manner, while he\n admitted that God knows all things that are knowable, abridged the\n objects of the divine knowledge by withdrawing from the number\n those objects whose future existence he considered as uncertain,\n such as the determinations of free agents. These, he held, cannot\n be certainly foreknown, because there is nothing in the present\n condition of things from which they will necessarily follow by\n natural law. The man who makes a clock can tell when it will\n strike. But free-will, not being subject to mechanical laws,\n cannot have its acts predicted or foreknown. God knows things only\n in their causes\u2014future events only in their antecedents. John\n Milton seems also to deny God\u2019s foreknowledge of free acts: \u201cSo,\n without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably\n foreseen, They trespass.\u201d\n\n With this Socinian doctrine some Arminians agree, as McCabe, in\n his Foreknowledge of God, and in his Divine Nescience of Future\n Contingencies a Necessity. McCabe, however, sacrifices the\n principle of free will, in defence of which he makes this\n surrender of God\u2019s foreknowledge, by saying that in cases of\n fulfilled prophecy, like Peter\u2019s denial and Judas\u2019s betrayal, God\n brought special influences to bear to secure the result,\u2014so that\n Peter\u2019s and Judas\u2019s wills acted irresponsibly under the law of\n cause and effect. He quotes Dr. Daniel Curry as declaring that\n \u201cthe denial of absolute divine foreknowledge is the essential\n complement of the Methodist theology, without which its\n philosophical incompleteness is defenceless against the logical\n consistency of Calvinism.\u201d See also article by McCabe in Methodist\n Review, Sept. 1892:760-773. Also Simon, Reconciliation, 287\u2014\u201cGod\n has constituted a creature, the actions of which he can only know\n as such when they are performed. In presence of man, to a certain\n extent, even the great God condescends to wait; nay more, has\n himself so ordained things that he must wait, inquiring, \u2018What\n will he do?\u2019 \u201d\n\n So Dugald Stewart: \u201cShall we venture to affirm that it exceeds the\n power of God to permit such a train of contingent events to take\n place as his own foreknowledge shall not extend to?\u201d Martensen\n holds this view, and Rothe, Theologische Ethik, 1:212-234, who\n declares that the free choices of men are continually increasing\n the knowledge of God. So also Martineau, Study of Religion,\n 2:279\u2014\u201cThe belief in the divine foreknowledge of our future has no\n basis in philosophy. We no longer deem it true that even God knows\n the moment of my moral life that is coming next. Even he does not\n know whether I shall yield to the secret temptation at midday. To\n him life is a drama of which he knows not the conclusion.\u201d Then,\n says Dr. A. J. Gordon, there is nothing so dreary and dreadful as\n to be living under the direction of such a God. The universe is\n rushing on like an express-train in the darkness without headlight\n or engineer; at any moment we may be plunged into the abyss. Lotze\n does not deny God\u2019s foreknowledge of free human actions, but he\n regards as insoluble by the intellect the problem of the relation\n of time to God, and such foreknowledge as \u201cone of those postulates\n as to which we know not how they can be fulfilled.\u201d Bowne,\n Philosophy of Theism, 159\u2014\u201cForeknowledge of a free act is a\n knowledge without assignable grounds of knowing. On the assumption\n of a real time, it is hard to find a way out of this\n difficulty.... The doctrine of the ideality of time helps us by\n suggesting the possibility of an all-embracing present, or an\n eternal now, for God. In that case the problem vanishes with time,\n its condition.\u201d\n\n Against the doctrine of the divine nescience we urge not only our\n fundamental conviction of God\u2019s perfection, but the constant\n testimony of Scripture. In _Is. 41:21, 22_, God makes his\n foreknowledge the test of his Godhead in the controversy with\n idols. If God cannot foreknow free human acts, then \u201cthe Lamb that\n hath been slain from the foundation of the world\u201d_ (Rev. 13:8)_\n was only a sacrifice to be offered _in case_ Adam should fall, God\n not knowing whether he would or not, and _in case_ Judas should\n betray Christ, God not knowing whether he would or not. Indeed,\n since the course of nature is changed by man\u2019s will when he burns\n towns and fells forests, God cannot on this theory predict even\n the course of nature. All prophecy is therefore a protest against\n this view.\n\n How God foreknows free human decisions we may not be able to say,\n but then the method of God\u2019s knowledge in many other respects is\n unknown to us. The following explanations have been proposed. God\n may foreknow free acts:\u2014\n\n 1. _Mediately_, by foreknowing the motives of these acts, and this\n either because these motives induce the acts, (1) necessarily, or\n (2) certainly. This last \u201ccertainly\u201d is to be accepted, if either;\n since motives are never _causes_, but are only _occasions_, of\n action. The cause is the will, or the man himself. But it may be\n said that foreknowing acts through their motives is not\n foreknowing at all, but is reasoning or inference rather.\n Moreover, although intelligent beings commonly act according to\n motives previously dominant, they also at critical epochs, as at\n the fall of Satan and of Adam, choose between motives, and in such\n cases knowledge of the motives which have hitherto actuated them\n gives no clue to their next decisions. Another statement is\n therefore proposed to meet these difficulties, namely, that God\n may foreknow free acts:\u2014\n\n 2. _Immediately_, by pure intuition, inexplicable to us. Julius\n M\u00fcller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:203, 225\u2014\u201cIf God can know a future\n event as certain only by a calculation of causes, it must be\n allowed that he cannot with certainty foreknow any free act of\n man; for his foreknowledge would then be proof that the act in\n question was the necessary consequence of certain causes, and was\n not in itself free. If, on the contrary, the divine knowledge be\n regarded as _intuitive_, we see that it stands in the same\n immediate relation to the act itself as to its antecedents, and\n thus the difficulty is removed.\u201d Even upon this view there still\n remains the difficulty of perceiving how there can be in God\u2019s\n mind a subjective certitude with regard to acts in respect to\n which there is no assignable objective ground of certainty. Yet,\n in spite of this difficulty, we feel bound both by Scripture and\n by our fundamental idea of God\u2019s perfection to maintain God\u2019s\n perfect knowledge of the future free acts of his creatures. With\n President Pepper we say: \u201cKnowledge of contingency is not\n necessarily contingent knowledge.\u201d With Whedon: \u201cIt is not\n calculation, but pure knowledge.\u201d See Dorner, System of Doct.,\n 1:332-337; 2:58-62; Jahrbuch f\u00fcr deutsche Theologie, 1858:601-605;\n Charnock, Attributes, 1:429-446; Solly, The Will, 240-254. For a\n valuable article on the whole subject, though advocating the view\n that God foreknows acts by foreknowing motives, see Bib. Sac.,\n Oct. 1883:655-694. See also Hill, Divinity, 517.\n\n\n(_e_) Prescience is not itself causative. It is not to be confounded with\nthe predetermining will of God. Free actions do not take place because\nthey are foreseen, but they are foreseen because they are to take place.\n\n\n Seeing a thing in the future does not cause it to be, more than\n seeing a thing in the past causes it to be. As to future events,\n we may say with Whedon: \u201cKnowledge _takes_ them, not _makes_\n them.\u201d Foreknowledge may, and does, presuppose predetermination,\n but it is not itself predetermination. Thomas Aquinas, in his\n Summa, 1:38:1:1, says that \u201cthe knowledge of God is the cause of\n things\u201d; but he is obliged to add: \u201cGod is not the cause of all\n things that are known by God, since evil things that are known by\n God are not from him.\u201d John Milton, Paradise Lost, book\n 3\u2014\u201cForeknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no\n less proved certain unforeknown.\u201d\n\n\n(_f_) Omniscience embraces the actual and the possible, but it does not\nembrace the self-contradictory and the impossible, because these are not\nobjects of knowledge.\n\n\n God does not know what the result would be if two and two made\n five, nor does he know \u201cwhether a chim\u00e6ra ruminating in a vacuum\n devoureth second intentions\u201d; and that, simply for the reason that\n he cannot know self-contradiction and nonsense. These things are\n not objects of knowledge. Clarke, Christian Theology, 80\u2014\u201cCan God\n make an old man in a minute? Could he make it well with the wicked\n while they remained wicked? Could he create a world in which 2 + 2\n = 5?\u201d Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 366\u2014\u201cDoes God know the\n whole number that is the square root of 65? or what adjacent hills\n there are that have no valleys between them? Does God know round\n squares, and sugar salt-lumps, and Snarks and Boojums and\n Abracadabras?\u201d\n\n\n(_g_) Omniscience, as qualified by holy will, is in Scripture denominated\n\u201cwisdom.\u201d In virtue of his wisdom God chooses the highest ends and uses\nthe fittest means to accomplish them.\n\n\n Wisdom is not simply \u201cestimating all things at their proper value\u201d\n (Olmstead); it has in it also the element of counsel and purpose.\n It has been defined as \u201cthe talent of using one\u2019s talents.\u201d It\n implies two things: first, choice of the highest end; secondly,\n choice of the best means to secure this end. J. C. C. Clarke, Self\n and the Father, 39\u2014\u201cWisdom is not invented conceptions, or harmony\n of theories with theories; but is humble obedience of mind to the\n reception of facts that are found in things.\u201d Thus man\u2019s wisdom,\n obedience, faith, are all names for different aspects of the same\n thing. And wisdom in God is the moral choice which makes truth and\n holiness supreme. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 261\u2014\u201cSocialism\n pursues a laudable end by unwise or destructive means. It is not\n enough to mean well. Our methods must take some account of the\n nature of things, if they are to succeed. We cannot produce\n well-being by law. No legislation can remove inequalities of\n nature and constitution. Society cannot produce equality, any more\n than it can enable a rhinoceros to sing, or legislate a cat into a\n lion.\u201d\n\n\n3. Omnipotence.\n\n\nBy this we mean the power of God to do all things which are objects of\npower, whether with or without the use of means.\n\n\n _Gen. 17:1\u2014_\u201cI am God Almighty.\u201d He performs natural wonders:\n _Gen. 1:1-3\u2014_\u201cLet there be Light\u201d; _Is. 44:24\u2014_\u201cstretcheth forth\n the heavens alone\u201d; _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cupholding all things by the word\n of his power.\u201d Spiritual wonders: _2 Cor. 4:6\u2014_\u201cGod, that said,\n Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts\u201d;\n _Eph. 1:19\u2014_\u201cexceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who\n believe\u201d; _Eph. 3:20\u2014_\u201cable to do exceeding abundantly.\u201d Power to\n create new things: _Mat. 3:9\u2014_\u201cable of these stones to raise up\n children unto Abraham\u201d. _Rom. 4:17\u2014_\u201cgiveth life to the dead, and\n calleth the things that are not, as though they were.\u201d After his\n own pleasure: _Ps. 115:3\u2014_\u201cHe hath done whatsoever he hath\n pleased\u201d; _Eph. 1:11\u2014_\u201cworketh all things after the counsel of his\n will.\u201d Nothing impossible: _Gen 18:14\u2014_\u201cIs anything too hard for\n Jehovah?\u201d _Mat. 19:26\u2014_\u201cwith God all things are possible.\u201d E. G.\n Robinson, Christian Theology, 73\u2014\u201cIf all power in the universe is\n dependent on his creative will for its existence, it is impossible\n to conceive any limit to his power except that laid on it by his\n own will. But this is only negative proof; absolute omnipotence is\n not logically demonstrable, though readily enough recognized as a\n just conception of the infinite God, when propounded on the\n authority of a positive revelation.\u201d\n\n The omnipotence of God is illustrated by the work of the Holy\n Spirit, which in Scripture is compared to wind, water and fire.\n The ordinary manifestations of these elements afford no criterion\n of the effects they are able to produce. The rushing mighty wind\n at Pentecost was the analogue of the wind-Spirit who bore\n everything before him on the first day of creation (_Gen. 1:2_;\n _John 3:8_; _Acts 2:2_). The pouring out of the Spirit is likened\n to the flood of Noah when the windows of heaven were opened and\n there was not room enough to receive that which fell (_Mal.\n 3:10_). And the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like the fire that\n shall destroy all impurity at the end of the world (_Mat. 3:11_;\n _2 Pet. 3:7-13_). See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 307-310.\n\n\n(_a_) Omnipotence does not imply power to do that which is not an object\nof power; as, for example, that which is self-contradictory or\ncontradictory to the nature of God.\n\n\n Self-contradictory things: \u201cfacere factum infectum\u201d\u2014the making of\n a past event to have not occurred (hence the uselessness of\n praying: \u201cMay it be that much good was done\u201d); drawing a shorter\n than a straight line between two given points; putting two\n separate mountains together without a valley between them. Things\n contradictory to the nature of God: for God to lie, to sin, to\n die. To do such things would not imply power, but impotence. God\n has all the power that is consistent with infinite perfection\u2014all\n power to do what is worthy of himself. So no greater thing can be\n said by man than this: \u201cI dare do all that may become a man; Who\n dares do more is none.\u201d Even God cannot make wrong to be right,\n nor hatred of himself to be blessed. Some have held that the\n prevention of sin in a moral system is not an object of power, and\n therefore that God cannot prevent sin in a moral system. We hold\n the contrary; see this Compendium: Objections to the Doctrine of\n Decrees.\n\n Dryden, Imitation of Horace, 3:29:71\u2014\u201cOver the past not heaven\n itself has power; What has been has, and I have had my hour\u201d\u2014words\n applied by Lord John Russell to his own career. Emerson, The Past:\n \u201cAll is now secure and fast, Not the gods can shake the Past.\u201d\n Sunday-school scholar: \u201cSay, teacher, can God make a rock so big\n that he can\u2019t lift it?\u201d Seminary Professor: \u201cCan God tell a lie?\u201d\n Seminary student: \u201cWith God all things are possible.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Omnipotence does not imply the exercise of all his power on the part\nof God. He has power over his power; in other words, his power is under\nthe control of wise and holy will. God can do all he will, but he will not\ndo all he can. Else his power is mere force acting necessarily, and God is\nthe slave of his own omnipotence.\n\n\n Schleiermacher held that nature not only is grounded in the divine\n causality, but fully expresses that causality; there is no\n causative power in God for anything that is not real and actual.\n This doctrine does not essentially differ from Spinoza\u2019s _natura\n naturans_ and _natura naturata_. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre,\n 2:62-66. But omnipotence is not instinctive; it is a power used\n according to God\u2019s pleasure. God is by no means encompassed by the\n laws of nature, or shut up to a necessary evolution of his own\n being, as pantheism supposes. As Rothe has shown, God has a\n will-power over his nature-power, and is not compelled to do all\n that he can do. He is able from the stones of the street to \u201craise\n up children unto Abraham,\u201d but he has not done it. In God are\n unopened treasures, an inexhaustible fountain of new beginnings,\n new creations, new revelations. To suppose that in creation he has\n expended all the inner possibilities of his being is to deny his\n omnipotence. So _Job 26:14\u2014_\u201cLo, these are but the outskirts of\n his ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the\n thunder of his power who can understand?\u201d See Rogers, Superhuman\n Origin of the Bible, 10; Hodgson, Time and Space, 579, 580.\n\n _1 Pet. 5:6\u2014_\u201cHumble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of\n God\u201d\u2014his mighty hand of providence, salvation, blessing\u2014\u201cthat he\n may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him,\n because he careth for you.\u201d \u201cThe mighty powers held under mighty\n control\u201d\u2014this is the greatest exhibition of power. Unrestraint is\n not the highest freedom. Young men must learn that self-restraint\n is the true power. _Prov. 16:32\u2014_\u201cHe that is slow to anger is\n better than the mighty; And he that ruleth his spirit, than he\n that taketh a city.\u201d Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2:3\u2014\u201cWe have power\n in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to\n do.\u201d When dynamite goes off, it all goes off: there is no reserve.\n God uses as much of his power as he pleases: the remainder of\n wrath in himself, as well as in others, he restrains.\n\n\n(_c_) Omnipotence in God does not exclude, but implies, the power of\nself-limitation. Since all such self-limitation is free, proceeding from\nneither external nor internal compulsion, it is the act and manifestation\nof God\u2019s power. Human freedom is not rendered impossible by the divine\nomnipotence, but exists by virtue of it. It is an act of omnipotence when\nGod humbles himself to the taking of human flesh in the person of Jesus\nChrist.\n\n\n Thomasius: \u201cIf God is to be over all and in all, he cannot himself\n be all.\u201d _Ps. 113: 5, 6\u2014_\u201cWho is like unto Jehovah our God....\n That humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and\n in the earth?\u201d _Phil. 2:7, 8\u2014_\u201cemptied himself ... humbled\n himself.\u201d See Charnock, Attributes, 2:5-107. President Woolsey\n showed true power when he controlled his indignation and let an\n offending student go free. Of Christ on the cross, says Moberly,\n Atonement and Personality, 116\u2014\u201cIt was the power [to retain his\n life, to escape suffering], with the will to hold it unused, which\n proved him to be what he was, the obedient and perfect man.\u201d We\n are likest the omnipotent One when we limit ourselves for love\u2019s\n sake. The attribute of omnipotence is the ground of trust, as well\n as of fear, on the part of God\u2019s creatures. Isaac Watts: \u201cHis\n every word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The\n voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.\u201d\n\n\nThird Division.\u2014Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.\n\n\n1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.\n\n\nBy veracity and faithfulness we mean the transitive truth of God, in its\ntwofold relation to his creatures in general and to his redeemed people in\nparticular.\n\n\n _Ps. 138:2\u2014_\u201cI will ... give thanks unto thy name for thy\n lovingkindness and for thy truth: For thou hast magnified thy word\n above all thy name\u201d; _John 3:33\u2014_\u201chath set his seal to this, that\n God is true\u201d; _Rom. 3:4\u2014_\u201clet God be found true, but every man a\n liar\u201d; _Rom. 1:25\u2014_\u201cthe truth of God\u201d; _John 14:17\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of\n truth\u201d; _1 John 5:7\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit is the truth\u201d; _1 Cor. 1:9\u2014_\u201cGod\n is faithful\u201d; _1 Thess. 5:24\u2014_\u201cfaithful is he that calleth you\u201d;\n _1 Pet. 4:19\u2014_\u201ca faithful Creator\u201d; _2 Cor. 1:20\u2014_\u201chow many soever\n be the promises of God, in him is the yea\u201d; _Num. 23:19\u2014_\u201cGod is\n not a man that he should lie\u201d; _Tit. 1:2\u2014_\u201cGod, who cannot lie,\n promised\u201d; _Heb. 6:18\u2014_\u201cin which it is impossible for God to lie.\u201d\n\n\n(_a_) In virtue of his veracity, all his revelations to creatures consist\nwith his essential being and with each other.\n\n\n In God\u2019s veracity we have the guarantee that our faculties in\n their normal exercise do not deceive us; that the laws of thought\n are also laws of things; that the external world, and second\n causes in it, have objective existence; that the same causes will\n always produce the same effects; that the threats of the moral\n nature will be executed upon the unrepentant transgressor; that\n man\u2019s moral nature is made in the image of God\u2019s; and that we may\n draw just conclusions from what conscience is in us to what\n holiness is in him. We may therefore expect that all past\n revelations, whether in nature or in his word, will not only not\n be contradicted by our future knowledge, but will rather prove to\n have in them more of truth than we ever dreamed. Man\u2019s word may\n pass away, but God\u2019s word abides forever (_Mat. 5:18\u2014_\u201cone jot or\n one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law\u201d; _Is.\n 40:8\u2014_\u201cthe word of God shall stand forever\u201d).\n\n _Mat. 6:16\u2014_\u201cbe not as the hypocrites.\u201d In God the outer\n expression and the inward reality always correspond. Assyrian\n wills were written on a small tablet encased in another upon which\n the same thing was written over again. Breakage, or falsification,\n of the outer envelope could be corrected by reference to the\n inner. So our outer life should conform to the heart within, and\n the heart within to the outer life. On the duty of speaking the\n truth, and the limitations of the duty, see Newman Smyth,\n Christian Ethics, 386-403\u2014\u201cGive the truth always to those who in\n the bonds of humanity have a right to the truth; conceal it, or\n falsify it, only when the human right to the truth has been\n forfeited, or is held in abeyance, by sickness, weakness, or some\n criminal intent.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) In virtue of his faithfulness, he fulfills all his promises to his\npeople, whether expressed in words or implied in the constitution he has\ngiven them.\n\n\n In God\u2019s faithfulness we have the sure ground of confidence that\n he will perform what his love has led him to promise to those who\n obey the gospel. Since his promises are based, not upon what we\n are or have done, but upon what Christ is and has done, our\n defects and errors do not invalidate them, so long as we are truly\n penitent and believing: _1 John 1:9\u2014_\u201cfaithful and righteous to\n forgive us our sins\u201d = faithful to his promise, and righteous to\n Christ. God\u2019s faithfulness also ensures a supply for all the real\n wants of our being, both here and hereafter, since these wants are\n implicit promises of him who made us: _Ps. 84:11\u2014_\u201cNo good thing\n will he withhold from them that walk uprightly\u201d; _91:4\u2014_\u201cHis truth\n is a shield and a buckler\u201d; _Mat. 6:33\u2014_\u201call these things shall be\n added unto you\u201d; _1 Cor. 2:9\u2014_\u201cThings which eye saw not, and ear\n heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever\n things God prepared for them that love him.\u201d\n\n Regulus goes back to Carthage to die rather than break his promise\n to his enemies. George William Curtis economizes for years, and\n gives up all hope of being himself a rich man, in order that he\n may pay the debts of his deceased father. When General Grant sold\n all the presents made to him by the crowned heads of Europe, and\n paid the obligations in which his insolvent son had involved him,\n he said: \u201cBetter poverty and honor, than wealth and disgrace.\u201d\n Many a business man would rather die than fail to fulfil his\n promise and let his note go to protest. \u201cMaxwelton braes are\n bonnie, Where early falls the dew, And \u2019twas there that Annie\n Laurie Gave me her promise true; Which ne\u2019er forget will I; And\n for bonnie Annie Laurie I\u2019d lay me down and dee.\u201d Betray the man\n she loves? Not \u201cTill a\u2019 the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks\n melt wi\u2019the sun.\u201d God\u2019s truth will not be less than that of mortal\n man. God\u2019s veracity is the natural correlate to our faith.\n\n\n2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.\n\n\nBy mercy and goodness we mean the transitive love of God in its two-fold\nrelation to the disobedient and to the obedient portions of his creatures.\n\n\n _Titus 3:4\u2014_\u201chis love toward man\u201d; _Rom. 2:4\u2014_\u201cgoodness of God\u201d;\n _Mat. 5:44, 45\u2014_\u201clove your enemies ... that ye may be sons of your\n Father\u201d; _John 3:16\u2014_\u201cGod so loved the world\u201d; _2 Pet.\n 1:3\u2014_\u201cgranted unto us all things that pertain unto life and\n godliness\u201d; _Rom. 8:32\u2014_\u201cfreely give us all things\u201d; _John\n 4:10\u2014_\u201cHerein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved\n us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.\u201d\n\n\n(_a_) Mercy is that eternal principle of God\u2019s nature which leads him to\nseek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed\nthemselves to his will, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice.\n\n\n Martensen: \u201cViewed in relation to sin, eternal love is\n compassionate grace.\u201d God\u2019s continued importation of natural life\n is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what he desires to do\n for his creatures in the higher sphere\u2014the communication of\n spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When he bids us\n love our enemies, he only bids us follow his own example.\n Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 2:2\u2014\u201cWilt thou draw near the nature\n of the gods? Draw near them, then, in being merciful.\u201d Twelfth\n Night, 3:4\u2014\u201cIn nature there\u2019s no blemish but the mind; None can be\n called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Goodness is the eternal principle of God\u2019s nature which leads him to\ncommunicate of his own life and blessedness to those who are like him in\nmoral character. Goodness, therefore, is nearly identical with the love of\ncomplacency; mercy, with the love of benevolence.\n\n\n Notice, however, that transitive love is but an outward\n manifestation of immanent love. The eternal and perfect object of\n God\u2019s love is in his own nature. Men become subordinate objects of\n that love only as they become connected and identified with its\n principal object, the image of God\u2019s perfections in Christ. Only\n in the Son do men become sons of God. To this is requisite an\n acceptance of Christ on the part of man. Thus it can be said that\n God imparts himself to men just so far as men are willing to\n receive him. And as God gives himself to men, in all his moral\n attributes, to answer for them and to renew them in character,\n there is truth in the statement of Nordell (Examiner, Jan. 17,\n 1884) that \u201cthe maintenance of holiness is the function of divine\n justice; the diffusion of holiness is the function of divine\n love.\u201d We may grant this as substantially true, while yet we deny\n that love is a mere form or manifestation of holiness.\n Self-impartation is different from self-affirmation. The attribute\n which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute\n which moves him to maintain. The two ideas of holiness and of love\n are as distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of\n generosity on the other. Park: \u201cGod loves Satan, in a certain\n sense, and we ought to.\u201d Shedd: \u201cThis same love of compassion God\n feels toward the non-elect; but the expression of that compassion\n is forbidden for reasons which are sufficient for God, but are\n entirely unknown to the creature.\u201d The goodness of God is the\n basis of _reward_, under God\u2019s government. Faithfulness leads God\n to keep his promises; goodness leads him to make them.\n\n Edwards, Nature of Virtue, in Works, 2:263\u2014Love of benevolence\n does not presuppose beauty in its object. Love of complacence does\n presuppose beauty. Virtue is not love to an object for its beauty.\n The beauty of intelligent beings does not consist in love for\n beauty, or virtue in love for virtue. Virtue is love for being in\n general, exercised in a general good will. This is the doctrine of\n Edwards. We prefer to say that virtue is love, not for being in\n general, but for good being, and so for God, the holy One. The\n love of compassion is perfectly compatible with hatred of evil and\n with indignation against one who commits it. Love does not\n necessarily imply approval, but it does imply desire that all\n creatures should fulfil the purpose of their existence by being\n morally conformed to the holy One; see Godet, in The Atonement,\n 339.\n\n _Rom. 5:8\u2014_\u201cGod commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while\n we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.\u201d We ought to love our\n enemies, and Satan is our worst enemy. We ought to will the good\n of Satan, or cherish toward him the love of benevolence, though\n not the love of complacence. This does not involve a condoning of\n his sin, or an ignoring of his moral depravity, as seems implied\n in the verses of Wm. C. Gannett: \u201cThe poem hangs on the berry-bush\n When comes the poet\u2019s eye; The street begins to masquerade When\n Shakespeare passes by. The Christ sees white in Judas\u2019 heart And\n loves his traitor well; The God, to angel his new heaven, Explores\n his deepest hell.\u201d\n\n\n3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.\n\n\nBy justice and righteousness we mean the transitive holiness of God, in\nvirtue of which his treatment of his creatures conforms to the purity of\nhis nature,\u2014righteousness demanding from all moral beings conformity to\nthe moral perfection of God, and justice visiting non-conformity to that\nperfection with penal loss or suffering.\n\n\n _Gen. 18:25\u2014_\u201cshall not the Judge of all the earth do right?\u201d\n _Deut. 32:4\u2014_\u201cAll his ways are justice; A God of faithfulness and\n without iniquity, Just and right is he\u201d; _Ps. 5:5\u2014_\u201cThou hatest\n all workers of iniquity\u201d; _7:9-12\u2014_\u201cthe righteous God trieth the\n hearts ... saveth the upright ... is a righteous judge, Yea, a God\n that hath indignation every day\u201d; _18:24-26\u2014_\u201cJehovah recompensed\n me according to my righteousness.... With the merciful, thou wilt\n show thyself merciful ... with the perverse thou wilt show thyself\n froward\u201d; _Mat. 5:48\u2014_\u201cYe therefore shall be perfect, as your\n heavenly Father is perfect\u201d; _Rom. 2:6\u2014_\u201cwill render to every man\n according to his works\u201d; _1 Pet. 1:16\u2014_\u201cYe shall be holy; for I am\n holy.\u201d These passages show that God loves the same persons whom he\n hates. It is not true that he hates the sin, but loves the sinner;\n he both hates and loves the sinner himself, hates him as he is a\n living and wilful antagonist of truth and holiness, loves him as\n he is a creature capable of good and ruined by his transgression.\n\n There is no abstract sin that can be hated apart from the persons\n in whom that sin is represented and embodied. Thomas Fuller found\n it difficult to starve the profaneness but to feed the person of\n the impudent beggar who applied to him for food. Mr. Finney\n declared that he would kill the slave-catcher, but would love him\n with all his heart. In our civil war Dr. Kirk said: \u201cGod knows\n that we love the rebels, but God also knows that we will kill them\n if they do not lay down their arms.\u201d The complex nature of God not\n only permits but necessitates this same double treatment of the\n sinner, and the earthly father experiences the same conflict of\n emotions when his heart yearns over the corrupt son whom he is\n compelled to banish from the household. Moberly, Atonement and\n Personality, 7\u2014\u201cIt is the sinner who is punished, not the sin.\u201d\n\n\n(_a_) Since justice and righteousness are simply transitive\nholiness\u2014righteousness designating this holiness chiefly in its mandatory,\njustice chiefly in its punitive, aspect,\u2014they are not mere manifestations\nof benevolence, or of God\u2019s disposition to secure the highest happiness of\nhis creatures, nor are they grounded in the nature of things as something\napart from or above God.\n\n\n Cremer, N. T. Lexicon: \u03b4\u03af\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 = \u201cthe perfect coincidence existing\n between God\u2019s nature, which is the standard for all, and his\n acts.\u201d Justice and righteousness are simply holiness exercised\n toward creatures. The same holiness which exists in God in\n eternity past manifests itself as justice and righteousness, so\n soon as intelligent creatures come into being. Much that was said\n under Holiness as an immanent attribute of God is equally\n applicable here. The modern tendency to confound holiness with\n love shows itself in the merging of justice and righteousness in\n mere benevolence. Instances of this tendency are the following:\n Ritschl, Unterricht, \u00a7 16\u2014\u201cThe righteousness of God denotes the\n manner in which God carries out his loving will in the redemption\n alike of humanity as a whole and of individual men; hence his\n righteousness is indistinguishable from his grace\u201d; see also\n Ritschl, Rechtf. und Vers\u00f6hnung, 2:113; 3:296. Prof. George M.\n Forbes: \u201cOnly right makes love moral; only love makes right\n moral.\u201d Jones, Robert Browning, 70\u2014\u201cIs it not beneficence that\n places death at the heart of sin? Carlyle forgot this. God is not\n simply a great taskmaster. The power that imposes law is not an\n alien power.\u201d D\u2019Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 237-240\u2014\u201cHow can\n self-realization be the realization of others? Why must the true\n good be always the common good? Why is the end of each the end of\n all?... We need a concrete universal which will unify all\n persons.\u201d\n\n So also, Harris, Kingdom of Christ on Earth, 39-42; God the\n Creator, 287, 290, 302\u2014\u201cLove, as required and regulated by reason,\n may be called righteousness. Love is universal good will or\n benevolence, regulated in its exercise by righteousness. Love is\n the choice of God and man as the objects of trust and service.\n This choice involves the determination of the will to seek\n universal well-being, and in this aspect it is benevolence. It\n also involves the consent of the will to the reason, and the\n determination to regulate all action in seeking well-being by its\n truths, laws, and ideals; and in this aspect it is\n righteousness.... Justice is the consent of the will to the law of\n love, in its authority, its requirements, and its sanctions. God\u2019s\n wrath is the necessary reaction of this law of love in the\n constitution and order of the universe against the wilful violator\n of it, and Christ\u2019s sufferings atone for sin by asserting and\n maintaining the authority, universality, and inviolability of\n God\u2019s law of love in his redemption of men and his forgiveness of\n their sins.... Righteousness cannot be the whole of love, for this\n would shut us up to the merely formal principle of the law without\n telling us what the law requires. Benevolence cannot be the whole\n of love, for this would shut us up to hedonism, in the form of\n utilitarianism, excluding righteousness from the character of God\n and man.\u201d\n\n Newman Smyth also, in his Christian Ethics, 227-231, tells us that\n \u201clove, as self-affirming, is righteousness; as self-imparting, is\n benevolence; as self-finding in others, is sympathy.\n Righteousness, as subjective regard for our own moral being, is\n holiness; as objective regard for the persons of others, is\n justice. Holiness is involved in love as its essential respect to\n itself; the heavenly Father is the holy Father (_John 17:11_).\n Love contains in its unity a trinity of virtue. Love affirms its\n own worthiness, imparts to others its good, and finds its life\n again in the well-being of others. The ethical limit of\n self-impartation is found in self-affirmation. Love in\n self-bestowal cannot become suicidal. The benevolence of love has\n its moral bounds in the holiness of love. True love in God\n maintains its transcendence, and excludes pantheism.\u201d\n\n The above doctrine, quoted for substance from Newman Smyth, seems\n to us unwarrantably to include in love what properly belongs to\n holiness. It virtually denies that holiness has any independent\n existence as an attribute of God. To make holiness a manifestation\n of love seems to us as irrational as to say that self-affirmation\n is a form of self-impartation. The concession that holiness\n regulates and limits love shows that holiness cannot itself be\n love, but must be an independent and superior attribute. Right\n furnishes the rule and law for love, but it is not true that love\n furnishes the rule and law for right. There is no such double\n sovereignty as this theory would imply. The one attribute that is\n independent and supreme is holiness, and love is simply the\n impulse to communicate this holiness.\n\n William Ashmore: \u201cDr. Clarke lays great emphasis on the character\n of \u2018a good God.\u2019... But he is more than a merely _good_ God; he is\n a just God, and a righteous God, and a holy God\u2014a God who is\n \u2018angry with the wicked,\u2019 even while ready to forgive them, if they\n are willing to repent in his way, and not in their own. He is the\n God who brought in a flood upon the world of the ungodly; who\n rained down fire and brimstone from heaven; and who is to come in\n \u2018flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God\u2019 and\n obey not the gospel of his son.... Paul reasoned about both the\n \u2018goodness\u2019 and the \u2018severity\u2019 of God.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Transitive holiness, as righteousness, imposes law in conscience and\nScripture, and may be called legislative holiness. As justice, it executes\nthe penalties of law, and may be called distributive or judicial holiness.\nIn righteousness God reveals chiefly his love of holiness; in justice,\nchiefly his hatred of sin.\n\n\n The self-affirming purity of God demands a like purity in those\n who have been made in his image. As God wills and maintains his\n own moral excellence, so all creatures must will and maintain the\n moral excellence of God. There can be only one centre in the solar\n system,\u2014the sun is its own centre and the centre for all the\n planets also. So God\u2019s purity is the object of his own will,\u2014it\n must be the object of all the wills of all his creatures also.\n Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 282\u2014\u201cIt is not rational or safe for the\n hand to separate itself from the heart. This is a _universe_, and\n God is the heart of the great system. Altruism is not the result\n of society, but society is the result of altruism. It begins in\n creatures far below man. The animals which know how to combine\n have the greatest chance of survival. The unsociable animal dies\n out. The most perfect organism is the most sociable. Right is the\n debt which the part owes to the whole.\u201d This seems to us but a\n partial expression of the truth. Right is more than a debt to\n others,\u2014it is a debt to one\u2019s self, and the self-affirming,\n self-preserving, self-respecting element constitutes the limit and\n standard of all outgoing activity. The sentiment of loyalty is\n largely a reverence for this principle of order and stability in\n government. _Ps. 145:5\u2014_\u201cOf the glorious majesty of thine honor,\n And of thy wondrous works, will I meditate\u201d; _97:2\u2014_\u201cClouds and\n darkness are round about him: Righteousness and justice are the\n foundation of his throne.\u201d\n\n John Milton, Eikonoklastes: \u201cTruth and justice are all one; for\n truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but truth in\n our practice.... For truth is properly no more than contemplation,\n and her utmost efficiency is but teaching; but justice in her very\n essence is all strength and activity, and hath a sword put into\n her hand to use against all violence and oppression on the earth.\n She it is who accepts no person, and exempts none from the\n severity of her stroke.\u201d A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,\n 326\u2014\u201cEven the poet has not dared to represent Jupiter torturing\n Prometheus without the dim figure of Avenging Fate waiting\n silently in the background.... Evolution working out a nobler and\n nobler justice is proof that God is just. Here is \u2018preferential\n action\u2019.\u201d S. S. Times, June 9, 1900\u2014\u201cThe natural man is born with\n a wrong personal astronomy. Man should give up the conceit of\n being the centre of all things. He should accept the Copernican\n theory, and content himself with a place on the edge of things\u2014the\n place he has always really had. We all laugh at John Jasper and\n his thesis that \u2018the sun do move.\u2019 The Copernican theory is\n leaking down into human relations, as appears from the current\n phrase: \u2018There are others\u2019.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Neither justice nor righteousness, therefore, is a matter of\narbitrary will. They are revelations of the inmost nature of God, the one\nin the form of moral requirement, the other in the form of judicial\nsanction. As God cannot but demand of his creatures that they be like him\nin moral character, so he cannot but enforce the law which he imposes upon\nthem. Justice just as much binds God to punish as it binds the sinner to\nbe punished.\n\n\n All arbitrariness is excluded here. God is what he is\u2014infinite\n purity. He cannot change. If creatures are to attain the end of\n their being, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice is\n nothing but the recognition and enforcement of this natural\n necessity. Law is only the transcript of God\u2019s nature. Justice\n does not make law,\u2014it only reveals law. Penalty is only the\n reaction of God\u2019s holiness against that which is its opposite.\n Since righteousness and justice are only legislative and\n retributive holiness, God can cease to demand purity and to punish\n sin only when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases\n to be God. \u201cJudex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.\u201d\n\n Simon, Reconciliation, 141\u2014\u201cTo claim the performance of duty is as\n truly obligatory as it is obligatory to perform the duty which is\n prescribed.\u201d E. H. Johnson, Systematic Theology, 84\u2014\u201cBenevolence\n intends what is well for the creature; justice insists on what is\n fit. But the well-for-us and the fit-for-us precisely coincide.\n The only thing that is well for us is our normal employment and\n development; but to provide for this is precisely what is fitting\n and therefore due to us. In the divine nature the distinction\n between justice and benevolence is one of form.\u201d We criticize this\n utterance as not sufficiently taking into account the nature of\n the right. The right is not merely the fit. Fitness is only\n general adaptation which may have in it no ethical element,\n whereas right is solely and exclusively ethical. The right\n therefore regulates the fit and constitutes its standard. The\n well-for-us is to be determined by the right-for-us, but not _vice\n versa_. George W. Northrup: \u201cGod is not bound to bestow the same\n endowments upon creatures, nor to keep all in a state of holiness\n forever, nor to redeem the fallen, nor to secure the greatest\n happiness of the universe. But he is bound to purpose and to do\n what his absolute holiness requires. He has no attribute, no will,\n no sovereignty, above this law of his being. He cannot lie, he\n cannot deny himself, he cannot look upon sin with complacency, he\n cannot acquit the guilty without an atonement.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) Neither justice nor righteousness bestows rewards. This follows from\nthe fact that obedience is due to God, instead of being optional or a\ngratuity. No creature can claim anything for his obedience. If God\nrewards, he rewards in virtue of his goodness and faithfulness, not in\nvirtue of his justice or his righteousness. What the creature cannot\nclaim, however, Christ _can_ claim, and the rewards which are goodness to\nthe creature are righteousness to Christ. God rewards Christ\u2019s work _for_\nus and _in_ us.\n\n\n Bruch, Eigenschaftslehre, 280-282, and John Austin, Province of\n Jurisprudence, 1:88-93, 220-223, both deny, and rightly deny, that\n justice bestows rewards. Justice simply punishes infractions of\n law. In _Mat. 25:34\u2014_\u201cinherit the kingdom\u201d\u2014inheritance implies no\n merit; _46_\u2014the wicked are adjudged to eternal punishment; the\n righteous, not to eternal reward, but to eternal life. _Luke\n 17:7-10\u2014_\u201cwhen ye shall have done all the things that are\n commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done\n that which it was our duty to do.\u201d _Rom. 6:23_\u2014punishment is the\n \u201c_wages of sin_\u201d: but salvation is \u201c_the gift of God_\u201d; _2:6_\u2014God\n rewards, not _on account of_ man\u2019s work but \u201c_according to his\n works_.\u201d Reward is thus seen to be in Scripture a matter of grace\n to the creature; only to the Christ who works for us in atonement,\n and in us in regeneration and sanctification, is reward a matter\n of debt (see also _John 6:27_ and _2 John 8_). Martineau, Types,\n 2:86, 244, 249\u2014\u201cMerit is toward man; virtue toward God.\u201d\n\n All mere service is unprofitable, because it furnishes only an\n equivalent to duty, and there is no margin. Works of\n supererogation are impossible, because our all is due to God. He\n would have us rise into the region of friendship, realize that he\n has been treating us not as Master but as Father, enter into a\n relation of uncalculating love. With this proviso that rewards are\n matters of grace, not of debt, we may assent to the maxim of\n Solon: \u201cA republic walks upon two feet\u2014just punishment for the\n unworthy and due reward for the worthy.\u201d George Harris, Moral\n Evolution, 139\u2014\u201cLove seeks righteousness, and is satisfied with\n nothing other than that.\u201d But when Harris adopts the words of the\n poet: \u201cThe very wrath from pity grew, From love of men the hate of\n wrong,\u201d he seems to us virtually to deny that God hates evil for\n any other reason than because of its utilitarian disadvantages,\n and to imply that good has no independent existence in his nature.\n Bowne, Ethics, 171\u2014\u201cMerit is desert of reward, or better, desert\n of moral approval.\u201d Tennyson: \u201cFor merit lives from man to man,\n And not from man, O Lord, to thee.\u201d Baxter: \u201c_Desert_ is written\n over the gate of hell; but over the gate of heaven only, _The Gift\n of God_.\u201d\n\n\n(_e_) Justice in God, as the revelation of his holiness, is devoid of all\npassion or caprice. There is in God no selfish anger. The penalties he\ninflicts upon transgression are not vindictive but vindicative. They\nexpress the revulsion of God\u2019s nature from moral evil, the judicial\nindignation of purity against impurity, the self-assertion of infinite\nholiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. But because its\ndecisions are calm, they are irreversible.\n\n\n Anger, within certain limits, is a duty of man. _Ps. 97:10\u2014_\u201cye\n that love Jehovah, hate evil\u201d; _Eph. 4:28\u2014_\u201cBe ye angry, and sin\n not.\u201d The calm indignation of the judge, who pronounces sentence\n with tears, is the true image of the holy anger of God against\n sin. Weber, Zorn Gottes, 28, makes wrath only the jealousy of\n love. It is more truly the jealousy of holiness. Prof. W. A.\n Stevens, Com. on _1 Thess. 2:10_\u2014\u201c_Holily_ and _righteously_ are\n terms that describe the same conduct in two aspects; the former,\n as conformed to God\u2019s character in itself; the latter, as\n conformed to his law; both are positive.\u201d Lillie, on _2 Thess.\n 1:6_\u2014\u201cJudgment is \u2018_a righteous thing with God_.\u2019 Divine justice\n requires it for its own satisfaction.\u201d See Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:175-178, 365-385; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:180, 181.\n\n Of Gaston de Foix, the old chronicler admirably wrote: \u201cHe loved\n what ought to be loved, and hated what ought to be hated, and\n never had miscreant with him.\u201d Compare _Ps. 101:5, 6\u2014_\u201cHim that\n hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer. Mine eyes\n shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with\n me.\u201d Even Horace Bushnell spoke of the \u201cwrath-principle\u201d in God.\n _1 K. 11:9\u2014_\u201cAnd Jehovah was angry with Solomon\u201d because of his\n polygamy. Jesus\u2019 anger was no less noble than his love. The love\n of the right involved hatred of the wrong. Those may hate who hate\n evil for its hatefulness and for the sake of God. Hate sin in\n yourself first, and then you may hate it in itself and in the\n world. Be angry only in Christ and with the wrath of God. W. C.\n Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 264\u2014\u201cBut we must purge ourselves of\n self-regard, Or we are sinful in abhorring sin.\u201d Instance Judge\n Harris\u2019s pity, as he sentenced the murderer; see A. H. Strong,\n Philosophy and Religion, 192, 193.\n\n Horace\u2019s \u201cIra furor brevis est\u201d\u2014\u201cAnger is a temporary madness\u201d\u2014is\n true only of selfish and sinful anger. Hence the man who is angry\n is popularly called \u201cmad.\u201d But anger, though apt to become sinful,\n is not necessarily so. Just anger is neither madness, nor is it\n brief. Instance the judicial anger of the church of Corinth in\n inflicting excommunication: _2 Cor. 7:11\u2014_\u201cwhat indignation, yea\n what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging!\u201d\n The only revenge permissible to the Christian church is that in\n which it pursues and exterminates sin. To be incapable of moral\n indignation against wrong is to lack real love for the right. Dr.\n Arnold of Rugby was never sure of a boy who only loved good; till\n the boy also began to hate evil, Dr. Arnold did not feel that he\n was safe. Herbert Spencer said that good nature with Americans\n became a crime. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty: \u201cThere is one thing\n worse than corruption, and that is acquiescence in corruption.\u201d\n\n Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 139\u2014\u201cXenophon intends to say a very\n commendable thing of Cyrus the Younger, when he writes of him that\n no one had done more good to his friends or more harm to his\n enemies.\u201d Luther said to a monkish antagonist: \u201cI will break in\n pieces your heart of brass and pulverize your iron brains.\u201d Shedd,\n Dogmatic Theology, 1:175-178\u2014\u201cHuman character is worthless in\n proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of\n Charles II that \u2018he felt no gratitude for benefits, and no\n resentment for wrongs; he did not love anyone, and he did not hate\n anyone.\u2019 He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and the only\n feeling he had was contempt.\u201d But see the death-bed scene of the\n \u201cmerry monarch,\u201d as portrayed in Bp. Burnet, Evelyn\u2019s Memoirs, or\n the Life of Bp. Ken. Truly \u201cThe end of mirth is heaviness\u201d_ (Prov.\n 14:13)_.\n\n Stout, Manual of Psychology, 22\u2014\u201cCharles Lamb tells us that his\n friend George Dyer could never be brought to say anything in\n condemnation of the most atrocious crimes, except that the\n criminal must have been very eccentric.\u201d Professor Seeley: \u201cNo\n heart is pure that is not passionate.\u201d D. W. Simon, Redemption of\n Man, 249, 250, says that God\u2019s resentment \u201cis a resentment of an\n essentially altruistic character.\u201d If this means that it is\n perfectly consistent with love for the sinner, we can accept the\n statement; if it means that love is the only source of the\n resentment, we regard the statement as a misinterpretation of\n God\u2019s justice, which is but the manifestation of his holiness and\n is not a mere expression of his love. See a similar statement of\n Lidgett, Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, 251\u2014\u201cBecause God is\n love, his love co\u00ebxists with his wrath against sinners, is the\n very life of that wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath\n as its instrument, while at the same time it seeks and supplies a\n propitiation.\u201d This statement ignores the fact that punishment is\n never in Scripture regarded as an expression of God\u2019s love, but\n always of God\u2019s holiness. When we say that we love God, let us\n make sure that it is the true God, the God of holiness, that we\n love, for only this love will make us like him.\n\n The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against\n moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened\n conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection\n of the awful revulsion of God\u2019s infinite justice from the impurity\n and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic,\n necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in\n self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see _Jer. 44:4\u2014_\u201cOh,\n do not this abominable thing that I hate!\u201d _Num. 32:23\u2014_\u201cbe sure\n your sin will find you out\u201d; _Heb. 10:30, 31\u2014_\u201cFor we know him\n that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And\n again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to\n fall into the hands of the living God.\u201d On justice as an attribute\n of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government,\n 2:253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works,\n 10:483-624.\n\n\n\nVII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.