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MODERIf DOUBT 



CHRISTIAN BELIEF 

a Salts tt aplogctic Etctiires attatsstU to 
lamest SeeSets atttt Erut!). 



THEODORE OHEISTUEB, D.D,, 

UHIVEKSIir PEBACHBE AKD PflOSESSOE OF THEOLOOT AT BOKlf. 



TBAKSLATED, WITH THE AVTBOKS SANCTION, CHIEFLY BT 

THE EEV. H. U. AVEITBUECHT, P11.D. 

AlfD EDITED ST 

THE EEV. T.. L. KII,'GSBUIt Y, MA, 

VICAU OF EABIOB EOYAL, AKD r.UEAL BEAK. 



NEW YORK: 

Scribn(r, Armstrong & Co., 

1874. 



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EDITOR'S NOTE. 



The following translation is in part the work of Mr. G. 
H. Venaeles (translator of Schmid's Biblical Theology of the 
New Testament), and in greater measure that of the Rev. 
H. U. Weitbrecht-— the four last Lectures, and the last 
section (B) of Lecture IV. (from page 266), having been 
translated by him. Mr. Weiterecht, who has just received 
Deacon's orders in the diocese of Chester, studied for some 
years in Germany, and being the author's brother-in-law 
and. former pupil, has throughout been favored with Pro- 
fessor Christlieb's special sanction and assistance, which 
have also been extended to other parts of the work. For 
the objects mainly kept in view in successive portions of 
this important Treatise, and for some changes made in the 
present translation, which may almost be regarded as a 
third edition of the original work, the reader is referred to 
the author's own account of them in the following Preface. 
In addition to what is there said, the reader's attention may 
also be invited to the valuable Exposition of the Scriptural 
Doctrine of the Trinity in Section A (pages 244.-265) of the 
Fourth Lecture. ''■ ^ *^- 



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PREFACE. 



COON aftev the appearance of the Second Midoa (consider. 

^ ably enlaiged) of tlie German original of these lectures^ 
I received inquiries from various quarters, both in the United 
Kingdom and in America, as to my intention to promote their 
translation into English. These inquiries convinced me that, 
though calculated in the first instance to meet the special 
needs of thinking people in Germany, my work might ydt 
prove useful, and supply a want that was sensibly felt else- 
where. Nothing, indeed, can be more evident than that there 
is everywhere in the present day a certain community of in- 
terests in the ranks both of Christianity and Unbelief,— no 
noteworthy production appearing anywhere now on either side 
without soon being made, by means of translations, the com- 
mon property of like-ndnded readers in all languages. We 
all know too well how much injury German Kationalism and 
Infidelity have done to the cause of Christ in other lands. It 
seems, therefore, to be a special obligation resting on faithful 
orthodox theologians in Germany to endeavour to extend their 
influence beyond the limits of their own Fatherland, and to 
show to Christian students in other countries what weapons 
and tactics they have found most useful in repelling the 
assaults of Unbelief among themselves. In the present in- 
stance I had, moreover, peculiar motives for eneouragin" and 
aiding an English translation of my book. It is now ten 
years ago (the winter of 1863-4), that, being then pastor of 
the German congregation in Islington, I delivered (at the 
Albion Hall, London Wall) my first series of public lectures 
in defence of Christianity. These lectures were addressed to 
the educated Germans of London generally, and a portion of 
the groundwork of the present series was laid in that early 
' Modeme Zmei/el am CkrullkUn Glav,l)en. Bona : A. Marcus, 1370. 



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effort to set forth a systeir.atic plan of Cliiisfcian apologetics. 
I may say, therefore, that this translation does in a certain 
way carry hack to Eugland a production whose first heginnings 
took their rise in that conntry. 

The three main sources of Modem Doubt in respect to the 
chief points of Christian belief and verity, may be found in 
some of the vaunted principles and assumed results of meta- 
physical phdoaophy, historical criticism, and natiiral science. 
AVith the first (Lect, I.-V.), and in part with the second of 
these sources {e.g. the modem critical theories of the gospel 
history and the Origines of early Christianity, Lect. VI.-VIIT.), 
I have dealt in such a way that the whole argument is made 
to turn on one main central point, the Scriptural and Chris- 
tian conceptions of the Divine Nature. It has been my chief 
endeavour, by treating first of the fundamental relations be- 
tween Eeason and Eevelation (in Lect. II.), and discussing the 
non- scriptural conceptions of modern Speculative Theology 
(Lect III.), to lead on the inq^uirer's mind to this one great 
central idea (as carefully developed in Lect. IV.), and then to 
avail myself of the positions so obtained in dealing with the 
question of miraculous agency (Lect. Y.), and other points 
made matters of dispute by our modern negative historical 
criticiim. In the lecture on Iteason and Eevelation I have 
purposely avoided entering on the subject of the Inspiration 
of Scripture. My motive for such abstinence was this. I 
believe the decided separation (and not mere distinction) now 
established between the idea of Eevelation on the one hand, 
and that of Scriptural Inspiration on the other, to be a real 
gain for modern Dogmatic Theologj', though by the popular 
mind the tBj~nis are still regarded as almost identical in mean- 
ing. Another motive for such omission was, that I have long 
determined, and still hope to he able, to deal with the general 
question of the Inspiration of Scripture and special points 
therewith connected {e.g. the genesis and credibility of par- 
ticular books), as well as with the objections raised by the 
votaries of natural science to Scripture teaching on such 
points as the Creation, the Deluge, the Descent of Man, etc., in 
a second series of Apologetic Lectures. The preparation of 
such a course I have already undertaken, and its completion 
as soon as may be, in the midst of other arduous professional 



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duties, I shall cndeavouf constantly to keep in view. The 
present English translation of this my first aeries differs from 
the second German edition of 1870, partly by the curtailment 
of various passages which seemed likely to be of less interest 
for English and American readers, and partly by some minor 
additions, and the mention of important works which have 
since appeared on either side. 

It is now becoming more and more evident every day that 
Christian faith stands in need of a more extended line of 
defence, addressed in various suitable forms to the different 
sections of modem society. Whereas, when in former times 
objections were raised to the truths and facts of Christianity, — 
first in England, then in Prance, and finally in the German 
fatlierland, — it was generally assumed that the challengers of 
Eevelation oirght to hear the burden of proof, the tables are 
now turned, and those who still believe anything are called on to 
justify their presumption in doing so. Experience, moreover, 
amply shows that countless as are the smaller apologetic writings 
composed for some special purpose or occasion, they are almost 
invariably short-lived, while more comprehensive works cover- 
ing' the whole ground are as yet by no means numerous. 
Eopnlar works, moreover, in defence of Christianity, calculated 
to meet the needs of uncultured readers, however much good 
they may do in their own sphere, cannot satisfy the want's of 
the thoroughly educated, who, more intimately acqnainted 
with the arguments on the other side, feel that a victory too 
easily won really leaves the battle unfought. 

It is true that professed apologists, like Luthardt (whose 
lectures are well known by translations both in England and 
America), have addressed themselves in some respects to these 
higher needs. StiU I have found many intelligent laymen 
who were far from being satisfied by a few remarks on certain 
cardinal questions, such as the relations between Reason and 
Eevelation, the pantheistic and other philosophical conceptions 
ot God, the possibility of the miraculous, etc., much to the 
point as those remarks might be ; and h-om this I have been 
led to conclude that in some quarters a need was still felt of 
something beyond what had hitherto been effected by Christian 
apologists. This need I would fain meet by my treatment of 
tliese ftrndamental questions in the present work. Inclinations 



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3: PREFACE. 

and wants differ greatly. Some — and these form the majority 
— wish to have everything compressed into the smallest possible 
compass, and thdr wants are already well attended to. But 
others — if not, perhaps, very many amongst the laity — are 
willing to expend time and trouble in studying the disputed 
points. To such I trust these lectares may prove of some 
service. They are not, it wili be seen, intended to be " popular" 
in the broadest meaning of the word. They are primarily 
addressed, not to the great body of uncultured or half-citltured 
readers, but to earnest-minded inquirers among the really 
cultivated, who are accustomed- to think logically, and whose 
mental powers I have accordingly in some passages pretty 
severely taxed. I have, however, throughout endeavoured to 
make myself widely intelligible, as well as to preserve the 
scientific character of the work ; and I venture to hope that it 
may be of some use to students of divinity and other younger 
men at our universities generally, by conducting them to at 
least a preliminary acquaintance with the most important 
theological questions of the day. Infidelity is now, both in 
Germany and elsewhere especially fond of vaunting itself as 
bt n^ facicnce par excdhn e and the influence exercised by 
the delugt of T.nti Chn&tiin literature and journalism threatens 
to leid many from among our editt-ited circles to ignore the 
fact that a Christian science inl philosophy still exists to do 
bittle for the claims of Chiistian fiith At such a time it is 
both our dut> and our pnvile^e to witness more particularly 
to n en of tho ight and culture amon^, us and to give them 
cleir iiid thoroigh proofs that m ChfI'^t are indeed "hidden 
all the treasireo of wisdom and of kn wledTe " that unbelief, 
m fi^htmg against Christ rejects the truth and that in reject- 
ing the tiuth it contradicts science Doubly necessary must 
this be m an a^e which e\incps more and more clearly that 
all the great intellectual political and social "questions" 
by which society lo agitated must finally be lesolved into the 
one great problem ot the truth of Christianity. 

Towards the fulfilment of this ennobling apologetic task, I 
would fain contribute my own humble efforts, I have every- 
where endeavoured to acknowledge wkai is true in the views of 
my opponents; and that the more, because I not unfreqnently 
missed auch acknowledgment in other apologetic works. Error 



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is always assuredly a mixture of truth and falsehood, nor can 
be overconui so long as the elements of truth which it contains 
are unacknowledged, and not carefully separated from what ia 
false. On the other hand, I have sought strictly to avoid 
unreal compromises — such as those attempted by a certain 
school in Germany — between Christianity and modem thouglit, 
believing, as I do, that they must invariably result in detii- 
raent to both sides ; nor have I ever knowingly allowed myself 
to polish off the sharp angles of the One Corner-stone. Every- 
where have I found it necessary fearlessly to indicate the 
fundamental conditions, both moral and religious, for the recep- 
f f f 'th I t tl am t t m t t f 11 

i tldttbt bl dbl 

hh IP tl fit tUldmrel Idlj tl 

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tl t m 1 dd t y t I 
hi bj S It 

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b t f th t y t t p t t d 1 

back at once the world as a whole to a belief m Christianity. 
Things moral and spiritual cannot be mathematically demon- 
strated, still less can divine truths. He who said, " My 
thoughts are not as your thoughts," has embodied in His 
words and actions a far higher logic than that whose prin- 
ciples Aristotle laid down. The acceptance of His truths 
cannot be forced on any by mere reasoning ; least of all on 
those who have not the will to believe, and who therefore 
■ have never inquired earnestly as to the way. Even oral lec- 
tures in defence of Christianity, as far as my experience goes, 
ai'e but rarely visited by persons of the latter class. The 
greater part by far of those who attend such lectures consists 
of professed believers and church-goers ; and they, too, are the 
chief readers of apologetic works. In them they seek for 
armour against the attacks of infidelity, or for instruction 
which shall enable them to attain a clearer insight into the 
grounds of their belief But even if such works should 
pass comparatively unnoticed by confirmed sceptics, yet should 



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funiish weapoTis to those wJio still hold to their faith, strengtben- 
iDg their courage and enabling them to fight the good fight ; 
this would be a full reward for the labour expended on them, 
and a good service rendered to the Church of Christ. 

In conclusion, therefore, I would in all humility commend 
these feeble efiorta to the Lord, that He would accompany 
them in their workings, both among friends and enemies, with 
His benediction. If what I have written should not avail to 
bring back many doubters to the faith, it may, nevertheless, 
instruct believers as to the certainty of the convictions which 
they have embraced, the stedfastness of the foundation on 
■which they stand, and 'assure them of a complete and final 
victory. The Lord needs not us or our efforts in His cause. 
He who in His own person is tlie Truth itself, is at once Faith's 
argument. Faith's object, and Faith's pledge of ultimate triumph. 
Only His people must believe in that triumph it they would 
one day share in it, and that the more confidently when the 
course of this world seems to render it most improbable. 
I'heir faith, indeed, in Truth's final victory is already that 
Victory's inauguration ! 

THEODORE CHRISTLIEB. 
Bonn, January 1S7I> 



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CONTENTS. 



FIRST LECTUEE 



THE EXISTIKG BEEACH BETWEES MODEIiN CULTUr.E AND 
CHUISTIAKITY. 



CAUsia OF THE Breach, ■ _ _ j 

Cftusea Historical, 3-9 ; Philosophical, 9-12 ; Ecclestaslical 12-22 ■ 
Political, 22-25 ; Social and Ethical, 23-27. ' 



In Church and School, 27-SO ; in Literature and Jcurnalism 30-33 ■ 
Infidelity in England, 33, 3*. 



Til. Can the Breach b 



Kature of Christiauify as the sonrce and exponent of all true Culture 
84-39 ; Unity of Culture and Chrislianity proved from the true nature 
of the former, 3B-43 ; General historical proof of this Unity, 43- 
48 ; Special historical proof in respect of the German nation, 48-53 ; 
Practical result, 53-55 ; Our present task— wrong and right method 

, of its accomplishment, 55-59 ; Ifeed and special Toeation of the 
Teutonic races to reconcile this great antithesis, 59-63 ; Prospects 



SECOND LECTUEE. 
reason and eevelatiok. 

Whekce do we demve our Knowledge of God ? . , . . 68, 6 
I. Natural Theoloov, or the Knowledge of Cou derived from 

Nature and Keason, 70-0 

Reason : its Eights, its Nature, its Limitation according to Philosophy 

and Scripture, its Present Condition— is it a material soaree of Itnow- 



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le^ge, or merelf a percoptive faculty? 70-76 ; Hisf^ricd achieve- 
ments of Reason in Keiigion and Philosophy as a proof of its 
iasnffieienoy, 76-81 ; Natural Science, 81-83 ; Conscience t its 
Tfature and its Purport, 83-88 ; necessity of Revelation proved (I'om 
the historical aberrations of Conscience, 86-89 ; Moral and Religious 
need of Man— His feeling of Guilt and moral Dualism, 89-34, 



Ilevelation : its Nature and Object— its Inner Laws, 9i-99 ; Objec- 
tions : to the specific value of Revelation, 89-100 ; to its Necessity 
(Leasing and the Eilucalkm oj !he Hiiiaaa ^ace)— impossibility of a 
Religion more perfect than Cliriatianity, 100-109 ; Positive alignments 
for the possibility of a Revelation, 109-112 ; Ohjeetiona raised, by 
Strauss, Grimm, Schenhel, Rousseau, 112-116 ; Cna a Bevelatioa ba 
recognised as sn'-.h ? (against the ohjections ot Kant, Fichte, and 
Lessing), 118-121 ; Revelation as a manifest Reality, 121-12S. 

in. Relation between Eevbaied Rel g on and Hatuhal Theo- 
logy, . 121-135 

Falsity of the antithesis between Faith d K wledg — 11 Knowledge 
conditioned by Faith, 124-127 ; Imposa li y o a ontrsdiction 
betneen Reason and Revelation — N S3 y that Reason should he 
guided, regulated, and supplemented by Revelation — Faith tha 
highest act of Reason, 127-129 ; Subordination of Reason to EeveU' 
tion — Revelation as the Lamp which must regulate Conscience-" 
Dlnstnited by the Magi in Bethlehem, 129-135. 



TIIIED LECTURE 
HODEES HOS-BIBLICAL CONCKPTIOXS OF GOD. 



Historic 1 m il t,ti — G ddesa f Reason— German Atheists, I3S- 
140 ; U al pre 1 i p 'chologionl necessity of the Ida* 

of God— Inttut t ty f th Divine existence, 140-143 j Im- 

possibUity of proimg the ntn existence of God— Arrogance and 
fatuity of Atheism, 143, 144. 

II. Materialism I45-1G1 

Principles and History— Scientific Impotence, 145-148 ; Examination 
of the main propositions of Matoiialism ; (a) Is Sensuous Perception 
the only souice of Knowledge ?— Case of Laura Brliigman, 148-161 ; 
(6) Is Mind merely an activity and effect of mdtter I— Relation 



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lietwcfln brain and thought— Specific djstiiielion between mental 
life in man and that of lieasta— Wliy animals can form no distinct 
ganeral concaptions — Moral and rel^ona disposition of man— Self- 
consoioosness of tlia human spirit, 151-166; Ckinseqaances of 
materialistic principles — Destructive influence on religion and edu- 
cation— Dunial ot Free-will annihilates morality — Elemenl^ of truth 
in Materialism, 166-161, 

III.. Pantheism, , 16I-IB0 

Principles and connection with Polytheism, 181, 162 ; Spinoza and 
Hegel, 162-164. Scientific untenablenras of Pantheism : (a) Shown 
by Philosophy and Logic— Unproved assomptions and internal con- 
ti'adiotions in Spinoza and Hegel's conceptions of God, 164-168; 
Whence onr Personality ?— Personality no Limitation, but a neces- 
sity for the Absolute, 168-171 ;— <S) Shown by contemplation of tha 
visible universe— Cosnwlogieal and teleoiogioal proof of the esist- 
ence of God, 171-174 ; Corroborations furnished by modem Natural 
Science-^rnconseious wisdom a contradiction in terms— Animal 
instinct— Witness of History, 174-181 ;^(c) Shown by the hist«ry 
of all Eeligions— Universal, tendency to form personal conceptions 
of their Deities, 181-183 ;— (li) Shown by first principles of Ethics 
and Eeligion — Whence oar conscience, sense of moral oblifation, 
religions eonaoiousness !- Necessity of a personal God for the moral 
order of the universe, 183-185 ; Pantheism denies the freedom of 
the Will, undermines Morality, and destroys the Personal Kesponsi- 
bility of Man, 185-188 ; Eesnlts— Elements of Tiiith in Pantheism, 
183-190. 

IV, Deism akd Eatiokalism, 100-200 

Principles and history, 190-193. Scientific untenablen ess— Conflicting 
Elements, 193, 194. Counter Arguments : (a) Theological— Deism 
deprives God of His Divmity, 194-197 ; (6) Cosmologieal— Creation 
no longer dependent upon God— The creatures limit the Citialor- 
Apparent support afl'orded to Deism by Hatural Science, 197-203 ; 
(c) Ethical— Deism deprives the morid world of its centre and 
main support— Worthlessness of the Deist's God— Irrationality of 
Kationaliem, 203- 208 ; Elements of truth in DeJsm and Eationalisni. 
208, 209. 



FOUIITH LECTUEa 

THE THEOLOGY OF SCSIPTUliE AND OF THE CHUKCH. 

1. BiELio.\L Theism, 210-219 

Exclusion of the errors of Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, Deism, 
ud Rationalism, 210-213 ; The Divine names Elohim and Jehovah, 



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213-216; Union of all elements of Tnitli contained in the non- 
bibiioal conceptions of God, 216-219. Biblical Idea of God : (o) Its 
intrinsic tnitli— God as Spirit, Love, Father, 219-225 ; (5) Its con- 
aonanee with Eeason, 225-227 ; (c) Its beauty— Jehovah Sabaoth— 
Holy Love, 227-232 ;' Anthropomorphic and other dilEcalties in the 
Old Testament, 232-2i0, 

II. Teibitabiak Conoeptios ov the Divine Nature, . . . 240-2. 
Deficiencies in certain ecclesiastical definitions of the dogma — Unity and 
manifoldness of the Divine Nature according to Scripture, 240-244 
(-1) S ptnte testimonies, 244— (n) Eeapectiug the Father, 246 —(J) 
Th S n— Ch st's witness to His own eonsubstantiaJity and filial 
Bubo d n t n 246-243 ; Apostolic testimonies to the Divme personal 
p -exi ten and filial subordination of the Son, 24S-251 , —(c) The 
H 1 Gh t— Indication of personality in attiibntes and activities, 
n t d nt 1 ritli the hmnan spirit, C03J3nbstantial with the Father 
and th Son, 251-254 ;— (d) The Trinity as a whole— Tlie Baptismal 
fonniila, etc— Ontologicd or economical Trinity! 254-237 , Iiiln.a 
tionaofthe Trinity in.theOid Testament, 257-261 ; Combined opera 
tion of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — Tritheism eitcluded— Eesults 
and retrospect, 261-265. (£) Collateral supports of the doctrine de- 
rived from Science ; (a) From the history ot other religions— A Trinity 
of Deities in the religions of heatliendom, 266-288 ; Lifelessneas of 
Abstract Monotheism, 268, 269 ;—{b) Theological and Cosmological 
advantages of the Trinitarian Conception, 269-271 ; — (c) Atgumenta 
drawn from Speculative Theology, 271-275 ;— (li) Analogies from 
Human Nature, the laws of thought, and the visible universe, 275- 
278 ; — (e) The Trinitarian Idea in Jlodem Philosophy as a key to its 
nltimate problems, 278-280;, Moral necessity for the aeeeptanee.of 
this Doctrine, and final appeal to Conscience, 2S0-234, - 



FIFTH LECTUllE. 



The modern m,G4Tio\ of mifacles 



Mincles the grtateat sfumbhns; bloi,k to the sj. rt it r 
sequencer of their Neffition AnmhiHtion of all Feb 
Itlorol Feisonalil^ of Man — Fundamental impc lance 
235-290. 



D POSStBILlTT OP Mihaoles, 



(tt) Nature of Miracles — Wider and narrower senses of the term — 
Essential points in the Conception, 290-294 ; (6) Origin of the Nega- 
tion of Miraeles, 294-298 ; (c) Theoretical presupposition ami lunda- 
mental error in this Negation, 298-300 ; {d} Possibility of the Mira- 
culous— ^Is it a "rent iu Nature's harmony "f — Ijawa of Nature not 



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insjieiiiied >ij MiiMks, 300-309 M 1 a often an t n fi t n 
of natural forces— Power and f dnotGd— 4 M Is an 
" after-help " in the government of ti e U ae o09 312 

II. Necessity akd Historical Mas ti^tat <j s op the M pacu 

""^^' 31^ 3 

Internal aim of Miracles a redempt ve one— M n I not an unn t ral 
breach in Nature, but a siipernatur 1 ntemiito of tl e unnat 1^ 
Their neceBSity for the redamptio and co snmmat on of the W o Id 
SI2-S16; Domain of the Miraculous- ta ed eatonal purpose ntho 
scheme ol Eedemption as an ae o npan ment and conlimiat on ot 
Kevelation, 316-318 ; Gradual histo al man I tat ons of the 
MiiTtculons— Christ the Centra of Devlopment, an I th Second G at 
Miracle after the Creation— Hi tory of the M racnlous— Its stn t 
snhjeotion to Divine lawa, 318 i23 D t ngu sh ng m La of 
fienuine Miraclea— Reality of tie '^ njtu'al M a 1 323 3 b 
Objections raised hy Spinoja aiid Hume— I es lit 3 6 3 

IIL Ane MiRACuLous Masifbstations t li, VorcasAPEn! 830 3 

fieasona for their discontinuance— Dist not on to ha n ie between tl e 
p liod ol the Church's foundation and that of her continued e\ 
utenoe, 330-333 ; Instances of tl e M ra lo s n the 1 tory of 
Modem Missions, 332-335 ; Mini ulou n a on 1 wti\ to I 
335-337 , The denial of the Miinculous involves a belief in grsater 
prodigies, 337-339. 



SIXTH LECTUEE. 

MODEHX ANTI-MIHACULOUS ACCODSTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST 

The Chrietological Prohlem, the great Theological question of tte present 
day— Variety in the Rationalistic metllods of treating the life of Christ 
—All eomhine in the denial of the Muaculous— nationalism and Mvthi- 
cism, 340-345. ' 

I. Old EATiotTALisnc Accounts or the Life op Christ, . . 345-353 

Principles— Panhis—Oleaninga from Rationalistic exegesis, 345-3JS ; 
TutOe attempts at natural explanation— Impossibility of eliminating 
the supernatural from the Gospel history, 348-353, 

II. ScnENKEL'a "Sketch of the ChaTuActer op Citrist," . . 353-379 
Treatment ot the Gospel records — Self-contradictory caprice therein 

displayed, 853-358 ; Denial of the Godhead of Christ -Attempt to 



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describe our Lnrd's human devfilopment, S58-362 ; Half rat [onal- 
istii;, half mythical explanation of the mimclea of Christ, 362-366 ; 
Arhitrary treatment of onr Loni'a discourses— 111 success in solving 
the enigma of Christ's Messionie consciousness, 366-371 ; Mania 
for discovering traces of development in the character of Christ, 
371-374 ; Keim's History of "Jesus of Nazara" (Note), 373-375 ; 
How Schenlcel degrades our Lord's moral character — Deceptive use 
of the Iflrm " Eedeemer," S7 4-879. 

III. Stgauss' " Life OF CnEisT," 379-42S 

Origin of the mythical theory— Grohmann (1799) the foreninner of 
Strauss, 379-381 ; First eiiition of 1835— Origin of the Myths— Prin- 
ciples and Method— Replies, 331-385; The edition of 1S64— Funda- 
mental tendency and arrangement, SS5-387 ; Historical residuum 
of thft Life of Christ, 387-S91 ; Formation of Myths, 891-393 ; S'yls 
of the Book— Critique of Gospel narratives, 393-396 ( Examination 
of the work— Pantheistic principles imd assumption tlmt the Super- 
natural is impossible, 396-399 ; The Myth a mere means for getting 
rid of the Miraculous — Arbitrary and unhistorical prooedtire — Ex- 
amination of his method, 399-402 ; Queation as ta the possibility of 
the formation of Myths, 402-406; Impossibility of the invention of 
the portrait of Chrii-t, 406, 407; Historical difBcnlties of the mythi- 
cal theory — Behaviour of the first opponents, and of the primitive 
Chnrehes, 407-409 ; St, Paul's confirmation of the Gospel Miracles 
—Their modest character, 409-411 ; Strauss' view of the Person of 
Chritt — Pantheistic ineamalion of the Godhead — The idenl Christ 
Bubstituted for the historical, and perversely suhordinated to 
humanity as a whole, 411-415 ; Wlienee the belief in the Messiah- 
ship of Christ without miracles?- How could Myths form around 
a merely human teacher! — Whence the higher view found in 
Christ's testimony respecting His own Person? 415-419; Strauss' 
attack on the Sinlessness of Christ — Weak point of his construction 
cf history— Optical illusion of the mythical theory, 419-422 ; 
Oiigin of the Christian Church left unexplained, 422-425. 

IV. Eesan's " Vie be Jesus," 425-440 

Orighi and character of the Book, 425-428 ; Sketch of the public life 
of Christ in three periods, 423-433 ; Examiuation of Eenan'a picture- 
Denial of oor Lord's Sinlessness— Perversion of the history, 433-436; 
Fanciful interpolations- Incapacity for historical research- Obscura- 
tion of moral consciousness, 436-440. 

CoiKlusion, 440-447 :—Acct:sation broi^ht against ns by the anti- 
miraeulists— Their profession of belief in Christ compared with that 
of the Church — Their surrender of Christianity, 440-443; Scientific 
weakness and untenableness of our opponents' position — Something 
yet to be learaed from them — The Church's need of further Chriato- 
logical development, 443-447. 



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SEVENTH LECTURE. 
MOREEN DENIALS OF THE EESUliEECTIOS. 

I. AKTi-MiRACiTLOUa Theories 418-46r 

Eesurrection refers to the body, not to the spirit— Importance of the 
body in the plan of salvation, i4S-452 ; Strauss accepts this as the 
crucial questiou — Baw evades it, 452-455 ; Kationalistio hypotbesis 
ot apparent death," 465-457 ; The visionary hypothesis— Sclieiikera 
wavering treatment, 457-460 ; Kenan's explanation, 460-463 ; 
Strauss— how he invalidates the witness of the New Testament 
— Origin of the "Eesorrectioa Myths," 463-467. 

II. Tub HisTOEioAL Testimonies, 467-iflO 

The Revelation of St. John^The Gospel narratives— Their discre- 
pancies — Their mutual supplfmentation— Ttn appeirances of the 
risen Saviour, 467-46B ; Essential agreement bet«eett the narra- 
tives, 469-474 ; Nature of the resurrettion body, 474-476 ; Tlie 
testimony of St. Paul, 1 Cor. iv., 476-473 Appeiranoe of Chiist 
to St. Paul before Damascus, as related in the Auts, 478-431 ; Exe- 
getical arguments (from the Epistles) and psyt-hoJogicil 01|eetiona 
against the theory (of Baar, Holsten, and Strauss) thit this was a 
merely inward occurrence, 481-437 ; St. Paul neither a visionai'y 
nor an epileptic, 487-490. 

III. Collapse OP TUB "VisioSAEY Hypothesis 4 03 
St. Paul's conversion and history— Belief of h D si, jl m Ch t 

bodily resurrection— Novelty of the idea f d J 1 

tion in a glorified body, 490-492 ; Possibil ty f is ly ill n 
affecting five hundred Disciples at once n t t 1 ss meJ— Ore t 
dilfotence between the appearances of tl =% dm 

visions as related in the New Testament— "W I y d d tl se ppe 
antes continue for only so short a time! 49 4 Ih Ih d 

Day "too early a date for the development f ry Hut a 

Disappearance of our Saviour's body, 495 4 S EB ts t h He- 
Burrection on the Disciples and the world— S dd 1 t n n 

the Disciples' fmme of uiind — A moral regeneration ot the world 
not the effect of visionary self deception, 498-500 ; Result — The 
visionary hypothesis overthrown by iiifflcolties esegetical, psycho- 
lineal, dogmatical, chronological, topographical, histoiical, and 
moral, 500-502 ; Positive counteipioola for the necessity of the Ee> 
■ 1, 502, 503. 



EIGHTH LECTUPvE. 

THE MODERN CRITICAL TIIEOEY OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 
Tim TuEBiNGEN School, asd its Fousdek F. C. Baiie, . . . 504-506 

I, The PmsciPLES of tub Titeeingeh School 506-517 

Influence of Hegel— Baur's anti-miraiculous conception of history— 



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mttiralistie eipknat un of the Or j w of H t in ii, ^OS 509 
Demonstration of h ston al analog a — C I r t a ty ra relj tlis com 
bination of pre Chr stian elen enta of truth — Its jiu ely sp ntaal 
character, 509-514 Pnmit ve Christ an ty an Eb on t c develop 
ment of Judaism— ''epa at on f m tl la of a I m e ■sal st &cl sm 
under St. Pawl— 4nt tie of Petr n n d P ilii is n— Cr t ol 
treatment of th N v T btament wr t ngs 514 17 

II. CkITIQTIB and EErUTAT ON OF TH S T( BORT 617 547 

Its pretended fitednm from dogmati al presnppos t ons— ^Its pi ilo 
sophieal assumpt ons— On s d d concept n of the nature of CI ns 
tianitv — True sj ec fie 1 fie enoe betwpen Christ an ty and all prcv us 
religions developmenta S17 fil9 Its supernatural r gm— Elements 
of truth in Baur's deductions, 519-524 ; Their historical deficien- 
cies ; Person and self-consciousness of Christ, Belief of tlie Disciples, 
St. Paul's conversion, all left unexplained— What is Paul without 
Cliiist? 524-628; Antithesis in the apostolic age not fundamental, 
and solved by tie Apostles themselves, 529-532 ; Three stages of 
development in primitive Christianity — The principle of univer- 
salism extant from the very first — Later divisions, ES3-536 ; Banr'a 
critiquo of the Ifew Testament books — Belief of primitive _ Chris- 
tianity in the Godhead of Christ — Impossibility of transferring the 
Books of the Few Testament into the Second Century— Eelation of 
the Fourth to the Three First Gospels, 536-641 ; Confusions result- 
ing from Baur'a theory — Analogy between him and Darwin — 
Accumulation of difficulties through dislike of the Jliraeuloua— SuTj- 
stitution of pMlosophieal criticism for historical— Dissolution of the , 
TiiHngen School, 541-517. 

CoKOLUSiON, *•*••••••>• H7-S4S 



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MODERN DOUBT AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 



FIEST LECTURE. 

THE EXISTING BREACH BETWEEN MODERN CULTUEE 
AND CHKISTIANITY. 

/^ITE German forefathers liad a grand old legend connected 
Vy -with the terrific battle of Chalons, at which, in the 
middle of the fifth century, the combined forces of Visio-oths 
and Eomans obtained a sanguinary triumph over the invading 
hordes of Attila, The bloody work of the sword was done, 
and the vast plain strewed with countless heaps of dead. But 
for three nights following— so ran the tale — the spirits of the 
slain might be discovered hovering over the scene of their 
lat« encounters, and cootinumg their ruthless conflicts in the air. 
The like has been the case with the age-long war still waged 
against the gospel, which, if at first conducted mainly with the 
sword, has now resolved itself into endless conflicts of opposinn' 
spirits. To give you some insight into the present condition 
of this world-wide struggle, more enduring and more significant 
than any material conflict, and lead you by the hand, as it 
were, to those parts of the battle-field where the hottest strife 
is raging, will be my endeavour in the following Lectures. 
And first, we must take a survey of the mighty field itself, or, 
in other words, make ourselves acquainted, so far as may be 
in a single view, with the full extent of the existing breach 
between our modern culture and.Ciiristianity. 

That such a breach exists, needs surely no proof from me. 
Thousands of educated persons now feel themselves compelled, 
as by an essential requirement of modern intellectual culture, 
to assume a critical position towards the whole of Christianity, 
60 far as it transcends the sphere of merely natural or rational 
religion, regarding it as an indubitable sign of defective culti- 



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2 MODEUN CULTURE AND CIIGISTIANITT, [LECT. L 

vation or narrow-minded partisanship, when any one professes 
an unreserved adherence to all the articles of the Christian 
faith. Great masses of so-called " cultivated " persons in Ger- 
many may be said indeed to entertain a deep "Jeated mistrust of 
all that is positi-v e in Christian faith e\ en though still acknow- 
ledging the truth ind obligation of Christian moials Such 
doctrines of the gospel as for instance the Tiinitj the Incar- 
nation, the Atonement are quietly demuiTed to by these 
people, or put abide ^ mere ■michromsmg about which the 
present generation hardly needt, tj trouble itself Hive they 
not read in numerous popular books and novels pipers and 
peiiodieals, and heard asserted in every educated circle, by how 
many social authorities these and the like doctrines are now 
openly impugned ? The first discovery that it was so, and 
the assurance with which it was proclaimed, may indeed have 
startled some a little. But by degrees they got used to the 
current expression of sceptical opinions, and to appeals on their 
behalf to the imposing authority of great scientific and philo- 
sophic names, so as in the sequel, from fear of being laughed 
at in educated circles for their childlike credulity, to be found 
ready to surrender bit by bit the whole religious faith of their 
fathers. The first thing given up would of course be the per- 
sonal existence of the Evil One ; then (for the sake of Balaam's 
ass, or Joshua's address to the sun and moon, or the Mosaic his- 
tory of creation) the authority of the Old Testament ; then, 
one after another, single miracles of the New Testament ; and 
finally, the doctrine of our Lord's divinity. His resuiTection 
and ascension, and all the other revealed foundations on which 
Christian faith is built. 

Serious and alarming as such a condition of things must be 
for every one who regards it in the light of past history and 
of the prophetic word, it will avail nothing to make those 
phenomena a mere subject of lamentation. We must have 
the courage to look them in the- face, and endeavour to com- 
prehend their true significance. Spinoza's word applies here ; 
" Human things are neither to be laughed at nor wept over ; 
our duty is to understand them." But this can only be 
accomplished in the present case by a careful investigation of 
the historical and other causes which have conspired to produce 
the present alienation of modem society from Christian faith. 



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LECT. !.]_ CAUSES OF THE BREACH. 3 

We m\isfc inquire, therefore, first, What may he the histori- 
cal and ethical factors by which the existing breach between 
Culture and Christianity has been gradually formed ? and 
secondly, How wide and how deep this bi'each at present may 
be ? A summary answer to these questions, which of course 
is all that could be attempted here, may nevertheless enable 
us, with our knowledge of the nature of Christianity and of 
Modem Culture, to s\iggest an answer to a third question, 
Whether at all, and how far, this breach can be closed t 



I. — CAUSES OF THE BBEACII. 

These maj be cU'-sed under the following heads : Sts- 
toncal, SnenUf/' Medestasheal FoUtkal, Social and Ethical, to 
each of which we must now de\ ote a brief attention. 

a And first the ffisto^ ical Modem unbelief is only in 
part a new phenomenon It stands in the closest connection 
with similar niOYements in all past times, of which it is the 
nituiii outcome ind lesult. Cliristianity has never existed in 
tl e woild -without expeiienoin^ opposition, nor deceived itselt 
b\ expecting it to be othemise " Tliis same is set for a sign 
that /tall ii, sjo/ttt ajainst cried aged Simeon at the first 
contemplation of the child Jesus. And the history of the 
Acts of the Apostles closes with the witness of the Jews 
m Iiome Concerning this sect, we hnow that efverywhcre it is 
spol tn agam'^ To what a height the contradiction rose in 
tlie peiiod embraced bv this twtfold testimony, may be seen in 
the histories of the Lord's passion, and of the persecutions of 
the early Church and His first disciples. Each apostle enters 
on his mission prepared for the extremest conflicts. " We 
preach Christ cmciJUd" exclaims St. Paul, " to the Jejvs a 
stumbling -Uock, and to the Grcelis foolishness" The first 
encounter between Christian truth and heathen culture is 
recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts, which tells 
how feai'lessly St. Paul proclaimed strange and unwelcome 
tnitlis in the metropolis of classical refinement, and in the 
hearing of the leaders of the old systems of philosophy. From 
that moment Uie gospel was assailed, not only by the fanatical 
hatred of the Jew and the unscrupulous violence of Eoman 



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4 MODERN CULTUEE AND CHKISTIANITT. ,[lECT. I. 

statecraft, but also by the iEtellectual weapons of Hellenic 
literature and science. 

Cynics, Epicureans, and Neo-Platonists produce elaborate 
treatises in disproof of Christianity. Celsus atte'cks it with 
considerable acumen as an imposition. Lucian, a thorough 
unbeliever in all religious systems, pours out his scorn on 
Christianity as "the latest folly in the world's great mad- 
house," and ridicules its martyrs. Christian writers find it 
necessary to give their treatises in defence of the gospel a 
scientific shape, and a valuable apologetic literature is gradually 
formed among the Greek and Latin Fathers. 

After three centuries of conflict, victory finally declares 
herself on the side of the new religion. Christianity triumphs 
in the Eoman Empire, and gradually absorbing the remains of 
the old classic culture, derives therefrom a powerful impulse 
towards the production of a new Christian form of civilisation 
in the west. And even here the first beginnings of an occi- 
dental Christian philosophy are found to generate or foster 
doubts as to the proofs or evidences of some of the verities of 
Christian faith. The subtle doctors of medieval scholasticism 
are seen to move uneasily in the fetters of ecclesiastical dogma, 
and it ofttimes taxes the most strenuous efforts of a powerful 
hierarchy to conceal or cover over the yawning gulf between 
faith and science. The antagonists of revealed truth are 
henceforth to be found within the Christian camp itself, and 
their attacks become in consequence the more formidable. 

The great Protestant Reformation, with all its added strength 
to the cause of faith, will he likewise found to have introduced 
fresh elements of danger. We now see the great religious 
principle of man's personal responsibility, though maintained 
by the Eeformers in the strictest subordination to the supreme 
authority of the divine word, aiming more and more, under 
humanistic and other influences, at unhmited self-assertion, 
and gradually emancipating itself from every kind of authority, 
even upon fundamental articles of faitL The conditions of 
the conflict are now changed. Whereas in former times the 
various elements of the old classical culture and philosophy 
had opposed themselves to Christianity as something young 
and new, so now henceforth Christianity and its articles of 
faith are regarded as old and obsolescent by the advocates of 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES OF TUE BBEACH. 5 

modem cultivation and science, lb is the children rising up 
in strife against an aged mother. 

It was not, however, tUl towards the end of the seventeenth 
century that free modes of thought hegan to obtain any sensible 
influence with the common people. But now, the more cold 
and lifeless Church orthodoxy had become, and the more tdl 
Bound theological inquiry was again degenerating into scholastic 
subtleties, the greater was the impulse felt to proceed with 
rapid strides from freedom of conscience to unrestrained free- 
thinldng. Such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza, Pufendorf, 
Tliomasius, Eayle, Leibnitz, and Wolf, proceeded with more or 
less temerity to unsettle all traditional religious convictions, 
and in some cases to destroy their very foundations ; while 
a new presumptuous popular philosophy of sound common 
sense (so called) began to develope an almost open hostility to 
the revealed doctrines of all churches. 

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italy had taken the 
lead in the development of free thought ; in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth, England and France are the first to show the 
way. In England, from the middle of the seventeenth to that 
of the eighteenth century, one portion after another of the 
great body of Christian faith is dissolved in the crucible of 
a Hobbes or a Hume, or under the attacks of the long 
series of the English deists, — Herbert of Cherbury, Toland, 
Collins, Woolston, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Chubb, Eolingbroke, 
and others. Unitarians having begun with the denial of the 
Trinity and the Incarnation, these deists soon follow, first with 
the rejection of the prophecies and miracles of the Old Testa- 
ment, and then of those of the Kew, as opposed to reason and 
the laws of nature ; and finally, with the denial of a special 
Providence, or any possibility of a dirine revelation. From 
about tiie year 1690 to the rise of Methodism, and the conse- 
quent revival of evangelical religion in the Church of England 
and among Protestant, Dissenters, it might be said that in 
many a circle of English society the denial of all that was 
specifically Christian, or in excess of the axioms of natural 
religion, had come to be regarded as a sign of superior intelli- 
gence, and the maintenance of contrary opinions as a proof of 
being quite behind the progress of the times, as one so often 
hears remarked in a similar spirit in German circles now. 



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6 MODERN CULTURE AHD CHRISTIANITY. [LECT. I. 

These results of English free-thinking were speedily intro- 
duced into France by Condillac and otliera, Jesuitism had in 
that country been slowly bnt surely undermining all the foun- 
dations of true religion and morality. Pascal, the man of 
conscience (a Protestant without knowing it), and Malebranche, 
were the last philosophers in France who reverenced Chris- 
tianity. The Grand Monarque, whose influence formed the 
character of the whole century, based his s\ipremacy in Europe 
on a culture which consciously derived its forms and principles, 
not from the spirit of the gospel, but from that of Greek and 
Pioman civilisation. The general apostasy from Christian faith 
thus induced was for a time concealed (under tlie prevailing 
Jesuit influence) by the outward forms of a ceremonial religion, 
while secretly difl'using itself among the polished circles of 
Parisian society. Political interests, and not religions, were 
henceforth the motive powers in the public life of Europe, 
which became more and more secular and humanistic. Ee- 
ligious indifferentism, rapidly degenerating into selfish pleasure- 
seeking and grosser forms of immorality, became the prevalent 
temper in French social circles, — a phenomenon which is not 
wanting among those chai'acteristie of our own time. 

It was not, however, till the middle of the eighteenth 
century that all reverence for the teaeliing and witness of the 
Church was openly abandoned. Voltaire now appears upon 
the scena Exercising almost absolute control, through the 
forco of genius, over the intellect of Europe, and from the first 
directing inexhaustible stores of wit and raillery against reli- 
gion, he did more than any other man of his age to promote 
the spread of unbelief among the people. The annihilation of 
positive Christianity Voltaire regarded as his great object in 
life. The heroes of the Bible were for him mere knaves and 
fools, and the Gospel history a tissue of fables, fit only for 
" cobblers and tailors." Luther, the Augustinian monk, opposed 
indulgences out of mere partisanship. " Had only Leo x, 
committed the sale to him and his order instead of the Domi- 
nicans, we should have had no Protestants ! " Morality and 
progressive civilisation were to be regarded as much more 
indebted to classic paganism than to Cliristianity ; and it is to 
ignorance of the gospel in the Chinese Empire t^jat we may 
attribute the superiority of that people to ourselves in moralSj 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES OF TliE DREACn. 7 

philosophy, and general culture ! Could only the Chinese 
religion of pure deism he adopted throughout Europe, it would 
put a speedy termination to all our miseries and disputes.' 
Notwithstanding all this wretched superficiality and perfidious 
perversion of historic truth, Voltaire succeeded in carrying the 
whole mind and spirit of his age along with him. Matters 
reached such a pass at length, that the most frivolous assailant 
of Christianity was more honoured and listened to than the 
most intelligent of its advocates. Douhts and arguments 
against the gospel were accepted without examination, while 
aught urged in its defence was condemned unheard ; pheno- 
mena of which we have again a repetition in our own time. 
Take, for instance, among many other examples, the French 
Encyclopjedists and Materialists ; a Diderot with his axiom, 
" True rehgion is to have none at all ; " a Ta Mettrie announc- 
ing to the world that it will never he happy till atheism 
becomes universal ; the Sydeme de la Nature, according to 
which man is no longer composed of body and spirit, hut of 
mere material substances ; and finally, the fatal convulsion of 
the French Eevolution (the after-shocks of which are still felt 
in France and Europe), with its impudent assaults on tho 
whole fabric of Christian, faith and morals, down to the very 
existence of the Christian calendar, — take only these examples, 
and you will see how unbelief in the last century passed 
through the same stages and arrived at the same results as 
now : beginning with doubts and difficulties about Christian 
miracles and gospel mysteries, it ended with complete negation 
of the divine and spiritual, the very existence of God Himself, 
and of any moral and spiritual life in man. The laws of 
historical development are inexorable. The seed sown was 
Jesuitical morality and superstition : the harvest reaped was 
materialism and infidehty. 

In Germany, the general influences of the spirit of the 
time were most profoundly felt. The mere name of Frederick 
the Great, " the philosopher of Sans Souci," friend and patron 
' Compare espeeiallj-, Voltaire el ami temps, Etudes sur fe ISHme sUck, par 
L. F. Bungener. Roman CatholicB often complain that unLelicf is a mere pro- 
dnet of Protestantism. Quite Intely Bishop DupaiJonp, in his book Atheism 
and tke Social Danger, says : " Protestantism began ths work of nnbelief in 
Europe." A comparison between tha piety of Luther and the frivoKty of Popa 
Leo, or the mere oame of Voltaire, is enough for a refutaUon of tim Billj charge, 



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8 MODERN CCLTUEE AND CIIEISTIANlTy. [lECT. I. 

of Voltaire, is enough to indicate how great the influence must 
have been of Trench intellectual culture in our own land. 
And what the French literature of unbelief did for the general 
public, English literature accomplished among the learned. 
Eationalism, however, properly so called, i.e. the denial of all 
dogmas which seem incredible to the ordinary understanding, 
is an outgrowth of our own soil. The Leibnitz-Wolfian philo- 
sophy, which laid the foundation for a mechanical superficial 
treatment of Christian doctrines, contribiited largely to the 
general alienation from Christian faith. A sort of natural 
rehgion began to be taught both in upper and lower schools, in 
which it was endeavoured to demonstrate the principles of 
Christian faith entirely by those of natural reason. Eevealed 
religion, under this process, soon appeared to become a super- 
fluity, ajid whatever in it could not be demonstrated hy reason 
was c^uietly abandoned. 

The most powerful attacks in Germany on the faith of the 
Church were made during the second half of the last century, 
when Eationalism had already gained the upper hand. The so- 
called Wolfenbiiitd Fragments, puhlished by Lessing, shook the 
faith of many in the truth of revelation, and especially in the 
cardinal doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, representing 
the whole of our Lord's life and teaching as mere human 
phenomena. The notorious Bahrdt, of sottish memory, first 
professor and finally publican (tl792), endeavoured, by an 
admixture of vulgar sentimentahty, to convert our Lord's life 
into a kind of romance somewhat after the fashion of Eenan. 
And finally, Nicolai, in his Allgemeine Dmtsche Bihliolhelc, the 
most popular literary periodical of the time (1 765-1805), made 
it his business to cast a reproach of superstition or suspicion of 
crypto-Jesuitism on all that went beyond the very baldest 
rationalistic morality. At such a time, when even ministers 
of the Church, conforming to the general taste, chose for the 
euhjects of their sermons points of general morality or natural 
science, the pursuits of agriculture, or the benefits of vaccina- 
tion, we cannot wonder at its becoming the general conviction 
that the breach between modem culture and Christianity waa 
complete and final, 

Such was the inheritance which the present century re- 
ceived from its predecessor. Can we wonder at its prevailing 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES OF THE BEEACH. 9 

unlielief, even without the accession of other fresh causes of 
euch alienation ? Among these we proceed to mention — 

6. Secondly, The Modern Scientific or Philosophical. 

Several branches of modem science have received since the 
early years of the present century a very rapid and brilliant 
development, ■which has lai^ely contributed to widen the 
breach between Modern Culture and Christianity. Of these 
we may mention Mental Science or iSIetaphysical Philosophy, 
the Historical Criticism of Scripture, and several branches of 
Natural Science. 

The general, but at iirst indefinite, aim of the eighteenth 
century to resolve revealed religion into mere morality, and 
the cardinal articles of Christian faith into abstract ideas,— as 
of God, of freedom, of immortality, and the like, — received 
towards its close a definite expression and scientific form from 
one whose speculations constituted a fresh epoch in the history 
of philosophy — Immanuel Kant. This earnest thinker always 
spoke of the Bible and Christianity with the deepest reverence 
and respect. It was his honest endeavour to hold fast the 
faith in God, in freedom, and in immortality as indispensable 
rer[uirements of " practical reason," and to limit the excesses of 
philosophical speculation by denying to " pure reason " (reason 
proper) the right or power of making positive deteiminations 
in things divine. Yet this notwithstanding, it cannot be 
denied that he contributed a powerful impulse to religious 
doubt, by laying do\vn, and endeavouring with great force and 
subtlety to prove (in his Critique of Pure Reason), that those 
ideas, when practically applied, would lead only to erroneous 
and illogical consec[uences : that the idea of God, for instance, 
depends upon a chain of illogical conclusions, and that all 
received arguments for the existence of God are untenable. 
You will easily see what encouragement such speculations 
must have given to any floating, doubts on the truth and 
certainty of positive religion. 

With ICant's successors, Fichte and ScheUing, these efforts 
of speculative reason were under much less restraint ; and 
even the sacred triad of God, freedom, and immortality, which 
Kant had endeavoured to maintain by appeals to practical 
reason, was absorbed, along with the idea ot Divine Personality, 
in an all-confounding idealistic Pantheism. This last received 



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10 MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY. [LECT. L 

from Hegel its final development, who maintained that the 
development of the universe consists in the inner logical pro- 
cess by which thought proceeds from consciousness to self- 
coasciousness, — pure absolute unqualified Being having first 
to be developed into Nature before it can pass into its higher 
form of self-conscious Spirit. 

But such metaphysical speculations, ntterly unintelligible 
■without profound study, would have had small influence on 
the genei-al public, but for their reproduction in more genial 
and comprehensible forms in our classical literatui-e. From 
Schiller, ardent student as he was of the Kantian philosophy, 
onwards to Heine (long an enthusiastic adherent of Hege- 
lianism) and his English and American compeers, Carlyle and 
Emerson, we find innumerable views and utterances in the 
works of poets, orators, and historians which owe their origin 
to those philosophical systems. Hence in the present day we 
meet so many educated persons whose faith in the personal 
Deity has resolved itself into a belief in " the moral order of 
the universe," or in some universal "law" or "principle," 
from which there may not indeed be much to hope, but also 
—and that is something— very little to fear. Many who 
know nothing more of Kant or Fichte than one or two much- 
abused phrases, consider themselves raised by their philosophic 
insight above any necessity of submission to the dogmas of 
revealed religion. 

But it is not so much philosophical speculation as histori- 
cal criticism from which the present generation derives its 
unbelief. Truths which rest on plain facts of history are not 
in the long run to be successfully impugned by mere specula- 
tions. But assaults which threafren to shake the historical 
foundation on which they stand are much more formidable. 
And such have been those most frequently undertaken in our 
own times. The conflict is now removed from the field of 
mere speculative reasoning to that of historical criticism of the 
Origines of Christianity. Two Swabian celebrities, Strauss 
And Baur, here lead the way. Strauss, proceeding from a 
])antheistic point of view, and an absolute denial of the pos- 
sibility of miracles, represented in his Life of Jesus (first 
publishei more than thirty years ago) the whole Gospel his- 
tory as in all its essential portions a mere chain of myths. 



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LECT. I,] CAUSES OF THE BEEACII. 1 1 

products of tlie inventive fancies of the first disciples and the 
early Church, and made special eft'orts to annihilate in detail 
the various miiacnlous accounts hy a skilful combination of 
minute discrepancies in the Gospel narratives. A fresh re- 
■vision, or rather the reproduction of the original work in a 
popular form, is that which has more recently appeared under 
the title of The Life of Jesus for the German People. Baur^ 
on the other hand, starting from similar Hegelian views of the 
nature of historical developments, endeavoured in a series of 
acute and profoundly learned treatises to divest Christianity 
of its claims to any supernatural origin, by representing it as 
the natural product and combination of innumerable pre- 
Christian forms of thought, belief, and expectation. In his 
historical investigations concerning the New Testament, he 
arrived at the result that all its books, excepting only four 
epistles of St. Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and 
Galatians), with the Eevektion of St. John, are spurious pro- 
ductions of an age about a centmy later than that of the 
apostles and evangelists to whom they are assigned. The 
strenuous efforts now everywhere made to popularize such 
matters has brought at any rate the names of these and 
similar works by disciples of Strauss and Baur to the know- 
ledge of almost every educated person in Germany; while 
Eenan's (the French Strauss) Vie de Jims, translated, as it has 
been, into ah. the languages of Europe, and everywhere dissemi- 
nated in forms ridiculously cheap, has found hundreds of 
thousands of readers in the lowest grades of society. 

Of the thorough and searching examination to which these 
works have been subjected in the replies of Neander, Tholuck, 
TJllmann, Ebrard, and many others, few except professed theo- 
logians seem to have even heard, and fewer still have given 
themselves the trouble to investigate the matter for themselves. 
Hence the assumption now so common among educated and 
half-educated people in Germany, that the mythical character 
of the Gospel narration, and the spuriousness of most of the 
books of the New Testament, are points no longer admitting 
of any serious question. Very few, indeed, in ordinary social 
circles would seem to he aware that the monstrously arbitrary 
assumptions of Strauss in his Leben Jesu,, the weakness of 
bis critical assaults on the historical sources of the Gospel 



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1 2 MODERN CULTURK AND CHEISTIANITr. [lECT. L 

narrative, and the scientifically untenable character o£ his much- 
vaunted results, have long ago been thoroughly exposed, and that 
the same work has heen satisfactorily accomplished for Baur's 
elaborate theories of the nature and origin of primitive Chris- 
tiaJiity by a long series of orthodox historians and expositors. 
But this is not all. To the afore-mentioned causes of our 
present unbelief you must add, further, the enormous influence 
of modem forms of that natural science to which, in prefer- 
ence to all othei-s, the niatoigJiatic spirit of our ^e is so much 
inclined, the serious doubts raised by geology as to the truth 
of the scriptural narrative in reference to the Creation and 
Deluge, as well aa to the age oi the woild and that of the 
human race ; the objections raised on the score of astronomy 
to biblical representations of the creation of the heavenlj bodies 
and the position of our eaith m the stvny universe , and the 
doubts, for which appeal is made to physiology and cognate 
sciences, as to the truth of the sciiptuial teaching concerning 
the derivation of all human races from a single pan Putting 
all these doubts, objections, and assumptiont, together and 
bearing in mind the boldness and assuiance with which they 
axe maintained, and the attitude assumed by modem science 
generally, with its claim e^en m its latest most infantmo 
forms to summon all othei teachers of tmth before its bar, 
you will have a comprehensive though supeificial view of the 
principal historical and scientific causes \\liiLh ha\e led to the 
existing breach between Modem Cultuie and Chribtianitj 
But even these are not all We must add to them — 
c. Thirdly, Causes Fccle^msiical ■■ — This deplomble bieach, 
alas, is widened by the unhaUowcd labours, pa it and present, 
of the Church herself. And here ■vou must suffer ine a^liile 
to pause and make a seiies of honest though pamful con- 



It is a phenomenon that meets us in the earhest histoiv rf 
the Christian Church, that the outbreak of heresies goes hand 
in hand with the loss of spiritual life in the Church at laige, 
that the rise of doubts has often comcided with the prevalence 
of fruitless controversies , and that open opposition to, or scpa^ 
ration from, the Church universal, has been the consequence of 
abuses and neglects in practice, or of one-sidedness and exagge- 
ration in dogmatic teaching. How has the Church commonly 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES OF THE BREACH. 13 

acted in reference to swch opposition, brought upon her so 
frequently bj' liur own fault ? Has she not, both in earlier 
and later times, been all too ready to condemn those who 
differed from her with stern anathemas, and to call in the aid 
of the secular arm to enforce obedience from the unconvinced 
and unwilling ? And yet how much better would it have 
become her to have inquired, when opposition rose, what fault 
of her own might have given it occasion, and even some 
measure of right ' How well would she have done in en- 
deavouring to lay down from the very first a broad line of 
demarcation between undoubted and unchangeable Scripture 
truth and the human forms of ecclesiastical practice, which 
oftentimes not only admit of, but require modification, and in 
seeking to establish a clear distinction between what is the 
nucleus and centre of all Christian faith, the free grace of God 
in Christ, and doctrines which, belonging more to the circum- 
ference, do not immediately affect the foundations of the faith ! 
How miich distrust and painful doubt, how many a breach 
between progressive culture and retrogressive theology, be- 
tween new discoveries of science and one-sided assertions of 
misapplied dogma, might have been thus avoided ! 

What was it in the middle ages that led so many nobler 
spirits into doubt as to the truth of Christianity itself, as well 
as to contempt of the existing Church system ? Was it not, 
on the one hand, the growing moral corruptions of the Church, 
and on the other the enslavement of men's minds in the 
bondage of the letter ? And so it came to pass that, under the 
shadow of an iron scholasticism, a scarcely disguised infidelity 
had gradually developed itself; and in the very metropolis of 
medieval Christianity, Eome itself, broke out occasionally into 
open mockery. I would on this point remind you merely of 
the characteristic saying attributed to Leo X. (1513-1521), 
'All men know how much we and ours are indebted to the 
Christian fable " (showing that Straussiancr existed long before 
Strauss), and of the decree of the Lateran Council, under the 
same Pope, that one must really believe in the immortality of 
tlie soul ! So thoroughly at that time, in what was regarded 
as the very heart of Christendom, was the edifice of Christian 
faith shaken to its very foundations. The Church having lost 
all sense of spiritual freedom, her intellectual servitude was 



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14 JIODEEN CULTURE ASD CHRlSTIAHIiy. [LECT. I. 

avenging itself by the rejection of every land of restraint, and 
the surrender of all, even divine authority. Unbelief is often 
a mere reaction from superstition ; and for the existence of the 
latter the Church itself is, in the first place, responsible. 

Similar causes ore still at work in the Koman Catholic 
Church in widening the breach between Culture and Christi- 
anity. On the one hand is the moral corruption of many 
priests and the practical abuses of the convent and the con- 
fessional; on the other, the retention of many points of 
medieval superstition, exposure of spurious relics on the 
Ehine, and periodical repetitions of miracles in Italy which no 
educated person can any longer seriously believe in. These 
things tend to make not only the Roman Catholic Church 
itself, but also our common Christianity, appear to many both 
odious and ludicrous, and a mere institute of obscurantism. 

All this illustrates the important observation, that doubt 
and unbelief assail for the most part, not the pure essence, 
but the corrupted forms of Christianity. The corruptions of 
the Church and her dogmatic errors supply these enemies 
with their mo^ formidable weapons of offence against her. 
They commit, indeed, JhB_grror of confounding the Church 
with Christianity ; but this is one for which the Church her- 
self must be held in large measure responsible, identifying, as 
she often does, herself, her institutions, and her customs with 
the very fundamentals of Christianity, so making it diflicult 
for superficial observers to distinguish between the one and the 
other. 

If from the Catholic Church we turn our eyes on the de- 
velopments of Protestantism, we meet with the like phenomena, 
though in a less degree. What was it that in the last century 
prepared the way among ourselves for the prevalence of Eation- 
alism ? Was it not the petrification of evangelical faith in 
the dry forms of a dead orthodoxy, accompanied by an almost 
total cessation of all further efforts for the diffusion of the 
gospel 1 The sermons of that period were for the most part 
dry expositions of particular doctrines, accompanied by vehe- 
ment attacks not only on other churches, but also on many 
in one's own church who happened to differ on some one point 
or other from the confessional standards, e.f/. on Crypto-Cal- 
vinista, Syncretists, Synergists, Majorists, Antinomians, Osian- 



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lECT. L] CiUSES OF THE BREACH. lo 

tlrians, Weigelians, and Arminians, etc. etc., malting one's liead 
swim mth the bare enumeration of the various " isms " which 
the preacher felt himself called upon to denounce. At such 
a time, when a cold orthodoxy was almost everywhere being 
substituted for living faith, when slavish adherence to the 
Church's standards was put in the place of that free inquiry 
into the sense of Scripture which the 6rst Keformers had 
pursued, and a fresh bondage of the letter was introduced, it 
became a simple necessity for energetic minds, like Lessing, 
to come to an open breach with traditional Protestantism, 
" which, however painful in the making, must nevertheless be 
regarded as providentially ordained." Eationalism was in a 
certaiji degree right in contending for simple morality hi op- 
position to theoretic orthodoxy. Truth itself was divided; 
the orthodox retained one portion, their assailants another. 
The claims of " humanism," too long neglected on the one 
side, were now opposed by the other to those of " positive 
Christianity." Morality, too long unduly depreciated, was 
now exalted as unduly at the expense of faith. One extreme 
begat the other. 

It must then he confessed that the Church theology of the 
last century deserves the chief blame for the general apostasy 
which then began from the ancient faith. And this defection 
was not only occasioned by the Cimrch's o^vn one-sidedness ; it 
was adopted, cherished, and promoted by the Church itself. 
From the middle of the eighteenth to the end of the Ihst third 
of the nineteenth century, the chief authorities in pulpit and 
university were promoters of Kationalism. If we have now 
so much reason to deplore the prevalence of this spirit in the 
educated circles of our town populations, and its spread among 
the lower ranks too, we have only ourselves to thank for it ; 
we theologians reap that which ourselves have sown. 

We often complain of our great poets, and our classical 
literature in general, that they exhibit such indifference, not to 
say hostility, to positive Christianity. Who is to blame for 
this ? Once more — the Pretestant Church amongst ourselves. 
How could it be otherwise, than that those great and leadinf 
spirits should, one after another, turn aside and separate them- 
selves from her ? What was it but the cold and stiff morality, 
the absence of all spiritual life and fervour, and the hard, 



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16 MODERN CULTURE AND CHEISTIASITT. . [LECT. L 

unsympathetic deism of our preachers and theologians, which 
repelled ardent and poetic minds like Schiller, and made them 
turn, aa he does in the Gods of Greece, to the beautiful forms 
of ancient paganism, in preference to the days of a degenerate 
Christianity ? Such men are not to be regarded as the enemies 
of Christianity, but only of its* rationalistic form aa then pre- 
sented to them. Schiller, in the poem referred to, is assailing 
not the religion of the gospel, but the vulgar Rationalism by 
which it was defaced. Perthes is perfectly right when he 
says ; " It is the longing of a noble human heart which there 
finds utterance, pouring out its righteous indignation against 
formalists and mammon- worshippers, and striving after living 
communion with a real self-manifesting God. He only can 
mistake Scliiller's true meaning who has no conception of the 
angry feelings which inspire the man who, never cheered hy 
any true teaching as to the faith of Christians, cries out for 
help, and finds it denied him ; desires intercourse with the 
living God, but receives from his age no other revelation 
than that of a dumb mechanical idol of the understanding, 
enthroned in mere astronomical sublimity above the subject 
world." Let us acknowledge, then, that true poetry thirsts 
for religion ; that if our own great poets do occasionally 
seem to be in any measure cognisant and receptive of the 
spirit of the gospel, it is because they learned to find behind 
the mask of a degenerate Church the nucleus of Ufe and truth 
which there lay hidden ; and that such was indeed the case 
from Schiller onwards, with his profoundly Christian poem 
TIte Song of the Bell, to the pious Uhland, who thus pours forth 
the longings of his soul for " the Lost Church : " 

" I wander tJirough the wood alona. 

No trodden patli before me lies ; 
Tlie world I leave is eold and dumb. 

To Gcfd I lift my longing ejea. 
I listen IE the silent wild. 

Till not«3 from heaven I seem to hew | 
And as my longing swells, those notes 

Seem to ring out more full and clear." 

Rut all the heavier responsibility falls on the Church for 
having had no answer to such longings as tliese ; all the more 
must we lament the misfortune that the development of our 
greatest poets and thinkers should belong to an age in which 



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I-ECT. I.] CAUSES OP THE BREACH. 17 

the Chorch had nothing to tell them of a true and living 
Christianity, and could only present them with its cold and 
lifeless skeleton. 

But to come nearer to our own time, the Church of the 
present is also in tliis respect not free from blame. Even 
now in England, where for ages past faith has struck its 
strongest roots in the very heart of the common people and 
stiU retains in great measure its hold upon them, doubts and 
sceptical Aeories are rapidly spreading. Kesting on the so- 
called " evidences of Christianity," the Church of England in 
the last century had fallen, as we all know, into a deep 
slumber. Erom that slumber she lias indeed long awakened, 
but it is now to contemplate with alarm her own impotence' 
to withstand assaults from which the old " evidences " afford no 
longer adequate protection. She finds now that theological 
training has been too long neglected in her great universities, 
and the vast majority of her cleigy quite inadequately furnished 
for encouiiterisg the attacks of modern criticism. Many will 
not acknowledge this to themselves, while others of a nobler 
temper rush in hot haste to translations from the German, in 
order to make themselves au fait in questions stirred by the 
Colenso and other " Eroad Church " controversies. The want 
of experienced leaders through the thickest labyrinths of 
modern criticism is painfully felt ; and many, in consequence, 
are seen heedlessly rushing on towards the most dangerous 
precipices of critical scepticism. Others, starting ba'ck in 
terror, seek in the communion of Kome a refuge from 
infideUty. Others, again,— and these naturally form the 
great majority, — still thoughtlessly cleave to the bare 
letter of Scripture and their Church formularies, and think 
to entrench themselves behind these paper fortifications in 
a vain^ security from the importations of German theology 
and critical science. Ey such persons a grossly esa^eratsd 
and thoroughly unevangelieal view of the nature of inspiration 
is often made use of to decide off-hand on critical or scientific 
questions, which ought to be discussed on their own merits, 
and by no means interfere with the foundations of Christian 
faith. And so also, needless appeals to legal tribunals to 
decide on points where spiritual and intellectual weapons 
ought rather to be used, are calculated not to heal, but only 



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1 8 IIODEES CULTUEE AND CHEISTIANITY. [LECT. L 

to 3 tl Tj a h b tw n S 1 CI t ty. To 

[ t f d t il th p nt coii- 

t b t Jiat 1 a d tl 1 y into tides of 

f th d tl mp t n h h ly n meaua 

d t tb in H ly S pt Ij th y way to 

tnn> d nt llnJ tnat such 

tt pt t t 11 t i ty n ) b t 1 h IS t pt tself to 

d tetttliidffnt d ylmf divine 

revelation. The Church itself, and her one-sidedness, is here 

ehieily to blame. 

Things are somewhat better in Germany. The Ciiurch here 
has certainly avoided some of these mistakes. She has not 
set herself in opposition to theological and scientific inquiry, 
perhaps has rather been too lax in duly limiting it She has., 
on the whole, followed the maxim of meeting opponents on 
their own ground, and withstanding them with merely scien- 
tific weapons ; and this course has resulted in a victorious 
advance of evangelical theology, despite the most formidable 
opposition, to a firmer, closer hold of the fundamental principles 
of the ancient faith. But here our commendation stops. The 
German Protestant Church has faUen into other faults and 
en'ors not less injurious than those of her English sister. She 
has favoured the advance of unbelief among her own people, 
by quietly looking on when she ought to have been up and 
doing. In the eyes of many, she has seemed to regard her 
own cause as lost. She has too long neglected a duty much 
better attended to in England,— that of encountering the scep- 
tical popular literature of the day by popular religious journals, 
tracts, and magazines, in which assaults on Christianity were 
duly met and answered. It is only quite recently that our 
Church has seriously set herself, by a revived apologetic litera- 
ture, to recover the ground thus lost. 

The internal condition of our Church, moreover, in the last 
few decades affords iu many respects a melancholy spectacle. 
How do we see her torn by endless strife about questions con- 
nected with the legal rights of the Prussian Union ! How 
much ill-blood has been made among the laity, by the excessive 
and quite un-Lutheran and unevangehcal claims put forth on 
behalf of the Church and the ministerial office ! How much 
precious time wasted by theologians in useless controversies ! 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES OF THE BKEACH. 19 

How much power and influence has the Chnrch thereby been 
losing with the common people ! With what bitterness do the 
three great parties into which we are now divided turn the 
one against the other ! — the Extreme Left, on the one hand, 
inclining again to Eationalism, and the extreme Lutheran 
Kight on the other, both equally hostile to the Evangelical 
Centre and its evangelical Church Congress ; those of .the 
Left summoning against it the Congress of German Protestants, 
and those of the Eight the Lutheran Church Congress ! Is it 
not enough to destroy the confidence of thousands in a Church 
which they see thus torn asunder by internal strife? And 
let me add one thing more ; How many of our clei^y are still 
addicted to the evil habit of using, parrot-like, a round of 
religious phrases which have lost for the most part their 
original force and meaning !— a habit than which nothing is 
more fitted to steel men's consciences against reception of the 
truth, and alienate all persons of thought and education. 

Still greater is the hostility now excited in the minds of 
many against both Church and Christianity, by the position so 
perversely taken by some of our friends on questions of politics. 
The true position of the Chnrch with regard to such questions 
is surely this : to exhort each one fearlessly and impartially 
to the performance of his duties to God and man; to bear 
witness before high and low -alike on behalf of truth and right, 
and against all manner of wrong and injustice ; and so to con- 
stitute herself the conscience, as it were, both of Government 
and people. How much real gratitude would the Church 
have earned from all right-thinking men had she really done 
this ! But the contrary has too often been the case. Men of 
both the extreme parties have in several instances given just 
offence by one-aided and partisan action in polities, while the 
inactivity and seeming indifference of others has done hardly 
less harm. We cannot here, of course, enter into details, or 
presume to judge in individual cases ; but one thing we may 
remark, that nothing is more likely to alienate popular confi- 
dence from the Church as a body, than when its representatives 
are seen to he wanting in impartiality in dealing with different 
ranks in the social system : when clei^ymen, for instance, are 
found hold and uncompromising in rebuking the sins of the 
common people, but timid or reticent with the great and 



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20 MODEHN CULTL-llE ASD CHUISTIAHITT. [lECT. L 

powerful ; and prepared to defend or advocate tlirongh thick 
and thin the line assumed by Govemiceiit, -whatever it may- 
be. How often haa it been remarked, -with truth, that the 
feudal party in Prassia are only too ready to identify their 
cause with that of the gospel, and to range their own party 
principles under the sacred banner of the Cross ! And have 
they not been greatly aided in this confusion of flesh and 
spirit by that portion of the clei^ who, instead of maintain- 
ing the genuine impartiality ■which ought to characterize all 
teachers of truth, suffer themselves to be degraded into mere 
servants of a faction, and advocates of its prejudices ? Chris- 
tianity and the Christian Church cannot be incorporated with 
a .single party, without subjecting itself to the liability of 
sharing all the odium and mortifications which m any political 
conflict tliat party may have to endure. Nor can we wonder 
that, under existing circumstances, the whole democratic sec- 
tion should be animated with a fanatical hatred to the Church, 
whose cause they see identified with that of the feudal aristo- 
cracy. Nothing has more powerfully contributed, since 1848, 
to the gradual and increasing ahenation of the laity of the 
middle classes from the Church and its interests, than the 
heiief that the clei^y have entirely taken part with the upper 
classes against the interests of the people at large, and have no 
longer any heart for or sympathy with them in their endea^ 
vonrs to obtain redress even of the most crying abuses. 

The other extreme party, that of the " Protestant " Congress, 
has fallen into the opposite mistake. Endeavouring to swim 
with the stream of political Liberaham, they not only oppose 
their brethren of the Conservative Church party with the 
utmost bitterness, but incur as much danger of truckling to 
tlie powers beneath as the others to those above therh: Put^ 
ting in the foreground the evangelical maxim of the universal 
priesthood of all Christians, they are apt to turn it into the 
mainten'^'^ce of an ecclesiastical democracy, and an application 
to the Church of the theory of manhood suffrage. Proclaiming 
the great mass of the people just as it is to be truly Christian, 
and so, in fact, to constitute the Church,' they remind one of 
the old watchword in the wilderness by which it was sought 
to overturn the government of Moses, — " You make too much 
of yourselves : the whole congregation is holy, and the Lord is 



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LECT. l] causes of the BKEACH. 21 

among them,'*— and seem quite to forget that it is not birth 
in a nominally Christian country, but the possession of Christ's 
spu'ifc, which constitutes the Christian ; and finally, by making 
common cause with the unsenipulous leaders of the party of 
progress, they give to their efforts a sort of ecclesiastical 
sanction, and drag down the Church as effectually as their 
opponents into the miry slough of political party warfare. 
The consequence of this is, that notwithstanding all their 
efforts to reconcile Christianity with modem culture and pro- 
gress, inscribing as they do upon their banner, " Renovation of 
the Evangelical Church in unison with the general develop- 
ment of culture in our time," this so-cailed " Protestant " party 
does really contribute to the widening of the breach between 
such development and any positive form of Christianity. It 
works towards this end from the side of intellectual and social 
culture, even as the opposite extreme party from the side of a 
narrow-minded form of Christianity. It alienates the orthodox 
and devout portion of the community from the national cause 
and liberal interests, quite aa surely as its opponents have 
alienated by their mistakes the national party from the cause 
of the Church. Adopting the tenets of the old rationalistic 
schools, it only confirms the already anti-religious liberalism 
of the time in its renunciation of all positive faith, betraying 
more and more cleai'ly that the only reconciliation between 
the gospel and modern culture for which it has any heart, 
would consist in basmg all the foundations of faith (so-called) 
on the dicta of that modem "consciousness" which aims as 
much as possible to dispense with any supematnral revelation. 
The natural consequence is, that many religious persons are 
rendei-ed more and more mistrustful of anything calling itself 
culture or progress, and more opposed than ever to even the 
most moderate liberalism in Church or State ; while not a 
few theologians, who in many principles might be inclined 
to coalesce with the members of the " Protestant Union," are 
deterred and disgusted by the excesses of their democratic 
radicalism. 

Thousands also, it must be confessed, are alienated from 
the Church by the conduct of some so-called " pietists." To 
say that such are mere hypocrites is a crying injustice; but it 
must be allowed that one-sidedness of judgment and general 



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22 MODERN CULTUBE AND CHEISTIANlXr. [LECT, 1 

narrowness of views does in many cases help to alienate men 
of culture from Christianity thus caricatured. When men see 
bow shy and unfriendly our pietists (unlike so many good 
evangelical Christians in England and America) show them- 
selves towards all national aspirations and endeavours ; when 
they observe their narrow-minded withdrawal from what they 
call the world and all secular interests and pursuits ; when 
they remark that, instead of being, as the Lord enjoins, a light 
to the world, and therefore especially to their own fellow- 
citizens, they prefer to let their light shine in the narrow 
bounds of a conventicle ; when they hear them passing ignorant 
judgments on matters of art and science, or condemnmg e^ ery- 
thing as antichristian which does not wear the colour ot tlieir 
particular section, harping always on one stnng — the sinfulness 
and iinpotence of the natural man, or the prophetic announce- 
ments of the glory of the latter day, — as if these or the hke 
were the whole of Christianitv,- — it ia not to be wondered at 
that such narrowness of m p f d Ch &hnuld 

make Christianity itself anbjtfdlk f n. Ihe 

man of general cultivat u I d t n tl 1 1 must gi\e 

up his clearer insight, — th pt tthtl n t n mce his 
pohtical aspirations, — il h ^ uld b m 1 t tl people 
would alone recognise as an orthodox Christian j and this he is 
natumlly not inchned to do. 

What has been already said will be enough to show, that 
in our enumeration of the causes of the present breach be- 
tween Culture and Christianity, we must add to those strictly 
ecclesiastical and found within the Church itself — 

d. Fourthly, Causes Political. — Our modern political de- 
velopment and aspirations are largely felt to be antagonistic 
to, or at least to lie outside, the sphere of Christianity. And 
this constitutes what has been truly called " a profound internal 
discord in our life as a state and as a nation," — namely, that 
the Christian and Church element on the one hand, the 
national and freedom -loving element on the other, should be 
so violently opposed, some regarding Christianity as in itself 
a reactionary principle opposed to all modern pn^resa, and 
others fearing all advances towards political freedom and inde- 
pendence as necessarily -inimical to Christianity, whereas all 
history teaches that freedom comes and perishes with religion. 



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LECT. l] causes OF THE BEEACIL 23 

with faith, and that faith can only grow and flourish in con- 
jnnctioii with liheity. The two are, in tlie long run, inseparable. 

" In many cases," says an English writer, " the true source 
of a man's irreligion will be found in his politics." "With 
none is this more the case than with the German people. 
Whenever the Church sinks to a mere engine of the State, and 
advocate even of its errors and abuses, then the natural result 
is, that the opposition originally directed against the State is 
now turned against the Church and Christianity, Again, 
whenever the Church shows herself cold and indifferent, or 
even hostile to the legitimate aims and aspirationa of the 
people, then also it will soon come' to be generally regarded as 
a reactionary institution, and political dislike soon developes 
into infidelity, A striking example of this is now exhibited 
in the present relations of Italy and the Papacy. From the 
very beginning the latter has been wont to confound ecclesias- 
tical and political interests, ofttimes making morality and 
religion subservient to its politics. The bitter fruits of these 
unhallowed confusions are now being reaped. The great 
spi-ead of infidelity in Italy during the last decade is due 
to the hati-ed felt for the anti-national policy of the Papal 
See. 

Experience shows that some systems of government are 
specially favourable to the growth of infidelity. Among these 
we may reckon especially despotism and bureaucracy. Church 
history proves clearly that the more freedom is granted to 
Christianity, the more it developes, the stronger it gi-ows ; the 
more the State interferes with its organization, and endeavours 
to direct its movements, the more sickly it becomes. It is not 
in the atmosphere of genuine freedom, but in the dose and 
sultry air of bureaucratic government, tliat infidelity will be 
found to flourish 'most luxuriantly. The close atmosphere of 
red-tapist administration is for unbelief what a hothouse is for 
a plant. Look at France under the old regime. The des- 
potism of Louis XIV. and XV. was a perfect hotbed of infidelity 
and free-thinking. Look at Germany. Nothing like the old 
bureaiicratic system to produce and foster rationalism, which 
in the fresh air of the War of Independence began to wither. 
Patriotic, liberal, and religious impulses were then for a time 
harmoniously united, and the irresistible force of tliat great 



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24 MODERN CULTOEE AND CHRIsnANITT. [lECT. L 

national movement grew out of that union, albeit an incom- 
plete and immature one. But no sooner was the bureaucratic 
system re-estalilished after the Congress of Vienna, than in- 
fidelity again raised its head and begaa to develops fresh 
energies. Since then, how many there have been and are who 
have sought to make up for cringing servility to the meanest 
representative of the State, by impudent self-assertion against 
God and religion.' From that epoch onwards all political 
changes took i moie ind more unchristian character, till in 
1848 the ihenation of the German people from Christianity 
Ijioke forlh ill at once and came to the light of day. And to 
\Uiat must we attribute this? Chiefly to that reaction, of 
■v\hich the SLCiet prison slowly corrupted the whole spiritual 
life blood of our people ' Rudely driven back from the 
thieshold of political existence and restricted to merely literary 
eff:)it3 saj s a modem hi=itoiiin " and deprived of every oppor- 
tunity of exercising its energies in a public sphere of action, 
the younger generation has specially addicted itself to theologi- 
cal incLiiiiies ^d looks for tiiumphs in that sphere which are 
denied it m the field of iction." This alone would go far to 
account for the spread of inhdelity and rationalism among the 
misses ol our populaticrt The German Catholics and Fnends 
of Light who made so gteat a stir in the fifth decade of this 
contuTj vith then total lejection of all positive Christianity, 
were m many instances Liberal politicians driven from their 
natural sphere to wander after false lights of fancied liberty 
in the bypaths of rationalism. 

The present generation has likewise been passing through a 
similar experience. The conservative reaction which speedily 
followed the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 evoked in many 
q^uarters a spirit of yet more embittered and pronounced 
scepticism. Vogt, Moleschott, Biicimer, and others came 
forward as the advocates of an impudent antichristian mate- 
rialism, which hitherto had been unknown in Germany, but 
soon became popidar in the circles of the opposition. Nor 
can we wonder at the vehement animosity of many Liberals 
to a Church which, starting back from the precipice before her, 
carried all her forces into the camp of their political adver- 
saries. Conscience assured them that their aim to make a 
strong and united Germany was right and noble, and could nob 



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LECT. I.] CAUSES 01 THE BKEAOH. 25 

in it'ielf be displeasing to God; while yet many were misled 
hy this conviction to confound a carnal aversion from the 
tuiths of the gospel with zeal for liberal enhghtenment and 
piyiesa It IS now encouraging to note, that since the re- 
awikening of political life, the popular favour towards mate- 
nili^tic theories seems to have sensibly diminished. 

e But to these political we must add, Fifthly, various sodal 
and ethical causes for the present tendencies to scepticism and 
unbelief. Some of these we now see actively at work, especi- 
ally in the artisan and labouring classes. What has Christianity 
done— what can it do for us ? are questions frequently put 
among them, as they chafe under the inequalities of our social 
arrangements. And communism stands ready to give the 
answer, with its violent disruptions of existing ties and redis- 
tribution of land and property as the basis of a new political 
system. Our German sense of right and conscience still keeps 
these principles in check among us, but in many of our larger 
towns we find them already taking root, as likewise in Eng-- 
laud. In France, as we all know, communism prevails in 
large masses of the population, combined with the coarsest 
antichristian and atheistic materialism. 

But, after all, it is to moral causes that we must assign a 
main influence in the present prevalence of unbelief. " Our 
systems of philosophy," said Fichte, " are very often but the 
reilex of our hearts and lives," You will, I am confident, 
accept this axiom as specially applicable to the subject now 
before us. Each man's position towards Christianity is ulti- 
mately determined by the inward condition of his heart and 
win. The gospel has from the first proclaimed that the only 
way of access to faith is by the path of practical obedience, 
combined with the ready ear that is ever open to the voice of 
truth. " If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God." " He that is of the trutli 
heareth my voice." Action must go before knowledge, and a 
certain inward condition prepare the way for the gospel 
message. To understand the truth, we must first stand in it, 
or at least be willing to enter and submit to it. 

Wherever there is a real alienation from the gospel, ethical 
causes have much to do with it. There is something humi- 
liating in the first aspect of all Christian truth. It reminds ua 



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26 MODERN CULTURE AND CHEISTIANITT. [LECT. L 

of personal responsibility, of personal shortcomings. It wounds 
our natural pride and self-sufficiency. And oh, how hard it is 
to many great and aspiring spirits to come down from their 
high estate and confess to gnUt and error ! Tor others, Chris- 
tianity has too much that is alarming. It makes of human 
life so serious a thing ; it warns so solemnly of the nearness of 
eternity and the certainty of future judgment ; its sign of the 
Cross reminds us so awfully of the divine holiness and the 
hatefulness of sin. Too many, alas, are not prepared to fight 
their way through all these terrors to real and sohd peace, and 
catch at the idlest doubts and shalloM'est surmises to escape 
from the pressure of unwelcome truths. What pride does for 
the former class, fear does for these, in deterring them from 
embracing the faith of the gospel. And as for both these 
classes the entrance of the way of life is found too strait, so 
for many others the way itself has proved too narrow. Their 
love of ease refuses to engage in the striving after holiness ; 
their love of gain and worldly honour shrinks from the- thorny 
path of humility and self-denial. With many, alas, sins of 
sensuality are either parents or offspring of unbelief; nay, 
every sin may be regarded as a step in that direction. The 
apostolic word is true of thousands in our day, as on the first 
preaching of the gospel : " The natui'al man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God." 

Ignorance with many is a cause of unbelief, superficiality 
with others. Many are so absorbed in the cares and turmoils 
of their earthly life, as to have neither time nor inclination to 
inq^uire into the grounds of Christian faith, and so fall an easy 
prey to the assaults of the shallowest scepticism. An non 
hahet osorern nisi ignwantem is most true here. The most 
vehement opponents of gospel truth are ofttimes those who 
know least about it, and are not ashamed to exhibit the most 
astounding ignorance of botii Catechism and Bible. Every 
close observer of the spirit of our times must be aware of its 
deep-seated aversion to any thorough inquiry as to the grounds 
or significance of any religious dogma. It would be a marvel 
in any age but ours that shallow pretentious hooks like Eenan's 
Vie de J&sus, which set all sound criticism and historical 
investigation at defiance, should be so immensely popular, and 
go through so many editions. Who can wonder that an 



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LECT. l] PjRESEST EXTENT OF THE BEEACH. 27 

age so constituted slio^ild be driven about by every wind of 
doctrine, — - 

"On its own axis turning restlessly. 
And never find the healing light of truth " f 

And if tbere be so many various causes of alienation from 
Cliristian faitb in the prevailing tendencies of our time, there 
are not a few which render the assumption of a sceptical 
temper pleasant and easy. Unbelief appeals mainly to the 
intellect, and lays no restraint on the waywaidness of tbe 
heart. It flatters one of the favourite inclinations of the 
natural man to embrace and cherish doubt as to his own 
responsibility to any spiritual power placed above bim The 
iirst note of interrogation found in tbe Bible follows a doubt- 
injecting word of the demon-serpent to our first parents : Hath 
God said ? and then came the flattering announcement which 
modem philosophy is so ready to repeat : Te shall he as gods ; 
of -which the present improved version runs thus : Ye are 
yourselves God ; that absolute Being whom ye once thought 
to be above you is in you and of you — your own spirit. "What 
a welcome word to an unquiet conscience ! There is no more 
eternity or judgment to come ! How charaiing to the earthly 
mind of tbe votary of pleasure is the announcement that this 
world is everj-thing, and the future nothing ! 

I^t us ask our own consciences : Have we not here in these 
moral causes the deepest ground of our present unbelief, the 
fullest explanation of its ready acceptance ? In divine and 
spiritual things, no one errs entirely without bis own fault. 

A due consideration of aU these causes, old and new, which 
have co-operated in the production of our present forms of 
unbelief, will make intelligible the serious extent of the breach 
thus made between modem culture and Clmstianity. To this 
I nmst now invite your attention. 



11. THE PEESENT EXTEKT OF THIS BEEACH. 

A look into our town churches shows at once the estrange- 
ment of the great majority of our educated classes from the 
Christian faith. Modern culture concentrates itself in our 
larger towns, and it is just there we find our emptiest churches, 



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28 jrODEEN CULTUEE AND CHEISTIANITY. [lECT. L 

and, in comparison with the growing population, the fewest of 
them. Formerly the sceptic might eay, with Paust, 
" I hear the dootiine, — what I want is faith j" 

now, alas, too often the doctrine itself is no more heard. There 
are large parishes in Berlin and Hamhurg where, according to 
recent statistics, only from one to two per cent, of the popula- 
tion are regular church-goers. Elsewhere it is somewhat 
better. But speaking of Germany in general, we may say 
that in our larger towns the proportion seldom exceeds nine or 
ten per cent., and in the majority of cases is far lower. And 
yet, in comparison with the days in which rationalism had 
possession of our pulpits, there is, in the matter of church 
attendance on the part of educated persons, considerable im- 
provement. In country places things look far better. There, 
Christianity has still much greater hold on the mass of the 
population. But of these we do not now speak. Our agricul- 
turists cannot yet boast of any high degree of culture. But 
in the towns, whether you visit the lecture-rooms of pro- 
fessors, or the council chambers of the municipality, or the 
barracks of the soldier, or the workshop of the artisan, — every- 
where, in all places of private or public social gathering, you 
hear the same tale ; The old faith is now obsolete ; modern 
science renders all genuine belief in it now impossible ; only 
ignoramuses and hypocrites profess to adhere to it any longer. 
StiU more is this the case among the educated and half- 
. educated classes, i.e. among the town populations in Roman 
Catholic countries. Prance, the greatest of them, has never 
recovered from her radical breach with Christianity in 1793, 
when bishops and priests united in the abjuration of their 
former faith. It is weR known that hi Upper and Central 
Italy (in Naples the case is different) the great majority of 
educated persons Lave not only silently broken with their 
Church, but openly avow their unbelief. In Boman Catholic 
communities, infidel publications enjoy much more splendid 
triumphs than any which await them in the domains of Pro- 
testantism. Por hundreds who read Strauss in Germany, tens 
of thousands in Prance and Italy have been seen devouring 
Benan. In Spain and Portugal the breach is not yet made so 
openly ; but signs are not wanting that the hearts of a large 



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LECT, I.] lEESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH. 29 

number of the cultivated classes are alienated from their pro- 
fessed faith ; that the hatred to the priests in many quarters 
i3 intense, especially since the last revolution ; and that the 
religion of very many is limited to an occasional appearance 
in some processions. Even in Catholic Belgium there are 
many indications of a strong reactisn against the Church, 
initiated by such societies as those of the AffrancUs, the Soli- 
daires, and the lAbres-Pcmeim. The members of the last- 
named society hind themselves to resist to the utmost all 
interference of the priesthood in the affairs of social and 
famHy life, and therefore (1) not to permit the visit of a priest 
in ease of death, or his ofBciating at a funeral ; (2) to take 
part in none but civil marriages ; and (3) not to allow their 
children to be baptized, or go to iirst communion, or be con- 
firmed. And tendencies of the same kind are manifesting 
themselves even in such thoroughly Eomanized communities 
as the Spanish Eepublics of South America. Who, then, -will 
deny that in Eoman Catholic countries the breach between 
Culture and Christianity is already a very wide one ? And it 
ia one that is increasing every day. 

But alas, all the factors of our modem intellectual life are 
largely influenced by a prevailing spirit of unbelief! Take 
first our universities and schools. Whereas amongst our 
theologians the old spirit of rationahsm is in gi«at measure 
overcome, it is quite otherwise among the teachers in our 
upper schools, and especially our mathematicians, whose train- 
ing in the exact sciences disposes them to demand a proof for 
everything, to be strongly prejudiced in favour of " rational 
religion," to be too ready to foiget how many incommensurable 
magnitudes exist in the moral world, and to seek for clearness 
of ideas at the expense of truth and life (Bengel). And so, 
also, the semi-cultured teacliei-s in our popular schools are 
even more prone to succumb to the temptation of thinking 
themselves too enlightened and advanced to share the simple 
faith of the common people, or submit to its restraints. Hence 
the general outcry for the emancipation of the school from the 
control of the Church, the .endeavour to abridge as much as 
possible the time given to religious instruction, and to banish 
it from the central position which it has hitherto occupied in 
popukr education; while in many places, notwithstanding 



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30 MODERN CULTURE AND CHEISTIAHITY. [lECT. I. 

such frec[ueiit failures, the attempt is again and again renewed 
to establish undenominational schools, in ■Which Catholics and 
Protestants may be educated together. 

In our gymnasia and other grammar schools, religious in- 
struction is, with some praiseworthy exceptions, relegated to 
a very inferior position. Boys and youths are often found to 
possess a remarkably good acquaintance with the details of 
other subjects, whose knowledge of Scripture history and 
Christian doctrine is of the most meagre description. Not 
long ago, it was discovered in a Prussian gymnasium that a 
secret society existed among the boys of from thirteen to 
fifteen years of age, with rules of a purely atheistic chai'acter, 
the first paragraph commencing with, " Any one believing in 
a God is thereby excluded from this society." 

Such being the condition of our grammar schools, who can 
wonder that at the university few students but those reading 
theology should go to Church, while many lecturers allow 
themselves to hold such language on the subject as to lead 
their youthful audience to regard attendance on public worship 
as something quite beneath their dignity ? The natural conse- 
quence is, that the large class of Government officials are for 
the most part indifferent, and in many cases even hostile, to 
Christianity, and that the mutual estrangement between Church 
and State increases every day. 

A further glance at our modern literature will exhibit the 
almost abysmal profundity of the chasm which in this respect 
divides our present culture from our Christianity. Not many 
years ago, German infidelity was contented to appear in the 
courtly guise and with the aristocratic exclusiveness of science 
and philosophy ; she now endeavours to clothe herself in forms 
in which every one may give her welcome. Unbehef is no 
longer a guarded secret among wits and scholars, or uttered in 
a language " not understanded of the people ;" it is now com- 
mended in innumerable publications, tracts, novels, illustrated 
newspapers, to the attention of the working classes, and even 
of the peasantry. 

The tendency to popularize all results of scientific investiga- 
tion, which is so marked a feature of our time, is seen specially 
at work in this department, widening more and more the 
breach between modern popular thought and Christianity. A 



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LECT. L] present EXTENT OF THE BEEAC3. 3 1 

few decades baclr, the 8tudy of German philosophy required 
very severe appHcation. Few then even read Hegel, and still 
fewer understood him. But the atheistic consequences drawn 
by Feuerbach and others from his speculations are found by 
many very piquant and agreeable reading now. Such philo- 
sophy every carpenter's apprentice can too readily understand. 
And so -with Stmuss. AVhat thirty years ago he addressed to 
theologians, is now hashed up again and fitted to the palates of 
" the German people." Every writer now wishes to be popular. 
The old deductions of Hegelian philosophy paraded by i'euer- 
baeh and his compeers, that God is nothing more than one's 
own inward being made the object of self-contemplation, that 
prayer and adoration are in reality but forms of self-worship, 
— "signs," to use Emerson's language, "of infirmity of will:" 
these are now thrown broadcast by the labours of a hundred 
pens over the whole field of the popular mind ; religion is to 
be no longer a seeking after God, but a resting on nature's 
bosom ; no longer an obedience to a higher will, but the carry- 
ing out of one's own self-discovered system of morality. And 
hence, besides the general disbelief in the supernatural and 
miraculous characteristic of the popular mind in the present 
day, the multitude of empty unmeaning phrases which one 
hears in every social circle expressive of philosophical notions 
and deductions half understood, t.g. " the worship of genius," 
" religion of humanity," " moral order of the universe," " pro- 
gress of the human race," etc. etc., while the use of any scrip- 
tural phrase or expression is regarded as a sign of narrow- 
mindedness or bad taste. 

The same rationalistic, pantheistic, and materialistic influ- 
ences pervade our modern esthetic literature. Many of our 
would-be fine writers have come to regard Christianity as a 
direct hindrance to true Culture. So, for instance, Arnold 
Huge, who will no longer caU it by its name, but speaks of it 
as " Asiatismtis," or Judaism; "This ' Asiatismus' lies like a 
dead weight on all the departments of modem life, and holds 
us in the bondage of a refined (or unrefined) barbarism." Even 
Voltaire, Lessing, Gothe, Schiller, Kant, Pichte, and Hegel, 
with all their liberality, were unable to free tliemselves en- 
tirely from the yoke. And for such ludicrous outbursts of 
fanatical infidelity he is praised in a modem journal (the 



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32 MODEEN CULTURE AHD CHRISTIANITY. [LEOT. L 

Gartenlauhe) as the ideal of a true G erman ! Another sings tlie 
triumphs of natural science in such strains as these : " Brahma, 
Buddha, Jupiter, and Jehovah must now yield to worthier suc- 
cessors in reason and philanthropy." ^ A third, liaving weighed 
both Catholicism and Protestantism in the halances, and found 
them wanting, proceeds to inatal the modem drama as the 
best teacher of true religion : " A great lie pervades the whole 
of modem society. Priests and laymen alike are liars against 
their will, and often withoiit knowing it. When we let our 
children learn the Catechism without believing it ourselves, 
are we not making ourselves liars ? What we want is a new 
Church. I am for a free stage. The theatre is my temple, 
where I would see inaugurated a new form of worship. The 
theatre should be regarded as a house, of God, as it was among 
the ancient Greeks. Religion and the drama I would fain see 
identified." (Eckardt.) 

To these signs of a literary and Eesthetical alienation from 
Christianity we must add those of a more directly political 
character. Our daily press in far the largest number of in- 
stances tabes up a perfectly indifferent, if not openly hostile, 
position. Witness the unmeasured scorn poured by a hundred 
of its organs on the efforts to promote home and foreign 
missions, and even on charitable associations if worked m a 
Cluistian spirit ; and so likewise our political clubs and 
unions, nay, even those of a merely social character, — singing, 
rifle-shooting, athletic clubs, and trades-unions, such as that of 
the shawl weavers in Berlin, — often go out of their way to 
parade religious indifference and unbelief; and is it not in the 
memory of many of us how the gi-eat popular movements, some 
twenty years ago, for the political regeneration of our country 
were conducted in the spirit of the motto of the last named 
association : 

" Consider, man, how great thou art — 
Tliy will is thy Redeemer ; " 

how the proposal to implore the divine blessing and assistance 
on the deliberations of the Frankfort Parliament was received 
with shouts of derisive laughter ; and how in so many educa- 
tionist meetings in later years the watchword most in favom 

' Compare Wichem, Dk Verp^khtang der Kirche sum Kamp/ gtg^ dU 
Widernadur des Qlauhene, p. 7 sq. 



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LECT. I.] PEESENT EXTENT OF THE EEEACU. 33 

has been: The undenominational " CliriBfcianity of humani- 
tarianism must bencefoith be the religion of Germany " ? Are 
not all these signs of the times, wbieh exhibit the breach 
between our present Culture and true Christianity as most 
deplorably deep and wide ? 

It may then, I fear, be affirmed with truth, that the gi'eat 
mass of our educated, and yet more of our half-educated, 
classes in this our German Fatherland is alienated from aU 
positive definite Christianity ; our diplomatists almost without 
exception, and the great majority of our of&cers in the army, 
our Government officials, lawyers, doctors, teachers of all kinds 
but professed theologians, artists, manufacturers, merchants, 
shopkeepers, and artisans, stand on the basis of a merely 
rationalistic and nominal Christianity ; while the lower middle 
class (always excepting the agriculturists and peasantry), carried 
away by the materialistic tendencies of the time, assume a more 
or less hostile position towards it. 

But is not the condition of some other countries better 
than ours in this respect ? It is so in England and America, 
There the mass of the people, especially the middle classes, 
still rest their faith on the old foundations; and England 
more especially stiR recognises with practical gratitude the 
inestimable blessings for which she is indebted to the gospel. 
But alas ! the following statements are enough to show that 
even there the breach is of lamentable extent. It has been 
calculated that in the year 1851 more than 12,000,000 copies 
of infidel publications of various kinds issued from the London 
press, — 640,000 purely atheistic, small pamphlets included, 
but without reckoning newspapers. These publications have 
an immense circulation among the working classes. To these 
must be added the enormous mass of immoral publications 
issued, according to a previous statement in the Edwhurgh 
Review, at the rate of 29,000,000 copies a year, — making a 
largsr aggregate than all the publications of the Bible, Tract, 
and many other religious societies put together. (Comp. Tlie 
Power of the Press, published 1847, aod Pearson's prize essay. 
Oft Infiddity, published in 1S63.) The perusal of these 
works, and of the wretched penny papers dispersed in hundreds 
of thousands, must powerfully contribute to spread infidelity 
and immoi'ality among the masses of the population. Turning 



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34 IIODEKS CULTURE ASD CIIIilSTIASITy. [LECT. L 

to the upper classes, it must be noticed that the ardent pur- 
suit of natural science has led many distinguished men' to 
views widely different from those commonly received on the 
inspiration of Holy Scripture, or leading to the total rejection 
of its authority, and that these have been comhated with con- 
siderable ability. The controversy is still proceeding. 

" Secularism " so called, — the doctrine that the present life 
and world is everything, that men have only to live and care 
for what they see around them or in the immediate future,— 
a doctrine founded on the positivism of Aiiguste Comte, — has 
great attractions for the practical and somewhat materialistic 
English mind.' Its apostle in England was Holyoake. If he 
has already of professed disciples not a few, the practical 
adherents of his system are everywhere multitudinous. 

It is also well known that assaults more or less covert have 
been made on faith in England by professed theologians, nay, 
even by some who hold high places in the National Church. 
When we remember the eagerness with which the Essays and 
Beviews, and Bishop Colenso's attacks on the Pentateuch, were 
sought for and read by all classes of the English-speaking race, 
and even in its remotest colonies, we cannot but be sensible 
that the breach between culture and Christianity is for tliera 
likewise beginning seriously to widen. 

So great and universal is the chasm which more or less in 
all countries of the civihsed world is now dividing the spirit 
of the age and its most characteristic products from the faith, 
aspirations, and convictions of the Christian Church. That 
chasm is wider than most of us would willingly allow. Per- 
haps some of the statements, necessarily brief and superficial, 
which I have laid before you, may have astonished some of my 
most intelligent hearers. But being so, the duty is the more 
incumbent on us seriously to put the question. Is a reconcilia- 
tion stiU possible ? "VVe must devote a somewhat carefol 
investigation to our reply. 



HI, CAN THIS BREACH BE TILLED UP ? 

If we are inclined to answer this question in the affirma- 
tive, we shall be very far from denying that between modern 



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LECT, I,] CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP ! 35 

culture and Christianity there exist, in many respects, irre- 
concilable internal contradictions, and that it is no use for us 
to attempt to reconcile them. But there is another question : 
n'hether true culture and genuine Christianity mutually ex- 
clude one anether ; or whether, on the contrary, the latter does 
not naturally produce, or at any rate pramote, the former ; and 
whether the present time and our own countrymen are not 
peculisriy fitted to illustrate the real inward connection be- 
tween the two, and so called upon to do their best in filling up 
this breach ? In what follows, ive desire to make an attempt 
to maintain this lattor proposition. 

However painful it may he to contemplate the assault 
which at the present day is made by innumerable adversaries 
with increasing bitterness on the structure of Christian faith, 
it nevertheless has, in some I'espects, a favourable aspect. If 
Christianity is that which from the very beginning it has 
professed to be, tliat is, absolute truth, which must prevail in 
the end, all these attacks upon it can only assist in advancing 
its ultimate victory, because they contribute to a deeper 
investigation of truth, and to a constant exhibition of fresh 
aspects of it. If it is true, as Chiistians beheve, that all 
things, even the attacks of their enemies, -take place under 
some higher guidance, then these attacks are never merely 
detrimental to Christianity, but from another point of view 
tend to further it. The open, honourable antagonism of an 
opponent, to say nothing of the victory over an error, always 
tends to intensify and enrich the treasure of truth possessed 
by the Church. The louder, therefore, the opposition of the 
present day, and the warmer the contest on all sides, the 
gi-eater, after all, is the gain to be derived therefrom, and the 
nearer becomes the final, complete, and permanent vlctoiy. 
Nay, the numerous attacks made on Christian belief are even 
now a proof that Christianity is i^ain beginning to become 
an important power in the life of nations. From all antiquity 
downwards, history tells us that the more powerful the de- 
velopment of Christianity, the stronger became the opposition 
to it. Unquestionably, at the present day, the opposition is 
great, and consequently Christianity must again have presented 
itself in a powerful form. Where there is much conflict, 
there is also much life. And perhaps the present time is just 



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36 MODEEN CULTUEE AND CHEISTIANiry. [leOT. I. 

the very period when there is the least groimd for despairmg 
of the victory of the gentdne Christian theory of the universe. 
If we survey the manifold bridges which are now being con- 
structed, in order to facilitate the return of educated persona 
to Christian belief, and the inei^easing numbers of those who 
are beginning to find ont this way of return, we are bound to 
say thitt, in the case of any one who examines the matter 
without prejudice, it is more easy now than in many previous 
periods to bring himself to a thoroi^h reconciliation between 
culture and Christianity. Lot us now mote closely look into 
the main path to this end. 

Who, then, are the chief exponents of modem culture ? 
Are they not the Christian nations, and very especially those 
among whom the Holy Seriptm^es have free course, that is, 
Protestant nations ? Is this fact to be taken as a mere accident ? 
Does it not point to some internal connection between culture 
and Chi'istianity ' When, in the case of all other nations, we 
see civilisation, after flourishing for a brief period, decline 
and fall into complete decay, whilst in the case of Christian 
nation? we see it although amid interruptions, constantly in- 
(.leismg IS not the supposition a very obvious one, that just 
in then Christnnity, and especially in the gospel, nations pos- 
sess an inexhaustible source of culture, and a constant impulse 
and stimulus to progress ? Nay, may we not enterta,in the 
supposition that, after all, Christianity and culture are so inti- 
mately connected, that they must increase or decay, stand or 
fall, together t This leads us to the perception that Chris- 
tianity/ is the smcrce and esiponent of all true culture. And on 
this perception is based the possibility of putting an end to the 
dissension between modern culture and Christian belief, and of 
reconciling the two. This proposition may be proved to be in 
consonance both with reason and history. Allow me to state 
a few points with regard to both these sides of the question. 

What, then, is the true idea, the peeuliar nature, of Chris- 
tianity, and what is the true idea of culture ? On, this point 
I must foithwith come into contact with many errors, some 
perhaps prevailing even among ourselves. 

It is of the essence of Christianity not to be a mere com- 
plex of new doctrines ; it is not, for instance, as Lessing as- 
serted, " a practical teaching of personal immortality ; " it began 



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LECT. I.J CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP ? 37 

with fads, and its doctrines are only to be compreliended in 
connection with them. Inimediafcely after its iirst word, 
"Repent!" attention is directed to a divine fact, "For the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand," which is rather a subject of 
spiritual than of intellectual apprehension. Christ therefore 
represents Himself to us in the gospel, not as a mere teacher, 
but rather as salvation and life made manifest ; not as one 
who merely enunciates truths, but is Himself the truth. " I 
am the Truth and the Life." 

Christianity is not, moreover, as Kant would have it, " the 
rehgion of a good life." To this many wise men have attained 
long before Christ preached, although not in so perfect a 
form. It is not a sum-total Of moral precepts, as rationalists 
both of older and more recent times suppose, who assume that 
the main points in Christian faith are the general ideas of 
reverence for the Divine, honesty, charity, virtue, etc. etc. 
These ideas and moral precepts did not specifically constitute 
the new message which was delivered by Clnist and the 
apostles : they were of course placed by Christianity in a new 
light, deepened, intensified, and widened ; hut they all had a 
previous existence, more especially in the Old Testament, 
(Compare the command of perfect love to God and our neigh- 
bour, Deut. vi. 5 Lev xii^ 2 and IS ■ and of love to our 
enemies, Ex. xxiii 4 5 et al) 

Let us cast a glance at the wntmgs of the aj nstlp'! Do 
they put forward ct,rtain moitl rules ot life as the es tnce of 
their new doctrine ? No their e\hoitations to liolmes love, 
etc., appear everj^ihere as accessor j to the chief matter which 
had been previou<d^ ''et forth the goj>e? of Jes-is Chiist — His 
death, His resuiiection and the qieit salvation tltained 
through Him, and now prcfTeied to the wtild In the first 
place, they always preach and pl•^^ fo' ^riee and peice with 
God through Jesus Christ and ■lU the special evhortatinns and 
precepts that are subsequently added ire requiied bj them 
to be fulfilled only as a conseiiuence which at once results 
from this new revelation, and from the new relation of man to 
God which is thereby constituted ; that is, they require these 
things as a fruit which is to grow out of tiio faith in Jesus 
Christ. Even John, the preacher of love, to whom some are 
very fond of appealing, sets forth, as the essential and new 



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38 MODEEN CULTDEE AND CHEISTIANIIT. [LECT. I. 

matter in his teaching, certainly not moral maxims, tut that 
" iJie I/i/e was manifested "— the Word which was from the 
beginning ; " and we," he goes on to say, " have seen it, and 
bear witness, and show it unto yon." He also, and he particu- 
larly, announces his message, not as a mere aggregate of truths 
and moral rules, but as a vital power, and as the revelation of 
a divinely established matter of history. And to what end ? 
Is it merely in order that our moral conduct should be im- 
proved ? No ; something far more is intended. " That ye 
also may have fellowship with the Father, and His Son Jesua 
Christ" (1 John i. 3). Christianity has in view not merely 
to make man righteous, but also to reconcile and unite him with 
God, in the way opened out by the new revelation of Himself 
in Christ — " the Life made manifest." Unless the writings of 
the apostles are distorted to the very uttermost, taking as last 
that which is first, and as first that which is last, it is simply 
impossible to maintain that they set forth certain moral pre- 
cepts as the essentials in their teaching. 

But in favour of this view, may we not also appeal to tha 
original teaching of Christ Himself? This is done, for in- 
stance by Baur, when, in allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, 
the parables, etc., he says, " The essence of Christianity is the 
doctrine of the kingdom of God, and the conditions requisite 
for a participation in this, so as to place man in a genuine 
moral relation to God ;" also that the specific pi-e-emiueuce of 
Christianity over other religions is " its universally human and 
comprehensive nature, — the purely ethical character of its 
facts and doctrines." We have here, as a result from the same 
grounds, something too indefinite and one-sided. Christianity 
is concerned, not merely in bringing about a " genuine moral 
relation of man to God," but in effecting a new relation through 
a distinct person, — that is, Christ. Those discourses of Jesus 
formed only the starting-point of His teaching, the general 
ground-plan as it were, with which He sought, in the first 
place, to lay hold of the consciences of His hearers. Mat 
from this point He proceeds to further developments, gra- 
dually unveding the significance of His own personality in 
.reference to the kingdom of God, and His own position as the 
central point in the economy of salvation (for instance, that 
'■' He gave His life as a ransom for many," etc. ; cf Matt. xx. 



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LECT. L] can the breach BE FILLED UP ? 39 

28, and our Lord's discourses in the Gospel of St. John), It 
is therefore a perverse proceeding to confine attention to the 
mere startiiig-point ; Banr himself teing subsequently driven 
to confess that, after all, it is " the personality of its Founder on 
which depends the whole importance of Christianity in the 
histor}' of the world." 

"We therefore arrive at the conclusion, that the essential in 
Christianity is objectively Christ Himself, and the redeeming 
work which has its source in His Person ; subjectively, faith 
in Sim as redemption manifested, — that is, the experience 
of this redeeming work in one's own heart. The object of 
Christianity is to lead men back to God and to their true 
destination, on the basis of the redemption and atonement 
which has taken place through Christ. This is the specific 
novelty in the teaching of Christ and the apostles. In every 
religion, man seeks in some way or other to draw nigh to God, 
to become well-pleasing to God, or to propitiate Him. But 
the means employed for this end are very various. In heathen 
religions, indeed in all religions not genuinely Christian, these 
means are some personal performances on the part of men, — 
sacrifices, penances, good works, and the like ; or also, as 
rationalism and modem enlightenment maintain, moral prin- 
ciples and righteous living. Christianity stands out in opposi- 
tion to all this : it denies that tlie goodwill of the holy God, 
whose desire is to see His children not merely outwardly 
righteous, but pei-fect as Ho is perfect {Matt. v. 48), can be 
attained by man without grace, or that the honour which men 
should have before God, and the righteousness which is of avail 
in God's sight, can be attained to by man without fellowship with 
Hini who ifa ilone perfectly iighteous — that is with Chnst 
And it IS tberefoie decUred thit theie is only one way which 
leads to the desued end and that thn wiy i? Chmd I am 
the way The piopcr essence theiefore of Christianity is the 
bunging bick men to God and their leunion with Him by 
the one only iiiy T^hieh is cilled and is Christ 

In respect to no idea ii it more necessary to distinguish 
between the true ind the filse no word is so miichiev ousl> 
misunderstood and misippbed as thi& high 'bounding \\ atchword 
of our time — cultuie Indeed oui centiirj before all others 
seems to aspire to he the age of "culture. Nothing m the 



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40 MOUEEN CULTUKE ASD CHILISTI.VSITY. [lECT. I. 

present day is so derc^tory as to be considered " uneducated ;" 
so that not a few even of our shoeblacks consider themselves 
" educated." How many are there, however, in our time, who 
are conscious of the points on which true culture really 
depends ? Is it not a matter of fact, that a certain superficial 
refinement of manners, some acquaintance with the forms of 
good society, a little stock of ordinary phrases, and the fact of 
having seen or heaid something of the best knowji products of 
literature, together with a fashionable style of dress, form, in the 
opinion of most persons, a sufficient claim to the possession of 
" culture " ? But is that enough ? Is it not then possible 
that a man, sunk in the lowest depths of moral rudeness and 
degradation, may appropriate some of this outward varnish of 
"culture," with very little reformation of his essential barbarism ? 
Can we then, on this account, consider him as a really cultured 
man ? We feel at once that true cultivation consists in real 
refinement of mind and spirit, and not in mere intellectual 
acquirements or outward accomplishments. 

Accoi'ding to the sense of the word " Bildung" (culture), wo 
call a thing " gcbiJdet" (foimed) when it is perfectly shaped, 
ready, and complete ; when it is that which it is intended to 
be, and consequently completely fitted for its purpose. So, 
also, the truly formed or cultured man is he in whom all 
natural faculties are thoroughly developed, so as to enable him 
to fulfil the purpose for which he was created. The nest 
question would therefore he, what this purpose is ; and what 
the nature, extent, and destination of the faculties implanted in 
each individual, and what the end he has to aim at reaching. 
It is clear that, just as any one places a higher or lower esti- 
mate on this task,— that is, on the whole end and purpose of 
human life,— his ideas of culture must take either a higher or 
a lower foi-m. But, in truth, what is this end and purpose ? 
Nothing less than God Himself. God is the eternal prototype, 
in harmony with which man is to form himself; and liheness 
to God is the aim for which he is to stuve, by perfectly culti- 
vating and shaping all the powers implanted in him. His 
divine, psychico-moral faculties point him to nothing less than 
God. And so it stands in the foie fiont of divine revelation, 
"God created man in His own vm.cge, m the image of God 
i He him." No poet who e\ei sang of the dignity of man. 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE BKEACII BE nLLED UP ? 41 

has conceived an idea of him more mo^nificeiit than this ; and 
no sage ever before placed the destination of man on so im- 
measurably high a stage as is done by Christ, when He says, 
" Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect." Classical antiq^uity never attained to the sublimity 
of this view : in its ideas as to the destination of man, it had 
no one conception worthy of man ; for it was without the idea 
of man's perfection and likeness to God. In the doctrine that 
man is created aftm- GoSs image, and therefore for God, the 
Holy Scriptures alone have given iiack to men (he full idea of 
their own dignity, and have set forth the highest priTtciple and 
aim of culture, beyond which it is alike impossible either for 
philosophy or religion to pass. He who falls short of this, 
and is content with some lower aim, does an injuiy to his own 
dignity, and never becomes cultivated in the highest sense of 
the word. 

This aim will likewise never be attained by him who, in 
respect to everything that belongs to the Divine image, and 
all the spiritual and moral capabilities implanted in him, fails 
to cultivate them equally, in harmony with God's purposes, — 
that is, by aU the means which God has provided, and in 
conformity with the final aim wliich He has set before us. In 
an infinite number of cases, one capacity is thoroughly culti- 
vated ai the cost of otliers, especially the intellect at the expense 
of heart and if^ill. The understanding and the memory are 
stored with all kinds of knowledge ; and the external de- 
portment is thus polished and refined, without any effort to 
render the heart and the conscience more tender and sensitive, 
the will more disciplined, and to lead it onwards by the path 
of obedience to true freedom and self-government. Hence 
it is that we frequently find inward rudeness combined with 
external polish. 

And thus we get at the root of all false culture, and of all 
inferior culture. Man falls into this by a neglect of moral 
self -discipline ; and even in Paradise had fallen into it. The 
first sin, as the Scriptui-es narrate its origin, was nothing more 
than an attempt to cultivate knowledge in a one-sided way, 
at the cost of the faculties of the heart and wiU. Man desired 
" to know good and evil," to increase in knowledge, without 
incLuiring whetlier heart and will would be raised thereby to a 



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4i MODERN CULTTJEE AND CHRISTIANITY, [lECT. I. 

higher stage of cultivation. Man desired to be " as God," but 
without endeavouring to approach God in the divinely pre- 
scribed path of obedience and moral self-discipline. Thus 
the new stage of cultivation was, in fact, a false development, 
which was increased by every sin that followed. For every 
sin tends to develope in a wrong direction the moral, and 
thereby also the intellectual, faculties of man. We are 
taught this plainly by experience, as well as by the word of 
Goci. This mis-development has through the universality of 
sin become a prevailing power, and henceforth man is no 
longer able to attain to God-likeness by the direct path, but 
only by a letnni from the fahe to the iuie course of develop- 
ment, that which the Scriptures understand by " conversion" 
being m reahty nothing else than this letum from mis-de- 
■velopment, which makes tis more and more unlike God, to a 
tiue, genuine, ethical, and religious culture, throiigh which we 
once more attain to the Divine likeness 

We thus arrive at the result, that true moral culture, 
culture in the highest sense of the word, is nothing more than 
reversion to the Bwim image. And how is this to be aceom- 
plished ? Since the original character of man as tlie image 
of God has once for all been obscured in various ways by the 
misguiding power of sin, and, on the other hand, our eternal 
prototype— God— is invisible, it became necessary that God 
should again place before our eyes His holy image in a perfect 
shape; as a pattern and ideal, from which we might be able 
to recognise both Him and ourselves,- — our true nature and 
destination, viz. to return to the Divine image. This was and 
is no longer possible witliout Christ, who is " the image of 
tlie invisible God " (CoL i. 15), and at the same time the pure, 
sinless, perfect Son of man, in whom, therefore, humanity was 
manifested in its most perfect likeness to God. Now, tlierefore, 
all true culture depends upon man formmg himself anew, 
or rather allowing himself to be formed according to this 
pattern. He only who puts on the likeness of the All- 
perfect One, and on whom it is distinctly stamped, is, and 
will be more and more, completely educated, made hhe to God, 
and perfect ; he alone will fulfil the purpose of his creation, 
and accomplish his true destiny. 

liSt us now see what we have ascertained. The aim of 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE I'KEACH BE FILLED UP ? 43 

Christianity is to lead man back to God by the Way which is 
called Christ ; and culture in the highest sense is nothing else 
than a re-educating back to God, and to that Divine image 
which can only be attained through Christ. Where is there, 
then, any disagreement between culture and Christianity? 
The breach between them is filled up, and a bond of union 
formed : am and md are the same in both ; both desire to lead 
man back to God, and thus to the attainment of his destina- 
tion. Ohrist-mnity is itself culture — the true, moral, and highest 
form of cuUiire; and culture in the highest sense of the word 
13 impossible without Christianity, 

Only look at a simple-minded man, not possessing much 
outward culture, but animated by the Spirit of Christ and by 
sound piety : what a sense of moral fitness, what correct tact, 
what sound judgment, especially as to the ethical value of any 
person or action, do we find gradually produced in him ! In 
such a case, the educating influence of Christianity is freijuently 
shown in a most surprising way. 

Only a false, merely external, religionless, and Christless cnl- 
ture, unworthy of the name, because nothing more than mere 
outward training, is irreconcilably apposed to Christianity; 
Just as it ia only a false, one-sided Christianity which comes 
into conflict with genuine culture and science When recoff- 
nised in their true nature, both are seen to ha-ve a profound, 
internal unity; for, as Michael Angelo forcibly ^ays, "Art is 
the imitation of God," All true culture and science has one 
tendency, to make human life moie Godldte , and this is the 
very task of Christianity Therefore, as regards the whole 
sphere of ancient and modern culture, all that tiuly cultivates 
and improves man, brings him nearer to truth and to God, and 
so far from opposing Chnstianity, prt pares the y.s.y for it; 
whilst all that is genuinely Christian in Christian belief, all 
that is divinely, true, so far from being a hindi-ance to true 
culture, is, on the contrary, its purest and richest source and 
worthiest exponent; 

We may thus come to recognise the unity of culture and 
Christianity from the nature of both. But this point may be 
also proved historically. 

Even in that first encounter between Christian truth and 
classical culture, when the Apostle Paul preached in the Areo- 



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44 MODEEN CULTOEE AND CIIEISTIASIIY. [LECT. I. 

pagiis at Athens (Acta xvii), we see how the one points to the 
other. The apostle, in his discourse, quotes one of the Greek 
poets : " As certain also of your own poets have said, ' For we 
are also His offspring : ' " taking it as a text for his argument. 
Compare also the quotation from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33), 
and the hexameter of Epimenides (Tifc. i. 12), both evincing 
St. Paul's acquaintance with classical literature. And we find 
the same thing occurring elsewhere. Wherever aught of Divine 
light and truth appears in Greek culture, we find points of 
connection for the preaching of the gospel ; and Christianity, 
far from despising these elements of truth springing up on 
other ground, wiUingly adopted, amplified, deepened, and 
glorified them, and in this way proved its aflinity to all that 
was true, and tended to real culture. AU the real treasures 
of classical civilisation the Christian Church was enahled 
gradually to appropriate, and so to realize the innumerahle 
helps afforded her by art and science for her own internal 
development, the deeper grounding of her faith, and its out- 
ward extension; whilst, on the other hand, a series of attempts 
was undertaken — though with much less success — by many 
cultivated heathen, to infuse new life into the timeworn 
Greek philosophies by the adoption of the substance of the 
Christian religion. 

And truly this classical culture required the support of 
living exponents, if it was to be preserved from entire de- 
stiULtion. "Wherever civilisation is not made to rest on the 
ha^is of moral ind religious truth, it cannot attain to any per- 
minpnt exi'itence -md is incapable of preserving the nations 
possessed of it from spiiituil starvation, to say nothing of 
politicil deitL Gieece ind Ilome were never more civilised, 
in the modern seu'ic of the word, their culture had never 
become the (..ommon jiopeitj of the people to so great an 
extent is when they begin to decay. These are facts worthy 
ot consideiation by all who iie of opinion that culture, that is, 
the public pursuit of art and science, can of itself afford an 
adequate guarantee for the future of a people, and who, alas, 
endeavour to persuade the German nation that their future 
depends on exchanging positive Christian religion for a culture 
and religion of mere humanity! What the fate of the German 
people would be in this case, we see clearly written upon the 



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LECT. I.] CAJJ THE BEEACH BE FILLED UP ? 45 

ruins of Greece. The polite culture of classical antiquity -waa 
deficient in any truly moral and reKgious' basis. Tlie whole 
system of life, aU political, civil, and social duties, and all 
family relations, were in the last resort based on selfishness} 
In consequence of this, those nations came to ruin. And for 
the same reason, all non-Christian civilised nations are even 
at the present day coming to ruin, caused by this fundamental 
error which their culture is unable to neutralize or overcome. 

Tor the preservation of society, as well as of its culture, 
some new and counteracting basis of life was necessary, — that 
of unseljish love. And what else was there which could intro- 
duce this new principle into the world, save that religion, 
whose vital point is the belief in the love which sacrificed 
itself even unto death in behalf of man— the love of the Son 
of God and Man ? Christianity alone could fulfil this great 
mission, and has in a measure fulfilled it, so that the heathen 
world has sometimes wonderingly exclaimed, " See how these 
Christians love one another ! " But by the introduction of 
this principle, Christianity has for ever ensured the preserva- 
tion of the genuine sentiment of humanity, and has thus 
become for all ages the only su/re avd certain exponent, and the 
only hi&chaustible smtrce, of all true moral mUure. 

It is already a matter of history that Christianity has in 
part fulfilled this vocation by absorbing into itself, on the 
breaking up of the system of ancient culture, all the valuable 
elements therein contained. When the irruption of the bar- 
barian nations threatened the whole system of GrEeco-Eoman 
culture with destruction, the Christian Church became the 
guardian and nurse of this culture, and carried the treasures 
of its genius through the storm into the middle ages. Chris- 
tianity, in the next place, Mndled in the nations of the West, 
one after another, the light of rehgious truth, and of a more 
elevated and permanent civilisation. How could it be other- 
wise, when the Church was teaching them to think of God as a 
Spirit, as the Father of man, as One who is love, and to regard 
mankind in the light of God's pui-pose of salvation in Christ, 
and of the moral duties thence resulting ^ And does it not at 

* For the more precise proof of this, see 0. Schmidt, Die Mrgerlicha 
QeMttechafl m der cUtremischea Welt und Vire VnurestaUvng dureh daa Christen- 
thinn, Leipzig 1SS7. 



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46 MODEKS CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY. [lECT. L 

once 'beeome evident to us wliat germs and powers of culture 
for personal, domestic, civil, and political life were contained 
in this fundamental principle of Christianity, if, on the other 
hand, we compare the misguiding influence exercised hy per- 
verted views of God and man on the whole life of the heathen ? 
Prom that time forward, most of these western nations hegan 
to take their place on the stage of history ; they consequently 
owe the wliole of their significance to having come in contact 
with Christianity. Now for the first time their languages 
become written languages, and new literatures begin to spring 
up. It is now that, on a Christian basis, under the fostering 
guidance of the Church, a new occidental civilisation is con- 
structed, to which even the ancient daasieal culture is allowed 
to contribute many a useful stone. This new culture gradually 
assumed a somewhat different stamp in various lands, accord- 
ing to the varying national peculiarities which, as involving 
special powers of culture and special destinies, true Christianity 
seeks not to destroy, but only, with forbearing hand, to purify 
and refine. When the Church, by suffering the obscuration of 
God's Word, bid fair to lose the genuine principle of culture, 
and when the sp t of selfishness, with the immorality inse- 
parable f on t w once more menacing the world with a 
relapse into le the deness, then it was that the " Eefor- 
mation," tl at s the Chiiatian conscience, recurred to the 
gospel, fi d n t the aohd ham of all true culture, the 

worship of God m spirit and in truth, and at the same time 
its strongest motiie, the principle of liberty of conscience, and 
the right of free mquiry And this principle, which could rest 
only on the ground of the gospel, has become the mainspring 
of the whole system of modern culture. Since its universal 
acknowledgment, it has not only given a fresh impulse to 
invest^ation in aU fields of knowledge, so that the true age 
of civilisation seems to he but now beginning, but has also 
iu the largest measure contributed to the diffusion of spiritual 
and moral culture among the peiyple. The most comprehensive 
educational institution of modern times, the National or Ele- 
mentary school, may he called the daughter of the Evangelical 
Church ; and if on no other account, every philanthropist is 
bound to confess that, for the Christian education of the German 
people, no one acted more grandly and more vigorously than 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED U? ? 4T 

Luther. The fact that in the present day we no longer have 
merely to speak of individuals or classes, hut of ]}e<yphs in the 
masa as educated, is pre-eminently due to these universal 
channels of education created hy the Reformation. That 
since that era the breach between the learned and the lower 
classes hag more and more vanished, that gradually the whole 
life of the people, public and civil, with the whole system of 
legislation, has assumed more and more the character of genuine 
humanity, is in the last instance a result of the giving back of 
the Holy Scriptures into the hands of the people ; of the re- 
moval of the chasm once existing between priests and laity ; 
of the restoration of the universal priesthood (1 Pet ii. 9) ; 
and of the recognition (attained through the gospel) of the 
spiritual freedom and independence of each individual man. 

Can it be supposed that all this shoiild of a sudden have 
been clianged ? Can Christianity, after having been through 
■whole centuries the exponent of all genuine educational de- 
velopment, suddenly have placed itself in hostile opposition to 
the culture which grew out of it, and for the most part sprang 
from its own impulses ? Can it, then, have ceased to diffuse, 
along with the pulsations of its own inner life, the spirit of 
true culture and genuine humanity ? What is it that at the 
present day, more now than at any former time, slieda the 
light of moral and religious culture into the darkness of 
heathen barbarism ? Is it modem cultui-e by itself, apart 
from Christianity ? Is it the wandering natural philosopher 
or savant, who goes forth to make discoveries in distant lands 
in order to increase knowledge at home, but who gives neither 
time nor trouble to the object of contributing something lasting 
towards the moral elevation of the aborigines 1 Or is it the 
European merchant in the heathen world, whose main object 
has for the most part been to make a proiit out of these 
lands, and who not only does not morally elevate the people 
that come in contact with him, but frequently leads them on 
to a still swifter ruin ? Have there not existed for centuries 
mercantile settlements on many coasts, without any kind of 
educational institution on behalf of the aborigines having 
been established by the traders ? T!ie nearer to the coast, 
and the more the natives come in contact with the trade of 
the Christian wprld, the more degraded for the most part do 



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43 MODEEN CULTPKE AND CHEISTIANITY. [lECT. I. 

we find the heathen, — a fact which affords a clear proof that 
culture in the mere service of selfishness, is nothing less than 
the greatest hindrance in the way of elevating the mental 
condition of any people. 

No ; it is not merely the contact with external culture, 
hut contact with the gospd which dears the -path for civilisa- 
tion among the heathen. The Christian Church in modem 
times has again recognised and enei^etically taken up her 
missionary task : her emissaries, wherever they can find a 
footing, not only combat the darkness of heathenism hy 
preachii^ and education — at the same time often rendering 
themselves the advocates of the oppressed heathen against 
the avarice and tyranny of the colonists (I only call attention 
to the names of a Thomas Coke, a Enrchell, and a Knibb in 
the West Indies, a Van-der-Kemp at the Cape, etc.) ; but by 
the communication of more exact information as to lands, 
peoples, manners, traditions, and languages, hitherto little or 
not at all known, open out even for home circles new sources 
of culture, and enrich science in many branches. It is by 
their laboiu^ and the increasingly important progress of Chris- 
tianity among the heathen, that we now see a number of 
barbarous peoples being gradually converted into cultivated 
aations, and beginiuug to make their appearance on the stage 
of the world's history. Ey means of the gospel their languages 
are reduced to writing ; the commencement of their literature 
is the translation of the Bible. Through the influence of 
Christian morals and freedom, of Christian order and activity, 
all the resources of a land become available, its prosperity is 
raised, and all civil and social relations are ennobled. 

If we confine our attention to our own German culture and 
science, it must certainly be confessed that for a long time 
past the Church has no longer been the exclusive exponent of 
them ; we have indeed seen above in how many ways our 
modem culture has placed itself in direct opposition to 
Christianity! Nevertheless, it must be but a very superficial 
consideration of history which can fail to perceive that even 
our Ge7tnan cuUitre and science — and in many branches they 
unquestionably take the lead of all — are in all essential points 
ajjrodud of Christianity and of the gospel; indeed that, even in 
those branches which maidfest the greatest antagonism to 



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lECT. I.] CAN THE BREACHBE FILLED UP ? 49 

Christianity, they are involuntarily, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, indirectly or directly, assisted by the spirit of 
Christianity, and are to some extent either ruled or strongly 
influenced by Christian views. 

At the very outset we find our written language shaped by 
the gospel, and its better elements interpenetrated by it. At 
the head of German literature, as its most ancient monument, 
we confessedly place the Gothic translation of the Bible by 
Bishop Uliilas as " a prophecy of the vocation and tendency 
of the whole people." At the commencement of the New 
High German we have, as its nucleus and groundwork, the 
translation of the BihU h/ ZutJier, who thereby almost re- 
created our language, and that in a degree seldom reached 
by any other literary work.^ This New High Geiman which 
we stOl speak— for we have deviated but little, and that to 
the detriment of force and expression, from Luther's language 
—is both in body and spirit the Protestant dialect, mainly 
indebted to Luther and the gospel for its "freedom-breath- 
ing nature," its force, opulence, and beauty, as well as for its 
naturalization as the written language of the educated and 
learned classes (who previously always wrote in Latin). 

Moreover, our Germaa poetical lileraiure does not disown the 
Christian soil from which it grew. In the works which mark 
the boundr-ies of the different periods of poetry, we see pro- 
ducts of the Christian spirit which give a colour to the follow- 
ing literature. In our ancient German poetry, that grand 
Christian epic the Old-Saxon " Heliand " {HeUand, Saviour) 
stands prominently out as a remarkable proof how quickly 
and deeply Christianity made its way into the German blood 
and life. The first classical period of our literature, the time 
of our national epic poetry and minstrelsy in the middle ages, 
when it reached its acme and purest expression, bore the 
impress of "the most intimate blending of German nation- 
ality and Christian faith." At the beginning of the New 
High German, we find the hpnns of the Evangelical Church 
laying hold with a Rudden power on the hearts of the German 
people ; and these hymns have ever since remained the living 
' On this point, rS. Libber, Vorirage uber BUdnitg vnd ChristeatliXim, Ham- 
hncg 1863, p. 202 ff^ 267 ff. ; R. v. Eaumer, Me Einwirkunu des ChrUU»- 
(ftuMM aufdU aUhwlideuUdte Sprdclie, Berlift 1845. 



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50 MODEES CULTUEE ASD CHEISTIAKIIY. [lECT. I. 

expression of their religious thought and feeling. How much 
have they contributed to the improvement and, in a Christian 
point of view, the refinement of popular song ! And who was 
it that in the last century ushered in the day of our modem 
classical literature, not indeed as a sun, but as a bright morning 
star ? Was it not Klopstoek, who in his " Messiah " and his 
Odes blended ancient classical with German Christian elements, 
and thereby struck the key-note of all our modern poetry 
and art, which, however far they may in individual cases 
have severed themselves from specific Christian ideas, still, 
in their most beautiful and elevated creations, do not disown 
the influence of Christian views of the world and human life, 
and could never have become what they are, except amongst a 
cliristianly educated people ? Or would it have been possible 
for an Euripides to have written an "Iphigenia" (to say 
nothing of a " Faust ") such as that of Goethe ? 

The case is similar with regard to our other arts and sciences. 
It is tnie that in modem times they take their own course, 
frec[uently in opposition to Christianity. But if from German 
music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and from the most 
important branches of German science, we take away that 
which owes its origin and development to the influence of 
Christian ideas, we shall soon find that we have deprived 
them of their best, most spiritual, most ideal elements, which 
most tend to education and elevation ; and we shall immedi- 
ately recognise the impossibility of any such separation, just 
because Christianity is most intimately intei-twined with our 
whole culture. 

Or if, in the next place, we consider our civilised life in 
other points, both public and private, whence proceeds that 
earnest assiduity in labour which distinguishes us Germans 
beyond most other nations ? It is an inestimable fruit of the 
gospel. Labour was considered by our heathen forefathers as 
a dishonour. And even in the present day, where the gospel 
has not free course, the stirring disposition, the assiduity, and 
the spirit of enterprise of the people is disproportionately less. 
The important difference between Protestant and Komanist 
countries in this respect affords everywhere, but especially in 
Geimany and Switzerland, a whole series of irrefutable proofs 
of tliis fact 



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LECT. L] can the BREACH BE FILLED UP ? 51 

Whence, f^aiu, come our views of riglit and order, of 
freedom and law ; whence comes the humane spirit of our 
jurisprudence and of our civil institutions ? Por the most 
part, from what the gospel has taught us of the dignity of 
man, of true philanthropy, and of human rights and obliga- 
tions. On merely heathen ground, no certain harrier can he 
raised against the most heartless despotism, or against the 
most shameful oppression and slavery. Even an Aristotle, 
the most cultivated heathen philosopher, thought that only a 
portion of mankind possessed a rational soui, and that the 
others had merely a higher kind of animal soul, and were 
therefore created for slavery ! The only sure guarantee for 
spiritual and ultimately for civil freedom is contained in 
the gospel. Modem civilised states are indebted to the gospel 
for their liberal institutions. 