\n\n\nThe attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection and\nwill in man, no one of them is to be conceived of as exercised separately\nfrom the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others.\nGod\u2019s love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God\u2019s knowledge,\npower, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high\nrank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy\nof higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God,\nthan the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.\nAnd yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and\nof its supremacy we now proceed to speak.\n\n\n Water is not water unless composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen\n cannot be resolved into hydrogen, nor hydrogen into oxygen. Oxygen\n has its own character, though only in combination with hydrogen\n does it appear in water. Will in man never acts without intellect\n and sensibility, yet will, more than intellect or sensibility, is\n the manifestation of the man. So when God acts, he manifests not\n one attribute alone, but his total moral excellence. Yet holiness,\n as an attribute of God, has rights peculiar to itself; it\n determines the attitude of the affections; it more than any other\n faculty constitutes God\u2019s moral being.\n\n Clarke, Christian Theology, 83,92\u2014\u201cGod would not be holy if he\n were not love, and could not be love if he were not holy. Love is\n an element in holiness. If this were lacking, there would be no\n perfect character as principle of his own action or as standard\n for us. On the other hand only the perfect being can be love. God\n must be free from all taint of selfishness in order to be love.\n Holiness requires God to act as love, for holiness is God\u2019s\n self-consistency. Love is the desire to impart holiness. Holiness\n makes God\u2019s character the standard for his creatures; but love,\n desiring to impart the best good, does the same. All work of love\n is work of holiness, and all work of holiness is work of love.\n Conflict of attributes is impossible, because holiness always\n includes love, and love always expresses holiness. They never need\n reconciliation with each other.\u201d\n\n The general correctness of the foregoing statement is impaired by\n the vagueness of its conception of holiness. The Scriptures do not\n regard holiness as including love, or make all the acts of\n holiness to be acts of love. Self-affirmation does not include\n self-impartation, and sin necessitates an exercise of holiness\n which is not also an exercise of love. But for the Cross, and\n God\u2019s suffering for sin of which the Cross is the expression,\n there would be conflict between holiness and love. The wisdom of\n God is most shown, not in reconciling man and God, but in\n reconciling the holy God with the loving God.\n\n\n1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.\n\n\nThat holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, is evident:\n\n(_a_) From Scripture,\u2014in which God\u2019s holiness is not only most constantly\nand powerfully impressed upon the attention of man, but is declared to be\nthe chief subject of rejoicing and adoration in heaven.\n\n\n It is God\u2019s attribute of holiness that first and most prominently\n presents itself to the mind of the sinner, and conscience only\n follows the method of Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:16\u2014_\u201cYe shall be holy;\n for I am holy\u201d; _Heb. 12:14\u2014_\u201cthe sanctification without which no\n man shall see the lord\u201d_;_ _cf._ _Luke 5:8\u2014_\u201cDepart from me; for I\n am a sinful man, O Lord.\u201d Yet this constant insistence upon\n holiness cannot be due simply to man\u2019s present state of sin, for\n in heaven, where there is no sin, there is the same reiteration:\n _Is. 6:3\u2014_\u201cHoly, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts\u201d; _Rev.\n 4:8\u2014_\u201cHoly, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty.\u201d Of no other\n attribute is it said that God\u2019s throne rests upon it: _Ps.\n 97:2\u2014_\u201cRighteousness and justice are the foundation of his\n throne\u201d; _99:4, 5, 9\u2014_\u201cThe king\u2019s strength also loveth justice....\n Exalt ye Jehovah our God.... holy is he.\u201d We would substitute the\n word holiness for the word love in the statement of Newman Smyth,\n Christian Ethics, 45\u2014\u201cWe assume that love is lord in the divine\n will, not that the will of God is sovereign over his love. God\u2019s\n omnipotence, as Dorner would say, exists for his love.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) From our own moral constitution,\u2014in which conscience asserts its\nsupremacy over every other impulse and affection of our nature. As we may\nbe kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be\nmerciful, but must be holy.\n\n\n See Bishop Butler\u2019s Sermons upon Human Nature, Bohn\u2019s ed.,\n 385-414, showing \u201cthe supremacy of conscience in the moral\n constitution of man.\u201d We must be just, before we are generous. So\n with God, justice must be done always; mercy is optional with him.\n He was not under obligation to provide a redemption for sinners:\n _2 Pet. 2:4\u2014_\u201cGod spared not angels when they sinned, but cast\n them down to hell.\u201d Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt.\n Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 277-298\u2014\u201cThe quality of justice is\n necessary exaction; but \u2018the quality of mercy is not\n (con)strained\u2019 \u201d [_cf._ Denham: \u201cHis mirth is forced and\n strained\u201d]. God can apply the salvation, after he has wrought it\n out, to whomsoever he will: _Rom. 9:18\u2014_\u201che hath mercy on whom he\n will.\u201d Young, Night-Thoughts, 4:233\u2014\u201cA God all mercy is a God\n unjust.\u201d Emerson: \u201cYour goodness must have some edge to it; else\n it is none.\u201d Martineau, Study, 2:100\u2014\u201cNo one can be just without\n subordinating Pity to the sense of Right.\u201d\n\n We may learn of God\u2019s holiness _a priori_. Even the heathen could\n say \u201cFiat justitia, ruat c\u0153lum,\u201d or \u201cpereat mundus.\u201d But, for our\n knowledge of God\u2019s mercy, we are dependent upon special\n revelation. Mercy, like omnipotence, may exist in God without\n being exercised. Mercy is not grace but debt, if God owes the\n exercise of it either to the sinner or to himself; _versus_ G. B.\n Stevens, in New Eng., 1888:421-443. \u201cBut justice is an attribute\n which not only _exists_ of necessity, but must be _exercised_ of\n necessity; because not to exercise it would be injustice\u201d; see\n Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:218, 219, 389, 390; 2:402, and Sermons to\n Nat. Man, 366. If it be said that, by parity of reasoning, for God\n not to exercise mercy is to show himself unmerciful,\u2014we reply that\n this is not true so long as higher interests require that exercise\n to be withheld. I am not unmerciful when I refuse to give the poor\n the money needed to pay an honest debt; nor is the Governor\n unmerciful when he refuses to pardon the condemned and unrepentant\n criminal. Mercy has its conditions, as we proceed to show, and it\n does not cease to _be_ when these conditions do not permit it to\n _be exercised_. Not so with justice: justice must always be\n exercised; when it ceases to _be exercised_, it also ceases to\n _be_.\n\n The story of the prodigal shows a love that ever reaches out after\n the son in the far country, but which is ever conditioned by the\n father\u2019s holiness and restrained from acting until the son has\n voluntarily forsaken his riotous living. A just father may banish\n a corrupt son from the household, yet may love him so tenderly\n that his banishment causes exquisite pain. E. G. Robinson: \u201cGod,\n Christ and the Holy Spirit have a conscience, that is, they\n distinguish between right and wrong.\u201d E. H. Johnson, Syst.\n Theology, 85, 86\u2014\u201cHoliness is primary as respects benevolence; for\n (_a_) Holiness is itself moral excellence, while the moral\n excellence of benevolence can be explained. (_b_) Holiness is an\n attribute of being, while benevolence is an attribute of action;\n but action presupposes and is controlled by being. (_c_)\n Benevolence must take counsel of holiness, since for a being to\n desire aught contrary to holiness would be to wish him harm, while\n that which holiness leads God to seek, benevolence finds best for\n the creature. (_d_) The Mosaic dispensation elaborately\n symbolized, and the Christian dispensation makes provision to\n meet, the requirements of holiness as supreme; _James\n 3:17_\u2014\u2018_First pure, then_ [by consequence] _peaceable_.\u2019 \u201d\n\n We are \u201c_to do justly_,\u201d as well as \u201cto love kindness, and to walk\n humbly with\u201d our God (_Micah 6:8_). Dr. Samuel Johnson: \u201cIt is\n surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society\n contains.\u201d There is a sinful mercy. A School Commissioner finds it\n terrible work to listen to the pleas of incompetent teachers\n begging that they may not be dismissed, and he can nerve himself\n for it only by remembering the children whose education may be\n affected by his refusal to do justice. Love and pity are not the\n whole of Christian duty, nor are they the ruling attributes of\n God.\n\n\n(_c_) From the actual dealings of God,\u2014in which holiness conditions and\nlimits the exercise of other attributes. Thus, for example, in Christ\u2019s\nredeeming work, though love makes the atonement, it is violated holiness\nthat requires it; and in the eternal punishment of the wicked, the demand\nof holiness for self-vindication overbears the pleading of love for the\nsufferers.\n\n\n Love cannot be the fundamental attribute of God, because love\n always requires a norm or standard, and this norm or standard is\n found only in holiness; _Phil. 1:9\u2014_\u201cAnd this I pray, that your\n love may abound yet more in knowledge and all discernment\u201d; see A.\n H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405. That which conditions all\n is highest of all. Holiness shows itself higher than love, in that\n it conditions love. Hence God\u2019s mercy does not consist in\n outraging his own law of holiness, but in enduring the penal\n affliction by which that law of holiness is satisfied. Conscience\n in man is but the reflex of holiness in God. Conscience demands\n either retribution or atonement. This demand Christ meets by his\n substituted suffering. His sacrifice assuages the thirst of\n conscience in man, as well as the demand of holiness in God: _John\n 6:55\u2014_\u201cFor my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.\u201d\n See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 280, 291, 292; Dogmatic\n Theology, 1:377, 378\u2014\u201cThe sovereignty and freedom of God in\n respect to justice relates not to the _abolition_, nor to the\n _relaxation_, but to the _substitution_, of punishment. It does\n not consist in any power to violate or waive legal claims. The\n exercise of the other attributes of God is regulated and\n conditioned by that of justice.... Where then is the mercy of God,\n in case justice is strictly satisfied by a vicarious person? There\n is mercy in _permitting_ another person to do for the sinner what\n the sinner is bound to do for himself; and greater mercy in\n _providing_ that person; and still greater mercy in _becoming_\n that person.\u201d\n\n Enthusiasm, like fire, must not only burn, but must be controlled.\n Man invented chimneys to keep in the heat but to let out the\n smoke. We need the walls of discretion and self-control to guide\n the flaming of our love. The holiness of God is the regulating\n principle of his nature. The ocean of his mercy is bounded by the\n shores of his justice. Even if holiness be God\u2019s self-love, in the\n sense of God\u2019s self-respect or self-preservation, still this\n self-love must condition love to creatures. Only as God maintains\n himself in his holiness, can he have anything of worth to give;\n love indeed is nothing but the self-communication of holiness. And\n if we say, with J. M. Whiton, that self-affirmation in a universe\n in which God is immanent is itself a form of self-impartation,\n still this form of self-impartation must condition and limit that\n other form of self-impartation which we call love to creatures.\n See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137-155, 346-353;\n Patton, art. on Retribution and the Divine Goodness, in Princeton\n Rev., Jan. 1878:8-16; Owen, Dissertation on the Divine Justice, in\n Works, 10: 483-624.\n\n\n(_d_) From God\u2019s eternal purpose of salvation,\u2014in which justice and mercy\nare reconciled only through the foreseen and predetermined sacrifice of\nChrist. The declaration that Christ is \u201cthe Lamb ... slain from the\nfoundation of the world\u201d implies the existence of a principle in the\ndivine nature which requires satisfaction, before God can enter upon the\nwork of redemption. That principle can be none other than holiness.\n\n\n Since both mercy and justice are exercised toward sinners of the\n human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is\n removed only by the atoning death of the God-man. Their opposing\n claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the\n reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God. This is\n intimated in _Rev. 13:8\u2014_\u201cthe Lamb that hath been slain from the\n foundation of the world.\u201d This same reconciliation is alluded to\n in _Ps. 85:10\u2014_\u201cMercy and truth are met together; Righteousness\n and peace have kissed each other\u201d; and in _Rom. 3:26\u2014_\u201cthat he\n might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in\n Jesus.\u201d The atonement, then, if man was to be saved, was\n necessary, not primarily on man\u2019s account, but on God\u2019s account.\n Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 279\u2014The sacrifice of Christ was an\n \u201catonement _ab intra_, a self-oblation on the part of Deity\n himself, by which to satisfy those immanent and eternal\n imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their\n satisfaction in the punishment of the transgressor, or else be\n outraged.\u201d Thus God\u2019s word of redemption, as well as his word of\n creation, is forever \u201csettled in heaven\u201d_ (Ps. 119:89)_. Its\n execution on the cross was \u201caccording to the pattern\u201d on high. The\n Mosaic sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Christ; but the\n sacrifice of Christ was but the temporal disclosure of an eternal\n fact in the nature of God. See Kreibig, Vers\u00f6hnung, 155, 156.\n\n God requires satisfaction because he is holiness, but he makes\n satisfaction because he is love. The Judge himself, with all his\n hatred of transgression, still loves the transgressor, and comes\n down from the bench to take the criminal\u2019s place and bear his\n penalty. But this is an eternal provision and an eternal\n sacrifice. _Heb. 9:14\u2014_\u201cthe blood of Christ, who through the\n eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God.\u201d\n Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 215, 216\u2014\u201cChrist\u2019s sacrifice was\n offered through the Spirit. It was not wrung from a reluctant soul\n through obedience to outward law; it came from the inner heart,\n from the impulse of undying love. It was a completed offering\n before Calvary began; it was seen by the Father before it was seen\n by the world. It was finished in the Spirit, ere it began in the\n flesh, finished in the hour when Christ exclaimed: \u2018not as I will,\n but as thou wilt\u2019_ (Mat. 26:39)._\u201d\n\n Lang, Homer, 506\u2014\u201cApollo is the bringer of pestilence and the\n averter of pestilence, in accordance with the well-known rule that\n the two opposite attributes should be combined in the same deity.\u201d\n Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: \u201cNeither angel, man nor world,\n could stand or can stand one moment in God\u2019s sight without\n beholding the same in the face of a Mediator; and therefore before\n him, with whom all things are present, the Lamb of God was slain\n before all worlds; without which eternal counsel of his, it was\n impossible for him to have descended to any work of creation.\u201d\n Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 819\u2014\u201cCreation is built\n on redemption lines\u201d\u2014which is to say that incarnation and\n atonement were included in God\u2019s original design of the world.\n\n\n2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.\n\n\nA. Erroneous Views. The ground of moral obligation is not\n\n(_a_) In power,\u2014whether of civil law (Hobbes, Gassendi), or of divine will\n(Occam, Descartes). We are not bound to obey either of these, except upon\nthe ground that they are right. This theory assumes that nothing is good\nor right in itself, and that morality is mere prudence.\n\n\n _Civil law_: See Hobbes, Leviathan, part i, chap. 6 and 13; part\n ii, chap. 30; Gassendi, Opera, 6:120. Upon this view, might makes\n right; the laws of Nero are always binding; a man may break his\n promise when civil law permits; there is no obligation to obey a\n father, a civil governor, or God himself, when once it is certain\n that the disobedience will be hidden, or when the offender is\n willing to incur the punishment. Martineau, Seat of Authority,\n 67\u2014\u201cMere magnitude of scale carries no moral quality; nor could a\n whole population of devils by unanimous ballot confer\n righteousness upon their will, or make it binding upon a single\n Abdiel.\u201d Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, xvii\u2014\u201cJustice, good, and\n truth were still Divine if, by some demon\u2019s will, Hatred and wrong\n had been proclaimed Law through the world, and right misnamed.\u201d\n\n _Divine will_: See Occam, lib. 2, qu\u00e6s. 19 (quoted in Porter,\n Moral Science, 125); Descartes (referred to in Hickok, Moral\n Science, 27, 28); Martineau, Types, 148\u2014\u201cDescartes held that the\n will of God is not the revealer but the inventor of moral\n distinctions. God could have made Euclid a farrago of lies, and\n Satan a model of moral perfection.\u201d Upon this view, right and\n wrong are variable quantities. Duns Scotus held that God\u2019s will\n makes not only truth but right. God can make lying to be virtuous\n and purity to be wrong. If Satan were God, we should be bound to\n obey him. God is essentially indifferent to right and wrong, good\n and evil. We reply that behind the divine will is the divine\n nature, and that in the moral perfection of that nature lies the\n only ground of moral obligation. God pours forth his love and\n exerts his power in accordance with some determining principle in\n his own nature. That principle is not happiness. Finney, Syst.\n Theology, 936, 937\u2014\u201cCould God\u2019s command make it obligatory upon us\n to will evil to him? If not, then his will is not the ground of\n moral obligation. The thing that is most valuable, namely, the\n highest good of God and of the universe must be both the end and\n the ground. It is the divine reason and not the divine will that\n perceives and affirms the law of conduct. The divine will\n publishes, but does not originate, the rule. God\u2019s will could not\n make vice to be virtuous.\u201d\n\n As between power or utility on the one hand, and right on the\n other hand, we must regard right as the more fundamental. We do\n not, however, as will be seen further on, place the ground of\n moral obligation even in right, considered as an abstract\n principle; but place it rather in the moral excellence of him who\n is the personal Right and therefore the source of right. Character\n obliges, and the master often bows in his heart to the servant,\n when this latter is the nobler man.\n\n\n(_b_) Nor in utility,\u2014whether our own happiness or advantage present or\neternal (Paley), for supreme regard for our own interest is not virtuous;\nor the greatest happiness or advantage to being in general (Edwards), for\nwe judge conduct to be useful because it is right, not right because it is\nuseful. This theory would compel us to believe that in eternity past God\nwas holy only because of the good he got from it,\u2014that is, there was no\nsuch thing as holiness in itself, and no such thing as moral character in\nGod.\n\n\n _Our own happiness_: Paley, Mor. and Pol. Philos., book i, chap.\n vii\u2014\u201cVirtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will\n of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.\u201d This unites\n (_a_) and (_b_). John Stuart Mill and Dr. N. W. Taylor held that\n our own happiness is the supreme end. These writers indeed regard\n the highest happiness as attained only by living for others\n (Mill\u2019s altruism), but they can assign no reason why one who knows\n no other happiness than the pleasures of sense should not adopt\n the maxim of Epicurus, who, according to Lucretius, taught that\n \u201cducit quemque voluptas.\u201d This theory renders virtue impossible;\n for a virtue which is mere regard to our own interest is not\n virtue but prudence. \u201cWe have a sense of right and wrong\n independently of all considerations of happiness or its loss.\u201d\n James Mill held that the utility is not the criterion of the\n morality but itself constitutes the morality. G. B. Foster well\n replies that virtue is not mere egoistic sagacity, and the moral\n act is not simply a clever business enterprise. All languages\n distinguish between virtue and prudence. To say that the virtues\n are great utilities is to confound the effect with the cause.\n Carlyle says that a man can do without happiness. Browning, Red\n Cotton Nightcap Country: \u201cThick heads ought to recognize The\n devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads\n Downward perhaps, but fiddles all the way.\u201d This is the morality\n of Mother Goose: \u201cHe put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And\n said, \u2018What a good boy am I!\u2019 \u201d\n\n E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 160\u2014\u201cUtility\n has nothing ultimate in itself, and therefore can furnish no\n ground of obligation. Utility is mere fitness of one thing to\n minister to something else.\u201d To say that things are right because\n they are useful, is like saying that things are beautiful because\n they are pleasing. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:170, 511,\n 556\u2014\u201cThe moment the appetites pass into the self-conscious state,\n and become ends instead of impulses, they draw to themselves terms\n of censure.... So intellectual conscientiousness, or strict\n submission of the mind to evidence, has its inspiration in pure\n love of truth, and would not survive an hour if entrusted to the\n keeping either of providence or of social affection.... Instincts,\n which provide for they know not what, are proof that _want_ is the\n original impulse to action, instead of pleasure being the end.\u201d On\n the happiness theory, appeals to self-interest on behalf of\n religion ought to be effective,\u2014as a matter of fact few are moved\n by them.\n\n Dewey, Psychology, 300, 362\u2014\u201cEmotion turned inward eats up itself.\n Live on feelings rather than on the things to which feelings\n belong, and you defeat your own end, exhaust your power of\n feeling, commit emotional suicide. Hence arise cynicism, the _nil\n admirari_ spirit, restless searching for the latest sensation. The\n only remedy is to get outside of self, to devote self to some\n worthy object, not for feeling\u2019s sake but for the sake of the\n object.... We do not desire an object because it gives us\n pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because it satisfies the\n impulse which, in connection with the idea of the object,\n constitutes the desire.... Pleasure is the accompaniment of the\n activity or development of the _self_.\u201d\n\n Salter, First Steps in Philosophy, 150\u2014\u201cIt is right to aim at\n happiness. Happiness is an end. Utilitarianism errs in making\n happiness the only and the highest end. It exalts a state of\n feeling into the supremely desirable thing. Intuitionalism gives\n the same place to a state of will. The truth includes both. The\n true end is the highest development of being, self and others, the\n realization of the divine idea, God in man.\u201d Bowne, Principles of\n Ethics, 96\u2014\u201cThe standard of appeal is not the actual happiness of\n the actual man but the normal happiness of the normal man....\n Happiness must have a law. But then also the law must lead to\n happiness.... The true ethical aim is to realize the good. But\n then the contents of this good have to be determined in accordance\n with an inborn ideal of human worth and dignity.... Not all good,\n but the true good, not the things which please, but the things\n which should please, are to be the aim of action.\u201d\n\n Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 223\u2014\u201cThe Utilitarian is really asking\n about the wisest method of embodying the ideal. He belongs to that\n second stage in which the moral artist considers through what\n material and in what form and color he may best realize his\n thought. What the ideal is, and why it is the highest, he does not\n tell us. Morality begins, not in feeling, but in reason. And\n reason is impersonal. It discerns the moral equality of\n personalities.\u201d Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 20\u2014Job speaks out\n his character like one of Robert Browning\u2019s heroes. He teaches\n that \u201cthere is a service of God which is not work for reward: it\n is a heart-loyalty, a hunger after God\u2019s presence, which survives\n loss and chastisement; which in spite of contradictory seeming\n cleaves to what is godlike as the needle seeks the pole; and which\n reaches up out of the darkness and hardness of this life into the\n light and love beyond.\u201d\n\n _Greatest good of being_: Not only Edwards, but Priestley,\n Bentham, Dwight, Finney, Hopkins, Fairchild, hold this view. See\n Edwards, Works, 2:261-304\u2014\u201cVirtue is benevolence toward being in\n general\u201d; Dwight, Theology, 3:150-162\u2014\u201cUtility the foundation of\n Virtue\u201d; Hopkins, Law of Love, 7-28; Fairchild, Moral Philosophy;\n Finney, Syst. Theol., 42-135. This theory regards good as a mere\n state of the sensibility, instead of consisting in purity of\n being. It forgets that in eternity past \u201clove for being in\n general\u201d = simply God\u2019s self-love, or God\u2019s regard for his own\n happiness. This implies that God is holy only for a purpose; he is\n bound to be unholy, if greater good would result; that is,\n holiness has no independent existence in his nature. We grant that\n a thing is often known to be right by the fact that it is useful;\n but this is very different from saying that its usefulness makes\n it right. \u201cUtility is only the setting of the diamond, which\n _marks_, but does not _make_, its value.\u201d \u201cIf utility be a\n criterion of rectitude, it is only because it is a revelation of\n the divine nature.\u201d See British Quarterly, July, 1877, on Matthew\n Arnold and Bishop Butler. Bp. Butler, Nature of Virtue, in Works,\n Bohn\u2019s ed., 334\u2014\u201cBenevolence is the true self-love.\u201d Love and\n holiness are obligatory in themselves, and not because they\n promote the general good. Cicero well said that they who\n confounded the _honestum_ with the _utile_ deserved to be banished\n from society. See criticism on Porter\u2019s Moral Science, in Lutheran\n Quarterly, Apr. 1885:325-331; also F. L. Patton, on Metaphysics of\n Oughtness, in Presb. Rev., 1886:127-150.\n\n Encyc. Britannica, 7:690, on Jonathan Edwards\u2014\u201cBeing in general,\n being without any qualities, is too abstract a thing to be the\n primary cause of love. The feeling which Edwards refers to is not\n love, but awe or reverence, and moreover necessarily a blind awe.\n Properly stated therefore, true virtue, according to Edwards,\n would consist in a blind awe of being in general,\u2014only this would\n be inconsistent with his definition of virtue as existing in God.\n In reality, as he makes virtue merely the second object of love,\n his theory becomes identical with that utilitarian theory with\n which the names of Hume, Bentham and Mill are associated.\u201d Hodge,\n Essays, 275\u2014\u201cIf obligation is due primarily to being in general,\n then there is no more virtue in loving God\u2014willing his good\u2014than\n there is in loving Satan. But love to Christ differs in its nature\n from benevolence toward the devil.\u201d Plainly virtue consists, not\n in love for mere being, but in love for good being, or in other\n words, in love for the holy God. Not the greatest good of being,\n but the holiness of God, is the ground of moral obligation.\n\n Dr. E. A. Park interprets the Edwardian theory as holding that\n virtue is love to all beings according to their value, love of the\n greater therefore more than the less, \u201clove to particular beings\n in a proportion compounded of the degree of being and the degree\n of virtue or benevolence to being which they have.\u201d Love is\n choice. Happiness, says Park, is not the sole good, much less the\n happiness of creatures. The _greatest_ good is holiness, though\n the _last_ good aimed at is happiness. Holiness is disinterested\n love\u2014free choice of the general above the private good. But we\n reply that this gives us no reason or standard for virtue. It does\n not tell us what is good nor why we should choose it. Martineau,\n Types, 2:70, 77, 471, 484\u2014\u201cWhy should I promote the general\n well-being? Why should I sacrifice myself for others? Only because\n this is godlike. It Would never have been prudent to do right, had\n it not been something infinitely more.... It is not fitness that\n makes an act moral, but it is its morality that makes it fit.\u201d\n\n Herbert Spencer must be classed as a utilitarian. He says that\n justice requires that \u201cevery man be free to do as he wills\n provided he infringes not the equal freedom of every other man.\u201d\n But, since this would permit injury to another by one willing to\n submit to injury in return, Mr. Spencer limits the freedom to\n \u201csuch actions as subserve life.\u201d This is practically equivalent to\n saying that the greatest sum of happiness is the ultimate end. On\n Jonathan Edwards, see Robert Hall, Works, 1:43 sq.; Alexander,\n Moral Science, 194-198; Bib. Repertory (Princeton Review), 25:22;\n Bib. Sacra, 9:176, 197; 10:403, 705.\n\n\n(_c_) Nor in the nature of things (Price),\u2014whether by this we mean their\nfitness (Clarke), truth (Wollaston), order (Jouffroy), relations\n(Wayland), worthiness (Hickok), sympathy (Adam Smith), or abstract right\n(Haven and Alexander); for this nature of things is not ultimate, but has\nits ground in the nature of God. We are bound to worship the highest; if\nanything exists beyond and above God, we are bound to worship that,\u2014that\nindeed is God.\n\n\n See Wayland, Moral Science, 33-48; Hickok, Moral Science, 27-34;\n Haven, Moral Philosophy, 27-50; Alexander, Moral Science, 159-198.\n In opposition to all the forms of this theory, we urge that\n nothing exists independently of or above God. \u201cIf the ground of\n morals exist independently of God, either it has ultimately no\n authority, or it usurps the throne of the Almighty. Any rational\n being who kept the law would be perfect without God, and the moral\n centre of all intelligences would be outside of God\u201d (Talbot). God\n is not a Jupiter controlled by Fate. He is subject to no law but\n the law of his own nature. _Noblesse oblige_,\u2014character\n rules,\u2014purity is the highest. And therefore to holiness all\n creatures, voluntarily or involuntarily, are constrained to bow.\n Hopkins, Law of Love, 77\u2014\u201cRight and wrong have nothing to do with\n things, but only with actions; nothing to do with any nature of\n things existing necessarily, but only with the nature of persons.\u201d\n Another has said: \u201cThe idea of right cannot be original, since\n right means conformity to some standard or rule.\u201d This standard or\n rule is not an abstraction, but an existing being\u2014the infinitely\n perfect God.\n\n Faber: \u201cFor right is right, since God is God; And right the day\n must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.\u201d\n Tennyson: \u201cAnd because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom\n in the scorn of consequence.\u201d Right is right, and I should will\n the right, not because God _wills_ it, but because God _is_ it. E.\n G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 178-180\u2014\u201cUtility\n and relations simply reveal the constitution of things and so\n represent God. Moral law was not made for purposes of utility, nor\n do relations constitute the reason for obligation. They only show\n what the nature of God is who made the universe and revealed\n himself in it. In his nature is found the _reason_ for morality.\u201d\n S. S. Times, Oct. 17, 1891\u2014\u201cOnly that is level which conforms to\n the curvature of the earth\u2019s surface. A straight line tangent to\n the earth\u2019s curve would at its ends be much further from the\n earth\u2019s centre than at its middle. Now equity means levelness. The\n standard of equity is not an impersonal thing, a \u2019nature of\n things\u2019 outside of God. Equity or righteousness is no more to be\n conceived independently of the divine centre of the moral world\n than is levelness comprehensible apart from the earth\u2019s centre.\u201d\n\n Since God finds the rule and limitation of his action solely in\n his own being, and his love is conditioned by his holiness, we\n must differ from such views as that of Moxom: \u201cWhether we define\n God\u2019s nature as perfect holiness or perfect love is immaterial,\n since his nature is manifested only through his action, that is,\n through his relation to other beings. Most of our reasoning on the\n divine standard of righteousness, or the ultimate ground of moral\n obligation, is reasoning in a circle, since we must always go back\n to God for the principle of his action; which principle we can\n know only by means of his action. God, the perfectly righteous\n Being, is the ideal standard of human righteousness. Righteousness\n in man therefore is conformity to the nature of God. God, in\n agreement with his perfect nature, always wills the perfectly good\n toward man. His righteousness is an expression of his love; his\n love is a manifestation of his righteousness.\u201d\n\n So Newman Smyth: \u201cRighteousness is the eternal genuineness of the\n divine love. It is not therefore an independent excellence, to be\n contrasted with, or even put in opposition to, benevolence; it is\n an essential part of love.\u201d In reply to which we urge as before\n that that which is the object of love, that which limits and\n conditions love, that which furnishes the norm and reason for\n love, cannot itself be love, nor hold merely equal rank with love.\n A double standard is as irrational in ethics as in commerce, and\n it leads in ethics to the same debasement of the higher values,\n and the same unsettling of relations, as has resulted in our\n currency from the attempt to make silver regulate gold at the same\n time that gold regulates silver.\n\n\nB. The Scriptural View.\u2014According to the Scriptures, the ground of moral\nobligation is the holiness of God, or the moral perfection of the divine\nnature, conformity to which is the law of our moral being (Robinson,\nChalmers, Calderwood, Gregory, Wuttke). We show this:\n\n(_a_) From the commands: \u201cYe shall be holy,\u201d where the ground of\nobligation assigned is simply and only: \u201cfor I am holy\u201d (1 Pet. 1:16); and\n\u201cYe therefore shall be perfect,\u201d where the standard laid down is: \u201cas your\nheavenly Father is perfect\u201d (Mat. 5:48). Here we have an ultimate reason\nand ground for being and doing right, namely, that God is right, or, in\nother words, that holiness is his nature.\n\n(_b_) From the nature of the love in which the whole law is summed up\n(Mat. 22:37\u2014\u201cThou shalt love the Lord thy God\u201d; Rom. 13:10\u2014\u201clove therefore\nis the fulfilment of the law\u201d). This love is not regard for abstract right\nor for the happiness of being, much less for one\u2019s own interest, but it is\nregard for God as the fountain and standard of moral excellence, or in\nother words, love for God as holy. Hence this love is the principle and\nsource of holiness in man.\n\n(_c_) From the example of Christ, whose life was essentially an exhibition\nof supreme regard for God, and of supreme devotion to his holy will. As\nChrist saw nothing good but what was in God (Mark 10:18\u2014\u201cnone is good save\none, even God\u201d), and did only what he saw the Father do (John 5:19; see\nalso 30\u2014\u201cI seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me\u201d), so\nfor us, to be like God is the sum of all duty, and God\u2019s infinite moral\nexcellence is the supreme reason why we should be like him.\n\n\n For statements of the correct view of the ground of moral\n obligation, see E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of\n Morality, 138-180; Chalmers, Moral Philosophy, 412-420;\n Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 112-122;\n Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:80-107; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena,\n in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274\u2014\u201cThe ground of all moral law is\n the nature of God, or the ethical nature of God in relation to the\n like nature in man, or the imperativeness of the divine nature.\u201d\n Plato: \u201cThe divine will is the fountain of all efficiency; the\n divine reason is the fountain, of all law; the divine nature is\n the fountain of all virtue.\u201d If it be said that God is love as\n well as holiness, we ask: Love to what? And the only answer is:\n Love to the right, or to holiness. To ask why right is a good, is\n no more sensible than to ask why happiness is a good. There must\n be something ultimate. Schiller said there are people who want to\n know why ten is not twelve. We cannot study character apart from\n conduct, nor conduct apart from character. But this does not\n prevent us from recognizing that character is the fundamental\n thing and that conduct is only the expression of it.\n\n The moral perfection of the divine nature includes truth and love,\n but since it is holiness that conditions the exercise of every\n other attribute, we must conclude that holiness is the ground of\n moral obligation. Infinity also unites with holiness to make it\n the perfect ground, but since the determining element is holiness,\n we call this, and not infinity, the ground of obligation. J. H.\n Harris, Baccalaureate Sermon, Bucknell University, 1890\u2014\u201cAs\n holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, so holiness is the\n supreme good of man. Aristotle perceived this when he declared the\n chief good of man to be energizing according to virtue.\n Christianity supplies the Holy Spirit and makes this energizing\n possible.\u201d Holiness is the goal of man\u2019s spiritual career; see _1\n Thess. 3:13\u2014_\u201cto the end he may establish your hearts unblamable\n in holiness before our God and Father.\u201d\n\n Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown\u2019s Rab and his Friends,\n 272\u2014\u201cHoliness and happiness are two notions of one thing....\n Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at one with the\n heart of God, it cannot but be miserable.\u201d It is more true to say\n that holiness and happiness are, as cause and effect, inseparably\n bound together. Martineau, Types, 1:xvi; 2:70-77\u2014\u201cTwo classes of\n facts it is indispensable for us to know: what are the springs of\n voluntary conduct, and what are its effects\u201d; Study, 1:26\u2014\u201cEthics\n must either perfect themselves in Religion, or disintegrate\n themselves into Hedonism.\u201d William Law remarks: \u201cEthics are not\n external but internal. The essence of a moral act does not lie in\n its result, but in the motive from which it springs. And that\n again is good or bad, according as it conforms to the character of\n God.\u201d For further discussion of the subject see our chapter on The\n Law of God. See also Thornwell, Theology, 1:363-373; Hinton, Art\n of Thinking, 47-62; Goldwin Smith, in Contemporary Review, March,\n 1882, and Jan. 1884; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 195-231,\n esp. 223.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.\n\n\nIn the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions which\nare represented to us under the figure of persons, and these three are\nequal. This tripersonality of the Godhead is exclusively a truth of\nrevelation. It is clearly, though not formally, made known in the New\nTestament, and intimations of it may be found in the Old.\n\nThe doctrine of the Trinity may be expressed in the six following\nstatements: 1. In Scripture there are three who are recognized as God. 2.\nThese three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to\nconceive of them as distinct persons. 3. This tripersonality of the divine\nnature is not merely economic and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.\n4. This tripersonality is not tritheism; for while there are three\npersons, there is but one essence. 5. The three persons, Father, Son and\nHoly Spirit, are equal. 6. Inscrutable yet not self-contradictory, this\ndoctrine furnishes the key to all other doctrines.\u2014These statements we\nproceed now to prove and to elucidate.\n\n\n Reason shows us the Unity of God; only revelation shows us the\n Trinity of God, thus filling out the indefinite outlines of this\n Unity and vivifying it. The term \u201cTrinity\u201d is not found in\n Scripture, although the conception it expresses is Scriptural. The\n invention of the term is ascribed to Tertullian. The Montanists\n first defined the personality of the Spirit, and first formulated\n the doctrine of the Trinity. The term \u201cTrinity\u201d is not a\n metaphysical one. It is only a designation of four facts: (1) the\n Father is God; (2) the Son is God; (3) the Spirit is God; (4)\n there is but one God.\n\n Park: \u201cThe doctrine of the Trinity does not on the one hand assert\n that three persons are united in one person, or three beings in\n one being, or three Gods in one God (tritheism); nor on the other\n hand that God merely manifests himself in three different ways\n (modal trinity, or trinity of manifestations); but rather that\n there are three eternal distinctions in the substance of God.\u201d\n Smyth, preface to Edwards, Observations on the Trinity: \u201cThe\n church doctrine of the Trinity affirms that there are in the\n Godhead three distinct hypostases or subsistences\u2014the Father, the\n Son and the Holy Spirit\u2014each possessing one and the same divine\n nature, though in a different manner. The essential points are (1)\n the unity of essence; (2) the reality of immanent or ontological\n distinctions.\u201d See Park on Edwards\u2019s View of the Trinity, in Bib.\n Sac., April, 1881:333. Princeton Essays, 1:28\u2014\u201cThere is one God;\n Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are this one God; there is such a\n distinction between Father, Son and Holy Spirit as to lay a\n sufficient ground for the reciprocal use of the personal\n pronouns.\u201d Joseph Cook: \u201c(1) The Father, the Son, and the Holy\n Ghost are one God; (2) each has a peculiarity incommunicable to\n the others; (3) neither is God without the others; (4) each, with\n the others, is God.\u201d\n\n We regard the doctrine of the Trinity as implicitly held by the\n apostles and as involved in the New Testament declarations with\n regard to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while we concede that the\n doctrine had not by the New Testament writers been formulated.\n They held it, as it were in solution; only time, reflection, and\n the shock of controversy and opposition, caused it to crystalize\n into definite and dogmatic form. Chadwick, Old and New\n Unitarianism, 59, 60, claims that the Jewish origin of\n Christianity shows that the Jewish Messiah could not originally\n have been conceived of as divine. If Jesus had claimed this, he\n would not have been taken before Pilate,\u2014the Jews would have\n dispatched him. The doctrine of the Trinity, says Chadwick, was\n not developed until the Council of Nice, 325. E. G. Robinson:\n \u201cThere was no doctrine of the Trinity in the Patristic period, as\n there was no doctrine of the Atonement before Anselm.\u201d The\n Outlook, Notes and Queries, March 30, 1901\u2014\u201cThe doctrine of the\n Trinity cannot be said to have taken final shape before the\n appearance of the so-called Athanasian Creed in the 8th or 9th\n century. The Nicene Creed, formulated in the 4th century, is\n termed by Dr. Schaff, from the orthodox point of view,\n \u2018semi-trinitarian.\u2019 The earliest time known at which Jesus was\n deified was, after the New Testament writers, in the letters of\n Ignatius, at the beginning of the second century.\u201d\n\n Gore, Incarnation, 179\u2014\u201cThe doctrine of the Trinity is not so much\n heard, as overheard, in the statements of Scripture.\u201d George P.\n Fisher quotes some able and pious friend of his as saying: \u201cWhat\n meets us in the New Testament is the _disjecta membra_ of the\n Trinity.\u201d G. B. Foster: \u201cThe doctrine of the Trinity is the\n Christian attempt to make intelligible the personality of God\n without dependence upon the world.\u201d Charles Kingsley said that,\n whether the doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible or no, it\n ought to be there, because our spiritual nature cries out for it.\n Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:250\u2014\u201cThough the doctrine of the\n Trinity is not discoverable by human reason, it is susceptible of\n a rational defense, when revealed.\u201d On New England Trinitarianism,\n see New World, June, 1896:272-295\u2014art. by Levi L. Paine. He says\n that the last phase of it is represented by Phillips Brooks, James\n M. Whiton and George A. Gordon. These hold to the essential\n divineness of humanity and pre\u00ebminently of Christ, the unique\n representative of mankind, who was, in this sense, a true\n incarnation of Deity. See also, L. L. Paine, Evolution of\n Trinitarianism, 141, 287.\n\n Neander declared that the Trinity is not a fundamental doctrine of\n Christianity. He was speaking however of the speculative,\n metaphysical form which the doctrine has assumed in theology. But\n he speaks very differently of the devotional and practical form in\n which the Scriptures present it, as in the baptismal formula and\n in the apostolic benediction. In regard to this he says: \u201cWe\n recognize therein the essential contents of Christianity summed up\n in brief.\u201d Whiton, Gloria Patri, 10, 11, 55, 91, 92\u2014\u201cGod\n transcendent, the Father, is revealed by God immanent, the Son.\n This one nature belongs equally to God, to Christ, and to mankind,\n and in this fact is grounded the immutableness of moral\n distinctions and the possibility of moral progress.... The\n immanent life of the universe is one with the transcendent Power;\n the filial stream is one with its paternal Fount. To Christ\n supremely belongs the name of Son, which includes all that life\n that is begotten of God. In Christ the before unconscious Sonship\n of the world awakes to consciousness of the Father. The Father is\n the Life transcendent, above all; the Son is Life immanent,\n through all; the Holy Spirit is the Life individualized, in all.\n In Christ we have collectivism; in the Holy Spirit we have\n individualism; as Bunsen says: \u2018The chief power in the world is\n personality.\u2019 \u201d\n\n For treatment of the whole doctrine, see Dorner, System of\n Doctrine, 1:344-465; Twesten, Dogmatik, and translation in Bib.\n Sac., 3:502; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:145-199; Thomasius, Christi\n Person und Werk, 1:57-135; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:203-229; Shedd,\n Dogm. Theol., 1:248-333, and History of Doctrine, 1:246-385;\n Farrar, Science and Theology, 138; Schaff, Nicene Doctrine of the\n Holy Trinity, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:209. For the Unitarian view,\n see Norton, Statement of Reasons, and J. F. Clarke, Truths and\n Errors of Orthodoxy.\n\n\n\nI. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.\n\n\n1. Proofs from the New Testament.\n\n\nA. The Father is recognized as God.\n\n\nThe Father is recognized as God,\u2014and that in so great a number of passages\n(such as John 6:27\u2014\u201chim the Father, even God, hath sealed,\u201d and 1 Pet.\n1:2\u2014\u201cforeknowledge of God the Father\u201d) that we need not delay to adduce\nextended proof.\n\n\nB. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.\n\n\n(_a_) He is expressly called God.\n\nIn John 1:1\u2014\u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f26\u03bd \u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2\u2014the absence of the article shows \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 to be\nthe predicate (_cf._ 4:24\u2014\u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2). This predicate precedes the verb\nby way of emphasis, to indicate progress in the thought = \u201cthe Logos was\nnot only with God, but was God\u201d (see Meyer and Luthardt, Comm. _in loco_).\n\u201cOnly \u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 can be the subject, for in the whole Introduction the\nquestion is, not who God is, but who the Logos is\u201d (Godet).\n\n\n Westcott in Bible Commentary, _in loco_\u2014\u201cThe predicate stands\n emphatically first. It is necessarily without the article,\n inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not\n identify his person. It would be pure Sabellianism to say: \u2018The\n Word was \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2.\u2019 Thus in verse 1 we have set forth the Word in\n his absolute eternal being, (_a_) his existence: beyond time;\n (_b_) his personal existence: in active communion with God; (_c_)\n his nature: God in essence.\u201d Marcus Dods, in Expositor\u2019s Greek\n Testament, _in loco_: \u201cThe Word is distinguishable from God, yet\n \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f26\u03bd \u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2\u2014the word was God, of divine nature; not \u2018a God,\u2019\n which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable, nor yet\n identical with all that can be called God, for then the article\n would have been inserted (_cf._ 1 John 3:4).\u201d\n\n\nIn John 1:18, \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u1f74\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2\u2014\u201cthe only begotten God\u201d\u2014must be regarded as\nthe correct reading, and as a plain ascription of absolute Deity to\nChrist. He is not simply the only revealer of God, but he is himself God\nrevealed.\n\n\n _John 1:18\u2014_\u201cNo man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten\n God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.\u201d In\n this passage, although Tischendorf (8th ed.) has \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u1f74\u03c2 \u1f51\u03b9\u03cc\u03c2,\n Westcott and Hort (with \u05d0*BC*L Pesh. Syr.) read \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u1f74\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 and\n the Rev. Vers. puts \u201c_the only begotten God_\u201d in the margin,\n though it retains \u201c_the only begotten Son_\u201d in the text. Harnack\n says the reading \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u1f74\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 is \u201cestablished beyond\n contradiction\u201d; see Westcott, Bib. Com. on John, pages 32, 33.\n Here then we have a new and unmistakable assertion of the deity of\n Christ. Meyer says that the apostles actually call Christ God only\n in _John 1:1_ and _20:28_, and that Paul never so recognizes him.\n But Meyer is able to maintain his position only by calling the\n doxologies to Christ, in _2 Tim. 4:18_, _Heb. 13:21_ and _2 Pet.\n 3:18_, post-apostolic. See Thayer, N. T. Lexicon, on \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, and on\n \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2.\n\n\nIn John 20:28, the address of Thomas \u1f49 \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03cc\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u2014\u201cMy Lord\nand my God\u201d\u2014since it was unrebuked by Christ, is equivalent to an\nassertion on his own part of his claim to Deity.\n\n\n _John 20:28\u2014_\u201cThomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my\n God.\u201d This address cannot be interpreted as a sudden appeal to God\n in surprise and admiration, without charging the apostle with\n profanity. Nor can it be considered a mere exhibition of\n overwrought enthusiasm, since it was accepted by Christ. Contrast\n the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the heathen at Lystra were\n bringing sacrifice to them as Jupiter and Mercury (_Acts\n 14:11-18_). The words of Thomas, as addressed directly to Christ\n and as accepted by Christ, can be regarded only as a just\n acknowledgment on the part of Thomas that Christ was his Lord and\n his God. Alford, Commentary, _in loco_: \u201cThe Socinian view that\n these words are merely an exclamation is refuted (1) by the fact\n that no such exclamations were in use among the Jews; (2) by the\n \u03b5\u1f36\u03c0\u03b5\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff7; (3) by the impossibility of referring the \u1f41 \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03cc\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\n to another than Jesus: see _verse 13_; (4) by the N. T. usage of\n expressing the vocative by the nominative with an article; (5) by\n the psychological absurdity of such a supposition: that one just\n convinced of the presence of him whom he dearly loved should,\n instead of addressing him, break out into an irrelevant cry; (6)\n by the further absurdity of supposing that, if such were the case,\n the Apostle John, who of all the sacred writers most constantly\n keeps in mind the object for which he is writing, should have\n recorded anything so beside that object; (7) by the intimate\n conjunction of \u03c0\u03b5\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c5\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2.