Lastly, on what are founded the views we entertain at the 
present day as to marriage and family life ? What is it that 
has aided the female sex in attaining the free and dignified 
position which it assumes among us ? What is it that has 
taught us to treat children as if they were " little majesties " ? 
It was and is the influence of the gospel, which teaches the 
equality of all men before God, and pays regard to every in- 
dividual man on account of the Divine image in him, and his 
own eternal destiny. Allow me, at this point, to state to ym-, 
my lady hearers; that as regards position in society, none 
are so much indebted to Christianity as you. No one has so 
much to fear as yon from any complete surrender of Chria- 
tianity, and from the prevalence of unbeUef Your freedom and 
dignity stand and fall with Christianity. One glance at the 
civilised heathen nations, both of ancient and modem times, 
■and tlie position that your sex assumes among them, will show 
you how little a culture without Christianity and without Christ 
is able to guard you against the most disgraceful servitude. 

In fact, regarding our own civilised life at the present day 
from whatever side we please, we everywhere come in contact 
with Chiistianity as the spiritual power which supports and 
penetrates it. Even a Fichte, who certainly took up a very 
free position in regard to' Christianity, was bound to confess, 
" We and our whole age are rooted in the soil of Christianity, 
and have sprang from it ; it has exercised its influence in the 



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52 MODEEN CULTURE AND CHEISTIAinTy. [lECT. I, 

most manifold ways on the whole of our cultiire, and we 
should be absolutely nothing of all that we are, if this mighty 
principle had not preceded us " {Amomung mm sdigen Zeben). 

These considerations apply to us Gennans in a very special 
measure. No other nation has from the very first yielded 
itself so heartily to the influence of the gospel ; no other 
possessed in its original purity of manners and force of cha- 
racter so great a predisposition to Gliristianity; no other nation 
in the ^world's history has become so deeply imbued with the 
Christian spirit or made itself to so great an extent its expo- 
nent. No nation, therefore, is less able to divorce itself and 
its culture from Christianity. It may be thought grand to dis- 
own or to decry the veritable sources of our present culture, but 
it certainly is not grateful. Even the most sceptical cannot 
withdraw himself from the influence of Christianity : ho must 
derive his intellectual nourishment from the fruits of a culture 
which Christianity created; indeed, even in assailing it, he 
is compelled for the most part to derive his weapons from it, 
just as he who seeks to discover spots iu the sun must for 
this purpose borrow the light of the sim itself. 

Having thus recognised the historical unity of Christi- 
anity and culture, and the way in which they inwardly per- 
vade and blend with one another, especially in our own 
nationality, it will be perfectly clear to us that nothing can be 
more perverse than to rend asunder things which both ideally 
and. historically are so intimately connected. The fact already 
observed, that so many are labouring hard to widen this breach, 
and that the orthodox themselves have often been foiind 
working towards the same end, is the greatest misfortune of 
our time. "The deeply tr^ical contrast," as has been strikingly 
observed, "which pervades the whole of modem history, is 
that the idea of humanity, born and nurtured in the bosom 
of Christianity by the influence of the gospel for a thousand 
years, has been torn away from the root on which it grew, 
and should now be placed in conflict with Christianity as a 
power hostile to, and seeking to destroy it. It is desired to 
cherish culture without true culture, and civiUsation without 
the root of all true morality ; it is desired to have the system 
of laws built upon the idea of humanity without acknowledg- 
ing the obligation of love and self-denial, in the absence of 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE BltEACU BE FILLED L'l* 1 63 

which, the free and joyous recognition of the rights of others, 
and also of society as a whole, cannot possibly last long. Let 
us openly confess the fact, that this contradiction constitutes 
the main i-oot of all the conflicts and crises pregnant with evil, 
by which our time is agitated " (Fah-i, as above). 

If, in the face of tliis unhappy tendency, you still maintain 
the internal unity of culture and Christianity; if you are jnst 
enough not to forget all that we, either the siD-called or really 
educated classes, owe as a matter of history to Christianity ; 
then, as far as you are concerned, the great, although in point 
of fact unnatural and artificial, hreaeh between culture and 
Christianity is filled up, or at least the way is made clear for 
their union. 

And now, to bring the foregoing remarks to a ■practicai result, 
before believing in any alleged contradiction between culture 
and Christianity, ask whether it be true eultare and true 
Christianity, or distorted, falsified forms of either which are 
thus opposed. Ko truth, when dealt with by man, is safe 
against disfigurement, not even Christian truth; no mental 
possession safe against misuse. In every case, instead of 
regarding the /orm in whicli these opposing elements are made 
to appear, look to their true inward natuve, and you will find 
aCQnity instead of contradiction. Is your attention dra\vn to 
some results of scientific inquiry, apparently irreconcilable 
with Scripture ? first ask the question^ — Arc these real results, 
or, despite the confidence with which especially in popular 
works they are represented aa perfectly reliable, are not the 
views of really scientific men so divided that the best course 
is to suspend your judgment ; or even if this be not the case, 
might not after all a correct understanding and explanation of 
Scripture obviate all serious diiSculties? Do the divisions and 
schisms of the Church offend you? then ask the question — Am 
I to lay this to the charge of Christianity, that is, to the charge 
of Ciirist Himself, His Word and Spirit ? Was it not His 
dying prayer, " that they may be one " ? Has not the primi- 
tive time left us as a testament the special article of faith, 
'■ I believe in One Holy Catholic Church " ? You will then 
be less ready to find fault with Christianity itself, though you 
may perceive much imperfection, and hence many differences, 
in the various Churches. 



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54 MODEEN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY. [LECT. 1 

If yon take offence at the ecclesiastical onesidedness and 
prejudice of many, who are of opinion that outside the limits 
of their own Church there ia little else but error, you must 
recollect that true Christianity, that is, Christ Himself, says in 
opposition to these opinions, " Other sheep I have which are 
not of this fold," and promises that " there shall he one fold 
and one shepherd." If yfeu take offence at the intolerance of 
many over-zealous representatives of orthodoxy, just inquire 
■whether the rationalists of ancient and modern times were 
any better in this respect (the Swiss and Baden schools, 
for instance) ; and next, call to mind that Christianity, be- 
cause it does not assert itself to be a trutli, but tJie truth, 
the absolute truth, must come in conflict with, and denounce 
as error, everything which contradicts its spirit ; hut that 
in this conflict it admits of no kind of carnal weapons (2 
Cor. X. 4) ; it is intolerant in the most tolerant way ; it 
merely witnesses against everything antichristian in life and 
doctrine, hut neither wishes nor is able to use compulsion. 
He who is the Truth is also the great Patience of the world, 
and once said to His disciples, when hastily refusing to tolerate 
one who was virtually if not formally associated with tliem : 
"Forbid him not; for he that is not against us is on our side;" 
and on another occasion, when they wished to rain down fire 
from heaven on those who rejected them, put them to 
shame by the inquiry, " Know ye not what manner of spirit 
ye are of ? " Let us not then lay to the charge of Christ 
Himself, or of Christianity, the faults of His short-sighted, 
narrow-minded, or passionate disciples. 

Or, if you are disgusted by the onesided illiberal jtidgment 
passed by many Christians on matters of art and science, do not 
ascribe this to the spirit of Christianity itself ; but rather recol- 
lect how the apostle, casting a kingly glance at the immeasurable' 
possessions of the Christian man, says, " All things are yours, 
both present and future ;" and that into the Holy City " shall 
be brought the glory and honour of the nations." Or, when 
disposed to take offence at churchnieii who timidly resist any 
freer political development, do not forget that the true Church 
maintains, in the words of the apostle, that " where the Spirit 
of the Lord is, there is liberty," and that Christianity furthers 
the cause of freedom everywhere on the one foundation of tba 



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LECT. I.] CAS THE BREACH BE FILLED UP ? 55 

Tmth which maketh free. So soon as yon recognise the fact 
that the imperfection of the Cliurch and of individual Chris- 
tians is not a comequence but a caatradiction of the genuine 
spint of Chnstianity, and therefore is not by any means to be 
laid to its chaige ; that the obstructions often placed in the 
■waj of genuine culture and true progress ore produced by 
those impel fections, and not by the nature of Christianity 
itselt , that the tendency of both, when rightly understood, is 
essentially the same, viz. to help man to attain bis divine 
destination ; and that Christianity has proved itself to be even 
historically the richest sonrce and the surest exponent of true 
culture, — then our scruples vanish, and the true method of 
reconciliation is discovered. 

If we go on to inquire what, in the face of this position, 
is our presmt task, and especially that of our Theology and 
our Church, in endeavouring to facilitate the return to belief 
of our educated classes, it is first and foremost, not to 
under-estimate the depth of the yet existing breach, and 
not to proceed too rashly in bridging it over — a course 
which would result in rendering bad service to both sides. 
We may well rejoice if our theology, more now than at 
any previous time, aspires to a " reconciliation with the de- 
velopments of modern culture," the very motto which the 
leaders of the "Ptoteshmt Union" inscribe on their banner. 
We wish for aU fliis, and we are bound to wish for it. Paith, 
so far as it assumed a scientific character, has in all times 
been compelled to come to an understanding with the develop- 
ments of culture, and to put itself in accord with them. But 
neither formerly nor now is this breach to be closed by any 
rationalistic methods, such as would tend to efface tlie essential 
diiference between many views now in vogue and the funda- 
mental doctrines of Christianity ; surrendering, for instance, 
thi miraculous element and other points of Christian faith 
■which modern culture thiniis itself to have outgrown, whilst 
the fundamental principle of Christianity, the belief in a 
Bupernatural revelation, is stiU unrecognised by the spirit of 
our age. A union on such terms can only be sought for by 
him who makes a merely secondary matter of the main point 
of all, the belief in Christ as the only-begotten Son of God, 
and as God incarnate, and utterly faik to recognise the true 



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56 MODEKN CtTLTUEE AND CIIEISTIAXITY. [LECT. I. 

nature of Christianity as we have previously defined it. In 
such aUiance, the culture of the present day would hecome a 
dangerous parasite, clinging round the great tree of Chi-is- 
tianity, nourished on its juices, growing with its growth, but 
at the same time exhausting its vitality until it ceases to 
exist! 

But neither does it help the matter to adhere' to the forms 
in which the old faith has crystallized, and to try to force 
the intellectual convictions of them upon our time, in total 
disregard of the progress of science. By this course the 
breach can only be made wider. Our duty is rather to 
endeavour to penetrate more deeply into, and present more 
comprehensively, the old truths of faith by tlie aid of the 
growing light of science, especially that of scriptural in- 
vestigation. It is better at once honourably to acknowledge 
as faulty anything which is evidently shown to be faulty in 
the mode in which it is comprehended or familiarized, firmly 
maintaining, however, entire and undiminished, the funda- 
mental points of belief, which (as we shall subsequently see) 
neither science nor criticism can overthrow — for they come out 
of every contest more firmly and surely established,- — I mean 
the great facts connected with our redemption through Clu'ist. 
It cannot tend to peace if all the ideas which are moving 
society at the present day — - those of freedom, progress, 
humanity, civilisation, etc. — a,ve straightway branded by the 
Church as antichristian, as has recently been done by Eome : 
let the Church, rather, lovingly receive and acknowledge all 
the elements of truth contained therein ; but let her, on the 
other hand, seek to purify and clear them from all that is false. 

If the dissension is to be radically overcome, we must allow 
to freedom that which belongs to freedom, and must leave to faith 
that which belongs to faith. I^t us at length learn, to look 
beyond the many secondary matters dividing us in belief and 
practice ; let us not bind the conscience where Christ has not 
bound it, and let us malce a distinction between the essential 
and the non-essential. But, on the other hand, let us not 
ti-eat main points, such as the divinity of Christ, Ilia atoning 
death, His resurrection, etc, as secondary matters ; let us not 
turn freedom into licence, nor ignore the doctrinal limits of 
our faith that ai'e laid down in the Holy Scriptm-es by Christ 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE BEBACU BE FILLED UP ? 57 

and the apostles, limits without which faith must cease to 
exist. Let us not resolve historical, fundamental matters of 
fact (as, for instance, the resuiTection of Christ) into mere 
mental conceptions and general vague ideas, whereby unspeak- 
able confusion is produced, and absolutely no internal recon- 
ciliation between faith and the culture of the time is brought 
about ; faith, on the contrary, being sacrificed to the repug- 
nance to miracles exhibited in our time. So soon as we 
eliminate the cross of Christ from our belief, and thus chip off 
the angles of our corner-stone, throwing overboard all that 
comes in conflict with natural sense and. understanding, there 
is no doubt that the union between faith and the spirit of 
the present day is easy enough : the offence of the cross ceases, 
but Christian faith as such is at the same time anniliilated. 

If any true reconciliation is to be effected, it must rather 
be accomplished : First, by a genuine apprehension of Chris- 
tianity in this its " divine foolishness, which is wiser than 
men," its divine nucleus and centre, Christ Himself the eternal 
Son ; and in its perfect purity, beauty, and truth, iearing 
its wm witness to entry human heart, and faithfully presented 
to the world : Secondly, by a genuine apprehension of the 
true nature and value of culture and science, their ennobling 
moral tendency in the formation of heart and character, and 
not merely of the intellect ; and Thirdly, by the bringing home 
to the consciousness of men in general, the inward affi/nity 
of this tendency with that of true Chrstianity. The gospel, 
freed from the disfigurements inflicted upon it by the prejudice 
of friends and the misunderstanding of opponents, must again 
be brought home to the mind and conscience of our age as the 
only sure basis of aR true popular culture, and once more 
made intelligible to the genius of the nineteenth century, so as to 
impart to the educated classes of the present day, with all 
their perverted and over-stimulated tastes, a feeling and an 
interest for divine truth. This result vnW. not be effected by 
a paring down or total rejection of the germ of gospel truth, 
but by developing this germ, and by disclosing to men's hearts 
its inward spring of lif&' Only let the Chm'ch hold- fast 

' It was one of Vinet's latest utterances, that, in tlia defence of Christian truth, 
" we must revert to the elementary, fundRmentnl, and utemally imshaken points, 
if we desii-e that the new generation should again be fed with the bread of life." 



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58 MODERN CULTITEE AND CHRISTIANITY, [lECT. L 

Him wlio is her foundation and her end, Christ ; only Id her 
proclaim Him not with the old vicrely, but also with new tongues. 
Let her be mindful to present Him to the present age, with its 
needs of culture, not merely in His divine glory, but also in His 
human leauty and moral purity ; and to exliibit the free grace ' 
and love of God manifested in Him not merely as indi^ensaUe, 
but also as all-mff^ient, to a world feverishly agitated, and in 
every sphere of knowledge and action weai'ily excited, and as 
the only true source of peace and the only power which can 
permanently satisfy the deepest needs of human nature. These 
vital characteristics of the gospel have for many centuries 
wonderfully attracted hearts and minds, and the more purely 
and plainly it was set forth the greater was the power it 
exercised ; and this attraction it will retain until the end of 
time. 

The ultimate answer to all questions, the solution of all 
doubts, is contained in Him wlio is the mystery of aR mys- 
teries, the revelation of aU revelations, that is, in Christ the 
Light of the world. If Christendom, now in so many ways 
Christless, is brought back to a contemplation of Christ, false 
prejudices will soon vanish, and the contradictions between 
knowledge and faith will begin to be solved, and from this 
light, beams will issue which will gradually illuminate even 
the darkest mysteries, or ensure the certainty of a future 
enlightenment. When that is the case, the inward schism of 
which we have spoken is already overcome, and the breach 
closes of itself. 

We cannot, indeed, expect, and more especially if we accept 
the testimony of Holy Scripture, that the breach wiH speedily 
be healed in regard to all. No one, indeed, will wish to 
deny that in our modem culture there is much that is false, 
egotistic, and selfish ; much that is misleading and exaggerated, 
and consequently opposed to true culture. Against these 
untrue elements of culture, Christianity will and must always 
take the field ; it must not oppose progress, although it is at 
all times bound to show itself hostOe to the si'ns of progress, 
just as from its very commencement ifc has always testified 
and striven against such sins. Between Cliristless culture and 
Christianity, a bridge of accommodatibn can no more he huUt than 
'between light and darkness; and woe to him who undertakes 



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LECT. l] can tub beeach be filled dp? 59 

this ! But wliiitever in our modern culture is thoroughly 
Christless, and therefore Godless^ is unworthy of the name, 
and can therefore claim from U3 no further consideration; 
it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, iU - disguised 
hy the gaudy rags of outward dec«icy; a mere cherishing 
of the sensual nature, which, left to itself, would soon de- 
generate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already see 
many indications. See, for instance, how fearfully the thirst 
for gold unchristianizes and demoralizes men, and how much 
internal rudeness and want of moral discipline are thereby 
fostered in the face of all external and apparent culture ! 
With moral failings of this kind, which are, alas ! closely 
blended with the culture of the present day, the spirit of 
Christianity can never be reconciled. To overcome these 
failings, we need, as we have previously recognised, a high 
degree of moral resolution ; and he who is not capable of this, 
will never be able to embrace even the purest form of Chris- 
tianity ; indeed, the more purely Christianity presents itself to 
such a one, the more direct will be the antagonism in which 
he finds himself placed towards it. 

If, however, it is anywhere high time to undertake with 
earnest dihgence the work of filling up this great breach in 
our modern civilised life, that duty methinks is incimahent 
upon us. The Teutonic races have a, s^pemM need and a fecial 
.vocation to overcome this de^seated contradiction from which 
our age, and most of all we Germans^ so greatly suffer. No 
nation has learnt to feel its internal disruptions so painfully 
as we. We are more truly than any other " a nation of pon- 
trarieties." Down to the latest period, in which, since the 
events of 1866, the German spirit has manifested itself as 
more and more essentially Protestant in church and school, 
science and polities, the opposing parties were very evenly 
balanced. This continuous tension of opposing forces of equal 
strength has been the cause of the paralysis of German power. 

The difference, however, which in truth has been and is the 
greatest of all others, and before all others has laid hold of the 
heart and marrow of our people, is a religious one. Other 
countries are tinged with one prevailing colour in a rehgious 
point of view ; they are either Protestant or Eomanist. Down 
to a very recent period we were divided into two nearly equal 



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60 MODEEN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY. [LECT. I. 

parts ; and this religious and ecclesiastical dualism has con- 
tributed and still contributes the greatest share to political divi- 
sion between North and South. Lately, indeed, in consequence 
of the mastery obtained by Jesuitism in the Eoman Catholic 
Church, tlie breach between the two Churches has become more 
and more irreconcilable ; and this growing breach is nowhere 
more painfully felt than among our people. Both camps are 
pervaded by this internal dissension between believers and un- 
believers, between Christianity and modern ideas, and in public 
life neither tendency has hitherto held unlimited sway, while 
both parties are active and powerful. Elsewhere, a country 
developes either a predominant enerj^y of faith, as, in a practical 
point of view, England, which is still on the -whole Christian 
and evangelical, or a special energy of unbelief, as France, 
which perhaps to a greater degree than any other nation has 
been disintegrated by infidelity from the days of Voltaire down 
to the Comtes, Kenans, Michelets, etb. Ger-many (and in a less 
measure Switzerland also) furthers, in a way peculiar to her- 
self, hoth id-kf and unbelief in almost equal proporliom. The 
believing Protestant theology of Germany, from the Eeformors 
down to Schleiermacher, Neander, Tholuck, Corner, etc., has 
rendered the greatest assistance towards the more profound 
comprehension, the scientific confirmation and vindication of 
our faith : by its intellectual products the Protestant theology 
of the whole world is still nourished. The Eoman Catholic 
faitli, likewise, as regards its scientific vindication, has found its 
chief supports in Germany, whore alone any scientific Eoman 
Catholic theology can be said really to exist, although lat- 
terly more and more oppressive fetters have been imposed 
upon it 

On the other hand, the negative and destructive produc- 
tions of German theology have formed the groundwork in 
other countries of opinions hostile to Christian faith. Among 
all our opponents, it is German philosophers, critics, and 
theologians, who have made the most dangerous attacks on 
the framework of our Christian faith ; and we find our foreign 
assailants standing shoulder to shoulder with our domestic 
enemies. 

Thus among us, more than in other countries, we see the 
t antitheses maintaining a nearly equal bfdance. We 



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LECT. I.] CAN THE BKEiCH BE FILLED DP t 61 

are indeed a people of contrarieties, and our need of recon- 
ciliation is consequently the greater. The words ■which follow 
apply well to our time : " So long as a reconciliation between 
our religious and scientific culture is not attained by the 
greater number among us, that is, is nob brouglit about in 
every sphere of our national education, in churches and schools, 
in our teaching and life, our age will be debilitated by this 
internal opposition, as by a secret ailment which threatens our 
moral and spiritual development with disto^ion and decay " 
(Gelzer). And all this is specially applicable to the German 
people. Its many internal differences will never .be truly 
adjusted so long as the main cause of dissension, the religious 
difference, remains ; and the matter still stands as it was put 
by a well-known historian in 1851: " Any one who desires 
to have a German empire must, in the first place, have a 
united and firmly-established German Church : German history 
for more than six centuries has taught this lesson !" 

But for this very reason, the work of reconcilement is our 
special vocation. It is certainly the problem of our century, 
in the solution of which all are bound to join ; hut the 
" People of contrarieties " is called upon more than all others 
to do this for itself and foe the world in general. It is fitted 
for tliis vocation both by internal gifts and also by its past 
history. Amid all its weaknesses and faults, the Teutonic 
genius more than any other combines a deep religious ten- 
dency with a peculiar power of speculative thought; high 
moral earnestness with the deepest and most comprehensive 
tliirst for knowledge ; pecuUar energy foe the most protracted 
and profound investigation, with humble submission to what 
is sacred and divine ; an honest and enduring inspiration for 
all that is high and ideal, with peculiar sobriety, yclearness, 
and acuteness of criticism " The Nation of thinkers " is 
evidently at the same time a nation fitted for the service of 
Christ And in many bitter trials it has maintained its public 
conscience more purely than has been the case with most other 
nations, and, in spite of all mortifications, has " never bartered 
away its ideal" By this moral attitude, and with the univer- 
sality peculiar to it, it has been capable of containing within 
itself for so long a time, and even up to the present day, the 
above-mentioned evenly-balanced antitheses, for the mere 



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62 MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIAHITT. [leot. I. 

toleration of which such an infinite tension and spiritual elas- 
ticity is requisite, that other nations would long ago have 
hroken down in the attempt. It is this mental and moral 
tendency and attitude which capacitates the German people 
before all others for effecting the reconciliation of faith and 



The genius of Germany has, however, already shown histori- 
cally that it has recognised, and has begun to fulfil, this its 
vocation. When, at the close of the middle ages, in conse- 
quence of the degeneracy of the Church, culture and Chris- 
tianity fell into a state of antagonism, it was the mind and 
conscience of the Teutonic races which sought and found the 
right way to unity. Together with the work of the Eeforma- 
tion, classical studies began to revive. In the Reformation 
we have Luther, the most German of Germans, the man of 
faith, standing side by side and hand in hand with the most 
profound adept in classical culture, Melancthon the Teacher 
of Germany, — a living and speaking proof how little faith and 
genuine science contradict, how nobly they supplement and 
further one another, — and -both together showing to the world 
in the newly acquired gospel the way to escape out of the 
profound contradictions of the time, and to bring Christian 
faith once more into harmony with knowledge and conscience. 
In later times the German people has indeed so power- 
fully furthered the unbelief which it received from others, 
that it bears a considerable share of the guilt incurred in its 
extension at the present day. For a long time past, the 
bleach which it was their vocation to heal has been deepened 
and widened by them. But, however deeply entangled in 
unbelief, the German people is now beginning to make good 
the wronCT committed ■ against itself and others, and to direct 
its attention, both practically and scientifically, to the great 
religious task incumbent on it. German inquirers pre-emi- 
nently have foRowed out all doubts into their innermost 
grounds ; and just as they have gone into them the more 
deeply, they have the more recognised the absolute irrefut- 
ableness of the fundamental articles of Christian faith, and 
shown anew to the world that belief and really thorough 
culture and science can exist together in the noblest union. 
And if in the future the breach is to be thoroughly healed. 



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LECr. I.] CAN THE BEEACH EE PILLED UP? 63 

recourse must be had to all that German industry and Gernian 
mental labour has done, and is still doiug, in promoting the 
reconciliation of faitli and knowledge. In these dissensions' 
we have suffered, and are still suffering, not merely for our- 
selves, but, in a measure, fo]' all ; and some day others will be 
compelled to come to us — and many are now already coming 
— to ask us for the use of oiu' weapons, and for the fniits 
of our victory. 

As yet, this victory has been gained for a small number 
only. The greater proportion of educated persons still view 
the Christian faith with doubt and distrust. But must we 
therefore renounce all hope that this yawning breach will one 
day be filled up for the great body of our people ? I think 
not. During the war of liberation, Christianity and German 
nationality solemnized an alliance, deficient indeed in depth 
and clearness (genuine Christianity being stOl obscured by the 
fog of rationalism), but from which, nevertheless, proceeded a 
new religious and moral impetus, which at the present day is 
still operative in various ways in our National Church. Many 
brave and earnest men are even now working at the bridging- 
over of this great gulf. Fov the last thirty years, in spite of 
all hostilities, a truly Christian science has. begun victoriously 
to lead the way : by new and deeper exegetical researches ; b}' 
historical investigation ; by pointing out the remarkable har- 
mony existing between many new archeological, ethnological, 
and even many scientific discoveries, and the utterances of 
Holy Scripture, it has vindicated the truth of the latter, and 
has confirmed the faith of many individuals. In the pulpits 
of by far the greater number of the German churches, and in 
the theological faculties of most of the universities, it has so 
completely driven unbehef out of the field, that the latter has 
been compelled to retire in a great measure into the divinity 
schools of adjacent countries (Switzerland, France, Holland, 
Hungary). When compared with these and other countries, 
Germany shows in various ways that unbelief has a greater 
tendency to insinuate itself into, and to make its peniianent 
abode among, half-educated rather than thoroughly educated 
conimnnities. 

A great portion of the Clmrch, moreover, has already turned 
away from fruitless controTersies, and addressed itself to the 



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64 MODEEN CULTUEE AKD CHRISTIAMITY. [LECT. i, 

practical work of Home and Foreign Missions, so as to exhibit 
to the world by dint of action what Christian faith and Chris- 
tian love are able to effect; thns silencing many a scoffer. 
The commencement of a new apologetic and popular Christian 
literature, the interest of the people in Missions, — an interest 
increasing in spite of all invectives. — better attendance on 
the services of the Church, the- highly necessary co-operation 
of the laity in Church organization, which has ^ain begun, 
are all most significant intimations that even in German 
society Christianity and nationality may be brought to a 
more and more general approximation. We will not, therefore, 
be deprived of the hope that — 

' ' The light will onee again appear 
To all onr brethren, pure and clear. 
Turning in penitence and love, 
To the One Source which spvinga aboTa I " 

We may therefore be allowed, in view of these phenomena, 
to affirm that, our Christianity being such as it is, so deeply 
rooted in the popular life, and supported by an earnest and 
believing science, eliciting great respect even from abroad, — 
with an intellectual and moral power whose influence per- 
vades the globe,— it will no longer do to pass by it with a 
eupercilious shrug ; the in'esistible demand is laid upon every 
one who is desirous to escape the reproach of indifference, 
superficiality, or onesided partiahty, and especially, therefore, 
on all " cultivated persons," that they should at least earnestly 
examine these claims. 

The history of our people, both in ancient and modem 
times, proclaims the fact that the prosperity of its future 
depends on the energetic prosecution of this work of recon- 
ciliation between Christianity and culture. From the era of 
the middle ages, when our great German emperors appeared 
contemporaneously with the erection of our mighty cathedrals, 
down to the time of the wars of liberation, indeed down to 
the present day, it is clearly written on the face of our history 
tliat the periods of our national splendour were our periods of 
faith ; that apostasy from faith renders lis weak and. demised; 
return to it, strong and invincible ! If the former cost us 
am Austerlitz and a Jena, the latter gained a Leipsic and a 
Waterloo ! Just as in former days, when Israel apostatized 



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LECT. I,] CAN TUB BBEACH BE FILLED [JP OO 

from the living God, it fell into political ignominy and bondage; 
so have we, on account of our scientific and religious vocation 
among nations, been compelled more palpably than others both 
to feel and suffer for it when we have fallen away from the 
faith of our fathers, and have become a prey to superstition 
and unbelief. To any one who has eyes to see it, our history 
will everywhere bring clearly before him the fact that belief 
in truth is the power and stronghold of our people, the inward 
moving spring of all its really great actions, the ultimate 
and surest means of protection against all our dangers both 
from within and without, and the crown of glory of our 
noblest Lei-oes botli in peace and war. And, although not in 
like measure, still in a similar way, the history of other 
nations confirms the fact that " all epochs in which faith pre- 
vailed have boen the most heart-stining and fruitful, both as 
regards contemporaries and posterity ; whereas, on the other 
hand, all epochs in which nnbelief obtains its miserable 
triumphs, even when they boast of some apparent briUiancy, 
are not less surely doomed to speedy oblivion." (Goethe, 
Aijiandlungen sum westMlichen JMvan.) 

If, in the recognition of these facts, parties desire to be 
made one in the genuine inheritance of their forefathers, and 
on the ground of the faith which includes and does not ex- 
clude culture ; if, on the one hand, liberals and men of pro- 
gress, now so commonly unboUevers, will only recognise with 
the ancient statesman, that " to obey God is freedom " (Seneca), 
and that " a nation thut desires to be free mud believe, and a 
-Elation that will not believe must he in servitude; that only 
despotism can dispense with faith, but not liberty ; " if they 
would recognise the fact, that no institution, no idea, not even 
the humanitarianism so much bepraised, is a certain guarantee 
for the preservation of freedom, and that such guarantee is 
only to be found in the spirit of the gospel ; if they would 
recognise the fact, that the bond of fellowship, so necessary 
between the vaiious classes of the people and their different 
stages of culture, can only be restored by means of rehgion, 
and that, consequently, in all liberal and national tendencies, 
resort must he had to Christianity; and if, on the other hand, 
their opponents would he willing to comprehend that Chris- 
tianity is not intended to hinder any free national develop- 



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(J6 MOBEES CDLTUEE AND CIIRISTUHITV, [lECT. I. 

ment, bnt only to restrain and purify it, and that freedom 
does not hinder faith, which indeed springs up most vigorously 
in the free air of liherty ; if hoth parties would but recognise 
the fact, that their interests rightly understood do not sever, Ivi 
really unite them, and in this recognition would hold out to 
one another a helping hand: then would the breach which now 
separates us be already healed, and the main cause of our 
present paralysis be removed ; no longer would one be hinder- 
ing another in the reconstruction of Church or Commonwealth, 
all would joyously be working together; Messing and salva- 
tion would again descend from heaven ; our protracted yearn- 
ings would be satisfied, our hope fulfilled, and seeking first the 
Idngdom of God, we should find all other things added to us ! 
And so at last would come the time of which one sings ; 

"Take down thy liarp from, the willow-tiec. 

Thou nation of toil, thon nation of gloom j 
Out of seom and of cruel misery 

Shall eternal golden, blessings bloom ; — 
TliB nations of the ransomed 

WitJi joy approach Thy shrine ; 
Thyself our God's own heirdom. 

And all for ever Thine I " 



In a public place in ancient Eome, there once opened, in 
eonsecLuence of an earthq^ualie, a deep chasra, which no amount 
of rubbish could fill up. The soothsayers were consulted, and 
answered, that " the most precious thing in Eome " must be 
cast into it. This was interpreted by a young hero as apply- 
ing to manly energy and weapons ; and courageous to the death 
and fully accoutred, he sprang into the yawning abyss, which 
immediately closed over him. I, too, have to lead you on to 
a deep gulf, which has been gradually formed by all kinds of 
storms and earthquakes in Church and State, Schools and 
Science. Nowhere else does it yawn so. widely as among 
ourselves. Much has been already cast into it, but it will not 
close. Nor do I believe that this will happen, until that 
wherein we are strongest siiall offer itself willingly for tha 
glorious enterprise ; until German science and German faith, 
arrayed in their respective panoplies of intellect and prayer — 
the former clad in its fuE equipment of critical acumen and 
the sense of truth, the latter in all the might derived from a, 



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LECT. I.] CAS THE BREACH BE FILLED UP ? 67 

heavenly presence and communion — step down into tlie depth, 
and there begin to build. No single man or generation will 
complete this work. It will be the work of many champions 
and of many years. But oh might it be granted me in the 
t lecture, to have cast into the gulf at least one stone I 



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BEA.SOH AND KEVELATION, ^LECT. 11. 



SECOND LECTUES. 



EEASON AND EEVELATIOIT. 



TN the great conflict between faith and unbelief, it ia 
J- always the idea conceived of God that forms the inmost 
core and centre of every question, and in the case of each 
individual gives norm and shape to the -whole of his religion, 
his theoretical convictions, and his practical rules of conduct. 
He who firmly holds that belief in the triune Deity, which 
from apostoHc times has been recognised as constituting the 
basis of our Christian profession, has no longer any rational 
motive for impugning any essential portion of Christian truth, 
while one who has renounced such belief might find it 
ditficult to maintain his adherence to a single dogma. Our 
entire position towards Christianity depends from first to 
last on this, whether we accept the scriptural and Christian 
idea of God or no. 

Hence arises the necessity for our considering first among 
modem doubts respecting the articles of Christian faith, those 
which concern the fundamental Christian idea of God. And 
here starts up the preUminary question — WJience is our hiow- 
ledge of God derived ? Do we obtain it by the mere exertion of 
our natural faculties of reason from the contemplation of the 
world around us and its history, and of our own inward being and 
conscience ? Are the foot-tracks of Deity thus laid down, aud 
discoverable by us, adequate to enable us to form a just con- 
ception of what God is, and of the problem of our moral and 
religious being ? Or do we need for this purpose a super- 
natural revelation on the part of God Himself, as to His 
own nature, wiU, and modes of dealing with ua, such as ia 



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LECT. n.] HEASON AKD REVELATION. 69 

recorded in Holy Scripture ? And if so, what relation does 
the Scripture Eecord hear to our knowledge of God ohtained 
by the process of natural reason ? I3 reason in accord with 
revelation or not ? or in the case of any discrepancy between 
them, must reason, as Deism and Eationalism maintain, take 
precedence tf tq\ elatijn as chief judge m r|^le'^tlon3 of religious 
tiuth 80 thit nothing is to be lecened on the testimony of 
■-iciipture evcept that which is cajahle rf lationil demon 
stiation t Oi on the othei hind is reason as the orthodox 
■\iew maintains to be subordinated to le^elatitn as to the 
highest and only ceitim scuice ot di^me knowledge and that 
by which the intuitions of reason must le shiped an I de 
\ eloped i 

&uch are the questions Mith \ hich m the first phce we 
hive to deiL In attempting their solution we must direct 
attention first to the rights nature and hnuts of reason and 
to tlie witness of hi'itory as to its peiformmces in compir 
son with the lequiiements of our leh^ious niture and more 
csjecially with refeience to the contributions made bj eon 
science to natural theolo^j Hj,-ving done tins we must 
ne\t eximme the innei nature and laws of di\ine revelaticn 
and attempt to asceitain its tn e w orth nece=5ity possibilitj 
md ieco„nisibihtv bj us so as in the list jlice tD draw 
c inclusions 11 to the relation in which the one stands to the 
ether 

Vmong these are eertimly some rather di-y ind unattractive 
questions m respect cf which we must irm oursehes with 
Jit ence but thej lie lU of the greatest \ lacticil impoitance 
You meet a thousand times in 1 f tl tl who in dealing with 
any religious question make at tl ir ppeal to reason, and 

insist on forthwith rejecting a ht that he beyond its sphere, 
without however being able to e 1 any clear account of the 
nature and proper limits of tl e kno 1 d e thus derived, or of 
the relation in which such kno 1 d^ tands to the religious 
needs of man. I would invite you, therefore, to inquire seri- 
ously whether such persons are not really bowing down before 
an idol of the mind, which, while itself of very questionable 
worth, demands as much implicit faith from, its worshippers as 
chvine revelation itself 

We shall first, therefore, turn our attention to 



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70 EEASOS AND EEVELATION. [lECT. II. 

I NATUEAL THEOLOGY, OE THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD DEKIVED 

TEOM NATURE ASD EEASON. 

It is a reproach not seldom laid upon the faith of Christiaas 
hy those who have ever oa their lips — 

" Science and Eeason highest powers in man," — 

that it fails to recognise the rights and powers of reason and 
conscience as organs of divine knowledge, or at least does so 
very imperfectly ; that it treats reason as an unformed, sickly 
child, and, subjecting ifc to an unbearable yoke, deprives it, in 
that crushed and slavish condition, of any healthy use of its 
faculties. Let us see whether there be any truth in this 
allegation. 

And first as to the prerogatives which rightly belong to 
reason, it must be acknowledged that its incapacity has often 
been so grossly exaggerated by certain orthodox writers as to 
give some colour to this accusation. But here a distinction 
must be made between the exaggerations of individuals and the 
true doctrine of the Church and Holy Scripture. So little does 
the Bible demand a mere blind faith, that on the contrary it 
requires a spirit of examination in all things (1 Thess. v. 21 ; 
1 Cor. X. 15 ; 1 John iv. 1 ff.). It often exhorts ua to follow 
the Divine footsteps in the works of creation (Ps. civ. ; Is. xl. 
26 et passim) ; it affirms it to be the duty of aU men, even of 
the heathen, to seek the Lord if Imply they ■mi^hifed after Him,, 
and find Him ; because He is not far from any one of us, and we 
also are His offspring (Acts xvii. 27-29, xiv. 17); it recog- 
nises the existence in man of a spiritual eye, by means of 
which he obtains and possesses light in respect to his relation 
to God (Matt. vi. 22, 23 ; Liike xi 34-36 ) ; and it ascribes 
to the very heathen, and consequently to the human intellect 
per se, independently of the revelation contained in Scripture, 
a capacity for obtaining from creation and from conscience a 
certain amount of real knowledge as to the nature and will of 
God- On this point I would merely call your attention to 
Eom, i. 19, 20 : that which may he hnown of God is manifest 
in them (the Gentiles) ; /w God (Himself) hath manifested it to 
them ; since from the creation of the world His invisible attributes 
have through Sis works suffered themselves to be seen in the eon- 



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LECT. II.] HATUEAL THEOLOGY 71 

templation of reason, even Sis eternal power and Godliead ; so 
that they are without excuse; — and to Eom. it 14, 15 (comp, 
Eom. i. 3 2) : these, havina not the law (once given to Israel), are 
unto themsdves a law; as showing the wm-k of the law {the 
conduct required by the law aud will of God) written in 
their hearts (as for Israel it was written on the tables of stone), 
their conscience tearing witness to it, etc. 

There is, therefore, according to Scripture, first, a natural 
knowledge of God which, since the creation, has been obtain- 
able by man through a rational contemplation of His works, 
and which so obtrudes itself on man as to deprive of aR means 
of exculpation those who reject it. Just as the outer world 
presents itself to the senses for external recognition, so God in 
and by the world presents Himself to reason for internal rec(^- 
nition. And tliis doctrine of the apostle of the Gentiles is not 
only almost literally repeated in so many words by Gentile 
philosophers, — as e.g. by Aristotle {de Mundo, c. 6) : " Although 
invisible to every mortal nature, God is yet manifested by His 
works;" and by Cicero {Tusc. L 29) : " Thou seest not God, and 
yet thou knowest Him from His works," — but also Las ita 
truth practically demonstrated by the various forms of religion, 
however imperfect, of all heathen nations.' And so again as to 
conscience : the law and will of God respecting human conduct, 
manifesting itself as a moral law and divine revelation in the 
heaits of all men, was equally well known to those who spoke 
of the conscience as, ou the one band, " irrefmgable and im- 
mutable, recompensing every good action," and on the other, 
as " arrows of the gods penetrating the heart of the ungodly " 
(Cicero), who " night and day bear about within, their own 
accuser " (Juvenal) ; and again, as " a holy spirit settled in the 
inmost heart and watching over aU actions, whether good or 
evil " (Seneca and the Laws of .Menu). 

It is then in accordance with the gener.il conviction among 
all nations that Holy Scripture lias thus assigned to reason a 
definite province in the domain of theology ; a capacity, nay, an 
inward necessity for independent search after God, and the 
traces of His presence both in the material world withoiit and 
the spiritual world within. The impulse towards and capacity 

I On thia and what follows, comp. Delitzact's excellent work, Syatm dtf 
Okriitl Apologetiii, Leipzig ISiS, p. 63 S. 



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' -^ REASON AND EEVEIAnOS. [LECT. II. 

for this search is the divine patent of nobility in the human 
spirit, and the Christian must not forego his inalienable rigiit 
tci claim it. 

Even the Reformers, who so strongly (especially Luther) 
insisted at times on the incapacity of natural reason, by no 
means called this right in question. So, for instance, Luther 
himself in the JM^Uation vom Mensehm : " It is a settled point 
that reason is among all things in the life of man the chiefest 
and the best, nay, something divine — a sun, and as it were a god 
placed over the government of things in this hfe. And this 
glory God has not withdrawn from reason since the PaU, but 
rather confirmed her in it." And in another place (the tract 
Von, dm KlostergMMen) he also writes : " Whatever is opposed 
to reason is certainly much more opposed to God. How 
should not that he contrary to truth divine which is opposed 
to human truth and right reason ? " It cannot therefore be 
maintained that the Christian Church thinks lightly of 
reason. 

But stm the question remains, how far the province of 
reason extends. What are the limitations of that knowledge 
of which reason is the source ? Or is there any such know- 
ledge at all ? To elucidate this question, we must first come to 
some understanding in respect to the difficult preliminary 
question, variously answered by the profoundest thinkers both 
in ancient and modern times, as . to the nature and idea of 
reason itself. The attempt has constantly been made to 
elucidate the idea of reason by comparison or contrast with 
that of the understanding. But here we can hardly rest satis- 
fied with Kant's mode of distinguishing the two, when he 
makes the understanding to be the faculty which contains the 
categories or logical forms of thought and judgment, and reason 
the faculty containing ideas or forms of conclusion. The dis- 
tinction between these two activities of thought seems to us 
much too subtle for us to assign them to two distinct mental 
faculties. But the other distinction, which regards the under- 
standing as the or^an of logical notions, and reason that of 
ideas, is probably correct, and is generally accepted. The 
former gathers from the outer world of sense perceptions and 
presentments, which it proceeds to combine in general cate- 
gories. The latter pursues the material presented to it by the 



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LECT. IL] HATUEAL TnEOLOGT. 73 

senses and the understanding to its ultimate basis, in order, if 
possible, to apprehend it in its inneimost ground and unity of 
being. Just tlien as notions are products of formal logical 
processes of thought, so are ideas the products of " real radical 
apprehension." Kanfc, however, in assuming that (excepting 
only the appetitive faculty with its eattg(mcal impcriUive) there 
is no proof of there being any real existence corresponding to 
the ideas of reason, seems to have overlooked the fact that the 
very (German) word Vemehmm (perceive or apprehend), from 
which YGTtmnft (reason) is derived, points to something real 
and actual, which presents itself to the apprehension of the 
reason ; and tliat such apprehension may therefore be like the 
contemplation of the world of sense by the understanding, a 
genuine source of experimental certainty. This " real some- 
thing " is tlie Supersensuom. Jacobi, therefore, was right in 
vindicating t^ainst Kant the true significance of the idea- 
constructing activity of reason, and defining it as the faculty 
which apprehends the supersensuous. Only, we must re- 
member, that the activities of reason are not exclusively 
directed towards the supersensuous, but in general towards the 
central unity and essence of the object contemplated : the last 
basis or groimd of each phenomenon. This impulse to seek 
after and discover the substantial unity in everything which 
is made an object of thought is characteristic of all the opera- 
tions of this faculty. It is at once analytical, resolving 
phenomena into their viltimato grounds, and synthetical, com- 
bining these gi'ounds so discovered into ideal unities. 

And now, supposing reason by a like impulse to endeavour 
to combine all these ideas into one yet deeper absolute idea, 
and to pursue in thought the ultimate ground of all being, i.e. 
God; can it (we must ask) by its own innate power, and 
through contemplation of the external world and the witness 
of conscience, arrive at such knowledge and apprehension as to 
be able permanently to satisfy man's religious needs ? Or must 
it for that end be stimulated and guided in its search after the 
only One and the True by supernatural revelations ? 

These questions bring us to the great fundamental antithesis 
between Holy Scripture and modem philosophy. Whereas 
Kant himself frankly denied the existence in reason of any 
power to ari'ive at certain knowledge in divine things, his 



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74 EEASON AND EEVELATION. I_LECT. IL 

successors maintained her absolute authority even in the highest 
sphere. Eeason, they asserted, was able of herself, even with- 
out appeal to the testimony of the external universe and the 
witness of history, and a fortwH without the aid of revelation 
or Scripture, to solve by her own unaided faculties the world's 
enigma ; to penetrate to the ground of all being, i.e. God 
Himself; and so to answer all moral and religious q^uestions in 
respect to man's ultimate destiny and purpose. In this way 
all limitations being removed, the power of reason to attain 
to the knowledge of God was asserted in the most absolute 
terms. 

Scripture, on the contrary, teaches thus : Eeason, like eveiy 
other faculty and every other talent, needs culture and edu- 
cation, such as God from the beginning has vouchsafed it; 
frrst, through the medium of the outer world (Gen. i. 28-30, 
ii 15, 19, 20); and, secondly, by the imposition of a moral 
commandment. Ey the transgression of the latter, mankind 
entered on a perverted course of development, a mis-cul- 
ture ; so that their moral, and thereby also their intellectual 
faculties, experienced such a weakening and disturbance, that 
henceforth, for the knowledge of truth and of salvation, a special 
revelation of God to man became infinitely more a necessity 
than before ; just as a sick child needs help much more than a 
[lealthy one (Matt. vi. 22, 23 ; John ix. 39-41). It is true, 
as -we have been previously told by St. Paul, that reason, even 
in its present condition, possesses the power of apprehending 
in the conscience something of God; but this fragmentary 
natural knowledge of God has not had the practical eft'ect 
of preventing those deprived of further sv.'pei'natu.ral revela- 
tion, that is, the heatlien, from fundamental mistakes as to 
their moral and religious duty, and. from seeking God in a 
perverted way (cf Eom. i 21-32), According to the Scrip- 
tures, therefore, natural reason is irmifficfient for ohtaining a 
rifflU hnmoledge of God ; and a supernatural revelation of the 
nature and will of God is absolutely necessary as a light to 
the darkened reason and the weakened conscience, to prevent 
their falling into various aberrations. 

We have here presented to us yet another important 
difference, which is closely connected with the previous one 
Scripture distinguishes between reason in itself, as it was in- 



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LECT. n,] NATCKAL THEOLOGY. 75 

tended to be, and its present condition, as disturbed by sin. 
Philosophy and rationalism recognise no substantial import- 
ance in this distinction. They pronounce reason as it now is, 
adequate for obtaining a speculative and religious knowledge 
of God, and therefore subject all dogmas to its judgment; 
whereas Scripture not only lays down the necessity of the 
submission of finite reason to the infinite, but also pronounces 
the necessity of its enlightenment and correction by means of 
revelation (e.g. Ps. xviii. 29 ; Isa. xxv. 7, liii. 6 ; Luke ii. 32 ; 
John i. 9 ; Eph. i. 17, 18, et al). 

To this must be added, as a further difference, that philo- 
sophy assumes the absolute cognizability of God, and brieves 
itself able to penetrate to the ultimate ground of things, and 
to place itself in the full possession of all truth ; where^ 
Scripture teaches, " God dwelleth in a light that no man can 
approach unto ; whom no man hath seen nor can see." It 
maintains, therefore, only a partial cognizability of God ; 
teaching that in this life, even with the aid of revelation, we 
can attain only to " a knowing in pait " in divine things, and 
not to anything whole and complete. According to Scripture, 
therefore, this rational knowledge has defined limits, drawn 
partly by the nature of reason itself, partly by the deteriorat- 
ing influence of sin, and again by the infinite nature of the 
Object ; philosophy, on the contrary, aims at demolishing all 
these restraining limits, and looks upon reason as self-suffic- 
ing for the recognition of truth. For which party shall we 
decide ? 

In order to support these claims of reason, some would 
ascribe to it innate ideas existing anterior to all experience — ■ 
by means of which it can generate conceptions of every kind 
of existence. This view has recently and with good right been 
abandoned. It has been shown that there is, psychologically 
considered, nothing contained in reason which could become 
the property of man in any other way than by means of 
experience ; ^ that reason is purely a mental faculty, without 
concrete contents ; and that the logical and mathematical laws 
which we must assume to exist for all minds with which we 
hold intercourse, do not extend further than the production of 
471 IT., and Emuss and 



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76 REASON AND EEVELATIOS. |_LEC'r. IL 

general forms of thought. It has heeii recognised that the 
human mind is so constituted, that whenever it is set in 
action certain ideas develope themselves, to which it is from 
its nature predisposed ; hut that every concrete truth so 
arrived at is not a product of reason as an abstract faculty, 
hut a result of its contact with the outward world, and con- 
y a product of the individual reason practically de- 



This preliminary cLuestion is therefore already decided, on 
phUosophieal gi'ounds, against the claims of the older and later 
idealistic philosophy. 

For our purpose we need not enter further into this ques- 
tion, but merely ask, whether reason is to he regarded as a 
'material souree of knowledge, or as a mere faculty ? Evidently 
the latter, and the former only so far aa, from tlie spiritual 
powers and qualities of human nature, a retrospective con- 
clusion as to the divine Archetype is allowable and even 
necessary. But in general it must he regarded as a mere 
facility of perception, by which the divine and supersen-iuous 
element in tilings is discerned. Is not reason essentially i 
receptive oi^an, whose fniiction is to heir to leim and to 
embrace truths which come to it either from withrut or from 
above? Is it not, therefore, naturally predisposed to receive 
revelations, the word being taken in tlie most ^ent-ral sense ^ 
If then, according to the later idealistic philosophy reason 
assumes to he able to comprehend by means of it's innite 
notions and ideas the divine ground cf all things and to soh e 
the enigma of the univeree and its destinies i= it claimm^ 
more than to comprehend itself, and soh e its own self con 
stituted enigmas ? And is not this an intemil contradiction i 
With equal truth and simplicity it has been objected against 
these claims : Philosophy has ever desired to solve the qup^ 
tions. What am I ? Whence am I ? and, Whithei im I and the 
world going ? But who is it puts these questi ns * Peason 
But reason, we are told, is able to answer them Ii it able ' 
Would it permt in asking questions of iihith ^t hr-ew tki 
answer? If reason, the oi^n of perception lefuses to pu 
cdve, it becomes therein/ itself in-ational. 

But now arises a further question, whether reason m older 
to attain to a right knowledge in divine thmga has to ei.eri,ise 



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LECT. II.] NATTJEAL THEOLOGY. 11 

its perceptive function merely on tlie world without and 
conscience within— God's natural revelation of Himself, — 
or whether a supernatural revelation of God is also neees- 
stiry ? On these points, let the impartial judgment of history 
decide. Let us inquire of the history of religion and the 
histoiy of philosophy how far natural reason apart from reve- 
lation has succeeded in its efforts. First, let us turn to those 
races of classical antiquity who were destitute of a special 
revelation. God suffered them "to follow their own ways," 
hut He gave them the most intelligent minds, surrounded 
them with the noblest objects of nature, gave them a history 
full of the most illustrious proofs that He judges with a holy 
arm, and a period of several thousand years in which " they 
should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and 
find Him." With all these advantages, what knowledge of 
God did they attain to ? To an obscure presentiment, break- 
ing forth here and there, but not to the clear knowledge, much 
less to the practical assertion of the simplest truth of all,- 
namely, that God is and can be only One ! Neither in ancient 
nor in modern times has it been possible to find in the whole 
earth a nation which, without the revelation recorded in Scrip- 
ture, and by its own powers of thought, has arrived at definite 
belief in one living personal God ! Perliaps you will adduce 
India against me. " One God, and beside Him none other " 
[Eli Bi-umho, dittyo nashti), is an utterance which is in fact, 
even in the present day, to be heard from the lips of every 
Brahmin. Brahminism, at least in its most ancient elements, 
shows clear traces of a monotheism. But if even the thoughts 
of the old Hindoos did sometimes rise from the contemplation 
of various deified natural phenomena, such as the dawn, the 
lightnings, and the storms, etc., to that of the one primal cause 
of all things, this cause was regarded not as the One God, but 
as an impersonal undefined existence, of which all that could 
be said was, that it is not what it is ; with which, therefore, 
any personal communion in prayer would be impossible. 
Monotheism in this case was attained by the surrender of the 
living character and p&rsonality of God, and so was essentially 
pantheistic; whilst the popular view, adhering to belief in 
personifications of divine power, lost thereby the divine unity 
in millions of gods derived from nature. The same thing 



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78 ItEASON AHD EBVEIATION. [LECT. U. 

occurred subsecniently in Greece ; ^ and Mahomet Limaelf ar- 
rived at monotheism, not by means of his own reason, but 
thrQiigh the influence of Judaism and Christianity. 

Moreover, notwithstanding all the witness of conscience and 
history, the reason of the heathen world, when left to itself, 
never attained to those other fundamental truths, that God is 
and must be an absolutely good and holy being. It occasionally 
assigned to its heaven its own human beauty, but with it 
also its human shame. The gods of even the most cultivated 
heathen, Greeks, Eomans, Hindoos, etc, suffer under the very 
same moral infirmities, indeed gross vices, as men Truly, 
reason cannot boast much of her performances in a religious 
point of view ; for can any genuine, moral, and religious 
knowledge of God be imagined, devoid of the two fundamental 
truths above-named ? Are we then to conclude from this that 
revelation is, or is not needed as a guide to erring reason ? But 
let us hot be too precipitate I 

The objection might be iii^ed, that the Greek philosophers, 
for instance, did not share in the popular conceptions con- 
cerning the gods. This is c[uite correct. Some of them have 
emphatically opposed those immoral conceptions, and so ap- 
proached nearer to the idea of monotheism. But not one com- 
pletely attained to this idea i'or them, the Divine Being was 
always losing Himself iu nature, or some general idea. Even 
Plato did not make his way \\p to the idea of a divine, self- 
conscious, personal Being ; nor ever distinctly propounded the 
question of the personality of God. It is true that Aristotle 
maintained more definitely than Plato that the Deity must be 
a personal Being. But even for him, it was not an absolute, 
free, creative power, but one limited by primordial matter ; 
not the world's Creator, but only One who gave shape to the 
rude material, and so not tndy absolute. 

But now let us look more closely into the liislory of philo- 
sopliy in general, and question the results of reason's efforts 
extending over thoiisands of years. Where are they? I could 
call your attention to many an honest confession on the part 
of philosophers, — to the complaint of Plato how hard it is 
to discover the Father of the Universe ; to the utterances of 

' Cf. also Gess and Eiggenboch, Apologetische Beitriige, p. 50 S., sad Sup- 
plement No. 9. 



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LECT. II.] NATUEAL THEOLOGY. 79 

Socratea, that he held it to be the greatest happiness to know 
the will of the gods, but did not believe this eould be dis- 
covered by the conclusions of reason, and therefore recom- 
mended an appeal to the science of divination,-— utterances 
which reveal to us what a profound longing after some special, 
divine revelation existed in the greatest philosophers of anti- 
quity, — or to some of the impressive songs of the' Indian 
Migveda, in which the longing for a knowledge of the origiaal 
source of life, and the pain of uncertainty on the part o£ the 
" 1 the ever-recurring refrain, — 



" Who is the Goi to whom our gifts belong ?" 

or to the way in which Fichte, after first combating revelation, 
confessed later on that reason stood in need of its assistance : 
" A Higher Being undertook the charge of the first members of 
our race, just as an old and venerable document containing the 
deepest and sublimest truths, represents Him to have done ; 
and to this testimony ail philosophy must revert in the end." 

Instead of further calling your attention to all this, I 
would only point out to you a single noteworthy matter of 
fact, that up to the present day, no one has been able to 
show to the world what the outcome of so long-continued 
a process of thought on the part of so many minds, and the 
certaia gain in respect to moral and religious knowledge, 
actually amount to ; in short, what the generally acknowledged 
results of philosophy are. In other sciences, after some time, 
certain truths can be collected as fixed results, from which 
advimces can be made to further investigations. Why, then, 
has no one succeeded in finding and establishing such results 
of the long process of philosophical developments 1 (For what 
Schelling attempted in his Positive Philosophy remained an 
attempt which received only partial acceptance ; and aR he 
did beyond this was founded on the Christian view of things, 
and so became, what we are not here concerned with, a " Philo- 
sophy of Eevelation.") Whence arises this surprising pheno- 
menon ? Simply from the fact, that philosophy has arrived at 
no definite residts in theology properly so called, and never laid 
dovyn, any principle as to the nature of God, which has not in its 
turn been assailed and upset. 

In saying all this, it is not our intention to deny absolutely 



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80 KEASON AND REVELATION. [lecT. IL 

the value of philosophy. The present generation, intoxicated 
hy triumphs in the domain of natural science, must be sum- 
moned to rather than deterred from the study of philosophy 
(hut it should he a thorough study), Most of the sciences, and 
theology above all, have very much to thank it for ; without! 
philosophy they would not be wliat they now are. But we 
maintain that no pliilosophy, whicli entirely rejected the aid 
of revelation, and sought to comprehend the world and God 
hy mere efforts of reason, ever succeeded in attaining to any 
positive, lasting results. From Thales and Pythagoras, onward 
to Hegel and Herbart, not only has one system taken the 
place in due time of another, but also by its criticism has 
demolished the earlier one. In criticism and in negation, 
then, philosophy has made mighty strides ; men have grown 
■wiser in pulling down, but not in building up. The former is 
no doubt much the easier of the two. Down to our time, 
philosophers have come to no agreement even as to the basis 
from which philosophical speculation has to proceed ; whether 
from some general principle or idea, or from matter ; whether 
from the idea of pure being, or from human consciousness, etc. ; 
—they are not yet agreed as to the relation between the real 
and the ideal, whether the former or the latter is that whicli 
truly is ; — not yet agreed as to the idea and nature of God and 
His relation to the world, nor as to that of man, his reason, 
and his spirit ; — they are not yet agreed as to the relation 
existing between body, soul, and spirit ; nor as to our freedom 
of will and awn accountability ; nor, in short, as to any one 
fundamental q^uestion in speculative knowledge, moi'als, or 
religion. Jn whatever direction we turn, we iind ourseh'es 
confronted by " open q^uestions," unsolved problems, and views 
either diametrically opposed or importantly divei^ent. 

We may therefore justly affirm, that philosophy in itself, ie. 
abstract rational speculation, has not yet attained to positive 
results. When, as in modem times, it has pretended, without 
the guidance of experience, and by means of mere reflection, 
to attain to some positive result, and to construct reality out 
of its own ideas, the results have always Iiad to be corrected 
by experience, and not seldom laid themselves open to ridicule 
or. contempt. Hegel, for instance, believed that he had philo- 
eophically proved that there could not be more than eleven 



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lECT. IL] KATURAL theology. (Jl 

planets ; and in his time there were not more than eleven 
known. Subacquently, however, more exact astronomical in- 
vestigation has added several dozens to this number. 

If, then, reason without experience thus fares in the pro- 
vince of nature, will it not meet with a similar fate, when, 
without the aid of revelation, it seeks to attain to a real know- 
ledge of God, and to positive religious truth ? Is not the 
Greek poet right when he says: 

' ' Except the goda themselves to thee unTeil, 
Search as thou wilt the world, thou scek'at in vain " ! 
In fact, no great objection can be raised, if, in opposition 
to this boundless and yet ever changing assumption of reason, 
Christianity steps in and says : Philosophy is condemned by 
its own history: always imagining that in some particular 
system it has arrived at a conclusion; whilst nevertheless 
reason, both in individuals and in the whole race of man, is 
subjected to a continuous process of development ; it is ever 
falling into the error of lookiiig wpon reason as absohitdy free, 
and failing to recognise the disturbing influence of sin. No 
wonder, then, if, with these defects, philosophy never attains by 
its own powers to any absolute certainty or any complete know- 
ledge of the truth, and the apostolic witness remains unshaken : 
" The world by its wisdom knew not God in His " (1 Cor. i. 
21). Is not this witness confirmed by history 1 And if this 
be the case, we arrive at the conclusion, that reason by itself 
does not suffice for attaining to a true knowledge of God ; that 
in fact it needs a light, to which it must be subordinate, a 
corrective against error ; that is, it needs the help of revelation. 
'• In Thy light shall we see light " (Ps. xxxvi. 9) ; we remain 
in darkness and uncertainty, so long as we are illuminated 
by nothing but the dim lamp of our own reason. This lias 
been confessed by some even of the greatest philosophers, 
such as Pichte and Schelliiig, w]io, after manifold voyages 
and wanderings over the sea of rational speculation and con- 
templation of nature, have at last steered a more and more 
decided course for the haven which is found in a belief in 
revelation. 

This conclusion will hardly be weakened by an appeal to 
the results of natural science in the present day, which, in 
direct antithesis to metaphysical philosophy, assigns to sen- 



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82 EEASON AND EEVELATION. [l.ECT. IL 

sible experience as a source of knowledge the place whicli 
the other claims for reason. We will only ask ; What lias 
modern natural science, apart from revelation, done for moral 
and religious knowledge ! It also has sought, in its own way, 
to solve the problem of the world's origin and of the life upon 
it ; but in that attempt has involved itself in such absurdities, 
that, now-a-days, all sober naturalists, one after another, are 
openly proclaiming that their science can adopt no other 
basis than the proposition, " In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth," without involving itself in a cloud of 
windy hypotheses, so soon as it attempts in other ways to 
solve the riddle of the worlds bcginmnT Can then natural 
science make inyiioTress m its endeavours tD explain the 
origin and formition of the outwaid unnerse without tacitly 
assuming the activitj of some ongmatmg adipting, and 
amn^m^ povver indicated in those hr^t wjrds of Holy 
Seriptuie ' ^ In this case ilso we see tlie neid of itvelation. 
Natural science his also sought by means of its oi^n investi- 
gitions to '(dIvc the q^uestion is to the origin of man, and 
has arrived in the end at a total denial cl the spnitial part in 
man the destruction of his ethical personalitj i doing away 
with all morality and reliaifn and the annih htion of all 
moral freedom in subjection to an absolute natural necessity. 
The materiilism of the present day show s moie clearly than 
any preMO us phenomenon thit nntire dots not Tiieidy reveal 
hut also coru-eals G d Minute obseiv itions of natural pheno- 
mena ha\e been biought to an unprecedented degree of per- 
fection and thereby unveiled moie cleirlj than ever the 
depths of divine wisdom to the believers in revelation. But 
he who rejects the lamp of revelation, and stops short at 
mere material results, fails thereby to recognise the 'connec- 
tion of the whole, and through the material, loses the sense 
of the immaterial, the spiritual, and the divine. 
It happens, as Goethe predicts : 

" Who of the living seaka to know and tell, 
Strives first the living spirit to expel ; 
He lias in tand the symraCe parte alone, 
But lacks tlie spiilt.bond that makes them one! " 

' See the proof of this in Ulrici, GoU und dk Ifalur, pp. 341-J22. W» 
rerert to this again in Lect. in. 



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I,ECT. n.] HATDEAL THEOLOGY. 83 

Let who will call this progress — any man with a just sense 
will soon note, that nioTal and religious knowledge (for we are 
not speaking here of what is gained by the separate branches 
of natural science as such) can only lose thereby and gain 
nothing ; whilst, on the other hand, splendid results are obtained 
in favour of the deeper knowledge of the divine wisdom and 
love by an investigation of nature, so soon as it permits reve- 
lation to intensify its view of the " spiritual bond of union," 
of the One in the many, the eternal Cause and the eternal end 
and aim of the world. 

Some liave attempted lately to make of coiisdctice, as the 
third factor of natural theology, the highest source of religious 
knowledge, and to represent revelation as dependent upon it. 
So they follow one after another. Eeason having wearied 
herself in the attempt to solve the mysteries of God and the 
universe, nature tried her hand at the same problem ; and now 
that a onesided contemplation of nature has led inq^uirers into 
the slough of materialism, they begin to interrogate conscience. 
In things divine it would seem as if men would question and 
attend to any witness rather than God Himself. 

Of these three factors, conscience would certainly appear to 
be the most reliable. Nevertheless, the numerous researches 
which have been recently instituted by different theologians 
into the nature of conscience, are in their results just as 
divergent as the researches of philosophers into the nature of 
reason. On this point also we need not go beyond what is 
generally agreed on. That the word " conscience " is used in 
different senses, sometimes for a definite subjective knowledge, 
sometimes for that which is objectively known ; that we speak 
not only of a religious and moral, but also of an ecclesiastical, 
a Christian, a scientific, an assthetic, indeed even of a public 
conscience, etc,, need not disturb us bete, for all we are now 
inquiring after is the common fundamental notion represented 
oy the word in all these uses of it. 

Now conscience is confessedly that consciousness which 
testifies to the law of God implanted in us ; that moral faculty 
whereby man discerns with inward certainty what is right and 
what is wrong in the sight of God (Eom. i. 32), and is con- 
scious that the eye of God is turned upon him. It is " the 
moral heart-throb in man, testifying to the existence of a 



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84 KEASOW AKD EEVBLATION. [lect. IL 

higher will by which it is implanted, and seeking to control, 
awakening, guiding, judging, all the movementg of hnman life, 
so far as it pertains to the province of free-will." Therefore, 
moral convictions only are directly derived from the action ot 
conscience. As being man's knowledge of the law written in 
his heart (o-ucei'Sjja-i?), it produces, indirectly, a certain know- 
ledge of the Lawgiver and His \vill, that is, of God, as a holy 
and righteous being, the moral consciousness being here iden- 
tified with the religious. So far, in fact, conscience is, from 
a humanitarian point of view, a genuine source of natural 
theology. 

Scripture, as we have already seen, not only recognises this, 
but also affirms that even with the heathen, conscience has not 
wholly lost its efficacy (Eom. ii. 14, 15), Even fallen man 
possesses in conscience a certain sense and moral appreciation 
of truth, which, if he follow, he is " of the truth," susceptible 
for higher divine truth (John xviii, 37). On the other hand. 
Scripture by no means siipports the position " that conscience 
is the source and judge of the whole complex of Christian 
doctrine ; that no dogma is to find place therein which cannot 
be referred to an utterance of conscience ; that conscience must 
decide without appeal as to the divinity of Scripture as a 
whole or in detail"^ According to this, conscience would 
be the chief if not the only source and highest rule of 
faith, as of our religion generally. And this is more or less 
the view of those who may often in the present day be heard 
to say, that in everything man need only follow his conscience ; 
and that that is the best, nay, the only true religion. In all 
this, the assumption evidently is, that conscience is an ever re- 
liable witness for the truth, a constant and immutable' source of 
moral and religious knowledge. Scripture teaches otherwise, 
namely, that conscience may err, be defiled, become impure and 
weak (Tit. i. 15 ; 1 Cor. viii. 7-10, 12 ; 1 Tim. iv. 2) ; that as 
a matter of fact it has 'become weakened and confused by sin ; 
that, in order to attain to perfect clearness and power, it needs 
enlightenment through God's word and Spirit {e.g. Eom. ix. 1), 
purification (Heb. ix. 14), and awakening by the revealed will 
of God. The oftentimes confused, though never perfectly 
extinguished, subjective revelation of God's will in the eon- 
' Cf, ScLejike}, ChHsllidie Doffmatik vom Slandpuakl dea GemUsem, IS58-59. 



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LECT, II.] KATL'iiAL TUEOLOGT. 85 

science, needs for its complement the pure and only constantly 
reliable objective revelation of God in His Word. It is not, 
therefore, revelation which is to be detei-mined and ruled by 
conscience, but the latter by revelation, as its necessary 
accompaniment and indispensable guide. 

Here also, therefore, we have essentially the same contro- 
versy as in the case of reason : are we to acknowledge, or not, 
that the conscience has been darkened and confused by sin ? 
This question ia practically answered in the negative, when 
conscience is made the source and arbiter of the whole body of 
faith. Which view is the right one ? Whether conscience 
13 thepid]i of re\elation 11 a pDint y^e cannot decide until we 
ha^e consideied what revelation itself is On the other hand 
the question we are dealing with i=i whether consiience either 
bv itielf or combined with leison and nature is nob in 
adequate source foi attaining the knowledge of Gtd — a source 
which tenders levelation snperfluou'^ ? 

Is it so ^ "We do not here go beyond the question as to 
whit ccnseience objectively la}s down Is this alwi->s the 
same ? By no means We hod cf couise m all men a 
conscience and make the fuithei observation that neither its 
witness noi its nature is dependent on human caprice It 
beat'< its testimonj with an authority independent of our wjU, 
and this is an essential characteristic of conscience as it exists 
m t11 men But it is just as univeioaUy the ease that conscience 
differs partially in each individual.^ It bids and forbids, 
decides and judges of right and wrong, acanrding to the iimgM 
in each individual, which is not absolutely common to all men, 
but in part at least very changeable and various. Hence the 
difference in tlie utterances of conscience in the case of men of 
different degrees of culture and of different religions, side by 
side with a certain fundamental similarity. Hence the peculiar 
deficiencies and [amiue in the consciences of so many men. 
Evidently, therefore, conscience, like reason, is, " on the one 
hand, something which has become, on the other hand, some- 
thing which is becoming." 

' Cf. Giider, Uronerungen, uher die Lehre vmtt Oernissen nach der Sckriji, 
Krauss ut sapr., p. 134 ff., who, on account of its dissimilar [lurport, delines con- 
science as "tlie innat* compulsion to have an ideal and to acknowledge it ta 
judge over oneself." Besides also cf R. Hofmann, dieLehrevom Gewisseii, 186flj 
Eahler, JJehre vom Oewitim, ISGl, and Delitzsch lit ai^r., 71 ff., 161 S. 



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86 EEASOK AND KEVEU.TEON. [LECT. II. 

WTiat follows from all tliis ? First of all, that Scripture 
is right when it speaks of the variations and confusions of 
conscience ; that it is, therefore, a moat questionable step, to 
make of the changeful utterances of conscience a main source 
of Christian dogma ; nay, that it is no longer possible to derive 
a natural religion with truths universallp valid, from the utter- 
ances of conscience taken hy itself, apart from the iniluences 
■which help to determine it. Not with tndh universally valid, 
for every conscience,, on account of its individual character, has 
real moral weight for its possessor only (cf. 1 Cor. x. 29); 
not from the utterances of conscience by itself, for everj' 
separate utterance of each individual conscience has its source 
in special circumstances, and is most commonly determined hy 
the influence of some positive rehgion. 

If all this already renders us somewhat cautious in the use 
of the conscience as a source- of the knowledge of God, the 
testimony of history will make us stdl more cautious. Here 
also history, not abstract researches, must be suffered to decide. 
"What, according to its testimony, has conscience accomplished 
for true theology apart from revelation ? We have already 
heard the answer to this cLuestion : The heathen, notwithstand- 
ing all their listening to the voice of conscience, as it spoke in 
the very noblest spirits among them, did not attain to the 
knowledge of God as the personal, absolutely Holy One, but 
" changed the glory of the unchangeable God into an image 
like to perishable man and beasts " (Eom. i. 23). 

Let us take a glance at the heathen world. One man aims 
at deliverance from sin by means of a bath ; another {eg. the 
North American Indians) thinks to purify his heart by the 
aid of an emetic ; here another sets prayer mills in motion at 
the caprice of the wind ; another pours out libations of wine 
or tea, sheds human blood, or offers his only child as the most 
acceptable sacrifice. Here a man can take no rest, until he 
has accomplished sanguinary vengeance on the man-slayer; 
there a fanatical Mussulman seeks to purchase paradise for 
himself by destroying as many Christians aa possible, and the 
lika Are not all these just so many examples of an erring 
eonsdeme, which is strong enough to insist on some kind of 
sacrifice or expiation, bnt is still too dark to apprehend tha 
perversity of these ways and means ? "What a mistalcea 



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LECT. II.] NATUKAL THEOLOGY. 87 

idea of God and the moral duty of man is presupposed in 
all this ! 

Is this mere spark of moral and religious knowledge to he 
supposed sufficient to enable men to solve the problem of 
moral duty ^ The fall of the nohlest nations of antiquity — the 
moral corruption of heathen nations of the present day addin" 
ever fresh confirmation to the fearful description of heathen vices 
in Bom. i. 21-32 — answers with a thousaud-tongued voice, No ! 
Even the knowledge of God derived from conscience was not 
and is not sufficient to guard men against the most grievous 
moral errors and the wickedest religious abominations; nor 
has it heen able to save any heathen, nations from moral and 
religious, and, finally, even from material destruction. 

But is it so ? Must it not he allowed that the natural 
religion of conscience goes further than this ? May we not 
turn from the dry tree of popular error to the green tree of 
phaosophical speculation ? Well, then, let us take one philo- 
sopher who approached more nearly than many others to a 
true knowledge of God, ascribing to Him goodness as His 
most essential attribute, — let us glance, for instance, at 
Pkto's Republic. What do we find there ? In his common- 
wealth, he desires to see introduced a community both of 
goods and wives; he desires that parents should not even 
know their children, to say nothing of educating them;. that 
a man should look upon , aU cliildren as his own, which, ac- 
cording to the time of their birth, might possibly have been 
his ; that the mother should nourish sometimes one child and 
sometimes another, and among these children, only incidentally 
those which were born from her ; that the nilers of the State 
should be permitted, without further question, to put to death 
weakly and unhealthy persons, and should prescribe for every 
one his vocation, etc. ; in short, he sacrifices— and this, indeed, 
fully in conformity with the ancient idea of a commonwealth — 
the right, the freedom, and. the property of individuals, in the 
very harshest way, to the good of the Stata I now ask — 
According to all these details, have philosophers been able to 
keep themselves free from tlie clouded moral consciousness 
and erring conscience of their time ? And what, then, is in 
this case the fundamental deficiency ? The want here, as in 
the whole of heathenism, is the recognition of the viorth of 



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88 EEASOS AND EEVELATIOIT. [lECT. II. 

each Tivmaii personality. This man only begins to see, when he 
knows the God of love, that is, by means of revelation. But 
if the heathen is deficient in a right knowledge of his own 
moral worth, and thns also of his moral duty, with his whole 
life bound up in the worship of the impulses of nature — a 
mere life of selfishness, how is it possible for his mind to rise 
to any clear knowledge and apprehension of God, as an abso- 
lutely holy and loving Will ? But neglect of tlie divine law 
in the conscience must, the longer it exists, lead more and 
more to a misapprehension and neglect of the Lawgiver. The 
loss of the living God must then be made good by the creation 
of false gods of one's own. And as the-creator, so his creatures. 
A people sunk in sensuality and cmelty, ci'eates for itself sen- 
sual and cruel gods, and worships them with corresponding rites. 

In fact, the history of heathenism is the history of the 
aberrations of conscience, and one long proof of the need of 
revealed religion for its enlightenment and purification. But 
this history is likewise a proof tlmt conscience is never 
completely extinguished, and that it absolutely is not, as cer- 
tain materialists seek to make us believe, a matter of arbi- 
trary agreement and of conventional manners and customs, 
but is an original revelation of God in man, which forms a 
part of universal human essence and of our moral nature. 
For no sooner is God's true will as revealed in His word 
presented to the heathen mind, than conscience is awakened 
even in tlie cannibal, who reverting to his higher instincts, 
feels shame for bis present conduct as inconsistent with them ; 
and this alone were enough to prove that conscience, as a 
source of natural religion, has stni a potential existence in 
every human mind, however much obscured by error and sin. 

And is not the history of Christendom also replete with 
proofs that without the continual guidance and stimulus of 
revelation, the conscience soon becomes darkened ? What, 
for instance, has broiight so many to the stake ? Very 
fieqiiently nothing but the erring conscience which thought 
that thereby "it did God seiwice" (John xvi. 2). Whence 
the darkening of the Christian conscience, such as that ex- 
liibited in so many ways in the moral history of the middle 
ages ? The light of revelation was placed " under a bushel ! " 
And what is it that has subsetjuenUy awakened the Christiao 



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LECT. II.] HATUBAL THEOLOGY. S9 

conscience, so that it has f^in reverted to the worship of God 
in spirit and in truth ? The light of God's word ! Thus, 
therefore, as in the case of reason and nature, we again arrive 
at the old conclusion, that this factor of natural theology also 
stands in tieed of revelation; that conscience is practically 
exposed to such violent fluctuations, and so readily errs and 
is perplexed, that it cannot dispense with the continual en- 
hghtenment and fixed rule of the revealed word. 

These facts are overlooked hy many of those who now 
regard conscience as an adeq^uatc guide in matters of faith and 
religion, and believe that they can dispense -with revelation,^ 
Besides this, they disregard the fact, that Christian conscience 
can no longer be entirely dissevered from revelation ; that its 
witness is a priori influenced by the spirit of Christianity, of 
which the strongest rationalists cannot wholly divest them- 
selves, so that, although they desire to adopt a mere natural 
religion, they are, nevertheless, unable to dispense with the 
assistance of supernatural revelation. Finally, they over- 
estimate the force and range of conscience and reason, in 
respect to the satisfaction of mir moral and religious need. 

An old mystic says somewhere, " God is an unutterable sigh 
in the innermost depths of the soul" With still greater j ustice, 
we may well reverse the proposition and say, the soul is a 
ne^ er ending si^h tftei God because she is from Him she is 
also for Him ani tends to Htm In her deepest leec^ses there 
lives or slumbers ho^\ever hidden an me^tinguishible longing 
after God She knows herself bj an mwiid sentiment not 
merelv to be dependent on Him but it the same tmie drawn 
towards Him and de=(tined ioi a union with Him Being 
essentially reasonable she leads God e\er}where both in 
and without herself so thit she is unalle to free herself fiom 
His presence however far removed Irom Him as the voice of 
conscience shows But the more she seeks and apprehends, 
the greater is hei longing after Hun And the moie we con- 
sider the nituie rf this longing the moie we discern that 
what it aims at is not a mere intellectual appiehension of 
God but a vital evptnence. enjoyment md communion The 

•AaF Pc(>aut m hia lite woik £e CUr •t et la consnenc repeats with 
Innume ^ble terms of expreKaioD that the rctigioiu and moral life has merely 
God and mdindual conscience as its two factors. 



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90 KBASON AND REVELATION. [lECT. If, 

religious need is essentially of a practical nature; it is an 
impulse to draw nigh to God, and to place one's self in per- 
sonal fellowship with Him, proceeding from the presentiment 
that our spirit can fiad its abiding rest and satisfaction in 
nothing but this fellowship, and in the enjoyment of the love 
and peace of God. The question then stands finally thus: 
Whether natural religion, besides imparting a true knowledge, 
succeeds likewise in conducting the soul to a living com- 
munion with God, and so, in satisfying its deepest need ? 

But how completely incompetent in this respect is it shown 
to be if we seek God in nature ? How little can we discern 
what He truly is, let alone the failure in revealing the jwr- 
sojial relations between Him and us, which are required by 
our religious need ! We feel that there is an infinite Being 
above us, by whose almighty power we are encompassed ; but 
just when we feel the nearness of the Eternal One, the words 
and ideas are wanting, which might, as it were, clinch the im- 
pression made and fix it in the form of clear conceptions. 
Again and again, the Inexpressible One eludes our imagination, 
or, we only too readOy confound Him with natural powers and 
phenomena, and so thrust into a dark and vanishing distance 
the Father of our spirits who is indeed so nigh ! 

Or if we seek God in the realm of thought, how little falls 
from the barren heights of speculation to cheer the longing 
heart and its burning spirit o£ inquiry I We look in vain even 
from those who are most advanced in such inquuies for testi- 
mony as to any real satisfaction derived therefrom. Socmtcs 
and Plato attained perhaps to a sense of the Divine, but still 
think of God as one who remains far from them. Pi'ophete 
and apostles, on the other hand, speak of Him as One who is 
very nigh them, and whom to approach is their highest good 
(Ps. Ixxiii. 28). The former deduce the notion of God in 
acute syllogisms; the lattor are learning to know Him as 
He is, as the true Shepherd of their souls, as " the strength 
of their hearts, and their portion for ever." In the one ease 
a religious need is satisfied, in the other it is not. In order 
to estimate the whole extent of this difference, compare, 
for instance, the 23d or the 73d Psalm with any one of 
PlatJi's dialogues. In the lattf^r, there is perhaps an approxi- 
mately correct answer given to the question of reason. What 



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lECT. n,] NATUEAL THEOI,OGT. 91 

is God in Himself * But in the former we find a solution to 
tb 1 t f tl h t A^ 1 t G iforme t How can I 
1 llyh p t k H Njrtillth 

1 d can th 1 d 1 ti fied. 

I-un llw tltmyillhre object, that they feel 
tl K 1 t 1 fu]ly t fi d by tlieir rational 

1 tl t in th t 1 hgion does all that is 

q rgd Th J 11 f th l p 1 t their own " good " 

troffth wl tf ction of their heart 

E t th re t 1 £ t< 1 If d ption ? I should like 

t k th d wl th r they can 'honestly 

t tl t tl 1 t and their practical 

It 1 "r d h tl tl former are actually 

fti t t bl th t ist 1 nd to do good. As 

b th m 1 ^ ; in m nee should do both 

til th 1 p 3 t! k wl Iga of good and the 

p f d t B t h t t ught by history and 

p t tl lat b tw these two ? Answer : 

■^t I J t U h t fl ! J</ — ven that is not done 

h h m k w f 1 ce to be the will of 

Gist th tl 1 tl "When they knew God, 

th y 1 nfi 1 H m t C d th re thankful" (Eom. 

1) W tl t tl f th tl confession of Marcus 

Aurelius, " I should liave hved better than I have done, had 
I always followed the monitions of the gods." 

The Tfiimcledge of the heathen, therefore, in divine things was 
greater and better than its practical remit. Hence their sense 
of fjuilt, turning their good conscience into an evil, self-con- 
demnii^ one ; or, in time, into a conscience which is eiTing 
and seared. Attention paid to conscience, so far from leading 
to the satisfaction of our rehgious needs, conducts to a kind of 
mora] dualism, of which we find virtuous heathen making the 
same complaint' which Paul, in liom.vii 7-25,soimpi'essively 
describes. Just as prophecy was the incorporated conscience 

•Cf., fot instance, the passage in Xenophon, Cyr. ri. 1-41: "I certainly have 
two souls, for if there were only on«, it snrely conld not be at the samn time 
good and bad, nor could it at the Bame time love good and base actions, and also 
at the same time wish the very same thing and not desire to pnt the wish into 
autioa ■■, but evidently there are two souls, and if the good aonl gets the upper 
hand, then good will be done, and if the evil, then shwneful actions will be per* 
petrateil" (Delitzsch ul ^ujir.). 



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92 EEASOS AND REVELATION. [lECT. IL 

of Israel, so the conscience was "the propfiet of the lieatlien," 
which was intended to awaken the longing for a divine redemp- 
tion, hy means of the sorrowful recognition of its own impotence. 

And ha^ it ever heen otherwise, m the case of any one wlio 
has rejected the aid of revealed religion in his moral conflicts ? 
Is not the saying of St. Paul again and agam confirmed by 
every day's experience, " For to will is present with me ; but 
how to perform that which is good I find not ; for the good 
that I would I do not"? (Eom. vii. 18, 19.) Does not the 
practical conduct often fall short of the better knowledge and 
mli ? K we aU are more or less compelled to acknowledge 
this,^ what follows ? ^Vhy, that our power for good, derived 
from conscience and natural religion, is so impaired that we can 
never keep ourselves wholly free from evil, nor get beyond a 
feehng of guilt which m con'iecmenco of the contradiction 
existing between our knowledge ind om actions is ever 
asserting it-,elf ind if we then seek a way ot escipe fiom 
such condemnition and mqune how we mij be reconciled 
with God what further counsel can rei«on jr conscience now 
aff^id us ? Ncne oi it least none thit i', satlsf^ctorJ Into 
whit follies h%\Q the heathen filkn ujon this point This 
IS the juncture it winch nituial religion either fills moat 
miserablj or utterly misleids if Imi s no uay to prate or 
eipvxhon of our guilt The more profonndlj the knowledge of 
the Holy One penetrites the conscience the purer is the heait s 
desire after atonement; but the more a man seeks to find 
comfort in false means of expiation, the more confused and 
darkened does his conscience become. If, with nothing but 
the rehgion of reason and the conscience, man cannot place 
himself in a right, normal, and peaceful relation to God ; if 
experience teaches him that this religion cannot help him to 
get over the moral dualism, it follows that it is also absolutely 
inadequate to the satisfaction of his religious needs. 

Here also the decisive CLuestion is, whether or -mt evU le 

' That ao mach ia allow&i sTen by tie most "free-tliinking" theolosians, wa 
Bee e.g. from the Prediglea am der Gegenwart, by X)i. Sehwarz of Gotha, III. 
Sammi. : " Oh, do not tell me that to act uprightly, and to do one's duty, and to 
have a good conscience, are sufficient. I ask you, ye viituous ones, wlio among 
us does hia duty and has a good conscience in the highest eenso of the word t 
Not one among us all. We all are, and remain, striving and struggling ones, 
who in manifold ways err, and stumble, and fall short" 



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LECT. U.] KATUKAL THEOLOGY. 93 

aehwwlcdgcd as an achially disturbing power, which darkens 
the conscience, separates us from God, and therefore req^uires 
an atonement But if a man resolves sin into a mere venial 
weakness, and the divine precept of perfection into that of a 
mere evternal honesty and iighteousness, — that is, if conscience 
he so weakened m him as no longer to produce any real aelf- 
condemnation (though, perhaps, retaining some measure of 
influence on his outward Life), if a tendency of mind has heen 
given him -which no longer attacks sin in its innermost centre, 
— then he may readily consider his natural rehgion as adequate 
to the satisfaction of his inmost needs, and thereby assure us 
of his good conscience. But there is in this case a darkened 
and enfethM conscience, and not a really good and pure ona 
The world is full of " good" consciences of this k-ind. Do not 
allow yourselves to he deceived by supposing that revelation 
can be dispensed with in attaining true peace with God. 
There is such a thing as a delusive peace, and a delusive satis- 
faction of one's religious need. 

In contrast to these delusions, keep firmly to this view ; — if 
natural religion is really to satisfy our spiritual need, it must 
be able to confer strength adequate to the resistance of evil 
and the performance of good ; and, inasmuch as evil already 
exists, to indicate the way to real reconciliation with a righteous 
God. But experience teaches that natural religion, together with 
conscience, is not able to do either the one or the other ; its 
inadequacy hence is evident. We are therefore from the bare 
consideration of our religious need \ ven to tl e necessity 
of some supematui'al revelation. An 1 th s re elation must 
not only purify, enlighten, and regulite but al supplement 
our religious hnowledge, communicatnip, n u truths, to the 
assistance of natural religion, and atte t n ts special divine 
character by its redemptive energy in breaking down the power 
of evil. Does Christian revelation do this ? 

We have previously seen that its aim is to bring fallen man 
back to God, in the way which is called and is Christ. Its 
pith and centre is the doctrine of the Atonement It therefore 
points out to our religious need a new mode of attaining satis- 
faction, Christ. And further stiU ; it also confers the power 
of embracing it. It enlightens and enlarges knowledge, but 
not without first becoming a power in the heart, and an eneigy 



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94 EEASOS ASD EEVEIATION. [LECT. II. 

in tlie will ; it becomes, indeed, a man's avm possession, not 
intellectually, but in a moral way, by the self-surrender of the 
heart and will It can therefore once more reconcile Jinow- 
Itidge and action by a restoration of the moral faculty and re- 
invigoration of the power for good. Hence it accomplishes 
both ends, shows the way of reconcihation, and imparts strengtb 
for future righteousness. And this is confirmed hy the daily 
experience of all true-hearted Christians. Ask of them whether, 
in the salvation revealed, they do not find life and full satis- 
faction for their rehgious need ? 

After all tins, we can understand the statement of Scrip- 
ture, that there can be no true insight in divine things without 
regeneration, without a new, higher life being implanted in 
us from above. Not until we are reconciled to Him can we 
again truly love the Divine Being, from whom we have been 
separated by sin, and be so intimately united with Him in love, 
that His glory shall be ever increasmgly revealed to us. And 
we sliaJl also be compelled to acknowledge the truth of that 
prophecy which represents aU Gentile nations as shrouded in 
ignorance and error, till the true divine and saving knowledge 
manifests itself in tlie new covenant of the latter day ; " The 
Lord of Hosts will destroy in this mountain the face of the 
covering cast over all peoples, and the veil that is spread over 
all nations" (Isa. xxv. 7). 

This will appear still more clear to us, if we give a closer 
consideration to 



II. SUPEENATUKAL THEOLOGY, OE THE KKOWLEDGE OF GOD 

DEEIVED PEOM KEVELATION. 

We take this last word in its narrower sense. In its mora 
comprehensive sense, it signifies in general the whole divine 
energy of self-communication in creation, in the conscience, 
and in providence. In this revelation, as we have seen, even 
the heathen have a share. In the nan'ower sense, revelation 
denotes a supernatural manifestation of divine grace influenc- 
ing human knowledge for man's etm-nal good; an unveiling 
of mysteries which lie beyond the province of reason, and 
may therefore stand in a certain contrast to it. When, for 



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LECT.. II.] F.EVEALED RELIGION. 95 

instance, Christ says to Peter, "T'lesli and blood hath not 
revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven ;" 
or when St. Paul testifies that he had not received his gospel 
from any man, but " through the revelation of Jesus Christ," 
— these are revelations in this special sense. To the same 
category belongs all that Scripture tells us of God's self- 
communications, under both the old and the new covenant, 
whether made by immediate theophaniea or through angelic 
and human instrumentality, through outward miracles or 
through inward spiritual manifestation, vision, and inspiration. 

In respect to revelation, a distinction must be drawn 
between the divine action in itself and its influence on man, 
that is, between the outward objective self-manifestation of God, 
and the inward suhjective Oliimination of the human intellect. 
Wliatever manifestation of Himself God vouchsafes. He seeks 
at the same time to interpret to man by the Spirit, even as the 
jnamfestation of the divine glory in the universe is supple- 
mented by the voice of the Divine Spirit in the conscience. 
Both together constitute revelation, properly so called. The 
crown and ultimate goal of all divine revelation is He 
in whom alone, according to the Scriptures, the perfection of 
divine knowledge dwelt, who alone on earth declared per- 
fectly the divine wOl — the only-begotten Son, who could 
truly say of Himself ; " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Patiier" (John i 18, vi 46, xiv. 6-9). In Christ, therefore, 
both factors of revelation meet : He is at once the perfect 
manifestation of Godj and the perfectly enl^htened or inspired 
Man. 

The object of divine revelation is God ffitmeif, historically 
manifesting Himself in the character of Saviour ; and Man 
needs no other object of revelation. God's self- revelation, 
therefore, is at the same time a special form of His work of 
redemption, and has human salvation for its end. The great 
miracle of revelation is historically developed in a threefold 
form : ^ sometimes God afjpears, sometimes He spea^, some- 
times He ioorks miracles. These forms are closely allied, and 
therefore, in the historical developments of revelation, often 

1 Cf. also in H. von der Goltz, Gottes Offenhamng diirch heUige Oeschkhle, 
Basle 1868, the excellent section as to "tlie mode and form of divine reveU- 
tion," pp. 84-107. 



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96 KEASON AND KEVELA.TION. [leCT. II. 

found together ; tbe revelationa being made either externally 
through the senses, as iu angelic appearances, or internally 
through the workings of the human spirit, as in prophetic 
dreams or visions. 

Ihe announcement of this revelation, which, up to the 
" time of fulfilment," was confined to a particular branch of 
the human race, and, after Christ, became a common property 
of mankind, ia contained in Scripture ; and that which was 
previously communicated to special persons, in an extra- 
ordinary way, now comes to us all iu an ordinary way, by the 
written or spoken word of human agents, along with the 
inward operation of the Holy Spirit ; but even thus it pre- 
sents itself to us as supernakvral and divine truth. This, in 
all brevity, is the scriptural* and Christian idea of revelation. 
Incomprehensible as it miy at first appear, ite must not 
overlook that revelation despite its essentially supernatural 
character his and must have, a natural side also. In 
all divine manifestations created existences are the media 
through which the presence and glory of God are revealed to 
men (Isa. vl, Ezek. i., ix., liev. iv.). In all divine utterances, 
God condescends to the limits of human understanding, and 
adapts His revelation to the mental condition of its recipients ; 
giving fi;rst milk, then strong meat (John xvi 12 ; 1 Cor. iii. 
I, 2 ; Heb. V. 12-14). And even divine miracles, as we shall 
nee further on, have not unfrequently a natural basis. Iteve- 
lation is never given without some previous preparation, in 
the historical developments of human thought and human 
needs. 

Nor is this done in any in'egnlar or arbitrary way ; the 
developments of revelation follow fixed internal laws and a 
certain order, and are confined within definite limits ; both 
Old and New Testament making manifest the divine purpose 
in the fourfold development of electing, calling, blessing, and 
taking into covenant. Even the superficial observer cannot 
fail to note the progi'essive developments of divine communi- 
cations with man from the simple intercourse of a primeval 
time to the world - covenant made with Noah, and from 
thence onward to the covemint of promise established with 
Abraham, the covenant of the law made with Ismel, and 
finally the covenant of grace in Christ with the whole world. 



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LECT. II.] EBVEALED KELIGION. 97 

There is therefore a continuous progress— an ever clearer 
manifestation of the Divine Nature, and of its purposes of 
love for man, concluding with the mission of Christ and the 
Comforter (Heb. i, 1, 2), 

There is also a certain progress in the form, of revelation. 
At first, God revealed Himself in sensible manifestations, 
wliich were an inevitable accommodation to the needs of 
humanity while still in pupilage, just as every tutor has 
now to condescend to the capacity of the child. With 
Moses He spake "face to face, as a man talketh with his 
friend " (Ex. xxxiii. 11 ; Num. xii 8). Then came miracles 
wrought by divine power, through human instramentality ; 
and in these we may note a certain internal educational 
progress from the material to the spiritual ; the miracles of 
inspiration becoming gradually the more prevaiHng forma of 
divine manifestation, until, in the miracle of miracles, the 
person of Christ, the deepest spiritual mysteries of redemp- 
tion -were unfolded, and finally, through the outpouring of 
the Spirit and the inspired gospel records, revelation became 
iibidingly an inward thing conveyed to na by the Word and 
Spirit. 

I'urther, Scripture miracles are sparingly distributed, and 
after an oiiiered plan among various periods, and in very 
different measures, aceoi-diug to their differences of character. 
The most significant make their appearance at decisive 
turning-'points in sacred history, e.g. the election of fresh 
agents of revelation, and the constitution of new forms of 
covenant. It was thus in the patriarchal age, and in those 
of Moses, of David, and of Christ and the Apostolic Church. 
In the periods between these epochs, miracles are not so 
frequent. When the point in question was more to maintam 
that which existed than to found something new, the Woi-d, 
the most inward mode of revelation, remains the only form 
of it. We everywhere see a progressive iireparation for the 
complete revelation of God in Christ; we see the sequel 
constantly linked on to that which precedes, and further 
developing it ; we see also in Christ Himself a wise tutorial 
progress m making known the secret things of God down to 
the last and most profound, the doctrine of tiie Trinity, which 
not until He had His departure in view did He fuEy make 



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93 EEASON ASD EEVELATION. [LECT. 1L 

known (Matt. ->.\vm. 1^) Firthti the lowci fumi of 
levelation, in which the chief point is some manifest ition oi 
Deity, always pieptie the wiy foi the more peifect forms of 
inward inspiration and these Q^am point onward fuither 
still to a final all completing manifestaUon m the second 
advent of Christ. Finally, we see the Dmne Revealer 
keeping always one and the same end in view — man's et«mal 
good, and therehy always adapting His revelations to the 
particular needs and capacity of their recipients. 

But, more especially, divine revelation is something quite 
different in its mode of operation from what is called magic, 
and addresses itself to man in his ethical capacity ; the moral 
condition of the recipient determines in the main its measure 
and its Ivmitations. Although under special circumstances 
God may allow some sordid person like Balaam to he the 
medium of revelation, the rule nevertheless holds good, that 
God adopts as His instruments those who, through their 
moral and religious character, were peculiarly ca^ahle of 
appreciating divine things, such as Abraham, Moses, David, 
the prophets, tlie apostles, and, ahove all, Christ (Matt, 
xi. 25; Acts vii. 22, x. 35; Jas. iv. 8; Jer. xxix. 13). 
Everywhere we find that revelation is met on the part of 
man by a heart-seeking after God, after truth, and after 
sanctification. " If ye seek me with your whole heart, ye 
shall surely find me." This practical piety was, from 
Abraham to Christ, the constant medium of existing and 
progressive revelation, which varied in the clearness of its 
manifestations with the varying rehgious character of its 
exponents. 

And so still the divine revelation contained in Scripture 
communicates itself as a fuU personal possession only to that 
heart which meets it with an honest seeking after truth. By 
mdifference, or opposition to truth, the susceptihiHty for 
divine things is lost, and thus also the possibility of receiving 
any further revelations. In Nazareth, Christ " doeth not many 
mijacles, on account of their unbelief" In revelation, as in 
other things, God deals with ua as free, responsible creatures. 
His supernatural revelation is no more irregular and arbitrary 
than that through nature. On the contrary, everywhere we 
Bee measure, order, well-planned gradation, organic connectior 



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LECT. II.] EEVEALED RELIGION. 

ivdl-defined limits, and the operation of its own inward lawa 
in all its self-impartations to man. 

If wo beep this in view, many rationalistic of^ections will 
refute themselves, raised as they are agamst the specific worth, 
necessity, possibility, and intelligibility of a supernatural reve- 
lation. 

What Scripture tells of divine appearances, spiritual mani- 
festations, visions, etc., is often compared with similar pheno- 
mena in heathen religions, and, consequently, the specijk valm 
of Christian revelation is denied. 

Without comparing its moral and religious character with 
the pretended communications of heathen deities, it will here 
suffice us to point out the profound difference hetween the 
biblical and the whole heathen idea of revelation. The reve- 
lations of heathen gods invariably have reference to something 
isolated, external, and fortuitous ; and even when they impart 
moral precepts, these have no real internal connection. In 
Scripture, on the other hand, revelation is one grand systematic, 
progressive organism, which from its very commencement goes 
on expanding, and so as to exhibit its smallest details in living 
connection with the whole, and its one great end, the moral 
and religious good of man. 

We find nowhere else, in tlie whole course of the history 
of religion, a hke conception of the end and purpose of divine 
revelations. The biblical view of revelation, apart from its 
sacred purport, is unique in its nature, and it is therefore 
a priori a mistake to force it down to the level of the heathen 
view. We must also note the important distinction, that in 
heathen legends it is alwijs the most ancient times which 
abound m miiadc^ and that subsequently miracles gradually 
decrease whereis m Scripture the grandest revelations and 
most stilting miracles occui ^t diff imt times, and, indeed, 
always at particular <.nses of sacred history, and without dis- 
ippearmg in the couise of a history citending over four tliou- 
s^nd year« 

But if flora the fict that not Chn-,tianity and Judaism 
on]\ but m'iny othei leligion^, also advance a claim to reve- 
htion inv one is tempted to conclude that this claim is in no 
cise trustTioithy and that we cinnot know which is the true 
tehgion, seeing the " revealed rehgions aE contradict one 



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100 KEASOS AND EEVELATION. [lect. n. 

another, and that therefore it is hest to reject them en masse, 
he is excellently answered by A. Monod, iu his LitcUe : " I£ 
twenty persons at once set up along with you a claim to the 
inheritance of your cousin, could a just judgment nonsuiting 
you and all the rest be based on the assumption that there is 
no legal heir ? A lie is only credible when it mahes use of 
truth to back it up. Spurious money is not coined except 
where good money exists. Quack doctors obtain patronage 
only because there are true physicians and teal remedies. /«- 
stead of concluding that there is no true revelation because there 
are so maiiy false ones, we shmdd on the contrary conclude, that 
there are only so many false heeause there is one true." The 
other inference cannot be drawn, except by that indolent spirit 
which shirks the trouble of examining into the diffei'ent claims 
of religious systems, a task which, at the present day, can 
hardly be very irksome. That can only be the true and 
perfect religion, which exercises the most wholesome influence 
on the moral life of individuals and of nations. " By their 
fruits ye shall know them." And who at the present day can 
stand in doubt on this point, if he compares Christian nations 
with heathen and Turks, or even with the Jews ? 

Against the necessity of revelation, the objection is generally 
made, from a rationalistic point of view, that if God was com- 
pelled from time to time to manifest Himself, then creation 
must have stood in need, as it were, of continuous " after- 
help." If animals can attain to their prescribed destiny by 
means of their natural powers, man can do the same by means 
of his reason. In opposition to these views, the rejoinder baa 
justly been made, that if man and beast differ by means of 
reason, and consequently in their destination " and in their 
means of attaining it, they may also well differ in the mode, 
and way in which they reahze their destiny. 

But this whole theory of " after-help," by which God's 
original plan of creation is made to appear as having been 
incomplete, is absolutely inadmissible. Scripture represents 
the counsel of redemption as having been from the first co- 
existent in the Divine Mind with that of creation (Eph. i. 4 ; 
1 Pet. i. 20). The fact of revelation, therefore, does not imply 
that God has been compelled by intervening circumstances, 
to wit, the ggnesis of sin, to resolve on affording such " after- 



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LECT, II.] KEVEALED KELIGION. 101 

lielp " to His own work ; on the contrary, from tlie very 
beginning, due provision was made in tlie divine plan for 
such eventuahty ; and God's own free love is only carrying 
into effect, by means of revelation, that which from eternity 
He had determined and prepared for, in order to conduct the 
rational miiverse, spite of all disturbing influences, to its rdti- 
mate and glorious consummation. The very idea of any after- 
thought and alteration of the divine work or plan, is absolutely 
excluded by the very terms of the Scripture doctrine of reve- 
lation. 

It is indeed the doctrine of Scripture, that man stands in 
need of divine assistance. A special revelation from God is 
a necessity for us, and that for two reasons : iirst, by reason 
of our natural helplessness ; and secondly, on account of the 
Fall, and man's consequent dege7t^-ac,y. i'or does not every 
cliild which is brought into the world need some " after- 
help " 1 And is it to be supposed that the first members of 
onr race required no education ? And who but God could 
have been their Educator ? If their only teachers were the 
animals, whence came their gift of speech ? Whence the 
development of their moral and spiritual faculties ? "Whence 
those purer religious ideas which are continually cropping up 
among the fragments of the oldest heathen religions ? How 
can things of this kind be explained without presupposing a 
divine interposition and assistance ? None hut he who denies 
the necessity of any such education, can deny the necessity of 
some special intercourse between the first man and his Maker, 
or he offended at that paternal and quasi-human relation in 
which the Iirst chapter's of the Bible represent God as putting 
Himself with man. Our own little ones, feeling themselves 
their need of education, look for and submit to it. In doing 
this they exhibit more understanding than many adults. 

But no sooner had sin entered the world, and with it an 
increasing radical disturbance of the very foundations of 
natural theology, and of the proper exercise of reason and 
conscience, than the necessity became manifest of further 
revelations on the part of God of Himself and of His plan for 
human redemption. When the unbelief of the natiu'al man 
had developed into tlie various forms of pagan superstition, 
how was it any loi^t possible for man to find out for him- 



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102 REASON AND KEVELATION. [LECT, H. 

self the highest ahsolute Good, the liviDg and true personal 
God, without the aid of a new supernatural revelation? 
Here again our former position holds good : only , he who 
denies the existence and power of sin can deny or dispute the 
necessity of some special revelation ; hut then let him also ask 
himself what he can make of the main facts of man's religious 
history, and of the clear proofs they give of the thorough 
incapacity of reason when left to itself? How natural and 
reasonable on the other hand, how conformable with the 
results of history and daily experience, is the teaching of 
Scripture as to the educating processes and progressive de- 
velopments of divine revelation ! For the first members of 
our race, regarded as children, revelation was a nurse who 
taught them to walk in leading-strings; for fallen man it 
became a task-master, as in the law of Moses ; and finally, for 
those who had learned the need of redemption, it manifested 
itself as a freedom-giving law of the spirit of Christ and the 
gospel Appeal, indeed, is often made to the perfection of the 
natural universe and its arrangements as not admitting of, 
much less requiring, any such divine manifestation or inter- 
ference ; but this is a point to which we shall have to recur 
when we come to a critique of Deism and to the question of 
miracles. 

Of late, however, an attempt has been made, starting from 
this very assumption that there has been such a gradual 
progressive spiritual development of the human race, to deny 
the necessity of divine revelation, at least for ns in our present 
stage of enlightenment. However necessary such revelation 
may have been at an earlier period, it is now maintained that 
" reason educated by Christianity, like a son who has attained 
his majority, can shift for itself." So speaks the spirit of 
our age, with its feverish longing for emancipation in every 
department of thought and action. The emancipation here, 
however, could be only a partial one. Eeason by itself woidd 
be still inadequate for the task assigned it. Formed at first 
by Christian influences, it remains subject to such influences 
still. Previous revelations could not fail to operate still, and 
to exert at any rate an indirect influence on future develop- 
ments. 

How, we ask in the first place, is this result, the maturity 



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LECT. II.] EEVEALED KELIGION. 103 

of reason, to be maintaiaed when divorced from its cause 1 
Are those factors no louger in action which formerly rendered 
a revehition necessary 1 Does sin, then, no longer exist, whose 
power of obscuration in reason and conscience cannot, as we 
know from history and experience, be abidingly broken except 
by the redeeming influence of divine revelation ? What other 
tJtimate defence than Christian revelation have we against an 
immediate relapse into heathen barbarism — what that has not 
already historically shown itself to be a completely insuflicient 
protection against moral, social, and national corruption ? la 
it our modem culture or our science ? The main object of the 
theory under discussion is certainly to place these in opposi- 
tion to Christianity, as the guiding stars of our future pro- 
gress. But we have already in our former Lecture recognised 
the fact, that culture and science, apart from Christianity, have 
no abiding, moral, and spiritual efficiency. Modem civilisa- 
tion is in every department dependent upon Christianity, and 
a severance from that which constitutes its groundwork 
would be nothing less than the initiative of a relapse into 
barbarism. Or has then reason, we would further ask, so 
manifestly attained her complete majority as to be now fully 
capable of "shifting for herself"? How many objections 
may be urged against such a position ? The glance we lately 
took at philosophy showed us how little ground modem rea- 
son has to boast of its performances. On this point we would 
only ask one question; Are there not still many revealed 
truths (for instance, the doctrine of the atonement) indis- 
pensable for our rehgious needs, and yet not capable of 
rational demonstration ? Finally, if we are now to believe 
that reason has outgrown the need of revelation, let it at 
least be shown that revelation, as a source of culture, is ex- 
hausted and used up, and can impart no more instruction. 
According to the Bible, God's revelation of Himself in Christ 
is perfect, inexhaustibly rich, sufficing for all ages and all 
needs, down to the consummation of all things. Is this so ■ 
or not ? On this point, one of our chief counter-authorities is 
Lessing, the great antagonist of revelation. 

In his work die Erziehwug des MenschmgeschletMs (" The 
Education of the Human Eaee "), Lessing had the merit of re- 
introducing into modem religious philosophy the idea of a 



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lOi EEASON AND REVELATION. [lEOT. II. 

divine education of man, referring to the Epistle to tlie Gala- 
tians, chap. iii. and iv., but -without souading the full depth of 
the scriptural idea of such education. Starting from this 
idea, he endeavoured to show that while the religion of the 
Old Testament was the childhood, and Christianity the youth, 
of mankind, a step was now to be made beyond them into full 
manhood ; beKef in revealed truths as motives of moral con- 
duct being henceforth superseded by the spontaneous action 
of the human mind, following after goodness for its own sake, 
and without reference to the doctrine of future rewards and 



We hear this thought reiterated on all sides in the f 
day, and in every possible form. Not long ago a literary 
journal in the Grand Duchy of Baden, discussing the pro- 
priety of teaching the ten commandments, propounded the 
opinion, that the fifth commandment was immoral because of 
the sanction attached to it. " that thy days may be long in 
the land, etc.," seeing that hero a reward is held out as an 
inducement to obedience. So then, the " full age " to which 
humanity is now supposed to have attained consists in man's 
doing good purely for goodness' sake. Who sees not the 
hollowness of this bombastic talk ? That man has yet to be 
born whose practice will bo regulated by a theoiy so insipid ' 
Tor what is the idea of goodness ^er set It must have some- 
thing actually good as its substance. Tht attainment of "iome 
end morally good, either for himself or foi otheis, must flo'it 
before the mental vision of the man who acts morallj — that 
is, he must have certain aims in view, which, again, leact 
upon him as motives. And these aims must be distinctly 
conceived. The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual 
motive for well-doing. An idea like this can only work 
effectually, and with living power, when prototypically realized 
in some actual pe^rsonality, whereby it may lay hold of the 
heart of the individual man. No such perfectly good person- 

'The original German is diestr grauen TMorie — "this grey theory," tbi 
reference being to Gbthe's well-known words in Faust : — 
" Graa, liebster Frennd, ist ajle Theorie, 
Und griin des Lebens goldcnei Baum." 
All theory, dearest friend, is pallid grey, 
'While life's 1^ golden tree is fi-esh and gceoL 



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LECT. U;] REVEALED RELIGION. 105 

ality is anywhere presented to us but by revelation; and in 
the person of Christ. Eevelation, therefore, and the divine 
personality disclosed by it, remain a necessity so long as men 
are to do good as well as dream of goodness. 

It is, moreover, a fimdamental error to regard Christianity as 
in its essence a doctrine of rewards ajid punishments. This has 
long since been proved in reply to Lessing, and results from 
our own previous delineation of the true nature of Ciiristianity. 
Neither Lessing himself, nor the later developments of ration- 
alistic philosophy, have been able to reconcile or identify the 
actual, historical, supernatural basis of Christian revelation with 
that which they maintain to be its true and original substance 
So both are driven to try to get beyond Christianity altogether, 
and to deny the continuous necessity of any revealed rehgion. 
And that is just what we might expect. For, if we ehmmate 
from Christian faith its supernatural elements, the residuum will 
be so dry and soulless a skeleton, that, in fact, no reason mil 
appear tor tying down the spiritual development of humanity 
to such lifeless companionship. The only question, therefore, 
IS, whether we recognise as matter of fact any supernatural 
element m Christianity ; whether we allow or not the possi- 
bihty of miracles— both pgints which we shall have to inves- 
tigate more closely further on. If it he denied that God 
exercises any direct influence on human life, there can be no 
such thing as a divine education of mankind : man must have 
educated himself, because left to himself by God. But then 
comes the question : Could God, in accordance with His own 
nature, have thus treated man 1 and the answer depends on 
our conception of the idea itself of God. But if it be 
conceded that God did once begin to educate humanity, a 
twofold question thence arises : First, Cart this educating 
aguicy cease to operate so long as God continues to be Ruler 
of the Universe, and before the final consummation of all 
things has set in ? — can He leave man to hiinself, as having 
attiined his " full age," so long as the continuing presence of 
Ein puts him in constant danger of failing to attain his desti- 
nation, in accordance with the divine idea ? And next. 
Are the revelations made in past times by God, for the purpose 
of furthering our education, already exhausted .^— is none of 
them any longer adequate to our present stage of culture ? 



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108 EBA80S AND REVELATION. [LECT, II, 

We may as pnpils get teyond a human teacher, but siirely 
not a divine. Is there any one, for instance, who has but in 
some degree entered into a perception of the infinite beauty 
and glory of the character of Christ, and is yet bold enough to 
say that he has no more to learn concerning it ? Where is 
the interpreter of Scripture to be found, worthy of the name, 
who would maintain that the interpretation of Scripture is 
now exhausted ? We are, indeed, now further advanced than 
ever in this work of interpretation ; but the more perfection 
we give to Our exegetical appliances, the more plentifully, 
clearly, and transparently do the sources of divine knowledge 
flow, the more inexhaustible is their well-spring in the Scrip- 
tures shown to be. But the more profound the treasures of 
truth thus brought to light, the more full of blessing ought 
their influence to be on the moral and intellectual lifo of the 
present day, whether as regards the mass or the individual. 
Divine revelation, though culminating in Christ, is, even in this 
its last form, not quiescent, hut progressive ; unfolding itself niore 
and more riclili/ in word and spirit, and constantly/ exercising, 
by ever fresh develo;pnients, a progrcssioelg educating influence 
on the humanity to which it has been given. This truth was 
overlooked by Lessing, He who does not acknowledge the 
supernatural element, the' deep thing.=! of God enshrined in 
revelation, must likewise fail to apprehend the inexhaustible 
fulness of thte germs of human culture which are also contained 
within it. 

Itevelation, Hke mankind, has run its course of childhood 
and i/ot'ih. The former, when God condescended to personal 
conveise with Adam and the patriarchs; the latter, when 
He encompassed with the thorny hedge of the Law of Sinai 
the vigorous and aspiring but sensual and unruly people of 
Israel (or, looking at the heathen side, when the Greek world, 
from Achilles to Alexander, was stamping all its creations, 
both material and mental, with the nnpress of its youthful, 
cheerful, and ideal character). Sut the Timnhood of tJie huimn 
race did not begin after the rise of Christianity, but together 
vnth it If riper knowledge and experience, more earnest and 
effective work, greater independence and firmness in will and 
action, constitute the pre-eminence of the man over the youth, 
these are the very characteristics which the influence of Clu'ia- 



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LECT. II.] EEVEAIED EELIGION. 107 

tianity brought to maturity, both in nations and individuala. 
It was only through the gospel that men attained to a deeper 
knowledge of their moral and rehgious duty, and learned to 
make a pure unselfish love, self-renunciation, and self-denial the 
bases of their new and nobler life : it was the gospel that first 
tanght men to strive and to suffer, with the manlike weapons of 
intellect and patience, for a more and more complete appre- 
hension of truth, and to be more and more strenuous in 
labours for its propagation : it was not tiU the advent of 
Chnstiauity that men became spiritually free and independent, 
and conscious of their individual and personal dignity, In 
fact Christianity has evei been m a way that no other agency 
has been able to apprcich a nursing-school for true men, for 
heroes in thought m ictron and in suffering ; and that be- 
cause rt piesents to the ^^oUd ind to every man's spiritual 
appiehenaron the Hero of all heroes, the Sufferer of all 
siifleiers as leader and example In view of what Christi- 
anity ha') done for rndivrduils and the race during well-nigh 
tTso thousand yeira we miy confidently say: He whom the 
school of Ciiriot does not make into a, man wiU never leaia. 
true manliness in any other ! If nations and individuals are 
to retain any powei" of further spiritual development, they can 
only do it hy retaining a living sense of the trath and efficacy 
of the Christian revelation ; once eliminate or weaken this 
source of strength, the freshness of spiritual life will soon 
wither away. Any step taken in supposed advance of Chris- 
tianity would prove a transition, not from youth to maTikood, 
hit from manhood to senility, — i.6. to a mental condition of 
absolute indifference or doubt, a temper of the idlest, most 
self-sufficient hypercriticism, the shallowest subjectivity, and 
an all-disintegrating egotistical selfishness. Offensive practical 
proofs are no longer wanting of what the condition of things 
would bo were mankind once to turn their backs on all posi- 
tive Christian belief. And such facts afford, we think, the 
strongest arguments for the continuous necessity of revelation. 
So long, however, as the ennobling influence of revealed 
Christian truth continues to operate, no one has a right to say 
that its mission has ended, or that the present generation has 
outgrown it. It is not that we are in advance of revelation, 
but that revelation ever keeps, and has kept, in advance of us ; 



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108 REASON AND EEVELATIOIT. [leCT. ir. 

raising men by just degrees to purer heights in the knowing and 
doing of goodness and tnith, and imparting to all who honestly 
seek to apprehend it, the enjoyment of ever lai^er manifesta- 
tions of its divine h'ght. Our human apprehension of Christian 
truth, both the scientific and the practical, is not only suscep- 
tible of, but of necessity requires, constant enlargement; but this 
cannot be said of God's own revelation of Himself in Christ, 
which by its very idea must from the first have been absolutely 
perfect. Whatsoever the Spirit of Truth may have vouchsafed 
since the Lord's ascension to reveal, or shall stiU reveal to men, 
" He will take," says Christ, " of mine, and will show it unto 
you;" thereby indicating that all true progress in religious 
knowledge has its only source in Christ, and that there is iwpossi- 
hilUy of a perfecting of religion hmjond Christianity. It follows, 
therefore — and that is the element of truth in the above- 
mentioned objection— that no fresh revelation will be needed 
till the consummation of God's kingdom. But for that very 
reason the revelation already vouchsafed is not to be set a^ide, 
but remains for all time equally vahd and necessary. And 
this must be remembered in all discussions of the views of 
the many who, in the present day, would retain Christianity 
as a general groundwork while desiring to dispense with its 
positive dogmas, who speak of " a religion of tlie future," or a 
" religion of humanity developed from the religion of Christ " 
(Strauss), and so destroy the very foundations on which they 
pretend to build. The very notion of a "religion of humanity " 
is a product of revelation ;— what is it, indeed, but a mere 
abstract term expressing the fact that God has revealed to 
mankind thin^ concerning their own nature of which they had 
tliemselves become oblivious ? 

One word more. Eevelation must continue to be a necessity 
for human nature as long as the mind ' and heart of man 
remain in their created dependence upon God, and that even 
apart from the existence of sin. The inner life of tlie soul of 
man is, as we have seen, " an infinite longing after God." We 
find tokens of the existence of this longing everywhere, even 
among the heathen They too seek to make approaches to 
what they beUeve to be divine ; they neither can nor desire to 
get rid of the conviction that their divinities draw nigh, appear 
to, and communicate with them. And has this deep univer&al 



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LECT. IL] KEVEAIED RELIGION. ,109 

longing "been implanted in man, never to be satisfied ty a special 
revelation on the part of Him who implanted it ; whereas hoth 
experience and history teach that his spiritual thirst can never 
more be stilled by draughts of a mere natural theology ? Even 
though the fact of God's existence were made certam to us in 
other ways, should we not stilly in the absence of a du-ect reve- 
lation, "feel astonishment and take offence at such complete 
immobility in a Being who is life itself, and such a hard and 
stubborn silence in Him who is infinite Wisdom and LoveV 
(Eougemont.) To questions like these, which ground the 
necessity of a divine revelation alike on the nature of God 
Himself and our own human needs, the only answer oiu' oppo- 
nents have to give, is found in a deistical conception which 
completely isolates Him from His own universe, — a conception 
which, further on, we shall have to consider more closely. 

But we proceed to ask, is such a revelation of Himself by 
God possible ? The answer to this question must ultimately 
depend on the conception we have formed of God and of man. 
He who believes in a living fersffrud God, and in the existence in 
man's nature of the divine image, a capacity for perceiving God 
by reason and for recognising Him in the conscience, together 
with an inward longing for communications from Him, cannot 
but maintain from both these points of view the pombilitp of 
revelation For all revelation is but the highest expression on 
the part of God Himself, of His actual personal relations to 
man as His creature and His child. If this our fundamental 
position be granted, the refutation of all objections made by 
opponents is easy. But if any dispute it, the argument must 
revert to a discussion of the fundamental conception of God, and 
of the possibility of miracles. Every act of divine revelation is 
indeed a miracle ; and the aclmowledgment of its possibihty 
concedes the principle that miracles are possible. This part 
of the question we defer to a future lecture (Lect. v.). Here 
we talic in view some special difficulties, by which the accept- 
ance of the possibility of a supernatural revelation appeai-s to 
be encumbered. 

How— that ia our first query — may the infinite distance 
hetibecn God and man be so bridged over that a personal com- 
munication between them shall become possible ? Let us see 
what help we may find in Scripture towards answering this 



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110 SEASON AND EEVELATIOS. [lECT. H. 

(iiiestion. And in order not to anticipite whit will liave to 
be said in a future lectuie on the doctime of the Trinity, 
you will allow me to touch but bneflj on the main points. 

First of all, the distinction must be obser\ed which exists 
in the Divine Nature itself an aspect of self concealment and 
one of self-manifestation. The htter is called in Scripture the 
Word, or Logos, which m the br ginning 'was with God," 
and by -whom " all things were mide the only-begotten Son 
in the bosom of the Pathei who alone has declared Him." 
All revelations from creation to Pentecost and from Pentecost 
to the end, have been and can be made onl-j through Him. 
He is the eternal, hypostatic self-manifestation of God, and 
therefore called " the Light of the World." In Him, as in His 
other self, God can draw nigh to other beings also, having in 
Him, as it were, already become another. It is in the internal 
distindio-ns of the Divine Essence that the possibility lies of divine 
external -manifestation. The second (and third) " Persons " in 
the Godhead form, so to speak, the bridge between God and 
creation. In Chiisfc, as " the everlasting life and light of 
men," there has existed from eteraity a bond between man 
and God. In Christ, God can draw nigh to us and hold 
communication with us. And here we may already see, what 
further on will he made more evident, that one who believes 
not in the Eternal Son of God can hardly recognise the possi- 
bihty of any special divine revelation ; the infinite exaltation 
of the Divine Being above all created things may well seem to 
such an one to intei-pose a gulf that nothing can bridge over. 
The only bridge possible, exists not for 'him. 

Fui-ther, we find in aU divine revelations recorded in 
Scripture a certain sclf-limitatian on the part of God, either 
hiding Hia divine glory in angehc or human shape, ox in 
that of some physical phenomenon — wind, cloud, or fire ; or 
else only partially disclosing it so as even, while revealing 
Himself, to remain still the hidden, supramundane, and in- 
visible One. So Moses, with whom the Almighty speaks 
" mouth to mouth," can only see Him from behind, and re- 
ceives the admonition, "My face shall not be seen" (Ex. 
xxxiii. 18-23). And even when He appears in whom "the 
fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily," the Father still remains 
the supramundane and invisible One. The Infinite cannot 



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LECT. II,] EEVEA.LED EELIBION. Ill 

cODimunicate itself to the finite, except in a limited maimer ; 
tlie whole cannot possibly come into manifestation. Scrip- 
ture, therefore, draws a distinction between " that which may 
he Imown of God" (Eom. i. 19), on the one hand, and His 
hidden, incomprehensible essence on the other ; whereof it is 
said, " God dwelleth in the light which no man can approach, 
whom no man hath seen, nor can see " (1 Tim. vi. 16), And 
therefore in all revelations, God puts, as it were, a restraint 
upon Himself, communicates to man only so much light as he 
is able to bear, and with the wonted condescension of true love 
submits for our sakes to self-limitation. 

So much, in brief, concerning the divine end of the bridge 
formed by revelation between God and man. Ifow for the 
other, the human end of it. And here we observe, that a peculiar 
fitness is predicated in Scripture of the recipients of revelaium,. 
They are all, as we have seen above, men endowed beforehand 
with a special capability and susceptibility in relation to ths 
Divine, tliey are the elect ones of mankind, — an Abraham, a 
Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a Peter, a John, — men already 
standing by their personal faith in a closer relation to God than 
othei-s. And even these men, in receiving revelations, experi- 
ence an emancipation from ereaturely limitations correspond- 
in" to the voluntary condescension and self-hmitatioo on the 
part of God. They are raised above their ordinary conscious- 
ness in a greater or a less degree ; they are " in the Spirit," 
or a visionary trance, at the time when spiritual revelations are 
afforded them. This at least would seem to be more especially 
the case with the prophets and apostles ; whilst in that of 
Moses, God's condescending limitation of Himself is made 
more prominent. Tlie transfiguration of our Lord was a tem- 
porary emancipation of the same nature ; and in the world to 
come we may anticipate that such liberation from the present 
condition of human intelligence will be fully vouchsafed to sdl 
saints : on it, indeed, depends the possibility of our knowing 
God hereafter, " even as also we ourselves are known " (1 Cor. 
xiii. 12). 

Finally, yet another agency of mediation between God and 
man is found in the angels, who appear as heaven - sent 
messengers (and especially in manifestations of the divine 
glory), not only to Abraham and Moses (Acts vil 30, 35, 



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112 EEASOJt ASD EEVELATION. [LECT. IL 

53), to David and Zechariah under the Old Testament, but 
also in attendance on our blessed Lord (John i. 51), and in the 
New Testament generally. These glorious beings are repre- 
sented as, on the one hand, allied by their creaturely nature 
to man, and, on the other, by their higher, spiritual, and sinless 
condition, as standing in closer affinity to God, and therefore 
as more capable than we of receiving direct communication 
from Him, and of being His ambassadors and representatives 
in the world. On this difficult question of angelic agency 
there remains, no douht, as on that of miracles generally, many 
a knotty problem to be solved ; but so much we fearlessly 
assert ourselves to have established, that there is no sufficient 
a priori ground in reason for precipitate rejection of the possi- 
bility, ay, and the necessity too, of a supernatural revelation 
of God to man. 

For surely the considerations wMch we have now been 
urging get rid at once of some of the most common ohjedions 
to the poBsihility of revelation: The objection, for instance, so 
often made, that the Absolute and Infinite cannot communicate 
itself to the finite, just because the latter is incapable of com- 
prehending it, is perfectly correct. But where ia it taught in 
Scripture that God, in any of His revelations, has made a 
complete communication of Himself to us ? The above-named 
icriptm'al distinction between the self-revecding side of the 
iivine nature and the hidden and incomprehensible one is in 
this objection entu-ely overlooked. God still remains the 
supramundane and the infinite, even while communicating 
Himself in revelation to man. We do not comprehend Him 
fully, but only perceive " that which may be known of God," 
that which for salvation it is needful to know. The best know- 
ledge is but imperfect here (1 Cor. xiii. 9); the perfect is 
resei'ved for the world to come. 

This scriptural distinction is also overlooked by Strauss 
{Chrietl. Giaubeml.) when urging the immutalility of the divine 
nature as rendering any special revelation impossible ; because 
the assumption of such " an isolated act of God in time con- 
tradicts the idea of His unchangeableness ; " an objection this 
somewhat unbecoming m a representative of Pantheism ; for 
where is God represented as more subject to change than in 
the process of " becoming " to which the Pantheist would con- 



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LECT. IL] revealed EELIGION. 113 

demn Him ? In like manner ai^ues the otlierwise very meri- 
torious philologer Jacob Grimm ; that tlie fact of God's once 
having spoken to a man would imply that He haa subjected 
Himself to an historical process which the Uncreated and 
Immutable cannot do. Our answer is, that it is only in His 
self-refEealing aspect that God appears under the conditions of 
time and historical development ; in His inner nature He still 
remains the snpramundane and immutable One. Eevelation 
is a development, but not one to which the Divine Kature is 
itself subjected. In whatever measure God condescends to 
work upon and nale the world, He sets in motion there a 
course of gradual historical processes, pre-arranged in harmony 
with the needs and conduct of man; but His own eternal 
nature is never drawn into the ebb and flow of these develop- 
ments. The Absolute and Eternal One cannot lecome any- 
thing other than Himself, but can only ie and continue from 
everlasting to everlasting what He is. And so Scripture 
speaks of " becoming " or " happening, " or of any distinctions 
of time, in reference only to creatures ; of God it simply says 
that " He is what He is," " the same yesterday, to-day, and 
for ever" (Ex. iii 14 ; Ps. cii. 28 ; Heb. xiii S). We may, 
indeed, turn the point of their own ■argument against our 
opponents and say : The divine immutability is realized and 
secured by divine acts of revelation. If God is to remain in 
Himself immutable, and, despite the abuse of human freedom 
of wiU, is to accomplish His own eternal counsels concerning 
the world and man. He must conduct by special act of revela- 
tion the universe of His creatures towards its eternally pre- 
determined end and aim. God's immutability in essence and 
in purpose on the one hand, and special revelations of His 
purposes to man on the other, are necessary correlatives. He 
only who substitutes for the scriptural idea of a living personal 
God an abstract impersonal Order of the universe, is pre- 
cluded from recognising the possibility of such special acts of 
divine self-manifestation, and loses at the same time the very 
idea of a moral order in the world around him. 

Grimm's strange objection, that the notion of God speaking 
to man at all imphes His possession of " a body and teeth," 
loses all force and application when we bear in mind the 
Scripture doctrine that His chief revelation is made in Christ 



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114 KEASON AND REVELATION. [LECT. IL 

the Incarnate Txigos, and many others through angelic spirits, 
with their etharial corporeity. And in any otlier cases of 
apparent antliropomorphism we may surely apply the Scrip- 
ture ai^umcnt, " He that made the eye, shall He not see ? " 
He that made the mouth, shall He not speak ? i.e. shall He 
fail in methods for making known to us His will ? 

A like fear of seeming to degrade and materialize the idea 
of God, hy admitting the possibility of special acts of self- 
manifestation, determines many minds in the present day to 
deny all revelation except by inward mental processes, and to 
relegate all external manifestations of the divine into the 
realm of fable. This sounds grand, and flatters the conceit of 
modem enlightenment. So, for instance, -writes the rational- 
istic Schenkel: "When, in accordance with traditional theology, 
God is supposed to have revealed Himself through external 
natural phenomena, angelic agencies, and the like, men forget 
that God is a Spirit, and that every conception which degrades 
His self-manifestations, by mixing them up with the alterna- 
tions of material phenomena, is radically untheological, and 
destructive of the true idea of God." But we have just seen 
that this is by no means the case ; not the inner natiu^ and 
essence, but only the self-revealing aspect of Deity, enters into 
any connection with material phenomena. And why should 
it not be able to do this ? God is indeed a Spirit ; but is the 
world then mere lifeless matter which the Spirit can never 
employ as its organ ? Is it not rather upheld and pervaded 
in all its parts by divine powers, ideas, and purposes, hy 
means of which it becomes a cosmof, an harmoniously articu- 
lated oi^nism, wherein, as in a mirror, we discern the workings 
of the Divine Spirit ? And if the world be already in itself 
a revelation of God, why should not He have been able to 
make it yet more so by means of special acts and manifesta- 
tions ? The consequences, moreover, in reference to the 
person of Christ, which are involved in the doctrine of a 
merely spiritual revelation, are not a little serious. Either 
the incarnation of tlie Divine Logos is impossible, or with 
that conceded, the self-manifestation of God in a material 
form is conceded also. But once degrade our Lord to a mere 
man, with whatever pretended illumination of the Spirit, you 
thereby deny all internal distinctions in the Divine Nature, and 



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LECT. U.] REVEALED RELIGIOS. 115 

may as well at the same time deny the possibility of any kind 
of revelation. The bridge connecting God and His creatures 
is finally broken down. 

Another argument against the possibility of revelation is 
sometimes drawn from the divine attributes of goodness and 
righteousness. How, it is argued, can the infinitely good and 
righteous One have attached salvation to the reception of 
revealed verities, of which the majority of mankind are igno- 
rant without any fault of their own, and others are cognizant 
ipvithout deservings ? This argument, strongly urged in former 
times by J. J. Eousseau, in his Profession de foi du vicaire 
Savoyard, is warmly echoed by many in the present day, and 
derives some countenance from the harshness ajid onesided- 
neas of many Christian theologians. But Scripbiye nowhere 
teaches, that all who die without knowledge of the revelation 
of God in Christ are irretrievably and eternally lost. It is 
one thing innocently not to htiow ; it is quite another wilfully 
to reject. The express doctrine of Scripture is that men will 
be judged hereafter " according to their works," and that the 
measure of such judgment will be the degree of revelation, 
supernatural or natural, vouchsafed them in the present life ; 
and that hence from one man more, fram another less, will be 
required, and that even among the lost it will go harder with 
some and be more tolerable for others (Matt, xl 20-24, 
.xii. 38-42 ; Luke xii. 47, 48 ; Kom. ii, 5, 12, v. 13). Nor 
are the Scriptures altogether witliout traces of the thought 
that the gospel was proffered, even after death, to those who 
had died in ignorance of the way of salvation (1 I'et. iii, 
1 6). But to demand now, at once, an explanation 

1 y th d vine counsels determine that some nations should 

th gospel earlier and others later, is a great act of 

p mi t n. It win not be tiU the final development and 

n 1 f the world that it mil be possible to survey the whole 
f God's dealings with man, and so determine whether 

h w y which the knowledge of salvation has been spread 

ra n t ons, and moulded their history, resulted from 
an absolutely wise and just and holy plan, or not I'inally, 
the divme attribute of goodness can be alleged as an argument 
against the probability of a special revelation only by one who 
will not see to how much nobler a degree of moral and 



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116 EEASON AND EEVELATION. [LECT. II. 

spiritual elevation nations have attained with a revealeil reli- 
gion than without one, a fact the ti'uth of whicli no reasonable 
persons ought to call in question. 

But here another objection meets us from quite a different 
point of view. Granted the fossSnlity. of revelation in the 
abstract, how can we Tcnow for certain thai it has been vouch- 
safed ? how are we to learn to distinguish between an ol^edive 
divine communication on the one hand, and the merely suhjec- 
tive operation of our own intellect on the other ? This is the 
argument of Kant and Fichte. , They allowed the possibility 
of a supernatural revelation, but denied that any one could 
determine with absolute certainty whether what seemed to him 
to be such was really divine, or merely the product of his 
own reason and conscienca Lessing (compare the " Dialogue 
between Lessing and Jacob! about Spinoza" in the Letters 
to Mendelssohn, and The Christianity of Season) gave this ob- 
jection a somewhat different turn, thus : Kevealed truths must, 
he argued, translate themselves in due course into truths of pure 
reason. By a law of development proper to the human mind, 
the first form assumed by all religious convictions is that of 
an extraordinary divine revelation ; it is only by degrees that 
man attains the consciousness that what has seemed to him a 
gift from without was leaUy the product of his own mental 
powers. According to this, belief in any supernatural revela- 
tion is but a piece of self-deception on the part of the 
undeveloped human consciousness, which, on reaching maturity, 
recognises the sources of such supposed revelation as derived 
from within and not from without itself 

"What is oi\r answer to all this ? In the ^irst place, it may 
readily be observed that this objection proceeds from those 
whose views are narrowed by the assumptions of mere intel- 
lectvialism, who decline to accept any rehgioiis truth, except by 
such a process of rational induction as we have already proved 
to be quite inadequate. Hence their efforts to make out that 
revelation must be strictly spiritual, the product of the internal 
workings of a man's own spirit. And this is the first unten- 
able assumption. Tor Scripture plainly testifies that revela- 
tions were oftentimes vouchsafed of old externally, i.e. by 
appeals to the senses of sight and hearing, as in divine and 
angelic appearances. In such cases the revelation was not 



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LECT. II.] EEVEALED RELIGION. 117 

in the first place a new idea -which presented itself to the 
consciousness, but a real external event. Ai-e, then, all such 
narratives to be accounted a priori as myths and fables 1 If 
not, these external miraculous events wei-e in themselves the 
most certain proof that, in each case of their occurrence, a 
supernatural communication from above had been vouchsafed. 
The miraculous element was in each revelation the most direct 
token of its divine character. The first recipients of such 
manifestations, imder the forcible impression made by the 
accompanying phenomena, which in sundry cases smote them 
in terror to the earth, could not remain in doubt that it was 
an outward objective power that thus encountered them, and 
that the awful words so suddenly sounding in their ears could 
not be mere ideal products of their own minds ; they must 
therefore have been well able to distinguish between their 
human consciousness on the one hand, and the divine revela- 
tion vouchsafed them on the other. 

But if, diverting our attention from these outward mani- 
festations, we direct it exclusively to those internal ones in 
which the element of inspiration prevails, we shall find that 
even with respect to these it cannot in every case be said 
that what was revealed were " mere rational conceptions 
concerning divine things;" an assumption which fonns a 
second untenable hypothesis. How frequently, for instance, 
must the prophets have announced revelations, the depth of 
which they could not fathom, and delivered predictions whose 
range of application was still foe them a veiled secret 1 Their 
own oracles were oftentimes as much objects of faith to them- 
selves as to others. How often did they hear things which 
seemed to run counter to their own natural reason, and about 
which they ventured to interpose the hveliest expressions of 
doubt and remonstrance {e.g. Gen. xvii. 17 ; Jer. i. 6 ; Lulte i, 
18, 34 ; Acts x. 14) . — instances in which we clearly see that 
the rational knowledge of the recipients was iy no means always 
in accord with the revelation vouchsafed ; that the latter very 
often surpassed the former, and that the recipients were well 
aware of this distinction. But hetween the conclusions of 
their own reason and the truths revealed, what they could not 
even " rationally appropriate " could hardly have been a 
product of their own rational faculties. Only observe, for 



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118 REASON AND REVELATION. [LECT. IL 

instance, how " the prophets inquired and searched diligently " 
(with their own natural faculties of reason) " what, or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
signify" (1 Pet. i. 10, 11); and how clearly St. Paul had 
learned to distinguish between his own human knowledge and 
divine revelation when he wrote (1 Cor. vii. 12), "But to the 
rest speak I, not the Lord;" and afterwards (xi. 23), "I have 
received of the Lord." Just as in the case of external mani- 
festations, so also in the interior modes of revelation, we 
everyvvhere see it laid down in Scripture that the seers, in 
some way or other which doubtless imparted certainty to their 
own minds, were conscious of the fact that what was inwardly 
perceived or heard by them was not a figment of their own 
fency, but a real revelation from God. 

Purtbermore, prophecy, which, both in its wider and its 
narrower sense, is revelation in the form of v;ord, as contrasted 
with miracle, which ia revelation in the form of divine action, 
is a second proof of the divine reality of revelation. Many 
prophecies, for instance, of the Old Testament give practical 
proof, by their punctual fulfilment centuries afterwards, that 
they were indeed revelations vouchsafed by God, far transcend, 
ing the powers of any human calculation. This is more 
especially the case with some of the Messianic prophecies, 
which even the presumptuous criticism of the present day 
finds a difficulty in referring simply to historical events of the 
prophets' own time. So much at least may be said here, 
without at present going into further details ; to which must 
be added, as a third argument, the testimony of the recipients 
of inspiration themselves to the reality of the communications 
vouchsafed them. Doubtless — and this is part of our reply 
to Lessing — that which in the first instance is a divine gift, 
received by faith, becomes by degrees the subject of rational 
apprehension (" Credo ut intelligam—J. believe, and so come 
to understand "). Revelation has a constant tendency to 
become nature, that is, to transmute itself, as it were, into 
our human flesh and blood, and become part of our ordinary 
human intelligence. But even in this intellectual apprehen- 
sion of revealed truth, — an apprehension, however, which ia 
by no means merely intellectual, hut far more practical and 
moral, — reason is so far from ignoring the supernatural origin 



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LECT. 11.] EEVEALED RELIGION. 11^ 

of revelation, or from confoiinding it with any subjective 
products of its own, that, on the contrary, the longer it is 
exercised in this field, the more clearly does i-eason recognise 
the divine and transcendent character of revealed truth, as 
something supematuially communicated to our human intel- 
l^ence, and not eelf-produced ; as something to he gradually 
apprffpriated, and not as au original possession. Belief, there- 
fore, in the divine character of revelation is not a standpoint 
which reason has gradually to overcome, but one which, on 
the contrary, every increase of spiritual and moral insight has 
a constant tendency to illumine and con-ohorate. 

These remarks apply ec[ualiy to the intellectual apprehen- 
sion of the original recipients of extraordinary revelations, and 
to our present knowledge of revealed truth as derived from 
Holy Scripture. With the preliminary q^uestion, whether the 
Bible really contains the records of a divine revelation, or is a 
mere product of human intelligence, we are not at present 
concerned. The only question we have to deal with here is, 
whether what we call the witness of the Spirit in our hearts— 
i.e. an inward consciousness of grace, of peace, and divine 
communion — may not after all be merely subjective, and have 
no producing cause beyond the operations of our own minds I 
" Whence canst thou know "■ — is the question now put to the 
Christian man — " that thine inwarf experiences and enlighten- 
ment are, in fact, the operations of the Divine Spirit, and so far 
supernatural revelations, and not merely derived from thine 
own mind ? Is not thy whole faith, after all, nothing but 
self-deception?" 

In answer to all this we reply, that Christian Eevelation is 
ultimately based on external matters of fact and an objective 
history, and not on mere doctrinal truths. Christ Himself, as 
a historical personality, is the great fact and substance of His 
own revelation. But Fads, with which I become acquainted 
by testimony from without, as by hearing and reading, are quite 
different sources of knowledge from the workings of my own 
mind ; and I can readily distinguish between the impression 
made by the former on my heart, and the effect of self-inspired 
ideas. My own reilection is sufficient to teach me tbat I 
need and long for something which shall make me inwardly 
free and happy. But the same of this longing, and s. conscious- 



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120 EEASOU ASD fiEVEL^VnON. [lECT. II. 

ness of its salis/acHon, are two very different tliing9 : in the one 
case, I have an idea; in the other, a fact of aqierience. If, now, 
I feel iny longings satisfied by the facts of the Christian 
Religion, whereas hitherto my heart has been kept in restless 
suspense, in spite of, nay, by reason of, all my meditation on 
the inherent ideas of the Good and the True, and if I suddenly 
receive from certain spiritual experiences a pledge of freedom 
and inward peace which no rational investigation could give 
me, then surely I nmst conclude that this new condition 
has been brought about by a Power from above, and is no 
mere creation of my own fancy. I have, consequently, a 
right to make a distinction between an objective divine 
revelation and the subjective action of my own mind. 

If any one has once become conscious of revelation as a 
divine matter of fact in his ovra heart, he can but smile at 
the efforts of reason to deprive him of that fact. Any 
naturalist who, with hundreds of others, had long obsei-ved 
some phenomenon, would certainly laugh at the notion of any 
one proving to him dialectically that he had really seen 
nothing. We Christians claim to avail ourselves of the same 
right; for quite as groundless are the objections raised against 
the facts of our religious consciousness. 

Nor shall we be disturbed in our position by the well- 
known objection raised by Lessing, primarily against the " de- 
monstration of the Spirit and of power " (1 Cor. ii. 4), but 
in fact against the possibility of proof in the case of any 
special revelation whatsoever, ai^uing that " if no historical 
truth can be (absolutely) demonstrated, nothing can be demon- 
strated by means of historical truth," and as a corollary, that 
"incidental historical truths can never serve as a proof of 
necessary truths of reason." We do not desire to hold any 
long argument as to the doubtful sense and ambiguous word- 
ing of tliis often cited dictum} nor will we inquire what may 
be the nature of these necessary truths of abstract reason, 
lindtations of reason in the concrete. We would only point 
out that at the present day far more importance is attached to 
historical proof than was the case in Lessing's age of abstract 
philosophy. Everything must now be first demonstrated as 
historical reality, before it can put in a claim to be accepted 

' Kefer to the copious refutation of this in Erausa, ul supT. pp. 95-1 00. 



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LECT. IL] revealed RELIGION. 



;th. This is an axiom of all modem science, 
natural science especially establishing all its general prin- 
ciples by means of particular empirical facts. Why should 
not the same be permitted in the sphere of religion ? Care- 
fully examined, Lessing's utterance comes simply to this, that 
the Incidental cannot be alleged in proof of the Eteroal. We 
submit that this argument, however incontestable, does not in 
the least affect the point here at issue, viz. the proof from 
history and inward experiences. For where will you find a 
Christian who considers God's revelations in history and the 
facts of his own spiritual experience as merely incidental, and 
not rather as the carrying out of eternal purposes? "Are 
not all His works known to God from the beginning of the 
, world?" If, however, as is usually the case, the sense 
attributed to Lessing's words is, that no particular historical 
events can, in preference to any others, be regarded as the 
revelation of eternal truths; that God equally reveals Himself 
in all that happens according to eternal and immutable laws, 
which render any special interference a thing unimaginable, 
and that, consequently, single events are only of incidental im- 
portance,— we reply tliat this is simply the rationalistic view, 
the untenableness of which we shall presently exhibit in detail. 
As in the experience of individuals, so in the entire history 
of the race, Eevelation is most clearly kntnim ly its fruits. 
The final and surest^ proof of the actuality and divine origin 
of revelation, is its manifestation in individuals and nations, 
as a healing, sin-constraining power, diffusing everywhere 
light and life. This is in truth the case, and so evidently do 
the representatives of revealed religion excel all their contem- 
poraries in moral and religioiis force and insight, as to furnish 
a weighty and indisputable argument against the rejecters of 
revelation. Let them explain to us how, without revelation, 
amidst the general obscuration of religious life, an Abi^am' 
could arise and shed abroad his light of faith ; or the people of 
Israel, in the midst of heathen degradation, and surrounded 
by lascivious and cruel idohxtries, discover and preserve such 
pure ideas of God, and so holy a moral law. Let them show 
further, how, in a period of universal corruption among both 
Jews and Gentiles, and without any supernatural interposi- 
tion, Christ could arise as the Light of the world and give its 



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122 REASON AKD EEVELATION. [LECT. IL 

whole development a new direction, even down to the present 
day, in tlie path of light and life ! All, even the most pains- 
taking recent attempts to prove a natural and human origin 
of these phenomena, have, as we shall see further on, turned 
out completely inadequate. The wondrous uniqueness of the 
facts themselves, and the blessings which have issued from 
them, will ever constitute an irrefragahle proof of the divine 
origin of revelation. 

Bearing this in mind, what shall we say to the hold asser- 
tion of ICant and his successors, that any revealed divine 
legislation, in addition to the law already recogniaed by reason 
and conscience, would he not merely unnecessary and, psycho- 
logicaUy speaking, imverifiahle, hut even positively injurwiis ; 
that free men, whose whole life should he guided by reason 
and conscience, would be reduced to moral slavery if " bur- 
dened " with a new law in addition to that already received ? 
That this assertion contains nearly aa many errors as words, is 
evident, we trust, from what has been already said as to tlie 
insufficiency of Natural Theology and the true character and 
need of Eevelation. Only tliose who do not acknowledge the 
power of sin can thus speak. But how grievously, likewise, 
is the inner nature of Eevelation here misunderstood ? Why, 
it belongs to the very nature of Eevelation not to appear as a 
compulsory law, but ever to appeal to human freedom ! And 
is not its effect, when inwardly experienced, a liberation frmn 
"bondage rather than the imposition of a fresh yoke i llevela- 
tion aids, purifies, and supplements Natural Theology, does not, 
as an ahen element, hinder and oppose it, but rather links 
itself on to the whole circle of our- other ideas. As it is, the 
Moral Law taken alone is found insufficient by Kant himself, 
who is fain to call in the aid of conceptions concerning God 
and His government of the world in order t-o its maintenance. 
How can he regard the influence of the divine "Will on man as 
a burdening of the conscience, whilst elsewhere he makes it 
appear as a help ? He confounds — a mistake that cannot be 
too strongly deprecated — certain ecclesiastical forms of Cliris- 
tianity with its living spirit and essence. The former may 
frequently be a burden, but not so the Spirit of the Lord, 
which is indeed a Spirit of liberty (2 Cor. iii. 17). He 
forgets that this Lord communicates and reveals Himself, not 



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LECT. n.] KEVEALED EELIGIOS. 123 

mechaniGally, or as a Lawgiver of the letter, but through the 
Spirit, which operates in our souls, liberating, purifying, en- 
lightening, and stimulating all that is good in us, especiiilly 
in the faculties of reason and conscience, but burdening and 
restricting only what is evil 

And thus, also, is refuted the objection made by Strauss, 
that Eevelation, as " a direct action of God upon the human 
spirit, would leave the latter in a position of absolute passivity, 
God being, by His own nature, absolutely active ; but the 
essence of the hun;an spirit consisting in activity, it is not 
capable of becoming absolutely passive, and that, consequently, 
the very idea of revelation is impossible." This conclusion, 
too, is based on entirely false premises. In the first place, 
the above-named definition by no means exhaustively describes 
the essence of revelation. And where do we find taught in 
the Scriptures that there is any such direct influence of 
the divine activity on the recipient of revelation as would 
thus put a stop to his own, and merge it in absolute 
passivity? According to Scri^tui'e (as we have seen), God is 
not wont to work directly on man, but through some bind of 
medium. The recipients of revelation are of course receptive, 
but not absolutely passive. On the contrary, the very recep- 
tion of divine communications, requiring a certain amount 
of activity, stimulates all their mental and moral energies to 
the highest degree. God, in drawing nigh to any individual 
man, has no desire to crush, but rather to awaken and carry 
onward him, and through him, others. Even divine com- 
missions are not to be accepted and executed in a spirit of 
absolute passivity; and in the recipients of revelation (c£ 
Jer, i. 6 and Jonah i 2, 3) their human freedom remains 
unfettered. How many opponents of revelation are still 
fighting against an idea which is not that of the Scriptures 
themselves ! 

The groundlessness of the various objections to Eevelation 
having been thus shown, it remains for us how to talie in 
review — 



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EEASOS AKD EEVELATIOH. [lECT. II. 



nl. THE EKLATIOS BETWEEN EEYEALED EELIGION AND 

NATUEAL THEOLOGY. 

Does the knowle(5ge of God derived from Revelation stand 
in any way in contradiction to Natural Tlieology, so that one 
excludes the other ? And if we allow that they agree, and 
indeed postulate each other, for which of these - two factors 
must we claim precedence ? 

Eeason and revelation have of late very often been placed 
in opposition to each other, because the existence of a corre- 
sponding antithesis hetween faith and hnowledge ' is taken for 
granted. The assumption of this antithesis is now so general, 
that there are- not a few even among Christians who accept it. 
" With the head a heathen, at heart a Christian," as Jacob! has 
put it — this is the conclusion at which they would wish to 
stop, allotting to faith the feelings, to knowledge the under- 
standing and reason, as their exclusive domain. It is high 
time that this fundamental error, the consequences of which 
are for the most part good-naturedly overlooked, should at last 
be recognised as such In the iirst place, it is certainly 
psycholc^ically impossible to sever feeling and understanding 
as opposed to one another. No one faculty of the soul can 
be brought into action separately without the others being at 
the same time exercised. In every act of the understanding, 
feeling and will are more or less involved ; and feeling itself 
when perfected is one with understanding. We may well 
di'ilinguisk between the different functions of the soul, but 
we must not sever them from each other. 

The same relation exists hetween faith and knowledge. The 
severance of the two, as mutually excluding opposites, indi- 
cates a superficial tone of thought. For all knmvMt/^ is, in 
tlie last instance, conditioned by faith; and faith (i.e. an act of 
belief) is the preliminary and the mediiitn of every act of intelli- 
gence. Are you surprised at this proposition ? The usual 
rationalistic axiom is certainly the reverse of it, — namely, that 
everything must first be proved and known before it can be 
believed. The superficiality of this axiom may, however, be 

■ On the following, cf. the excellent elucidation of the qnestion in Fabri'» 
Srie/e gegen den Materialiemia, 2d ed. pp. 164-lBO. 



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LECT. II. J EELATION BETWEES THEM; 125 

readily perceived. Is not every act of knowledge baaed npon 
an act of faith— namely, the belief that we are, and that we 
tlunk I This fact is always presupposed. But on wbatdoes 
lis certainty depend? On out thintingl Can this possibly 
prove Its own actuality? Would not this be to move in a 
circle, and presuppose that which is to bo proved? The 
oortamty of our thinking depends simply on an act of belief. 
Just as the eye never sees itself, but only the outward foi-m 
ot Itself, so also the self-knowing of the mind is not a self- 
beholding, but ■■ an ideal cognizance, a radical though mediated 
knowledge, u. scire credcndo' (Delitssch), a knowledge mediated 
by faith. It IS by the direct testimony of our own minds that 
we are convinced of the tact that we exist, think, wake and 
dream ; and this tact neither needs nor is capable of proof ■ we 
merely Idieve it. ' 

Or what is the case with learning! In every act ot 
learning, must not a bebeving be presupposed, some belief in 
the anthonty of the teacher, and in the truth ot that which 
is taught ? Ho who does not start with this belief will never 
learn anything And does not all philosophizing depend on 
taith ? If a philosopher does not Wism in the wisdom %vith 
which the world is filled, he cannot be a lover of wisdom. 
When a philosopher presumes to look down on faith, it is a 
proof that he does not know on what ground ho himself is 
standmg. And in every single act ot cognition, does not 
belief form a connecting link necessary to its completion ? In 
every cognition of a sensible object, the first decisive step is 
the sensuous penieption ; the second, often so momentary as to 
be scarcely perceptible, is the inward aifitmation of this per- 
ception, the heli,/ in, and acknowledgment ot, the testimony 
of the senses; then, and not till then, foUows the logical con- 
clusion. It is just so with intellectual cognitions directed to 
the snpersensuouB. In this, also, the first point is an inward 
intellectual perception, the second an assent to or affirmation 
of It ; wheieiipon follows the cognition properly so-called 

Trom this you see that faith is really a preliminary and a 
medium of all cognizance, and that all knowing is conditioned 
by an act of believing B, wha Mmes mthing, hwm mthing. 
"As Its ultimate basis, even the most radical unbelief has one 
and the same principle of knowledge witli Christianity and 



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126 REASON AND KEVELATION. [LECT. II. 

every otter positive religion, — tlie principle of belief in given 
matters of fact, on the ground of the original and direct testi- 
mony of the human mind " (Fabri). He who believes this — 
and every one must do so — wiU find it a contradiction to 
reject the testimony of Christian and religious consciousness 
to the existence and the inward experience of some super- 
sensuoua world. The existence of this, as of the material 
world, can never be proved by mere reasoning ; to this must 
be added an experience based on belief. If such testimony is 
allowed to be valid as regards the material world, why not as 
regards the supersensuous ? 

Our former remarks as to the certainty of an inwardly 
experienced fact of revelation are thus afresh corroborated. 
He who experiences in his own mind God's testimony of 
Himself as the living, holy, and gracious One, may take his 
stand upon this as a matter of fact, with as good a right as 
the naturalist on his experimental observations. For both 
attain their experimental knowledge on the same principle of 
belief. 

A like view of the relation between faith and knowledge" 
is found in Holy Scripture, which recognises no true knowledge 
except such as is grounded on behef. True faith, according 
to Scripture, conducts the human soul not only to peace and 
joy, but also to light and truth. It is the apprehension of 
divine truth which depends on one suffering liimself to be 
apprehended ; it is the saying " Yea and Amen " thereto, and 
is accomplished and perfected in the most intimate surrender of 
the heart, resulting, as does all perception and experience, in real 
knowledge. Peter says (John vi. 69), " We have helieved and 
are sure :".faith leads on to knowledge, of which it is itself the 
first beginning. As an undoubting and assured conviction of 
the unseen (Heb. xi. 1), it is the oi^n for the immaterial 
world, and for our knowledge of it. It is not therefore knoya- 
ledge hut unbelief which is opposed to faith ; that is, the resolve 
neither to accept nor to be convinced of the reality of the 
supersensuous and its influence on the world. For this postu- 
late, the reality of the Invisible is the ultimate point at which 
fait I and unbelief part company, and at which there is no 
alternative except fither belief or unbelief In religious 
things, therefore, the Mitithesis is noi that of faith and know- 



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LECT. II.] BKLATION BETWEEN THEM. 127 

led^e, hut that of faith and uiAeUef, or of religious knowledge 
and religious ignorance ; or again, yet more often of religious 
belief and knowledge on the one h^id, and irreligious belief 
and knowledge on the other. 

From all this, we may now gather the right view of the 
relation between Ilevealed Eeligion and Natural Theolc^. 
Revelation and reason, no more than faith and kmywledge, can 
in priiieiple contradict one another. Eeason cannot object if 
we derive our knowledge of God in a supernatural way, since, 
as we have seen, faith is the principle of knowledge in both 
cases. As far, however, as regards the substance of the 
knowledge thus arrived at, whether by means of Natural or 
Revealed Theology, we find as the result that the one postu- 
lates the other, and for this reason the two theologies cannot 
be considered as opposed. Eeason, especially when under 
the influence of sin, shows, by the imperfection of its ideal 
products as exhibited in history, how much it stands in need 
of the guidance, regulation, and assistance of Divine Eevelation. 
Eeason and faith are, in the divine order of things, destined 
as it were to a spiritual wedlock, in which faith shall be the 
masculine and productive, reason the feminine and receptive 
power. Faith, from the invisible world in which it lives, 
must bring the truths unattainable by reason and impart 
them to her ; while reason, thus fructified and invigorated, is 
enabled to search into the ultimate grounds and inner essence 
of the objects of religious knowledge, to connect, systematize, 
and duly arrange them. But if, without the aid of her lord 
and master, she endeavour to obtain for herself the materials 
of religious thought, we must, in view of all the independent 
efforts of merely rational theology in ancient and modern 
times, agree with the utterance of Matthias Claudius, that he 
"found it much more difficult to vindicate the wisdom of 
reason against faith, than that of faith against reason," or with 
the Scotch sceptic, when he says, that " the ultimate fruit of 
all philosophy is the observation of human ignorance and 
weakness " (Hume). In fine, might we not almost express 
the result of our investigation in the words of Hamann,— that 
" dark philosopher of the North," Kant's contemporary and 
fellow-townsman,—" As the law was given to the Jews, not 
to make them righteous, hut to convict them of nnrighteoua- 



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128 EBASON AKD KEVELATIOH. [LECT. II. 

ness, so in the same way reason was given to our race, not to 
make us wise, but to convict us of our own ignorance ; so 
that errors might thereby be multiplied as sin was strengthened 
by the law " ? ^ 

But, on the other hand, Eevelation no less requires the 
co-operation of reason and conscience, witli which, by its own 
inherent ethical laws and purposes, it is necessarily connected. 
Every particular revelation is based upon and fits into the 
universal and natural, the religious and moral elements of 
which it receives aud adapts in order to give them further 
development, and impart to them a higher substance. If, for 
instance, Conscience is able of itself in some measure to 
recognise the justice of God, Eevelation leads it to a compre- 
hension of His-absolute holiness. If in nature and in history 
we find some traces of a ruling providence, the observation is 
amplified by i^evelation into the assurance that such a pro- 
vidence extends to all, even the most trivial-seeming circum- 
stances of each individual life. AYhen a consideration of the 
world and of ourselves has brought home to us the necessity 
of some divine assistance against the universal corruption ot 
death, Eevelation steps in and tells us of redemption accom- 
plished, and of the way to salvation. By no means does it 
set aside Natural Theology as useless, nor does it desire— no 
matter how often the repitiach may be made — eiiher to restrict 
or to suppress the operations of reason and conscience, iut only, 
on the contrary, to elevate, enlarge, and render them more acute. 
Eevelation, it is true, would have reason " made captive to 
the obedience of Christ ;" not, however, in order to render it 
blind, but to enable it to see more clearly, and to make it 
really serviceable aud efficacious by liberating it from the bond- 
age of error (John viii. 32). This submission only takes place 
to be followed by an exaltation ; it is nothing but the transi- 
tion to a knowledge all the higher and purer, and a use of reason 
all the more powerful Hence the words of St. Paul, " When 
I am weak, then am I strong." The act of submission hrinys 
vnth it the reception of light, and the communication of a fuller 
moral and religious knowledge, thus producing sound and 

' Collected Works, i. p. 405 ff. On tha details of this, cf. the talented and 
instruetive leeture of Gran, " Ueher den Olauben ali die hSchsCe Venmrift" 
(Beteeis det eiaubmo, 1865, p. 110 fL). 



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LEOr. n.] EEIATION BETWEEN THIM. 129 

enlightened views on all fundamental points, such as the doc- 
trine of God, the world, the destination of man, sin and its 
cure ;— views which must lead to a sound practical judgment, 
and a conformable course ot life. So far, ikeref ore, from, faith 
being unreason, it is in truth the highest form of reason, and the 
only way to progressive perfection of the intellect. Innumer- 
able instances might be adduced to prove this power of faith 
in thoroughly cultivating and iniinitely raising our moral 
intuitions. The fact that the opponents of revelation so often 
reproach its defenders with " obscurantism," only goes to prove 
tliat they completely misapprehend the nature and the effects 
of faith. 

And, as in the case of individuals, po also in that of the 
whole race and its Natural Theology, Eevelation merely steps 
in to its aid, setting up, aa it were, landmarks for necessary 
guidance in the region of moral and religious thought, and 
supplying a support for human infirmity in a few funda- 
mental facts and truths ; its purpose being to indicate to men, 
by a few master-strokes, their divine destiny and the way to 
its fulfilment ; and that not in order to perplex, but to en- 
lighten ; not to hring into bondage, but to lead aright, to save 
from wandering in endless aimless labyrinths, and at the same 
time guide investigation of the traces of Divine Eevelation in 
the world, in history, and in Scripture, and, in a word, assist 
the search after their underlying unity. Wor, in good sooth, 
does Eeason forfeit aught of her dignity in thankfully accept- 
ing such assistance. If this assistance came from an inferior, 
Eeason might find some excuse for despising it. Eufc surely 
no creature need to be ashamed of help from its Creator ; it 
does but honour itself in accepting it. " True Christianity," 
says Pascal, " consists in the submission as well as in the use 
of reason. It is Reason's last step to acknowledge that there 
is an infinity of things which transcend her powers. She 
remains weak till she comes to the acknowledgment of this 
her own insufficiency. Doubt and assert we all nmst at 
times, but must learn at proper times to submit also. He 
who cannot do this, knows not yet the true strength of 



And that brings us to the right point of view from which to 
decide the last question, — To which of the two must we eon- 



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130 REASON AKD REVEUTIOIT. [lECT. IL 

cede the superiority when Keason and Eevelation diverge 
from one another 1 Although they are not, as we have seen, 
opposed in principle, still in certain cases the teachings of 
Revelation frequently lie so far beyond the scope of Eeason as 
to make her slow to accept them. In this case, rationalism 
would make Season the superior judge, and accept only that 
which can be logically demonstrated. Here we see a growing 
faculty that is ever changing, and constantly requires fresh 
material, without ever coming to maturity, put forward claims 
which would presuppose it complete and perfect. Instead of 
this, we gather from the preceding that the only true view is 
that which subordinates reason to revelation. Not, JFirst under- 
stand and then accept, is the maxim to be adopted in seeking 
religious truth, hut. First submit and accept the truth, then 
you will be able to obtain a thorough intellectual knowledge 
of it. Finite reason must submit itself to infinite ; the never 
fully educated human understanding, limited as it is by time, 
matter, and individuality, must yield to the perfect truth 
which proceeds from God; a judgment which is subject to 
vacillations and disturbances, to one that is ever settled and 
abidinc. " To improve religion by means of reason," exclaims 
Claudius on one occasion, " appears to me just as if I were to 
try to set the sun by my old wooden clock" 

Let Reason ever remain mindful of her own limitations. 
Let her not summon everything before her judgment-seat 
alone, especially questions, the final decision of which belongs 
to the moral feelings and the will. Let her especially cease to 
confound that which is alove reason with that which is against 
reason : an error fraught with evil consequences for so many. 
Those parts of revelation which it is beyond the power of 
Eeason fuUy to comprehend — such as miraculous facts and 
the mysteries of faith^ — -are presented to her not as absurdities 
to he laughed at and rejected, as is often done by intellectually 
slothful and superficial Unbelief, hut as deep and earnest pro- 
Uems, which it is our solemn duty to investigate, although to 
master them a whole hfe-time, yea, eternities, were requisite. 
Mysteries hke these, which in this life we cannot fuUy com- 
prehend, need by no means fill us with mistrust of faith 
For " if all life has its mysteries, how much more the highest 
life ! It all turns upon the question whether Eeason recognises 



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lect.il] eelatios between them. 131 

faith as life, and, indeed, the highest form of life," and has 
learnt to see that everywhere the higher life transcends the 
laws of the lower, and, so that no Itigker form of hei-ng can be 
comprehended by the laws which regulaie those bmieath it (see 
Lect. v., on Miracles). Let Eeason therefore seek in }ierself, 
and not in faith or in revelation, as such, the cause of what 
is ohscure and incomprehensible ; and let her conclude, from 
that which she has learnt to see of revelation, as to the truth 
and excellence of tliat which still seems dark to her. Let 
her endeavour to bring light into this obscurity as far as pos- 
sible, not, however, in a merely intellectual way, but first of 
all in that which revelation itself indicates as indispensable, 
the way of moral action and obedience (John v. IV). If, 
without pursuing this course, she seeks to appropriate super- 
natural truths, she will never attain her end. Only, let her 
not say that these truths are incredible and irrational, since 
she wiil not take the one possible way to understand and 
appropriate them. 

If, on the contrary, Eeason would only seek in the right 
way to penetrate into the mysteries of revelation, she would, 
with regard to much that might be new to her, and which 
she never could deduce from her own premises, be enabled, 
as it were, to follow the divine thought and sympathize with 
the divine intention ; to recognise what was at iirst incompre- 
hensible to her more and more in its wisdom and fitness, and, 
indeed, as the expression of the highest Eeason, as the most 
certainly and absolutely True. In this way the objective facts 
of revelation would be ever growing more subjectively certain, 
and the original difference between the two would be tending 
more and more to disappear. 

But what, in all conscience, gives Eeason a tight to reject 
historically attested matters of fact, merely because she is 
unable to derive and prove them directly from her own con- 
sciousness, or because she cannot forthwith understand them, 
while there are millions who testify that, in their case, the 
conviction of their truth only gradually dawned upon them ? 
The same is the case with Cotiscienee. Let him who would 
make conscience the criterion of revelation show us first of 
all — a much more difficult task than is generally supposed — 
what there is in the witness of conscience that is so special, 



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132 EEASON AND EEVELATION. [LECT. 1L 

independent, and immutable as to constitute it the measure of 
the truth of revelation. Let him show us, further, that those 
portions of revelation which conscience would reject are really 
of immoral tendency, and run counter to our inherent sense of 
tight. If our previous delineation of the character of reve- 
lation has shown that this is impossible, and if history irre- 
futably proves that conscience in itself has no adequate 
guarantee against constant vacillations and errors, then surely 
it is sufficiently clear that conscience must he miordinate to the 
revealed Word as Us fixed ndc and guidiiig-star. Do we not 
perceive this in ourselves ? Honestly speaMng ! must we 
not confess that our conscience is always clearer, tenderer, 
and more acute when we open it to the influence of revela- 
tion ; and, on the other hand, that it is always duller, laxer, 
and more obscure when we withdraw it from that influence ? 
Is not this again a proof that conscience must be guided 
and enlightened by revelation, and not i:iee versa ? But 
clearly, whatever a thing is guided by, to that it must be 
subordinate. 

True enough, it has been maintained, in order to claim for 
conscience greater fixedness of character, that it is the con- 
science of the whole bod}/ of Ghfistians, and not that of 
individuals, which is to be the rule and measure of revelation. 
Eiit who will show us this collective conscience ? "What 
differences would not present themselves on inquiry between 
the collective consciences of various Christian churches ? 
And would not whatever they might hold in common be the 
fruit of the one revelation ? Is the Christian conscience to 
sit in judgment on that from which it has virtually sprung? 
The truth is, that the conscience even of whole nations and 
churches is subject to great obscurations and disturbances, as 
we have previously hinted. How blinded, for instance, was 
the collective Christian conscience of the Southeni States of 
North America with regard to the question of slavery ? If 
revelation did not form, the criterion of our belief, we should 
have no firm ground to stand upon. To make conscience 
the measure of our faith, is simply " to degrade the great- 
ness of divine thoughts to the narrowness and smallness of 
human." 

Kevelation is for our theology what the telescope is for 



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LECT, D.] RELATION EETWEEN THEM, 133 

our knowledge of the stars, and tears the same relation to 
reason and conscience as tlie telesco[e doe'* to the naked eye. 
One m either casts lequiies the othei The telescope enhances, 
sharpens, and evtends the poweis of the natural eye, but 
demands at the same time its full actnity. Any one who 
should study astionomy luthout the use of the telescope 
would attain some slight degiee of knowledge, hut many 
thousand stars and beauties of the heavens would escape his 
obser\ation &o he who would know God without the aid of 
revelation must sufler from the same po\erty and insecurity 
in hie reUgious knowledge But just as the uncertain testi- 
mony of the naked e>e is suhoidmate to the cleirer testimon-y 
of the assisted vision so should it be with natuial knowledge 
in companson with the witness of le^elatlon And it on 
account of the imi erfectim ot our thoufihts as wtll as of our 
belief the combined testimony of both lea\es miny lacun'B 
untilled jet these hcune are ly no means contudietions 
And e-sen if Natural and Levealed Theokgy are now found 
m several respects to di\en>e tiom one another yd a day is 
certainly wming uJun then umoit mil h^ compl tt Ee^elation 
and nature ire developing towards one gieat goal at which 
they will coilesce The peifecting of the one is thit of the 
cthei The li\td tendincj of re-ielition to become natuie to 
make itself more and nioie a citizen on eaith m oider to 
mike eaith the chosen place ot dmne revelation this ten 
dencyisone daj to be completelj leahzed, tlie consummated 
kingdom of God will continne loth elements — the highed degiet 
of laehtion and the highest devdopTiient of natuie 

It afpeira to me that the H Iv Scriptuies themselves 
explain verj beautifullv and piofoundlv tlie relation which 
natural and revealed leh^ion bear to c^ch other and their 
close aftinit> in principle and purpose m the sto^y of th Wi 
Men, pom the Eaht They came to the Hilj Land led by a 
supernatural revelation granted to them in connection with 
aationomj the branch of natuial learning which the> 
pursued— a comforting indication that ehffty earnest honf^t 
seaich oftei light and truth leads to its distotetg The lowti 
revelation uhen > ightly used pnpares for a higher one Not 
the law ot Mi sea alone but al o the heathen philosrphi and 
investigation ot natuie was a prepuation for the clear light 



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134 EEASOS AND REVEUTION. [LECT. 11. 

of Trutli which was to shine forth in Christ, It is only when 
supa-ficially tasted — aa Bacon well says — that philosophy 
leads US away from God ; deeper draughts of a thorough and 
real philosophy brint; us back to Him. And, we add, with a 
more modern natural philosopher (Oerstedt), " every thorough 
knowledge of nature leads to a knowledge of God." The true 
spirit of science, the only aim of which is truth, ever points 
and impels us towards the Centre of all knowledge and all 
truth; the One "in whom are hidden all the treasures of 
wisdom and of knowledge." To Him, not only the Scriptures 
with the ever-waxing light of their revelation, hut heathen 
wisdom, too, amid its gropings for truth in the starry heavens, 
still point us ; to attain to its salvation all history in its 
ruins, nature in her pangs, the heart in its grief, and the whole 
creation in its groaning and travailing for freedom (Eom, viii. 
19-23) are ever striving. 

The wise men come to Jerusalem ; hut they do not find 
the path to Bethlehem till enlightened by the prophetical word, 
—a hint that the light of Natural Uevelation needs to be 
supplemented by that of Scripture. Their heathen knowledge, 
when aided even by the clearest light of Ifatnral Kevelation, 
brings them at best only into the immediate neigkhourhood of 
salvation; fully attain to it they cannot, unless the Divine 
Word be vouchsafed as a key to the understanding of the 
Pivine Works. 

Lastly, they go from Jemsalem to Bethlehem, guided by 
the harmoniously blended light of the prophetic utterance and 
of the Star, which, through its means, has once more appeared 
to them, — a sign that no real contradictions exist between the 
two revelations in the Word and in nature, but that they are 
one both in their divine origin and in the end to which they 
point. We men may, perhaps, by our own fault, and owing 
to the imperfection of our knowledge, lose for a time tlie trace 
of a connection between the two ; but he who deals faithfully 
with the measure of knowledge and revelation entr\]sted to 
him, and is obedient to the heavenly guidance, will be led 
step by step to the full knowledge of the truth. Such an one 
shall be more and more clearly and harmoniously enlightened 
by the different forms of God's revelation, until at last he sees 
how all their manifold beams converge in, and radiate from. 



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Lyxr. II.] liELATION BETWEEN THEM. ISo 

the one Sun, wliicli is tlie Erightneas and the Heart of the 
Holy Scriptures, as well as the Light of the world and the 
Centre of its history, — from Him who, as the everlasting 
Word, unites ia Himself at once eternal Keason and eternal 
Eevelatioa. 



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136 MODEKN WON-BIBUCAL CONCtPTIOUS OF GOD. TlECT. III. 



THIRD LECTT7EE. 

MODERN KOH.EIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 

TT has been justly said, that religion is the iirst power upon 
J- earth. Any one who attentively considers the history 
of the world and its cnltwre, in the light, not merely of surface 
events, but of the internal motives which determine its de- 
velopment, cannot fail 60 apprehend this truth. 

Even Goethe, in his AhJmndlungm zum westSstlichen Divan, 
acknowledges that "the only real and the deepest theme of 
the world's and of man's history, to which aU other subjects 
ai-e subordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief" 
As long as the religious q^uestion remains unsolved, there 
will always be plenty of external " questions " on the Tiber 
or the llhine, in Constantinople or in Washington Since 
the great French Eevolution, however, the religious question 
has entered upon a fresh, and, if I am not mistiken, upon the 
last stage of its development. The issue, taken as a whole, 
no longer lies in isolated dogmatical differences betw een the 
various churches ; even the controversy between Protestantism 
and Eomanism has in public life become a secondary ques- 
tion. The guBStion tww is, whether sJmll continue to exist at all 
— Christian belief. The battle of centuries between belief 
and unbelief is in our days nearly tending to the point where 
the decisive question must be put, whether the Christian 
religion shall continue to be maintained as the basis and rule 
of our civilisation, or whether it must he wholly abandoned, 
" To be, or not to be ; that is the question " now-a-days for the 
Christian faith ; and this question, if any, must he the last, 
just as two thousand years ago it was the first. 

Nothing shows this so clearly as the present position of the 
controversy about the idea of God. We have already re- 
marked that, in the conflict between belief and unbelief, it is 
the idea of God which always forms the heart's core of the 



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LECT. la] MODIiEN NOX-BIBLICAL COKCEPTIONS OF GOD, 137 

matter, the vital question, and which decides as to our view 
of Christianity generally, and of all particular dogmas. The 
present contest, too, as to the person of Christ, the gospel 
history, and the entire origin of Christianity, resolves itself 
into certain fundamental differences in the conception of God. 
The efforts of Strauss, Eenan, and all the negative critics of 
this class, are, as we shall see, based upon a non-biblical — 
viz. the pantheistic — idea of God, and this they are seeking 
to introduce into the world. It is a non-biblical idea of God, 
the deistical, rationalistic idea, on which the " free-think- 
ing " theology — that is, the theology which denies all that is 
supernatural — and all its products are based. Hegel's con- 
ception of God it really is which makes Baur and his school 
attempt to derive the entire origin of Christianity from merely 
natural sources. We shall therefore dwell rather longer on 
this cardinal point. Tor when we have once established the 
untenableness of these fundamental views, it will be all the 
easier to understand how weak is the criticism based upon 
them 

The controversy as to the idea of God is no longer the same 
as it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. At that time, 
if we except a few pantheists, the existence of a personal God 
was not generally called in question ; and hence the only 
disputable point was God's action in the world, whether He 
could work miracles, whether His providence extended to all 
things, whether Christ was truly divine, and the like. In 
the present day, however, it is not merely this that is called 
in question, hut also the existence of God at all, and con- 
sequently the existence of the human spirit as a distinct 
essence. Formerly the issue lay between Biblical Christianity 
and Deism : now it lies between Christianity and — Jiothing ; 
between belief in God as the personal Spirit who is Love, 
and the denial of God, which must be the annihilation of 
man's spiritual and moral being. This you will see in the 
consideration of oui- next subject — Atheism, and Maieriahsm. 

It would be an unprofitable and thankless imdertaking 
were we to attempt in due order to refute all the non-biblical 
ideas of God which have ever presented themselves. Their 
number is incalculable. Almost every idea of reason, almost 
every im^iuable conception of the universe, has, one time or 



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138 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. m. 

another in the history of philosophy, been maintained as an 
idea of God. Reason restlessly moves from one fundamental 
principle to another, and, in its hasty progress towards some- 
thing new, ultimately returns to that which is old, as in the 
present day Materiahsm has reverted to the principles of the 
older Ionic and Atomistic Philosophy. Under these circum- 
stances, it is better to take in review only the fundamental 
forms under which all the non-biblical, philosophical, and 
scientific conceptions of God may be included ; and in so doing, 
we shall, of course, give special attention to the ideas which 
prevail ip. our own time. We find that they diverge into 
three main tendencies, regarding the Absolute either as a uni- 
versal Material SiAstance, or as an impersonal, unconsciously 
working Anima Mundi, or as the Creator of the world — personal 
indeed, but not exercising any direct influence on its present 
life. These are the distinguishing marks of the systems of 
Materialism, Pantheism, and Deism ; but before considering 
them, we will first take a glance at Atheism as forming the 
most direct contrast to the biblical doctrine of God. 



This is the absolute denial of any kind of 06o5, that is, of 
any Divine Being, and therefore cannot be classed among the 
ideas of God above mentioned. This view, that there is abso- 
lutely no God at all, was so much detested by the ancient 
Greeks, that they considered Atheism synonymous with wicked- 
ness ; and those who had the reputation of holding this opinion 
were more than once banished, and their names (as tliat of a 
Diagoraa, a Bion, or a Lucian) stigmatized by history. We 
also find the principle of Atheism — although not strictly car- 
ried out — in Buddhism, inasmuch as it acknowledges as the 
Absolute, only the absolute Nothing from which everything 
springs and to which everything returns. 

This view, after having for ages appeared only quite sporadi- 
cally, first assumed the character of a system— ii indeed it be 
worthy of the name — in the train of French Materialism. La 
Mettrie, for instance, pronounced the belief in the existence of a 
God to be as groundless as it was unprofitable. This tendency, aa 



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^OT. III.] atheism; 139 

is well known, penetrated the hirss of the French people during 
tie " reign of terror" under the Convention, when the " Hebert- 
ists" laid it down as a principle, "that the King of Heaven 
must be dethroned just as the kings of the earth," Encouraged 
by the abjuration of Christianity on the partof the Bishop of Paris 
and his priests, they came before the Convention with a peti- 
tion Jor the abrogation of Christianity, and the institution of a 
worship of Reason, presenting the wife of one of their colleagues 
as the Goddess of Reason. Clad in white garments and a sky- 
blue mantle, with the red cap on her head and a pike in her 
hand, they placed her on a fantastically ornamented car, and 
conduced her, surrounded by crowds of bacchanalian dancers, 
to the " Temple of Eeason," as they were pleased to rename 
the Cathedral of Kotre-Dama There she was seated on the 
high altar, and, amidst profound obeisances, frantic speeches, 
and frivolous songs, divine honours were paid to her, — a 
scandal which was immediately imitated in sevei-al thousand 
churches in the country, Who does not see from this what 
abysses are opened before a nation when Atheism once gains 
ground in it ! 

Let no one imagine that such scenes cannot be repeated. 
Not many years ago, at a students' congress in Liege, some of 
the speakers declared, amidst universal applause, that " their 
aim was to do away witli all religions, to destroy all churches, 
and to eradicate every thought of God from the consciousness 
of their fellow-men ; and that in their opinion Atheism was the 
ultimate aim of all human science." Even amidst the bom- 
bastic perorations of a Geneva " Peace Congress," sentiments 
of this kind may now and then he distinctly recognised. 

Quite recently all doubt as to the growing power of Atheism 
has been removed by the -blasphemous "Manifestos" of the 
Commune^ and the "International/' as well as by the openly 
avowed tendency of many of oiu- Socialist Unions. 

Of late, too, some of our own literati and poets have been 
un-Germa-n, enough to try to transplant this tendency into our 

' Cf. what Gnstave Flourens, the lute leader of the Bed Republican party in 
Paris, writes in his jomnal, La libre Pensile, for October 1870 ; — " Our enemy 
is Goif. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. It mankind would maka 
true progre.5s, it must be in the basis of Afbeism. Every trace of religion must 
he banished from the education ri our children," etc etc 



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140 MODERN KON-BIBLICAL COKCEPTIOKS OF GOD. [lECT. UL 

German soil. Ay, a well-known representative of the people 
has kid it down, as the task to te carried out, and to a great ex- 
tent accomplished by the present age, " to educate in Atheism 
personal enemies of a personal God, especially amongst the class 
of German artisans." And was not, about twenty-five years 
since. Atheism publicly toasted at the banquet of a literary 
society ? But philosophers also come forward as its advocates. 
Feuerbach pronounces, " There is no God ; it is as clear as the 
sun and as evident as the day that there is no God, and still 
more, that there can be none. For if there were a God, then 
there must ie one ; He would be necessary. But now if ikere 
is no God, then there can he no God ; therefore there is no 
God. There is no God, because there cannot be any." A 
pretty kind of logic, which saves us the trouble of any refuta- 
tion ! In a similar way, only in a more philosophical garb, 
another follower of Hegel, in his work, Chridenthum und 
Eumanisrmis, introduces his Atheism to tlie world by en- 
deavouring to show that " because there is no God, there can 
also be no objective belief. Man has placed himself, in the 
shape of the ideal after which he strives, as a religious subject, 
outside and above his own consciousness, and worships the 
God whom he has thus set up." In fact the world, as one of 
his critics remarks, " is a great madhouse ; by some inexplicable 
bewitchment man sees above him his own shadow, and takes 
it to be the real author of his existence." 

If Atheism takes its stand on such arguments as these, we 
may fairly ask whether those wlw proclaim it were tlmnsclves 
convinced of it? It has been said, not without good reason, 
that Atheism never really existed as a full conviction in' any 
human breast, and that there is always an underlying self- 
deception whenever any one professes to be a pure atheist. 
That one, in a fanatical over-estimation of reason, should 
imagine himself able to know and investigate everything, and 
curtly deny whatever is beyond his knowledge ; or tJiat, in the 
pride which declines to acknowledge either sin or its Avencrer, 
he should believe himself aU-sufficient, in base dependence on 
the world of sense, denying everything that does not belong 
to it, and thus persuading himself that no God exists, — this, 
after all, is conceivable enough. Eut that he should, con- 
sciously and conscientiously, make this idle notion his per- 



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LECT. m.] ATHEISM. 141 

manmt conviction, and that he shoiTld not, when denying the 
Christkn's God, venerate aught else as the Divine Power, 
this is difficult to believe, even apart from the fact that, not-' 
■withstanding all the trouble which atheists have taken to dis- 
cover but one nation utterly devoid of religious consciousness, 
we have found, down to the present day, in all nations, even 
the most degraded, some conception or other of a Higher Being, 
and a feeling of dependence on supernatural powers, and con- 
sequently some kind of religious exercise. Cicero's question 
(Be Nat. Deorum, i 16) stOl holds good— "What people is 
there, or what race of men, which has not, even without 
traditional teaching, some presentiment of the existence of 
Gods ?" Does not this indicate that the belief in some higher 
and more powerful Being by which he is conditioned, is both a 
logical and a moral necessity for man ? Or must not that in 
which not merely many (which would prove nothing), hut all 
agree, he grounded in the nature and essence of man himself? 
Yes, human thought must recognise God j'tist as certainly 
as itself and the world. As a modem apologist says : " We 
cannot, in any way, get rid of the idea."^ We do not 
merely believe that there is a God, hut we know it in 
virtue of an ideal cognition consisting in an immediate 
act of faith in human consciousness. And this very fact, 
that a direct certainty of God exists in our minds per se, 
is the most simple refutation of Atheism. It is not as if the 
idea of God were in its complete shape innate in our minds. 
We have seen above that there is no such thing as fuU-orown 
innate ideas. Eather, the idea of God developes itself {along . 
with those of our own personality and the Cosmos) through 
contact witli the outer world, of necessity, from the inward pre- 
disposition of our mental and moral constitution. Man, in 
becoming conscious of his own personality, becomes at the 
same time conscious of his state as a conditioned and Kmited 
being ; from which follows, as a necessary corollary, the acknow- 
ledgment that there must be a Being who is absolute and un- 
conditioned. " The perception of bis own relativity leads man 
to the idea of some higher Being on whom his own existence 

' Cf. tha well-known and excellent Apologetic Lectures by Liitliardt, of which 
a translation has been puhlished by Messrs. Chirk. Also, for what foUows, 
Dditiach ui mipr., pp. 66, 67. 



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142 MODERN KON-BIBLIOAL CClSCEPTlONS OF GOD. [LECT. IIL 

depends, and this Being he can only conceive as one that is 
absolute — above himself and above nature— that is, God."* 

Whether this higher Being must also be conceived as 
personal, we shall presently have to investigate, when consider- 
ing the impersonal (pantheistic) idea of God. Here we have 
only to do with the idea of God as a necessary postulate of 
thought. And we see that the atheist can give no clear 
account of the inner elements and the extent of his own 
consciousness. 

Even heathen thinkers have recognised the importance of 
this universal fact of ethnology and psychology as telhng in 
favour of behef in God. That that " wherein all by nature 
agree must be true," is a conclusion rightly drawn by Cicero. 
Or could a man in his senses venture to tax the whole of 
mankind mth an error in their consciousness ? No lie can 
last for ever ; only truth is eternal. If the consciousness of 
God were an error, it would, like any other error, have long 
ago vanished. But instead of this, we see it propagating 
itself with growing power through all the ages. 

If, then, the existence of God he an inward necessity of 
thought, the denial of it can be nothii^ but an arbitrary act 
of onr will ; it is that we vnll not acknowled(/e fhis inward 
certainty. As an element of our consciousness, as a divine 
gift implanted in the heart, the idea of God precedes all other 
thought, and the only question is, whether we are willing to 
let it stand as truth or not If we acknowledge it, the heart 
convinces the understanding, and not vice versa. Hence the 
belief in God is " not a science, but a virtue." If, however, 

^ DelUzsehutiupr. Taking tiis into coneidaratioii, we cannot deny that somn 
weight is to be attached to the much reviled OTitotogkalaTgilmeilt for the existi^nce 
of God. The way in which it is Tisually put is this— that the idea of the Moat 
Perfect Being includes reality as one ot His perfections, and that, conae([uently, 
the Most Perfect Being necessarily oasts, which has been cleaily shown by Kant 
to be a false conclusion. But is it not " an immediate certainty that the greatest, 
most beautiful, and most valuable object must be a reality, and not a mere matter 
of thought ; fox it would be utterly intolerable to believe our highest Ideal to be 
a mere conception of our intellect, without actual existence, power, or validity ' " 
Even if we cannot, from the perfection of the absolntely Perfect, logically infer 
its actual existence, still we distiaelly fml the impimMlUy oj Us non-ejis^flncc. 
" If the Greatest dM not exist, there would be no Oreateat; end it is surely 
impossible that the Greatest of all imaginable beings shoali not exist." Lotze, 
' M^vkosvtas, iiL p. SG? 



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LECT. m.] ATHEISM. 143 

we will not allow the idea of God, it is because the under- 
standing is unwilling to be thus convinced by the heart, and 
this is an arbitrary act. It was therefore a perfectly correct 
instinct which led the Greeks to look upon Atheism as a 
moral fault. And every moral fault avenges itself. The 
refusal to acknowledge that which is, and absolutely is, and is 
directly certain to every heart, leads to the acceptance of that 
which is nothing but a deceptive shadow. Man must have a 
God. K he rejects the true God, he must maie a God for 
himself, and this is of necessity a false one. " Man must be- 
lieve in something. If he does not believe in the Eternal 
Eeason, he believes in unreason ; if he does not accept as the 
truth the living God, he believes in. the idol of inanimate 
matter." 

The pretensions of Atheism would seem to he supported by 
the rejection in modem times of the old arguments which had 
long obtained in favour of the existence of a God. We re- 
serve the most important of these for our consideration of 
Pantheism, merely remarking that they are not, it is true, cogent. 
To one who does not believe in the foundation of all religion, 
that is, the reality of the supersensuous, they prove nothing ; 
for the existence of the supersensuous can never he demon- 
strated by mere reasoning. But for one who has this belief, 
they do possess a certain force : they have the value of a 
"subjective assurance," since they make the existence of God 
in the highest degree probable to reason. 

Granted, however, that the eanstence of a God cannot be proved, 
still less can Mis non-existence. This can be shown without 
difficulty. The denial of the existence of God involves a 
perfectly monstrous hypothesis ; it is, when looked at more 
closely, an unconscionable assumption. Before one can say 
that the world is without a God, he must first have become 
thoroughly conversant with the whole world. He must have 
searched through the universe of suns and stars, as well aa 
the history of all ages ; he must have wandered through the 
whole realm of space and time in order to be able to assert 
with truth, " Nowhere has a trace of God been found ! " He 
must be acquainted with every force in the whole universe ; 
for should but one escape him, that very one might be God. 
He must be able to count up with certainty all the causes 



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144 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. HL 

of existence for were there one thit he did not know, that 
one n ight be Crod He niUit be in al jok tp p ss is on of all 
the elements of tinth which foim the i\hule body of our 
knowledge foi else the one factor which he did n^t possess 
might hQjud the \erj tnth tiiat there is i God If he does 
net know and cinnot explain e^erj thing that has happened 
m the coup'^e of aj,es just the ^ eiy ^ mt which he does not 
kn w and i^ unable to explain may ]n\olve the insti-umen- 
taltj of a God In shoit to ie txble to affiim anihoi itativdy 
that no Goi a.i i a man, muH be omnitite it and om iipresent, 
that u he hiJiu, If mi st h. God and then after all theie would 
be one You see in this the monstro=iit7 of the atheistic 
hypothesis that it is possible to pioie the non existpnce of 
G(d. Atheism depends as mich and more than Theism on 
fmth that 1=! on asanmptiong ithich cannot be pro\ed 

Fmallj we would ask "What ad\ intige ac rue<! to the 
solution ot the woilds enigma if we assume the non-existence 
of a God ? Kone at all can we see, The atheist, just as the 
materialist and the pantheist, must suppose the world to 
be eternal. Is its existence in any way thus explained ? It 
may, at the present day, be physically proved with tolerable 
certainty, that the first fact of which any trace is extant in 
the world's history is the appearance of light. This brings us, 
as a scientific naturalist remarks, " to the limit of our physical 
knowledge, and to the very end of what we can discover as 
regards the material world." If we inquire further. Whence 
this principle of light ? Holy Scripture at once gives the 
answer: "God said. Let there be light;" — the atheist, the 
materialist, and the pantheist have no answer to give ; they 
say that light, or the matter and force from which light is 
derived, has existed from everlasting. What does this ex- 
plain ? These sceptics may pronounce the idea of a God 
existing from all eternity incomprehensible, but they forget 
that their idea of eternal matter is at least equally unex- 
plained. Where, then, is the advantage ? For the rest, the 
arguments to be adduced against Materialism and Pantheism, 
especially those of a moral nature, apply also to Atheism. 



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LECt lU.] 



-MATERIALISM. 



Matepialism is the twin brother of Atheism. They must 
necessarily be simultaneous; tor he who denies the existence 
of God, is unable, as we shall see, to maintain the spiritual 
personality of man. Historically it iuTarkhly either proceeds 
or closely follows Atheism. The two play into one another's 
hands, and. in fact, amount to the same thing. For Atheism 
must ultimately believe in the eternity of matter, and, just 
like Materialism, must make it its God. Between Materialism 
and Pantheism, however, a distinction must be drawn. Pan- 
theism considers God as the Soul of the world, and material 
nature as His body only. Materialism merges God in matter ; 
for, according to it, nothing at alt exists but matter, — tjt£re is m 
such thing at a separate spiritual satstante. All that exists is 
material ; and that which is called spirit, or spiritual life is 
nothing but a function of the lite of the body, a necessary 
product of sensuous perception, and of the nutritive matter 
absorbed by us, but pre-eminently of the action of the cerebral 
muscles. Materialism may well be called the gospel of the 
flesh ; it is the absolute deification of matter and of the 
creature, tmoes of which pervade the whole history of man- 
kind from Babel and Sodom onwards; nay, from the tastin" 
of the forbidden fmit in Paradise down to our own days! 
Every false belief, and every act of unbelief, like that oi' 
Thomas, involves a disposition to sensualism and materialism. 
Every apostasy from the living God, who is a Spirit, necessi- 
tates a tendency in the opposite direction to the deification of 
the flesh, though it may not always go so far. 

Hence unbelief has constanay from time to time landed in 
Materialism. We find it in the Buddhism of ancient India ; 
in Greece, among the Atomists and the Sophists, the Epi- 
cureans and the Sceptics ; we find it in the middle ages 
when the Eoman Church clearly betrayed her tendency to' 
the worship of matter, and even at times among the occupants 
of the Papal throne, of whom, for instance, John xxni (d 
1419) and Paul III. (d. 1549) publicly denied the immor- 
tality of the soul ; we find it in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, as the ultimate result of the long-protracted doubts 



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146 MODEKS XOK-BIBLICAL CO^CEPTIOXS OF GOD. [i.ECT. ni 

(IS to revelation ; and everywhere do we see it exercising tho 
same pernicious effect on nations, everywhere rusliing through 
the same circle till it attains its climax in despair of all 
knowledge' of truth, giving the rein to all evil desires, and 
finally destroying its own existence. 

In our days, the materialistic view has obtained a wide- 
spread aeceptation, owing to the fact, that many natural 
philosophers assume the entirely material descent of manVind, 
and make out that the ancestors of our race, just like other 
mammals, especially apes, originally sprang from the primeval 
slime. In Germany, too, the influence of this school has been 
no slight one during the last decades. L. Feuerbach, C. Vogt, 
J. Moleschott, Biichner, Czolbe, and others, were, and still are, 
the chiei heralds of this wisdom. " The sonl," exclaims Vogt 
{Physiologisehe Briefs, 184C), " does not enter into the human 
Icetus like an evil spirit into one possessed, but is the product 
of the brain's development, just as muscular action is produced 
by the development of the muscles, and secretion by that of 
the glands. — To assume the existence of a soul which uses 
the brain as an instrument with which to work as it pleases, 
is utter nonsense. Physiology distinctly and categorically 
pronounces against any individual immortality, and against 
all ideas which are connected with the iigment of a separate 
existence of the sonl." " Man," says Moleschott {der Krtislavf 
des Lehms, fhysiologiscke Antworien avf lAebig's ckemische 
Brkfe, 4th Ed, 1S63), "is produced from wind and ashes. 
The action of vegetable hfe called him into existence. Man 
is the sum of his parents and his wet-nurse, of time and place, 
of wind and weather, of sound and light, of food and clothing ; 
his will is the necessary consequence of all these causes, 
governed by the laws of nature, just as the planet in its orbit, 
and the vegetable in its soil. Thought consists in the motion 
of matter, it is a translocation of the cerebral substance ; 
without phosphorus there can be no thought ; and conscious- 
ness itself is nothing but an attribute of matter." The watch- 
word of this school is, in short, Wc are what we eat (Feuer- 
bach) ; in fact, man is nothing but a retoi-t in which certain 
elements are chemically decomposed and combined, and certain 
gases generated ; or as Czolbe expresses it {Entdehvmg des 
Selhsthevmsstseins, 1856), "nothing more than a mosaic figure 



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LECT. III.] MATERIALISM, 147 

made up of different atoms aud mechanically comliined in asi 
elaborate shnpe." 

We need not delay to prove that this gospel of the flesh, 
the moral of which is to produce plenty of phosphorus by 
means of good eating and drinking, is diametrically opposed 
to the Holy Scriptures, which teach us to worship God as a 
Spirit, and in the spirit, and bid man, as the spiritual image 
of God, approach his Creator in the way of sanctification and 
subjection of the flesh to the spirit ; which, from beginning to 
end, so often warn us against any deification of the creature, 
against the worship of the visible and the transient, against 
those "whose god is their belly," who sav, "Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die." Surely this 11 a view unworthy 
of refutation ; for oh ! is it not a grie-i ous and shameful thing 
that one should have to prove to men that they ate something 
better than beasts ? In opposition to such thrones, an appeal 
to the self-consciousness of the sonl and to its moral feehngs 
should suffice. Eut since in our days Matenahsm, disguised 
under the garb of science, has impressed with the idea of its 
importance many who have not as yet gone so far as to adopt 
it in theory, but who do so all the more in practice, by exclu- 
sively directing aU their energy towards gain and pleasure, it 
becomes a matter of necessity briefly to point out the scientijk 
iveakness and groundlessness of this stand-point} 

We might at once dismiss the " phosphorus theory " by 
simply denying the existence of phosphonis in the brain. 
And for a coiToboration, we might appeal to the celebrated 
J. V. Liebig, who says : " The honour of the discovery that 
phosphorus e.^iats in the brain belongs, not to me, but to Dr. 
Moleschott; and in my 'Chemical Letters' I have declared it 
to be a mistaken idea, not based on a single fact," — an utter- 
ance which shows, at all events, how uncertain is the hj-pothesis 
upon which this theory is based. But it is not our business 
to pronounce an opinion on this controversy. We might ask 

' Cf. on this subject, Pabri, Bri>-fe gegen den MateriaSsmua, 2d ed. ; Euete, 
On tite Jixistence of lite Soal from, the Stand-point of NrUural Sekiice, I-eiprig 
1863 i the Histoiy of Materialism ia Biihner's Nalttrfarsclmng und CiiltarUben, 
2(1 eJ. p. 101 fi. ; and the works of Rud, Wagner, MemdiemchSp/uag «. 
Seeknsubslaiiz, 1S54 ; der Kampf jim dk Seek, 1S57 ; Vorstudien em einer 
wiasensch. Morjiholagie it. Fhyaiologi', (fe« memehliehen Gehirm aU Seekiiorgaii, 



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148 MODERX NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPriOXS OF GOD, [lECT. IIL 

those gentlemen who assert that thought is derived merely 
from the nerves and convolutions of the brain, to explain to 
us what is the specific organ or acting medium of nervous 
activity, and should thus not a little perplex them. Por on 
this point physiologists are still most divided in their views. 
According to one, the nerves are like the strings of an instru- 
ment, the vibrations of which act upon the brain, and thence 
are reflected to the periphery. Another seeks to determine 
nervous action after the manner of the mechanical propagation 
of motion, i.e. as a concussion of minute globules. Others 
assume the presence in the nerves of an albuminous, or an 
acrid, or a sulphurous fluid, which, by means of a pressure at 
one end, produces a similar pressure at the other; and this 
nervous fluid is sometimes thought to be ether, sometimes 
luminous matter, sometimes caloric. Others, again, are of 
opinion that electricity and galvanism are the active principle 
of the nerves, etc. Whilst thus, as we see, nothing certain has 
yet been ascertained as to the material of the nervous func- 
tions, these people dare to attribute the mental functions, 
hitherto held by the whole world to be immaterial, to the 
nervous activity of the brain,— a totally unknown c[uantlty, 
about which, forsooth, they claim to be able to set up hypo- 
theses ! 

Let us, however, submit their main propositions to a closer 
examination. In order to eliminate the spirit from our nature. 
Materialism, both ancient and modern, adduces two proposiiions : 
first. That senmoTis perception is the source of all knowledge ; and 
second. That all menial action is nothing more than the activity 
of matter, and therefore the smd itself is matenal and mortal. 
Let us now consider the first proposition. 

(a) Is it then a fact, that everything in the nature of 
thoughts, notions, and ideas which can be conceived by our 
understanding, our reason, or our memory, reaches us merely 
through the senses ? Can it be that every idea of ours may 
be reduced to an original act of seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. 1 
What right have we at all to assert the existence of a neces- 
sary mechanical relation between the perception of the senses 
and thought ? The one process is separated from the other 
both temporally and locally ;. for, according to materialistic 
principles, thought is evolved by an irritation of the brain, and 



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LECT. III.] MATEKIALISM. 149 

material perception Ly a function of the senses. Kow Mate- 
rialism, either thoughtlessly or sophistically, straiglitway 
asserts that there is a mechanically necessary mntnal relation 
between the two, — an assertion %yhat is contradicted by all 
experience. Por is it not frequently a matter of fact, that one 
and the same material perception excites di^trent thoughts 
even in the same individual, to say nothing of different per- 
sons ? How, then, can we say with Vogt, " like causes, like 
results " ? According to Vogt's law, similar sounds should 
produce similar thoughts. The two propositions, " There is a 
God," and " There is ■ no God," sound very much alike, and 
differ only in two letters ; how is it, then, that they call forth 
in us opposite and not similar thoughts ? 

Is it not further a matter of fact, that a perception of the 
senses does not by any means necessarily and m all cases 
call forth a thought ? Cannot a man under the mfluence of 
violent irritation of the senses pursue a line of thought which 
stands in no kind of connection therewith ? And are theie 
not innumerable thoughts which arise completely mdepeudent 
of any external sensuous perception ? Cannot I imagine 
something which I neither hear, see, nor smell etc ? ind 
how can the materialist explain dream-life, m which the 
functions of the five senses cease ? Are dreams caused by 
nervous excitement ; and if so, whence the excitement without 
any irritation of the senses ? Or how can memory be ex- 
plained ? Since the substance of the body is being constantly 
renewed, the influence, for instance, of the journeys which we 
have taken in your youth ought gradually to lade away after 
about twelve years, because then the substance of the brain 
which originally received them has completely disappeared. 
Instead, however, of this, we find that many impressions and 
recollections lose nothing of then: vividness even after the 
lapse of many decades. And then, to put isolated intellectual 
functions out of the c[uestion, we inquire : "Whence the laws 
of thought themselves ? And finally : Whence the idea of 
God, and all the moral ideas ? 

Material perception is there/ore very far frmx forming the 
whole substance of our intellectual life, and hence cannot he the 
sole source of our knowledge. Indeed, the external influence 
does not even form the full substance of the material sensa- 



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150 MODEEil NOS-EIBLICAL C0XCEPTI0S8 OF GOD. [LECTi III, 

tion that we are conscious of, L t nl t! outward incite- 
ment thereto. The individual a t f t n are one thing, 
and the capaiility of perceiving lit 1 etc. is another. 
The capability itself cannot be 1 k d i n s evolved in ns 
solely by the exciting influence f f 1 ght and sound. 
Instead of aU tliis, we might inquire, if all thoughts arise 
merely from impressions which the senses are pleased to 
impart, why does not sensuous perception produce rational 
thought in beasts also ? The fact that the lutter do not really 
think, whilst their material perceptions are exceedingly acute, 
is a sufficient proof that a distinction must be drawn between 
thinking and material sensation, and that the former is some- 
thing new and special as compared with the latter,' On the 
other liand, there are plenty of examples of human beings 
who are almost entirely deficient in the faculties of material 
perception, and who, nevertheless, exliibit a perfectly developed 
life of thought, and considerable mental acquirements. Laura 
Bridgman, bom. the 20th of December 1829, at Hanover, in 
New Hampshire, U.S., suffered up to the twentieth month of 
her ^e from convulsive fits ; she then completely lost the 
senses of sight, hearing, and smell, and almost entirely that of 
taste, — the sense of touch being the only one left to her, with- 
out any recollection of the former possession of other faculties. 
Nevertheless, under the instruction of a sltilful teacher of the 
deaf and dumb, she has succeeded in attaining an incredibly 
iiigh development both in a physical, moral, and intellectual 
point of view: her understanding lias developed just as in 
one possessed of all his senses ; and, although four classes of 
material impressions are denied to her, still she is in perfect 
possession of all the elements of human reason. She is still 
(1863) living, and is happy and contented (see liuete ut 
supra). In the face of facts like these, how can any one assert 

■ Cf, also tlie remsrks which liebig {Chemische Briffe, 1865, p. 38) makes, 
from a clieniic»l stand-point, .against the materialistio theory : " Tha strangest 
thing is, that many look upon the peculiarities of the self-conaoious, thinking, 
and perceptive being Jn this habitation (the hnmun body) as a simple conae- 
qnenee of its intern^ structure and the arrangement of its smallest particles, 
although ohaniistry supplies the indubitable proof that, aa I'ogai'ds tliis extremely 
delicate combination which ia almost beyond tlie poweption of the senses, man 
is identical with the lowest animals," There is, therefore, every reason for tlw 
latter also being ahle to think. 



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LECT. Ill,] mate:;iali3m. 151 

that all rational knowledge is nothing but a product of the 
organs of sense ? 

(&) And how farea it with (he second aanc^n of Materialism, 
(luit mind is merely an activity and efiect oj -matter f This 
q\iestion turns upon the relation existing between the brain 
and thought. Hitherto the brain has been considered as the 
organ to which indeed thought was necessarily bound, but 
which the mind freely controlled. In order to subvert this 
view, the materialist must prove that a mechanical law governs 
the relation between a certain irritation of the brain and the 
excitation of a certain thought All attempts, however, to 
supply this proof, lead only to the conclusion that a mutual 
relation subsists between the brain and thought, but do not 
demonstrate that this relation is a mechanically binding one. 
Many facts, indeed, directly contradict this. How does it 
come to pass that in many cases a morbid alteration of the 
brain, nay, even a partial loss of brain-matter (by wounds), 
does not weaken the mental life ; or, conversely, that after 
long and vehement mental aberrations no alteration of the 
brain can be demonstrated ? "Whence, moreover, the absolutely 
inexhaustible fertility of the brain in the formation of thoughts, 
since a material structure of this sort, limited as to space, 
affords only a definite number of possibilities, and also since 
material perception is always of a limited nature ? Besides, 
if thought be identical with the brain, and the soul with the 
body, it cannot rightly be understood why man shouldfirst 
have to make himself acquainted with his own body, a fact 
which is perfectly dear in the case of children. Does not the 
circumstance, that man nmst find out the locality of his own 
limbs by experience, indicate that the body is merely an in- 
strument of the soul % 

These are then indications of a dualism existing between 
nervous or cerebral activity and mental life ; and this dualism 
is rendered still more probable by the comparison — so much 
in vogue at the present day- — between our brain and that of 
the anthropoid apes. Modern anatomy has taught us that 
the brain, for instance, of the orang-outang only differs from 
that of man in an inferior intricacy of the convolutions, a some- 
what greater protuberance of the cerebellum, as well as in a less 
delicate molecular composition (ci. the investigations of Perty, 



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152 MODERN KON- BIBLICAL COKCEPTIOSS OF GOD. [LECT. UL 

Eongemont, and others). On the whole, however, the differ- 
ence is not very important ; in external size and weight, the two 
brain=! are pretty much alike Anitomists have thus unwittingly 
supplied us with an e\;.ellent weapon for tie vmdicition cf 
the bibliLil view of man Tlic argument intended to support 
Alateuahsm in fact refutes it 1 Dr we a^ain ask as m thp 
case ot sensuous periettions if the yigan or as mateiiali U 
would say the s\ hstance of thoUj,ht and to some e\tent the 
nourishment are so similai m man and heist wh) are not the 
products oi thmkuig that is the i leas also imilar i IJ hy 
w ^t that the heast with nearly iJie same deielopment ofbram as 
man cannot succeed m p o luavg nearly the same conceptwns 
aiid ideas ? li this question cannot be answered sati factorily 
evidently the higher chaiact^i oi thought m man cannot dep d 
on the structure ot his 3 qans alo e^ and is not the product of 
merely mat^nal causes Por the greater the numl er of 
orj,anic similarities which are lisco^ered between man and 
beast the more evident is the different nature ot the treasure 
which God has implanted m us (G- '^amt Hilaire) and has 
conceale 1 under similar forms It is thut, perfectly clear that 
there is a duahsn between tit, bnin ind tie operationsj of 
thought and that theie must be a new factor which consti 
tutes the latter in man 

In or lei to elude this simple conclusifn materialists ha\e 
drawn special attention to the vaiious ihenomenam animal 
life which are analogo is to the opeiations of the s il m man — 
such as their prudence their constiuctn eness their memoij 
their expressions of joy thankfulness love etc — isapmotthat 
there is no specific difference, but only one of degree, between 
the mental life of man and that of beasts. Vogt, indeed, has 
hut lately discovered " an ursine and feline morality," because 
hear cubs and kittens are growled at and cuffed by their 
parents, "just as our own dear little ones are when they make 
light of filial obedience." AVe do not object to consider such 
phenomena as anahgies to the workings of the human soul. 
We would even go so far as to remind our opponents, if they 
have overlooked it, as a further ai^mient in their favour, of 

' For this reaeon, Moleschott has tiioitly withdrawn, in the second edition of 
hie above-named work, the attemjit to prove the capabOity ot thought in mui 
from tJio structure of his hraio. 



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LECT. III.] MATERIALISSL 153 

the masterpiece of instinct in the case of the elephant, who 
at night-time escaped from his cage, and was found in the 
open fields, practising by moonlight the lesson whicli his 
keeper had been teaching him in the daytime. 

But what do all snch examples prove ? Nothing but this : 
tliat animals possess, often in a high degree, the capability of 
sensuous cognition, and of making a judicious choice among 
the possible courses of action, as well as the faculty of memory. 
But what a wide difference there still remains between this 
lower form of consciousness in the beast, this mere force of 
impulse and instinct, and the self-conscious intellect of man, 
which forma conceptions and ideas ! If these animal feats 
really indicated a tendency to rational thought, how could we 
explain the entire want of progress in the brute world ? The 
swallow builds her nest, and the beaver his dam, exactly as 
they did in the time of Abraham. As they build, so they 
must budd, and they neither need nor are able to learn their 
art from any one. Man must laboriously learn how to shape 
the creations of his industry ; but he is compensated for this 
by the capability of infinite improvement, showing that the 
constitution of his mind is an infinite one given him by God. 
There is not much difference between the hands of men and 
apes. How is it, then, that man has made the whole of nature 
subject to him by means of this instrument, whilst the ape 
has not yet been able to make even a stone axe ? The beast 
shows a certain gift of observation and memory; it can dis- 
tinguish the succession of certain phenomena. But can it 
ever find out tJie law which governs these events ? The beast 
has perceptions of pain and pleasure which are conveyed to it 
by the outward senses. But can it call up these feelings 
without a direct sensuous impression ? Hence the beast has 
no language.. The gorilla, for instance, is not deficient in the 
organs of voice. But why is it that, with a throat similar to 
that of man, he can only howl and whine, and that man, with 
a throat like the ape's, can speak and sing so delightfully ? * 
The answer is, that the heast cannot form an drjective notion of 
his sensations and feelings, and therefore is unable to repro- 
duce them in language ; it cannot distinguish between a 
1 Efjo and the momentary sensation. It is the power 
t also Eaugemont, Der MeiiscJi nnd der Affe, p. it. 



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154 MODESN NON-BIELICAL CO^•CEPTI0^'S OF GOD. [lECT. Ill, 

to do this, and not his organs of voice (for even the deaf and 
dumb make a language for themselves), which gives man the 
faculty of speech. It is tliis, the self-c<msdous spirit, in virtue 
of which he involuntarily feels himself, as compared with any 
other created being, of inflnicely greater dignity and value. 

And what shall we say of man's distinctive Tiwral and 
TdvjioiiS disposition, and its development ! "Who can seriously 
speak of the moral attributes of beasts ? Could any training 
ever bring a beast to a moral perception of good and evil 1 
The dog is ashamed when he is caught thieving, that is, he is 
afraid of blows ; the man is ashamed of hiviself. The beast 
sees and feels nothing but nature, the world of finite things. 
It has no knowledge of God ; it perceives nothing of the 
divine govemment of the world ; it sees and feels nothing of 
any higher purposes, aims, or ideals. 

Does all this constitute mei-ely a difference in point of 
degree, and not rather an immeasurable specific difference 
between the thoughts, feelings, and desires of men and those 
of beasts ? In the latter, we see the consciousness of a soul 
unenlightened by any beam of the spirit, obscure and incap- 
able of forming the conception of an Ego ; in the former, real 
sdf-consciousiiess. In the latter, we have mere natural im- 
pulses, directed towards the satisfaction of materi:d wants, 
and serving no other purpose than tlie maintenance of the 
genus, for which reason the individual beast as such has no 
value ; in the former, we have the moral consciousness of a 
person who possesses in himself the purpose of bis existence, 
and is therefore of infinite value and eternal significance. In 
short, in one case there is a living but irrational soul ; in the 
other, the rational, God-like spii-it. All these higher achieve- 
ments on the part of beasts belong to the soziWife as dis- 
tinguished from the spirit ; because the illuminating centre of 
self-consciousness is wanting in them. The Holy Scriptures 
themselves attribute to beasts a soul as the vital principle of 
the corporal oi^anism. The phenomena in the life of man, 
on the contrary, all point to some higher power, a substance 
that marks him as superior to all mere animal life, and gives 
to his intellect' the self-conscious clearness and power, and to 
his actions a moral value ; and this is the God-descended 
spirU, which is not only distinct from the soul, but can even 



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LECT. in.] MATEBIALISM. 155 

lie practically opposed to its inclinations, in virtue of its own 
higher law. Hence the acriptuml doctrine, that man consists 
of body, 80\\l,and spirit. (1 Thess. v. 23 ; Heb. iv. 12, rf al.) 

Tills Materialism completely ignores ; hence its incapability 
to explain the fundamental difference between the merely 
animal and the human soul-life. If, however, this difference 
consists essentially in self-consciousnssa, there now arises a 
fresh and insuperable objection to the substantial unity of 
brain and thought, viz, tJmt no explanation can tJien be given 
a.s to the origin of sdf-consciousness in man. Granted that the 
individual acts of our soul-life all resulted from nothing but 
ehemico-physieal causes, it can, never be denied that these 
acts are all rooted in a certain iixed, permanent centro, in 
" the idea of the Ego as the basis of all thought;" that is, in 
self-consciousness. Whence then is this ? This centre is not 
identical with tJie individual acts of tJwugki ; for it is not an 
isolated act, but a continuous condition. Materialism, it is 
true, would fain make it identical with thought, but again 
in opposition to all experience. For do we not clearly dis- 
tinguish ourselves in self-consciousness from any definite act 
of thought ? Are there not conditions in which correct 
reasoning is coexistent with perturbed consciousness ? And 
viee versa, is there not sometimes a continuance of conscious- 
ness notwithstanding the cessation of intellectual activity ? 
The materialist, who will hear of no operative iaetor except 
the individual ^encies, — brain, muscles, nerves, etc, — and 
■who denies as an empty abstraction the bond which unites 
these separate agents, and preser\'es its own unity amid all 
the changes of thought and perception, — that is, the self- 
consciousness, or the personality as such, — makes out man 
to be a " purely mechanical lay-figure," or as Czolbe openly 
admits, " a piece of mosaic, mechanically constructed from 
various atoms,"~a theory which explains absolutely nothing 
of the practical phenomena of soul-life. 

The whole foundation of materialism is thus shown to be 
simply an audacious sophism, tlie most arbitrary, because 
unproved and absolutely unprovable, of assumptions, which is 
contradicted at every turn by our o^vn consciousness. " I do 
not wish," says Schleiden, in opposition to Materiahsm, " to 
puzzle these gentlemen witli the task of unfolding to me in 



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lo6 MODERN KON-BIELICAL COKCEPTIOXS OF COD. [lECT. III. 

detail the process whereby, for instance, the feeling for beauty 
is actually secreted in the brain. All I want them to do is 
to prove to me the possibility that, some day at least, we may 
be able to recognise the very simplest idea, as for instance, 
tree, law, etc., as a chemical element present in the brain, 
or as a combination of such. But a naturalist who judges 
and decides as to the nature of things, the possibility of which 
(to say nothing of their reality) he is not in a position to 
demonstrate, appears in this respect not an exact investigator 
of nature, but merely a superficial talker." And these people, 
in their opposition to Christianity, are fond of talking of 
" ploughman's faith," although in truth more faith in autliority 
is needed for tlic acceptance of their Jiypothesis than for 
believing all the miracles of the Bible ! 

We might conclude with this; but let us first glance at 
the consequences of the materialistic principles. First and 
foremost, it is clear that they do away with the immortality 
of the soul and all belief in another world. For he who does 
not acknowledge any immaterial principles in man, will not 
allow the existence of an absolute Spirit, ie. of God, either in 
or above the world. The ideas of God as a Spirit and of the 
human spirit as a distinct substance are inseparable, and for 
this reason we were obliged carefully to investigate the latter 
question. Every one sees what questionable results follow 
from the negation of our immortality, even as regards this life, 
and the moral order of the present world. We will not now 
enter into the details of the well-known arguments for the 
immortality of the soul, the main purport of which is that 
God is a Spirit, and that man's soul is a breath of this Spirit, 
proceeding therefore from above and not from below ; that it 
is an entity absolutely incomposite, indivisible, and immaterial ; 
and that its immateriality becomes more and more evident the 
longer it is exposed to the impotent attempts made to dcgrnde 
it to the level of mere matter. We would, however, point 
out in passing, that it is precisely the most exact modern 
i-eseareh which increasingly tends to enhance and perfect the 
ancient arguments lor immortality derived from nature, from 
the analogy of the spring, the grub, and butterfly, etc. Here 
is an example. It has been observed that the laiva of the 
male stag-beetle, when it becomes a chrysalis, constructs a 



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LECT. III.] MATEllIALISM. 157 

laiger case than it needs to contain its curled-up body, in 
order that the horns, which will presently gi'ow, may also iind 
room. What does the larva know of its future form of exist- 
ence ? and yet it arranges its bouse with a view to it ! Is it 
then t-o be supposed that the some Power, which created both 
the beetle and the man, " instilled into tM 'beetle a tme instinct, 
and into man a lying faith, which makes him arrange his 
present life with a view to a future one otherwise than he 
would were this not the case, — a faith which arises as natu- 
rally, and is as necessary for the development of mankind, as 
instinct in the larva?" (Euete ut supra). 

. If there is no such thing as a soul, not only would a future 
life be done away with, and all religion be merged in the 
worship of this world, — we pastors becoming the most useless 
of all t — b t y ill al p wl t It 

must f 11 tl h 1 m d h 1 1 1 t! t hta d 



of CO d t If t f 


11 J I Kth It 


a se t f th b p d 


df 1 tlj 


mean f k d f f m t t 


hit I th 


way, b d Y th t 


1 1 to b plul 


soph m dtl Ik 


d a t po t t 1 


tion f t 1 ull 1 J 


b 1 th t f d 1 p p 1 


to-da) t 1 t b 


f th 1 t k d f f d 


andd k Tl h I 


f 1 t 1 Itt t 


large q 1 1 t p fi 1 


d tl ph il f d 


in Old t e. d 1 


t th p f tl It 


B t 1 ft d I 


h t th I t tl t 


everytbm hi h 1 J tl t 


1 h 1 d 1 It t 1 


as m im lb 1 m 1 1> 1 


1 f tl p t nd f th 


will, t k I th 


f f t h t n ty W 


see cl ly b tl hly d 


Ih 1 t 1 I d Ij 



Materialism would destrot/ all the moral faculties of our life, — 
for instance, in the words of Moleschott, that " sin lies in 
the Unnatural, and not in the will to do evil. Speech and 
style, good and bad actions, courage, half-heartedness, and 
treachery, are all natui-al phenomena, and all of them stand 
in a direct relation to indispensable causes as their natural 
consequences, just as much as the revolutions of the globe." 
" The brain altera with the ages; and with the brain, custom, 
wliich is the standard of morals, is altered ako." " Wicked- 



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15S MODERN NON-BIBLICAL COXCEPTIOXS OP GOD. [lECT. IIL 

nes9 in individuals, like the whole man himself, is therefore 
only a natural phenomenon. And as the words, ' Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself,' form the pith of Christian 
morals, so the first maxim of the modem gospel should be, 
' To understand everything is to tolerate everj'thing ' " (ut supr. 
p. 466). At the end of his book Moleschott vouchsafes to 
the world the sapient and delieate-minded advice, that the 
stationary churchyards, in which so much excellent manure 
remains useless, should he changed into moveable churchyards, 
in order that the dead may attain the only immortality which 
now remains open to them, and have the privilege of impreg- 
nating barren ground with ammonia, carbonic acid, etc., to 
help towards the production and nourishment of fresh men ! 
Taine, one of the latest French materialists, pronounces man 
to he a beast in human (sic) shape, which is led by humour 
and instinct. " Humour and instinct proceed from the blood. 
Hence arises habit; necessity brandishes the whip, and the 
beast goes forward. But being fall of pride and conceit, the 
beast fancies that it moves in accordance with its own will, 
and that there is no whip urging it forward. We fancy that 
we govern our passions, but in reality they govern us ; and we 
ascribe to ourselves the actions which they have produced." 
Vogt, however, has, as he always does, expressed himself on 
this point most unequivocally and unconcernedly of all. " It 
is indeed true. Freewill does not exist, neither docs any 
amenabdity or responsibility, such as morals and penal justice, 
and Heaven knows what else would impose upon us. At no 
moment are we our own masters any more than we can decree 
as to the secretions of our kidneys. The organism cannot 
govern itself ; it is governed by the law of its material com- 
bination. It is impossible to demonstrate the admissibility of 
punishment, or to prove that there is any such thing as amen- 
ability or responsibility," eta 

Jurists, therefor*, do not fare any better than we theologians. 
It is evident that there is no room for them in the world now. 
There is no right to punish, for there is no responsibility ; 
everything takes place under an iron necessity. The man who 
robs and murders is no worse than the falling stone which 
crushes a man, nor, of course, any more valuable; both are 
involuntary slaves of the law of nature. Criminals should be 



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LHCT. III.] MiTEriAUS:.!. 159 

sent into hojt I>1 nttj Tlj! 

must yield up J pi t tl ph n I "W h Id n t 

then begin t t 1 1 f the t ty f ty Wh d 

not perceive tb I la g I d n M t J d 

ing to which llhnn tit ntltftl mnl d 
spirit, is subc 1 tttblwf t ndmnnin 

does what he gM (rfltwlth i I — d t 
which, theref all tl t t d hi t p f m 1 n th 
world's histoiy are nothing but the necessary products of certain 
bodily impulses and conditions ? But the whole matter assumes 
an exceedingly tragico-comical aspect when we find these 
people desirous to be thought the " squatters of advancing 
civilisation," without observing that they are its gravediggers ; 
and see them swaggering as the heralds of freedom and humanity, 
whilst it does not occur to them that they are the apodUs of 
the most hrutal tyranny, and that the practical aim of their 
theory is that the best-organized beast, called man, should sit 
alone on the throne of unfettered self-deification and unchecked 
self-gratification. For if man is nothing but a beast without 
a future, and organized merely for the full enjoyment of his 
present existence, then all that we have hitherto stupidly con- 
sidered to be virtue is only a sin against our destiny ! Jus- 
tice, duty, honour, self-sacrifice, compassion, etc., are morbid 
secretions of certain deranged lobes of the brain ! What good 
is my fellow-man to me ? To subject and tjTannize all othei's 
is the only aim which reasonable man can pursue ! Such 
maxims can-ied into practice would render society a mere con- 
ga ries of atoms. 

In good sooth, the materialists are the most dangerous enemies 
of progress that the world has ever seen. For all progress in 
the last resort depends on the ideal of an Infinite Perfection, 
to which the God-derived spirit of man aspires. He who 
destroys this ideal destroys progress also. But this ideal is 
destroyed when health and sensual enjoyments are held up to 
our race as the sole aim of life, within which we are to move 
in an eternal circle ! 

In the face of these apparent consequences, we are in this 
case, too, really led to doubt whether these gentlemen them- 
selves believe what they are trying to palm off upon us. Why 
do they seek to work upon the people by means of lectures 



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160 MODERN NOX-BIBLICAL COJTCErTIOXa OF GOD. [lECT. IU. 

and books ? The proper Vayto convert people to their opinions 
would be to make them eat the same food as they do I Just 
imagine a soulless professor, with the utmost ingenuity, demon- 
strating to soulless students from his professorial chair that 
they have no souls: Is not the wiseacre contradicted out' of 
his own moutii by every word he utters, since every one of his 
words is addressed to the souls of his audience ? In fact, my 
honoured hearers, if any one among you has brought with him 
flesh, blood, bone, some phosphorus, and iiotldng else, I would 
make bold to intimate to him in a friendly way that all argu- 
ments, as far as he is concerned, are but lost time. 

Doubtless, however, there is something true and justifiable 
in Materialism. All that exists has some right to its existence. 
We would not deny this. Materialism calls our attention 
more closely than in former days to the profound inter- 
penetration of our soul-Kfe and our bodily condition, and to 
tlie fact that the activity of our mind and will is partly deter- 
mined \iy boddy functions, — the circulation of the blood, the 
action of the nerves, etc.; in a word, to the unquestionably 
very important influence exercised by material ^ents, both 
within and without us, on our mental condition. Materialism 
may thus teach a lesson, especially to those one-sided, idealists 
whom we were before compelled to blame for looking upon 
their reason as something always absolutely free in its nature, 
without believing in their dependence on material iufluences. 
This one-sided spiritualism of necessity degenerates in time 
into its opposite, tliat is, into Materialism. The latter, then, 
forms a wholesome counterbalance to that system of philosophy 
in which the " idea" was all in all, and in which the inquirer 
was so taken up by speculations of pure reason as not to have 
time for any consideration of nature. Any future sound sys- 
tem of natural philosophy ■rf'iU have to seek the right course 
between these two extremes. 

The Holy Scriptures, on the other hand, which observe an 
equal distance between these extremes, fuUy recognise this 
truth of the intorpenetration of our soul-life witJi our bodily 
condition. They point out, with much emphasis, the pre- 
dominance which, by means of sin, the flesh has attained over 
the spirit, the constant bondage and danger which the soul 
incurs from sensual iiiclinations,^in a word, " the law of sin 



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LECT. m.] PANTHEISM. 161 

in the meinbers" (Eom, vii.); and in teaching our natural sub- 
jection to the power of sensuality, they bring clearly before onr 
eyes the truth which is involved in the materialistic denial 
of freewill. But the Holy Scriptures do not lead us into a 
comfortless fatalism, but show us the way in which the spirit 
may again attain to predominance and freedom. But it is 
one thing to acknowledge these bodily influences and another 
to identify the soul with them, — to deny its separate existence, 
and thus to tread into the dust man's crown, the basis of all 
that is truly great and htmourable, all that is high and God-like, 
in and above the world. 

If theories of this kind appeared only among morally fickle 
and degraded nations, whose whole development, or rather mis- 
development, would naturally lead to them, we might, though 
with deep compassion, look on quietly. But the busy efforts of 
many, in modem times, to naturahze a materialistic popular 
philosopliy, even<in our Gei-man soil, must be characterized by 
every one who is aware of the profound ideality of the German 
mind, and of German Christian science and education, and who 
knows how for the last ten centuries Germans have done battle 
for the highest moral and spiritual treasures of life, as an act of 
treason against the original and ini& nature of German research 
and science ! To similar opponents in his own time, Plato 
gave the counsel, " lirst to reform, so that then they might be 
capable of being taught." The Christian spirit of Germany, 
inheriting as it does the ideal impulses of the mind of ancient 
Greece, should give the same answer to the theories we have 
been considering. 



in. — PAtrrHEisai, 

Pantheism derives its name from the motto, %v Kal -jrav, i.e. 
One and AU, which was first brought into 'vc^re by the Greek 
philosopher Xenophanes. According to this view, God is the 
universe itself; Icyond and outside the world He does not exist, 
but only in the world. He is the Soul, the Eeason and the 
Spirit of the world, and all nature is His body. In reality, 
God is everything, and beside him there is nothing. Thus, 
making God the Soul of the world, PanEheism is distinguished. 



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1G2 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL COSCEPTIOSS OF GOD. [lECT. HL 

on the one liand from Matenahsro according to which God 
■ind natuie are immediitelj identical and on the Jther hand 
from Theism that ii from the behef m a seli conseiou'' per 
sonal God A\ho '.rented the vorld ind guides e\en its most 
minute details For the mam point of pantheistic behef is 
that this ^onl of the world is not a peisunnl self conscious 
Being who appears in his totality m any one phenomenon or 
at any one niom'-nt so as to comprehend himself or hecome 
comprehensible for ii'i hut thit it is oniy the One e\ei same 
Essence which fillint; e\ei>'thing and shifin^' e\eiythin£; hves 
and moves in ill e\i%tin^' thing-, and is r(,\ taled m aR that is 
visible, yet is Itself never seea Goethe has depicted it in the 
oft-q_uoted words : — 

"I rise and fall on the waves of life, 
I move to aniJ fro in action's strife ; 
Birth and the grave,— an eternal sea,— 
A web that changes alternat^^ly, — 
A life whiph must evtr glow snd bum,— 
On the whirring loom of life, in turn 
All these I weave, and the Godhead sea 
Clad in a robe of vitality. " 

The fact that this view of the world is first met with among 
nations with polytheistic religions, such as the Hindus and 
Greeks, points to an internal relationship between Polytheism 
and Pantheism which is often overlooked. The two seem opposed; 
but, when accurately considered, they are in principle the same. 
Just as, e.g., the ordinary Greeks believed that there was a 
nymph or a naiad in every tree and in every fountain, and, 
in addition to the Olympian gods, peopled all nature with 
innumerable demi-gods ; so also, in every being and in every 
phenomenon the Greek pantheistic philosopher saw a mani- 
festation of the Deity. Pantheism and Polytheism are hut a 
higher and a lower form of one and the same view of the 
world. The former is the reiined, the latter the vulgar mode 
of deifying nature ; the ioimer seeks after unity amid the 
individual phenomena, the latter stops shoit at and pei-sonifies 
them. 

We have previously alluded to the fact that this One, AU- 
inspiring, yet Unconscious, is characterized by Pantheism in 
various ways, as the Soul of the world, as universal Substance, 



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LECT. ni.] PANTHEISM. 163 

as the Moral Order of the world, as Absolute Spirit, etc.^ Tlie 
father of occidental Pantheism in modem times was the Jew 
Spinoza (1632-1677). "I have," says he, "opinions as to 
God and nature entirely different from those which modem 
Christians are wont to vindicate. To my mind God is the 
immanent (that is, the intramundaae), and not the transcendent 
(that is, the supramundane} Cause of all things ; that is, the 
totality of finite objects is posited in the Essence of God, and not 
in His Will. Nature, considered per se, is one with the essence 
of God." According to Spinoza, God is the one universal Sub- 
stance, in which all distinctions and all isolated q^ualifications 
are resolved into unity, to which per se we cannot therefore 
ascribe either understanding or will. He ridicules those who 
make out that God acts according to a purpose, and look upon 
the world as a product ct the divme will or intellect. "God 
does not ict m puisuanue of i purpose, but only according to 
the netcSitity of His nature Everything follows from nature 
with the same logical necesaitj aa that by which the attributes 
of a thing follow fiom its idea or from the nature of a triangle 
that its three an^'les iie eq^ual to two riglit angles." This 
expresses the fundamental \iew of every form of Pantheism. 
E\ en He^el s conception of God as the absolute Idea or the 
absolute Spint which, m eternal self-movement, proceeds from 
itself and becomes nature, and then again reverting to Itself, 
becomes a self-conscious spirit, is, in truth, only another name 
for the same thing. For Spinoza himself distinguishes be- 
tween nature "begetting" and "begotten" (natura naturans 
et naturata). The latter is the ever- varying phenomenal world, 
the " former" the intermittent bourne from which these phe- 
nomena take their rise, and into whicli they sink again. 

From this we can already see how much falls to the ground 
if the personality of God be given up. In the first place, we 
can no longer acknowledge a creation of the world as a free 

' There is even a. form of Pantheism, or rither of semi- Pantheism, in which 
the personality of God ia to some extent preserved, whicii loolrs upon the wotld 
as ail effing from the DeUn, and hence aa being of Hid essence, hut not ooeiten- 
Bive with Him. Thus, for instance, the doctrine of emotnations in the Indian 
Vedas. But here, too, the personality ot God is dangcroosly compromised by 
the necessity of the natural process in which these emanations take place. Since, 
however, this riew has no representatives of impoitanoe in modem times, tw 
lliall oonfino our attention to lie abore-mentioned form of Pantheism. 



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164 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [lECT. IH, 

act of the divine Will ; since things are " posited in the 
nature of God, not in His will." Miracles and providence mnat 
fare in like manner, and especially the incarnation of God in 
Christ is left without any basis. It can no loBger be looked 
upon as a fact which took place in this particular Individual, 
but only as a universal, everlasting and daily-renewed process. 
There is no longer any place for the freewill of man, and for 
the ordinary distinction between good and evil. If God has 
no liberty of action, but works " in accoi-danee with the mere 
necessity of His nature," man fares no better ; he is, indeed, 
nothing but one form of manifestation of the universal Soul ; 
and the necessity under which the whole universe is developed 
must also be the standard for every individual thing. Every- 
thing is borne along by the one immutable stream of develop- 
ment ; all that takes place is the consequence of an absolute 
necessity; and that which appears to be evil is only a necessary 
point of transition in the development of good, and therefore 
is not really evil at alL Finally, it is patent that the immor- 
tality of man, and the continuance of personal existence after 
death, are ideas which must henceforth be rejected. All per- 
sonal life must again resolve itself into the impersonal primal 
Cause, Religion itself can no longer he considered a reality. 
For I can no more stand in any personal relation to this God 
than He can to me ; I cannot address Him as " thov," for He 
is no personal /; I can neither pray to Him nor can I love 
and trust in Him, for He is only the One, the inflexible and 
unfeeling power of fate, in which I myself must one day be 
merged. 

Clearly, we may call this an unbiblical idea of God, In 
the Scriptures God appears from the beginning as One who 
acts with self- consciousness, who creates and guides the world 
with definite purposes, whose essence, therefore, is clearly to 
be distinguished from His creation. He communicates Him- 
self in special revelations, speaks of Himself in the first 
person, carries out an eternal counsel of love, and there- 
fore cannot be imagined as any other than a personal Being, 
(Cf. Lect. iv.) 

Pantheism is, however, not merely unbiblical, but, like every 
idea of God which denies His personality, also scientifically 
untenable. Allow me to prove this to you, by exhibiting its 



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LECT, III.] PANTHEISM. 165 

chief weaknesses from four different points of view, viz. : (a) 
from logie, (b) from a, consideration of the world, (c) from t/te 
kistirry of religions, and (rf) from mflrai mid religious conscious- 
ness and life. 

(a) Let us first ask philosophy and logic Jnst aa Atheism 
depends on the monstrous assumption that we are acquainted 
with all the forces in the world; just as Materialism pre- 
supposes that the matter of ichich the vjorld is constituted is 
eternal and has always existed ; — so also Pantheism depends 
on assumptions which are unproved and incapable of proof . Let 
us take up Spinoza's Ethics, the classical text-book of modem 
pantheists, which to some extent forms the groundwork of all 
their systems. Its fundamental assumption is the existence 
of a universal substance. This substance, with its attributes — 
i.e., in fact, this idea of God — is presupposed as a thing of 
course, and from this the further conclusions are deduced with 
mathematical precision. The thing Itself is, however, simply 
presupposed or assumed to exist, and its acceptance therefore 
requires as much faith as the utterances of the Scriptures about 
God. Spinoza does not attempt to investigate whether this 
idea of God is in itself correct and true. Had he done so, he 
might have discovered that this universal substance, beside 
wliich nothing at all exists, which includes all actual objects 
as its individual qualifications, is in tnith nothing but the 
highest logical conception of universality, in which all individual 
notions are blended into an undivided unity, and hence that-it 
is merely a subjective idea, but not a real objective existence. 
But our phdosopher immediately assumes, in the most un- 
critical manner, that this merely subjective idea is an oljective 
reality, and that the merely imagined imity of notions in 
our consciousness is the actually existing unity of all things. 
Here, then, we see the same confusion of thought with existence 
which we meet with almost at every turn in modem philosophy, 
" Spinoza's whole system," says a modem critic, " depends on 
the postulate, that the logic form of the notion and its attri- 
butes is identical with the objective form of real existence," 

Both Spinoza and all other pantheists are greatly at a loss 
how to answer the question as to the origin of cosmical matter ; 
and on this point it is clearly evident that they ultimately 
depend on mete assumptions, and those illogical onea They 



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166 MODEEN HON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LEC:T. in. 

all of them reject the hiblical doctrine, that God created the 
world, that is, from His own free, loving wlR called it into 
existence out of nothing. For, since they cannot conceive of 
God except in conjunction with the world, they cannot helieve 
that He called it into existence out of its former nothingness ; 
His activity is limited to shaping and oi^anizing inatttr al- 
ready existing. But if we go on to ask, whence this matter f 
we are either met with the reply, "it just exists," and are 
thus re(juiied to accept without demur their unproved assump- 
tion as a matter of fact ; or, in the attempt to explain the 
origin of the actual world, we are expected to imagine such 
extraordinary things, that the biblical miracle of creation must 
appear to every unprejudiced person fiH' more reasonable and 
conceivable. According to Spinoza, everything actual proceeds 
from the " begetting nature," which from eternity is incessantly 
hegetting the mundane phenomena. But whence, then, its 
inexhaustible fulness of force and life ? From what source is 
this vitality constantly renewed 1 The only reply is to this 
effect, that the forces of "begotten nature," by the mutual 
reaction in ■which they play upon one another, may efiect 
reciprocal renewal ; that the forces exhausted in hegetting 
and bringing forth are constantly restored by the reactionary 
influence of that which is produced. But thus we make 
"begotten nature" the mother as well as the daughter of 
"begetting nature," and so are moving in a complete circle. 
If. we demand the origin of the actual world, that is, of the 
" begotten nature," we are told that " begetting nature " is the 
ultimate cause ; and if we demand the origin of the latter, we 
are again referred to the " begotten nature," that is, to the 
very fact of which we seek an explanation.^ Granted, how- 
ever, that these forces are constantly renewed by their Imr- 
monious mutual action, must not this harinony he planned h/ 
some intelligence ? Is it to be supposed that unconscious 
nature working by blind necessity could have made a com- 
putation of this kind ? Can our intellect feel satisfied with 
the idea, that from all eternity there exists a combined play of 
forces mutually exciting and renovating one another, bhnd 
indeed, yet computed with perfect wisdom ? Th'5 absurdity ot 

■ Cf. hero also Zur Vfrantimrlanij des chriatL Glajebeiis, No, II., HalUT 
Oder Gott I and Genu, apologet, Beitrdge. 



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LECr. III.] PANTHEISM. 167 

tlie assumption of an impersonal unconscious God here be- 
comes clearly evident. That by which everything else is 
realized with absolute wi'idom is supposed to be unable to 
realize itself in conscious thought ! What a contradiction ! 

We do not fare much better under the guidance of HegeL 
He teaehes us to regard God as the absolute Idea which, from 
endless ages, realizes, inspires, and orders the whole pheno- 
menal world : in other words, as the system of those concep- 
tions on which all thought is necessarily based {e.g. being and 
becoming, force and effect, etc.), and which are supposed to 
possess reality, since without them all our thought would be 
null and void. But whence proceeds this absolute Idea ? It 
is not conceived by a personal God, for none such exists. 
Keither can it conceive itself; for if it did, it would become 
self-conscious, and thus God would again become personal. 
How does Hegel get out of the difficulty ? He says that the 
absolute Idea fosUs itself by means of the eternal position and 
organization of the world. If we inquire. Whence proceeds 
the world? we are met by the reply, It exists, and is 
continuously posited by the absolute Idea. And if we ask, 
Whence comes the absolute Idea, from what is it derived, and 
in what does its actuality consist ? we are told, It is posited 
in and with the world, and has none but a mundane actuality. 
Do you see how we are being mocked with a shadow ? The 
world. is supposed to be posited by the absolute Idea, and yet 
the absolute Idea itself has an actual existence only in the 
world. How, then, can this absolute Idea posit itselt ? and 
how can it be looked upon as the principle which posits the 
world if itself attains actuality only in the world ? 

Pantheism desires to realize the Infinite ; but because the 
Infinite always has its actuality only in the Finite, the result 
is, that Pantheism constantly denies it in ita endeavours to 
realize it. A close examination of this "sell-positing" Idea 
clearly shows that tjie panfheistie conception of God is one which 
destroys itself ; for thai only which is conscious of itself can 
posit iiself ; but a being which is possessed of sclf-conscioumess 
must also be possessed of personality. The impersonal idea of 
God, in fact, depends upon a hypothesis which on a more 
thorough consideration will be found t« point beyond itself. 
The way, too, in which Hegel makes the Absolute develope 



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168 MOOEEN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OP GOD. [LECT. IU, 

itself is thoroughly illogical. Mrat of all, in its existence 
per se it is a purely immaterial idea ; next it en.erges into 
existence as distinct from, itself, and, distorting itself in time and 
space, becomes nature ; then, from this self-alienation it reverts 
to itself, and in man attains to self-ecmstence, and becomes self- 
knowing thought, or self-conscious spirit. In this process it 
is only the existence per se, and the existence as distinct from 
itself, in which the Idea is absolutely : in its self-existence, on 
the contrary, it is only in a fnite, human-psyehological form, 
although evidently the Absolute should include all three 
■ forms ; that is, God, as a Spirit, must he His own cause. His 
own ol^ecf, and the suljjeci which comprehends, knows, and wills 
Himself 

Besides this, the pantheistic idea of God lahoiuB under two 
other great difHcnlties. In the first place, it cannot be under- 
stood how persontdity can proceed from an impersoiial prin- 
ciple. We ourselves are persons, that is, we can conceive and 
determine ourselves ; for in this personality consists. Aud 
although Spinoza denies the self-determination and freewill of 
man, still he does not deny his self-consciousness. Whence, 
then, is this self-consciousness supposed to proceed if the soul 
of the world, from which we ourselves have emanated, has no 
consciousness ? Can God communicate that which He does 
not Himself possess, and create forms of existence which 
transcend His own ? Can the effect contain anything which 
does not exist in the cause ? To this one simple question 
no pantheist has as yet been able to give a satisfactory 
answer. Moreover, the idea of an endless aiid aimless process 
of development is illogical and self-contradictory. An endless 
development, an infinite process, which is for ever approach- 
ing its aim, but eternally remains infinitely far from it, is a 
contradiction with which our intellect cannot be satisfied. 

The chief argument which pantheists bring forward against 
the existence of a personal God is, that ■personality eannot ie 
conceived without finite limilaiions. Personality, they say, 
consists in the contraposition of self to another object, a non- 
ego which forms an insuperable hmit to the ego ; and hence 
the conception of absolute, limitless personality inrolves a 
direct contradiction. In short, the infinite greatness of God 
is supposed to be incompatible with His j)ei-sonality. To this 



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LECT. III.] MODEES SOS-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. Il39 

■we first reply by a question: la it in our own case the 
limitation of self by the cosmical non-ego which is the cause 
of our consciousness reflecting upon itself, and thus becoming 
«e//'-eonscious or personal, so that without the non-ego our 
personality would cease to exist ? No, this limitation is 
merely the occasion; the original cause of the self-reflection 
consists in the peculiar constitution of the human subject as 
a spirit, which points to a primal Spirit-subject as its 
Creator. 

The root of personality in the ego lies in its nature before 
any contraposition to other objects. This contraposition, 
therefore, does not form the eisenu of the personality, but is 
only a conseqiience of its uiheient nature. " Personality," says 
a well-known modern philosopher* who has very tellingly 
answered this objection to the personality of God, " does not 
depend upon a past or piescnt contraposition of the ego to 
the non-ego; but, comerselj, it consists in an immediate esse 
per se, forms the necessary ji7-ivs of this contraposition wher- 
ever it taiies place." If, then, even in the finite subject 
self-consciousness is the result of its own action, based upon 
an esse per se which is not dependent on the world, how much 
less can the absolute Subject, God, by reason of His personality, 
be considered to be entirely dependent upon, and limited by, 
externals ' Doubtless, in the ca&e of ths finite spirit as such, 
the development of personal consciousness can only take place 
under esternal influences proceeding from the non-ego ; not, 
however, because it needed the contraposition to an alien 
object in order to be self- existent, but simply because it does 
not in this nor in any other respect possess in itself the 
conditions of its existence. But we do not meet with iJtis 
limitation in the nature of the Infinite. " It alone, therefore, 
is capable of a self-existence, which needs neither ijiitiation 
nor cnntmuous development by means of anything which is 
alien to it, but maintains itself in an eternal movement within 
its own essence." And if we designate the inner personal 
life of the personal God, the cun-ent of His thought, feeling, 
and will, as one that is eternal and without beginning, never 
resting, and hence never excited into movement from any 
state of cLuiescence, " we do not impose a more difficult task 
' Lotze, .Jftb-piTwnww, L p. 210 ff.; iii. pp. 565-578. 



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170 PANTHEISM. [LECT. III. 

on the powers of imagination than does any pantheistic or 
materialistic theory." 

And -why should the idea of in eternal absolute Pers Duality 
be self-contradictory ? For the ■very leison that we are finite 
our personality is imperfect To none but the Inlinite can 
we ascribe perfect personaljty But mure than tins ue aie 
compelled to do so. Or is not i personality superior to an 
impersonal object ? Is it n t a matter of fact thit the greater 
and higher a being is, the more perfect is his personality ^ 
Do we not see the creation struggling to-wards personality 
and mounting step by step thnugh the prelimmai^ stamps of 
the vegetable aud animal \vorld until in man it actually 
attains to individual personahtj and beuomes a self conscious 
mind ? " Whence this unn cr'ial tendency of aU that lives 
towards personality, if it be not the law of the world ; and 
whence this law, if the Principle of the world is an impersonal 
one ? " And if personaKty constitutes the pre-eminence of 
man over the inferior creation, can this pre-eminence be 
wanting in the highest Being of all ? can God, the most per- 
fect Being imaginable, be devoid of personality, the most 
perfect form of being? Is God indeed the absolute and 
entu'ely perfect One, if He be wanting in any one excellence ? 
We do not assert that the most perfect Being as such neces- 
sarily exids (which was, as we saw, the false conclusion of the 
ontological argument. But we maintain that personality must 
belong to perfect existence as such (for the existence of God is 
acloiowledged by Pantheism), because otherwise the most per- 
fect' form of existence would not have been attained. So little, 
therefore, is the idea of God!s p&rsonality co^ilradicted h/ His 
infinite greatness and perfection, that, on the contrary, it is pre- 
cisely hj reason of them that He must he personal. In fact, the 
Absolute can only be imagined as the absolute Subject, ie. 
as the absolute Personality. If the Absolute is to be mere 
substance, its idea reinains incomplete ; because then the sub- 
jective spirit and the fipite personality of man appear as some- 
thing higher. 

In support of this we can again appeal to the self-know- 
ledge of man. We liave already seen, in our arguments 
against Atheism, tliat, from the consciousness of his own 
conditionality and hmitation, man derives the idea of an 



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LECT. m.] MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 171 

unconditioned absolute Being. If we now go a step fartlier, 
and assert that this absolute Being must necessarily be con- 
ceived as a personal one, we are justified in so doing by the 
fact, that if man perceives that even a conditioned, relative 
being hke himself is by its self-consciousness raised high 
above the level of mere nature, he cannot imagine the abso- 
lute Being, whom he regards as the creative Cause of himself 
and all conditioned existence, to be otherwise than possessed 
of absolute self-consciousness and freedom, i.e. as absolute 
PersonaUty (Delitzsch ut mpra, p. 69). That which man 
recognises in himself in a conditioned form, he must ascribe 
to his original Cause ahsolutehj. 

"We here perceive the fundamental weakness of Pantheism, — 
its absobUe Bmig is not absohtte at all, just because It is defi- 
cient in the point of personality. The latter is not in the 
case of God, any more than of other beings, a defect, a 
restrictive limitation; but, on the contrary, a pre-eminence, 
a perfection, and consequently in the most perfect Being a 
necessity. Only we must not exaggerate the infinity of God, 
so as to make Him out to be something entirely colourless, 
abstract, and utterly devoid of attributes ; but we must, not- 
withstanding all infinity, imagine Him at the same time as a 
definite Quantity, determined by Himself and not by others, 
whose self-posited unity is His own tixi, and in whom per- 
sonality is the necessary form and determination (but not the 
limitation) of the infinite being, I say the necessai-y form; 
for how should that which has in itself no definite centre, and 
cannot even posit itself in thought and will, have power and 
stability to posit a world as distinct from itself, and to become 
the motive power of the universe ? Indeed, how can that 
which in itself lacks all precision and definiteness ever be 
capable of shaping given cosmical matter into definite forms ? 

Lastly, the pantheist may object that a self-consciousness 
cannot most assuredly have an ohject ; it requires tvio distinct 
subjects, such as are in fact presented to us in the Scriptures, 
in Father and Son. And further, it is clear that if two are 
required, God and the world cannot be one. Thus the above- 
mentioned objection, after all, recoils against its authors. 

(6) The next set of arguments to show untenableness of 
the pantheistic conception of God are taken from a cosmo- 



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172 PANTHEISM. [LECT. JU. 

logical point of view ; that is, from a consideration of the world. 
The well-known cosmologkal proof foi the existence of a God 
'is simply enough indicated in Scripture, viz. Heb. iii. 4: 
" For every house is builded by some man ; but He that built 
all things is God." (Cf. Eom. i. 19-21.) It is sometimes 
ai^ued from the eifect to the cause, thus: All existence is the 
effect of some cause, which, in its turn, is the effect of another 
cause ; and so on till we arrive at some first cause, which is 
not the effect of any other, but is itself the cause of its own 
existence (cf. the Aristotelian expression, "iirst mover," irpwrov 
Kwovv). At other tunes it is argued from the accidental to 
the necessary, thus : That there is no accidental — that is, 
■what can be otherwise or not — without a corresponding 
necessary (used in this form by the school of Leibnitz and 
Wolff). Since the time of Kant it has been justly held that 
this argument only proves the existence of an unconditioned 
essence, eternal and self-subsisting, which forms the ground- 
work of everything else ; but not that this essence must be 
an unique and "personal Being. 

Nevertheless, this argument should not be unconditionally 
rejected. That great man Sir Isaac Kewton has said: 
"Although no actual step in this argumentation brings us 
directly to the knowledge of the First Cause, yet each one 
carries us constantly nearer to it." And how is this? Because 
the human spirit can believe of none but the S'pirit, that it is 
a self-poaiting, unconditioned eternal Being. Of eveiy other, 
that is, of every material existence, the mind asks, and must 
ask. Whence is it ? and cannot rest satisfied with the mere 
thoi^ht that it has always existed. " We are no more able 
to believe of cosmical substance than, for instance, of the sun, 
that it is per se a. necessary eternal being ; for this cosmical 
substance possesses no understanding; it is not spirit" (Gess, 
Amloget. Beitrdge, p. 190). If it be an assumption necessary 
to our intellectual being, that only the Spirit can posit itself 
and possesses eternal necessary being, it follows that we can 
only imagine as a Spirit that unconditioned Cause of all 
things, that absolute One, to whom we are led by the cosmo- 
logical argument That which is self-existent must also he 
self-conscious. 

Ent the necessity of postulating self-consciousness as in- 



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lECr. III.] MODEllN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 173 

heretit in the Divine Nature is still more evident, if we 
consider the world not merely as matter, bnt as the Cosmos; 
that is, as a harmoniously proportioned and -well-arranged 
organism. This brings us to the ideological argument, based 
upon the purpose or aim manifested in the universe, an argu- 
ment which the results of modern science are rendering more 
and more important. It is based upon an idea of the creation, 
as a judiciously arranged whole, tending to a certain aim ; and 
from the regularity and conformity to purpose exhibited in 
the universe, it argues that there must be an Intelligence 
which has ordered it according to a set purpose, and thus 
points us to a self-conscious, personal Spirit. In vain have 
endeavours been made to dispute the material premise of this 
argument, viz. that the world's course is arranged after a set 
purpose. It has been said that we know only a small portion 
of the universe, and must not therefore presuppose as a matter 
of course that the same order and wisdom prevail in all its 
spheres ; and moreover, that the conformity to purpose shown 
in the earthly creation is by no means perfect, but that on the 
contrary there are many things in it which are purposeless or 
contrary to their true aim ; for the world, human life, and 
history, form an exhibition of incompleteness and unsuitable- 
ness, as is proved by the many evils which exist. But, in the 
first place, if only a portion of the world be indubitably shown 
to be fuU of msdom, the whole universe must be so also; 
because otherwise this portion would not for one moment be 
safe from being destroyed by the want of order in the re- 
mainder. And does not the fact that we need to meditate 
upon the world, and cannot help doing so, at once presuppose 
that the object of o\ir thought must be a Reality full of 
wisdom? "A world of accident could not be an object of 
cogitation. If the world around us be not a system of thought, 
whence comes the need we feel for thinking about it ? . Why 
is not man satisfied with the use that beasts ma]>:e of the 
■world ?" The very fact that we are compelled to think about 
this world is a proof that thoughts are inwrought in it. 

With regard to the evil tliat is in the world, and the want 
of conformity to purpose shown in certain phenomena, we 
must first ask whether these incongruities form an intrinsic 
element of creation, or whether they are a later introdnctioa. 



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174 PAKTHEISM. [LECT. IIL 

According to Scripture, they are everj'wliere connected with 
sin, the destructive effects o£ which extend even to nature. 
ThiSj however, by no means does away with the conformity to 
purpose which marks the universe as a vihole. Indeed, the 
manner in which these temporary disturbances of the moral 
and physical order of the world are ultimately made service- 
able to the divine aims is, the longer we consider it, the clearer 
proof of the greatest wisdom and conformity to plan. Thus 
the fundamental premise of the teleological ailment for the 
existence of God remains unshaken.^ 

It may be said with more reason, that this argument has 
something incomplete about it, inasmuch as this conformity 
to purpose affects only the form and not the matter of the 
world, and that therefore we can derive from it only the idea 
of an Architect, not that of a Creator. But let us combine 
the result of this aigument — that there must be a world- 
oi^anizing intelligence — with that of the cosmological argu- 
ment, that there must be an absolute Substance, which, on 
account of its eternity, we can imagine only as a Spirit, and 
we then have the cause in the one of the matter, m the other 
of the form of the world. If, then, the latter argument shows 
us the aelf-existent, all-creating nature of God, and the former 
His thinking intelligence which makes infinite plans and 
wisely carries them out, is there so very much wanting to 
constitute the idea of a personal Creator of the world ? The 
only q^uestioii that remains is, whether it is not in any way 
possible to derive the wisdom prevailing in the world from 
the agency of some blindly operating cause, some unconscious 
soul of the world ? 

In our inquiry after traces of the wisdom which so plenti- 
fully dwells and operates in creation, modem science furnishes 
us with a constantly increasing number of direct proofs, that 
everywhere a foreseeing Wisdom, whieh must as such he conscious 
of itself and of its action, rules the world. Indeed, these proofs 

'The materialistic opponents of the "theory of adaptation to parpose " 
(Biichner, and others) frequently argue on the erroneous supposition, that 
theologians who believe in the Bible look upon the n'orld in its present con- 
dition as absolutely perfect ; and they seek, by various exBinples, to prove the 
contrary. If tbey would take the trouble to turn to Rom. viii, 19 if., they 
might see that, long bcfora their arguments, the imperfection of the world in 
its pre»e>U condition was taught by Scripture. 



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LECT. ul] modern non-biblical conceptions of god. ■ 175 

have rendered Pantheism and Materialism, coTisidered as hypo- 
theses of natural science, simply absurd, and save us the trouble 
of refuting tliem from Scripture.^ Listen, for instance, to 
■what the great chemist, Liebig, sajfs in opposition to these 
views : " There is no phenomenon in chemistry more wonder- 
fu], and none which so effectually strikes all human wisdom 
dumb, than that which is presented by the processes taking 
place in the soil of a field adapted for vegetable growth. 
During the filtration of rain-watef through the soil, the earth 
does not surrender one particle of all the nutritive matter 
which it contains available for vegetable gro*th (such as 
potash, silicic acid, ammonia, etc.) ; tlie most unintermittenfc 
rain is nnable to abstract from it (except by the mechanical 
action of floods) any of the chief requisites for its fertility. 
The particles of mould not only firmly retain all matter nutri- 
tive to vegetable growth, but also immediately absorb such as 
are contained ia the rain-water (ammonia, potash, etc.). But 
only such substances are completely absorbed from the water 
as are indhpeTtsahle requisites for vegetable growth ; others 
Temain either entirely or for the most part in a state of solu- 
tion." ^ Tims every drop of rain is in its operation a miracle 
of conformity to purpose. No less wonderful are the well- 
known proportions in which oxygen and nitrogen are combined 
in the air, their continuous production aud consumption, and 
the constant restoration of the due proportions amidst per- 
petual oscillations. And just as in these matters we see a 
previously unthought of "great scheme for the harmonious 
blending of forces," so, too, in modem astronomy. Here it 
has been demonstrated that those phenomena which were 
formerly called " disturbances " in tlie planetary orbits, and 
consequently appeared to point to some want of order, some 
little error on the part of the inteUigeiice which arranged the 
universe, are in reality recipi-ocally compensating forces, and 
balance one another according to fixed laws,— thanks to a dis- 
tribution of masses in our solar system, such as could only be 
contrived by the piercing mind of a heavenly Arithmetician, 
whose reckonings even a Lagrange was scarce able to follow. 
And how many other facts are there in the worid, in re- 

' Cf. for what follows, Ulrici, Oott iwid die 2falar. 
' Chemiiche Bri^e, 1865, p. 387 ff. 



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1 76 PANTHEISM. [LECT. III. 

5pect of which the truly profoiind natural philosopher must 
confess that they absolutely cannot be derived from blindly 
ruling forces of nature, but must point to some intelligence 
which guides everything according to wise and good purposes ! 
How is it, for instance, that drift-wood is cast up on the coasts 
of Greenland — which stand ia^such need of it — and not upon 
those of England and France ? How is it that the planets 
nearest to the sun have no moons, whilst those that are farther 
removed, and stand in more, need of light, have several ? How 
is it that iron is the metal which is found more frequently 
than any other ? Hov/ is it that the trade-winds carry the 
clouds past one portion of America, so that they may gather 
round the summits of the Andes, and thence descend and 
moisten by mists and storms those provinces which would 
otherwise be arid ? If it is said that these things are caused 
by certain natural laws which are hitherto unknown to us, 
the question still arises, whether every law does not pre- 
suppose a lawgiver ? 

In organic nature we meet with still clearer traces of in- 
telligent forethought. Here we see each form of -animal and 
vegetable life with a special function allotted to it, and pro- 
vided with the requisite structure, but very often in such a 
way that the orgaiis make thdr appearance long before they are 
needed to exercise tJteir functions. Thits the leaf attached to 
the stamen of the lime-blossom remains motionless for montlis, 
until the pistil with the fruit, which has in the meantime 
ripened, becomes disengaged from the bougfi, and then by the 
help of this its leaiy wing does not descend perpendicularly 
to the earth, hut is carried in graceful spiral curves beyond 
the spreading roots of the parent trunk. The feathery crowns 
of the dandelion and the thistle, the teeth of the mammalia, 
and the wings of birds, all illustrate the same law. And the 
further we descend amongst the genera of the inferior animal 
creation, the more frequently are we confronted by phenomena 
which, to use the words of a Professor of Botany, "can 
scarcely be described otherwise than as the predefined pre- 
paration for predestined future fiiTtctims." Soo, too, with all 
the higher animals ; the organs of the lungs, the eyes, and the 
eara are formed in the womb or in the e^ long before there 
is any contact with the outer air, or any afteetion of the 



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LECT. in,] rAXTIIEISJI. 177 

optical or aural nerves fAotice too the complete refutation 
of Materialism invohed m thee facts) And how exactly 
are tj^ese oi^'ans formed m re',pect of the purposes which they 
will have to fulfil! Ihe e\e of tl t fish is constructed in 
precise conformity with the hws thit govern the refraction 
of light through water whikt its gills are perfectly adapted 
to the nature of its ^ital element Ihe scle ot the human 
foot and the palm of the hand are clothed even in the womb, 
with a thicker skin than the remainder of the hody. Indeed^ 
the wise construction of the hum-in hand has been not inaptly 
adduced as an irrefutiUe pioif of the existence of God (by 
Sir Charles Bell in his Bndgiewater Treatise). 

And with what wonderful conformity to purpose is the hfe 
of the body carried on ? It can only subsist by means of the 
continuous action of the blood, which in every limb absorbs 
and carries away all useless or noxious matter ; and, on the 
other hand, brings to it all that is serviceable, by depositing 
phosphate of lime in the bones, nitrogen in the muscles, car- 
bonic acid in the lungs, etc,— every kind of matter in the right 
place, at the right time, and in the correct chemical propor- 
tions. Surely, in the face of such cleai> facts, it is only the 
blindness of prejudice which can deny that a, conformity to 
plan and purpose governs the various forces. The birth of 
all animals which live on any sort of food that is not always 
obtainable, takes place just at those periods of the year in 
which the food necessary for their young is to be had. In- 
sects, too, do not emerge from the grub until the means of 
their subsistence are at hand ; indeed, they conform to the 
irregularity of the seasons if the growth of the plants requisite 
for their food is delayed by bad weather. 

How incomprehensible is all this, unless we assume the 
existence of Him " to whom all His works are known from 
the beginning of the world ! " (Acts xv. 18). Is it not clear 
that the infinitely rich and yet united system of laws inherent 
in the whole of natural life— fi-om the harmoniously circling 
heavenly bodies to the drops of dew upon the field, from the 
human body to the smallest blade of grass — can only be the 
worir of a foreseeing and therefore self-conscious intelligence ? 
If, however, from the systematic co-operation of all isolated 
natural forces towards one great Korld-liarmony, the necessary 



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178 MODEEK SOS-EIELICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [lect. UL 

deduction be the existence of some all-conditioniiig, all-govern- 
ing and <!piritual pnmal Power, then the utter untenablenesa 
of Pantheism IS cloarlj ev dent. Logic proves that it cajiiiot 
explain the orii;in of cosmical matter; and natural science 
reduces it to the utmost perplexity, by demanding an explana- 
tion of the eo=!mic haimonj ind of the woudrously beautiful 
disposition of the component pai'ta in the world's organism. 
In this matter it^ perplexity is twofold. First, it cannot 
point out the origin of tke individual forms of life in the world. 
The origin of our own personality from the impersonal mun- 
dane Soul remains, as we showed above, a mystery ; but the 
same remark applies to the origin of organic life generally. 
The natural science of the present day shows that at the 
earliest period nothing but inorganic life existed, and con- 
fesses its inability to conceive how organic hfe can be de- 
veloped from inorganic matter. The pantheist, however, is, 
in accordance with his principles, compelled to maintain that 
this did take place. For if nature is the ultimate cause of 
eveiything, if everything is developed by necessity in an 
eternal circle, then no individual form of hfe can be isolated 
from all other entities by a special act of creation, . or pro- 
duced by a miracle ; on the contrary, everything must foiTO 
part of one firmly- United chain of cause and effect. Therefore, 
the oi^anic must take its origin spontaneously from the in- 
oi^anic, and man must descend from some species of ape. 
Thus Pantheism stands in complete contradiction .to all sound 
investigations of natural science.' 

In the next place. Pantheism cannot explain the connection 
existing between the individual cosmical beings, i.e. the laws 
that govern them and combine them into a Cosmos. This 
marvel of wisdom and conformity to purpose, these predestined 
preparations for future activity, this magnificent scheme of 
harmonious adaptation of forces both in animated and inanimate 
nature, — all this has been produced, according to Pantheism, 
by an unconscious Wisdom, by a Soul of the world infinitely 
intelligent, it is true (for even Spinoza attributes thought to 

' According to tlie latest observations of Psisteur, which are confirmed by the 
French Academy of Science, the assumption oS s, genetvitto Bp(mtattea ot tequivoca, 
i.e. that organic lif^ should spontaneously spring from iitorgnnic matter, mmt 
heucelortlL lie considered as scientificiiUy disproved. 



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LECT, in.] PAKTHEISJr. 179 

the universal Substance), but still impersonal An unconscious 
Wisdom, ! An infinite Intdligmce devoid of sel/-co>iscioiisness ! 
Grasp who may sueli an idea ! It is a self-contradicting con- 
cation, just as much as a wooden iron, or a quadrangular 
circle ! ' For if, as infinite Intelligence, God knows every- 
thing, Ho must also linow Himself, and must be a Person, 
since " the conception of the Ego is the root of all knowing." 

The objection may, however, be raised, that the possibility 
of a wisdom devoid of consciousness is evident from the work- 
ings of animal instiTid and the origin of human language. 
Many animals, such as the spider, the bee, the beaver, etc., do, 
indeed, without any clear eo n m V t t 

nently adapted to their purp d th u f a p pi 

produces its own language, th t y p n d pi n 
and any clear intention, and ; t 1 pi t th 

well-defined rules and laws. Th bj t n y pi is bl 

nevertheless it proves nothin^ m fd\ oui of an absence of con 
seiousness on the part of the mundane Soul It cannot ptove 
this, unless these wisely planned workings of animal instinct 
really proceed primarily from the least itself. But this is not the 
case. On the contrary, instinct is implanted in the beast as a 
result of its oiganization, as e.g. the faculty of singing in the 
singing bird ; and faculties of this kind are not produced by 
the animal itself, but are derived from some other source, 
In like manner, the peculiar features of a language arise from 

' Hence, also, the contradictions in which pantheistic naturaliBta entangle 
themselves when endeavonring to explain the process of creation. Bumieieter, 
for instance, has shown with praiseworthy pains that the creation of the various 
animal species always began with a type of the whole genus, which .united in 
itself the qaalities sutaequently distributed among the different species. Hence 
he, too, acknowledges a " united plan, a definite law unalterably observed 
in the developmant of the animal world ;" bat at the same time he maintains 
that this law ia only the result of the forces working in matter, and that as they 
altered, that which was produced by them assumed another form. But if these 
forces not only work, but also "alter" in conformity with "a united plan," so 
that they do not constantly produce similar formations, but siioh as are progres- 
sively more and more perlect ; and if all this appears to be based npon some dis- 
tinct universal conception, does it not evidently follow that it is not a number 
of forces Madly acting upon the matter with which they fortuitoasly meet, but 
only an intelligent and conscious Power operating according to plan and eoneep- 
lion, which, by means of these nataral forces and materials, has called forth the 
succession of animal species, and has guided the whole process of creation t 
Pantheism is here convicted trora its own lips 1 



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180 AIODERN KON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. fLECT. UL 

the bodily or mental constitution wliicli the people has by 
nature ; and this, too, is a gift conferred upon it. Hence, in 
reality, the ■wisdom which manifests itself in animal instinct 
and in the construction of languages is not derived from the 
beast itself, nor from the genius of the nation, " but from that 
Power to which both animals and men owe their organization. 
It is therefore impossible to ai'gue, from the deficiency of self- 
consciousness in animal instinct, that the ultimate Cause which 
organizes every tind of life can operate unconsciously." A 
cleverly- constructed machine works well by itself, and produces 
things serviceable for the purpose intended ; but this is a 
merit due, not to the machine, but to him who constructed it 
wisely, with a certain end in view. It works only with bor- 
rowed wisdom and forces implanted in it by man. Thus God 
implants in oi^nie nature certain instincts and faculties, 
which then produce unconsciously things wondrously adapted 
for their purpose. But from this it by no means follows that 
the Creator, who conferred these gifts on animals or men, did 



No, it is a proposition clear and irrefutable as the axioms in 
mathematics, that tlie primal Reason, from which all that is 
rational in the world proceeds, cannot be blind, but must be 
self-conscious. " So long," says a prominent philosopher of 
the present day, " as the position of natural science allowed us 
to cousider original matter to be a continuous substance extend- 
ing into infinity, it was possible to take a pantheistic view of 
the spiritual Power governing it, as though this were inherent 
in matter, and formed it continually into the shapes which 
nature exhibits, i.e. as though it were merely the Soul or 
Spirit of the world. But since natural science has demon- 
strated that matter consists of an infinity of separate and dif- 
ferent atoms, it is scientifically impossible to cling to Pantheism 
as a theory of the world witJunii betraying an utter want of 
rejection." If I shuffle promiscuously a thousand letters of 
the alphabet, is it likely that some happy accident wiU group 
them into a glorious poem, teeming in every line with intel- 
lect and beauty ? Yon cannot believe tliis. Neither can 
you, then, believe that a Cosmos, such as presents itself to our 
eye, with more wisdom and beauty the longer we consider it, 
is the product of matter, of forces and atoms unconsciously 



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LECT. in.] rASTHEISU. 181 

meeting and comknin„ ■siith ne -inct! r At tlie pre ent 
day the only choKe left U us is between this extieme 
Slaterialism, which declares the origin of the world to be an 
accidentally fortunate conibmat on of atomi and the belief in 
the creative action of a spiritual self conscious original Being, 
who governs according to purposes and ideas, that is, in tlie 
personal God. This, my honoured hearers, is the final dilemma 
put to you also : you must believe either in an accident which 
explains nothing at all, and puts a stop to all scientific inves- 
tigations, or in a personal Creator ! 

The very same alternative is laid before you in respect to 
the whole histonj of ilie world. Its wonderful course is as 
much a proof for the existence of a wise and holy God who 
guides everything according to conscious aims and ends, as is 
the creation, for the existence of a wise and omnipotent God. 
" The wisely ordered inarch of history," says a modern apolo- 
gist, " through the midst of all the turmoil brought about by 
the arbitrary conduct of so many millions of free men, can 
only be explained as resulting from the all-ruling providence 
of a personal God. It would be impossible, in the face of 
human freewill, for the unconscious wisdom of nature to 
retain the mastery over the course of events." Every individual 
personal being would possess in his freedom a power greater than 
all that of the impersonal mundane Soul, and could, by a single 
action, confound all the operations of the latter. Nothing hut 
a fffrmi can rule over and guide persons. The rule of an im- 
personal power over personal beings is just as impossible for the 
one as it is unworthy for the other. We need not pursue this 
further, for it will suffice to refer each one to his own history. 
If God exists, then man, the being formed in His image, may 
demand that He should make Himself personally felt. And 
has He not already done so in our individual experience ? 
With one who denies this, we cannot of course dispute further ; 
but such an one will find his whole life one great unsolved 
enigma ! 