\u201d _Cf._ _Mat. 5:34\u2014_\u201cSwear not ... by\n the heaven\u201d\u2014swearing by Jehovah is not mentioned, because no Jew\n did so swear. This exclamation of Thomas, the greatest doubter\n among the twelve, is the natural conclusion of John\u2019s gospel. The\n thesis \u201cthe Word was God\u201d_ (John 1:1)_ has now become part of the\n life and consciousness of the apostles. _Chapter 21_ is only an\n Epilogue, or Appendix, written later by John, to correct the error\n that he was not to die; see Westcott, Bible Com., _in loco_. The\n Deity of Christ is the subject of the apostle who best understood\n his Master. Lyman Beecher: \u201cJesus Christ is the acting Deity of\n the universe.\u201d\n\n\nIn Rom. 9:5, the clause \u1f41 \u1f62\u03bd \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b5\u1f50\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b7\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 cannot be\ntranslated \u201cblessed be the God over all,\u201d for \u1f62\u03bd is superfluous if the\nclause is a doxology; \u201c\u03b5\u1f50\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b7\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 precedes the name of God in a doxology,\nbut follows it, as here, in a description\u201d (Hovey). The clause can\ntherefore justly be interpreted only as a description of the higher nature\nof the Christ who had just been said, \u03c4\u1f78 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c3\u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03b1, or according to his\nlower nature, to have had his origin from Israel (see Tholuck, Com. _in\nloco_).\n\n\n Sanday, Com. on _Rom. 9:5_\u2014\u201cThe words would naturally refer to\n Christ, unless \u2018_God_\u2019 is so definitely a proper name that it\n would imply a contrast in itself. We have seen that this is not\n so.\u201d Hence Sanday translates: \u201c_of whom is the Christ as\n concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever_\u201d. See\n President T. Dwight, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:22-55; _per\n contra_, Ezra Abbot, in the same journal, 1881:1-19, and Denney,\n in Expositor\u2019s Gk. Test., _in loco_.\n\n\nIn Titus 2:13, \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b4\u03cc\u03be\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bc\u03b5\u03b3\u03ac\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c3\u03c9\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f21\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd\n\u1f38\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03a7\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 we regard (with Ellicott) as \u201ca direct, definite, and even\nstudied declaration of Christ\u2019s divinity\u201d = \u201cthe ... appearing of the\nglory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ\u201d (so English Revised\nVersion). \u1f18\u03c0\u03b9\u03c6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1 is a term applied specially to the Son and never to\nthe Father, and \u03bc\u03b5\u03b3\u03ac\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5 is uncalled for if used of the Father, but\npeculiarly appropriate if used of Christ. Upon the same principles we must\ninterpret the similar text 2 Pet. 1:1 (see Huther, in Meyer\u2019s Com.: \u201cThe\nclose juxtaposition indicates the author\u2019s certainty of the oneness of God\nand Jesus Christ\u201d).\n\n\n _Titus 2:13\u2014_\u201clooking for the blessed hope and appearing of the\n glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ\u201d\u2014so the English\n Revised Version. The American Revisers however translate: \u201cthe\n glory of the great God and Savior\u201d; and Westcott and Hort bracket\n the word \u1f21\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd. These considerations somewhat lessen the cogency of\n this passage as a proof-text, yet upon the whole the balance of\n argument seems to us still to incline in favor of Ellicott\u2019s\n interpretation as given above.\n\n\nIn Heb. 1:8, \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c5\u1f31\u03cc\u03bd; \u1f41 \u03b8\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5, \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2, \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b1\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd\u03b1 is\nquoted as an address to Christ, and verse 10 which follows\u2014\u201cThou, Lord, in\nthe beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth\u201d\u2014by applying to Christ\nan Old Testament ascription to Jehovah, shows that \u1f41 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, in verse 8, is\nused in the sense of absolute Godhead.\n\n\n It is sometimes objected that the ascription of the name God to\n Christ proves nothing as to his absolute deity, since angels and\n even human judges are called gods, as representing God\u2019s authority\n and executing his will. But we reply that, while it is true that\n the name is sometimes so applied, it is always with adjuncts and\n in connections which leave no doubt of its figurative and\n secondary meaning. When, however, the name is applied to Christ,\n it is, on the contrary, with adjuncts and in connections which\n leave no doubt that it signifies absolute Godhead. See _Ex.\n 4:16\u2014_\u201cthou shalt be to him as God\u201d; _7:1\u2014_\u201cSee, I have made thee\n as God to Pharaoh\u201d; _22:28\u2014_\u201cThou shalt not revile God, [marg.,\n _the judges_], nor curse a ruler of thy people\u201d; _Ps. 82:1\u2014_\u201cGod\n standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods\u201d\n [among the mighty]; _6\u2014_\u201cI said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons\n of the Most High\u201d; _7\u2014_\u201cNevertheless ye shall die like men, And\n fall like one of the princes.\u201d _Cf._ _John 10:34-36\u2014_\u201cIf he called\n them gods, unto whom the word of God came\u201d (who were God\u2019s\n commissioned and appointed representatives), how much more proper\n for him who is one with the Father to call himself God.\n\n As in _Ps. 82:7_ those who had been called gods are represented as\n dying, so in _Ps. 97:7\u2014_\u201cWorship him, all ye gods\u201d\u2014they are bidden\n to fall down before Jehovah. Ann. Par. Bible: \u201cAlthough the\n deities of the heathen have no positive existence, they are often\n described in Scripture as if they had, and are represented as\n bowing down before the majesty of Jehovah.\u201d This verse is quoted\n in _Heb. 1:6\u2014_\u201clet all the angels of God worship him\u201d\u2014_i. e._,\n Christ. Here Christ is identified with Jehovah. The quotation is\n made from the Septuagint, which has \u201c_angels_\u201d for \u201c_gods_.\u201d \u201cIts\n use here is in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word,\n which includes all that human error might regard as objects of\n worship.\u201d Those who are figuratively and rhetorically called\n \u201c_gods_\u201d are bidden to fall down in worship before him who is the\n true God, Jesus Christ. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:314;\n Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity, 10.\n\n\nIn 1 John 5:20\u2014\u1f10\u03c3\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u1ff7, \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c5\u1f31\u1ff7 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f38\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03a7\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u1ff7. \u03bf\u1f57\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\n\u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd \u1f41 \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u1f78\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2\u2014\u201cit would be a flat repetition, after the Father had\nbeen twice called \u1f41 \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2, to say now again: \u2018this is \u1f41 \u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd\u1f78\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2.\u2019\nOur being in God has its basis in Christ his Son, and this also makes it\nmore natural that \u03bf\u1f56\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 should be referred to \u03c5\u1f31\u1ff7. But ought not \u1f41\n\u1f00\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2 then to be without the article (as in John 1:1\u2014\u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u1f26\u03bd \u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2)?\nNo, for it is John\u2019s purpose in 1 John 5:20 to say, not _what_ Christ is,\nbut _who_ he is. In declaring _what_ one is, the predicate must have no\narticle; in declaring _who_ one is, the predicate must have the article.\nSt. John here says that this Son, on whom our being in the true God rests,\nis this true God himself\u201d (see Ebrard, Com. _in loco_).\n\n\n Other passages might be here adduced, as _Col. 2:9\u2014_\u201cin him\n dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily\u201d; _Phil\n 2:6\u2014_\u201cexisting in the form of God\u201d; but we prefer to consider\n these under other heads as indirectly proving Christ\u2019s divinity.\n Still other passages once relied upon as direct statements of the\n doctrine must be given up for textual reasons. Such are _Acts\n 20:28_, where the correct reading is in all probability not\n \u1f10\u03ba\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6, but \u1f10\u03ba\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u039a\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 (so ACDE Tregelles\n and Tischendorf; B and \u05d0, however, have \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6. The Rev. Vers.\n continues to read \u201c_church of God_\u201d; Amer. Revisers, however, read\n \u201cchurch of the Lord\u201d\u2014see Ezra Abbot\u2019s investigation in Bib. Sac.,\n 1876: 313-352); and _1 Tim. 3:16_, where \u1f45\u03c2 is unquestionably to\n be substituted for \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, though even here \u1f10\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u03c1\u03ce\u03b8\u03b7 intimates\n pre\u00ebxistence.\n\n Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., before the Unitarian Club, Boston,\n November, 1882\u2014\u201cFifty years of study, thought and reading given\n largely to the Bible and to the literature which peculiarly\n relates to it, have brought me to this conclusion, that the\n book\u2014taken with the especial divine quality and character claimed\n for it, and so extensively assigned to it, as inspired and\n infallible as a whole, and in all its contents\u2014is an Orthodox\n book. It yields what is called the Orthodox creed. The vast\n majority of its readers, following its letter, its obvious sense,\n its natural meaning, and yielding to the impression which some of\n its emphatic texts make upon them, find in it Orthodoxy. Only that\n kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and in candor I must\n add, forced treatment, which it receives from us liberals can make\n the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The evangelical sects, so\n called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of\n Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of\n creed between them and ourselves. In that earnest controversy by\n pamphlet warfare between Drs. Channing and Ware on the one side,\n and Drs. Worcester and Woods and Professor Stuart on the other\u2014a\n controversy which wrought up the people of our community sixty\n years ago more than did our recent political campaign\u2014I am fully\n convinced that the liberal contestants were worsted. Scripture\n exegesis, logic and argument were clearly on the side of the\n Orthodox contestants. And this was so, mainly because the liberal\n party put themselves on the same plane with the Orthodox in their\n way of regarding and dealing with Scripture texts in their bearing\n upon the controversy. Liberalism cannot vanquish Orthodoxy, if it\n yields to the latter in its own way of regarding and treating the\n whole Bible. Martin Luther said that the Papists burned the Bible\n because it was not on their side. Now I am not about to attack the\n Bible because it is not on my side; but I am about to object as\n emphatically as I can against a character and quality assigned to\n the Bible, which it does not claim for itself, which cannot be\n certified for it: and the origin and growth and intensity of the\n fond and superstitious influences resulting in that view we can\n trace distinctly to agencies accounting for, but not warranting,\n the current belief. Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creeds till it\n readjusts its estimate of the Scriptures. The only relief which\n one who professes the Orthodox creed can find is either by forcing\n his ingenuity into the proof-texts or indulging his liberty\n outside of them.\u201d\n\n With this confession of a noted Unitarian it is interesting to\n compare the opinion of the so-called Trinitarian, Dr. Lyman\n Abbott, who says that the New Testament nowhere calls Christ God,\n but everywhere calls him man, as in _1 Tim. 2:5\u2014_\u201cfor there is one\n God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ\n Jesus.\u201d On this passage Prof. L. L. Paine remarks in the New\n World, Dec. 1894\u2014\u201cThat Paul ever confounded Christ with God\n himself, or regarded him as in any way the Supreme Divinity, is a\n position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by\n the whole drift of his epistles.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) Old Testament descriptions of God are applied to him.\n\nThis application to Christ of titles and names exclusively appropriated to\nGod is inexplicable, if Christ was not regarded as being himself God. The\npeculiar awe with which the term \u201cJehovah\u201d was set apart by a nation of\nstrenuous monotheists as the sacred and incommunicable name of the one\nself-existent and covenant-keeping God forbids the belief that the\nScripture writers could have used it as the designation of a subordinate\nand created being.\n\n\n _Mat. 3:3\u2014_\u201cMake ye ready the way of the Lord\u201d\u2014is a quotation from\n _Is. 40:3\u2014_\u201cPrepare ye ... the way of Jehovah.\u201d _John\n 12:41\u2014_\u201cThese things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he\n spake of him\u201d [_i. e._, Christ]\u2014refers to _Is. 6:1\u2014_\u201cIn the year\n that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.\u201d So in\n _Eph. 4:7, 8\u2014_\u201cmeasure of the gift of Christ ... led captivity\n captive\u201d\u2014is an application to Christ of what is said of Jehovah in\n _Ps. 68:18_. In _1 Pet. 3:15_, moreover, we read, with all the\n great uncials, several of the Fathers, and all the best versions:\n \u201csanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord\u201d; here the apostle borrows\n his language from _Is. 8:13_, where we read: \u201c_Jehovah of hosts,\n him shall ye sanctify_.\u201d When we remember that, with the Jews,\n God\u2019s covenant-title was so sacred that for the Kethib (=\n \u201cwritten\u201d) _Jehovah_ there was always substituted the Keri (=\n \u201cread\u201d\u2014imperative) _Adonai_, in order to avoid pronunciation of\n the great Name, it seems the more remarkable that the Greek\n equivalent of \u201cJehovah\u201d should have been so constantly used of\n Christ. _Cf._ _Rom. 10:9\u2014_\u201cconfess ... Jesus as Lord\u201d; _1 Cor.\n 12:3\u2014_\u201cno man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.\u201d We\n must remember also the indignation of the Jews at Christ\u2019s\n assertion of his equality and oneness with the Father. Compare\n Goethe\u2019s, \u201cWer darf ihn nennen?\u201d with Carlyle\u2019s, \u201cthe awful\n Unnameable of this Universe.\u201d The Jews, it has been said, have\n always vibrated between monotheism and moneytheism. Yet James, the\n strongest of Hebrews, in his Epistle uses the word \u2019Lord\u2019 freely\n and alternately of God the Father and of Christ the Son. This\n would have been impossible if James had not believed in the\n community of essence between the Son and the Father.\n\n It is interesting to note that 1 Maccabees does not once use the\n word \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 or \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, or any other direct designation of God unless\n it be \u03bf\u1f50\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2 (_cf._ \u201cswear ... by the heaven\u201d_\u2014Mat. 5:34_). So\n the book of Esther contains no mention of the name of God, though\n the apocryphal additions to Esther, which are found only in Greek,\n contain the name of God in the first verse, and mention it in all\n eight times. See Bissell, Apocrypha, in Lange\u2019s Commentary;\n Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity, 93; Max M\u00fcller on Semitic Monotheism,\n in Chips from a German Workshop, 1:337.\n\n\n(_c_) He possesses the attributes of God.\n\nAmong these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness,\neternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are\nascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no\nsecondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.\n\n\n _Life_: _John 1:4\u2014_\u201cIn him was life\u201d; _14:6\u2014_\u201cI am ... the life.\u201d\n _Self-existence_: _John 5:26\u2014_\u201chave life in himself\u201d; _Heb.\n 7:16\u2014_\u201cpower of an endless life.\u201d _Immutability_: _Heb.\n 13:8\u2014_\u201cJesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and\n forever.\u201d _Truth_: _John 14:6\u2014_\u201cI am ... the truth\u201d; _Rev.\n 3:7\u2014_\u201che that is true.\u201d _Love_: _1 John 3:16\u2014_\u201cHereby know we\n love\u201d (\u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7\u03bd = the personal Love, as the personal Truth)\n \u201c_because he laid down his life for us_.\u201d _Holiness_: _Luke\n 1:35\u2014_\u201cthat which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of\n God\u201d; _John 6:69\u2014_\u201cthou art the Holy One of God\u201d; _Heb.\n 7:26\u2014_\u201choly, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.\u201d\n\n _Eternity_: _John 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the Word.\u201d Godet says\n \u1f10\u03bd \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u1fc7 = not \u201cin eternity,\u201d but \u201cin the beginning of the\n creation\u201d; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the\n \u1f26\u03bd\u2014the Word _was_, when the world was _created_: _cf._ _Gen.\n 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning God created.\u201d But Meyer says, \u1f10\u03bd \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u1fc7 here\n rises above the historical conception of \u201c_in the beginning_\u201d in\n Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the\n absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is\n something subsequent. He finds a parallel in _Prov. 8:23\u2014\u1f10\u03bd \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u1fc7\n \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03b3\u1fc6\u03bd \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u1fc6\u03c3\u03b1\u03b9_. The interpretation \u201cin the beginning of\n the gospel\u201d is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. So _John\n 17:5\u2014_\u201cglory which I had with thee before the world was\u201d; _Eph.\n 1:4\u2014_\u201cchose us in him before the foundation of the world.\u201d Dorner\n also says that \u1f10\u03bd \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u1fc7 in _John 1:1_ is not \u201cthe beginning of the\n world,\u201d but designates the point back of which it is impossible to\n go, _i. e._, eternity; the world is first spoken of in _verse 3.\n John 8:58\u2014_\u201cBefore Abraham was born, I am\u201d; _cf._ _1:15_; _Col.\n 1:17\u2014_\u201che is before all things\u201d; _Heb. 1:11_\u2014the heavens \u201c_shall\n perish; but thou continuest_\u201d; _Rev. 21:6\u2014_\u201cI am the Alpha and the\n Omega, the beginning and the end.\u201d\n\n _Omnipresence_: _Mat. 28:20\u2014_\u201cI am with you always\u201d; _Eph.\n 1:23\u2014_\u201cthe fulness of him that filleth all in all.\u201d _Omniscience_:\n _Mat. 9:4\u2014_\u201cJesus knowing their thoughts\u201d; _John 2:24, 25\u2014_\u201cknew\n all men ... knew what was in man\u201d; _16:30\u2014_\u201cknowest all things\u201d;\n _Acts 1:24\u2014_\u201cThou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men\u201d\u2014a\n prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the\n attitude of the disciples toward their Master; _1 Cor. 4:5\u2014_\u201cuntil\n the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of\n darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts\u201d; _Col.\n 2:3\u2014_\u201cin whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge\n hidden.\u201d _Omnipotence_: _Mat. 27:18\u2014_\u201cAll authority hath been\n given unto me in heaven and on earth\u201d; _Rev. 1:8\u2014_\u201cthe Lord God,\n which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.\u201d\n\n Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus\u2019\n pre\u00ebxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal\n conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and\n divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a\n heavenly original in which it pre\u00ebxisted before its earthly\n appearance; _e. g._: the tabernacle, in _Heb. 8:5_; Jerusalem, in\n _Gal. 4:25_ and _Rev. 21:10_; the kingdom of God in _Mat. 13:24_;\n much more the Messiah, in _John 6:62\u2014_\u201cascending where he was\n before\u201d; _8:58\u2014_\u201cBefore Abraham was born, I am\u201d; _17:4, 5\u2014_\u201cglory\n which I had with thee before the world was\u201d _17:24\u2014_\u201cthou lovedst\n me before the foundation of the world.\u201d This view that Jesus\n existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means\n simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted\n by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from\n an ideal, pre\u00ebxistence.\n\n Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115\u2014\u201cThe words \u2018In the beginning\u2019_\n (John 1:1)_ suggest that the author is about to write a second\n book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.\u201d As creation\n presupposes a Creator, the pre\u00ebxistence of the personal Word is\n assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The \u1f26\u03bd\n indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of\n mere pre\u00ebxistence, although it includes this. While John the\n Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into\n being, it is said that the Logos _was_, and that the Logos was\n _God_. This implies co\u00ebternity with the Father. But, if the view\n we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham\n pre\u00ebxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning\n of Jesus in _John 8:58\u2014_\u201cBefore Abraham was born, I am\u201d; _cf._\n _Col. 1:17\u2014_\u201che is before all things\u201d\u2014\u201c\u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 emphasizes the\n personality, while \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd declares that the pre\u00ebxistence is\n absolute existence\u201d (Lightfoot); _John 1:15\u2014_\u201cHe that cometh after\n me is become before me: for he was before me\u201d = not that Jesus was\n _born_ earlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months\n later, but that he _existed_ earlier. He stands before John in\n rank, because he existed long before John in time; _6:62\u2014_\u201cthe Son\n of man ascending where he was before\u201d; _16:28\u2014_\u201cI came out from\n the Father, and am come into the world.\u201d So _Is. 9:6, 7_, calls\n Christ \u201c_Everlasting Father_\u201d = eternity is an attribute of the\n Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis,\n 1881:169-171\u2014\u201cChrist is the Everlasting One, \u2018whose goings forth\n have been from of old, even from the days of eternity\u2019_ (Micah\n 5:2). _\u2018Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no\n end,\u2019 just because of his existence there has been no beginning.\u201d\n\n\n(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.\n\nWe do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated\npower, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of\nall things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men.\nPower to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are\ncharacteristic of omnipotence.\n\n\n _Creation_: _John 1:3\u2014_\u201cAll things were made through him\u201d; _1 Cor.\n 8:6\u2014_\u201cone lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things\u201d; _Col.\n 1:16\u2014_\u201call things have been created through him, and unto him\u201d;\n _Heb, 1:10\u2014_\u201cThou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation\n of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands\u201d; _3:3,\n 4\u2014_\u201che that built all things is God\u201d = Christ, the builder of the\n house of Israel, is the God who made all things; _Rev. 3:14\u2014_\u201cthe\n beginning of the creation of God\u201d (_cf._ Plato: \u201cMind is the \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03ae\n of motion\u201d). _Upholding_: _Col. 1:17\u2014_\u201cin him all things consist\u201d\n (marg. \u201c_hold together_\u201d); _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cupholding all things by the\n word of his power.\u201d _Raising the dead and judging the world_:\n _John 5:27-29\u2014_\u201cauthority to execute judgment ... all that are in\n the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth\u201d; _Mat.\n 25:31, 32\u2014_\u201csit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall\n be gathered all the nations.\u201d If our argument were addressed\n wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ\u2019s work in the world\n as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity.\n [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity, 153;\n _per contra_, see Examination of Liddon\u2019s Bampton Lectures, 72.]\n\n Statements of Christ\u2019s creative and of his upholding activity are\n combined in _John 1:3, 4\u2014\u03a0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03b4\u03b9\u1fbd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f10\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u1f76\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\n \u1f10\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf \u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u1f72 \u1f15\u03bd. \u1f45 \u03b3\u03ad\u03b3\u03bf\u03bd\u03b5\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff7 \u03b6\u03c9\u1f74 \u1f26\u03bd\u2014_\u201cAll things were made\n through him; and without him was not anything made. That which\n hath been made was life in him\u201d (marg.). Westcott: \u201cIt would be\n difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities\n in favor of any reading than that which supports this\n punctuation.\u201d Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that\n the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ\u2019s being; 2. is\n not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge,\n Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as\n well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things\n were made, not \u1f50\u03c0\u1f78 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\u2014\u201cby him,\u201d but \u03b4\u03b9\u1fbd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\u2014\u201cthrough him.\u201d\n Christian believers \u201cBehind creation\u2019s throbbing screen Catch\n movements of the great Unseen.\u201d\n\n Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi\u2014\u201cThat which many a\n philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce\n the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or\n other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of\n revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of\n God to our deep and reverential homage.\u201d Would that such\n scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature,\n and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the\n Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ\u2019s hand in the\n physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of\n the universe than all the mere scientists put together.\n\n _Col 1:17\u2014_\u201cIn him all things consist,\u201d or \u201chold together,\u201d means\n nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the\n universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that\n the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as\n if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton:\n \u201cGravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly\n according to certain laws.\u201d Lightfoot: \u201cGravitation is an\n expression of the mind of Christ.\u201d Evolution also is a method of\n his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and\n nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds\n together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak\n of a \u201cuniverse.\u201d Without him there would be no intellectual bond,\n no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of\n induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The\n medium of interaction between things is also the medium of\n intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws\n and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw\n and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself\n (_John 12:32_) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven\n and earth (_Col. 1:20_). In Christ \u201cthe law appears, Drawn out in\n living characters,\u201d because he is the ground and source of all\n law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in\n Creation, 6-12.\n\n\n(_e_) He receives honor and worship due only to God.\n\nIn addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already\ncited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which\ndivine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship\noffered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.\n\n\n _John 5:23\u2014_\u201cthat all may honor the Son, even as they honor the\n Father\u201d; _14:14\u2014_\u201cIf ye shall ask me [so \u05d0B and Tisch. 8th ed.]\n anything in my name, that will I do\u201d; _Acts 7:59\u2014_\u201cStephen,\n calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit\u201d\n (_cf._ _Luke 23:46_\u2014Jesus\u2019 words: \u201cFather, into thy hands I\n commend my spirit\u201d); _Rom. 10:9\u2014_\u201cconfess with thy mouth Jesus as\n Lord\u201d; _13\u2014_\u201cwhosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall\n be saved\u201d (_cf._ _Gen. 4:26\u2014_\u201cThen began men to call upon the name\n of Jehovah\u201d); _1 Cor. 11:24, 25\u2014_\u201cthis do in remembrance of me\u201d =\n worship of Christ; _Heb. 1:6\u2014_\u201clet all the angels of God worship\n him\u201d; _Phil. 2:10, 11\u2014_\u201cin the name of Jesus every knee should bow\n ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord\u201d; _Rev.\n 5:12-14\u2014_\u201cWorthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the\n power....\u201d; _2 Pet. 3:18\u2014_\u201cLord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be\n the glory\u201d; _2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21\u2014_\u201cto whom be the glory for\n ever and ever\u201d\u2014these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply\n his deity. See also _1 Pet. 3:15\u2014_\u201cSanctify in your hearts Christ\n as Lord,\u201d and _Eph. 5:21\u2014_\u201csubjecting yourselves one to another in\n the fear of Christ.\u201d Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards\n Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See\n Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity, 266, 366.\n\n Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154\u2014\u201cIn the eucharistic\n liturgy of the \u2018Teaching\u2019 we read: \u2018Hosanna to the God of David\u2019;\n Ignatius styles him repeatedly God \u2018begotten and unbegotten, come\n in the flesh\u2019; speaking once of \u2018the blood of God\u2019, in evident\n allusion to _Acts 20:28_; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the\n Pauline words and calls him the \u2018architect and world-builder by\n whom [God] created the heavens\u2019, and names him God (chap. vii);\n Hermas speaks of him as \u2018the holy pre\u00ebxistent Spirit, that created\n every creature\u2019, which style of expression is followed by Justin,\n who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the\n second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read: \u2018Brethren,\n it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God\u2014as\n the Judge of the living and the dead.\u2019 And Ignatius describes him\n as \u2018begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was\n before the eternities with the Father.\u2019 \u201d\n\n These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw\n in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the\n precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful\n massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish\n savages was heard to ask: \u201cWho was that \u2018Lord Jesus\u2019 that they\n were calling to?\u201d In their death agonies, the Christians, like\n Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning\n quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of\n Charles Lamb, when \u201cin a gay fancy with some friends as to how he\n and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear\n suddenly in flesh and blood once more\u2014on the first suggestion,\n \u2018And if Christ entered this room?\u2019 changed his tone at once and\n stuttered out as his manner was when moved: \u2018You see\u2014if Shakespere\n entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.\u2019 \u201d On\n prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in\n Hastings\u2019 Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten\n Kirche, 9, 288.\n\n\n(_f_) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.\n\nWe do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for\nthe latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the\nformula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages\nin which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon\nGod, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the\nFather.\n\n\n _The formula of baptism_: _Mat. 28:19\u2014_\u201cbaptising them into the\n name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit\u201d; _cf._\n _Acts 2:38\u2014_\u201cbe baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus\n Christ\u201d; _Rom. 6:3\u2014_\u201cbaptized into Christ Jesus.\u201d \u201cIn the common\n baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are co\u00f6rdinated with the\n Father, and \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u1f44\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1 has religious significance.\u201d It would be\n both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the\n Father and of Moses.\n\n _The apostolic benedictions_: _1 Cor. 1:3\u2014_\u201cGrace to you and peace\n from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ\u201d; _2 Cor.\n 13:14\u2014_\u201cThe grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,\n and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.\u201d \u201cIn the\n benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to\n impart it. But why do we find \u2018God,\u2019 instead of simply \u2018the\n Father,\u2019 as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the\n Father who does not become man or have a historical existence.\n Elsewhere he is specially called \u2018_God the Father_,\u2019 to\n distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (_Gal.\n 1:3_; _Eph. 3:14_; _6:23_).\u201d\n\n _Other passages_: _John 5:23\u2014_\u201cthat all may honor the Son, even as\n they honor the Father\u201d; _John 14:1\u2014_\u201cbelieve in God, believe also\n in me\u201d\u2014double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com., _in loco_);\n _17:3\u2014_\u201cthis is life eternal, that they should know thee the only\n true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ\u201d; _Mat.\n 11:27\u2014_\u201cno one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any\n know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son\n willeth to reveal him\u201d; _1 Cor. 12:4-6\u2014_\u201cthe same Spirit ... the\n same Lord [Christ] ... the same God\u201d [the Father] bestow spiritual\n gifts, _e. g._, faith: _Rom. 10:17\u2014_\u201cbelief cometh of hearing, and\n hearing by the word of Christ\u201d; peace: _Col. 3:15\u2014_\u201clet the peace\n of Christ rule in your hearts.\u201d _2 Thess. 2:16, 17\u2014_\u201cnow our lord\n Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your\n hearts\u201d\u2014two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness\n of the Father and the Son (Lillie). _Eph. 5:5\u2014_\u201ckingdom of Christ\n and God\u201d; _Col. 3:1\u2014_\u201cChrist ... seated on the right hand of God\u201d\n = participation in the sovereignty of the universe,\u2014the Eastern\n divan held not only the monarch but his son; _Rev. 20:6\u2014_\u201cpriests\n of God and of Christ\u201d; _22:3\u2014_\u201cthe throne of God and of the Lamb\u201d;\n _16\u2014_\u201cthe root and the offspring of David\u201d = both the Lord of\n David and his son. Hackett: \u201cAs the dying Savior said to the\n Father, \u2018Into thy hands I commend my spirit\u2019_ (Luke 23:46)_, so\n the dying Stephen said to the Savior, \u2018receive my spirit\u2019_ (Acts\n 7:59)_.\u201d\n\n\n(_g_) Equality with God is expressly claimed.\n\nHere we may refer to Jesus\u2019 testimony to himself, already treated of among\nthe proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see\npages 189, 190). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by\nJesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.\n\n\n _John 5:18\u2014_\u201ccalled God his own Father, making himself equal with\n God\u201d; _Phil. 2:6\u2014_\u201cwho, existing in the form of God, counted not\n the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped\u201d\u2014counted\n not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ\n made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he\n claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass\n of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims\n to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived,\n and, in either case, _Christus, si non Deus, non bonus_. See\n Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.\n\n\n(_h_) Further proof of Christ\u2019s deity may be found in the application to\nhim of the phrases: \u201cSon of God,\u201d \u201cImage of God\u201d; in the declarations of\nhis oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the\nGodhead.\n\n\n _Mat. 26:63, 64\u2014_\u201cI adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell\n us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto\n him, Thou hast said\u201d\u2014it is for this testimony that Christ dies.\n _Col. 1:15\u2014_\u201cthe image of the invisible God\u201d; _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cthe\n effulgence of his [the Father\u2019s] glory, and the very image of his\n substance\u201d; _John 10:30\u2014_\u201cI and the Father are one\u201d; _14:9\u2014_\u201che\n that hath seen me hath seen the Father\u201d; _17:11, 22\u2014_\u201cthat they\n may be one, even as we are\u201d\u2014\u1f15, not \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2; _unum_, not _unus_; one\n substance, not one person. \u201c_Unum_ is antidote to the Arian,\n _sumus_ to the Sabellian heresy.\u201d _Col. 2:9\u2014_\u201cin him dwelleth all\n the fulness of the Godhead bodily\u201d; _cf._ _1:19\u2014_\u201cfor it was the\n pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;\u201d\n or (marg.) \u201c_for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in\n him_.\u201d _John 16:15\u2014_\u201call things whatsoever the Father hath are\n mine\u201d; _17:10\u2014_\u201call things that are mine are thine, and thine are\n mine.\u201d\n\n Meyer on _John 10:30\u2014_\u201cI and the Father are one\u201d\u2014\u201cHere the Arian\n understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words\n \u2018_are one_\u2019 is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise\n of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words\n themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in\n them.\u201d Dalman, The Words of Jesus: \u201cNowhere do we find that Jesus\n called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a\n merely religious and ethical relation to God\u2014a relation which\n others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or\n were destined to acquire.\u201d We may add that while in the lower\n sense there are many \u201c_sons of God_,\u201d there is but one \u201c_only\n begotten Son_.\u201d\n\n\n(_i_) These proofs of Christ\u2019s deity from the New Testament are\ncorroborated by Christian experience.\n\nChristian experience recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior,\nperfectly revealing the Godhead and worthy of unlimited worship and\nadoration; that is, it practically recognizes him as Deity. But Christian\nexperience also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and\nreconciliation to God as one distinct from Jesus Christ, as one who was\nalienated from the soul by its sin, but who is now reconciled through\nJesus\u2019s death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also\ncompelled to recognize a distinction between the Father and the Son\nthrough whom we come to the Father.\n\nAlthough this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to\nJesus\u2019 claims, since it only tests the truth already made known in the\nBible, still the irresistible impulse of every person whom Christ has\nsaved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and bow before him in the\nlowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of\nScripture can be true which recognizes Christ\u2019s absolute Godhead. It is\nthe church\u2019s consciousness of her Lord\u2019s divinity, indeed, and not mere\nspeculation upon the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that has\ncompelled the formulation of the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity.\n\n\n In the letter of Pliny to Trajan, it is said of the early\n Christians \u201cquod essent soliti carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere\n invicem.\u201d The prayers and hymns of the church show what the church\n has believed Scripture to teach. Dwight Moody is said to have\n received his first conviction of the truth of the gospel from\n hearing the concluding words of a prayer, \u201cFor Christ\u2019s sake,\n Amen,\u201d when awakened from physical slumber in Dr. Kirk\u2019s church,\n Boston. These words, wherever uttered, imply man\u2019s dependence and\n Christ\u2019s deity. See New Englander, 1878:432. In _Eph. 4:32_, the\n Revised Version substitutes \u201c_in Christ_\u201d for \u201cfor Christ\u2019s sake.\u201d\n The exact phrase \u201cfor Christ\u2019s sake\u201d is not found in the N. T. in\n connection with prayer, although the O. T. phrase \u201cfor my name\u2019s\n sake\u201d_ (Ps. 25:11)_ passes into the N. T. phrase \u201cin the name of\n Jesus\u201d_ (Phil. 2:10)_; _cf._ _Ps. 72:15\u2014_\u201cmen shall pray for him\n continually\u201d = the words of the hymn: \u201cFor him shall endless\n prayer be made, And endless blessings crown his head.\u201d All this is\n proof that the idea of prayer for Christ\u2019s sake is in Scripture,\n though the phrase is absent.\n\n A caricature scratched on the wall of the Palatine palace in Rome,\n and dating back to the third century, represents a human figure\n with an ass\u2019s head, hanging upon a cross, while a man stands\n before it in the attitude of worship. Under the effigy is this\n ill-spelled inscription: \u201cAlexamenos adores his God.\u201d\n\n This appeal to the testimony of Christian consciousness was first\n made by Schleiermacher. William E. Gladstone: \u201cAll I write, and\n all I think, and all I hope, is based upon the divinity of our\n Lord, the one central hope of our poor, wayward race.\u201d E. G.\n Robinson: \u201cWhen you preach salvation by faith in Christ, you\n preach the Trinity.\u201d W. G. T. Shedd: \u201cThe construction of the\n doctrine of the Trinity started, not from the consideration of the\n three persons, but from belief in the deity of one of them.\u201d On\n the worship of Christ in the authorized services of the Anglican\n church, see Stanley, Church and State, 333-335; Liddon, Divinity\n of our Lord, 514.\n\n\nIn contemplating passages apparently inconsistent with those now cited, in\nthat they impute to Christ weakness and ignorance, limitation and\nsubjection, we are to remember, first, that our Lord was truly man, as\nwell as truly God, and that this ignorance and weakness may be predicated\nof him as the God-man in whom deity and humanity are united; secondly,\nthat the divine nature itself was in some way limited and humbled during\nour Savior\u2019s earthly life, and that these passages may describe him as he\nwas in his estate of humiliation, rather than in his original and present\nglory; and, thirdly, that there is an order of office and operation which\nis consistent with essential oneness and equality, but which permits the\nFather to be spoken of as first and the Son as second. These statements\nwill be further elucidated in the treatment of the present doctrine and in\nsubsequent examination of the doctrine of the Person of Christ.\n\n\n There are certain things of which Christ was ignorant: _Mark\n 13:32\u2014_\u201cof that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the\n angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.\u201d He was subject\n to physical fatigue: _John 4:6\u2014_\u201cJesus therefore, being wearied\n with his journey, sat thus by the well.\u201d There was a limitation\n connected with Christ\u2019s taking of human flesh: _Phil.\n 2:7\u2014_\u201cemptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in\n the likeness of men\u201d; _John 14:28\u2014_\u201cthe Father is greater than I.\u201d\n There is a subjection, as respects order of office and operation,\n which is yet consistent with equality of essence and oneness with\n God; _1 Cor. 15:28\u2014_\u201cthen shall the Son also himself be subjected\n to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all\n in all.\u201d This must be interpreted consistently with _John\n 17:5\u2014_\u201cglorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I\n had with thee before the world was,\u201d and with _Phil. 2:6_, where\n this glory is described as being \u201c_the form of God_\u201d and\n \u201c_equality with God_.\u201d\n\n Even in his humiliation, Christ was the Essential Truth, and\n ignorance in him never involved error or false teaching. Ignorance\n on his part might make his teaching at times incomplete,\u2014it never\n in the smallest particular made his teaching false. Yet here we\n must distinguish between what he _intended_ to teach and what was\n merely _incidental_ to his teaching. When he said: Moses \u201cwrote of\n me\u201d_ (John 5:46)_ and \u201cDavid in the Spirit called him Lord\u201d_ (Mat.\n 22:43)_, if his purpose was to teach the authorship of the\n Pentateuch and of the 110th Psalm, we should regard his words as\n absolutely authoritative. But it is possible that he intended only\n to _locate_ the passages referred to, and if so, his words cannot\n be used to exclude critical conclusions as to their authorship.\n Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 136\u2014\u201cIf he spoke of Moses or David,\n it was only to identify the passage. The authority of the earlier\n dispensation did not rest upon its record being due to Moses, nor\n did the appropriateness of the Psalm lie in its being uttered by\n David. There is no evidence that the question of authorship ever\n came before him.\u201d Adamson rather more precariously suggests that\n \u201cthere may have been a lapse of memory in Jesus\u2019 mention of\n \u2018Zachariah, son of Barachiah\u2019_ (Mat. 23:35)_, since this was a\n matter of no spiritual import.\u201d\n\n For assertions of Jesus\u2019 knowledge, see _John 2:24, 25\u2014_\u201che knew\n all men ... he needed not that any one should bear witness\n concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man\u201d;\n _6:64\u2014_\u201cJesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed\n not, and who it was that should betray him\u201d; _12:33\u2014_\u201cthis he\n said, signifying by what manner of death he should die\u201d;\n _21:19\u2014_\u201cNow this he spake, signifying by what manner of death he\n [Peter] should glorify God\u201d; _13:1\u2014_\u201cknowing that his hour was\n come that he should depart\u201d; _Mat. 25:31\u2014_\u201cwhen the Son of man\n shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall\n he sit on the throne of his glory\u201d = he knew that he was to act as\n final judge of the human race. Other instances are mentioned by\n Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49: 1. Jesus\u2019 knowledge of Peter\n (_John 1:42_); 2. his finding Philip (_1:43_); 3. his recognition\n of Nathanael (_1:47-50_); 4. of the woman of Samaria (_4:17-19,\n 39_); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (_Luke 5:6-9_; _John\n 21:6_); 6. death of Lazarus (_John 11:14_); 7. the ass\u2019s colt\n (_Mat. 21:2_); 8. of the upper room (_Mark 14:15_); 9. of Peter\u2019s\n denial (_Mat. 26:34_); 10. of the manner of his own death (_John\n 12:33_; _18:32_); 11. of the manner of Peter\u2019s death (_John\n 21:19_); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (_Mat. 24:2_).\n\n On the other hand there are assertions and implications of Jesus\u2019\n ignorance: he did not know the day of the end (_Mark 13:32_),\n though even here he intimates his superiority to angels;\n _5:30-34\u2014_\u201cWho touched my garments?\u201d though even here power had\n gone forth from him to heal; _John 11:34\u2014_\u201cWhere have ye laid\n him?\u201d though here he is about to raise Lazarus from the dead;\n _Mark 11:13\u2014_\u201cseeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came,\n if haply he might find anything thereon\u201d = he did not know that it\n had no fruit, yet he had power to curse it. With these evidences\n of the limitations of Jesus\u2019 knowledge, we must assent to the\n judgment of Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 33\u2014\u201cWe must decline to\n stake the authority of Jesus on a question of literary criticism\u201d;\n and of Gore, Incarnation, 195\u2014\u201cThat the use by our Lord of such a\n phrase as \u2018_Moses wrote of me_\u2019 binds us to the Mosaic authorship\n of the Pentateuch as a whole, I do not think we need to yield.\u201d\n See our section on The Person of Christ; also Rush Rhees, Life of\n Jesus, 243, 244. _Per contra_, see Swayne, Our Lord\u2019s Knowledge as\n Man; and Crooker, The New Bible, who very unwisely claims that\n belief in a Kenosis involves the surrender of Christ\u2019s authority\n and atonement.\n\n It is inconceivable that any mere _creature_ should say, \u201cGod is\n greater than I am,\u201d or should be spoken of as ultimately and in a\n mysterious way becoming \u201csubject to God.\u201d In his state of\n humiliation Christ was subject to the Spirit (_Acts 1:2\u2014_\u201cafter\n that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit\u201d;\n _10:38\u2014_\u201cGod anointed him with the Holy Spirit ... for God was\n with him\u201d; _Heb.9:14\u2014_\u201cthrough the eternal Spirit offered himself\n without blemish unto God\u201d), but in his state of exaltation Christ\n is Lord of the Spirit (\u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03cd\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2\u2014_2 Cor. 3:18_\u2014Meyer),\n giving the Spirit and working through the Spirit. _Heb. 2:7_,\n marg.\u2014\u201cThou madest him for a little while lower than the angels.\u201d\n On the whole subject, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 262, 351;\n Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s\n Divinity, 127, 207, 458; _per contra_, see Examination of Liddon,\n 252, 294; Professors of Andover Seminary, Divinity of Christ.\n\n\nC. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.\n\n\n(_a_) He is spoken of as God; (_b_) the attributes of God are ascribed to\nhim, such as life, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence,\nomniscience, omnipotence; (_c_) he does the works of God, such as\ncreation, regeneration, resurrection; (_d_) he receives honor due only to\nGod; (_e_) he is associated with God on a footing of equality, both in the\nformula of baptism and in the apostolic benedictions.\n\n\n (_a_) _Spoken of as God._ _Acts 5:3, 4\u2014_\u201clie to the Holy Spirit\n ... not lied unto men, but unto God\u201d; _1 Cor. 3:16\u2014_\u201cye are a\n temple of God ... the Spirit of God dwelleth in you\u201d; _6:19\u2014_\u201cyour\n body is a temple of the Holy Spirit\u201d; _12:4-6 _\u201csame Spirit ...\n same Lord ... same God, who worketh all things in all\u201d\u2014\u201cThe divine\n Trinity is here indicated in an ascending climax, in such a way\n that we pass from the Spirit who bestows the gifts to the Lord\n [Christ] who is served by means of them, and finally to God, who\n as the absolute first cause and possessor of all Christian powers\n works the entire sum of all charismatic gifts in all who are\n gifted\u201d (Meyer in _loco_).\n\n (_b_) _Attributes of God._ Life: _Rom. 8:2\u2014_\u201cSpirit of life.\u201d\n Truth: _John 16:13 _\u201cSpirit of truth.\u201d Love: _Rom. 15:30\u2014_\u201clove of\n the Spirit.\u201d Holiness: _Eph. 4:30\u2014_\u201cthe Holy Spirit of God.\u201d\n Eternity: _Heb. 9:14\u2014_\u201cthe eternal Spirit.\u201d Omnipresence: _Ps.\n 139:7\u2014_\u201cWhither shall I go from thy Spirit?\u201d Omniscience: _1 Cor.\n 12:11\u2014_\u201call these [including gifts of healings and miracles]\n worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one\n severally even as he will.\u201d\n\n (_c_) _Works of God._ Creation: _Gen. 1:2_, marg.\u2014\u201cSpirit of God\n was brooding upon the face of the waters.\u201d Casting out of demons:\n _Mat. 12:28\u2014_\u201cBut if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons.\u201d\n Conviction of sin: _John 16:8\u2014_\u201cconvict the world in respect of\n sin.\u201d Regeneration: _John 3:8\u2014_\u201cborn of the Spirit\u201d; _Tit.\n 3:5\u2014_\u201crenewing of the Holy Spirit.\u201d Resurrection: _Rom.