(c) This brings us to -the historical arguments against Pan- 
theism. These we will touch very shortly, and only from one 
point of view, viz. that of the history of religions. It is a 
matter of fact that, even in polytheistic religions, the pre- 
Bentiment of the One persontU God has not entirely faded 



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ISli MODERN NOS-BIBLICAL COiXEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III. 

away. Only to tate one instance, we should scarcely find 
even a Negro in Africa who denies the one God, the Creator 
of heaven and earth. The history of religions is making it 
more and more evident at the present day, that in the most 
ancient traditions of aU nations there are to be found scattered 
traces and features, distorted hut still recognisable, of a primi- 
tive revelation of the One personal God. But more than this, 
traces are not wanting that the growing darkness of super- 
stition is sometimes painfully felt by the heathen as a state of 
dei/radation from the more elevated stage of that primitive 
revelation.^ We do not consider this as a direct argument 
against Pantheism, but we take note of the fact that the testi- 
mony of Scuptiire respecting the original revelation of the 
One pei&onal God is increasingly confirmed hy the history of 
religion. But if Polytheism is shown to he an obscuration of 
the oiiffinal revelation of God, then Pantheism, its reverse, 
must be the tame. But the history of religions supplies us 
with a diieet argument against Pantheism, in the fact that all 
leligions show an involuntary impulse towards foimmg a p^t- 
1 mat idea of their gods. Nations camiot imagine then gods 
otherwise than as persons ; and this is what Cicero means 
when he says " All of us of every nation, following a necessity 
implanted m our nature, cannot ascribe to the gods any other 
shape than that of man." This religious feature is universal 
in the most ancient as well as in the most modern forms of 
heathenism Even in the religions of nature the deified natural 
foices are invariably personified. The hymns and prayers 
addressed to them (cf. those of the Indian Vedas) presuppose 
their personahty. Even the sacrifice intended to propitiate 
the fetish gi\es to it "a background of personality." So, too, 
the supieme God of the Chinese, who was subsequently wor- 
shipped by their ])hilosophers as merely the impersonal soul of 
the world, was, according to modem investigations, not merely 

^ Cf. for instance (in Burclthardfa MiasionahiNiolkel:, II. B., South Africa, 
p. 12), the confession of the Hottentota at the heginning of the ISth centnry, 
"that it had been related to them hy their fathers how their ancestors had 
sinned bo dreadfijlly against the great God that He had hardened the hearts of 
them and of their posterity, so that they eouid no longer know nor honour nor 
serve Him rightly." Also Ergatizungslieji, ii. 1868, p. 10. For what followB, 
cf. also Flath, Die Eelig. der aitea Chiaesen, 1863, and DcUtiiauh vt lupra, 
p. 63 tf. 



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I.ECT. III.] PANTHEISM. ]83 

originally imagined as a person, but is even at the present day 
practically personified as the Higher Emperor, Shang-Ti. All 
mythologies are based on the idea of personal historical inter- 
course between gods and men. Is not the conclusion a fair 
one, " that man is inwardly compelled to think of the Godhead 
as a personal Being, and that he cannot, at any stage of religious 
progress, get rid of tbi^ idea ?" The objection that " it is a 
form of thought peculiar to the human mind to represent as 
persons all tlie unknown, secret causes of natural phenomena," 
in no way lessens the importance of this unique fact. For we 
clearly see that, foUomng a necessary internal law which has 
been universally confirmed by history, man cannot look upon 
any of the beings which he ranks above himself, and with 
whom he stands in some religious connection, except as per- 
sonal beings ; because othei'wise they would rank under him, 
and could not ent«r into reciprocal intercourse with him. 

From those facts we draw the conclusion that, according 
to the unanimous testimony of religious history, Pantheism is 
nothing but an artificial system of philosophical abstractions, 
which keeps back, subtilizes, and generalizes the original and 
ever-recurring instinct that leads man to yearn after a per- 
sonal God, and personal intercourse with Him. We now 
proceed to show that this internal law cannot be slighted 
without the infliction of a heavy injury on our moral and 
religious consciousness. 

(rf) This we do by means of the moral and religic^is ail- 
ments against the pantlieistic idea of God. In the first 
place, we ask the pantheist. Whence proceeds the conscience, 
the moral law implanted in us ? Whence this " categorical 
imperative " which makes itself directly felt and recognised in 
our soul? Does it not point to some absolute law-giving 
Will operating in us ? Surely the moral law is something 
entirely diflerent from the natural law. The latter is un- 
consciously carried out by nature ; that is, it fulfils itself. But 
the law which lives in the conscience is not fulfilled until 
man has become conscious of it. And whilst the fonner law 
miist be fulfilled, the latter, though requiring its fulfilment on 
the part of man, yet allows him free self-decision. The moral 
law cannot, therefore, be derived from nature ; and if man 
discovers this law inherent in him, he cannot be a mere pro- 



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1S4 JIODERS NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. IIL 

duct of natural life. (This argument Kkewiae holds good against 
Materialism.) Indeed this law may even eoDtvadiet the natural 
law ; for in some cases we feel ourselves bound to obey the 
moral law m the teeth of all our natural inclinations. If a man 
is hungry, and sees bread before him, the impulses of nature bid 
him appropriate it ; but the moral law says, " Thou shalt not 
steal ! " And if lie disobeys the latter, he cannot avoid the 
painful feeling that he has thereby degraded himself. How 
is this ! Why is this moral law permitted so frequently to 
contradict the laws of nature ? And, lastly, whence proceeds 
our religwiis consciousness, which, as we have already seen 
[under the head (e)], demands fellowship with the personal 
God, and which, if the pantheistic idea of God were correct, 
would be mere self-contradiction, a lie, a mockery, and an 
eternally nnappeased longing ? No pantheist has as yet been 
able to give a satisfactory answer to these questions. 

We are probably met with the reply, that "all this is 
connected with the moral order of the world;" which is 
s\ipposed to be the origin, support, and end of moral conscious- 
ness in man But this is ^ mere phrase and does not etphin 
■\m tlnni; A\ hence does the moral order of the w orld proceed i 
Docs it not as much or stiU moie than the confoimity to 
law in evtemal natiie piesuppnse a thinking self conscious 
Lawgiver i free and holy "Will and a personal Creator ai d 
Ruler of the unnerbe ? Is o ir intellect agim to acquiesce 
in the idea that this moral order has ausen spontaneously oi 
has always existed i bupposing even it existed without any 
ordamer oi lawguei would it b) itself be able to implant the 
moral law m us and to maintain its authoritj ? We have 
al eadj seen that tl e meie abstract idea of Goodness is no 
effective notive for domg good and that it cannot operate 
■with Mtal power unless it IS seen lealized in some jj J o city 
and thus takes hold of the h^ait We a'=k Is it possiole 
that a meie law or uni\ersal order an utter abstnction which 
it IS difiieult e\en to express should diaw forth a love fron. 
man which would pro^e an adequate motive for moril conduct 
even m cases wheie such would lequiie pamful self-denial ? 
Indeed, can such a law even exact the necessary respect from 
man's freewill ? Practical experience answeiB this inquiry 
with a dear and unanimous — No. It teaches us that these 



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LECT. XII.] PANTHEISM. 185 

effects can only follow when the law proceeds from, and is 
represented by, concrete personal beings. If, therefore, the 
moral ideas which man detects in his conscience are not to 
remain powerless and without effect," they must bo derived 
from a personal Will ; a livinjr CEod must be their source and 
exponent, not a mere law. Where in all the world wiU a 
mere Iftw obtain the respect due to it, unless it is supported 
by persons endowed with authority ? And, in like manner, 
nobody would care for the moral law if it were supported by 
nothing but the " order of the universe," and not by the per- 
sonality of a holy God. The same rule, as above, holds good 
here also, that only a pei-sonal will can rule persons ; a free- 
will does not submit to the mere framework of a spon- 
taneously generated mimdane order. 

ATe see that the pantheistic idea of God cannot afford any 
support to our moral life, inasmuch as it is unable eUher to 
explain the moral law or enforce it. It may, however, be 
shown still more simply that it must lead even to' the destruc- 
tion of all Tiwrality ; «nd this is the last and heaviest chaige 
which we bring forward against it^ 

The reason is this, that I'antbeism (just aa Materialism) is 
at last compelled, if consistent with its own principles, to deny 
the freedom of man, his respoTisibility, and even tli« distinction 
letween good and evil, by which means all morality is done 
away with. According to the pantheistic view, the world is 
moving in a circle formed by an inexorably Iiitq chain of 
cause and effects, one thing resulting from another with iron 
necessity. Man is no exception to this rule. He stands, 
according to Spinoza, as a link in the endless series of deter- 
mining causes. In his spirit there is no such thing as free- 
will ; for each act of his will is predetermined by some 
other cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinit^ivi. 
Whatever the will does, it cannot help doing. " Men believe 
that they are free agents, simply because they are conscious 
of their actions only, and not of the causes by which these 
actions are determined." The ideas of the distinction between 
good and evil are based upon an error Nothing is in itself 
either good or evil ; these are purely relative and subjective 
ideas, " mere prejudices, which arise from arbitrary concep- 
tions formed by men of the standards at which things and 



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186 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL C0NCEPII0N8 OF GOD, [lECT. III. 

actions are to aim, whilst in nature nothing really takes place 
which can be imputed to her as a fault," As soon as we 
turn our glance away from details and direct it towards the 
whole, we recognise that everything, even so-called evil, 
works together for the perfection and heauty of the whole. 
Truly, these utterances of Spinoza in his Practical Philosophy 
leave nothing to he desired as regards perspicuity. . They 
completely destroy all moraUty. Whatever I do, I do ifc of 
necessity, and so it is right, seemly, and profitable for the 
whole ! 

Other pantheists, it is true, may not have admitted these 
awful conclusions quite so hluiitly as Spinoza; but if they 
wish to be consistent with their principles, they are all 
inexorably compelled to do so, and hence in the case of each 
one of them they are more or less openly manifest Theolo- 
gians of the pantheistic school cannot do othei'wise than 
represent the fall of man as a necessity, and with human free- 
dom they must deny human guilt Statesmen and national 
jurists of pantheistic opinions, if they remain faithful to their 
principles, must constantly allow the freedom of the individual 
to be merged in the mechanism of the commonwealth as a 
whole. The rights of the individual person can never be duly 
recognised by those who hold such opinions. Take e.g. Hegel's 
teachings as to law and government, and see how he utterly 
sacrifices the will of the individual to that of the common- 
wealth. The outcome of such doctrines is best described in 
Hegel's own words, when he says that "tlia world's history 
is the Golgotha of the Absolute Spirit; the fearfully tragic 
slaughter-house in which all individual life and happiness is 
sacrificed, in order that the universal ideal of humanity may 
progress." Under the dominion of a blindly ruling Soul of 
the universe, which is hut another name for necessity itself, 
there is no room left for any being in the world to exercise 
freedom. Everything is swallowed up in the universal sub- 
stance, and is ruled by the law of its development. The 
course of the world necessarily involves the life and death of 
all that we see. Everything has existed long since, and will 
again exist ; everything remains as it always was, unaltered 
amidst all changes. Aimless and coloiirless, the current of 
the world's life eternally sweeps onward, and only to om 



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LECT. m.] PASTHEISM. 187 

short- sighted vision does it appear hright with different hues. 
And we, ourselves, mere specks that of necessity emerge only 
again to subside below this current, cannot in truth, either 
by our best or our worst actions, tinge the world's develop- 
ment by any difference or peculiarity of character, nor by any 
deed of abiding merit or demerit. JVhat a cmiifortless vievj of 
the world is this ; how unworthy of man, how paralyzing, nay, 
destructive to all his moral powers ! Not only does it deprive 
U3 of any personal immortality, since the spirit after death is 
to be absorbed into the universal soul of the world, but, even 
in this life, when it deprives man of his freedom, it robs him 
of all joyfulness in action, of his responsibility, and hence of 
all moral value ! This is the last and' the heaviest accusation 
that we must bring against Pantheism, just as above against 
MateriaUsm, that it destroys the whole ethical and spiritual 
dignity of man, and does away with all morality and all reli- 
gion. Not only is it unable to satisfy the inmost need of our 
hearts, which long after personal intercourse with God, but it 
also robs our moral action of its last support. Pantheism, 
therefore, harmonizes neither with the world nor with ourselves ; 
neither with the cosmicU order nor with our re^'ion neither 
with the history of the world and relig ou nor with oui con- 
science and the religioutj need implanted in our hearts It 13 
an evident contradiction of all these thmi^s 

Here, too, we see the p,reat truth that the persona! tj of God 
and the moral person ditj oj iiai miM tand 01 fall tog ther. 
If personality is not essential to the nature of God it cannot 
be acknowledged in its full dignity m mm it is not a com- 
plete truth, for it is everywhere only transient in its character. 
Lessing says most justly, " If I am, God is also ; He may be 
separated from me, but not I from Him." But for this very 
reason the converse holds good also. If God is not, then I 
am not ; if He is no person, I can no longer maintain my per- 
sonality. The man who denies the personality of God under- 
mines the foundation of his own. Pantheism, in doing this, 
swallows up God in man and man in God. Well and truly 
may a modem philosopher say, " It is clearly evident that 
pantheistic and atheistical philosophy are ahke based upon 
principles which are irrational and unphilosophicaL" A pious 
man, three thousand years ago, well knew this, though he 



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1S8 MODERS SOS-BIBLIGAL COXCEPTI0;;S OF GOD. [LECT. III. 

expressed it somewhat more simply. " The fool hath said in 
his heart. There is no God" (Ps. xiv. 1). 

Let me compress the result of all that I have said into a 
few woMs of advice. If you meet one who denies the per- 
sonality of God, ask him the following questions ; (1.) Whence 
does the cosmical substance proceed which you suppose to he 
shaped by the Soul of the universe ? How can God produce 
this substance if He Himself is only produced and realized by 
it ? Is not, therefore, its existence an unproved assumption ? 
How is it possible that personality should proceed from the 
impersonal, and that God should create something which He 
Himself is devoid of? In fact, can the most perfect Being 
he deficient in anything that we His creatures possess I (2.) 
How is it conceivable that the Soul of the universe, which 
orders and guides everything with astonishing wisdom and 
according to evidently preconceived purposes, should form 
conceptions of everything else, but not of Itself? (3.) Why 
do I'l nations both m ancient and, modem times, always 
imagine their God or gids to be personal ? (4.) If everything 
be a product ol nature and the laws of nature, whence come 
oui conscience the moral law, and religious consciousness ? 
And where is theie any lo m left for my freedom of will and 
rcsponsibdit) — for the dignity of jay moral personality — if aU 
thin^^ lollow one anothei m an endless circle under the pres- 
sure of an internal necessitj and are connected in one firmly- 
bnked chain ot cause and effect ? Until a pantheist can give 
you S'ltisfictory answers to these questions — and you need not 
feai th^t this will be -verv leadily done — you are perfectly 
justified m calhng his stand \ oint sdmtijkaily untenable. 

Unquestionibly howevei there is something true even in 
Pintheism There is sometlnng grand in the idea of the unity 
oj all beinf/, and of the connection of our life with the whole 
life of the universe. And this fundamental view is by no 
means entirely unjustifiable. , The atfmity between spirit and 
nature is a deeply seated one, and the laws of the two realms 
correspond to each other. They have one origin, and tend 
towards one goal of consummation. In man, too, the dualism 
between nature and spirit is to be done away with when he 
an-ives at the condition of perfection. Hence a oneness of 
feature runs through the whole development of the physical 



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LECT. III.] PANTHEISM. 189 

and moral world, and tlie spirit m a tlioisiiid ^vtvs recofjm^es 
itself and its laws in the objective leison nhiuli it meets with 
in nature. But the wrong lies in stopping short at this one 
nniversal life, just as if it were the orJc;in of all thmijs thit is, 
God Himself, instead of raising onr mmds to the reco<niition 
of that absolute Reason which must at the same time be 
absolute Will and Self-conseiou8nes=! t e to the One to whom 
this nnity of being and becoming m the ^ rid du'ectl} points 
us as the origin and the goal of e\erjthin'' 

Further, it is the special effort of Pmtheisra to refer every- 
thing which exists and occurs to the direct agencj of God md 
to show its dependence on Him It cannot imagine an-y thing 
which is not an etSux of divine povser and theiefoie finds 
God in everything. And this too contains a ^e'it trath viz,, 
that it is utterly impossible to imagmts the life of the woild, 
its origin and continuance, both as a whole and in its smallest 
details, as severed from God seeing that He must need, be 
omnipresent and everywhere actiie This much maj be learned 
from Pantheism by deists, rationalists and all those who at the 
present day would attrih ute to the w orld a life and self dev elop- 
ment independent of God's direct influence. But the will, 
the activity of God, is one thing, and His very essence is another; 
Although the world, down to its very smallest particle, may be 
entirely dependent on the former, it does not follow that tJie 
latter should he mei^ed in and coextensive with the world. 
On the contrary, trae and rational as is the first proposition, it 
is just as irrational to make out that God, the first Cause of 
the world, is Himself dependent on it, and only exists in the 
totality of the world's being; in other words, to deny His 
supramundane existence, and therefore His personality, just as 
if the Being who is the Cause of all things must not for this 
very reason be something different from the things caused ! 

Another truth expressed by I'antheism is this, that even 
evil is not to be thought of as entirely without the pale of 
God's government. Ihere can be no power whatever which 
is not subject to Him or entirely independent of His control 
and guidance. He foresees evil and allows it ; indeed, when 
it is once in existence, He makes use of it for His own pur- 
poses in the government of the world. ' But it is an eiTor on 
this account to attribute the authorship of evil to the wiE of 



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190 MODEEN KON-EIBLICAL CO.\XEPTI0XS OF GOD. [lect. III. 

God, as if the absolutely existent and eternal Being must not 
at tlie same time be the absolutely good and holy One. It is 
also wrong, by thus referring the origin of evil to the Divine 
Will, to do away with the freedom of man and to efface the 
distinction between good and evil, just as if the indelible self- 
certainty of man in respect to his moral freedom and respon- 
sibility, as well as his feeling of guilt, could be a lie. 

Finally, there is something true in the pantheistic view, that 
the conception of personality is too limited and finite to be 
applied to God ; for we cannot conceive of God ordy as a single 
PerBOTi. The fulness of His Being overflows the limits of this 
conception. But it is wrong, on this account, entirely to give 
up the idea of personality. There is a conception of God 
■which leaves room for the infinite fulness of life in Him, and 
yet maintains the infinite prerogative of personality. This, 
as we shall see, is accomplished by the Christian doctrine of 
the triune personality of God. The true conception of God 
must as decidedly acknowledge and embrace these elements of 
truth as exclude the false inferences drawn from them. And 
such we shall show to be the case with the teaching of the 
Christian faith. 

There now remains for our consideration one more concep- 
tion of God which acknowledges His personality, and yet, 
from a scriptural point of view, must be rejected. 



IV. DEISM AND EATrONALISM. 

This is in many respects the antithesis of Pantheism. 
According to Pantheism, God exists only in the world as its 
soul ; according to Deism, He exists only above the world as a 
personal Spirit : by Pantheism, God and the world are re- 
garded as absolutely inseparable ; by Deism, as absolutely 
severed, and as not merely different, but divided one from the 
other. God is for the deist a personal Being, who, after 
creating the world by His will, now acts towards it like an 
artificei with a finished machine, which mechanically pursues 
its natural course according to the laws laid down for it, and 
no longer requires the immediate assistance or interference of 
its maker. The master shipbuilder has completed and launched 



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LECT. III.] DEISM ASD EATIOMALISM. 191 

his ship, aiid now leaves hep to heraelf and hep own creiv. 
The cloclmakep has completed and »ound up his elocic, which 
now goes of itself without any mope need of him. 

The being, personality, and suppamundane nature of the 
Deity (hence the vague and awkwapd term " Deism"), and the 
creation of the world by Him, ape thus acknowledged ; while, 
on the other hand, any continmus active presewe of God in the 
toorld, attd any livinj, interp'otition in it, affairs, are denied. 
The wopld has outgpown its leading-strings, and, emancipated 
fpom dmne control, is now left to itself. Thepe is no special 
providence: miracle are an impossibility. Everything takes 
place in harmony with natural laws which are implanted in thti 
universe, and suffer no alteration whatsoever. This is tlie chief 
characteristic of the deistioal theory. Fop the pantheist, God 
IS too near to seem to be above him ; fop the deist, too f»p off to 
be recognised as exercising any direct rule over the world which 
He has made. Eelegating God, as it were, to the outepniost 
confines of being, he seeks to keep Him as tar off as possible, in 
order to follow the light of natural reason, unmolested by the 
cross-lights of a higher revelation The first and immediate 
consequence of this is, that every special rMLniftAdim of God 
no matter what, must be denied, all supernatural elements in 
the Chnstian belief, even those involved in the Person and 
Work of Christ, must be excluded, and anything in Scripture 
bearing on these points must be explained away by a reference 
to natural causes. 

In all essentials, then. Deism coincides entirely with that 
•which was formerly denominated Naiuralim ;^ for it pro- 
noimoes the laws of nature to be adequate to the continuous 
existence of the world, and natural religion to be the only 
essential form of belief, even in connection with Christianity. 
It likewise agrees in principle with what is called Ealimalism, 
the essence of which consists in the position that Season is 
not merely the formal, hut also the matepial, principle of 

' At the present dsy, in Germany, "Faturalism and Ma ennlism " are 

used almost as synonymous terms for the tlieory whi d es from the 

operation of the laws of nature only, not merely the on n n hut the very 

existence and even the origin of the world ; wh I n Fn n f r instance 
" Natnmlism " still retains its original meaning, and John da 'the denial 

or any dmuo rule and providsnce extending to nd nduaU f for instance, 

Peoraoli on /n/rfelily). ' 



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192 MODEEN NON-BIBLICAL COXCEPTIOXS OF GOD. [l.ECT. IIL 

religion,, and supreme arbiter over the wliole substance of the 
Christian faith (cf. Lect. II. sec. 1 and 3). 

This theory is however by no mcius new We meet with 



m th 1 1 t C 


b il 1 ily b tl tl 


n b 1 nt p t t t 


t Ij tl ! 


nd V t t 


llf tn b 


t 1> p t (1 f 11 tt 


w 11 n tb t h f 


Ep tb t th d t k 


t t I m fl 


b t t w ft d d t 


1 ) t m tb t tl 


d 1 1 tl t by 11 


E I 1 ( 1 D t I) t 


hi t pbl p! 


d d t 1 


pi bt b d b d 


th 1 t n f t -il 


1 n tl b t f tl 


It d q t th p 


If It t 11 


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positive, a d n 1 f any special duine providence, of 


Jiiiaoles, nl n 11) otcierv 


direct interposition by Cod in 



the coTir f tl Id Ihus, for instance, Chnbb taught 

that God held Himself aloof fiom human concerns, and that 
whatever happens to man is only the dependent lesult of 
second causes. In lil;e manner, Bohngbinke maintained that 
God regards the universe as a whole, and not its individual 
parts ; and that there is no dn me loten ention as to details 
either in nature or, morals. In the Germany of the last 
generation, these rationalistic tendencies were prevalent among 
theologians and educated persons generally ; but in such 
various shades and modifications as to the views taken of 
Divine Providence, and the chief of all miracles, the Person of 
our Lord, that we must be on our guard against comprehend- 
ing them all in one category. While some of those specula- 
tions were rot far removed from the Chiistian and scriptural 
ideas ol God and Providence, others approximated very closely 
to Pantheism. Cut in general, it is a characteristic principle 
of Eationahsm not to recognise any special divine interposition 
in the course of this world or the concerns of men, to explain 
in a manner compi'ehensible to natural reason everything in 
Scripture which implies such interposition, all miracles and 
special revelations, and so to eliminate the supernatural 
element generally. 

At the present time, both in German and English theology, 
this principle lias but few representatives, but reckons a pro- 



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LECT. III.] DEISM AKD RATIONALISM. 193 

portionately larger number among Swiss (Ziirich), Ficneh 
(Strasburg), and Dutch (Leyden and Groningen) theologians, 
while the great body of educated laynaen, and especially of the 
students of modem natural science, are confessedly under its 
influence. In spite of all the attempts which Eationalism has 
made, and is still making, to find for its theories a scriptural 
basis, we scarcely need any justification if we class its theo- 
logical conceptions among the non-Uhlical. In every page, 
indeed, the Bible teaches a direct divine ^ency in the world, 
a providence extending to the minutest details (the very hairs 
of our head being all numbered), and a constant dependence 
of the world on God for its existence and guidance; points, 
which, in the next lecture on the Scriptural Idea of God, will 
come before us in more detail. 

But we affirm that this rationalistic conception of God is 
not merely unscriptural, but also impossible and false; and 
we maintain the nntenahleness of its 2>osititms frffm. a scientific 
point of vieio, — in a word, the iixationality of Eationalism. In 
proof of these assertions, we may pursue a like course to that 
we followed in the case of Pantheism, and consider in suc- 
cession the main arguments which can be adduced from a con- 
sideration of tlie nature of God, the lowU, and man's moral 
condition, against the fundamental positions of Deism and 
Uationalism. Having previously become acquainted to some 
extent with the weakness of nationalism in its denial of 
revelation as such, and having also to submit hereafter the 
general question as to the possibility of miracles to a separate 
discussion, we need not now do more tlian take a brief view 
of its general principle as to the position it assigns to God in 
the world. 

Deism, falsely named as it is, is also in its jirinciple an 
unnatural combination of conflicting dements, adopting some 
things even from Atheism, when it I'egiii-ds the world, as now 
constituted, as existing without God or any divine influence , 
others from Materialism and Pantheism, when it seelis to derive 
all that takes place in the world from natural causes inherent 
in it, and to exclude all exercise of supernatural power on the 
part of God. So far. Deism shares in and suffers from the 
fundamental faults of the three other systems. But it is itself 
more inconsisteid than they, attempting to make on essential 



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194 MODERN NON-BIBLICAL COKCEPnONS OF GOD. [lECT. HL 

distinction between the creation and that wliich followed it. 
During the creative process, the world, according to Deism, 
was not without God, but completely dependent on Ilim as its 
creating and shaping Principle ; but ever since it has been left 
alone and independent. While creation was going on, God was 
interested in the work down to its smallest details, but has 
since withdrawn Himself into His own solitude, and has 
henceforth had an eye for the whole only, and not for any of 
its parts. During creation, God wrought miracle after miracle, 
creation itself being the greatest of aU miracles ; but no 
sooner was creation finished, than He tied, as it were. His own 
hand, and made any subsequent act of miraculous power a 
tiling impossible. He who could once call worlds into being 
cannot now, by an act of miraculous healing, restore to health 
the life of a single invalid. What do we gain by these evident 
inconsistencies ? Only this, that the world's enigma assumes 
now for us three forms, each more puzzling than the other. 
We no longer ask merely, aa in respect to the God of Holy 
Scripture, How was creation possible 3 but we have to put the 
further question. How was it possible that God, Tmting created, 
should leave the world tkvs ereated alone ? How is its present 
independent continuance possible ? And, lastly, how is it 
possible that God sJiould Tuaintain towards the world now an 
attitude so entirely different from that which He took in the 
beginning? At this point the greatest difficulties arise, in 
respect both to tlie nature and action of God Himself and the 
world's position towards Him. 

(ft) Let us, in the first place, consider for a moment the 
difficulties connected with the nature of God Himself. Our 
main objection to Deism on this ground is, that God is therehj 
made to forfeit His own divinity. Is He not, we ask, as the 
most perfect Being, necessarily the one Being who is ever 
consistent with Himself? How can I assume in Him a dis- 
tinction between action and rest, such as would divide His 
conduct towards the world into two contradictory positions? 
How could this harmonize with the doctrine of His eternal 
unity and perfection? Labour with Him is rest, and rest 
labour ; that which to us is sundered, is in God one and tho 
same. Even in the rest of the seventh day His action goes 
on, for "God," we read, "blessed the seventh day, and 



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LECT. III.] DEISM AND RATIOEALTSM. 195 

hallowed it." The whole of Scripture is pervaded by the 
view that God the Creator is still continuously at work (John 
V. 17). Any one who makes an absolute severance between 
the divine action and the divine rest, draws down the infinite 
Godhead into the changing revolutions of the finite ! 

How much is this the case in the system we are consider- 
ing ! How unworthy and how degrading in this respect are 
the conceptions which Deism and Eationalism form of God's 
relation to the world ! After only " six days' " work. He gives 
Himself up to a state of rest, and so remains, without giving 
Himself any further trouble about its details, content to take 
an occasional glance, as if fiom a shrine on the confines of the 
universe, at that universe as a whole ! Where else will you 
find an artificer who conducts him<(clf with so much indiffer- 
ence towards his own finished work? It will hardly be 
objected that, as it is unworthy of a great ruler to trouble 
himself about the insignificant details of government, so it is 
unworthy of God to extend His direct guidance and provi- 
dence to smaller matters. Just the contrary ! A great ruler 
is in nothing greater than in his power of dealing with details 
that appear most trifling. It is only inferior magnates who 
affect importance by looking down upon small matters ; the 
truly great neither despise nor are indifferent to anything. 

If, however, it be asserted that God troubles Himself only 
with m^ral and not with physical details, it is fot^otteu surely 
that the two are most closely connected. How often does the 
most trivial matter, the most insignificant event in the natural 
world, become either the occasion or the means of bringing 
about something morally good or evil ! If God regards the 
latter. He cannot fail to pay attention to the former ; if He 
looks to the result. He cannot be indifferent to every factor 
which helps to accomplish it. And does not, then, all nature 
ultimately tend towards some moral aim ? Was it not moral 
motives which moved God to frame the world exactly as He 
did, and not in any other way, and to assign to everything its 
proper place ? In a true cosmos, that is, in an harmoniously 
developed organism, the smallest portion has a direct signifi- 
cance in the arrangement of the whole. If, then, the world, 
in the divine idea of it, is arranged on moral principles, as 
Rationalism is never weary of maintaining, then everything 



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19G MODERN KON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [lECT, HL 

that takes place therein is of moral significance, and claims 
and needs some attention from God. 

And tliis attention must be not merely passive, but active 
and lively. Ai'e there now operating in the world not merely 
natural powers, but creatures endowed with moral freedom., 
who, through their action, may every moment disturb, and 
actually do disturb, the divine order and harmony of the 
whole, at least in isolated points, and can it be supposed that 
God should quietly look on without any counteraction on His 
part ? If, as the Holy One. He must be conducting the world 
towards some kind of holiness as its consummation, and yet 
man is allowed the freedom of opposing this consummation 
with all his powers, if every moment it is being counteracted 
in some way by sin in the case of numberless individuals, can 
it be supposed that God is to remain unsympathetic and in- 
active ? Does He not owe it to Himself and to the world to 
suffer nothing to remain exempt from His guidance, or to occur 
without His permission, by a holy rule of providence to set 
some limits to the misuse of human freedom, and to neutralize 
some of its pernicious workings by a wholesome counter- 
action ? And will not such a providential government come 
in contact in a thousand ways with the processes of tlie 
physical universe, and necessarily react upon them, as indeed 
is the case with all human activity ? 

Human freedom and its correlative, the holiness of the 
divine will and law, render necessary a continiial and active 
interposition on the part of Dirine Providence in the course of 
the world's development. It may be said that, in the laws of 
the world's " moral order," we have an adequate security for 
the due maintenance of that order, and the gradual conducting 
of the universe to its final consummation. But that is the 
same error that we have previously censured in Pantheism, 
assuming that mere law, i.e. something impersonal, can control 
persons and counteract free-will. Either this law, this moral 
order, is so inflexible in its nature that it cannot be troken, in 
which case it is all up with human freedom and with the whole 
distinction between right and wrong, that is, with morality 
itself ; or tliis moral order can be broken, and is, in faet, con- 
stantly threatened and opposed by the operation of creaturely 
free-will: in that case, how can it be maintained, except by 



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LECT. III.] DEISJt AND EATIOKALISM. 19 V 

constant interpositions on the part of God restoring it when 
impaired, or making preparations for the future removal ot the 
disturbances introduced by sin ? In other words, ao far from 
a " moral order of the world" rendering the living activity of 
God in tlie world superiiuous, some such interference is, on 
the contrary, rendered necessary by its very existence. 

We see that the most fundamentally essential attribute of 
God, His holiness, is not compatible with the denial of a 
divine providence actively extended to every individual. But 
God would lose in lilie manner all His other attributes too, if 
condemned to a repose so unworthy of Him, in the face of the 
continuous developments of the universe. There Hes the world 
with all its sins and sorrows, and God Himself may not stir a 
iinger to come to its help ! Where, in this case, are His 
goodness and faitlifidness. His merey and pity ? How am I 
still to look on Him as love, when this love has long since 
ceased to reveal itself to its creatures ? What is to become 
of His omnipresence if He can never actively manifest it within 
the sphere of creation t \\ hat does His wisdom profit me, and 
how should His omniAeiente inspire me with dread, if my 
human life remains unaffected by either 1 In short, the God 
of the rationalists ceases to he God ; in ceasing to be truly good 
and liviiig, He has dn ested Himself generally of all divine 
attributes, ioi ill lile is activity, and the highest life is the 
highest activitj Henue a God who reposes in inaction ceases 
to be a source of life — ceases, in fact, to be God. 

(b) Objections of no less importance to deistical theology 
arise from the consideration of the world in its relation to God. 
Our second class of objections to Deism rest on tlie following 
position : Just as God loses Ms Godhead, so also the creakire 
loses its creaiv.rely eharaeter, when the deistical conception is 
received ! The world did not create itself, and yet is supposed 
able to maintain itself without its Creator. This view is 
based upon a twofold hypothesis ; first, that the world, by means 
of inherent laws, can, as it were, frow. its own resources, proceed 
to further developiiunts ; and next, that its oi^anism, just as it 
is, is absolutely perfect, rendering unnecessary any further 
interference on the part of its Originator. Both these 
assumptions are but half truths. It is, of course, true that 
God has implanted in things themselves the laws of theii 



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198 MODERS NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [lECT. III. 

nature and natural operation ; but is complete repose thereby 
enforced upon Him ? Does any reasonable man adjust iiis 
work in such a way that he completely binds his bands in 
futurfe, and condemns himself to become a mere looker-on ? 
What is tliat which men call "the flay of accident," but an 
exercise of divine freedom within the settled course of nature ? 
If God has subjected the ptnvers of nature to the laws of 
nature, it does not follow that He subjects SimJiel/ to His 
own creation. How can God possibly be placed in opposition 
to His own laws ? What are these laws ? Are they thinjjs 
existing by themselves, and independent of the will of God ? 
A law taken by itself is nothing more than a particular way 
or rule, in or by which a power works or a movement runs its 
course. Without this impelling power the law can effect and 
is nothing. Hence, it is an incorrect use of language when a 
mere law is described as a motive cause. And so the laws of 
nature, if devoid of any power and intelligence working in 
them and through them, are mere abstractions, which we 
gather from a series of observations resembling one another, 
but which are not in themselves enduring realities. But if, 
as Deism confesses, God made all things as they are in the 
world, then the power and the intelligence which operate in 
the laws of nature must be a divine power and a divine in- 
telligence. How, then, can they be opposed to the divine will 
and action as independent and exclusive enei^ies ? 

It is tnie that modem natural seie^ice, as a rule, maintains 
this doctrine. It talks so much about the laws of nature, that 
at the present time the latter, in the view of numberless lay- 
men, are become independent divinities, each absolute loi"d in 
its own special domain, and repudiating all interference even 
fi-om God Himself. The old heathen personified the forces of 
nature and made them demi-gods ; we do the same, and call 
them laws. The heathen, however, were rational enough to 
place these individual lesser gods in subjection to the Most 
High ; while we invest our laws of nature with sovereign 
power, in whose august presence the very hands of God Him- 
self are tied and bound ! In our time, therefore, natural 
science has "become the main support of the separation made hy 
Deism between God and the world. It has followed out all tha 
processes of development in both organic and inorganic nature 



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LECT. inj TEISM AND RATIONALISM. 199 

80 much more protomidly than was ever done 'beFore, and in 
that -way brought to light so many fresh laws of natural 
change, and it has so succeeded in reducing almost the whole 
world of phenomena to its registers and categories, that, in 
fact, the temptation is a very natural one to recognise nothing 
else but these laws themselves, and to regard any constantly 
operating or spontaneous intervention on the part of God as 
not merely useless but disturbing. But that when the law of 
any phenomenon has been discovered, the real mystery of its 
being is still far from being cleared up, and nothing thereby 
really explained, but only some assistance afforded to future 
observations ; and that, therefore, every law should be traced 
back to its lawgiver, and to the motives tliat guided him, are 
points for the most part overlooked by the advocates of 
natural science. 

And so it came to pass that (he further discoveries mere 
pushed in natural science, the smaller iecame the -prooince which 
icas hft rernaining for the creative action of God. Whilst the 
old Deism and Naturalism assigned to God a " six days' work," 
and not until the process of creation had come to an end 
sought to make the world independent of Him, our modern 
systems claim His services for nothing more than the mere 
production of the original matter. With the words, " In the 
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the Bible 
of modern science begins and ends. Any further special 
divine action or revelation is imnecessary. And why 1 
Modern natural science has taught Deism that the world is 
not only able to maintain itself in the state in which it was 
created, but that the forces and laws inherent in the original 
matter are also perfectly adequate to infinite development. 
First formed itself, in virtue of some internal necessary develop- 
ment, a primary cell or bladder ; and this became the germ of 
the first oi^anism ; from this were developed, in the next 
place, forms of life more and more complete, species of vege- 
tables and animals ever hightr in their grade, until at last, 
from the most perfect specimen of ape, proceeded man! All 
this is supposed to have happened without any special opera- 
tion on the part of God, and merely through the laws 
immanent in nature. 

Any closer consideration of these theories, which supply so 



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200 MODEKN NON-BIBLICAL COXCliPTIOiH OF GOD. [LECT. IU. 

much assistance to Eationaliam, would enter on the question 
of the origin of man, which we cannot dwell upor. now. All 
we can do here is to remind ourselves that, as akeady shown, 
the assumption that organic life can be produced by the in- 
organic, is rejected as untenable by science ; and further, that 
the new Darwinian theory of the origin of species, finds its 
most important positions impugned on the basis of undeniable 
matters of fact. Why are not new species continually starting 
up in the present day ? Why is it that individuals bred by 
an artificial system of crossing can never prolong tlieir species 
for any length of time ? Why does nature herself in every 
case place such limits to her various species, as clearly and 
sharply to divide the one from the other ? Why do not the 
lower plants and animals at the present day gradually improve 
themselves into higher forms of life, and idtimately rise into 
man ? How can so many of the very lowest oi^nisms, in 
spite of their imperfection, maintain their position against 
those which are so much further advanced ? Why, amongst 
the fossil vegetables and animals which we discover in the 
geological strata of the earth, do we never find those interme- 
diate stages which once formed the transition between tlie 
species which now often differ so widely from one another ? 
The geological strata show most clearly that new species arose 
and disappeared wUhout any internal comiection in respect to 
timr origin. Would not any formation of separate species, by 
means of constant fresh alterations and combinations of 
unlimited progression, be an impossibilitj', and would not the 
world become a chaotic confusion of forms ? And how does 
Darwin's tlieory consist with the teleology which governs 
nature, and with the impulse of formation which is directed 
towards something future and still invisible ? Generally speak- 
ing, does not "the struggle for existence" leave innumerable 
peauliarities unexplained. Of what nature might " the struggle 
for existence" be in which the violet became blue and the rose 
red? 

With these and other w^eighty arguments the most enlight- 
ened natural phQosophers repel these theories.^ If, however, 

' Among the opponents of the transmutation tlieoi'y it is here only neoessiry to 
mention Piotet, Buokland, Sedgwick, Owen, Hitehcoolt (I'/ie HeUgion of Oeo- 
I'igy), Agaamifionlributions to Uie Natural ffiitory <^ the United Staia, HI.), 



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LECT. m,] DEISM AHD RiTIOKALlSM. 201 

the varioiB species and familiea did not proceed spontaneously 
one from the other, it is clear that some bind of interven- 
ing creative activity on the part of God was necessary for the 
formation of species. " That new systems should arise out of 
old ones without the intervention of God's power is ahsurd" 
(Newton). 

But here we must leave these c[uestions. At the present 
day, on the ground of natural science only, the first hypothesis, 
that the, vrorld has inherent powers of self-development, is no 
longer found acceptable. 

But next, how stands the case with the second hypothesis : 
that the constitution of the world, just as it is, is so absolutely 
perfect, that any interposition on the part of God -would only 
disturb it ? The older systems of Eationalism laid it down, that 
to maintain the imperfection of nature is to bring a charge 
against the Creator. But in tliis view, the distinction between 
the world fer se, as it proceeded from the hand of God, and its 
present condition, is entirely overlooked. May there not in 
the latter be disturbances which arise from the fault of the 
creature, and, consequently, are not chargeable on the Creator ? 
Is it not a truth that death was a consec[uence of sin ? Is 
not this confirmed by experience ? Are there not in the 
natural world perfect masses of physical evil ? Have we not 
seen some professors of natural science taking pains to par- 
ticularize the imperfections of nature, with a view, indeed, of 
denying the idea of divine providence ? How strange it is to 
see maintained, on the one hand, the absolute perfection of 
the world's organism, and, on the other, its faultiness asserted 
as zealously ! only both in like opposition to the idea of God 
authorized in Holy Scripture. Evidently in this case the 
truth lies between the two extremes ; and that truth is, that 
the world is now only on the way to perfection, and therefore 
cannot as yet be perfected. Unquestionably an infinite 
wisdom is manifested in the general arrangements of the 

Forbes, Falconer, Qnatretagnes, Eongemont, Andreas, and End. "Wflgner 
(Agasaiz" Principkn der Classi/k. der orgaa. XHi-per—jnit McheicJU auf 
Daraiia's AmichlfTi, 1860 ; Zoologisck-anthropohg. Unt^suehvngen, 1801, anil 
others), Joh. Miiller, GJSppert, Heer, Eoper, Czolbe, Giebel {Der Menscli, sein 
Korperbau, etc., 1868, in wlUKh Darwin's theory is designated " a cliaos of 
inorediWUties and tooUiardy assumpliona") r among older authorities, Cuvier, 
etc. 



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202 MODERN KO^^-BIBLICAL COSCEPTIOSS OF GOD. [lECT. HI. 

cosmos as a whole. But this does not exclude the pos- 
sibility of disturbances and evils finding an entry into it. 
Such disturbances are plain matters of fact ; and in the face 
of them to speak of the world's absolute perfection, is truly 
to make an idol of nature. 

But apart from these disturhances of moral order, which 
render divine interpositions doubly necessary, let ns only 
realize the position in which the world would stand in regard 
to God, if His continuous agency therein were henceforth to 
be considered unnecessary and impossible. A world so inde- 
pendent of its Creator would cease to be a creaiure, and become 
itself a part of the Absolute, a manifestaiion of Deity ! But 
God never can release any created thing, however perfect, 
from its condition of creaturely dependence ; how much less 
this present world of sorrow and imperfection ! Self-maintain- 
ing and self-perfecting on the part of the world arejiist as im- 
possible as its self-creation. Either the world is a created thing, 
aud in that case is and remains dependent on God, and subject 
to His rule and action ; or it is independent and self-develop- 
ing, and in that case, must have been so from all eternity, and 
therefore the idea of God as its personal Creator must be 
given up. Yon see the self-contradictions of Deism: a living 
personal God is assumed who yet has no authority over His 
creatures; a world is supposed to have been created by Hiui, 
and yet to remain entirely independent! Science is com- 
pelled to press forwards beyond these contradictions, and 
either to accept a living God standing in a relation of con- 
tinuous activity to the world of creatures (Theism), or, in order 
to maintain consistently the world's independence, to surrender 
the doctrine of the Divine Personality (Pantheism). Hence, 
even in the first years of the present century, philosophy began 
to turn her back on her former allies Deism and Eatioualism, 
and in some cases somewhat rudely,' as now in our own time 
Strauss ridicules with trenchant criticism " the half-and-half 
ones," who stop short of his conclusions. The conflict hence- 

• Cf., for instance, what Hegel aays in his treatise Giaiihea und Wissen, in tho 
Cri&eal Journal of Sclielling and Hegel, ii p. 1 ; — " Since stwpiility and 
mennness have presumed to call themselves sound human understanding and 
morality, there are no longer any limits to their worthlessness and shameless- 
ness, and we cannot help considering this mere skin of morality as tlia verj 
worst cloak in which conceited ignorance ever hid itself. " 



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LECT, iil] deism and eationalism. 20" 

forth must turn almost exclusively on the question whether 
we are to believe in the God of the Bible, or acciuiesce in the 
theories of a pHntheistic Materialism. 

(c) A single glance at the third aspect in which we pro- 
posed to contemplate Deism, its influence on human morals, 
will make this yet more evident. Our third objection to that 
system may be stated thus: As Deism deprives God of His 
divinity and the world of its creaturely character, so does it 
in like proportion tend to deprive morality of its main m;^ort 
and standing-ground, religion of Us mainspring and lever, and 
the history of mankiml of tJte one Tcey required to disclose its 
enigmas. And all this simply because the God of Deism has 
ceased, as we have seen, to be the All-Holy and the AU-Good, 
the living, self-revealing, and self-communicating Love, and 
the all-wise Providence which directs all things. What is to 
maintain order in the moral world, and to dispose and rule 
over creatures endowed with freedom, if God has ceased to 
concern Himself about individual acts and persons ? One 
who believes in moral order at all must also believe in a 
Providence which interests itself iu the smallest matters of 
detail. A very sparrow falling to the ground, — how much 
more any action on the part of a moral free agent ! — might 
produce disorder in the whole, if it could take place without 
the cignizince of the lather in heaven. 

And if J on s-iy it ib tiin^ orthy of man as a free agent to be 
iu everything so strictly watched, and limited on all sides by 
the hind of God 3 ou say what no doubt is very natural ; in 
the di^iire to emancipate oneself from the inconvenient super- 
vision ind guidance of the Just and Holy One, lies probably 
the deepe'it and most influential motive of Deism, though I 
would not saj thit such must be the case in every instance. 
But, from another point of view, we may surely notice what 
comfortle'is results as regards the whole of our moral and 
religious stiivings are in\olved in the denial of a special 
providence ! Everything that takes place around us has some 
influence on our life. If God does not trouble Himself about 
everything, our wellbeing is but little dear to Him. In the 
eyes of a human father, even the pebble with which his child 
is playing is not without its importance ; and yet God is sup- 
posed to remain unsympathetic in regard to anything wliich 



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204 MODERN NON-EIBLICAL COXUEPTIOXS OF GOD. [LECT. HI. 

lias reference to the life of His children 1 And if siieh a con- 
stantly attentive sympathy is not due to Himself and to His 
absolute perfection, still it is due to us, ajid to the special needs 
of our immortal spirit Whosoever asserts tlrnt God looks on 
indifferently at the conrse of the ■world, can have no real con- 
ception of the infinite worth of a human soul, and of the im- 
portance -which attaches to it and its actions in the sight of 
God. 

But further, if God does not trouble Himself about me aa 
regards anything that I do or suffer, the inference seems a 
just one, that He caniwt require me to trouble myself much 
about Sim in like respects. In other words, the inmost main- 
spring is removed fi'om my moral and religious life and con- 
sciousness. For if God be no longer the ever-near One -whose 
eyes watch over me, and -whose love illumines my life, but 
infinitely far away, then the thought of Him can no longer be 
any encouragement in good, any comfort in afQiction, any guard 
against evil, or any refuge in the hour of need ; and so, neitlier 
fear of God, nor confidence in Him, can remain in any measure 
the guiding principle of my life. Then I no longer iiiiow 
whether He bears my prayers and heeds my aspirations ; I no 
longer make my complaints to Him ; I can no longer demand 
anything of Him ; indeed, I cannot even justly hope for any 
future reward, for this -would presuppose that God pays strict 
attention to minute details. Of wliat profit to me is a God 
of this kind ? I cannot make any use of Him ! For, as 
Luther says, " A God is One from whom we expect to receive 
every good thing, and in whom we may find a shelter in every 
hour of distress." H I cannot place this confidence in God, 
He is of httle help to me, and the inmost impulse of my 
religious feeling must be stunted'! 

In fact, he who beheves that prayer is heard, must also 
believe in a special Providence. But is not all history full of 
instances of particular answers to prayer, of deliverances out 
of trouble, vouchsafed to God's children by means of special 
dispensations of I'rovidence, and of special judicial visitations 
for particular acts of wickedness ? After all, is not the 
existence of the Christian Church on earth, and. the main- 
tenance of its position amid a thousand storms, a sufficient 
proof of a special Providence ? Even at the present day, doea 



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LECT. III.] DEISM AND RATIONALISiL 205 

not the daily life of the Christian afford a sufficient practical 
proof of God's merciful and judicial rule, not only over, but in, 
the world, that is, in the midst of men ? Could not even some 
from among you, my honoured hearers, stand forth as living 
witnesses of this 1 Will it be desired to relegate to the realms 
of fancy, as a matter of course, all the most precious experi- 
ences of the children of God of His nearness and help, and, 
in the face of the moral grandeur of the ancient heroes of the 
faith, to hold it to be possible, that, as regards this point, 
fanciful conceptions and continuous self-deceptions should 
exist together with the clear light of their spiritual knowledge ? 
Well, if it he so, we shall soon enough have to recognise the 
fact, that we have lost the key which would enable us to 
understand the world and its history, and the conduct of life 
in every individual ! Without the providence of God guiding 
everything, and witli a holy arm leading on the course of the 
world to its ultimate aim, the world and its history, both as a 
whole and in detail, presents itself, both to the pantheist (as 
before remarked), and also to the deist and the rationalist, as 
one great unsolved enigma, which the lonner it i'' pondered 
over, becomes the more dark and per^ lexed But e e the 
in deahng with him who would sevei C od f on the vo Id w 
might at least refer liim to his coiuoit. and aj In t th 
liearest God's warning voice, in it God s ■n 11 s la 1 do vn — 
the will of a God not infinitely dista t as tl ou tl u kest I t 
dwelling in the midst of the world a d of tl t 1 ch 
taking place in it, and in the inmo t le e es t tl ne o n 
heart ! For " He is not far from eveiy one of us for n H n 
we live, and move, and have our being." 

Nor is there, finally, much gain for Eationalism, when, in its 
latest form, it seeks to extend and diversify the possibility of 
divine influence in the world by teaching that God works 
upon us tlirough the threefold agencies of 'the economy- of 
nature, the moral order of the world, and the spiritual order 
of His kingdom, but through these only.-* For, after all, it 
makes no great difference whether God's action is coniined 
within the nari'ow scheme of -one or three immiitahle ordi- 
nances. His own divine life and freedom, and with them the 



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20G JIODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [lECT. lU. 

moral and religious life of man, are, in any case, limited and 
endangered to the uttermost. "What does it profit to allow 
God the free use of these three fingers — the Economy of 
Nature, of Moral Order, and of Hia own Spiritual Kingdom — 
by which to touch us, if, as to the rest. His liands are to con- 
tinue bound ? What does it profit tc show that, in the great 
musical clock, so to speak, of the world's course, not one or 
two, but three different cylinders are fixed, if in the move- 
ment of even these three no alteration is heneel'orth to be 
made in time and harmony ? No ; if God is the living, the 
holy, the metciial, and the faithful One, He must have reserved, 
to Himself free t^nd unencumbered movement in the world He 
has created. If God be Master in His own hoiise, He cannot, 
as it were, have walled in Himself within immutable ordinances, 
by which His action as regards every detail of the world's 
development has been prescribed from all eternity. Nay, we 
must beUeve that He rules the world according to men's moral 
conduct, and constantly adapts the course of nature to express Sis 
judgment concei-ning that condiict. Were it not the case, man 
himself would not be really free, and all his actions, his good 
as well as bis evil conduct, would, form but items in a pre- 
determined order ; his very fall and all his acta of sin being 
included in it, as, indeed, some rationalists are very apt to 
allow. We are thus landed in an inflexible determinism, 
which destroys the worth or wortldessness of aU our actions. 

Nor does it fare better, on tliis theory, with our religious 
than with our moral life If God be connected with man 
through those three Economies alone, then must they also 
be the only bridge whereby man can reach to God, But such 
provision would be inadequate to his religious need. JIan needs 
a personal immediate union with God, and not merely that 
effected by these inflexible Economies. In religion, especially 
in the Christian form of it — childlike communion with the 
Father of spirits— man makes a personal and immediate 
surrender of himself, and desires therefore also to receive, no 
less immediately from God Himself, that which he requires for 
his personal needs. His " soul is athirst for God, for the 
living God," who works and communicates Himself in living, 
unlettered action, in accordance with laws not outside Himself, 
but iiihereni in His own nature. 



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LECT. m.] DEISM AND RATIONALISM. 207 

Id brief, this system assumes that God is a living Person, 
and yet unable to move or give any signs of free life ; that 
God is love, and yet unable to communicate His love; that 
He is holy, and yet unable to act against evU either as a 
whole OP in detail ; that we must believe in some future and 
eternal retribution, and yet deny that everything takes place 
under God's immediate supervisiou and guidance; that the 
world was made by Him, but is now independent, and gets 
on__ well without Him ; that God created man in His own 
image, but cannot conduct his education by any immediate 
action from Himself; that He has given to man desires after 
personal communion which He cannot meet half-way or assist ; 
that I am to pray to God though He cannot hear me, or at 
least can vouchsafe me no special answer ; that, because the 
harmonious interworking of God's universal operation and of 
His special action in regard to individuals involves, as un- 
doubtedly it does, a yet unfathomed mystery, I am simply to 
deny the latter, though all history and my own personal experi- 
ence are full of its traces, and perfectly unintelligible without 
the assumption of some special interpositions ; that, in order 
therefore to evade one enigma, we are to create a thousand 
others ; that the mighty miracle of the world's creation is 
never to be followed by any others ; that we men ^re no 
longer to believe in ought miraculous, though man himself 
be a miracle, of which no interpretation can be found in the 
mere laws of nature ! Is not all this the very irrationality of 
nationalism, the unreason of the faith of reason ? 

In fact, honoured hearers, I need only ask you which of 
the two stands higher, and must do so in our innermost con- 
victions, — which ot the two thinks and feels more nobly, more 
truly, more religiously : the man who seats the Creator out- 
side the doors of His own house, and will not suffer Him to 
exercise any kind of special intervention therein ; or he whose 
soul is so deeply pervaded by a sense of the divine nearness and 
ever-present activity, that he sees or feels the iinger of God in 
everything that happens, and traces his hand of love in every 
gift and blessing, and, overcome by the thought of such 
infinite condescension to each individual soul, cries out, " What 
is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that 
Thou visitest him ? " " Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle ; 



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208 MODEES HON-EIELICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD^ [l.ECT. in, 

are they not all numbered in Thy book ? " " Behold, He that 
keepeth Israel neither slnnibereth nor sleepeth " ? Compare 
these two together, and let your hearts decide the controversy. 

There is, however, after all, some amount of trvih even in 
the deistic and rationalist theory. We must not deny this. 
It acknowledges the Divine Personality, and God as the 
Creator ; it insists, in opposition to Pantheism, on His supra- 
mundane character. Only it overstrains the separation be- 
tween the world and God, and makes it a complete severaoce, 
whereby God ceases to be a living God, and the world ceases 
to be a creature dependent on Him. 

Nor must we ignore the points of truth contained even in 
the deistic^l denial of any Bivine Interpositions. In the first 
place, no divine interposition can ever be a merely arbitrary 
one. God ever works by plan and rule, and in accordance 
with His own internal laws. But these laws are internal, self- 
imposed by the necessity of His own divine nature and all-holy 
will, not imposed upon Him as limitations from without. He 
remains therefore always, these laws notwithstanding, free and 
unfettered. 

Moreover, it ia true that, in His rule and operation, God 
neither can nor will disturb the sacred Economies which He 
lias Himself established Nor doe'' Iljly Scripture e\er make 
Him do this The God of the Lible is lud continues to be, 
a God ot order But preciselj beciu e He is this He cannot 
persevere m the quiesceuL-e of indifference but is compelled 
to interpose not to break the worlds ordtr but to lepairife 
disorder by His own holj and Lurati\e influence This will 
be shown more fully in oni consideration of miracles It is, 
moreovei fciue that as a rule God exercises His lule and 
providence not in e\traordimi} wtvs b> roeai s of constant 
miraculous interpositions but thiough the laws and forces 
implanted in His creatures and tliat in dnmi this He makes 
use of both circumstances and men But foi that very reason 
His omuiireseuce and umver^il actmty and His special 
providence are all the more necessirj Nor dees it tollow 
that He is restnuted to these mfLnoi igencies fiom emj loying 
other ways and niLins of e\ereising influence on the w orld. 

Lastly it IS true that God has vjuchsated a ceitain relative 
1 to the various spheres oi creited existence 



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LECT. III.] DEISM A^■D EATinXALISM. 209 

th 1 th lai. and f pi t d n th „ ccordmce 

wtl h hthyp th t t I ttlesBforoes 

andla» aen 11 1 a ,bta It IJUm of tk 

''^ " <" ""I- the 1 tt IS alle d; hence 

th ub ten t th w Id n nt nn nditionally 

d p 1 at op n G 1 It hk t n peet to the 

«t 1 t n tl t G d h mi dp H peratioils a 
Imllm fE , •» llyl nut th freedom 

tm dth f tl t nf t f al wh 1 He does 

" ' ' P l" ' 1 tly I k n a 1 t lWin» os 

t d p t m tt J t f , rl I 1} our own 

masters. But all this is nothing mom than His patience and 
long-suffering. His wise remission, in wliicli, however He is 
■«air inmtwe, but is only making His preparations in secret for 
a subsequent intervention. Ent from this attribute of God it 
does not follow that He does not trouble Himself about us, or 
that there is no special providence on His part, but only that 
our freedom is a fact, and not a sham ! 

Hence, when Deism one-sidedly oveistrains the points of 
truth contained in it, by condemning God to inaction as 
regaidsthe world, and by utterly severing the world from 
God, Pantheism, on the other hand, maintains against it its 
special tmth, that God is omnipresent, and constantly active 
everywhere in the world ; just as, conveBely, against the one- 
sidedaess of Pantheism, which would blend Him entirely with 
the world. Deism justlv maintains its theory of a reparation of 
God as a personal Bern.; and Will from the w orld Pintheism 
and Deism bear therefore such a relation tc one anothei, that 
what Is false and one si led ui either r>stem is anniliilated by 
the other and what is bne has its doBuencies s ipplied Let 
us abandon the frlse and cleave to the true li we adopt 
from Pantheism the doctrine of the diiine acti>ity and 
immanence withm the wmld and fiom Deism that of God's 
supiamundane position and separate Personahty we shall have 
s near approach to the teaching of Holy Sciiptuie. 



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LECTUEE IV. 
THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE AND OF THE CHUECH. 

HITHERTO we have followed out oue by one the various 
non-scriptural conceptions of the divine nature, and 
endeavoured to exhibit their untenableness from a scientific 
point of view, without at the same time closing our eyes 
to the scattered elements of truth which are nevertheless 
enshrined within them. We now turn to the Biblico-Christian 
conception as to that which alone is fundamentally true and 
scientifically tenable. In order to present it, we have only 
to gather up the various threads of our previous argument. 
The truth of the scriptural conception of the nature of God is 
evident from this, that while it excludes all tlmt in tho^e other 
conceptions we have recognised as false and negative, it combines 
in a living unity all their scattered elements of -positive ti-uth. 
In doing this we shall have to solve a twofold problem : first, 
to exhibit in general terms the fundamental scriptural concep- 
tion of the divine nature, i.e. Bibhcal Theism, and establish 
the truth of its various Principles ; and then to justify its full 
development in the Chiistian doctrine of the Trinity as the 
deepest, highest, perfectest presentation of the Idea of God. 



I. BIBLICAL THEISM. 

The teaching of Scripture concerning God is based on the 
theistic conception, that, namely, which holds fast at once His 
supramundane and His intramundane character ; the one in 
virtue of His nature and essence, the other of His will and 
power. For while Theism, on the one hand, regards the T/ieos 
(God) as a porsooal Being, and so as essentially distinct from 
the whole created universe and from man, it is no less careful, 
on the other hand, to present Him as the ever-Uving and 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 211 

■working One in His immediate personal relationsliip to man 
and the universe by tlie doctrine of a universal Divine Provi- 
dence. This view of the divine nature is virtually expressed 
in the first verse of the Bible : In the beginning God created 
the heavens and tlie earth, and in the fundamental article of 
the Apostles' Creed: / helieve in Ged, the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and eartK Let me now briefly endeavour to 
show you how this and other definitions of Holy Scripture 
exclude what is false in those conceptions of God and the 
universe which we have been examining. 

And first, against Atheism, which we need scarcely mention, 
Scripture here, as everywhere, teaches an eternally existing 
nnbeginning God, from whose creative activity heaven and 
earth and time itself took their beginning,— an absolute self- 
existent One, who saith, I am that I am, having in Himself 
the ground of His own being,— the unchangeable, ever-living 
One, who " hath life in Himself, and therefore hath given to 
the Son to have life in Himself" (St. John v. 26); "who if, 
and who was, and who ia to come " (Rev. i. 4, 8). 

Against Materialism we find a protest in the first sentence 
of the Bible. Matter is not eternal. It had a beginning along 
with time ; heaven and earth were created in that beginning. 
Matter, therefore, cannot itself be God, but came into exist- 
ence through an act of His will. And He is distinguished 
from it not only by priority of existence, but difference o!' 
nature. " God is a Spirit" (St. John iv. 24), that is, a thiTiI^- 
ing Being : e.g. " Thy thoughts are very deep " (Ps. xcii. 6) ; 
and "of His wise thinking there is no end" (literal rendering 
of Pa cxliii 5) 

In bke mmner we find in those lirst words of Scripture a 
protest against Pantheism, with ita confusion of God and 
world and its assumption of the identity of essence in both. 
God i-i both antcmundane and supramundane, and as to His 
essencp distmut ind separate from the world, and existing 
independently of it : " /» the beginning God created — heaven 
and earth God IS — is absolutely and without beginning; 
the woild 13 brought into existence, and is dependent on 
its Creator, not He on it. Moreover, it comes into existence 
tliroiigh Him, but not from Him. Every theory of emanation 
which would make the world, in -wliatever form, old Indian 



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212 THE THEOLOGY OF SGRIPTUJtB. [lect. IT. 

or modern pantheistic, an efflux from the Divine Essence, is 
from the first excluded by the word " created," which simply 
expresses the fact that the world's origin is derived not from 
the essence, hut from the will of its Creator ; that its produc- 
tion was not a necessity, but a free act on God's part, who is 
therefore to be distinguished and separated from the world as 
a living, thinking, wilhng, and personal Eeing. Throughout 
Scripture God speaks as a person — I — who does not, as Hegel 
thought, attain to self- consciousness in the human spirit, but 
has possessed it independently from the beginning. So little, 
according to Scripture, is God from us, that we are rather 
from Him. He is not a mere Idea, but Personality itself, 
absolute Freedom, and the highest Self-consciousness, — the pro- 
totype of aU other Self-consciousness, all other Personality, — 
that which alone and eternally IS, which we ai'e always becom- 
ing, who is before and above all, and from whom our own per- 
sonality is derived (Gen. ii. 7 ; Eph. iv. 6). Whereas modern 
Pantheism affirms, in words which a well-known professor 
inscribed under his own portrait, " Our God is an immaneiU 
God, and His true spiHt is the human spirit" the God of 
Holy Scripture says of Himself, " My tlumghts are not as your 
' (Isa. Iv, S) : His Spirit, therefore, is not our spirit. 

s Spirit searches out our spirit, His thoughts comprehend 
our thoughts : Thou searchest me out and hmwest me : Thou 
understandest my thoiigltts afar off (Pa. cxxxix.). The Lord 
knoweth the thoughts of man (Ps. xciv. \1 et passim). He is 
fully conscious of all His own thoughts and works : " I knmo 
the thoughts which I think toward you," saith the Lord (Jer. 
xxis. 11). " Knoum unto God are all His works from the hc- 
ginniiig of the world" (Acts xv. IS). Even in holding com- 
munion with man through His Spirit, He does not confound 
His Consciousness with ours : " The Spirit (of God) beareth 
witness to our spirit" (Eom. viii. 16). 

Finally, against the false deistic and rationalistic separation 
between God and world, Holy Scripture makes like protest in 
that same opening sentence, which declares the dependence of 
the world in both its parts (heaven and earth) on the will of 
Him who called it into being. The same is also indicated in 
the divine names most commonly used in Scripture, expressive 
of divine power and might {Elohim, El, Eloah), as well as of 



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LECT. IT.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 2 1 ■■' 

lordship and dominion {Adon, Adonai), and indicating at onte 
the essential unity of God in opposition to Polytheism (Dent, 
vi. 4) and His fukiess of living energies : hence the plural 
form of the divine name Elohiin, used ordinarily when refer- 
ence is made to the Divine Activity in the creation, preserva- 
tion, and providential government of the world in general. 
God (it tells us) makes Himself seen and felt hy us, both in 
the universe as a -ivhole and in its smallest details, aa the 
absolutely simple and yet complex Life. He is, therefore, in 
the highest sense the living One and the living Agency, -which 
not only created the world, but also continuously upholds and 
maintains it: who, "upholding all things by the word oJ 
His power " (Heh. i. 3), and in His omnipresence pervading 
everything, "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things" 
(Acts svii. 25). So much, too, is He needed hy the world at 
every moment of its existence, that all life would cease were 
His influence withdrawn : " Thou hidest Thy face, they are 
troubled ; Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return 
to their dust" (Ps. civ. 29). Whereas Deism asserts tliat the 
Creator has withdrawn Himself from His work, and is now far 
removed from the world; the Scriptures say; "He is not far 
from every one of us : for in Him we live, and move, and 
have our being" (Acts xvii. 27, 28). He is not merely the 
Creator of oursekes, but also, in one point of view, of our 
actions (I's. exxxix. 5) : He is the Euler of hearts, who 
"worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure" 
(Phil. ii. 13). Whereas the deist is of opinion that the pro- 
vidence of God extends to the world only as a whole, and to 
matters great and universal, the God of the Holy Scriptures, 
on the contmrj', " beholdeth all the sons of men and con- 
sidereth all their works" (Ps. xxxiii. 13, 15); He is the 
keeper of m h t! 1 b n ] j -ho marks 

every sigh, a i n h th h f ir h d nor permits 

even a sparrow t f 11 1 tl or nd th t th 11 of Him 
whose provid t Itth mUtthn 

All these att 1 t f II w 1 11 m 1 1 f the name 
" Jehovah." ^ Just as the ^eneial activity of God m the world 

'In the Authorized VeraioD, simost invariably rendered ly "the LORD." 
Tha capitals eerve to distinguish the translation of "Jehovah" from thu.t of 
" Adonai," which is also rendertd " Lord," hnt printed small. 



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214 THE THEOLOGY 01 8CEIPTUBB. [LECT. IV. 

is referred to Elohim, so almost without exception every divine 
action which relates to the theocratic revelation is ascrihed to 
Jehovah. He is the covenant-God of Israel who reveals Him- 
self specially to His people. In Ex. iii. 13-15, the name is 
explained : "I AM that I am," — the absolutely independent 
and sdf-existivf; One, who progressively shows and reveals 
Himself as God, in the constancy of His being, knowledge, 
will, and power, — who is the First and the Last throughout 
all epochs of revelation,— who was, and is, and is to come. He 
is, therefore, not merely the One who without beginning or 
end is all-sufficient in Himself, the causa mi who acts from 
His own freewill, and is absolutely self-controlled ; but He 
also continues to be for His people that which from the begin- 
ning He showed Himself to be, and fulfils everything which 
He either promises or threatens. Hence He is the /ailhful 
and true God (Ps. xxxiii. 4; Num. xxiii. 19), who is a firm 
Defence and Kock to all that put theii' trust in Him (Ps. xviii. 
2, 3 ; Isa, xxvi. 3, 4 ; Deut. vii. 9, 10 ; Josh, xxiii. 14, 16 ; 
1 Kings viii. 56 ; 2 Kings x. 10), This eternally living, one 
Lord, though as ""the Holt/ One of Israel" (Ps. Ixxi 22, 
Ixxxix. 1 9 ; Isa. i. 4) He must necessarily be separate from all 
that is finite and impure, yet cannot and may not, in this very 
capacity, hold aloof from human affairs, or look on without 
concern at the development of the world. On the contrary. 
He guides it, both as a whole and in detail, according to His 
holy aims and purposes, and under the revealing aspect of His 
nature Himself enters into the growing development of things, 
in order to lead it on, by a free and independent, but ever 
consistent guidance, to the destiny which He has marked 
out. 

Thus the mere name of Jehovah is in itself a refutation ol 
Deism. The latter asserts that God worked on one occasion 
only, — in the creation, — and that since then the world has 
spontaneously followed its own coiu-se ; but Christ says, " lly 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work : the Son can do nothing 
of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do : for what things 
soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise " (John v. 
17, 19). Deism asserts in regard to its God, that miracles are 
a matter of impossibility to him ; but the Scriptures say of the 
Chi'istian's God, " With God nothing shall be impossible " 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 215 

CLnke i. 37). Deism affirms that God cannot manifest and 
communicate Himself in special, supernatural modes ; but the 
Scriptures, on the contrary, teach us that " God, who at sundry 
times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us 
by His Son " (Heb. i. 1 S.). The Scriptures represent God as 
One who is love, and must therefore continuously communicate 
Himself; ^yho also has gradually revealed Himself more and 
more clearly and completely, till at length in Christ His entire 
fulness appeared ; and who even now, by means of His Spirit, 
makes Himself recognised, felt, and enjoyed. In short, they 
tell of Him as One who in a thousand ways every moment 
places Himself in mutual relationship and active communica- 
tion with man ; who lives and rules not merely cAove, but in the 
world ; from whose throne the current of life ilows down to all 
creation, and lightnings, thunders, and voices go forth in every 
direction (Rev. iv. 5, xi. 19). 

This is the living, personal, all-working God of the Holy 
Scriptures, whose active influence is omnipresent in the world, 
and yet, as the one free and independent Being, is enthroned 
in eternal majesty above it. From beginning to end— that is, 
from its origin in England in the l7th century down to its 
rationalistic scions of the present day — the whole tendency of 
Deism has been directed towards a severance between God and 
the world ; in the Holy Scriptures, on the other hand, from 
first to last the holy God is represented as taking care to con- 
nect Himself in mercy and judgment more and more profoundly, 
pei-vadingly, and condescendingly, with the world and with 
man (Hos, ii. 19, 20). From the movement of the Spirit of 
God on the face of the primeval waters (Gen. i. 2), down to 
the dwelling of God amongst men in the new Jerusalem (Eev. 
xxi. 3 &.), the life from God seeks to naturalize itself more and 
more completely on earth, and this is done through Him in 
whom an eternal, indissoluble, and personal bond of union 
between God and man haa been cemented through Christ and 
His Holy Spirit. 

Fram the foregoing it will be evident that we were 
thoroughly justified in applying the term non-biUical to those 
other conceptions of God ; and lil;ewise, that the false elements 
which we recognised in Pantheism and Deism, — viz. in the one. 



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216 TOE THEOLOGY OF SCKIPTUEB. [lECT. IV. 

the blending together of God and the 'world ; and in the other, 
tlieir entire separation, — are excluded by the biblical concep- 
tion of God. 

Let us, however, now observe how the scattered paries of 
truth -which scintillate amid tJte darkness of the other ideas cf 
God, shine forth together as one clear light in the view taJcen of 
Him in the Bible. 

Atheism, which certainly is falsehood itself, and therefore 
does not contain one single spark of truth, rests upon the 
argument that nothing is to be seen of God. According to 
the Scriptures, God is really the invisible One (1 Tim. i 1 7 ; 
John i. 18). So far, however, from this attribute diminish- 
ing tlie reality of His being, it is precisely that which certifies 
to His true, eternal existence ; " for the things which are 
seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
eternal" {2 Cor. iv. 18). The invisibility of God is not a 
defect, but a prerogative. Por, in respect of His essence, 
God is so absolutely exalted above everything that is created 
and visible, that He cannot manifest Himself directly to the 
creature, but only in some shape which has a certain affinity 
to it. 

Matei-ialism identifies God with nature and with matter. It 
lays stress, as we saw above, not altogether unjustly, on the 
element in the being and working of the Spirit which is allied 
to, and interwoven with, nature. This aspect of the truth also 
receives its full due in the biblical view of God. According 
to it, although God is Spiiit, He has nevertheless a nature, 
which we may term sulstaviial, but not material. It is desig- 
nated as light and fire : " We declare unto you, that God is 
light ;" " Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment," 
etc. (1 John i 5 ; liev. xxi. 23 ; Vs. civ. 2 ; 1 Tim. vi. 16) ; 
" Our God is a consuming fire ;" "a fire goeth before Him," etc. 
(Deut. iv. 24,ix. 3; Heb. xii. 29 ; Isa x. 1 7 ; Ps. xcvii. 3 ; cf. 
also the visions of the prophets). However, this element of 
light in God's nature does not exclude its spirituality, but 
plainly indicates it. 

The truth in Pantheism is the assertion that God is omni- 
present and universally active in the world. We have already 
seen that these attributes are assigned to God by the Holy 
Scriptures everywhere, and with full emphasis. They entirely 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 217 

separate God from tlie world as regards His nature, but most 
closely connect Him with it as regards His will and His 
action. The Scriptures cannot at all imagine the life of the 
world without the animating presence of God in it As an 
infinite Being, far exalted above aR hmits either of time or 
space, God is near to every being in every place, and that not 
as a mere idle looker-on, but quickening and maintaining, 
helping and directing it with His full power and activity (1 
Kings viii. 27 ; Amos ix. 6 ; Isa. Ixvi. 1 ; Jer. xxiii. 24 ; Ps. 
cxxxix. 7, 10, cv. 7; Matt xxviii. 20; Eph. i. 23). But 
although pervading everything, and in everything, yet at the 
same time He ia above everything (Eph. iv. 6). Biblical 
Monotheism does not, therefore, at all require the aid ot 
Pantheism in order to maintain a constant, living relation 
between God and the world. The Bible teaches that God is 
the fulness of all life, and therefore recognises a veritable pre- 
sence of God in all forms of the world's life ; so that as 
regards the fulness, midtifariousness, and intimacy of the 
divine presence, it falls short neither of Pantheism nor of 
Polytheism. Further, Pantheism fears lest the idea of per- 
sonality should involve a restriction in the being of God ; and, 
as we have previously seen, there is truth in this idea to the 
extent that God camwt be conceived as a single Person. He 
would thus be degraded to the level of other personalities. 
But Holy Scripture also considers Him not as a single Person, 
but as absolute Personality, which is neither limited nor 
restricted by anything else; which is not a numerical One 
beside other single beings, but is both Unity and Plurality at 
once, i.e. a triune Being. Thus, as we shall subsequently see, 
room is left for the infinite fulness of life in God : and yet the 
great prerogative of personahty is firmly maintained. Thus, 
moreover, fidl_ justice is done to the truth involved in 
Polythsisni, viz. that plurality is an elementary form of being, 
and therefore must be derivable from God. Pantheism likor 
wise demands, not without reason, that a self-conscious God 
must from all eternity have had an object which might reflect 
His consciousness back into itself; but according to the 
biblico- Christian view, God has an object of this kind, exist- 
ing from all eternity, in the distinction between the Persons 
of the Trinity in His own being, — an object which renders it 



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218 THE THEOLOGY Of SCEIPTUEE. [LECT. IV, 

superfluous to suppose that the -world existed from everlasting. 
Because He is absolute Personality, He does not exist, or come 
into existence, in or through anything else, nor does He only 
receive His self-consciousness through something which en- 
counters Him, and causes Him to revert upon Himself ; but 
He derives it from Himself, and it flows to Him out of His 
own essence. For He is not merely /, but also constitutes 
Hunself as He ; hence He can say of Himself, " I am Ha " 
(Deut. xxxii. 39; Isa. xli. 4,xliii. 10,13, 25, xlviii. 12). He 
is in Himself both subject and object. 

The elements of truth contained in Ddsm and Rationalism 
■we found to be that God is a personal Being, and, as tlie 
Creator of the world, must be conceived as separate from it ; 
further, that His interposition in the world is not . of an 
arbitrary character calculated to disturb its order, but avails 
itself of the forces and laws implanted therein ; also, that God, 
in His holy patience, even imposes upon Himself a certain 
self-limitation in respect of human freedom. These truths, 
likewise, have due importance accorded to them ia the Holy 
Scriptures. Eor the aU-guiding and all-watching God of the 
Bible, and none other, is a God of order (1 Cor. xiv. 33). The 
entire history of His holy rule over the world, as related to us 
in Scripture, is a proof of this. But this order not only does 
not render the providence of God in individual cases super- 
fluous, but directly requires it. Again, even when Deism goes 
too far in exalting God above the world, ia order not to 
degrade Him hy mixing Him up with the finite and with the 
changes and chances of the world, this idea contains a two- 
fold element of truth ; — first, the separation of God from alt 
that is impure. His holiness and incomparaUeness ; and next. 
His eternal immutaUlity aijd constant conformiiy with Himself. 
But what can set forth these attributes of God more promi- 
nently than do the Scriptures ? According to them, God is in 
His inmost nature the only holy One, who, being strictly 
severed from all that ia impure, and unaffected by all the 
infirmities of finite beings, is supernaturally exalted above all 
their limitations. He is purity itself, and keeps far from Him 
everything that ia opposed to His nature (Lev. xi. 44, 45, 
xix. 2; Ps. xxii. 4; Isa. vi. 3, liv. 5; John xvii. 11; Eev. 
XV. 4), because He ia the incomparable One (Isa. 3d. 25, 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 'J\0 

xlvi, 5). And so, too, He is the immutable One. For 
whereas all the gods of polytheistic religions have a history 
fall of personal events, changes, metamorphoses, and adven- 
tures, and the sacred writings of the heathen are mere collec- 
tions of divine biographies, the God of the Bible has no 
biography and no personal adventures whatever. He is ever 
and unchangeably the same, because He is the only veritable 
self-exident Being, and not a being brought into existence. His 
pecnliar nature also defines His relation to the world — " I am 
that I am ; " " Thou ai-t the same " (Ps. cii. 27) ; " I am the 
Lord ; I change not " (Mai. iii.' 6) ; " With whom is no 
variableness" (Jas. i 17; cf. Heb. xiii. 8). 

Thus, in the bibli co-Christian conception of God, all the 
separate spariis of truth are concentrated, as it were, in a 
focus. It combines God's personality and independence. His 
connection with nature and capability of being known. His 
omnipresence and omnipotence. His invisibility, incomparable- 
ness, and immutability. His supramundane and yet intra- 
mundane existence ; and, we may also add, everything which 
reason and conscience can, by means of natural knowledge, 
unveil of God's omnipotence, goodness, wisdom, and holiness,, 
indeed, even all the true elements wliich are contained in the 
heathen conceptions of God, of His miracles and manifesta- 
tions. His inspirations and incarnations. If one-sidedly main- 
tained, these several elements of truth lead to a distorted and 
mistaken view of God; but if united, each one chedis any 
uwlue wominence of the other, and so all contribute towards 
the perfect truth, rationality, and heauty of (he biblical concep- 
tion oj God. 

Allow me to lay this before you more in detail 
{a) The intrinsic truth of the biblical idea of God is shown 
by the fact that it alone affords the possibility of conceiving 
God as the entirely perfect, the truly absolute Being. No con- 
ception of God can be the ti-ue one which does not include 
every perfection. But in all the other ideas of God there is 
something essential wanting; at one time His spirituality 
(Materialism), or even His existence (Atheism), so again His 
consciousness (Pantheism), or His constant living activity 
(Deism), From the biblical point of view, however, God ia 
made to possess all these attributes, and to possess them in 



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^20 TOE THEOLOGY OF SCiilPTUEa [LECT. IV. 

the very highest degree — being and life, spirituality and 
oraiiipotenee, consciousness and thought, will aud freedom, 
and, in addition, a constant living and holy activity in the 
entire universe. Here alone He possesses both Himself and 
the world, and is ahsohitely the Lord, who rules everything 
according to His holy aims, and giiides free spirits according 
to free moral laws ; here alone does He possess every physical 
and moral perfection, and become " God" that is, entirely and 
thoroughly good, as our Teutonic speech strikingly points out. 
Therefore in this view only is the coitception of the Absolute com- 
pletely realized: For God must needs determine and condition 
everything. But for this end it ia necessary that He should be 
absolutely good and absolutely free. These two attributes are 
combined only in the God of Scripture,— the hol^, and there- 
fore also the free God, who does what pleases Him, whose 
will no one can gainsay (llom. ix. 19) ; whereas the God of 
Pantheism is neither good nor free, and the God of Deism is 
at all events not free, and in reality not perfectly good. 

Moreover, the true principle of all being can evidently be 
only that from which everything (hat is may be derived. Apart 
from the moral sphere, God must be the unity of all antitheses. 
This He is only according to the Chiistian conception, because 
this alone makes Him truly absolute. We can trace back to 
the almighty One all that is created, to the living One all 
tliat lives, to the self-conscious Spirit all the spiritually 
rational and personal life in the world. Here we see God as 
one, and yet containing in Himself the principle of multi- 
plicity ; pervading everything, and yet above all ; capable of 
being known, and yet unsearchable; condescending to the 
lowest depths, and yet enthroned in unattainable sublimity ; 
eternally near, and yet etemally far off. 

Again, must not that be the truest idea of God which 
af!ords the deepest satisfaction to the religious need of man ! 
This, as we have seen, tends to a complete union of the 
God-seeking soul with its Creator, and to its being pervaded, 
filled, and blessed by Him, This, according to Scripture, is 
the aim and conclusion of the whole revelation and world 
government of God and Christ, "that God may be all in 
all" (1 Cor. XV. 28). Once more, we must aver that this 
consummation of the ■v^'orld's development is unattainable 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISSf. 221 

except under the presupposition of the biblical idea of God. 
Neither the impersona] mundane soul of Pantheism, which 
destroys the higher self-conscious life as soon as it tal;es it 
back again into itself ; nor yet the deistical God who abides 
outside the life of the world, and therefore does not communi- 
cate Himself to individual souls, can ever be " all in all," and 
thus fuUy satisfy the religious need of man. Only the God 
of Scripture can do this. And why ? Because He is the 
perfect Spirit and perfect love, or, combining both attributes 
in one, the Father. 

Here we have before us the most profound definition of 
Scripture as to the nature of God, per se definitions to the 
sublimity of which the presentiments and longings of no 
heathen people ever rose, although the truth of them directly 
forces itself on the reason and the conscience. God is spirit 
(Job iv. 24, not " a spirit "}. Man lias spirit, God is spirit. 
In Him the spirit does not form merely a portion of His 
being; but the whole substance of His nature. His peculiar 
self, is spirit. Here we have the idea of God in His inner 
-perfection, just as the names Elohim and Jehovah tell us 
mainly His external position As ipmt, God is the eternal, 
self-dependent brightness and truth, absolute knowledge, the 
intelligent prmciple of all forces whose glance penetrates into 
eveiything, and produces light and truth m all directions 
Spirit ' how much food for thought does this one woid give ' 
Do we not feel as though it would cut asunder the haid knot 
which philosophy has placed before us with its conceptions of 
God, so liboriou->ly wrought out, so artificially combined, and 
therefore often so diflicult to understand ? " God is spirit" 
Placing these simple words side by side with all the definitions 
of ancient and modern philosophers, — e.g. that God is the univer- 
sal relative measure of the world's becoming (Heraclitus), or the 
indifference of the real and ideal (Schilling), etc., — have we not 
even in the profound simplicity of the biblical doctrine a proof 
of its truth t The greatest truths are always those very ones 
which are the most surprisingly simple in their nature, whilst 
tliat which is artificial, contorted, and complicated, is in most 
cases only half true or entirely false. 

How dear and intelligible, too, do all the other attributes 
ascribed to God in Scripture become, when ;onsidered in 



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222 TIIE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTUKB. [lect. IV. 

the light of this fundamental definition of spirituality ! "When 
once I know that God is spirit, I can much more readily con- 
ceive that He is the eternally living and personal One, and I 
can even forecast that this spiritual nature of fire and light 
may be the basis of His omnipresence, omniscience, and omni- 
sapience, as well aa of His omnipotence and glory. Nay, I 
can more readily comprehend those attributes, for it is only 
as spirit that they can appertain to Him. And conversely, 
■when once the point is settled that He, as the most per- 
fect Being, must possess all these, it follows that He must be 
spirit. This definition, therefore, is not merely a, truth, hut a. 
necessity, which spontaneously results from the conception of 
the Absolute. 

The same is made clear to us in the fundamental tenet of 
Scripture as to the moral nature of God, viz. that He is holy 
love. As spirituality is the vital foundation of His physical 
and intellectual perfections, so holy love is the internal basis 
of „all His moi'al perfections, and a necessary deduction from 
the' true idea of the Absolute. Benign, gracious, mercliul, 
long-suffering, patient, faithful, true. Just, and whatever other 
moral beauty may be ascribed to God in the Scriptures, all 
this He can only be because He is holy (cf. the passages above 
quoted), and because He is love (1 John iv. 8, 16). For the 
same reason He is also light, in which there is no darkness at 
all (1 John i. 5). Light is only the necessary effulgence of 
His intrinsically holy nature ; for the moral and the natural 
ate in God individually one. Truly has one said ; " Holiness 
is the hidden glory, and glory the manifested holiness of God," 
As holy love, God has two attributes : He is distinctly scipa- 
rated, as we have seen, from all that is either internally or 
externally impure and base (the fundamental conception of 
holiness), and is therefore higher, more glorious, and more 
majestic than any creature ; at the same time. He is full of 
the most tender condescension and — if I may so say— self- 
sacrifice ; in infinite compassion imparting Himself to the world 
in order to eradicate from it sin and all impurity, and to render 
it a partaker in His perfect life and glory. " I am the Lord thy 
Crod," He exclaims to His people, " the holy One of Israel, thy 
Saviour" (Isa xliii. 3, xlv, 15, liv. 5; John iii. 16; 1 Tim. 
iv. 10), etc. 



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IJICT. IV.] BIBLICAL TIinSM. 223 

What teaching about God can be more sublime or more 
adapted to the yearuings of our heart tlian this 1 "Where do 
we find an idea of God which satisfies owv religious need so 
abundantly as the truth that God is love ? Does not every 
heart led by an involuntary bias say " Yea and amen " to 
this ? Does not this idea lorce itself directly as the trath 
upon all, even unbelievers ? Any man who, even in the 
smallest degree, acknowledges his deepest need, will lay hold 
on this truth with both hands, and cry out, " Yea, this is God ; 
and He must be this, not merely on His own behalf, on behalf 
of His moral perfection and beauty, but for my sake also, if 
there is to be any hope for me ; the God of love is the only 
God who can satisfy my needs." 

Ko less comforting is the name of Father, as applied to 
God; and following from the twofold conception of spirit and 
love, God is thus called, sometimes in His character of uni- 
versal originator (e.g. 1 Cor. viii. 6), sometimes in the special 
sense of begetting, as in the case of Christ {e.g. Ps. ii. "7) and 
the regenerate (e.g. Jas. i. 18), but specially because He exer- 
cises loving care, education, and providence. The former 
universal relationship is the groundwork of the latter more 
special one. This, however, we do not find only in the 
New Testament, hut also in the Old (Deut. xxxii. 6 ; Ps. ciii. 
13 ; Isa. Ixiii. 16, Ixiv. 8 ; Jer. iii. 4, 19, xxxL 9 ; Mai i. 6, 
ii. 10); although, it is true, the fall depths of the divine 
Fatherhood are first revealed to us in the former, because 
the relation of God to men as Father was perfectly realized 
in Christ alone, and through Him was brought about for 
the whole world. This name points out His dignity no less 
than His accessibility and condescension. His holy prefigura- 
tion of us no less than His love and care, our own needy 
condition no less than our honour and dignity, as children 
created in our Father's image. What an encouragement and 
stimulus for a human heart,— how much that excites confidence, 
imposes awe, stimulates the conscience, and inspires love and 
hope, — what a sea of joy and bliss there is in that one name 
Father ! " All our other knowledge of God contains nothing 
more than isolated letters and syllables of this one Name " 
(Tholuck). We Christians possess it and enjoy it in its fullest 
extent. In the whole range of heathen piety we find nothing 



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224 THE THEOLOGY OF SCKIPTUEE. [lECT. IT. 

but distant and obscure presentiments of the heart's-joy wbich 
overwhelms each' one who, in the fulness of his soul, can cry, 
" Doubtless Thou art our Father and our Eedeemer, from 
everlasting this is Thy name" (Isa. Ixiii. 16); who can call 
upon his God by all the glorious names which the Scriptures 
apply to Him, ^ rhysician, Stronghold, Piock of salvation, 
Piefuge and Confidence, Shield and BucMer, Light and Con- 
solation, Shepherd and Helper, Eedeemer and Saviour. 

Again, I ask, is there any idea of God which can more 
thoroughly satisfy the religious need of a human heart ? In- 
deed, in view of this name of God, I may well venture to ask 
every one who rejects the bibhcal idea of Him, Hast thou 
ever earnestly considered its depths, in devout contemplation 
and active appropriation, without finding full satisfaction in it ? 
Only we must never forget that the truth of the hiblical idea of 
God must he recognised principally by personal experience The 
true God must be found by a moral search. " The desire to 
attain to God ^\ithout G d sajs a jhilo'topher is just such 
another feit as the temptpr premised to teach our first patents 
how m opp sition to God md without Him they might make 
themsel/es eq^ml to Him (Paidet; 

Or must njt that be the tiue idea of God by which I is a 
smful being am at once io led dain and iflj^f / ip by \^hich 
I am made to fuel the ^ihile wt ^ht of my p,iiilt and ^et not 
to despair but to hope by which I am shown the wide gulf 
wh ch sepintes me fiom God ind ilso the way to a re-itoia 
tion ol unit> with Him ' And what else m this respect t,an 
compire with the G d of the Holy '^cnptnes who in one 
breath says of Hunscli, " I dwell in the high and holy place, 
and mth him who is of a contrite and humble spirit " (Isa. Ivii. 
15 ; comp. Ps. cxvii 5-7), so as to make us feel at once His 
Jtoly distance and His comfoj-ting nearness ; or again, who, whilst 
asking sin-burdened Israel whether He ought not justly to 
make them like unto Sodom, immediately adds, " Mine heart 
is turned within me : my repentings are kindled together " 
(Hos. XL 8) ? And where shall we find the way to a restora- 
tion of imion with God brought so lovingly before the fallen 
world as by Him who proclaims, " God so loved the world 
that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish, but have everlaslinff life"? 



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.LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 225 

And finally, must not that be the tnie idea of God which 
does the most to elevate man morally, to ennoble, to spiritualize 
him, and to render him like God? And from an hidonml 
point of view we ask, Where has there been any conception of 
God and religion which has so much elevated, educated, and 
enlightened both individuals and nations as the biblico- 
Christian conception ? Whence may we expect a more 
powerful moral influence than from the worship of the God 
who, as spirit, desires to be M'orshipped only in spirit and in 
truth ? Where is there a more forcible stimulus to purity, 
both of heart and life, than is found in the worship of Him of 
whom it is written, " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth ;" 
and, " Be ye holy, for I am holy " ? And place side by aide 
the fact, that other nations, who were acquainted with none 
but unholy gods, have, through their worship, sunk into an 
ever-deepening moral degradation, which could not be averted 
even through the influence of philosophy. " By their fruits 
ye shall know them." And indeed the truth of this concep- 
tion of God is witnessed not merely by the Holy Scriptures, 
but also by our own heart and conscience, and the testimony of 
innumerable Christians, who have recognised it in their personal 
experience, and have given incontestable evidence of its moral 
fraits in their hearts and lives ; and the whole history of the 
world and its civilisation confirms it ! 

Qj) Nor does reason itself bear a less decided witness in 
favour oi this view. Someone, perhaps, will say. It is all very 
well to heap together the greatest possible number of beautiful 
attributes ; but the question is, whether it is rational to pre- 
dicate aU these together of God ? Yes, I reply, the biblical 
conception ol God is also the most ratioiial, and the one that 
recommends itself most strongly to our understanding. It 
is true that His sublimities far transcend all the perceptions 
of reason. But they are not imreasonable because they are 
beyond the scope oi reason. Wo reasonable man can expect 
that he as a finite being should entirely and perfectly compre- 
hend the infinite God ; to do this, he must himself be God. 
And it is therefore perfectly comprehensible to any discreet, 
temperate mind, which remains conscious of its limitations, 
that the Scriptures should reserve the perfect knowledge of 
God for the intuition of another life (1 Cor. xiii 12; 2 Cor. 



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226 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUEE. [lECT. IV. 

V. 7 ; 1 Jolin iii. 2). Tlie only question therefore is, -whether 
this preliminary knowledge of God with which the Holy Scrip- 
tures furnish us, on the express understanding of its frag- 
mentary nature, really recommends itself to onr reason, and 
not merely to our liearts. And this it does infinitely more 
than any other conception. 

Is it not, I ask in the first place, the most reasonable thing 
we can do to adopt that conception of God which renders the 
necessary divine perfections, and also the mystery of the world 
and our own being, more intelligible than does any other ? 
Our idea of God fulfils all these requirements. We have 
already seen that the attributes of eternal vitality and per- 
sonality, of omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, etc., which 
we are bound to attribute to the Absolute as siich, are unintelli- 
gible, unless with the Bible we presuppose God to be spirit. 
Moreover, it is no longer a mystery to me that God should 
create worlds, notwithstanding the perfect self-sufficiency of 
His Being, if I know that He is Love, whose nature is to desire 
that other beings outside itself should rejoice in their existence. 
It is no longer a matter of wonder to me that, in every grain 
of dust and in every drop of water, traces of infinite wisdom 
obtrude themselves on my notice, when I think of God as the 
highest self-conscious Intelligence. I am no longer at a loss to 
account for the requirements of a law in my conscience which 
is altogether different to that which rules in nature, when I 
know that the holy God is thereby teaching me His holy 
will. Again, it appears to me in the highest degree reason- 
able that God should reveal Himself in the Scriptures step by 
step, gradually disclosing to man the depths of His own nature ; 
first His power, goodness, and wisdom ; then His holiness and 
justice ; and last of all, in Christ, His world-subduing love. So 
soon as I form the idea that He is a Father who is edv.cating 
man, I see why He communicates Himself to him in a special 
manner during childhood, and then places the earlier periods 
of man's existence under a law somewhat different from that 
which rules the later ones. Yes, in view of the moral freedom 
of man, it no longer seems inexplicable that God should have 
allowed him to sin, and thereby to bring such unutterable woes 
upon our race, if I can believe that the purpose and counsel of 
God from all eternity was to redeem man through Christ, and bo 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 22? 

bring him back into blessed fellowship with Himself. It no 
longer seems a strange chance that, in the course of the world's 
history, I should perceive so many traces of righteous justice 
and holy laws never to be infringed with impunity, when I 
know that a righteous God is in the seat of government, 
guiding everything according to His holy purposes. Nay, do 
not the mysteries of my own life's experience become closer 
and clearer when I illumine them with the light of the utter- 
ance, " I have loved thee with an everlasting love ; therefore 
with loving-kindness have I drawn thee " (Jer. xxxi. 3) ; that 
is, with the belief in God as a Father, who in everything, be it 
love or be it severity, seeks to draw me to Himself t The 
inmost yearning of my soul after God only becomes intelligible 
to me, and is satis6ed in its profoundest depths, when I know 
that God in His compassion meets me half way and imparts 
Himself to me, because He is love. 

Once more I ask, is it not consonant with reason to accept 
an idea of God which furnishes me with a key to the most im- 
portant questions connected with the wwld and tvith iny life ? 
If the other conceptions of God lead me only to an inexplicable 
soinething, at which my thoughts are to rest ; and if, on the 
other hand, the biblical conception of God affords me, in 
respect to the ultimate cause of things, at least a notion, the 
substance of which I can in some measure comprehend, and 
which — even in practical life— solves many enigmas which 
must else remain -unsolved ; then surely the rationality of this 
conception of God must be greater than that of all others, and 
the words hold good, " The fear of the Lord," that is, the theo- 
retical and practical observance of tliis idea, " is the beginning 
of wisdom." 

(c) Finally, the biblical conception of God recommends 
itself by its heauty no less than in other ways ; for in this 
respect, too, it far surpasses all other cognate ideas. 

For the most part it would he hard to discover an aspect 
of beauty in the non-biblical conceptions of God. Philo- 
sophical definitions of the divine nature may tickle our iutel- 
lectiial palate ; but abstract ideas of this kind will not touch 
our sense of beauty. And yet the God who formed the world, 
as a beautiful expression of His own mind (Gen. i. 31), and 
then made it oi,'er to man as His beautiful image, to impress 



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-28 THE THEOLOGY OF SGEIPTOEB. [LECT. IV. 

upon it the divine brightness of His Spirit, and glorify it into His 
own likeness,— surely this God who is the most perfect Being 
must also be the most beautiful, and must, therefore, most 
forcibly arouse and attract to Himself the sense of beauty felt 
by His im^— man. Both in His physical. His intellectual, 
and moral attributes, the God of the Holy Scriptures is a God 
of surpassing beauty. Kot, indeed. His formless and invisible 
essence, b\it His overt action and self-manifestation, especially 
in Christ, have for this reason at all times been an inex- 
haustible mine of wealth for representative art, and have 
inspired it to its sublimest and most ideal productions. 

All true beauty is the outward expression of something 
good. That which is perfectly good can only a.ppear in per- 
fect beauty. Hence the biblical doctrine as to the glory of 
God, and in connection with it the future transformation of the 
world. The holy and living God stands in the most effective 
relationship to His world. He is the glorious One, whose 
glory extends' to the utmost limits of the universe, and is 
manifested by the creation, His own handiwork, in which He 
is all-present, and all-guiding. Even now " the heavens de- 
clare the glory of God," and " the whole earth is full of Hia 
glory" (Ps. xix. 2, xcvii 6, exiii. i ; Isa. vi, 3, et al) ; and 
one day it shall be still more so when God's kingdom is 
consummated (Num. xiv, 21 ; Ps Ixxii 19 , Isa, xl 5 , Ezek 
xxxviii. 23 ; Hab. ii. 14 ; Tit. ii 13 et al) 

If we more closely consider the mtnnsic substance and the 
apparent form of this divine glory, we hnd that the seciet of 
God's beauty is primarily involved in His nature as light, 
which reflects the purity, holiness, grace, and gladness of ILb 
inner being, and radiates around Him this intnnsic beantj 
Is there in nature anything more beautiful than light, and 
is there in the moral world anything more beautiful than 
holiness i. He is incomparable, both m His essence and m 
His actions (Ex. xv. 11; Ps. xxxv. 10, Ixxi. 19, Ixxsvi. 3, 
Ixxxix. 9 ; Dent. iii. 24, etc.). What can we imagine more 
grand and majestic than the outward demonstrations of the 
glories of God, which are occasionally described in Scripture, 
Irom the maniiestation on Sinai down to the glorious seicond 
advent of Christ ? "What brilliant pictures are spread before 
us by the praphetic seera, describing the heavenly glories of 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 229 

God and of Christ (Isa. vi. ; Ezck i. ; Eev. i., iv.), and of the 
new world tliat is to come glorified in the light of God (Eev. 
xxi., xxii. ; Isa. Ixv. 17 ff.) ' How plainly does the struggle for 
language show that words and figures were alike inadequate to 
express that wliieh they intuitively perceived ! Two names in 
particular which the Old Testament applies to God point to 
His majestic beaiity and glory. The one is : " Jehovah that 
dwelleth between the ehembim " (1 Sam. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2 ; 
Ps. xcix. 1 ; Isa. xxxvii. 16) ; for the latter are simply the 
exponents of His glory and of his active presence in the world. 
The other name is still more fiec[uently appKed to God, viz. 
" Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts," that is, not only of the 
heavenly bodies, but especially of the heavenly spirits. Eeirg 
the messengers of God and the instruments of His will (Ps. 
ciii. 20, and frequently), also the witnesses accompanying 
Jehovah when He Himself appears in His Mngly and judicial 
glory {Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. Iviii 18), these spirits constitute, as 
it were, the " celestial Church," which heads " the antiphony of 
the universe " (Ps. cxiii. 2, cL 1), offering adoration to God 
in the heavenly sanctiuwy, and celebrating both His mighty 
rule in nature (Ps. xxix. 19), and His miracles of mercy (Ps. 
Ixxxix. 6 ff.). How grandly beautiful, liow solely worthy of 
God are tlieae views, and, in conjunction with them, how 
blessed the promise, " Thine eyes shall see the King in His 
beauty " (Isa, xxxiii 1 7) ! 

But above all, what unique moral beauty is exhibited to us 
in " tlie Fairest among the children of men " (Ps. xlv. 3), who 
could say of Himself, " He that hath seen me, liath seen my 
Father also ! " His countenance full of grace and truth. His 
actions full of infinite compassion, gentleness, and holy zeal. 
His sufferings full of priestly majesty, all place before our 
eyes a picture of perfect spiritual beauty and moral sublimity 
so absolutely harmonious and spotless, that the whole race of 
man has nothing which can be compared to it. And yet all 
this was nothing more than the reflection of the Father's glory 
shaded by an earthly and human incarnation (John l 14 ; 
1 Cor. ii. 8), in One who had divested Himself of His divine 
fulness, and had taken on Him the shape of a servant. 

In the next place, if we transfer our attention from the 
revealed aspect of God to His internal nature, how beautiful is 



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230 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTDEE. [LECT. IV. 

the intiinsic harmony of Hia Being, in all Hia attributes, both 
intellectual and moral ! With what beautiful harmony do the 
fundamental principles of His nature flow one from the other 
— spirit, light, life, love ! Or, if we distinguish these attri- 
butes one from another, how beautiful is their mutual cor- 
respondence ! We may, for instance, distinguish, as above, 
between the attributes of God resulting from His vitality, and 
those flowing from His nature as light On the one hand, there 
appertain to His vitality, His absence of beginning and all- 
suflieiency. His eternity and immutability, His omnipotence 
and omnipresence ; on the other hand, to His nature as light, 
belong His invisibility, omnisapienee, omniscience, love, justice, 
and holiness. How beautifully these two series of attributes 
correspond to and supplement each other! — in one, the all- 
sufiiciency of God ; in the other. His intrinsic life of love : in 
one, eternity and immutability ; in the other, spirituality and 
invisibility : in one, omnipotence ; in the other, omnisapienee : 
in one, omnipresence ; in the other, omniscience. Can there 
be a harmony more beautifuj ? 

The beauty of God, as regards His action, furtlier depends 
on the harmonious development of all His attributes in His 
overt manifestations. And with what perfect beauty does the 
God of the Bible unfold these attributes as holy love, in which 
idea the whole fulness of His essence and action is expressed ! 
Can anything produce a more harmonious development than 
love ? How beautifully does it unite such contrasts aa 
sublimity and gentleness, as majesty and condescension ! 
How 'beautiftiUy does the fatherly guidance of God exhibit 
to us His holy wisdom and discipline, combined with a con- 
stant respect for our human freedom ! With what wondrous 
and soothing beauty does God balance the awe with which His 
physical attributes inspire us by the trust and self-surrender 
which His moral attributes awaken in ns — as, e.g., in tlie text 
already quoted, " I dwell in the high and holy place, and 
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit I" How 
beautiful it is that His action ever awahens both veneration 
and love ! And in what unequalled beaxity shall this holy 
love stand before us at the end of the world's course, when old 
things have been done away with, and all things have become 
new ! Then this love shall wipe away all tears from the eyes 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM, 231 

of the redeemed, and guide the thirsty to fountains of living 
water, and its pure beams shall illumine the heuYeiily city of 
God, in which He will dwell among His glorified people 
enthroned in everlasting glory (Eev. xxi., xxii.). 

The poet might well complain of the deist's god, that under 
his sceptre life became so gloomy, and " the world deprived of 
deities" so soulless. When the world, "her leading-strings 
at length outgrown, free hovers and upholds herself," — that 
is to say, when we accept the rationalist's idea of God, — this 
complaint is completely justified. But if, instead of this, the 
biblical idea of God, so glorious and yet so sootliing, had been 
presented to the poet's eye, assuredly his soul would have 
embraced its living beauty with fervid aspirations. 

Let us just for a moment compare the other conceptions of 
God with that of the Bible in point of beauty. In the one 
case we have an unconscious mundane soul, whose rule, in a 
moral point of view, is no better than that of animal instinct ; 
in the other, a self-conscious, holy, all-wise intelligence : in the 
one case, a universal substance under the iron law of necessity, 
first begetting a world, and then again swallowing it up ; in the 
other, a free, creative will which, in love to men, places itself 
in relation to them as free beings according to the moral laws : 
or again, in the one case, a Being who was once a Creator, but 
now rests in slothful inactivity, not troubling Himself about 
His creatures individually ; in the other, a Father who 
" openeth His hand and filleth all things living with plen- 
teousness," who also "clothes the lilies and the grass of the 
field," and "feeds the fowls of the air:" in the one case, a 
mere indifferent looker-on, who leaves the world entnely to 
itself, or at best observes it from some astronomical distance ; 
in the. other, " One who keepeth Israel, and. neither slumbereth 
nor sleepeth," and guideth His people like a faithful shepherd. 
Listen, on the one hand, to a Lalande, who presumptuously 
exclaims, " For sixty years I have surveyed the heavens, and 
never as yet have I seen Him !" or to a La Place, who says, 
" In my heaven I can find no God ;" and hear, on the other, 
the king of Israel, who, in holy awe, ejaculates, "Wliither 
shall I fiee from Thy presence?" "Behold, the heaven of 
heavens cannot contain Thee:" listen, on the one hand, to 
a Hegel, who looks upon the starry world as nothing better 



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232 THE THEOLOGY OP SCRIPTUEE. [lECT. IV. 

than " a luminous eniption, no more worthy of wonder than 
an eruption in man, or a swarm of flies;" and, on the other, 
to the pious psalmist, to whom " the heavens declare the glory 
of God." Compare, I pray you, these antagonistic views of 
God and the world, and then tell me candidly which is the 
more beautiful, the more sublime, and the more worthy of 
God and man ? 

On this point, however, the objection is very frequently 
raised, that, side by side mth many exalted ideas of God, 
there are in the Bible, at least in the Old Testammt, niany 
views unieorthy of Rim. This widely-spread notion is in 
innumerable cases not merely a main item, but also the source 
of modem doubts as to the Christian faith. The Old Testa- 
ment is not in harmony with the taste of the present day. 
Thus, for instance, a recent publication ^ expresses its opinion 
as to the God of the Old Testament in the following disgrace- 
fully blasphemous language : " The covenant of Jehovah is 
directed towards distinctly material and immoral aims. His 
agreement goes into the very smallest details, just as would 
any Jewish tradesman. He has to be incessantly reminded 
of His obligations; and in oi-der to save His credit. He is 
CflmpaM to inftUi considerable expense in furnishing manna 
and quails. The God of Moses is just such a person as the 
Jew lilies to do business with. In paradise he takes His 
walk; travels to Sodom for the purpose of inspecting the 
property ; dines with Abraham off roast veal and cakes ; has 
a tussle with Jacob Ml" etc. Voices such as these might 
well be left to their own ignominy. But if we set aside the 
scurrility of expression, we find that they give vent to objec- 
tions which go far to render the Old Testament repulsive to 
many. The chiel stumbling-blocks in this case are the nature 
and mode of God's inteicouise with man. His too human-like 
appearances and feehngs. His wmth, vengeance, repentance, 
and the like. In tlie face of these objections,^ of which we 
can here only consider the most important, I would recom- 
mend you to keep m view two things : Jlrst, the gi'adual pi-o- 
gi'ess of revelation, in which God must educate mankind 

I Die Judeit awrf der i' .itsche Sl^nt, 5th ed., 1862. 

' For further details, eee Ileinlioler die AnslSsseiader kdl ScliriJI, Sluttgut, 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 233 

(Dent. viii. 5), dealmg therefore with them at first as children, 
and condescending to them in a way diiferent from His bear- 
ing towards men ; and, second, the circumstance that God 
Himself and the instruments of His manifestation, such aa 
the angels in the case of Abraham and Jacob, are not to he 
considered as absolutely identical. In this way very many of 
the situations which are supposed to be unworthy of God lose 
their apparently offensive character. 

God approaches the first sinners in Paradise " in the cool of 
the day," just as a father and tutor might do in a human or 
human-like shape. But if He sought to gain their confidence, 
could He converse with them in any other than human shape ? 
Having once given a bodily form to the image of Himself in 
man, He manifests Himself so as to be recognised by hia 
bodily senses. Man has now cut himself off from God; but 
Gcd approaches man because He cannot and will not leave 
him. And for this pui'pose He chooses the evening, which 
m the east is the most pleasant hour, not in order to avoid 
being molested by the suu, hut in order to give to the sinners 
one day more in which to present themselves to Him as 
penitent " When the sun for the last time gilded with its 
rajs the glory of Paradise," as Spurgeon exclaims, "when the 
evening dews dropped a tear over the sin of man, when all 
was so still that man was more easily led to think about 
himself and his offence, and the heaven above was resplendent 
with its lights, in order that man in now appiiDachinc dark- 
ness might stiU have hope," then the right moment had 
aiTived, then He lets the guilty ones hear the rustling of His 
footsteps, so as to show them that man cannot hide himself 
from the face of God. And yet shallow mockers talk about 
" promenading in the cool of the evening ! " This necessity 
for a human fonn of the divine manifestation, which has its 
tme cause in Hia condescension to mankind, and its climax 
in the incarnation of God in Christ, it is not to be nndeistood 
as if bodily shape formed part of the nature of God ; for it is 
well Icnown how stiictly all images of God are forbidden in 
the Old Testament. But it explains to us what we read of 
divine communications and manifestations in the lives of our 
first parents and the patriarchs. 

No words need be wasted on the scurrile objection to God'a 



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234 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPIUEB, [LECT. IV. 

covenant with Isi-ael, as beipg an immoral Jewish husiness 
transaction. It is probably intended for a jeu d' esprit, 
but betrays a superficiality and triviality which are truly 
astounding. For where is there any human code of laws, or 
even any inoml precept of a heathen philosopher, which can 
compare with the Mosaic law as regards the strictest req^uire- 
ments of the subliraest morality, — in other words, of holiness, — 
or in respect of the severe persecution and condemnation of 
sin, down to its- innermost source in evil desire ? 

We may deal in a similar way with the objection that has 
also often been raised, that it is unworthy of God for Him to 
appear, as He often does in the Old Testament, as " the par- 
ticular God of a special nation," because He is often called 
"the Lord thy God," or because, e.g. in Ex. ix. 1, in speaking 
to Pharaoh, He calls Himself " the God of the Hebrews." 
But all this is mere superficial talk. For is not Monotheism, — 
■ie. the belief that there is only one true and living God in 
the whole world, and that this is the God of Israel, — is not 
this, I say, the groundwork of the Mosaic rehgion ? The 
phrase, " the Lord thy God," refers only to the special covenant 
of God with Israel ; why should it be unwortliy of God so 
to call Himself, thus reminding Israel of their covenant 
duties 1 Surely none will attempt to deny that it was ex- 
ceedingly wise, and even necessary, that the knowledge of the 
true divine revelation should be entrusted to one branch of 
the human race, and be continued in it until the time of ful- 
filment, when it might become a benefit common to all man- 
kind ! Even in this " pai'ticularism," have we not innumer- 
able intimations of the fact, that the God of Israel was at the 
same time the God of the whole world, and that the gods of 
all other nations were but vain idols ? (Ps. xlvi. 5, xlv. 3, 
Ixxxvi. 8, cxxxv. 5 ; Isa, ii. 18, xli. 29, xlv. 21, and 
frequently.) What can there be more universal than the 
one Creator and Lord of heaven and earth ? Or if the point 
of the objection is supposed to be, that the " special God of 
tire Isi'aeUtes," as such, ignored other nations, then we ask- — 
must ask — Was it not God's purpose, in calling Abraham, in 
his seed to bless all the nations of the earth, although for a 
long time " He suffered all nations to walk in their own 
ways"? (Actsxvi 16.) Docs, then, the Old Covenant contain 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 235 

no promises from the heatlien? {cf. Isa. xix. 25, xlix. C, 
Ix. 3 ff. ; I's. Ixxii. 10 ff., xcviii. 2 if., and frequently.) liow 
often is the u-hok world called upon to praise God ! (Ps. xcvi., 
xcvii., xcviii, c, etc.) Or docs the Old Testament, generally 
speaking, pay less consideration than it ought to other nations ? 
What can we find more universal in its character than the his- 
tory of mankind contained in the first ten chapters of the BibJe ? 
No people of antiquity ever attained even to the idea of an 
universal history of mankind ; it is only possible on the ground 
of i-evelation ; and there, it exists from the very beginning. 

But did not tha God of the Old Testament on one occasion 
incite to roVbery ? So we hear many indignantly ask, in view 
of the passage Ex. iii. 21, 22 (cf. xi. 2 ff., xii. 35 ff.). This 
reproach is based simply on a misunderstanding of the passage. 
Before its departure, Israel is told to demand from the Egyp- 
tians golden and silver vessels, and thus to "spoil the Egyp- 
tians " (as to the signification of the v/ovd, cf. 2 Chron. xx. 
25). This command was subsequently carried out. But this 
" spoiling " is very different from secret theft, or from osten- 
sibly borrowing (cf. xii 36) without the intention to return. 
The Israelites from the outset ask /or or demand- these orna- 
ments, without any intention of restoring them ; and the Egyp- 
tians give (not " lend ") them without hope of receiving them 
hack. They were so overcome with terror, that they were glad 
enough to get rid of Israel on these terms. These gifts to 
which God inclined the hearts of the Egyptians were caiTied 
away by Israel as a booty, in token of the victory which 
God's omnipotence had granted to His weak people. The 
whole took place openly and fairly, and assuredly it was 
nothing more than equitable. How mucli valuable property 
in the shape of houses, lands, and utensils, must Israel have 
left behind in Egypt ! And for how many centuries had 
Israel been robbed by the Egyptians, through unjust enslave- 
ment ' The rigliteoiis God now takes care that Israel shall 
not remain unrewarded, or go away empty, after so long a 
period of severe labour ; and so Israel is permitted to despoil 
his oppressors, hut at the same time with their knowledge and 
consent, — " a prelude of the victory which the people of God, 
in their contest with the power of the world, shall always 
obtain" (Zech xiv. 14). 



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236 TUE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUEE. [lECT. IT. 

Another stumbling-block for many lies in the divine com- 
mand for the extirpation of the Canaanites (Dent. vii. 1 ff., 
XX. 16-18, etc.). Strange to say! For when we read else- 
where in liistory that a morally decrepit and enervated nation 
has been destroyed by some fresher people, then we talk 
about a Nemds, a just fate, and the like. But in the present 
case, as soon as Jehovah steps forth in the place of this 
undefined power, these sentimentalists begin to shriek out 
about a bloodthirsty God. Nevertheless, not only in this, but 
in all similar cases, it is the same God who passes the sen- 
tence of extirpation, and makes use of certain nations as a 
scourge for others. Judgments of this kind are a universal 
law of history. The only distinction is this, that that whicli 
is accomplished by other nations unconsciously, though accord- 
ing to God's counsel, is to be done by Israel consciously and 
in name of his God. And can it be said that this condemna- 
tion was not a just one ? Centuries before, God had said that 
He would allow the inhabitants of Canaan a respite until 
"their iniquity was full" (Gen. xv. 16). Kow that measure 
of iniquity has been fulfilled. Not only the usual crimes of 
the heathen, but also special moral abominations, idolatry in 
its most frightful degeneracy, accompanied by the most 
unnatural sins of the flesh (Lev. xviii. 24 ff.; Deut. ix. 4, 
xii. 31, xviii. 12), were now to be judged, and, in addition 
to this, their hostile attitude towards Israel (Ex. xviii. ; 
Num. xxi. 1 ff. ; Ueut. ii. and iii.) was to be punished. Just 
as the body forcibly ejects food which it cannot assimilate, 
so the land, defiled by the unnatural abominations of its in- 
habitants, forcibly vomited forth the Canaanites (Lev. xviii. 
24, 25). In the world before the flood it was the water that 
carried out God's judgments, in Sodom it was fire, but now it 
was to be the sword of Israel (not, however, without excep- 
tions; cf Josh. vi. 25, Matt. i. 5, Josh. ix. 19 ff.). This 
visitation of divine wrath is not to be justified — as some have 
attempted to do— by bringing forward ancient rights of pro- 
perty dating from the patriarchal age, which Israel had the 
right to assert against the Canaanites (for this is contrary to 
Gen. xii. 6, xiii 7). According to the Old Testament, the 
only ground on which Israel might take possession of the land 
of Canaan was the favour of God to whom the land belonged. 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISftL 237 

■who also conferred it upon His people ; and the only ground 
for the extirpation of the Canaanitish tribes was the justice of 
God, whose long-suffering was at length exhausted, and who 
threatened Israel itself, in case it were guilty of the same 
sins, with the very same punishment (Lev. xviii. 28 ; Deufc. 
viii. 19, 20 ; Josh, xxiii. 15, 16). But this sentence of extir- 
pation was not merely a holy act of divine penal Justice, it 
was also an act of divine wisdom. For hy rooting out these 
tribes and their idolatry (Ex. xxxiv. 13 ff.), God desired to 
hold up to Israel and the surrounding nations which were 
spared a warning example ; and especially by isolating Israel, 
to guard it from the danger of intermingling with the heathen 
(Ex. xxiii. 32 ff.; Lev. xx. 22-26). The fact that Israel did 
not fully cany out the divine command, but suffered many 
remnants of the Canaanites to remain in the land, which 
remnants soon became strong again, and were a snare to 
Israel, is an intimation to these sentimentalists that there is 
such a thing as a false tolerance. On the other hand, it is in a 
measure the prelude of that disobedience and fall of Israel, out 
of which, according to the wondrously wise and gracious provi- 
dence of God, salvation was to accrue to the heathen world 
(Eoni. xi. H, 12). 

After all, however, we must bear in mind that a certain 
distinction does exist between the avenging Judge of the Old 
Covenant and the God of mercy and love of the New Cove- 
nant. Not that God alters in His nature ; He ever was and 
is unalterably holy in all His actions. But times and men 
certainly do alter. Hence in God's educatoiy dealings with 
man, everything has its wisely prescribed season. The truth 
that God is love could not be revealed in its full depth, until 
the law, by its penalties, had brought about the consciousness 
of sin and a longing for entire release from it 

These poiiits should also be kept in view when considering 
those Psalms which contain curses or prayers for vengeance (c£ 
XXXV., lix., Ixix., cix., cxxxvii.). Even believers in the Bible 
are sometimes offended by the manner in which the God of 
the Old Testament is appealed to in these psalms as a God of 
vengeance, and also, generally speaking, by the whole spirit 
expressed in those passages in which the poet invokes destruc- 
tion on his enemies. Many look upon these passages as out- 



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238 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTURE. [LECT. IV. 

bursts of a base thirst for vengeance, and as indicating that 
vindictive feelings, to a certain extent at least, are sanctioned 
by the Old Testament. This eiTor ought to have been averted 
by a glance at the divine precept of love to one's enemies as 
contained in the Old Testament (Ex. xxiii. 4, 5 ; Prov. xxv, 
21), also the divine prohibition of vindictive feeling (Lev. 
xix. 18), and the oft-expressed abhorrence of revenge and 
malignant pleasure in the misfortunes of others (e.y. Job xxxi. 
29, 30; Ts. vii. 5; Prov. xx. 22, xxiv. 17, 18, 29; Ezek. 
XXXV. 15), Moreover, as regards David, the author of most 
of these psalms, objectors should first consider the generosity 
which he so often evinced towards his personal enemies, and 
also the fact tliat in moments of the highest religious inspira- 
tion, such as those in which the Psalms were composed, the 
impure fire of personal emotion could scarcely mingle with the 
holy fervour of love to God. The key to the right under- 
standing of these psalms is contained in Ps. cxxxix. 19-21 : 
" Surely Thou wilt slay the wicked, God : depart from 
me, therefore, ye bloody men. For they speak against Thee- 
wickedly, and Thine enemies take Thy name in vain. Do not 
I hate them, Lord, that hate Thee ? and am not I grieved 
with those that rise up against Thee 1" According to tliis, the 
suffering servants of God see in their own enemies the enemies of 
6od Hi'mself, and their curses are directed ogainst the latter. 
Hence they ate not the expression of any ^rivaie vengeance, 
on account of personal wrong experienced by them, but they 
are the outflow of a zealous wrath against the injury inflicted 
on the honour of God and the concerns of His kingdom. 
David, more especially in the face of his persecutors, feels 
himself to be the anointed of the Lord, and linows that on his 
fate hangs the future of Israel. Whoever persecutes liim, sins 
also against Christ in him. " In this focus of self-contempla- 
tion, as an essential link in the history of redemption, the fire 
of his wrath is kindled." Frequently, too, the enemy whom 
the psalmist has in view, as well as the unjust persecutor, are 
not concrete, historical persons, but poetical -personifications, 
pointing to the future victory over His enemies which the 
perfectly righteous One shall gain by His sufferings, — the curse 
in this case being addressed in general against the feeling of 
hostility to God. Where, however, the psalmist clearly refers 



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LECT. IV.] BIBLICAL THEISM. 239 

to definite persons, it must be rememljered that the vengeance 
of God on obstinate sinners is an act as necessary to His justice 
as wholesome for the consnnnnation of the divine kingdom. 
Hence, even in the IS'ew Testament there are passages in 
which a curse is pronounced on irreclaimable enemies of God, 
and divine punishment is invoked upon them (Matt. xi. 20 ff., 
xxiii. 13 ff. ; Acts viii. 20, xxiii. 3). 

But at the same time we must acknowledge the imperfec- ■ 
Hon of the Old Testament standpoint occupied by the sacred 
poets. The lively impatience of their longing for divine judg- 
ments on their enemies probably arose, in part, from a feeling 
of human wealcness unable to cope with tribulation, and which 
is therefore in Eev. vi. 10, 11 exhorted to wait patiently. At 
that time, moreover, a dark veil permitted but dim glimpses 
of eternity, with heaven and heU ; so that denunciations such 
as those in Ps. Ixix, 28 coidd not have been understood by the 
poet in all their intinite depth. And finally, there had not 
yet been accomplished that world-embracing scheme of re- 
demption oKlained by divine love, from which alone could flow 
the love that would fain help all men, even her enemies. 
Hence the spirit of the New Covenant is in this respect a 
relatively different and a higher spirit. Not only were such 
utterances as sprang from the language and spirit of Sinai 
unsuited for the lips of Jesus, the meek Lamb of God, but 
even His disciples are not to emulate the spirit of wrath 
which inspired Eliaa (Luke ix. 64 et ss.), and which some- 
times actuates the utterances of David (Pa. cix.). They are 
not pei-mitted to wish that even their deadliest enemies should 
be everlastingly lost. Therefore when, in exceptional cases, 
the holy zeal of the New Testament seems to touch upon that 
of the Old, there is this barrier between them,— that the 
anathemas of the apostles apply only to the correction and 
temporal expulsion of enemies from the community, and not 
to their everListing perdition (Acts viii. 22, cf. with ver. 20 ; 
1 Cor. xvi 22; Gal. i. 9, v. 12; 2 Tim. iv. 14). No one 
who believes in the necessity of a gradually progressive reve- 
lation can fake offence at the form in which Old Testament 
piety occasionally presents itself to us,— a form which is in- 
complete enough when viewed from a Christian standpoint, 
although justifiable at its own peculiar stage. Indeed, it has 



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240 THE THEOLOGY OF SORIPTUEK [LECT. IV. 

beco asserted, not without justice, that these psalms contain 
a very wholesome antidote against the mawkish religions 
sentimentality of our own days, which, in the case of many, 
is the chief source of all these difficulties, since they are alike 
incapable either of fervent love to that which is good, and of 
holy ardent hatred against that which is evil. 

Having thus endeavoured to vindicate before the forum of 
modern consciousness the eternal truth of the general concep- 
tion of God — that is, of His personality and special providence 
— as laid down in the Eible, we still feel that we have only 
accomplished the easier portion of our task. Por the number 
of those who reject the general system of biblical Theism is, on 
the whole— and' probably among ray readers also— far less than 
that of those who entertain doubts as to the specific Christian, 
that is, the Trinitarian, conception of God. Now, therefore, 
we must give a closer consideration to the Christian dodrim 
of the Tnnity. The subject, however, is so wide a one, that 
in respect of many questions which conveige in this central 
point, we shall not be able to give more than mere hints, 
which may tend to remove the manifold offences that attach 
to this doctrine in particular. 



IL THE TRISITAiaAS COKCEPTIOU OF THE DIVIHE SATUEK. 

The doctrine of the Trinity set forth in its simplest form in 
the Apostles' (and Nicene) Creed, may be assumed as univer- 
sally known. The so-called Apostles' Creed is, of course, not 
stnctlj speaking of apostolic nithorship. Founded on our 
Loids own baptismal fcruula (Matt xxviii. 19), it grew by 
devices into its iiesent shape in the midst of thecontro- 
\eisies of the first centuiies of piimitive Christianity. In 
iccoidmce with this its oiigm this Creed presents the doc- 
tiint, of the Tiinitj m tlie simple form of a confession of 
pergonal fnith in God the Fathei m Jesus Christ His only- 
beg tten Son -md in the Holj fepmt But in the so-called 
Cieed of St Athanisius which m iddition to the Apostles' 
and Nicene is gpuei-ally received m all divisions, Ti-otestant 
a& well as Eomin Catholic of the "Western Church, we have 
tlie doctimeof the Tiinity as foi-mulated in the school of St. 



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LECT. IT.j THE DOCTRIXE OF THE TlilKITY. 241 

Augnstine in a much more developed shape. " Tlti Calhalie 
faith," according to this tormnla, " is, tliat we worAif me Goi 
•» y™.iy, mi TrinUy in JJnUy, milker eon/mmling tht, Ffruns 
nor dimdmg the luistcatce." The Persons, it pnjoeeds to teach 
are different, the snbstance one. Each o! lliese divine Persons 
]s uncreate. each is eternal, each almighty etc And jet 
there are not three Almighties or thiet Ltemals lit one 
Almighty and one Eternal, etc. ; and not three Gids or three 
lords, tat one lord and one God The Father is nncreate 
and nnbegotten; the Son nncreate, but 1 egotten ol tlie Father 
the Holy Ghost uncreate, but preceeding fi m the Fithei and 
the Son. And in this Trinity of divine Pcrsiia there is none 
before and none after, none higher and none less but all 
three co-e(inal, etc. 

This the faith of the Church universal ,n respect to the 
divine nature, is regarded liy many in tl e present da) as an 
' Aberglaivie," i.e. an "ultra-faith" or upei tition uliile 
others, without directly impugning the dcctrine of the Tnnity 
perie, regard this particular form in which it lb enshiined as 
of doubtful validity, and some of its definitions as oliectitn 
abhi whereas the Athanasian Creed itsell decliies with the 
utmost stringency, that "he who would be saied „i, I thm 
think of the Trinity," and, indeed, rightly insibts upon the 
doctrine as the necessaiy foundation ot ill Chiastun teichin> 
We will now, taking tlie definitions of th s sjmbol as our 
starting-point, inquire as to the scriptural chai ictei of the 
doctrine thus formulated, and, faithful to our general prin 
oiple, will endeavour frankly to acknowledge and concede 
where concession and acknowledgment n ij seem ri^ht and 



And our first confession is this; Thit the scientific tin 
logy of the present day, and, indeed, that lianch rf it which 
most closely adheres to the teaching of Holy Scripture pio 
fesses to find (and not, I think, without some reason) sundry 
defects in the Athanasian definitions. The more closely one 
examines into what the Bible itself teaches concerning the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the more readily will 
ho acknowledge that true and precious as the midem of its 
doctrine remains, there are nevertheless some points in the 
teaching of this Creed, conceming the rehitions of the divine 



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242 THE THEOLOGY OF SCFJPlOKa [lECT. IV, 

Persons, which are not in full accord with that of Scripture. 
And still less do tliey satisfy the questions and requirements 
of' speculative theologj'. "We confess with Nitzsch, that while 
the received doctrine of the Church enshrines the jnestimahle 
treasure of the trath itself, it does not always put it in a forai 
acceptable or satisfactory to the philosophical inquirer. There 
is in the Athanasian fornmla, for instance, much that is haixi 
and unnecessarily offensive, and even provocative of douht 
and objection; nor can we be surprised if such oljjections are 
continually cropping up and appearing on the surface through- 
out the chequered course of Church History. 

The Athanasian Creed is evidently too stiffly arithmdical ia 
some of its definitions and antitlieses, without attempt to re- 
concile their obvious contradictions. Thus each divine Person 
is said to be eternal, each unereate, etc., and yet there are not 
three Eternals nor three unereate, hut one unereate and one 
Eternal, etc. To these statements the objection is obvious, that 
they either destroy the Unity for the sake of the Trinity, or the 
Trinity in the interest of the Unity ; nor is it quite easy with 
the doctrine so stated to rebut the charge alleged, not by Jews 
and Mahometans only, but also by many Christians, that 
Trinitarianism contradicts the fundamental article of all tnie 
religion, that there is only One living and true God. Hence 
the numerousattempts in ancient and modem times to remove 
this stumbling-block of the understanding, now in one way, 
now in anotlier, — attempts in which the Trinity was naturally 
more frequently sacrificed than the Unity ; as, for instance, by 
Socinians and Unitarians since the Eeformation, who argue 
that inasmuch as Monotheism is evidently the fundamental 
doctrine of the Bible, it cannot teach the divinity of our Lord, 
and that Christ nmst be therefore a mere man, and the Holy 
Spirit merely a divine influence. Hence also the similar ob- 
jections of modem I'ationnlism, that it contradicts the law8 
of thought, that a part should be equal to the whole, or a 
whole to its several parts, — that, for instance, 1 = 3, — an 
objection the superficial character of which is obvious, and the 
answer to it easy. Mathematical axioms are out of place in 
metaphysical and ethical inquiries. Our minds must be carried 
into a higher sphere. Mathematically speaking, no doubt two 
persons are distinct entities. But of the persons of the Trinity, 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTRINE OF TUB TRINITY. 243 

the Church has always taught their unity of substance and 
theit absolute inseparability, and so lifted up the whole ques- 
tion into a region of transcendent thought and feeling, of which 
mathematical science is wholly ignorant. We must not con- 
found the respective spheres. 

The Church herself, however, is not quite free from blame 
in this respect, on account of the arithmetical character of 
some parts of her chief formulary. The objections stirred by 
these might have been avoided by anticipation, had a firm 
hold been taken from the first of the truth indfcated by the 
Hebrew form of the divine name Elohim (as will be more 
fully shown presently), that in God unity and plurality con- 
sist as correlatives which mutually reijuire one another ; that, 
as we have already indicated, it is the essential characteristic 
of the true doctrine of the divine nature, in contradistinction 
to Polytheism on the one hand, and an abstract Monotheism 
on the other, that both elements of true Being, unicity and 
multiplicity, do in God meet and interpenetrate one another 
in a perfectly unique and transcendental way. 

But now to come to the doctrine itselti and its basis in 
Holy Scripture. You are all aware that no such sentence as 
God is a triune God is to be found in the Bible. The well- 
known text, 1 John v. 7, There are three that hear record 
in lieaven, the Faiher, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these 
three are one, is now universally recognised as an intei'polation. 
The terms trinity, triunity, threefold personality, and even 
the word person itself, are not derived immediately from 
Scripture. It fares with these as with all attempts to express 
human conceptions concerning the Divine and Infinite — they 
are but imperfect, inadequate expressions which we accept and 
use for the want of better. The very term 'peisom has some- 
thing objectionable in it, suggesting at first the notion of 
distinct and separate individuahties, which is perfectly inap- 
plicable to the eonsubstantial, and therefore inseparable, hypo- 
dases of which the Eible speahs as Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit. 

Our Church formularies are undoubtedly right in layincf 
stress on tlie unity of substance in these divine Persons ; but' 
it may be questioned whether they are also right in seemiu" 
to speak of the divine substance as if it were, in the first 



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244 THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE. [lECT. 17. 

instance, something indefinite and nniversal, wliich was then 
resolved into three distinct hypostases. When we speak of 
"three persons in one divhie^ substance" we use an expres- 
sion which apparently implies that the suhstance is regarded 
as something ahstract and impersonal, which assumes a three- 
fold personality in the concrete forms of God the Father, God 
thft Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Many earnest inq^nirers 
are sensible of a certain incongruity between this mode of 
speaking and the teaching of Scripture, and, we may add, the 
teaching also of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, as well as of 
the best and most authoritative Fathers of the Oriental Church. 
Holy Scripture and primitive theology undoubtedly regard the 
Divine Essence as in itself personal, naming it at ouee God 
and Father. They agree in speaking of the heavenly Father 
as (not the first member in a series of divine evolutions, but) 
Himself God, holding the fulness of the Godhead in Himself, 
Fons totius Deitatis, the spring and fountainhead of the whole 
Deity from which Son and Holy Spirit are evermore derived. 
This point is one of decisive significance in determining the 
relations between the divine Persons, and leads us at once 
into the midst of our present inquiry. 

We propose therefore (A.) to examine the chief Scripture 
testimonies to the doctrine of the Trinity in general, viz. those 
concerning («) The divine Father, (&) The Son, (c) The Holy 
Ghost, and (il) The mutual relations of the divine Persons. 
This done, we propose further (B.) to examine the results thas 
obtained by the light derived from the history of religious 
thought and from modem philosophical speculation, and to 
inquire as to what extraneous supports and testimonies may be 
thus afforded them, 

A. Scripture Testimonies to tlis Doctrine of the TriiiUy. — 
Are then, according to the witness of Scripture, Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost so one in essence that Son and Spirit axe 
also God ? And are they, notwithstanding this essential 
unity, three distinct though not sepai-ated subjects (or persons), 
having each His own knowledge and will ? These are our 
first questions. The former point, the unity of the Son's 
es.sence with the Father, was denied by Paul of Samosata in 
the third, by the Ariaus ia the fourth and following centurios, 
and in later times by Unitarians and Eationalists. The latter, 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTMNE OF THE TElNnT. 245 

the personal distinctions of tbe three divine hypostases, were 
disputed by the Sabellians as early as the third centuiy. They 
taught that the one God, while manifesting Himself in a 
threefold relation to the world, now as Father, now as Son, and 
now as Holy Spirit, had nevertheless remained within Himself 
always one and the same ; and that so, what we call the Ter- 
sons of the Trinity were but different forms of divine mani- 
festation;— a view which has often reappeared ia various 
shapes in modern theology. The doctrine of Scripture stands 
in the midst between these two parties ; it holds fast, on the 
one hand, the unity of substance, the consubstantiality of Son 
and Holy Spirit with the heavenly Father, and on the other, 
their personal distinctness : it combines, in reference to the 
doctrine of the Trinity (as we have seen to be the case in 
reference to other theories concerning the divine nature), all 
t!ie various elements of truth which human systems are so 
prone to separate. 