\n 8:11\u2014_\u201cgive life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit\u201d;\n _1 Cor. 15:45\u2014_\u201cThe last Adam became a life-giving spirit.\u201d\n\n (_d_) _Honor due to God._ _1 Cor. 3:16\u2014_\u201cye are a temple of God\n ... the Spirit of God dwelleth in you\u201d\u2014he who inhabits the temple\n is the object of worship there. See also the next item.\n\n (_e_) _Associated with God._ Formula of baptism: _Mat.\n 28:19\u2014_\u201cbaptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son\n and of the Holy Spirit.\u201d If the baptismal formula is worship, then\n we have here worship paid to the Spirit. Apostolic benedictions:\n _2 Cor. 13:14\u2014_\u201cThe grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of\n God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.\u201d If the\n apostolic benedictions are prayers, then we have here a prayer to\n the Spirit. _1 Pet. 1:2\u2014_\u201cforeknowledge of God the Father ...\n sanctification of the Spirit ... sprinkling of the blood of Jesus\n Christ.\u201d\n\n On _Heb. 9:14_, Kendrick, Com. _in loco_, interprets: \u201cOffers\n himself by virtue of an eternal spirit which dwells within him and\n imparts to his sacrifice a spiritual and an eternal efficacy. The\n \u2018spirit\u2019 here spoken of was not, then, the \u2018Holy Spirit\u2019; it was\n not his purely divine nature; it was that blending of his divine\n nature with his human personality which forms the mystery of his\n being, that \u2018spirit of holiness\u2019 by virtue of which he was\n declared \u2018_the Son of God with power_,\u2019 on account of his\n resurrection from the dead.\u201d Hovey adds a note to Kendrick\u2019s\n Commentary, _in loco_, as follows: \u201cThis adjective \u2018_eternal_\u2019\n naturally suggests that the word \u2018_Spirit_\u2019 refers to the higher\n and divine nature of Christ. His truly human nature, on its\n spiritual side, was indeed eternal as to the future, but so also\n is the spirit of every man. The unique and superlative value of\n Christ\u2019s self-sacrifice seems to have been due to the impulse of\n the divine side of his nature.\u201d The phrase \u201ceternal spirit\u201d would\n then mean his divinity. To both these interpretations we prefer\n that which makes the passage refer to the Holy Spirit, and we cite\n in support of this view _Acts 1:2\u2014_\u201che had given commandment\n through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles\u201d; _10:38\u2014_\u201cGod anointed\n him with the Holy Spirit.\u201d On _1 Cor. 2:10_, Mason, Faith of the\n Gospel, 63, remarks: \u201cThe Spirit of God finds nothing even in God\n which baffles his scrutiny. His \u2018search\u2019 is not a seeking for\n knowledge yet beyond him.... Nothing but God could search the\n depths of God.\u201d\n\n\nAs spirit is nothing less than the inmost principle of life, and the\nspirit of man is man himself, so the spirit of God must be God (see 1 Cor.\n2:11\u2014Meyer). Christian experience, moreover, expressed as it is in the\nprayers and hymns of the church, furnishes an argument for the deity of\nthe Holy Spirit similar to that for the deity of Jesus Christ. When our\neyes are opened to see Christ as a Savior, we are compelled to recognize\nthe work in us of a divine Spirit who has taken of the things of Christ\nand has shown them to us; and this divine Spirit we necessarily\ndistinguish both from the Father and from the Son. Christian experience,\nhowever, is not an original and independent witness to the deity of the\nHoly Spirit: it simply shows what the church has held to be the natural\nand unforced interpretation of the Scriptures, and so confirms the\nScripture argument already adduced.\n\n\n The Holy Spirit is God himself personally present in the believer.\n E. G. Robinson: \u201cIf \u2018Spirit of God\u2019 no more implies deity than\n does \u2018angel of God,\u2019 why is not the Holy Spirit called simply the\n angel or messenger, of God?\u201d Walker, The Spirit and the\n Incarnation, 337\u2014\u201cThe Holy Spirit is God in his innermost being or\n essence, the principle of life of both the Father and the Son;\n that in which God, both as Father and Son, does everything, and in\n which he comes to us and is in us increasingly through his\n manifestations. Through the working and indwelling of this Holy\n Spirit, God in his person of Son was fully incarnate in Christ.\u201d\n Gould, Am. Com. on _1 Cor. 2:11_\u2014\u201cFor who among men knoweth the\n things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even\n so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God\u201d\u2014\u201cThe\n analogy must not be pushed too far, as if the Spirit of God and\n God were co\u00ebxtensive terms, as the corresponding terms are,\n substantially, in man. The point of the analogy is evidently\n _self-knowledge_, and in both cases the contrast is between the\n spirit within and anything outside.\u201d Andrew Murray, Spirit of\n Christ, 140\u2014\u201cWe must not expect always to feel the power of the\n Spirit when it works. Scripture links power and weakness in a\n wonderful way, not as succeeding each other but as existing\n together. \u2018I was with you in weakness ... my preaching was in\n power\u2019_ (1 Cor. 2:3)_; \u2018when I am weak then am I strong\u2019_ (2 Cor.\n 12:10)_. The power is the power of God given to faith, and faith\n grows strong in the dark.... He who would command nature must\n first and most absolutely obey her.... We want to get possession\n of the Power, and use it. God wants the Power to get possession of\n us, and use us.\u201d\n\n\nThis proof of the deity of the Holy Spirit is not invalidated by the\nlimitations of his work under the Old Testament dispensation. John\n7:39\u2014\u201cfor the Holy Spirit was not yet\u201d\u2014means simply that the Holy Spirit\ncould not fulfill his peculiar office as Revealer of Christ until the\natoning work of Christ should be accomplished.\n\n\n _John 7:39_ is to be interpreted in the light of other Scriptures\n which assert the agency of the Holy Spirit under the old\n dispensation (_Ps. 51:11\u2014_\u201ctake not thy holy Spirit from me\u201d) and\n which describe his peculiar office under the new dispensation\n (_John 16:14, 15\u2014_\u201che shall take of mine, and shall declare it\n unto you\u201d). Limitation in the _manner_ of the Spirit\u2019s work in the\n O. T. involved a limitation in the _extent_ and _power_ of it\n also. Pentecost was the flowing forth of a tide of spiritual\n influence which had hitherto been dammed up. Henceforth the Holy\n Spirit was the Spirit of Jesus Christ, taking of the things of\n Christ and showing them, applying his finished work to human\n hearts, and rendering the hitherto localized Savior omnipresent\n with his scattered followers to the end of time.\n\n Under the conditions of his humiliation, Christ was a servant. All\n authority in heaven and earth was given him only after his\n resurrection. Hence he could not send the Holy Spirit until he\n ascended. The mother can show off her son only when he is fully\n grown. The Holy Spirit could reveal Christ only when there was a\n complete Christ to reveal. The Holy Spirit could fully sanctify,\n only after the example and motive of holiness were furnished in\n Christ\u2019s life and death. Archer Butler: \u201cThe divine Artist could\n not fitly descend to make the copy, before the original had been\n provided.\u201d\n\n And yet the Holy Spirit is \u201cthe eternal Spirit\u201d_ (Heb. 9:14)_, and\n he not only existed, but also wrought, in Old Testament times. _2\n Pet. 1:21\u2014_\u201cmen spake from God, being moved by the Holy\n Spirit\u201d\u2014seems to fix the meaning of the phrase \u201cthe Holy Spirit,\u201d\n where it appears in the O. T. Before Christ \u201cthe Holy Spirit was\n not yet\u201d_ (John 7:39)_, just as before Edison electricity was not\n yet. There was just as much electricity in the world before Edison\n as there is now. Edison has only taught us its existence and how\n to use it. Still we can say that, before Edison, electricity, as a\n means of lighting, warming and transporting people, had no\n existence. So until Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, as the revealer of\n Christ, \u201c_was not yet_.\u201d Augustine calls Pentecost the _dies\n natalis_, or birthday, of the Holy Spirit; and for the same reason\n that we call the day when Mary brought forth her firstborn son the\n birthday of Jesus Christ, though before Abraham was born, Christ\n was. The Holy Spirit had been engaged in the creation, and had\n inspired the prophets, but _officially_, as Mediator between men\n and Christ, \u201c_the Holy Spirit was not yet_.\u201d He could not show the\n things of Christ until the things of Christ were ready to be\n shown. See Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 19-25; Prof. J. S.\n Gubelmann, Person and Work of the Holy Spirit in O. T. Times. For\n proofs of the deity of the Holy Spirit, see Walker, Doctrine of\n the Holy Spirit; Hare, Mission of the Comforter; Parker, The\n Paraclete; Cardinal Manning, Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost;\n Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350. Further references will be\n given in connection with the proof of the Holy Spirit\u2019s\n personality.\n\n\n2. Intimations of the Old Testament.\n\n\nThe passages which seem to show that even in the Old Testament there are\nthree who are implicitly recognized as God may be classed under four\nheads:\n\n\nA. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the Godhead.\n\n\n(_a_) The plural noun \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd is employed, and that with a plural verb\u2014a use\nremarkable, when we consider that the singular \u05d0\u05dc was also in existence;\n(_b_) God uses plural pronouns in speaking of himself; (_c_) Jehovah\ndistinguishes himself from Jehovah; (_d_) a Son is ascribed to Jehovah;\n(_e_) the Spirit of God is distinguished from God; (_f_) there are a\nthreefold ascription and a threefold benediction.\n\n\n (_a_) _Gen. 20:13\u2014_\u201cGod caused [plural] me to wander from my\n father\u2019s house\u201d; _35:7\u2014_\u201cbuilt there an altar, and called the\n place El-Beth-el; _because there God was revealed_ [plural] unto\n him.\u201d (_b_) _Gen. 1:26\u2014_\u201cLet us make man in our image, after our\n likeness\u201d; _3:22\u2014_\u201cBehold, the man is become as one of us\u201d;\n _11:7\u2014_\u201cCome, let us go down, and there confound their language\u201d;\n _Is. 6:8\u2014_\u201cWhom shall I send, and who will go for us?\u201d (_c_) _Gen.\n 19:24\u2014_\u201cThen Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone\n and fire from Jehovah out of heaven\u201d; _Hos. 1:7\u2014_\u201cI will have\n mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by Jehovah,\n their God\u201d; _cf._ _2 Tim. 1:18\u2014_\u201cThe Lord grant unto him to find\n mercy of the Lord in that day\u201d\u2014though Ellicott here decides\n adversely to the Trinitarian reference. (_d_) _Ps. 2:7\u2014_\u201cThou art\n my son; this day have I begotten thee\u201d; _Prov. 30:4\u2014_\u201cWho hath\n established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what\n is his son\u2019s name, if thou knowest?\u201d (_e_) _Gen. 1:1 and 2,\n marg.\u2014_\u201cGod created ... the Spirit of God was brooding\u201d; _Ps.\n 33:6\u2014_\u201cBy the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the\n host of them by the breath [spirit] of his mouth\u201d; _Is.\n 48:16\u2014_\u201cthe Lord Jehovah hath sent me, and his Spirit\u201d; _63:7,\n 10\u2014_\u201cloving kindnesses of Jehovah ... grieved his holy Spirit.\u201d\n (_f_) _Is. 6:3_\u2014the trisagion: \u201c_Holy, holy, holy_\u201d; _Num.\n 6:24-26\u2014_\u201cJehovah bless thee, and keep thee: Jehovah make his face\n to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: Jehovah lift up his\n countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.\u201d\n\n It has been suggested that as Baal was worshiped in different\n places and under different names, as Baal-Berith, Baal-hanan,\n Baal-peor, Baal-zeebub, and his priests could call upon any one of\n these as possessing certain personified attributes of Baal, while\n yet the whole was called by the plural term \u201cBaalim,\u201d and Elijah\n could say: \u201cCall ye upon your Gods,\u201d so \u201cElohim\u201d may be the\n collective designation of the God who was worshiped in different\n localities; see Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish\n Church, 229. But this ignores the fact that Baal is always\n addressed in the singular, never in the plural, while the plural\n \u201cElohim\u201d is the term commonly used in addresses to God. This seems\n to show that \u201cBaalim\u201d is a collective term, while \u201cElohim\u201d is not.\n So when Ewald, Lehre von Gott, 2:333, distinguishes five names of\n God, corresponding to five great periods of the history of Israel,\n _viz._, the \u201cAlmighty\u201d of the Patriarchs, the \u201cJehovah\u201d of the\n Covenant, the \u201cGod of Hosts\u201d of the Monarchy, the \u201cHoly One\u201d of\n the Deuteronomist and the later prophetic age, and the \u201cOur Lord\u201d\n of Judaism, he ignores the fact that these designations are none\n of them confined to the times to which they are attributed, though\n they may have been predominantly used in those times.\n\n\nThe fact that \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd is sometimes used in a narrower sense, as applicable\nto the Son (Ps. 45:6; _cf._ Heb. 1:8), need not prevent us from believing\nthat the term was originally chosen as containing an allusion to a certain\nplurality in the divine nature. Nor is it sufficient to call this plural a\nsimple _pluralis majestaticus_; since it is easier to derive this common\nfigure from divine usage than to derive the divine usage from this common\nfigure\u2014especially when we consider the constant tendency of Israel to\npolytheism.\n\n\n _Ps. 45:6_; _cf._ _Heb. 1:8\u2014_\u201cof the Son he saith, Thy throne, O\n God, is for ever and ever.\u201d Here it is God who calls Christ\n \u201c_God_\u201d or \u201c_Elohim_.\u201d The term Elohim has here acquired the\n significance of a singular. It was once thought that the royal\n style of speech was a custom of a later date than the time of\n Moses. Pharaoh does not use it. In _Gen. 41:41-44_, he says: \u201cI\n have set thee over all the land of Egypt ... I am Pharaoh.\u201d But\n later investigations seem to prove that the plural for God was\n used by the Canaanites before the Hebrew occupation. The one\n Pharaoh is called \u201cmy gods\u201d or \u201cmy god,\u201d indifferently. The word\n \u201cmaster\u201d is usually found in the plural in the O. T. (_cf._ _Gen.\n 24:9, 51_; _39:19_; _40:1_). The plural gives utterance to the\n sense of awe. It signifies magnitude or completeness. (See The\n Bible Student, Aug. 1900:67.)\n\n This ancient Hebrew application of the plural to God is often\n explained as a mere plural of dignity, = one who combines in\n himself many reasons for adoration (\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd from \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4 to fear, to\n adore). Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:128-130, calls it a\n \u201cquantitative plural,\u201d signifying unlimited greatness. The Hebrews\n had many plural forms, where we should use the singular, as\n \u201cheavens\u201d instead of \u201cheaven,\u201d \u201cwaters\u201d instead of \u201cwater.\u201d We too\n speak of \u201cnews,\u201d \u201cwages,\u201d and say \u201cyou\u201d instead of \u201cthou\u201d; see F.\n W. Robertson, on Genesis, 12. But the Church Fathers, such as\n Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Iren\u00e6us, Theophilus, Epiphanius, and\n Theodoret, saw in this plural an allusion to the Trinity, and we\n are inclined to follow them. When finite things were pluralized to\n express man\u2019s reverence, it would be far more natural to pluralize\n the name of God. And God\u2019s purpose in securing this pluralization\n may have been more far-reaching and intelligent than man\u2019s. The\n Holy Spirit who presided over the development of revelation may\n well have directed the use of the plural in general, and even the\n adoption of the plural name Elohim in particular, with a view to\n the future unfolding of truth with regard to the Trinity.\n\n We therefore dissent from the view of Hill, Genetic Philosophy,\n 323, 330\u2014\u201cThe Hebrew religion, even much later than the time of\n Moses, as it existed in the popular mind, was, according to the\n prophetic writings, far removed from a real monotheism, and\n consisted in the wavering acceptance of the pre\u00ebminence of a\n tribal God, with a strong inclination towards a general\n polytheism. It is impossible therefore to suppose that anything\n approaching the philosophical monotheism of modern theology could\n have been elaborated or even entertained by primitive man....\n \u2018Thou shalt have no other gods before me\u2019_ (Ex. 20:3)_, the first\n precept of Hebrew monotheism, was not understood at first as a\n denial of the hereditary polytheistic faith, but merely as an\n exclusive claim to worship and obedience.\u201d E. G. Robinson says, in\n a similar strain, that \u201cwe can explain the idolatrous tendencies\n of the Jews only on the supposition that they had lurking notions\n that their God was a merely national god. Moses seems to have\n understood the doctrine of the divine unity, but the Jews did\n not.\u201d\n\n To the views of both Hill and Robinson we reply that the primitive\n intuition of God is not that of many, but that of One. Paul tells\n us that polytheism is a later and retrogressive stage of\n development, due to man\u2019s sin (_Rom. 1:19-25_). We prefer the\n statement of McLaren: \u201cThe plural Elohim is not a survival from a\n polytheistic stage, but expresses the divine nature in the\n manifoldness of its fulnesses and perfections, rather than in the\n abstract unity of its being\u201d\u2014and, we may add, expresses the divine\n nature in its essential fulness, as a complex of personalities.\n See Conant, Gesenius\u2019 Hebrew Grammar, 108; Green, Hebrew Grammar,\n 306; Girdlestone, O. T. Synonyms, 38, 53; Alexander on _Psalm\n 11:7_; _29:1_; _58:11_.\n\n\nB. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.\n\n\n(_a_) The angel of Jehovah identifies himself with Jehovah; (_b_) he is\nidentified with Jehovah by others; (_c_) he accepts worship due only to\nGod. Though the phrase \u201cangel of Jehovah\u201d is sometimes used in the later\nScriptures to denote a merely human messenger or created angel, it seems\nin the Old Testament, with hardly more than a single exception, to\ndesignate the pre-incarnate Logos, whose manifestations in angelic or\nhuman form foreshadowed his final coming in the flesh.\n\n\n (_a_) _Gen. 22:11, 16\u2014_\u201cthe angel of Jehovah called unto him\n [Abraham, when about to sacrifice Isaac] ... By myself have I\n sworn, saith Jehovah\u201d; _31:11, 13\u2014_\u201cthe angel of God said unto me\n [Jacob] ... I am the God of Beth-el.\u201d (_b_) _Gen. 16:9, 13\u2014_\u201cangel\n of Jehovah said unto her ... and she called the name of Jehovah\n that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth\u201d; _48:15, 16\u2014_\u201cthe\n God who hath fed me ... the angel who hath redeemed me.\u201d (_c_)\n _Ex. 3:2, 4, 5\u2014_\u201cthe angel of Jehovah appeared unto him ... God\n called unto him out of the midst of the bush ... put off thy shoes\n from off thy feet\u201d; _Judges 13:20-22\u2014_\u201cangel of Jehovah\n ascended.... Manoah and his wife ... fell on their faces ...\n Manoah said ... We shall surely die, because we have seen God.\u201d\n\n The \u201c_angel of the Lord_\u201d appears to be a human messenger in\n _Haggai 1:13\u2014_\u201cHaggai, Jehovah\u2019s messenger\u201d; a created angel in\n _Mat. 1:20\u2014_\u201can angel of the Lord [called Gabriel] appeared unto\u201d\n Joseph; in _Acts 3:26\u2014_\u201can angel of the Lord spake unto Philip\u201d;\n and in _12:7\u2014_\u201can angel of the Lord stood by him\u201d (Peter). But\n commonly, in the O.T., the \u201cangel of Jehovah\u201d is a theophany, a\n self-manifestation of God. The only distinction is that between\n Jehovah in himself and Jehovah in manifestation. The appearances\n of \u201c_the angel of Jehovah_\u201d seem to be preliminary manifestations\n of the divine Logos, as in _Gen. 18:2, 13\u2014_\u201cthree men stood over\n against him [Abraham] ... And Jehovah said unto Abraham\u201d; _Dan.\n 3:25, 28\u2014_\u201cthe aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods....\n Blessed be the God ... who hath sent his angel.\u201d The N.T. \u201c_angel\n of the Lord_\u201d does not permit, the O.T. \u201c_angel of the Lord_\u201d\n requires, worship (_Rev. 22:8, 9\u2014_\u201cSee thou do it not\u201d; _cf._ _Ex.\n 3:5\u2014_\u201cput off thy shoes\u201d). As supporting this interpretation, see\n Hengstenberg, Christology, 1:107-123; J. Pye Smith, Scripture\n Testimony to the Messiah. As opposing it, see Hofmann,\n Schriftbeweis, 1:329, 378; Kurtz, History of Old Covenant, 1:181.\n On the whole subject, see Bib. Sac., 1879:593-615.\n\n\nC. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.\n\n\n (_a_) Wisdom is represented as distinct from God, and as eternally\n existing with God; (_b_) the Word of God is distinguished from\n God, as executor of his will from everlasting.\n\n (_a_) _Prov. 8:1\u2014_\u201cDoth not wisdom cry?\u201d _Cf._ _Mat.\n 11:19\u2014_\u201cwisdom is justified by her works\u201d; _Luke 7:35\u2014_\u201cwisdom is\n justified of all her children\u201d; _11:49\u2014_\u201cTherefore also said the\n wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles\u201d;\n _Prov. 8:22, 30, 31\u2014_\u201cJehovah possessed me in the beginning of his\n way, Before his works of old.... I was by him, as a master\n workman: And I was daily his delight.... And my delight was with\n the sons of men\u201d; _cf._ _3:19\u2014_\u201cJehovah by wisdom founded the\n earth,\u201d and _Heb. 1:2\u2014_\u201chis Son ... through whom ... he made the\n worlds.\u201d (_b_) _Ps. 107:20\u2014_\u201cHe sendeth his word, and healeth\n them\u201d; _119:89\u2014_\u201cFor ever, O Jehovah, Thy word is settled in\n heaven\u201d; _147:15-18\u2014_\u201cHe sendeth out his commandment.... He\n sendeth out his word.\u201d\n\n In the Apocryphal book entitled Wisdom, 7:26, 28, wisdom is\n described as \u201cthe brightness of the eternal light,\u201d \u201cthe unspotted\n mirror of God\u2019s majesty,\u201d and \u201cthe image of his\n goodness\u201d\u2014reminding us of _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cthe effulgence of his glory,\n and the very image of his substance.\u201d In Wisdom, 9:9, 10, wisdom\n is represented as being present with God when he made the world,\n and the author of the book prays that wisdom may be sent to him\n out of God\u2019s holy heavens and from the throne of his glory. In 1\n Esdras 4:35-38, Truth in a similar way is spoken of as personal:\n \u201cGreat is the Truth and stronger than all things. All the earth\n calleth upon the Truth, and the heaven blesseth it; all works\n shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing. As\n for the Truth, it endureth and is always strong; it liveth and\n conquereth forevermore.\u201d\n\n\nIt must be acknowledged that in none of these descriptions is the idea of\npersonality clearly developed. Still less is it true that John the apostle\nderived his doctrine of the Logos from the interpretations of these\ndescriptions in Philo Jud\u00e6us. John\u2019s doctrine (John 1:1-18) is radically\ndifferent from the Alexandrian Logos-idea of Philo. This last is a\nPlatonizing speculation upon the mediating principle between God and the\nworld. Philo seems at times to verge towards a recognition of personality\nin the Logos, though his monotheistic scruples lead him at other times to\ntake back what he has given, and to describe the Logos either as the\nthought of God or as its expression in the world. But John is the first to\npresent to us a consistent view of this personality, to identify the Logos\nwith the Messiah, and to distinguish the Word from the Spirit of God.\n\n\n Dorner, in his History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ,\n 1:13-45, and in his System of Doctrine, 1:348, 349, gives the best\n account of Philo\u2019s doctrine of the Logos. He says that Philo calls\n the Logos \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03ac\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2, \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03b9\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2, \u03b4\u03b5\u03cd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2. Whether this is\n anything more than personification is doubtful, for Philo also\n calls the Logos the \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 \u03bd\u03bf\u03b7\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2. Certainly, so far as he makes\n the Logos a distinct personality, he makes him also a subordinate\n being. It is charged that the doctrine of the Trinity owes its\n origin to the Platonic philosophy in its Alexandrian union with\n Jewish theology. But Platonism had no Trinity. The truth is that\n by the doctrine of the Trinity Christianity secured itself against\n false heathen ideas of God\u2019s multiplicity and immanence, as well\n as against false Jewish ideas of God\u2019s unity and transcendence. It\n owes nothing to foreign sources.\n\n We need not assign to John\u2019s gospel a later origin, in order to\n account for its doctrine of the Logos, any more than we need to\n assign a later origin to the Synoptics in order to account for\n their doctrine of a suffering Messiah. Both doctrines were equally\n unknown to Philo. Philo\u2019s Logos does not and cannot become man. So\n says Dorner. Westcott, in Bible Commentary on John, Introd.,\n xv-xviii, and on John 1:1\u2014\u201cThe theological use of the term [in\n John\u2019s gospel] appears to be derived directly from the Palestinian\n _Memra_, and not from the Alexandrian _Logos_.\u201d Instead of Philo\u2019s\n doctrine being a stepping-stone from Judaism to Christianity, it\n was a stumbling-stone. It had no doctrine of the Messiah or of the\n atonement. Bennett and Adeny, Bib. Introd., 340\u2014\u201cThe difference\n between Philo and John may be stated thus: Philo\u2019s Logos is\n Reason, while John\u2019s is Word; Philo\u2019s is impersonal, while John\u2019s\n is personal; Philo\u2019s is not incarnate, while John\u2019s is incarnate;\n Philo\u2019s is not the Messiah, while John\u2019s is the Messiah.\u201d\n\n Philo lived from B. C. 10 or 20 to certainly A. D. 40, when he\n went at the head of a Jewish embassy to Rome, to persuade the\n Emperor to abstain from claiming divine honor from the Jews. In\n his De Opifice Mundi he says: \u201cThe Word is nothing else but the\n intelligible world.\u201d He calls the Word the \u201cchainband,\u201d \u201cpilot,\u201d\n \u201csteersman,\u201d of all things. Gore, Incarnation, 69\u2014\u201cLogos in Philo\n must be translated \u2018Reason.\u2019 But in the Targums, or early Jewish\n paraphrases of the O. T., the \u2018Word\u2019 of Jehovah (_Memra_, _Devra_)\n is constantly spoken of as the efficient instrument of the divine\n action, in cases where the O. T. speaks of Jehovah himself, \u2018The\n Word of God\u2019 had come to be used personally, as almost equivalent\n to God manifesting himself, or God in action.\u201d George H. Gilbert,\n in Biblical World, Jan. 1899:44\u2014\u201cJohn\u2019s use of the term Logos was\n suggested by Greek philosophy, while at the same time the content\n of the word is Jewish.\u201d\n\n Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 174-208\u2014\u201cThe Stoics invested the Logos\n with personality. They were Monists and they made \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 and \u1f55\u03bb\u03b7\n the active and the passive forms of the one principle. Some made\n God a mode of matter\u2014_natura naturata_; others made matter a mode\n of God\u2014_natura naturans_ = the world a self-evolution of God. The\n Platonic forms, as manifold expressions of a single \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2, were\n expressed by a singular term, Logos, rather than the Logoi, of\n God. From this Logos proceed all forms of mind or reason. So held\n Philo: \u2018The mind is an offshoot from the divine and happy soul (of\n God), an offshoot not separated from him, for nothing divine is\n cut off and disjoined, but only extended.\u2019 Philo\u2019s Logos is not\n only form but force\u2014God\u2019s creative energy\u2014the eldest-born of the\n \u2018I am,\u2019 which robes itself with the world as with a vesture, the\n high priest\u2019s robe, embroidered with all the forces of the seen\n and unseen worlds.\u201d\n\n Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:53\u2014\u201cPhilo carries the transcendence of\n God to its logical conclusions. The Jewish doctrine of angels is\n expanded in his doctrine of the Logos. The Alexandrian\n philosophers afterwards represented Christianity as a\n spiritualized Judaism. But a philosophical system dominated by the\n idea of the divine transcendence never could have furnished a\n motive for missionary labors like those of Paul. Philo\u2019s belief in\n transcendence abated his redemptive hopes. But, conversely, the\n redemptive hopes of orthodox Judaism saved it from some of the\n errors of exclusive transcendence.\u201d See a quotation from\n Siegfried, in Sch\u00fcrer\u2019s History of the Jewish People, article on\n Philo: \u201cPhilo\u2019s doctrine grew out of God\u2019s distinction and\n distance from the world. It was dualistic. Hence the need of\n mediating principles, some being less than God and more than\n creature. The cosmical significance of Christ bridged the gulf\n between Christianity and contemporary Greek thought. Christianity\n stands for a God who is revealed. But a Logos-doctrine like that\n of Philo may reveal less than it conceals. Instead of God\n incarnate for our salvation, we may have merely a mediating\n principle between God and the world, as in Arianism.\u201d\n\n The preceding statement is furnished in substance by Prof. William\n Adams Brown. With it we agree, adding only the remark that the\n Alexandrian philosophy gave to Christianity, not the substance of\n its doctrine, but only the terminology for its expression. The\n truth which Philo groped after, the Apostle John seized and\n published, as only he could, who had heard, seen, and handled \u201cthe\n Word of life\u201d_ (1 John 1:1)._ \u201cThe Christian doctrine of the Logos\n was perhaps before anything else an effort to express how Jesus\n Christ was God (\u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2), and yet in another sense was not God (\u1f41\n \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2); that is to say, was not the whole Godhead\u201d (quoted in\n Marcus Dods, Expositors\u2019 Bible, on _John 1:1_). See also Kendrick,\n in Christian Review, 26:369-399; Gloag, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,\n 1891:45-57; R\u00e9ville, Doctrine of the Logos in John and Philo;\n Godet on John, Germ. transl., 13, 135; Cudworth, Intellectual\n System, 2:320-333; Pressens\u00e9, Life of Jesus Christ, 83; Hagenbach,\n Hist. Doct., 1:114-117; Liddon, Our Lord\u2019s Divinity, 59-71; Conant\n on Proverbs, 53.\n\n\nD. Descriptions of the Messiah.\n\n\n(_a_) He is one with Jehovah; (_b_) yet he is in some sense distinct from\nJehovah.\n\n\n (_a_) _Is. 9:6\u2014_\u201cunto us a child is born, unto us a son is given\n ... and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,\n Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace\u201d; _Micah 5:2\u2014_\u201cthou Bethlehem\n ... which art little ... out of thee shall one come forth unto me\n that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old,\n from everlasting.\u201d (_b_) _Ps. 45:6, 7\u2014_\u201cThy throne, O God, is for\n ever and ever.... Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee\u201d;\n _Mal 3:1\u2014_\u201cI send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way\n before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his\n temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire.\u201d\n Henderson, in his Commentary on this passage, points out that the\n Messiah is here called \u201c_the Lord_\u201d or \u201c_the Sovereign_\u201d\u2014a title\n nowhere given in this form (with the article) to any but Jehovah;\n that he is predicted as coming to the temple as its proprietor;\n and that he is identified with the angel of the covenant,\n elsewhere shown to be one with Jehovah himself.\n\n\nIt is to be remembered, in considering this, as well as other classes of\npassages previously cited, that no Jewish writer before Christ\u2019s coming\nhad succeeded in constructing from them a doctrine of the Trinity. Only to\nthose who bring to them the light of New Testament revelation do they show\ntheir real meaning.\n\nOur general conclusion with regard to the Old Testament intimations must\ntherefore be that, while they do not by themselves furnish a sufficient\nbasis for the doctrine of the Trinity, they contain the germ of it, and\nmay be used in confirmation of it when its truth is substantially proved\nfrom the New Testament.\n\n\n That the doctrine of the Trinity is not plainly taught in the\n Hebrew Scriptures is evident from the fact that Jews unite with\n Mohammedans in accusing trinitarians of polytheism. It should not\n surprise us that the Old Testament teaching on this subject is\n undeveloped and obscure. The first necessity was that the Unity of\n God should be insisted on. Until the danger of idolatry was past,\n a clear revelation of the Trinity might have been a hindrance to\n religious progress. The child now, like the race then, must learn\n the unity of God before it can profitably be taught the\n Trinity,\u2014else it will fall into tritheism; see Gardiner, O. T. and\n N. T., 49. We should not therefore begin our proof of the Trinity\n with a reference to passages in the Old Testament. We should speak\n of these passages, indeed, as furnishing intimations of the\n doctrine rather than proof of it. Yet, after having found proof of\n the doctrine in the New Testament, we may expect to find traces of\n it in the Old which will corroborate our conclusions. As a matter\n of fact, we shall see that traces of the idea of a Trinity are\n found not only in the Hebrew Scriptures but in some of the heathen\n religions as well. E. G. Robinson: \u201cThe doctrine of the Trinity\n underlay the O. T., unperceived by its writers, was first\n recognized in the economic revelation of Christianity, and was\n first clearly enunciated in the necessary evolution of Christian\n doctrine.\u201d\n\n\n\nII. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to\nconceive of them as distinct Persons.\n\n\n1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.\n\n\n(_a_) Christ distinguishes the Father from himself as \u201canother\u201d; (_b_) the\nFather and the Son are distinguished as the begetter and the begotten;\n(_c_) the Father and the Son are distinguished as the sender and the sent.\n\n\n (_a_) _John 5:32, 37\u2014_\u201cIt is another that beareth witness of me\n ... the Father that sent me, he hath borne witness of me.\u201d (_b_)\n _Ps. 2:7\u2014_\u201cThou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee\u201d; _John\n 1:14\u2014_\u201cthe only begotten from the Father\u201d; _18\u2014_\u201cthe only begotten\n Son\u201d; _3:16\u2014_\u201cgave his only begotten Son.\u201d (_c_) _John 10:36\u2014_\u201csay\n ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,\n Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?\u201d; _Gal\n 4:4\u2014_\u201cwhen the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son.\u201d\n In these passages the Father is represented as objective to the\n Son, the Son to the Father, and both the Father and Son to the\n Spirit.\n\n\n2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.\n\n\n(_a_) Jesus distinguishes the Spirit from himself and from the Father;\n(_b_) the Spirit proceeds from the Father; (_c_) the Spirit is sent by the\nFather and by the Son.\n\n\n (_a_) _John 14:16, 17\u2014_\u201cI will pray the Father, and he shall give\n you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the\n Spirit of truth\u201d\u2014or \u201c_Spirit of the truth_,\u201d = he whose work it is\n to reveal and apply the truth, and especially to make manifest him\n who is the truth. Jesus had been their Comforter: he now promises\n them another Comforter. If he himself was a person, then the\n Spirit is a person. (_b_) _John 15:26\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of truth which\n proceedeth from the Father.\u201d (_c_) _John 14:26\u2014_\u201cthe Comforter,\n even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name\u201d;\n _15:26\u2014_\u201cwhen the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you\n from the Father\u201d; _Gal. 4:6\u2014_\u201cGod sent forth the Spirit of his Son\n into our hearts.\u201d The Greek church holds that the Spirit proceeds\n from the Father only; the Latin church, that the Spirit proceeds\n both from the Father and from the Son. The true formula is: The\n Spirit proceeds from the Father _through_ or _by_ (not \u201cand\u201d) the\n Son. See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 263. Moberly,\n Atonement and Personality, 195\u2014\u201cThe _Filioque_ is a valuable\n defence of the truth that the Holy Spirit is not simply the\n abstract second Person of the Trinity, but rather the Spirit of\n the incarnate Christ, reproducing Christ in human hearts, and\n revealing in them the meaning of true manhood.\u201d\n\n\n3. The Holy Spirit is a person.\n\n\nA. Designations proper to personality are given him.\n\n(_a_) The masculine pronoun \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2, though \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 is neuter; (_b_) the\nname \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, which cannot be translated by \u201ccomfort\u201d, or be taken as\nthe name of any abstract influence. The Comforter, Instructor, Patron,\nGuide, Advocate, whom this term brings before us, must be a person. This\nis evident from its application to Christ in 1 John 2:1\u2014\u201cwe have an\nAdvocate\u2014\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd\u2014with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.\u201d\n\n\n (_a_) _John 16:14\u2014_\u201cHe (\u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2) shall glorify me\u201d; in _Eph. 1:14_\n also, some of the best authorities, including Tischendorf (8th\n ed.), read \u1f44\u03c2, the masculine pronoun: \u201c_who is an earnest of our\n inheritance_.\u201d But in _John 14:16-18_, \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 is followed by\n the neuters \u1f41 and \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc, because \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1 had intervened. Grammatical\n and not theological considerations controlled the writer. See G.\n B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 189-217, especially on the\n distinction between Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is\n another person than Christ, in spite of Christ\u2019s saying of the\n coming of the Holy Spirit: \u201c_I come unto you_.\u201d (_b_) _John\n 16:7\u2014_\u201cif I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.\u201d\n The word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, as appears from _1 John 2:1_, quoted above,\n is a term of broader meaning than merely \u201cComforter.\u201d The Holy\n Spirit is, indeed, as has been said, \u201cthe mother-principle in the\n Godhead,\u201d and \u201c_as one whom his mother comforteth_\u201d so God by his\n Spirit comforts his children (_Is. 66:13_). But the Holy Spirit is\n also an Advocate of God\u2019s claims in the soul, and of the soul\u2019s\n interests in prayer (_Rom. 8:26\u2014_\u201cmaketh intercession for us\u201d). He\n comforts not only by being our advocate, but by being our\n instructor, patron, and guide; and all these ideas are found\n attaching to the word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 in good Greek usage. The word\n indeed is a verbal adjective, signifying \u201ccalled to one\u2019s aid,\u201d\n hence a \u201chelper\u201d; the idea of encouragement is included in it, as\n well as those of comfort and of advocacy. See Westcott, Bible\n Com., on _John 14:16_; Cremer, Lexicon of N. T. Greek, _in voce_.\n\n T. Dwight, in S. S. Times, on _John 14:16_\u2014\u201cThe fundamental\n meaning of the word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, which is a verbal adjective, is\n \u2018called to one\u2019s aid,\u2019 and thus, when used as a noun, it conveys\n the idea of \u2018helper.\u2019 This more general sense probably attaches to\n its use in John\u2019s Gospel, while in the Epistle (_1 John 2:1, 2_)\n it conveys the idea of Jesus acting as advocate on our behalf\n before God as a Judge.\u201d So the Latin _advocatus_ signifies one\n \u201ccalled to\u201d\u2014_i. e._, called in to aid, counsel, plead. In this\n connection Jesus says: \u201cI will not leave you orphans\u201d_ (John\n 14:18)_. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit, 228\u2014\u201cAs the orphaned\n family, in the day of the parent\u2019s death, need some friend who\n shall lighten their sense of loss by his own presence with them,\n so the Holy Spirit is \u2018called in\u2019 to supply the present love and\n help which the Twelve are losing in the death of Jesus.\u201d A. A.\n Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 237\u2014\u201cThe Roman \u2018client,\u2019 the poor and\n dependent man, called in his \u2018patron\u2019 to help him in all his\n needs. The patron thought for, advised, directed, supported,\n defended, supplied, restored, comforted his client in all his\n complications. The client, though weak, with a powerful patron,\n was socially and politically secure forever.\u201d\n\n\nB. His name is mentioned in immediate connection with other persons, and\nin such a way as to imply his own personality.\n\n(_a_) In connection with Christians; (_b_) in connection with Christ;\n(_c_) in connection with the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son\nare persons, the Spirit must be a person also.\n\n\n (_a_) _Acts 15:28\u2014_\u201cit seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us.\u201d\n (_b_) _John 16:14\u2014_\u201cHe shall glorify me: for he shall take of\n mine, and shall declare it unto you\u201d; _cf._ _17:4\u2014_\u201cI glorified\n thee on the earth.\u201d (_c_) _Mat. 28:29\u2014_\u201cbaptizing them into the\n name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit\u201d; _2 Cor.\n 13:14\u2014_\u201cthe grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,\n and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all\u201d; _Jude\n 21\u2014_\u201cpraying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of\n God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.\u201d _1 Pet. 1:1,\n 2\u2014_\u201celect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in\n sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the\n blood of Jesus Christ.\u201d Yet it is noticeable in all these passages\n that there is no obtrusion of the Holy Spirit\u2019s personality, as if\n he desired to draw attention to himself. The Holy Spirit shows,\n not himself, but Christ. Like John the Baptist, he is a mere\n voice, and so is an example to Christian preachers, who are\n themselves \u201cmade ... sufficient as ministers ... of the Spirit\u201d_\n (2 Cor. 3:6)_. His leading is therefore often unperceived; he so\n joins himself to us that we infer his presence only from the new\n and holy exercises of our own minds; he continues to work in us\n even when his presence is ignored and his purity is outraged by\n our sins.\n\n\nC. He performs acts proper to personality.\n\nThat which searches, knows, speaks, testifies, reveals, convinces,\ncommands, strives, moves, helps, guides, creates, recreates, sanctifies,\ninspires, makes intercession, orders the affairs of the church, performs\nmiracles, raises the dead\u2014cannot be a mere power, influence, efflux, or\nattribute of God, but must be a person.\n\n\n _Gen. 1:2_, marg.\u2014\u201c_the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face\n of the waters_\u201d; _6:3\u2014_\u201cMy Spirit shalt not strive with man for\n ever\u201d; _Luke 12:12\u2014_\u201cthe Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very\n hour what ye ought to say\u201d; _John 3:8\u2014_\u201cborn of the Spirit\u201d\u2014here\n Bengel translates: \u201c_the Spirit breathes where he wills, and thou\n hearest his voice_\u201d\u2014see also Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;\n _16:8\u2014_\u201cconvict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness,\n and of judgment\u201d; _Acts 2:4\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit gave them utterance\u201d;\n _8:29\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit said unto Philip, Go near\u201d; _10:19, 20\u2014_\u201cthe\n Spirit said unto him [Peter], Behold, three men seek thee.... go\n with them ... for I have sent them\u201d; _13:2\u2014_\u201cthe Holy Spirit said,\n Separate me Barnabas and Saul\u201d; _16:6, 7\u2014_\u201cforbidden of the Holy\n Spirit ... Spirit of Jesus suffered them not\u201d; _Rom. 8:11\u2014_\u201cgive\n life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit\u201d; _26\u2014_\u201cthe\n Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... maketh intercession for us\u201d;\n _15:19\u2014_\u201cin the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the\n Holy Spirit\u201d; _1 Cor. 2:10, 11\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit searcheth all\n things.... things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God\u201d;\n _12:8-11_\u2014distributes spiritual gifts \u201cto each one severally even\n as he will\u201d\u2014here Meyer calls attention to the words \u201cas he will,\u201d\n as proving the personality of the Spirit; _2 Pet. 1:21\u2014_\u201cmen spake\n from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit\u201d; _1 Pet.\n 1:2\u2014_\u201csanctification of the Spirit.\u201d How can a person be given in\n various measures? We answer, by being permitted to work in our\n behalf with various degrees of power. Dorner: \u201cTo be power does\n not belong to the impersonal.\u201d\n\n\nD. He is affected as a person by the acts of others.\n\nThat which can be resisted, grieved, vexed, blasphemed, must be a person;\nfor only a person can perceive insult and be offended. The blasphemy\nagainst the Holy Ghost cannot be merely blasphemy against a power or\nattribute of God, since in that case blasphemy against God would be a less\ncrime than blasphemy against his power. That against which the\nunpardonable sin can be committed must be a person.\n\n\n _Is. 63:10\u2014_\u201cthey rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit\u201d; _Mat.\n 12:31\u2014_\u201cEvery sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but\n the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven\u201d; _Acts\n 5:3, 4, 9\u2014_\u201clie to the Holy Ghost ... thou hast not lied unto men\n but unto God.... agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord\u201d;\n _7:51\u2014_\u201cye do always resist the Holy Spirit\u201d; _Eph. 4:30\u2014_\u201cgrieve\n not the Holy Spirit of God.\u201d Satan cannot be \u201cgrieved.\u201d\n Selfishness can be angered, but only love can be grieved.\n Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is like blaspheming one\u2019s own mother.\n The passages just quoted show the Spirit\u2019s possession of an\n emotional nature. Hence we read of \u201cthe love of the Spirit\u201d_ (Rom.\n 15:30)_. The unutterable sighings of the Christian in intercessory\n prayer (_Rom. 8:26, 27_) reveal the mind of the Spirit, and show\n the infinite depths of feeling which are awakened in God\u2019s heart\n by the sins and needs of men. These deep desires and emotions\n which are only partially communicated to us, and which only God\n can understand, are conclusive proof that the Holy Spirit is a\n person. They are only the overflow into us of the infinite\n fountain of divine love to which the Holy Spirit unites us.\n\n As Christ in the garden \u201cbegan to be sorrowful and sore troubled\u201d_\n (Mat. 26:37)_, so the Holy Spirit is sorrowful and sore troubled\n at the ignoring, despising, resisting of his work, on the part of\n those whom he is trying to rescue from sin and to lead out into\n the freedom and joy of the Christian life. Luthardt, in S. S.\n Times, May 26, 1888\u2014\u201cEvery sin can be forgiven\u2014even the sin\n against the Son of man\u2014except the sin against the Holy Spirit. The\n sin against the Son of man can be forgiven because he can be\n misconceived. For he did not appear as that which he really was.\n Essence and appearance, truth and reality, contradicted each\n other.\u201d Hence Jesus could pray: \u201cFather, forgive them, for they\n know not what they do\u201d_ (Luke 23:34)_. The office of the Holy\n Spirit, however, is to show to men the nature of their conduct,\n and to sin against him is to sin against light and without excuse.\n See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 297-313. Salmond, in\n Expositor\u2019s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 4:30_\u2014\u201cWhat love is in us\n points truly, though tremulously, to what love is in God. But in\n us love, in proportion as it is true and sovereign, has both its\n _wrath-side_ and its _grief-side_; and so must it be with God,\n however difficult for us to think it out.\u201d\n\n\nE. He manifests himself in visible form as distinct from the Father and\nthe Son, yet in direct connection with personal acts performed by them.\n\n\n _Mat. 3:16, 17\u2014_\u201cJesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway\n from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he\n saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him;\n and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved\n Son, in whom I am well pleased\u201d; _Luke 3:21, 22\u2014_\u201cJesus also\n having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the\n Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a\n voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am\n well pleased.\u201d Here are the prayer of Jesus, the approving voice\n of the Father, and the Holy Spirit descending in visible form to\n anoint the Son of God for his work. \u201cI ad Jordanem, et videbis\n Trinitatem.\u201d\n\n\nF. This ascription to the Spirit of a personal subsistence distinct from\nthat of the Father and of the Son cannot be explained as personification;\nfor:\n\n(_a_) This would be to interpret sober prose by the canons of poetry. Such\nsustained personification is contrary to the genius of even Hebrew poetry,\nin which Wisdom itself is most naturally interpreted as designating a\npersonal existence. (_b_) Such an interpretation would render a multitude\nof passages either tautological, meaningless, or absurd,\u2014as can be easily\nseen by substituting for the name Holy Spirit the terms which are wrongly\nheld to be its equivalents; such as the power, or influence, or efflux, or\nattribute of God. (_c_) It is contradicted, moreover, by all those\npassages in which the Holy Spirit is distinguished from his own gifts.\n\n\n (_a_) The Bible is not primarily a book of poetry, although there\n is poetry in it. It is more properly a book of history and law.\n Even if the methods of allegory were used by the Psalmists and the\n Prophets, we should not expect them largely to characterize the\n Gospels and Epistles; _1 Cor. 13:4\u2014_\u201cLove suffereth long, and is\n kind\u201d\u2014is a rare instance in which Paul\u2019s style takes on the form\n of poetry. Yet it is the Gospels and Epistles which most\n constantly represent the Holy Spirit as a person. (_b_) _Acts\n 10:38\u2014_\u201cGod anointed him [Jesus] with the Holy Spirit and with\n power\u201d = anointed him with power and with power? _Rom.\n 15:13\u2014_\u201cabound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit\u201d = in the\n power of the power of God? _19\u2014_\u201cin the power of signs and\n wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit\u201d = in the power of the\n power of God? _1 Cor. 2:4\u2014_\u201cdemonstration of the Spirit and of\n power\u201d = demonstration of power and of power? (_c_) _Luke\n 1:35\u2014_\u201cthe Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the\n Most High shall overshadow thee\u201d; _4:14\u2014_\u201cJesus returned in the\n power of the Spirit into Galilee\u201d; _1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11_\u2014after\n mention of the gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge,\n faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits,\n tongues, interpretation of tongues, all these are traced to the\n Spirit who bestows them: \u201c_all these worketh the one and the same\n Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will_.\u201d Here is\n not only giving, but giving discreetly, in the exercise of an\n independent will such as belongs only to a person. _Rom.\n 8:26\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit himself maketh intercession for us\u201d\u2014must be\n interpreted, if the Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the\n Father, as meaning that the Holy Spirit intercedes with himself.\n\n \u201cThe personality of the Holy Spirit was virtually rejected by the\n Arians, as it has since been by Schleiermacher, and it has been\n positively denied by the Socinians\u201d (E. G. Robinson). Gould, Bib.\n Theol. N. T., 83, 96\u2014\u201cThe Twelve represent the Spirit as sent by\n the Son, who has been exalted that he may send this new power out\n of the heavens. Paul represents the Spirit as bringing to us the\n Christ. In the Spirit Christ dwells in us. The Spirit is the\n historic Jesus translated into terms of universal Spirit. Through\n the Spirit we are in Christ and Christ in us. The divine Indweller\n is to Paul alternately Christ and the Spirit. The Spirit is the\n divine principle incarnate in Jesus and explaining his\n pre\u00ebxistence (_2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). Jesus was an incarnation of the\n Spirit of God.\u201d\n\n This seeming identification of the Spirit with Christ is to be\n explained upon the ground that the divine essence is common to\n both and permits the Father to dwell in and to work through the\n Son, and the Son to dwell in and to work through the Spirit. It\n should not blind us to the equally patent Scriptural fact that\n there are personal relations between Christ and the Holy Spirit,\n and work done by the latter in which Christ is the object and not\n the subject; _John 16:14\u2014_\u201cHe shall glorify me: for he shall take\n of mine, and shall declare it unto you.