(a) And first, n'ith regard to God the Father, He is the 
ultimate cause of all creation (1 Cor. viii. 6 ; Eom. xi. 1^6) ; 
to Him the whole development of the universe is due— ife 
vjorheth all in all (1 Cor. xii. 6), and the goal toward which it 
is all tending— ^Sa( God may he all in all (1 Cor. xi. 28). 
He is, therefore, the only Potentate and Lord of all (1 Tim. vi. 
. 15); He is also the Author of all redemption, which, in accord- 
ance with His will, was determined from all eternity (Eph. i. 
4; 2 Tim. i 9, 10), and evolved in time. He is therefore 
designated simply hy the title Saviour (Luke i. 47 ; 1 Tim. 
i. 1) ; by Him the Son is sent, and from Him the Paraclete 
proceeds (John iii. 16, xiv. 16). This divine Father, while 
not disdaining to eater His own world and make His dwelling 
in His saints (John xiv. 2:! ; Acts xvii. 27), yet remains 
eternally unchangeable, in light unapproachable, the only 
deathless One (1 Tim. vi. 16)J the only Wise, overruling and 
disposing all events by His holy will and providence (Eom. 
xvi. 27 ; Matt. xxiv. 36). No one disputes, indeed no one can 
deny, that deity and divine honour are in Scripture assigned 
to the Father. But how is it with the Son and the Spirit ? 
Here the variety of teaching and opinion is manifold. We 
must consider the Scripture testimonies more in detail. And 
first let us examine : (6) The Scripture testimony lo the con- 



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246 THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTUEE. [lect. IT. 

suLstantiality of the Son with the Tather. The very title 
which our Lord applies to Himself (John iii, 16, 18)~Son, 
and only-hegotten Son of God — compared with the many pas- 
sages in which He speaks of the Father in heaven as Jlis 
Father, indicates a claim to stand in a peculiar iilial relation 
to the Father such as no mere creature" can aspire to. All 
attempts to deny this, and to make out that the Sonship claimed 
by our Lord is nothing more than the childlike relation which 
belongs to all believers (against which, compare John i. 12 
with iv. 14 and 18), are plainly refuted by the observation, 
that He always makes a cleax distinction in speaking to His 
disciples between your Father and my Father, pour God and 
my God ; tliat He never places Himself, so to speak, on the 
same line with them — never speaks of our Father (Matt. vi. 
8, 32, xviii. 10, xvi. 17, xxvi. 53 ; John xx, 17) — (the first 
words of the Ijord's Prayer are not in point (Slatt. vi. 9), for 
Christ is there teaching His disciples to pray, and does not 
include Himself with them). Moreover, this specific filial 
relation to the Father is indicated in those places where our 
Lord speaks of Himself as sent by the Father, and coming into 
the world, as having come down from heaven, and as the Son 
of man who is in heaven (John iii. 13, comp. iv. 31, 32, vi. 
33, 50, 58, viii. 23). He limits at the same time His own pre- 
existence : compare especially John viii. 58, Se/ore Abraham 
was, I aw, ; which is not, as we shall see more fully hereafter, 
to be understood in an ideal and impersonal, hut in a strictly 
per.sonal and realistic sense. 

In accoivlance with tliis claim to a divine origin, we find 
our Lord assuming divine authority — {But I say unto yoii) — 
abrogating not merely Eahbinical but Sinaitic precepts (Matt. 
V. 1 9, 9) — declaring Himself greater than the temple, Lord of 
the Sabbath, more than Jonas and Solomon, and the dispenser 
of forgiveness (Matt. ix. 2, 6), It is only in virtue of His 
self- consciousness as God that He can regard Himself as a 
creditor to whom the sinner is indebted, and who, in His own 
name, vouchsafes remission (Luke vii. 41-50). God alone has 
the right to judge or to foigive the violation of His image in 
man by sin : were Christ not one with God, He would be 
guilty of blasphemy in assuming such power (Matt ix. 2, 3). 
It is in virtue of the same claim to a divine character that oui 



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LECT. IV.] THE BOCTBINE OF THE TRINIXr. 247 

Lord subordinates love to one's neighbour in His disciples to 
love towards Himself — He that lovdh father or mother more 
than me, etc. (Matt x. '67, which is virtually the same as John 
s. 30). And it is as being omniscient and pi-e-existent that He 
declares that He will hereafter come again as Judge (Matt vii. 
21-23, xxiv. 30, xxv. 31, etc.). It is as one with the omni- 
prtisent Father that He promises to he with His disciples 
everywhere and always to the world's end (Matt, xxviii. 20 
compared with John xir. IS). It will be observed that these 
proofs are in the first instance tfiken from the earlier Gospels, 
which modem criticism would fain separate by a wide gulf 
from that of St John. How impossible it is to do so is 
evident from one example. Our Lord, in. St Matt xi. 27, 
claims to stand in a position so unique to the heavenly Father . 
that none can .know the Father but Himself, or through His 
mediation, and none know Him but tlie Father only. The 
whole Gospel of St John may be regarded as an illustration of 
this one utterance (cf. John iii. 35, xiv. 6, xvii. 25). 

It is only like that knows like. It is only in virtue of 
unity of essence that the Son thus knows the Father, and is 
known only of Him. "VVe need not, therefore, wonder to hear 
Him saying in the fourth Gospel : I and my Father are one; 
I am in ilie FatJier, and tJie Father in me (John x. 30, xiv. 
11, 20, X. 38) ; ffe that hath seen me hath seen the Father; 
and claiming with the Father one undivided dignity, that they 
all may honour the Son evefn as they honour the Father (John 
v. 23, xiv, 13) — a claim refuting in the most complete way 
those wlio would deny adoration to be due to our Lord (com- 
pare Luke xxiv. 62). There is one will and one wouk 
(Joim V. 30, 10-21, xi 41, etc.), as there is one love (xiv. 
21, xvii. 26) of the Father. and the Son. And, therefore, the 
Sons return to the glory which He had with ilie Father iefore 
the world was (John xvii. 5), is a glorification with the Father 
such as no creiiture can attain to (John iii. 13, viii. 21, 23, 
xiii. 32, 33). He returns to a state in which He is the sender 
of the Spirit, even as the Father is (John xiv. 26, xv. 26 ; 
Luke xxiv, 49), — that Spirit who will take the substance of 
His witness from the things of the Son, and will glorify the 
Son (John xvi, 13-15) on earth, even as the Son once glorified 
the Father (xvii, 4) m His life here. 



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•^40 THE THEOLOGY OF SCF.IPtUEE. [LECT. IT. 

Cut if this witness of our Lord concerning Himself, iiud, 
indeed, the very terms Son of God and Ouly-begotten, justify 
tlie inference of His consubstantiality with the Fatlier, they no 
less teach His derivation from, dependence on, and subordina- 
tion to, the Fatlier, albeit in co-equal Godhead. The Father 
hath, indeed, committed to the Son all that He hath ; but one 
thing He could not impart, His own paternity, otherwise t!ie 
Son would have ceased to be Son.. The Father is the eternal 
unbeginning archetype, the Son the co-eternal perfect image of 
the Father. "When it is said that "the Father hath given to 
the Son to have life in Himself," the meaning is, that the life 
of Godhead -which the Son possesses is, as compared with the 
highest life among the creatures, original, creative, and arche- 
typal ; bnt as compared with the Father, it is still something 
given and received ; " The Son can do nothing .of Himself but 
what He seeth the Father do" (John v. 19); "My Father is 
greater than I" (John xiv. 28); "I ascend to my God and 
your God" (John xx. 17). Even in the heavenly glory the 
Father is still His God. 

Tlie apostolic testimonies in other parts of the New Testa- 
ment conduct us to the same result as these utterances of oni 
Lord contained in the Gospel. They establish both His con- 
substantiality with the Father and His filial subordination. 
"We will refer to only one' or two of tlie most important pas- 
sages. First, then, our Lord's personal pre-existence is clearly 
taught by St. Paul (Col. i. 16, 17), "He is before aU things" 
(compare His own I am in John viii. 58) ; and His consub- 
stantial dignity by the same apostle (Phil. ii. 6), Bcivf) in the 
form of God ; where the reference is not to any manifestation 
of the Godhead in the days of His flesh (when " the form " 
which He took upon Him was that " of a servant "), but His 
position from eternity. And as a consequence of this, we find 
that even in His human nature God is immanent, that in 
Him "dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. il 9; 
2 Cor. V. 19; 1 Tim. iii. 16). 

This unique and pre-existent unity of essence between the 
Father and the Sou is wonderfully taught by St. John in the 
prologue of His Gospel : , In the heginning (compare i 1), i.e. 
before all created things, and when creation itself beyan, ivas 
HiB Word, the Logos, i.e. divine utterance or speech, and not 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTEINE OE THE TEISITT. 249 

merely divine inward thought or reason (\6yo^ -Trpo^opiKot 
as well as T^p'; evSiaBeroi). This Word was God's self- 
manifestation by which He was preparing to hold communion 
with His creatures. But before any of these came into exist- 
ence t!iis WoKD was with God, or, more accurately, was to- 
wards God, i.e. resting in and clinging to Him by a natural 
tendency (compare the like remarkable expression in ver. 18, 
(he Only-begotten in, or rather ISTO, the iosom of the Father). 
From this it is evident that the Son in His pre-existent state 
was personally or hypostatically distinct from the Father. 
What follows shows not less clearly that He was consub- 
stantial with Him : And the Word was God, i.e. of nature 
efiual and one with the Father. And that explains how St. 
Paul could speak of Christ as not only more than man (Gal. 
i. 1), but also (as the best interpreters of Eom. ix. 5 allow) 
as " God over all " (comp. Tit. ii. 13, Heb. i. 8. 9, Eph. v. 5, 
John XX. 28, Luke xxiv. 52, and the adoration of tho Lamb, 
liev. V. 11, 13). 

But the apostles no less clearly teach the filial subordina- 
tion of the Son to the Father, both in His pre-existence before 
creation and in His glorification now (ef. Heb. i. 3, Acts 
vii. 55, Eom. viii. 34, Heb. x. 12), yea, and even in the con- 
summation of an after eternity (1 Cor. xv. 28). 

All this teaching is of great importance, from its bearing on 
the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity. Christ, it tells us, has 
occupied from eteniity a relation of mediptorship between 
God and the universe. The very expression " only-begotten " 
indicates this. For if ■"begotten" refers to a transcendent 
process within the Godhead before all worlds, the "only" 
refera to the world of creatures which was to follow. The 
divine Word or Logos had not only an imvard tendency (as 
explained above) towards the Godhead, but also an outward 
one towards the universe and the work of creation. There- 
fore St John in his prologue goes on to say, " All things were 
made through Him, and without Him was made nothing" 
(thap. i. 4). The full apostolic teaching is, that creation 
is a work of the Father done through the Son (1 Cor. viii. 6 ; 
2 Bet. iii. 5 ; Col. i. 1 6). The Son is not, as such, the final 
Cause, but the Divine co-equal Instrument of creation. He 
is also its Motive — the Heir of all things, because all things 



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250 TUE THEOLOGY OF SCEIFTUEE. [LECT. IV. 

were made for Him, under whom, aa its Head, tlie All is finally 
to be gathered (Heb. i. 2, 3 ; Eph. i. 10). As the immediate 
support of all life in the world of creatures. He is not Himself 
a creature, hut yet " the First-born of all creation " (Col, 115, 
cf Eev. iii. 14). This last expression — " First-born of" (or 
" before ") " all creation," or " every creature " — teaches three 
things ; His derivation from the Father, His essential uniike- 
nes3 to all creatures (bom, not made), and at the same time 
His mediatorial relation towards them. And so we see how, 
in the scriptural idea of the divine generation, it forms as it 
were a bridge to the work of creation. The eternal Son goes 
forth from the Father's bosom as the archetype of the world 
that is to be, and specially as the future Life and Light of 
man (John i, 4, viii 12). 

Moreover all these witnesses of Christ and the apostles 
prove no less clearly the distinct pehsonality of the Son of 
God. Unity with the Father is not identity with Him. The 
very word " with God " implies personal distinction. And it 
needs hardly to notice how in His earthly life our Lord, when 
most strongly asserting His oneness with the Father, yet 
never puts this personal distinction out of view : " I and my 
Father are one ;" and yet, " My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work." From Hia first utterance in the temple to His last 
upon the cross, Ho always speaks of the Father as a distinct 
person from Himself. And so also He speaks of the Holy 
Spirit as another Comforter, as His future representative in 
the world (John xiv. 16, xvi. 14, etc.), as sent by Him from 
the Father, and therefore as f^'ain a distinct person from 
Himself. And it is evident from every page of the Acts of 
the Apostles that these personal distinctions were not effaced 
by His return to glory. 

One important result at which we arrive is plainly this : 
So surely as our Lord describes Himself as one with the 
Father, though yet personally distinct and derived from Him, 
so surely as He speaks of Himself as not only the teacher and 
pattern of divine love, but also as the Lord and Master of the 
hearts of all men, — so surely must His equality and unity with 
the Father, along with any personal distinction, be of an in- 
finitely closer and more intimate kind than that between any 
creaturely offspring and its earthly parent. (Gess.) 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTKINE OF THE TEIKITr. 251 

And another result is, that if the well-known clefniition of 
the Athanasian Creed, " In this Trinity there is none before 
or after, nothing greater or less," must be regarded as a one- 
sided and inadequate statement of the truth, ignoring as it 
seems to do the filial subordination, so much more must we 
pronounce the teaching of Unitarian ism and IJationalism as 
altogether antiscriptural in its denial of His co-equal con- 
substantial Godhead. 

(c) A similar result wowM also follow from an investiga- 
tion of the doctrine of Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit. 
Some ancient heretics tegai-ded the Holy Spirit, as Eationalism 
does now, as a mere impersonal eneigy or virtue of the divine 
nature ; others (like the Arians), as a created Being ; some 
modem rationalists apply the term to the religions instinct 
of tho existing Christian community. The Church teaches 
that the Holy Spirit is a divine person. To which of these 
forms of doctrine does Holy Scripture bear witness as the 
true ? 

None can deny that Scripture assigns t-o the Holy Ghost 
attributes and operations which are simply divine — omniscience 
(1 Cor. ii. 1.0), omnipresence {Ps. cxxxix. 7), creative enei^ 
(Ps. xxxiii. 6 ; Gen. i 2). In Heb. ix. 2, He is called simply 
"the eternal Spirit;" in 1 Pet. iv. 14, "Spirit of God," and 
"Spirit of glory;" in 1 Cor. ii. 10, He is said to " search tlie 
deeps of God." There can be no doubt as to Scripture testi- 
mony to His Godhead, but how does the case stand as to 
Scripture teaching concerning His personality ? 

Now here it must be first observed, that as in the natural 
world the Spirit of God is represented as the quickening 
energy which impaits life and fomi and power of develop- 
ment to what before was dead and formless matter, so in the 
spiritual world He is the life-giving influence for the soul of 
man, and the imparter to it of spiritual lile and true person- 
ality (Gen. ii. 7). This life He can at all times quicken and 
renew, and through Him it is that the believer becomes first 
a person and then a child of God. Is it not a. priori probable 
that He from whom the principle of personality comes should 
be Himself a person ? 

Further, 'personal attributes are constantly assigned in Holy 
Scripture to the Holy Spirit — self-consciousness, knowledge 



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252 THE THEOLOGY OF SCHIPTUER [lECT. IV, 

■w'ill, self-deteniiination, speech, and action. So, when the 
Spirit is spoken of as " searching all things," as " only knowing 
what is in God" (1 Cor. ii. 11), as the "other Comlorter" 
■who " convinces," " teaches," " brings to remerabrauce," " leads 
into aU truth," "takes of the things of Jesus and shows them 
to believers," and so "glorifies Christ in them" (John xiv. 
16, 28, xvi. 7, 8, 13-15); when it is said of Him that He 
aids our prayers by " making intercession for us with groan- 
ings that cannot be uttered" (Kom. viii. 26),— all this is unin- 
telligible without assuming personal self-consciousness in the 
divine ^ent. And again, when He is said to be grieved 
(Eph. iv. 30), lied to (Acts v. 3), blasphemed (Matt, xii 31), 
to be the Loi'd and Distributer of heavenly gifts, imparting tci 
each man severally as He will (1 Cor. xii. 11), to speak and 
witnesa in the disciples (Matt. x. 20; Eom. viii. 16), and 
even to speak to them in the first person (Acts xiii. 2 : 
"Separate me Barnabas and Saul"), personal feeling, will, 
and action are evidently attributed to Him. 

It is, indeed, often noticed that the Holy Spirit is spoken of 
as a gift (Acts ii. 38 ; Heb. vi. 4), as "power from on high" 
(Luke xxiv. 49) with which the first disciples were to" be 
endowed ; and this, it is aigued, is incompatible with person- 
ality. But so Christ Himself, we reply, is spoken of as the 
gift of God (John iii, 16, iv. 10); and the Distributer of 
heavenly gifts cannot Himself he a gift in a neutral or material, 
but only in a personal sense. It is only as being the per- 
sonal principle of aR the powers of the kingdom of God, and 
not merely as a single power or divine property, that the 
Spirit can be co-ordinated, as in 1 Cor. xii. 4-6, with the 
Father and the Son. It is only as a person distinct from the 
Father that He can make intercession in the hearts of be- 
lievers (Eom. viii. 26). 

A question is sometimes asked : If the Holy Spirit is 
poured out upon and imparted to so many thousands of be- 
lievers, can it, in this distribution and manifold division, he 
one and the same person? The sohition is found in'tho 
divine omnipresence of the Spirit. Is not our Lord Himself 
spoken of as dwellmg in individual saints (2 Cor. xiii. 5 ; GaL 
ii. 20), without any thought of denying His distinct per- 
sonality ? And when we consider that it belongs to the veiy 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTIilSE OF THE TEINITT. 253 

idea of the Holy Spirit that He should be the principle of 
unity in the divine attributes, and that it is, as it were, the 
law of His being that He should be self-distributing and self- 
imparting, we see at once how natural it is for Him to dwell 
in a multitude of spiritual homes. And therefore He is 
represented, in this sell- division and innate disposition to self- 
impartation, as " the seven Spirits before the throne of God," 
"sent out into all the earth" (Rev. l 4, iv. 5). These 
" seven Spirits " are further said (Isa. xi. 1, 2) to " rest upon" 
" the rod of the stem of Jesse," as manifold and yet as One — 
the Hol'i/ Spint of the New Testament which comes to us 
from Him as the Spirit of Jesus, through one and the same 
with the personal and consubstantial Spirit of the Father. 

In heaven, then, the Holy Spirit appears as a person, the 
personal principle or unity of the divine powers ; on earth 
He is manifested to us as a multiplicity of gifts (Aotsii. 38). 
But even these "gifts" have something "personal" in them. 
They dwell in us without being lost or confounded with our 
personality. The Spirit speaks to the heart of the believer, 
" bears witness with our spirit," and even speaks from us to 
the world without (Matt. s. 20). 

But at the same time He is and remains very God, con- 
substantial with the Father and the Son. This is evident not 
only from what was said above, but also from the numerous 
passages of Scr>pture in which He is spoken of as the principle 
of the new birth and source of our sanctification (cf. 1 Thess. 
i. 5; 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5; John iu. 5 foil; Eom. ii. 29, viii. 9, 
V. 5, xiv. 17 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3, 13 ; 1 John ii. 27, iii. 24 ; Acts 
vii. 51, xix. 2-5), even as the same is said of the Father and 
the Son. Those who are horn of the Spirit are also born of 
God ; those who lie to the Holy Ghost, lie also to God. Christ, 
too, identifies His own operation with that of the Spirit. The 
coming of the Paraclete is His coming likewise (John xiv, 
16-18). That blasphemy against the Holy Ghost should he 
the only unpardonable sin is a clear proof that He cannot in 
dignity be less than God. 

And thus we arrive at the like result with regard to the 
Holy Spirit to that which appeared to ua the doctrine of 
Scripture in regard to the Son. Consubstantial with the 
Father and the Son, He is yet personally distinct from them. 



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254 THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTUEB. [lECT. IT. 

and in a certain way subordinate, from being from Both 
derived and from Both proceedirig. " He speaks not of Him- 
self, but tliat whicb He hears;" He takes of the fulness of 
Christ to impirt to ns (Jolin xvi 13, 14). His coming to us 
is dependent on the Lord's completion of the Lord's redeeming 
work and His entrance into glory (John vii. 39, xvi. 7). He 
is sent b} Him fiom the Father. And as in the kingdom of 
grace, so in the natural and moral -world He is the principle 
of communication between the Creator and the CT-eatercs— the 
breath of life from God in the world. 

(d) We conclude this investigation with a brief review of a 
few passages of Scripture, in which the doctrine of the Trinity 
is contained as a whole, in which Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost are spoken of together. 

The received dogmatic theology of the Church distinguishes 
between an essential (immanent Ontological) Trinity of per- 
sons in the Godhead and an Economical Trinity, ix. a three- 
fold manifestation or self-revelation of the one God to us. 
The Church believes in and affirms both. But many theo- 
logians in the present day, and among them not a few sincere 
believers in revelation, deny the scriptural authority of the 
former, while all receive and acknowledge the latter. 

Leaving on one side for the present this point of contro- 
versy, we will first inquire how far the testimony of Scripture 
supports the essential features in the doctrine of the Cliurch 
concerning the personal distinctness and yet real unity and con- 
substantiality of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 

The fundamental scriptural authority for the whole doctrine 
is the formula of baptism (Matt, xxviii. 19): "Baptizing 
them in (or into) the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost." That what is here spoken of is a baptism 
into communion with Father, Son, and Spirit, all sound exegesis 
must allow. And therefrom must follow, in the first place, 
that by these terms cannot be meant tliree successive phases 
of development (Sabellianism), but three contemporaneous 
distinctions in the divine nature. And further, we are 
warranted in drawing a threefold conclusion : (1) That these 
three distinct manifestations must be personal. Tliere is no 
instance in Scripture of an action being perfoiined in tlie 
name of anyabstra(t thing, but only of a personal subject 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTEISE OF THE TRINITy. 

Moreover, it would be impossible to enter into ( 
with any but a person. (2) That these three persons are 
,co-eqnal and divine. They are named together on equal 
terms, and the same divine honour is accorded to each of 
them. (Especially significant is here the co-equal divine per- 
sonality assigned to the Holy Spirit. No one will deny that 
Father and Son are terms properly applied only to distinct 
persons ; but how with such could an impersonal power or 
virtue be associated in the way in which the Holy Spirit is 
here ?) And (3) the singular term " iu tJte name " indicates 
that these three persons are yet essentially one, not three 
diSerent beings or separate individuals. The same divine 
name manifests itself as Father in the Father, as Son in the 
Son, as Holy Ghost in the Holy Spirit. Then is unity with- 
out singularity, consubstantiality along with personal distinc- 
tions, distinction without separation. 

Another Trinitarian passage is 2 Cor. xiii. 13: "The grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God ("the God," i.e. 
God the Father), and the communion of the Holy Ghost be 
with you all." Compare this with 1 Cor. xii. 4-6, where 
manifold " gifts " are associated with " one Spirit," manifold 
" ministrations " with " one Lord " Christ (Eph, iv., 1 1), and 
manifold " operations " with " one God " (the Father) who 
worketh all in all ; and with Eph. iv. 4-6, which speaks of 
one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. These 
passages compared together prove what we have already estab- 
lished by other considerations, that in the doctrine of Scripture 
God the Father is the source and well-spring of the whole 
Godhead {Fans fotms Beitatis), of that of the Son, and of that of 
the Spirit, who are not separate existences, but in the Father 
and from Him. Compare also 1 Pet. L 1, 2, where the fore- 
];nowledge and predetermination of the Father is represented 
as the source and mainspring of the whole work of grace. 
The same thing is taught in our original passage, 2 Cor. ■ 
xiii. 13. The love of God the Father is the source of all 
grace, which manifests itself in the Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ ; and the product of this grace and love is the com- 
munion of the Holy Spirit. 

And if with these and other Trinitarian passages of Scrip- 
ture (such as Eev. L 4, 5 and Eom. xi. 36) we compare the 



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256 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUEE. [LECT. IT, 

Gospel narratives which have a specially Trinitarian character, 
—such as the Annunciation (Luke i. 35),and the Lord's Baptism, 
iti which the sinless one, who had placed Himself in fellow- 
ship with sinners for their salvation, is raised, as it were, by 
the Pathor's voice, and introduced by the illapso of the Spirit 
into the " communion " of the Trinity, — we shall be in a condi- 
tion to form a judgment in the controversy between those who 
regard the doctrine of the Trinity as expressing eternal and 
essential distinctions in the divine nature, and those who 
regard the divine persons as mere economical manifestations 
of the Holy One in His relation to ourselves. 

Now, first of all, it is clear, and allowed on all sides, that 
the doctrine of the Trinity rests upon, and is derived from, 
great fffcts of divine revelation. It is because God has 
revealed Himself to us as Pather, Son, and Holy Spirit, that 
we believe in a triune God. The very form of the Apostles' 
and Nicene Creed proves this. The divine name in the 
baptismal formula is a threefold name of revelation as to 
God's relation to us. And so the love of God (the Father) in 
2 Cor. siii. 13, in connection with the grace (of the Son) and 
the communion of the Spirit which follow, points in the first 
instance to the relation in which He reveals Himself as 
standing to the world. In all these ways we have undoubtedly 
a triniiy of revelation (an economical trinity). 

But it cannot, on the other hand, be denied that in Holy 
Scripture some passages maybe found which point to the 
existence of real internal distinctions in the divine nature, 
that is, to a trinity of hypostatic existence (an Ontological 
Trinity). The uncreated Word or Logos is before all worlds 
" with " or " towards " {vpoij God, and sinking as it were mto 
{eU) the Father's bosom. And the same inwardly directed 
tendency towards " the deeps of the Godhead " is predicated of 
the divine Spirit (1 Cor. ii. 10). The very names of Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, though in the first instance names of a 
trinity of revelation, do, if expressive of a real revelation, 
indicate real internal distinctions in the divine nature. And 
so also in our Lord's Baptism we have not only a divine 
revelation made to us, and a link in the chain of the works 
of redeeming love, but we also see the divine persons acting 
and reacting one on the other. 



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LECT. IV,] THE DOCTKINE OF THE TEIXITY. 257 

The conclusion at which we arrive is this : If the teacliing 
of Scripture is in the main concerned with the divine rfilations 
to us, and ita Trinity is therefore in the main a Trinity of 
revelation, it is yet going much too far to say that it does 
not contain expressive hints of a real internal ontoiogical 
Trinity, And this latter has a very deep interest for Specula- 
tive Theology. 

But we may snrely ask further. Is it then necessary, or 
even rational, to make so hroad a distinction between this 
external and this internal Trinity? If God reveal Himselt to 
the world as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is it not because He 
IS whafHe reveals Himself as being? The Trinity of revela- 
tion points to a Trinity of inward being which it thus makes 
manifest. The one implies and presupposes the other. The 
eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit 
involve a divine impulse from eternity to creation and re- 
demption. And in like manner the Trinity of revelation hag 
ontoiogical elements. If love be the essence of the divine 
nature, the impulse to revelation is inherent in it. In other 
words; God's actions vntluntt imply inward workings and 
relations, and His inward actions and relations ai-e the ne- 
cessary premises and preparations for His outward working. 
In revelation God reveals Himself, and the impulse of self- 
manifestation belongs to His inmost being. 

The comparative silence of Holy Scriptiire as to the onto- 
iogical code of Trinitarian doctrine is easily accounted for by 
the considerations already offered, as to the self-hiding as well 
as the self-revealing characteristics of the divine nature. It 
is naturally the latter which are prominently presented to iis 
in Holy Scripture. 

But before we proceed to the final result of what has been 
said on this subject, we must briefly consider an objection 
which has seemed to many to militate against the doctrine of 
the Trinity. Why is nothing said, they ask, with regard to 
this truth in the Old Testament? Why did God withhold 
for 4000 years a self-revelation which is assumed to be so 
essential to the spiritual good of His creatures ? And if this 
were indeed the case, if in the Old Testament, which professes 
to be a revelation of the true and living God, there were no 
traces of this truth, we might indeed be seriously shaken as 



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253 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUKE. [lECT. IT, 

to the veiy groundwork of Cliristian doctrine. But a closer 
examination shows that it is not so. If for good reasons God 
was pleased to withhold under the Old Covenant a full reve- 
lation of His triune nature, He gave at least manifold hinta 
of it in the names and words and facts of the ancient Scrip- 
tures. We can only briefly hint at some of these. 

Many passages of the Old Testament, for instance, teach 
the divinity of the future Messiah, as when He is called the 
Son of God (Ps. ii. 7 ; Prov. xxx. 4),, the Branch of the Lord 
(Isa. iv. 2 ; Zech. iii. 8), the Lord (Ps. ex. compared with 
Matt. xxii. 44), God (Ps. xlv. 8), Mighty God (Isa. ix. 6 
comp. X. 21); His pre-existence is hinted at (Mic. v. 1 comp, 
with Isa. xlviii. 16), and an eternal post-existence promised 
Him (Dan. vii. 14), an eternal kingdom and an eternal 
priesthood (Ps. ex. 4). And if with regard to the Holy 
Spirit many pa-ssages of the Old Testament do not go beyond 
the notion of a divine energy or influence, it cannot surely be 
denied that in othei's, activities are ascribed to Him which 
imply personal subsistence, as His striving (Gen. vi, 3), 
speaking (2 Sam. xxiii. 2), leading (Ps. cxliii. 10), His being 
made grieved and made angry (Isa. Ixiii. 10), to which we 
have so many parallels in the New Testament. The Spirit of 
God, moreover, is represented in the Old Testament as resting 
on Messiah in His sevenfold eradiation (Isa. xi, 2), and as not 
only imparting Himself to individuals (Num. xi. 25—29; 1 
Sam, xix. 23; 2 Kir^s ii. 9-15), but as outpoured on the 
whole people of the redeemed in Messianic times (Isa. xliv. 
3) ; as the Spirit of vision and prophecy (Joel ii. 28), of 
inward renewal and sanctification (Ezek. xxxvi. 27, xxxix. 
29), of grace and prayer (Zech. xii 10). 

These are only lunts, but they are enough to show that the 
Old Testament attributes to the Messiah predicates which 
belong to no mere creature, and so teaches His true Godhead, 
while it ascribes a real independent activity to the Holy 
Spirit. And there are also numerous indications in the Old 
Testament of a certain plurality ia the divine nature, an 
organized and complex unity, a mutual indwelling and co- 
operation ot the three divine hypostases. 

Such an indication 'may be found in in the Hebrew namo 
tor God, Elohim. The plural (as is well known) is commonly 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE TEIKITY. 259 

used ^¥itll a singular verb. So in the very first words of 
Scripture (Gen. i. 1), which may be said to contain the first 
trace of the doctrine of the Trinity : " In the beginning 
Elohim " (plural) " created " (singnlar) " heaven and earth." 
This is hardly to be acconnted for by the hypothesis of a 
pluralis majestatis, of the use of which there is no other clear 
evidence in Scripture. But even if it were so, the plural might 
still be regarded as indicating an internal divine plurality of 
powers and forms of being. The same may be said of the " Ua ' 
in Gen. i. 26 and iii. 22 (comp. Gen xi 7 and Isi vi 8) 
The hypothesis that God is here speaking of tlie angels as 
associated with Himself, is perfectly inadmissible so fir, at any 
rate, as the first two passages are concerned It would con- 
tradict all other teachings of Scripture, which clearly asciibe 
to God the creation of mankind without any inteivention of 
angelic agencies (Gen. ii. 7-22; Isa. ^ 13 full, xliv 24) 
AVe may say indeed of Gen. i. 1, that we have here an intima- 
tion of the divine plurality in unity, and unity in plurality ; 
that all subsequent Trinitarian developments are but unfold- 
ings of what is here presented in the germ. 

Again, consider what is said in Scripture of God's creating 
all things by His Word (cf. John i. 1-3), and by His Spirit 
moving on the face of the waters (Gen. i. 2). Comp, Ps. xxxiii, 
6, " The heavens were made by the Word of Jehovah, and all 
the host of them by the Spiritof His mouth;" to which "Word" 
and " Spirit" the " Us" of Gen. i. 26 must be referred, and 
not to an association of angels. An interpretation to which 
we are the more entitled, inasmuch as seveial places in the 
Old Testament refer unmiatakeably to twofold and threefold 
self-distinctions in the divine essence, e.g. : " The Lord caused 
it to rain from the LoM out oi heaven" (Gen. xix. 24) ; " I 
have filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God " (Ex. xxxi. 3), 
where the Lord who speaks distinguishes between Himselt and 
God (the Father) as well as (the Holy) Spirit ; " The Lord " 
(God the Father) "said unto my Lord" (Messiah, son of 
David, who at the same time is David's Lord, Ps. ex. 1) ; "0 
God, hear for the Lord's sako"(Dan ix.17); and especially 
Isa, xlviii. 16 : "Fi^om the time that it took place there am I 
(Messiah, the servant of the Lord), and now the Loi"d God 
hath sent me, and His Spirit." Compare also the Lord's 



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260 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTURB. [leCT. IV. 

fJehoviih's) proclamation concerning the name of the Lord 
(Ex. xxxiv. 5-7). 

Moreover the Word is, in the Old Testament, Mediator in 
the Lord's redeeming work as well as in that of creation. " He 
sent forth His Word and healed them" (Ps. cvii. 20). To 
which, if we add the fore-cited passages wherein the fntnre 
Messiah is designated as the Sou of God. we have the New 
Testament doctrine of the Word made flesh in germ and 
early development. And this will he confirmed hy observa- 
tion of the divine agency in the history of the Exodus, the 
type of the redemption under the New Testament. There we 
see the Angel of Jehovah, sent hy God, the Father of His 
people (Deut. xxxii. 6), to lead them through the wilderness, 
as the angelic and quasi-human oi^n of His presence {Ex. 
xxiii. 20, 21, xxxiii. 14); and His Spirit poiired out upon 
their leaders, Moses, Aaron, the seventy elders, Joahna (Num. 
xi, 25, xxvii. 18 ; Neh. ix. 20). So that in after times Isaiah 
could describe tlia redemption from Egypt as the wort of 
Jehovah, of His Angel, andHisSpmt (Isa. Ixiil 8-10). This 
is the trinity of tlie Old Testament. " These three forms of 
divine manifestation dominate the whole of its history." 
(Delitasch, Apologctik, pp. 314 foil., 411, 420.) 

And further, these observations enable us to trace Trini- 
tarian doctrine in the Levitical blessing (Num. vi. 24-27), 
the putting of the threefold sacred name on the children of 
Israel : "_ The Lord bless thee and keep thee " (God the Eather, 
Maker, and Preserver) ; the Lord make His face to shine upon 
thee, and be gracious unto thee (God the Son, the Light of 
the world, full of grace and truth) ; the Lord lift up His 
countenance unto tliee and give thee peace (God the Holy 
Ghost, who brings nearer and appropriates to us the divine 
grace and peace). You will observe how here we have an 
essential nnity in the thrice repeated J.m'd (Jehovah) with 
diversity of operations.^ And to this threefold name of blessing 
here on earth, corresponds the thrice-repeated Holy of the 
seraphim in the heavenly sanctuary (Isa. vi. 3). When 
throughout the Old Testament we find God calling Himself 
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,— Abi'ahani, the father 

' This point has been more fully treated in the author's Seimona, eufitled Bet 
Segea des Hei-ra. LoniloB, 1860. 



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LEUT. IV.] THE DOCTEINE OF THE TEIXITY. 261 

who was willing to offer up his only son ; Isaac, the son who 
carried the wood of his sacrifice, and suffered himself to be laid 
thereon ; and Jacob, the founder and prototype of a spiritual 
Israel, — have we not here a prophetic type of that divine 
manifestation in which God gives up His Son as a sacrifice 
for all, and sends forth His Spirit to form a spiritual people, 
and so reveals the sacred name of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost? 

After all this, we surely cannot deny that Holy Scripture 
from the very beginning exhibits germs of Trinitai-ian docti-ine. 
Eut these germs are not the unfolded flower, A clear 
developed dogma of the Trinity is not to be found in the Old 
Testament, and that for good reasons. It was all-important 
under that dispensation, that, in the face of heathen Polytheism, 
the great fundamental truth of the divine unity should be 
impressed on the religious consciousness of God's ancient 
people : " Hear, Israel ; The Lord our God is one Lord." 
Too plain an utterance of Trinitarian doctrine would in such 
times have obscured the trath of the divine unity, and misled 
into Tritheism. And for the hke pcedagogic reasons our Lord 
did not at first reveal the triuuity of the divine nature to 
His disciples. It was not till they had learned to beheve in 
His divine Sonship, and in some measure to apprehend His 
unity with the Pather and pre-existence, that He could speak 
to tbem of the divine person of the Second Comforter ; nay, 
it was not till He had proved Hunself to be the Fountain of 
eternal life by His own resurrection, and by His breathing on 
the apostles had kindled in their hearts the fire ot the Holy 
Spirit, that He found them capable of receiving tlie divinest 
of mysteries, and therefore could leave behind Him as a pre- 
cious heu'loom to His Church— as the deepest revelation of 
the divine nature, as the one foundation of Christian faith, 
knowledge, and practice, and as the final seal and crown of all 
His teaching while here on earth — the great commission : " Go 
into all the world, and make disciples of all the nations, 
baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy GhosL" 

The objection, therefore, so often raised, that the doctrine 
of the Trinity, is not even founded on Scripture, is itself base- 
less. From the first of its pages to the kst. Scripture is full 



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262 THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE. [lecT. IV. 

of indications of this mystery ; from the description of fhe 
work of citation in Gen. i to that of the New Jerusjlem in 
the last chapter of the Apocalypse, where the livi^ water 
(symbol of the Spirit, John vii. 38, 39) is seen iasu'ing from 
the throne of God and of the Lamb. Everywhere we hear 
hints both of the personal distinctions and the unity of 
essence. A striking indication may be found of this in the 
observation, that whereas each divine hypostasis has a special 
work and mode of revelation assigned Him, the other two 
are throughout associated with Him in its discharge. Tlie 
creation and preservation of the universe is, for instance, the 
special work and revelation of God the Father. But it is by 
the Word of His power that He makes and upholds all things, 
and by His SpiiHt that life and form are given to chaos, and 
the face of the earth continually renewed. The special work 
of the Son is redemption. But here, too, the Father sends 
and constantly co-operates and finally receives the finished 
sacrifice ; and here, likewise, the Spirit is co-worker. It is by 
the Spirit that the eternal Word takes upon Him our nature, 
that the man Christ Jesus is anointed at His baptism and 
prepared for His ministry, that He offers Himself without 
spot to God the Father, and rises again from the dead ; and 
finally, it is by the Spirit taking of the things of Christ that 
His redemption is applied to each believer. The special 
work of the Spirit is sanctification ; but He is sent forth to 
that work by the Father and by the Son, and it is the Father's 
will and the Son's redemption by which He accomiilishes it 
No communion with one divine person is possible fm nnn 
without a like fellowship with the others. He thit liith not 
the Spirit of Christ is none of His ; he that deuieth the '--on 
hath not the Father (Rom. viii. 9 ; 1 Johuii, 2:>) A\e mi^ht 
perhaps venture to express this unity and distinctness of the 
divine persons ui their work and manifestations by three cog- 
nate predicates of our own Teutonic speech, and that almost 
as neatly in English as in German : The Father is lidlifj, the 
Holy One ; the Son, Jieilend, the Healing One ; the Spirit, 
liciligcncl, the Hallowii^ One, 

And here we see — a remark of great importance in respect 
to the reproach of Tiitheism so often brought against Trini- 
tarian doctrine — that what we necessarily represent to ouf 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOGTIilSE OF TliE TELNIiy. 263 

own minds, and to. others, as a Ti-initarian process, is really iu 
its divine eternal ground the simultaneous co-workiug of three 
co-etemal divine hypostases. Speculatively overstepping the 
lines actually drawn in Scripture, we recognise the necessity of 
the conclusion that God could never have heen Father without 
the Son, and that, therefore, the generation of the Sou is not 
only before time, , hut co-etemal with the Godhead of the 
Jather ; and in the same way, that the procession of the Spirit 
is co-eternal too. We recognise also, that as there is but one 
God who manifests in one work the one eternal counsel of His 
love, and that by revealing Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit ; 
so these three factors constitute by their mutual indwelling 
and co-worhing the self- consciousness of the Godhead, which 
is not to he thought of as a fourth producing them. The 
teaching of the Church has always insisted on the unity of 
the Godhead, and maintained that the Father is not only God, 
but the source also of the Godhead, of the Son and Holy Spirit 
(Fans Deitatis), and thereby has cut off all possible basis for a 
charge of Tntheism. 

And now, to gather up the threads of the whole inquiry, 
the Trinitarian doctrine of Scripture is briefly this : The 
Father is simply God, the God, the divine subject, the 
source and well-spring of the Godhead of both Son and Holy 
Spirit ; the Son is God, true God, in hypostatic distinction, 
though derived from the Father ; and the Spirit is also truly 
God in a form which is predicated of the whole divine nature 
(for God is a Spirit, John iv. 24; and the Lord is the Spirit, 
2 Cor. iiL 17), but also in hypostatic distinction from the 
Father and the Son, by whom He is sent, and from whom Se 
proceeds. There is therefore at once the most essential unity 
and a threefold hypostatic distinction. The divine nature 
remains undivided ; the whole Godhead (^eoTJj?) is in the Son 
and in the Holy Spirit — in the Son (Logos) as God's own self- 
utterance, in the Spirit as the divine self-consciousness. And 
as the Son is the uttered thought oi the Father concerning 
Himself, so it is again His office to speak out into the world 
the Father's thoughts of creation and redemption, and thus 
to stand to the creatures generally, and especially to mankind, 
in an original archetypal relation (John i. 4). And finally, as 
the Son is thus the archetypal and ideal principle ot media- 



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'i"* THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIl'TLTvE. [lECT. IT. 

tion between God and the world, of creation and of redemp- 
tion, so the Holy Spirit ia the real or efficient principle, 
effecting and individualizing all the creative and redeeming 
energies of the i;ather and the Son, applying, for instance, to 
each individual believer the justilieation ideally' {i.e. in the 
idea or thought of God) accomplished by the Son, and so 
effecting a real sanctiiication and regeneration (Eph. ii. 18; 
1 Cor. xii. 3) ; in which process He takes, indeed, everything 
from the Son, the real and actual having always the ideal and 
transcendent for its ultimate ground and condition. 

And if from this point we now look back on those dog- 
matic statements of the Athanasian Creed from which we 
started, we shall find them confirmed in essentials by Holy 
Scripture ; the Son and the Holy Spirit are with their imma- 
nence in the Father yet distinct persons, and with their 
distinct personality they continue immanent. Therefore, 
neitlier may we confound the three persons nor divide the 
one substance. And if the definitions of that formulary go 
somewhat beyond the teaching of Scripture and of the earlier 
Church, in the absohUe equalization of the divine persons 
(none before or after, none greater or less), to the partial 
obscuration of the truth of the derivation and subordination of 
the Son and Holy Spirit in the co-equal Godhead, it must 
nevertheless be acknowledged that the Church possesses and 
guards in the Athanasian Creed an invaluable restramt and 
bulwark against speculative errors, whether of a tritheistic or 
deistic or pantheistic tendency. 

At the same time, it must further be acknowledged that 
these definitions and distinctions are not sufficient to bridge 
over the chasm which still yawns between Taith and Reason. 
The old question is evermore recurring : How can the unity of 
one being or substance admit of a threefold self-consciousness t 
How can there he one substance in three distinct persons, 
and with three distinct personal activities ? Eighteen centuries 
of toilsome thought have not succeeded in solving this enigma. 
The most recent efforts of Specuktive Theology make tis only 
feel more acutely that here we stand in presence of the 
mystery of all mysteries, and see only darkly as through a 
mirror of obscure reflection. " It is a truth " (to use the noble 
words of Hilary of Poitiers) " which lies beyond the domain 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTEINE OF THE TKIXnT, 265 

of h limn Iingtn;:;e beyond the fcope of sense bejoi (J the com- 
ptehens on if leas n The archangels know it i ot the angels 
understand it not the a es do not LDmpehend it no prophet 
has disco\ercl it no apostle explored it the Son H mself has 
not made it fullj kao% □ T)n nc mj terito cannot and were 
never intended to be made perfectlj plinsible to hunnn reason ; 
they are and must le m the fiist instance matteis of faith. 

On the other h'lnl it is nj le ceitun thit thej mnst also 
j.re'ient points of contiet foi oui ipprchenaion the believing 
in^u rer seel s for a leason for tl c faith that it m him, and to 
penetiate m le and moit, 'with intelligent understanding into 
its depths (see above, Lect. II. 3), It is given to him not 
only to believe, bnt also to Jcnow the mysteries of the kingdom 
of heaven (Matt. xiii. 11). And this is the case with the 
fundamental doctrine of the holy Trinity, The revelations of 
Scripture on this subject, however inadequate may be the 
forms given to them in the systems of earlier and later 
theology, are not only of the last importance for our knowledge 
of God, of man, and of the universe ; but also present so many 
aids to fruitful meditation, and are themselves in so many 
ways cqnlirmed by the witness of history and the soundest 
results of rational speculation, that only the most indolent 
superficiality would pretend to reject them unexamined. So 
much has been effected in our ovfu day for the illustration of 
this doctrine, in the departments of sci'iptural exegesis and 
philosophical speculation, as well as in that of dogmatic and 
historical theology, that vi'e have already sufficient grounds of 
reason for our adherence to this the apostolic faith ; which, 
not having its source in mere reason, is above but not against 
it. Only, he who would enter into this as into any other 
truth, must have his standing in it before he can understand. 
But whosoever, not in the carping, one-sided spirit of mere 
intellectual exercise, but in the pmctical way of both moral 
and intellectual self-surrender to the quickening and illumi- 
nating influences of the triune Godhead, seeks to apprehend 
this truth of the divine nature, to him an ever-widening field 
of rational inquiry will be revealed, and he will learn more and 
more to find in this mystery a key to the understanding of the 
deepest enigmas of his own nature and that of the world around 
him. This will be clear to us if, in conclusion, we proceed — ■ 



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266 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUBE. [lECT. IV. 

B. To examine the results just arrived at by tlie light of 
out present advances in thought and knowledge. We shall 
see how many collateral supports niay he derived from hwtory 
and philosophy in support of this ti-uth. Supports they must 
be, not positive praofa ; for such can never be alleged in respect 
of a divine mystery. We shall proceed to ask: (a) Whether 
the history of religions thought and development does not bear 
witness to our Trinitarian faith, and that both positively and 
negatively ? (6) What advantages the Tiiiiitarian conception 
affords in respect of our theological and cosmological know- 
ledge ? And then, what arguments of a speculative character 
in favour of the doctrine may be drawn (c) from a considera- 
tion of the divine natwe ; (_d) from a study of human nature 
and the visible universe ; and (e) from the testimony oS^nod&i-n 
philosophy ? 

(«) Tlie, history of the chief religions of the world itself 
affords so many collateral supports to our Trinitarian concep- 
tion of God, as to have given rise to the assertion that primeval 
humanity must in some shape or other have possessed the 
knowledge of the triune God, which thence was ti'ansmitted 
in a distorted form to, the heathen religions. For we find 
traces of it, not only here and there, but in the niythologie.j 
of all nations. In any case, it is certain that in a very early 
age men learned to look upon three as the perfect number, 
expressing absolute harmony, and uniting in itself beginning, 
middle, and end. Hence a trinity of deities in conirnon to all 
natimis. ^ We give a few instances. The Emperor of China 
o0ers once every year a sacrifice to the Spirit of Trinity 
and Unity. lao-tse the great philosopher, to whom the 
Chinese pay almost divine honours (600 B.C.), says; Tao 
(■i.e. the intelligent principle of aU being) is by nature one : 
the first begat the second ; both together brought forth the 
thiixl ; these three made all things. We are more familiar 
with the Indian Triniurti (Trinity), Erabma, Vishnu, and 
Shiva, who are also represented and worshipped as tliree 
persons, though the original divine principle, Brahm, is but 
one. One of the I'urannas (their eacred writings) plainly 
declares that the great unity is to be distinctly recognised as 

' Passages in verification of the fctatemenfa liere made, ore quoted ty Keerl in 
his work JMe Sehdpfung v, die Lehit vom Parodies, p. 159 et 89. 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE TKirJIT?. 267 

three Gotls in one person. In a commentjciy on the Eigveda 
(a book of aacrecl hymns collected between 1300 and 600 
B.C.) it is said ■ There are three Deities, bnt there is only one 
Godhead, the gieit souL The so-called Clmldcean Oracle saya : 
" The Unity brought forth the Duality which dwells with it 
and shines m intellectual light, from these proceeded the 
Ti-inity which shines through the whole world. The names 
of the ChaldEean Tiinit^ aie Anos, lUinos, Aos. In like 
inauner we find a Divine Trinity among the Babyloniam 
(witness the three images in the temple of Eelus), the 
Fliceniemns (Ulomus, Ulosuros, Eliun), and the Eg'jptians 
(ICneph or Ammnn, Phthas, and Osiris), The divinities of 
Greece were grouped by mythologers both in a successive 
(Uranoa, Chronos, Zens) and a simultaneous Trinity (Zeus, 
Poseidon, Aidoneus), The coinage of the Dalai Lama (in 
Thibet) is stamped with a representation of a threefold 
divinity. A coin, supposed to he Tataiian, and preserved in 
the Imperial collection at St. Petersburg, bears the impress of 
a human figui-e with three heads, and on the revei^se the 
inscription : " Glorious and holy picture of the Godhead, to be 
contemplated in three forms." 

So, too, in the Keltic, Germanic, and Slavic mythology we 
find the same idea of a Divine Trinity; amongst the Irish 
(Kriosan, Biosena, Siva), the Scandinavians (Thor, Woden, 
Fricco), the ancient Prussians (Petrimpos, Petkunos, Pilcullos), 
and the Pomeraniam and Wends (whose God was named 
Triglav, i.e. the three-headed). The £dda teaches that the 
earth was created by Odin, Vile, and Ve, or by Odin, Thor, 
and Freya. And, finally, the ancient Americans worshipped 
the sun under three images, which they called Father, Son, 
and Brother Sun. One of their great idols was called Tanga- 
langa, i.e. One in Three and Three in Ona The three Gods 
who emanated from the original Spirit they called Trinimaaka, 
ie. Trinity. 

Do not all these coincidences serve as an indirect proof 
that we are justified in holding that Elohim, the oldest divine 
name in Scripture, contains an indication of the Trinity in its 
plural form ? And does not this strange agreement compel 
us to acknowledge that Sehelling was right when he said : 
" The philosophy of mythology proves that a Trmity of Divine 



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268 THE THEOLOGY OP SCEIPTUEa [lECT. IV. 

Potentialities is the root from which have grown the religious ideas 
of all itatioTis of any importance that ai-e known to us "? In 
a former passage we confronted Atlieism with the fact, noticed 
even by heathens themselves, that all nations are agreed in 
■worshipping some higher Being; and we regarded this as a 
proof that our conscionsness of God does not deceit-^ ns. 
Now we may point those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity 
to this general agreement of all nations, as a proof for the truth 
of our Christian conception of God ; while, by the pre-Christian 
origin of these mythologies, we are guarded against the objec- 
tion that these Trinitarian ideas might have proceeded from the 
influence of Christian ideas upon the heathen legends. "This 
idea does not exist because there is such a thing as Chris- 
tianity ; on the contrary, Christianity exists because this idea 
is the most original of all " (Schelling). 

But in addition to this positive argument in favour of 
Trinitarianism, the history of religions fm'nishes us with a no 
less important negative support in the example of those 
nations whose creed has remained an abstract Monotheism — the 
Jews and the Mohammedans. Here we see that the mere 
abstract unity of the Godhead, which does not include a 
multiplicity, soon leads to a cold and lifeless Deism ; and as 
soon as it has reached this point, is forced to seek refresh- 
ment from the pantheistic religions of nature. After the Jews 
and Mohammedans had rejected the idea of a Son who is of 
the same divine essence with His Father as idolatry, they 
were fated to find their absolutely monotheistic conception of God 
idterly empty and lifeless, so that they yearned after the warm 
vitality of Pantheism. This is a phenomenon which is clearly 
evident from the history of the Jewish philosophers (especially 
Spinoza), as well as of the Indian and Persian pantheists. And 
so, too, it could not but happen that philosophical Pantheism 
should tread on the heels of German Deism and Eationalism. 
As long as Theism distinguishes only between God and the 
world, and not between God and God, it will always have a 
tendency to Pantheism, or to some other denial of absolute 
Being. "The abstract and absolutely monotheistic philo- 
sophers underwent just that fate which SchiUer describes in 
2%e Gods of Greece. Pulness and vitality vanished with reve- 
lation ; One has taken to Himself all life, and neutralises all 



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LECT. rv.] THE DOCTEINE OF THE TBINITT. 269 

tlie vital fulness of nature. We no longer feel love or joy. 
There is but One, around whom all tiling move, and He is a 
cold, mathematical quantity, a point of pure abstraction. This, 
assuredly, la the meaning of Schiller's poem" (Nitzsch). Hence 
we can weE understand his plaintive lament : — 

" A desert chill arouad us lies. 

Devoid o£ life and warmth divine ; 
Dim shadows flit before our eyea, 
Where once & world of grace did shine. 

" The blooma of ancient faiths mnst flit 
Before a nortliem blast, that One, 
Enriched by all their spoils, may sit 
High on a, faatitin, cheerless throne." 

But if a Christian poet could thus sing, it is still moro 
natural that non-Christian monotheists of this class should 
yearn after the freshness and fulness of nature's life. Back- 
wards they could not go to tlie polytheistic religion of nature, 
since they had already attained to the conception of the 
divine unity, and hence they had no choice but to sink this 
unity in matter, apd turn to Pantheism. 

If, then, we put the question. Row is Monotheism to he pre- 
served from sinMng haclc again into the deifieaiioTt of nMure ? 
the answer will be, (My through lelief in the Trinity. Poly- 
theism contains a bare contradiction (for the god who has 
other gods beside him is for that very reason not god, not 
the highest being, not almighty, etc). The untenableness of 
Pantheism we have already seen. Abstract Monotheism has 
too little life-blood to offer an enduring resistance to the pan- 
theistic deification of nature. What remains open to us but 
the doctrine of the Trinity ? In it we have a Unity ; not, 
however, unloving and lifeless, a cold numerical One, but a 
complex of living and loving energies, — a living Unity em- 
bracing a Plurality, and bearing the sacred name of Father, 
Son, and Spiiit. 

(b) This brings us to the great advantages derived from the 
Trinitarian conception, in respect to the knowledge of God in 
general, and His relation to the world and to man. 

We have already remarked, that the falness of God's being 
cannot be contained in an abstract Unity, and yet that His 
absolute personality must have unity for its fundamental 



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2*70 THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTUBE. [LECT. IV. 

attribute. Here we find both of these in vital iiiterpenetra- 
tion. God is One it is true, but at the same time He is the 
Living One, the organic fulness of power and love, and thus 
alone is the conception of a truly living God actually realized. 

Furthermore, the conception of the triune God furnishes us 
with the sole hndge thai can fill up the hreach ietween God and 
the world. ITone but this can fill up the void which separates 
the ti-anscendeot \mity of God from the rich and manifold 
organization of natural life. Here we see the possibility of 
the world's creation by the premundaue "Word of God and 
His Spirit, whose work it is to realize the divine thoughts. 
The Word is the image of the invisible God, and the first- 
born before all creatures, in which God sees as it were His 
alter ego, and stands in relation to Himself, and through 
which also He can place Himself in relation to other beings. 
This ATord, which finally becomes incarnate in order to do 
and suifer for mankind, and the Spirit who by His power 
begets fresh life, both stand between God and the world 
as mediate causes, which not only render the creation of the 
world a possibility, but also guarantee the divine presence 
in it, and its return to God. Here, then, we have all the 
fulness and freshness of Pantheism combined with the truth 
of Monotheism, whilst the element in which the latter is 
wanting, viz. a real connecting link between God and the 
woild, is here supplied to us. Philosophy has not been slow 
to recognise these advant^es, and to tm-n them to account in 
her specidations, a^ we shall see hereafter. 

Here, first of all, we have a connecting link between God 
and man in the person of the Incarnate Logos, who is the 
eternal Archetype of the whole creation, and especially of 
man,^ and who, for all future ffions, will be the head of the 
whole body. Here, too, the spiritual chasm which yawns 
between sinful man and the absolutely sinless God-man, is 
filled up by the regenerating and sanctifying influences of the 
Holy Spirit. Hence the doctrine of the Trinity affords the 
most important aids in determining our practical relation to 
God. We have seen that our religious need can only be fully 



' By this we do not mean to afErm that the incainatioa of tha Logos ivai 
neeessary per se, apavt from the sin of man ; since, on the oontraiy, Soriptnn 
alwaya represents it as ordained by the/ree mercy of God on aecount of^a. 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTIIINE OF THE TKINITT. 271 

satisfied by the idea of God as the eternal and all-holy love. 
The belief in this love must revert to the idea of the love 
which the Father hears to His oidy-begotten Son, and it can 
only be perfected practically as well as theoretically by a 
knowledge of the perfect and eternal object of the divine self- 
knowledge and self-lova So, too, a real belief in the self- 
communication of this love can only be vitalized and preserved 
from error by the Trinitarian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 

From all this it follows, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the 
eonsv,inmation and the only perfect protection of Theism, ye 
have already shown that the theistic conception of God is the 
only true one ; and we may now add, that if this theistic 
conception is to be effectually guarded against Atheism, 
Polytheism, Pantheism, Dualism, and Deism, it must be ex- 
panded into the Trinitarian idea. No true Theism without the 
Trinity. The One absolute Personality as such can only be 
the triune God. Trinitarianism is no less tine and necessary 
than Theism ; and what we adduced as proofs for the latter, 
are mediate ai^iiments for the fonner.also. 

(c) In addition to this, Speculative Theology furnishes us with 
many collateral arguments in favour of the truth and the 
intrinsic necessity of the Trinitarian doctrine. Many attempts 
have been made by modern theologians to derive the Trinitarian 
view of God from a consideration of the Divine essence itself. 
Of course, they are but attempts, and not perfectly successful 
or adequate explanations. In all such speculations it behoves 
us to take great care that we do not pass from the difficult to 
the unintelligible ; bearing this in mind, I would lay before 
you some of the most important of these tentative theories. 
They start partly from the seI/-conseiousness of God, partly ironi 
the idea of the Absolute Zove. 

Nitzsch remarks that the Divine Ego, in oider to have a 
really living personality, must not only view its second other 
self as an object, but also revert to itself by a further act as a 
third subject, as that it comprehends its alter ego as the real 
image of itself " If God be conceived as the primal Ego, and 
from this basis begets an objective alter Ego, this thesis and 
antithesis still remain severed or incomplete until a third Ego 
pniceeds from the Divine essence through the medium of the 
sei-ond, and thus the personality is fully consummated." 



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272 THE THEOLOGY OF SCMPTUltK [lECT. IT. 

Modern religious philosophers have often reasoned thus : 
God must be pei-sonal, since He is the presupposition of our 
personality. The essence of personality is to comprehend it- 
self, or to distinguish in itself the comprehending and the 
comprehended. The eq^uality of these two elements must he 
developed into unity, but in such a way that they shall not 
coincide in absolute identity. This can only he brought 
about by their mutual union in a third factor. Hence three 
persons, I, thou, and he, are indispensable to self-comprehension. 
Thus the Three Persons of the Godhead presuppose each 
other ; they are in one another, and yet distinct (not separate), 
so that each of the three Persons is I, Thou, and He, because 
personality includes the possibility and reality of self-trans- 
position.^ 

Others ai^e thus: The Divine nature must be primarily 
conceived of as Being, as Necessity (Father), but at the same 
time as Action, as Freedom (Son) ; the mediation of both these 
factors being effected by Love (the Holy Spirit). 

The intei'pretatioDS drawn by Liebner, Sartorius, and others 
from the idea of love are clearer. The Trinity in Unity and 
absolute Personality, replete with tioily moral and actually 
wrought out personal life, pertains to God, because He is Love, 
not because He is a self-conscious Spirit. For absolute Love 
demands a process of self-communication, which in its highest 
perfection nrust be tiinitarian. Love is the transposition of 
one's self into another person aa his second self {alter ego). God, 
who is Love, must therefore transpose Himself into His second 
Self, which as such is of the same Divine nature, since other- 
wise the act of self-transposition would not be perfect. No 
less necessary, however, is the conception of a third homo- 
geneous Self, by wliich the infinite equality is mediated so as 
to produce harmonious unity in distinctions. This act it is 
which permanently fixes the divine personality ; ior mere self- 
transposition would be equal to infinite restlessness. Thus 
God is one pei-son in three persons, each of which is only in 
and through the others ; and this apparent contradiction, that 
sevei-al persons should be one, and have their full personality 

' Cf. Mehring, " Die ilulosophisch kritiichen Gmiidsatze der SclbstvorHns- 
scrurg, Oder die EiligionsplulosophiL," p. 91 et ss.; also the passage aliove 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTitlSE OF THE TRIN-ITT. '^J^ 

only in this unity, is solved only by the principle of love 
(Liebner). 

This idea is very beantiMIy worlied ont by Sattorius 
tod 1 _p nal, primal love. What can He mope 
delight t y tl My beloved " ! God is the Father the 
eternal F tl What is the Father's eternd and dealest 

Word th tb n S , boloied Son (Matt iii. 17) ! Tbron-b 
the ete 1 S n G 1 s the eternal Fither, the eternally lovin" 
and et Uy loved One the eternal I and the eternal Thon 
as Chnst addresses His Father m loving converse (John xvii' 
24). And this Love is a^ readv to impart itself, as perfect 
and as gMat as God whose essence it is ; and therefore the Son 
IS not less than the Father, nor does He differ from Him either 
m essence or in origin. How small would be the Fatherhood 
vvere the Son but half God ! We must distinguish between 
the love which tiget, the Son and that which blisses Him — 
the love of the well-pleased Father, and again, the answiH,, 
love on the Son's part. The breath of that Wessin» and 
answering love is the SpiHI. Bnt were He m/j breath and 
not a person, the glorification of the Father and Son thron* 
the Spirit would be egoistical. This egoistical clement °is 
removed only if the Spirit who glorifies the Father and the 
Son is Himself a person." 

The meaning of this sentiment is as follows: Love always 
includes delight in the object loved. H this object be an 
entirely separate person, the purity of my love is not sullied 
by my delight. But this is not the case with God. The 
object of His love is not a person outside of Him but His 
second Self. Here, therefore, the delight in another is at the 
same time delight in Himself In orfer, therefore, that this 
delight may not appear as self-seeking egotism, God has com- 
mitted this delight in Himself to a third Person, which repre- 
sents the mutual delight of Father and Sou in each other- 
and this Person is the Holy Spirit When the Father uttered 
Himself, He begat the Son, the eternal Word. But no speech 
can talce plice without breathing, and the breath of that 
spoken Word was hipostatized in the Spirit, which represents 
the delight of the Divme Love. 

In a similar manner, Delitzsch has recently attempted to 
reconcile the trmitarian passages of Holy Scripture with the 



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274 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEirTURE. [lECT. IV. 

idea of God as contained in our reason. The triune God is — 
1. Absolute Life, the impulse of whose development is an act 
of will; in Him existence and will, necessity and freedom, 
interpenetrate each other. Tliia Life is unfolded within the 
Divine Being without counteraction from the world; it is self- 
tilled and self-consummated. But being such it cannot be 
otherwise conceived than as a 1 te of lo^e Hence the tr une 
God is — 2. Absolute Love. The objeub of this love cinnot be 
the world,^since, then, God wm Id not be I \ e m Hinistlf — 
but only His alter ego, the Son wher^iti the Holj Gh st con 
summates the mutual relationship between the Either and the 
Son, as it were, in a perfect circle of d vme 1o\p But both 
these conceptions of life and lo\e ].oint on!) to the peisonilitj 
of the Father and the Son, not tc that of the H ly Ghost 
Hence, finally, the triune God must be conceived ct — 3 As 
Absolute Organism, which unites in itself the es=!ent al eharie 
teristics of nature (substantial objectnity withoit ''elf c n 
sciousness) and spirit (self-consi-io isness without substantial 
objectivity). As the highest identi'j it must combine these 
two factors, which in the woild ire sejiiatel tie latter 
I'iiises it above created nature, the foimer al o\e created sp iit 
so that it embraces both. — Dehtzsch Apolojet I p 2''7 tt ss 

"Whatever objections may be raided against the force of 
such ai'guments, especially as legards the personahtj of the 
Spirit, yet thus much, at least is c^ear an I certain Becaise 
God is love, therefore there must be dislmcttoTib %n Hiin, ivhich, 
Tiowever, hy love are agam, broujhf into i nitj The object of this 
(intra-divine) love can be nothing less important than God 
Himself, else thia love i^ould not be fullyjustihed nor can it 
be anything outside of God else God s %i tri isii, nature would 
not be love. lor 1 th reasons tins object cannft be the 
transitory world b it only the eternal S n who is of the same 
essence with the Father How this 1 \e ].resei\es its equili- 
brium, ot its unselfiahnt,=!s and puiity tin Dugh the Holy Ghost 
as the third lei on this nmst remain to us a mjstery so 
long as the spiiit ot 'iellit^hnL«s and '^lu is not oveicome, and 
Iiinders even our self k lowlu Igi, to sav nothiii" of our know- 
ledge of God, ^ihich IS bi ight about b^ the surrender of our- 
selves to Hiin The practii-al giat of this doctiine is simply 
this, to proclaim thai God is eie} nal and perfeet love, and that the 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTUINE OF THE TRINITY. 21 ~> 

historical revelation of. His love in Christ coiTcsponds to 
His eternal essence, in whose everlasting sell-distinction and 
self-comprehension into unity the divine life is changelessly 
evolved. 

(d) Another and more obvious series of collateral supports 
for the doctrine of the Trinity, may be found in a consideration 
of His image as reflected in our own human nature, and in 
creation generally. For if God he indeed Trinity in Unity, 
then there is every reason to suppose that the works of His 
hands should, in some degree at least, reflect His nature, and 
especially that man, who is created in the image of God 
should evince in His nature certain analogies which indicate a 
triune Creator. 

And what an abundance of such indications meets our eye, 
so long as we do not foi^et that we cannot expect to find 
within the limits of created life analogies perfectly correspond- 
ing with that which is incomparable and unique ! Chiistian 
thinkers, even in olden times, discovered traces of the Trinity 
in the life of the human spirit; and hence Augustine and 
others speak of a human tnnity, consisting in the threefold 
function of feeling, thought, and will. And, indeed, these 
principal faculties of the spirit present us, as it were, with a 
threefold cord, the threads of which are distinct and yet one, 
and they give us some idea of the united and harmonious 
co-operation of the three Divine Persons. No single one 
of these three functions of feeling, thonght, and will can be 
exercised without the simultaneous activity of the others. 
" Thus the spiritual life of man is, in fact, always a multipli- 
city of intermingling actions. In this intermingled action I 
see a picture of the threefold divine life, showing how every 
vital act of one Person calls forth and is necessarily accom- 
panied by a corresponding act of both the others ; so that the 
vital movements of any one Person posit those of the others" 
(Gess), just as we have seen in the work of creation, redemp- 
tion, and sanctification. But just as with the soul, its three 
functions may be distinguished, but not separated, so, too, in 
the case of the three Persons who form the one Divine Bein". 

In like manner, the process of our thought will explain to 
us in some degree the pre-existence of the Son as the Logos 
or Word of the Father. In our humao consciousness a certain 



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276 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTDEE. [LECT. IV. 

thought always simultaneously produces the corresponding 
word; we can only think in conceptions and words, for our 
thought is inward speech. So, too, God's tliought of Himself 
necessitates the utterance of the Word -which represents this 
primal Thought ; hut the divine utterance is at the same time 
a real act, and hence this inner Word in God is a Being eCLual 
to Him. True, in our human self- consciousness we do not, by 
conceiving ourselves, produce a second self; we all the time 
have only one ego. But we are only creatures, not the 
creative source of life ; and even our hnraan consciousness is 
still imperfect. But the case is different with God, who is 
the eternal and almighty source of life and power. His self- 
consciousness is absolutely perfect, and hence the intellectual 
image of Himselt, which He has conceived, may become a real 
substantial' antitype of the Father. In any case, we have an 
analogy to the Ti-inity in the thought, its product the word, 
and the unity of both, the spirit. In addition to this argument 
for the pei"sonality of the Divine Word as drawn from our 
intellectual consciousness, we find that a similar argument for 
the personality of the Spirit may be 'drawn from our reliyiovs 
consciousness. Faith tells us that the Spirit is giving us true 
personality in the sight of God, and tliat without Him we 
cannot in any way attain to full, firm. Godlike personality. 
But, as we have already remarked, that which tends to pro- 
mote true personality cannot in itself be impersonal. 

'Moreover, let us remember that the fundamental form of all 
syntax, which governs our thought and our speech, is a triplicity 
which contains a wtiity, or a unity which developes into tri- 
plicity. For every sentence consists of subject, predicate, 
and copula — three parts, which together express one thought. 
Indeed, every conception " has something of the trinity," 
since in it is the union of subject and predicate, which does 
away with their distinction. The fundamental schema of all 
spiritual development is always position, contraposition, higher 
unity of both (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). Everywhere three 
is the fundamental number of the gelf-re verting process. 

As in the human spirit, so, too, in the outward world of nature, 
there are certain indications and reflections of the Trinity. 
This truth is not only revealed in Scripture, and confirmed by 
history and intellectual speculation, hut it is, .so to speak. 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTEINE OF THE TEINITT. 277 

omnipresent tbroughont the world. We constantly see one 
life in various memiers; in eacli one it acts in a special 
manner, yet in all it is one and the sama In the one mn 
we see light and ivarmik as different, and yet intermingling 
and co-operating forces. We have the one space divided into 
three dimensions of length, breadth, and height; time, similarly, 
into past, present, and future ; all bodies into solid, liquid, 
and gaseous. In analogy with the three parts required to 
form a sentence, we find that the kingdom of sound is governed 
by the triad, as the basis of all chords ; nor does this destroy 
the original unity of the key-note, but, on the contrary, makes 
it an organized unity embracing muitiplicity. What remark- 
able analogies are shown by the laws of colour and of light ! 
The tliree fundamental colours, red, yellow, and blue, dis- 
solve into the unity of white light, so that an English naturalist 
(C. Woodward) might well call this white light a trinity in 
unity, But they coalesce in such a manner, " that each of the 
three rays preserves its distinctive attribute. Eed is the calorie, 
yellow the luminous, blue the chemical (activic) ray."^ God 

1 Cf. C. "Woodward, Familiar Introduction U> the Slvdy of Light. If it is per- 
missible to follow this analogy out further, we should say that the caloric ray 
evidently corresponds to the Father, the warm Source of life ; the luminous ray 
to the Son, the Light of the world ; and the chemical ray to the Spirit, which 
piertyis into the innermost recesses of the heart, and imhues it with peculiar 
quulities and forces. One of tha instances given by Woodward is very sug- 
gestive. Some plants (cucumhers and melons) were put under a glass which 
was so coloured as to absorb the blue (chemical) rays of light. The consequence 
was, that the plants grew with the greatest rapidity, and put forth luxuriant 
HoBSoma, hut just as quickly they faded away again, without bringing fruit. 
Does not this look like a physical reflection of the Christian precept, " Qaenoh 
not the Spirit," because withotit Him no real fruit can ripen ! (1 Thess. v. 19 ; 
GaL T. 22.) How mightily did men multiply before the flood! hut because 
they uttetlj- withdrew themselves from the influence of the Spirit, they only 
ripened, without fruit, for a sudden death. True, from a strictly scientific point 
of view, we cannot attach much weight to such theosophieal indications. Yet 
thus much we may afSrm respecting certain fundamental principles (such as 
light, life, etc.) which occur in the region of intellect, physios, and morals, — 
that in them the whole enigma of tha world and its history lies hid, and that by 
means o£ them we must endeavour to ascend from our discursive rational know- 
ledge to a central intuition of the ultimate and universal Cause of all being. 
The man who has no presentiment of this is incapable of entering into any pro- 
found speculative philosophy. In this there lies a elne to the temple of know- 
ledge, lost to man since his banishment from paradise, but of which scattered 
fragments at least may he found. To collect these, is the ultimate task of all 



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278 THE THEOLOGY OB SCKIPTURE, [leCT. IV. 

is Light ; and, verily, natural light, the first of His creatures, 
bears the immediate impress of His triune Being ! 

No less does the number three govern the arrangement of 
Nature's forces ; whether we adopt the classification of Ohm,^ 
who divides the fundamental forces into those of " attraction, 
tension, and polarity," or the moi-e general enumeration, alirac- 
tion, repulsion, equilibrium. The whole of nature is ruled by 
the law of polarity, with its two magnetic poles and their 
ec[uipoise. Positive and negative electricity are balanced by 
the electric spark. The entire development of the vegetable 
world takes place in a process of three degrees. Pirst, the 
self-enclosed potential unity (seed, germinal Cell, root), then 
the self- development into multiplicity (inward dilation and 
ramification of the genn, stem), and, finally, conclusion of the 
multiplicity in organized unity (leaf, fruit, return to the seed 
and germinal cell). 

Is not the eternal Origin of life visible in all these things 
in a thousand pictuies? Were we not right in saying that 
the idea of (he T> imty was mnmp tsent ? Not only do we bear 
it in our own spirit as the rnlirg law of all its vital functions; 
not only do we see it shine foith m the religions of all nations 
as a dark presentiment common to all Nature herself reflects 
this truth " as in a thousand miirors , everywhere we hear its 
harmony, we see its brightnebs, and feel it looking at us 
through a thousand eyes" (Delitzsch, nbi sup. pp. 282-286). 

(e) No wonder that phdosophy too — and that not only the 
old mystic theosophical speculation, but also modem idealism, 
with all the acuteness of its dialectics^ — has taken up the idea 
of a triune God, and endeavoured to comprehend and to prove 
it. True, they have often ended in proving tlie truch of an 
utterance once made by a profound divine in respect of the 
doctrine of the Trinity, and which I would beg my readers to 
lay to heart. " If we go too deeply, and yet not deeply enough 
into this matter, we shall be blinded by this sun." They have 
also confirmed our remarks as to the achievements of independent 
reason, which, with haughty self-sufficiency, despises the light 
of revelation, and therefore can attain to no sure and positive 
results. But still their efforts show us that modem philosophy 
(from Jacob Ebhme onwards) feels that this doctrine is the true 
' Die Dmeinigheil der Eraji, Niimberg, 1856. 



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LECr. IV.] TUE DOCTRINE OF THE TEINITY. 270 

solution of the worlcCs enigma. Moreover, these philosopliical 
investigations caat a strong light on tlie unconscionable super- 
ficiality and short-sightedness of those who most reject this 
fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith untested, without 
a notion of its deep religious, philosophical, and historical 
import. 

Hegel calls the idea of the Trinity " the pivot of the world." 
Ai wording to him, the Father is God as self-existent, or as 
it n'ere self-enclosed ; He discloses Himself as the Son, and 
in this form takes upon Him the form of individual heing, 
thereby compensating the contrariety between the Ahsolute 
ai.d the Individual. The latter, however, ia not the adequate 
form of ahsolute being ; therefore it undergoes death, and rises 
again as the Spirit ; — or, in other words, the I'ather is God 
in the abstract, mere universality; the Son is infinite partieu- 
laiity ; the Spirit is phenomeuality or individuality as such 
{Religionsphilos. iii). True, the entire groundwork of this 
view is pantheistic, and the difference between it and the 
biblical doctrine is evident. For acccording to Hegel, Father, 
Son, and Spirit successively change into each other, whereas 
Scripture teaches that they exist simultaneously with and in 
each other. But in any case we see how deeply the concep- 
tion of the Trinity is interwoven with Hegel's system. 

Schelling has followed out this iSea far more fully, and in 
his FMlosophie dcr Offenharung he approaches very closely 
to the Christian view. God is the perfect Spirit in three 
forma ; proceeding from Himself, existing by Himself, and 
reverting to Himself. The Father is the Author of matter, 
the Son the Author of fonn, and the Spirit the ultimate Cause 
of the world as the unity of both. Hence the world is created 
by the Father, through the Son, to the Holy Ghost. A still 
greater affinity to the Christian doctrine is shown by the specu- 
lations of Baader (accoi'ding to whom the divinity of the three 
Persons proceeds from the Father, their personality from the 
Son, and their spirituality from the Holy Spirit) and J. H. 
Fichte, who distinguishes between a real objective and an ideal 
subjective aspect of the Divine essence, combined in a third 
and higher principle, viz. that of volition or of love. 

These instances will suffice to make us comprehend what a 
pliilosopher some years ago most truly remarked : '■" The con- 



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280 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUEK [lecT, IV. 

ceptions of speculative pkUosophj, where tkey are most prof mind, 
m-nie. nearest to the Christian doctrine; nor need we be anxious 
lest speculative philosophy should ever reach a height from 
which it may look down and say that the Christian elemen't 
is left behind. No thought can transcend the Christian idea, 
for it is truth in itself" (Braniss). 

Thus we are from all quarters forcibly referred to the idea 
of the Trinity ; and should we ever be tempted to sacrifice the 
Trinity to the Unity, it will be well to remember that the 
scriptural and Christian conception of God is justified and 
proved, as far as a mystery can be, by history and science, by 
nature and philosophy. 

We may apply to the doctrine of the Trinity the beautiful 
words uttered by Vinet, when speaking of love : " It is a 
mystery, the greatest of all mysteries, and the key of aU 
mysteries, but itself has no key." The collateral ai^uments 
which we have adduced are by no means keys that can open 
this mystery, but they are handles for our intellect and 
imagination, which give us suflieient cause not to reject this 
doctrine as irrational Indeed, they show that the idea of the 
Tnnitj IS realH the Itijtoa compreliension of the ultimate ivorld- 
cnujnms o£ the world's eternal pre-condition in God ; of 
its creation redemition, and consummation. Without this 
doctrme Scripture i(> to us a sealed book ; without it, we our- 
selves and the world s history are a dark riddle. For these 
reisons ne ought thankfully to accept the revelation of this 
tiuth True tins is a problem, the rational solution of which 
m this life 11 ind must remain mere patchwork ; but even 
this pitchwciL IS far deeper and more valuable for our know- 
ledge as a whole (to say nothing of our practical religion) 
than all that the chetp wisdom of the street can bring forward 
in objection. And so, too, the mere struggle to solve this 
problem, even though it should be without results, is of in- 
finitely greater value than the ready rejection which we so 
often hear from the intellectual slothfulness of unbelief 

The conclusion already arrived at (Lect. II,) with regard 
to the relationship between reason and revelation, has there 
been perfectly confirmed, and that in the case of that very 
article of our belief which is most difficult for the intel- 
lect. We have seen that pliilosophy and faith, reason and 



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LECT. IV.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE TEIKITT. 281 

revelation, are by no means natural eneruies ; on the contrary, 
if rightly used, they demand, they support, they supplement 
each other. More than thia. We have seen that the darker 
the revelation the greater is the reward, both for faith and 
knowledge, which awaits those who gradually penetrate into 
it. Just because the doctrine of the Trinity is the most 
obscure and enigmatic revelation of God, therefore to him who 
penetrates into it with earnest searchings the profoundest 
depths of knowledge will be opened, and what is apparently 
self- contradictory will appear more and more in grand harmony 
and intrinsic necessity. At first it appears to be quite con- 
trary to reason, aftenvards reason is more and more in favour 
of it, and iinally it cannot give it up, it becomes indispensable 
for her entire knowledge of God and the world. 

We have seen that just the contrary is the case with the 
false non-biblical conceptions of God. At first they please 
our reason, and look as if they could give a simple solution of 
all enigmas. But the more deeply i-eason goes to work with 
them, the less satisfactory do they become ; the more do 
enigmas, obscurities, aye, contradictions appear, till at length 
it is evident that the whole fabric rests on unproven and 
untenable assumptions, and that those conceptions really give 
none of those explanations which they at first promised. 

But if by reason of this profound agreement between the 
testimony of Holy Scripture and the demands and discoveries 
of science, any one should adopt the Chri.?tian conceptiion of 
God, let him not foi^et that in and with it he has essentially 
accepted the ciitire Christian faitlL The Apostles' Creed shows 
that the Christian doctrines of creation, redemption, and sancti- 
fication. Christian faith and Christian morals, all centre in our 
belief in the triime God, 

Does the choice stiU embaiTass you ? Tlien allow me, after 
the intellectual exertions which I could not dispense with, to put 
a question to your conscience. Supposing that eternity should 
show us that we were mistaken in our scriptural and Christian 
view of God, w?i,ai liarm vjould it have done to v.s? In this 
life, none at alL For our faith in the holy, personal and Jiving 
God has proved to us a constant source of moral strength, and 
an enduring impulse to all tliat is good, Wliich of us would 
deny that, as often as we rose from our knees, or had been 



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282 THE THEOLOGY OF SCEIPTUEE. [LECT. IV. 

Otherwise absorbed in this divine faith, we felt more capable 
and willing to do all that was good, niore disinclined to all 
evil — more strong, more pure, and more divine ? Nor could 
we hardly suffer harm in another life. For if we found no 
living, personal God there, our own personal existence would 
be at an end, and wo could not even become conscious of our 
deception. But supposing, on the other hand, that we nourish 
our doubts, adopt a non-biblical conception of God, and then 
in another world find all that realized which here we had 
denied, ivlmt would have lecn our gain even in this life were 
our doubts able to inspire us with strength to do or to 
suffer ? Did they not rather, in the depths of our soul, make 
us timid and undecided ? Did they not exercise a paralyz- 
ing influence on our spiritual and moral life ? For this life 
we should have gained nothing ; but for the other life, when 
we have to meet tho disregaided and dishonoured God, the 
Eternal King who is a consuming fire how then ? 

" Give me great thou"t ts cr e i Herder on his deatb-bed. 
Yes ; in death we all need great tl oughts. This at least you 
will not deny. The gi atest m nd princes in the realm of 
thought, grasp after then n tl e r djing hour, and chng to 
them as a support amid t the g eit shipwreck in which the 
entire visible world is smkmg before their eyes. But tlie 
greatest of all thoughts is God; the eternal, personal, holy 
God who is love. And in such moments He is the only great 
and ondiiring thought. All others vanish and dissolve before 
Him Woe be to him who at that crisis lacks the eternal 
support of this thought ; who only grasps it in earnest when 
he himself is being grasped by it ! 

See this exempUfied in the case of a sceptic of the first 
rank during the last century, who was equalled by few in his 
persistent and life-long opposition to Christianity, by none in 
the endless floods of biting satire with which he deluged all 
scriptural belief ; who gi-adually sank from Deism to Atheism, 
till at length he worehipped "the will of his sacred majesty, 
Cliance : " I mean Voltaire. " All things considered," he 
writes to a lady who was in fear of death, " I am of opinion 
that one ought never to think of death. This thought is of 
no use whatever, i,ave to embitter life. Death is a mere 
nothing. Those people who solemnly proclaim it are enemies 



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I.ECT. IV.] THE DOCTEIKE OF THE mXITT. 283 

of the human race ; one must endeavour always to teep them 
off. Death is as like to sleep as one drop of water to another. 
It is merely the idea that we shall not wake up again which 
gives U3 pain." But when death, this despicable nothing, 
approached the man who thought that by his writings he had 
steeled himself, and half Europe besides, against the fear of 
another world, how did he then show himself! A reliable 
informant, Voltaire's own physician, writes to a friend aa 
follows : " When I compare the death of a righteous man, 
which is like the close of a beautiful day, with that of Voltaire, 
I see the difference hetween bright, serene weather and a black 
thunderstorm. It was my lot that this man should die under 
my hands. Often did I tell him the truth, but, unhappily 
for him, I was the only person who did so. ' Yes, my friend,' 
he would often say to me, ' you are the only one who has 
given me good advice. Had I but followed it, I should not 
be in the horrible condition in which I now am. I havft 
swallowed nothing hut smohe ; I have intoxicated myself with 
the incense that turned my head. Tou can do nothing nmre 
for me. Send me a mad-doctor ! Have compassion on me, 
I am mad ! I cannot think of it without shuddering.' . . . 
As soon as he saw that all the means which he had employed 
to increase his strength had just the opposite effect, death was 
constantly before his eyes. From this moment madness took 
possession of his soul. Think of the ravings of Orestes. He 
expired under the torments of the furies." ^ 

Tktis dies an apostle of unMief ! Worshipped by half the 
world, yet helpless and despairing ; stupefied by the incense 
clouds of flattery, yet raving mad ; beforehand mocking at 
death, now so convulsively clinging to life that he actually 
offers great sums of money (100 francs) for every minute of 
its prolongation ; beforehand luxuriating in the sensation of 
having gained all his wishes, and triumphing over everything, 
DOW exclaiming in horror, " Nothing more can help me !" 

Compare with such an one a witness for God and for 
Christ, e.g. a St. Paid, as he sees death approaching. See him 
then ; not enveloped in clouds of incense, nor overwhelmed 
with marks of honour, but bearing in his body the scars of 
many wounds inflicted on him by the hatred of the world, 
' Bungener, Voltaire et son tempi. 



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284 



THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE. [lecT. IV. 

the marks which he has received in the service of the Lord 
Jesus; in chains and degradation, under sentence of death, 
yet free and strong, quiet and joyful ; not dinging to this 
poor life, but "forgetting the things that are behind, and 
pressing forward ; " not in a condition of hoi-rible agony, but 
desiring to depart and to he with Christ; looking backward 
in sweet peace on the past, and forward with blessed hope to 
the future. Hear his words in the Second Epistle to Timothy, 
his last legacy to the Church; "I am ready to be oefered up,' 
and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a 
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness ; " 
not begging for help, but offering help to the world ; witness- 
ing for Christ tiU his Ust breath, and sealing his testimony 
with his blood ; — thus it is that an apostle of faith dies ! 

" Choose you, therefore, this day whom ye wiU serve • . . , 
but as for me, and my house, we will serve the Lokd." 



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LECTURE V. 
THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIEACLEa 

ISCAECELY require a preliminary apology for still de- 
voting a special discuasion to the modern negation of 
miracles, after the examination of the objectiona.to the biblical 
conception of God. True, when we have once proved the per- 
sonality and freedom of God, and the necessity of His continued 
rule and operation in the world, we have also proved that 
miracles are possible. To this extent our present inquiry 
rests entirely on the previous one. But since viirmUs are tJie 
greatest stumbling-Uock to tlie spirit of our age} the question of 
their possibility requires a special consideration. One of the 
first among its articles of faith is this : There is no such thin" 
as a miracle, and never has been, since the supernatural is 
impossible. This unproved assei-tion, which is boldly put 
forward as a self-evident axiom, is the basis of the rationalistic 
dismemberment of the gospel history, and of those notorious 
attempts of Strauss and Eenan to do away with the central 
miracle of history — the life of Jesus Christ — by reducing it to 
legend and poetry,— attempts which have made the question 
one of intense interest, especially among the laity. Upon the 
same axiom are based the efforts of Baur, to prove that 
Christianity is only the sum of the previously existing, scat- 
tered germs of culture, and that it is merely a link in the 
universal development of the world. The same presupposition, 
moreover, is the basis of the most important modern philoso- 
phical systems, as well as a maxim of most naturalists at tlie 
present day. 

However much in other respects our opponents may differ, 
they an agree in the denial of miracles, and unitedly storm 

' Tlie chief offence which the old system of religion necessarily gives to the 
spirit of our sge, is its superstitious belief iu mitaeles— Stbauss, Ltben Jeau, 
JS6i, p. xviii. 



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286 THE SrODEEN NEGATION OF MIEACLES. [lECT. V. 

this bulwark of the Christian faith ; and in its defence we 
have to combat theni'all at once. But wiience this unanimity ? 
Because with the truth of miracles theetiiire citadel of Christianity 
stands or falls. For its beginning is a miracle, its Author is 
a miracle, its progress depends upon muacles, and they will 
hereafter be its consummation. If the principle of miracles 
be set aside, then all the heights of Christianity will be 
levelled with one stroke, and naught will remain but a heap 
of ruins. If we banish the supernatural from the Bible, there 
is nothing left us but the covers ! 

A glance at the conseqiiences of the negation of miracles wiU 
at once reveal to us the momentous significance of the question. 
Tka negation of miracles leads to the annihilation not merely 
of the Christian faith, hut of all religion. As a rule, anti- 
miraculists will not admit this. They imagine that miracles, 
and the doctrines resting upon them, merely belong to the out- 
works of Christianity, and that even if these fall, the essential, 
i.e. the moral, truths of Christianity wiU still remain. I have 
already sought to show how perverted this conception of 
Christianity is. Christianity, in its real essence, is not a definite 
quantity of moral truths or teachings, but a series of facts : it 
is Christ Himself, His person and work, the religion of the 
incarnation of God in Christ,and the redemption of the world 
therefrom resulting. In other words, Christianity is essen- 
tially miraculous : its Founder, in His personality as the God- 
man, is the miracle of all miracles, the miraculous goal towards 
which all foregoing miracles were tending, and of which all 
that follow are only an echo. Our Saviour's earthly life and 
work, from His sinless birth to His resiurection and ascension — 
all the chief facts of redemption— are nothing but miracles, and 
His entire teaching, as well as the law and the prophecies of 
the Old Testament, must be talien as the declaration of divine 
truths — as a supernatural revelation (John vii. 1 6 ; 2 Pet. i 
21), or in other words, as a miracle. 

The Christian religion, however, does not show its miracu- 
lous character only in the facts and doctrines which constitute 
its beginnings, but it is to a certain extent a continuous and 
ever-present miracle in the sapernatural effects which it pro- 
duces on nations as well as on individuals, in its constant 
victories over the kingdoms of this world, and its experience 



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LECT. v.] THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES. 287 

in the heart of the believer. Whoever, therefore, seeks to 
exclude from Christianity all that is miraculous and super- 
natural, denies the entire Christian faith ; he not merely plucks 
from the tree a few loose leaves, but fells the entire trunk, and 
cuts away all the roots. And if after this he still desires to 
retain the system of Christian morality, he is just as unreason- 
able as one who should first fell a tree, and then hope" to 
continue in the enjoyment of its fruit. 

But the denial of miracJes leads to the annihilation, not only 
of Christianity, but also of all religions whatever. Por every 
religion is based upon the supposition that certain superhuman 
powers extend their influence into the sphere ' of our life. He 
■who denies this immediate action of higher powers in the 
world, le. who does not believe in miracles, need no longer 
care for those powers. To him every religion, every divine 
service in which man with offerings and prayers, or by other 
means, approaches his deities and seeks their favour, mnsfc 
appear folly, since they can exert no special influence either 
for or against their suppliant That this is the case with 
those who entertain pantheistic conceptions of God, as having 
no personal existence, is plainly evident. But even if, with 
the Deists, we grant Him pei'sonal existence, yet entirely 
separate Him from the world, and abandon the latter to its 
own laws, the same result follows. We need not care much 
for God, for neither does He care specially for us ; nor have we 
much need of divine service and prayer, for God cannot really 
interfere with our life. He has no freedom of action in oppo- 
sition to the comrse of nature, no true vitality, no continuous 
activity : He is only a sleeping, inactive, listless Something 
above the world, but without communication with it, like the 
dot over the i. Is such a Being a God worthy of worship, or 
indeed a God at aU ? 

You see here the truth of the proposition uttered long since 
by Nitzsch, that the denial of miracles involves the denial of • 
the free, living, personal God. Those who, like the Eationalists, . 
deny the former and seek to maintain the latter, are guilty of 
illogical reasoning. 

' An enemy of religion, at the Peace Congress in Betne, Ang. 1865, said very 
traly, " All religions, however diverse their creeds may be, have tie miraculotu 
element in common with each other." 



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288 THE MODERN KECATIOS OF MIUACLE3. [leCT. V. 

The denial of the personality and living activity of God 
subverts not only all religion, but also the Ttioral personality 
of man ; for both these, as we have seen, stand or fall together. 
By completely severing this world from a higher one, the 
denial of miracles confines ns entirely to our present temporal 
existence, and leaves us without any safeguard against the 
■worst Materialism. Only consider what an effect the extermi- 
nation of miracles would have on our personal life \ With 
regard to this, a recent advocate of miracles ' strikingly says : 
" Didst thou believe that thou couldst trace the guiding hand 
of thy God at many a turning-point of thy history — fancies, 
pure junctures of nature, which neither know of thee nor 
inquire after thee ? Thou beseechest God for the recovery of 
a child at the point of death — unnecessary trouble ! from a 
blind, deaf process of nature thy trembling heart must await 
its destiny ! Thou feelest at the cofBn of a father, or a hus- 
band, that the bands of love cannot be sundered for ever — 
dreams ! there is no resurrection. Thou sighest after divine 
help for the conquest of evil— in vain ! the new birth itself 
would be an unnatm-al interruption of thy naturally sinful 
development. Sayest thou, that thou hast experienced thi8 
very miracle ? They answer. Self-deception ! Proud man, 
who hast dreamed of becoming perfect as thv Father in heaven 
is perfect, of a glory _which was de&tined for thee before the 
world was, why wilt thou aspire to be something better than 
the entire universe ? why wilt thou become h ly and happy ? 
' Let us eat and drint, for to-monow we die Such is the 
logical consequence of the denial of mirtcles The same grave 
in which modern heathenism buries the miraculous, swallows 
up everything which gives to human existence an ideal 
character, a true value : the soul made m tlie divine image, 
faith and prayer, the holy person of the Eedeemer, the entire 
system of Christian truth, the future world, the living God !" 
But, perchance, the world might be found too small, aa well 
as the arm of the grave-diggers too weak, to bury all these 
together. 

When we thus see how great the victory would be if our 
adversaries were able to banish miracles, and why they concen- 
trate their attacks upon this point, we cannot wonder that 
' BeysclilLig, Vdxr dit Bedeulang dea Waadcre im ClaietenlJuiin, 



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LECT. v.] THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIEiCLES. 289 

here the believing Christian should be determined nob to yield 
an inch. To him there is nothing so firmly established as the 
miraculous ; because in the first place faith itself is a miracle 
What Hamann saj a is tiue Miraclei cuinot even be belie\ ed 
without a mira le And so to one who has experienced m 
his own heirt thiough the p v^ev of Chn^^t and His Spmt the 
nuncle ff rei^ iieiation this niiaculous power is the most 
ceitiin ot all tliiugb Heie then for moie than two hundred 
j(,\ri the contest has been hottest agiin'it this foundation the 
unueisal assault has been directed and from it \11 defence 
piiceed Theiefoie this question desenes in es|e(.iaUy care 
fill consideration. 

Such of you, my respected hearers, as still adhere to the 
biblical faith have now and then been somewhat perplexed at 
hearing everywhere, in the street and in the daily papers, 
attacks upon the miracles related in Holy Scripture. Against 
you stood the close phalanx of your adversaries : on the one 
side, the authority of the Scriptures, and a certain premonition 
that with the surrender of this aiticle of our faith all woidd be 
lost ; and on the other, so many distinguished scientific 
names ! If, then, the judgment of many a one began to 
tremble, and Still trembles in the balance, I would seek accord- 
ing to my ability to help him to attain a firm conviction, and 
will first afford him the consolation that, though the adver- 
saries are many, there are not a few scientific defenders of the 
miraculous. If many rationalists, philosophers, critics, and natu- 
ralists are on the other side, there are on ours — to say nothing 
of the Prophets and Apostles — great philosophers and theoso- 
phists, from Jacob Eohme and Leibnitz down to SeheUing in 
h^s later period ; great natm'alists, from Copernicus, Newton, 
and Kepler, to von HaUer, Schubert, Cuvier, Marrel de Serres, 
Eougemont, Hugh Miller, Eudolphus, and Andrew Wagner, 
etc. ; and besides these, the great majority of the representatives 
of our present scientific German Theology, among whom the 
contest is considered as essentially decided in favour of the 
faith, not only on dogmatical, but also on esegetieal, historical, 
and speculative grounds. 

We divide the q^uestions which meet us here as follows : 
(i) After an exposition of the true nature of miracles, we shall 
consider the origin of their negation, and the j 



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290 THE MODERS NEGATION OF MIEACLES. [LECT. T. 

Oil which this negation is founded, so thut we ipay be able to 
oppose to it a closer exatnination and proof of the possibility 
of the miraculous. Thence we proceed (2) to the positive 
counter-evidence for the necessity of miracles. To this end we 
must exhibit their internal aim, their indispensableness in the 
plan of redemption and the education of man, their historical 
manifestation and laws, the possibility of discerning their 
genuineness, and their foundation on fact. (3) In conclusion, 
we must briefly discuss the question of the cotitinuance of 
miracles in our own times, in order to meet those objectors 
who ask why miracles are no longer performed. 



I. THE NATOEE and POSSIBILITY OF MreACLES. 

(a) Nature of Miracles. — In the use of the word miracle, as 
in that of revelation, we must discriminate between a wider 
and a narrower sense. In the wider sense, we often use ifc of 
all that is incomprehensible and extraordinary in nature and 
history, of which the origin is still concealed from us, or the 
existence of which excites our astonishment. So it occurs in the 
Holy Scriptures, where mention is made of God's iniraeles (or 
wonders) upon the sea, in the creation and guidance of man, 
and where man himself is called a wonder (Ps. cxxxix. 14). 
Bnt in the narrower sense, miracles are (with the exception of 
the demoniacal miracles ^ occasionally mentioned in Scripture) 
unique and extraordinaiy manifestations of divine power, which 
influence nature in a manner incomprehensible to our empirical 

' On this dark qaestiOD, mostly disregarded by the apologists of the day, we 
will only remark, that the opinion held by many, that these are only to be ooft- 
aidered as lying, or delnsiyelj imitated, bnt not as real miraelea, is scarcely eon- 
formnhle to the sense of the passages, 2 Thess. ii. 9, Matt. xxir. 24, Bev. ziu. 
13. To be sore, St. Paul speska of them as " lying wonders ; " bat If this were to 
be nnderstood only in the sense of jugglery, coiUdtJiey in other passages properly 
be called " ffT-eid signs and wonders " ! They are lying, because they serve a lie, 
they proceed from a lie, and a lie is their goal, since their object is to oMitemte 
the impression of the witnesses for the truth (Ei. vii. 12-23, Tiii. 7 ; 2 Tim. iiL 
8) ;— "because they appear t« attest the so-called gods as true gods; because the 
powers which their originators use are only stolen and abused ; because they are 
the means of promoting error, falsehood, and destruction ; because they pretend 
to be something else than they are, and to work good, while they farther and 
promote evil" (Eurtz). It cannot be denied that heathenism, besides much 
liand and superstition, has also exhibited facts which can only be explained h 



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LEOT. V.J TUE NATDRE AND I'OSSIBILITY Off MIRACLES. 291 

knowledge, but always in accordance with some moral or 
spiritual end. Or, more exactly, they are creative acts of God, 
ie supernatural exertions of power upon certain points of 
Jsaturea domain through ir^hich by \irtue of His own might 
already woiling m the ccuise of nature <jod, for the further- 
ance of His kingdom brings toith some new thing which 
natural substances or causal ties could not have produced by 
themsehes but which — and this must not le overlooked,— as 
soon as they lid%e taken place lan^e themselves in the uatuial 
coulee of things without any distuibance arising on their 
account 

The essential potjiib %n the conceptu n. of miracles, strictly so 
called are these 

1 They are tffctts of Gvdb pm r in tlie domain of Katvre. 
Miracles m eveiy ciie aie only performed through divioe 
nii„lit Who alone doeth giett wonders (l*s. cxxxvi, 14). 
M in only perfomis them thrt i^h God and m unison with Him, 
; t he IS pernutttcd h> dnme lutliont) m the name of God 
(cf the miracles of M ses) oi ot Chiist (Acts iii. 6, iv. 10), 
to summon Gods po^^ei which pen ides the creation, to a 
concentrated and intensified action at some definite point, and 
thus to bring foith extraordinaiy effecta foi definite holy ends. 
Chr st on account o± His unique oneness with the Father, 
po lessed this divme power in an exti lordmary degree, not 
merely trinsiently like the piophets and apostles, hut con- 
tmudly Hence althfugh on the one hind. He can "do 
nothing of Himself but only the woiks which the Father 
hath gn en Him (John \ 1<5 20 3b 3^ 2o, xi. 41), yet, on 

the result of demonweal mfluetices Hence the seienty of the Mosaic enitct- 
menta against all heathen ma^ic whi h nnnot itell he explained ou the 
supposition that the whole WJ3 only an illusion Demoniacal miracles are 
md e I servile imitations ot the dmne working and tl ence they receive their 
sMluotive ftppeatitnie and influence But their full power to captivate the .judg- 
mcnt hes in the fact thit they are realtj super uUural although their 'working 
Tinot above tJie jmwer qf tie crealare Bnt at the same time we maintain that 
even these miracles, and especially those still impending as the culminating 
point of Satanic working in the laat decisive straggle between light and darkness 
(according to the previous passages), are, like all the powers ot datkness, under 
God's direction and control. They are regulated and restricted by the divine 
government of the world, they appertain to the revelation of divine wrath, are 
not immediately decreed, bnt permitted and judicially inflicted in punishment 
lor human frivolity and unbeliel, 2Thess. ii 10-12 ; Matt. xxiv. 2*. Cj, helow, 
remarks on the discern ibility of miracles. 



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292 THE MODEEN NEGATION OF MIEACLES. [LECT. T. 

the other, He reveals tlierein not only God's glorj'^, but at the 
same time His own (John ii. 11 comp. with xi. 40), hecause 
His oneness with the Father extends to His power also (John 
V. 21, X. 28, 29). Not as if during His earthly course He 
were to be considered as " walliing Omnipotence ; " on the con- 
trary, He was to unfold and work out the divine life dwelling 
within Him in growing communion with the Father, and ther e- 
fore He regarded His miraculous acts as something done in 
virtue of a command received from the Father (John xi. 41, 
. 42). But through the personal union of the world-creating 
Word with His human nature, through the fulness of the God- 
head dwelling in Him bodily (Col. ii. 9), as well as through His 
perfect sinlessness. His dynamic relation to nature was entirely 
different to that of other men, so that He possessed an indwell- 
ing causality of worlcing miracles, which needed only to be 
evoked from above. I"or this reason also He manifested His 
own glory in His miracles (comp. John ix. 33, x, 37). This is 
our stand-point in opposition not only to those who consider 
Him as pure Omnipotence, hut also to those who wo^ild place 
Him on the same footing with other human workers of 
miracles. As operations of divine power, miracles are — 

2. Supernatural phenom&ita, the effective causes of which 
cannot he found in the usual course of nature, nor in the 
ypicit of man, but only in the immediate interposition of higher 
divine powers. Here, therefore, cell ancdogical concqilion ceases ; 
we cannot connect the miracle with our natural experience, 
but we can only say, " This is the finger of God " (Ex. yiii. 
1 9). So far the conception of miracles belongs to the cri- 
tique of our knowledge.^ We caE that a miracle for which 
we can find no analogy whatever in that which has previ 
ously existed, i.e. in the established system of our empirical 
knowledge. " For the miracle is — 

' Hence it hits been, tnily aoid, "Thew -d tnir 1 ti I d g t n 

and a sign of tlie eriticolly active sinrit Ih-naa tltwhtn If 

pens by tliat wliicli lias nlrendy happen 1 — Mb g S Ij -pi I il 
S. 197 ff. 

" By this I mean the totality of knowl If, atta nabl by la as eatn v I 

do -not refer merely to a lower degree of 1. 11 rd g t h 1 nj 

things might seem to be miracles which Ise mitnwddji to 

be natural events, for this would renile tl n t f inKaA.le3 m ly lat e 
and subjective. 



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LECT. v.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 293 

3. Always a beginning of something: new (Ex. xxxiv. 10; 
Num. xvi. 30 ; laa, Ixv. 17 ; Jer, xxxi. 32), a creative act; 
partly an absolute calliDg into existence of new substances 
(as at the creation), partly a supernatural transformation, 
intensification, or increase of an ab-eady existing material. 
Miracles in the naiTower sense belong, with the exception of 
the miracle of creation, 

4. To the preservation and gommmmt of the world. They 
have become necessary because cormption has entered the 
world ; they not only attest God's creative, but especially His 
redeeming foioer. 

6. Tor this reason, finally, the object of miracles is one of 
moi-al holiness in mercy and judgment- — a redemptive olgect. 
They tend to the furtherance of the divine kingdom, to the 
salvation and consummation of the world. In the present 
material creation, they are isolated •nianifestations of a higher 
order of things, effected by a special power from above. 

The different expressions — "wonders, signs, mighty deeds" 
(or " powera")— which are used in the Old and New Testaments 
already indicate this. Tlie miracle or wonder (repa^, davfui), 
in the first place, is meant to astonish ; it is intended, as some- 
thing striking and extraordinary, to work upon the moral 
consciousness, and to draw attention to itself. Further, it is 
intended to make us reflect ; we are to perceive in it some- 
thing of what God is doing, and is about to do. Thus it be- 
comes a " sign " ((rrii^ehv) to direct us iu the knowledge of the 
ways of God, and a pledge of His truth and faithfulness — an 
earnest of the future consummation of His kingdom. Through 
such reflections we finally arrive at the recognition of the 
higher supernatural " powers " (Sura/tet?), and of the " mighty 
deeds " of God, which are revealed in miracles ; or if men work 
them, we recognise their divine mission Por mincles must 
everywhere reveal something of the ommpctent just and holy 
God, but especially of the merciful God and of His w ork of 
redemption upon earth. Hence, althoigh the mnacle cannot 
he comprehended, because it is God's most especial act ^et it 
sliould be apprehended in its divine intention as a sign for 
our faith. 

The " spiritual miraeles," i.e. the mi htj i^orkm,, fGodand 
of His Spirit in the depths of the human soul, occupy, as it 



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294 THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES. [lect. V. 

were, a middle position between miracles in the -wider and those 
in the narrower sense. Here, too, God places Himself in im- 
mediate relation to a human creature, and brings forth in him 
effects which never could have been produced through natural 
forces or influences ; effects such as spiritual enlightenment, 
conversion, regeneration, consolation, peace, etc. These may 
rightly be called miracles, for faith is always a kind of miracle ; 
and these spiritual miracles are the necessary pre-condition of 
a genuine development of the Christian life — a pre-condition 
which is demanded by the very idea of religion. But they 
are not miracles in the strict sense, i.e. effects of God's work- 
in' upon definite points of Nahiii a domain. As di'^tmct fiom 
the latter, we must finally mention the special mua la of 
tnsimatwn By thi3 we understand those pecubw workings 
of God upon individual men through ■which He imperts to 
them, in an especial excitement of their spintual and mentil 
life new religious truths, allows them to hue a con 
Crete and immediite MMon of futuie d6\ Llopments in the 
\\.\\\ of the world and of the dnme kingdom m order that 
under the influence of the Sprat they miy testify of this 
before others These miriclts of inspiration and prophecy as 
e cb aordinary spiritual processes conespond stJl more directly 
than the kst nimed class to the conception of miraLlc ■ind 
will theiefoie be considered by manj a separate kind in 
which God paitly uorl s something new (manifestationi \ aitly 
says something new {inspiration ; comp. Isa. xlu. 9, xlviii. 6, 
1 Cor. ii. 9, 10). We find both kinds, the external miraculous 
acts, and tlie internal miracles of inspiration, combined in the 
chief instruments of revelation, such as Moses, some of the 
Prophets, the Apostles, and to the highest degree in Christ. 

The modem aversion to miracles, therefore, also extends to 
both kinds. We endeavoured to refute the objections against 
the miracles of inspiraiion in the chapter on Eevelation ; we 
now have to do with the attacks upon external miracles of 
manifestation, as- miracles in the stricter sense. Whence their 
negation ? 

(h) Origin of the legation of Miracles. — The negation of 
miracles is almost as old as miracles themselves, Moses, the 
first human worker of miracles mentioned in Scripture, is 
opposed by Pharaoh, the first denier of miracles, who, with hia 



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LECT. V,] TilE KATUIiE AXD POSSIBILITY OF MIKACLES. 295 

imvird lepu^niiice to the leco^nitKH of immediate divine 
woikm^ stands befoie us as a prophecy and a warning. 
The genention too belore the flood -n \b one which denied 
mimcles i^hich while it lesisted the inner striving of God's 
Spirit (Gen m o) was diiven to consider God's mighty work- 
ing m external nature as impossible. This points us to the 
true source of the negation of miracles, viz. that as a rale 
it rests not so much on external as on internal and moral 
grounds, from which, indeed, all estrangement from our faith 
usually proceeds. How haixi it was even in the time of 
Christ for the learned Israelites to believe in His most mani- 
fest mii'acles, is plainly shown in the history of the man who 
was born blind (John ix.). Nevertheless the opposition at 
that time, as well as during the first centuries of Chris- 
tianity, was not directed against the- possibility of effects 
produced by supernatural causes. Jews and Gentiles both 
believed in this. Even the enemies of Christ did not deny 
His muscles (Matt, xxvii. 42 ; John xi. 47, 48 ; Acts iv. 16). 
It was rather the moral value and the divine origin of these 
mighty works which was doubted ; the unbelieving Jews 
ascribing them to demoniacal powers (" He casteth out devils 
thmugh Beelzebub, the chief of the devils "), and the heathen 
afterwards placing Christ in the same category as their pagan 
sorcerers and wonder-workers. 

For the last two hundred years, however, men have begun 
absolutely to deny the possibility of miracles, and to reject 
every supernatural manifestation, from whatever quarter it may 
come, as being unliistorical, because impossible. This was first 
done by the English Deists. They gradually advanced from 
the negation of the Old Testament miracles to the denial of 
those in the New, and from the quest for historical impossi- 
bilities and internal contradictions in their narration to an 
utterly frivolous explanation of them. Chubb, e.g., observes 
that if these miracles are to be considered as historical, tliey 
must have been base impositions, Eenan has lately main- 
tained substantially the same opinion in respect of the resur- 
rection of Lazarus ; but it had long since been pushed to the 
extreme by A'^oltaire, who pronounced the heroes ot the Bible 
to be knaves and fools, and the gospel histoiy in general a lie 
and a deception. Hume, in his Essai/ on Miracles, undertook 



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2J6 THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIEACLES. [LECT. T. 

a systematic refutation of their possibility, endeavouring to 
sliow tliat miracles are violations of the laws of nature, and that 
the doubtful testimony of a few for their authenticity cannot 
avail against the universal experience of the inviolability of 
these laws. We sliall recur to this again. Before Hume, 
Spinoza had sought to get rid of miracles by appealing to 
the laws of nature. " The laws of nature," said he, " are the 
only realization of the divine will; if anything in nature 
could happen to c ntradict tl em C d ^\ould contradict 
Him sell 

Notwithstindmg the endeavours of tl e philosophy of Leib- 
nitz and Wolft to defend the pos<i bility of miriLles Ration- 
alisin continued to oifose them on tie same gi iinds. In 
this particular our modem philosophy m general tollows the 
lead of \vii za and Hume out it is now assisted in its 
attack on n lacles especially hy JSeio T stament C-iticvmb 
and the Nat al S len es Each in its own way Beets to 
carry out the piinciple of the nat iial exphtnatnn of all 
phenomena in nature and history All of them e pecnlly the 
natural sciences have aheady cleircl np so nianj hitherto 
dark proccs'ies and ha\ e male such piL^ie s in tl e 1 nowled^e 
of the unuersal laws of nat ire that we must not 1 e i rprised 
to find them too hastilj trym" to establi h the hounlaries of 
the possible and the imjo sil le and utterh denying the in- 
comprehensible ■which must elide our nat iral understanding. 
In these endeavours opponents of the miraculous are supported 
by the universal tendency of our age, noi to endure any hind 
of monopoly. This age is a universal leveller; it seeks every- 
where to obliterate differences as much as possible, aTid has 
even proceeded, as we know, to the insane attempt to bridge 
over the gulf between man and beast. It endeavours to con- 
fine everything to universal fixed laws, and brooks no excep- 
tions. But miracles are a kind of monopoly which the 
supernatural world has reserved for itself and its instruments. 
It is by virtue of an exception to the general rule that Ohris- 
tianity and Judaism occupy so prominent a position in history. 
He who attempts to degi-ade them from this peculiar position 
to the ordinary and natural course of things, and to deprive 
them of the monopoly of their divine origin, is doubtless con- 
eciously or unconsciously led by this universal impulse of our 



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LKCT. v.] THE KATURE AJJD POSSIBILITY OF JIIEACLES. 297 

age to reduce everything to the same level. This impulse 
easily leads to the denial of the difference of dispensations in 
the divine methods of revelation and in the education of 
mankind, and finally, to the statement that what does not 
happen in these days never can have happened. 

Many are aveise to the miraculous through fmr of siipersii- 
tioii. They think that if they accept the miracles of Scripture, 
they cannot withhold their assent to a multitude of apociyphal 
miracles, nor, indeed, to the pretensions of aU sorts of necro- 
mancers and -wizards. In this, however, they overlook the 
sharp discrimination of Scripture between belief and supersti- 
tion, between miraculous power and witchcraft Whereas the 
heathen sorcerer pretends to make the supernatural powers sub- 
sei'vicnt to his person, the prophet or apostle, if he performs a 
miracle, accounts himself only the iiistrument of God. Thus 
Peter says to the Jews (Acts iii), after the healing of a lame 
man, " "Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own 
power or holiness we had made this man to . walk ? By the 
name of Jesus Christ of Kazai-eth doth this man stand before 
yon whole" (Acts iv. 10}. Whereas the sorcerer or magician 
seeks his own honour {e.g. Acts viii. 9) by means of his art, 
the workers of miracles in Holy Scripture ascribe all the glory 
to God, because it is not they who perform the miracles by 
virtue of any natural or artificial power of their own, nor by 
any secret charm or spell containing such power, but it is 
God alone who works. The Son Himself seeks, through His 
works, not His own honour, but that of the Father (John 
viii. 50, 54). Hence these God-sent workers cannot use the 
divine power arbitrarily, but only by virtue of the highest 
personal and spiritual communion with God, accoi-ding to the 
teachings and purposes of His will. Only notice the noiseless 
unobtrusiveness of miracles in Holy Scripture, the chastity 
with which Christ shai-ply repels the vain curiosity and vulgar- 
thirst of His age for wonders, and His frequent prohibition of 
their publication (Matt, xvi 1-4, xii. 38-39 ; Mark viii, 
11-13; Matt. ix. 30, xii 16, xvi. 20; Mai-k i 44, iii 12, 
eta). Compai'e with these features the sensational miracles 
in the Eomiah and Oriental churches, — images of saints who 
sweat blood, who nod the head, who roll the eyes, — or the 
Whitsuntide miracles among the Greeks and Armenians at 



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298 THE MODERN NEGATION OP MIRACLES. [LECT. V, 

Jerusalem, when the Holy Ghost lights up candles,- (but not 
hearts) ; and yon will confess that such feats of legerdemain 
and jugglery betray, in their external pomp and straining after 
effect, anything but a divine origin. A glance at the internal 
evidences of truth in miracles, at their moral and religious 
character, which reflects and serves not only the* power of 
God, but also His truth and holiness, and must prove pre- 
eminently their divine origin, will show that it is not a very 
difficult task for one to defend his belief in the biblical 
miracles against the charge of superstition. 

It is a remarkable fact, however, that not the believers in 
miracles, but their deniers, fall most* easily into superstition. 
How often one can observe their " half fearful, half prurient 
listening for the supposed higher powers of nature !" If there 
is a spiritual medium, a clairvoyante, or a fortune-teller, they 
are the first to consult this oracle. For unbelief and super- 
stition are most intimately connected. " When men no 
longer believe in God, they begin to believe in ghosts. In 
truth, there has scarcely ever been an age in which men have 
siiatched moro greedily after the extravagant than our own, 
which derides the supernatuiui:'" a proof that only faith, 
and not unbelief, can fully overcome superstition. 

And here we observe, that in the negative of miracles 
internal causes must eo-opei-ate with all the assumed historic 
or scientific reasons. Aa in the time of Moses, so in these 
times, there are many who have never confessed to the work- 
ings of divine power in their own hearts, and who are there- 
fore inwardly compelled to dispute the external working of 
G-od in nature and history. And this the more, inasmuch as 
the divine miracles appeal far less to our merely logical sense 
than to our moral judgment. Only he who experiences and 
admits the spiritual miracles wrought by the finger of God 
in his own experience, can readily raise his mind to the idea 
of an especial working of God's power in external nature. 
Only that man can believe in miracles (which are throughout 
designed for the moral and religious training of mankind) who 
can testify from the depths of his own experience the reality 
of such a training. 

e. The Theoretical Presupposition in the negation of tho 
' Soienkel, Was ist Wakrhtil I S. 22. 



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LECT. v.] THE NATUKE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 299 

mi ra en Ions, is partly a false naturalistic conception of God, 
partly a mecJianical conception of the world. The former of 
tliese conceptions impels Pantheism, the latter impels Deism 
and Eiitionalism, to deny the possibility of miracles. If God 
has no personal existence apart from nature, and if He is 
merely the unconscious fettered Soul of the Universe, then He 
is entirely bound by the laws of nature, and nothing remains 
but to adopt Spinoza's principle. This one-sided conception 
of the divine immanence in the world must annihilate all 
miracles. On the other hand, we may start with the supposi- 
tion that God is actually separated from the world ; that the 
wlllambnlftt tlf Iter the creation, has become 
nd p nd nt d nt t se mechanically ; nor does 

tndth I Ip dn f God, since its laws and 

ulat p f tlj d q t for it.s further development. 

F m th w t i tl t n miraculous interference of 

Clnth fnt p sihle, since only a disturb- 

f tl Id Id result. In this case the 

d d pt n f th d transcendence, and the com- 

plete emancipation of the world from God's power, makes the 
miraculous impossible. These two hypotheses are, it is true, 
opposed to each other ; for in the one God is entii-ely lost in 
nature, in the other He is absolutely separated from it. But 
they both agree iu maintaining that the world, as it now 
exists, no longer needs a special divine influence, and that it 
must continue to develope itself unassisted according to its 
indwelling laws. 

In addition to this, it is further presupposed that these 
mundane laws are absolutely/ perfect, that the present condition 
of the world is a normal one, and that therefore every interfer- 
ence, from whatever source it may come, can only occasion a 
disturbance. 

In these presuppositions there lies a threefold ftindamental 
error. First, the relation in which Ood is placed to the world is 
false and untenable. God is neither identical with the world, 
nor is He completely separated from it. We have recognised 
the former as the error of Pantheism, the latter as that of Deism. 
On the other hand, we have recognised this as the truth, that 
God works by His will in the world no less than Ho possesses 
His esseiice as distinct from it ; that He is actually, vitally 



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SCO THE MODEEN NEGA.TIOS OF MIRACLES. [LECT. V. 

present in it no less than He is personally free froni it. In 
tlie union of these two elements, the aupramiindane person- 
ality and freedom of God on the one hand, and His intra- 
mnndane working on the other, we have the possibility of 
miracles. H& wlw Mieves in God as a free, personal Will, Ms 
settled for hiTmelf the possibility of miracles. Our opponents, 
too, acknowledge that "if God be once conceived of as an 
extramundane Will, a manifestation of this Will in the world 
must also be admitted; but this manifestation, as the en- 
croachment of a transcendental principle in the course of the 
world, can only be a supernatural fact, ie. a miracle." (ZeUer.) 
The second fundamental error lies in a fake conception of the 
wm'ld, as though it were normal and perfect, and therefore had 
no further need of God's interference. But we see that, on 
the contraiy, the development of the world is in many ways 
so abnormal, so disturbed, that just on account of this abnor- 
mity, caused by the breaking in of sin, a healing and restoring 
interference on the part of God evidently becomes necessary. 
This shows us the root of the third fimdamental en-or, viz. 
the opinion that the supernatural interference of God micst 
derange and break up the established order of natura We 
hold the reverse, that it is the means of Itealing and restoring 
tlie order which has been destroyed through sin and death. 

This is the position which we take up as against all the 
adversaries of miracles, and which we now proceed to justify 
in detail 

This we do by means of a closer examination into the 
possibility/ of the miraculous, and an enumeration of the positive 
arguments in favour of it. 

Let me here begin, as I have throughout sought to do, with 
the recognition of that which is jvM in the objections of our 
opponents. The old supranaturalistic theology was decidedly 
defective in its conception and treatment of miracles, and is 
now severely punished by their universal negation. It con- 
sidered miracles singly, instead of as forming coherent parts 
of a whole. Its followers valued everj' miracle per se, as a 
means of proving Christianity and the divine mission of the 
wonder-worker, whilst it really proved nothing; because its 
own veracity rested on that which it was supposed to prove, 
namely, the divinity of Christ, or the divine mission and 



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LECT. v.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 301 

mighty gifts of other wonder-workers, or on the divine truth- 
fulness of the Seripturea. Thua the fact was overlooked, that 
single miracles were only accompaniments of the divine 
message ; that they were intended to work as a whole in the 
entire organism of Eevelation, in which each part mutually 
supports and is sustained by the others. 

In addition to this, that school of theology took pleasure in 
pointing out the antagonism of miracles to the order of nature, 
and in the most trenchant manner maintained the interference 
of God's mighty will in the world, according to His own 
pleasure, in defiance of the laws of nature, and without refer- 
ence either to the unchangeable and holy ends which exclude 
all arbitrariness, or to the internal conformity to law which 
appears in the miraculous. Such a procedure could not fail 
to provoke contradiction, and lend force to ao emphatic enun- 
ciation of the claims of nature's law. It is legitimate that in 
opposition to such a one-sided view, the modem consciousness 
of our age should again insist above all things on the internal 
t^reement of all the works and ways of God, — on the harmony 
of tlio moral and natural laws, — and should interdict all inner 
contradiction in the preservation and government of the world. 
In this we are agreed. We admit, what we have already 
previously recognised as a truth of Deism, that the created 
world, although upheld by God's mighty will, yet has a 
separate existence and a measure of independence. We find 
a hint of this in the repose of God after the creation, which 
indicates that from that time forward an independent existence 
of the world was possible. We do not, therefore, maintain 
that the law of nature is only the will of God, free to change 
at any time; but we acknowledge that He has established 
fixed laws and rules in the creation, which He employs in 
His ordinary administration of the world, and which are 
sufficient for that purpose. We even acknowledge that God 
employs these laws to such an extent, that to the perception 
of many He is entirely concealed behind events which seem 
merely natural, so that such men cease to perceive Him and 
His working in the special dispensations of providence. 

But we do tuit admit the complete iiviefpendeiice of these laws 
as sovereign powers existing separately, and as absolutely in- 
capable of modiiication, which would form an absolute barrier 



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302 THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIE-ICLES. [lect. V. 

im God i£ He willed to do anythmir extraordinary, and there- 
foie we do not leimquish the possibility of miinclcs Noi do 
we admit that tlie laws of nature aie deianged by miracles 
On the contiary, we maintain -with the modem biblical theo- 
lo^uns, who aie now defending the niuacnlous Viiih mcreasmg 
confidence, the united harmonious working of God m nature 
At the same time, we undeitake the task of sho\iing, m the 
midst of the apparent contiadiction between miMcles and the 
order of nature, the deeper haimony, m the brealang through 
of the usual course, the higher order of the ways of God, and 
the confoimity to law which manifests itself therein, exclud- 
ing all that 13 abnormal and arbitrary And theiefoie we do 
not consider miracles as detached apologetic proofs, but "we 
place them all in the great histoiical oij^anism of ledemption 
of -which Christ is the living heart" We consider them only 
as effective vehicles of one and the same redemption, as radia- 
tions from one and the same central miracle, Chnst , tx. Me no 
longer believe in Christ for the sake of miracles, but in miracles 
for the sake of Christ. Still, the inverted order has never yet 
lost, and never will lose, its significance for certain times and 
circumstances (John ix. l(i, 32, and especially xiv. 11). 

From a theistie conception of God, i-c from the knowledge 
that He is a personal, free Being, and that He is omnipotent 
and continually active in the world, the objective 'possibility 
of the miraculous necessarily follows. " The question whether 
a miracle is possible, amounts to the query, whether there is a 
living God who has created the world," ' and who preserves 
it. He who believes in a living God must logically believe 
in miracles; for God is the miracle of all miracles. As 
soon as we understand the declaration, " My Father worketh 
hitherto," and recognise that the world depends for its very 
existence upon the mighty will of God ; that the living God, 
who " rolls up the heavens" and " renews the earth," rules in the 
whole world ; when we remember that He has not withdrawn 
I'fom His work, but continually directs it ; that He ikus has 
kept c-pen an entrance for Himsdf to every point of nature's 
harmony ; then we have in this intrammidane working oj God 
a basis for the mssiUUty of the ridramlous. The objection that 
miracles are beyond the power of God, at once falls to the ground. 
' Auberlen. 



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tECT. v.] THE NATURE AKD POSSIBILITY OF MIRICLES. 303 

If God could perform miracle upon miracle at the creation of 
the world, why not after\i^ards ? There can be nothing more 
illogical than to admit, as Eationalism does, the raii-acle of 
creation, and at the same time to deny the possibility ot other 
miracles. What God has once done He must always he able 
to do, otherwise He wonid cease to be God. 

But here we are met by the objection that miracles are an 
outrage upon the degree of independent life due to the world— 



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^ Th ts t th y t t th 

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m the creation of the world by God, i.e. in its being called 
forth from non-existence into existence, the connecting chain 
is broken off at the very beginning. From the laws of the 
created world, the genesis of creation itself can never be 
deduced. The existence of the world, then, is a miracle, as 
well as the existence of God Himself. But putting this 
enth'ely aside, we meet with phenomena in the genetic pro- 
cess of nature itself at which that chain breaks off, with 
events which natural science never can explain from the laws 
and forces known to us. The original entrance of higher 
forms of life into the sphere hitherto filled up by lower ones, 
is one of the most striking phenomena of this kind. How 
did (lie first living organism originate ? Modern natural 
science has unquestionably demonstrated that life did not 
always exist on the earth. Long ago, Cuvier confidently 



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304 THE MODEEN NEGATION OF MIRACLES. [LECT. V. 

maintained this to be the case, and that we could easily 
indicate the point of time when life began ; ^ and it is con- 
firmed by IJebig, who says : " Some philosophers have affirmed 
that life has existed from eternity. Natural science, however, 
has proved that at a certain period the earth's temperature 
was such that no organic life could exist, and that, therefore, 
it must have had a beginning." ^ In addition to this, natural 
science has of late years increasingly confirmed the position, 
that it is impossible to demonstrate the natural evolution of 
organic life from inoi^anic matter, even in the smallest 
degree. What MtiUer once said still remains true, " Only a 
miraculous interruption of the natural laws can form the 
living oi^nism out of lifeless matter." ^ Here, at all events, 
we have a beginning, which we can only explain tlirough a 
creative act, i.e. through a miracle. And how did Spirit 
first enter the world ? how man, with the law of conscience 
which transcends aU the laws of nature ? With him, too, the 
chain breaks off. He appears as a new beginning, as a tlihd 
miracle, which retains its miraculous character even to this 
day. For what is every new-born man, with his peculiar 
individuality, his special talents and powers, but a never 
fully explicable miracle ? * There is not merely poetical 
imagery, but real truth, in the words of the poet Riickert : 



;r Us ricdnUons du globe, p. 24, 

' Avgshurger Allgmieiiie Zeitvvg, 1S5S, Hr. 24. 

' It is instruetivB to witness tlie dcHperate efforts of Stmuss in hU last 
work, TItB Old and tlie New Faith, 1873, p. 1C9 et soj., to s\\.<m that modem 
natural scientists have discovered tlie miKsing lint between the organic find 
unorganic kingdom. In the face of tlio express opinion of a scientific man like 
Virchow, who certainly does not favoa i sit t,l t an ty b t deelares 
"that all known facts go to disprove tie t uth f p ntaneo s generation 
during the present ei^a," he can only quo th hyp tl eaea bnilt by Huxley on 
his discovery of the " Bathybius, " and ly H'Si.k 1 on tl t n f what he 

styles "Moneren." 

' It is therefore only logical for deni rs f th n ul like Stcanss, to 
banislt it from nature, in order tborougl ly t g t 1ft nd f tl is reason, 
above nil, to seek a natural Ksplanation for the onom of man Thus Strauss 
{in Ilia ClirhtL Olaabmdekre, i. p. 206 ff. ) once gave vent to tl e d sj erats con- 
jecture, tiiat if it were possible for the tai>e-iTomL to gro v f om 1 t ri^neoaa 
matter to a considerable length in the human intest nei tl out ha dug been 
sexually generated, he did not see why man should not at son e tin e or other, 
when the earth was far lieher in generative forces tJim no 1 a e bein formed 
out of Bomeaort of terrestrial matter, however fore gn to h s p so t being. At 
Iha present day, after the impossibility of a gaifratm aqutvoca has been demon- 



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LECT. V.j THE NATUKE AND POSSICILITY OF JIIKACLES, 305 

" Mau is a miracle begotten and conceiTei, 
A miracle, he lives, is bom and naraed, 
A miracle, he grows, and sees, and leels, 
A miracle, he thinks, and what he thinks, 
A miracle, he stands, miracles environing. 
Miracles precede and follow all his stepa ; 
To them is he so gradually, nnconscioMlr 
Inured, that they appear to him quite natural. 
Anil unacoustom'd only seems miraculous to him, 
"Who Nature's wonders unastonish'd sees. " 

We thus see tlmt there are divers " rents/' ^ not, it is true, 
in the world, but in the eoanection of Natiire, supposed to be 
perfect— rents which can only he filled iip by the miraculous 
power of God, Not Nature herself, but the false conception 
of Nature from which the denial of the miraculous proceeds, 
is violated by these facts. 

And do not a multitude of analogies go to show that God 
can interfere supernaturally at any time in all natural exist- 

strated, Strauss would scarcely venture to make such assertions. Many years 
ago, Alexander v. Humboldt remarked on these tendencies of liis : " What I do 
not like in Strauss, is the scientific frivolity with which he finds no difficulty in 
accepting the generation of organic matter from nnoi^nic ; or even the foima- 
tion of man from some primeval Chaldiean slime " (Lettnrs to Varaltagen, 4t]i 
ed. p. 117). We see from this, that whoever believes in the superiority of man's 
nature, must believe in miracles also. 

lienan, too (in hia work on the Apostles), is otili^ed, in order to get rid of the 
miraculous, to abandon the stipematural origin of man. " Nothing can be mote 
ofiensive,"heEays, "nothing more senseless, than the foimation of mankind, if 
we regard it as a sadden, momentary act. It enters the region of universal 
analogies, if we regard it as the result of a slow progress going on through 
incalcHlahlfl periods." So the divine origin of man is "ollensive," but his 
derivation from the primal egg or cell of some first oi^nism,— through the 
medium, probably, of the monkey tribe, — or, to use Eenaii's euplieniism, from 
" universal analogies," is not only inoffensive, bnt the only reasonable view ! 
What an ntter perversion of ideas ! ! 

' And not only does the entrance of liigher forms of life interrupt the chain of 
natm'al cansea ; for witliin the different grades of existence themselves, we s^e 
the unh-erml lawa hrokcn hy exceptions in certain points. Tlie only exception to 
the law, tliat heat expands and cold contracts, is ivater, which is most dense and 
heavy at a temperatm'e of 4° (Cent.), hut expands and becomes lighter below 
this mark. For this reason, the heavy water of the temperature above men- 
tioned remains below, otherwise a few cold days would tiu?n all our waters into 
ice, and our countries would liave the climate of tfie frigid zones. ' ' Tlius we 
see in the caso of water how God breaks throngh an otherwise universal law of 
nature, in order to make a greater part ol the earth's surface habitable. " This 
speaks at tlie same rime against the unconscious mundane soul of the pantheist ; 
fur the lawa of such a being ivould allow of no exceptions in favour of a higJicr 



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306 THE MODEEU NEGATIO:^ OF MIKACLES. [lECT. V. 

I ce f Evh hjherfirm of lift has its peculiar latvs, which 
t a i-cend thosi, of the, lower fa} its and cannot he explained hy 
Ikem Therefore ea h m a certain sense can perform miracles 
m the life 10 grades of existence th-it is to say, it can inter- 
fere as a higher will and hnng forth remits which could not 
pioceed from the laws and forces of the 1 wei orders, and yet 
thi'i tikes J lice without disturhing thtn m their continued 
CMstence How wondeifnlly eg in iniiml can interfere in 
the ■vegetable 1 ingd na by his sudlcn i ^a^ps! Think how 
the human wiU can interfere m the lower orders of nature. 
The sum of humin acti\itj is almost solely expended in 
seeking to realize that which Nature of herself cannot produce. 
Why, then, should it not be possible for God to interfere with 
His higher Will in eai-thly nature and the human world ? If 
He has granted to human freedom an influence on the world. 
He must have reserved the same rit;ht for Himself When 
man works upon nature and transforms it, or when the mind 
controls and directs the organs of the body, the power of the 
will is manifest. The spiritual works upon the sensuous, and 
produces that which Nature alone could not produce without 
in some way disturbing the simultaneous working of hei 
forces and laws. For the mind rules the body, and through 
the power of the will moves the limbs innumerable times, in 
opposition to tlie law of gravitation. This very law of 
gravitation — the corner-stone upon which the naturalistic 
view of the world is based — is in a special sense the law of 
death, because it reigns entirely and absolutely only where 
there is death; and it is interrupted continually by every 
motion of life, from the germ bursting its shell to the flying 
bird or the working man. And yet its validity is always 
unimpaired. Why, then, should not divine power also act 
immediately upon certain points in the dcmain of creation, 
and be able to produce m it something which tl^e resources 
of Nature could never pioduce, and thit without disturbing 
the continuously operating friues and liws of the world, or 
permanently " rending them asundei * 

Moreover, we often see things m mture merely by contact 
with other natural forec^, enter into pioce'-sps and conditions 
whicli we could not at nil hi\e mlerred fiom the powers and 
laws hitherto observed in them, as when, e.g., iron, which 



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LECT. v.] THE K.VTORE AND POSSIBILITY OE MIRACLEa. 307 

before lay on the gi'ound through the force of gravitation, ig 
lifted by the magnet. Why should not earthly creatures also, 
by contact with divine power, be enabled to pass into con- 
ditions or develope forces Vhich we were unable to infer from 
their former nature fer se ? 