\u201d The Holy Spirit is not\n some _thing_, but some _one_; not \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc, but \u0391\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2; Christ\u2019s _alter\n ego_, or other self. We should therefore make vivid our belief in\n the personality of Christ and of the Holy Spirit by addressing\n each of them frequently in the prayers we offer and in such hymns\n as \u201cJesus, lover of my soul,\u201d and \u201cCome, Holy Spirit, heavenly\n Dove!\u201d On the personality of the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, in\n Works, 3:64-92; Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350.\n\n\n\nIII. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic and\ntemporal, but is immanent and eternal.\n\n\n1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are eternal.\n\n\nWe prove this (_a_) from those passages which speak of the existence of\nthe Word from eternity with the Father; (_b_) from passages asserting or\nimplying Christ\u2019s pre\u00ebxistence; (_c_) from passages implying intercourse\nbetween the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world; (_d_)\nfrom passages asserting the creation of the world by Christ; (_e_) from\npassages asserting or implying the eternity of the Holy Spirit.\n\n\n (_a_) _John 1:1, 2\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word\n was with God, and the Word was God\u201d; _cf._ _Gen. 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the\n beginning God created the heavens and the earth\u201d; _Phil.\n 2:6\u2014_\u201cexisting in the form of God ... on an equality with God.\u201d\n (_b_) _John 8:58\u2014_\u201cbefore Abraham was born, I am\u201d; _1:18\u2014_\u201cthe\n only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father\u201d (R. V.);\n _Col. 1:15-17\u2014_\u201cfirstborn of all creation\u201d or \u201cbefore every\n creature ... he is before all things.\u201d In these passages \u201c_am_\u201d\n and \u201c_is_\u201d indicate an eternal fact; the present tense expresses\n permanent being. _Rev. 22:13, 14\u2014_\u201cI am the Alpha and the Omega,\n the first and the last, the beginning and the end.\u201d (_c_) _John\n 17:5\u2014_\u201cFather, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory\n which I had with thee before the world was\u201d; _24\u2014_\u201cThou lovedst me\n before the foundation of the world.\u201d (_d_) _John 1:3\u2014_\u201cAll things\n were made through him\u201d; _1 Cor. 8:6\u2014_\u201cone Lord, Jesus Christ,\n through whom are all things\u201d; _Col. 1:16\u2014_\u201call things have been\n created through him and unto him\u201d; _Heb. 1:2\u2014_\u201cthrough whom also\n he made the worlds\u201d; _10\u2014_\u201cThou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay\n the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy\n hands.\u201d (_e_) _Gen. 1:2\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of God was brooding\u201d\u2014existed\n therefore before creation; _Ps. 33:6\u2014_\u201cby the word of Jehovah were\n the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit]\n of his mouth\u201d; _Heb. 9:14\u2014_\u201cthrough the eternal Spirit.\u201d\n\n With these passages before us, we must dissent from the statement\n of Dr. E. G. Robinson: \u201cAbout the ontologic Trinity we know\n absolutely nothing. The Trinity we can contemplate is simply a\n revealed one, one of economic manifestations. We may _suppose_\n that the ontologic underlies the economic.\u201d Scripture compels us,\n in our judgment, to go further than this, and to maintain that\n there are personal relations between the Father, the Son, and the\n Holy Spirit independently of creation and of time; in other words\n we maintain that Scripture reveals to us a social Trinity and an\n intercourse of love apart from and before the existence of the\n universe. Love before time implies distinctions of personality\n before time. There are three eternal consciousnesses and three\n eternal wills in the divine nature. We here state only the\n fact,\u2014the explanation of it, and its reconciliation with the\n fundamental unity of God is treated in our next section. We now\n proceed to show that the two varying systems which ignore this\n tripersonality are unscriptural and at the same time exposed to\n philosophical objection.\n\n\n2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.\n\n\nA. The Sabellian.\n\n\nSabellius (of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, 250) held that Father, Son, and\nHoly Spirit are mere developments or revelations to creatures, in time, of\nthe otherwise concealed Godhead\u2014developments which, since creatures will\nalways exist, are not transitory, but which at the same time are not\neternal _a parte ante_. God as united to the creation is Father; God as\nunited to Jesus Christ is Son; God as united to the church is Holy Spirit.\nThe Trinity of Sabellius is therefore an economic and not an immanent\nTrinity\u2014a Trinity of forms or manifestations, but not a necessary and\neternal Trinity in the divine nature.\n\nSome have interpreted Sabellius as denying that the Trinity is eternal _a\nparte post_, as well as _a parte ante_, and as holding that, when the\npurpose of these temporary manifestations is accomplished, the Triad is\nresolved into the Monad. This view easily merges in another, which makes\nthe persons of the Trinity mere names for the ever shifting phases of the\ndivine activity.\n\n\n The best statement of the Sabellian doctrine, according to the\n interpretation first mentioned, is that of Schleiermacher,\n translated with comments by Moses Stuart, in Biblical Repository,\n 6:1-16. The one unchanging God is differently reflected from the\n world on account of the world\u2019s different receptivities. Praxeas\n of Rome (200) Noetus of Smyrna (230), and Beryl of Arabia (250)\n advocated substantially the same views. They were called\n Monarchians (\u03bc\u03cc\u03bd\u03b7 \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03ae), because they believed not in the Triad,\n but only in the Monad. They were called Patripassians, because\n they held that, as Christ is only God in human form, and this God\n suffers, therefore the Father suffers. Knight, Colloquia\n Peripatetica, xlii, suggests a connection between Sabellianism and\n Emanationism. See this Compendium, on Theories which oppose\n Creation.\n\n A view similar to that of Sabellius was held by Horace Bushnell,\n in his God in Christ, 113-115, 130 sq., 172-175, and Christ in\n Theology, 119, 120\u2014\u201cFather, Son and Holy Spirit, being incidental\n to the revelation of God, may be and probably are from eternity to\n eternity, inasmuch as God may have revealed himself from eternity,\n and certainly will reveal himself so long as there are minds to\n know him. It may be, in fact, the nature of God to reveal himself,\n as truly as it is of the sun to shine or of living mind to think.\u201d\n He does not deny the immanent Trinity, but simply says we know\n nothing about it. Yet a Trinity of Persons in the divine essence\n itself he called plain tritheism. He prefers \u201cinstrumental\n Trinity\u201d to \u201cmodal Trinity\u201d as a designation of his doctrine. The\n difference between Bushnell on the one hand, and Sabellius and\n Schleiermacher on the other, seems then to be the following:\n Sabellius and Schleiermacher hold that the One _becomes_ three in\n the process of revelation, and the three are only _media_ or\n _modes_ of revelation. Father, Son, and Spirit are mere names\n applied to these modes of the divine action, there being no\n internal distinctions in the divine nature. This is modalism, or a\n modal Trinity. Bushnell stands by the Trinity of revelation alone,\n and protests against any constructive reasonings with regard to\n the immanent Trinity. Yet in his later writings he reverts to\n Athanasius and speaks of God as eternally \u201cthreeing himself\u201d; see\n Fisher, Edwards on the Trinity, 73.\n\n Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook, proposes as illustration of the\n Trinity, 1. the artist working on his pictures; 2. the same man\n teaching pupils how to paint; 3. the same man entertaining his\n friends at home. He has not taken on these types of conduct. They\n are not masks (_person\u00e6_), nor offices, which he takes up and lays\n down. There is a threefold _nature_ in him: he is artist, teacher,\n friend. God is complex, and not simple. I do not know him, till I\n know him in all these relations. Yet it is evident that Dr.\n Abbott\u2019s view provides no basis for love or for society within the\n divine nature. The three persons are but three successive aspects\n or activities of the one God. General Grant, when in office, was\n but one person, even though he was a father, a President, and a\n commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.\n\n\nIt is evident that this theory, in whatever form it may be held, is far\nfrom satisfying the demands of Scripture. Scripture speaks of the second\nperson of the Trinity as existing and acting before the birth of Jesus\nChrist, and of the Holy Spirit as existing and acting before the formation\nof the church. Both have a personal existence, eternal in the past as well\nas in the future\u2014which this theory expressly denies.\n\n\n A revelation that is not a self-revelation of God is not honest.\n Stuart: Since God is revealed as three, he must be essentially or\n immanently three, back of revelation; else the revelation would\n not be true. Dorner: A Trinity of revelation is a\n misrepresentation, if there is not behind it a Trinity of nature.\n Twesten properly arrives at the threeness by considering, not so\n much what is involved in the revelation of God to us, as what is\n involved in the revelation of God to himself. The unscripturalness\n of the Sabellian doctrine is plain, if we remember that upon this\n view the Three cannot exist at once: when the Father says \u201cThou\n art my beloved Son\u201d_ (Luke 3:22)_, he is simply speaking to\n himself; when Christ sends the Holy Spirit, he only sends himself.\n _John 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with\n God, and the Word was God\u201d\u2014\u201csets aside the false notion that the\n Word become _personal_ first at the time of creation, or at the\n incarnation\u201d (Westcott, Bib. Com. _in loco_).\n\n Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 50, 51\u2014\u201cSabellius claimed that the\n Unity became a Trinity by expansion. Fatherhood began with the\n world. God is not eternally Father, nor does he love eternally. We\n have only an impersonal, unintelligible God, who has played upon\n us and confused our understanding by showing himself to us under\n three disguises. Before creation there is no Fatherhood, even in\n germ.\u201d\n\n According to Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:269, Origen held that\n the Godhead might be represented by three concentric circles; the\n widest, embracing the whole being, is that of the Father; the\n next, that of the Son, which extends to the rational creation; and\n the narrowest is that of the Spirit, who rules in the holy men of\n the church. King, Reconstruction of Theology, 192, 194\u2014\u201cTo affirm\n social relations in the Godhead is to assert absolute\n Tritheism.... Unitarianism emphasizes the humanity of Christ, to\n preserve the unity of God; the true view emphasizes the divinity\n of Christ, to preserve the unity.\u201d\n\n L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 141, 287, says that New\n England Trinitarianism is characterized by three things: 1.\n Sabellian Patripassianism; Christ is all the Father there is, and\n the Holy Spirit is Christ\u2019s continued life; 2. Consubstantiality,\n or community of essence, of God and man; unlike the essential\n difference between the created and the uncreated which Platonic\n dualism maintained, this theory turns _moral_ likeness into\n _essential_ likeness; 3. Philosophical monism, matter itself being\n but an evolution of Spirit.... In the next form of the scientific\n doctrine of evolution, the divineness of man becomes a vital\n truth, and out of it arises a Christology that removes Jesus of\n Nazareth indeed out of the order of absolute Deity, but at the\n same time exalts him to a place of moral eminence that is secure\n and supreme.\n\n Against this danger of regarding Christ as a merely economic and\n temporary manifestation of God we can guard only by maintaining\n the Scriptural doctrine of an immanent Trinity. Moberly, Atonement\n and Personality, 86, 165\u2014\u201cWe cannot incur any Sabellian peril\n while we maintain\u2014what is fatal to Sabellianism\u2014that that which is\n revealed within the divine Unity is not only a distinction of\n aspects or of names, but a real reciprocity of mutual relation.\n One \u2018aspect\u2019 cannot contemplate, or be loved by, another....\n Sabellianism degrades the persons of Deity into aspects. But there\n can be no mutual relation between aspects. The heat and the light\n of flame cannot severally contemplate and be in love with one\n another.\u201d See Bushnell\u2019s doctrine reviewed by Hodge, Essays and\n Reviews, 433-473. On the whole subject, see Dorner, Hist. Doct.\n Person of Christ, 2:152-169; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:259; Baur,\n Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, 1:256-305; Thomasius, Christi Person\n und Werk 1:83.\n\n\nB. The Arian.\n\n\nArius (of Alexandria; condemned by Council of Nice, 325) held that the\nFather is the only divine being absolutely without beginning; the Son and\nthe Holy Spirit, through whom God creates and recreates, having been\nthemselves created out of nothing before the world was; and Christ being\ncalled God, because he is next in rank to God, and is endowed by God with\ndivine power to create.\n\nThe followers of Arius have differed as to the precise rank and claims of\nChrist. While Socinus held with Arius that worship of Christ was\nobligatory, the later Unitarians have perceived the impropriety of\nworshiping even the highest of created beings, and have constantly tended\nto a view of the Redeemer which regards him as a mere man, standing in a\npeculiarly intimate relation to God.\n\n\n For statement of the Arian doctrine, see J. Freeman Clarke,\n Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors. _Per contra_, see Sch\u00e4ffer, in\n Bib. Sac., 21:1, article on Athanasius and the Arian controversy.\n The so-called Athanasian Creed, which Athanasius never wrote, is\n more properly designated as the _Symbolum Quicumque_. It has also\n been called, though facetiously, \u201cthe Anathemasian Creed.\u201d Yet no\n error in doctrine can be more perilous or worthy of condemnation\n than the error of Arius (_1 Cor. 16:22\u2014_\u201cIf any man loveth not the\n Lord, let him be anathema\u201d; _1 John 2:23\u2014_\u201cWhosoever denieth the\n Son, the same hath not the Father\u201d; _4:3\u2014_\u201cevery spirit that\n confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the\n antichrist\u201d). It regards Christ as called God only by courtesy,\n much as we give to a Lieutenant Governor the title of Governor.\n Before the creation of the Son, the love of God, if there could be\n love, was expended on himself. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism: \u201cThe\n Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen idol, invented to maintain a\n heathenish Supreme in heathen isolation from the world. The nearer\n the Son is pulled down towards man by the attenuation of his\n Godhead, the more remote from man becomes the unshared Godhead of\n the Father. You have an _\u00catre Supr\u00eame_ who is practically\n unapproachable, a mere One-and-all, destitute of personality.\u201d\n\n Gore, Incarnation, 90, 91, 110, shows the immense importance of\n the controversy with regard to \u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd and \u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u03b9\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd. Carlyle\n once sneered that \u201cthe Christian world was torn in pieces over a\n diphthong.\u201d But Carlyle afterwards came to see that Christianity\n itself was at stake, and that it would have dwindled away to a\n legend, if the Arians had won. Arius appealed chiefly to logic,\n not to Scripture. He claimed that a Son must be younger than his\n Father. But he was asserting the principle of heathenism and\n idolatry, in demanding worship for a creature. The Goths were\n easily converted to Arianism. Christ was to them a hero-god, a\n demigod, and the later Goths could worship Christ and heathen\n idols impartially.\n\n\nIt is evident that the theory of Arius does not satisfy the demands of\nScripture. A created God, a God whose existence had a beginning and\ntherefore may come to an end, a God made of a substance which once was\nnot, and therefore a substance different from that of the Father, is not\nGod, but a finite creature. But the Scripture speaks of Christ as being in\nthe beginning God, with God, and equal with God.\n\n\n Luther, alluding to _John 1:1_, says: \u201c\u2018The Word was God\u2019 is\n against Arius; \u2018the Word was with God\u2019 is against Sabellius.\u201d The\n Racovian Catechism, Quaes. 183, 184, 211, 236, 237, 245, 246,\n teaches that Christ is to be truly worshiped, and they are denied\n to be Christians who refuse to adore him. Davidis was persecuted\n and died in prison for refusing to worship Christ; and Socinus was\n charged, though probably unjustly, with having caused his\n imprisonment. Bartholomew Legate, an Essexman and an Arian, was\n burned to death at Smithfield, March 13, 1613. King James I asked\n him whether he did not pray to Christ. Legate\u2019s answer was that\n \u201cindeed he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but\n not for these last seven years\u201d; which so shocked James that \u201che\n spurned at him with his foot.\u201d At the stake Legate still refused\n to recant, and so was burned to ashes amid a vast conflux of\n people. The very next month another Arian named Whiteman was\n burned at Burton-on-Trent.\n\n It required courage, even a generation later, for John Milton, in\n his Christian Doctrine, to declare himself a high Arian. In that\n treatise he teaches that \u201cthe Son of God did not exist from all\n eternity, is not co\u00ebval or co\u00ebssential or co\u00ebqual with the Father,\n but came into existence by the will of God to be the next being to\n himself, the first-born and best beloved, the Logos or Word\n through whom all creation should take its beginnings.\u201d So Milton\n regards the Holy Spirit as a created being, inferior to the Son\n and possibly confined to our heavens and earth. Milton\u2019s Arianism,\n however, is characteristic of his later, rather than his earlier,\n writings; compare the Ode on Christ\u2019s Nativity with Paradise Lost,\n 3:383-391; and see Masson\u2019s Life of Milton, 1:39; 6:823, 824; A.\n H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 260-262.\n\n Dr. Samuel Clarke, when asked whether the Father who had created\n could not also destroy the Son, said that he had not considered\n the question. Ralph Waldo Emerson broke with his church and left\n the ministry because he could not celebrate the Lord\u2019s Supper,\u2014it\n implied a profounder reverence for Jesus than he could give him.\n He wrote: \u201cIt seemed to me at church to-day, that the Communion\n Service, as it is now and here celebrated, is a document of the\n dullness of the race. How these, my good neighbors, the bending\n deacons, with their cups and plates, would have straightened\n themselves to sturdiness, if the proposition came before them to\n honor thus a fellow-man\u201d; see Cabot\u2019s Memoir, 314. Yet Dr. Leonard\n Bacon said of the Unitarians that \u201cit seemed as if their exclusive\n contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the\n example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional\n beauty and Christlikeness of living.\u201d\n\n Chadwick, Old and New Unitarian Belief, 20, speaks of Arianism as\n exalting Christ to a degree of inappreciable difference from God,\n while Socinus looked upon him only as a miraculously endowed man,\n and believed in an infallible book. The term \u201cUnitarians,\u201d he\n claims, is derived from the \u201cUniti,\u201d a society in Transylvania, in\n support of mutual toleration between Calvinists, Romanists, and\n Socinians. The name stuck to the advocates of the divine Unity,\n because they were its most active members. B. W. Lockhart:\n \u201cTrinity guarantees God\u2019s knowableness. Arius taught that Jesus\n was neither human nor divine, but created in some grade of being\n between the two, essentially unknown to man. An absentee God made\n Jesus his messenger, God himself not touching the world directly\n at any point, and unknown and unknowable to it. Athanasius on the\n contrary asserted that God did not send a messenger in Christ, but\n came himself, so that to know Christ is really to know God who is\n essentially revealed in him. This gave the Church the doctrine of\n God immanent, or Immanuel, God knowable and actually known by men,\n because actually present.\u201d Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present\n Age, 14\u2014\u201cThe world was never further from Unitarianism than it is\n to-day; we may add that Unitarianism was never further from\n itself.\u201d On the doctrines of the early Socinians, see Princeton\n Essays, 1:195. On the whole subject, see Blunt, Dict. of Heretical\n Sects, art.: Arius; Guericke, Hist. Doctrine, 1:313, 319. See also\n a further account of Arianism in the chapter of this Compendium on\n the Person of Christ.\n\n\n\nIV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three\nPersons, there is but one Essence.\n\n\n(_a_) The term \u201cperson\u201d only approximately represents the truth. Although\nthis word, more nearly than any other single word, expresses the\nconception which the Scriptures give us of the relation between the\nFather, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is not itself used in this\nconnection in Scripture, and we employ it in a qualified sense, not in the\nordinary sense in which we apply the word \u201cperson\u201d to Peter, Paul, and\nJohn.\n\n\n The word \u201cperson\u201d is only the imperfect and inadequate expression\n of a fact that transcends our experience and comprehension.\n Bunyan: \u201cMy dark and cloudy words, they do but hold The truth, as\n cabinets encase the gold.\u201d Three Gods, limiting each other, would\n deprive each other of Deity. While we show that the unity is\n articulated by the persons, it is equally important to remember\n that the persons are limited by the unity. With us personality\n implies entire separation from all others\u2014distinct individuality.\n But in the one God there can be no such separation. The personal\n distinctions in him must be such as are consistent with essential\n unity. This is the merit of the statement in the _Symbolum\n Quicumque_ (or Athanasian Creed, wrongly so called): \u201cThe Father\n is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; and yet there are\n not three Gods but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the\n Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord; yet there are not three Lords\n but one Lord. For as we are compelled by Christian truth to\n acknowledge each person by himself to be God and Lord, so we are\n forbidden by the same truth to say that there are three Gods or\n three Lords.\u201d See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:270. We add\n that the personality of the Godhead as a whole is separate and\n distinct from all others, and in this respect is more fully\n analogous to man\u2019s personality than is the personality of the\n Father or of the Son.\n\n The church of Alexandria in the second century chanted together:\n \u201cOne only is holy, the Father; One only is holy, the Son; One only\n is holy, the Spirit.\u201d Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 154,\n 167, 168\u2014\u201cThe three persons are neither three Gods, nor three\n parts of God. Rather are they God threefoldly, tri-personally....\n The personal distinction in Godhead is a distinction within, and\n of, Unity: not a distinction which qualifies Unity, or usurps the\n place of it, or destroys it. It is not a relation of mutual\n exclusiveness, but of mutual inclusiveness. No one person is or\n can be without the others.... The personality of the supreme or\n absolute Being cannot be without self-contained mutuality of\n relations such as Will and Love. But the mutuality would not be\n real, unless the subject which becomes object, and the object\n which becomes subject, were on each side alike and equally\n Personal.... The Unity of all-comprehending inclusiveness is a\n higher mode of unity than the unity of singular\n distinctiveness.... The disciples are not to have the presence of\n the Spirit instead of the Son, but to have the Spirit is to have\n the Son. We mean by the Personal God not a limited alternative to\n unlimited abstracts, such as Law, Holiness, Love, but the\n transcendent and inclusive completeness of them all. The terms\n Father and Son are certainly terms which rise more immediately out\n of the temporal facts of the incarnation than out of the eternal\n relations of the divine Being. They are metaphors, however, which\n mean far more in the spiritual than they do in the material\n sphere. Spiritual hunger is more intense than physical hunger. So\n sin, judgment, grace, are metaphors. But in _John 1:1-18_ \u2018Son\u2019 is\n not used, but \u2018Word.\u2019 \u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The necessary qualification is that, while three persons among men\nhave only a _specific_ unity of nature or essence\u2014that is, have the same\n_species_ of nature or essence,\u2014the persons of the Godhead have a\n_numerical_ unity of nature or essence\u2014that is, have the _same_ nature or\nessence. The undivided essence of the Godhead belongs equally to each of\nthe persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each possesses all the\nsubstance and all the attributes of Deity. The plurality of the Godhead is\ntherefore not a plurality of essence, but a plurality of hypostatical, or\npersonal, distinctions. God is not three and one, but three in one. The\none indivisible essence has three modes of subsistence.\n\n\n The Trinity is not simply a partnership, in which each member can\n sign the name of the firm; for this is unity of council and\n operation only, not of essence. God\u2019s nature is not an abstract\n but an organic unity. God, as living, cannot be a mere Monad.\n Trinity is the organism of the Deity. The one divine Being exists\n in three modes. The life of the vine makes itself known in the\n life of the branches, and this union between vine and branches\n Christ uses to illustrate the union between the Father and\n himself. (See _John 15:10\u2014_\u201cIf ye keep my commandments, ye shall\n abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father\u2019s commandments,\n and abide in his love\u201d; _cf._ _verse 5\u2014_\u201cI am the vine, ye are the\n branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth\n much fruit\u201d; _17:22, 23\u2014_\u201cThat they may be one, even as we are\n one; I in them, and thou in me.\u201d) So, in the organism of the body,\n the arm has its own life, a different life from that of the head\n or the foot, yet has this only by partaking of the life of the\n whole. See Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:450-453\u2014\u201cThe one divine\n personality is so present in each of the distinctions, that these,\n which singly and by themselves would not be personal, yet do\n participate in the one divine personality, each in its own manner.\n This one divine personality is the unity of the three modes of\n subsistence which participate in itself. Neither is personal\n without the others. In each, in its manner, is the whole Godhead.\u201d\n\n The human body is a complex rather than a simple organism, a unity\n which embraces an indefinite number of subsidiary and dependent\n organisms. The one life of the body manifests itself in the life\n of the nervous system, the life of the circulatory system, and the\n life of the digestive system. The complete destruction of either\n one of these systems destroys the other two. Psychology as well as\n physiology reveals to us the possibility of a three-fold life\n within the bounds of a single being. In the individual man there\n is sometimes a double and even a triple consciousness. Herbert\n Spencer, Autobiography, 1:459; 2:204\u2014\u201cMost active minds have, I\n presume, more or less frequent experiences of double\n consciousness\u2014one consciousness seeming to take note of what the\n other is about, and to applaud or blame.\u201d He mentions an instance\n in his own experience. \u201cMay there not be possible a bi-cerebral\n thinking, as there is a binocular vision?... In these cases it\n seems as though there were going on, quite apart from the\n consciousness which seemed to constitute myself, some process of\n elaborating coherent thoughts\u2014as though one part of myself was an\n independent originator over whose sayings and doings I had no\n control, and which were nevertheless in great measure consistent;\n while the other part of myself was a passive spectator or\n listener, quite unprepared for many of the things that the first\n part said, and which were nevertheless, though unexpected, not\n illogical.\u201d This fact that there can be more than one\n consciousness in the same personality among men should make us\n slow to deny that there can be three consciousnesses in the one\n God.\n\n Humanity at large is also an organism, and this fact lends new\n confirmation to the Pauline statement of organic interdependence.\n Modern sociology is the doctrine of one life constituted by the\n union of many. \u201cUnus homo, nullus homo\u201d is a principle of ethics\n as well as of sociology. No man can have a conscience to himself.\n The moral life of one results from and is interpenetrated by the\n moral life of all. All men moreover live, move and have their\n being in God. Within the bounds of the one universal and divine\n consciousness there are multitudinous _finite_ consciousnesses.\n Why then should it be thought incredible that in the nature of\n this one God there should be three _infinite_ consciousnesses?\n Baldwin, Psychology, 53, 54\u2014\u201cThe integration of finite\n consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine consciousness may find\n a valid analogy in the integration of subordinate consciousnesses\n in the unit-personality of man. In the hypnotic state, multiple\n consciousnesses may be induced in the same nervous organism. In\n insanity there is a secondary consciousness at war with that which\n normally dominates.\u201d Schurman, Belief in God, 26, 161\u2014\u201cThe\n infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the idea of a single\n organism embraces within a single life a plurality of members and\n functions.... All souls are parts or functions of the eternal life\n of God, who is above all, and through all, and in all, and in whom\n we live, and move, and have our being.\u201d We would draw the\n conclusion that, as in the body and soul of man, both as an\n individual and as a race, there is diversity in unity, so in the\n God in whose image man is made, there is diversity in unity, and a\n triple consciousness and will are consistent with, and even find\n their perfection in, a single essence.\n\n By the personality of God we mean more than we mean when we speak\n of the personality of the Son and the personality of the Spirit.\n The personality of the Godhead is distinct and separate from all\n others, and is, in this respect, like that of man. Hence Shedd,\n Dogm. Theol., 1:194, says \u201cit is preferable to speak of the\n _personality_ of the essence rather than of the _person_ of the\n essence; because the essence is not one person, but three\n persons.... The divine essence cannot be at once three persons and\n one person, if \u2018person\u2019 is employed in one signification; but it\n can be at once three persons and one personal Being.\u201d While we\n speak of the one God as having a personality in which there are\n three persons, we would not call this personality a\n superpersonality, if this latter term is intended to intimate that\n God\u2019s personality is less than the personality of man. The\n personality of the Godhead is inclusive rather than exclusive.\n\n With this qualification we may assent to the words of D\u2019Arcy,\n Idealism and Theology, 93, 94, 218, 230, 236, 254\u2014\u201cThe innermost\n truth of things, God, must be conceived as personal; but the\n ultimate Unity, which is his, must be believed to be\n superpersonal. It is a unity of persons, not a personal unity. For\n us personality is the ultimate form of unity. It is not so in him.\n For in him all persons live and move and have their being.... God\n is personal and also superpersonal. In him there is a transcendent\n unity that can embrace a personal multiplicity.... There is in God\n an ultimate superpersonal unity in which all persons are one\u2014[all\n human persons and the three divine persons].... Substance is more\n real than quality, and subject is more real than substance. The\n most real of all is the concrete totality, the all-inclusive\n Universal.... What human love strives to accomplish\u2014the overcoming\n of the opposition of person to person\u2014is perfectly attained in the\n divine Unity.... The presupposition on which philosophy is driven\n back\u2014[that persons have an underlying ground of unity] is\n identical with that which underlies Christian theology.\u201d See\n Pfleiderer and Lotze on personality, in this Compendium, p. 104.\n\n\n(_c_) This oneness of essence explains the fact that, while Father, Son,\nand Holy Spirit, as respects their personality, are distinct subsistences,\nthere is an intercommunion of persons and an immanence of one divine\nperson in another which permits the peculiar work of one to be ascribed,\nwith a single limitation, to either of the others, and the manifestation\nof one to be recognized in the manifestation of another. The limitation is\nsimply this, that although the Son was sent by the Father, and the Spirit\nby the Father and the Son, it cannot be said _vice versa_ that the Father\nis sent either by the Son, or by the Spirit. The Scripture representations\nof this intercommunion prevent us from conceiving of the distinctions\ncalled Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as involving separation between them.\n\n\n Dorner adds that \u201cin one is each of the others.\u201d This is true with\n the limitation mentioned in the text above. Whatever Christ does,\n God the Father can be said to do; for God acts only in and through\n Christ the Revealer. Whatever the Holy Spirit does, Christ can be\n said to do; for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. The\n Spirit is the omnipresent Jesus, and Bengel\u2019s dictum is true: \u201cUbi\n Spiritus, ibi Christus.\u201d Passages illustrating this intercommunion\n are the following: _Gen. 1:1\u2014_\u201cGod created\u201d; _cf._ _Heb.\n 1:2\u2014_\u201cthrough whom [the Son] also he made the worlds\u201d; _John 5:17,\n 19\u2014_\u201cMy Father worketh even until now, and I work.... The Son can\n do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing; for\n what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like\n manner\u201d; _14:9\u2014_\u201che that hath seen me hath seen the Father\u201d;\n _11\u2014_\u201cI am in the Father and the Father in me\u201d; _18\u2014_\u201cI will not\n leave you desolate: I come unto you\u201d (by the Holy Spirit);\n _15:26\u2014_\u201cwhen the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you\n from the Father, even the Spirit of truth\u201d; _17:21\u2014_\u201cthat they may\n all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee\u201d; _2\n Cor. 5:19\u2014_\u201cGod was in Christ reconciling\u201d; _Titus 2:10\u2014_\u201cGod our\n Savior\u201d; _Heb. 12:23\u2014_\u201cGod the Judge of all\u201d; _cf._ _John\n 5:22\u2014_\u201cneither doth the father judge any man, but he hath given\n all judgment unto the Son\u201d; _Acts 17:31\u2014_\u201cjudge the world in\n righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained.\u201d\n\n It is this intercommunion, together with the order of personality\n and operation to be mentioned hereafter, which explains the\n occasional use of the term \u201cFather\u201d for the whole Godhead; as in\n _Eph. 4:6\u2014_\u201cone God and Father of all, who is over all through all\n [in Christ], and in you all\u201d [by the Spirit]. This intercommunion\n also explains the designation of Christ as \u201c_the Spirit_,\u201d and of\n the Spirit as \u201c_the Spirit of Christ_,\u201d as in _1 Cor. 15:45\u2014_\u201cthe\n last Adam became a life-giving Spirit\u201d; _2 Cor. 3:17\u2014_\u201cNow the\n Lord is the Spirit\u201d; _Gal. 4:6\u2014_\u201csent forth the Spirit of his\n Son\u201d; _Phil. 1:19\u2014_\u201csupply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ\u201d (see\n Alford and Lange on _2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). So the Lamb, in _Rev.\n 5:6_, has \u201c_seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven\n Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth_\u201d = the Holy Spirit,\n with his manifold powers, is the Spirit of the omnipotent,\n omniscient, and omnipresent Christ. Theologians have designated\n this intercommunion by the terms \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03c7\u03ce\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, _circumincessio_,\n _intercommunicatio_, _circulatio_, _inexistentia_. The word \u03bf\u1f50\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\n was used to denote essence, substance, nature, being; and the\n words \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c3\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd and \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 for person, distinction, mode of\n subsistence. On the changing uses of the words \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c3\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd and\n \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:321, note 2. On the meaning\n of the word \u2019person\u2019 in connection with the Trinity, see John\n Howe, Calm Discourse of the Trinity; Jonathan Edwards,\n Observations on the Trinity; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:194, 267-275,\n 299, 300.\n\n The Holy Spirit is Christ\u2019s _alter ego_, or other self. When Jesus\n went away, it was an exchange of his presence for his\n omnipresence; an exchange of limited for unlimited power; an\n exchange of companionship for indwelling. Since Christ comes to\n men in the Holy Spirit, he speaks through the apostles as\n authoritatively as if his own lips uttered the words. Each\n believer, in having the Holy Spirit, has the whole Christ for his\n own; see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit. Gore, Incarnation,\n 218\u2014\u201cThe persons of the Holy Trinity are not separable\n individuals. Each involves the others; the coming of each is the\n coming of the others. Thus the coming of the Spirit must have\n involved the coming of the Son. But the specialty of the\n Pentecostal gift appears to be the coming of the Holy Spirit out\n of the uplifted and glorified _manhood_ of the incarnate Son. The\n Spirit is the life-giver, but the life with which he works in the\n church is the life of the _Incarnate_, the life of Jesus.\u201d\n\n Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 85\u2014\u201cFor centuries upon\n centuries, the essential unity of God had been burnt and branded\n in upon the consciousness of Israel. It had to be completely\n established first, as a basal element of thought, indispensable,\n unalterable, before there could begin the disclosure to man of the\n reality of the eternal relations within the one indivisible being\n of God. And when the disclosure came, it came not as modifying,\n but as further interpreting and illumining, that unity which it\n absolutely presupposed.\u201d E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology,\n 238\u2014\u201cThere is extreme difficulty in giving any statement of a\n triunity that shall not verge upon tritheism on the one hand, or\n upon mere modalism on the other. It was very natural that Calvin\n should be charged with Sabellianism, and John Howe with\n tritheism.\u201d\n\n\n\nV. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.\n\n\nIn explanation, notice that:\n\n\n1. These titles belong to the Persons.\n\n\n(_a_) The Father is not God as such; for God is not only Father, but also\nSon and Holy Spirit. The term \u201cFather\u201d designates that hypostatical\ndistinction in the divine nature in virtue of which God is related to the\nSon, and through the Son and the Spirit to the church and the world. As\nauthor of the believer\u2019s spiritual as well as natural life, God is doubly\nhis Father; but this relation which God sustains to creatures is not the\nground of the title. God is Father primarily in virtue of the relation\nwhich he sustains to the eternal Son; only as we are spiritually united to\nJesus Christ do we become children of God.\n\n(_b_) The Son is not God as such; for God is not only Son, but also Father\nand Holy Spirit. \u201cThe Son\u201d designates that distinction in virtue of which\nGod is related to the Father, is sent by the Father to redeem the world,\nand with the Father sends the Holy Spirit.\n\n(_c_) The Holy Spirit is not God as such; for God is not only Holy Spirit,\nbut also Father and Son. \u201cThe Holy Spirit\u201d designates that distinction in\nvirtue of which God is related to the Father and the Son, and is sent by\nthem to accomplish the work of renewing the ungodly and of sanctifying the\nchurch.\n\n\n Neither of these names designates the Monad as such. Each\n designates rather that personal distinction which forms the\n eternal basis and ground for a particular self-revelation. In the\n sense of being the Author and Provider of men\u2019s natural life, God\n is the Father of all. But even this natural sonship is mediated by\n Jesus Christ; see _1 Cor. 8:6\u2014_\u201cone Lord, Jesus Christ through\n whom are all things, and we through him.\u201d The phrase \u201c_Our\n Father_,\u201d however, can be used with the highest truth only by the\n regenerate, who have been newly born of God by being united to\n Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. See _Gal. 3:26\u2014_\u201cFor\n ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Jesus Christ\u201d;\n _4:4-6\u2014_\u201cGod sent forth his Son ... that we might receive the\n adoption of sons ... sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our\n hearts, crying, Abba, Father\u201d; _Eph. 1:5\u2014_\u201cforeordained as unto\n adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.\u201d God\u2019s love for Christ is\n the measure of his love for those who are one with Christ. Human\n nature in Christ is lifted up into the life and communion of the\n eternal Trinity. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:306-310.\n\n Human fatherhood is a reflection of the divine, not, _vice versa_,\n the divine a reflection of the human; _cf._ _Eph. 3:14, 15\u2014_\u201cthe\n Father, from whom every fatherhood \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u03b9\u03ac in heaven and on earth\n is named.\u201d Chadwick, Unitarianism, 77-83, makes the name \u201cFather\u201d\n only a symbol for the great Cause of organic evolution, the Author\n of all being. But we may reply with Stearns, Evidence of Christian\n Experience, 177\u2014\u201cto know God outside of the sphere of redemption\n is not to know him in the deeper meaning of the term \u2018Father\u2019. It\n is only through the Son that we know the Father: _Mat.\n 11:27\u2014_\u2018Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to\n whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.\u2019\u201d\n\n Whiton, Gloria Patri, 38\u2014\u201cThe Unseen can be known only by the seen\n which comes forth from it. The all-generating or Paternal Life\n which is hidden from us can be known only by the generated or\n Filial Life in which it reveals itself. The goodness and\n righteousness which inhabits eternity can be known only by the\n goodness and righteousness which issues from it in the successive\n births of time. God above the world is made known only by God in\n the world. God transcendent, the Father, is revealed by God\n immanent, the Son.\u201d Faber: \u201cO marvellous, O worshipful! No song or\n sound is heard, But everywhere and every hour, In love, in wisdom\n and in power, the Father speaks his dear eternal Word.\u201d We may\n interpret this as meaning that self-expression is a necessity of\n nature to an infinite Mind. The Word is therefore eternal. Christ\n is the mirror from which are flashed upon us the rays of the\n hidden Luminary. So Principal Fairbairn says: \u201cTheology must be on\n its historical side Christocentric, but on its doctrinal side\n Theocentric.\u201d\n\n Salmond, Expositor\u2019s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 1:5_\u2014\u201cBy \u2018adoption\u2019\n Paul does not mean the bestowal of the full privileges of the\n family on those who are sons by nature, but the acceptance into\n the family of those who are not sons originally and by right in\n the relation proper of those who are sons by birth. Hence \u03c5\u1f31\u03bf\u03b8\u03b5\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\n is never affirmed of Christ, for he alone is Son of God by nature.\n So Paul regards our sonship, not as lying in the natural relation\n in which men stand to God as his children, but as implying a new\n relation of grace, founded on a covenant relation of God and on\n the work of Christ (_Gal. 4:5_ _sq._).\u201d\n\n\n2. Qualified sense of these titles.\n\n\nLike the word \u201cperson\u201d, the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not to\nbe confined within the precise limitations of meaning which would be\nrequired if they were applied to men.\n\n(_a_) The Scriptures enlarge our conceptions of Christ\u2019s Sonship by giving\nto him in his pre\u00ebxistent state the names of the Logos, the Image, and the\nEffulgence of God.\u2014The term \u201cLogos\u201d combines in itself the two ideas of\nthought and word, of reason and expression. While the Logos as divine\nthought or reason is one with God, the Logos as divine word or expression\nis distinguishable from God. Words are the means by which personal beings\nexpress or reveal themselves. Since Jesus Christ was \u201cthe Word\u201d before\nthere were any creatures to whom revelations could be made, it would seem\nto be only a necessary inference from this title that in Christ God must\nbe from eternity expressed or revealed to himself; in other words, that\nthe Logos is the principle of truth, or self-consciousness, in God.\u2014The\nterm \u201cImage\u201d suggests the ideas of copy or counterpart. Man is the image\nof God only relatively and derivatively. Christ is the Image of God\nabsolutely and archetypally. As the perfect representation of the Father\u2019s\nperfections, the Son would seem to be the object and principle of love in\nthe Godhead.\u2014The term \u201cEffulgence,\u201d finally, is an allusion to the sun and\nits radiance. As the effulgence of the sun manifests the sun\u2019s nature,\nwhich otherwise would be unrevealed, yet is inseparable from the sun and\never one with it, so Christ reveals God, but is eternally one with God.\nHere is a principle of movement, of will, which seems to connect itself\nwith the holiness, or self-asserting purity, of the divine nature.\n\n\n Smyth, Introd. to Edwards\u2019 Observations on the Trinity: \u201cThe\n ontological relations of the persons of the Trinity are not a mere\n blank to human thought.\u201d _John 1:1\u2014_\u201cIn the beginning was the\n Word\u201d\u2014means more than \u201cin the beginning was the _x_, or the zero.\u201d\n Godet indeed says that Logos = \u201creason\u201d only in philosophical\n writings, but never in the Scriptures. He calls this a Hegelian\n notion. But both Plato and Philo had made this signification a\n common one. On \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 as = reason + speech, see Lightfoot on\n Colossians, 143, 144. Meyer interprets it as \u201cpersonal\n subsistence, the self-revelation of the divine essence, before all\n time immanent in God.\u201d Neander, Planting and Training, 369\u2014Logos =\n \u201cthe eternal Revealer of the divine essence.\u201d Bushnell: \u201cMirror of\n creative imagination\u201d; \u201cform of God.\u201d\n\n Word = 1. Expression; 2. Definite expression; 3. Ordered\n expression; 4. Complete expression. We make thought definite by\n putting it into language. So God\u2019s wealth of ideas is in the Word\n formed into an ordered Kingdom, a true Cosmos; see Mason, Faith of\n the Gospel, 76. Max M\u00fcller: \u201cA word is simply a spoken thought\n made audible as sound. Take away from a word the sound, and what\n is left is simply the thought of it.\u201d Whiton, Gloria Patri, 72,\n 73\u2014\u201cThe Greek saw in the word the abiding thought behind the\n passing form. The Word was God and yet finite\u2014finite only as to\n form, infinite as to what the form suggests or expresses. By Word\n some form must be meant, and any form is finite. The Word is the\n form taken by the infinite Intelligence which transcends all\n forms.\u201d We regard this identification of the Word with the finite\n manifestation of the Word as contradicted by _John 1:1_, where the\n Word is represented as being with God before creation, and by\n _Phil. 2:6_, where the Word is represented as existing in the form\n of God before his self-limitation in human nature. Scripture\n requires us to believe in an objectification of God to himself in\n the person of the Word prior to any finite manifestation of God to\n men. Christ existed as the Word, and the Word was with God, before\n the Word was made flesh and before the world came into being; in\n other words, the Logos was the eternal principle of truth or\n self-consciousness in the nature of God.\n\n Passages representing Christ as the Image of God are _Col.\n 1:15\u2014_\u201cwho is the image of the invisible God\u201d; _2 Cor.\n 4:4\u2014_\u201cChrist, who is the image of God\u201d (\u03b5\u1f30\u03ba\u03ce\u03bd); _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cthe\n very image of his substance\u201d (\u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u1f74\u03c1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03ac\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6); here\n \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1 means \u201cimpress,\u201d \u201ccounterpart.\u201d Christ is the perfect\n image of God, as men are not. He therefore has consciousness and\n will. He possesses all the attributes and powers of God. The word\n \u201cImage\u201d suggests the perfect equality with God which the title\n \u201cSon\u201d might at first seem to deny. The living Image of God which\n is equal to himself and is the object of his infinite love can be\n nothing less than personal. As the bachelor can never satisfy his\n longing for companionship by lining his room with mirrors which\n furnish only a lifeless reflection of himself, so God requires for\n his love a personal as well as an infinite object. The Image is\n not precisely the _repetition_ of the original. The stamp from the\n seal is not precisely the _reproduction_ of the seal. The letters\n on the seal run backwards and can be easily read only when the\n impression is before us. So Christ is the only interpretation and\n revelation of the hidden Godhead. As only in love do we come to\n know the depths of our own being, so it is only in the Son that\n \u201cGod is love\u201d_ (1 John 4:8)_.\n\n Christ is spoken of as the Effulgence of God in _Heb. 1:3\u2014_\u201cwho\n being the effulgence of his glory\u201d (\u1f00\u03c0\u03b1\u03cd\u03b3\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b4\u03cc\u03be\u03b7\u03c2); _cf._ _2\n Cor. 4:6\u2014_\u201cshined in our hearts, to give the light of the\n knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.\u201d Notice\n that the radiance of the sun is as old as the sun itself, and\n without it the sun would not be sun. So Christ is co\u00ebqual and\n co\u00ebternal with the Father. _Ps. 84:11\u2014_\u201cJehovah God is a sun.\u201d But\n we cannot see the sun except by the sunlight. Christ is the\n sunlight which streams forth from the Sun and which makes the Sun\n visible. If there be an eternal Sun, there must be also an eternal\n Sunlight, and Christ must be eternal. Westcott on _Hebrews\n 1:3_\u2014\u201cThe use of the absolute timeless term \u1f64\u03bd, \u2018_being_\u2019, guards\n against the thought that the Lord\u2019s sonship was by adoption, and\n not by nature. \u1f00\u03c0\u03b1\u03cd\u03b3\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1 does not express personality, and\n \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1 does not express co\u00ebssentiality. The two words are\n related exactly as \u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 and \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2, and like those must be\n combined to give the fulness of the truth. The truth expressed\n thus antithetically holds good absolutely.... In Christ the\n essence of God is made distinct; in Christ the revelation of God\u2019s\n character is seen.\u201d On Edwards\u2019s view of the Trinity, together\n with his quotations from Ramsey\u2019s Philosophical Principles, from\n which he seems to have derived important suggestions, see Allen,\n Jonathan Edwards, 338-376; G. P. Fisher, Edwards\u2019s Essay on the\n Trinity, 110-116.\n\n\n(_b_) The names thus given to the second person of the Trinity, if they\nhave _any_ significance, bring him before our minds in the general aspect\nof Revealer, and suggest a relation of the doctrine of the Trinity to\nGod\u2019s immanent attributes of truth, love, and holiness. The prepositions\nused to describe the internal relations of the second person to the first\nare not prepositions of rest, but prepositions of direction and movement.