From this we make two deductions : First, that the inter- 
ference of the higher forces is not excluded by the operation 
of the lower, and, therefore, that the interference of God is 
not excluded by the operation of the laws of nature. The man. 
who endeavours to vvUce the laws of iiatiire a ground of proof 
against miracles, simply hcgs the question, for he always pre- 
supposes what he desires to prove. If he say that the existence 
of these laws renders a higher influence impossible, he clearly 
presupposes that these laws alone are valid always and every- 
where, and that is precisely what must first be proved. 
Second, we see that by the interference of the higher orders 
with the lower, the laws of the latter are in no way dis- 
turbed or abolished, but still continue in force. The same 
also is true of the interference of God in the course of the 
world. The laws of nature are in no way suspended thereby, 
but contuiue to retain their validity. And why ? Because 
the forces of nature, strictly speaking, do not participate at 
all in the actual miracles, and because the products of the 
miracle, with all their consequences, immediately take their 
place in the ordinary course of nature. 

I say the forces of nature do not participate at all in the 
act itself. Not they, but a higher divi!;e power performs the 
miracle. But we must here discriminate between miracles in 
the absolute seme of the word, which exclude all mediation of 
the creature, and those which are accomplished through an 
enhaucement of the forces of nature, and are thus connected 
with the legitimate activity of the latter. To the first belong, 
e.g., the conception of Christ, and the miracles of the loaves 
and fishes. Here wo have a process similar to the creation 
of the world. God by His own immediate activity places 
something in the course of nature which did not exist there 
before. What He once did for the universe, He is surely 
able to do for an individual part of it. But the forces of 
nature are not partakers in this immediate act of God. The 
miraculous act in these instances lies entirely boyond the 



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303 THE MODERS NEGATION OF MIHACLES. [LECT. V. 

laws of nature. They mevely receive its product, which 
directly subordinates itself to them. The miraculous act itself 
caa never be perceived by the senses, only its eifect. How- 
can any one in such a case apeak of a disturbance or a breach 
in the laws of nature ? And how can men say that the 
object thus introduced into the course of nature must 
necessarily produce endless chaises in the world ? A& soon 
as it enters the world, it becomes subject to the laics of nature, 
and obeys them in its further existence. Apart from its 
origin, it ceases mth its entrance into the world to be a 
miracle, and becomes part of the natural and the actual. 

The same thing occurs here as in grafting a noble scion 
upon a wild stock. It is something foreign to the nature of the 
latter, but is dependent for its future existence upon all the 
conditions of that nature. So Christ is the noble scion grafted 
upon the human stock, not by the will of man, but through a 
creative act of God (John i. 1 3). The order of creation m 
nature and history, which is indeed the di\ine order, is so far 
from being interrupted, that it is throughout respected as sacied. 
Thus the law of historical development is respected The 
Destroyer of the beipent does not appeal before the specifically 
religious as well as the general human pie-conditions are ful- 
filled, and thus the human race is ready to receive Him 
" When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His 
Son," Gal iv 4 The oidi,r of nature, too, is respected "We 
do not see a fantastic descent fiom heaven of one appaiently 
thirty jears of age, whose human form is a mere phantom , 
but from the moment \ihen the seed of the woman is roused 
to conception by a creative act of God, He is subject to 
all the natural conditions ot birth and uidividual life in 
its gradual de\elopment And, family, the mmal law as 
well as the national law of Judaism is lespected Jesus is 
" made undei the law," fulfils all righteousness, is subject to 
His parents He proves His morality m the course of Hi'i 
life undei constant temptation and tnal m obedience to His 
Father e\en unto death I ask, "Can the gloiy of God 
accommodate itself moie humbly to human nature and history 
thin it has done m the life and death of Christ ' "^ 

' Cf Dx Tabingerhistoutche Schuk in the Zettsclinfl fur FroU ^ianiiMm 
Hixl Kwche, Apr. 186t, p. 223 et seq., and Beyschhg, uii svjira. 



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LECT. v.] THE NATL'EE AND POSSIBTLITT 07 MIILVCLEa. iiOS 

What reasonable man can speak of a rent io the laws of 
nature, in a sphere where she originally hatl neither anything 
to do nor to suffer? The same is true of other absolute 
miracles or new creations. "The already existing harmony 
of nature is as little annihilated by the appearance of an ab- 
solute creative act of God in the world, aa is humanity itself 
by the entrance of a new personality."^ 

But in those miracles in which God produces supernatnrai 
effects through an intensification of the legitimate activity of 
nature (e.g. in the deluge and several of the Mosaic miracles, 
which were connected with certain natural phenomena of those 
regions), the natural order is presei-ved. The mimole is here 
connected with the existing life of nature, the slow process of 
which is but temporarily suspended while the divine power 
substitutes a concentrated and potential plastic energy. In 
these cases, as we have already hinted, God does tlie same as 
man, though in an iniinitely higher manner and sphere. By con- 
trolling and intensifying the forces of nature in art and indiistry, 
wo produce effects which the course of nature left to itself 
would never bring about. But what man can do, God can also 
do, and that without limitation. He who has created nature 
and determined its course, to whom it is perfectly clear and 
transparent in all its parts, must surely best understand how 
to play on that gigantic instrument upon which we, in spite 
of all our progress in the natm^al sciences, are still but clumsy 
performers. And even though whole countries and nations 
should be dashed to the ground by its most powerful chords, 
not one of the many strings would break so as to disorder the 
framework of His laws. Is He not the skilful Master to 
whom all His works are known from the foundation of the 
world ? He does not intermeddle with them like the novice 
who stops the harmonious working of a watch ; but with holy 
wisdom for the salvation of the world, and at the right hour. 
He exerts His supernatural power. To this day the world 
CLuietly moves on in its course, and the laws of nature exist and 
work in full force ; therefore they have not been rent asunder,, 
and still less annulled, by previous miracles. And, therefore, 
the power which performed them cannot be one which dis- 
tuiLed order, but its interference must have maintained it. 
' Sohenltel, ChrisS. Dogiaat. p. 258, 



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1510 THE JIODEEN NEGATION OF MIEACLES. [lECT. V. 

Those who find it difficult to helieve in anything which 
surpasses the ordinary course of nature, ought to determine foi 
us precisely how much is included in the natural, and show 
us the houiidary heyoiid which natural forces cannot he iiitensijied 
hi/ the supernatural. Or, if they maintain that suih an intensi- 
fication can never take place at all, let them show us why the 
natural, which originally proceeds from the supernatural, should 
not always continue to be open to its influence. If the laws 
of nature originally proceed fi-om God, is He to he the only 
one who is not Master in His own house ? Are these laws 
to be, as it were, prison walls, within which God has confined 
Himself? "Shall we — to adopt the language of a natural 
philosopher— dare to allow no freedom to the primitive source 
of all freedom, and make a strait-waistcoat for Him of His 
own laws, which we, moreover, hut imperfectly understand ? " 
The course of God in the government of the world and of 
man is, and always has been, one of freedom ; His is the free 
election of grace. He will not, and cannot, allow His hands to 
he bound by anything. Why should He not have reserved to 
Himself the power to interfere in special cases and in special 
extraordinary ways? just as in every household, in spite of 
the strictest rules which continue both before and after, special 
regulations are req^uired for special cases. - 

Whence arises the proverb, " There is no rule without an 
exception " ? Does it not come from a true feeling that the 
rules which we have discovered or made are not immutably 
and absolutely valid, but that they admit of modifications ? 
Nothing can ever limit the Infinite and Boimdiess. If He as 
the Absolute has His limitations only in Himself, and not in 
anything outside of Him, then no order of nature can stop 
Him, be it never so fixed in its working. As Matthias 
Claudius strikingly says to the learned men who are always 
appealing to the " nexus rerum," i.e. the strict connection of 
all things, " The gates of Gaza with their two posts had a 
strong connection with the stone archway and the bolts. Tet 
Samson came, and, taking them out of this beautiful ' nexus,' 
carried them to the top of the hill before Hebron,-— a violent 
proceeding which certainly no professor of natural history in 
Gaza would have considered possible." And must not surh 
an absolutely free and sometimes extraordinary divine inter- 



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I,ECT. v.] THE KATUEE AND POSSIBILITY OF MII1ACLE3. 311 

fereiice be all the more necessary in a woild where God not 
only has to do with inanimate things and mechanical laws, 
hut with free beings who can thwart His moral order every 
moment? Could we under such circiiinstancea imagine a 
government of the world, in whicli God had not the freedom 
to inteifere in details, in order to reahze His holy will in the 
history of the world, amid the action and reaction of the 
struggle with His free creatures?^ From all this we see clearly 
that no valid objection gainst miracles can result either from 
tlie contemplation of God or from that of the laws of nature ; 
and the talk about a "rent in the world " is shown to emanate 
from a great rent in the logic of those who invent such 
empty catchwords, which are unfortunately adopted by many 
without judgment or examination. 

But here a new objection meets us. If it cannot be denied 
that miracles are consistent with the power of God, yet at 
least they seem to he incompatible with His omniscience, which 
must \\&\& foreseen and suitably arranged everything, and which, 
therefore, renders an extraordinaiy interference in the course 
of the world superfluous. Such after-help, in special cases, can 
only he necessary where the original regulations are imperfect, 
hut not in God's perfect universe, Eenan, amongst others, 
appeals to this trivial argument, " Miracles," says he, " are 
special interpositions like those of a watchmaker, who, though 
he has made a veiy fine watch, yet is compelled to regulate it 
from time to time in order to compensate for the insufficiency 
of the mechanism." We have already seen how ill this con- 
ception of a compensating assistance corresponds to God's 
special government in the world. Not ffoifs oulei hut ui. 
men, and especially fallen men, require divine ^id for our 
entire condition, and above all for our perception of the bemf, 
and power of God, which has been darkened through sm 
Hence this objection rests entirely upon the indisciimniation 
of those men who overlook the moral aim of miracles Eenan 
does so. He entirely waives the main question whethei 
it is not possible that a disturbance has really entered tlie 
mechanism of our existence. He lias no idea of the moial 

' Compare with this p. 196 et s«q., where thefact of man's fretdom was shown 
to be an argiunent agiuiist the deUtic conception of the divine govenunent of 
the world. 



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■U2 TUE MODERN NEGATIOS OF MIIiACLES. [lECT. V, 

aspect of our question, and cannot have, because tlie ethical 
element is entirely wanting in his view of the woi'ld. 

If we fix oui attention upon this side of the question, we 
shall find that the miraculous is justified fi-om another point 
of view. We now recognise in the condition of the world as 
vitiated by sin, not only the possibility, but also the necessity 
of miracles, and can proceed to enter upon the line of positive 
counter-proofs in opposition to their negation. 



ir.— NECESSITY AXD HISTOUICAL MANIFESTATIOSS OF THE 
MIRACULOUS. 

It 1 htli 1 1 1 th t 1 "^sary if 

t Ij f t! i 1 pm t f 1 t J 1 wl Ist the 

p f t ml 1 f p 1 1 th 1 storieal 

IOC t dmh Ihthw must 

I il Tl 111 f th p t h t J equires 

tl d 1 b} t H t y h d b) the new, 

by tl 1 t w Id b m t t tl ut it"^ 

HI tl f t 1 th w 1 sense. 

Etastl 1 1 ytoh toiy, so 

1 1 p Ij Hi J ^ nee of 

tl 1 d t £ tl Id ft tl t of sin. 

\\ t U f t tl Id d a dis- 

t b ft 11 t 1 h by God, 

b t 1 y m t p 1 d hy m I b t tl to be 

vl dhyi\ m pp t ytltthw Id would 

to f C d th h H t f t late the 

d f t T th w pi tl t th t y, since 

h e«t d tl w Id t w 1 1 d t 1 t ruin if 

1 ft t t If d tl f t 1) ts t th 1 y because 

f d y 1 ra ly t f d t If iflicted 

d d "W h 11 ly b d f th f w fix our 

ttt pthiZ f m I 1 pare it 

t! tl d d f tl w Id A dh ti Ij ctionof 

those who talk of a rent in the world appears in aU its folly. 

■ As Leasing remarked, that he had already seen the earth put on its green 
drcsB thirty-eight timee, and now for onoehe should like to see it in a red vui, 
* Mehrinj^ BeUgioiisphilosophie, p. 199. 



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LECT. v.] KECESSITT OF THE MIEACULOUS. 313 

As God ia the Creator of the world, so He is also the End 
for which it was created. He Himself is the aim of its 
development. Therefore, although it was " veiy good," as 
created by Him, yet from the beginning it was destined for a 
still higher consummation. Above the visible order of things 
tliere existed a higher supernatural sphere of glorious spirife. 
To this the natural world was to become gradually conformed. 
, But what happened ? Did the world move in a direct path 
towards this her destiny by faithfuUy preserving the original 
divine order ? Let us look around. Evil meets us at every 
step. We see all life springing only from death, and hastening 
thither f^ain. Strife and muider stalk throughout the entire 
creation. We see the elements raging against the works of 
man's hands, and rising in rebellion against their divinely 
ordained master, often to his destniction. Is that the original 
order which God beheld, and, lo, " it was very good"? Natural 
science may affirm this as often as it pleases, since it know^ 
no better. The Christian, who believes in an infinitely bene- 
volent and holy Creator, will always deny it He is compelled 
to recognise that a far-reaching disturhance has entered into 
the originally divine order— a disturbance from which all evil 
proceeds, in consequence of which the curse of death rests 
upon every creature, and the world is cheeked in its develop- 
ment towards its eternal goal, aye, which threatens the loss of 
that goal,— and this disturbance is sin. If, then, the divine 
aim in the ereatim of the world was ever to he attained, God 
must needs interfere in order to nullify/ the disturbance which 
had entered, and to realize the consummation whicA vks intended 
lyy Sim; He must immediMtely overcome the povxrs of sin and 
death with new creative energy, in order to deliver that which 
was iu bondage to them, i.e. He must perform a miracle. And 
this interference could not take place only in the spiritual and 
moral sphere, but it must also touch upon the domain of 
nature, since, as every one can trace in his own body, corrup- 
tion has also penetrated the material world. Hence there is 
a necessity for miracles in the strict sense of the word. 

Here we see the necessity and the aim of the miraculous. 
The whole question turns upon this, whether men set out with 
the supposition that the world in its present state is normal and 
perfect, or whether they admit that a disturbance h 



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314 THE MODERN XEGATIOS OF MIEACLES. [LECT. T, 

development through sin. Only in the latter case can men 
arrive at a belief in the miraculous, as in general they only 
attain to faith at all when they first see tlieir misery, and 
look not at their good, but at their evil. He only who 
believes in the fatal ruin of man as a consequence of sin, and 
at the same time in a holy God, who is love, and as such 
cannot forsake His creatures although they have forsaken 
Him, will also consider a divine interference necessary for the 
removal of the ruin which has entered the world. We there- 
fore maintain that the first breach in the divine order wiiich 
entails infinitely important consequences was made by sin, — 
sin has made a " rent" in the world ; but miracles only enter 
in for the removal of the already existing disturbance.^ The 
abnormal sinful course of our free development not only can 
bear God's saving interference, hut imperatively demands it as a 
vjork of mercij. Hence we read, "Who done doeth great 
■wonders (or miracles) : for His mercy endureth for ever " (Ps. 
cxxxvi. 4). 

If men call the salvation wrought by Christ a violent 
interference in our natural de\eIopment, they should also 
consider the grafting of wild trees and the healmg of the sick 
as contrary to nature. " Miraehs do not unnatxirally break 
through nature, hnt supematurally through the unnoiural!' Por 
surely it is plainly contrary to the laws of nature, and of a 
truth most unnatural, that one should have eyes and not see, 
ears and not hear, organs of speech and not speak, or limbs 
without the power to use them ; but not that a Saviour should 
come and loose his fetters ! Assuredly it is unnatural that 
there should be so much misery in the world, but not that a 
Saviour should seek to remove it ! It is unnatural that one 
people should be most cruelly enslaved and abused by another, 
but not that God should regard them and lead them out of 
the land of bondage " by signs and wonders, by a mighty 
hand and a stretched-out arm" (Deut. vii. 19)! It is un- 
natural that the wind and the waves should rise against a 
good human action, but not that the Lord should command 
them ! It were indeed unnatural that the five thousand who 
had gone after the Word of life should starve in the wilder- 
ness, but not that the bountiful hand of God should open and 
' At present we are putting the miracle of the creation out of the question. 



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lECT. v.] KECESSITY OF TEE MIEACULOUa 315 

make much out of little, as it once made the universe out 
of nothing ! It was contrary to nature that ruthless death 
should sever the binds of love, which God Himself has knit, 
between mother and son, between brother and si&ter; but not 
that a younj^ man of Nam, oi a Lazaius, should he released 
from the fetteis of death thiou^h a mighty woid ' And that 
was the climat of the unnatural, that the ^^orld should nail 
the only righteous One to the ciwss , hut not that the holy 
Bearer of that cross should conquer undeserved death, should 
rise and victoriously enter into His glory 1 ' 

In every one of these cases the unnatural is removed by 
■ means of the miraculous, and the original laws of nature are 
re-established, Here the sitpirnattiral is shotim to he truly in 
accordance with nature. That which taJces place here is so far 
from being a disturbance or a breach m real nature, that it is 
rather a healing and re-estahlisliing of ihe original and genuine 
order. The laws of nature, instead of being abolished, are 
confirmed and set up again in their full force. In the same 
way the healing of the sicli is not a violation but a re-estah- 
lishment of the laws of nature ; and when the laws of the 
natural life of the soul are interrupted by the new birth, one 
does not feel in any wise a violation of the mind and spirit, 
but rather a replacement of the same in their sound, normal, 
and vigorous condition. 

After having thus recognised the aim of miracles, their 
entire significance becomes clear to us. They presuppose man 
estranged from God, and a depraved course of nature, and they 
aim at the restoration, salvation, and consummation of the world. 
They only break through the laws of nature in order to raise 
her from her imperfection and bondage to the freedom and 
glory which was her original aim. They are isolated mani- 
festations of a new creative activity of the divine will, infusions 
of a reorganizing power into the life of nature, whereby it is 
imitated and excited. This holy purpose lies, without excep- 
tion, at the foundation of all true miracles, and in this especially 
consists the difference between the scriptural and apocryphal 
miracles. Hence miracles in Scripture are so often called 
signs, as we saw above. They are always signs of the divine 
intention whicli aims at the salvation of thp jrorld j_ tobsna 
' Beysoblag. 



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316 THE MODEUN NEGATION OF 1(111! AGLES. ■ [lECT. V. 

that God liT? n t ^l inlonei the high destiny for which He 
cieited it pli> 1 e'f that He la br i g n^ it i eaier an 1 nearer to 
this destmv in spite of ill hiudnnce and that He ■will at 
length ledeem H s woi 1 Eel Id I make all tl ings new 
(Pev x\L o) They are the fir?t strokes of Cods hammer 
which IS to bieak the greit ^ribon ot nat ire and of tl e human 
wotld and to loo^e the chains of corruption and deith Like 
single 1 cams of the ru<!d> mo n they jiophe } ^At Inj/ of tlip 
final eons mmalion ivhen Chi st will cio\\n the deluerince ot 
the soul by that of the lody the^ ire the ii st Iruita ot thit 
future order of things wherein tlere is to Ve no m re deith 
neithei so i )w nor any more \ iin — no further c ntn liction 
het Veen s\ ir t and matter Ihey point to that coi summation 
of the world in, iiki h gl itfied uhcre shaH imm dmtelj obey the 
spirit, and therefore miracles will no longer be the exception, 
but the rule. For " miracles upon earth are nature in heaven," 
as Jean Paul Itichter has truly said. 

But, it may be asked, is all this true of miracles in general, 
and not merely of the miracles of healing ? Let us consider 
how far the domain of tlie miraculous extends. It embraces 
the whole region of the moral and religious life, and of the 
special providence of God. It is the domain of biblical 
history, the theatre of the divine. Miracles are the insepar- 
able attendants of revelation, and are therefore manifested in 
a certain portion of humanity to which God has placed Him- 
self in a special historical relation, and whose history without 
such special divine activity is entirely incomprehensible. 
Miracles can only be understood if considered in connection 
with (he history of redemption. And in this their holy aim 
appears. " It is God's will, by means of the miraculous, to 
reveal Himself to men who are blinded by their sins." ' So 
He did to Pharaoh and to the children of Israel in the time 
of Moses and the prophets, and subsequently in the time of 
Christ. The revelation for which the course of nature no 
longer sufficed, must take place tlirough facts which He out- 
side of the course of nature. While miracles make the in- 
credible visible, they serve to make the invisible credible. 
In them God always causes His holy being to shine forth in 
goodness and Judgment. From the deluge and the destruction 
' Bothe. 



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LECT. v.] KECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS. 317 

of Sodom to the future conflagration of the world, all the 
judicial miracles are designed perceptibly and palpably to 
reveal the holy justice of God to men, who otherwise could 
not be aroused. And from the deliverance out of Egypt, 
and the manna in the wilderness, down to the liealin" 
miracles of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit in the 
New Testament, aU the miracles of grace make the endless 
love of God to man no less palpably evident Hence their 
purpose in the scheme of redemption is likewise an educational 
one. 

Miracles are also intended to confii-m the divine mission 
of those who perform them, and to add to the weight of their 
testimony. Christ Himself appeals to His miracles as tokens 
of His Messianic destiny (Matt. xi. 4-6 ; Isa. xxxv. 5, 6), of 
His divine mission and Sonship (John v. 36, x. 25, 37, 
XX. 31). And lastly, they serve (especially the healings re- 
corded in the New Testament) to illustrate the internal miracles 
which tike place m the smls of those who are spiritually 
blmd dbif d imb lime and deid Yet their evidence or in- 
herent power of convictirn i^ not irre<iistible (John xii. 37), 
It 15 not so ^reit that contndn-tun is impossible; nor should 
it le Faith m Tesus mcit ne\er be made so easy that it 
would cease to be i matter of free determination, and become 
a necessity m which no other choiLe were possible. There- 
fort the proof fiom miriules is not sufticient in itself, but 
bhoild ahvais be imited with the still more powerful proof 
Irom the entire substance in i spiut of the teaching of Christ. 
His miracles should onlj work in harmony with the impres- 
sion of His entire peiotnality Hence our Lord always re- 
fused thp demand pron-jted bj the fleshly lust of that age 
foi wrndeib and e\en rebuked those who attached too great 
importance to His miracles Hence too His caution against 
their dissemimtion by those who did not comprehend the 
entile significince of His woik and who would thereby only 
have given an impetus to the carnal Messianic expectation 
of the people (Matt ix. 30, xii. 16, xvi. 20; Mark i. 44, 
iii. 12, etc.). " The Lord prefers a faith which believes with- 
out seeing signs and wonders. But on account of the dull 
perception of man, which cleaves to the sensuous, God quickens 
and arouses him by sensuous means, in order to lead him to a 



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318 THE MODERN NEGATION 01 MU'ACLES. [lect. V. 

faith which sees not and yet believes." ' In the life and 
woi'ks of the apostles, miracles likewise appear only as accom- 
paniments of their preaching, never as of primary importance. 
The Ijyrd " conjimiing tite word, with signs following " (Mark 
xvi. 20). 

Hence, too, the modest proportion of tlie miracles performed 
by Christ and His apostles as compared with the deeds which 
8 wonder-seoliing fancy might imagine, or with the " signs from 
heaven" wliich the Jews expected of the Messiah (Matt. xvi. 
1 &., xii. 38 ff.). They did not even regard the acts of Jesus as 
proper miracles or Messianic signs. Although the Sciipturea 
abound in miracles, yet the proportion of the miraculous for 
which they demand belief is really less than in any other 
religion. How much more incredible things, e.g., does the 
Koran ^"record, to say nothing of pagan mvths 

Miraculous manifestations occur throughout only so far as 
is necessary in order to make God's love or righteousness 
more palpably evident through sensuous impiessions upon the 
perception of man, which has been blunted b} sin Or they 
are intended to prepare him for a spiritual influenct, to arouse 
his attention, and to facihtate his belie\in_ icceptance of the 
truths of salvation. The entire series oi miracles perceptible 
to the senses, from the time of Abraham and Moses down tx) 
that of Christ, has accompanied every step ot (At diitne reve- 
lation, in order eitlter to confirm it or to pre^ at t the v.a/ for it. 
Whenever revelation takes a step in ad\ance it is pieceded 
by specially powerful miracles. They are only the reflections 
in nature of the progressive spiritual development which have 
theii' legitimate foundation in the connection between nature 
and spirit. And in each case they are necessary from an 
educational point of view, in order to open men's eyes by 
means of sensuous signs to the spiritual revelation of salva- 
tion, and to the greater spiritual miracles which accompany 
them. Moses could not have made the power, truth, and 
majesty of God evident to the rude, sensual people whom he 
led out of Egypt, if God had not Himself done it in His 

' KBstlin. 

' E.g. when Jlahotnet is sttid to have caosed darkness at noon, vfhereupon the 
moon flew to him, howed before him, and dipped into his right sleeve, coming 
out again at bis left, etc.— Comp. Tholuck, F«t». Sehr, i. 1-37. 



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LECT. v.] NECESSITY OF THE MIKACULOUa. 319 

saving miracles in the sea and the wilderness, and in His 
thunderings and lightnings from Sinai. Elijah, the sole 
champion of Jehovah, could not Imve held out against an 
entile apostate kingdom and people, had he not heen able to 
summon miraculous divine power to his aid, when the nation 
\viis to choose between Eaal and Jehovah. And could Christ, 
when He became one of a race which felt its external far 
more than its internal misery, have opened the hearts of men 
(or the divine love and giace, if He had not caused its beams 
to fall sensibly and palpably upon earthly distress, sickness, 
and death ? 

Every miracle, therefore, serves the purpose of salvation ; 
on the one hand, in a subjective educational way, by preparing 
the heart for greater spiritual wonders, and alfording a tan- 
gible proof of the divine love and righteousness ; on the other 
hand, by counteracting sin and the ruin caused by death, and 
by preparing the way for the future consummation. God 
could not, and would not, magically obtrude redemption upon 
us. It was His will in manifold ways through a miraculous 
history to work gradually towards the goal of the world's 
ranewal. 

If we fix our attention more closely upon the gradual 
hisiorical manifestations of the miraculous, we shall see that 
Christ is {he centre of this development, and the second great 
miracle after the creation. With Him the beginning of a new 
era is inaugurated, which will attain its consummation when 
" all things have become new." In Him the power exists 
for the regeneration of the world, and from Him it goes forth 
to every creature ; in His acts He appears as the divine 
Liberator of all physical and spiritual life from the thraldom 
of sin ; His resurrection is the foundation and beginning of 
the glorified world, of that new order of things to which the 
creation is at length destined to be raised. He is the divine 
Miracle of love, which was demanded on the one hand by the 
redeeming love of God, and on the other by the actual con- 
dition and the destiny of man. But this takes place in such 
wise, that in Him " the miraculous appears as His true nature, 
as a human life of love, leading us tlnough itself to its internal 
divine source." ' Hence the resurrection, the greatest miracle 
' Domer. 



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320 THE MOnEIiN NEGATIO.'ir OF MIEACLES. [LECT. V. 

which was accomplished in the person of Jesiis, appears en- 
tirely natural, and is plainly demanded by His own being; 
it was not possible that this Holy One should see corruption 
(Acts ii. 27 ff.). And that wliich in consecinence of His 
natural moral being is worked in Him through the power o£ 
God, is at the same time the object of His own will, which is 
one with, and mighty through, God. He Himself takes His 
own life again as He had laid it down (John x. 17, IS). 

The entire history of miracles is grouped around this central 
miracle, and stands in internal connection with it, either as a 
prophecy or as an echo of that which is begun in Him. A 
glance at this confirms the result just before attained respect- 
ing the aim and significance of the miraculous, which we had 
hinted at in our remarks on the gradual progress of i-evelation 
(see p. 97). Before the time of Moses, God performs many 
miracles, but as yet without human agency. The patriarchs 
are endowed with the gift of inspiration, but not with that of 
miracles ; on the other hand, visions and theophanies are 
frequent during this period. Moses is the first who has not 
only the gift of inspiration, but that of miracles, as a mani- 
festation of his divine mission. Under him, and immediately 
after him, miracles are frequent, but the theophanies gradually 
disappear. Again, the judges appear under the influence of 
inspiration as propliets in deeds, though not in words. Ifi 
Samuel, David, and Solomon, we see inspiration progressing 
towai-ds the actual realization of the theocratic Church. With 
the encroaching sway of- heathenism, miracles again appear 
more conspicuously. They are as necessary for the re-estab- 
lishment of the law as they were at its foundation. Elijah 
often inflicts destructive blows ; Elisha works in a milder, more 
beneficent manner. The later prophets are pre-eminently men 
of words, of inspiration, until finally both the gift of miracles 
and that of inspiration cease. Again, the forerunner of Christ, 
John the Baptist, appears as inspired, but without miraculous 
power, so that the miracles of Christ might make a deeper 
impression (John x. 41). The miracles of Christ, which are 
almost without exception beneficent miracles of grace, break 
forth with unparalleled splendour, yet in such a way that on 
some occasions He performs many signs, which at other times 
He omitSj as we have seen before, because of unbelief, or 



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LECT. -v.] HECESSIXY OF THE MUIACUL0U3. 321 

because He foresees that they will be -without result, and 
wishes to cheek the fleshly desire for wonders. To the 
apostles it is given to work " the signs of an apostle." Then 
this gift gradually disappears, and a free course is left for the 
Spirit of Christianity during a period characterized by spiritual 
miracles.^ 

Miracles, therefore, hke revelation in general, belong to those 
crises in which the divine hingdorn is to males an important 
They are connected with certain periods and persons, 
', with the chief promoters of God's kingdom. The time 
of the foundation and re-establishment of the law by Moses 
and Elijah, the time of the founding and the first promulgation 
of the gospel by Christ and His apostles, were decisive epochs 
of this kind. In the intermediate ages miracles fall into the 
background. With this the prediction of Scripture exactly 
agrees, that at the end of time, when the last decisive stru^le 
is being waged between the kingdom of God and the anti- 
christian power of this world, and when Christ returns, there 
will again be a period of miracles (Luke xxi. 25 ffi). 

We need not be surprised that exti-aowlinary forces work in 
such crises. Analogies from natural life sufficiently show that 
the moments in which a new creature is bom into the world 
are not subject to the ordinary laws of development, but evince 
a plenitude of peculiar impulses, forces, and forms, which, after 
the fully accomplished birth, give place to the customary acti- 
vity of the usual laws of life. It is known, e.g., that the organic 
functions in the formation of the fostua proceed according 
to other laws than those of the perfect organism. The same 
is true of the birth-hour of the Christian Church. This, as 
well as every other birth-hour, is subject to other laws than 
those of the ordinary course. The man who makes ordinary 
human development the standard for the extraordinary fulness 
of the Spirit, which appears in that most important epoch of 
human history, in order to exclude the miraculous, falls into 
the same error as he who makes the laws of the ] 



' With regard to the continuance of miracles ai'ter Hie apostolic age, we liave 
testimonies cot only Irom Tertnllian and Origen, who tell ns that many in their 
time were convineeci against their wOl of the truth of Christianity by miraculous 
risiona, hut also much later from Theodore of Mopsueste (+ 439), The latter 
eaya ; " Many heatlien amongst us ara heing healed by Chiistians from whatever 
wekneases they may have ; so abundant are miiacles in oar midst." 



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:122 THE MODERN NEGATION OF mRACLES,, [LECT. V. 

course of nature a standard for the period of the creation. 
He is guilty of a vuTepav irporepov : he places that which is 
later before that which is earlier, and forgets that the laws of 
primary developmeut are altogether different from those work- 
ing in that which already exists. 

From this history of the miraculous, and the holy purpose 
constantly manifested in it, we see in how strict a manner it is 
gmiemed hy divine laws, which render the mere thought of an 
arbitrary interference impossible. Miracles never have an 
anomalous disconnected/ character. They are connected with 
each other, and with the central miracle, Christ; and they 
belong as necessary members to the entire organism of reve- 
lation, working together towards one great end, the salvation 
and consummation of the world. We neither see the boy 
Jeaus play at miracles with childish caprice, as several of the 
apocryphal gospels relate, nor does the man Jesus ever arbi- 
trarily or selfishly exert His miraculous power on His own 
behalf fcomp. the history of the temptation). He employs it 
throughout enly in the service of God, as proof of His divine 
mission, to relieve human need, and for redemptive ends. "We 
may thei-efore expect miracles to a greater or less extent, 
according as they are needful, where the condition of the 
world and of God's kingdom demands them, and whe»e 
unbelief sets no limits to the divine working (Matt. xiii. 58). 
A further rule for the operation of the miraculous is this, 
that as it is often connected with natural phenomena, so its pro- 
duct takes its place in the existing oi-der of nature without any 
disturbance of the laws hitherto obtaining; and as respects 
the form of its appearance, that it is as q^uiet as possible, with- 
out noise or pomp. The internal law for the human workers 
of miracles is this : their external miraculous power must be 
connected with inward and spiritual miracles taking place 
in their hearts. By means of the latter they must be raised 
into a specially close communion with God, and they may n<.t 
seek their own honour, but only that of God and Christ. The 
• Strauss {Lebm Jesu, S. 1 48) is of opinion that a God who should now and 
then work a miracle, sometimes exerting, sometimes discontinaiug a certain kind 
of activity, would be sahjeot to the succession of events in time, and conse- 
quently no absolute Being. This purely extenial and euperflcial objection eom- 
pletely overlooks the internal connection of miracles with revelation, and the 
historical development of the divine kingdom 



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LECT. v.] mCESSITY OF THE MIEACULOUa 823 

internal law for men, in whom the miracles of salvation take 
place, is faith. Faith is the medium of the divine operation ; 
through it man surrenders himself to its efl'ects. On this 
account such miracles can never be considered as unnatural, 
nor as contrary to nature. And so it is, too, with the internal 
miracles of conversion and regeneration. Por the recipients 
of revelation, who are spectators of the miraculous, the law 
obtains, that though it may facilitate their faith, yet it must 
never absolutely compel them to believe. Here, also, God 
respects human freedom. Therefore He never intensifies His 
miraculous working to such a degree that all objections of a 
hardened heart would be for ever destroyed. He who will 
doubt, always can doubt. And finally, for the historical 
development of the miraculous the law is generally binding, 
that in proportion as the divine revelation dispenses with 
sensuous media, its miracles become more spiritual. 

Strauss says, " If the friends of the miraculous would explain 
to us its working laws as clearly as we know the laws which 
govern the action of steam, we should then consider their 
arguments as something more than mere talk." So our oppo- 
nents wish to know the laws which govern the miraculous. 
"Well, its internal moral laws are those which we have just 
stated, and they exactly correspond to what we before ascer- 
tained to be the internal laws of revelation. But if Strauss 
means to demand a demonstration of the physical laws which 
govern the actions of miraculous forces, we answer that this is 
simply a contradiction in itself. For precisely that which 
gives the miracle its distinctive character is, that we cannot 
point out the natural laws and forces working in it, because 
they are not of a physical or mathematical kind, but super- 
natural. To exhibit the physical laws of the working of 
mu:acles would be to divest them of their miraculous character. 

This confirms to us what we have already hinted to be the 
true distinguishing mark of genuine miracles from those which 
are either fictitious and apocryphal, or demoniacal. The 
divine origin of any miracle is apparent, not so much from the 
extraordinary power manifested in it, as from its moral and 
religious character,— from the spiritual power and moral truth 
which ai-e reflected in it and promoted by it. Truly divine 
miracles appeal not merely to our logical faculty, but to our 



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324 THE MODERN NEGATION OP MIRACLES. [^ECT. T. 

moral judgment, to our recognition of the divine in its supra- 
mundane character, to our transcendental knowledge, not to 
our physical acquaintance with the forces of nature. There- 
fore it has very rightly been said that it requires much more 
intelligence to believe miracles, than understanding to deny 
them (Scbenkel). Miracles approve themselves to our moreil 
sense of truth through their connection with the plan of re- 
demption and their relation to Christ. They are performed 
in confirmation of a divine testimony. They must either be 
accomplished through the believing invocation of the name of 
God or of Christ (Acts iii. 16), or they must serve to awaken 
and confirm belief in Him (John ii 11, xx. 31). A true 
miracle, further, should either make a new disclosure as to 
some saving truth, or it should tend to the deliverance of man, 
or finally, should contribute in some way to the furtherance of 
God's kingdom, and to the desti-uotion of the powers of dark- 
ness. When such a purpose and connection cannot be traced, 
then it is not only our right, but our dnty, to be distrustful 



Vulgar infidelity completely overlooks the existence of this 
moral tribunal in the soul bef le which alone the miritubug 
and the laws of its manifestation aie to be judged Toi this 
reason we so often hear men siy tint they cannot believe m 
the possibility of amincle until one has been authenticated by 
competent judge=i such as piofcssoro of medicine or phjiic=! 
etc. Eenan, too is supeificiil enough to fall into the 'nme 
strain; "Miracles are not performed m the places where they 
ought to be. One single muicle performed m Pans befoie 
competent judges * w ould for e^ ei settle so minv doubts But 
alas ! none has evei tiken plicp Ko miracle was e\er per 
formed before the people who need to be converted —I mean 
beiore unbehevers The condtho sim qua non of the miiaeu 
lous is the creduhti of the wltne^ses No miracle was ever 
performed before those who could thoroughly discuss the 
matter, and decide in regard to it " (" Les Apfitres :" Introduc- 
tion). If Eenati would lay to heart why " not many mighty 

' Perliaiis before the Freneli Aeailemy ? We wonld remind those who Mt 
inclined to euhmit to its decision oa infallible, that this body in former times 
rejected (1) the iiso of quinine, (3) vaccination, (3) lightajng condnotors, (4) 
the esistente of meteorolites, (5) the steam engine. 



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LECT. v.] NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS. 325 

works" were done in Nazareth (Matt, xiii. 5 8), perhaps he might 
soon find out why now-a-days still fewer are done in Paris. 
Certainly no miracle has ever yet been performed, nor ever will 
be, in order to tickle the curiosity of a professor, or to remind 
him of the limits of human Icnowledge. He who thinks that 
God ought to condescend to perform miracles before " compe- 
tent judges." in order to prove His omnipotence, and for ever 
to silence all doubts, has no idea of the saving purpose of 
miracles, nor of tlie inviolable laws of the divine- government, 
which, if faith is to remain faith, must ever leave a possibdity 
for doubt But difficult indeed it is to understand how one 
■who has read, e.ff., the history of Christ healing the man who 
was torn blind (John Lx.), one who has observed what investi- 
gations the really not vert/ (sedulous Pharisees instituted, can 
assert that a miracle was never performed before unbelievers, 
but always before credulous witnesses. The man who calmly 
affirms that no miracle has appeared befoi-e those who were 
capable of criticising it, aud who thus declares the entire Jewish 
and Roman world, with aU their learaed and wise men, 
amongst whom Christ and the apostles did so many signs, to 
have been utterly incapable of forming a true judgment in 
regard to them, — such a man simply gives vent to the pre- 
sumptuous self-esteem of the nineteenth century, which in so 
many (juestions arrogates to itself the monopoly of " com- 
petent " criticism. 

Leaning upon these hollow arguments, Eenaa proceeds to 
contest the actuality of aU the scriptural miracles, maintaining 
that no miracle has ever been established as such, and that 
" aU supposed miraculous facts which we have been in a 
position to examine, liave proved to be delusions or deceptions." 
This result, of course, is attained in a most facile manner, by 
simply changing the facts, which are too stubborn to evaporate 
into delusions, into myths and legends. Further on we shall 
see how M. Henan and the other deniers of the miraculous 
conduct their business. We will not here enter into a closer 
examination of the gospel histories. Every unprejudiced 
person can perceive that the source of these temperate, artless, 
true-hearted narrations, is neither unbridled oriental fancy nor 
intentional poetical invention, but simply historic events. 
Why, we ask, were no miracles attributed to John the I 



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326 THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIKACLES. [LECT. V. 

whom all men, even the adversaries of Jesus, considered to be 
a prophet ? Simply because none were performed by him. 
Does it not follow that miracles were ascribed to Jesus be- 
cause they were done by Him ? Oue point more we would 
urge with confidence against our opponents, in favour of the 
reality and actuality of the scriptural miracles (as before in 
favour of Eevelation): I mean the unique appearance of 
Israel and of the Christian Church in religious history. Look 
at Israel, with its pure conception of God in the midst of the 
deep degradation of heathenism, — with its ancient prophecies 
and their wonderful fulfilment, which, in spite of all the 
attempted deductions of historic criticism, cannot be explained 
away,— with its stern moral and religious spirit aroused in 
opposition to the natural propensity of the people, and yet 
sustained with wondrous clearness and vigour, because con- 
stantly quickened from above. Surely such a nation is and 
remains an inexplicable phenomenon, unless supernatural divine 
revdations were vouchsafed to it, i.e. unless miracles sometimes 
interfered in its history ! ^ Once more : look at the Christian 
Church, founded and built upon the belief in the resurrection 
of Christ, arising and making its way in the midst of nnivereal 
darkness and corruption, with new powers of truth for the 
conquest of the world, and new powers of hfe for its renewal 
This Church is and remains in its origin and victorious dsvelop- 
ment an utterly inexplicable riddle, if we take away Christ the 
central miracle, or the miraculous facts of His divine Sonship 
and resun'ection ! The actual existence of the Christian 
Church and of the Christian faith is the simplest and most 
irrefutable proof for the actuality of the New Testament 
miracles. 

The results of these investigations leave little more to be 
said in answer to the phihsophico.1 ohjections against the mira- 
culous ,to which we before alluded. Those foundation-stones 
for the denial of all miracles which were laid by Spinoza and 
Hume, and on which the critics of the present day still take a 

' Diestel {among others) has very clearly shown that the Monotheism, us wull 
as the entire moral and religions spirit of Israel, can by no means be derived 
from 3, universal tendency of the Semitic ra<^e in that du'ection, as Eenan would 
have us believe (of. Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theol. 1860, iv., " der Monotheismui 
des itltesten Heidenthuma "). 



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LECT. v.] KECESSITY OF THE JIJItACULOUS. 327 

defiant stand, liave crumbled away piecemeal before our eyes, 
Spinoza'8 axiom, that " the laws of nature are the only realiza- 
tion of the divine will," stands or falls with his pantheistic 
conception of the Deity — a conception wliich is not only un- 
worthy of God and of man, but also contrary to reason. The 
Source of all freedom is supposed to have no freedom, but to 
be immuied in His own laws ! And to this Spinoza adds the 
conclusion " If anything could take place in nature contrary 
to its laws, God would thereby contradict Himself." We have 
seen that just the converse is true, namely, that if God 
ftifoitrkbiL iho miracles, and left the world to itself, He would 
coiitradict Himself ; that He must perform miracles in order to 
maintain the end for which the world was created, and to 
bring it to the destuiy which was originally intended. His 
miraculous action contradicts, not nature and its laws, but 
the unnatural which has entered the world through sin, and 
connteracts its destructive consequences in order to restore the 
life of the world to holy order. Ouly those who, lilce Spinoza, 
deny the reality of sin, and its destructive power, can question 
the necessity of the miraculous. The present condition not 
only of the human world, but also of nature, gives such opinions 
the lie at every step ! 

Hume, in like manner, bases his attack against the miracu- 
lous on a series of false assumptions ; First, " Miracles are 
violations of the laws of nature." This is false, since miracles, 
far from violating, serve to re-establish the already violated 
order of the world, and do not injure the laws of natura 
Second, " But we learn from experience that the laws o£ 
nature are never violated." This is false, because we our- 
selves immediately interfere with our higher will in the laws 
of nature, and interrupt them without their being violated. 
Third, " For miracles we have the questionable testimony of 
a few persons." Thjs is false, because the entire Scriptures 
are full of miracles ; and the historical testimony for them 
is unquestionable, since the appearance of Israel and of 
the Christian Church is pei-fectly incomprehensible without 
miracles. " But," he goes on, " against them we have univei-sal 
experience; therefore this stronger testimony nullifies the 
weaker and more questionable." The pith of Hume's argu- 
ment, then, is simply this ; Because according to universal 



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328 THE MODERN NEGATION OF tllRACLES. [LECT. V. 

experience no miracles now take place, therefore none can ever 
have occurred. This proposition, in the first place, involves a 
hewing of the question, since it is not at all certain that no 
miracles are performed now-a-days (on which point we are soon 
to speak) ; and second, it ignores the fact that different periods 
are subject to different laws, and with their very varied wants 
may demand varied kinds of revelatory actioli on the part of 
God. Certainly the negro who should affii-m that there is no 
anow, because in his country according to " universal expe- 
rience " it never snows, would be committing an absurdity. 
And no less illegitimate is it to measure all time by the 
universal (?) experience or non-experience of some particular 
period. Finally, Hume goes on to demand as a condition for 
the credibility of miracles, that they must be attested by an 
adequate number of sufficiently educated and honest pei-sons, 
who could not be suspected of intentional deception, and that 
they should be done in so frequented a spot that the detection 
of the illusion would be inevitable. We shall see further on 
(in Lects. VI. and VII.) that these conditions were all essen- 
tially fulfilled in the case of the New Testament miracles. 
And yet, in spite of the evident weakness of Hume's argument, 
Strauss would have us believe that " Hume's Essay on Miracles 
is so universally convincing, that he may be said to have 
settled the question" {Lelm Jem, p. 148) ! The author of 
The Life of Christ foi^ets to mention that Hume has long since 
been refuted in detail by the earlier and later English apolo- 
gists/ to say nothing of the Germans; but then he knows 
that a very small proportion of his readers is aware of this fact. 
To tliese objections not even our most modern philosophers 
have been able to add really new ,ones; and as against 
them all we may confidently maintain the follotving truths as 
the rcsvM of our investigation. The possibility of the miracu- 
lous rests upon the uninterrupted activity of a living God in 
the world. Its necessity arises on the one hand from the 
divine end and aim of the world, and on the other from the 
disturbance introduced into its development through sin. 
Therefore, although miracles are supernatural, they are not 
unnatural. Far from violating the conditions of life, of nature. 



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LECT. v.] NECESSITY OF THE MIEACUL0U3. 329 

or of humanity, they re-estaWish the life of the world which 
has already been deranged, and initiate the higher order of 
things for which the universe was created. " Thus the natural 
and spiritual miracles of the sacred narrative are only the 
notes of a higher harmony which resound throughout the 
discords of earthly history. To our dull sense, indeed, they 
may seem disconnected ; hut the more we listen the more we 
perceive a connected law of higher euphony now presaging, 
and finally bringing about, the solution of all dissonance into 
an eternal harmony. Surely, then, a believer may look down 
with pity upon the spirit of the age, and its declaration that 
the harmony of the Koamos is destroyed by the miracles 
of the Bible " (Beyschlag), as well as on its blind belief in 
the immntabihty of natural laws. The old truth remains : 
" Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my wai/a higher than 
your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts !" 

Even a free-thinker like Eouaseau says : " Seriously to 
raise this c[uestion (whether God can perform miracles) would 
be impious, if it were not absurd ; and we should be doing the 
man who answered it in the negative too much honour by 
punishing him for it ; it would be sufficient to keep him in 
custody " (Lettres de la Montagne, iii.). And Eichard Eothe, 
a no less acute than liberal thinlier of our times, remarks : " I 
■will frankly confess that up to this hour I have never been 
able to discover any stumbling-block for my intellect in the 
conception of a miracle." 

He who denies the miraculous, denies God and His reve- 
lation, since revelation is miraculous. All that we before 
adduced in proof of the possibility and necessity of a siiper- 
natural revelation, and of the existence of a personal God 
{vidt Lects II and HI), thus turns into a justification of 
muacles We ha\e already demanded of those who deny the 
existence of a God (p 144), and we now demand of those wJio 
reject the miiacttlous, that they should explain tons from natural 
causes all phcnomtna tn iiatiu e and history. If they cannot do 
this, they have no nght to contest the possibility and the his- 
toncal nature of the miraculous. And we shall show more 
fully m the following lectures that in numberless cases unbelief 
has jet to find a satisfactory explanation for the most important 



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330 THE MODERN NEGATION OF JIIEA.CLE3. [LECT. V, 

ft li t Th m th hly t t t th 

It 1 tl It □ t w th pi m tl 

dhtyfwhh B nfid flit 

d t pi t ( y th 1 1 f tl t f 

Ch t th f P 1 t ) 4 d h t tl 11 

It t f tl d t th 1 Mint! 

n t n link nt 1 ftitlj ft 

t / d ( J th to t m 1 f Ch t) 

tikf dlk PtnUmft I Btt 

t k f h tl I th f U t h t 

t n H \, w tl t th 1 t d t fi th d 

y ft Its nt h h d t f th 

tt pt t 1 th dll 4 tl f P th m 

(p 181) nth t f tl m 1 Hn lly 1 

pi 1 b f re the d 1 mm i h I j tl I n 

h 

Btwem tnt 1 witl ufc n d nn n th y 

ob bj t n f q ntly la ntn-a] fi hj 

I f t t n. w I g ks fd t th- 1 t 

T I Itl qine Udnwp dlflyto 

dis 



nl. ARE MIRACULOUS SIANIFESTATIOSS STILL VOUCHSAFED ? 

If miracles are directed, as we have seen, not against the 
■world's order, but against its disorder, why do we not find 
them happening in every place where misery and death still 
prevail ? Sin and evil exist to this day ; misery and disorder 
still abound in the world ; why should not God continue 
miraculously to interfere for the removal of all these, and for 
the re-establishment of the original order ? 

To this we answer, first of all : Are miracles (strictly so 
called) the only means through which God counteracts sin 
and evil ? Does He not first employ the internal infiuences 
of His Word and Spirit ? And this has not ceased as yet. 
Sin, it is true, still exists ; but so does Christ, the great Physi- 
cian for the maladies of the whole world, and His influence ia 
ever becoming more powerful and more extended. Are new 
miracles then req^uifed, while ih^ old ones are still in aciivi 



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LECT. v.] DO niEY STILL OCCUR? 331 

operation? Let us beware of an idle longing after the miracu- 
lous. Lutliei''s remarks on this subject are no less hunible tliaa 
tme : " The world continually gapes after prodigies ; it many 
a time mistakes chalk for cheese, and gladly believes in appari- 
tions ; believers keep to the Word, and follow it. I have very 
often prayed my God that I might not see any vision or 
miracle, nor be informed in dreams, since / kavs enough to 
learn in His Word." 

We have seen that the great mass of those who are averse 
to the miraculous usually argue thus : Miracles do not happen 
now-a-days ; therefore, they never happened at all. This is 
in the first place a flagrant transgression of the logical rule, 
that one cannot argue from the majority to the whole. But 
we, on our part, cannot even admit the assumption that no 
miracles are now performed, without further consideration, and 
must therefore proceed to investigate the question, whether 
miramlffiis manifestations are still vouchsafed. 

First of all, we must admit that miracles in these days 
have fallen into the background, having either almost or else 
entirely ceased. We do not live in a miraculous period such 
as that of Moses or of our Lord. But can we find no reasons 
for this ? We have already recognised that miracles belong 
to the divine education of the human race. Now it is self- 
evident that a means of education must be differently applied 
at different times. The schoolmaster's ferule is as little 
adapted to every age as the miraculous rod in the hand of 
Moses. But we can by no means ai^ue that because a certain 
means of education is not required at a definite period, it can 
never be needed. We have ah-eady seen from the history of 
the miraculous, that according to the Holy Scriptures miracles 
are more prominent in some periods and less so in others, and 
that the former periods are always crises in which the eyes 
of men are to be opened to the fact that the kingdom of God 
is on the eve of a momentous advance. If, then, our modem 
times are compai-atively inferior in this respect to many of the 
earlier ages ; if they have more of an intermediate character, 
as preparatory for great events which may be expected in the 
divine kingdom, it is simply in accordance with the laws hither- 
to recognised, that few or no miracles should occur in them. 

The apostolic age required miracles, because it was the 



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'632 yiE MODEKN NEGATION OF MIRACLES, [lKCT. V. 

epocli in which the Church was fird founded ; the present period, 
during which the Church is only maintained, no longer requires 
them to the same extent. If that period had miracles as the 
means of supporting its faith, ours has the testimony of history : 
we have before us the effects of the words and acta of Chi-ist 
in the history of the world and its renewal; we see the 
Christian Church overcome the world and survive it, and 
thereby fulfil a great part of the predictions of Christ and the 
prophets. All this, together with the constant inner workinc 
of the Word and the Spirit of Christ, is a sufficient external 
support for our faith. In the las/ epoch of the consummation 
of the Church, however, she wiU again require for her final 
decisive struggle with the powers of darkness, the miraculous 
interference of her risen Lord, and hence the Scriptures lead 
us to expect miracles once more for this period. 

Our age, however, is still characterized by the establish- 
ment of new churches. The work of missions is, outwardly 
at least, more extended than it ever was before. In this 
region, therefore, according to our former rule, miracles should 
not be entirely wanting. Nor are they. We cannot, there- 
fore, fully admit the proposition that no more miracles are 
performed in our day. In the history of modern missions we 
find many wonderful occurrences which immistakeaUy remind 
us of the apostolic age. In both periods there are similar 
hindrances to be overcome in the heathen world, and similar 
palpable confirmations of the Word are needed to convince the 
dull sense of men. We may, therefore, expect miracles in this 
case. And now read, e.g., the history ot Hans Egede, the first 
evangelical miss' n y n G nl d. He had given the 
Esq^uimaux a pict nip t t f the miracles of Christ 
before he had ma t 1 tl I His hearers, who, like 

many in the tim f CI t h d p eftion onlj foi bo lily 
relief, urge him t p tl j w t this Eedeemer of the 
world upon their k p [1 W t! manj si^hs and praters 
he ventures to lay his hands upon several pra^s o\er them 
and, lo, he makes them whole in the name of Jesus Christ 
The Lord could not reveal Himself pHmly enough to this 
mentally blunted and degraded race by merely spiritual means, 
and therefore bodily signs were needed. In such cases, and 
in dealing with such men, miracles may not have been entirely 



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LECT. v.] DO TilEY STILL OCCUR ? 333 

wanting in the ■worl; of evangelization amongst other nations 
and in other ages, and we should not, therefore, absolutely 
reject all that is miraculous in the old legends as mere fables, 
though their statements must be i-eceived with great caution. 

Let me mention another incident from the life of the 
Moravian missionaries Spangenbeig and Zeisbeiger. On their 
way to the Indian tribes in the endless forests and wilds of 
North America, tormented with hunger, weaiy and exhausted, 
they came to a brook. Here Spangenberg begged his com- 
panion to bring out the fisliiug tackle. He did ao without 
hope, since the water was clear and shallow, and at tliat time 
of the year the fish were known to remain in the deep water. 
But, encouraged by Spangenberg's faith, he obediently cast the 
net, and in a few moments Peter's miraculous draught of 
fishes was repeated. 

The history of Missions at the present time affords many 
similar instances. At a Ehenish mission station in South 
Africa in 1858, an earnest native Christian saw an old friend 
who had become lame in both legs. Impressed with a peculiar 
sense of believing confidence, he went into the bushes to pray, 
and then came straight up to the cripple, and said, " The same 
Jesus who made the lame to walk can do so stiU ; I say to 
thee, in the name of Jesus, Eise up and walk ! " The lame 
man, with kindred faith, raised himself on his staff and walked, 
to the astonishment of all who knew him (vide the Memoir 
of Klciuschmidt, Barmen 1866J p. 58 ff). 

In view of the temperate and conscientious character of 
such messengers of the gospel, wo have no right to doubt these 
reports of theirs, to which many similar ones could be added. 
But those who nevertheless persist in doubting them, we would 
point to the people of Israel as a perennial living historical 
miratle The continued existence of this nation up to the 
piesent day, the preservation of its national peculiarities 
throughout thousands of years in spite of all dispersion and 
oppression, remains so unparalleled a phenomenon, that without 
the special providential preparation of God, and His constant 
interieience and protection, it would be impossible for us to 
e\plam it For where else is there a people over whom such 
judgments have passed, and yet not ended in destruction ? 

But even in modem times parallels are not entirely wanting 



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334 THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIItACLE9. [lECT. T. 

to some of the miraculous deliverances of Israel Compare 
with theirs the history of the ■VValdenses, the Israel of the Alps. 
Eead the history of the siege of the mountain fortress La 
Balsille ; how the little band, having been surrounded by a 
French and Sardinian army throughout an entire summer, at 
length had to face the prospect of death by starvation, since 
the enemy was guarding every outlet of the valley. In mid- 
winter they are driven by hunger to visit the snow-clad fields 
which they have been unable to harvest, and there under the 
deep snow they find the entire harvest still uninjured. Part 
of this was housed in good condition eighteen months after it 
had been sown. Piead how in the following spring one breast- 
work of the small fortress after another sank under the 
enemy's cannonade, until finally the last intrenchment was 
demolished ; how they then stood defenceless, at the mercy of 
a cruel foe, and could only cry to the Lord of Hosts ; and how 
in their extremity a cloud of fog suddenly rolled down upon 
the valley, and enveloped it in so dense a darkness, that, 
although in the midst of their enemies, they were able to 
climb down the rocks unseen and effect their escape. This 
occurred on the 13tb of IVtay 1690. Does it not remind us 
of the God who once fed Israel so miraculously, and who 
covered them with the pillar of cloud as a defence against 
Pharaoh's army ? ^ 

Again, what a wonderful deliverance was experienced \>y 

' Almost more wonderful deliveranees are rekted in tlie history of the South 
African Missions. In one case "the terror of the Lord" auddenly fell on a 
triumplumtly advancing euemy, who mas about to set fira to the mission-hotise, 
so tiiat the vietoiy wns turned into a sudden flight, and both friends and toes 
were oonipelled to confess that God had fought for His people. i,Vide Klein- 
schmUll, tibi supra, pp. 73, 77 ; of. Pa, xxxiv. 8, and 2 Kings Tii. 6 ff. ) 

Another most remarkable instance oconrred in the case of a missionary of the 
Rhenish Society, named Noinmensen, wording in Snmatta, On one occasion 
a heathen who had designs on his life managed secretly to mix a deadly poison 
in the lice wliich Nommensen was preparing for his dinner. Without suspicion 
the missionary ate the rice, and the heathen watched for him to fall down dead. 
Instead of this, howeycr, the promise contained in Jlark ivi. 18 was fulfilled, 
and he did not experience the slightest inconvenience. The heathen, by this 
palpable miraculous proof of the Christian God's power, became convinced of 
the truth, and was eventually converted : but not until his conscience had im- 
pelied him to confess his guilt to Hommensen, did the latter know from what 
danger he had been preserved. This incident is well attested (cf. V. Rohdon, 
QesclachU der r/ieiij. Missiomgutltscha/C, 2d ed,, p. 324), and the missionary 
etm lives (1873). 



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LECT. v.] DO THEY STILL OCCUE 7 S35 

the crew of tTie missionary ship Harmony, which every 
year visits the Moravian stations on the coast of Labrador, 
and supplies them with provisions ! Some years ago an iceberg 
was one day perceived drifting rapidly towards the vessel 
A moment more, and it ■would have inevitably been dashed to 
pieces. At a distance of only one foot from the ship, the 
monster snddenly stopped in its course, and drifted away 
again. I myself have heard the captain of the Harmmiy 
attest the truth of this incident, which the entu'e crew declared 
to be a miracle. Cases of this sort, especially as regards the 
marvellous deliverances of children, could he multiplied in- 
definitely, but they belong to miracles in the wider sense. 

But even apart from the history of Missions, especially in 
the healing of the sick and in miraculous answers to prayer, 
our times offer resemblances at least to the apostolic age. 

You all know with what victorious faith Luther oQce 
wrestled with God in prayer at the bedside of the dying 
Melanchthon, and how he then with firm confidence went up to 
the sick man, who felt that his last hour had come, and taking 
him by the hand, said, "Be of good cheer, Philip, you shall 
not die ;" and how/rom that hov/r Melanchthon revived. Johann 
Albrecht Bengel, famous as the best interjireter of Holy Scrip- 
ture in the last century, relates that a girl in a little town of 
South Germany,* who had been paralysed for twenty jetis 
was suddenly healed by the pmyer of faith. The case was 
examined and publicly certified to he a miracle. And suiely 
the veracity of an informant Hlie Bengel cannot be questioned 
Most of us are awai'e that wonderful things are idited of 
the healing of the sick at the present day. Yet the'ie are 
but weak analogies of that divine power of healmg in the 
New Testament history, through which tlie severest and most 
chronic eases were instantly cured by a word. Oui age it is 
ti'ue, can show more cases of wonderful answers to ].ri}er 
than many previous ones;^ and assuredly all historj as 'well 
as the present period abounds in wonders of the divine govern- 

' Loonberg, near Stnttgavt. 

' T need only remind you of the humble origin and the grand development of 
HO many Christian inatitutioiia and Eocietiea as related in the memoirs ot A. H. 
Fitmke, J. Fait, Jung Stilling, J. Gossner, George Miiller oi Bristol, Tlieodor 
pjiflilner, L. Harms, J. Wicheni, and others, whom Spcrgeon designates "modi'm 
workers of mirades. " 



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33G THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIHACLEa [lECT. V. 

meiit, and in sudden divine interpositions which are no less 
tlie workings of God's providence for being often brought 
about by circumstances or men, and thus concealed from us 
through the dimness of our spiritual vision. But these signs 
and wonders do not possess the same force and clearness as 
the biblical miracles. 

On the other hand, we see the sceptics of the present day 
reject with scorn the appeal to the lives of God's children, and 
the clear proofs afforded by them, for eveiy one who is not 
wilfully blind, of a special divine providence ; and we iind 
them presuming to derive from merely natural sources aU the 
answers to prayer, and all the dearest experiences of the 
children of God, or representing them as self-deceptions* 
This shows us clearly that it is the want of faith in our age 
which is the greatest hindrance to the stronger and more 
marked appearance of that miraculous power which is working 
here and there in quiet concealment. Unhdief is the final and 
the most important reason for the retrogression of miracles. 

' We often see unbelievers greatly embarmsaed by the countless and undeniable 
answers to prayer in the lirfls of many children of GoJ ; answers which it is 
ndicnlous to attribute to chance. An instance of this may be seen in the 
desperate explanation attempted by Perty (in his work. Die mystinclten 
E> acheimmgen der mawcfilic/ien Natur, 1861). According t« him, those 
results proceed, sot from the influence of the suppliant upon God, but from the 
mjstio working of one human sool upon another. The spiritual energy of the 
Buppliant ocoosiona disquietude in other souk until they have satisfied his needs. 
If tills be so, then men and not God hear prayer. "What a wild fancy is this t 
Indeed, it is an incomparably greater miracle than that God should answer 
prayer 1 In many cases help comes from a person whom the suppliant did not 
know — of whose existence he was unconscious ; or it does not come through 
persons at all, but through things and circumstances. How, in these cases, is a 
psychical influence conceivable f We see how unbelief in its despair prefers to 
accept the purest impossibility rather than the simple truth of Scripture. In 
thih respect it is still true that "professing themselves to be wise, they become 
foolsl" (Cf. ApologeL BeUrtige von Gess Knd Siggeabacb, p. 187.) The 
GaTtenlatihe remarks in a similar strain with regard to George Jliiller's won- 
derful work; "The 'Lord' who went before Miiller was merely another form 
for his own German energy, his simple, feeling heart, etc ,— -a form dear to him 
and imposing to the English public." Whoever takes the pains to read in 
T/te Lon^e dealingi with 0. Miilkr (1860, 6th ed.), and to learn how, without 
eiw applying to any one for a gift, he received the means to build those great 
palaces near Bristol, in which he provides for 2000 orphans, only llirouf/h prayer, 
will immediately realize the folly of snch a judgment. If it is always men who 
do such things, and not God, why do not these enlightened gentlemen make use 
of tlieir own "simple, feeling hearts," and some "imposing fonii," say that of 
Materialism, in order to perform lite wonders I 



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LECT. v.] DO THEY STILL OCCUIi ? ooV 

But thougli these facts — being miracles in a ivider aense 
only — may be no direct proof for the miraculous, strictly so 
called, still they plainly prove that the omnipotent God ip 
everyis'here present and active in the natural as well aa in 
the spiritual world. But when this fact is once admitted, it 
follows that the miraculous ia constantly possible, and that 
God need not disturb nor destroy anything when He performs 
a miracle properly so called, of which we have at least single 
examples in our own days. 

These alone may not be sufficient to lead one to a belief in 
the truth of the biblical miracles. But there is a still more 
cogent consideration which I would finally seek to impress 
upon you, viz. that hp a denial of the vdramlous we do not 
in the least escape miraeles, but only have to believe in greater 



We have already seen that he who believes in God must 
also believe in the miraculous. Though one may not believe in 
God, yet he must believe in the miracle of the world, which, 
through a miracle, must have existed from eternity, and must 
have developed and preserved itself up to its present condition 
by means of still greater miracles and riddles. If one does not 
believe in the miraculous creation of man, he must believe in 
his descent from the monkey, and further back in his genera- 
tion, from the original slime — a wild supposition which is 
contradicted by all experience and moral consciousness. He 
who does not believe in the miraculous revelation of God in 
history, especially in Christ, must assume that a people like 
Israel, and a phenomenon like Christianity, could have arisen of 
their own accord ; he must assume that the preaching of a few 
poor Galilean fishermen could have overcome the world, and 
have ruled it spiritually until now, without the co-operation of 
divine power. And would that not be a far greater miracle ? 
He who does not believe in the continual government of God's 
providence has lost the key for understanding the entire 
history of the world, of the divine kingdom, and of his own 
life, and has no longer any safeguard against the thoughtless 
behef in chance, which explains nothing. 

As the Bible is much more inexplicable if we suppose it 
uninspired than if we grant its inspiration, so, too, the natui'al 
and the moral woild aie infinitely more full of riddles without 



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333 THE SIODEBN NEGATIOS OF MIRACLES. [lECT. V. 

tlie belief in miracles than with it. Though the latter may 
still leave much that is incomprehensible, yet the many com- 
prehensible things -which we find in Holy, Scripture should 
induce us to believe the incomprehensible too. This is how 
children learn. For the sake of what they already understand, 
they accept that which for a long time is still beyond their 
powers of comprehension; and this is precisely the way to 
make progress in learning. In this respect we have much to 
learn from children, and especially do we see in them the 
simple beauty and naturalness of the belief in miracles. Since 
they have no doubt whatever of the existence of a higher 
world with its heavenly powers of love, miracles seem just as 
natural to them as to the angels ; since their hearts are still 
open, and their consciences bnt little burdened, they joyously 
believe in the influence and interference of these divine 
powers in our lives. Were our children to find in some q^uiet 
meadow a ladder reaching up to heaven, they would not be so 
greatly astonished, but would straightway ascend it, while we 
older people still stood below, engrossed in critical considera- 
tions. And which would be the wiser? 

There are in our day many doubtful souls, who, if they meet 
with a miracle in the Holy Scriptures, swallow it as a bitter 
pill, or even allow it to spoil their delight in the Word of 
God. And why ? Because they would fain measure the gi'eat 
ways of God by their own small ideas, which are not even 
adequate to the uuderstanding of that which daily takes place 
around them.^ Because they think far too highly of our 
human wisdom and knowledge, they have far too small con- 
ceptions of God and of His mighty power. This view must 
be reversed in order to lead us to a belief in the miraculous. 
Think very highly, I pray you, of the infinite God, and make 
a very lowly estimate of all human knowledge and actions, 
and then, my respected hearers, the Scripture miiacles will 
prove to you no longer a cross, but a comfort ; a source no 
longer of timid doubts, but of heartfelt joy and of stronger 
iaith ! 

As is Christ Himself, so certainly are all miracles, a sign 
which may be spoken against (Luke ii. 34) ; clear and unmis- 

' Lord Bacon truly eajs ; "Animus ad amplitudinem mysteriorum pro modulo 
BBO dilatetur, uon mysteria ad anguatias animi constringautur." 



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LECT. v.] DO THEY STILL OCCUR ? 339 

takeable enough for him wlio is willing to helieve, but dark 
and uncertain enough for him who means to doubt. Nor 
should it be otherwise. For only those can or may penetrate 
into the seprets of the divine government who have experi- 
enced the miraculous spiritual power of God in their own 
hearts. To him only who sustains a living relation to Christ, 
the miracle of all miracles, and who recognises himself as a 
miracle,— not merely .as a man, but still more as a child of 
God,— and to such an on^ssuredly, the miraculous operation 
of God in the world, as well as in his own experience, will 
appear intelligible and necessary; and theisupernatural will 
seem natural, because it is shaping his inmost life. The 
longer his experience, the more profoundly and clearly will 
he traee the finger of God even in a thousand small events, 
where the blind world sees only natural laws and chance, 
because he discerns that finger continually in himself in grace 
and discipline. And therefore no one can dispute his right to 
continue in that faith which the angel invited in his announce- 
ment of the greatest miracle, that " wUh God nothiiig shall !)« 
impossible" (Luke i. 37). 



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SIXTH LECTURE. 



"If they shaTi say that no iniraclea have heen wrought, they will thereby 
only turn tha edge of their weapons against thamselTes. For that were the 
greatest miracle, that without signs and wonders twelve poor and unlearned men 
should have drawn the whole world into their net." — Cheysostojil's (in AH, 
Ap. Horn. I,), 

WHAT tliink ye of Christ ? whose Son is He 1 " Tliis 
question it is which once more agitates the world 
most deeply m oiu own di) Thus did our Lord in a decisive 
hour adlress the assenil led Pharisees m one of His last public 
dLicourscs And whLne\ei this question is addressed to a 
whole people or genpiation it is i sign that the times are 
prL^nint with solemn issues and thit a turning-point in its 
hibtoij IS at hind It 11 not a question, but tJie question, the 
jnnciniost vital issue the decision of which by individuals or 
n'itions now as then in the cibC of Israel, pronounces the 
Betitenee of judgment on their future destiny. 

The answer to this question touulies the centre of our faith. 
And sutel} the fact that the assault upon Christian belief, is 
now being concentrated morL tnd nioie upon this its central 
buh^atl. is a pioof that our age is piessing on to a decision, 
and that the battle of well nij,h two thousand years, which the 
Christian faith has been waging with science and with life, is 
at length Hearing its final issue. The spirit of our age, weary 
— and that not without good reason — of mere speculation, 
is in every department asking for realities and facts. The 
study of dogma has had to yield to that of history. Men no 
longor look to authoritative statements of Church doctrines 
or dogmatic treatises, but to historical investigations of the 
Gospel narratives and of primeval Christianity, for an answer 
to the question, Who was and is Jesus Christ ' 



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LECT. TI.] JIODERX ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKtST. 341 

This cLiiestion, so decisive for our whole faith, is forced 
upon us, not only ty the spirit of our age, but also by the 
progressive development of modern theology. As formerly 
the lieformers appealed from the Church to the Scriptures, 
so now OUT modem critics appeal " from the Scriptures to the 
actual history upon which they are based," ^ and claim to 
make a distinction between the biblical narration of facts 
and the facts themselves. In order to attain to an historical 
comprehension of the origin of Christianity, modern criticism 
first began to investigate the apostolic and post-apostolic ages, 
seeking in the struggles which agitated these periods to dis- 
cover the giowjng geims of the Chuich and her faith For a time 
the cntics hoveied round the person of Cijiist with a cautious 
reserve But soon it became evident that all criticism must 
eventually have recourse to this as the onlj leasonable i^ ij to 
account for the ongin of Christianity Thus investigations 
into the latter made way for inrjuiiiGs after the person of 
Chii'it As this was the chief religious prolilem lor the scnbc'i 
m Isiael and the wiie men of heathendom, so, too, it is once 
more the great qut'ition that occupies the theology of the 
dij and has attiacted more general interest than any other 
This question is addie=!sed to \is also We may not evade it, 
and therefore v. e must seek a clear and concise ansM er No 
one may remiin undecided in the face of this issue , for on it 
depends our v;hole future, as mdividuils, as chuiehes, and 
(witness the example of Isiael) as nations 

If Me mquiie after the inner motives which have led oui 
modern theology bick to tins old question, it ib not difficult to 
see that chief among them is the aiasmn to tlu, muaciilous 
v\hich characterizes the spmt of oui a^e We have seen that 
Jesus Chnst i^ the central miracle of histoiy He who denies 
the miracuIou=! cinnot acLcpt this chiet mnacle For this 
reason the deists and the old school of rationalists eveited 
themselves to get rid of one miiacle aftt,r another , but thej 
soon discovered that all this was labour lost, so long as the 
supernatural, in the person of Christ, was bodOy present in 
the world and its history. Since then our opponents have be- 
come wiser, and have transferred the conflict to the person of 
Christ The foundations of all supernatural revelation cannot 
' Ct Lnthardt, Die wodernen DarsleUmgen des Lebau Jeau. 



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342 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF OlIRIST. [lECT. VI, 

be considered as destroyed until this Jesus of Nazareth, with 
His unique life, — until all His doings and sayings, and even 
His peculiar religious consciousness, are naturally explained as 
the result of a merely human development. Here we have 
the reason for the most recent attempts at a purely natural 
solution of this enigma. 

But there is another alternative. The result of our inves- 
tigations may show that all tliese attempts, even the most 
unbridled and arbitrary of them, still leave an inexplicabh 
something, which the most desperate eiibrts to divest the 
life of Christ of its divinity cannot do away with ; and that 
they arrive at this something only by means of an abrupt leap, 
i.e. by giving up all natural connecting links, — a proceeding 
which must lead us to the conclusion that it was a supernatural 
ylhh trflO nttnny show 

tl t tl Id Sto f t bl tl p n f tl Crucified, 
1 11 1 b f t tl d y I k f £f hich the 

tf- fldfhntis nth h vay nor 

hi t Im y h 1 y St f n hich all 

the learned human masons cannot even grind away the sharp 
corners, which they must needs let alone in the unique grandeur 
of its origin and its effects.' If such be the case, then we 
have a fresh argument for the possibility of miracles in 
addition to those already adduced, viz. the impossibility of 
removing the miraculous from the Bible, and from history in 
general, since its opponents are fain to let it stand in its 
central manifestation — Christ. 

Not a device has been left untried in order to divest the 
life of our Lord of its supernatural character. The most 
clumsy method was, to accuse either Himself or the gospel 
writers of lying and fraud. This was the main point in the 
well-known Wolf enhuttd Fragments, liy Eeimarus {f 1768), and 
long before, in the writings of Celsus, that heathen adversary 
of the Christian faith in the second century. The same metljod, 
too, was partially carried out by some of the English deists, 
but especially by Voltaire and the French illu-tninati. In our 
day there is no longer any difference ot opinion as to this 
frivolous and morally revolting theory. It is condemned by a 
single qQCStion : How can He from whom the moral regenera- 
tion of the world proceeded have been an immoral deceiver ? 



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LECT. VI,] MODERN ACCOUNTS OP THE LIFE OF CHIIIST. 343 

Or how can it be conceived as possible that a number of 
fraudulent men should be able to invent the purest, grandest, 
and most exalted character, the mere idea of which far transcends 
the loveliest visions of poets, and the noblest speculations of 
philosophers ? 

For this reason the accusation of conscious fraud soon fell 
to the ground, and others set up the theory that Christ was 
the victim of sdf-dece;ption and enthusiasm. We shaR find 
that this supposition is, partially at least, accepted by Strauss 
and Eenan, who, in their explanation of our Saviour's words 
and deeds towards the close of His life, are compelled to make 
use of it. Eat neither does this theory explain anything ; on 
the contrary, it only multiplies enigmas. For all the sayings 
and doings of Christ which are recorded in the Gospels give 
an unprejudiced reader the impression of the most sober clear- 
ness of spirit, the calmest dignity, and the most prudent self- 
command, ever wondi'ously the same in all situations ; and 
this accompanied by the glance of profound knowledge which 
penetrates through all outward show to the real essence, and 
the sure judgment which is never deceived, but constantly 
hits the nail upon the head. Is not aE this directly opposed 
to enthusiastic imagination and self-deception ? 

Others, therefore, have attributed the errors and the self- 
deception to the discijiks, whom they suppose to have formed 
a false conception of the deeds of Christ, in their superstitious 
prejudice making purely natural events into supernatural ones, 
and converting an extraordinary human being into a God-man. 
This is the creed of vulgar Eationalism. We are to believe 
that the fabrications and dreams of a few Galilean fishermen, 
imposed upon Jews and Greeks, conquered the world, morally 
regenerated it, and have since proved to be a ruling spiritual 
■power and an inexhaustible source of culture and education! 
And is this the pass at which exalted reason has arrived ? 

Since this theory has been undermined, in part by the his- 
torical contradictions which it provoked, but especially by the 
intolerably arbitrary exegesis which it necessitated, a final and 
most recent attempt has been made to show that the miraculous 
history and the " deification" of Christ originated in the (un- 
conscious) legendary invention of the first Christian communities, 
which surrounded and darkened the original history with an 



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344 MODERN ACCOUNTS OP THE LIFE OP CHRIST. [LECT. VI. 

e\ei thid eninc; cloud of myths and legends. This is the 
stmdpomt of Strauss and Eenau. In it they were greatly 
Btiennthened by the attempt made in another quarter to remove 
the Gospels md the Acts, as well as most of the Epistles, into 
a period suhiequent to the apostolic age,^attempts which, if 
'iiici,e''sful, would leave the time necessary for the gradual 
fonnation of these mythical legends. 

Fiom this we see that every possible method has been tried 
m 01 lei to eliminate the miraculous from the gospel history. 
Tor it IS eisy to see that all these hypotheses are only set up 
IS "i } eans f getting rid of tJie inii-aculous at any cost; and, 
indeed as much is openly confessed. Take, for instance, what 
Strtuss sajs ^ " The, miraculous is a foreign element in the 
gospel narratives of Christ which defies all liistorical treat- 
ment and (he conception of the myth is the meaiis which we shall 
%j,6 ill U to eliminate this element from our siihject." This 
mythical hypothesis," then, belongs to the same class as aU 
other attempts of ancient or modem Eationalism to explain 
away the miraculous. They are all one in their aim, and 
therefore we comprise them all under the one category of 
" antir-miramlous accounts of the life o£ Christ." 

From what we have already said, it is evident that all these 
theories exhibit one and tbe same tendency in two fundamental 
toims the r itwnali^tio and the mythical. Under the former 
aspect the Gospels aie led hut merely natural history, in 
which all 'leemin^lj min,culous events are to be naturally 
iccoimted for According to the latter view, they do not, for 
the mo&t part contiin history at all, but merely ^fictions or 
legpTuls SJienkels &1 dch cf the Cliaracter of Christ we con- 
sider to belong to the foimei of th t 1 the chief 
lepiesentatnes of the latter are, w li k wn St uss and 
Itenin The w jrl ? of these tl — n dd t n to the 
ivntmgs of Binr which we lese f f t 1 ation — 
are doubtless the gieit authoi t f th n t e gospel 
ciiticj-sm of the present day It wdl tl f h r duty, 
after \ short sketch ■Jnd coniide t n f th 11 t nalistie 
■view ot the lite of Chii&t to subj t th tm f tl e three 
men to a closer investigation and critique. 

Eetore so doing, I would - remark, that the attacks on the 
' In his Lehen Jeeaf'dr das deutscki Volk, ISCi, p. ]4S. 



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LECT. VI.] OLD BATIOXALISTIC ACCOUNTS. 345 

resurrection (as constituting the chief miracle in the life of our 
lord) will be considered separately in Leet. VII., and will there- 
fore remain unnoticed in this chapter. The important CLuestion, 
too, as to the origin of the Gospels caimot be treated merely 
en passant, and I must therefore reserve its consideration to a 
later occasion, when 1 hope to treat, in connection, of the doc- 
trine of Scripture, its inspiration, the canon of both Testaments, 
and the origin of the individual books. At present we ate 
only considering the principles involved in the modern accounts 
of our Saviour's life, both rationalistic and mythical. So well, 
however, have the Gospels been defended in our days by many 
learned divines, that we cannot pretend to handle the subject 
in a new or original manner. We therefore simply confine 
ourselves to gleaning from those who have gone before. 



I.— OLD EATIOSALISTIO ACCOUNTS OF THE LIEE OF CHKIST. 

According to the rationalistic school, the miraculous element 
in the life of Christ originated, not from the facts themselves, 
but from the superstitious light in which the biblical narrators 
viewed them. In their simplicity, they looked upon extra- 
ordinary medical cures as supernatural wonders, although they 
were perfectly natural occurrences; and that extraordinary mau, 
Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in word and in deed be- 
fore God and' all the people, they believed to be God, though 
he was really nothing but a man. We find this same practice 
of reducing all that is divine to merely natural and human 
proportions, many centuries back, in some Greek philosophers 
— Euhemerus and others — who made their national gods into 
men, saying that Zeus, Apollo, and the rest had, indeed, 
actually existed, but only as men, whom their station, or their 
deeds, or their knowledge had rendered famous, and caused 
them to be worshipped by their posterity as superhuman beinga 
The very principle of this heathen school is applied by our 
rationahsts to the Christian faith. They say, Jesus Christ 
is a real historical character, but nothing more than a man, 
who, for the sake of his extraordinary doings and sayings, 
gradually came to be adored as divine. Thus unbelief con- 
stantly retreads the old worn-out paths, affording a s 



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.^46 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OP CHRIST. [lECT. VI. 

striking illustration of the tnith that " there is nothing new 
under the sun," 

After Eichhorn'a application of these principles chiefly to 
the Old Testament, they were carried out to their full extent 
by Dr. Paulus of Heidelbeig in his Commentary on the Gospels 
(1800) and his Ufe of Christ (1828). He declares that the 
occurrences related in the Gospels are facts, but merely natural 
ones. How can this be ? Dr. Paulus tells us that the his- 
torical critic must distinguish between facts and opiniom, be- 
tween the actual occun-ence and its mistaken acceptance as 
miraculous hy the narrator or the actor. In the tradition of 
the first churches, facts and opinions had been promiscuously 
propagated and identified. This obscuration of real facts, hy 
attributing them to unreal miraculous causes, is to be done 
away with ; the natural kernel of the matter is to be separated 
from its supernatural shel],.and thus the actual historical truth 
to be arrived at. By means of this operation the life of Christ 
is transformed into the hfe of a wise Eabbi, who did not, it is 
true, perform any miracles, but instead of that, from love to 
man, executed innumerable works of charity, with the help of 
medical skill and good fortune. 

I cannot better illustrate the violence done to Scripture by 
the rationalistic school, in reducing all miraculous occiuTences 
to merely natural events, than by giving some gleanings from 
the rationalistic exegesis. The bright light shining around the 
shepherds in the night of our Lord's birth was " probably a 
meteor," or perhaps " the rays of a lantern that happened to 
pass by." The changing of the water into wine at Cana was 
a "harmless wedding joke;" the disciples had got the wine 
beforehand, and the twilight helped to deceive the guests. 
That Christ walked on the lake is simply a misapprehension 
on the part of the reader or expositor ; he reaUy walked " on 
the shores of the lake," or above it, on " one of its high banks." 
The stilling of the storm on the lake is resolved into the fact 
that Jeaus, through his calm and dignified bearing, quieted the 
frightened disciples, and that hy a " happy coincidence " the 
raging elements ceased their fury just at the same time. The 
healing of the bUnd was accomplished by means of an " effica- 
cious eye-salve," which little circumstance was overlooked by 
the wonder-seeking narrator. The direction of Christ to the 



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LECT. VJ.] OLD EATIOXAJISTIC ACCOITSTS. 847 

blind man, " Go to the pool of Siloam and wash," refers only 
to " taking the waters " at some neighbouring medicinal springs. 
St. John did not intend this for a miracle at all. The great 
miracle of the loaves and fishes, which made such an impres- 
sion upon the people that they said, " Surely this is the 
Prophet which shonld come into the -world " (John vi. 14), was 
accomplished by means of secret stores which were in the 
neighbourhood, and through the provisions which the people 
had brought with them ; Christ, by His words, producing so 
great an effect upon the more wealthy among the multitude, 
who were well supplied with food, that they forthwith shared 
their stores with the poorer. The daughter of Jairus, the 
young man of Nain, and Lazarus, were raised — from a death- 
like trance. The transfiguration of our Saviour on the moun- 
tain, and His converse with Moses and Elias, are equally 
easy to explain. The disciples saw Jesus in a morning mist 
on the mountain speaking with two men, and as the sun broke 
forth at the moment, they thought that Moses and Elias were 
standing with their Master, and that He was shining with 
celestial light. The struggle in Gethseniane is an " unexpected 
indisposition caused by the damp night air of the valley ; " in 
fact, a sudden cold. The resurrection of Christ is the return 
to life, not of a dead man, but of one who was apparently 
dead, having been laid in the grave swooning from the effects 
of the crucifixion. The angels in the grave were " the white 
linen cloths," which were taken by the women for celestial 
beings. Other angelic appearances are reduced to lightnings 
or storms. Dr. Paulus especially makes the lightning " fly in 
a hundred forked flashes around the heads of the Jews, with- 
out singeing a hair of them." The ascension of our Lord, 
finally, was merely His disappearance in a mountain cloud 
which happened to come between Him and His disciples ; or, 
according to Eahrdt's account, Christ disappeared behind a 
hUl, and withdrew into the circle of His more intimate dis- 
ciples, until later on, according to a pre-arranged plan, He , 
suddenly appeared from behind a bush to St. Paul on bis way 
to Damascus ! ! 

You see that the miracle-fearing rationalists accomplish 
perfectly miraculous feats by means of exegetical devices. Of 
such interpreters Gothe (in his Faust) says : — 



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348 MODEEN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHr.IST. [lect. VI. 

Slavish fidelity is out of dtite ; 
When exposition fiiila, intei'polnto. 

Assuredly such, attempts are not exposition, but imposition. 
They need but he mentioned to ha condemned by eveiy unpre- 
judiced mind as utterly desperate cov^ps de foi'ce. The whole 
method is one of boundless arbitrariness, which turns and 
twists, clips and maims the historical documents, until they 
say no more than they are wanted to say, i.e. nothing super- 
natural. One does not listen to the narrators in order to 
learn what lias taken place, but he knows beforehand that 
events cannot have happened in the manner in which they are 
described. One does not want to be taught by them, but 
rather to teach these simple, superstitious narrators by taking 
the bandage from their eyes and showing them what they did 
and what they did not really see and hear. The fruits of 
this an-ogance consist not only in boundless caprice, but also 
in positive vtdgarity which utterly disgusts us. Tlie fine- 
sounding term, " natural explanation," turns to bitter irony 
when we see that it is most unnatural in its efforts to do away 
with the supernatural. I have already pointed out the irra- 
tionality of "rational belief." Here you have the clearest 
proofs of it. 

In order to make this naturalization of the supernatural 
more acceptable, especially as regards the miracles of healing, 
recourse has often been had to magnetism, and similar mys- 
terious though natural forces. Christ Himself and the other 
workers of miracles are supposed to have possessed a special 
magnetic power ; and their laying of hands on the sick was 
the same manipulation as that performed by mesmerists in our 
own days. The rationalists and semi-rationalists even of the 
present day do not despise this expedient, as, e.g., Weisse and 
Hase. But what is gained thereby ? Did not the cures often 
take place without any personal contact, and even in some 
cases, at a distance (e.g. the centurion's servant and the 
daughter of the Syro-Phcenician woman) ? Eecently, however, 
this expedient has been annihilated, for natural science has 
taught that these supposed effects of animal magnetism are 
for the most part fictitious. . It cannot be denied that mag- 
netic stroking often produces peciiliar effects on the nervous 
system, and, through it, on adjacent parti of the human frame. 



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r.Ecr. vl] old rationaushc accounts. 349 

But it is a great question whether these effects are produced 
by any distinct and special force ; and the most learned physi- 
cians assure us that sudden cures of any hodOy ailment or 
infirmity are never effected by it. Still more is tlie healing 
by this means of such diseases as leprosy out of the question. 
The critical deniers of the miraculous are not then so very 
critical in this case. Having been critical where they should 
have believed, they ate now fain to believe implicitly where 
criticism would be most fitting. 

Others recognise that no person in his senses could find 
accounts of modem magnetic cures in the Gospels or the Acta, 
and therefore have recoui'se to psychology: They suppose that 
the immense psychological influence which Christ exerted on 
the souls of men, the faith and the confidence with which He 
knew how to inspire them, were sufficient to effect His 
miracles. And true it is that Christ demands faith of the 
sick who look for help. But if the faith alone, without any 
special exertion of power on the part of Christ, could perform 
miracles then, why not now ? According to this view of the 
matter, a physician need but inspire his patient with the firm 
belief that he is or immediately wiU be well, aud he would 
straightway become so ! And what is gained by such explana- 
tions in the case of other miracles, which had nothmg to do 
with healing ? 

But it is not only that these expository arts do not stand 
the test of isolated cases : they are unsound in principle. It 
is supposed that the Gospels confound facts and opinions, and 
that the kernel of facts must he extracted from the shell of 
the narrators' false apprehension. All this is simply an arbi- 
trary supposition, proceeding from an aversion to the mimcu- 
lous. The man who reads the Gospels in an unprejudiced 
spirit, wiU find in them nothing but the most simple, artless, 
and true-hearted collation of facts, with scarcely anywhere an 
opinion of the narrator about them. Indeed, we may say that 
there probably never were historians who gave so little of their 
own opinions in the course of their accounts as the evangelists, 
and the sacred vmters in general Never has any one written 
in such a terse style of pregnant shortness as they. What 
with others would have filled thick volumes, is by them 
related in a few pages. And this could only be accomplished 



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350 WODEKS ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CiJKIST. [LECT. VI. 

by a plain enumeration of facts without many ubjectire views ; 
a delineation of their mam feitures m •i few bold strolies. Dr. 
Paulus need not take so m ich trouble to get at the kernel of 
the matter; it stands befoie us cleiier moie transparent and 
unadorned, than was ever fact related by any writer. Tins 
grand, though simple stjie passes by m silence a thousand 
c[uestions, which our curiosity were fiin to ask : " And He 
entered into a ship ; ami He aw a man sittmfr at the receipt 
of custom ; and the disciples of John came unto Him." Any 
unbiassed reader will see here a simple ml often abrupt 
collation of facts, the chief object of which always is to give 
a short account of the mim pomts a st>le such as even tax- 
gatherers and fishermen couli ittain. It is only when the 
raader puts on the erroneous and misleading glasses of a deter- 
mined aversion to the miraculous, that be sees in the gospel 
narrative no longer the simple substance of real events, but a 
history overlaid with myths and legends. 

And according to what standard are we to distinguish 
between the husk and the kernel of a nanative ? Are we to 
take for our canon the rule that the laws, of natui'e and of 
general human development are the limits of historical possi- 
bility and of critical allowableness ? This is nothing but the 
principle from which proceeds the denial of the miraculous,— 
a principle already shown by us to be false. It is merely an 
extraneous presupposition brought to bear on the investigation 
of these historical records ; an axiom which does not result 
from them, but stands in direct contradiction to them. For 
by means of it anti-miraculous critics make that appear to be 
the husk which, in the estimation of the evangelists them- 
selves, is the true kernel of the nan-ative, i.e. the miraculous 
element. This they seek to peel off by their criticism, in 
order that a merely natural occurrence may be left as the 
historical kernel But why does an evangelist relate a mira- 
culous event ? Clearly for the sahe of the miracle. This is to 
him the root and centre of the matter, the important part for the 
sake of which the event appears to him worthy of commemora^ 
tion. If this be taken away, it is not the husk which has been 
separated from the fruit, but the true kernel which has disap- 
peared, leaving in most cases k shell not worth preserving. 

This arbitrary procedure, which acknowledges as historical 



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LECT. VI.] OLD EATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS. 351 

only what does not contradict our anti-iiiiraculons prejudices, 
and throws all else overboard, is evidently not the method of 
objective science, but only that of subjective inclination. As 
against such arbitrariness Strausa is quite right when he says : 
" Either the Gospels are really historical records, and miracles 
cannot be banished from the life of Christ ; or the miraculous 
is incompatible with true history, and then the Gospels cannot 
be historical records" {Leben Jesu, p. 18). 

This is true not only of isolated narratives, but of the life 
of Christ, depicted in the Gospels, as a whole. Whoever wishes 
to retain the historical character of the Gospels cannot cut out 
the miracles without losiBg all. It is labour lost to chip and 
pare down isolated miracles, and to give them a natural instead 
o£ a supernatural purport Not merely this cr that occurrence, 
hut the whole foundation of the Gospel history, Le. the person of 
Christ itself, is inirinsicaUy minwidous from Ix-giniiing to end. 
His" words and deeds are likewise miraculous : so, too, is that 
m Hmi ^^luch lationalibts ■^chmwled^e aa historical; for His 
IS a more thin human development meiphcable without the 
influence of supLrnituro,! powers and revelations. In short, 
the miraculous is not a mere outward appendage, which as 
such might be sepirated from the gospel hi'.tory ; on the con- 
trary it IS the indispensable basis on which the latter rests, 
and one of its most essentnl elements "W e should therefore 
gain nothinc; e\en did we succeed in a natural explanation of 
nil the individual miricles and the whole rationalistic under- 
taking — ipart fiom the falsity of its anti miraculous basis — 
cannot lead to anj real results Foi what use is it to prune 
away the nnraeulous from the twigs and branches if the whole 
tree he supernatural ? 

It the miraculous he once denied, it is far more logical and 
honest no longer to regard the Gospels as historical, but, as 
Strauss does, to consider them a chain of legends and iictions, 
and then to abjure Christianity openly. For the elimination 
of the miractUotts element frmn the gospel history can never 
taJce place without a deeply penetrating injury, or even a total 
and destructive alteration of the entire substance of the Christian 
religion. What good is it to us to know all about the Hnen 
of the swaddling clothes which the rationalistic exegete will 
describe so learnedly and vividly, if it is no longer a divine 



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352 MODEKN ACCOUNTS OP THE LIFE OF CHraST. [lECT. VL 

Chad that was wrapped in them ? What is the use of de- 
picting to us the cross, if it is merely an apparently dead man 
who is being lifted down from it ; or of describing the giave, 
if the Prince of life do not come forth from it ? The wliole 
foundation of our Christian life is shattered. 

Take away the miraculous element from the Gospels, and 
what remains ? The threadbare story of a wise and virtuous 
Rabbi, who preached pure morality,^ and, having resolved to 
niake bis appearance as the Messiah, managed by the help of 
a natural power of healing, which he employed with good 
luck, to persuade a small portion of the people that he was 
such. He would appear to have been persecuted by the 
Pharisees, because he chastised their hypocrisy, and finally to 
have suffered death, — that is to say, apparent death, from 
which, after a swoon of many hours on the cross, he re- 
covered ; " only daring, however, to show himself to a few, 
and afterwai-ds in all probability slowly languishing away in 
some remote part of Galilee from the effects of his sufferings." 
And to this poverty-stricken story the development of humanity 
is supposed to be attached ! These commonplace occurrences, 
which might similarly talie place in the case of any man who 
should excel his age in knowledge and moral power, and then, 
opposing himself to its spirit, should die as a martyr to his 
noble efforts^these are supposed to have unhinged the world's 
liistory, and marked out for it a fresh path. These exceed- 
ingly clumsy and simple narrators, who in their fanaticism 
took such simple events for one series of miracles, who were 
not even gifted with ordinary common sense, were yet able to 
depict for the benefit of mankind a character the moral beauty 
and profound spirituality of which has for centuries irresistibly 
fascinated the noblest minds, and become their richest source 
of culture : they could succeed in " writing a history which 
puts to shame tlie productions of the proudest historians ! " 
What a miracle do anti-mimculous critics expect us to believe ! 
Nay, more than a miracle, an utter absurdity. 

' So pura, indeed, that it is perfectly unique, and, if tafeen together with the 
religious consciousness of the mnn who could preach it, still points to a super- 
natural origin. Further on we shall recur more fully to this "divine remnant" 
in the life of Christ which is still left after all the subtractions of critics have 



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LECT. Vl] SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH." 353 

These monstrosities and inner weaknesses soon brought dis- 
credit on the " natural " explanation of the gospel history. 
We have already * heai-d the hard sentence of Hegel on the 
" stupidity and meanness which arrogates to itself the title of 
common sense and morality." Sohelhng, too,* condemns it, 
saying that " nothing is more doleful than the occupation of 
all rationalists, who stiive to make that rational which declares 
itself to be above all reason." For the scientific annihilation 
of this standpoint, however, we have to thank Strauss, who in 
this way has done us real service. Not only did he in his 
former lAfe of Christ confute Dr. Paulus step by step, but in 
his latest writings, and most of all in the pamphlet entitled 
IH& Halben mid die Ganzen, he chastises the rationalists of the 
present day, especially the Baden school, with a bitter irony, 
and often with a scathing sarcasm nearly approaching to 
abiise. Thus it is tliat one of our opponents often confutes 
the other. 

All the more does it give us cause for wonder tliat a well- 
known theologian of the present day, notwithstanding the 
undoubted bankruptcy of nationalism, and in contradiction to 
his own past history, should have fallen back to the old ration- 
alistic standpoint. I mean Dr. Schenkel in his Sketch of tM 
Character of CJtrist,^ a book which scarcely corresponds to its 
title, as it is in reality nothing but a life of Christ. 



n. DR. SCHENKEL S " SKBTOH OF THE CHAEACTEE OP CHRIST." 

We shall soon see that we have a right to place Schenkel 
in the immediate vicinity of the rationalists, although much 
that is in his book reminds us of Strauss and Kenan, and still 
more of the " Tubmgen scliool," so that in fact his book is 
varied with almost every hue of thought. Before doing so, 
however, let iis cast' a glance at his treatment of the Gospels 
tvith res-pect to their historical value. 

Selienkel agrees with several othei's of the most modern 
critics in considering the Gospel of St. Mark to be the oldest 

^ lu the oiiticpe of Deiam in Lect. III., p. 202. 

3 SammtlicJie Werhe, Bd. ii,, AUK iv. p. 23. 

' G&aToiiierMld JeiU. IVe quote in the Mlowiiig from the 3d et!., I86i. 



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354 MODEES ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OP CHRIST. [lECT. VI. 

and most original, and he lays a stress upon the fact that his 
book " gives the first delineation of Christ from the stand- 
point of the second evangelist." This preference for the second 
Gospel may be the result of critical investigations, the correct- 
ness of which we cannot stop to examine here : certainly, 
however, it is connected with Dr. Schenkel's aversion for 
miracles ; for, as he observes, " the second Gospel contains no 
trace of the ' Legend of the Infancy,' nor of the appearances 
of Christ after His resurrection ;" and also, " many of its inci- 
dents are less embellished with miraculous paraphernalia than 
the corresponding ones in the first and third Gospels" 
(pp. 239, 240). But since even Mark relates much that is 
miraculous, Schenkel is forced to confess that the " miracle 
legends" had attained the preponderance even in this Gospel, 
notwithstanding its intimate connection with the reports of 
Peter, whose disciple Mark was. How, then, did the miracu- 
lous element penetrate into this comparatively trustworthy 
historical record t In the first place, " Peter himself, under 
the influence of Old Testament precedents, probably repre- 
sented some of the gospel incidents in the light of miraculous 
workings ; " second, " Mark treated the reports of Peter in a 
free manner, and doubtless wrote his Gospel under the influ- 
ence of [other] oral tradition, and of the craving for the 
miraculous which was characteristic of the early churches ; " 
and finally, we may suppose that the reviser of the " original 
Mark" (for the present Gospel is a revision of the original 
one) now and then imported later ideas into the older records. 
Thus, in order to explain the miraculous element in this 
Gospel, we are referred from Peter to Mark, from Mark to the 
oral tradition and the craving of the early churches for the 
miraculous, and thence to some later reviser of the original 
record; and all this evidently because Schenkel feels that none 
of these gi-ounds of explanation really suffices. He who can 
represent purely natural occurrences " in the light of miracu- 
lous workings " places himself in a very doubtful light, even 
though he be an apostle. And the man who for the sake of 
his readers can make miracles out of events wluch were re- 
lated to liim by his teacher as perfectly natural, is surely ill 
fitted to be a credible narrator. More than this : how does 
this very free treatment of the records agree with what Dr. 



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LEct. vl] schehkel's " sketch." 355 

Scheoliel before stated, viz. that Mark wi-ote down the nai-- 
rations of his teacher with great exactitude ? 

In -whatever manner the miraculous element became intro- 
duced into this Gospel, the favoured record has to endure a 
very arbitrary treatment for its sake. At one time its clear 
testimony must go for nothing, e.g. in the healing of the palsied 
man (Mark ii. 10, 11), because, as Schenkcl confesses, it con- 
tradicts his view of the case ; at another time, the clear, un- 
mistakeahle sense of the words is arbitrarily distorted, — e.g. 
when Christ speaks of His coming again " in the glory of the 
Father with the holy angels" (Mark viii. 38), this is to be 
understood " figuratively of the Master's spiritual reappear- 
ance " (just as if a single one of our Lord's hearers would 
have thus received it). In chap. siii. the second advent of 
Christ only means the epoch " at which the imiversal Christian 
Ghuich began to exist ;" bjit on account of His disciples' weak 
comprehen'sion, Christ calls it the day of His second coming ! 
In chip XIV 62, likewise, our Lord merely made use of " the 
iir,uiative language familiar to the theocratic mind" (pp. 145, 
259, 294). Probably it was because he was well acciuainted 
with this figure of speech that the high priest rent his clothes, 
aud condemned it as blasphemy ! ! 

If the chief record is thus treated, it is not to be expected 
that the others should fare better, The whole history of the 
childhood of our Lord, as related by St. Luke, must of course 
be mythical, with the exception, however, of the story of 
Jesus at the age of twelve years in the temple. Why should 
this part merely be historical ? Because in the other there is 
too much of the supernatural, which would not suit Scbenkel's 
human picture of Jesus ; this event is seemingly more natural 
(though, in truth, it points to a more than human development 
of the inq^uiring boy). The Sermon on the Mount appears to 
Scbenkel suitable. It must, therefore, be brought over from 
St. Matthew's Gospel, with the excuse that in the present 
revision of St. Mark it was doubtless " overlooked," not " in- 
tentionally omitted " (p. 70). But our critic is not pleased 
with all that is contained in it ; thus the declaration (Matt. 
V. 17), that heaven and earth shall pass away rather tliiin the 
smallest fraction of the law remain unfulfilled, is an entire 
misunderstanding : this was really a saying of the Pharisees 



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^56 MODEEH ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [lECT. VL 

which was controverted by Jesus, and put into His mouth by 
some strange mistake (p. 271). 

The worst treatment, however, is accorded to the fourth 
Gospel ; and here we see the most flagrant instances of 
arbitrary treatment of the records. According to Schenkel, 
St. John occupies the last place among the gospel narrators, 
because, in his record, "there is no trace of a gradual 
development of the religious and Messianic consciousness in 
Christ, no perceptible growth or progress of his inner life " 
(p. IV) ; but, on the contrary, his earthly work is placed in 
connection with a pre-existent condition. We cannot help re- 
membering that, six years before the publication of his Skdck, 
Schenkel conceded to St. John the iirst place amongst the evan- 
gelical historians, just "because he testifies most decidedly to the 
immediate and imconditional agreement of the self-consciousness 
of Christ with that of God." But since the substance of this 
Gospel is " not directly historical," there can be no hesitation, 
if necessary, in doing away with its testimony. St. John may 
teli ns that Jesus, when hanging on the cross, committed His 
mother to the care of His beloved disciple ; but Schenkel 
knows better, that Mary was not able "to bear the sight even 
from a distance." St. John, therefore, invented the circum- 
stance in order to represent "this admirable endurance of 
motherly love, as an expiation for her former strange coldness 
towards the gospel ; " although, in another place, he tells us 
tiiat Mary expected a miracle at the wedding in Cana, and was 
therefore by no means indifferent to the gospel. Elsewhere, 
too, in the history of the passion, St. John shows himself to be 
an undependable nnrrator ; he purposely omits to mention the 
institution of the Lord's Supper, and brings his farewell re- 
past into connection with the washing of the disciples' feet, 
an ordinance " which was as plainly calculated to humble all 
priestly pride, as afterwards the Lord's Supper became the 
chief support of this sentiment" Por this reason, therefore, 
it must be historically correct that Christ washed His disciples' 
feet, because this anti- hierarchical incident is excellently 
adapted to the purpose of Schenkel's S/cekk. In the conver- 
sation of Christ with the woman of Samaria, St. John has 
misstated time and place, and has eiToneously represented 
him as omniscient ; nevertheless, the narrative must be based 



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LECI, VX.] SCHENKEL'S " SKETCH." 357 

Oil some historical event, in order that "the grandest of all 
speeches in defence of tolerance," the " exalted wide-hearted- 
ness " shown in what Jeans says ahout the nature of worship, 
may not be wanting to the Sketch of Christ's character. 

Indeed, such genuinely human features in the character of 
Christ are frequently recurring in the fourth Gospel. Sehenbel 
is often fain to give the preference to this unhistorical, specu- 
lative record, as against the other Gospels, and even to correct 
his favourite St. Mark according to its statements. The dis- 
course on the bread from heaven in chap. vi. betrays to us the 
origin of the legend of the loaves and fishes, and is therefore 
more credible than what the other evangelists relate in reapect 
of this. The discourses of Christ as to His coming again, are 
more faithfully reproduced by St. John (chap. xiii.-xvii.) than 
in the three first Gospels. St. John alone is the tnie narrator 
in this case, although Schenkel informs us that Jesus could 
not possibly have held such long discourses on the last evening. 
And why 1 Because the reference to the Comforter whom 
He would send shows that, when Jesus spoke of His second 
coming, He did not refer to a personal and bodily r 
ance, but only to an advent "in spirit" (186 et seq.). 

From this you see in what an ariitrary spirit Schenkel 
hawMcs the gospel records. His method is far moi'e self~con- 
tradictory than even that of the old rationalists. Whatever 
can be explained as opposition to " High Churchism " or 
" orthodoxy," whatever may be strained to serve his well- 
known democratic church tendencies, whatever is calculated 
to make Jesus appear as a natural man, bounded by human 
limitations and imperfection,— all this is always a " genuine 
historical trait" (pp. 40, 149, 208, etc. etc), whether it 
come from the Synoptics or from the fourth Gospel But 
wherever the Gospels speak of the necessity of church dis- 
cipline, and above all of the superhuman dignity and power 
of Christ, of His divine nature and self -consciousness, be their 
language never' so distinct, and the occurrence of such senti- 
ments never so frequent, this is not history, but some 
misunderstanding of a later reviser, or a legendary addition, 
no matter in which Gospel the passage occurs. "Whoever 
pleases, may call this science and historical criticism ; in 
truth, it is nothing but subjective inclination. Hence the 



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358 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OP CHRIST. [LECT. VI 

best critics have already shown his self-contradictory treat- 
ment of the historical recoixis to be a fault which vitiates the 
whole of Dr. Schenkel's work.^ 

We can easily guess of what description the sketch of 
Christ's character will be, which is produced by such a pro- 
cedure. Let us look at it more closely. 

Like the rationalists with their denial of the miraculous, 
so, too, Schenkel approaches the gospel history with a pre- 
supposition that decides everything beforehand, viz. the 
denial of the Godhead of Christ. On the iirst page of his 
book he declares that the teaching of the Church as to the 
person of Christ is an ancient absurdity, a remnant of Eoman 
Catholicism in the Protestant Church ; a doctrine imported 
into the Church by the Gentile Christian party, for the Jewish 
CI t n alw ys considered Christ to be a mere man. " The 
t t m nt th t Jesus once lived among men, and still lives as 
y n a d very God, must necessarily call forth the most 
Ity fles" (p. 2). He was rather "a child of the 
\ pi th al son of Joseph and Mary ; " his father was 
n f tl \ eople, one who belonged to the working class, 
p t (p. 26).* The lad of twelve years old "calls 
t, d h F tl r, as any pious Jewish child might do " (pp. 
2o9, 27). Jesus experienced an early " development of strong ■ 
feeling, which temporarily repressed his filial piety " (p. 28). 
He doubtless " learned from the book of Nature, beneath the 
smiling skies of Galilee "^ (p. 28). He was baptized by John, 
but there was never any intimate relationship between them, 
far less a declaration of Christ's divine aonship on the part of 
John (p. 30 et seq,). In baptism Jesus receives divine en- 
lightenment " like a silver glance " from above, teaching him 
that henceforth not the law, but " the mild and gentle spirit 
of humility and love, symbolized by the dove, is to effect a 
moral regeneration of the people " (p. 35). 

'Cf.Weiss: "Dr. Sobenkel's Oftai-aiiertWd Jesn, besondera von Seiten der 
Qnellenbenntzung u. geschichtlickcn Be1iandlting!'U'Gise1)eleiichtet ;" in Sludim 
a. KriUken for 1865, Heft ii. p. 277 et seq. Also, TJlilhoni's valuable Uttle 
book. Die jiioffenwn DarsCellwigen de« Lehena Jesa, p. 39 et seq. 

' And yet Dr. Schenkel dtnied this at the General Synod lot Baden (18th May 
1867), stating that his boek merely contained a. refeienee "to the parents of 
Jesus," but not that Jesus teas the son of the cuipenter I ClL this statement 
with the above cited page <>l his book. 

' Cf. further on, ths description by Rcnan, 



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LECT, v;.] sciieskel's "skeicu." 359 

It 19 certain that Christ attributed to Himself an nnev- 
ampled clearness in His consciousness of God, and, in conse- 
qneiice of it, a most intimate and indissoluble communion 
with God ; also, that He designated this personal character of 
His as an inexhaustible source of revelation and life foi the 
whole of humanity. But it does not follow that He attributed 
to Himself divine power or dignity, nor did He co-equalize 
the " Son " as the second person of the Godhead, with the 
"Father" as the first (pp. 121, 175). Scheukel actually 
endeavours to prove this by quoting Matt si. 29, where Clirist 
calls Himself " meek and lowly ; " indicating that He " some- 
times had to straggle with anger" (p. 122)! la, not this 
genuine Eationalism, importing a meaning into the text instead 
of extracting one from it ? for in the passage quoted our Lord 
says, if anything, directly the contrary to what Schenkel infers. 
Christ applies to Himself the designation " Son of God," in no 
other sense than " that in which the people of Israel or the 
theocratic king might be so called" (p. 177). "The fourth 
Gospel even, if we examine it. closely, contains nothing about 
the God-equal dignity of Christ" (pp. 178, 160). But how 
about the many passages which indubitably apply to the 
divine power and dignity of the Son, — e.g., " Whatsoever the 
Father doeth, that doeth the Son likewise ; " " that they all 
may honour the Son even as they honour the Father ; " the 
co-ordination of Father and Son in the baptismal command, 
and many others ? These are partly passed over in silence, 
probably because they appear unnecessary (and at all events 
unsuitable) for the Sketch of Christ's character ; partly they 
are disposed of — as e.g. the declaration, " AH things are gi\en 
unto me by my Father " — witli a remark such as this, that 
" without the necessary limitation these words would be 
meaningless" (p. 120). When Jesus said, " I and the Father 
are one," He referred not to oneness of essence, but to oneness 
of will (p. 150). We have already shown that these oft- 
renewed attempts to deprive our Lord of His personal and 
conscious divinity are exegetically untenable. 

" From His earliest youth a partaker in the sorrows and 
joys of the people," Christ soon felt " that His work must be 
devoted to them" (pp. 33, 41). "Mm fiwn the people were 
the men of tlie futwe Christian Church" (pp. 60, 44), — from 



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ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. TL 

amongst their iminl)er He chose His apostles. At the time of 
His first public appearance Jesus was not yet fully clear as to 
His calling, far less did He at once claim to be the Messiah. 
After the temptation in the wilderness " He is gifted with a 
preliminary insight into His vocation " (p. 40). He had seen 
from the example of John the Baptist that the old Jewish 
theocracy was possessed of no specific for the moral regenera- 
tion of the people, and that a new path must be struck out in 
order to attain to this end. Thence proceeded His proclama- 
tion ; The time is fulfilled ; the kingdom of God is come near 
~-t.e. " the old age of ceremonial minority and traditional 
schooling of the people" has passed away. At that time, 
therefore, Christ did not make His appearance " as the Messiah 
promised by the prophets, but only as the founder of a new 
age, of a fresh communion of pious Israelites with God, which 
should be independent of theocratic conditions " (p. 43), which 
communion He sought to realize in the circle of His first dis- 
ciples. It was the healing, ie. quieting, by means of a con- 
solatory assurance, of one whom the people thought possessed, 
which gave the first impulse to the spread of the opinion that 
Jesus worked miracles. 

The opposition of the hierarchical party, the " orthodox 
school-theologians," the " High-Churchmen," alias the Scribes 
and Pharisees, who took violent offence especially at His 
breach of the Sabbath, convinced Jesus " with ever-increasing 
clearness, that it was the aim of His life to remove the yoke of 
the dead letter from His tormented people, to put bounds to 
the empty scholasticism and arrogant rule of the priesthood, 
and to elevate the neglected and forsaken community of lay- 
men to moral and religious freedom" (p. 64). Henceforth He 
represents " the true dignity and the eternal i-ights of man " 
as against the school-tlieology of the priests and the spirit- 
killing letter of their traditions (pp. 64 et s., pp. 36 et s.), 
and seeks " to liberate the consciousness of God from all iorms 
and limits " (p. 1 2 1). He proclauns the freedom of worship ; 
for, in truth, " liberty of conscience and of faith were the start- 
ing-point as well as the leading ideas in His whole purjjose and 
work" (p. 127). He wishes to introduce the religion of a 
universal love of man ; that is to say, " of a universal charity, 
purified from all prejudices of confession, of social standing or 



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LECT. VI.] SCHENKEL'S " SKETCH." 361 

of nationality : this He distinctly testifies to be the way to 
everlasting life" (p. 127). This "religion of unqualified 
humanity " He pronounced sacred in the parable of the good 
Samaritan (p. 127). 

In virtue of tliese ideas, Jesus wished to proclaim Himself, 
not yet as Messiah, but as the Saviour of His people. He 
seeks to spread them by sending out the twelve, and thus to 
make the original nucleus of God-fearing Israelites outgrow its 
dimensions. He even makes a practical use of these ideas in 
the regions of Tyre and Zidon, etc., i.e. at the boundary of the 
Gentile world, in order to test the readiness of the heathen to 
receive the new doctrine. 

"When Peter, on His return from thence, solemnly confes,?ed, 
" Thou art the Messiah;' this was, " a motto to hold His 
f 11 t tl thus He unfolded His banner, and took up 

a 1 fi t p t n linst the hierarchy. It would seem as if 
J 1 p ted the decisive word to issue from the 

m h fa 1 pi (p. 99). Well knowing that, according 
t 1 Old T tan nt, the office of Messiah was one quite 
diffeient from the woric He had set before Himself, He did not 
approve of this opinion. But He could not help Himself ; He 
must of necessity lay claim to be the Messiah, since this " was 
the sole means by which He could penetrate a portion at least 
of the nation with His ideas, and thus attain the object ot His 
vocation" (p. 98), 

It was, however, necessary that His Messiahship should 
be consecrated by suffering. His entry into Jerusalem, an 
open avowal of His claims, and the subsequent cleansing of 
the temple — a symbol of the approaching destruction of the 
outward temple-service — supplied Hia opponents with the 
weapons necessaiy for His accusation and sentence of death. 
He was amenable to the letter of the law. He " sacrifices Him- 
self to the killing commandment, in order by His death to 
destroy it in principle for ever, as the most fearful hindrance 
of true religion and morality " (p. 199). His death was " the 
victory of liberty and love." TJie heai'tless law was accused 
by compassionate love ; the hierarchy was condemned, and 
thenceforth became the object of detestation. This was the 
substance of Christ's redemption and reconciliation. Through 
the belief in His resun-ection, arising " from a condition of 



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362 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST. [LECT. VL 

ecstasy, the effect of deeply shaJ;en feminine aonl-life " (p. 
226), the deceased Messiah waS' glorified as the ever-living 
One. He lives in all to -whom His words are spirit and life. 
'"The living Christ is the Spirit of the Church" (p. 234). 

These are the salient points in the picture of Christ as 
drawn hy Schenkel. The first thing that strikes us is the 
facile and matter-of-conrse way in which he (in common with 
all other anti-miraculous writers on the life of Christ) passes 
over the question as to the descent of oui Lord ; just as if the 
whole foundation of our faith were not destroyed by changing 
the " only-hegotten Son of God, conceived of the Holy Ghost, 
horn of the Virgin Mary," into the (illegitimate ?) son of 
Joseph and Mary ! In this and in other respects we recognise 
in the Slsdch the same old, scrupulous, hij^hly enlightened 
people's friend of the rationalistic age. Dr. Schenkel has 
only trimmed his garments after a more modern fashion, in 
order, for his own reasons, to set Him up in opposition to all 
time ChurchmansMp, either new or old. We need waste no 
words in proving that the Christ of the S!cetch does not 
correspond in the remotest degree to Him whom St. Mark 
portrays. But we cannot help feeling surprised that Dr. 
Schenkel should reproach other's, e.y, Eenan, with " repeating 
in many respects the mistakes of the old rationalists." That 
he himself does this more than any one is especially evident 
from the manner in which he treats the miracles of Christ. 

Schenkel distinguislies between two classes of miracles in 
the gospel history, Pirst, the miracles of healing, which " are 
still approximately explicahle by the laws of p,sychology, as 
the iniluence of a personality gifted with the highest spiritual 
talents and the rarest moral powers, met hy an unqualified 
confidence on the part of those who sought help from him." 
Second, "the wcfrlss of absolute otimipotenee," occurring daring 
the latter part of Christ's ministry, " in which all the laws of 
nature are simply suspended " {eg. quieting of the storm, 
feeding the multitude, raising the dead). Since these latter 
break through the hounds of human finity, within which 
Christ is supposed to he confined throughout the first three 
Gospels, they are to he accounted as the products of legends 
and fancies. They reveal the " unconscious worship of an 
enthusiastic religious fancy, proceeding from the deeply excited 



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LECT. vr.] scheskel's "sketch." 363 

consciences and hearts of the first disciples and churches, who 
thus gave a hyperbolical expression to the glow of their pious 
fuelings, and to their admiration, love, and reverence for the 
departed hero, — an expression which, naturally enough, was 
scarcely in accordance with the standards of sober historical 
criticism " (pp. 15,1 6). Dr. Schenkel appeals to the thoroughly 
rationalistic maxim, " that we must keep not to the shell but 
to the kernel of the gospel history ;" and he lays stress on the 
absence of " an undisturbed power of perception, in the case 
even of the most immediate witnesses," who for that reason 
could not form a correct judgment (p. lOo). Here we have 
the same distinction between facts and opinions as in the case 
of the rationalists. The only difference between them and 
Sehenkel is, that the latter finds far more of legend in the 
miracles. For " the picture of the Eedeeraer's life, soon after 
His earthly departure, was surrounded by a rich stream of 
legends " (p. 16). 

Dr. Schenkel is thus possessed of two means to get rid of 
the supernatural : the enthusiastic, exaggerating fancy of the 
disciples, and the legendary element. True, he himself speaks 
of a miraculous gift possessed by Christ, but only in the 
sence of a specially " intensified gift of human nature." For 
" if we were to consider the miraculous gift of Christ as the 
result of indwelling omnipotence, or as the shining forth of 
His divine nature, we should no longer be able to apply any 
human standards to His operation" (p. 48). As if miracle- 
workens before the time of Jesus had, as such, ceased to be 
men ! But Scheukel's picture of Christ must not at any price 
exceed the limits of the purely natural. 

" During His retirement in the desert, Jesus began to feel 
within Himself the workings of that, mysterious power which 
we must believe to be the source of His miracles " (p. 39). 
And in what did it consist ? Jesus had the " psychical power 
of calming troubled souls." His assurance, e.g,, of the forgive- 
ness of sins, could thrill through the soul like an electric 
current, and communicate itself to the paralysed nerves of the 
sick man, tlius producing bodQy eftects (p, 57), This was the 
case with the palsied man in Mark ii. 1-12. If so, however, 
why did not the sick man spring up immediately after the 
assurance, " Thy sins are forgiven thee," instead of waiting to 



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3G4 MODEEM ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST. [lECT. Vl 

hear the words, " Eise up and take thy bed," etc. ? In the 
syniigogue at Capernaum (Mark i. 21 et a.), Christ merely 
quieted the convulsive fit of a highly exeit«d madman 
(48, 49) — who, however, according to ver. 26, is most of all 
convulsed by the first words of the Saviour. Other sick people 
were cured " in consequence of undergoing spiritual suspense, 
and through passing incitements" (p. 89). The healing of 
the woman with an issue of blood is eifected by " religious 
excitement in her soul " (p. 82), though the evangelist tells us 
that she was healed UJore Jesus turned round and spoke to 
her (Mark v. 30). In the case of the centurion's servant, 
" the chief cause of his recovery was the extraordinary spiritual 
excitement of the sick man, and his invincible faith in the 
healing power of Christ " (p. 74) : yet the passage in question 
says not a word about the faith of the sei-vant, but only about 
that of the centurion ! Tiiose who were sick of fever, Jesus 
quieted by a " loving grasp of the hand, probably accompanied 
by comforting and refreshing assurances" (p. 49). The leper 
" was probably cured in the main before he came to Christ " 
(p. 63)! 

The miraculous power of Christ did not extend beyond (at 
best doubtful) results of this kind. 

Are these not the old worn-out paths and threadbare arts 
of natural explanation ? is not this the same old rationalistic 
caprice which clips and pares the historical matter, till it 
no longer belies the axiom that there is no such thimr as a 
miracle? According to Isaiah (iv. 6), Christ's name is "Won- 
derful ;" according to Messrs. Schenkel & Co., " an entirely 
natural man." And yet this same Dr. Schenkel some twelve 
years since most truly remarked, "Pew men only are wise 
enough to perceive that much more intellect is necessary to 
the believing of a miracle than cleverness to its denial ! " 

Yet we may find even in the " historical " remains left us 
by this violent exegesis enough to shatter the natural explana- 
tion of these incidents. \Vhen, e.g., we read that the inhabi- 
tants of Capernaum bring all their sick folk to Jesus (p. 49), we 
should like Dr. Schenkel to explain liow it was that the people 
expected this Kabbi, on His Urst appearance, to heal the sick ? 
Surely more must have happened than merely tiie quieting of 
a woman sick of fever, for tlie people to think Him a man of 



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LECT. VI.] SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH." 365 

miracles who would heal all their sick Indeed we may put 
the question in a general form : If no miracles ever took place, 
how came the people constanthj to expect tlmnt Schenkel, 
Strauss, and Eenan all confess tliat that generation did expect 
them ; indeed they employ this fact in support of their nega- 
tion of the miraculous, arguing that the miracle-seeking pro- 
pensities of that age were the chief source of miraculous 
narratives.' In the last resort this weapon may be used 
against our adversaries. It is perfectly true that an inordinate 
craving for the miraculous may invent miracles; and that 
later on it did so, is sufficiently proved by the apocryphal 
Gospels. But just as in later ages a " miracle-mania " created 
false miracles, so in tM first iTistance real and true miracles 
created Ike miracle-mania of later time^. It would never have 
occurred to men to coin false money, if there had not first 
been real money (cf. p. 112) ! Kow, we ask, did manMnd evei- 
arrive at the coiiception of a miracle, if not through witTiessing 
workings of the Divine Omnipotence, which were iitterly beyond 
the reach of hmnan comprehension ? We are still waitin" for 
an answer to this question from the critics who deny the 
miraculous. 

Hitherto we have been considering Dr. Schenkel's treatment 
of the first class of miracles — those of healing. The second 
class, our Saviour's worlds of omnipotence, are disposed of either 
by similar violence, or else by their transposition into the 
realm of fable. The feeding of five thousand in the wilder- 
ness dwindles down to the fact that Christ satisfied them 
" with the heavenly bread of life," by " reverently consecrating 
the provisions which they had brought with them, or which 
they hastily pi-ocured in the neighbourhood," and then dis- 
tributing them through His disciples (p. 86). The daughter 
of Jaims was still aUve ; for Christ Himself says, " She is not 
dead, but sleepeth." The nan-ative of the transfiguration 
"underwent a legendary transformation in the subsequent 
tradition " (p. 105). In like manner the legends of both the 
miracles on the lake arose from the simple fact, that during a 
storm Christ exhibited greater courage than frightened though 
experienced mariners, notwithstanding the despair of the helms- 

' We shall see, liow ever, in our conaideration of Strauss' wort, ttiat the Jewish 
nation, as such, by no means ha/l a proclivity for the miracnlous. 



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366 MODEIIN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CUEIST. [lECT. VL 

man, and tliat He thereby inspirited all surrounders. This 
Dr. Schenkel considers to be " much grander and more stir- 
ring" than the cLuieting of the storm as related by the 
evangelists (pp. 79, 80) ! On the other occasion Jesus walked 
in the dark of night, not on the water, but "along the shore," 
and this appeared to the disciples like a threatening appari- 
tion (p. 88). The raising of Lazarus is a myth which perhaps 
originated from the parable of Lazarus the beggar (p. 277). 
The later legends in general were not satisfied with the un- 
adorned simplicity of the original narratives. The additions 
made by them give us many an instructive insight into the 
formation of miraculous narratives (p. 208). So, e.g., with the 
bloody sweat in Gethsemane, which is "an unmistakeable 
exaggeration." ^ 

Thus I3r, Sehenkel, in contradistinction to the former 
attempts to explain away the miracles of Christ, which were 
either simply rationalistic or purely mythical, combines all 
methods — the natural, the mythical, the allegorical, the prosaic 
or sentimental rationalistic — to suit his own convenience.^ 
Just as much violence is done to tlie discourses of Christ when 
they do not fit into Schenkel's portrait of Him, even though 
they may occur in the Gospel by St. Mark. Thus it is with 
the prophecies of Christ in regard to His second coming. These 
were all meant by Jesus to be taken impersonally ; but the 
misapprehension of a later age converted them into predictions 
of a personal advent (p. 104). If we ask how such a mis- 
understanding was possible, we are told that Jesus spoke 
figuratively, because His disciples could not yet raise their 
minds to the idta of an impersonal advent ; and these figures 
of speech oiigimted the idea that Christ would appear again 
personally (p Ib-i et s) Ihe mere inner grounds against 
such a view show it to be utterly impossible that Christ 
should have predicted of Himself a personal and corporal 
second advent in the splendour of heavenly glory, and accom- 
panied by the angelic hosti for the purpose of erecting an 
earthly kingdom He who came to found a spiritual kingdom 
of truth, justice, and love, could not possibly have designated 

' The possibility of the fornmtion of myths will be more closely csiiiiiuicd in 
the conniderntion of Stiatiss' book. 
' Cf. in Lecture VII. his thooty as to the resuii'cction of Cluist. 



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LECT. VI.] SCHENKEL's "SKETCH." 367 

outward splendour, earthly power, and dazzling glory as the 
last aim of it (p. 104). We ask in amazement : Has the idea 
never dawned upon Dr. Schenkel that " corporality is the end 
of God's -ways," and must be so ? Does he not see that tlie 
kingdom of truth and justice, which in this world is bein" 
built up invisibly and in q^uiet concealment, must, in order to 
celebrate its full triumph, one day appear visibly ; and that 
therefore Christ might point out botfi aspects of His kingdom 
— its present inward nature, and its future outward and visible 
incorporation ? The deeper reason why Dr. Schenkel will not 
acknowledge these discourses as genuine, is simply his aversion 
to confess the Godhead of Him who is King of heavea and 
earth, and the future Judge of the world ; who, therefore, in 
these discourses places His person far above all merely natural 
humanity. 

The clearest view of the insufficiency and futility of this 
whole attempt to explain the life and person of Christ will 
accrue if we consider its central point, and ask for an answer 
to the question, how the man Jesus arrived at His Messianic 
consciousness? According to Schenkel, this came on Him 
gradually against His will, and indeed, in the first instance, 
gainst His better knowledge. We have already heard 
Schenkel tell us that Jesus was " not yet fully clear " as to 
His Eedeemer's vocation on the occasion of His first public 
appearance at Nazareth. Even at the time that He preached 
in Nazareth (Luke iv. 16 et s.) He " was not convinced that, 
as a ' prophet ' in a new and higher sense. He was to be the 
fulfiller of the still imperfect Old Testament prophecies of the 
Messiah" (pp, 14, 40 et s) ' Still imperfect?" Yes; be- 
cause they aimed only at a restoration of Israel's ancient 
power and dominion ind at the extension of an outward 
theocracy over the whole eaith md that not only according 
to the then condition of Messiinic expectations, but also 
according to the true meanmg of the prophetical writings 
themselves (?). For this leison Christ was at first " unwilling 
to undertake the task assj^-ned to the Messiah by the prophets " 
(p. 97). He only wished to become the Saviour of His nation 
— the founder of a new God-fearing community. But how if 
the nation expected its salvation and regeneration from none 
else than the Messiah ? In this case He could not attain 



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368 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. TL 

His ends without laying claim to the Messiahship. He there- 
fore " assumed the title and dignity of Messiah only in conser 
quence of an unavoidable accommodation to the ideas and 
expectations of His contemporaries and co-patriots" (p. 199), 
because this was " the only means to attain the object of His 
vocation." And so when Peter had, to the surprise of Christ 
Himself, uttered the decisive " watchword," He could no 
longer help Himself, hai was obliged to " permit " the applica- 
tion of Messianic ideas to Hia work and person. 

But how could He in this case assume to be the Fulfiller 
o£ the Messianic prophecies, if they represented the Messiah 
as acting quite differently to what He had, according to His 
better knowledge, resolved to do ? " He probably looked on 
these promises aa a series of figurative representations of the 
future, which were indispensable to a spiritually backward 
nation, and served the purpose of a bridge leading in later 
times to a purer and deeper comprehension of God's self- 
revelation to man" {p. 98). So Christ endeavoured to purify 
the Messianic prophecies from the spurious elements contained 
in them, and thus to fulfil their true substance. Only from 
this point of view could He suffer them to be applied to His 
person. True, He must not "for a moment conceal from 
Himself, that every appeal to Old Testament passages would 
be open to the gravest misunderstandings and wrong inter- 
pretations " ('IMd.). But not only in this respect did Christ 
put another interpretation on the Messianic prophecies ; for 
He soon became aware of the necessity that He should become 
a suffering Messiah, "an idea which to the Jews was self- 
contradictory, and unknown to the Old Testament " (notwith- 
standing Isaiah liiL ?). This converted the difference between 
His purer idea of the Messiah and the expectations of His 
nation into a positive contradiction. Dr. Sehenkel is forced 
to confess that " the fulfilment of the Old Testament in His 
person, was the non-fulfilment of aU theocmtic expectations. 
There was no longer anything in common between the hopes 
of His fellow-countrymen and His own conviction " (pp. 101, 
102). 

Here once more we ask in amazement : To whose Messianic 
ideas did Christ "accommodate" Himself? Clearly neither to 
those of the old prophets nor to those of the people. And 



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LECT. VI,] schenkel's "sketch." 369 

what would be the object of allowing tbe people to apply to 
Him the title of Messiah, if He did not fulfil their expecta- 
tions ? How could Christ conscientiously accept a title which 
to His own mind conveyed a meaning precisely opposed to 
that which the people attached to it, — a title which was not 
the substance formerly concealed by spurious wrappings, but 
simply the deceptive veil of a new idea, used by Him in order 
to secure more easy access to the affections of the people ? If 
Jesus ought not, on account of false Messianic expectations, 
to have appealed to the Old Testament with its imperfect 
promises, how is it that He constantly does so, and represents 
Himself as the Fulfiller of the old economy 1 (Cf. the Sermon 
on the Mount, the discourse at Kazareth, etc.) Were this 
the case, Christ would have been guilty of an apparent acqui- 
escence in the Old Testament, while neglecting to fulfil its 
most important part, and secretly transmuting it into some- 
thing entirely different. And would not this have betrayed 
a want of sincerity ? or would not a serious lack of clearness, 
firmness, and consistency be evident from the original relue- 
tancy to become the Messiah, followed so soon by the resolu- 
tion to claim this office ? If Christ from the time of His 
baptism and His sojourn in the wilderness clearly saw tliat 
there was no way open to Him other than " an inner rupture 
with the theocracy, and a preparation to fight for hfe or death," 
why could He not from the very beginning recognise that He 
must needs take up a definite position as against the current 
ideas about Messiah ? Why should Peter have been the first 
to give Him a clear view as to His future course ? How 
piteously dependent on His disciple does the Master thus 
appear, though Schenkel says, with truth, that " Jesus grew 
i-athei' from within than from without ! " And yet, on the 
other hand, how blind are these disciples ! They stamp their 
Master as the Messiah, but they do not see that the fulfilment 
of the Old Testament in His person was " the non-fulfilment 
of all theocratic hopes," and continue to cleave to them with 
their whole soul (Acts i 8). 

We see from these, and many other questions and conti-a- 
dictions, !mp HI Dr. Schenkel has succeeded in soloing the. enigma, 
of Christ's Messianic consciousness. Instead of bringing light into 
the question, he has confused it on all hands. With unbounded 



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370 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CUEIST. [lECT. VI. 

capiice he treats the propheeiea of the old Testament as in- 
tended to be fulfilled, but as incapable of fulfilment on account 
of their imperfection. He places Christ in a thoroughly false 
position as regards both the ancient prophets. His nation, and 
His disciples ; thus heaping up one exegetical, psychological, or 
historical riddle on another. But this always wiE and must be 
the case when men will not listen to the plain voice of Scripture. 
Of a truth, no ! The Messiaaic consciousness of Christ was 
not gradually developed amid constant fluctuations. It was 
not after half His career was past that He at length forced 
Himself to appear as the Messiah under the pressure of out- 
ward circumstances and human ideas. From the very beginniiif/ 
of Sis puUio ministry He Jcnew that He was the Messiah, and 
that from His Own deepest convictions, which long preceded 
any confession by the disciples. All the Gospels clearly 
testify to this. They tell us that the Messianic consciousness 
of Cinist, of which there was a presentiment in the lad of 
twelve, who lived in such close communion with His Father, 
broke forth at the baptism in Jordan. What a series of testi- 
monies in word and deed to this effect do we find long before 
the confession of Peter ! The history of the temptation ; the 
first sermon in Nazareth, representing the Messianic passage 
(Isa. Ixi. 1) as fulfilled in Himself ; His first miracle in Caper- 
naum, where the demon, without any contradiction on His 
part, declares Him to be the Holy One of God ; the first 
adoration on the part of the disciples (iTolm i. 45), who rejoice 
that they have found the Messiah ; the Sermon on the Mount, 
in which He lays claim to be the Fulfiller of the law and the 
prophets (Matt, v.'!"?), and attributes to Himself the power of 
excluding from or admitting into the Messianic kingdom (vii. 
21-23); the question of the Baptist, "Art Thou He that 
should come ? aye, even the designations, " Son of man " and 
" Bridegroom," which the most recent investigations have 
proved to have a Messianic import; the series of parables in 
which He represents the kingdom of God as come through 
Him ; — are not all these direct proofs of His distinct Messianic 
consciousness? We can very well understand why, for self- 
evident educational purposes, our Saviour endeavoured to rouse 
the faith of the people by His doings and sayiugs, instead of 
at once declaring, " I am the Messiah," The confession of 



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LECT. VI.] BCHEXKEL'S " SKETCH." 371 

Peter is pleasing to Hinij — not so much because it contains the 
acknowledgment of His Messiahship, as because it shows that 
the same " hai-d sayings " which had offended the mass of the - 
people had only produced a firmer faith, and one bom from 
inward experience, in the hearts of His disciples. This is 
clearly shown by John vi. 66-69. 

Even Keim, in his History of Jesus of Nazara, acknow- 
ledges that He was " convinced of His Messianic vocation from 
His very first public appearance;" and in the face of this 
strong conviction, as well as of many other facts, he is " forced 
decidedly to reject the theories of Strauss and Scheukel, who 
hold that the Messianic idea was not formed until later on," * 
It should never be forgotten " that thirty years of tranq^uil 
development preceded this ministry of scarce three years, and 
that He who made His appearance so late, and yet so decidedly, 
must have formed a clear opinion as to Himself and His work; 
and finally, let all objectors remember, that no transitional 
■ turning-point in the life of Christ, no breaking forth of Hjs Mes- 
sianic consciousness, such as the Gospels describe at the opening 
of His ministry, can be either pointed out or imagined later on."* 

Another defect, extending not only to this portion, but to 
the whole of Dr. Schenkel's Sketch, is the mania, which of late 
years has become perfectly morbid, for discovering signs of 
development, in the characte'r of Christ. We have already seen 
how this tendency sacrifices the Godhead of our Lord to His 
manhood, and misinterprets or rejects as spurious all the pas- 
sages which testify to the former. True, if we accept the false 
axiom on which these attempts are based, there ia something 
justifiable in them. Every real man must develope; and we 
'confess the true manhood of Christ, as the Church in all ages 
has done, though it may not always have had its due rights 
conceded. But the question is, during which period did this 

' Keim, Gfsehkhte Jeiii von Nazara, vol. L pp. 453, 454. He goes on to 
lemai'k, "At first, it is true, Jesus eoneealed thU dignity, and did not make 
use of the terms, 'Messiah,' 'Christ,' or 'Son of God,' until a later period. 
Still there can be no donbt that from the very beginning Ha laid claim to the 
highest authority. In His opening discourses He proclaims His Messiahship in 
terms more or less distinct ; hut apart from these, all the Gospela agree that 
during the first period of His ministry He bore the title of the ' Son of man,' 
which was confessedly and indubitably in dicatire of the Messianic dignity." 

• Cf. Beyschlag, DU ChrUlologk de» neuea Tedameiit*, p. 37. 



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3V2 MODERS ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFIS OF CHKIST. [LECT. VI. 

inner development of Christ take place? The anti-miraculous 
accounts of His life invariably date it too late, since they sup- 
pose it to result from the appearance of John the Baptist aud 
the religious excitement thereby produced. The i-eligious 
development of our Lord did not begin so late as this, for we 
find traces of it even in the child Jesus ; and when the 
religious excitement broke out amongst His people, the pur- 
poses of Christ were nearly matured. In other words. His 
inner development essentially took place, not during the period 
of Sis public miwistry, hU dui-ing the quiet of the preceding 
thirty years. Whoever will consider the beginnings of Christ's 
ministry, as related in the Gospels, with an unbiassed mind, 
will at once be struck with the admirable certainty and firm- 
ness of His conduct, and will receive the impression that the 
new Prophet was perfectly clear as to His redemptory vocation, 
and His entire relation to the past, present, and future of Israel, 
the world, and the kingdom of God. Do not the purity, ti-uth, 
and holy chastity of His intellect and will, which shine with 
such overpowering beauty in all His deeds and words, — do not 
these demand of us the belief that He never could have presented 
Himself to His own nation and to all mankind as their Re- 
deemer, before, in virtue of His constant communion with God, 
becoming perfectly certain that "the fulness of time was come"? 
After this epoch, we must contemplate His life not so much 
under the aspect of inwai'd devdopviemt (though, of course, this 
is not to be excluded'), as under that of a moral testing of what 
He had inwardly attained by means of a struggle with tho 
world and obedience to His heavenly Father even unto death. 
In the main, it is not Christ but His contemporaries who de- 
velope. As He offers them the fruits of His mature spiritual 
growth in word and deed, so they are forced to take up a more 
and more decided position towards this new divine Eevelation; 
and this necessitates a corresponding behaviour on His part. 

Apart from His Messianic consciousness, it is not easy to 
give proofs of development in Christ analogous to that o£ 
ordinary men during the time of His public ministry. Sup- 

' Of., e.g., Ltikeix. 31 withxii. 59. Still there are distinet traces of a recog- 
nition that it was needful for Him to suffer eveu during the earliest period of 
His ministiy. Of. Luko ix, 23, Matt. x. 16-25, v. 10, II, Luke Tii, 22 ff., and 



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LECT. VI.] SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH." S'S 

pose, e.ij., that we consider Him as an orator. Even the most 
gifted of human orators gradually attain the climax of their 
eloquence ; but so soon as Christ opens His lips, we hear the 
perfect Master of divine speech. Do not the very first sentences 
of the Sermon on the Mount show the ahsolnte incomparable- 
ness of the most gractons yet most tlirilling Treacher ? The 
same is the case with His actions, from the outset so holy and 
decided ; with His look, which pierces the depth of the heart ; 
with His ever sure and correct judgment ; with His perfect 
wisdom in dealing with all men, combining a majesty which 
must command respect with a condescension that should win 
the hearts of all men.' 

This mania for everywhere pointing ont development in the 
life of Christ, is often rightly punished by an inability to dis- 
cover any true development whatever. This is the case with 
Schenkel. In his book everything turns on the opposition 
to the " orthodox " Pharisees. This appears to be the main- 
spring which moves the drama of Ciirist's life, and brings about 

' On the grounds alio™ ennmeniUd, we take exception to the abovc-.iuoted 
work of Keim's, Oesdiitlite JeeuvmNasara (as well as to hie previously published 
leetiu-eB on "the human derelopmont of Christ," "the historical dignity of 
Christ," and "the historical Christ"), becanse, in the constant endeavour .o 
attain a historical eomprehansion of everything, he loaves no room for the 
divinity of our Saviour. This hook far excels tiie work ot Schenkel in wfll- 
conceived delineations, in scientific value, in purity of language, in real his- 
torical perception, and espeoiaUy in a warm respect for al) that is holy. On 
account, however, of its being written for the theological world, and not for the 
public at large, wo have not taken it info consideration above. Keim's eailier 
writings we cannot reckon direcUy amongst the number of the anti -miraculous 
accounts of the life of Christ, especially as he emphatically defends the bodily 
resaiTection of our Lord. Still, all these writings are closely allied fo the 
rationalistic and mythical accounts ; for Keim considers Christ to be only a man, 
although at the same time he calls Him a "mystery, "and acknowledges that 
He applied to Himself " overwhelming names »nd titles, before which all human 
categones seem to sink into sUence " {Historical DigaUy, pp. 26 and 29). We 
would just devote a few words to one aspect of these writings. 

According to Keim, Jesus "resolved" to he the Messiah. "Amidst conflicts 
wid struggles, there was developed the wondrous worid-transforming, primary 
thought -of His life, to be the Son of God, and aa soch the Saviour ot the world. 
Yea, this was the deed of His life, f<i offer Himself to the world as the true 
Messiah sent by God ; yea, as the obedient Son of God Himself. " " The greatest 
spiritual acquisition of His lile was His resoMum to he the MessM " (HUlm-ical 
CAmf, Sd ed. pp. 27, 78, et s. ; cf. Hkt. Dignily, pp. 12 et s. ; /esu wnA'a^., 
pp. 543 et s.). Granted the premise that Jesus was a mere man, there is no 
«scnping the conclusion that His Messiahship was a free inward resolve, whether 



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374 MODEES ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST. [lECT. VI 

one imporfcaat decision after another. But according to Dr. 
Sehenkel, Clirist is from the very commencement quite decided 
as to His behaviour towards the Pharisees ; as early as His bap- 
tism. He sees that " they are possessed of no specific for tbe 
regeneration of their nation." In the wilderness He sees that 
there is no way open to Him but to " declare enmity against 
the Pharisees, and wage war to the knife." He " purposely " 
makes His disciples " break the Sabbath." Jn the Sermon on 
the Mount He abjures " all connection with the Jewish hier- 
archy and theocracy," etc. etc. But whence, then, is any 
further " development " to proceed ? How can Sehenkel after- 
wards say that " noio the breach was inevitable," that Jesus 
was now " assuming the offensive," since all this had taken 
place from the very beginning ? 

True, there is one sacrifice by means of which we may pur- 
chase a purely human development in the life of Christ, — we 
mean the surrender of His siulessness, as in Kenan's work. 
This, however, to his honour he it said, is studiously avoided 
it resulted from ' ' tlie process of a lifetime " (vM sup. ) or was first formed at 
the baptism in Jordan, up to whicli Jesus " lind by no means attained tc a cer- 
tainty as to His vocation, or a conviction of His Messiahship " (Jem voit Naa., 
p. 5i3), Bnt bow could Christ, if He were a mere man, present Himself to the 
people Rs tha "God'Sent, true Messiah;" whereas the true Messiah, i.e. He who 
was promised in the Old Testament, was to bo no mere man, but "tbe Branch of 
tbe Lord," whose "goings out are from everlasting to everlasting"! We have 
hero a pldii dilemma. Either Jesus was tU true Messiah, and that according 
to the preparation and foreitiowlalge of God, in ivhklt case Mf had no need to 
" resolve " to be so, bat only to achaomledge and faijil the task aasijmed to Mm 
by God; or He ttas nothing qf the tind, in which tase no resulre, were it never so 
heroic, could make Him Meseiak, — at most it could hut enable Him to play tbe 
part. Is it, indeed, in any way possible to resolve to be one thing or anolier ? 
But even though this might be meant in the sense of becoming (or voluntarily 
undertaking the office of) Messiah, we must remember that such a " becoming" 
is, according to Scripture, only possible in consequence of a divinely-granted 
"Being," i.e. the divine Sonship, which cannot be dependent on the good 
pleasure of a, man. A resolution cannot originate a new existence ; it can only 
cany out the work belonging to that existence. True it is that tie whole of 
Christ's work for our redemption, from His first appearance to the acceptance ol 
the cup of suffering, was voluntary, and took place amid unceasing conflicts 
and assaults. Indeed, we believe that the free resolve of Christ extended still 
farther than Keim would allow, — even His coming into the world was subject 
to it. Thus His " resolution to be the Messiah " was made, not in this world, 
ftt Jordan, bnt in a pre-existent life. But when He had once appeared in the 
flesh, it no longer depended upon His free will whether to be the Messiah or 
not ; He could not act otherwise, according to the necessity of His nature. As, 
in the actions of Ood, liberty and necessity coalesce in a higher' unity, so, toO) 



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LECT. VI.] SCHEXKEL'S "SKETCH." 375 

by Dr. Sclieiikel as far as may be. Nevertheless, this same 
mania for development compels even him every now and then 
to place the moral dignitij of Christ in a dvhious light. Accord-- 
ingly, in such passages he generally speaks with an indecision 
and vagueness which moBi of itself arouse suspicion. He does 
not look upon the baptism of Christ as His Jiessianic conse- 
cration, but as a ceremonial purification. Jesus being seized 
by the force of the great religious and moral movement of the 
people, " places Himself in their ranks " without pride, or self- 
righteoushess, but yet without " classing Himself amongst 
common sinners" (pp. 33, 35). He classed Himself "with 
the better portion of the people." Thus He prayed with His 
disciples: " Forgive ws otir debts" (p. 29), as if our Lord had 
not put this prayer into the mouths of His disciples, and thus 
spoken, placing Himself in tJteir position ; " After this niannei', 
therefore, pray ye " (Matt, vi.- 9) ; " When ye pray, say " (Luke 
xi. 2). Purther, Christ allows Himself to be proclaimed as the 
Messiah for the sake of the people, and in order to attain His 
in the work of Christ vie may nol B€pa7-ate Mman liherty from dii:i)ie n^ceseiVy. 
Tlie latter, and, in fact, the entire divine aspect of Chriit's redeeming mtrhclearly 
doei not receive its dm importance, if we accept the theory of a "resolution to be 
Messiah and Son of God." However delicata may he the historiwil and psyoholo 
gioal analysifl by meons of which Keim seoliS to explain to aa tliia process, and 
however much moral praise he may bestow on " the nohle achievement of the 
Messianic resolve" (Hisi. Sisn. pp. 12 et a.), nevertheleaa his whole theory 
detracts fartoo serioosly from the divine preparation and execation of the redemp- 
tion. Although Eeim declares that dMne Proeideace so ordered oircumstancea 
to work together that this resolve was suggested to oitr I^rd, yet surely it would 
never have been consonant with the almighty rule of divine love and mercy to 
trust the most important tnming-point in the history of manltind to the subjec- 
tive decision of any mere human being, were he never so excellent Where there 
is a inorJd to be remwed, God ii far more actively present than it would appear 
from Eeim's theory. Keim himself seems to feel this, for his historical con- 
science compels him presently to confess that " the fibres of the spiritual process 
Caking place in the Baptist and in Jesus did not run merely through the circuit 
iif an earthfy consciousness ; they were connected with a higher world, Tliey 
'■ould not have dared to believe what tliey did, without being stire of the divine 
will. All their discourses, especially those of Jeans, constantly recur to this 
divine Counsellor and Helper. Our historical conscience forces us to confess 
that divine dispensations and instructions were introduced into the world on the 
banks of Jordan, and that the influence of the divine government must have 
accompanied the greatest deed and the greatest tiuning-point in i}ii history of 
man " {Jem von Naz., p. 549). If Keim would but trace out those fibres, con- 
necting with a higher world One "before whom all human categories sink into 
silence," surely he would see in Him, no longer a mere man, but the only- 
l)egotten Son of God. 



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o , Q MODEES ACCOUXTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRKT. [LECT. VI 

object. What shall we say to this ? If Christ really were 
" He that should come," then the title of Messiah oUght nol 
. to have been repugnant to His feelings, notwithstanding an) 
popular fallacies as to the idea ; but if He was not that pro- 
mised One, it was wrong in Him to let Himself be proclaimec 
as such without a standing protest. And the same with Hi; 
healing works. If they were not miraculous, and yet Chrisi 
saw that they were held to be so. He ought to have loudlj 
witnessed to the contrary; othenvise His sincerity would bt 
open to suspicion. 

Furthermore, Christ was liable to eiT ; He made a mistake 
ia His estimate of Judas, although this mistake proceeded 
from the purest motives (p. 194). He had often felt the 
allurements of temptation, and was well acquainted with the 
sinful inward emotions of flesh and blood (pp. ISO, 207) 
For " only a man who has to stru^le with anger can call him- 
self ' meek,' and only a man who has been tempted by pride 
can call himself ' humble ' " (p. 122) ! Therefore He rejectee 
the title " good " when applied to Himself, and this rejectior 
" is a most valid testimony to His deep and earnest convictiou 
that He was not in any way entitled to this attribute " (pp 
140-150).' Keeping in mind His own nat\iral weakness, H( 
judged the moral corruption of men much more mildly thar 
does the dogmatic theology of any age ; indeed the gi-eat fail- 

' This passagp, so fomllj quoted by all deiiiors of the Godhead of Christ, ii 
differently given in the first Gospel and in the two following. In Matt, six 
16 fl., the troe reading is not "Good Master," but simply "Masteri" ant 
further on, not "Why callest thou me good!" bat "Why aakest thoa nn 
about that -which is gooil ? none is good, save One," etc.,— i.e. God .is the on]; 
source of goodness ; and if thou wilt attain to Him as goodness in unity, thoi 
must first he in earnest in keeping Hia commandments as goodness in mulfipli 
city. This passage, therefore, does not apply to the person of Christ, am 
cannot be used by Sohenke!. The tivo other Synoptics, however, have thi 
reading to which Schenkel appeals (Mark X. 17 et s. ; Luke xviii. 18ets.);stil 
they do not bear out his views. They show, in the first place, that our Lon 
wished to humble the questioner who used the word "good" so lightly, am 
who had too high an opinion ot himself, by reminding him wliat true goodnes 
was. Second, we see that Jesus, who was stilt being m'ade " perfect througl 
sufferings" (Heb. ii. 10), points out to the scribe the absolute meaning of th 
ptedicatfl "good," which He reserves for His Father only, since He Himself i 
still in the midst of His hamiliation. Bat ChiTst could never have me.->n 
" that He was not in any icay entitled to this attribute," else how eould H 
h%Ye invited omwh} was inqairingiifttrperfeeliimiofMmi) Him f (T«r. 21.) 



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LECT. VI.] SCHESKEL'S "SKETCH." S77 

ing of mankind in general. He found to be merely their natural 
weakness (208 ets.). 

These are some of tlie shadows which Dr. Schenkel cannot 
help introducing into Ms Sketch of Christ's Character, because 
it/ie denml of our Savimir's Godhead ever impels men to deny 
His sinlessness. But if this latter be denied, or only made 
uncertain, it follows of necessity that the moral corruption 
of mankind, as a whole, will appear in a more favourable 
light as mere " natural weakness." If the divine dignity of 
Christ be lost sight of, our own human nature will be un- 
duly exalted. The school of Arius mostly lies hard by that 
of Pelagius. 

But how can one who no longer thoroughly acknowledges 
the ainlessuess of Christ, still see in Him the '* Saviour" and 
" Redeemer " ? True, Schenkel remarks that those who hold 
his views are perfectly justified in calling Jesus the 
" Kedeemer," because He " released mankind from the errors 
of Judaism and heathenism." Against this evasion Strauss 
well remarks : " When was a man ever called ' Redeemer ' 
because he released those who lived with and after him from 
certain errors ? This expression proceeds from the idea of the 
sin-offering ; it could never have resulted from Schenkel's 
rationalistic theory, and if he employs it notwithstanding, 
he is guUty of double-dealing in the xise of words} Most tme ! 
If Jesus was in truth the Redeemer, He could only be so in 
virtue of His sacrifice for the sin of humanity ; but this He 
could only present if He were perfectly sinless. On the other 
hand, if we consider Schenkel's persistent, though futile, 
endeavour to represent Christ as sinless, the q^uestion at once 
arises, ffow could He he sinless if He were a mere man ? Why 
should absolutely ne one else have been so ? We here stand 

1 Die BaBien u. die Oanzen, pp. 48, iQ. This is not the only instance in 
whicli Schenkel hna done so. E.g., in speaking of the satisfaction of God's 
justice throngh the socrifiee of love, he says that reconciliation with God con- 
sists in the recognition of His foi^ving love, uid that the follower of Jesus 
shows himself to be worthy of this love by jaoiifioing himself (pp. 88, 114, 198 
et s., 218 et s.) ; and again (itt the AUgemeiae Ktrdd. ZeiUchrlft, Tol. vi., part 
4, p, 234), tliat Chiist " revealed the jternal essence of the Godhead, Its holy 
love, by meiuiB of the greatest sacrifice recorded in history." Here again, nnder 
cover of the term " soeriiice," he smuggles in i conception ^nite foreign to that 
ol the Seripturos.—a conception in which the central truth of the biblical doctrine, 
tlie vkariovt atonement of Christ, ia qoite igoored. 



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378 MODERN' ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT, VL 

before the simple, incontrovertible conclusion, that if Jesns 
was a mere man. He was subjected, to all^ the limitations of 
human nature and development, and by universal analogy 
could nut have been sinless ; if He was not sinless^ He was 
not -fitted to be the Eedeemer of the world; if He was not 
fitted to be the Pedeen u He cannot have been or 1 ecome 
such But now li He was not the Pedeemei m the nime of 
fairne=iS let our o[.pou(,nt3 he open md hon^irable enoiji to 
di p tl e title s uce thej have repudiate 1 the tu e idea instead 
of continmug to adultunte biblical conceptions by using tl e 
same words while substit iti j^ an utteily different meaning 
The same remarks ajply to otl er jieheates -nhiuh Schenkel 
m his SJttrh applies to Chist H Jesus wis a mere man 
how could He be the ^leit Pattern far all ages or tl e 

L ght of the w ild i In this case howe-ver prominent He 
could not be m re thin oi e ano ig'^t other and not unique for 
all ages If He ^as ent rtly 1 orne al n by the current of 
h m n development He might <5ti!l mark a ^leat ef od m 
onr h sto -J 1 ut not its cl mix and culmiaatmg point ' as 
Strauss has clearly shown 

Fmilly we isk ho v can any man with so doubtful a view 
of Chusts monl dignity give us a ly coic jlwn of His u u^ e 
religious consciousness, — that clear unsullied mirror of the purest 
union and communion with God, into which the astonished 
world has been gazing for eighteen centuries, but never with- 
out feeling how great the contrast between itself and Him ? 
What other key have we to the explanation of this phenomenon, 
thau the belief that in Christ there lived an original hio^her 
consciousness, which sprang from His unique relation to God, 
and was continually strengthened by perfect and sinless 
obedience to His Father ? 

This is the most impoHant element (to speak figuratively) of 
that sediment which no critical sohaioji of the life of Christ has 
ever yet leen able to dissolve, and which will laffie all such efforts 
to th^ end of time. The fundamental hypothesis of Schenkel's 
whole sketch — that Jesus was a mere man — is here seen to 
be false, because it will not suffice to explain the facts of 
history ; above all, it leaves in darkness the central feature of 
Christ's character, His peculiar consciousness. 

' Uliliiora, vii mpra, p. 63. The detaila of Strauss' aigament, sea Mow. 



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LECT. VI.] STHAUS3' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 379 

Before closing this notice of Dr. Schenliel's work, we cannot 
help alluding to one feature of it, which is particularly re- 
pulsive, — we mean the ultra-radical ■party spirit so glaringly 
manifested in its intemperate language and in its whole 
tendency. This is painfully evident to the German reader on 
nearly every page ; hnt those of our English readers who wish 
to verify our remarks, we would refer to such passages as pp. 
33, 41, 44, 58 et s., 76, 77, 92, 202, 234. All these and 
many others give this hook the character of a violent party 
attack on all orthodox Christian helief and Church govern- 
ment, — an attack which invidiously imports descriptions and 
even epithets of ecclesiastical phenomena from the present 
day into the history of the past, thus taking away well-nigh 
all its value as a historical work. We cannot wonder that 
these defects, combined with its undecided, semi-rationalistic, 
semi-m J thical character, have procured for the book a con- 
demnation from critics of well-nigh aU shades ; ^ and we may 
safely piedict, that ere long its influence will have died 
away 

These remarks do not apply to the hook which it is now 
our turn to consider, — a book which is to a considerable extent 
the pattern of Dr. Schenkel's work, but which greatly excela 
it in strictness of logic and dehcacy of delineation,— we mean 
The Life of Chiyist by Strauss. The name of David Fried- 
rich Strauss brings ua to the mythical them-y, and, as this is 
one of the chief defences of modern scepticism, we must devote 
a little more time to it than to the others. 



HI. — STRAUSS " LIFE OF CUEIST. 

First of all, let us see what was the origin of this standpoini. 
Long before Strauss, men had begun to compare heathen 
mythologies with biblical narratives, and to conjecture that 
there might be some truths contained in the mythological 
fables, and some fables in the biblical history. Schelling 
discovered that all primitive history, proceeding from a time 
when writing was as yet unknown, especially if it contain 

■ Cf. Luttardt, Die moderncn Darsleliuagen (fc» Lehens Jesii, p. 46 ; and 
IJMIiom, vM mp., p. 67. 



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380 MODEKM ACCOUNTS OF THE UFE OP CHEIST. [LECT. VI. 

miraculous elements, must be a myth, ie. a legend or fiction. 
It was especially De Wette who proceeded to apply this 
principle to the Old Testament, and who pro \ t \ th 
general rule, that where any record relates inconc bl tl n 
in good iaith, it is to be considered not as hi t 1 h t 
mythical. Others soon began by the light of th m t 

investigate New Testament history, impelled, t by ly 
arisen critical doubts as to the genuineness of th C pi 
The inward motive of these researches was the rationalistic 
axiom that the miraculous is impossibla This was accom- 
panied by the influence of recent philosophy, which dissolved 
the person of our Lord into a universal principle, and evapo- 
rated His incarnation, death, and resurrection into a number of 
universal, eternal, and spiritual truths. Thus, in their sub- 
jective idealistic view of the world, these systems calmly sail 
away over all historical testimonies, and regard the biblical 
history as a sacred mythology sprung from active relifious 
fancy. 

This is the view represented by Grohmann, who wrote in 
1799 on « Eevelation and Mythology," He maintains that 
the ideas current among the Jews had long beforehand settled 
what Christ, ie. the Messiah, was to do. But Jesus Christ,' 
as a historical individual, did not correspond to the expecta- 
tions of the Jews. Not even that, in which all accounts 
agree, is a matter of fact ; the people's contributions formed 
a popular idea of His life, and from this popular idea His 
history was niade. Here we have ike whoU theory of Strauss 
and his followers enunciated thirty-six years le/ore the first 
edition of Straus^ Life of Christ afpeared. 

The principle of these critics is, that the Gospels in tJie -nmin 
consisl of tininlmtional fictions as to the person of Christ, pro- 
duced by the irmffinaiion of the first Christian churches, mostly 
in accordance with former Jewish predictions and expectations 
of the Messiah. Christ Himself, they say, gave people the 
impression of His Messiahship through the power of His word 
and spirit only, without yielding to their cravinc for miracles. 
And thus the apostles and the primitive Church regarded and 
preached Him. It was not until His life lay far behind them 
that the following generations, from a want of historical feel- 
ing, though on the whole in good faith, began involuntarily to 



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LECT. VI.] ETHAUSS' " LIFE OF CHEIST." Sffl 

form legends, relating such outward wonders as were expected' 
of Messiah, and to afply them to Christ. These legends were 
received without suspicion by onr evangelists, who were men 
ol the second century, and by them incorporated m the 
gospel narrative. 

We now see the distinction between the principle of 
Eationalism and that of Mythicism. The former left a 
historical remainder after eliminating the miraculous element 
from the gospel narratives. This remainder is, for the most 
part, given up by the mythical treatment, and the Gospels are 
considered as productions of the religious imagination, clothing 
rehgious ideas in a quasi-historical, though really legendary 
garb. Of course, a certain amount of original fact is conceded 
even by this theory, and in this respect there is only a 
difference of degree between it and Eationalism, since its 
negations go a step further. Both agree entirely as regards 
the denial of the miraculous. But the mythical theory does 
not labour to give a natural explanation of the miracles. It 
acknowledges that no straightforward exposition can remove 
them from the gospel history, because the Kew Testament 
writers themselves believed in them ; therefore it simply 
relegates them to the realm of legend ; as Strauss * puts it : 
" We leave the writers in undisturbed enjoyment of their 
miracles ; but we ourselves regard them as mere myths." 

The first edition of Strauss' IAf& of Christ appeared in 
1S35 in 2 vols., and was written for the learned world. Its 
novelty consisted in the universal application of the mythical 
principle to the whole gospel history, and not merely the 
miracles of Christ, thus giving the finishing stroke to this 
theory by carrying it out to its last consequences. 

We will now follow Strauss in hia explanation of the origin 
of these myths. Without further inquiry, he states that 
during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberias certain Messianic 
expectations were rife amongst the people of Israel, who 
imagined that their Messiah would be a political Hberator, and 
expected Him to perform still greater miracles than those 
related in the Old Testament. And what happened I In the 
reign of Tiberias there appeared an ascetic named John, who 
preached repentance, and baptized those who professed it 
' Leben Jtau, edition of 18Bi, p. 146 ; of, p, £3. 



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382 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE UFE OP CUEIST. [j.ECT. VL 

(sec. 45). Amongst his disciples there was a Galilean Jew, 
named Jesus, wlio was baptized amongst the rest (sec. 49) ; 
and when John had been put into prison, this man continued 
and developed his -work. He conceived the idea of effecting 
a moral regeneration of the people by means of his teaching, 
and hoped for a supernatural interference on the part of God, 
by means of which the old kingdom of David should he again 
restored (i. 520). This perfectly corresponded to the long- 
cherished Messianic ideas of the people (p. 521), and thus it 
occurred to his followers, tliat he himself was probably the 
Messiah. At first he was alarmed at this idea (p. 497), but 
he gradually raised himself to believe it (p. 503). The hatred 
of the ruling priestly party, however, brought him to the 
cross. 

Tliig is, in short, the historical account of the life of Christ, 
as Strauss gives it in his book of 1835. This was the nucleus 
which was gradually encrusted by the present mass of legends 
and fictions in the following manner. After the first shock of 
Christ's death had passed away, the disciples felt the psycho- 
lo"ical need of reconciling the contradiction between the last 
fate of their master and their former Messianic hopes. On 
searching in the Old Testament, they found many passages 
which spoke of servants of God who were tormented to death, 
and these, by dint of their had exegesis, they applied to the 
sufferings of Messiah. Thus the belief gained ground in them, 
that Jesus was fore-ordained to suffer and die in this very 
capacUp of Messiah ; they were enabled to retain their fonner 
opinion of him, and " the shamefully killed Christ was not 
lost, but left to them" (il p. 638). Christ, according to their 
idea, had now entered into his glory. "But how could he 
neglect to send thence a message to his followera ? How well 
can we conceive that in tlie case of certain individuals, and 
especially of women, these feelings should have been subjectively 
excited so as to produce real visions ; or, on the other hand, in 
the case of whole assemblies, that some visible or audible 
object, perchance the aspect of an unknown person, should 
produce the impression of an appearance of Christ ! " Thus 
originated the legend of Christ's rmin-eetion. 

This waS the impulse for the formation of further myths. 
Since the disciples preached that Christ had risen from the 



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LECT. vr.] Strauss' "life of cheist." 383 

dead, the Jews asked whether he had done any miracles, as 
this was a iiecessaiy attribute of the Messiah. The more the 
disciples became convinced of this necessity, the more they 
made themselves believe that Jesus must have performed 
miracles, only they could not have seen them rightly. And 
so, in their enthusiastic fancy, without intending to deceive, 
they began, to adorn the simple picture of Christ with a rich 
garland of miraculous tales, especially applying to him all the 
characteristics of the Messiah who was predicted and hoped 
for, till at length the real history was entirely covered, and, in 
fact, destroyed by these " parasitic plants " (second edit, p. 6 2 1). 
Many sayings of Christ were converted into miracles. " There 
was no rest for a word or a figure of speech in primitive 
Christian tradition, until, if possible, it had been developed 
into the story of a miracle" (p. 514). When Jesus said that 
he would make his disciples fishers of men, tradition trans- 
formed this into the miraculous draught of fishes (sec. TO 
et 8S.). "When he declared that an unfruitful tree should be 
cut down, this became in course of tradition the story of the 
withered fig-tree (sec. 104). Especially did this restlessly 
inventive tradition apply all the miraculous features which 
could be discovered in Moses and the pr<^hds in a magnified 
form to the life of Christ Because the hand of Moses and 
likewise his sister Miriam had been leprous and become clean 
again, and because Elisha had healed a leper, therefore Christ 
must also have healed lepers (E 52). Because Moses changed 
water into blood, Christ must improve it into wine (i. 220). 
Because the former fed the people with manna in the wilder- 
ness, Jesus must have fed the people in the wilderness too ; 
and because Elisha fed one hundred people with twenty 
loaves (1 JCiugs iv. 42—44), the proportion must be enhanced 
in the case of Christ, and hence five loaves for five thousand 
people (ii, 205). Because Elisha made one man see, and 
many others blind (2 Kings vi.), it was thought probable that 
Christ should have healed the bhnd (ii. 2). Because Elisha 
healed Kaaman without being present at his washing, it was 
necessary that the Messiah should not do less (ii. Ill et 
S8.) : hence the legends about the centurion of Capernaum, 
and the Syro-Phosnieian woman, both of them cures effected 
at a distance. The Jews believed in a co-operation of the 



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38i MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIEE OF CHEIST. [lECT. VI- 

Holy Ghost in the begetting of important men, and the first 
Christians literally interpreted Psalm ii V : " Thou art my 
Son : this day have I begotten Thee," as well as a number of 
passages in Isaiah ; hence the myth that Christ was the Son 
of God, superna^jirally conceived without sin. This is very 
similar to the belief of the heathen, that their great men were 
sons of the gods ; as, too, their legends relate miracidous stories 
about the birth of Eomulus, Hercules, and other of their 
heroes. 

When the analogies of Jewish tradition are insufficient, 
such instances from heathen mythology are often appealed to. 
Thus, e.g., to explain the darkening of the sun at the death of 
Christ, Strauss says : " This was in fashion then ; did not the 
sun do the same, in the Eoman legend, when Csesar was mur- 
dered, and before Augustus died ?" {p. 587.) 

In this manner Strauss goes through every feature of the 
life of Christ, and explains them one after another as the pro- 
ducts of tradition, which was taken either from Old Testament 
miracles by combining their different traits, or from Messianic 
hopes then current, or from analogous heathen legends. All 
these myths, however, are supposed to have been formed 
unconsciously and involuntarily. But we see at once that 
Strauss must presuppose a great deal of reJlecHve mental action 
in the formation of each single myth, and hence that this 
could only take place intentionally ; for this reason Strauss of 
late years has spoken more of " invention with a purpose " 
{Tend&nzerjindung). From the rich material of these legends, 
which were often very different iu different places, our four 
Gospels were composed, not, however, by the apostles, hut in 
the second century. 

So much for the principles and the method of Sti-auss' Life 
of Christ, a work which doubtless owes its world-wide fame 
in great measure to its polished style and esthetic finish. 

When this work appeared in 1835, it seemed as though 
the last balance had been struck in the criticism of the gospel 
history, and the result was — banliruptcy. An electric shock 
vibrated through the whole German theology. The theological 
world had not been in such excitement since the days of the 
Wolfmhuttel Fragments. Soon, however, the most notable 
divines came forward against Strauss, among them Steudel, 



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LECT. VI.] STIiAUSS' "LIFE OF CUEIST." 38o 

Tholuck, TTeander, Ullmann, Lorner, and Ebrard ; whilst others, 
such as Weisse, Gfrorer, Bruno Eaitr, endeavoured to carry- 
out the mythical hypothesis in their own way. Jb'or a time, 
Strauss defended himself; but after some years he seemed to 
have spoken his last word, and the controversy was apparently 
settled- Ullmann, especially, had in his mild but clear way 
exposed Strauss' weak points. 

But in 1864 the book once more appeared; this time, how- 
ever, with a new address : " For the German People." ' The 
times were changed. The principle of publicity had obtained 
more and more in every department. The public at large was 
beginning to demand an insight into the doings of the learned 
world, formerly Strauss might boast, " Did I try to deprive 
the people of their faith by means of a popular book ?" * Now, 
on the contrary, he thought himself Justified in doing this. 
And why ? " Since the great majority of theologians will not 
hear us, we must speak to the people " (Preface, p. xii). Here, 
then, he must speak more openly, and we are obliged to him 
for doing eo. 

He does not for a moment leave us in doubt as to the 
fundamental tendency of this new edition. " If we wish," says 
he, " to make pi-ogress in religious matters, then those theo- 
logians who stand above the prejudices and interests of the 
profession must go hand in hand with the thinking laymen 
in the Church. As soon as ever the best among the people 
have made progress enough to refuse what the clergy still for 
the most part offer them, these latter will think better of 
it. When Christianity has ceased to be miraculous, thej; 
will cease to be the miracle-men which they have hitherto 
set themselves up for. They will no longer be able to pro- 
nounce blessings, but only to impart instniction ; but it is 
well known that the latter of these occupations is as difficult 
and thankless as the former is easy and profitable " (p. xii). 
Therefore, " a pressure must be brought to bear on them by 
public opinion. But (and this is the only italicised sentence 
in the whole hook) whoever wishes to do away with parsons 
in, tlie Ckureh, invst first do away with the miracles in religion " 
(p. xix). 

' We quote from the first edition of 1884. 
• Streitschri/t gegen Sleudd, i. p. 20. 



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SSQ MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [lECT. \L 

So this work, also, is but the means to a demagogue's ends, 
though not quite in the same manner as that of SchenkeL 
" Our ultimate aim is not to, ascertain the history of the past, 
but rather to help the human spirit in future to liberate itself 
from an oppressive yoke of belief" (p. xiv). Strauss' aim is "not 
in the past, but in the future " (p. xv). He lays the axe at 
the root of the miraculous Kew Testament history, in order 
that, when this is done away with, the parsons may be 
abolished too. It is his wish to establish a free Church 
commonwealth, and to dissolve the diSerent confessions into 
one great religion of humanity. We scarcely need to point 
out that this is only the effect of his old grudge against the 
theolo'dans, who formerly, by their unanimous verdict against 
him, spoilt his career, and reduced him to the occupation ot a 
literary man (c£. p. xiii). We see that this grudge has rather 
increased than decreased from the select names, such as " field- 
mice," " rabble," " vermin," which he bestows upon us biblical 
theologians (p. 162). Moreover, he declares that it is not 
worth his while " to fight with such a rabble " as the recent 
apologists, because " the conservative theology of the present 
day is wearying itself with the strangest contortions and the 
most venturesome caprioles," and " its paper battlements do 
not deserve a real siege ;" but yet be promises, " for the sake of 
the joke, not entirely to give ap doing so." In all this, how- 
ever, lie forgets that haughty contempt for the opponents is 
everywhere the worst way to victory. 

Attacks of this kind . are probably intended as a piquant 
.kind of spice to make the book more popular. But for 
all this, it is not popular. There wiU he but few readers 
who are able to peruse it without great omissions. Notwith- 
standing his promise to leave out learned details (p, xiii), 
Strauss' book still contains a mass of these details, which are 
fatiTuinf enough to go into. Strauss does not possess the 
same art of writing for the people as his French colleague. 
He gives too much and too little ; too much for the people, 
even those who are educated, and too little for the professional 
theologian. • 

Moreover, the arrangement of the matter in this second 
edition is far too prolix to be interesting, going as it does 
tioice through the whole subject In the first edition, Strauss, 



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.LECT. VL] STEAUSS' "UFG OP CHRIST." 387 

after dissolving the life of Christ into a series of myths, merely 
gave a few positive hints as to what remained of Christianity- 
according to his view ; in the second edition, he begins with a 
positive account of the probable historical nucleus of the life 
of Christ Thus the first part contains " a historical sketch of 
the life of Christ," and the second part, " origin and develop- 
ment of the mythical histoiy of Christ;" first the tree, and 
then the creepers. But since both are followed out from end 
to end, there are of necessity many repetitions and constant 
references backwards and forwards, whilst numerous portions 
which belong together are separated. 

The fird part rests upon the axiom, that " we jww know for 
certain at least what Jesus ivas not and did not do, viz. nothing 
superhuman nor supernatural. We shall thus probably be 
enabled to follow out the hints given in the Gospels as to his 
natural and human characteristics far enough to obtain an 
approximately correct outline of what he was and what he 
wanted" (p. 160 ets.). Strauss leaves as historical only what 
is in accordance with the course of nature at the present day, 
what would seem necessarily to result from the relations of 
Jewish and Gentile humanity at that time, and that in which 
all the evangelists strictly agree. All else is rejected, or at 
least impugned. Thus negations form the chief element even 
of this " positive " part. It can easily be imagined how little 
remains that is historical ; much the same as in the former 
edition. Jesus, the son of a carpenter, was born in Nazareth, 
and not in Bethlehem, whither Luke transports him by means 
of " special machinery." ^ " He was induced by what he 

' Pp. 323,335, et Bs., — meaning.of course, the tiaation in Luke ii. letes. It 
was an ftliaolute necessity for the son of David somehow to be bom in Bethlehem. 
As Uie writer of St. Luke's Gospel " was cudgelling his brains for an expedient 
which should, bring the parents of Christ to Bethlehem, in order that he might 
be born tjiere, this taxation occurred to him " (p. 836). But in adding, "When 
Cyrenius (i.e. Qairinns) was governor of Syria," he made a blunder of some sis 
or seven years, for Qairinos did not become proconsul till bo many years later 
on ; and thos the onhistorical character of his narrative is betrayed. Strauss 
assures H3 that since ISSShehas "correctedandsappleraented his results, accord- 
ing to the Iruits of farther investigations both bj himself and by others " (p. 
xiii). Does he, then, know nothing of the fact that the investigations made 
as to this imperial taxation under Augustus have proved that Quirlnus was 
ttdce proconsul* As early as 1854, Dr. Zumpt (in his work C'ommeniatioti'am 
epigraphic. ad antiqmt. Soni. pertinentima, vol. ii.) showed from profano 
Boutces that Quirinus was proconsul in Syria not only from the jeax 6 a.]>., but 



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ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [lECT. TL 

lieard of the Baptist to resort to Jordan, for he, too, was dis- 
satisfied with the existing religious institutions" (p. 195) ; and 
he prohably remained for some time amongst the toUowers of 
John. The silence of the Gospels is no proof against this (!), 
since they sought to avoid even a transitory subordination of 
Christ to the Baptist for dogmatic reasons. " Both of them 
aimed at the moral elevation of their peoplOj and at the crea- 
tion of a people's church, which should be worthy to receive 
the coming Messiah in its midst" (p. 196). John, however, 
"chiefly employed sharp denunciation and threats of divine 
judgment," whilst Jesus used only love. " For the highest 
religious sentiment which existed in his consciousness was 
that love which embraces all, and overcomes evil itself only 
with good, and this he transferred to God as the chief attribute 
of His Being" (p. 207). Hence His precepts in the Sermon 
on the Mount respecting toleiunce, love to brethren and to 
enemies. " If any saying of the New Testament proceeded 
from the mouth of Christ, assuredly Matt. v. 45 did so {'He 
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,' etc.). 
This is a fundamental trait in the piety of Christ : he felt and 
conceived his heavenly Father as indiscriminate Goodness" 
(p. 206). Inasmuch as Christ, in this temper of humane love, 
felt Himself to be united with His heavenly Father, all His 
happiness sprang therefrom. " By developing in himself this 
cheerful frame of soul, at peace with God and in love with alt 
men as brothers, Christ had realized the prophetic ideal of the 

al.so once before, from the year i B.C. (It is well known that the precise year 
oFout Lord's birth ia uncertain ; jffobably it is really some years earlier than our 
account makes it.) The last woik ot Zma'pt (das Qeburl^'ahr Chrieli ; ge^chkhtl. 
chroaolog. Untermchungm, 1869) is a brilliant testimony to his learning, and 
arrives at the same conclusion as historically indubitable (pp. 43, 71). St. 
Luke himself only says that Christ was bom at the time of that taxation, which 
was eliejirsl under Quiriiaia, in contradistinction to other similar ones ; and he 
gives us the occasion of it, which consisted in an imperial edict issued long 
before. ' ' The record of Luke gains full historical probability from the fact that 
the secoYid taxation (of which Josephus tells) applied only to property, which 
according to Jewish law should necessarily be completed by a taxation ot persons 
(ot poll-tax), and that no fitter time can be fixed u].ion for this than the first 
proconsulate of Qaitinus." The murder of the innocents at Betlilehem is also 
historical (p. 227 ff.). InLnkeiii.l, "thefifteenthyeaiofTiberius" isreckoued 
fi'om liis api>ointinent to the eo-regency of the provinces and armies, as was 
often done. " Thus all contradictions between the data of St. Luke a,nd other 
miters are removed." 



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LECT. Vl] STliAUSS' "LIFE OF CHKIST." 389 

new covenant, with the law of God written in the heart ; he 
had received the Deity into his will, and therelore for him 
the Deity had descended from Its eternal throne. This cheer- 
ful and unhroken spirit, acting out of the gladness and joy of 
a heautifnl sonl, we may call the Hellenic element in Christ. 
The pure epirituahty and strict morality of his own heart's 
impulses, and of his idea of God, was a legacy of the Jewish 
national spirit ; the result of his bringing up in the law, and 
his education in the prophets" (pp. 207, 208). ■ 

Strauss rightly rejects the opinion that Jesus merely accom- 
modated Himself to the Messianic idea of the Jews. " In 
tliis case there can he no q^uestion of accommodation or of 
playing a part ; in such a person every inch must iiave been 
conviction." For this reason he approves ot Schleiennacher's 
saying, that " Christ must have been convinced from the depths 
of his inward consciousness that no one else but he was 
referred to in the Messianic prophecies contained in the sacred 
writings of his people" (p. 229). But Christ never repre- 
sented himself to be the son of God in a unique superhuman 
sense.* In contradistinction to the Messiah as Son of God, 
Christ especially loved to call himself the son of man, a teim 
which pointed to his natural humanity (p. 228). The fourth 
Gospel contains the fewest genuine traces of the religious con- 
sciousness of Christ. For " no man with a sound head and 
heart, whoever he were, could have spoken of himself in the 
way that does the Jesus of this Gospel" (p. 201). It is, 
however, certain that Christ connected the epoch of the world's 
consummation with a miraculous change to he produced by 
God, and that He spoke of His second coming in glory to 
judge the world. But in this respect " he appears to us not 
only as an enthusiast, but as guilty of imdue self-exaltation " 
(pp. 241, 242). 

As for miracles, not only did Christ never perform any, but 
neither did He ever say that He had. In Matt xi. 5 only 
the spiritually blind and lame, etc. are referred to (p. 265 ; 
and yet even Strauss confesses that "the works of Christ," 
ver. 2, refer to His miracles). " However, it was little use 
for Jesus to refuse to do corporal miracles : according to the 
idea of his contemporaries and co-patriots, he must needs per- 
' Cf, our refutation otthis Btatement ia Leot IV. pp. 2i5-251. 



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390 MODEUS ACCOUNTS Of TOE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECI. VI. 

foiii then? 1 <! -id A aiicjhet He wi'! exj ected to 

possesi m nciibu'i power When ufferei'^ eveiywhere (?) 
ttied to touch H a ga nient'^ 1 ecatise they expected hethng 
from Him it ■^^o ild h^ve been tian^e it tl eie ii'ui uc been 
some cases of leil cme or mciiieiitai} alleMition resulting 
from the intense impression ^aitly sensuous anrl partly 
spiiituil on an excited imi§ination and the&e cures were of 
course asciibed to the minculous power ot Chiist (p 226). 
Cures 01 this kind through excitement ot the imagination, 
were especially possihle m the cise oi d, sickne s which itselt 
gieatly depended on the imaoimtion and which was fashion- 
able amongst tl e Jews T,t thit time viz demoniacil pos- 
session. FeHpsei of couise could not fail to appeir m 
fancy cuies such as these At these miiades btiauss 
di iwi tl e boundary line of the historical region md entirely 
banislos all the gieatei miiacles such is ineieasmg the biead, 
changing the watei into wine, riisin^ the dead, into the lealm oi 
legend ; because here " all conceivaWeneaa according to the laws 
of natuie is at an end" (p. 267). Clearly this is a distinction 
between miracles of healing (as naturally explicable doings) 
and works ot absolute omnipotence, similar to that of Schenkel 
(p. 362) Yet Strauss says (p. 33) : " It is not permissible 
to make a distinction amongst miracles, and to accept those 
which show an analogy with natural occurrences, while reject- 
ing others as magical, for every miracle is magical" How 
can he speak so, seeing that those who thus distinguish, 
like Strauss himself, do not consider the fonner class as 
miracles strictly speaking ? What right has he to be so indig- 
nant at the rationalistic explanation of miracles practised by 
Schenkel and others, when he himself uses the old rational- 
istic arts of explaining away miracles hy means of " excited 
imagination," and so forth ? 

Strauss has a very poor opinion of the disciples. Their 
dreams about a restoration of the kingdom of Jdiael (Luke 
xxiv. 21 and Acts i. 6) " give us a very small idea of their 
powers of comprehension." Their stubborn prejudice against 
the admission of Gentiles into the Messianic kingdom, shows 
us "that they were incapable of drawing conclusions from 
their master's principles." The one genuine writing of a 
disciple in the Kew Testament, the Eevelation of St. John, 



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LECT. VI.] STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 391 

"gives lis a melaacholy impression of tlie imperfect way in 
which Christ was understood by his most intimate disciple. 
.... The importance given to the . subsequent appearance 
ot Paul proves that there was no one amongst the immediate 
disciples of Christ who was fitted to be his representative, 
and capable of further developing the ideas of his master in 
accordance with the wants of the age " (p. 276). 

Accompanied by His Galilean followers, Jesus goes to 
Jerusalem, cleanses the temple, attacks the ruling priestly 
party most sharply in public speeches, and exhorts the people 
to turn away from them. Of course all these steps could not 
but arouse the anxiety of the hierarchs, and move them to get 
rid of so dangerous an opponent by any means (p. 279). 
The scene in Getlisemane is certainly " strongly pdom'fed with 
mythical traits." We cannot imagine that Jesus knew of His 
death beforehand with exactitude and certainty. Keverthelesa 
during His last days, the thought of a violent end probably 
became more and more familiar to Him, and cast dark shadows 
on His soul. His death on the cross was real, and not merely 
apparent (p. 283 ft.). His biunal by Joseph of Arimathea is 
uncertain on account of diff'erences in the narratives ; possibly 
he " was hastily interred in some dishonourable burying- 
place" (p. 287). According to traditional Jewish ideas, Christ 
had lost all claim to the title of Messiah by His death upon 
the cross. Now, however, "the disciples altered their old 
Jewish ideas in accordance with this fact, by including the 
attribute of a vicarious suffering, and of violent death as a 
redeeming sacrifice, in their conception of the Messiah" 
(p. 575), We have no testimonies of an eye-witness as to an 
appearance of the risen Clirist (p. 291). Both the appearance 
of Christ to Saul on his way to Damascus, and aQ others, 
" were simply inward occun-ences -which might well affect the 
persons in question as outward and objective perceptions, but 
which we have to conceive of as visions produced by an 
excited condition of the mind" (cf. Lect. YIL). 

This is the' " historical kernel" of the life of Christ which 
Stratiss leaves us. We should prefer to call it the, shell fiom 
which the kernel has been extracted. 

The second part of his book shows us how the various 
myths, as it were, crystallize around this nucleus. Along with 



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392 MODEES ACCOUNTS OP THE LIFE OF CHEIST. [lECT. VI. 

the belief in the resuiTection of Christ, we see the idea of 
Him " placed in a temperature which could not but result in 
a luxuriant growth, producing numerous unhistorical shoots, 
each one more miraculous than the last. The divinely in- 
spired son of David now becomes the son of God, begotten 
without a father; the aon of God developes into the incar- 
nate creative Logos. The philanthropic miraculous physician 
becomes a raiser of the dead, the unlimited Lord of nature 
and her laws. The wise teacher of tiie people, the prophet 
who saw into men's hearts, now becomes the omniscient 
alter Ego of God. He who after his resurrection returned to 
God, came from Him before his birth" (p. 161). Thus one 
layer formed on another, each one being, as it were, the pre- 
cipitate of the ideas current at a certam time, and in certain 
circles, till at length the fourth Gospel reached the climax 
of Christ's deification and spiritualization. Strauss then goes 
through the whole history of Christ in all its features, repre- 
senting each one (just as in his former work) as the product 
of inventive legends. These he supposes to have gathered 
their materials from the histories of David, Moses, Samuel, 
and others, or from the writings of the prophets, many of 
whose sayings they uncritically applied to Christ, or even 
from the heathen mythology.' One cannot help wondering 
how so stunted a historical shrub could nourish so many 
mythological parasites. 

Thus we see that the standpoint of this edition of the Liji 
of Clinst is essentially the same as that of the first one, only 
that now Strauss supposes far more intentional invention than 
formerly in place of the unconscious fabrication of myths. 
He himself says : " In this new Work, I have, chiefly in con- 
sequence of Baur's investigations, used the supposition of 
conseioas and intentional invention far more freely than 
before" (p. 159). At the same time he applies the term 
" myth " equally to the products of conscious and unconscious 
invention. And yet the theories of Straiiss and Baur do cvi- 

' E.g. Strauss mn finil no pataM in the Old Teatiment to the Tisit of Jesus 
OB a boy in the temple. He therefore proceeds to drag in by the head and 
shoulders a legend mentioned by Saatonius, that Angiistus when a little child 
was once suddenly missed from his cradle, and found lying in the highest part 
of the house. And this he considers on analogy to Jeeus remaining in tha 
temple!! 



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LECT. VI.] STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHEIST." 303 

detiily exclude each other} Strauss originally proceeds on the 
supposition of a simple inventive tradition, whilst Eaur takes 
his stand on the relation of parties as at that day, and looks 
upon the writings of the Xew Testament as products of a 
distinct purpose, Strauss' theory assumes the utmost nalvetS 
in the writers of the Gospel, Eaur's the self-conscious purpose 
of the resolute partisan. It must make an exceedingly un- 
pleasant impression on every impartial reader, to see hovr 
Strauss employs this art which he has learned from Eaur by 
fathering upon narrators so simple and tme-hearted as our 
evangelists such dogmatic presuppositions, conscious fictions, 
crafty intentions, ay, finely calculated lies. 

The whole style of this book, except that of the preface, 
will disappoint the reader who considered Strauss to be a 
master of the art of delineation. Nowhere is there a life-like 
development, or an exciting progress, not even so much as in 
Schenkel's work. The various sections have no vital connec- 
tion, epen in the "positive" part; they stand side by side 
like abstract heads. They read like so many critical treatises, 
but not aa a life-like delineation. The narrative is like a 
Stufi'ed figure without flesh and blood: instead of being full 
of life, it is replete with marks of interrogation; instead of 
presenting a vivid and concrete reality, it merely leaves a few 
probabilities. Nowhere do we see — to say nothing of the Son. 
of God— —even the man Jesus, the Prophet of Nazareth as He 
walked and lived amongst men. A constant and wearisome 
sifting of the records only leaves us detached fragments of 
His person. His consciousness, His life, and His work. No 
sooner is a step made towards a description of actual history, 
no sooner have we entered on the oasis ot some living reality, 
than straightway the gi-ound beneath our feet again begins to 
rock, and we once more see before us the sad and sandy wastes 
of the mythical desert. Surely at that time, if ever, when the 
central figure of all history was walking upon earth, the pulse 
of histoiy must have beat strongly But instead of the fresh air 
of a world-renewing history, ^vhlch lire.vthe^ so sensibly in the 
Gospels, we have in this book the odouib of i gra\e. Instead 
of the mighty hammers of an (^ that is being built up afresh, 

thicM InhaUi, 1S65) 



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394 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE .LIFE OF CHEIST, [lECT. VI. 

we hear only the monotonous creaking of the critical wind- 
mill, which, for the smallest differences, is grinding the gospel 
narratives into pieces against each other. We need not expect 
anything else, for the writer himself confesses that " the 
negative element is of primary importance." So that when 
we read a treatise on the " scene and duration of the ministry 
of Christ," the matter itself is described in a few sentences 
only ; or when we read ahout " Christ's manner of teaching," 
we are told almost nothing about the doctrine itself, for even 
the parables of the first three Gospels are almost without 
exception crumbled away by criticism. Were we to eliminate 
the whole of the critical apparatus, there would he but few 
leaves of this thick volume left. And yet this is supposed 
to be a historical sketch " for the German nation ! " 

Strauss prefaces his work with a critiqtie of the Gospels as 
records of the life of Christ, in which he comes to the con- 
clusion that all our four Gospels are spurimis. He makes a 
lengthy effort to support this assertion, but without doing 
Justice to the present standpoint of criticism, for which reason 
our best authorities now condemn this performance as behind 
the age. Strauss simply accepts and argues from the positions 
of the Tubingen school. Unlike Schenkel, he considers the 
Gospel of St. Matthew, not indeed as the work of the apostle, 
but yet as the " most original and i-elatively credible " (p. 115) 
of the tour, although it has probably undergone many re- 
visions. St. Mark " made up " his Gospel from extracts taken 
out of Matthew and Luke, putting in here and there some fresh 
and vivid additions as a kind of "beauty spots" (p. 132). 
The Gospel of Luke was written between those of Matthew 
and Mark, i.e. before the year 135, but at a time " wlien' it 
was scarcely possible that a companion of St Paul shoidd 
have been living and writing hooks." It only received Luke's 
name for the sake of the Acts (itself an unhistorical partisan 
fiction) (pp. 126,127). The Gospel of John was composed lap 
later in the course of the second century, and this in accord- 
ance with the conclusions of Baur, who regards it as a party 
production, without the slightest historical credibility. Strauss 
makes no secret of his contempt for this Gospel, nor indeed 
for the three others. He criticises them all, and especially 
the Gospel of St. John, with the most profane levity. 



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LECT. VI.] STIiAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 395 

But with all this assumption of supeiionty, Stnuss is soiue 
twenty-five years behindhand m hib critical standi '^^^^ ^^^ 
seeina to feel this himself. He is so foi this himple reason, 
that the " Tahirigen school" whose old theones ho dcipeiately 
clings to, has in that time been comjyelled to make some %tiy latgt, 
concesmm. Baur himself first placed the Gospel of St. Matthew 
between the years 130 and 134, then in the year 115, and 
at last 105-110. According to C. E. Kostlin, this Gospel, 
in its present form, originated hetween 90 and 100; in its 
original form, between 70 and 80. According to Hilgenfeld, 
probably the most distinguished of Baur'a disciples, it was 
composed in its present form certainly before the year 80 ; 
according to Holtzmann and Keim, before the destruction of 
Jerusalem, i.e. cir. a.d, 66. You see how the critical school 
has drawn back from its earlier positions. The Gospel of St. 
Mark has these various dates assigned to it : Kostlin, before 
110; Keim, 100; Hilgenfeld, before 100; VolUmar, "73; 
Schenkel (in its original form), between 45 and 58. The 
Gospel of St Luke: Baur, 150; Zeller, 130; Hilgenfeld, 
before 120 ; Volkmar, 100 ; Kostlin (vide above), shortly before 
Matthew ; Keim, 90 ; Holtzmann (with Mark), 75-80. Even 
as regards the Gospel of St. John, the critical school has had 
to retire step for step from Baur's calculation (160) to the 
beginning of the second century,' at which time John was 
probably still living. Amongst other distinguished men, Ewald 
sharply criticises the Tubingen school. He considers that 
Mark wrote soon after the death of Peter ; the Gospel by 
Matthew was written before the destruction of Jerusalem 
(70) ; the Gospel by St. Luke, between 75 and 80. These 
are the results of criticism up to the present day. We would 
only stop to take exception to the statement made by Zeller 
and others, that the first churches would not feel the need of 
written records until after the apostolic generation had died 
out. Surely it is far more likely that this want should be 
felt while the apostles were still living, because they could 
' Keim {Jeaa bob JToMin, p. 146) dates it from 100-117. Ci'. ttgainst Kciai 
and Sclioltaii the excellent Commenfary on St. John by Godet ; also liis work, 
Fri'/ang der wkMgsteii ErUischen StreUfragen iiber das vla-te Eimngelium, 
(1866); also Riggenbach, Die Zeagnme fiir daa Ev. JohaimU {1866); van 
Ooaterzee, Dm Joliaiotiaevangelium (1867) ; and LeuBchner, Das Mang. St, 
Johani^ u. seine neueslai WidersaiAa- (1S73). 



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396 MOUEKN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHCIST. [LECT. VI. 

not be in all the churches afc once to -n-itcli i>\ er the i uni^ of 
tialition But m the ci^e ot gcspel le cords bein_ wiitt n ly 
other-j we must al\^^>& suppose them to have been directed 
and controlled Ly the aj oitles 

Thus we see that Stiau =! stands very much ilone m his 
critical losititn aod that even the mn t wgatut pottion of 
the cut cil 'school is «hil m„f the giound under his feet It n, 
bee mill ^ mere anl moie difticilt for '5tiii s to mamtim that 
his mjths ^\e\e, formed diriUj, the post ayostolic ige smce 
6% en tie critical "school itself ickno-w ledges the existence of 
go'ipels J of e\ten-,ne miraculous lecoid'' tn the cpoMohv 
a/e '-o that their wnteis \vhoevei they -were must have leen 
contemporaries of fiiends and disciples of Jesus In mi diy 
thcrt, IS scaicely 1 sii "le notable critic Mho would dare to 
deny thit there were not nuniprous nairatives of muicles 
peifomied hj our Loid in cucnlati n amru^st the Ji}st Lhii<i 
tianb wlich toimed the liis of their testimony lor lIis 
Messiahshii; and that without contiadiction fiom the apostle^ 
Let us take note of this for the piesent A hundred 3^.^l3 
after a man s death i legend about him may easilj oi igmate 
but how 11 Ills contemporaiies rehte it ' 

Having thus lecome aciuainted with the woik of Stiii'^s 
in its general outbnes we will now proceed to tnie-itigal it 
firot its pnnc pies presuppositions and method then the 
ktstoneal jx>ss%hlil}/ of the fuimntimi cf mytl s and last its 
view of the person and fke sdf-teshmony of Chiist. 

In a recent pamphlet,' as in bis former Mfe of Christ, Strauss 
has contessed with praiseworthy candour that his " former 
standpoint was that oi the Hegelian philosophy." Nor is this 
otherwise now. The principle which goveras the whole work 
is that of Pantheism. Strauss plainly enough indicates that 
he believes neither in a personal God, nor in the inimortahty 
of the soul, nor, oi course, in retribution after death. To him 
the words apply, that " whosoever denietli the Son, the same 
hath not the Father" (1 John ii. 23). In the dedication at 
the beginning, he praises a deceased friend because he " never 
yielded to the temptation ot deceiving himself by borrowing 
from another world" (p. 10). For his own pait he I'enonnces 
the hope of dying " happy," and only hopes to die " quietly " 
' I>ie halben u. die Grtijten, p. 42 



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LECT. VI.] STEAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 397 

(tibi Slip.). For God is that " indiscriminate Goodness " wliich 
" rains upon the just and upon the tinjust".(p. 206), before 
■which the small distinctions that we make between good and 
evil ate dissolved into one — all true signs of Pantheism.-' 
Hence the pleasure which Strauss takes in those sayings of 
Christ which can be explained in this sense (p. 206 et s.), 
whilst he abhors the numerous passages which speak of a 
future retribution, or of Christ as Judge of the world (pp, 
242, 276, 513, et s.). The former class of passages may stand 
as genuine and true ; the latter must be either later additions 
springing from dogmatic presuppositions, or else serious tokens 
of fanaticism and self-exaltation in Christ. Thus Stranss ex- 
plains the beatitudes which Christ promises for a future world, 
as applying to this life. In " transferring the reahzation of 
this blessedness to heaven, Jesus speaks according to the 
notions of his age and of his nation." In truth this blessed- 
ness simply means, that the new spiritual life which has been 
awakened in mankind is to shape the outward world in unison 
with itself, and this takes place naturally and little by little, 
though never perfectly, in tliis world, and is expected in the 
next as a wonderful compensation only by religions fancy 
(p. 205). The salvation of man is, "in more intelligible 
language, the possibility that he should fulfil his destiny, 
develope the powers implanted in him, and thus enjoy the 
corresponding measure of happiness" (p. 624). These senti- 
ments will confirm what I have aheady remarked (p. 1 3 7), that 
the entire conflict in the present day as to the pereon of Christ 
springs from certain fundamental differences in the idea of 
God, and that the negative critics of the gospel history have 
in reality no other aim than to introduce into the Christian 
■ Church a new pantheistic conception of God. This is the 
"forward aim" of Strauss' book (p. xv). At the same time 
it is also evident that we were perfectly justified (p, 287) in 
representing the denial of the miraculous as leading to the 
destruction of all rehgion. For what profit is there in religion 

1 Coiiipnre the Maspheraons way in whic}! St:rai;ss excuses the sins of Israel 
against Jehovah (p. 168) ; " After Ijoth of them had entfirtd into a covenant, 
eilhcr side soon had caiise for eom2>laint againU the other ; there was uot much 
to he felt of the special protection which Jehorah had promised to His Israel ! ! " 



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398 MODEKN ACCOUKTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST, [LECT. VI, 

if there be no personal God, and iio other world ? This view 
ot tlie ■world, it is true, would fain give itself the appearance 
of rendering man truly energetic by maMng him depend only 
on himself. But this is a lie. By depriving him of all super- 
natural help, it paralyses his powers and takes away his moral 
energy. Gtethe truly says, " they who expect no other life, are 
for this li/e already/ dead." 

The fii-st consequence of these pantheistic principles of 
Strauss, is the pre-estahlisked -negation of all thai is supernatural 
either in the person or in the work of Christ. The sentiment 
above quoted, that " we know for certain at least what Christ 
was not and did not do, viz. nothing superhuman nor super- 
natural," decides the whole question, and settles the method 
of investigation beforehand. War is declared against every- 
thing in the works or words of Christ, which betrays a trace 
of God's special inifluence, or of His higher nature ; all snch 
elements must be got rid of at any price. This is the 
assumption with which Strauss sets to work. He so often 
speaks slightingly of " dogmatic presuppositions," and he him- 
self approaches his task with the largest presv.pposition of all, 
with an axiom which decides the result of all his investiga- 
tions beforehand. What is the real pivot of the entire con- 
troversy, if it be not the Godhead of Christ ? If a man claim 
to write a life of Christ, the reader, and especially the " German 
people," may well demand that he should closely investigate 
this cardinal question. But what does Strauss do ? He 
simply cuts short the whole matter by a hold assertion ! J\ist 
the most important point which ought to have teen investigated 
and established is Twt examined iitto, hut simply taken, for 
granted. Strauss knows tor certain that it is so, and that is 
enough ! And are we to accept this as criticism, as \inbiassed 
historical investigation ? " We know for certain that there was 
nothing supernatural in Christ :" — Strauss utters these words 
with an assurance which reminds lis of the language of those 
who, when Christ was upon earth, thought they " knew for 
certain " that He was not from God, " We know that this 
man is a sinner." Strange, Strauss is especially fond of 
abusing the " priestly caste ; " hut it does not occur to him 
that in this stlf-contented " we know," he is speaking the 
language of the proudest " caste " that ever existed ! 



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LECT. VI.] STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 399 

Stransa does make an effort, though an utterly unsuccessful 
one, to verify his opinion as to the ajluriousness of our Gospels. 
Kut in no •place does he make a seiHoiis attempi to jmiify his 
denial of the supernatural or his aversion to the miraculous. 
From the very beginning he professes his adherence to that 
view of the ■world which, " renouncing all supernatural sources 
of help, throws men on their own resources, and those of the 
natural order of things " (p. ix.). He proclaims his inten- 
tion " to remove the delusive belief in miracles as the chief 
stumbling-block in the antique forms of religion " (p. xviii). 
When we inquire on what grounds he considers himself 
^justified in so doing, we are merely told that one can "soon 
discover thus much about our Gospels, that neither one nor all 
of them possess sufficient historical certainty to compel our 
reason to give up its liberty so far as to bel e e n miracles " 
(p. XV.). " All philosophical systems vl ch deserve the name, 
agree in one conclusion " [ie. the ne^at o of the miraculous 
(p. 147)]. This he boldly asserts, tl o gl ur l^ well aware 
that many great philosophers and nat t1 ats ha e defended, 
and still are defending, miracles (cf. p. 289). But Strauss is 
satisfied with Lis own assertions, and considers himself exempt 
from the trouble of further examining into his principles. 
For if, he urges, we allow of miracles in the times of primitive 
Christianity, we must concede that they are possible in any 
other religious region. Just as if there were not an immense 
intrinsic distinction between the two. Thus one problem only 
remains for Strauss, how the mnaculous, this " foreign element 
wliich repels all historical treatment," may be removed from 
the gospel narratives? The only solution offered is the 
mythical hypothesis. 

This therefore is inerely a means for getting rid of the 
miraeidoiis ; as Strauss himself expresses it, " an apparatus 
for evaporating miracles into myths" (p. 159). All the 
labour expended on it becomes aimless and worthless, if the 
miraculous be- — as we have seen in the last lecture — well 
grounded. All the more should this question have been 
thoroughly examined into by Strauss, instead of which he 
expects us simply to presuppose its impossibility. 

We now see how Strauss' whole hypothesis, like all other 
pantheistic systems, hegs the question, and postulates what most 



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400 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [lECT. VI. 

requires pioof This wa^ the ci<"- -is we In^e ?een ^utli 
Spiiiozi ind with those demeis (f the mmcik is who like 
Stiaiisa, have made tfie laivs of natuie -m argument against the 
possibility of muacles The fict that the Gospels contain ao 
much that is minculous ib foi Strauss the fundamental pinof 
ot then mythical cliinctei He is not dnven to thio Loncli 
eion by histoncal mvestigitnns hut simply bj a nituralistiu 
presupposition He isks vhethei the Chustian reli_,ion ind 
its hiatonual lecords are m i^ieement with oiu modem ^hilo- 
soph} or -whether they ire not rathei pioved tobeunhiitLiiciI 
bj their contiadiction to it It was the stmdpoint of the 
old world to regaid as miraculous an> unusual alteritions iq 
the woild of nature and of man but oui molem age knows 
that ill things are connected m one great chain of t-ause and 
eflect and thit this chiin cannot be bitkcn without being 
destrojed This it is which we ha\e shown to be a complete 
delusion. The Jews iie supposed t3 hi\e had no histtr cil 
consciousness beciuse they belie\ ed in the muaculous Sith r, 
tiue hihtorieil perception and no miracles o! an acceptmce 
of the miriculons md unhiitoricil simply dogmatic position — 
this IS the fandamentj. dilemma which Stnu"^ places befoie 
his leaders But whit gives him any ri^ht to do so ? Kotbing 
but las own pie supposition hia natnrahstic bias which makes 
our ordiniry e\ eryday life the eiitLuon of ill reality' Foi 
m the last resort the cardinal question mi} prove to be 
ulicfher the miracles f/iaisehes are not historu.al and their 
demal tttteily nnhiitoricil — a meie philosophicil delusion 
Is it we ask, a si^n of hi&toucal conscnusnesb foi a imii 
not to give the old records i thorough and unbiassed exami 
nition according to their im^ aid ind outwaid credibility but 
to iiproach them with the settled axiom tint there can >e no 
such thm^ "it, a miracle thus condemnmg befirehmd all that 
does not agree with this axiom ? By so djing btiaut-s plainly 
shows tliat he li no t) ue histoi uin which indeed no thorough- 
going diaciple of Hegel e>er can be JSe bcarche^ the -letwds, 
twi in, orda to /ind oui ichat they me and what they contain, 
hut %n urdei to eairwi proof/, fiom, thui miracirJotts narratnes 
and indzvtdtial dtserepanaes, that they are not what they proftss 
to he VIZ not history/, hU mifths , in oth&i woids he gois to umh 
tn order to get proofs fm his assumption On such a method 



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LEI;t. VI.] STKAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 401 

even a critic like Schwegler remarks : The attempt to solve 
historical problems by means of philosophical categories must 
always fail ; Strauss has sullied the purity of historical research 
by importing into the critique of the Gospels his presupposi- 
tion as to the impossibUity of the miraculous under the guise 
of a phdosopbical postulate. Hence it is that in the works 
both of Strauss and Schenkel we find the same mfyjective 
taprice in eliminating the spurious from the genuine, only 
that Strauss makes a more consistent use of the myth, aa 
being the means which he has selected for this purpose. 

This extreme caprice is palpably evident, as soon as we 
look at the method more closely. In the most paltry and 
exa^erated manner Jie scrapes together differences in the 
narratives of the evangelists, in order to show their legendary 
character, apparently proceeding from the assumption that the 
Gospels were intended to be exact chronological biographies, 
which is far from being the case. SmaU differences and 
omissions are magnified into great contradictions. E.g. the 
statement of St. John, that Nicodemus brings about 100 pounds 
of myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Christ, and of the 
Synoptics, that the women buy spices, is held up as a great 
discrepancy and proof of the unbistorical nature of both 
accounts (p. 598 ff.), because the former quantity would have 
been more than enough. Just as if love would reckon in 
this strict way in the ease of a dear one who was departed ! 
On the other hand, great differences, which clearly show that 
two distinct events are referred to, are toned down into smaR 
shadings, in order to prove that the legend is relating the 
same matter in two different forms. Thus, for instance (in 
imitation of the feat first performed by ZeUer), Lazarus of 
Bethany is identical mth Lazarus in the parable, Luke xvi 
(p. 479 et ss.) i the anointing of Christ in Bethany (John xii.) 
is one with that in the house of Simon, Luke vii. (pp. 429 
et S3.) ; so, too, the stilling of the storm and the walking on the 
sea (pp. 489 et ss.}, and the two miracles of feeding (pp. 499 
et ss.), etc. 

In truth, Strauss is a master in the art of straining out 
gnats and swallowing camels. Eepetitions of words are as 
suspicious to him as those of works, just as if it were not 
often necessary to repeat cei'tain important truths several 



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402 JIODEnU ACCOUNTS OF TDE LIEE OF CHF-IST. [LECT. VI. 

times, in order to impress them on the weali and slow com- 
prehension of man. If an evangelist omits to mention some 
partieiibr, he is. put down as not knowing it, and this is 
adduced as proof of a myth, It one of them describes an 
incident exactly, tins is a progress in the growth of the legend. 
11 a narrative is simple and short, it is " entirely in coufor- 
. mity -with the spirit of the original popular legend ; " if it 
goes into details, this exactitude is the clearest proof of a 
mjthical tendency Poor e\angelists' whatever they do is 
\i rong ' 

The wiy m -which an inttnhon is scented out m the imeu 
tion of the smallest and mo^t tniiing features of a story is 
often peifectly udaulous Thus in the ciicumstance that 
lohn outiuns Peter while both are hastening to the ^ave t,' 
Christ StriuSb detects an artfully eontmel preferment of 
John to Peter, an exiltation of the spiritual Johannean Chri= 
tiamty ahjve the Petrme camility" (p GUo ) We canm 
be surprised at frivolity when a man looks through the spec- 
tacles of intentional invention in this manner. In several 
places Strauss has been unable to resist this temptation, as, e.^'., 
at p, 380, where, in connection with the flight of our Saviour 
into Egypt, he remarks, " Once more a correct impression as 
to the'orifdo of the gospel narrative has led the ecclesiastical 
legend touring in the OSS from the Mosaic myth " (cf. pp. 409, 
449,455,476,513, 610). 

It may be cinite true that the events of the New Testa- 
ment contain a reflection of what had gone before in the Old. 
But for all that, this constant derivation of the New Testament 
narratives, down to their smallest details, from incidents in the 
lives of Old Testament worthies, is simply a monstrous mis- 
apprehension of the wise and holy plan of the divine kingdom. 
Why should what is later have been invented or copied from 
what is earlier because it bears some resemblance to it ? Why 
should not God be able to carry on His kingdom towards its 
consummation in a kind of rhythmic historical movement, in 
which certain events happening at different times and under 
different laws should yet distinctly correspond 1 It is just m 
this that we see the beauty and wisdom of His government, 
of which, it is true, Pantheism neither has nor can have any 
notion. 



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LECT. VI.] ETRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHP.IST." 403 

We now come to the principal question as to the posn- 
Ulity of the formation of i.<.yths. In this respect it is not 
difficult to point out a nuinber of historical and psychological 
invpossiiUities and internal contradictions in Strauss' positions. 

He will scarcely deny that the soil in which myths grow 
is the childhood of nations. How come myths to spring 
up so luxuriantly among the Jews at the time of Christ, 
destitute as their nationality was of all that is childlike, 
and well-nigh arrived at the hoary goal of its development ? 
Are we to believe that after prophecy had so long been 
silent, and at a time when the chosen people and the world 
in general were in a state of spiritless languor, the poetic 
fancy of a few poor Jews should suddenly have made this 
mighty effort ? The possibdity of this is only conceivable on 
the supposition that there did exist some such personage as 
the Christ of the Gospels. But we will pursue the inqtury a 
little further. The childhood of cations is their prehistoric age, 
and this age it is in which the formation of myths invariably 
takes place} It is before the contrast has been realized between 
the ideal and the actual worlds, when the spirit of man is stil! 
engrossed in the unconscious life of nature, — in a word, in its 
childhood, — that a nation dreams out its mythology. But as 
soon as reflection, reason, and conscience awake, the mythical 
world begins to vanish. See, e.g., how Plato rejects or spiritual- 
izes the Greek myths. In the clear daylight of historical 
consciousness the formation of myths comes to an end. Some 
fictitious anecdotes and legends may still attach themselves to 
the persons of a few great men, but the formation of a whole 
system of myths is inconceivable in a historic age. And if 
we contemplate the age in which our Gospels were composed, 
here assuredly we fiiid ourselves in a liistoi-ic, and not a pre- 
historie period. Eeflection has long since awakened. Indeed, 
it is an age of great intellectual activity, and even of scepticism 
(cf. Pilate). Men have long since come to regard the Greek 
myths as the playful products of a poetic fancy. Is this a 
period favourable to the formation of myths ? 

Livy calls writing " the faithful giiardian of history." And 
accordingly, we find myths only amongst nations unacquainted 
mth the art of writing, and consequently without either history 
' Cf, Hetlinjer, Apologitdes CliTiaknlhuma, i. 2, p. 2S6 fi. 



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404 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CDCIST. [leCT. VI. 

w chr&mlogy. How different was the case in tlie apostolic 
age ! Not only had Greece and Eome long possessed their 
great historians, and Egypt its Manetho, hut even Palestiuu 
had its riaviu3 Josephus. Everj'where there was a lively 
historical, and literary activity, and a quick historical con- 
sciousness. How come myths to be formed ia an age like this? 

The improbability increases when we compare the character 
of the gospel narratives vnth that of myths in other quarters. 
Consider " the myths of Greece and Egj'pt, hovering as they 
do between memory and invention, between heaven and earth, 
between God and matter, between the natural and unnatural ; 
considei the gigantic bloody monstrous fables concerning 
the fantastic gods of Indii consider the iirk mi^t woven 
forms cf the old Germanic and &candini\nn mjthologj 
without fixed outlines or clearly defined peisonalities ind 
contra t with these the clear calm holy self contimed selt 
consistent and well defined fi^uie of Christ in the Gospels 
and say uhemn lies (he sJijhtest leseiiUunce Mueen tlietii^ 
Theie we ba've the shadowy maze of prehistoric times here 
palpable bnght reality on historical soil, — there, heathen 
deification of nature ; here, a revelation of the one personal 
God ; — there, the instinctive action of natural religion and 
natural life ; here, holy and solemn works and words proceeding 
from a personal mind_ and will. 

Moreover, as being a reflection of the life of nature, myths 
everywhere bear a local and national impress. According to 
the characteristics of people and country, they are differently 
developed in gladsome Greece, in arid India, and in the in- 
hospitable Koi-th. The purport of the Gospels, on the other 
hand, is universally human ; it is adaptable to every nation, 
every clime, every stage of time or cultivation. So little is it 
exclusively Jewish, tliat it constantly eontraihrts the prejudices 
of the nation from wliich it has originated. The portrait of 
Christ in the Gospels, instead of being that of a typical Jewish 
teacher, is aitirdy opposed to what such an one was considered 
to be.' 

' Cf. Wiseman, Znaammenhang noiacTien H'isufnwSn/i «. Offmihanuig, p. 228 
(Connection tiatween Seienee nnd Eevoalcd Eclsgion, London 133fi, Leut. IV., 
pp. 256 et BS.). For a description of wiiie teadiets in Isi'ael at that time, vid« 
Sepp, £e6e» Chriati, ii. p. 17. 



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LECT. Tl] STRAUSS' "LIFE OP CHUIST." 405 

Further, it lias been objected with truth, that luytlis know 
nothing of chronology ; they are prone to mix up times, places, 
and persons. In the Gospels, on the contrary, from Luke i. 
5 onwards, we find a series of exact data as to times, places, 
and persons, and a continuous reference to contemporaneous 
Koman and Jewish history. In the face of these historical 
relations, and of the inward opposition hetween mythical and 
gospel narratives, must it not, from the very beginning, be a 
vain undertaking to " evaporate" the latter into myths ? But 
Strauss quietly passes by this important intrinsic distinction, 
with the remark that " the formation of Christian myths must 
be put OK the same footing with the corresponding process in 
all other religions" (p. 153). 

To all this we add another difl:culty of considerable weight, 
viz. that the formation of myths is always a lengthy process, 
requiring considerable time. Homer's mythical account of the 
fall of Troy did not appear till some 200 years after the event. 
But the oldest of our Gospels appeared, as we have seen, before 
the fall of Jerusalem, ie. hardly a generation after the death 
of Christ. Therefore a portion of these myths at least mnst 
have taken their rise amongst the disciples themselves ; nor 
does Strauss deny that " the resurrection myth " in particular 
was believed and preached by the apostles themselves. Were 
these good people so utterly destitute of all historical sense 
and feeling ? Had they not been taught by Christ Himself, 
in the Sermon on the Mount, in the discourses which Strauss 
acknowledges as genuine, to distinguish clearly between divine 
revelation in the law and the subsequent human additions, — 
between what had been said by them of old time and what 
is written as the truth of God? Was not this calculated 
to implant some historical feeling in the disciples, and to 
sharpen their perception of the difference between iirmly estab- 
lished truths and human fictions ? Or if the disciples were 
so simple and superstitious as not to be able to understand 
their Master, is it not incomprehensible how He came to 
choose such inefficient men, " who would have spoilt His work 
entirely if it had not luckily been saved by the unexpected 
conversion and activity of the Apostle Paul " ? But what &^ 
unwortliy idea does this give us of the progress of man's h^- 
tory, " if Christianity, the most powerful factor in the world's 



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406 MODERX ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [leCT. VI, 

history, is made to depend on an unfoiesecn and incidental 
i&ctV"- 

Or are we to suppose that the later evangelists are the chief 
culprits in this mythical and unliistorical introduction, or, 
in plain English, this lying cheat ? To this we reply ty 
the old q^neation which we have already put to the rationalists. 
How can these biblical records, with their truthful spirit and 
pure morality, and the glorious ideal which they present to us, 
have their origin in mere hes ? And how could tiiese feolish 
writers, " who were so strongly biassed by their Jewish pre- 
judices, draw a picture containing none of the traditional 
features common to great Jewish rabbis, but revealing a moral 
dignity and purity so great that centuries upon centuries have 
bowed down before it, and from its Original received their 
life ? " " My friend," even Eousseau cried, full of admiration 
for the portrait of Christ in the Gospels, " such things cannot 
be invented ! Never could Jewish writers have fabricated 
discourses and moral teachings such as these. The Gospel 
contains so great, so astonishing and perfectly inimitable traits 
of tnith, that its inventor would be even more wonderful than 
its Hero." ' Assuredly, I appeal with confidence to the un- 
biassed judgment of my readers. Is it possible or conceivable 
that sinful and imperfect men should beget the thought of so 
majestic and stainless a personage, of so holy and Godlike a 
life, and should cany it out in this vivid and lifelike manner, 
not having received it as an impression fToni witlwut ? This 
would be a miracle more perplexing and unheard of than any 
of those which Strauss rejects, and the whole issue would only 
be transferi'ed fi-om the person of Christ to that of His his- 
torian ; in other woi-ds, we should by no means escape the mira- 
culous. The old truth still stands; "the pwtrait of Christ wJiich 
is delivered to lis; the faultlessly perfect Original of God-filled 
humanity cannot have been invented, since that which has never 

' Cf. Lutlinnlt, iiM sup. p. 19. 

* Bonsaeaii, Entile, L ir. pp. 109-111. Gcethe, too, in hia Qeapr&ehe mU 
Eciermann, (iii. p. 371), saya ; "I consider tlitrGospelsdeeiiledly genuine, for 
they are penetrated by the reflection of a, laiijesty whieli proei-edfd from the per- 
son of Chrht; and this is divine, if over divinity appeared upon the earth." 
Cf. also Scliaff, Die Perioa Jem CliTisli (now edit., p. 302), and cspeuially the 
remavlialilesitieaof testimoaiesfram sceptics and opponents for the r'liuructer of 
Christ, pp. 2JE-33fl [English edition (Boston, 1865), p^ 251 et ss ]. 



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LECT. V:.] STEAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 407 

entered into tlie heart of man as an impression cannot proceed 
from it as a lifelike fancy picture."' And does not the frag- 
mentary character ot the gospel records give us the impression 
that the narratives themselves were not capable of deline- 
ating this sublime Personage in an adei^uate manner, and that 
the reality must have gone far beyond what is told us ! (ct. 
John xxi. 25.} 

If the primitive Christian Church invented most of Christ's 
miracles, and made Him something quite different fram what He 
really was, why did not unbelievers on every hand protest against 
this? Why did they not appeal to the surviving contem- 
poraries of Jesus, or at least to their own immediate ancestors, 
many of whom must have seen Him, in disprocf of all these 
miracles ? Not even the most fanatical opponents of Chris- 
tianity, such as the Pharisees, or later on, Celsus, Porphyry, 
Julian, and others, ever impugned the truth of the miracles 
related in the Gospels. Strauss tries to evade this very evident 
objection by asking how the unbelief of Israel is to be accounted 
for if Christ really did so many miracles ? But he entirely 
overlooks the moral obstacles to faith. No miracles, nor any 
other works of God, ever absolutely compel man to believe ; 
they are and they will be like our Lord Himself, — a sign vvhich 
may be spoken against, clear enough for him who is willing 
to see, but dark enough for him who will not see nor believe. 
Else faith would cease to be a moral act, — a taking hold of 
the invisible : it would cease to be faith. 

Again, we ask, is it not probable that those who joined the 
new doctrine, before they took this step, made some examina- 
tion into these miraculous narratives ? How could a man 
break, off all connection with his past Judaism or heathenism, 
without having in some degree satisfied himself that he was 
not grasping after a shadow, but after living truth and histori- 
cal reality ? Was it not in the interest of faith itself to know 
something ceiiain ahout Christ, in order to be able to say, " I 
know in whom I have believed " ? (2 Tim. i. 12 ; c£ Luke i. 4, 
John XX, 31, 1 Cor. xi. 23, xv. 14-32.) And was not there 
a possibility of this, because the Christian Church gradually 
developed from a certain point without essential interruptions, 



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403 JIODEEN ACCOUJSrS OF THE LIFE OF CHEIST. [lECT. VL 

and thus it was easy to trace the narratives of Christ to their 
soMj-ce and test them there ? How could the Messiahship of 
Christ be proved to any one without first proving what He had 
done ? The first thing in the vocation of the apostles surely 
was to testify of the worts of Christ. Where, then.unless the 
apostles were intentional deceivers, ia there room for the forma- 
tion of myths ? 

And supposing that some myths had formed in the Church, 
must they not soon have beea rejected by the apostles or their 
disciples, if we take account of the intimate con-nedim, which 
the Acts and the Epistles proved to have existed amongst 
the pnmitive Churches ? Strauss prudently ignores this con- 
nection, and speaks as though every Church had remained 
isolated, and had continued to adorn the tradition of Christ in 
whatever way it pleased. 

Sti-auss is constantly invoking the enthusiastic superstition 
of the primitive age as the source of myths. But why did not 
this enthusiastic superstition adorn other persons — e.ff. the 
liighly-esteemed Baptist— with miraculous garlands ? It is by 
no means permissible to place the apostolic age on a level 
m this respect with the following period, which stands most 
palpibly below it in spiritual, moidl, and intellectual power. 
But that latei Judrmm as svch — and Jewish Christians were 
the wiitera of the New Testament — was not fond of miracles, 
IS clearly shown by their rare occurrpnce in the lives of the 
groat piophets from Isaiah downwards Only where Creator 
and cieature are commingled — as in the case of heathenism — 
do we find a fertile soil for miiacle mania. But where both 
are kept so entirely di'^tinct as m Judaism, and " the human 
subject IS penetrated with the feeling of God's greatness and 
its own nothingness, it cannot e\pcct that miracles should 
take plice every instant It will look on them as somethiu" 
evtraordmaiy, and expect them seldohi to occur." 

Tins IS confirmed by the gospel history. Was not, e.g., the 
Etnct examination of witnesses m the judicial inquiry respect- 
mg the man who was bom bhnd (John ix.) a token of histori- 
cal sense and sober inquiry ^ The dge cannot, after all, have 
been so utterlj destitute of these qualities ; and should the 
Chiistian Church alone of all other bodies, have been without 
members who weie capable of such examination? Not eve« 



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LECT. VI.] STKAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 409 

the .Churches of the second century were entirely void of 
critical perception. Where there -was a question aa to the 
genuineness of certain writings, they could make very exact 
inquiries. Certain Fathers of the second century made 
journeys on purpose to get exact information from churches 
founded by the apostles about some disputed writings, in 
order afterwards to appeal confidently to this information in 
their discussions with heretics. A presbyter in Asia Minor 
who had composed an apocryphal book entitled, Histories of 
Paid and Tliekla, was convicted, and confessed his fraud. The 
Church in Philippi wished to make a collection of the letters 
of Ignatius (f 108), and for this purpose they wrote to Poly- 
carp, Bishop of Smyrna, begging for his assistance, in order 
that the matter might bo more certain.* Are not these proofs 
foi the existence ol a sober historical investigation in that age, 
^nd do thej not at the same time witness favourably to the 
genuineness of our Gospels ? And shall we not suppose that 
this spirit of critical investigation and inquiry was active as 
regards the oial tndition of the words and works of Christ in 
the Churches especmlly in those of the first century, where 
such inquny was considerably easier? 

But the hibloiual difficulty changes into a still greater 
psychological obstacle. Must not the eiUhusiastic fancies of these 
primitive Christians, we ask, have hcen somewhat cooled doivn 
and sobered when the perseeuivms began ? Wliat motive could 
tliey have for holding to tJieir delvsion in the fcice of irihilation 
and death, and in ex^osiiig tliemselves to contutnely, modceiy, and 
h:itred from Jeies and Gefiitiles for the sake of their imaginary 
dreains? But this supposition of extravagant enthusiasm 
amongst the primitive Christians is entirely incorrect. Beside 
the Old Testament, they received edification from certain of the 
apostolic epistles, especially those of St. Paul. But do these 
or any other of the New Testament epistles give us the im- 
pression that their writers were extravagant enthusiasts, or 
sharp-witted foi^ers t Does not the clear, simple, temperate, 
humble style of tliese writings make just the opposite impres- 
sion on everj' unbiassed mind ? Does the reading of them 
have an intoxicating or a sobering effect ? 

And what do these apostolical writings tell us t Let us look 
' CL Stint), Apolojk dea Gh-ktai&ami, 2d cd., p. 2&. 



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410 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI, 

at some of the pon 1 ose en e ess tl ere has never 
rested the shade ft of a loubt the Ep ties of St. Paul to the 
Eomana and Co tl na Does not St T 1 here speak of 
miraculous powe n the CI rch (L Cor 10-30) ? Does 

he not say of h m&elf tl t he h o J t tl e 1 eatben into the 
obedience of fa th throu^I m ^1 ty s ^ns and -wonders " 
i^Eom. XV. 19), 1 d tl at a onjst the Co tl ans he accom- 
plished the "sig s of ai aioth % th o d rs and mighty 
deeds" (2 Cor. x 1" cf CiL i 5 a d Heb ii. 4), — doubt- 
less, that is, miracles espec illy of heal ng ? These passages 
are a sore per^Ie ty for the d ers of tie miraculous, for 
here there is no t me for tl e for u t on of n > ths intervening 
between the facta tl e sel bs and tl e confessedly genuine 
records ; seeing tl at tl e m racl s tl e sel es are held up to 
the original witne ses of tl em at Co ntl The only resource 
left to Strauss is to ton 1 on tl ese mj ort t historical data as 
lightly as possil le and ther to tah a leaf out of the rational- 
ist's book,^ by led c ,, th e nura les to erely psychical, 
or even imagina j res ^1 ch were tl e nitural result of 
religious exciten ent n 11 s e r le (p ''08) The visions of 
a man lite St. V 1 who w s perfect \ tual health, and 
possessed of bo 1 1} ^ t hi h could e d re the greatest 
hardships, he ac o t for 1 y on uls e perhaps epileptic 
fits" (p. 302) ! Such a e tl e sh fts to 1 ch anti-miraeutoua 
delineators of pr n t e Chr t an tj ire p t 

We now see 1 o v gre tlj il lo s arralives in the 

Gospels are confir i ly these sayings of an apostle. If signs 
and wonders were pert rmed Ij an apostle n Corinth, may 
we not, nay, m st e not concl de tl t s n lar mighty deeds 
were likewise done 1 y 01 r st o atl er tl it His life and work 
were accompanied by 1 11 „ eater d more nerous miracles? 
For tlie disciple is not above his Master ; and as by the evan- 
gelists (Matt. X, 1, Luke ix. 1), so, too, by St. Paul (Eom. 
XV. 18), the apostolic authority and power is always traced 
back to Christ as its source. Even the belief of the apostles 
themselves, that they performed mii'acles, is utterly incompre- 
hensible, unless they-^and not only the later Churches — were 

> So, too, aoes Baur ; but still he cniilcsses that even though Taul may have had 
■n ecstAtie element in hia nature, yet this H'aa kept so stvietly in schiection by ths 
oleac rationalily of his aelf -eonscioasnesa, that i< cmM never pauim exiravaaawie. 



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LECT. Vl] STEAUSS' "LIFE OF CHEIiiT." 411 

persuaded that He, the infinitely greater One, had preceded 
them in so doing. 

Another important argument against the mythical hypothesis 
and its constant reference to the extravagant spirit of the 
primitive Christian age, lies in the simple, unadoi'ned, and 
chaste chai-acter of the miracles themselves. If the spirit of 
extravagant enthtiBiasm had woven a garland of myths around 
the life of Ohiist, it would have made Him perform miracles 
quite different from- those vshieh the Qospels relate of Him. There 
would have appeared " signs from heaven " (Matt. xvi. 1 et ss,), 
changes in the heavenly bodies, and all other kinds oi fantastic 
and extravagant portents, and in the end we should have had 
a -picture of Christ quite differed to that which the Gospels 
give. The case would have been the same as in some of the 
later apocryphal gospels, which really do malie Christ, as a 
child, perform so many aimless and ridiculous mii'acles. 
Instead of this, look at the modest measure of the miracles 
performed by Christ and the apostles (mostly miracles of 
healing), their constant holg purpose, their earnest and sdier 
charaeter. This is not the impress of an extravagant fancy. 
Strauss is prudent enongh from the very beginning to place 
the biblical miracles on a level with those of lieathen mytho- 
■ logy, magic, and jugglery ^ (pp. 147, 455, etc.), thus making 
the former fall before the same criticism as the latter. But 
tliis is (as we liave already shown, cf. pp. 318 and 323) simply 
an act of violence which entirely ignores the deep internal 
distinction between the biblical and the apoert/plial miracles. 

And how are the difficulties mnltiplied when we consider 
the external and internal contradictions contained in Strauss' 
portrait of the Person of Christ ! Here we are utterly at a loss 
to account for the formation of myths. Strauss' view of the 
incarnation of God in Christ is, as belore, the pantheistic 
Hegelian. According to Scripture, " in Christ dweUeth all 
tbte fulness ot the Godhead bodily " (Col. ii. 9) ; but according 
to Hegel, God, i.e. the " Absolute Idea," can never appear in 
' Thus Straiiss compares the liealitig of blind men by Christ with a juggling 
miracle performed by Vesptisiim before the populace in Alexandria (pp. 269, 
429). But it has been proyed by P. Cassel (in his pamphlet, Leroi te fovJie, 
1864), that this performance ot Vespasian's is to be attributed to his contact 
with Jewish thought ; in other words, that it is an echo of Christ's miracles, and 
a ttriking proof of the then Kide-spread beli^ in the mtnulet qf ChHst. 



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412 JIODEKN ACCOUKTS OF THE LIFE OF CIIHIST. [LECT. VI, 

its entire fulness in a single individual, but only in t!ie whole 
race. Therefore the incarnaLion of God does not take place 
in a single individual called Christ, but universally and eon- 
tinuonslj in Humiint> as a -whole. In a treatise with which 
he closed his former Lifs of Christ, Strauss characteristically 
remarks. As the subject of the predicates which the CJiurch 



appli 
the 



s to Chni't we must posit an idea, but a real one, viz. 

ea of the human race." This shows that he denies the 
cific divine Sonship of Christ. His teaching and His eon- 
! but mtural products of the preceding ages, 
the Hellenic and Jewish inheritance of which concentrated 
themselves in Him. The latter accounts for the purely spiritual 
and moral tendency of His religious views ; the former, for His 
" spirit of humane love," — the "cheerful, unbroken action pro- 
ceeding from the joyous delight of a beautiful soul" (p. 207 
fl.). We shall see in Lect. VIII. that these factors are by no 
means sutficieut to explain the whole character of Christianity 
and its immense effects. But they are not even correctly 
stated. Tor the fundamental feature of His life and teaching 
is not the mild and cheerful Hellenic view of the world, hut 
rather " a perfect concentration on the one highest aim, and 
an intense conviction that He was called to be a revealer of 
truth." * But according to Strauss, no unique position can be 
claimed for Christ. As a member in tlie development of the 
race, He only marks a special progress in the knowledge of 
the ideal man. " Every gi'eat moral character, every great 
thinker, lias helped to develope the idea of human perfection." 
Christ stands in the first rank of those who have so done. 
" He introduced features into the ideal of humanity which 
before were wanting, or at least had remained undeveloped, 
the features of toleration, ot charity, and of love to man" 
(p. 625 et ss.) ; but, on the other hand, his single life, his 
" merely passive relation to the state," his " visible repug- 
nance " to all trade, his entire neglect of all " that belongs to 
art and the refinements of life," were "features which remained 
undeveloped in Clirist, and leave marked deficiencies" (p. 626),' 

' Cf. Weizsiicker, Uniersnchangen Hher die evangeliiehe GeseJikACe (p. 3i7). 

• This is ooiitradieted on p. 228, where Stranss says that " Jesus presentfid 
liinisflif as the friend ot men, who thouglit nothing human teneoth his notice, 
tu>thii>3 human fttr^gn to him, who did not desiuse harmless human Jojs," et'\ 



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LECT. VI.] STEAUSS' " LIFE OF CHIilST." 413 

Against this tlieory of a imiversal incarnation of God instead 
of the individual one, TJllmann {uhi sup.) has well argued that 
although the Eevelation of God may progress through all 
nations and all ages, yet it must strive towards a centre and 
climax, such as appeared in Christ ; and that the Church, in 
order to he an organism, must have a living Head. Further- 
more, in the realm of art great geniuses from time to time 
appear, in whom the power and beauty of their art is concen- 
trated, such as Homer, Raphael, MozarL In them the fulness 
of the idea is to a great extent centred in one person, and so 
it must be still more entirely with the Godhead in Christ. 
And this is simply a necessity ; for if God indeed be love, then 
a perfect self-revelation and self-communication on His part 
must take place within the human race which was created in 
His own image, and this can only be accomplished through 
Him who is at once the image and Son of God, the Redeemer, 
and Head of mankind, Only in such an One can the holy love 
of God he satisfied ; only in Him can mankind have been the 
object of eternal predestination and future self-communication. 
" The idea and the reality of the Holy Son of God and man 
thus contains the exact opposite of that deprivation for the 
remainder of mankind, which Strauss and other's make it out 
to he. The whole fulness of God ia imparted to others only 
through Him." ' 

Here we see the fundamental deficiency in Strauss' view oi 
the world ; it ignores the iinporlatice of a 'personality in the life 
of history. In Hegel's pliilosophy all personalities are merely 
points at which the "ideas" converge, or masks through 
which the universal spirit looks. And so, too, in Strauss' 
view, mankind is but a mass of powerless atoms, which 
together make up a divine-human whole ; but not a living 
organism, which, as such, has and must have its climax and 
its central organ. 

Strauss wishes to substitute "the ideal Christ — i.e. the original 
type oi man aa he should be contained in our reason— /or the 
kistorieal " (p. 625) ; a proof, by the way, how little he cares 
for historical results from a religious point of view, and that 
his so-called historical criticism is only a means for the intro- 

' Compare the article on " The Sialessness of Christ," in Herzog's Sealeacy' 
ctopMie, vol. ssr,p. 210. 



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414 MODELS ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [lECT. VL 

diiction of hia pantheistic principles. This is the way with all 
speculative philosophy ; it invariably treats real history as a 
secondary matter. So, then, our " saving faith is to be trans- 
ferred " from a palpable, living historical Person, to an intel- 
lectual conception. This is precisely the same fundamental 
error which we rejected in the case of Pantheism, as if an 
abstract idea which is not tj^ically realized in some personality 
conld of itself gain a hold on men's hearts ; as if a mere prin- 
ciple, or even a moral law, could make itself respected and 
realize itself, unless certain persons endowed with power stood 
forth as its exponents. These are mere dreams, belied by the 
civil and rehgious history of all, and especially of Christian 
nations. The moral process going on in humanity is surely 
" J calculated to develope personality, and is therefore 
f dependent on the influence of notable moral 
personages. If the indispensable postulate, that moral good- 
ness should be realized in this sinful world, is not to be given 
up, this realization must "proceed from an individual in whom 
goodness itself has become a human person." Our divine 
sonship can only proceed from the divine Son Himself. 

As for what Strauss says in connection with this about a 
"development of Christ's religion into the religion of humanity," 
we can only repeat what we have already shown to be the 
case, that Christ and Mis gospel alone is the one sure and firm 
exponent, the only inexhaustible source of all true culture and 
humanity ; this, and nothing else, not even Hellenicism. "We 
repeat, that to go beyond Christ in the perfection of religion is 
an utter impossibility ; and that to tear the idea of humanity 
away from the root which has borne it. would he — in spite of 
any outward varnish — not progress, but the surest retrogres- 
sion into barbarism, into a dotage of scepticism, of entire sub- 
jectivity and selfishness. Christ is not one amongst others of 
those who have pei'fected the ideal of humanity ; for what a 
spiritual and moral gulf is there between Him and even auch 
men as Socrates or Moses! He is Himself this Ideal; for why 
else have centuries bowed down before His spiritual and moral 
dignity and stainless beauty, as before an ever-fiowing spring 
of truth and holiness ? That man only can discover " essen- 
tial deficiencies in this portrait," who has from the beginning 
taken Him for a mere man instead of the divine Kedeemer, 



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LEGT. VI.] STEAUSS' " LIFE OF CUKIST." 41 5 

and lias thua made a false estimate of His character. His life's 
work, and His whole position in regai'd to human affairs. 

Whereas Scripture stAordinates tJie whole of humamty to 
Christ, Strauss subordinates Christ to humamty as a whole. 
According to Scripture, all humanity is gathered together under 
one Head, even Christ (Eph. i. 10, avaKe^oKaiwaaaBai rk 
'jravra eV tw XpioTw ; cf. ver. 2 2 and Col. ii. 1 0) ; accoi'ding to 
Strauss, this body remains ever headless, and over the unhappy 
trunk there hovers eternally' distant — an ideal ! I shall en- 
deavo t 1 w m t 1 ngth in the last lecture, how all 

history t d j d 1 vn by such attempts as these to 
deriv CI t ty f tural sources. 

Th t w th US counter to the representations 

of Sc pt 1 h k Christ, not the almost accidental 

point f f tl p ously existing germs of religious 

cultu b t tl t ntre of Christianity; and we can- 

not d f tl } t re of Christ drawn by its author is 
confi Id ffi t Hence the peculiar complaint of 

Strai Ab t t t men have we such insufficient 

infor t bo t Ch t the figure of Socrates, though 400 

years H m f hly more distinct" (p. 621). Indeed, 

this p t " Ko one ever made so great an 

impr p n 1 d as he did ; no one has ever left 

behmi 1 m 1 t fbs^orkashe, and jet of no man 

shouli k 1 ttl of him though he belongs not to 

the dirk da'vs of hoary antiquity but to the cleir and open 
age of history i (Luthardt uh, siii ) lo Stiauss onlj that 
Clinch IS purelj humin and impeifect appeiis clear Because 
this evidently appears in the Cdse of Socrites therefore his 
tiauie IS clear but since it does not appear thus in Chnst, 
His shape is indistinct 

In tiuth it cannot but lecome so when men hke Strauss 
and Schenkel are conbtantlj ii akmg hidon al ili£nuUiP3 and 
impoitmg them into the naiTati\es According to Strauss 
Chiist peiiormed no miracles But m this case huu cmild the 
Ofii uon tale rist that He wan the Itfesstah ^ We are told that, 
as being a piophet men attnbuted to Him miiaculous power 
end magnified iiatunl cuies oi alle\iaticns into miiade'! But 
can this ha-\ e been i ifhcient to produce that behef ' Men 
expected the Messiah to perform the most extras agant things. 



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416 JIOItEEN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHEIST. [LECT. Tt 

— works at least as great as those of Moses, — indeed, special 
"signs from heaven ;" why, then, did they not rather attribute 
to Him Messianic signs of this description ? And how is it 
that Jesus invariably refuses to show signs of this kind, when 
demanded from Him, in proof of His Messiahship (Matt xvi. 
1 et ss. ; Mark viii. 1 1 et ss. ; Luke xL 1 6 ; John vi. 3 et ss,), 
and that He noiselessly performs signs of q^uite a different 
sort, and miracles oi far more modest dimensions ; ' and yet 
this belief arises? How is it that He combats the carnal 
Messianic expectations of His disciples and hearers, and gives 
ofl'ence to them by declaring " the kingdom of God cometh not 
with outward show — it is within you,-" and yet this opinion 
gains ground ? 

Furthermore, according to Strauss, certain prophetical 
designations of the Messiah, as " Son of David" and " Son of 
God," were then cun-ent. The first of these designations, 
however, Jesus never appKed to Himself, and the second but 
seldom, and not without restriction (p. 224 et ss.) ; He pre- 
feiTed to call Himself by the humble title, " Son of man." 
Does not this make it all the more diflicult to understand 
whence the belief in His Messiahship could arise, unless those 
greater miracles (loaves and fishes, raising of the dead, etc.) 
actually took place ? These, we are told, were only gradually 
invented after the death of Christ, and it was not till then 
that the belief in His Messiahship began to spread in wider 
circles. But how did it arise in the disciples ? If Jesus did 
no miracles, and yet was " evidently glad " when the belief in 
His Messiahship sprang up in the minds of Peter and His 
most intimate disciples, why did He not honestly disabuse 
them of the notion that the Messiah must do miracles ? Or 
if He did so, how could the disciples after His death so soon 
fall back into their old miraculous delusion as to surround His 
life with such a garland of myths, and that in contradiction to 
their real experience ? Or if they were obliged to do so in 
order to obtain a hearing irom the people, why did they not 

'According to the most recent inrestigations, the purport of theMeesianio 
expectations of that oge (nhicli Strauss only exaniinea Euperficially) consisted of 
miracles such as those of Sloses. How Inr must the miraclea oi Christ hare 
fallen short of such hopes ! Witness, e.g., the diapcoportJon between the feeding 
of the five thousand and the manna in the wilderness, John tL SO et ss. 



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LECT. TI.] STKAUS3' "LIFE OF CHRIST." 417 

rather impute to tlieir Master the tremendous miracles ex- 
pected by the excited fancy of those times, and thus convince 
the mass of the unbelieving Jewish world of His Messiah- 
ship ? On every hand this mythical hypothesis entangles us 
in enigmas. 

One thing is perfectly clear, that Christ Himself must in 
some way or other have given an impulse to the fabrication of 
myths. Now, we have already seen how much is left of the 
historical Christ after all the myths are removed. We thus 
stand before the question, Hovj is it possible that the mere per- 
sonal appearance of this simple Galilean MaUi should have given, 
so great an impulse ? The greatest enigma 0/ all is, that this 
poor skeleton of a life of Christ should ever have been enveloped 
in such a wealth of myths, and that Christ, in contradiction to 
the nniversal belief in a miracle-working Messiah, should ever 
have been able to attain this dignity without performing a 
single mirage} 

The higher view of Jesus as the incarnate Son and the 
eternal "Word of God, is, we are told, the " last layer in the 
process of the deification of Christ," and was not developed till 
the second century. Eut in the Book of Eevelation, which 
Straus.? acknowledges to have been written by St. John, we 
find Jesus already designated as " the Word of God " (xix. 13); 

as " the Alpha and Omega the Lord which is, and 

which was, and which is to come, the Almighty " (i. 8). Can 
we conceive of a higher view of Christ's majesty and glory 
than that given in the descriptions ol the Book of Eevelation 
from beginning to end? If we search the Epistles of St. 

'Sehelling says: "As regards the hypothesia. that the life ot Christ was 
adotned by mytha, I suppose e?ery one will admit that only such a life is glorified 
by myths or legends as has been already in some manner distinguishfd and 
moved into a higher region. How the ([Uestion is, Hnw did this Jeivish countiy 
rabbi Jesus hecome the object of such glorification ! Was it in virtue of His 
teaoliing 1 The stones which they took up show liow the Jews received this. 
What, then, is the presupposition which may renrter so extraordinary a glorifica- 
tion probable! Onl}/ if toe gmnt tlial Christ m'sedfor what a-e have recognised 
Him to he, is it conceivable that in conaef[uence of this opinion certain ' myths' 
may have arisen. Eat if we grant this, we must presuppose the entire dignity 
of Cliiijt, quite independently oi the Gospels. It is not the Gospels which are 
necessary in order that we may recognise the majesty of drist, but U is the 
diynity of Christ which is necessary in aider thai we mat/ be able to comprehend 
these Gospel narratives." ("I1iCosophiederOft^enbamng,"fiW>BBii£ieA« Werie, 
Pui II. vol. iv. p. 2S8.) 



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418 JIODERN ACCOUHTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LEOT. VI. 

Paul, -which Strauss himseK accepts as genuine, we find tliat 
Christ is " the Lord of glory " {1 Cor. ii. 8), " the Lord from 
heaven " (1 Cor. xv. 47), " by whom are all things " (1 Cor. 
viii. 6), " the image of God" (2 Cor. iv. 4), who existed before 
His incarnation (1 Cor. x. 4). This higher view of Christ, 
then, dates from the first century, and fi-om the apostolic 
circle. How did the apostles arrive at this view, if Christ was 
a mere man ? 

More than this. That higher view is found in Christ's testi- 
mony respecting His own Person Stnuss cannot help himself 
by drawing a line between the di^coiir^es of Christ in the 
fourth Gospel and those in the fc^noptic^ However much 
he may critically reject of the sayiniiia of Christ, there will 
always be enough remaining even m the fir=!t three Gospels 
to confute his view. There will 1 e passages -nhere Christ calls 
God His Father in a perfectly unique sense where He pro- 
nounces Himself to he gi-eater than the temple, greater than 
Solomon, the Lord of the Sabbath the Lord of the angels ; 
where He makes Himself the Mediator an<i Dispenser of the 
foi^iveness of sins ; where He stnctlj distinguishes between 
His own undefiled conscience and oui consciousness of sin; 
where He attaches to His own ivnrk and Person the highest, 
eternally valid authority in all matters of morals and religion ; 
where He attributes to Himself, and His return in heavenly 
glory, the last judgment and the consummation of the world.^ 
Do not such indubitable signs of Christ point to a higher view 
of His Person contained in His own consciousness ? We cannot 
evade this conclusion by general phrases, such as that He 
called Himself Son of God " only in the acceptation of a 
purified Messianic idea," etc. No ; He gave Himself, as Keini 
says, " overwhelming names and titles, before which all human 
categories must sink into silence." What gave Christ ihe right 
to think thus oj Himself if He was not truly tU Son of God ? 
If we accept this self-testimony of Christ, then His Person 
stands so high above the world and the remainder of humanity, 

' Cf. the proofs of this, pp. 245-243. With respect to ifott. si. 27, "All 
thiijgs are delivered unto me of my Father," etc, Strauss confeasea tliat the man 
who 30 speaka must place himself in an entirely unique relation Ia God, and that 
" tliis ia the same aa when the Johannean Christ says to his Father, ' All mine 
aie Thine, and Thine are mine ' (sviL 10)." 



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LECT. VI.J STRAUSS' " LIFE OF CHKIST." 419 

that neither can Jlis works he measured according .to mere human 
and creature standards. But if we do not accept thia testimony, 
■we must necessarily accuse Cliiist of extravagance and undue 
self- exaltation; and then the crushing task remains, to reconcile 
these glaring defects ■with the light of truth and moral majesty, 
which otherwise shines so brightly in His words and works, 
and with the -world-redeeming and regenerating influences that 
proceeded from Him. 

And, in fact, Strauss finds himself compelled thns to 
reproach Christ. Considering Him as a mere man, and there- 
fore imperfect, he does and must 7indermine His sinlessness. 
This is the worst, the fatal feature in his theory. " The notion 
that Christ was sinless, must be a death-blo^w to any historical 
treatment of his person " (i.e. any which denies His Godhead),, 
" for even the best of men has constantly to accuse himself of 
some faults " (p. 195). " Humanity alone is sinless, inasmuch 
as its development is blameless, and impurity cleaves only to 
the indi^ridual !" Who that has an eye for the fearful conup- 
tion ■which is in the ■world through sin, can apeak of a " sinless 
humanity " ? Thus it is that the pantheistic creed turns every- 
thing upside down. Hitherto mankind was believed to be 
sinful and Christ sinless ; now the former is supposed to be 
sinless, and the latter, because He is a mere individual, to be 
polluted, or at least imperfect. Mankind, however, gaine little 
enough by the exchange. For if a sinless man be an impos- 
sibility, then sinfidness, moral weakness, and imperfection be- 
long to the idea of man as an individual. Thus the idea of 
man is degraded by one who claims to have apprehended it 
more clearly. We see that to deny the sinlessness of Christ 
is to degrade the human race, because proceeding from too 
low an idea of man. 

True, Strauss cannot conceal from himself the fact that the 
nature of Christ — " unlike those of a I'aul, an Augustine, or 
a Luther, which were purified by means of a struggle and a 
violent rupture, and retained the scars of it ever after " — was 
uninterrupted and harmoniously unfolded, and that His " inner 
development took place without violent crises" {p. 208). This 
is, in point of fact, as much as to concede His sinlessness ; for 
" the specific purport of the Old Testament is the recognition 
of God's holiness and man's sin ; and on this soil an unbroken, 



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420 MODEBN ACCODHTS OF THE LIFE OF ciiEIST. [lECT. VI. 

harmonious nature could grow, only if the breach of God's will 
and the diaharmony of sin were entirely foreign to it." ^ But 
Strauss contradicts himself by demanding that this nnbrolien 
development of Christ should be understood so as "not to 
exclude isolated fluctuations and faults which would necessitate 
continuous and earnest eflbrts for self-government " {uii sup.). 
These faults are supposed actually to have showed them- 
selves towards the close of our Lord's life. At this period we 
see the depths of His divinity manifested more clearly than 
ever. AU the more levers must be applied by anti-miraculoua 
critics to obscure them ; and when aU other efforts fail, then 
they cast a moral slur on the only sinless One. Help what 
may ; only His divinity must not be conceded ! We will leave 
Strauss' frivolous remarks on the prayer of Christ at the grave 
of Lazarus* out of the question, because he considers the 
Christ of the fourth Gospel to be a fiction, and the whole 
narrative " an unhistorical creature of the primitive Christian 
imagination." But the remarks of Strauss on Ch-ist's discourses 
respectinfj His second coming {e.g. Matt. xxv. 31 et ss.) leave no 
room for doubt. " Here we stand at a decisive point For 
us, Christ exists either as a man only, or not at all Such 
things as he predicts of himself here cannot he said of any 
man. If, notwithstanding, he did predict and expect these 
things, we must consider him a visionary, just as, had he 
said them without the fuU conviction of their truth, he would 
have been a bragging deceiver." So Strauss decides in favour 
of considering Him a visionary. "What offends ua in all 
these discourses is only the one point, that Christ should have 
attached that miraculous change, the appearance of that ideal 
day of retribution, to his own person, and that he should have 
designated himself as the judge who would come in the clouds 
of heaven, accompanied by angels, to raise the dead and judge 
the world. The man who expects such things of himself is 
not only a visionary, he is guilty of undue sdf-exaltation in 
presuming to except himself from all others so far as to place 
himself above them as their future judge. In so doing, Jesus 

' Beyschlag, tiii supra, p. i7. 

' P. 47fi : " The Christ of this Gospel, thus praying out of accommodation 
(' Ijecause of the people '), look.'! like an actor, and, moreover, a clumsy actor, 
when he confesses that his prajer is a mete aceommodation, " 



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LECT. VI.] STRAUSS' " LIFE OF CIIEISl'," 421 

seems entirely to have forgotten how once he refused the pre- 
dicate 'good' as belonging to God alone"' (p. 242). 

In such sayings, then, we have extravagance and seK- 
exalfcation, spiritual and moral error. Kut wliat of the 
" beautiful nature," with the joyous HeUenie clearness of 
spirit, of which Straiiss before spoke ? He breaks off here, 
as though conscious that this is the most self-eridently weak 
•point of his whole historical eomtrtKtion. Christ did speak 
those words. No criticism can remove from our Gospels the 
absolute divine consciousness which is expressed in the uni- 
versal judicial function thus claimed by Him. Strauss him- 
self acknowledges that these discourses are historical; and, 
indeed, tliey do fonn " a decisive point." In no part of his 
life of Christ does he so twist and turn to get out of the 
difficulty, and in no part can he so ill hide the embarrassment 
of his " criticism." For either Clirist uttered these sentiments 
iorongly, in extravagance and self-exaltation, — and then let any 
man reconcile them with His otherwise perfect moral majesty ; 
let him explain how from this haughty enthusiast, from this 
religious leader who himself was subject to sin or error, there 
could proceed the religion of humihty and love, and the 
kingdom of truth with its world-regenerating effects ; — or, on 
the other hand, Christ was right in speaking these words, and 
did so with full clearness and truth ; lut then He was more 
than a mere man. Trom this we see that thovffh all the works 
of Christ should vanish into myths, yet Mis words remain as an 
irrefutahle proof of His MessiaJiship and Godhead ; and so does 
His consciousness, with the views resulting therefrom of His 
person and dignity, as something incompatible with all mere 
human standards. This firm rock is to Strauss a stone of 
stumUing which shatters his vshole theory in pieces. He is 
indignant that Jesus Christ should dare to bind the whole 
course of the world to His person, and should call all men, 
even Dr. Strauss, before His judgment throne;^ and lather 

' Cf. Beysclilag, iM mip. p. B4. Ha rightly remarks, that by this last clause 
" Strauss reiirehcuds his own abuse of the passage Mark x. 8 (ct. p. 876, note). 
Would not th^ simjilest inle of interjiretation have bound him to inteipret this 
isolated passage so that it should not contradict bo many indubitalie saYin<'3 of 
Christ ?" ■* ° 

'. To show that we are not saying too much, it may be mentioned that Bruno 
Bauer, one of those who have developed the mythical hypothesis, feela himself 



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422 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. TI. 

■would he grasp after the crown of His sinlessness and freedom 
from error, to trample it in the dust, than how down before 
His perfect and unicLue grandeur, and acknowledge before 
tliis holy mystery what poor piecework all our learning and 
investigation is. It is the old objection : " "We will not have 
this man to reign over us" (Luke xix. 14; Ps. ii. 2 et ss.). 
Thence come mistakes which cannot be corrected by the best 
logic, theories whose upholders are not to be confuted by the . 
clearest arguments. 

The optical Ulusion of mythiciam lies in the train of ail- 
ment, that because in the Church herself the higher linowledge 
of Christ was gradually attained, therefore this higher know- 
ledge was invented from the imagination of these primitive 
Christians, though, at the same time, we cannot understand 
how this idea should have occurred to them. From the 
an"els' song in the first Christmas night, down to the words, 
" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? " coming from the lips 
of the risen One, the gospel history contains a series of 
pictures so beautiful and grand, so perfumed with heavenly 
grace, that innumerable features in it must be recognised as 
uninveniaUe. Doubtlesa there is a poetry in them ; but it is 
not that of arbitrary fiction, it is the result of holy and 
divinely ordered facts. "Why should legends only invent 
what is beautiful? Why should not the finger of God in 
history trace out an objective beauty of facts which exceeds 
all that human fancy can invent ? Instead of saying that it 
is too beautiful to be true, each man who believes in some- 
thin" more than our common everyday life should say, when 
looking at this page of history, " It is too hemitiful to he mere 
fiction" so beautiful that it must be true. Tiiere is an ideal 
perfection of beauty which is itself the highest reality; or, 
to use the words of Gothe, 

"The iinattninaWa 
Is here nicomplished;" 

and this beauty it is which shines in the Gospels, above aU, 
in the delineation which they give xis of Christ 

Only if Christ really was lohat He ifos taken for, ean we 

"injured, offended, and aiig«t«d" by the prominent dignity of Christ ; "!». 
cniise one man is alnays sot vtp as a mode! against the iviokedneis and stupidity 
of all the others 1 " (in his Kril'k der cm«g. Gesddchle, Pretnce,) 



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LECT. VL] STKAUSS' "UFE OF COEIST." 423 

solve the migina of primitive Ckrislian faith, of the foundation, 
the spread, and Ike world-renewing power of the Ch-mtian Church. 
Clirist could only live as the God-man in the hearts of Bis 
folloioers if He really was so. How else was it possible that 
BO many Jews should have believed in One who was shame- 
fully crucified (only think what a stumbling-block a crucified 
Messiah must have been to them !), and so many heathen 
should have accepted a crucified Jew as the Son of God? 
How 13 it conceivable that on this sandy, mythical foundation 
a Church should have been huilt up which possessed such 
vitality and power of growth ? Whence did the Church, 
which is a Christian Church solely in virtue of her belief in 
Jesus as the* only-begotten Son of God,- — whence did the 
Church take her rise, if she were not formed by Christ in 
that capacity ? A myth cannot form, cannot produce ; it is 
itself only a product, a reflection of the popular mind, and that 
in prehistoric times : it cannot, therefore, have begotten the 
Christian Church ; nay, it cannot even have helped to heget it. 
The estabhshment of the Church, this immense achievement, 
demands a personal Will, a creative power of the greatest 
energy ; it cannot be accounted for by the empty pictures of 
imagination. And where else do we find this power, what 
else is a suificient explanation, hut the divine power of the 
cracified and risen One ? 

We look at the enormous revolution in the world accom- 
plished through Christianity ; we look at the joKful heroism of 
its confessors, braving death ; and at the purity of the primitive 
Christian Church, which is bom, grows, spreads, and finally 
conquers the world, though placed between a thorouglily 
corrupted Judaism on the one hand, and a no less thoroughly 
vitiated heathenism on the other; and having done so, we 
consider the attempt made to explain all this from the fact 
that a certain Jew became convinced thai he was the Messiah, 
whereupon his disciples after his death attributed to him all 
sorts of miracles, lohich they drew from their imagination ; and 
our final conclusion is, that this ea^lanation involves such an 
utter disproportion hetween cause and eged, that it is in itself 
the most inconceivaUe miracle, a pure historical impossibility. 

Strauss shares the fate of all anti-miraculists. Denying 
miracles, they are forced to substitute still greater enigmas 



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424 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHEIST. [LECT. Vl 

for them, and yet are unable to explain real history. There 
stands Christ in the unique conscioQsness of His Godhead, 
His redeeming vocation, and His universal Kingship There 
13 the Church, there is Chnstianity with its woild regenerat- 
ing eflei.t>5, — -all undeniable facts All these Stiaics cannot 
explain^ by refeinng them to one who ivas not free from sm 
and error, or to the in\ entn e ay, deceptive, im^ination of 
his followeis Here we see ihr immenbt Ttstdiuim iihich eien 



s cannot gd iid oj and which shows his whole hypo- 
thesis to be insufScient and wrong 

His hjpothesis does not suit the clearness of that age 
which was a Jinioiical and not a prehistoric one , it does not 
accord with the trath-bieathmg spint of the Gd^pcU, nor -nith 
their simple, clear, and temperate style , it does not accord 
■viith the personal greatness, the moral perfection, nor the 
selt-consciousness and the sell testimony of (Jhnst, for whom 
all human standards are icsufRcient , it suits neither thp 
spiritual, conscientious, and honourable character of the 
priimhie CJiuith noi the behavioui of its opponents, who rai-^p 
no cuntrddiction ; it does not accord with the immense and 
ever beneficial moral effects of the Gospel, which cannot hai e 
proceeded from beautiful though unconscious fancies, nor fiuiii 
intentional deceptions ; and finally, we boldly say, it does not 
accord with the present age, in which the Christ of the Gospels 
is stiU approving Himself to many thousand hearts and con- 
sciences as living power and trntb,, and not as legend. 

It all comes to the dilemma : Sid Christ create Hie Church, 
or did the Church invent Christ? The former of these pro- 
positions is supported by the entire analogy of history ; the 
latter, as we have seen, is abnormal and inconceivable. The 
Christ of Strauss first called this wonderful Church into 
existence in a perfectly natural manner, and was then born 
again as a creature of lier fancy. Is not this the old trick 
which Hegel tried to play, treating the world as posited by 
tlie " absolute Idea," whilst this " absolute Idea " is only 
realized in the world (vide p. 167) ? No wonder that Nemesis 
appeared iu the person of Bruno Bauer (not to be confounded 

' CF, Dovner, History nf Protestant Theolnyy, p. 838 (English edit,, toI. ii, 
p. 872), and SdialT, Hie Person Jem Chnsli (Gotha, 1865), p. 110 et ss., 
English edition (Boston, 18Q&), pp. 187 et sa 



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LECT. VI.] EENAN's "VIE DE JESUS." 425 

with Dr. Ferdinancl Christian von Eaur), who carried Strauss' 
hypothesis to its extreme, and said in effect : You derive 
everything from the idea of the Messiah which yon suppose 
to have heen already in existence ; but, my friend, the exist- 
ence of this idea itself is likewise a myth : neither Christ 
made the Church nor the Church Him, the Church made 
ittielf! ! I will spare you any further delineation of this 
nttcr nonsense, wliich would make everytliing exist before it 
exists, and would engulf all historical development in an 
eternal progress from nothing to nothing. 

" Simplex veri sigillum" — Simplicity is the seal of tJie irtiih. 
This wise motto of a great physician is appheahle in all 
matters of history and of faith. Compare, my honoured 
hearers, this artificially invented, this laboriously and violently 
applied mythical hypothesis as to the life of Christ, with the 
simple and artless statements of the Gospels. Can you any 
longer doubt which bears the impress of truth ? 



IV, KENAN'S " VIE DB JESUS." 

After having thus fully discussed the mythical theory, it 
will suffice to give the French Strauss a shorter consideration 
than his German colleague. The standpoint of Ernest Eenan 
in his Vie de J^sas ' is essentially the same as that of Strauss, 
and is shattered to pieces on the same rock. 

Goethe says somewhere : " A book which should explain to 
us Christ as a man glorified by the pure divine charm which 
suiTounded him, would exercise an immense influence on 
Christianity." If the success of a book were any criterion of 
its intrinsic value, we might imagine that Eenan had suc- 
ceeded in solving Uiis problem, and that Goethe's prophecy 
was fulfilled in him ; although, to be sure, there is not mucli 
of the " pure divine charm " left us in his portrait of Christ. 
But we have every reason to believe that the unparalleled 
success ot this book, which has heen circidated by hundreds of 
thousands, especially in the Eoman Catholic world (Franca 
and Italy), is primarily due to its graceful Jorm. 
• We qnote ii'om the fidition of 1S63. 



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426 MODEES ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CDEIST. [lECT. VL 

Eenan's work is an embodiment of the spirit of modern 
French infidelity. We see it here gracefully floating along in 
all its seductive elegance, labouring hard to compress much into 
brilliant and short sentences, yet -withal pleasantly entertaining, 
and using all those arts which for centuries have made it such 
a favourite in the polite society of Europe. But, at the same 
time, -we mark its boundless, well-nigh incomprehensible capri- 
ciousness, ita superficial frivolity, which only calculates on 
sensations suited to the times, and gracefully waives the most 
difficult problems ; we mark its entire want of earnest moral 
consciousness, of real scientific perception, of thorough and 
conscientious historical investigation, and, worse than all; the 
piquant flippancy (pleasing, alas ! to too many) which does 
not hesitate to clothe the most holy Figure in history in the 
garb of a social democrat of modern France, nor to change the 
most sacred life into — a nM-el. 

This book is the first part of a larger work ; ' it was written 
on the occasion of a journey to Pbcenicia and the Holy Land. 
" I wrote down a sketch of it hurriedly enough in a Maronite 
hut, with five or sis books around me. . . . The striking 
agreement between the descriptions of the New Testament 
and the places which lay around me ; the wonderful harmony 
between the ideal portrait of the Gospels and the landscape 
which served as its fi-ame — all these things were a kind of 
revelation to me. I seemed to have a fifth gospel before me, 
mutilated and torn, but still legible ; and from that hour, 
under the guidance of Matthew and Mark, I saw, instead of 
that abstract being whose existence one can scarce help 
questioning, a genuine but wondrously beautiful human 
figure f iiU of life and motion. ... I fixed this picture, which 
appeared to my spirit, with a few hasty strokes, and what 
grew from it is this story " (vide Introduction), 

This explains to us the whole character of the book. On a 
well-drawn background of Syrian landscapes, Kenan sketches 
the picture of Christ, not in philosophical abstractions, but 
with the fresh colours of life ; not floating in mythical raists, 
but with sharply defined features. Unlike the figure drawn 
by Strauss, which is constantly shrinking up under the mono- 

' "Histflire des origines du Christianism«." Since then there have appeared 
theseoondpart,."LesApOtre3," and the third, "SL Paul." 



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LECT. VI.] EEXAN'S "VIE DE JESUS." 427 

tonous action of the critical dissecting knife, till at last the 
operator complains that of few great men do we know so little 
as of Christ ;-— unlike this, here we see flesh and blood, life and 
development. Indeed, there is a certain warmth of feeling 
for the beauties of the King whom yet he seeks to dethrone. 
Nowhere do we breathe the close 'air of the study, but always 
the fresh breezes of an inspiriting journey. But then this 
vivid freshness is so dearly bought, that we could wish the 
lamp of study had not been wanting in that Maronite hut 
(and afterwards too !), and that the clever Frenchman had not 
so often tried to cover his want of thorough investigation by 
fanciful ideas and brilliant superficiality. For the "fifth 
gospel " from which he borrows is (as we shall soon see) not 
only the ocular instruction obtained on the scene of the 
occurrences but to a con'^iderablj greater e\tent his iinagina,- 
tioi which ifpeirs to have llo-,^ med so luxuriantly under 
the rajt of the Eastern sim thit it x^a^s its posses.^or one 
trick after anothei and finiUy chinges him from a historian 
into a nm chut 

Penan too sees m Jesus nothing moie than a man. He 
intends to draw a wonlicusly beautiful ^et "genuinely 
human portrait to the exclusi n of all bupetmtural factors. 
We shall see whether be succeeds in both tl ese respects, or 
whether the all too gieat humanitv does not spoil the wondrous 
beautj and make ugly stams m it As '>tiauss makes use of 
the mjth to get rid of the supematuial so Picmn uses the 
co-,iate ccnception of the I g nd His views aie expressed in, 
the sentence that the life of Cbri'st as the evangelists relate 
it, is essentially historical, but in no way mpemaiiirai." The 
Gospels are " essentially " genuine writings, composed by 
apostles or their disciples in the course of the first century. 
Even the Gospel of St. John Eenan supposes probably to have 
been written by an intimate disciple of his, and qrfite in his 
spirit. But for all that, in them the real history of Christ is 
throughout distorted hy Upends, and adorned by the traditions 
of the wonder-loving disciples. Moreover, these four "legendary 
biographers flagrantly contradict each other" (Introduction, p. 
xliv) ; "they are full of errors and of nonsense" (p. 450), 
The questions which we asked above,— whether the fabrica- 
tion of such legends is in accordance with the otherwise 



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428 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CnEIST, [LECT. VI. 

conscientious and sober character of the disciples, and with 
the behaviour of their opponents who do not dispute the 
miracles,— none of them trouble Eenan ; his historical con- 
science is far above such scruples. We are merely told that 
tradition at that time was utterly unconcerned as to an exact 
record of what had happened ; since " the spirit was every- 
thing, the letter nothing " to these primitive historians,— just 
as though no one could have had any interest in obtaining 
certain and exact information about the words and works of 
Christ (cf. Luke i. 4). 

Eut from tliis mass of legends and apocryphal miracles the 
real history of Christ may still be extracted by means of a 
bold historical criticism. How, then, does it now appear ? 

Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, was born in Kazareth, 
not in Bethlehem, nor of the lineage of David. He grew up 
in poor circumstances, and notwithstanding his unusually rich 
gifts, he remained under the influence of the nan-ow views 
common to his people. Thus he believed in Satan, in 
demons, in miracles, and had no knowledge whatever of the 
" inflexibility of all nature's laws " {ride Introduction), In 
his youth he even showed some inclination t« the uncouth 
and narrow-minded fanaticism of the Pharisees. " Probably," 
however, he learned from the mild Eabbi Hillel (who lived 
from 110 B.C. to 10 A.U.). In addition to the Old Testament, 
he " probably " read many of the apocryphal writings ; and 
the visions of Daniel especially iixed themselves in his mind. 
This constant "probability" at the very outset shows that 
Eenan is writing history only in hypotheses. 

Eenan divides the public life of Christ into three periods.' 
The first and most beautiful was " ihe period of pure moral 
teaching," of the ti'anc[uil Galilean life. There, from the 
blue skies of Galilee, from the beauties of nature, and from 
his own heart, Jesus extracts a consciousness of God such as 
no one before or after him has ever had, and he begins to 
preach about the heavenly Father whom he has found. " God 
is our Father, and all men are brethren." This was at that 
time the purport of his preaching. He announced a kingdom 
of God "which we must create in ourselves through upright- 
ness of the win and poetry of the heart." In the Sermon on 
1 Cf. Luthuidt, vbi eiip. p. 25 et ss, ; Uhlhoiti, u5> mp. p. IG ot as. 



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LECT. TI.] BENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS." 429 

the Mount, " that most heautiful code of a perfect life which 
ever moralist drew up," we may recognise the main features 
of this divine kingdom ; a worship built upon purity of heart 
and brotherly love to men ; a religion without priests and 
outward ceremonies, entirely depending on the imitation of 
God and the immediate commimion of conscience with the 
heaveiily Father. The later realistic conception of the kingdom 
of God is an obscuration of this then pure idea. At that 
time, too, Jesus did not as yet perform any miracles. Had he 
died during this period, his idea would have remained purer. 
But it is one thing to conceive a great idea, and another to 
give it practical elTect. In order to attain success, every idea 
must sacrifice something, for none ever yet went forth un- 
stained from the great struggle of life. " In order to make 
that which is good successful among men, less pure ways are 
necessary." ' Without miracles the gospel could not have con- 
quered the world. Here we see the fundamental desideratum 
of Eenan's historical theory ; it leaves no room for the moral 
consciousness. A little fraud is absolutely necessary in order 
to succeed. And so Christ was ohliged to come down more 
and more from his ideal heights, till at length he fell into the 
slough of deception as soon as he endeavoured to realize his 
ideal. 