\nThe Trinity, as the organism of Deity, secures a life-movement of the\nGodhead, a process in which God evermore objectifies himself and in the\nSon gives forth of his fulness. Christ represents the centrifugal action\nof the deity. But there must be centripetal action also. In the Holy\nSpirit the movement is completed, and the divine activity and thought\nreturns into itself. True religion, in reuniting us to God, reproduces in\nus, in our limited measure, this eternal process of the divine mind.\nChristian experience witnesses that God in himself is unknown; Christ is\nthe organ of external revelation; the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal\nrevelation\u2014only he can give us an inward apprehension or realization of\nthe truth. It is \u201cthrough the eternal Spirit\u201d that Christ \u201coffered himself\nwithout blemish unto God,\u201d and it is only through the Holy Spirit that the\nchurch has access to the Father, or fallen creatures can return to God.\n\n\n Here we see that God is Life, self-sufficient Life, Infinite Life,\n of which the life of the universe is but a faint reflection, a\n rill from the fountain, a drop from the ocean. Since Christ is the\n only Revealer, the only outgoing principle in the Godhead, it is\n he in whom the whole creation comes to be and holds together. He\n is the Life of nature: all natural beauty and grandeur, all forces\n molecular and molar, all laws of gravitation and evolution, are\n the work and manifestation of the omnipresent Christ. He is the\n Life of humanity: the intellectual and moral impulses of man, so\n far as they are normal and uplifting, are due to Christ; he is the\n principle of progress and improvement in history. He is the Life\n of the church: the one and only Redeemer and spiritual Head of the\n race is also its Teacher and Lord.\n\n All objective revelation of God is the work of Christ. But all\n subjective manifestation of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. As\n Christ is the principle of outgoing, so the Holy Spirit is the\n principle of return to God. God would take up finite creatures\n into himself, would breath into them his breath, would teach them\n to launch their little boats upon the infinite current of his\n life. Our electric cars can go up hill at great speed so long as\n they grip the cable. Faith is the grip which connects us with the\n moving energy of God. \u201cThe universe is homeward bound,\u201d because\n the Holy Spirit is ever turning objective revelation into\n subjective revelation, and is leading men consciously or\n unconsciously to appropriate the thought and love and purpose of\n Him in whom all things find their object and end; \u201cfor of him and\n through him, and unto him, are all things\u201d_ (Rom. 11:36)_,\u2014here\n there is allusion to the Father as the source, the Son as the\n medium, and the Spirit as the perfecting and completing agent, in\n God\u2019s operations. But all these external processes are only signs\n and finite reflections of a life-process internal to the nature of\n God.\n\n Meyer on _John 1:1\u2014_\u201cthe Word was with God\u201d: \u201c\u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd does\n not = \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff7, but expresses the existence of the Logos in God\n in respect of intercourse. The moral essence of this essential\n fellowship is love, which excludes any merely modalistic\n conception.\u201d Marcus Dods, Expositor\u2019s Greek Testament, _in loco_:\n \u201cThis preposition implies intercourse and therefore separate\n personality.\u201d\n\n Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 62\u2014\u201c_And the Word was toward God_\u201d =\n his face is not outwards, as if he were merely revealing, or\n waiting to reveal, God to the creation. His face is turned\n inwards. His whole Person is directed toward God, motion\n corresponding to motion, thought to thought.... In him God stands\n revealed to himself. Contrast the attitude of fallen Adam, with\n his face averted from God. Godet, on _John 1:1_\u2014\u201c\u03a0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd\n intimates not only personality but movement.... The tendency of\n the Logos _ad extra_ rests upon an anterior and essential relation\n _ad intra_. To reveal God, one must know him; to project him\n outwardly, one must have plunged into his bosom.\u201d Compare _John\n 1:18\u2014_\u201cthe only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father\u201d\n (R. V.) where we find, not \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03cc\u03bb\u03c0\u1ff7, but \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03ba\u03cc\u03bb\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd. As \u1f26\u03bd\n \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03c0\u03cc\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd means \u201cwent into the city and was there,\u201d so the use\n of these prepositions indicates in the Godhead movement as well as\n rest. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:193, translates \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 by\n \u201c_hingewandt zu_,\u201d or \u201cturned toward.\u201d The preposition would then\n imply that the Revealer, who existed in the beginning, was ever\n over against God, in the life-process of the Trinity, as the\n perfect objectification of himself. \u201cDas Aussichselbstsein kraft\n des Durchsichselbstsein mit dem F\u00fcrsichselbstsein\n zusammenschliesst.\u201d Dorner speaks of \u201cdas\n Aussensichoderineinemandernsein; Sichgeltendmachen des\n Ausgeschlossenen; Sichnichtsogesetzthaben; Stehenbleibenwollen.\u201d\n\n There is in all human intelligence a threefoldness which points\n toward a trinitarian life in God. We can distinguish a _Wissen_, a\n _Bewusstsein_, a _Selbstbewusstein_. In complete\n self-consciousness there are the three elements: 1. We are\n ourselves; 2. We form a picture of ourselves; 3. We recognize this\n picture as the picture of ourselves. The little child speaks of\n himself in the third person: \u201cBaby did it.\u201d The objective comes\n before the subject; \u201cme\u201d comes first, and \u201cI\u201d is a later\n development; \u201chimself\u201d still holds its place, rather than\n \u201cheself.\u201d But this duality belongs only to undeveloped\n intelligence; it is characteristic of the animal creation; we\n revert to it in our dreams; the insane are permanent victims of\n it; and since sin is moral insanity, the sinner has no hope until,\n like the prodigal, he \u201ccomes to himself\u201d_ (Luke 15:17)_. The\n insane person is _mente alienatus_, and we call physicians for the\n insane by the name of _alienists_. Mere duality gives us only the\n notion of separation. Perfect self-consciousness whether in man or\n in God requires a third unifying element. And in God mediation\n between the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cThou\u201d must be the work of a Person also,\n and the Person who mediates between the two must be in all\n respects the equal of either, or he could not adequately interpret\n the one to the other; see Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 57-59.\n\n Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:179-189, 276-283\u2014\u201cIt is one of the effects\n of conviction by the Holy Spirit to convert consciousness into\n self-consciousness.... Conviction of sin is the consciousness of\n self as the guilty author of sin. Self-consciousness is trinal,\n while mere consciousness is dual.... One and the same human spirit\n subsists in two modes or distinctions\u2014subject and object ... The\n three hypostatical consciousnesses in their combination and unity\n constitute the one consciousness of God ... as the three persons\n make one essence.\u201d\n\n Dorner considers the internal relations of the Trinity (System,\n 1:412 _sq._) in three aspects: 1. Physical. God is _causa sui_.\n But effect that equals cause must itself be causative. Here would\n be duality, were it not for a third principle of unity. Trinitas\n dualitatem ad unitatem reducit. 2. Logical. Self-consciousness\n sets self over against self. Yet the thinker must not regard self\n as one of many, and call himself \u201che,\u201d as children do; for the\n thinker would then be, not _self_-conscious, but _mente\n alienatus_, \u201cbeside himself.\u201d He therefore \u201ccomes to himself\u201d in a\n third, as the brute cannot. 3. Ethical. God\u2014self-willing right.\n But right based on arbitrary will is not right. Right based on\n passive nature is not right either. Right as _being_\u2014Father. Right\n as _willing_\u2014Son. Without the latter principle of freedom, we have\n a dead ethic, a dead God, an enthroned necessity. The unity of\n necessity and freedom is found by God, as by the Christian, in the\n Holy Spirit. The Father\u2014I; the Son\u2014Me; the Spirit the unity of the\n two; see C. C. Everett, Essays, Theological and Literary, 32.\n There must be not only Sun and Sunlight, but an Eye to behold the\n Light. William James, in his Psychology, distinguishes the _Me_,\n the self as known, from the _I_, the self as knower.\n\n But we need still further to distinguish a third principle, a\n subject-object, from both subject and object. The subject cannot\n recognize the object as one with itself except through a unifying\n principle which can be distinguished from both. We may therefore\n regard the Holy Spirit as the principle of self-consciousness in\n man as well as in God. As there was a natural union of Christ with\n humanity prior to his redeeming work, so there is a natural union\n of the Holy Spirit with all men prior to his regenerating work:\n _Job 32:18\u2014_\u201cthere is a spirit in man, And the breath of the\n Almighty giveth them understanding.\u201d Kuyper, Work of the Holy\n Spirit, teaches that the Holy Spirit constitutes the principle of\n life in all living things, and animates all rational beings, as\n well as regenerates and sanctifies the elect of God. Matheson,\n Voices of the Spirit, 75, remarks on _Job 34:14, 15\u2014_\u201cIf he gather\n unto himself his Spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish\n together\u201d\u2014that the Spirit is not only necessary to man\u2019s\n salvation, but also to keep up even man\u2019s natural life.\n\n Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:172, speaks of the Son as the centrifugal,\n while the Holy Spirit is the centripetal movement of the Godhead.\n God apart from Christ is unrevealed (_John 1:18\u2014_\u201cNo man hath seen\n God at any time\u201d); Christ is the organ of external revelation\n (_18\u2014_\u201cthe only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,\n he hath declared him\u201d); the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal\n revelation (_1 Cor. 2:10\u2014_\u201cunto us Christ revealed them through\n the Spirit\u201d). That the Holy Spirit is the principle of all\n movement towards God appears from _Heb. 9:14_\u2014Christ \u201c_through the\n eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_\u201d; _Eph.\n 2:28\u2014_\u201caccess in one Spirit unto the Father\u201d; _Rom. 8:26\u2014_\u201cthe\n Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... the Spirit himself maketh\n intercession for us\u201d; _John 4:24\u2014_\u201cGod is a Spirit: and they that\n worship him must worship in spirit\u201d; _16:8-11\u2014_\u201cconvict the world\n in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.\u201d See\n Twesten, Dogmatik, on the Trinity; also Thomasius, Christi Person\n und Werk, 1:111. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 68\u2014\u201cIt is the joy of\n the Son to receive, his gladness to welcome most those wishes of\n the Father which will cost most to himself. The Spirit also has\n his joy in making known,\u2014in perfecting fellowship and keeping the\n eternal love alive by that incessant sounding of the deeps which\n makes the heart of the Father known to the Son, and the heart of\n the Son known to the Father.\u201d We may add that the Holy Spirit is\n the organ of internal revelation even to the Father and to the\n Son.\n\n\n(_c_) In the light of what has been said, we may understand somewhat more\nfully the characteristic differences between the work of Christ and that\nof the Holy Spirit. We may sum them up in the four statements that, first,\nall outgoing seems to be the work of Christ, all return to God the work of\nthe Spirit; secondly, Christ is the organ of external revelation, the Holy\nSpirit the organ of internal revelation; thirdly, Christ is our advocate\nin heaven, the Holy Spirit is our advocate in the soul; fourthly, in the\nwork of Christ we are passive, in the work of the Spirit we are active. Of\nthe work of Christ we shall treat more fully hereafter, in speaking of his\nOffices as Prophet, Priest, and King. The work of the Holy Spirit will be\ntreated when we come to speak of the Application of Redemption in\nRegeneration and Sanctification. Here it is sufficient to say that the\nHoly Spirit is represented in the Scriptures as the author of life\u2014in\ncreation, in the conception of Christ, in regeneration, in resurrection;\nand as the giver of light\u2014in the inspiration of Scripture writers, in the\nconviction of sinners, in the illumination and sanctification of\nChristians.\n\n\n _Gen. 1:2\u2014_\u201cThe Spirit of God was brooding\u201d; _Luke 1:35_\u2014to Mary:\n \u201c_The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee_\u201d, _John 3:8\u2014_\u201cborn of the\n Spirit\u201d; _Ps. 37:9, 14\u2014_\u201cCome from the four winds, O breath.... I\n will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live\u201d; _Rom. 8:11\u2014_\u201cgive\n life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit.\u201d _1 John\n 2:1\u2014_\u201can advocate (\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd) with the Father, Jesus Christ the\n righteous\u201d; _John 14:16, 17\u2014_\u201canother Comforter (\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd), that\n he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth\u201d; _Rom.\n 8:26\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit himself maketh intercession for us.\u201d _2 Pet.\n 1:21\u2014_\u201cmen spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit\u201d; _John\n 16:8\u2014_\u201cconvict the world in respect of sin\u201d; _13\u2014_\u201cwhen he, the\n Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth\u201d;\n _Rom. 8:14\u2014_\u201cas many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are\n sons of God.\u201d\n\n McCosh: The works of the Spirit are Conviction, Conversion,\n Sanctification, Comfort. Donovan: The Spirit is the Spirit of\n conviction, enlightenment, quickening, in the sinner; and of\n revelation, remembrance, witness, sanctification, consolation, to\n the saint. The Spirit enlightens the sinner, as the flash of\n lightning lights the traveler stumbling on the edge of a precipice\n at night; enlightens the Christian, as the rising sun reveals a\n landscape which was all there before, but which was hidden from\n sight until the great luminary made it visible. \u201cThe morning light\n did not create The lovely prospect it revealed; It only showed the\n real state Of what the darkness had concealed.\u201d Christ\u2019s advocacy\n before the throne is like that of legal counsel pleading in our\n stead; the Holy Spirit\u2019s advocacy in the heart is like the\n mother\u2019s teaching her child to pray for himself.\n\n J. W. A. Stewart: \u201cWithout the work of the Holy Spirit redemption\n would have been impossible, as impossible as that fuel should warm\n without being lighted, or that bread should nourish without being\n eaten. Christ is God entering into human history, but without the\n Spirit Christianity would be only history. The Holy Spirit is God\n entering into human hearts. The Holy Spirit turns creed into life.\n Christ is the physician who leaves the remedy and then departs.\n The Holy Spirit is the nurse who applies and administers the\n remedy, and who remains with the patient until the cure is\n completed.\u201d Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 78\u2014\u201cIt is in vain that\n the mirror exists in the room, if it is lying on its face; the\n sunbeams cannot reach it till its face is upturned to them. Heaven\n lies about thee not only in thine infancy but at all times. But it\n is not enough that a place is prepared for thee; thou must be\n prepared for the place. It is not enough that thy light has come;\n thou thyself must arise and shine. No outward shining can reveal,\n unless thou art thyself a reflector of its glory. The Spirit must\n set thee on thy feet, that thou mayest hear him that speaks to\n thee (Ez. 2:2).\u201d\n\n The Holy Spirit reveals not himself but Christ. _John 16:14\u2014_\u201cHe\n shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it\n unto you.\u201d So should the servants of the Spirit hide themselves\n while they make known Christ. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit,\n 40\u2014\u201cSome years ago a large steam engine all of glass was exhibited\n about the country. When it was at work one would see the piston\n and the valves go; but no one could see what made them go. When\n steam is hot enough to be a continuous elastic vapor, it is\n invisible.\u201d So we perceive the presence of the Holy Spirit, not by\n visions or voices, but by the effect he produces within us in the\n shape of new knowledge, new love, and new energy of our own\n powers. Denney, Studies in Theology, 161\u2014\u201cNo man can bear witness\n to Christ and to himself at the same time. _Esprit_ is fatal to\n unction; no man can give the impression that he himself is clever\n and also that Christ is mighty to save. The power of the Holy\n Spirit is felt only when the witness is unconscious of self, and\n when others remain unconscious of him.\u201d Moule, Veni Creator,\n 8\u2014\u201cThe Holy Spirit, as Tertullian says, is the vicar of Christ.\n The night before the Cross, the Holy Spirit was present to the\n mind of Christ as a person.\u201d\n\n Gore, in Lux Mundi, 318\u2014\u201cIt was a point in the charge against\n Origen that his language seemed to involve an exclusion of the\n Holy Spirit from nature, and a limitation of his activity to the\n church. The whole of life is certainly his. And yet, because his\n special attribute is holiness, it is in rational natures, which\n alone are capable of holiness, that he exerts his special\n influence. A special inbreathing of the divine Spirit gave to man\n his proper being.\u201d See _Gen. 2:7\u2014_\u201cJehovah God ... breathed into\n his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul\u201d;\n _John 3:8\u2014_\u201cThe Spirit breatheth where it will ... so is every one\n that is born of the Spirit.\u201d E. H. Johnson, on The Offices of the\n Holy Spirit, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:381-382\u2014\u201cWhy is he specially\n called the Holy, when Father and Son are also holy, unless because\n he produces holiness, _i. e._, makes the holiness of God to be\n ours individually? Christ is the principle of collectivism, the\n Holy Spirit the principle of individualism. The Holy Spirit shows\n man the Christ in him. God above all = Father; God through all =\n Son; God in all = Holy Spirit (_Eph. 4:6_).\u201d\n\n The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has never yet been scientifically\n unfolded. No treatise on it has appeared comparable to Julius\n M\u00fcller\u2019s Doctrine of Sin, or to I. A. Dorner\u2019s History of the\n Doctrine of the Person of Christ. The progress of doctrine in the\n past has been marked by successive stages. Athanasius treated of\n the Trinity; Augustine of sin; Anselm of the atonement; Luther of\n justification; Wesley of regeneration; and each of these\n unfoldings of doctrine has been accompanied by religious\n awakening. We still wait for a complete discussion of the doctrine\n of the Holy Spirit, and believe that widespread revivals will\n follow the recognition of the omnipotent Agent in revivals. On the\n relations of the Holy Spirit to Christ, see Owen, in Works,\n 3:152-159; on the Holy Spirit\u2019s nature and work, see works by\n Faber, Smeaton, Tophel, G. Campbell Morgan, J. D. Robertson,\n Biederwolf; also C. E. Smith, The Baptism of Fire; J. D. Thompson,\n The Holy Comforter; Bushnell, Forgiveness and Law, last chapter;\n Bp. Andrews, Works, 3:107-400; James S. Candlish, Work of the Holy\n Spirit; Redford, Vox Dei; Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ; A.\n J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit; Kuyper, Work of the Holy\n Spirit; J. E. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit; Lechler, Lehre\n vom Heiligen Geiste; Arthur, Tongue of Fire; A. H. Strong,\n Philosophy and Religion, 250-258, and Christ in Creation, 297-313.\n\n\n3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.\n\n\nThat the Sonship of Christ is eternal, is intimated in Psalm 2:7. \u201cThis\nday have I begotten thee\u201d is most naturally interpreted as the declaration\nof an eternal fact in the divine nature. Neither the incarnation, the\nbaptism, the transfiguration, nor the resurrection marks the beginning of\nChrist\u2019s Sonship, or constitutes him Son of God. These are but\nrecognitions or manifestations of a pre\u00ebxisting Sonship, inseparable from\nhis Godhood. He is \u201cborn before every creature\u201d (while yet no created\nthing existed\u2014see Meyer on Col. 1:15) and \u201cby the resurrection of the\ndead\u201d is not _made_ to be, but only \u201c_declared_ to be,\u201d \u201caccording to the\nSpirit of holiness\u201d (= according to his divine nature) \u201cthe Son of God\nwith power\u201d (see Philippi and Alford on Rom. 1:3, 4). This Sonship is\nunique\u2014not predicable of, or shared with, any creature. The Scriptures\nintimate, not only an eternal generation of the Son, but an eternal\nprocession of the Spirit.\n\n\n _Psalm 2:7\u2014_\u201cI will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou\n art my Son; This day I have begotten thee\u201d see Alexander, Com. _in\n loco_; also Com. on _Acts 13:33_\u2014\u201c\u2018To-day\u2019 refers to the date of\n the decree itself; but this, as a divine act, was eternal,\u2014and so\n must be the Sonship which it affirms.\u201d Philo says that \u201cto-day\u201d\n with God means \u201cforever.\u201d This begetting of which the Psalm speaks\n is not the resurrection, for while Paul in _Acts 13:33_ refers to\n this Psalm to establish the fact of Jesus\u2019 Sonship, he refers in\n _Acts 13:34, 35_ to another Psalm, the _sixteenth_, to establish\n the fact that this Son of God was to rise from the dead. Christ is\n shown to be Son of God by his incarnation (_Heb. 1:5, 6\u2014_\u201cwhen he\n again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let\n all the angels of God worship him\u201d), his baptism (_Mat.\n 3:17\u2014_\u201cThis is my beloved Son\u201d), his transfiguration (_Mat.\n 17:5\u2014_\u201cThis is my beloved Son\u201d), his resurrection (_Acts 13:34,\n 35\u2014_\u201cas concerning that he raised him up from the dead ... he\n saith also in another psalm, Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to\n see corruption\u201d). _Col. 1:15\u2014_\u201cthe firstborn of all\n creation\u201d\u2014\u03c0\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03bf\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03ac\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2 \u03ba\u03c4\u03af\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2 = \u201cbegotten first before all\n creation\u201d (Julius M\u00fcller, Proof-texts, 14); or \u201cfirst-born before\n every creature, _i. e._, begotten, and that antecedently to\n everything that was created\u201d (Ellicott, Com. _in loco_). \u201cHerein\u201d\n (says Luthardt, Compend. Dogmatik, 81, on _Col. 1:15_) \u201cis\n indicated an antemundane origin from God\u2014a relation internal to\n the divine nature.\u201d Lightfoot, on _Col. 1:15_, says that in Rabbi\n Bechai God is called the \u201c_primogenitus mundi_.\u201d\n\n On _Rom. 1:4_ (\u1f41\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 = \u201cmanifested to be the mighty Son of\n God\u201d) see Lange\u2019s Com., notes by Schaff on pages 56 and 61. Bruce,\n Apologetics, 404\u2014\u201cThe resurrection was the actual introduction of\n Christ into the full possession of divine Sonship so far as\n thereto belonged, not only the _inner_ of a holy spiritual\n essence, but also the _outer_ of an existence in power and\n heavenly glory.\u201d Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 353, 354\u2014\u201cCalvin waves\n aside eternal generation as an \u2018absurd fiction.\u2019 But to maintain\n the deity of Christ merely on the ground that it is essential to\n his making an adequate atonement for sin, is to involve the\n rejection of his deity if ever the doctrine of atonement becomes\n obnoxious.... Such was the process by which, in the mind of the\n last century, the doctrine of the Trinity was undermined. Not to\n ground the distinctions of the divine essence by some immanent\n eternal necessity was to make easy the denial of what has been\n called the ontological Trinity, and then the rejection of the\n economical Trinity was not difficult or far away.\u201d\n\n If Westcott and Hort\u2019s reading \u1f41 \u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u1f74\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, \u201c_the only\n begotten God_,\u201d in _John 1:18_, is correct, we have a new proof of\n Christ\u2019s eternal Sonship. Meyer explains \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 in _Rom.\n 8:3\u2014_\u201cGod, sending his own Son,\u201d as an allusion to the\n metaphysical Sonship. That this Sonship is unique, is plain from\n _John 1:14, 18\u2014_\u201cthe only begotten from the Father ... the only\n begotten Son who is in the bosom of the father\u201d; _Rom. 8:32\u2014_\u201chis\n own Son\u201d; _Gal. 4:4\u2014_\u201csent forth his Son\u201d; _cf._ _Prov.\n 8:22-31\u2014_\u201cWhen he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I\n was by him as a master workman\u201d; _30:4\u2014_\u201cWho hath established all\n the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son\u2019s\n name, if thou knowest?\u201d The eternal procession of the Spirit seems\n to be implied in _John 15:26\u2014_\u201cthe Spirit of truth which\n proceedeth from the Father\u201d\u2014see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_;\n _Heb. 9:14\u2014_\u201cthe eternal Spirit.\u201d Westcott here says that \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\n (not \u1f10\u03be) shows that the reference is to the temporal mission of\n the Holy Spirit, not to the eternal procession. At the same time\n he maintains that the temporal corresponds to the eternal.\n\n\nThe Scripture terms \u201cgeneration\u201d and \u201cprocession,\u201d as applied to the Son\nand to the Holy Spirit, are but approximate expressions of the truth, and\nwe are to correct by other declarations of Scripture any imperfect\nimpressions which we might derive solely from them. We use these terms in\na special sense, which we explicitly state and define as excluding all\nnotion of inequality between the persons of the Trinity. The eternal\ngeneration of the Son to which we hold is\n\n(_a_) Not creation, but the Father\u2019s communication of himself to the Son.\nSince the names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not applicable to the\ndivine essence, but are only applicable to its hypostatical distinctions,\nthey imply no derivation of the essence of the Son from the essence of the\nFather.\n\n\n The error of the Nicene Fathers was that of explaining Sonship as\n derivation of essence. The Father cannot impart his essence to the\n Son and yet retain it. The Father is _fons trinitatis_, not _fons\n deitatis_. See Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:308-311, and Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:287-299; _per contra_, see Bib. Sac., 41:698-760.\n\n\n(_b_) Not a commencement of existence, but an eternal relation to the\nFather,\u2014there never having been a time when the Son began to be, or when\nthe Son did not exist as God with the Father.\n\n\n If there had been an eternal sun, it is evident that there must\n have been an eternal sunlight also. Yet an eternal sunlight must\n have evermore proceeded from the sun. When Cyril was asked whether\n the Son existed before generation, he answered: \u201cThe generation of\n the Son did not precede his existence, but he always existed, and\n that by generation.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) Not an act of the Father\u2019s will, but an internal necessity of the\ndivine nature,\u2014so that the Son is no more dependent upon the Father than\nthe Father is dependent upon the Son, and so that, if it be consistent\nwith deity to be Father, it is equally consistent with deity to be Son.\n\n\n The sun is as dependent upon the sunlight as the sunlight is upon\n the sun; for without sunlight the sun is no true sun. So God the\n Father is as dependent upon God the Son, as God the Son is\n dependent upon God the Father; for without Son the Father would be\n no true Father. To say that aseity belongs only to the Father is\n logically Arianism and Subordinationism proper, for it implies a\n subordination of the essence of the Son to the Father. Essential\n subordination would be inconsistent with equality. See Thomasius,\n Christi Person und Werk, 1:115. Palmer, Theol. Definitions, 66,\n 67, says that Father = independent life; Son begotten =\n independent life voluntarily brought under limitations; Spirit =\n necessary consequence of existence of the other two.... The words\n and actions whereby we design to affect others are \u201cbegotten.\u201d The\n atmosphere of unconscious influence is not \u201cbegotten,\u201d but\n \u201cproceeding.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) Not a relation in any way analogous to physical derivation, but a\nlife-movement of the divine nature, in virtue of which Father, Son, and\nHoly Spirit, while equal in essence and dignity, stand to each other in an\norder of personality, office, and operation, and in virtue of which the\nFather works through the Son, and the Father and the Son through the\nSpirit.\n\n\n The subordination of the _person_ of the Son to the _person_ of\n the Father, or in other words an order of personality, office, and\n operation which permits the Father to be officially first, the Son\n second, and the Spirit third, is perfectly consistent with\n equality. Priority is not necessarily superiority. The possibility\n of an order, which yet involves no inequality, may be illustrated\n by the relation between man and woman. In office man is first and\n woman second, but woman\u2019s soul is worth as much as man\u2019s; see _1\n Cor. 11:3\u2014_\u201cthe head of every man is Christ; and the head of the\n woman is the man: and the head of Christ is God.\u201d On _John\n 14:28\u2014_\u201cthe Father is greater than I\u201d\u2014see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in\n loco_.\n\n Edwards, Observations on the Trinity (edited by Smyth), 22\u2014\u201cIn the\n Son the whole deity and glory of the Father is as it were repeated\n or duplicated. Everything in the Father is repeated or expressed\n again, and that fully, so that there is properly no inferiority.\u201d\n Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (edited by Fisher), 110-116\u2014\u201cThe\n Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated, and\n most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The\n Son is the Deity generated by God\u2019s understanding, or having an\n Idea of himself and subsisting in that Idea. The Holy Ghost is the\n Deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and\n breathed forth in God\u2019s infinite love to and delight in himself.\n And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly\n subsist both in the divine Idea and in the divine Love, and each\n of them are properly distinct persons.... We find no other\n attributes of which it is said in Scripture that they are God, or\n that God is they, but \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 and \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7, the Reason and the Love of\n God, Light not being different from Reason.... Understanding may\n be predicated of this Love.... It is not a blind Love.... The\n Father has Wisdom or Reason by the Son\u2019s being in him....\n Understanding is in the Holy Spirit, because the Son is in him.\u201d\n Yet Dr. Edwards A. Park declared eternal generation to be \u201ceternal\n nonsense,\u201d and is thought to have hid Edwards\u2019s unpublished Essay\n on the Trinity for many years because it taught this doctrine.\n\n The New Testament calls Christ \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, but not \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2. We frankly\n recognize an eternal subordination of Christ to the Father, but we\n maintain at the same time that this subordination is a\n subordination of order, office, and operation, not a subordination\n of essence. \u201cNon de essentia dicitur, sed de ministeriis.\u201d E. G.\n Robinson: \u201cAn eternal generation is necessarily an eternal\n subordination and dependence. This seems to be fully admitted even\n by the most orthodox of the Anglican writers, such as Pearson and\n Hooker. Christ\u2019s subordination to the Father is merely official,\n not essential.\u201d Whiton, Gloria Patri, 42, 96\u2014\u201cThe early\n Trinitarians by eternal Sonship meant, first, that it is of the\n very nature of Deity to issue forth into visible expression. Thus\n next, that this outward expression of God is not something other\n than God, but God himself, in a self-expression as divine as the\n hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip\u2019s cry, \u2018show us the\n Father, and it sufficeth us\u2019_ (John 14:8)_, and thus they affirmed\n Jesus\u2019 declaration, they secured Paul\u2019s faith that God has never\n left himself without witness. They meant, \u2018he that hath seen me\n hath seen the Father\u2019_ (John 14:9)_.... The Father is the Life\n transcendent, the divine Source, \u2018_above all_\u2019; the Son is the\n Life immanent, the divine Stream, \u2018_through all_\u2019; the Holy Spirit\n is the Life individualized, \u2018in all\u2019_ (Eph. 4:6)_. The Holy Spirit\n has been called \u2018the executive of the Godhead.\u2019 \u201d Whiton is here\n speaking of the economic Trinity; but all this is even more true\n of the immanent Trinity. On the Eternal Sonship, see Weiss, Bib.\n Theol. N. T., 424, note; Treffrey, Eternal Sonship of our Lord;\n Princeton Essays, 1:30-56; Watson, Institutes, 1:530-577; Bib.\n Sac., 27:268. On the procession of the Spirit, see Shedd, Dogm.\n Theol., 1:300-304, and History of Doctrine, 1:387; Dick, Lectures\n on Theology, 1:347-350.\n\n\nThe same principles upon which we interpret the declaration of Christ\u2019s\neternal Sonship apply to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father\nthrough the Son, and show this to be not inconsistent with the Spirit\u2019s\nequal dignity and glory.\n\nWe therefore only formulate truth which is concretely expressed in\nScripture, and which is recognized by all ages of the church in hymns and\nprayers addressed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when we assert that in\nthe nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions, which are\nbest described as persons, and each of which is the proper and equal\nobject of Christian worship.\n\nWe are also warranted in declaring that, in virtue of these personal\ndistinctions or modes of subsistence, God exists in the relations,\nrespectively, first, of Source, Origin, Authority, and in this relation is\nthe Father; secondly, of Expression, Medium, Revelation, and in this\nrelation is the Son; thirdly, of Apprehension, Accomplishment,\nRealization, and in this relation is the Holy Spirit.\n\n\n John Owen, Works, 3:64-92\u2014\u201cThe office of the Holy Spirit is that\n of concluding, completing, perfecting. To the Father we assign\n _opera natur\u00e6_; to the Son, _opera grati\u00e6 procurat\u00e6_; to the\n Spirit, _opera grati\u00e6 applicat\u00e6_.\u201d All God\u2019s revelations are\n through the Son or the Spirit, and the latter includes the former.\n Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit, designates the three offices\n respectively as those of Causation, Construction, Consummation;\n the Father brings forth, the Son arranges, the Spirit perfects.\n Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 365-373\u2014\u201cGod is Life, Light, Love. As the\n Fathers regarded Reason both in God and man as the personal,\n omnipresent second Person of the Trinity, so Jonathan Edwards\n regarded Love both in God and in man as the personal, omnipresent\n third Person of the Trinity. Hence the Father is never said to\n love the Spirit as he is said to love the Son\u2014for this love _is_\n the Spirit. The Father and the Son are said to love men, but the\n Holy Spirit is never said to love them, for love _is_ the Holy\n Spirit. But why could not Edwards also hold that the Logos or\n divine Reason also dwelt in humanity, so that manhood was\n constituted in Christ and shared with him in the consubstantial\n image of the Father? Outward nature reflects God\u2019s light and has\n Christ in it,\u2014why not universal humanity?\u201d\n\n Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 136, 202, speaks of \u201c1. God,\n the Eternal, the Infinite, in his infinity, as himself; 2. God, as\n self-expressed within the nature and faculties of man\u2014body, soul,\n and spirit\u2014the consummation and interpretation and revelation of\n what true manhood means and is, in its very truth, in its relation\n to God; 3. God, as Spirit of Beauty and Holiness, which are\n himself present in things created, animate and inanimate, and\n constituting in them their divine response to God; constituting\n above all in created personalities the full reality of their\n personal response. Or again: 1. What a man is invisibly in\n himself; 2. his outward material projection or expression as body;\n and 3. the response which that which he is through his bodily\n utterance or operation makes to him, as the true echo or\n expression of himself.\u201d Moberly seeks thus to find in man\u2019s nature\n an analogy to the inner processes of the divine.\n\n\n\nVI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes the\nKey to all other Doctrines.\n\n\n1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.\n\n\nIt is inscrutable because there are no analogies to it in our finite\nexperience. For this reason all attempts are vain adequately to represent\nit;\n\n(_a_) From inanimate things\u2014as the fountain, the stream, and the rivulet\ntrickling from it (Athanasius); the cloud, the rain, and the rising mist\n(Boardman); color, shape, and size (F. W. Robertson); the actinic,\nluminiferous, and calorific principles in the ray of light (Solar\nHieroglyphics, 34).\n\n\n Luther: \u201cWhen logic objects to this doctrine that it does not\n square with her rules, we must say; \u2018Mulier taceat in ecclesia.\u2019 \u201d\n Luther called the Trinity a flower, in which might be\n distinguished its form, its fragrance, and its medicinal efficacy;\n see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 189. In Bap. Rev., July,\n 1880:434, Geer finds an illustration of the Trinity in infinite\n space with its three dimensions. For analogy of the cloud, rain,\n mist, see W. E. Boardman, Higher Christian Life. Solar\n Hieroglyphics, 34 (reviewed in New Englander, Oct. 1874:789)\u2014\u201cThe\n Godhead is a tripersonal unity, and the light is a trinity. Being\n immaterial and homogeneous, and thus essentially one in its\n nature, the light includes a plurality of constituents, or in\n other words is essentially three in its constitution, its\n constituent principles being the actinic, the luminiferous, and\n the calorific; and in glorious manifestation the light is one, and\n is the created, constituted, and ordained emblem of the\n tripersonal God\u201d\u2014of whom it is said that \u201cGod is light, and in him\n is no darkness at all\u201d_ (1 John 1:5)_. The actinic rays are in\n themselves invisible; only as the luminiferous manifest them, are\n they seen; only as the calorific accompany them, are they felt.\n\n Joseph Cook: \u201cSunlight, rainbow, heat\u2014one solar radiance; Father,\n Son, Holy Spirit, one God. As the rainbow shows what light is when\n unfolded, so Christ reveals the nature of God. As the rainbow is\n unraveled light, so Christ is unraveled God, and the Holy Spirit,\n figured by heat, is Christ\u2019s continued life.\u201d Ruder illustrations\n are those of Oom Paul Kr\u00fcger: the fat, the wick, the flame, in the\n candle; and of Augustine: the root, trunk, branches, all of one\n wood, in the tree. In Geer\u2019s illustration, mentioned above, from\n the three dimensions of space, we cannot demonstrate that there is\n not a fourth, but besides length, breadth, and thickness, we\n cannot conceive of its existence. As these three exhaust, so far\n as we know, all possible modes of material being, so we cannot\n conceive of any fourth person in the Godhead.\n\n\n(_b_) From the constitution or processes of our own minds\u2014as the\npsychological unity of intellect, affection, and will (substantially held\nby Augustine); the logical unity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis\n(Hegel); the metaphysical unity of subject, object, and subject-object\n(Melanchthon, Olshausen, Shedd).\n\n\n Augustine: \u201cMens meminit sui, intelligit se, diligit se; si hoc\n cernimus, Trinitatem cernimus.\u201d... I exist, I am conscious, I\n will; I exist as conscious and willing, I am conscious of existing\n and willing, I will to exist and be conscious; and these three\n functions, though distinct, are inseparable and form one life, one\n mind, one essence.... \u201cAmor autem alicujus amantis est, et amore\n aliquid amatur. Ecce tria sunt, amans, et quod amatur, et amor.\n Quid est ergo amor, nisi qu\u00e6dam vita duo aliqua copulans, vel\n copulare appetans, amantem scilicet et quod amatur.\u201d Calvin speaks\n of Augustine\u2019s view as \u201ca speculation far from solid.\u201d But\n Augustine himself had said: \u201cIf asked to define the Trinity, we\n can only say that it is not this or that.\u201d John of Damascus: \u201cAll\n we know of the divine nature is that it is not to be known.\u201d By\n this, however, both Augustine and John of Damascus meant only that\n the precise _mode_ of God\u2019s triune existence is unrevealed and\n inscrutable.\n\n Hegel, Philos. Relig., transl., 3:99, 100\u2014\u201cGod is, but is at the\n same time the Other, the self-differentiating, the Other in the\n sense that this Other is God himself and has potentially the\n Divine nature in it, and that the abolishing of this difference,\n of this otherness, this return, this love, is Spirit.\u201d Hegel calls\n God \u201cthe absolute Idea, the unity of Life and Cognition, the\n Universal that thinks itself and thinkingly recognizes itself in\n an infinite Actuality, from which, as its Immediacy, it no less\n distinguishes itself again\u201d; see Schwegler, History of Philosophy,\n 321, 331. Hegel\u2019s general doctrine is that the highest unity is to\n be reached only through the fullest development and reconciliation\n of the deepest and widest antagonism. Pure being is pure nothing;\n we must die to live. Light is thesis, Darkness is antithesis,\n Shadow is synthesis, or union of both. Faith is thesis, Unbelief\n is antithesis, Doubt is synthesis, or union of both. _Zweifel_\n comes from _Zwei_, as doubt from \u03b4\u03cd\u03bf. Hegel called Napoleon \u201cein\n Weltgeist zu Pferde\u201d\u2014\u201ca world-spirit on horseback.\u201d Ladd, Introd.\n to Philosophy, 202, speaks of \u201cthe monotonous tit-tat-too of the\n Hegelian logic.\u201d Ruskin speaks of it as \u201cpure, definite, and\n highly finished nonsense.\u201d On the Hegelian principle good and evil\n cannot be contradictory to each other; without evil there could be\n no good. Stirling well entitled his exposition of the Hegelian\n Philosophy \u201cThe Secret of Hegel,\u201d and his readers have often\n remarked that, if Stirling discovered the secret, he never made it\n known.\n\n Lord Coleridge told Robert Browning that he could not understand\n all his poetry. \u201cAh, well,\u201d replied the poet, \u201cif a reader of your\n calibre understands ten per cent. of what I write, he ought to be\n content.\u201d When Wordsworth was told that Mr. Browning had married\n Miss Barrett, he said: \u201cIt is a good thing that these two\n understand each other, for no one else understands them.\u201d A pupil\n once brought to Hegel a passage in the latter\u2019s writings and asked\n for an interpretation. The philosopher examined it and replied:\n \u201cWhen that passage was written, there were two who knew its\n meaning\u2014God and myself. Now, alas! there is but one, and that is\n God.\u201d Heinrich Heine, speaking of the effect of Hegelianism upon\n the religious life of Berlin, says: \u201cI could accommodate myself to\n the very enlightened Christianity, filtrated from all\n superstition, which could then be had in the churches, and which\n was free from the divinity of Christ, like turtle soup without\n turtle.\u201d When German systems of philosophy die, their ghosts take\n up their abode in Oxford. But if I see a ghost sitting in a chair\n and then sit down boldly in the chair, the ghost will take offence\n and go away. Hegel\u2019s doctrine of God as the only begotten Son is\n translated in the Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:395-404.\n\n The most satisfactory exposition of the analogy of subject,\n object, and subject-object is to be found in Shedd, History of\n Doctrine, 1:365, note 2. See also Olshausen on John 1:1; H. N.\n Day, Doctrine of Trinity in Light of Recent Psychology, in\n Princeton Rev., Sept. 1882:156-179; Morris, Philosophy and\n Christianity, 122-163. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 174,\n has a similar analogy: 1. A man\u2019s invisible self; 2. the visible\n expression of himself in a picture or poem; 3. the response of\n this picture or poem to himself. The analogy of the family is held\n to be even better, because no man\u2019s personality is complete in\n itself; husband, wife, and child are all needed to make perfect\n unity. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 372, says that in the early church\n the Trinity was a doctrine of reason; in the Middle Ages it was a\n mystery; in the 18th century it was a meaningless or irrational\n dogma; again in the 19th century it becomes a doctrine of the\n reason, a truth essential to the nature of God. To Allen\u2019s\n characterization of the stages in the history of the doctrine we\n would add that even in our day we cannot say that a complete\n exposition of the Trinity is possible. Trinity is a unique fact,\n different aspects of which may be illustrated, while, as a whole,\n it has no analogies. The most we can say is that human nature, in\n its processes and powers, points towards something higher than\n itself, and that Trinity in God is needed in order to constitute\n that perfection of being which man seeks as an object of love,\n worship and service.\n\n\nNo one of these furnishes any proper analogue of the Trinity, since in no\none of them is there found the essential element of tripersonality. Such\nillustrations may sometimes be used to disarm objection, but they furnish\nno positive explanation of the mystery of the Trinity, and, unless\ncarefully guarded, may lead to grievous error.\n\n\n2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.\n\n\nThis it would be, only if it declared God to be three in the same\nnumerical sense in which he is said to be one. This we do not assert. We\nassert simply that the same God who is one with respect to his essence is\nthree with respect to the internal distinctions of that essence, or with\nrespect to the modes of his being. The possibility of this cannot be\ndenied, except by assuming that the human mind is in all respects the\nmeasure of the divine.\n\nThe fact that the ascending scale of life is marked by increasing\ndifferentiation of faculty and function should rather lead us to expect in\nthe highest of all beings a nature more complex than our own. In man many\nfaculties are united in one intelligent being, and the more intelligent\nman is, the more distinct from each other these faculties become; until\nintellect and affection, conscience and will assume a relative\nindependence, and there arises even the possibility of conflict between\nthem. There is nothing irrational or self-contradictory in the doctrine\nthat in God the leading functions are yet more markedly differentiated, so\nthat they become personal, while at the same time these personalities are\nunited by the fact that they each and equally manifest the one indivisible\nessence.\n\n\n Unity is as essential to the Godhead as threeness. The same God\n who in one respect is three, in another respect is one. We do not\n say that one God is three Gods, nor that one person is three\n persons, nor that three Gods are one God, but only that there is\n one God with three distinctions in his being. We do not refer to\n the faculties of man as furnishing any proper analogy to the\n persons of the Godhead; we rather deny that man\u2019s nature furnishes\n any such analogy. Intellect, affection, and will in man are not\n distinct personalities. If they were personalized, they might\n furnish such an analogy. F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 3:58, speaks of\n the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as best conceived under the\n figure of personalized intellect, affection and will. With this\n agrees the saying of Socrates, who called thought the soul\u2019s\n conversation with itself. See D. W. Simon, in Bib. Sac., Jan.\n 1887.\n\n _Ps. 86:11\u2014_\u201cUnite my heart to fear thy name\u201d\u2014intimates a\n complexity of powers in man, and a possible disorganization due to\n sin. Only the fear and love of God can reduce our faculties to\n order and give us peace, purity, and power. When William after a\n long courtship at length proposed marriage, Mary said that she\n \u201cunanimously consented.\u201d \u201cThou shalt love the Lord thy God with\n all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,\n and with all thy mind\u201d_ (Luke 10:27)._ Man must not lead a dual\n life, a double life, like that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The\n good life is the unified life. H. H. Bawden: \u201cTheoretically,\n symmetrical development is the complete criterion. This is the old\n Greek conception of the perfect life. The term which we translate\n \u2018temperance\u2019 or \u2018self-control\u2019 is better expressed by\n \u2018whole-mindedness.\u2019 \u201d\n\n Illingworth, Personality Divine and Human, 54-80\u2014\u201cOur sense of\n divine personality culminates in the doctrine of the Trinity.\n Man\u2019s personality is essentially triune, because it consists of a\n subject, an object, and their relation. What is potential and\n unrealized triunity in man is complete in God.... Our own\n personality is triune, but it is a potential unrealized triunity,\n which is incomplete in itself and must go beyond itself for\n completion, as for example in the family.... But God\u2019s personality\n has nothing potential or unrealized about it.... Trinity is the\n most intelligible mode of conceiving of God as personal.\u201d\n\n John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:59, 80\u2014\u201cThe parts\n of a stone are all precisely alike; the parts of a skilful\n mechanism are all different from one another. In which of the two\n cases is the unity more real\u2014in that in which there is an absence\n of distinction, or in that in which there is essential difference\n of form and function, each separate part having an individuality\n and activity of its own? The highest unities are not simple but\n complex.\u201d Gordon, Christ of To-day, 106\u2014\u201cAll things and persons\n are modes of one infinite consciousness. Then it is not incredible\n that there should be three consciousnesses in God. Over against\n the multitudinous finite personalities are three infinite\n personalities. This socialism in Deity may be the ground of human\n society.\u201d\n\n The phenomena of double and even of triple consciousness in one\n and the same individual confirm this view. This fact of more than\n one consciousness in a finite creature points towards the\n possibility of a threefold consciousness in the nature of God.\n Romanes, Mind and Motion, 102, intimates that the social organism,\n if it attained the highest level of psychical perfection, might be\n endowed with personality, and that it now has something resembling\n it\u2014phenomena of thought and conduct which compel us to conceive of\n families and communities and nations as having a sort of moral\n personality which implies responsibility and accountability. \u201cThe\n _Zeitgeist_,\u201d he says, \u201cis the product of a kind of collective\n psychology, which is something other than the sum of all the\n individual minds of a generation.\u201d We do not maintain that any one\n of these fragmentary or collective consciousnesses attains\n personality in man, at least in the present life. We only maintain\n that they indicate that a larger and more complex life is possible\n than that of which we have common experience, and that there is no\n necessary contradiction in the doctrine that in the nature of the\n one and perfect God there are three personal distinctions. R. H.\n Hutton: \u201cA voluntary self-revelation of the divine mind may be\n expected to reveal even deeper complexities of spiritual relations\n in his eternal nature and essence than are found to exist in our\n humanity\u2014the simplicity of a harmonized complexity, not the\n simplicity of absolute unity.\u201d\n\n\n3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other doctrines.\n\n\nA. It is essential to any proper theism.\n\nNeither God\u2019s independence nor God\u2019s blessedness can be maintained upon\ngrounds of absolute unity. Anti-trinitarianism almost necessarily makes\ncreation indispensable to God\u2019s perfection, tends to a belief in the\neternity of matter, and ultimately leads, as in Mohammedanism, and in\nmodern Judaism and Unitarianism, to Pantheism. \u201cLove is an impossible\nexercise to a solitary being.\u201d Without Trinity we cannot hold to a living\nUnity in the Godhead.\n\n\n Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1882:35-63\u2014\u201cThe problem is to\n find a _perfect objective_, congruous and fitting, for a perfect\n intelligence, and the answer is: \u2018_a perfect intelligence_.\u2019 \u201d The\n author of this article quotes James Martineau, the Unitarian\n philosopher, as follows: \u201cThere is only one resource left for\n completing the needful Objectivity for God, _viz._, to admit in\n some form the co\u00ebval existence of matter, as the condition or\n medium of the divine agency or manifestation. Failing the proof\n [of the absolute origination of matter] we are left with the\n _divine cause_, and the _material condition_ of all nature, in\n eternal co-presence and relation, as supreme object and\n rudimentary object.\u201d See also Martineau, Study, 1:405\u2014\u201cIn denying\n that a plurality of self-existences is possible, I mean to speak\n only of self-existent _causes_. A self-existence which is _not_ a\n cause is by no means excluded, so far as I can see, by a\n self-existence which _is_ a cause; nay, is even required for the\n exercise of its causality.\u201d Here we see that Martineau\u2019s\n Unitarianism logically drove him into Dualism. But God\u2019s\n blessedness, upon this principle, requires not merely an eternal\n universe but an infinite universe, for nothing less will afford\n fit object for an infinite mind. Yet a God who is necessarily\n bound to the universe, or by whose side a universe, which is not\n himself, eternally exists, is not infinite, independent, or free.\n The only exit from this difficulty is in denying God\u2019s\n self-consciousness and self-determination, or in other words,\n exchanging our theism for dualism, and our dualism for pantheism.\n\n E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:379, quotes from Oxenham\u2019s\n Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, 108, 109\u2014\u201cForty years ago\n James Martineau wrote to George Macdonald: \u2018Neither my\n intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with\n the Unitarian heroes, sects or productions, of any age. Ebionites,\n Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with\n their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought far less worthy,\n on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity.\u2019 In his paper\n entitled A Way out of the Unitarian Controversy, Martineau says\n that the Unitarian worships the Father; the Trinitarian worships\n the Son: \u2018But he who is the Son in one creed is the Father in the\n other.... The two creeds are agreed in that which constitutes the\n pith and kernel of both. The Father is God in his primeval\n essence. But God, as manifested, is the Son.\u2019 \u201d Dr. Johnson adds:\n \u201cSo Martineau, after a lifelong service in a Unitarian pulpit and\n professorship, at length publicly accepts for truth the substance\n of that doctrine which, in common with the church, he has found so\n profitable, and tells Unitarians that they and we alike worship\n the Son, because all that we know of God was revealed by act of\n the Son.\u201d After he had reached his eightieth year, Martineau\n withdrew from the Unitarian body, though he never formally united\n with any Trinitarian church.\n\n H. C. Minton, in Princeton Rev., 1903:655-659, has quoted some of\n Martineau\u2019s most significant utterances, such as the following:\n \u201cThe great strength of the orthodox doctrine lies, no doubt, in\n the appeal it makes to the inward \u2018sense of sin,\u2019\u2014that sad weight\n whose burden oppresses every serious soul. And the great weakness\n of Unitarianism has been its insensibility to this abiding sorrow\n of the human consciousness. But the orthodox remedy is surely the\n most terrible of all mistakes, _viz._, _to get rid_ of the burden,\n by throwing it on Christ or permitting him to take it.... For\n myself I own that the literature to which I turn for the nurture\n and inspiration of Faith, Hope and Love is almost exclusively the\n product of orthodox versions of the Christian religion. The Hymns\n of the Wesleys, the Prayers of the Friends, the Meditations of Law\n and Tauler, have a quickening and elevating power which I rarely\n feel in the books on our Unitarian shelves.... Yet I can less than\n ever appropriate, or even intellectually excuse, any distinctive\n article of the Trinitarian scheme of salvation.\u201d\n\n Whiton, Gloria Patri, 23-26, seeks to reconcile the two forms of\n belief by asserting that \u201cboth Trinitarians and Unitarians are\n coming to regard human nature as essentially one with the divine.\n The Nicene Fathers builded better than they knew, when they\n declared Christ _homoousios_ with the Father. We assert the same\n of mankind.\u201d But here Whiton goes beyond the warrant of Scripture.\n Of none but the only begotten Son can it be said that before\n Abraham was born he was, and that in him dwelleth all the fulness\n of the Godhead bodily (_John 8:57_; _Col. 2:9_).\n\n Unitarianism has repeatedly demonstrated its logical insufficiency\n by this \u201cfacilis descensus Averno,\u201d this lapse from theism into\n pantheism. In New England the high Arianism of Channing\n degenerated into the half-fledged pantheism of Theodore Parker,\n and the full-fledged pantheism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern\n Judaism is pantheistic in its philosophy, and such also was the\n later Arabic philosophy of Mohammedanism. Single personality is\n felt to be insufficient to the mind\u2019s conception of Absolute\n Perfection. We shrink from the thought of an eternally lonely God.\n \u201cWe take refuge in the term \u2018Godhead.\u2019 The literati find relief in\n speaking of \u2018the gods.\u2019 \u201d Twesten (translated in Bib. Sac.,\n 3:502)\u2014\u201cThere may be in polytheism an element of truth, though\n disfigured and misunderstood. John of Damascus boasted that the\n Christian Trinity stood midway between the abstract monotheism of\n the Jews and the idolatrous polytheism of the Greeks.\u201d Twesten,\n quoted in Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:255\u2014\u201cThere is a \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 in God.\n Trinity does not contradict Unity, but only that solitariness\n which is inconsistent with the living plenitude and blessedness\n ascribed to God in Scripture, and which God possesses in himself\n and independently of the finite.\u201d Shedd himself remarks: \u201cThe\n attempt of the Deist and the Socinian to construct the doctrine of\n divine _Unity_ is a failure, because it fails to construct the\n doctrine of the divine _Personality_. It contends by implication\n that God can be self-knowing as a single subject merely, without\n an object; without the distinctions involved in the subject\n contemplating, the object contemplated, and the perception of the\n identity of both.\u201d\n\n Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 75\u2014\u201cGod is no sterile and motionless\n unit.\u201d Bp. Phillips Brooks: \u201cUnitarianism has got the notion of\n God as tight and individual as it is possible to make it, and is\n dying of its meagre Deity.\u201d Unitarianism is not the doctrine of\n one God\u2014for the Trinitarian holds to this; it is rather the\n unipersonality of this one God. The divine nature demands either\n an eternal Christ or an eternal creation. Dr. Calthorp, the\n Unitarian, of Syracuse, therefore consistently declares that\n \u201cNature and God are the same.\u201d It is the old worship of Baal and\n Ashtaroth\u2014the deification of power and pleasure. For \u201cNature\u201d\n includes everything\u2014all bad impulses as well as good. When a man\n discovers gravity, he has not discovered God, but only one of the\n manifestations of God.\n\n Gordon, Christ of To-day, 112\u2014\u201cThe supreme divinity of Jesus\n Christ is but the sovereign expression in human history of the\n great law of difference in identity that runs through the entire\n universe and that has its home in the heart of the Godhead.\u201d Even\n James Freeman Clarke, in his Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors,\n 436, admits that \u201cthere is an essential truth hidden in the idea\n of the Trinity. While the church doctrine, in every form which it\n has taken, has failed to satisfy the human intellect, the human\n heart has clung to the substance contained in them all.\u201d William\n Adams Brown: \u201cIf God is by nature love, he must be by nature\n social. Fatherhood and Sonship must be immanent in him. In him the\n limitations of finite personality are removed.\u201d But Dr. Brown\n wrongly adds: \u201cNot the mysteries of God\u2019s being, as he is in\n himself, but as he is revealed, are opened to us in this\n doctrine.\u201d Similarly P. S. Moxom: \u201cI do not know how it is\n possible to predicate any moral quality of a person who is\n absolutely out of relation to other persons. If God were conceived\n of as solitary in the universe, he could not be characterized as\n righteous.\u201d But Dr. Moxom erroneously thinks that these other\n moral personalities must be outside of God. We maintain that\n righteousness, like love, requires only plurality of persons\n within the God-head. See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,\n 1:105, 156. For the pantheistic view, see Strauss, Glaubenslehre,\n 1:462-524.\n\n W. L. Walker, Christian Theism, 317, quotes Dr. Paul Carus, Primer\n of Philosophy, 101\u2014\u201cWe cannot even conceive of God without\n attributing trinity to him. An absolute unity would be\n non-existence. God, if thought of as real and active, involves an\n antithesis, which may be formulated as God and World, or _natura\n naturans_ and _natura naturata_, or in some other way. This\n antithesis implies already the trinity-conception. When we think\n of God, not only as that which is eternal and immutable in\n existence, but also as that which changes, grows, and evolves, we\n cannot escape the result and we must progress to a triune\n God-idea. The conception of a God-man, of a Savior, of God\n revealed in evolution, brings out the antithesis of God Father and\n God Son, and the very conception of this relation implies God the\n Spirit that proceeds from both.\u201d This confession of an economic\n Trinity is a rational one only as it implies a Trinity immanent\n and eternal.\n\n\nB. It is essential to any proper revelation.\n\nIf there be no Trinity, Christ is not God, and cannot perfectly know or\nreveal God. Christianity is no longer the one, all-inclusive, and final\nrevelation, but only one of many conflicting and competing systems, each\nof which has its portion of truth, but also its portion of error. So too\nwith the Holy Spirit. \u201cAs God can be revealed only through God, so also\ncan he be appropriated only through God. If the Holy Spirit be not God,\nthen the love and self-communication of God to the human soul are not a\nreality.\u201d In other words, without the doctrine of the Trinity we go back\nto mere natural religion and the far-off God of deism,\u2014and this is\nultimately exchanged for pantheism in the way already mentioned.\n\n\n Martensen, Dogmatics, 104; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,\n 156. If Christ be not God, he cannot perfectly know himself, and\n his testimony to himself has no independent authority. In prayer\n the Christian has practical evidence of the Trinity, and can see\n the value of the doctrine; for he comes to God the Father,\n pleading the name of Christ, and taught how to pray aright by the\n Holy Spirit. It is impossible to identify the Father with either\n the Son or the Spirit. See _Rom. 8:27\u2014_\u201che that searcheth the\n hearts [_i. e._, God] knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,\n because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the\n will of God.\u201d See also Godet on _John 1:18\u2014_\u201cNo man hath seen God\n at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the\n Father, he hath declared him\u201d; notice here the relation between \u1f41\n \u1f64\u03bd and \u1f10\u03be\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae\u03c3\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf. Napoleon I: \u201cChristianity says with simplicity,\n \u2018No man hath seen God, except God.\u2019 \u201d _John 16:15\u2014_\u201cAll things\n whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he\n taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you\u201d; here Christ claims\n for himself all that belongs to God, and then declares that the\n Holy Spirit shall reveal him. Only a divine Spirit can do this,\n even as only a divine Christ can put out an unpresumptuous hand to\n take all that belongs to the Father. See also Westcott, on _John\n 14:9\u2014_\u201che that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou,\n Show us the Father?\u201d\n\n The agnostic is perfectly correct in his conclusions, if there be\n no Christ, no medium of communication, no principle of revelation\n in the Godhead. Only the Son has revealed the Father. Even Royce,\n in his Spirit of Modern Philosophy, speaks of the existence of an\n infinite Self, or Logos, or World-mind, of which all individual\n minds are parts or bits, and of whose timeless choice we partake.\n Some such principle in the divine nature must be assumed, if\n Christianity is the complete and sufficient revelation of God\u2019s\n will to men. The Unitarian view regards the religion of Christ as\n only \u201cone of the day\u2019s works of humanity\u201d\u2014an evanescent moment in\n the ceaseless advance of the race. The Christian on the other hand\n regards Christ as the only Revealer of God, the only God with whom\n we have to do, the final authority in religion, the source of all\n truth and the judge of all mankind. \u201cHeaven and earth shall pass\n away, but my words shall not pass away\u201d_ (Mat. 24:35)._ The\n resurrection of just and unjust shall be his work (_John 5:28_),\n and future retribution shall be \u201cthe wrath of the Lamb\u201d_ (Rev.\n 6:16)_. Since God never thinks, says, or does any thing, except\n through Christ, and since Christ does his work in human hearts\n only through the Holy Spirit, we may conclude that the doctrine of\n the Trinity is essential to any proper revelation.\n\n\nC. It is essential to any proper redemption.\n\nIf God be absolutely and simply one, there can be no mediation or\natonement, since between God and the most exalted creature the gulf is\ninfinite. Christ cannot bring us nearer to God than he is himself. Only\none who is God can reconcile us to God. So, too, only one who is God can\npurify our souls. A God who is only unity, but in whom is no plurality,\nmay be our Judge, but, so far as we can see, cannot be our Savior or our\nSanctifier.\n\n\n \u201cGod is the way to himself.\u201d \u201cNothing human holds good before God,\n and nothing but God himself can satisfy God.\u201d The best method of\n arguing with Unitarians, therefore, is to rouse the sense of sin;\n for the soul that has any proper conviction of its sins feels that\n only an infinite Redeemer can ever save it. On the other hand, a\n slight estimate of sin is logically connected with a low view of\n the dignity of Christ. Twesten, translated in Bib. Sac., 3:510\u2014\u201cIt\n would seem to be not a mere accident that Pelagianism, when\n logically carried out, as for example among the Socinians, has\n also always led to Unitarianism.\u201d In the reverse order, too, it is\n manifest that rejection of the deity of Christ must tend to render\n more superficial men\u2019s views of the sin and guilt and punishment\n from which Christ came to save them, and with this to deaden\n religious feeling and to cut the sinews of all evangelistic and\n missionary effort (_John 12:44_; _Heb. 10:26_). See Arthur, on the\n Divinity of our Lord in relation to his work of Atonement, in\n Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 35; Ellis, quoted by Watson, Theol.\n Inst., 23; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 13\u2014\u201cWe have tried to\n see God in the light of nature, while he said: \u2018In thy light shall\n we see light\u2019_ (Ps. 36:9)_.\u201d We should see nature in the light of\n Christ. Eternal life is attained only through the knowledge of God\n in Christ (_John 16:9_). Hence to accept Christ is to accept God;\n to reject Christ is to turn one\u2019s back on God: _John 12:44\u2014_\u201cHe\n that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent\n me\u201d; _Heb. 10:26, 29\u2014_\u201cthere remaineth no more a sacrifice for sin\n ... [for him] who hath trodden under foot the Son of God.\u201d\n\n In The Heart of Midlothian, Jeanie Deans goes to London to secure\n pardon for her sister. She cannot in her peasant attire go direct\n to the King, for he will not receive her. She goes to a Scotch\n housekeeper in London; through him to the Duke of Argyle; through\n him to the Queen; through the Queen she gets pardon from the King,\n whom she never sees. This was medi\u00e6val mediatorship. But now we\n come directly to Christ, and this suffices us, because he is\n himself God (The Outlook). A man once went into the cell of a\n convicted murderer, at the request of the murderer\u2019s wife and\n pleaded with him to confess his crime and accept Christ, but the\n murderer refused. The seeming clergyman was the Governor, with a\n pardon which he had designed to bestow in case he found the\n murderer penitent. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 86\u2014\u201cI have\n heard that, during our Civil War, a swaggering, drunken,\n blaspheming officer insulted and almost drove from the dock at\n Alexandria, a plain unoffending man in citizen\u2019s dress; but I have\n also heard that that same officer turned pale, fell on his knees,\n and begged for mercy, when the plain man demanded his sword, put\n him under arrest and made himself known as General Grant. So we\n may abuse and reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and fancy that we can\n ignore his claims and disobey his commands with impunity; but it\n will seem a more serious thing when we find at the last that he\n whom we have abused and rejected is none other than the living God\n before whose judgment bar we are to stand.\u201d\n\n Henry B. Smith began life under Unitarian influences, and had\n strong prejudices against evangelical doctrine, especially the\n doctrines of human depravity and of the divinity of Christ. In his\n Senior year in College he was converted. Cyrus Hamlin says: \u201cI\n regard Smith\u2019s conversion as the most remarkable event in College\n in my day.\u201d Doubts of depravity vanished with one glimpse into his\n own heart; and doubts about Christ\u2019s divinity could not hold their\n own against the confession: \u201cOf one thing I feel assured: I need\n an infinite Savior.\u201d Here is the ultimate strength of Trinitarian\n doctrine. When the Holy Spirit convinces a man of his sin, and\n brings him face to face with the outraged holiness and love of\n God, he is moved to cry from the depths of his soul: \u201cNone but an\n infinite Savior can ever save me!\u201d Only in a divine Christ\u2014Christ\n _for_ us upon the Cross, and Christ _in_ us by his Spirit\u2014can the\n convicted soul find peace and rest. And so every revival of true\n religion gives a new impulse to the Trinitarian doctrine. Henry B.\n Smith wrote in his later life: \u201cWhen the doctrine of the Trinity\n was abandoned, other articles of the faith, such as the atonement\n and regeneration, have almost always followed, by logical\n necessity, as, when one draws the wire from a necklace of gems,\n the gems all fall asunder.\u201d\n\n\nD. It is essential to any proper model for human life.\n\nIf there be no Trinity immanent in the divine nature, then Fatherhood in\nGod has had a beginning and it may have an end; Sonship, moreover, is no\nlonger a perfection, but an imperfection, ordained for a temporary\npurpose. But if fatherly giving and filial receiving are eternal in God,\nthen the law of love requires of us conformity to God in both these\nrespects as the highest dignity of our being.\n\n\n See Hutton, Essays, 1:232\u2014\u201cThe Trinity tells us something of God\u2019s\n absolute and essential nature; not simply what he is _to us_, but\n what he is _in himself_. If Christ is the eternal Son of the\n Father, God is indeed and in essence a Father; the social nature,\n the spring of love is of the very essence of the eternal Being;\n the communication of life, the reciprocation of affection dates\n from beyond time, belongs to the very being of God. The Unitarian\n idea of a solitary God profoundly affects our conception of God,\n reduces it to mere power, identifies God with abstract cause and\n thought. Love is grounded in power, not power in love. The Father\n is merged in the omniscient and omnipotent genius of the\n universe.\u201d Hence _1 John 2:23\u2014_\u201cWhosoever denieth the Son, the\n same hath not the Father.\u201d D\u2019Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 204\u2014\u201cIf\n God be simply one great person, then we have to think of him as\n waiting until the whole process of creation has been accomplished\n before his love can find an object upon which to bestow itself.\n His love belongs, in that case, not to his inmost essence, but to\n his relation to some of his creatures. The words \u2018God is love\u2019_ (1\n John 4:8)_ become a rhetorical exaggeration, rather than the\n expression of a truth about the divine nature.\u201d\n\n Hutton, Essays, 1:239\u2014\u201cWe need also the inspiration and help of a\n perfect filial will. We cannot conceive of the Father as sharing\n in that dependent attitude of spirit which is our chief spiritual\n want. It is a Father\u2019s perfection to originate\u2014a Son\u2019s to receive.\n We need sympathy and aid in this _receptive_ life; hence, the help\n of the true Son. Humility, self-sacrifice, submission, are\n heavenly, eternal, divine. Christ\u2019s filial life to the root of all\n filial life in us. See _Gal. 2:19, 20\u2014_\u2018it is no longer I that\n live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in\n the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,\n who loved me, and gave himself up for me.\u2019\u201d Thomas Erskine of\n Linlathen, The Spiritual Order, 233\u2014\u201cThere is nothing degrading in\n this dependence, for we share it with the eternal Son.\u201d Gore,\n Incarnation, 162\u2014\u201cGod can limit himself by the conditions of\n manhood, because the Godhead contains in itself eternally the\n prototype of human self-sacrifice and self-limitation, for God is\n love.\u201d On the practical lessons and uses of the doctrine of the\n Trinity, see Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct 1902:524-550\u2014art. by R. M.\n Edgar; also sermon by Ganse, in South Church Lectures, 300-310. On\n the doctrine in general, see Robie, in Bib. Sac., 27:262-289;\n Pease, Philosophy of Trinitarian Doctrine; N. W. Taylor, Revealed\n Theology, 1:133; Schultz, Lehre von der Gottheit Christi.\n\n On heathen trinities, see Bib. Repos., 6:116; Christlieb, Mod.\n Doubt and Christian Belief, 266, 267\u2014\u201cLao-tse says, 600 B. C.,\n \u2018Tao, the intelligent principle of all being, is by nature one;\n the first begat the second; both together begat the third; these\n three made all things.\u2019 \u201d The Egyptian triad of Abydos was Osiris,\n Isis his wife, and Horus their Son. But these were no true\n persons; for not only did the Son proceed from the Father, but the\n Father proceeded from the Son; the Egyptian trinity was\n pantheistic in its meaning. See Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 29;\n Rawlinson, Religions of the Ancient World, 46, 47. The Trinity of\n the Vedas was Dyaus, Indra, Agni. Derived from the three\n dimensions of space? Or from the family\u2014father, mother, son? Man\n creates God in his own image, and sees family life in the Godhead?\n\n The Brahman Trimurti or Trinity, to the members of which are given\n the names Brahma, Vishnu, Siva\u2014source, supporter, end\u2014is a\n personification of the pantheistic All, which dwells equally in\n good and evil, in god and man. The three are represented in the\n three mystic letters of the syllable _Om_, or _Aum_, and by the\n image at Elephanta of three heads and one body; see Hardwick,\n Christ and Other Masters, 1:276. The places of the three are\n interchangeable. Williams: \u201cIn the three persons the one God is\n shown; Each first in place, each last, not one alone; Of Siva,\n Vishnu, Brahma, each may be, First, second, third, among the\n blessed three.\u201d There are ten incarnations of Vishnu for men\u2019s\n salvation in various times of need; and the one Spirit which\n temporarily invests itself with the qualities of matter is reduced\n to its original essence at the end of the \u00e6on (Kalpa). This is\n only a grosser form of Sabellianism, or of a modal Trinity.\n According to Renouf it is not older than A. D. 1400. Buddhism in\n later times had its triad. Buddha, or Intelligence, the first\n principle, associated with Dharma, or Law, the principle of\n matter, through the combining influence of Sangha, or Order, the\n mediating principle. See Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the Light\n of the World, 184, 355. It is probably from a Christian source.\n\n The Greek trinity was composed of Zeus, Athena, and Apollo. Apollo\n or Loxias (\u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2) utters the decisions of Zeus. \u201cThese three\n surpass all the other gods in moral character and in providential\n care over the universe. They sustain such intimate and endearing\n relations to each other, that they may be said to \u2018agree in\n one\u2019 \u201d; see Tyler, Theol. of Greek Poets, 170, 171; Gladstone,\n Studies of Homer, vol. 2, sec. 2. Yet the Greek trinity, while it\n gives us three persons, does not give us oneness of essence. It is\n a system of tritheism. Plotinus, 300 A. D., gives us a\n philosophical Trinity in his \u03c4\u1f78 \u1f14\u03bd, \u1f41 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2, \u1f21 \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae.\n\n Watts, New Apologetic, 195\u2014The heathen trinities are \u201cresiduary\n fragments of the lost knowledge of God, not different stages in a\n process of theological evolution, but evidence of a moral and\n spiritual degradation.\u201d John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,\n 92\u2014\u201cIn the Vedas the various individual divinities are separated\n by no hard and fast distinction from each other. They are only\n names for one indivisible whole, of which the particular divinity\n invoked at any one time is the type or representative. There is a\n latent recognition of a unity beneath all the multiplicity of the\n objects of adoration. The personal or anthropomorphic element is\n never employed as it is in the Greek and Roman mythology. The\n personality ascribed to Mitra or Varuna or Indra or Agni is\n scarcely more real than our modern smiling heaven or whispering\n breeze or sullen moaning restless sea. \u2018There is but one,\u2019 they\n say, \u2018though the poets call him by different names.\u2019 The\n all-embracing heaven, mighty nature, is the reality behind each of\n these partial manifestations. The pantheistic element which was\n implicit in the Vedic phase of Indian religion becomes explicit in\n Brahmanism, and in particular in the so-called Indian systems of\n philosophy and in the great Indian epic poems. They seek to find\n in the flux and variety of things the permanent underlying\n essence. That is Brahma. So Spinoza sought rest in the one eternal\n substance, and he wished to look at all things \u2018under the form of\n eternity.\u2019 All things and beings are forms of one whole, of the\n infinite substance which we call God.\u201d See also L. L. Paine,\n Ethnic Trinities.\n\n The gropings of the heathen religions after a trinity in God,\n together with their inability to construct a consistent scheme of\n it, are evidence of a rational want in human nature which only the\n Christian doctrine is able to supply. This power to satisfy the\n inmost needs of the believer is proof of its truth. We close our\n treatment with the words of Jeremy Taylor: \u201cHe who goes about to\n speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words and\n names of man\u2019s invention, talking of essence and existences,\n hypostases and personalities, priority in co\u00ebquality, and unity in\n pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head,\n and talk something\u2014he knows not what; but the renewed man, that\n feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom,\n sanctification, and redemption, in whose heart the love of the\n Spirit of God is shed abroad\u2014this man, though he understand\n nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands\n the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nChapter III. The Decrees Of God.\n\n\n\nI. Definition of Decrees.\n\n\nBy the decrees of God we mean that eternal plan by which God has rendered\ncertain all the events of the universe, past, present, and future. Notice\nin explanation that:\n\n(_a_) The decrees are many only to our finite comprehension; in their own\nnature they are but one plan, which embraces not only effects but also\ncauses, not only the ends to be secured but also the means needful to\nsecure them.\n\n\n In _Rom. 8:28\u2014_\u201ccalled according to his purpose\u201d\u2014the many decrees\n for the salvation of many individuals are represented as forming\n but one purpose of God. _Eph. 1:11\u2014_\u201cforeordained according to the\n purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his\n will\u201d\u2014notice again the word \u201c_purpose_,\u201d in the singular. _Eph.\n 3:11\u2014_\u201caccording to the eternal purpose which he purposed in\n Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d This one purpose or plan of God includes\n both means and ends, prayer and its answer, labor and its fruit.\n Tyrolese proverb: \u201cGod has his plan for every man.\u201d Every man, as\n well as Jean Paul, is \u201cder Einzige\u201d\u2014the unique. There is a single\n plan which embraces all things; \u201cwe use the word \u2018decree\u2019 when we\n think of it partitively\u201d (Pepper). See Hodge, Outlines of\n Theology, 1st ed., 165; 2d ed., 200\u2014\u201cIn fact, no event is\n isolated\u2014to determine one involves determination of the whole\n concatenation of causes and effects which constitutes the\n universe.\u201d The word \u201cplan\u201d is preferable to the word \u201cdecrees,\u201d\n because \u201cplan\u201d excludes the ideas of (1) plurality, (2)\n short-sightedness, (3) arbitrariness, (4) compulsion.\n\n\n(_b_) The decrees, as the eternal act of an infinitely perfect will,\nthough they have logical relations to each other, have no chronological\nrelation. They are not therefore the result of deliberation, in any sense\nthat implies short-sightedness or hesitancy.\n\n\n Logically, in God\u2019s decree the sun precedes the sunlight, and the\n decree to bring into being a father precedes the decree that there\n shall be a son. God decrees man before he decrees man\u2019s act; he\n decrees the creation of man before he decrees man\u2019s existence. But\n there is no chronological succession. \u201c_Counsel_\u201d in _Eph.\n 1:11\u2014_\u201cthe counsel of his will\u201d\u2014means, not deliberation, but\n wisdom.\n\n\n(_c_) Since the will in which the decrees have their origin is a free\nwill, the decrees are not a merely instinctive or necessary exercise of\nthe divine intelligence or volition, such as pantheism supposes.\n\n\n It belongs to the perfection of God that he have a plan, and the\n best possible plan. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty\n that infinite wisdom will act wisely. God\u2019s decrees are not God;\n they are not identical with his essence; they do not flow from his\n being in the same necessary way in which the eternal Son proceeds\n from the eternal Father. There is free will in God, which acts\n with infinite certainty, yet without necessity. To call even the\n decree of salvation necessary is to deny grace, and to make an\n unfree God. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:355; lect. 34.\n\n\n(_d_) The decrees have reference to things outside of God. God does not\ndecree to be holy, nor to exist as three persons in one essence.\n\n\n Decrees are the preparation for external events\u2014the embracing of\n certain things and acts in a plan. They do not include those\n processes and operations within the Godhead which have no\n reference to the universe.\n\n\n(_e_) The decrees primarily respect the acts of God himself, in Creation,\nProvidence, and Grace; secondarily, the acts of free creatures, which he\nforesees will result therefrom.\n\n\n While we deny the assertion of Whedon, that \u201cthe divine plan\n embraces _only_ divine actions,\u201d we grant that God\u2019s plan has\n reference _primarily_ to his own actions, and that the sinful acts\n of men, in particular, are the objects, not of a decree that God\n will efficiently produce them, but of a decree that God will\n permit men, in the exercise of their own free will, to produce\n them.\n\n\n(_f_) The decree to act is not the act. The decrees are an internal\nexercise and manifestation of the divine attributes, and are not to be\nconfounded with Creation, Providence, and Redemption, which are the\nexecution of the decrees.\n\n\n The decrees are the first operation of the attributes, and the\n first manifestation of personality of which we have any knowledge\n within the Godhead. They presuppose those essential acts or\n movements within the divine nature which we call generation and\n procession. They involve by way of consequence that execution of\n the decrees which we call Creation, Providence, and Redemption,\n but they are not to be confounded with either of these.\n\n\n(_g_) The decrees are therefore not addressed to creatures; are not of the\nnature of statute law; and lay neither compulsion nor obligation upon the\nwills of men.\n\nSo ordering the universe that men _will_ pursue a given course of action\nis a very different thing from declaring, ordering, or commanding that\nthey _shall_. \u201cOur acts are in accordance with the decrees, but not\n_necessarily_ so\u2014we _can_ do otherwise and often _should_\u201d (Park). The\nFrenchman who fell into the water and cried: \u201cI will, drown,\u2014no one shall\nhelp me!\u201d was very naturally permitted to drown; if he had said: \u201cI shall\ndrown,\u2014no one will help me!\u201d he might perchance have called some friendly\nperson to his aid.\n\n(_h_) All human acts, whether evil or good, enter into the divine plan and\nso are objects of God\u2019s decrees, although God\u2019s actual agency with regard\nto the evil is only a permissive agency.\n\n\n No decree of God reads: \u201cYou shall sin.\u201d For (1) no decree is\n addressed to _you_; (2) no decree with respect to you says\n _shall_; (3) God cannot cause _sin_, or decree to cause it. He\n simply decrees to create, and himself to act, in such a way that\n you will, of your own free choice, commit sin. God determines upon\n his own acts, foreseeing what the results will be in the free acts\n of his creatures, and so he determines those results. This\n permissive decree is the only decree of God with respect to sin.\n Man of himself is capable of producing sin. Of himself he is not\n capable of producing holiness. In the production of holiness two\n powers must concur, God\u2019s will and man\u2019s will, and God\u2019s will must\n act first. The decree of good, therefore, is not simply a\n permissive decree, as in the case of evil. God\u2019s decree, in the\n former case, is a decree to bring to bear positive agencies for\n its production, such as circumstances, motives, influences of his\n Spirit. But, in the case of evil, God\u2019s decrees are simply his\n arrangement that man may do as he pleases, God all the while\n foreseeing the result.\n\n Permissive agency should not be confounded with conditional\n agency, nor permissive decree with conditional decree. God\n foreordained sin only indirectly. The machine is constructed not\n for the sake of the friction, but in spite of it. In the parable\n _Mat. 13:24-30_, the question \u201c_Whence then hath it tares?_\u201d is\n answered, not by saying, \u201cI decreed the tares.\u201d but by saying:\n \u201c_An enemy hath done this_.\u201d Yet we must take exception to\n Principal Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Theology, 456, when he\n says: \u201cGod did not _permit_ sin to be; it is, in its essence, the\n transgression of his law, and so his only attitude toward it is\n one of opposition. It _is_, because man has contradicted and\n resisted his will.\u201d Here the truth of God\u2019s opposition to sin is\n stated so sharply as almost to deny the decree of sin in any\n sense. We maintain that God does decree sin in the sense of\n embracing in his plan the foreseen transgressions of men, while at\n the same time we maintain that these foreseen transgressions are\n chargeable wholly to men and not at all to God.\n\n\n(_i_) While God\u2019s total plan with regard to creatures is called\npredestination, or foreordination, his purpose so to act that certain will\nbelieve and be saved is called election, and his purpose so to act that\ncertain will refuse to believe and be lost is called reprobation. We\ndiscuss election and reprobation, in a later chapter, as a part of the\nApplication of Redemption.\n\n\n God\u2019s decrees may be divided into decrees with respect to nature,\n and decrees with respect to moral beings. These last we call\n foreordination, or predestination; and of these decrees with\n respect to moral beings there are two kinds, the decree of\n election, and the decree of reprobation; see our treatment of the\n doctrine of Election. George Herbert: \u201cWe all acknowledge both thy\n power and love To be exact, transcendent, and divine; Who dost so\n strongly and so sweetly move. While all things have their will\u2014yet\n none but thine. For either thy _command_ or thy _permission_ Lays\n hands on all; they are thy right and left. The first puts on with\n speed and expedition; The other curbs sin\u2019s stealing pace and\n theft. Nothing escapes them both; all must appear And be disposed\n and dressed and tuned by thee Who sweetly temperest all. If we\n could hear Thy skill and art, what music it would be!\u201d On the\n whole doctrine, see Shedd, Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:1-25.\n\n\n\nII. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.\n\n\n1. From Scripture.\n\n\nA. The Scriptures declare that all things are included in the divine\ndecrees. B. They declare that special things and events are decreed; as,\nfor example, (_a_) the stability of the physical universe; (_b_) the\noutward circumstances of nations; (_c_) the length of human life; (_d_)\nthe mode of our death; (_e_) the free acts of men, both good acts and evil\nacts. C. They declare that God has decreed (_a_) the salvation of\nbelievers; (_b_) the establishment of Christ\u2019s kingdom; (_c_) the work of\nChrist and of his people in establishing it.\n\n\n A. _Is. 14:26, 27\u2014_\u201cThis is the purpose that is purposed upon the\n whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all\n the nations; for Jehovah of hosts hath purposed ... and his hand\n is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?\u201d _46:10,\n 11\u2014_\u201cdeclaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times\n the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand,\n and I will do all my pleasure ... yea, I have spoken, I will also\n bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it.\u201d _Dan.\n 4:35\u2014_\u201cdoeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and\n among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or\n say unto him, What doest thou?\u201d _Eph. 1:11\u2014_\u201cthe purpose of him\n who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.\u201d\n\n B. (_a_) _Ps. 119:89-91\u2014_\u201cFor ever, O Jehovah, thy word is settled\n in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: Thou hast\n established the earth and it abideth. They abide this day\n according to thine ordinances; For all things are thy servants.\u201d\n (_b_) _Acts 17:26\u2014_\u201che made of one every nation of men to dwell on\n all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed\n seasons, and the bounds of their habitation\u201d; _cf._ _Zach.\n 5:1\u2014_\u201ccame four chariots out from between two mountains; and the\n mountains were mountains of brass\u201d\u2014the fixed decrees from which\n proceed God\u2019s providential dealings? (_c_) _Job 14:5\u2014_\u201cSeeing his\n days are determined, The number of his months is with thee, And\n thou hast determined his bounds that he cannot pass.\u201d (_d_) _John\n 21:19\u2014_\u201cthis he spake, signifying by what manner of death he\n should glorify God.\u201d (_e_) Good acts: _Is. 44:28\u2014_\u201cthat saith of\n Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure, even\n saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy\n foundation shall be laid\u201d; _Eph. 2:10\u2014_\u201cFor we are his\n workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God\n afore prepared that we should walk in them.\u201d Evil acts: _Gen.\n 50:20\u2014_\u201cas for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for\n good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people\n alive\u201d; _1 K. 12:15\u2014_\u201cSo the king hearkened not unto the people,\n for it was a thing brought about of Jehovah\u201d; _24\u2014_\u201cfor this thing\n is of me\u201d; _Luke 22:23\u2014_\u201cFor the Son of man indeed goeth, as it\n hath been determined: but woe unto that man through whom he is\n betrayed\u201d; _Acts 2:23\u2014_\u201chim, being delivered up by the determinate\n counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men\n did crucify and slay\u201d; _4:27, 28\u2014_\u201cof a truth in this city against\n thy holy Servant Jesus, who thou didst anoint, both Herod and\n Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were\n gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel\n foreordained to come to pass\u201d; _Rom. 9:17\u2014_\u201cFor the scripture\n saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up,\n that I might show in thee my power\u201d; _1 Pet 2:3\u2014_\u201cThey stumble at\n the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed\u201d;\n _Rev. 17:17\u2014_\u201cFor God did put in their hearts to do his mind, and\n to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast,\n until the words of God should be accomplished.\u201d\n\n C. (_a_) _1 Cor. 2:7\u2014_\u201cthe wisdom which hath been hidden, which\n God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory\u201d; _Eph 3:10,\n 11\u2014_\u201cmanifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose\n which he purposed in Christ Jesus our lord.\u201d _Ephesians 1_ is a\n p\u00e6an in praise of God\u2019s decrees. (_b_) The greatest decree of all\n is the decree to give the world to Christ. _Ps. 2:7, 8\u2014_\u201cI will\n tell of the decree:... I will give thee the nations for thine\n inheritance\u201d; _cf._ _verse 6\u2014_\u201cI have set my king Upon my holy\n hill of Zion\u201d; _1 Cor. 15:25\u2014_\u201che must reign, till he hath put all\n his enemies under his feet.\u201d (_c_) This decree we are to convert\n into our decree; God\u2019s will is to be executed through our wills.\n _Phil. 2:12, 13\u2014_\u201cwork out your own salvation with fear and\n trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to\n work, for his good pleasure.\u201d _Rev. 5:1, 7\u2014_\u201cI saw in the right\n hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on\n the back, close sealed with seven seals.... And he [the Lamb]\n came, and he taketh it out of the right hand of him that sat on\n the throne\u201d; _verse 9\u2014_\u201cWorthy art thou to take the book, and to\n open the seals thereof\u201d\u2014Christ alone has the omniscience to know,\n and the omnipotence to execute, the divine decrees. When John\n weeps because there is none in heaven or earth to loose the seals\n and to read the book of God\u2019s decrees, the Lion of the tribe of\n Judah prevails to open it. Only Christ conducts the course of\n history to its appointed end. See A. H. Strong, Christ in\n Creation, 268-283, on The Decree of God as the Great Encouragement\n to Missions.\n\n\n2. From Reason.\n\n\nA. From the Divine Foreknowledge.\n\n\nForeknowledge implies fixity, and fixity implies decree.\u2014From eternity God\nforesaw all the events of the universe as fixed and certain. This fixity\nand certainty could not have had its ground either in blind fate or in the\nvariable wills of men, since neither of these had an existence. It could\nhave had its ground in nothing outside the divine mind, for in eternity\nnothing existed besides the divine mind. But for this fixity there must\nhave been a cause; if anything in the future was fixed, something must\nhave fixed it. This fixity could have had its ground only in the plan and\npurpose of God. In fine, if God foresaw the future as certain, it must\nhave been because there was something in himself which made it certain;\nor, in other words, because he had decreed it.\n\n\n We object therefore to the statement of E. G. Robinson, Christian\n Theology, 74\u2014\u201cGod\u2019s knowledge and God\u2019s purposes both being\n eternal, one cannot be conceived as the ground of the other, nor\n can either be predicated to the exclusion of the other as the\n cause of things, but, correlative and eternal, they must be\n coequal quantities in thought.\u201d We reply that while decree does\n not chronologically precede, it does logically precede,\n foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is not of possible events, but of\n what is certain to be. The certainty of future events which God\n foreknew could have had its ground only in his decree, since he\n alone existed to be the ground and explanation of this certainty.\n Events were fixed only because God had fixed them. Shedd, Dogm.\n Theol., 1:397\u2014\u201cAn event must be _made_ certain, before it can be\n _known_ as a certain event.\u201d Turretin, Inst. Theol., loc. 3,\n quaes. 12, 18\u2014\u201cPr\u00e6cipuum fundamentum scienti\u00e6 divin\u00e6 circa futura\n contingentia est deoretum solum.\u201d\n\n\nDecreeing creation implies decreeing the foreseen results of creation.\u2014To\nmeet the objection that God might have foreseen the events of the\nuniverse, not because he had decreed each one, but only because he had\ndecreed to create the universe and institute its laws, we may put the\nargument in another form. In eternity there could have been no cause of\nthe future existence of the universe, outside of God himself, since no\nbeing existed but God himself. In eternity God foresaw that the creation\nof the world and the institution of its laws would make certain its actual\nhistory even to the most insignificant details. But God decreed to create\nand to institute these laws. In so decreeing he necessarily decreed all\nthat was to come. In fine, God foresaw the future events of the universe\nas certain, because he had decreed to create; but this determination to\ncreate involved also a determination of all the actual results of that\ncreation; or, in other words, God decreed those results.\n\n\n E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 84\u2014\u201cThe existence of divine\n decrees may be inferred from the existence of natural law.\u201d Law =\n certainty = God\u2019s will. Positivists express great contempt for the\n doctrine of the eternal purpose of God, yet they consign us to the\n iron necessity of physical forces and natural laws. Dr. Robinson\n also points out that decrees are \u201cimplied in the prophecies. We\n cannot conceive that all events should have converged toward the\n one great event\u2014the death of Christ\u2014without the intervention of an\n eternal purpose.\u201d E. H. Johnson, Outline Syst. Theol., 2d ed.,\n 251, note\u2014\u201cReason is confronted by the paradox that the divine\n decrees are at once absolute and conditional; the resolution of\n the paradox is that God absolutely decreed a conditional system\u2014a\n system, however, the workings of which he thoroughly foreknows.\u201d\n The rough unhewn stone and the statue into which it will be\n transformed are both and equally included in the plan of the\n sculptor.\n\n\nNo undecreed event can be foreseen.\u2014We grant that God decrees primarily\nand directly his own acts of creation, providence, and grace; but we claim\nthat this involves also a secondary and indirect decreeing of the acts of\nfree creatures which he foresees will result therefrom. There is therefore\nno such thing in God as _scientia media_, or knowledge of an event that is\nto be, though it does not enter into the divine plan; for to say that God\nforesees an undecreed event, is to say that he views as future an event\nthat is merely possible; or, in other words, that he views an event not as\nit is.\n\n\n We recognize only two kinds of knowledge: (1) Knowledge of\n undecreed possibles, and (2) foreknowledge of decreed actuals.\n _Scientia media_ is a supposed intermediate knowledge between\n these two, namely (3) foreknowledge of undecreed actuals. See\n further explanations below. We deny the existence of this third\n sort of knowledge. We hold that sin is decreed in the sense of\n being _rendered certain_ by God\u2019s determining upon a system in\n which it was foreseen that sin would exist. The sin of man can be\n foreknown, while yet God is not the immediate cause of it. God\n knows possibilities, without having decreed them at all. But God\n cannot foreknow actualities unless he has by his decree made them\n to be certainties of the future. He cannot foreknow that which is\n not there to be foreknown. Royce, World and Individual, 2:374,\n maintains that God has, not _fore_knowledge, but only _eternal_\n knowledge, of temporal things. But we reply that to foreknow how a\n moral being _will_ act is no more impossible than to know how a\n moral being in given circumstances _would_ act.\n\n\nOnly knowledge of that which is decreed is foreknowledge.\u2014Knowledge of a\nplan as ideal or possible may precede decree; but knowledge of a plan as\nactual or fixed must follow decree. Only the latter knowledge is properly\n_fore_knowledge. God therefore foresees creation, causes, laws, events,\nconsequences, because he has decreed creation, causes, laws, events,\nconsequences; that is, because he has embraced all these in his plan. The\ndenial of decrees logically involves the denial of God\u2019s foreknowledge of\nfree human actions; and to this Socinians, and some Arminians, are\nactually led.\n\n\n An Arminian example of this denial is found in McCabe,\n Foreknowledge of God, and Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies\n a Necessity. _Per contra_, see notes on God\u2019s foreknowledge, in\n this Compendium, pages 283-286. Pepper: \u201cDivine volition stands\n logically between two divisions and kinds of divine knowledge.\u201d\n God knew free human actions as _possible_, _before_ he decreed\n them; he knew them as _future_, _because_ he decreed them.\n Logically, though not chronologically, decree comes before\n foreknowledge. When I say, \u201cI know what I will do,\u201d it is evident\n that I have determined already, and that my knowledge does not\n precede determination, but follows it and is based upon it. It is\n therefore not correct to say that God foreknows his decrees. It is\n more true to say that he decrees his foreknowledge. He foreknows\n the future which he has decreed, and he foreknows it because he\n has decreed it. His decrees are eternal, and nothing that is\n eternal can be the object of foreknowledge. G. F. Wright, in Bib.\n Sac., 1877:723\u2014\u201cThe _knowledge_ of God comprehended the details\n and incidents of every possible plan. The _choice_ of a plan made\n his knowledge determinate as _fore_knowledge.\u201d\n\n There are therefore two kinds of divine knowledge: (1) knowledge\n of what may be\u2014of the possible (_scientia simplicis\n intelligenti\u00e6_); and (2) knowledge of what is, and is to be,\n because God has decreed it (_scientia visionis_). Between these\n two Molina, the Spanish Jesuit, wrongly conceived that there was\n (3) a middle knowledge of things which were to be, although God\n had not decreed them (_scientia media_). This would of course be a\n knowledge which God derived, not from himself, but from his\n creatures! See Dick, Theology, 1:351. A. S. Carman: \u201cIt is\n difficult to see how God\u2019s knowledge can be caused from eternity\n by something that has no existence until a definite point of\n time.\u201d If it be said that what is to be will be \u201cin the nature of\n things,\u201d we reply that there is no \u201cnature of things\u201d apart from\n God, and that the ground of the objective certainty, as well as of\n the subjective certitude corresponding to it, is to be found only\n in God himself.\n\n But God\u2019s decreeing to create, when he foresees that certain free\n acts of men will follow, is a decreeing of those free acts, in the\n only sense in which we use the word decreeing, _viz._, a rendering\n certain, or embracing in his plan. No Arminian who believes in\n God\u2019s foreknowledge of free human acts has good reason for denying\n God\u2019s decrees as thus explained. Surely God did not foreknow that\n Adam would exist and sin, whether God determined to create him or\n not. Omniscience, then, becomes _fore_knowledge only on condition\n of God\u2019s decree. That God\u2019s foreknowledge of free acts is\n intuitive does not affect this conclusion. We grant that, while\n man can predict free action only so far as it is rational (_i.\n e._, in the line of previously dominant motive), God can predict\n free action whether it is rational or not. But even God cannot\n predict what is not certain to be. God can have intuitive\n foreknowledge of free human acts only upon condition of his own\n decree to create; and this decree to create, in foresight of all\n that will follow, is a decree of what follows. For the Arminian\n view, see Watson, Institutes, 2:375-398, 422-448. _Per contra_,\n see Hill, Divinity, 512-582; Fiske, in Bib. Sac., April, 1862;\n Bennett Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 214-254; Edwards the younger,\n 1:398-420; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 98-101.\n\n\nB. From the Divine Wisdom.\n\n\nIt is the part of wisdom to proceed in every undertaking according to a\nplan. The greater the undertaking, the more needful a plan. Wisdom,\nmoreover, shows itself in a careful provision for all possible\ncircumstances and emergencies that can arise in the execution of its plan.\nThat many such circumstances and emergencies are uncontemplated and\nunprovided for in the plans of men, is due only to the limitations of\nhuman wisdom. It belongs to infinite wisdom, therefore, not only to have a\nplan, but to embrace all, even the minutest details, in the plan of the\nuniverse.\n\n\n No architect would attempt to build a Cologne cathedral without a\n plan; he would rather, if possible, have a design for every stone.\n The great painter does not study out his picture as he goes along;\n the plan is in his mind from the start; preparations for the last\n effects have to be made from the beginning. So in God\u2019s work every\n detail is foreseen and provided for; sin and Christ entered into\n the original plan of the universe. Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:156,\n says this implies that God cannot govern the world unless all\n things be reduced to the condition of machinery; and that it\n cannot be true, for the reason that God\u2019s government is a\n government of persons and not of things. But we reply that the\n wise statesman governs persons and not things, yet just in\n proportion to his wisdom he conducts his administration according\n to a preconceived plan. God\u2019s power might, but God\u2019s wisdom would\n not, govern the universe without embracing all things, even the\n least human action, in his plan.\n\n\nC. From the Divine Immutability.\n\n\nWhat God does, he always purposed to do. Since with him there is no\nincrease of knowledge or power, such as characterizes finite beings, it\nfollows that what under any given circumstances he permits or does, he\nmust have eternally decreed to permit or do. To suppose that God has a\nmultitude of plans, and that he changes his plan with the exigencies of\nthe situation, is to make him infinitely dependent upon the varying wills\nof his creatures, and to deny to him one necessary element of perfection,\nnamely, immutability.\n\n\n God has been very unworthily compared to a chess-player, who will\n checkmate his opponent whatever moves he may make (George Harris).\n So Napoleon is said to have had a number of plans before each\n battle, and to have betaken himself from one to another as fortune\n demanded. Not so with God. _Job 23:13\u2014_\u201che is in one mind, and who\n can turn him?\u201d _James 1:17-_\u201cthe Father of lights, with whom can\n be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.\u201d Contrast\n with this Scripture McCabe\u2019s statement in his Foreknowledge of\n God, 62\u2014\u201cThis new factor, the godlike liberty of the human will,\n is capable of thwarting, and in uncounted instances does thwart,\n the divine will, and compel the great I AM to modify his actions,\n his purposes, and his plans, in the treatment of individuals and\n of communities.\u201d\n\n\nD. From the Divine Benevolence.\n\n\nThe events of the universe, if not determined by the divine decrees, must\nbe determined either by chance or by the wills of creatures. It is\ncontrary to any proper conception of the divine benevolence to suppose\nthat God permits the course of nature and of history, and the ends to\nwhich both these are moving, to be determined for myriads of sentient\nbeings by any other force or will than his own. Both reason and\nrevelation, therefore, compel us to accept the doctrine of the Westminster\nConfession, that \u201cGod did from all eternity, by the most just and holy\ncounsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes\nto pass.\u201d\n\n\n It would not be benevolent for God to put out of his own power\n that which was so essential to the happiness of the universe.\n Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 231-243\u2014\u201cThe denial of decrees\n involves denial of the essential attributes of God, such as\n omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence; exhibits him as a\n disappointed and unhappy being; implies denial of his universal\n providence; leads to a denial of the greater part of our own duty\n of submission; weakens the obligations of gratitude.\u201d We give\n thanks to God for blessings which come to us through the free acts\n of others; but unless God has purposed these blessings, we owe our\n thanks to these others and not to God. Dr. A. J. Gordon said well\n that a universe without decrees would be as irrational and\n appalling as would be an express-train driving on in the darkness\n without headlight or engineer, and with no certainty that the next\n moment it might not plunge into the abyss. And even Martineau,\n Study, 2:108, in spite of his denial of God\u2019s foreknowledge of\n man\u2019s free acts, is compelled to say: \u201cIt cannot be left to mere\n created natures to play unconditionally with the helm of even a\n single world and steer it uncontrolled into the haven or on to the\n reefs; and some security must be taken for keeping the deflections\n within tolerable bounds.\u201d See also Emmons, Works, 4:273-401: and\n Princeton Essays, 1:57-73.\n\n\n\nIII. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.\n\n\n1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.\n\n\nTo this we reply that:\n\nA. The objection confounds the decrees with the execution of the decrees.\nThe decrees are, like foreknowledge, an act eternal to the divine nature,\nand are no more inconsistent with free agency than foreknowledge is. Even\nforeknowledge of events implies that those events are fixed. If this\nabsolute fixity and foreknowledge is not inconsistent with free agency,\nmuch less can that which is more remote from man\u2019s action, namely, the\nhidden cause of this fixity and foreknowledge\u2014God\u2019s decrees\u2014be\ninconsistent with free agency. If anything be inconsistent with man\u2019s free\nagency, it must be, not the decrees themselves, but the execution of the\ndecrees in creation and providence.\n\n\n On this objection, see Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 244-249;\n Forbes, Predestination and Free Will, 3\u2014\u201cAll things are\n _predestinated_ by God, both good and evil, but not\n _prenecessitated_, that is, causally pre\u00f6rdained by him\u2014unless we\n would make God the author of sin. Predestination is thus an\n indifferent word, in so far as the originating author of anything\n is concerned; God being the originator of good, but the creature,\n of evil. Predestination therefore means that God included in his\n plan of the world every act of every creature, good or bad. Some\n acts he predestined causally, others permissively. The certainty\n of the fulfilment of all God\u2019s purposes ought to be distinguished\n from their necessity.\u201d This means simply that God\u2019s decree is not\n the _cause_ of any act or event. God\u2019s decrees may be executed by\n the causal efficiency of his creatures, or they may be executed by\n his own efficiency. In either case it is, if anything, the\n execution, and not the decree, that is inconsistent with human\n freedom.\n\n\nB. The objection rests upon a false theory of free agency\u2014namely, that\nfree agency implies indeterminateness or uncertainty; in other words, that\nfree agency cannot co\u00ebxist with certainty as to the results of its\nexercise. But it is necessity, not certainty, with which free agency is\ninconsistent. Free agency is the power of self-determination in view of\nmotives, or man\u2019s power (_a_) to chose between motives, and (_b_) to\ndirect his subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen.\nMotives are never a cause, but only an occasion; they influence, but never\ncompel; the man is the cause, and herein is his freedom. But it is also\ntrue that man is never in a state of indeterminateness; never acts without\nmotive, or contrary to all motives; there is always a reason why he acts,\nand herein is his rationality. Now, so far as man acts according to\npreviously dominant motive\u2014see (_b_) above\u2014we may by knowing his motive\npredict his action, and our certainty what that action will be in no way\naffects his freedom. We may even bring motives to bear upon others, the\ninfluence of which we foresee, yet those who act upon them may act in\nperfect freedom. But if man, influenced by man, may still be free, then\nman, influenced by divinely foreseen motives, may still be free, and the\ndivine decrees, which simply render certain man\u2019s actions, may also be\nperfectly consistent with man\u2019s freedom.\n\n\n We must not assume that decreed ends can be secured only by\n compulsion. Eternal purposes do not necessitate efficient\n causation on the part of the purposer. Freedom may be the very\n means of fulfilling the purpose. E. G. Robinson, Christian\n Theology, 74\u2014\u201cAbsolute certainty of events, which is all that\n omniscience determines respecting them, is not identical with\n their necessitation.\u201d John Milton, Christian Doctrine: \u201cFuture\n events which God has foreseen will happen certainly, but not of\n necessity. They will happen certainly, because the divine\n prescience will not be deceived; but they will not happen\n necessarily, because prescience can have no influence on the\n object foreknown, inasmuch as it is only an intransitive action.\u201d\n\n\nThere is, however, a smaller class of human actions by which character is\nchanged, rather than expressed, and in which the man acts according to a\nmotive different from that which has previously been dominant\u2014see (_a_)\nabove. These actions also are foreknown by God, although they cannot be\npredicted by man. Man\u2019s freedom in them would be inconsistent with God\u2019s\ndecrees, if the previous certainty of their occurrence were, not\ncertainty, but necessity; or, in other words, if God\u2019s decrees were in all\ncases decrees efficiently to produce the acts of his creatures. But this\nis not the case. God\u2019s decrees may be executed by man\u2019s free causation, as\neasily as by God\u2019s; and God\u2019s decreeing this free causation, in decreeing\nto create a universe of which he foresees that this causation will be a\npart, in no way interferes with the freedom of such causation, but rather\nsecures and establishes it. Both consciousness and conscience witness that\nGod\u2019s decrees are not executed by laying compulsion upon the free wills of\nmen.\n\n\n The farmer who, after hearing a sermon on God\u2019s decrees, took the\n break-neck road instead of the safe one to his home and broke his\n wagon in consequence, concluded before the end of his journey that\n he at any rate had been predestinated to be a fool, and that he\n had made his calling and election sure. Ladd, Philosophy of\n Conduct, 146, 187, shows that the will is free, first, by man\u2019s\n consciousness of ability, and, secondly, by man\u2019s consciousness of\n imputability. By nature, he is _potentially_ self-determining; as\n matter of fact, he often _becomes_ self-determining.\n\n Allen, Religious Progress, 110\u2014\u201cThe coming church must embrace the\n sovereignty of God and the freedom of the will; total depravity\n and the divinity of human nature; the unity of God and the triune\n distinctions in the Godhead; gnosticism and agnosticism; the\n humanity of Christ and his incarnate deity; the freedom of the\n Christian man and the authority of the church; individualism and\n solidarity; reason and faith; science and theology; miracle and\n uniformity of law; culture and piety; the authority of the Bible\n as the word of God with absolute freedom of Biblical criticism;\n the gift of administration as in the historic episcopate and the\n gift of prophecy as the highest sanction of the ministerial\n commission; the apostolic succession but also the direct and\n immediate call which knows only the succession of the Holy Ghost.\u201d\n Without assenting to these latter clauses we may commend the\n comprehensive spirit of this utterance, especially with reference\n to the vexed question of the relation of divine sovereignty to\n human freedom.\n\n\nIt may aid us, in estimating the force of this objection, to note the four\nsenses in which the term \u201cfreedom\u201d may be used. It may be used as\nequivalent to (1) _physical_ freedom, or absence of outward constraint;\n(2) _formal_ freedom, or a state of moral indeterminateness; (3) _moral_\nfreedom, or self-determinateness in view of motives; (4) _real_ freedom,\nor ability to conform to the divine standard. With the first of these we\nare not now concerned, since all agree that the decrees lay no outward\nconstraint upon men. Freedom in the second sense has no existence, since\nall men have character. Free agency, or freedom in the third sense, has\njust been shown to be consistent with the decrees. Freedom in the fourth\nsense, or real freedom, is the special gift of God, and is not to be\nconfounded with free agency. The objection mentioned above rests wholly\nupon the second of these definitions of free agency. This we have shown to\nbe false, and with this the objection itself falls to the ground.\n\n\n Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 133-188, gives a good\n definition of this fourth kind of freedom: \u201cFreedom is\n self-determination by universal ideals. Limiting our ends to those\n of family or country is a refined or idealized selfishness.\n Freedom is self-determination by universal love for man or by the\n kingdom of God. But the free man must then be dependent on God in\n everything, because the kingdom of God is a revelation of God.\u201d\n John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:133\u2014\u201cIn being\n determined by God we are self-determined; _i. e._, determined by\n nothing alien to us, but by our noblest, truest self. The\n universal life lives in us. The eternal consciousness becomes our\n own; for \u2018he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth\n in him\u2019_ (1 John 4:16)_.\u201d\n\n Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 226\u2014\u201cFree will is not the\n independence of the creature, but is rather his self-realization\n in perfect dependence. Freedom is self-identity with goodness.\n Both goodness and freedom are, in their perfectness, in God.\n Goodness in a creature is not distinction from, but correspondence\n with, the goodness of God. Freedom in a creature is correspondence\n with God\u2019s own self-identity with goodness. It is to realize and\n to find _himself_, his _true_ self, in Christ, so that God\u2019s love\n in us has become a divine response, adequate to, because truly\n mirroring, God.\u201d G. S. Lee, The Shadow Christ, 32\u2014.\u201cThe ten\n commandments could not be chanted. The Israelites sang about\n Jehovah and what he had done, but they did not sing about what he\n told them to do, and that is why they never did it. The conception\n of duty that cannot sing must weep until it learns to sing. This\n is Hebrew history.\u201d\n\n \u201cThere is a liberty, unsung By poets and by senators unpraised,\n Which monarchs cannot grant nor all the powers Of earth and hell\n confederate take away; A liberty which persecution, fraud,\n Oppressions, prisons, have no power to bind; Which whoso tastes\n can be enslaved no more. \u2019T is liberty of heart, derived from\n heaven, Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind, And sealed\n with the same token.\u201d Robert Herrick: \u201cStone walls do not a prison\n make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for\n a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free,\n Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty.\u201d\n\n A more full discussion of the doctrine of the Will is given under\n Anthropology, Vol. II. It is sufficient here to say that the\n Arminian objections to the decrees arise almost wholly from\n erroneously conceiving of freedom as the will\u2019s power to decide,\n in any given case, against its own character and all the motives\n brought to bear upon it. As we shall hereafter see, this is\n practically to deny that man has character, or that the will by\n its right or wrong moral action gives to itself, as well as to the\n intellect and affections, a permanent bent or predisposition to\n good or evil. It is to extend the power of contrary choice, a\n power which belongs to the sphere of transient volition, over all\n those permanent states of intellect, affection, and will which we\n call the moral character, and to say that we can change directly\n by a single volition that which, as a matter of fact, we can\n change only indirectly through process and means. Yet even this\n exaggerated view of freedom would seem not to exclude God\u2019s\n decrees, or prevent a practical reconciliation of the Arminian and\n Calvinistic views, so long as the Arminian grants God\u2019s\n foreknowledge of free human acts, and the Calvinist grants that\n God\u2019s decree of these acts is not necessarily a decree that God\n will efficiently produce them. For a close approximation of the\n two views, see articles by Raymond and by A. A. Hodge,\n respectively, on the Arminian and the Calvinistic Doctrines of the\n Will, in McClintock and Strong\u2019s Cyclop\u00e6dia, 10:989, 992.\n\n We therefore hold to the certainty of human action, and so part\n company with the Arminian. We cannot with Whedon (On the Will),\n and Hazard (Man a Creative First Cause), attribute to the will the\n freedom of indifference, or the power to act without motive. We\n hold with Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 188, that action without\n motive, or an act of pure will, is unknown in consciousness (see,\n however, an inconsistent statement of Calderwood on page 188 of\n the same work). Every future human act will not only be performed\n with a motive, but will certainly be one thing rather than\n another; and God knows what it will be. Whatever may be the method\n of God\u2019s foreknowledge, and whether it be derived from motives or\n be intuitive, that foreknowledge presupposes God\u2019s decree to\n create, and so presupposes the making certain of the free acts\n that follow creation.\n\n But this certainty is not necessity. In reconciling God\u2019s decrees\n with human freedom, we must not go to the other extreme, and\n reduce human freedom to mere determinism, or the power of the\n agent to act out his character in the circumstances which environ\n him. Human action is not simply the expression of previously\n dominant affections; else Neither Satan nor Adam could have\n fallen, nor could the Christian ever sin. We therefore part\n company with Jonathan Edwards and his Treatise on the Freedom of\n the Will, as well as with the younger Edwards (Works, 1:420),\n Alexander (Moral Science, 107), and Charles Hodge (Syst. Theology,\n 2:278), all of whom follow Jonathan Edwards in identifying\n sensibility with the will, in regarding affections as the causes\n of volitions, and in speaking of the connection between motive and\n action as a necessary one. We hold, on the contrary, that\n sensibility and will are two distinct powers, that affections are\n occasions but never causes of volitions, and that, while motives\n may infallibly persuade, they never compel the will. The power to\n make the decision other than it is resides in the will, though it\n may never be exercised. With Charnock, the Puritan (Attributes,\n 1:448-450), we say that \u201cman hath a power to do otherwise than\n that which God foreknows he will do.\u201d Since, then, God\u2019s decrees\n are not executed by laying compulsion upon human wills, they are\n not inconsistent with man\u2019s freedom. See Martineau, Study, 2:237,\n 249, 258, 261; also article by A. H. Strong, on Modified\n Calvinism, or Remainders of Freedom in Man, in Baptist Review,\n 1883:219-243; reprinted in the author\u2019s Philosophy and Religion,\n 114-128.\n\n\n2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.\n\n\nTo this we reply that:\n\n(_a_) They cannot thus influence men, since they are not addressed to men,\nare not the rule of human action, and become known only after the event.\nThis objection is therefore the mere excuse of indolence and disobedience.\n\n\n Men rarely make this excuse in any enterprise in which their hopes\n and their interests are enlisted. It is mainly in matters of\n religion that men use the divine decrees as an apology for their\n sloth and inaction. The passengers on an ocean steamer do not deny\n their ability to walk to starboard or to larboard, upon the plea\n that they are being carried to their destination by forces beyond\n their control. Such a plea would be still more irrational in a\n case where the passengers\u2019 inaction, as in case of fire, might\n result in destruction to the ship.\n\n\n(_b_) The objection confounds the decrees of God with fate. But it is to\nbe observed that fate is unintelligent, while the decrees are framed by a\npersonal God in infinite wisdom; fate is indistinguishable from material\ncausation and leaves no room for human freedom, while the decrees exclude\nall notion of physical necessity; fate embraces no moral ideas or ends,\nwhile the decrees make these controlling in the universe.\n\n\n North British Rev., April, 1870\u2014\u201cDeterminism and predestination\n spring from premises which lie in quite separate regions of\n thought. The predestinarian is obliged by his theology to admit\n the existence of a free will in God, and, as a matter of fact, he\n does admit it in the devil. But the final consideration which puts\n a great gulf between the determinist and the predestinarian is\n this, that the latter asserts the reality of the vulgar notion of\n moral desert. Even if he were not obliged by his interpretation of\n Scripture to assert this, he would be obliged to assert it in\n order to help out his doctrine of eternal reprobation.\u201d\n\n Hawthorne expressed his belief in human freedom when be said that\n destiny itself had often been worsted in the attempt to get him\n out to dinner. Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, quotes the\n Indian\u2019s excuse for getting drunk: \u201cThe Great Spirit made all\n things for some use, and whatsoever use they were made for, to\n that use they must be put. The Great Spirit made rum for Indians\n to get drunk with, and so it must be.\u201d Martha, in Isabel Carnaby,\n excuses her breaking of dishes by saying: \u201cIt seems as if it was\n to be. It is the thin edge of the wedge that in time will turn\n again and rend you.\u201d Seminary professor: \u201cDid a man ever die\n before his time?\u201d Seminary student: \u201cI never knew of such a case.\u201d\n The decrees of God, considered as God\u2019s all-embracing plan, leave\n room for human freedom.\n\n\n(_c_) The objection ignores the logical relation between the decree of the\nend and the decree of the means to secure it. The decrees of God not only\nensure the end to be obtained, but they ensure free human action as\nlogically prior thereto. All conflict between the decrees and human\nexertion must therefore be apparent and not real. Since consciousness and\nScripture assure us that free agency exists, it must exist by divine\ndecree; and though we may be ignorant of the method in which the decrees\nare executed, we have no right to doubt either the decrees or the freedom.\nThey must be held to be consistent, until one of them is proved to be a\ndelusion.\n\n\n The man who carries a vase of gold-fish does not prevent the fish\n from moving unrestrainedly within the vase. The double track of a\n railway enables a formidable approaching train to slip by without\n colliding with our own. Our globe takes us with it, as it rushes\n around the sun, yet we do our ordinary work without interruption.\n The two movements which at first sight seem inconsistent with each\n other are really parts of one whole. God\u2019s plan and man\u2019s effort\n are equally in harmony. Myers, Human Personality, 2:272, speaks of\n \u201cmolecular motion amid molar calm.\u201d\n\n Dr. Duryea: \u201cThe way of life has two fences. There is an Arminian\n fence to keep us out of Fatalism; and there is a Calvinistic fence\n to keep us out of Pelagianism. Some good brethren like to walk on\n the fences. But it is hard in that way to keep one\u2019s balance. And\n it is needless, for there is plenty of room between the fences.\n For my part I prefer to walk in the road.\u201d Archibald Alexander\u2019s\n statement is yet better: \u201cCalvinism is the broadest of systems. It\n regards the divine sovereignty and the freedom of the human will\n as the two sides of a roof which come together at a ridgepole\n above the clouds. Calvinism accepts both truths. A system which\n denies either one of the two has only half a roof over its head.\u201d\n\n Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:176, and The Best Bread, 109\u2014\u201cThe\n system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one\n straight line but two, and no man will ever get a right view of\n the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once....\n These two facts [of divine sovereignty and of human freedom] are\n parallel lines; I cannot make them unite, but you cannot make them\n cross each other.\u201d John A. Broadus: \u201cYou can see only two sides of\n a building at once; if you go around it, you see two different\n sides, but the first two are hidden. This is true if you are on\n the ground. But if you get up upon the roof or in a balloon, you\n can see that there are four sides, and you can see them all\n together. So our finite minds can take in sovereignty and freedom\n alternately, but not simultaneously. God from above can see them\n both, and from heaven we too may be able to look down and see.\u201d\n\n\n(_d_) Since the decrees connect means and ends together, and ends are\ndecreed only as the result of means, they encourage effort instead of\ndiscouraging it. Belief in God\u2019s plan that success shall reward toil,\nincites to courageous and persevering effort. Upon the very ground of\nGod\u2019s decree, the Scripture urges us to the diligent use of means.\n\n\n God has decreed the harvest only as the result of man\u2019s labor in\n sowing and reaping; God decrees wealth to the man who works and\n saves; so answers are decreed to prayer, and salvation to faith.\n Compare Paul\u2019s declaration of God\u2019s purpose (_Acts 27:22,\n 24\u2014_\u201cthere shall be no loss of life among you.... God hath granted\n thee all them that sail with thee\u201d) with his warning to the\n centurion and sailors to use the means of safety (_verse\n 31\u2014_\u201cExcept these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved\u201d). See\n also _Phil. 2:12, 13\u2014_\u201cwork out your own salvation with fear and\n trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to\n work, for his good pleasure\u201d; _Eph. 2:10\u2014_\u201cwe are his workmanship,\n created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared\n that we should walk in them\u201d; _Deut. 29:29\u2014_\u201cthe secret things\n belong unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed\n belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all\n the words of this law.\u201d See Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures,\n 252-354.\n\n _Ps. 59:10 (A. V.)\u2014_\u201cThe God of my mercy shall prevent me\u201d\u2014shall\n anticipate, or go before, me; _Is. 65:24\u2014_\u201cbefore they call, I\n will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear\u201d; _Ps.\n 23:2\u2014_\u201cHe leadeth me\u201d; _John 10:3\u2014_\u201ccalleth his own sheep by name,\n and leadeth them out.\u201d These texts describe prevenient grace in\n prayer, in conversion, and in Christian work. Plato called reason\n and sensibility a mismatched pair, one of which was always getting\n ahead of the other. Decrees and freedom _seem_ to be mismatched,\n but they are not so. Even Jonathan Edwards, with his deterministic\n theory of the will, could, in his sermon on Pressing into the\n Kingdom, insist on the use of means, and could appeal to men as if\n they had the power to choose between the motives of self and of\n God. God\u2019s sovereignty and human freedom are like the positive and\n the negative poles of the magnet,\u2014they are inseparable from one\n another, and are both indispensable elements in the attraction of\n the gospel.\n\n Peter Damiani, the great monk-cardinal, said that the sin he found\n it hardest to uproot was his disposition to laughter. The homage\n paid to asceticism is the homage paid to the conqueror. But not\n all conquests are worthy of homage. Better the words of Luther:\n \u201cIf our God may make excellent large pike and good Rhenish wine, I\n may very well venture to eat and drink. Thou mayest enjoy every\n pleasure in the world that is not sinful; thy God forbids thee\n not, but rather wills it. And it is pleasing to the dear God\n whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.\u201d\n But our freedom has its limits. Martha Baker Dunn: \u201cA man fishing\n for pickerel baits his hook with a live minnow and throws him into\n the water. The little minnow seems to be swimming gaily at his own\n free will, but just the moment he attempts to move out of his\n appointed course he begins to realize that there is a hook in his\n back. That is what we find out when we try to swim against the\n stream of God\u2019s decrees.\u201d\n\n\n3. That they make God the author of sin.\n\n\nTo this we reply:\n\n(_a_) They make God, not the author of sin, but the author of free beings\nwho are themselves the authors of sin. God does not decree efficiently to\nwork evil desires or choices in men. He decrees sin only in the sense of\ndecreeing to create and preserve those who will sin; in other words, he\ndecrees to create and preserve human wills which, in their own self-chosen\ncourses, will be and do evil. In all this, man attributes sin to himself\nand not to God, and God hates, denounces, and punishes sin.\n\n\n Joseph\u2019s brethren were none the less wicked for the fact that God\n meant their conduct to result in good (_Gen. 50:20_). Pope Leo X\n and his indulgences brought on the Reformation, but he was none\n the less guilty. Slaveholders would have been no more excusable,\n even if they had been able to prove that the negro race was cursed\n in the curse of Canaan (_Gen. 9:25\u2014_\u201cCursed be Canaan; a servant\n of servants shall he be unto his brethren\u201d). Fitch, in Christian\n Spectator, 3:601\u2014\u201cThere can be and is a purpose of God which is\n not an _efficient_ purpose. It embraces the voluntary acts of\n moral beings, without creating those acts by divine efficiency.\u201d\n See Martineau, Study, 2:107, 136.\n\n _Mat. 26:24\u2014_\u201cThe Son of man goeth even as it is written of him:\n but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed!\n good were it for that man if he had not been born.\u201d It was\n appointed that Christ should suffer, but that did not make men\n less free agents, nor diminish the guilt of their treachery and\n injustice. Robert G. Ingersoll asked: \u201cWhy did God create the\n devil?\u201d We reply that God did not create the devil,\u2014it was the\n devil who made the devil. God made a holy and free spirit who\n abused his liberty, himself created sin, and so made himself a\n devil.\n\n Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:299\u2014\u201cEvil has been referred to 1.\n an extra-divine principle\u2014to one or many evil spirits, or to fate,\n or to matter\u2014at all events to a principle limiting the divine\n power; 2. a want or defect in the Deity himself, either his\n imperfect wisdom or his imperfect goodness; 3. human culpability,\n either a universal imperfection of human nature, or particular\n transgressions of the first men.\u201d The third of these explanations\n is the true one: the first is irrational; the second is\n blasphemous. Yet this second is the explanation of Omar Khayy\u00e1m,\n Rub\u00e1iyat, stanzas 80, 81\u2014\u201cOh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with\n gin Beset the road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with\n predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin. Oh\n Thou, who man of baser earth didst make, And ev\u2019n with Paradise\n devise the snake: For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is\n blackened\u2014man\u2019s forgiveness give\u2014and take!\u201d And David Harum\n similarly says: \u201cIf I\u2019ve done anything to be sorry for, I\u2019m\n willing to be forgiven.\u201d\n\n\n(_b_) The decree to permit sin is therefore not an efficient but a\npermissive decree, or a decree to permit, in distinction from a decree to\nproduce by his own efficiency. No difficulty attaches to such a decree to\npermit sin, which does not attach to the actual permission of it. But God\ndoes actually permit sin, and it must be right for him to permit it. It\nmust therefore be right for him to decree to permit it. If God\u2019s holiness\nand wisdom and power are not impugned by the actual existence of moral\nevil, they are not impugned by the original decree that it should exist.\n\n\n Jonathan Edwards, Works, 2:100\u2014\u201cThe sun is not the _cause_ of the\n darkness that follows its setting, but only the _occasion_\u201d;\n 254\u2014\u201cIf by the author of sin be meant the sinner, the agent, or\n the actor of sin, or the doer of a wicked thing\u2014so it would be a\n reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin....\n But if by author of sin is meant the permitter or non-hinderer of\n sin, and at the same time a disposer of the state of events in\n such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and\n purposes, _that sin_, if it be permitted and not hindered, _will\n most certainly follow_, I do not deny that God is the author of\n sin: it is no reproach to the Most High to be _thus_ the author of\n sin.\u201d On the objection that the doctrine of decrees imputes to God\n two wills, and that he has foreordained what he has forbidden, see\n Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 250-252\u2014\u201cA ruler may forbid\n treason; but his command does not oblige him to do all in his\n power to prevent disobedience to it. It may promote the good of\n his kingdom to suffer the treason to be committed, and the traitor\n to be punished according to law. That in view of this resulting\n good he chooses not to prevent the treason, does not imply any\n contradiction or opposition of will in the monarch.\u201d\n\n An ungodly editor excused his vicious journalism by saying that he\n was not ashamed to describe anything which Providence had\n permitted to happen. But \u201cpermitted\u201d here had an implication of\n causation. He laid the blame of the evil upon Providence. He was\n ashamed to describe many things that were good and which God\n actually caused, while he was not ashamed to describe the immoral\n things which God did not cause, but only permitted men to cause.\n In this sense we may assent to Jonathan Edwards\u2019s words: \u201cThe\n divine Being is not the author of sin, but only disposes things in\n such a manner that sin will certainly ensue.\u201d These words are\n found in his treatise on Original Sin. In his Essay on Freedom of\n the Will, he adds a doctrine of causation which we must repudiate:\n \u201cThe essence of virtue and vice, as they exist in the disposition\n of the heart, and are manifested in the acts of the will, lies not\n in their _Cause_ but in their _Nature_.\u201d We reply that sin could\n not be condemnable in its nature, if God and not man were its\n cause.\n\n Robert Browning, Mihrab Shah: \u201cWherefore should any evil hap to\n man\u2014From ache of flesh to agony of soul\u2014Since God\u2019s All-mercy\n mates All-potency? Nay, why permits he evil to himself\u2014man\u2019s sin,\n accounted such? Suppose a world purged of all pain, with fit\n inhabitant\u2014Man pure of evil in thought, word and deed\u2014were it not\n well? Then, wherefore otherwise?\u201d Fairbairn answers the question,\n as follows, in his Christ in Modern Theology, 456\u2014\u201cEvil once\n intended may be vanquished by being allowed; but were it hindered\n by an act of annihilation, then the victory would rest with the\n evil which had compelled the Creator to retrace his steps. And, to\n carry the prevention backward another stage, if the possibility of\n evil had hindered the creative action of God, then he would have\n been, as it were, overcome by its very shadow. But why did he\n create a being capable of sinning? Only so could he create a being\n capable of obeying. The ability to do good implies the capability\n of doing evil. The engine can neither obey nor disobey, and the\n creature who was without this double ability might be a machine,\n but could be no child. Moral perfection can be attained, but\n cannot be created; God can make a being capable of moral action,\n but not a being with all the fruits of moral action garnered\n within him.\u201d\n\n\n(_c_) The difficulty is therefore one which in substance clings to all\ntheistic systems alike\u2014the question why moral evil is permitted under the\ngovernment of a God infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and good. This\nproblem is, to our finite powers, incapable of full solution, and must\nremain to a great degree shrouded in mystery. With regard to it we can\nonly say:\n\nNegatively,\u2014that God does not permit moral evil because he is not\nunalterably opposed to sin; nor because moral evil was unforeseen and\nindependent of his will; nor because he could not have prevented it in a\nmoral system. Both observation and experience, which testify to multiplied\ninstances of deliverance from sin without violation of the laws of man\u2019s\nbeing, forbid as to limit the power of God.\n\nPositively,\u2014we seem constrained to say that God permits moral evil because\nmoral evil, though in itself abhorrent to his nature, is yet the incident\nof a system adapted to his purpose of self-revelation; and further,\nbecause it is his wise and sovereign will to institute and maintain this\nsystem of which moral evil is an incident, rather than to withhold his\nself-revelation or to reveal himself through another system in which moral\nevil should be continually prevented by the exercise of divine power.\n\n\n There are four questions which neither Scripture nor reason\n enables us completely to solve and to which we may safely say that\n only the higher knowledge of the future state will furnish the\n answers. These questions are, first, how can a holy God permit\n moral evil? secondly, how could a being created pure ever fall?\n thirdly, how can we be responsible for inborn depravity? fourthly,\n how could Christ justly suffer? The first of these questions now\n confronts us. A complete theodicy (\u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, God, and \u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae, justice)\n would be a vindication of the justice of God in permitting the\n natural and moral evil that exists under his government. While a\n complete theodicy is beyond our powers, we throw some light upon\n God\u2019s permission of moral evil by considering (1) that freedom of\n will is necessary to virtue; (2) that God suffers from sin more\n than does the sinner; (3) that, with the permission of sin, God\n provided a redemption; and, (4) that God will eventually overrule\n all evil for good.\n\n It is possible that the elect angels belong to a moral system in\n which sin is prevented by constraining motives. We cannot deny\n that God could prevent sin in a moral system. But it is very\n doubtful whether God could prevent sin in the _best_ moral system.\n The most perfect freedom is indispensable to the attainment of the\n highest virtue. Spurgeon: \u201cThere could have been no moral\n government without permission to sin. God could have created\n blameless puppets, but they could have had no virtue.\u201d Behrends:\n \u201cIf moral beings were incapable of perversion, man would have had\n all the virtue of a planet,\u2014that is, no virtue at all.\u201d Sin was\n permitted, then, only because it could be overruled for the\n greatest good. This greatest good, we may add, is not simply the\n highest nobility and virtue of the creature, but also the\n revelation of the Creator. But for sin, God\u2019s justice and God\u2019s\n mercy alike would have been unintelligible to the universe. E. G.\n Robinson: \u201cGod could not have revealed his character so well\n without moral evil as with moral evil.\u201d\n\n Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, tells us that it was God\u2019s plan to\n make man in his own image: \u201cTo create man, and then leave him\n Able, his own word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him\n too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all\n unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made\n perfect as a thing of course.\u201d Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 268-270,\n 324, holds that sin and wickedness is an absolute evil, but an\n evil permitted to exist because the effacement of it would mean\n the effacement at the same time both for God and man, of the\n possibility of reaching the highest spiritual good. See also\n Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:108; Momerie, Origin of Evil; St.\n Clair, Evil Physical and Moral; Voysey, Mystery of Pain, Death and\n Sin.\n\n C. G. Finney, Skeletons of a Course of Theological Studies, 26,\n 27\u2014\u201cInfinite goodness, knowledge and power imply only that, if a\n universe were made, it would be the best that was naturally\n possible.\u201d To say that God could not be the author of a universe\n in which there is so much of evil, he says, \u201cassumes that a better\n universe, upon the whole, was a natural possibility. It assumes\n that a universe of moral beings could, under a moral government\n administered in the wisest and best manner, be wholly restrained\n from sin; but this needs proof, and never can be proved.... The\n best possible universe may not be the best conceivable universe.\n Apply the legal maxim, \u2018The defendant is to have the benefit of\n the doubt, and that in proportion to the established character of\n his reputation.\u2019 There is so much clearly indicating the\n benevolence of God, that we may _believe_ in his benevolence,\n where we cannot _see_ it.\u201d\n\n For advocacy of the view that God cannot prevent evil in a moral\n system, see Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 17; Young, The Mystery,\n or Evil not from God; Bledsoe, Theodicy; N. W. Taylor, Moral\n Government, 1:288-349; 2:327-356. According to Dr. Taylor\u2019s view,\n God has not a complete control over the moral universe; moral\n agents can do wrong under every possible influence to prevent it;\n God prefers, all things considered, that all his creatures should\n be holy and happy, and does all in his power to make them so; the\n existence of sin is not on the whole for the best; sin exists\n because God cannot prevent it in a moral system; the blessedness\n of God is actually impaired by the disobedience of his creatures.\n For criticism of these views, see Tyler, Letters on the New Haven\n Theology, 129, 219. Tyler argues that election and non-election\n imply power in God to prevent sin; that _permitting_ is not mere\n _submitting_ to something which he could not possibly prevent. We\n would add that as a matter of fact God has preserved holy angels,\n and that there are \u201cjust men\u201d who have been \u201cmade perfect\u201d (_Heb.\n 12:23_) without violating the laws of moral agency. We infer that\n God could have so preserved Adam. The history of the church leads\n us to believe that there is no sinner so stubborn that God cannot\n renew his heart,\u2014even a Saul can be turned into a Paul. We\n hesitate therefore to ascribe limits to God\u2019s power. While Dr.\n Taylor held that God could not prevent sin in _a_ moral system,\n that is, in _any_ moral system, Dr. Park is understood to hold the\n greatly preferable view that God cannot prevent sin in the _best_\n moral system. Flint, Christ\u2019s Kingdom upon Earth, 59\u2014\u201cThe\n alternative is, not evil or no evil, but evil or the miraculous\n prevention of evil.\u201d See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:406-422.\n\n But even granting that the present is the best moral system, and\n that in such a system evil cannot be prevented consistently with\n God\u2019s wisdom and goodness, the question still remains how the\n decree to initiate such a system can consist with God\u2019s\n fundamental attribute of holiness. Of this insoluble mystery we\n must say as Dr. John Brown, in Spare Hours, 273, says of Arthur H.\n Hallam\u2019s Theodic\u00e6a Novissima: \u201cAs was to be expected, the\n tremendous subject remains where he found it. His glowing love and\n genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom, but it is as\n brief as the lightning in the collied night\u2014the jaws of darkness\n do devour it up\u2014this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and\n dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, \u2018all\n dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,\u2019 no steady ray has ever or will\n ever come; over its face its own darkness must brood, till he to\n whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the\n night shineth as the day, says \u2018Let there be light!\u2019 \u201d\n\n We must remember, however, that the decree of redemption is as old\n as the decree of the apostasy. The provision of salvation in\n Christ shows at how great a cost to God was permitted the fall of\n the race in Adam. He who ordained sin ordained also an atonement\n for sin and a way of escape from it. Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,\n 1:388\u2014\u201cThe permission of sin has cost God more than it has man. No\n sacrifice and suffering on account of sin has been undergone by\n any man, equal to that which has been endured by an incarnate God.\n This shows that God is not acting selfishly in permitting it.\u201d On\n the permission of moral evil, see Butler, Analogy, Bohn\u2019s ed.,\n 177, 232\u2014\u201cThe Government of God, and Christianity, as Schemes\n imperfectly Comprehended\u201d; Hill, System of Divinity, 528-559;\n Ulrici, art.: Theodic\u00e9e, in Herzog\u2019s Encyclop\u00e4die; Cunningham,\n Historical Theology, 2:416-489; Patton, on Retribution and the\n Divine Purpose, in Princeton Rev., 1878:16-23; Bib. Sac,\n 20:471-488; Wood, The Witness of Sin.\n\n\n\nIV. Concluding Remarks.\n\n\n1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.\n\n\n(_a_) It inspires humility by its representation of God\u2019s unsearchable\ncounsels and absolute sovereignty. (_b_) It teaches confidence in him who\nhas wisely ordered our birth, our death, and our surroundings, even to the\nminutest particulars, and has made all things work together for the\ntriumph of his kingdom and the good of those who love him; (_c_) It shows\nthe enemies of God that, as their sins have been foreseen and provided for\nin God\u2019s plan, so they can never, while remaining in their sins, hope to\nescape their decreed and threatened penalty. (_d_) It urges the sinner to\navail himself of the appointed means of grace, if he would be counted\namong the number of those for whom God has decreed salvation.\n\n\n This doctrine is one of those advanced teachings of Scripture\n which requires for its understanding a matured mind and a deep\n experience. The beginner in the Christian life may not see its\n value or even its truth, but with increasing years it will become\n a staff to lean upon. In times of affliction, obloquy, and\n persecution, the church has found in the decrees of God, and in\n the prophecies in which these decrees are published, her strong\n consolation. It is only upon the basis of the decrees that we can\n believe that \u201call things work together for good\u201d_ (Rom. 8:28)_ or\n pray \u201cThy will be done\u201d_ (Mat. 6:10)_.\n\n It is a striking evidence of the truth of the doctrine that even\n Arminians pray and sing like Calvinists. Charles Wesley, the\n Arminian, can write: \u201cHe wills that I should holy be\u2014What can\n withstand his will? The counsel of his grace in me He surely will\n fulfill.\u201d On the Arminian theory, prayer that God will soften hard\n hearts is out of place,\u2014the prayer should be offered to the\n sinner; for it is his will, not God\u2019s, that is in the way of his\n salvation. And yet this doctrine of Decrees, which at first sight\n might seem to discourage effort, is the greatest, in fact is the\n only effectual, incentive to effort. For this reason Calvinists\n have been the most strenuous advocates of civil liberty. Those who\n submit themselves most unreservedly to the sovereignty of God are\n most delivered from the fear of man. Whitefield the Calvinist, and\n not Wesley the Arminian, originated the great religious movement\n in which the Methodist church was born (see McFetridge, Calvinism\n in History, 153), and Spurgeon\u2019s ministry has been as fruitful in\n conversions as Finney\u2019s. See Froude, Essay on Calvinism; Andrew\n Fuller, Calvinism and Socinianism compared in their Practical\n Effects; Atwater, Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton\n Review, 1876:73; J. A. Smith, Historical Lectures.\n\n Calvinism logically requires the separation of Church and State:\n though Calvin did not see this, the Calvinist Roger Williams did.\n Calvinism logically requires a republican form of government:\n Calvin introduced laymen into the government of the church, and\n the same principle requires civil liberty as its correlate.\n Calvinism holds to individualism and the direct responsibility of\n the individual to God. In the Netherlands, in Scotland, in\n England, in America, Calvinism has powerfully influenced the\n development of civil liberty. Ranke: \u201cJohn Calvin was virtually\n the founder of America.\u201d Motley: \u201cTo the Calvinists more than to\n any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland,\n England and America are due.\u201d John Fiske, The Beginnings of New\n England: \u201cPerhaps not one of the medi\u00e6val popes was more despotic\n than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of\n his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken\n towards personal freedom.... It was a religion fit to inspire men\n who were to be called to fight for freedom, whether in the marshes\n of the Netherlands or on the moors of Scotland.\u201d\n\n \u00c6sop, when asked what was the occupation of Zeus, replied: \u201cTo\n humble the exalted and to exalt the humble.\u201d \u201cI accept the\n universe,\u201d said Margaret Fuller. Some one reported this remark to\n Thomas Carlyle. \u201cGad! she\u2019d better!\u201d he replied. Dr. John Watson\n (Ian McLaren): \u201cThe greatest reinforcement religion could have in\n our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the\n sovereignty of God.\u201d Whittier: \u201cAll is of God that is and is to\n be, And God is good. Let this suffice us still Resting in\n childlike trust upon his will Who moves to his great ends\n unthwarted by the ill.\u201d Every true minister preaches Arminianism\n and prays Calvinism. This means simply that there is more, in\n God\u2019s love and in God\u2019s purposes, than man can state or\n comprehend. Beecher called Spurgeon a camel with one\n hump\u2014Calvinism. Spurgeon called Beecher a camel without any hump:\n \u201cHe does not know what he believes, and you never know where to\n find him.\u201d\n\n Arminians sing: \u201cOther refuge have I none; Hangs my helpless soul\n on thee\u201d; yet John Wesley wrote to the Calvinist Toplady, the\n author of the hymn: \u201cYour God is my devil.\u201d Calvinists replied\n that it was better to have the throne of the universe vacant than\n to have it filled by such a pitiful nonentity as the Arminians\n worshiped. It was said of Lord Byron that all his life he believed\n in Calvinism, and hated it. Oliver Wendell Holmes similarly, in\n all his novels except Elsie Venner, makes the orthodox thinblooded\n and weakkneed, while his heretics are all strong in body. Dale,\n Ephesians, 52\u2014\u201cOf the two extremes, the suppression of man which\n was the offense of Calvinism, and the suppression of God which was\n the offense against which Calvinism so fiercely protested, the\n fault and error of Calvinism was the nobler and grander.... The\n most heroic forms of human courage, strength and righteousness\n have been found in men who in their theology seemed to deny the\n possibility of human virtue and made the will of God the only real\n force in the universe.\u201d\n\n\n2. True method of preaching the doctrine.\n\n\n(_a_) We should most carefully avoid exaggeration or unnecessarily\nobnoxious statement. (_b_) We should emphasize the fact that the decrees\nare not grounded in arbitrary will, but in infinite wisdom. (_c_) We\nshould make it plain that whatever God does or will do, he must from\neternity have purposed to do. (_d_) We should illustrate the doctrine so\nfar as possible by instances of completeness and far-sightedness in human\nplans of great enterprises. (_e_) We may then make extended application of\nthe truth to the encouragement of the Christian and the admonition of the\nunbeliever.\n\n\n For illustrations of foresight, instance Louis Napoleon\u2019s planning\n the Suez Canal, and declaring his policy as Emperor, long before\n he ascended the throne of France. For instances of practical\n treatment of the theme in preaching, see Bushnell, Sermon on Every\n Man\u2019s Life a Plan of God, in Sermons for the New Life; Nehemiah\n Adams, Evenings with the Doctrines, 243; Spurgeon\u2019s Sermon on _Ps.\n 44:3\u2014_\u201cBecause thou hadst a favor unto them.\u201d Robert Browning,\n Rabbi Ben Ezra: \u201cGrow old along with me! The best is yet to be,\n The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in\n his hand Who saith \u2018A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust\n God: See all nor be afraid!\u2019 \u201d\n\n Shakespeare, King Lear, 1:2\u2014\u201cThis is the excellent foppery of the\n world that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our\n own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon\n and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by\n heavenly compulsion, and all that we are evil in by a divine\n thrusting on; an admirable evasion of man to lay his disposition\n to the charge of a star!\u201d All\u2019s Well: \u201cOur remedies oft in\n ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives\n us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we\n ourselves are dull.\u201d Julius C\u00e6sar, 1:2\u2014\u201cMen at some time are\n masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our\n stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.\u201d","title":"Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":282824}