With this we enter on the second period of his work, that 
of intoxicated Galilean enthusiasm, brought in by the unfavour- 
able influence of John the Baptist's austere spirit on the 
milder soul of Jesua. He now adopts the Messianic belief 
of his nation, and begins to think more highly of his own 
person. In the energetic flight of his will he believes himself 
to be almighty, the reformer of the universe. He now preaches 
the kingdom of heaven, which he himself brings ; his funda- 
mental idea changes to that of an entire overthrow of the 
existing order of things, a moral revolution by which even 
sickness and death should be banished, but not through 
sanguinary political means. The kingdom of God was to be 
. a peaceable manner by men amongst men. He 

" Pour faire reussir le tien parmi lea homraes, des voies moins jinres sont 
■ssaires." See, too, how K^naii in his "St. Paul" (1869) maltea tlie apoatle 

on sevei-al oeeasions take his rofuge in Jugglery, becanae " the contact with 

reality always defiles. " 



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430 MODEEM ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI. 

gitlieia around his person i cirLle of cliildlike disciples of 
puLlicant and espeuallj of \\omen nnl Magd'^lens wl o m 
ba soeiet} disGn\ ered an easy meins of becoming hone t 
igain. Ihus he piaaes through the countrj riding on a 
gentle mule along the lo^elj ^hoies rf the Sea of dalilee 
smrounled by affliudmg multitides with young hsheimen 
as his enthusiastic fnend=! women and children in his train 
It IS a ecnstant febtival an uninterrupted mtiMcition a 
hea-^enly rural ^veddmg feast The new lehgion 19 m miny 
re pi,et3 a movement iniouost women and children 

This level} hut \niionaiy idjll is followed by the fatal 
tkiii fciwd that of the doil fanat il onfiiet \iith the 
Phaii&ees and ecclesiastical rulers In order to attack the 
citadel of Judiism Jesis changes his place of action from 
Gihlee to Judea and Jeiuialem In Aiew of the temple with 
its prieits and slaughterings he seizes the cleansii 3, scoui e 
This act loosened the last bond which bound him to the 
Jettish filth and tightened the knot of enmity between him 
and the rulers He and hi:) pro\inciils had made but small 
mipie sion on the smooth and poKhcd fl 01 of the cap til 
All the muie does this ^.i int of success inflame his zeil The 
pieacher of morals turns into i viilent levolutioniiy md 
apocalyptic enthusiast. Now he is the Meosiah appeared m 
person, who will abolish the law and found his kingdom on 
the ruins of the present age. He speaks of his second coming 
in the clouds of heaven, makes the angels of God his ser- 
vants to execute judgment on the world, and pronounces the 
belief in his person as Son of God in a superhuman sense the 
fundamental law of his kingdom. His natural meekness 
changes into a sharp and dictatorial manner which can bear 
no contradiction. Indeed, at times his ill-temper towards all 
resistance betrays him into inexplicable and seemingly absurd 
actions, as, e.g., his curse against the fig-tree. 

At that time the first legendary germs began to collect even 
around the living person of Christ. Because the Messiah was 
generally supposed to he the Son of David, Christ let himself 
be called so ; at first unwillingly, because he well knew that 
he was not descended from him, but afterwards he found 
pleasure in the title. Thence proceed the legends of his 
1 and his birth in Bethlehem. But above all, he now 



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LECT. VI.] EENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS." 431 

puts on the appearance of ■miraeidous power, and in general 
teconies less particular in the choice of ■ways and means. 
True, even earlier than this he may have given an impulse 
to the formation of miraculous legends ; for one of his most 
constant and deep-seated convictions was, that through faith 
and prayer a man could obtain full power over nature. Best- 
ing xipon this conviction, he obtained that extraordinary power 
over men's minds which soon led them to attribute to hia 
miraculous power every remarkable case oi recovery from 
sickness, or awakening from apparent death, that happened in 
his neighbourhood. Fame multiplied the number of these 
occurrences immensely. For, on the whole, there are but few 
different kinds of miracles related in the Gospels ; they are 
merely repetitions of one and the same pattern. Jesus, how- 
ever, in all probability never performed real miracles ; for in 
aU cases (though Eenan himself can only cite two .') in which 
scientific researches have been made as to ostensible miracles, 
they have been found to he baseless. Eenan expresses him- 
self more cautiously than Strauss : " We do not say that a 
miracle is impossible, but only that as yet none has ever been 
confirmed ; " but in reality he means the same. But many 
circumstances seem to indicate that it was not till a*later 
period, and against his will, that Jesus became a miracle- 
worker (pp. 265, 270), He had no choice. Miracles were 
universally considered an indispensable proof of a divine mis- 
sion. He allowed himself, compelled by this unconquerable 
prejudice of the multitude, to assume the appearance of 
miraculous power, and in some cases really did succeed in 
producing improvement in the condition of physical or mental 
sufferers by means of his moral influence, and at other times 
cured those who fancied themselves possessed, by falling in 
with their monomania. In other cases, however, miracles 
were simply -fathered upon him by the superstition of his con- 
temporaries or the enthusiastic iancy of his followers. At 
length his miracles became intcaiional frauds. This was 
especially the case with the illusion practised at the mising 
of Lazarus, who was laid in the grave alive, in order that he 
might issue forth at the call of Jesus. " Tired of the cold 
reception with which the kingdom ot God had met in the 
capital, the friends of Christ were desirous of a great miracle, 



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432 MODERN ACCOUSTS OW THE UFB OF CnHIST. [lECT. VL 

in order that they might strike a heavy blow at the unbelief 
of Jerusalem. Lazarus and bis two sisters undertook the 
chief part in this fraud." And Christ, who knew of it, joined 
in the comedy ! " We must beep in mind that in this impure 
town, with its dull, oppressive atmosphere, Jesus was no 
longer the same. lEs conscience hid, through the fault of 
men, not bis own, lost soradMng of ils original "purity." The 
town had exercised a demoralizing influence upon him I Well 
it was that death soon plucked him out of the fatal meshes 
of a rSle which was no longer practicable. 

But this death of his atoned for his momentary aberra- 
tions. Eenan closes the life of Christ with the last sigh on 
the cross. The resurrection is nnhistoricaL The empty grave 
and the imagmary vision which appeared to the excited Mary 
Magdalene gave the impetus to this legend. Only the enthu- 
siasm of love raised Jesus to the elevation of the Godhead. 
" Divine power of love " — thus Eenan concludes with solemn, 
piously sounding pathos — "sacred momenta, in which the 
passion of a hallucinated woman gave the world a risen 
God ! " ^ 

This is the sad and downward path of the life of Christ 
according to Eenan. What is paiticularly repulsive in bis 
description is the constant mixture of admiration and blas- 
phemy, of approbation and detraction. But though this 
defilement of our Lord's bfe may raise our indignation, we 
are utterly disgusted when we look at the important and 
ambiguous part in it which Eenan assigns to the women. 
Here we see only too distinctly that the writer borrows his 
colours fi'om the society amongst which he moves, and for 
whom his novel is calculated. The young Galilean, " of 
ravishing beauty " and amiableness, captivated women's hearts. 
His words and looks penetrated their inmost soul. Women of 
dubious morality are not wanting. These " fair creatures " 
(beUes creatures) having received a strong impression from 
him, now emulate each other in proofs of grateful love. Tnie, 
Eenan does not think of accusing Christ Himself of anythiu" 
wrong. But still he thinks it possible that " in that dai-k 
hour in Gethsemane, Jesus thought not only of the clear 

' " Moments saciiis, ou la passion d'uiie halluoinfe doiiiie uu moiide uii Dieu 
resusciie t " (of. Lect. VII.) 



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LECT. VI.] BENAN'S " VIE DE JESUS." 433 

brooks in his native land, but also of the Galilean girls, 
whose love he renounced, in order to live only for his 
vocation ! ! " 

We turn away in disgust. Even a rationalist like A. 
Coc|uerel wrote to Eenan : " I beg you to expunge from your 
hook an intolerably odious phrase — that about the 'fair 
creatures.' ... In the name of good taste, and of tlie highest 
and most delicate rules of decency, do speak of them with 
more dignified gravity ! " ^ Before this we have had occasion 
to complain of arbitrary treatment of history by the anti- 
miraculoua critics of the life of Christ; but here we have 
worse than that— the morbid abortions of an imagination cor- 
rupted by the air of Paris. 

Nevertlieless we will give a quiet investigation to these 
statements of Eenan. In these three periods of the Hfe of 
Christ we really have a genuine human — one might even say 
Prench — development, but only at the cost of openly giving 
up His siniessitess. According to the Gospels (cf Luke ii. 49 
with John xvii,), Jesus rises from step to step in the develop- 
ment oi His divine consciousness and the proof of His obedi- 
ence even to death ; according to Eenan, He constantly siiilcs 
lower both in spiritual knowledge and in moral purpose and 
practice. In the Christ of the Gospels we are astonished at 
the constancy of His character, and the unifoi-mity of His 
moral dignity. Eenan goes so far in " developing " his Christ, 
that he at last is '■ no longer himself ! " The sublime moral 
teacher, with his pure ideas, becomes an amiable but unprac- 
tical enthusiast, who as yet knows little of the world ; the 
innocent enthusiast changes into a fanatic revolutionist, a dark 
prophet who only hears in his dreams the tnimpet of judg- 
ment ; and he at last turns into a deceiver, at first against his 
will, making one dishonest concession after another to the 
spirit of the age ; then into a Jesuit, who tliinks that the end 
sanctifies any means, and who is not even ashamed of a 
comedian's tricks ! 

' In the people's edition seyeral offensive things were really elimiiiatea. Bnt 
in Kenan's "St. Paul" (:869) he again assigns an important part to the Greet 
women, and malies the apostle entertain the warmest feelings towai-ds his bean, 
tifnl and faithful devotees, " amongst whom he appears even to have fqimed a 
mow intimate connection with Lydia, though he may not have taken her with 
him on his travela 1 1 " 

82 



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43-i MODERX ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI. 

Moral teacher, enthusiast, fanatic and deceiver, of what do 
these three stages of life remind us ? Doubtless the Koran 
at once occurs to all of us. And verily Eenan is naive 
enough openly to confess that " the life of Mohammed supplied 
him with the idea of these periods " (cf the Introd.), He has 
merely made the little mistake of confounding the true PropJiet 
with the false one .' ! Who can wonder, after this, that Eenan 
should have drawn a distorted caricature instead of a true 
historical picture ? 

Here, as in the case of Strauss and Schenkel, we see a just 
retribution. In the character of Christ, deity and humanity 
form an inseparable personal unity, and whoever, in depicting 
Him, excludes the divine factor, cannot justly treat the human 
nature of Christ, for he cannot depict it without bringing in 
shadows which would make Him quite incompetent to be 
the Eedeemer of the world. Eenan promises to sliow us a 
" wondi'ously beautiful " human character. But when we 
think of his Christ at the grave of Laaarus, how much of this 
beauty remains ? Kenan's account gives us the impression 
that he is unioilling to include these moral etaius in tho 
picture of Christ. He would willingly represent Him as more 
pure, if this were possible. But through his acknowledgment 
that our Gospels are essentially genuine apostolic writings, he 
is compelled to take for genuine historical tradition much that 
Strauss simply throws overboard as mj^thicaL What other 
choice has Eenan, since he denies the Godhead of Christ and 
the existence of the miraculous, than to aaeribo these elamenta 
in the Gospels to visionary enthusiasm, or, if tJiafc will not 
suffice, to deceit ?* It is of no use to try, ae Eenan docs, to 
excuse these impure means which he suppoaoa Jesus to employ 
by saying that tliis was the only way for Eiin tit attain His 
object, that in this world "nothing great was ever accom- 
plished without resting on a legend ; " ifc is of no use to 
transfer the guilt from Jesus to " men who want to be de- 

• "The ease of B«naD is liigbly instmotive, as showing what o man mnet come 
to who concedes the historical character of the Gospels even merely in their 
fundaBiental features {and tliis every one must do, or else give himself up to on 
ftlbiti'ory disregard of all ecienoe), and yet refuses to acknowledga Jesus rs the 
God-man, Such an one may get a mere man, hut assuredly not a morally pure 
one, or a pattern of true humanity; his mei-e man must necessarily be a visionary 
«nd a deceiver" (Uhlhorn, u6t sup. p, 35). 



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LECT. VI.] EENAN S "VIE DE JESUS." 435 

ceived," For every man who still has a moral consciousness 
must feel that whoever is capable of employing suck means is 
not competent to release mankind from sin and error, and 
morally regenerate it ; or, on the other hand, that if such in- 
fluences really did proceed from Christ, He must have been 
different to what Eenan represents Him. 

When any one can do such despite to history and its 
records as to impute moral faults to Christ, this fundamentally 
false view of the centre must dislocate the whole history which 
is grouped around it. He who makes Christ develope morally 
downwards instead of divinely upwards, is capable, ay, is 
compelled, to turn all else upside down. And this is actually 
the case in the work before us. The death of Christ is a 
redemption for himself, from the difficulties of his impracti- 
cable role, instead of a redemption for us ; in fact, the whole 
work of Christ, instead of being accomplished step by step up 
to the last word, " It is finished," is less accomplished the 
longer it is earned on, till at length it becomes absolutely 
" impracticable." The resurrection, or the disciples' belief in 
it, instead of being a divine release from all doubts and con- 
flicts, is rather the occasion of endless errors and enthusiastic 
lies. Christianity itself, this manly religion of self-denial and 
self-conquest, becomes a " movement amongst women and 
children ; " and the whole history of the world and the Church, 
instead of being founded on divinely certain facts, rests on 
the hallucinations of a nervously-affected woman ! ! 

Truly the historical difRculties and psychological impossi- 
bilities in Eenan's view of the life of Christ are far more 
numerous than in that of Strauss. For Pienan does not delay 
the formation of legends till after the death of Christ, but 
boldly hicludes it in His life. He who said "I am the 
Truth," must Himself stand and see how falsehood grows up 
around Him and be silent, nay, even help ! Moreover, the 
way in which Renan treats the Gospels is far more arbitrary 
than the method either of Strauss or Schenkel ; which is all 
the more inexcusable, inasmuch as Eenan considers these 
writings to be essentially genuina' Often a piece is taken as 

' This artitrary dealing is only eqniJled by Rcnan's exegetical incapadly. Of 
this he gives some perfectly astounding proofs, M.g. tlie parable of the rich 
man and Lajonis tu explains thus : " Tlie rich man b in hell because he i' 



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436 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI 

true down to the smallest detail, when another close ty 
(merely from an aversion to the supernatural) is declared to 
be a legend. And not only this, but the various passages are 
sliuffied together like a pack of cai'ds, vfithmit the least regard 
to chronology or the plan of the evangelists, and then put 
together again according to a self-invented chronologj'. Eenan 
is bold enough to fabncate an entire pei-iod in Christ s 'ministry 
about which not one of the Gospels tells anything. According to 
all four Gospels (and even according to Strauss, Schenkel, and 
Keim), Christ meets with the Baptist before the beginning of 
His puhlic ministry. But Eenan transfers this meeting to the 
beginning of the second period, and represents it as preceded 
by the first period of pure moral teaching, which, however, he 
fills up -with words and works of Jesns wliich are related by 
all the Gospels as- taking place after that meeting (as the 
Sermon on the Mount, etc.). According to all the four 
Gospels, the first disciples are called by the Lord at the begin- 
ning of His ministry ; according to Eenan, this circle is not 
formed till the second period. All four evangelists relate 
miracles of our ^ord from the very beginning of His public 
appearance ; according to Eenan, it is at a much later period 
that He permits Himself to be forced by popular pressure to 
assume the character of a miracle-worker. Is this the method 
of a conscientious historian ? 

In addition to this, Eenan everywhere unhhishinghj lets his 
fancy paint and speak for him ; and in the most frivolous 
manner brings in details about which he knows nothing what- 
ever, in order to give his story more freshness and vividness. 
As soon as the picture of Christ threatens to become too lean and 
insignificant, by reason of the denial of all that is miraculous, 
Eenan knows how to supply what is lacking from his imagina- 
tion. We learn things that are entirely new to us, and for which 

rieli, — tecause lie dines well ivhOst others before his door are dining ill." For 
this reason Luke is supposed to be "an eioited democrat and Ebionite, i.e. 
moat hostile to property, and persuaded that the Tengeance of the poor ivould 
soonoome." His Gospel has a " communistio tendency 1 " Hero again ito see 
how modem French conditions of life are dated back to the beghiniTig of the 
Christian era. From Matt. mii. 1-14 Renan concludes "that pure Ebionism-- 
i.e. the doctrine that the poor are to be saved, and their kingdom is cominf;— 
was the doctiine of Christ f " Eenan does not seem tji have a notion that this 
parable applies to the rejection of the Jews and the calling of Cbriat's Church 
from amongst the Gentiles. 



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LECT. VI.] EENAN'S "vie DE JESUS." 43'? 

we shoiild be most grateful if they were not entirely imaginary. 
Eenan can tell us all about the teachers of Christ ; the books 
that He read in His young days ; His youthful tendency te 
zealotism ; His sisters, who Eenan knows were married in 
Nazareth; about the children of Peter; about Judas, who"most 
likely " led a harmless life on his estate of Hakeldama, etc., 
etc. On the other hand, what the Gospels know and tell, he 
often ignores or 'thinks he knows better. Thus, in contradic- 
tion to, the Gospels, he knows that the family of David was 
entirely extinct at the time oi Christ's birth. According to 
the Gospels, Jesus travels on foot, so that He becomes " wearied 
with the journey " (John iv. 6) ; but Eenan knows that in His 
progress through Gahlee He " used a mule. Evei^ now and 
then the disciples would display around his person a rustic 
pomp, at the expense of their own clothes, which served the 
purpose of carpets. They laid them on the mule which 
bore him, or spread them before him on the earth." All 
this Eenan's imagination extracts from Matt. xxi. 7, 8, with 
such slight changes as making the ass into a mule, con- 
verting the incident which took place once in JcruBaUm into 
an oft-repeated habit in Galilee, and making the disciples 
spread their garments on the road, which in rer. 8 is done 
only by the people. He also knows that Jesus, who was pleased 
with the " straightforward and lively character of Peter, some- 
times condescended to senile at his very decided ways." . . 
" A naive doubt was sometimes raised amongst the disciples, 
but Jesus with a smile or a look silenced the objection." 
Where else are we told about Jesus smiling ? ' The wife of 
Pilate, Eenan supposes, perhaps saw the " gentle Galilean from 
a window of the palace, which looked out on te the heights of 
the temple," (Eut according to Josephus the palace lay on 
the hill of Zion, in the upper town, so that this outlook was 
not possible.) All this sounds as lifelike as if Eenan himself 
had been an eye-witness of the events, and yet it is mere 
vapour and false paint applied to real events. How grand, 
when compared with this sensational depiction, is the terse 
and chaste style, the holy gravity of the Gospels ! 

After this we cannot wonder that Eenan should put words 
into the mouth of Chiist which He never spoke ; eg. that the 
law was abolished, whereas He plainly said, " I am not come 



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438 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL 

to destroy the law, but to fulfil it." Christ said, " Destroy 
[ye] this temple, and in three days I will raise it np " (John 
ii. 1 9) ; and the fake witnesses changed this into : " I am able 
to destroy the temple ot God, and to bndd it again in three 
days" (Matt. xxvi. 60, 61 ; Mark xiv. 57-59) ; but this does 
not prevent Eenan from assuring ns that " Jesus really pro- 
nounced these fatal words." 

Eespected hearers, can a book which professes to be history 
be more full of weak points and blunders 1 The same ques- 
tion, as in the case of Strauss and Schenkel, returns to ns with 
redoubled force : Is a mail like this capable of writing history? — 
one who draws on his imagination in the way we have seen, 
who brings in an entirely new chronology of his own, taken 
from elsewhere ; one who, to judge by the solecisms we have 
cited,^ has not even carefully examined the passages in ques- 
tion ; one who paints Christ and His times in the colours of 
the present Parisian world ;— can any confidence be placed in 
him ? And yet the present generation, from excess of criticism, 
has become so uncritical as to go by hundreds of thousands 
(I am not exaggerating) to hear the history of aU histories 
from a man who has laid himself open to so many charges ! 
If one who were writing the life of Luther or Kapoleon 
thus gave the reins to his fancy, we should expunge his 
name from the list of historians and place him among the 
novelists; and this we must do to Eenan. But at the source 
of history, it anywhere, only history should be -vrntten, and 
not novels. 

A novel — this is the only trae title of his book with its 
constant mixture ot truth and fiction, of historical fragments 
and subjective imagination. Tlie efteminate, unhealthy, morbid 
tone of the modem Prench novel, with its utter want of 
moral consciousness, permeates the whole work. Hence the 
peculiarly tentative style, with its constantly-recurring " pro- 
bably " — " most likely " — " to all appearance " — " well-nigh," ' 

' One of the most flagrflnt amongst the many not mentioried is the school- 
hoy's error of confounding Hellenes (Greeks) and Hellenists (Greek-speaking 

' Eenan is incxhaustihU in such phrases as, " II fant supposer — on est tcnto 
<le croite — il semblc— il parait — probahlement— peut-Stre— on dit— i ce i\ae Ton 
oroit — js soupjonne — q^ui sait— si je puis le dire," etc. 



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WCT. VI.] ElUAS'S « VIE DK JESUS." 439 

Which are not wanting in any important passages, and betray 
an mvoluntaiy distrust of his imaginative hypothesis. Ijlte 
most modern S«„ „,,rit,, Eonan always uses genfle approxi- 
mations. A real toio.r is too rough and paintnl to sensitive 
eyes, so we always have Aadi^,. u i, „„,j, consistent o( 
Henan iinaay to shade over the cardinal dilTerence between 
the colours of all human acts, i.e. to efface the distinction 
between good and evil, and to represent even that which is 
best and most beneficent as always mixed with evil This 
brings us to the fundaminlal error of his amdpoinl: tie 
2»»(fcm.j «5,»ft„ „/ !fe mfenmtufid. and consequently Oe 
iMeme of momi feeling. Eenan's God is not the God ot 
bonptuM, the free personal Creator of the world This is 
shown not only by many pantheistic sentences in his book 
some of which he puts into Christ's mouth, but also by other 
utterances" in which he declares his leaning to Hegel He 
does not attribute self-cousciousness to God, but only a pro- 
gressive development in His self-kuowled.-e from the stone 
and the plant upwards to Buddha and Christ.' We must not 
let ourselves be deceived as to this by the religious warmth 
of tone in his Vie d, J&us. Eut what does he mean by 
continuing to talk of a heavenly Father < If Jesus did so 
then even He could not have attained to the "pure idea" is. 
the pantheistic conception of God. 

^ This false fundamental view may expkin to us the surpris- 
ing olmmbon of vm-al mmicmim which strikes us in such 
sentences as these: that fop the success of what is good « less 
pure ways are necessary ;"_" the best cause is only won by 
111 means; we must accept men as they ai-e, with aE their 
Illusions, and thus endeavour to work upon them : France 
would not be what it :- ' — ^--'-' 



---- -- ■■— -' -" '^ vpiuuauiy not!) if it had not for a 

thousand years believed in the Bask of holy oil at Eheims ■ 
wnen we with onr scrupulous regard for trath liave accom- 
plished what the heroes did by their deceptions, then, and not 
till then, shall we have a right to blame them : the only 
Jbi M ^^28 '* '^*^' *"* ^^'t'loH .S^ae rfea rfeas Hfomies, 1863 ; also Ublhorn, 
..,' ''"™*" Grf » l« " I, 11,. d= I'ifa], I, pdndp, ,l,„l Ju bim " ,1. 

6trea qui le eompose.t " (ufii aap.). "iacim QM 



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440 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHHIST. [LECT. VI. 

culprit in Buch cases is mankind, who wants to be cheated." 
Instead of destroying the delusions ot mankind, we are merely 
to let them be, and to use them cleverly, cheat those who want 
to be cheated, and not shun false paint and ill means in order 
to attain our end ! Here . we see the democrat turn into a 
Jesuit. But these are the morals of Parisian circles — the truly 
French confusion between momentary, outward success, and 
real, durable, though slowly progressing moral welfare and 
blessing. And these are the moral sentiments of one who 
wishes to reduce Christianity to its purely moral basis while 
doing away with all dogmas. Here we may leam what, sort 
of morals we may expect to result from this process. For 
Eenan does not only give theory, he immediately carries his 
maxims into practice in his book. He knows the illusions of 
the public with whom he has to deal, and chooses its weak 
side, the love of novels, in order to attain great success. We 
see that he is wanting in that very quality which is most 
important for the exegete and for the historian, viz. moral 
coitscientioitsness. Not only — like Strauss — does he not 
believe in an absolute moral perfection, but not even in the 
power of pure ti-uth. He thinks that it must always be assisted 
by some false paint and deception ; whereas we all know that 
the whole history of the world, but still more that of God's 
kingdom, is one long proof that the truth is strong and invincible 
in propoitwn as it is puie and unadulterated. The more 
unadorned it is, the more durable — though not always speedy 
—are its eSeots, ind eveiy admixture of falsehood and fraud 
weakens it and threatens its life.' But a view of the world 
which IS so coirupt as to deny this can only be pitied, not 
combated ' . . . 

And now, "what think je of Christ," and what of Hia 
anti-miraculous biographers ? Perhaps some of my hearers 
may have thought the judgment passed on them (which, how- 
ever, is one with that of the greatest critics) somewhat hard 
Those who think so, I would merely ask one question : Do you 

I " Truth needs no colour with his colour fls'd j 
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay ; 
But best is best, if never intermix'd. " 

Shakspea/rt, Sonnet d. 



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LECT. VI.] CONCLUSION. 441 

know what accusation is trought by those who deny the 
Godhead of Christ against us who confess and defend ifc, ay, 
and against the whole Church ? In virtue of this denial they 
poetically accuse us of idolatry, and of a continuous most 
aggravated offence against the majesty of God, because we 
worship Jesus who is a mere man. They accuse Christ Him- 
self at least of caring worse for His Church than Mohammed 
did for his. Tor whereas the latter taught and recorded in 
writing the exclusive Unity of the Godhead so clearly that it 
is we!l-nigh impossible for his followers to -become idolaters, 
Christ spoke so ambiyuously in many discourses about His 
unique and superhuman relation to God, that His disciples 
and His Church not only were able, but were aJmost com- 
pelled, to fall into deep idolatry ! Why did He not speak 
more clearly in order to preclude this great evil ? More than 
this. liy the assertion that Christ was not the Son of God 
(in a superhuman sense), our opponents (though they will not 
confess it) affirm that the sentence passed on Him, because of 
blasphemy, was the justest vei-dict ever pronounced ! Nothing 
hut Mis true and real divinity can save Him from the accusation 
of blasphemy, and us fr&m the charge oj idolatry ! 

This, then, without mincing the matter, is the issue between 
lis and our opponents. Who can be angry with us for not 
allowing this slur to be cast upon our Lord, upon the goodly 
host of His followers, and upon ourselves ; or who chide us 
for rebutting such a charge with all our energy ? How can 
preachers of tolerance be so devoid ot understanding as to 
demand that we should give the right hand of fellowship to 
these opponents, and acknowledge the justification of their 
standpoint in the Christian Church, whilst they declare the 
central truth of our belief, as it has hitheito stood, to be a 
deception ? 

Here stands our Lord Jesus Christ, and around Him His 
accusers, and " their witness agreeth not together " in many 
points, neither in their treatment of the Gospels as historical 
records, nor in their apprehension of passages taken singly. 
Let us now comprise in a few sentences what is common to 
them as a body, and compare it with our old confession of 
belief in Christ. You will then see at once the depth of the 
chasm which separates us : — 



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442 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHKIST. [leCT. VI. 

THE CHURCH. TBB ABTI-MIBACULISTS. 

I believe in Jesus Christ. I brieve in -Tesiis, who allowed himself to bo 

called Christ (or Messiah). 
The only.begotten Son of The (Olcgitinmte) son of Joseph the carpeDter. 

Our Lord. Our hrother, who himself was not quite free from 

sin End eri'or. 
Who was eonoeired hj the Who was naturally begotten and conceived. 

Holy Ghost. 
Bom of the Vii^n Mary. Bom of Mary, the wife (f). 
Suffered under Pontina Who {merely on account of his resistance to the 

Pilots- rulers) suffered tinder Pontins PDate. 

Was crucified, dead, itnd Was crucified, dead, and probably "hastily in- 

buried. ferred in some dishonourable bnrying-plaee." 

He desccniled into hell. (?) 

The third day He rose again Eeniained in death, and did not rise again, bnt 

from the dead. was only in after years believed to have done so. 

He aseended into hoaTen. Whose body decayed in the grave, whilst his 

spirit was raised to hearen, if indeed there be 

such a thing as immortality and eternal bliss. 

And sitttth on the right (?) 

hand of God the Father 

Almighty. 
From thence He shall come Who also spoke of his second coming— which was 

to judge the quick and the either visionary or else intended impersonally 

dead, —and of his judging the world, which was 

undue self- exaltation. 
If any one is suited by this non-miraculous Christ, we 
demand of him, with Strauss, that he should cease to speak of 
Him as the "Kedeemer." If he is a clergyman, let him no 
longer read prayers to Clirist in the Church or at the grave, 
and let him be honourable and straightforward enough to give 
his new religion a luw name. He who no longer believes in 
Christ as the divine, sinless, and holy Eedeemer, no longer 
stands within the pale of Christianitij, though he may still hold 
on to a few tatters of Christian morals. For the Christian 
religion is, and remains, nought else than the behef in the 
i-edemption accomplished by Christ the Son of God. This doc- 
trinal foundation, which was laid by Christ and His apostles, 
cannot be given up by the Christian Church to all ages with- 
out giving up herself. In so saying, we lift up no stones 
against those who have thus radically broken with the belief 
of the Church; in matters of faith and conscience we abhor all 
measures of foree as wrong and hurtful to the cause of Christ ; 
we would allow to every man the fullest freedom to investi- 
gate for himself, and decide freely for or against our old 



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LECT. VI.] CONCLtrSION. 443 

Christian faith. But if this decision fall out against it, -we 
demand an open and honourable breach, and protest aloud 
against those who notwithstanding proclaim as Christianity — 
ay, and even as. a higher, purer form of Christianity — that 
which deals a death-blow at the heart of the Christian faith. 
And while, as a matter of course, we do battle for this central 
truth, we feel that we have a right to do 30, not only because 
we have experienced the power of the truth in our own hearts, 
but also lecauk of the scientific weakness and untenalleness of 
our oppoiients' position. 

Looking back upon the way which we have gone, and 
passing by all details, we may comprehend the weak points 
in the anti-miraculous accounts of the life of Christ under the 
following heads : — 

1. Their author's are devoid of that true historical perception 
which does not mal^e its own subjective axioms the criterion 
of what is historically possible, but which lets the records say 
what they do say, and weighs their truth according to the 
historical effects which the events related in them have had 
and are stiU having. Instead of this, we find that both 
Kationalism of every sort and Mythicism exhiUt a hotmdless 
caprice in their treatment of the recoi-ds ; the former in its expo- 
sition of them, the latter in the way it cuts them down, i.e. 
both in their elimination of the supernatural element. The 
standard of possibiUty which they apply to all that is contained 
in these records is their own unproved (and unprovable be- 
cause false) presupposition that the miraculous is impossible. 
Whence their right to apply this standard "i Certainly not 
from Him who has said, " My ways are not your ways," but 
solely from their own good pleasiu'e. And what else is this, 
if we examine it closely, than a tremendous presumption? 
They alone, at least as regards their anti-miraculous axioms, 
ai-e absolutely free from error : whatever mUitates against these 
cannot have happened. History must he suited to their tastes, 
instead of their learning from, history, and widening the narrow- 
ness of their own ideas to suit the greatness of divine actions. 
Is this historical perception or presumption ? Whoever 
approaches the treatment of a difficult historical problem 
without a humble desire for instruction, will be sure to pro- 
duce an abortion; above all, in the treatment of a subject 



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444 MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHEIST. [LECT. VI. 

■which should never be approached otherwise than ■witli the 
feeling, " Put ofl thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
whereon thou standest is holy ground." 

2. Out opponents do not explain what most needs explanation, 
viz. the existence of the Christian Church, with its wonderiul 
historical development, its moral iniiuence, the spiritual and 
temporal blessings which it has brought to nations and indi- 
viduals. Let any impartial person look at that very natural 
human demagogue of Schenkel's, or at that Galilean Eabbi of 
Strauss', who finally is guilty of "undue self-exaltation," or at 
that enthusiast and deceiver of Eenan's who is constantly 
sinking deeper in the mire ; and then let him say whether any 
of these characters will afford a sufficient explanation of such 
far-reaching and mighty events ? No ! must be the answer — 
none but the Christ of the Gospels, the only-begotten Son of 
God, is great and mighty enough for us to attach such results 
to His holy name ! The very existence of the Church is in itself 
the strongest proof for the truth of the goi^pel history. By its 
fruits the truth may be known to this day. Error may propa- 
gate itself, hut only for a tinu. The undiminished — nay, the 
ever-increasing — power of the gospel after the lapse of 1800 
years, is proof enough that its contents are not legends and 
myths, but eternal truths. 

3. These accounts do not eceplain to ii8 the Person of Christ, 
notwithstanding— -or rather because of — its depression to the 
level of natural human development. The issue on this ques- 
tion is simple. Here is a series of discourses and actions 
which the four Gospels attribute to Christ (even taking into 
account merely what is common to all, and undisputed). But 
no ordinary man can havo said and done, or pretended to 
do, these things, without laying himself open to the reproach 
of arrogance, self-exaltation, fanaticism, and fraud. Hence 
the anti-miraeulists are absolutely compelled to question 
Christ's sinlessness and freedom from error. Their merely 
human Christ no longer represents true, i.e. pure, humanity. 
Here, too, on the other hand, is the Christian Church, i.e. a 
world-wide series of wholesome moral influences which pro- 
ceeded from this Fcrson. How can both these things be 
reconciled ? They are a complete enigma. Por if Jesus acted 
and spoke as a deceiver, then the moral effects of His teaching 



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LLCT. VI.] COKCLUSIOS. 445 

are inconceivable. But since tliese effects are indubitably 
certain, it follows that Christ cannot have been a visionary or 
a deceiver, nor can He have acted as such. But if He truly 
spoke and actually did what is related, then He was no mere 
man, but the Son of God. 

4. They do not even explain to us whence the Christ imaged 
forth in tlie Gospels originated. How came Galilean fishermen 
to invent an ideal of moral and spiritual majesty such as has 
never been attained in history, poetry, or philosophy, if it 
did not walk before them in person ? AH endeavours to 
explain this by means of myths and legends, later inventions 
and exaggerations, accord neither with the character of that 
age, nor with the spirit and style of the Gospels, nor with the 
testimony of confessedly genuine Pauline epistles, nor with 
the character of the primitive Christian Church, nor yet with 
the behaviour of its opponents. 

5. Not one oj tliese accowiiis in the least satisfies the needs of 
the heart, which, above all, the gospel is assuredly intended to 
meet. He who yearns after help and consolation, peace and 
freedom, for a burdened conscience, an aching heart, or a rest- 
less doubting spiiit, cannot look for this from a Jesus who 
has ceased to be the Saviour of the world. 

6. Every one of these accounts is based upon a false conc^- 
Hon of God, either deistic or pantheistic. Together with their 
negation of the miraculous, they deny the free, living, personal 
God and Creator. Their whole tendency is to do away with 
Christ as the great "Witness for a supernatural world, and to 
" disable " His testimony against the modern naturalistic views. 
In so doing they lose the Father as well as the Son ; or more 
correctly, because they will not know the Father, they cannot 
know the Son. 

However, we may learn something from all our opponents, 
even from these. Fundamentally false though their anti- 
miraculous standpoint may be, yet they contain certain elements 
of truth, just as the cognate systems of Deism and Pantheism. 
Does not the applause with which they were received proceed 
partly from the fact that the Church has not, as yet, given to 
the world an entirely correct representation of the life of 
Christ ? Trae, here below the Church will never fully see 
through the great divine mystery of His Person; what the 



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446 MODEES ACCOBNTS OF THE LIFE OF CKBIST. [LECT. VI. 

apostlea did not succeed in -will scarcely be acconaplished by 
men of our own day. A perfect representation of Christ can 
only be expected by one who does not believe that we know 
in part^ Nevertlieless, since these late disputes, certain 
theologians have truly pointed out that the Church has pro- 
ceeded in too one-sided and dogmatic a manner in her delinea- 
tions of the Person of Christ^ It cannot be denied that there 
is a considerable gulf between the portrait of Christ in the 
Gospels and that of our dogmatic writings. In the latter we 
often miss the living historical reality of the Saviour. AVhat 
with the great stress laid on tlie two separate factors. His 
humanity and Hia divinity, we have lost the living unity of 
the Person, the human and historical element in Christ ; His 
learning obedience in constant and free self-.^uiTender to His 
Father's will has been neglected as against His divine nature. 

At this point of her doctrinal development the Church has 
still much to learn with regard to the great Christological 
problem of the present day, — a problem so great and difficult 
that it will never be more than approximately solved. Yet 
we shall constantly approach towards its final solution, if only 
we do not forget, on the one hand, that the genuinely human 
does not stand in absolute antithesis to the divine, but is 
intimately related to it ; whereas, on the other hand, in a race 
degenerated through sin, this true humanity cannot be fuUy 
brought out except by a fresh engrafting of the divine. The 
true, the perfectly beautiful, humanity of Christ is so far from 
being annihilated by His divinity, that it is only the latter 
which completes and guarantees the former.* 

Let ns therefore beware of sacriiicing the divine nature of 
Christ to His humanity, and of removing the stumbling-block 
of His God-manhood at the expense of His supernatural glory. 
This dangerous extreme will best he avoided by constantly 
allowing the perfect sinlessness, the unique moral dignity of 
Christ, to work upon our hearts and consciences. In view of 
this, the more earnestly a man feels his sin, the more deeply 
will he be convinced that the divine Sonship of Christ far 
transcends all natural humanity. And finally, let ns cast 

■ Cf. Lutliardi; iiBi aup. pp, 11 ot aa. 

' Witni'ss th« periecllj' beautiful Iiumanity of Chtist, comliined with His tto 
less perfect diviui^, in Gie Gospel ot St. John. 



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LECT. VI.] CONCLUSION. 447 

into the scale the fact that this same <5ivine Chiisb of the 
Gospels at this day is still approving Himself to the souls of 
men as the One who of God is made nnto us wisdom and 
righteousness, saiictificatioa and redemption. This, we know 
in our inmost hearts, is no delusion of fable or fancy ; and 
this drives im to the conclusion, that the historical portrait 
given by the evangelists of the Son of God is safe against all 



Jesus Christ is not only, as many at the present day would 
have it, a great Qiiestion; He is far rather the Divine Answer 
to all human questions and complaints. If we look at Him 
merely as a Question, He becomes more and more unintel- 
ligible. Let us lathei stiive to understand Him as the 
Answer to that most vitil question of our hearts : Who shall 
save me from sm and death * Then shall we soon learn to 
believe and confess, " Thou ait Christ, the Son of the living 
God'" 



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SEVENTH LECTTJEE. 

MODERN DESIALS OF THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

THE discussion of this, question is, aa it were, the final 
test of all that has gone before. What I have hitherto 
been seeking to establish was the belief in the supernatural, 
in the miraculous power of the living God as manil'ested in 
His being and His revelations, and especially in the history of 
His Son upon earth. All these miracles culminate in the 
resurrection of Christ If this be established as true, then all 
else stands firm ; if it be a legend, then little more can be 
saved. Therefore the investigation of this fact is peculiarly 
adapted to serve as a test for the results which we have 
hitherto attained. For the dogma of the resun-ection is tM 
profff of all other dogmas, the foundation of our Chi-istian life 
and hope, the soul of the entire apostolic preaching, the corner- 
stone on. which the Christian Church is huilt. 

We will first make ourselves acquainted with the views 
and statements of our anti-miraculous opponents ; after this 
we shall proceed to investigate the historical testimonies — 
especially that of Paul — and the arguments of those who 
reject them ; and finally, we shall inquire whether the denials 
of the resurrection are not contradicted by certain indubit- 
able facts and circumstances. 



L ANTI-SIlIiACULOUS THEORIES. 

Not a few among those who ([e-ay the hodily resurrection of 
Christ seek to diminish the importance of the question by re- 
presenting it as non-essential to our faith, and " the corporeal 
element" as of no special significance. A¥hat matter, they 
say, whether His body again issued from the grave, if only 
the Spirit of Christ continue to work in those who are His ? 
"The risen One is the exalted and glorified Christ the Lord 
448 



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LT:CT. VII.] anti-miraculous THE0BIE3. 449 

who is the Spirit ; He who lives in His Church." ^ Thus we 
find many surreptitiously changing the resurrection of Christ's 
body into something quite difi'eient, whilst outwardly keeping 
up a show of adherence to the letter of this Article, by 
preaching and speaking of a "spiritual resurrection and glori- 
fication." This miserably confuses the whole issue. Who- 
ever denies a bodily resuiTection should be honest enough no 
longer to speak of resuiTection at all.* Besurredion does not 
refer to the spirit, the continued existence of which Scripture 
takes as a matter of course, hut only to the body, and its imiing 
forth alive from the grave. Only that can rise again which 
has before been laid down in the grave, and that is only 
the body, not the spirit. Let us then have done with these 
ambiguities. 

But according to Scripture, the body of Christ was a sin- 
less body, broken only for the sins of the world. Hence His 
. death was freely andeitaken (John x. 18) by One who, as the 
Son of God, possessed life in Himself, and had received from 
His Father power to lay down His life and to take it again 
(John V. 26, ii. 19, x. 17 ft.). The question therefore is, 
whether by the raising up of this His body, Christ reaUy was 
" declared to be iJie Son of God " (Rom. i. 4), and His most 
important self-testimonies confirmed or not ; whether He was 
indeed " crowned with glory and honour " (Heb. ii. 9), or 
whether, forsaken of God, He merely died on the cross ? We 
must decide whether His death was accepted by God as an 
atoning death for us or not ; or, in other words, whether the 
work of redemption ivas indeed accomplished. On the resurrec- 
tion of Christ depends our hope that this work will be fully 
accomplished in each of us, first inwardly, but at length out- 
wardly too, when the last enemy is destroyed in the general 
resitrredion (Eom. vL 8 ; 1 Cor, sv. 2). This shows the 
importance of the question under consideration. A birth 
divine and human ; a perfectly sinless obedience ; a world- 
redeeming death and passion ; a resuiTection by which death 
was overcome ; followed by exaltation at the right hand of 

' Sohenksl, ChaToktm-h'ild Jeaa, p, 233. 

' Tliiia, Vogelin confesses, "It would be more correct, instead of always 
speaking of the Teturrectlon of Christ, to mention only His continved existence 
KOioag^m" {Die GeaehichleJeiu, -p. 111). 
3 V 



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450 THE KESUltBECTION OF CHItlST. [leCT. VII. 

the Fattier and the mission of the Spirit, — all these things 
are firmly connected parts of one and the same work of re- 
demption. Take but one link out of thia chain, and the 
whole falls to pieces. The resurrection is the beginning of 
Christ's exaltation, and therefore the most important and in- 
dispensable link which connects His temporal work on earth 
with His eternal work in heaven It is necessary, no less for 
the perfection of the person than for the completion of the 
work of the God-man ; it is no less the source of our living 
faith than the firm foundation for our hope of comiag glory 
and perfection. 

It ia only if we take our stand on this fundamental view 
that we can understand the apostle when he says ; " It Christ 
be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also 
vain ; ... ye are yet in your sins : then they also which are 
faUen asleep in Christ are perished" (1 Cor. xv. 14-18). If 
any one attaches weight to this testimony of St. Paul, he 
ought not to deny that the resuriectinn of CI rist must remain 
the Shibboleth of our Cbiistian futh as it was from the 
beginning the centre of the apostohc preiching (Acts i. 22, 
ii. 31 &.). How can Scl enkel in coi tr'idiction to such a 
testimony, maintain th-it the Apostle Paul himself pronounced 
a faith which rests only on the outward fact of a hodihj re- 
surrection of Christ to be entirely worthless " ? ^' What does 
St. Paul— in our case as in that of our Lord — mean when he 
speaks of resurrection, if not a bodily vising again ? In the 
passage cited (vers, 33-54) he constantly mentions the resur- 
rectim-hody : " How are the dead raised up ? and with what 
body do they come ? . . . This corruptible must put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Against 
whom is St Paul writing in this entire chapter, if not against 
the doubters of a bodily resurrection ? And we are told that 
he pronounced the faith in this outward fact to be entirely 
"le who makes the truth of his preaching, tlie 



' CharakterMd Juu, p. 223. To support this, Schenkel appeais to 2 Cor. 
V. 16, "Thougli we haveknowa Christ a/ierWe;?eeft, yet now henceforth know 
we Him no more ;" but this passage does not in the least confirm liis view. For 
St Paul only means that he no longer lays any yake upn having known Christ 
"after the flesh," i.e. outwardly as a natural man, since he has now hecome 
acquainted with Him as the risen and glorified One. The meaning or import- 
ance of the reauiTection-body is not touched upon at aU. 



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LECr. Vn.] Atm-MirACULOUS THEORIES. 451 

certaioty of our faith, our redemption from sin, and our liope 
of life, dependent on this fact ! Ifc is impossible to speak more 
distinctly than St Paul does here. But nothing is clear to 
those who are delermi^ied to doubt and cavil Moreover, 
unbelief has an interest, for reasons which are easy to dis- 
cover, in not acknowledging any one article of our faith as of 
fundamental importance for the whole. For then it is all the 
easier to shake and undermine one after another. Hence the 
numerous attempts to dimmish the importance of the resurrec- 
tion, or to transfer it from the corporeal into the spiritual 
region, and hy these means to make this article of faith some- 
what more palatable to the mu-acle-fearing minds of our age. 

This tendency to ignore the importance of the body pro- 
ceeds from a general lack of insight into the scriptural 
philosophy of nature and of spirit. Those who do so are 
entirely wanting in any ■profound apprehension of the process of 
salvation, by which, according to Scripture, God is carrying 
on the world towards its consiunmation. This process must 
extend to the corporeal world as well as to the spiritual. Por 
the victory of divine love over all the powers of sin and death 
would not ie complete if the body of man were not once to be 
released from the bonds of death, and raised into that glorious 
condition for which God has originally destined it. Like all 
other terrestrial bodies, it is intended one day to he entirely 
penetrated by the spirit, to be translated into the glorious 
hberty of the children of God, and thus to be transformed in 
light inwardly and outwardly (Eom. viii. 21-23 ; Phil, iii, 21 ; 
2 Cor. iv. 10,. etc.). And how otherwise could this world- 
renewing process be begun than by the resurrection and ti-ana- 
formation of that one Body over which death had no power — 
the sinless body of Christ the second Adam, in whom all are 
to be made alive (1 Cor. xv. 22 et es.) ? In His resurrection 
" the consummation of the world is anticipated." As in the 
nether world Christ broke the bonds of spiritual death, so in 
His resurrection He destroyed the organic power of death in 
the earthly creation, and impregnated it (as an organism — 
hence the dead bodies of the saints appear in Matt xxvii. 
52 and 53) with new and divine vital forces: just as in the 
heart the lifd-blood is prepared afresh, and from it flows forth 
into all the-limbs. The resurrection power coming from Christ, 



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452 THE RESUERECTION OF CHRIST. [lECT. VIL 

through the medium of His word and sacraments, tends mainly 
to the sanctification and renewing ol the sinner (Rom. v. 10 ; 
Eph. ii. 5, 6 ; 1 Pet. i. 3) : and thus interpenetrates, first, the 
spiritual nature oi man, planting within those who are regene- 
rate a germ for the resurrection oi the hody (Eom. viii. 11). 
Then the spiritual life of Christ breaks forth into a manifesta- 
tion in the visible world, by revivifying the bodies of those 
■who are sanctified (in the first resurrection, 1 Cor. xv. 23 ; 
John V. 25-29; Eev, xx. 5, 6). In the succeeding general 
resurrection — an act ot Christ's power which extends to the 
whole of the corporeal world, and introduces the great mundane 
catastrophe (Eev. xx, 11-13) — as well as in the formation 
of a new heaven and a new earth, this grand and gradually 
progressive process of the world's renewal has its fitting con- 
summation. It is God's will that His glory should dwell in 
His whole creation, that He may be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28; 
Eev. xxi. 3 et ss.). In this respect we must indorse the senti- 
ment of Oetinger, that " corporeity is the end of God's ways." 

This profound connection between the resurrection of Christ 
and the renewal of the whole world, is overlooked by our 
opponents in a spirit that is as unbiblical as it is luiphilo- 
sophical. They have no comprehension for that great promise, 
" ISehold, I make all things new " (Eev. xxi. 5), nor yet for the 
holy necessity ot its fulfilment. 

All the more are we ready to acknowledge the just percep- 
tion of Strauss (who in this respect sees further than Keim "■) 
■ Der geschiehtliche CArisdw, ■ third edition, p. lOJ. We say this at the risk 
ot Kflim'fl classing na wnongat "the zealota of the letter, ",S3 he has done with 
Glider (p. 135) on acconnt of his instinctive book, The Actuality of Ckrisl'a 
Sesurrec/ioH and its Opponents. Keim is of opinion that "we cannot— aa 
Schleiermachcr long since proved— hind down the Cbristiim faith to an isolated 
historical aceonnt, related with bo many contradictions, and of so difficult and 
Tariable interpretation." Against this we would remark, that we do not consider 
the resurrection of Christ to be a mere "account," but also the intrinsically 
necessary oonclnsion ol all that had gone before, and the starting.point of all 
that followed in the work of redemption. Kor is this "an isolated account 
related with many contradictions," but rather one which is vouched for by many 
witnesses, and in the main unanimously testified ; an aceoant which, like cve(y 
miracle, is historically difiicnlt to eitplain, but by no means, according to the 
plain meaning of the words, "of variable interpretation." The appeal to 
Sehleiermaeber, who, in respect of the resurrection, unaccountably maintained 
that most unfortunate theory of apparent death {side below), is by no means 
happy. ' In this case Schleiermaoher only showed " that one cannot remain on 
bis standpoint" 



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LECT. VII.J ASTI-MIGACOLOUS THE0EIE3. 453 

in assigning to the resurrection its full importance ; calling 
it as he does, "the centre of the centre, the real heart of 
Christianity as it. has been until now," and saying that, " as 
regards the resurrection of Chi-ist, it can scarcely be doubted 
that with it the truth of Christianity stands or falls. Does 
not the Apostle Paul say, ' If Christ be not risen, then is 
0T3r preaching vain,' etc.? (1 Cor. xv. 14-17.) This apostolic 
saying cannot be explained away."^ Indeed, Strauss aclinow- 
ledges that this question is the real test of his standpoint : 
" We here stand on the decisive spot where, in face of the 
records which tell of the miraculous resurrection of Christ, 
we must either confess the insufficiency of all natural historical 
explanations of the life of Christ, ie. give up our entire under- 
taking ; or we must pledge ourselves to explain the purport of 
those records, viz. the belief in the resurrection of Christ, with- 
out having recourse to a corresponding miraculous fact."* 
Most true. This is the point at which it must be decided, 
more palpably than anywhere else, who is in the right, Strauss 
or the Chiu'ch, the anti-miraculists or the miracle-believers. 

Strauss has shown greater keenness of perception in this 
matter even than Baur, who, strange to say, seems to think 
that he can evade this fundamental question. He expresses 
himself in a strangely ambiguous manner. " What the 
resurrection per se is, it does not lie within the bounds of 
historical research to determine." ^ Our research has only to 
bear in mind that, for the hdief of the disciples, the resurrection 
of Christ was incontestably certain. " Ifo analysis can pene- 
trate into the inward spiritual process in the disciples' con- 
sciousness by which their unbelief at the death of Christ 
afterwards changed into a belief in His resurrection. ... For 
the disciples the resurrection was as real as any historical fact 
— whatever may have been the medium of this persuasion." 
In this way Eauf quickly passes by the chief question, how 
this new belief can have originated in the disciples. The 
resurrection is supposed to be the declaration of a iiim belief, 
that the person of Christ had not only not perished, but by 
death was raised to its ahsohite importance — expressed in the 
form of an external event. 

> Die Halhen und die Gaagen, pp. 125-127. « Lehen Jtsv., p. 283. 

' Das ChriBtentkum tier erstm drei JahrhmdeHe, p. 36, 



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454 THE EESUERECIION OF CHKIST. [LECT. YU. 

Thus we see that Baiir rests the whole development of 
the Christian Church, not on the ohjective fact of Christ's 
resurrection, hut on the subjective behef of His disciples in 
it ; not on Christ Himself, but on His disciples ; not on a 
divine act, but on a certain inexplicable condition oj huinan 
conscimisness. Instead of the faet, we have a fiction, i.e. the 
mere conception of a fact, which may or may not have a 
real objective foundation. Well might Sti-auss blame this 
ambiguity, " Eaur," says he, " at least verbally, evaded the 
lurning qti^tion. For his words sound as if it were impossible 
to ascertain historically, nor were even a matter of historical 
research, whether the resurrection of Christ was an outward 
(natural or miraculous) event, or whether it only took place 
in the belief of the disciples. But assuredly Baur had settled 
in his own mind that it was by no means the former, i.e. an 
outward occurrence of any sort, and therefore he must neces- 
sarily conclude that it was the latter, i.&. a mere idea " (jt&i 
swp. p. 228). And, indeed, we are strangely impressed, but 
not at aU convinced, by the way in which this historian, — who 
examines every portion of Church history with such exactitude, 
and asks not merely what was- believed to have occurred, but 
what really happened, — instead of examining into the reality 
of this fact to which all the apostles appeal, and on which the 
Christian Church is founded, simply contents himself with 
knowing that it was believed in ! This can only be done by 
an idealistic philosopher, to whom history in general is nothing 
but a process of consciousness. 

Before this Baur had remarked : " Between the death of 
Christ and his resurrection there lies so thick and impenetrable 
a darkness, that after the connection has been so violently torn 
and so wonderfully restored, we seem to be placed on a new 
theatre of history." This is perfectly true : the resuri'ection 
of Christ turned over a new leaf in the history of the world, 
and prepared a new soil for its development. But does " a 
new theatre ot history " originate from a mere idea ? Would 
not the formation of this divine idea, this belief, " from which 
depends the entire weight of a movement so world-wide as that 
of Christianity, without the corresponding fact, be a miracle 
as great and far greater " than the resurrection itself ? Of 
Buoh a" theory assuredly we may say : " In any case it does 



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LEUT. VIL] AKTI-M!EACUL0US THEORIES. 455 

not help us to attaia to a historical and philosophical com- 
prehension of Christianity." ^ According to Scriptuie, the 
apostles founded the Cliurch on a fact. Here we have a 
foundation-stone. Eaiir founds ifc on a hreach in the historical 
connection which is enveloped in enigmatic darkness, i.e. upon 
a gap. No wonder, then, that his historical construction of 
the building is hollow. 

Many others, however, have in the moat various ways 
endeavoured positively to show how this belief could arise in 
the disciples in a natural manner. On the one hand, the 
reality of Christ's death was denied, and reduced to a mere 
trance, so that the resurrection would be the perfectly natural 
recovery frcmi a deep swoon. On the other hand, the reality of 
our Saviour's death was confessed, but the resurrection as an 
outward fact denied, and the origin of the belief in it attributed 
to visions experienced hy the disciples. 

The former of these hypotheses, that of apparent death, was 
employed by the old nationalists, and more recently by 
Schleiermacher in his Idfe of Christ. We might remind the 
upholders of this theory, of the blood and water which flowed 
from our Saviour's opened side. However, we will let the 
physiologists dispute whether this symptom is a sure test of 
death or not This theory is contradicted in the first place by 
ifte unanimous voice oj S&i-ipture in all Us parts, which in a 
hundred passages represents the death of Christ as real. We see 
this throughout the Old Testament, from the promised coming 
of the Serpent's Destroyer, whose heel shall he bruised (Gen. 
ill 1 5), down to such prophecies as these : " Thou hast brought 
me into the dust of death " (Ps. xxii. 15); " He was cut off out 
of the land of the living " (Isa. liii 8) ; " They shall look 
upon me whom thay have pierced " (Zech. xii. 12, 10). And 
far more clearly even do we see it throughout the Kew Testa- 
ment,— in our Lord's numerous predictions of His own redeem- 
ing death (Matt. xvi. 21, xx. 28, etc.), — in the exact descrip- 
tions, of His death by all four evangelists, according to whom 
He really died, or breathed out His spirit (i^hrveuae), and 
commended it into the hands of His Father (Matt, xxvii. 50 ; 
Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 46 ; John xix. 30, 33), — in the 
apostolic testimonies of St. Peter and St. Paul, both in the 
' Landerer, Worle der Eravntrung im F: C. v. £anr, p. 71, 



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456 THE EESUKRECTION OF CHEIST. [LECT. VII. 

Acts (ii 24-32, x. 39. xiii. 28-30, 34 et as., etc.) and in 
the Epistles (Eom. v. 6-10; 1 Cor. xv. 3; 1 Pet. iii. 18, 
etc.), — in the Eevelation of St. John, where " the First-begotten 
of the dead " testifies of Himself, " 1 . . . ■was dead, and 
behold I am alive tor evermore, and have the keys of hell and 
of death" (i. 5, 18, ii 8). Again, this theory is contradicted 
by the divine and human necessity of Christ's death as the 
ground of our reconciliation with God. How could this death, 
foreshadowed by all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, be 
imagined as a sacrificial death, if Christ did not actually expire ? 
And once more, this theory is contradicted by the parallel, 
thovigh contradistinctive. relation in which the death of Christ 
is placed to His resurrection ; as also by the way in which 
our translation from the condition of death into new life is 
connected with the resurrection of Christ as its pattern and 
principle (Eom. iv. 24, 25, vi. 3 et ss., viii. 10 et ss,, xiv. 9 ; 
1 Cor. XV. 3 et ss. ; 2 Cor. v. 14 et ss., etc). 

But apart from all these considerations, there is one simple 
question which entirely upsete this contrivance of the rational- 
ists. How could the piiiable appearance of otic who wasjttst 
recovering from deadly Kmtnds give rise to such a sudden and 
enthusiastic belief in the resurrection of death's conqueror ? 
Strauss has dealt a deadly blow to Rationalism by pointing 
this out in his trenchant way.^ " One who had thus crept 
forth hall dead from the grave, and crawled about a sickly 
patient, who had need of medical and surgical, assistance, of 
nursing and strengthening, hut who notwithstanding finally 
succumbed to his sufferings, could never have given the 
disciples the impression that he was the conqueror over the 
gi'ave and death, and the prince of life. Such a recovery could 
only have weakened, or at best given a pathetic tinge to the 
impression which he had made upon them by his life and 
death ; but it cannot possibly have changed their sorrow into 
ecstasy, and raised their revei-ence into worship." Sehleier- 
inacher defends his strange view by the argument that real 
death had never been known to take place without decomposi- 
tion supervening ; as if the shedding of Christ's blood and 
His death were not adequate for our redemption without 
ensuing corruption, the absence of which is snfaciently 
' Leben Jesa, p. 288. 



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LECT. VIL] ANTI-MIEACULOUS THE0EIE3. 457 

accounted for hy the epithet " Thy Holy One " in Ps. xvi. 1 
and Acts ii. 31. Schleiermacher's supposition, that Jeaus 
afterwards lived for a time with the disciples, and then retired 
into entire solitude for his second death, ■will scarcely ohtain 
fresh acceptation for tliis exploded hypothesis ; for even then 
the apparent death would be followed by the infinite dis- 
enchantment of real decease.^ Hence the modem opponents of 
the resurrection have not ventured to recur to this hypothesis, 
according to which God would have Jounded His Jdngdmn on a 
misunderstanding,^ — and the words of oar old creed are still 
valid, " who was crucified, dead, and buried." 

At present, the second of the theories which we have 
mentioned is in vogue among our opponents ; ie. they suppose 
the belief in the resurrection to have arisen from, visions. 
This is the distinctly expressed theory of Strauss and Eenan ; 
■while with Scheniiel, who as usual stops halt way, it is difficult 
to say what theory he really adopts. It would he scarce 
■worth while to follow out the various modifications of his 
views, were it not that from him we learn an instructive 
lesson as to how the opponents of the biblical doctrine turn 
and twist and cover their movements with a cloud of phrases, 
in order, on the one hand, to remove the miraculous, and on 
the other, to escape the reproach of radical unbelief. 

Schenkel rejects the miraculous revivification of our Lord's 
earthly body ; he rejects the supposition of apparent death ; ay, 
he even rejects the " visionary hypothesis." In chap. xxix. of 
his Sketch of Ckrisfs Cliaracter (under the ambiguous heading, 
" The Glorification ") he considei-s three facts to be indubitable : 
first, " that in the early morning of the first day of the week 
which followed the crucifixion, the grave of Jesus was found 
empty ; " second, " that the apostles and other members of the 
apostolic community were convinced that they had seen Jesus 
since ]iis crucifixion ; " and last, " that the appearances of Christ 
which tlie Gospels relate as taking place after his death were 
essentially of the same character as that which the Apostle 
Paul experienced on his way to Damascus" (p. 231). And 
St. Paul himself, in Gal. i 16, designates "his vision mainly 

' Vide Sclileiermaclier, Ldien Jesu, pp. 413 et ss., and 500 et ss. Against 
tliis tlieory, cf. Keitii, tM mp. pp. 1S2 et ea. 
' Cf. also Ealmis, Die Ai^erelehUBg Jciu aU geecJtiditUche Thatsacht, 



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458 THE REStJRIiECTION OF CHEIST. [lECT. ViL 

as an inward revelation of Christ" " The risen One is, there- 
foi*, the glorified and transfigured Chriat, the Lord who is the 
Spirit" (p. 232). 

The two fii'st of these facts are universally acknowledged. 
But the third is no " fact ; " it is merely a conjecture, which 
leaves it an entirely open question whether that appearance 
of Christ near Damascus was merely an inward revelation 
or an outward and objective one as well, and whether Gal. 1, 
16 is a sufficient proof for the former of these suppositions; 
indeed, whether this occurrence really does at all belong to 
the same category as the appearances of the risen Christ iii the 
Gospels. This question will come hefore us presently ; mean- 
while " a mainly inward revelation " is of no use, as we must 
postulate either an external or an internal event. 

If, however, he denies the bodily resurrection of Christ, and 
pronounces that which tlie Bible maintains to be of supreme 
importance to be utterly worthless, how does Schenkel explain 
the belief in the resurrection 1 He says tliat the Church at 
Jerusalem regarded the fact, that the grave of Jesus was found 
empty, as a miracle of divine omnipotence, and supposed that 
" it had taken place by the help of angels. Hence the first 
tradition of an angelic appearance, which was supported by 
the utterances of deeply-excited women" (p. 231). The feel- 
ings of love, of hope, and of trust were again awakened. 
" Here, too, women led the way. They believed that in the 
place where Christ's body had lain they had seen celestial 
beings. This was followed by ecstatic conditions, the conse- 
quence of deeply shaken feminine soul-life" (p. 226). It 
seems strange after this that Schenkel should reject Kenan's 
supposition of morbid hallucinations. But what really hap- 
pened ? Did Christ in any way again approach His people ? 
We are merely told that " his appeai'ances were so many 
manifestations of his likeness, which till then had been so 
much ohscured in the hearts of those who believed in him. 
He proved himself in them to be the ever-living One" 
(p. 233). 

Apparently Schenkel feels that indefinite phrases such as 
these are mere evasions, and not explanations of the matter in 
question. For in another place ^ he endeavours to give us 
' Attge-iadae KircMdie Zeitschn/l, 1865, No. 5, pp. 2S9 -384. 



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LECT. VII.] ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES. 459 

more precise information. Here he tells ns tbat the appear- 
ances of the risen Christ were " real manifestations of his 
personality, which had issued ioith from death hving and 
glorified." This sounds almost orthodox, only that the more 
indefinite expression "personahty" is suhstituted for"hody." 
For, he continues, the corpse remained in the grave, or was 
removed from it in a manner which we cannot now determine; 
only the spirit issued forth alive (just as if (he spirit had ever 
been laid in the grave !) and suiTounded itself with some fresh 
body, " because the life of the human personality absolutely 
needs some (outward) organ for its manifestation." Was it, 
then, a kind of spiritual apparition through the medium of this 
new " organ," and in any case without the old body ? No, it 
was not this, but a " teal though mysterious self-revelation ol 
Christ's personality which had come forth from death living and 
imperishable," and which was of such a nature " that the dis- 
ciples received the impression of having actually seen Jesus." 
Instead of an explanation, a fresh enigma is here presented to 
us. Who can extract any clear idea from this cloud of words, 
which seems to affirm everything, and yet is intended to deny 
everything ? If the body of Christ remained dead, then it is 
a glaring abuse of bibhcal language, ay, verbal "forgery" 
(Strauss), still to speak of Him as " risen from the dead," 

Here we are met by Schenkel with a strange objection ; 
" If Christ had returned among men after his crucifixion in 
the same earthly and corporeal form as before,^ why did he 
not show himself to his Jewish judges and to the Koman 
procurator? Why did he not appear in the streets of Jerusalem 
before, the people who had been so basely deceived as to his 
person ? Why did he not by his mere appeai'ance inspire 
courage in his frightened followers everywhere, and utterly 
deleat his malignant enemies ?"' Why ? Because God's ways 
are far more wise and holy than our short-sightedness would 
expect Why did our Lord always refuse to give a sign from 
heaven ? Wliy did He not at the very begiiming hold an 
audible conversation with His Father up to heaven, in order 

' This is nowliere maiiitaiaed in the Scriptures ; for, aMording to them, tho 
reatirrection was the beginning of the trans form atioa of Hie earthly body, which 
tmnslormation was completed nt His ascension. 

» Charakterhild Je»u, p. 233. 



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460 THE RESOBREOTJON OF CHRIST. [lECT. VJI. 

publicly and irrefutably to prove His divine mission, to stop 
the months of all doubters and adversaries, and make it easy 
for every one. to believe in Him ? Why did He not come 
down from the cross to prove His divine Sonsbip ? Hail it 
been told ns that Christ did, as Schenkel would have had Him, 
mahe a public shew of Himself before His enemies, then we 
should have great reason to doubt the veracity of the records 
wiiich contained such a statement Por this would be entirely 
out of keeping with all His other miracles, as well as with His 
charaetor and work, That He did not do so, speaks for the 
credibility of His reappearance. Miracles may facilitate faith, 
but must never compel it. This objection of Schenkel's entirely 
ignores the moral character of true faith, which must depend 
upon a man's free decision. Wonld Christ's kingdom any 
longer be a kingdom of faith, if it were founded upon the fact 
that the risen Saviour had been seen and touched iy all — i.e. 
upon a miracle which had become a public gaxiwj-siock i And 
did Jerusalem still deserve this ? Had not the people, when 
demanding the crucilixion of Jesus, passed sentence of death 
upon themselves ? After Christ's entry into Jerusalem, the 
respite of grace for Israel had hurried to its close. With His 
crucifixion, Israel, as a nation, was condemned to death. Only 
individuals could stdl be saved. And Schenkel would demand 
a further respite for the most hardened enemies of Christ; 
nay, even a compulsion to believe ! No ; henceforth the risen 
Saviour could only appear, " not to all the people, but unto 
witnesses chosen before of God " (Acts x. 41), as a reward for 
their measure of faith in still following Him even when shame- 
fully put to death. Henceforth it was ordained by " the fool- 
ishness of God," which is " wiser than men," that " by the 
foolishness of preaching they that hdiece " should be saved ; 
and now Israel and the whole world, with all their wise men 
and scribes, had to learn from the poor fishermen to whow 
the manifestations of this wondrous divine victory over death 
had been vouchsafed. 

But though Schenkel may not be a strict upholder of the 
" visionary theory," Eenan openly professes his adherence to 
it. We have already seen that he regards Mary Magdalene 
as the creative authoress of the resurrection belief Tor an 
explanation of " the strange rumours which spread amongst 



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LECT. VII.] ANTI-MIEACULOUS THEOEIES. 461 

the disciples in consequence of the grave being found empty," 
we are referred to his work on the Apostles. This has since 
then appeared, and in the first chapter we are tolias follows : — 

" Though Jesus often spoke of resuiTeetion and a new life, 
yet he never distinctly said that he should rise again in this 
flesh," — ^just as if His repeated announcements that the Son of 
man should be kiUed and rise again the third day could have 
been understood by His disciples in any other sense than that 
of a bodily resurrection from the grave (cf Matt. xii. 40, xvii. 
9, 23, XX. 19, xxvi. 32, Mark viii 31, ix. 9, 10, 31, x. 34, 
Luke ix. 22, xviii. 33). All the passages which contradict 
Eenan's notion are disposed of by the remark, that " after a 
certain time had elapsed, much importance was attached to 
Christ's predicting his resurrection." This is the. old critical 
artifice, to reject as spurious that portion of the records which 
contradicts one's presuppositions. Christ must be told what 
He may and what He may not have spoken. 

Further on Eenan cannot help confessing that " several of 
the Master's words might be underatood in the sense of his 
again issuing from the grave." He then describes to us the 
state of mind in which a belief in the resurrection might arise. 
" Enoch and Elijah bad not tasted death. The belief began to 
gain ground that even the patriarchs and other Old Testament 
■woithies of the first rank had not really died, and that their 
bodies were alive in their graves at Hebron." How does 
Eenan know this ? It is simply a piece of his lively Oriental 
imagination which plays such an important part in his Vie de 
Jesiis. In Acts ii. 29, Peter says of David, " He is both dead 
and buried, and bis sepulchre is with us unto this day ; " and 
he mentions this as a well-lmown fact, doubted by no one. 
Nor can Eenan adduce a single authority for this wild asser- 
tion. But let us hear him further. " The same thing must 
happen to Jesus as has happened to all men (?) who had 
riveted the attention of their contemporaries. The -world, 
accustomed to invest them with superhuman powers, cannot 
believe that they have succumbed to the hard law of death. 
Heroes do not die. This honoured Master had lived too pro- 
foundly amongst his followers for them not to maintain after 
his death that he would always live. The day after his burial 
was full ot such thoughts as these. The women, especially 



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462 THE EESUKKECTIOS OF CUEIST. [LECT. TIL 

in spivit, overwhelmed him with their teoderest caresses (only 
hear the Parisian !). Their thoughts cannot for a moment for- 
sake this beloved friend : surely the angels must be suiTOund- 
ing him, and veding their countenances with his grave-clothes, 
. . . The little company of Christians on that day accom- 
plished the true miracle ; they raised up Jesus in their hearts 
ty the mighty love which they bore to him. They resolved 
that Jesus should not die. The love of these passionately- 
moved souls was indeed stronger than death." 

According to the unanimous testimony of all the records, 
the reports or manifestations of Christ's resurrection profoundly 
startled both the women and the disciples, and so suddenly 
broke in upon their sorrowful brooding, that at first they would 
not believe them (Mark xvi. 11, 13 et ss. ; Luke xxiv. 22 et 
ss.). According to Eenan, they were made way for by the 
expectations of the disciples; nay, even p-odnced iy them 
through a heroic resolution ! ! 

Mary Magdalene played a most important part in this 
matter. " We must follow her step by step, for during one 
hour of that day she carried within her all the workings of the 
Christian consciousness. Her testimony decided the faith o! 
the future." But how may we explain the appearances oi 
Christ amongst the assembled disciples 1 Whilst they are 
sitting together, probably " something like a light breath 
passes over the faces of the assembly. At such decisive hours 
a breath of air, a rattling window, a chance murmur, may 
decide the belief of nations for centuries." The disciples hear 
the word " Peace." There was no longer any doubt ; Christ 
is present ! 

Thus it is that Eenan explains the belief in the resurrec- 
tion. Hallucinations of a visionary woman, a breath of air, a 
rattling window, a chance murmur ; these are his last resorts. 
Windy hypotheses in good sooth ! Did ever unbelief give a 
more flagrant proof of its inability to afford a natural explana- 
tion of divine facts than this ? Woe be to ns if a breath of 
air may at any time chain us and our posterity for centuries 
to a momentous error from which there is no escape, espe- 
cially if we happen to be in an excited frame of mind ! How 
thoroughly must one who can thus speak have given up all 
belief even in a inoral harmony of the world, to say nothing 



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LECT. VII.] ANII-MIRACULOUS THEORIEa. 463 

of a holy providence ! Unbelief delivera mankind's choicest 
treasures, all its moral religious convictions, to the mercy of the 
merest chance ; and here we see in glaring colours 7wi0 deeply, 
in consequence of this, it degrades man, and how shamefully U 
defiles his moral dignity. And yet unbelief behaves as though 
it were going to help man to attain his full dignity. 

A far more notable upholder of the " visionary " hypothesis 
meets us in the person of Strauss. He extends the myth as 
far back as Gethaemane, though it is not easy to imagine how 
it should have occurred to any one to invent such a spiritual 
struggle : for these myths are surely intended to exalt Christ, 
I the scene in the garden sboM's Him in His deepest 
As is his wont, Strauss begins the investigation 
by gathering together all the variations and contradictions of 
the different narratives, in order to deduce therefrom " the 
insufficiency of the evangelical accounts." He will not ac- 
knowledge any other witness as credible than Pa,ul, who in 
1 Cor. XV. only says that the revived Saviour " appeared " to 
the apostles, i.e. " they believed that they visibly perceived him. 
But he docs not tell us what reasons they had for regarding 
the appearance aa something real, and even as their crucified 
Master himself. Indeed, it is douhtful whether Paul ever 
inquired after such reasons " {Lelen Jesn, p. 290). " We do 
not possess any deposition of an eye-witness about these 
appearances" (p. 291; since the Gospels are not apostoUc), 
Only the appearance of Christ iefffre Damascus, which is referred 
to by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 8 and ix. 1, is related to us by 
an eye-witness, and that "very brieliy" (p. 301); for tbj 
th ' t !d t y "n the Acts has only the value of a " third- 
1 t t m ny on account of the spuriousness and uncer- 
t ty f tl rd. True, from that testimony of St. Paul 

b t h m If hort as it is, this much is evident, " that he 
m n d tl Ited Christ to be really a'lid wonderftdly pre- 

nt nd d d the appearance folly objective" (p. 302). 

N t tl t d there is " nothing to prevent us from being 
f d fl nt p nion in this matter, and considering the 
pp n ply subjective, an event of his inward soid- 

Ufe" Moreover, we may safely do this, as " certain over- 
strained conditions of the soul were nothing uncommon with 
Paul," and many traits in him make us suspect that he had 



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464 THE EESOEEECTION OF CHEIST. [LECT. VIL 

" a nervous constitution," whicli probably kept him subject to 
convulsions, or perhaps epileptic fits ! Only Strauss forgets 
that the virions and revelations of wliicb Paul speaks (2 Cor. 
xii. 1 et ss.) belong only to his Christian life, and not to hia 
career as a Jew and a Pharisee, which closed with that first 
and greatest vision of Christ before Damascus. 

It is evident, then, that the clear and certain meaning of 
that testimony points to an actual outward appearance of 
Christ. Nevertheless, it was merely an inward occurrence, and 
St. Paul must have deceived himself, since, with re"ard to 
visions in general, he was not sober and dependable enough ; 
indeed, we may almost say, not a responsible agent. Another, 
too, of Strauss' manceuvres is worthy of notice, viz. the way 
in which he changes what St. Paul evidently considers an 
incontestable objective fact (1 Cor. xv. 3 ff.) into the tradi- 
tion of a subjective hdief that the Lord had been seen, and 
that merely because St. Paul does not enumerate the reasons 
which induced the disciples to consider this appearance as 
something objective. Does Sti-auss think that the apostle in 
this short sketch ought to have made provision for the doubts 
of every future sceptic? Surely the absence of all such 
reasons rather tends to show that the disciples had so little 
doubt as to the reality of Christ's appearance, that it never 
occurred to them to give further reasons for their belief in 
what they had seen and experienced. 

Having by coups lU force such as these endeavoured to give 
colour to his supposition that the vision of Christ before 
Damascus was merely inward, Strauss proceeds from this to 
draw "regressive conclusions as to the origin of the belief in 
Christ's resurrection." The appearances of Christ to the elder 
disciples were of intrinsically the same character. " They, too, 
■were merely internal events, which might easily appear to the 
persons concerned as outward and sensuous perceptions, but 
by us must be comprehended as imcard facts resulting from, mi 
cxcitcmeiU of the emotional life, i.e. as visions" (p. 304). " The 
endeavour of the disciples after the death of Christ must have 
been to include the attribute of vicarious suiTering, of violent 
but expiatory death, in their conception of the Messiah." Such 
a death which wrs undergone for all, could only be the 
entrance into the Messianic gloiy — a transition to a new and 



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LECT. VII.] ANTI-MIRACULOUS TCEOEIES. 46i 

higher life. And did not the Old Testament contain pioplie- 
cies of the Holy One whom God ■would not siiflei' to see cor- 
ruption, — of tlie Servant of God who should be taken away out 
of the land of the living, and yet see long life ? But " from 
the Jewish standpoint, the aoiil without the body ia a mere 
shadow" (p. 307). How else, therefore, eould they imagine 
the soul of Christ to be exalted to His Father in heaven othei'- 
wise than by the reviving of His body ? Hence their notion 
of His resurrection. 

Some of the narratives about the appearance of the nsen 
Christ may well make us " conjecture that the extitement of 
the disciples ai'ter the sudden death of Jesus, and their imagi- 
nation which was constantly employed in renewing his pictuie, 
caused them to see a reappearance of their Master in an} 
unknown person who met them under enigmatical circum- 
stances, and made a special impression upon them " (p. 308). 
How is it that other mourners, whose imagination is also much 
occupied with the picture of their dear and huddenly departed 
ones, do not often suffer under a similar deceiition * But even 
Strauss remarks of the iirst occasions on whicli Cbiist appeared 
to single individuals, that " it is scarce likely that they weie 
of this description." How were they ? " The expression of 
Mark, that he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom 
be had cast out seven devils, gives much food for thought. 
With a woman thus constituted in mind and body, there wa^ 
no great step between inwai-d excitement and a vision." Tlic 
case of Paul and the (legendary) vision of Peter (Acts x.), show 
us that mental conditions of this kind were not rare even in 
the case of men of that period, and of simple cultiu'e. We 
may therefore well " suppose that during the days which 
followed the death of Jesus, there was among his followers a 
general frame of mind, an intensification of the emotional and 
nervous life, which would compensate for any want of disposi- 
tion on the part of an individual" (p. 309). But how can 
we conceive that the belief in the resurrection should have 
arisen so early as the third day ? Does not the mental revul- 
sion from which the visions of Christ are supposed to have 
proceeded, need a longer space of time for its development? 
Certainly ; but Paul only says that Jesus rose on the third 
day, not that be wppeared at the same time (pp. 310, 311). 



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465 THE KESUKIJECTION OF CHRIST. [lECT. VII. 

"We must therefore suppose the matter to have taken place 
thus : " After the crucifixion of Jesus, his disciples, in their 
first panic, fled back to their homes in Galilee. There, in the 
regions which they had so often ti-aversed with him, tliey 
were constantly aroused to recall anew his picture. The 
longer period which in this way elapsed would give time for 
the revolution in the feelings of the disciples" {pp.. 3 15, 316). 
And here, then, the visions took place. True, this is contra- 
dicted by the Gospels, which all mention the first appearances 
of the risen Saviour as taking place in Jerusalem and its 
neighbourhood; and even Matthew, who tells of the angel 
commanding the disciples to come into Galilee, immediately 
aftenvards relates how Jesus appeared to Women from Jeru- 
salem But " there never was a thing so utterly superfluous 
as this first appearance of Christ in Matthew ; it is a later in- 
terpolation into the nari'ative on which Matthew founded 
his story of the resurrection " (p. 314). For it was not until 
afterwards that the manifestation of the resurrection was 
transferred to Jerusalem and the third day, in order that 
" death might only have a short-lived power over the crucified 
Messiah" (p. 315). 

This is the view of Strauss. He uses the same violence 
towards the records in caiTying through his hypothesis as in 
making way for it. AVhat he really offers as an explanation 
of the belief in the resurrection, amounts merely to power- 
ful imagination, excitement of the nervous life, intensified 
emotions, and visions resulting therefrom. 

For a historical demonstration of the actuality of Chnst's 
resurrection, Strauss demands a double proof: fnt it must be 
shown that the direct testimonies to the reality of this fact 
should meet all the requirements of historical te'^tmionies ; 
second, it must be proved that without the occurrence m ques- 
tion, other events which are historically certain could not have 
taken place.^ Well, we think that these two things may he 
proved: the historiml credibility of our testimomcs, and the 
impossihility of explaining certain indid}itable facts, — such as 
the belief of the disciples in Christ's resurrection , the sudden 
revolution in their consciousness, their preaching, and the 
Church thereby gathered and founded on this belief, but 
' Die HaSien a. die Oansen, p. 125 ; cf. Lelen Jeaa, p. 289, 



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LECT. til] the historical TESTIMONIES. 467 

especially the sudden conversion of St. Paul, — without having 
recourse to the resurrection as a fact, and not a mere vision. 
We will now proceed to consider the histoncal teslwionies, — 
first, that of the Gospels, then that of St. Paul (especially his 
vision of Christ before Damiiscus), — and we shall see whether 
the enemies of these records are right, or whether their credi- 
bihiy fulfils the first half of Strauss' demand. 



n. THE IIISTOUICAL TESTIMOKIES. 

Strauss demands that these should be direct testimonies, 
proceeding from eye-witnesses. Now. aceoi-ding to his pre- 
suppositions, the only book of the New Testament which could 
possibly have proceeded from an apostle is the Revelation of 
St. John ; and this book, he says, " does not go beyond the 
general belief that Jesus had been killed, and was now alive 
again and immortal" (p. 298). Is this correct? The con- 
tradiction which this proposition contains shows how nntenable 
such an interpretation of the passages in question must be. 
For only that can live again which was before dead ; but this 
was not the case with the immortal spirit of Christ, only with 
His body. If, then, the Book of Eevelation teach that Christ 
is living again, it witnesses to His resurrection. But it does 
80 even directly. In chap. i. 5, Christ is called "the First- 
begotten of the dead." This certainly cannot mean the first 
of those who lived immortal after death, for there were enough 
such before Christ ; it must mean the first among the dead who 
again came to life, and who, because He had broken the power 
of death, has become the source of new life for all wh« have 
, died, i.e. the first risen One, who is the resiirvection and the 
life for all others. In the same manner, chap. ii. 8 — "which 
was dead and lived " (e^t)<rev) — mentions both, dying and coming 
to life, equally as historical facts, and must be understood in 
the same way. What our Lord says in i. 18, "I have the 
keys of hell and of death," ie. power over death and the king- 
dom of the dead, would not be fully true if a part of Christ, 
viz. His body, had remained in the bondage of death. Here, 
then, we have (especially in ii. 8) an historical testimony from 
an apostle for the resurrection of Christ's body, which can be 
overlooked only by a most superficial exegesis. 



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■ioo THE EESUBRECTIO.N' OP CHEWT. [lECT. VH. 

Strauss vriM not acknowledge the Gospels as direct testimonies, 
because none of them was written by an apostle or eye-witness 
of the life of Christ Bat we have already seen that even the 
most ne;^iitive critics in our day grant tliat they belong to the 
apostolic 3s:e, when there must at least have been many such 
eye-witnesses living. Moreover, it should be borne in mind 
that the Uospel of St -Tohn declares itself to have been written 
by an eye-witness (xix. 35, xxi, 24), and would therefore, if 
genuine, abundantly fulfil Strauss' first postulata But its 
genuineness is maintained even by such critics as Schleier- 
inacher, Credner, Lachmann, Ewald, Hase, and Pdtschl, to say 
nothing of more orthodox men, such as Gaussen, Hengstenber", 
Tisehendorf, Eiggenbach, Oosterzee, and many others. Time 
and space would fail us to go into this c[uestion here. Only 
to one thing I would draw your attention. Notice the extra- 
ordinary vividness in St. John's narrative of the remrredion, 
and see how, in a multitude of minute and delicate details, it 
bears the impress of personal eir^erie^m {e.g. the way in which 
Peter and John go together to the grave ; the description of 
the interior ; the bearing of Mary Magdalene, etc.). Kone but 
an eye-witness can have described the event with such original 
freshness and vividness. In fact, their exactness in isolated 
details speaks sti'ongly for the authenticity of these narratives ; 
the more so, the more numerous the appearances which they 
relate as vouchsafed to different persons, and under different 
circumstances. 

Here Strauss (like his predecessor, the author of the Wolfen- 
hatlel Fragments) meets us with a second objection, viz. the 
variations and cqntradietioiu in the narratives of the resurrection. 
We will not deny that theie may be certain differences and 
inexactnesses of stitement m the gospel accounts. But are 
these really important and irreconcilable contradictions, casting 
suspicion on the great fact itself ? Let us see. 

Even m the succession of Christ's appearawes there are sup- 
posed to be serious differences. According to Mark xvL 9, He 
appears first to Mary Magdalene ; according to Matt, xxviii. 9, 
to her and the " other Mary " together ; and according to St. 
Paul's account in 1 Cor. xv. 5, to Cephas (Peter). But does 
any one of these pledge himself to relate all the appearances 
of the risen Saviour ? Strauss himself confesses that this is 



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LECT. VII.] THE HISTOmCAL TESTLMOSICS. 4G9 

not the case (p. 292). Does not each one choose from the 
rich treasure of tradition tliis or that appearance first, so that 
tliey supplement, but do not contradict one another ? If, e.g., 
Matthew, in relating what happened to the women on the 
Easter morning, blends into one several traits wliicli accordin" 
to the other evangelists are separate, is tliis so very important a 
difference ? If vcs compare the gospel narratives with that of 
fit. Paul, we see ten appearances of Christ, which probably took 
place in the following order: (1) Mary Magdalene sees the 
Lord iirst, on coming to the grave the second time (Mark xvi. 
9 ; John xx. 1 6), after having told Peter and John that the 
stone is rolled away, and tlie grave empty. (2) The other 
women, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, having heard 
the angel's joyful message, hurry back in fear and great joy, 
whereupon the Lord meets them (Matt, xxviii. 9, 10). (3) He 
also appears in the course of the same day to Peter (Luke 
xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 6) ; (4) in the evening, to two disciples 
on their way to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 15 et ss.) ; (5) and 
after this to the ten apostles (without Thomas) assembled in 
Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 36-44; Johnxx. 19et8s). (6) On the 
Sunday following, He appears to the apostles, with Thomas (John 
XX. 26 et ss.). All these appearances took place in Jenisalem 
and ills neiglthourhooil, shortly after the resuiTection. Then 
come those between Passover and Pentecost, when the pilgrims 
to the former feast had returned to Galilee, viz. : (7) at the . 
Lake of Tiberias (John xxi. 1 et ss.) to seven disciples ; (8) the 
great manifestation on a mountain in Galilee to all the disciples 
(Matt, xxviii. 16 ffi ; Mark xvi. 15-18 ; Luke xxiv. 45-49), 
and probably at the same time to the 500 mentioned in 1 Cor. 
XV. 6 ; (9) the special appearance accorded to James the 
brother of the Lord (1 Cor. xv. 1), when, perhaps, the disciples 
were exhorted to return earlier than usual to keep the feast of 
Pentecost at Jerusalem. (10) The iinal appearance is that to 
the apostles on the Mount of Olives, which concluded with 
the ascension (Mark xvi 19; Luke xxiv. 50 et ss. ■ Acts 
i. 4-12).^ 

In this manner the various appearances, although not fully 
hi any one record, may be broi^ht together. 

3 Eame order has Iwen observed by Greiner in his book on The 7-mirrectioa 
w Christ from, the dead ; Carlsmhe (1869). 



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470 THE liESUKRECTION OF CHRIST. [LECT, TII. 

Sti'aiiss objects to this, first, that John, xxi. 14, mentions the 
appearance at the Sea of Tiberias as being the tliird (instead 
of the seventh) ; and secondly, that John does not count in 
the appearance before the 500. The former difficulty is eaeily 
explained by the fact that St. John is here only reckoning the 
appearances among assembled diseiples, of which only two (the 
fifth and sixth) had gone before. The latter objection is futile, 
since Christ did not appear to the 500 till later (the eighth 
time), while Strauss himself confesses that St. John does not 
say that the appearance at the Sea of Tiberias was the last 
(p. 292). St. Paul too, in 1 Cor. xv., does not wish to give a 
judicial protocol ot al! our Lord's appearances, but only to show 
the number of witnesses, and their authority, and therefore 
leaves oiit the women. 

But we are told that there are far greater contradictions in 
respect of the duration and the lor.ality of these appearances. 
True, all the evangelists and St. Paul agree that Christ rose 
again on the third day (p. 313). But the length of time 
during which His appearances took place is fixed in Acts i. 3 
at forty days, whereas Luke connects the last words of the 
Lord immediately with His appearance to the disciples on the 
evenii^ of Easter Sunday, so that scarce a day would seem to 
have elapsed between the resurrection and the ascension, and 
there would have been no time for the appearances in Galilee. 
Moreover, if, according to Luke xxiv, 29, Jesus commanded 
the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they were endowed 
with power from on high. He cannot, as Matthew relates, 
have directed them to Galilee on the morning of His resurrec- 
tion (p. 293). 

This apparent contradiction, however, is very simply ex- 
plained. Had we only the narrative of St. Luke, we should 
certainly have thought that Jesus ascended to heaven on the 
firat day after the resurrection. But how often do the evan- 
gelists bring together sayings of Christ which were in point 
of time separated by weeks and months ! This is the case 
here with St Luke. He evidently collated the most important 
of our Lord's last utterances, without regard to differences of 
time, and so blends together sayings which the other evan- 
gelists, and he himself in Acts i., give separately in chroao- 
logical order. If (as was done by us above) Luke xxiv 



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LECT. VIL] the historical TESTIMONIES. 471 

36-43 or 44 be taken to apply to the fifth appearance of 
our Lord, and vers. 45-49 as spoken at His eighth appear- 
ance in Galilee, then all is clear ; for then ver. 49 contains 
a direction for the disciples who are in Galilee (or perhaps 
already returned to Jerusalem) to wait for the blessing of 
Pentecost at Jerusalem. This direction was not therefore 
given, as Strauss would have it, " on the resurrection day," 
but after the journey of the disciples to Galilee, so that all 
appearance of a contradiction to Matt, xxviii. 7 and 10 is 
removed. 

But again, it is objected that Matthew and Mark gravely 
contradict themselves, because on the one hand they make 
Jesus appear in Jerusalem on Easter morning to the women, 
but on the other hand they relate how the angels and our 
Lord Himself direct the disciples to go to Galilee tliat they 
may see Him there. " If Jesus had indicated to the disciples 
that Galilee was the place where they should see him, we 
cannot conceive what should have moved him to show him- 
self to them on the same day in Jerusalem" (p. 293). How 
strange if, "immediately after the direction to go to Galilee, 
" Jesus himself should step into the women's ivay ! "What 
reason could he have tad for so quickly giving up the plan 
which he had only just proclaimed through an angel ? " (pp. 
313, 314.) 

A pitiable objection this, in good sooth, and quite charac- 
teristic of the heartless ways of one who is utterly unable to 
transport himself into the conditions and times whose historian 
he lays claim to be. Only look at the difference between the 
first appearances in and about Jerusalem, and that latter one 
on the mountain in Galilee. In tho former, the Lord appears 
quite unexpectedly and suddenly, and soon disappears again ; 
to the latter. He had bid the whole body of disciples, and 
d;ubtless remained longer in their midst. This was the chie! 
n.anifestation, in which He openly asserts His participation in 
the government of the world, institutes baptism, commands 
that the gospel should be preached in all the world, and 
promises ever to be with His people. Far from this longer 
and more detailed manifestation excluding the first more fleet- 
ing appearances in Jerusalem, the latter were rather a neces- 
sary and fitting preparation for the former — not an alteration 



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472 THE EESUBEECTION OF CHKIST. [leCT. VIL 

of His original plan. And must not love have driven Jesus 
to (by the tears of His followers as soon as possible, and to 
change their deep sorrow into the joyous assurance of victory ? 
Could He, niight He pass by His disciples, so bowed down 
through grief, without giving them a single word of comfort 
from His lips ? Could He wait so long with the ocular proof of 
His victory till His disciples were all assembled in Gablee, after 
the close of the feast (to terminate which they remain those 
eight days longer in Jerusalem) ? Nothing was more natural 
than that He should appear to them there. Had He iiot done 
so, we should have reason to be perplexed. 

As it is, all these events succeed each other in a way which 
is not only explicable, but necessary. First come the passiu" 
manifestations in Jerusalem, intended to le-establish the 
crushed hopes of the disciples ; then a pause of eight days, 
during which they have time to tecaU the former promises of 
the Lord, that He would ri.se again, and especially to recognise 
His ten-ible death in the light of the Old Testament prophecies 
as a holy necessity, as a wise and merciful decree of God 
(Luke xxiv. 26, 44-46). Then, after they had reached this 
standpoint, when their shaken faith was again confirmed and 
deepened, come the longer communications, the last revelations 
and grand directions as to their calling, first in Galilee, then 
on the Mount of Olives, which once was the scene of the 
Saviour's deepest humiliation, but now witnesses His exalta- 
tion and entrance into glory. 

Would that our negative critics, before trying to master 
Scripture with their hair-splitting logic, only took the trouble 
to meditate a little on the wisdom and beauty of God's ways 
which are depicted therein ! 

But Strauss himself has confessed that, in order to make 
the origin of his visions concei^'able, he needs a longer period 
between the death of Jesus and the conviction that He had 
risen than three days. Hence his frantic efforts to do away 
with the appearances at Jerusalem by any means ; because, if 
trae (even subjectively), they would cut the ground from 
under his feet. 

Strauss asks why the disciples, if they knew of the resur- 
rection of Jesus so early as the third day, waited to announce 
it till the fiftieth ? He will not accept the answer given by 



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LECT. Vir,] THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 473 

the Acta, " that they had to wait for the Holy Ghost," be- 
cause he is of opinion that the feast of Pentecost was fixed 
upon as the day when the Spirit was poured out, " not for 
historical, bat for dogmatic reasons" (p. 313). Against this 
we remark : first, that it was not only after (Acts i. 4 et ss.), 
but also before His resurrection, that Jesus commanded His 
disciples to wait for the Comforter ; secondly, that after the 
deep trial of their faith through the death of Christ, the 
disciples naturally enough had need of some time to compose 
themselves, and prepare for their coming vocation as witnesses 
of the cross ; and third, that to endeavour to persuade the 
Christian Church that the historical miracle of Pentecost did 
not take place, is as reasonable as it would, be to argue with a 
living man that he never bad a birthday. 

This ia how the matter stands with the so-called " contra- 
dictions " in the Gospel histories of the resurrection. If we 
look at them closely, they dwindle down to incompletenesses 
and inaccuracies. And even granting their non-agreement in 
all details, is not ike cardinal fact clearly and quite unani- 
mously related by them ? Do they not all say that Jesus 
TOse again the third day, and appeared in Jerusalem to His 
disciples ? Wliat matters it much to whom He first appeared, 
so long as the cardinal point that He appeared is a certainty ? 
Faith depends not on the letter of Scripture, but upon the 
essential substance of the facts i«corded in it. And this 
essential substance is manifested, not only by the agreements, 
but even " by the differendes themselves ; for these are signs 
of the extraordinarj' effect which the resurrection produced 
amongst the disciples," and which has taken an individual 
shape in each of the narrators. Even a critic like Lessing 
remarks : " It cannot possibly be otherwise than that each of 
several witnesses seeing the same thing at the same time, and 
in the same place, should bear and see, and therefore relate it 
differently, for the attention of each one is differently directed." 
Thus the events of the resurrection appear " fixed in indelible 
memories, which were variously and yet harmoniously shaped 
according to the standpoint of the different disciples. In these 
records there is fixed for ever the staHled joy of the Church at 
the great news of the resurrection. Here, as in a festal choir, 
though the voices seem at times to be confused, isolated, or 



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474 THE EESUREECnON OF CHRIST. [LECT. VII. 

contrary, yet tliey all are pnrsning one tlieme in fnH, grand, 
and blissful IiaTmoiiy. We may clearly see the rich nnity of 
the one resurrection history amid all its details," (Lange, 
vhi snp. p. 441.) 

Indeed, we may well say that tJte differences in tliese accounts 
exclude all idea of an intention to deceive. ' If the evangelists 
Imd been con&ciously indenting, the simplest piiidence would 
have made them avoid aU traces of difference in their accounts. 

Another and a special pioof of their historical veracity, is 
the way %n uhtch they male our Lord appear. Were they 
legends that had arisen trom the visions of enthusiasts, they 
would ceitamly hi^e represented the Lord quite differently, 
probably m all the blize ot heavenly glory, as He might be 
expected iccording to Dan ^ii. 13, 14, x, 5, 6.* But in 
these accounts the xisen Chiist, with all His dignity, appeal's 
in such unpretending humanity, in such a natural state ot 
tratmition bet\\een human lowliness and divine glory, that 
this uttei ahsence of all extravagance is a striking testimony 
to the tiuth of that \\hn,h is thus related. 

But hon can thib be ' Is not the way in which Christ still 
appears in His body just the most enigmatical part of the 
whole matter ? And, indeed, the most offence of all has per- 
haps been talcen at the nature of the resurrection body. It has 
been said that the Gospel accounts lead to CLuite conti-adictory 
notions as to the c[uality of Christ's bodily life during those 
fortj' days. At one time He allows Himself to he felt and 
touched, eats and drinks, showing Himself to be capable of 
taldng bodily nourishment even though He may not need it : 
at another time His bodily substance would appear to be 
supersensuons ; it is not bound down to the limits of space ; 
He comes through shut doors, and suddenly vanishes again ; 
He can even assume different shapes (Mark xvi. 12). What 
contradictions ! our opponents triumphantly exclaim. " A 
body which can be felt cannot pass through shut doors, and 
vice versa a body which without hindrance passes through 
boards cannot have hones, nor a stomach to digest bread and 
broiled fish" (Strauss, p. 295). 

Ever since the date of the Wolfenhiittcl Fi-agments this con- 
' Couipara the visions ot the Anabiiptists in Wiiiister at the time of llie 



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LECT. Til.] THE HISTOKIOAL TESTIMONIES. 475 

tradiction has teen m^d in disproof of the tiuth of the resur- 
rection. But it ratlier speaks for it. For how should only 
one evangelist, to say nothing of all together, have made a 
description to all appearance so contradictory and utterly 
unheai-d of, unless it necessarily followed from the nature of 
the case ? Would not an invented story betray itself too 
glaringly in this matter ? Evidently it was only because the 
evangelists considered the truth of the resurrection to be 
beyond aU q^uestion that they could venture to add to this 
great miracle such strange appearances of their risen Master. 
That they did so, proves their good conscience in the matter. 
Like e\eiy primal geneiition the nature of the lesuuection 
body of Him who was the Fnst fiuits of them thit slept ' 
must rf,mam a m^ aterj "We cannot form anj clear concep 
tion of the process bj Mhieh the eoipsp of Christ wis ti ins- 
muted into ^ gl iified body nor cin we undeistand the niture 
of the htttr We can only recall to oui minds th'it hea^y 
water is changed int) hght vapour or daik flint m'"! tians- 
parLiit .^lass by heat or that the caterpillar whiLh slowly 
ciawls along the giound at length j^ows into an atij butter 
fly And thus the gloiihed body of Christ was not altered as 
re^aids its fundamental components, it i^as ihe same hndij, 
with the marks of the nails and the wound m its side but in 
a new ■spiritual foim of existtnct and Gierefoie stavding unda 
oikei ?ffli '* It therefore appears — until the ascension when 
its transformation -n as cDmpIeted— as an elementary, eaithly, 
jnateual body but its elements are no longer bound by spaue 
and it can go here or tht,ie make itself Msible or invis-ible 
— m fact shape itself outu ardly a;,cording to the internal will 
And this 13 possible because the bodj is spxutuahztd thiough 
and through, it has become an adeqnite e-qnession of the 
spirit, and its willing instrument. The body no longer opposes 
its own laws (of space, gi'avitation, motion, etc.) to the voli- 
tions of the spirit ; it does not liinder nor limit them, but 
impUoitly obeys. All strife is at an end. If the spirit will 
to transport itself to any place, it can do so together with the 
body ; the body no longer hinders it, for it is saturated with 
vital force and immortality. This is what the Scriptures (1 



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476 THE EESUKRECTION OF CHRIST, [LECT. VIL 

C'ui \\ 44-46) call a "spiritual hody" (crana wvevfiariKov) 
m cuntitiilistiiiction to the "natural body" (cr. i^vxtmv). 

Ill tins lebunection ho^j the Lord stands during those forty 
days, as it were, on the boundary line of both worlds ; He 
bears the impress of this as well as a future state of existence. 
It IS therefore no contradiction — as Strauss would have it — 
that this body sometimes manifested the force of repulsion 
(when touched), and at other times not (when penetrating 
throui^h closed doors) ; for it could do so or not, according to 
the will of the spirit. Doors could not keep out that which 
IS in a spiritual state of existence. Since all matter, too, is 
weU known to be porous, it can form no absolute barrier for 
the spirit. We cannot wonder, moreover, that this body, 
being formed from the same essential elements as the former 
earthly one, should be capable of eating food (Luke xxiv. 43 ; 
Acts X. 41), though not needing it, especially as the same 
thing is mentioned in the case of angels (Gen. xviii 8). Onr 
Lord does not "digest" this food, as Strauss coarsely puts it, 
but He assimilates it in some way or other, and transmutes it 
into His spiritual form of existence, so that it cannot hinder 
Him from disappearing. For we must not forget that it is 
not earthly matter per se which is incapable of being developed 
into a spiritual state of existence, but only the defilement 
which cleaves to it in our fallen condition that prevents this. 
Tlie terrestrial body as stwlv is destined to he spirihialized ; but 
if this is its destiny, it must also possess the capahilily. This 
shows us at the same time the reason why the sinless body of 
Christ could be immediately transmuted. Its purity was the 
possibility of its transformation. 

In this manner we see that the enigma of our Lord's resur- 
rection body, with its wondrous appearances, no longer con- 
tains any inexplicable contradiction. And after ivhat we have 
said, it will be evident that the Gospel narratives of the 
resurrection may be looked upon without suspicion, either by 
reason of their differences from one another, or of their special 
purport. 

But even supposing that from some cause or other the 
testimony of the fonr Gospels were not valid, still we have 
another witness for t!ie truth of the i-esurreetion, whose testi- 
mony no criticism can invalidate, viz. the Apostle Paid, 



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LECT. VII.J THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIEa 477 

Were he to stand quite alone, he wouM affbrcl a perfect and 
adequate refutation of all arguments against the Church's doc- 
trine of the resurrection, as well as of the visionary hypoUiesis, 
This is evident, partly from his testimony, partly from his 
personal history. 

First, let us listen to his testimony. In Eomans vi. 4, the 
expression, " Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory 
of the Father," cannot he reconciled with the "visionai-y 
theory " of the resurrection ; for the latter is here represented 
as a consequence of the objective mighty working ol God, not 
of subjective action of the human nerves and imagination. 
Those of our opponents who acknowledge the Epistle to the 
Ephesians to have been written by St. Paul, we would refer 
to chap, i, 19, 20 of the same, which spealis of " the working 
of His mighty power, which He (the Father of glory, ver. 17) 
wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead " (cf. 
Phil. iii. 21). But St. Paul's chief testimony, every word of 
which breathes a firm and joyous conviction of its truth, is con- 
tained in 1 Cor, xv. : " For I delivered unto you first of all 
that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins 
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that 
He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures ; and 
that He vjas seen of Cephas, tlien of the twelve. After that He 
was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the 
greater part remain unto this present, hut some are fallen asle'v- 
After that. He was seen of James, then of all the apostles, and 
last of all He was seen, of me. . . . Therefore, whether it 
were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed. Now, if 
Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some 
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead 1" 

In these terse and clear words, the force of which is in- 
voluntarily felt even by the present opponents of the resurrec- 
tion, there is contained a double testimony. First, St. Paul 
here witnesses to many appearances that were vouchsafed to 
other disciples, in a way which (as we showed) is perfectly 
consonant with the Gospel accounts, and in the language of 
an historical record which Strauss in vain endeavours to 
represent as a mere tradition of the subjective belief that the 
Lord had been seen. The value of this testimony cannot be 
lessened by Strauss' arbitrary objection, that it is doubtful 



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478 THE EESUEKECTION OF CHRIST. [leCT. VII. 

■whether St. Paul ever inquired closely into the reasons -which 
the apostles had for helieving in a real resurrection. How 
incomprehensible that a Pharisee, theoretically and practically 
intimate with all the statutes of Judaism, and a much feared 
enemy of the Christians, should suddenly have adopted this 
new faith, thereby changing all his former religious convic- 
tions, without assuring himself of the truth of those facts on 
■which his new faith was founded ! How incomprehensible 
that this man should have preached before Jews and Greeks 
about the crucified and risen Jesus, and entered into many a 
discussion on the subject with their wise mea, without having 
inquired closely into the ohjective proofs for the truth of his 
own doctrine I This testimony to the appearances of Christ 
amongst the apostles retains its full historical value. 

It is important to notice that St. Paul, in ver. 6, appeals 
for a confirmation of what he says to iiHtnesses who were still 
living. I^ow any ordinary writer who should appeal for a 
verification of his statements to living witnesses would, for the 
sake of his literary honour, be sure to employ the utmost cau- 
tion. And shall we suppose that a man like St. Paul, writing 
to the Church in such a world-renowned city as Corinth, and 
relating a fact on which he rests the whole Christian faith, 
should appeal to well-known witnesses without being sure of 
their veracity ? Clearly this is a moral impossibility.' 

In the second place, St. Paul appears as eye-witness to an 
appearance of the risen Christ which was vouchsafed to him- 
self : " Last ot all. He was seen of me also." Every one is 
agreed that this refers to the appearance lefore Damascus, 
which was the turning-point of his life. How are we to 
regard this : as an inward or as an outward event ? Since 
St. Paul places this experience of his in the same category as 
the manifestations accorded to the other apostles, and speaks 
of it in precisely the same terms, it is evident that if it be a 
merely inward occurrence, suspicion must be cast upon the 
other manifestations of our Lord ; whereas, if it can only be 
conceived of as an external event, this will be a strong 
argument in favour of our Lord's other appearances being 
externally objective — i.e. it wiU. militate greatly against the 
" visionary hypothesis," 

> CX Eabnis, vbi nw, 



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LECT. VII.j IHE HISTOraCAL TESTIMONIES, 479 

In the Acts of the Apostles we have a threefold minute 
history of St. Paul's conversion, chap. ix. 1-30, xxii. 1-21, 
xxii, 4-23 ; and in both the latter passages it is St. Paul 
himself who is relating his own history. Strauss himself 
confesses that this threefold narrative " sounds quite as if it 
had heen an outward sensuous phenomenon" (p, 299). In 
all three accounts, too, the main points are clearly and con- 
formably stated : — the visible appearance of a light whicli 
cast Paul to the ground and blinded him for some days ; the 
voice, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?" and the answer, 
" I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest ;" the direction to go to 
Damascus, and the transformation of Saul, under the hands of 
■ Ananias, into a soldier of Christ. Eut critics have laboured 
much over the small variations in these accounts. Baur ^ seeks 
to explain them by referring them to the " pragmatism " of the 
writer, who alters the narrative in each different connection 
according to his purpose in bringing it in there. This paltry 
criticism has been well met by the remark,^ that a historian 
who purposely contradicts himself for pragmatic reasons must 
indeed be a strange fooL And if tliis same historian promises 
in the introduction to his Gospel to write so that we might 
know " the certainty oi those tilings wherein " we have been 
instructed, and then, from sharp-witted pragmatism, turns so 
important an event as the conversion of St. Paul, first this 
way, then that, common sense can scarcely help thinking 
him a liar. 

But what do these differences consist of? First, the com- 
munication which in chaps, ix. and xxii. is made by the Lord 
through Ananias, is immediately attached to the words of 
Christ Himself in chap. xxvi. This simply shows that the 
naiTative in chap. xxvi. is condensed in comparison with the 
othei's, and tliis Baur himself afterwards confesses. Again, in 
chap. ix. 7 the companions of Paul hear without seeing ; in 

■ I>er Aposlel Pmilus, chap, iii ; and KirelKiigeschicJite der drei erslen 
JaliThvndertf, voL L p. 46 et sa. 

" Cf. lieyaclilag's excellent articles on " The conversion of the Apostle Paul," 
in Stttdien ii. KriUten, 1864, Purt n. pp. 197 et ss. ; and on "Tlie yisionary 
hypothesis and its most recent defence " (ngaiiist Holsteii), ibid. 1370, I'aits i. 
and II. Also Selmlze on " The testimony of the Apostle, Paul to the resuiTeo- 
tion of our Lord," ia Beineia det Olaubem, 1866, p. 33 et ss. ; and Grenier, vbi 
tup. p. 73 etes. 



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480 THE EESUEEECnON OF CIIKIST. [lecT. VII. 

chap, xxii 9 the> see with \it heiriip lormilh tons d lel 
this is, of couise a conti^dKtion but it is ferfertl^ e^ihined 
if we consider that the companiong of Siul onlj reuen ed a 
general sensuous impics='ioQ of that which was M«ible and 
audible, ie the h^ht and the sound without either clearly 
seeing the h^uie or distinguishing the wjids spol en bj the 
voice. Only we must not lij the stress upon the> heaid 
and " the-v bend not but upon the i^ ords of Him thit spake 
to me." They heard the sound of a voice, but they did not 
hear the articulated words which were spoken to Saul (just as 
in John xii. 28, 29). Nor must we foi^et that by "hear" 
St. Paul sometimes means "understand" (ef. 1 Cor. xiv. 2). 
And what shaR we say, finally, when the sharp eyes of our 
critics discover the flagrant discrepancy that in chap. ix. 7 
the companions of Saul " stand speechless, " in xxii. 9 " are 
afraid," and in xxvi. 14 fall to the eai-th with him? Is it 
not a perfect farce, for the sake of such differences, to refuse 
to believe records which in the main perfectly confirm one 
another? "What liberties do critics take with the biblical 
writings which they would never think of in the case of pro- 
fane histoiians ! Such conduct was long ago condemned by 
that patriarch of critics, Lessing, who says, " If Livy, and 
Dionysius, and Polybius, and Tacitus are so generously treated 
by us that we do not rack thein for every single syllable, why 
should we not act in the same way towards Matthew, and 
Mark, and Luke, and John t " 

If we account for these sniaR differences by referring them 
to the different historical records of which St. Luke made use, 
and which he did not wish to assimilate down to the last 
letter, then this is an excellent testimony to his conscientious- 
ness as a historian. Then, too, that which is unanimously 
recorded by all three authorities gains greatly in verification. 
Now their unanimous testimony is this, that Christ appeared 
to Saul externally and ohjcctivcly ; not merely inwardly in a 
vision. But if the upholders of the latter ■view argue that 
Saul's companions neither saw nor heard this heavenly vision, 
we must correct this statement to the effect that they did not 
see and hear it distinetly; but they did receive a very strong 
external impression, for they stood speechless, fearing, and iell 
to the eartL That they did not understand what was imme- 



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LECT. VII.] THE HISTOEICAL TESTIMONIES. 4S1 

diately clear to S,^^ll, is oorapMhensible from the nature ot the 
glorified body, which shares the power of the spirit to reveal 
Itself to one person and remain wholly or partially nnperceivod 
by others, according to circumstances. 

When Banr goes on to stamp the part played by Ananias 
as a myth, we cannot help asking how the legend came to Bx 
on a person so little known as Ananias, and why it did not 
rather mate the Holy Ghost descend straight from heaven on 
St Paul, as on the other apostles ! Eaur tries to explain this 
by the supposition that the writer wished to recommend St 
Paul to the Jewish Christian party by connecting his conver- 
sion with a Jewish Christian. This is only an efi-ect of Baur's 
black view ot the primitive Christian era, which makes him 
everywhere look out tor traces of an abrupt opposition between 
Jewish and Gentae Christians,— between foKowers ot Peter 
and ot Paul,— so that he often does not hesitate to represent 
the most artless narrative as an intentional fabrication or a 
didactic lie. 

But putting aside the Acts, and considering only the direct 
testimony ot St. Paul himself, it cannot be denied that the 
passages m his epistles which refer to that event can only 
moan an external, bodily appearance ot Christ, and not a mere 
internal vision. Take, ej/., the words ot 1 Cor. xv 8 « Last 
ot all, He was sea i,j me also," and of 1 Cor. ix. 1, " Am I 
not an apostle? have I not sctn our lord Jesus Christ!" 
Strauss acknowledges this testimony as proving, in conjunction 
with the Acts, that he was persuaded that he had seen Christ 
and even heard words from Him (p. 301); but he tries to take 
away the point of it by saying that at other times as well St. 
Paul "thought he had heard words ti-om a hi"hcr world" 
True, in 2 Cor. xE 1 et ss. the apostle speaks ot° visions and 
revelations which he hadXproceeding, however, /rem God, and 
not from the action of his own nerves merely). But it is' evi- 
dent that this passage does not refer to the revelation before 
Damascus, which took place much earlier, and in quite a dif- 
ferent manner; tor here St Paul is 'caught up into paradise," and 
in the other case Christ appeared to him on earth This very 
passage (2 Cor. xii.), then, shows that when St. Fmd is sftah- 
ty ofvmms, fa expresses kimsel/ pale pmiliarlp: he describes 
himself as " caught up," and does not know whether ho is " in 



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482 THE KESL'ERECTION OF CHRIST. [lECT. VIl. 

the body or out of the body." So that even if the apostle did 
have visions, yet it is evident that he was perfectly well able 
to distinguish between what he saw in this condition, and what 
he perceived with his senses ; and that he should have deceived 
himself so as to confound an internal with an external occur- 
rence, is out of the q^uestion. In the passages where St. Paul 
speaks of his having seen Christ, he ^ives not the slightest hint 
that this seeing was other than the natural sensuous process; 
whereas elsewhere he makes a sharp distinction between seeing 
in spirit and in body.^ 

Our opponents, therefore, have no right to place the appear- 
ance near Damascus in the same category with the later visions 
of St. Paul. Strauss entirely overlooks the fact, that in 1 Cor. 
XV. 8 he designates the manifestation of the risea Saviour 
which was vouchsafed to him as the " last of all." Kone of 
his later visions or revelations can be classed with it, fc 
they were of an entirely different kind. The t 
Damascus was unique in his memory, and he could only class 
it with those vouchsafed to the other apostles. If, then, it 
was similar to these ind dissimilar to the later ones, it was 
no inere vision, hut an external occurrmce, in which the Lord 
became bodily visible 

The same thing necessarily follows from the context of these 
passages. In 1 Cor. xv. the apostle wishes to remove doubts 
as to the resurrection, by pointing to the resurrection of Christ 
as an established fact, since the apostles, many brethren, and 
last of aU, he himself, had seen Him after it. Kow this seeing 
could only be a proof of the resurrection if it was outward and 
ocular, and cannot be intended otherwise Further on St. 
Paul seeks to demonstrate from the same fact the nature of 
the resurrection 6o%, which would be meaningless if the risen 
Lord had not appeared in bodily form. So, too, with 1 Cor. 
ix. 1. Against those who maintained that he was no real 
apostle, and not called by the Lord, he upholds his apostleship 
by an appeal to his having personally met Christ. But the 
apostles based their authority on their personal intercourse 
with Clirist, and their vocation by Him as witnesses of His 
resurrection. Thus the apostolic consciousness of St Paul 

' Till! former is attributed to tlie uttv/iii as the highest faculty of 
the latter to the mm, ie. the intellect which receives impressions fiom the 



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LECT. YII.] TOE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 483 

depends on this very point, that he had seen the Saviour 
bodily, and not merely in a vision (like Stephen, Ananias, and 
others, who were not apostles). 

What is the result of our investigation « In. an incon- 
UslaUy genuine epistle we have found an eyc-uitnebs to the .fact 
of Christ's resurrection; St. Paul icith his lodily eyes heheld the 
rism Lord. A^inst such clear testimonies it is of little use 
for our opponents to appeal to Gal. i. 15, 16, "It pleased 
God ... to reveal His Son in me" though Strauss gathers 
from these words that Paul laid the chief stress in this matter 
upon the inward revelation (p. 302); and Sehenkel, on account 
of this passage, considers the manifestation of Christ to the 
apostle to have been " mainly internal" For though these 
woi'ds doubtless apply primarily to the scene before Damascus, 
yet they have a more general meaning too, and include the 
subsequent divine enlightenments, especially the gift of the 
Holy Ghost after Ananias had laid on hia hands. St. Paul is 
here reviewing his whole life in the hght of the divine act oi 
grace which called him to be the apostle of the Gentiles. It 
is self-evident that this must have had an inward effect upon 
his heart, which, by divine enhghtenment, underwent the great 
change through which he attained to the knowledge and dis- 
, cipleship of Christ But this does not exclude the external 
appearance ; on the contrary, the internal event was only the 
necessary consequence of the external one. 

We submit, however, that it is not only an exeg^tical, but 
also a psychological impossibility, to comprehend the vision he- 
fore Damascus as a merely internal event taking place in the 
apostle's mind. Our opponents cannot explain to us the sudden 
and total revolution in St. Paul's moral and religious conviction 
as a purely natural mental process. The attempt to do so has 
brought them into the greatest straits, so that their leader, 
Baur, after all his efforts, at length confessed himself fairly 
beaten. The most zealous defender of this theory at the present 
time is Baur's sagacious follower, Holsten.^ But his writings 
clearly betray that the critical school is driven to this ex- 
planation, not by unbiassed exegetical researches, but only by 

■ " Die Christusvision des Aposfcis Pauliis," in Hilgenfelds ZeiMirifl f&r 
lotssensrMftlklie Thcologle, 1861, Part in. pp. 224-28*. Against it, ct 
Beyechlag, «6i sup. ; also Krauss, Ldire von de-r Ofenbarwiij, pp. 287 et sa. 



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484 THE EESURRECTION OF CHRIST. [lECT. VII. 

ita pantheistic presuppositions. " Criticism," he says, " must 
endeavour to comprehend this vision as an internal psycho- 
logical act of Paul's own spirit, because it is subject to the law 
of finite causalities and the immanent developmuut of the human 
spirit." Behold the cloven hoof ! It is not the insufficiency 
or inadequacy of the records, nor is it their isolated dis- 
crepancies, that give offence ; but it is the fact of Christ's 
bodily resurrection and actual appearance which is great and 
strong enough to overthrow all the pantheistic and deistic 
views of tliese critics. This fact must be got rid of at any 
coat, because it threatens the supremacy of the law of im- 
manent development ; or, in other words, because the pan- 
theistic standpoint wiU not allow of anything supernatural 
Here, again, we see how this so-called " historical criticism " 
is " in reality dogmatic or philosophical, having for its iirst 
principle the dogma of Pantheism." Furthermore, we see what 
it must cost to do away with the fact under consideration. If 
it be only an immanent psychological act, — and yet St Paul 
speaks of it as a sure external fact, on which thenceforth he 
based his existence and his intellect, his faith and hope, his 
testimony and his work, — then he laboured under a sdf-decep- 
tion which rendered his whole life and preaching a mere ■illusidi. 
This Holsten candidly confesses. He grants that criticism 
must declare the actual basis of St. Paul's gospel to be a delu- 
sion, i.e. it converts the most notable witness and martyr for 
the truth into an apostle of error ! This, and no less, ia 
the price which must be paid for the denial of the fact in 
question. 

What, then, we ask in astonishment, can the reasons be 
which give the critical school courage to attempt such a 
Imzardous feat ? Baur in his later writings endeavours tc 
account for this sudden change in the convictions of St. Paul 
by supposing that the narrow-minded, one-sided pharisaical 
Judaism must at length have worn itself out by going to 
extremes, and then have changed into the contrary. The 
great achievement of Christ's death all at once made a mighty 
impression on the mind of Saul. How else can he have over- 
come his Jewish hatred to Christianity than by the involim- 
tary impulse of his spirit, which drove him to meditate on that 
death ? In his mind, which was accustomed to more profound 



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LECT. VII.] THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 485 

thought, the idea— so intolerable to a Jew— of a crucified 
Measiah^ changed into the contrary, when he considered that 
that which was most opposed to the sensuous consciousness 
might, after all, be true in its deepest inward essence. But 
how does Eanr know that Saul was occupied with the thought 
of Christ's death just at that time ! If he ever were so, from 
his standpoint he could only regard it as a divine judgment. 
And why is the apostle — at other times so truthful and open 
—here silent as to the doubts which at that time arose in his 
mmd respecting the correctness of his pharisaical standpoint ? 
And even had a presentiment of the truth of Christianity at that 
time arisen of its own accord in his understanding, there was 
still a long distance between the thought and the practical 
resolve, which would assuredly have taken up much time. Is 
it usual that one should break thus radically with his past life, 
and entirely give up convictions hitherto so deeply rooted and 
notably acted out, and that he should suddenly go over so 
decidedly to the opposite standpoint ; — and all this as a result 
of spontaneous mental action, without any external solicitation 
or influence ? Would not this be without parallel ? Later 
on, Baur felfc that this was a psychological monstrosity ; for 
in his last work he designates the conversion of St. Paul a 
"wonder," a mysterious secret, " wliich no analysis, either 
psychological or dialectic, can clear up." By this he does not 
mean that it is a niiracle in our sense of the word, but still he 
confesses the inadequacy of all attempts at a natural psycho- 
logical explanation. 

This, then, is another portion of fhe unexplained and in- 
explicahle residuum of miraculous fads, which proves the 
futility of aU anti-mu^culous theories as to the origin of 
Christianity, 

Nor do the explanations of Baur's disciples make the matter 
clearer. Holsten tells us that visionary seeing is only a 
reproductive action: only that which lives in the mind as an 
image or conception can thus appear. The vision adds to 
those elements which already exist in the spirit a sensuous 
objectiveness, by exciting the nervous life, which thus makes 
the image appear sensibly to the outward eya This is con- 
firmed by physiologists. "We may assert, that if any higher 
or lower order of being is to appear to us subjectively inlhia 



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436 THE RESUKRECTION OF CHKIST, [LECT. VJI. 

maimer, it must first be conceived and imagined, and thus 
impressed npon the senses." * Therefore Saul, if he experi- 
enced merely a natural ecstatic vision, without a supernatural 
divine communication, must in some way or other have re- 
ceived into his mind beforehand that which he afterwards saw. 
But even Strauss confesses that this effect could not have 
been produced by " the excitement into which the fanatical 
upholder of Jewish traditions had been brought by the threat- 
ening advances of Christianity ;" for, " from such emotions a 
vision of Moses or Elias would have been far more liliely to 
result than an image of Christ" (p. 303). He therefore lays 
especial stress on the probability that in his pharisaical self- 
righteousness Saul had found no enduring satisfaction. While 
as a ready dialectician he disputed with the Christians, or 
vifhen he broke into their meetings to hale them to prison, and 
saw not only their sincerity, but also their tranquil peace and 
quiet joy in suffering, which put to shame the peaceless and 
joyless fanaticism of their persecutor,— his present convictions 
must have been shaken day by day. Could it be an eiTOneous 
teacher who had such followers ? We must not therefore 
" wonder if sometimes, in seasons of dejection and inward dis- 
tress, he put to himself the question, " Who is in the right 
after all; — thou, or the crucified Galilean whom these people 
adore?" When he had once come thus far, his bodily and 
mental peculiarity would easily result in an ecstasy, in which 
that very Christ, whom he had hitherto persecuted so passion- 
ately, would appear to him in all the glory of which His 
followers spoke, showing him the wrongness and futility of 

I his course, and calling him to enter His service (pp. 303 

.' and 304). 

This ■ is the explanation which Strauss gives of St. Paul's 
conversion. But neither the Acts nor the Epistles tell us 
anything about " seasons of dejection " or of disputations with 
the Chidstians ; whereas St. Paul clearly states that he had 
received tlie gospel of no man, neither was taught it, but by 
the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. i. 12). These writings say 
nothing of the image of the risen Saviour which lived in Saul 
h'fore that scene, or of a faith in Jesus which had already 
taken root in his heart. On the contrary, they bear witness 
' Joh. MiUIer, UqIct die pMntaUkcIien Oesklilsersdieinungea, p. 63 et as. 



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LECT. VII,] Tim HISTOBICAL TESTDIO^'ICa. 487 

to the fact tliat he continued to lage in his blind zeal until the 
Saviour met liim, and that this meeting moved and astonislied 
Mm to the highest degree, iwt that it was internally 'prepared, and 
then of necessity resulted from the workings of his mind. 
. Thej- do not aa much as hint that he was to any inward 
uncertainty as to his conduct up to that time, nor even that 
the same knowledge had dawned upon him as upon Gamaliel 
(Acts V. 38, 39) : " If this work ... be of God, ye cannot 
overthrow it." The words " Saul, Saul, why peisecutest thou 
me ? " point, not to inward doubts, hut to fanatical hatred 
and zeal; as he himself, too, witnesses (Gal i 13, 14) The 
psychological precondition for a vi&ion, which can only be 
reproductive, is wanting in St. Paul Foi his mmd contained 
just the very opposite of what the vision is supposed to liave 
reproduced and ohjectivized Moreovei, if his condition is 
supposed to have been that of inteinil doubt, it is well to 
remember that, in tlie New Testament visions an never accorded 
to doubters or enemies of tJie gospel, hit only to helievcra when in 
ecstasy. 

And how about St. Paul s bodily constitution ? was it such 
as would be conducive to a vi'iion * The origin of visions in all 
those men who have experienced them, shows that the vision- 
ary, although he may be of sound mind, is invariably suffer- 
ing from overstrained nerves, fever, congestion, or some sort of 
bodily ailment.^ Hence the "visionary hypothesis" has to 
support itself with other new and strange hypotheses as to the 
bodily constitution of St. Paul. The " thorn in the flesh " 
(2 Cor. xii. 1) is interpreted by Strauss to mean " convidsive, 
and perhaps epileptic (!) fits ; " and he, as well as Holsten, con- 
cludes therefrom that St. Paul was of a " nervous tempera- 
ment." This conjecture is as ridiculous as it is undignified, in 
the case of a man who was not only of such sound and clear 
intellect, but also capable of such constant and severe bodily 

^ Witness Mahammetl and bis morliii! tendency to seusanl indulgence in Inter 
years (Sprenget, Lehen a. Lelire des Mohawnted, i. 309) ; Swadflnborg aad his 
nnhuppy attacliment to young Polhem (Sprengex, vU sup, p. 278) ; the Maid 
of Oiicwns and her freijuent fasts, combined with, a regular diet dmilai' to that of 
a strictly observed Lent (Hasa, ifeue Pi-opJtetea, p. 88 et sa.) ] and the viajons 
of tlie bookseller Nicolai, in the year 1791, " when the nsual bleeding and leeches 
on account of hsmorrhoids y)iye omitted" (Joh. MUller, PliaiilaiiliBche Geak/Ueer- 
schehii'tujm, pp. 77 et ss.). Cf. Kranss, nlii siip. pp. 274 et aa. 



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488 THE RESURKECTION OF CHKIST. [LECT. VII. 

exertion (consider the exhausting apostolic Labour by day and 
the work of his trade by night. Acts xviii. 3, xx. 34 ; 1 Cor. 
iv. 12), and who went on his way with unbroken vigour after 
undergoing the most rigorous hardships and persecutions 
(I Cor. iv. H ; 2 Cor. xi. 23-28). Surely such a man does 
not give one the impression of a feeble, nervous epileptic. 
Since his conversion, the apostle feels free and strong in the 
Loi'd ; shall we suppose that this effect was produced by a 
sickness, by an epileptic fit, or nervous convulsions ? Holsten 
draws our attention to the fact that our actual knowledge of 
the outer world is in no way increased by a vision. Was not 
St. Paul's knowledge extended by that occurrence ? Was he 
not enlightened with new and fruitful truths respecting him- 
self and the world around and above him ? From the scientific 
investigations respecting visions, Lotze draws the following 
true conclusion : " No notable new wisdom has as yet pro- 
ceeded from the month of somnambulists or the dreams of 
ecstatics and visionaries." ' Can we say the same of that 
appearance of Christ before Damascus, in view of the im- 
measurable new and wholesome effects which the conversion 
of St. Paul had on the history of the Church and the world 1 

.We come to the conclusion that the scene before Damascus 
is wantiiig in the chief characteristics of a ■vision. There is 
neither the physical preconditi&n. in the person concerned which 
marks its reproductive character, nor the constitutional precon- 
dition which pertains to its pathologically morbid nature. The 
critics use the most arbitrary means to make way for this 
theory, adapting history to their own fancy in spite of the 
clearest testimonies. Again do they expect us to believe 
marvels far more inconceivable than the external miracles 
related by Scripture ; and again our former maxim is con- 
firmed, that those who seek to escape the miraculous fall into 
absurdities. 

Every explanation of the appearance near Damascus as a 
merely internal event, labours under the fundamental mistake, 
that it must refer the conversion of St. Paul to the spontaneous 
activity of his own spirit, whereas at first he could not but he 
passive and receptive, in order afterwards to attain to a living 
activity in Christ. Not until he had been apprehended hj Christ 
■ Medkiaiache PtychologiB, p. 4S9. 



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LECT. Vn,] THE HISTORICAL TESTIM0.1IES. 489 

Jmis could he press forward towards the new mark, seeking 
to apprehend it himself (PhiL iii. 12). It was not he who 
had chosen Christ, but Christ who had chosen and ordained 
him, thit he should go and hiui!:; foith much fiuit (John 
XV, 16 ; Pom i 1 GaL i 151 Thenceforth he knows and 
designates himself as an ipot,tle of Je^ns Christ not by his 
own will but by the will of God (2 Cor i 1) , called nob 
of men, neither b} rain but bj Jes is Christ and God the 
Father, who raised Him from the dead (Gil i 1) 

We shall see further on that m the construLtitn of prmn 
tive Christnnitj as attempted by the critical bchool w e alv. i} s 
have a bcgtnmng -without a hjinning because e^erjthmg is 
already existing beforehand The same is the cisu with" all 
subjecti^ e evplanations of the manifestation vouchsaled to St 
Paul, The'i aie obliged to suppo e that a belief m Chiist 
existed in hini befcre he belie\ ed and an image of Chribt such 
as could onlj be formed afterwards before Christ appeared to 
him: they nnke him be con\erted while he was st 11 a 
Pharisee lagmg acpimst the Christians All these attempts 
are defeated b} then psvcholotjical inLoncen ableness fai more 
than by the difhuilty of evplaining the impression on the 
senses without an external appeamnce of f linst 

We re\ert to the issue before raised Does the appeaiance 
of our Lord to St Paul speak foi or a^amst the attempt to 
explain all His othei appeaianees as vitions and thus to deny 
the reality of the resurrection X Mi> we n t safelj say thit 
the endeaiour of Stmuss to employ the intbinal nature of this 
event as a handle to reduce aU the othei manifestations related 
in the Gospels to meie subjectne phenomena lecoils upon 
himself ? Justus the a;ppearance of th. itsen Saiunti to St 
Paul lefme Damascus can mil/ he conctticd as exffnml and 
hodily, so all thf other mamftstatvms enumoattd hy hini in 1 
Cor. XV. must he regaidi-d in, ble manner But tven were 
the former subjective the converse would not follow with 
certaint} mz that all the maniiestatiLns vouchsafed to the 
older apostles weie so too' Moieo\er m comparing both we 
should not o\eilook the distinction that befoie Damascus 
the body of oui Lord (about which however nothing is said) 

■ TLis is correctly stated by We ^sndpr I niei sue} uvgrn i ler d eiangelteclM 
Geiehkhle,p 6/0 Cf Keuu Dir geaj et tl die CI nstas p 137 



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490 THE RESUEBECTION OF CUEIST. [lECT. VII. 

was long since fully glorified (lience the Winding light) ; 
whereas, when appealing before the ascension, it was in a 
transitional stata 

Ent St. Paul is not merely an immediate eye-witness of 
the resurrection ; lie also testifies to it with his person and 
history. In his sudden transfm^ination, and in his entire svise- 
quevi life^orh, he appears as an incomparably eneigetic and 
joyous witness and maityr for the Chiiatian faith, who con- 
stantly refers his preaching to an immediate vocation by 
Christ. Re himself is me long liviny proof for the elective fact 
that the risen Saviour appeared before Damascus. 

This leads us from the historical credibility of our records 
— which was the first part of the proof demanded by Strauss 
— to the second, viz. that certain induUtaUe events cannot he 
explained without having recourse to the fact of the resurrection. 



m. COLLAPSE OF THE " VISIONAET " HYPOTHESIS IK CONSE- 
QUENCE OF INDUBITABLE CIKCUMSTANCES AND FACTS. 

Pe idc3 the conicrbim aid history of St Pail already 
allu le 1 to there is i series of other fact=' ill of whith no 
IBS', dt. nand the bodily lesnirectiun cf Ghii t as i necessary 
piecondition &uch are the Ithef of the discijhs in J their 
unanimous testimony that the resurrection toDk place on the 
tJiid daj the actual disappearance of iM bodj of Jesus out 
of the „rive the entire niol iwn m the disciples statt of 
mini after the risen Saviour had appealed to them and last 
but not least the world wide effecte. proceeding from the resur 
rect on Let us consider these a little moie closely 

Tic Mif of the disciples m the lodtly rea tri ection, of our 
Lord IS confessed by the critical school and this fact cannot 
he espial ud as the esilt of a mer iision If we picture to 
ourselves the condition and consciousness of the disc pies at 
that time we must first ask huu — inless their Master 
actually issued forth from the gra^e— coitW the idea 0/ the 
lesimcction occin to tJcm ^ They belie\ed, we are told, m the 
Messiahship of Christ, and in His victorious existence after 
death. But why should this belief take the shape of a fact so 
utterly uniimrd of, as that He should shortly come forth again 



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LtCT. Vri.] FAILUKE OF THE " VISIONARY " mTOTHESIS. 491 

from the grave ? It has been shown that at that time the 
belief in the resurrection of tlie dead at the last judgment was , 
current among the Jews ; but tho notion of the resurrection of 
a dead man, who leaves his grave in a body already transformed 
long before the judgment-day, was as little thought of by tho 
contemporaries of Christ (of, John xi. 24) as by any of the Old 
Testament writers. This idea was so foreign to the disciples, 
as -well as to the Jewish world in general, that had they 
had visions of Christ, their oidy conclusion could have been 
that His soul waa living iu heavenly glory ; but never that 
the Master who had died before their eyes had gone forth 
fram the grave again alive. Their belief in the resurrection 
was to all intents and purposes quite a ntw belief . " The Mes- 
sianic expectations of the Jews contained no idea correspond- 
ing to it." ^ But since it is undeniable that from their first 
public appearance the apostles preached of their Lord, who 
'had not onlj' been received up into heaven, but who had also 
risen again in body, we ask, how was this new element intro- 
duced into their view of the Messiah unless a fact ot their 
indubitable experience convinced them of it ? Strauss con- 
fesses that the Pharisees believed only in a resurrection at 
the last day, bnt adds, " There was no difficulty, from the stand- 
point of Jewish thought at that time, in supposing that the 
resurrection of some particularly holy man might take place 
earlier in an isolated instance" (pp. 303, 304). The artifice 
of supposing an exception in this one case will not help 
Strauss to get over this inconvenient difficulty. 

Moreover, we ask, whence did the disciples obtain the notion 
of a glorified bodj ? On other occasions when the dead were 
riiaed something quite diffcient took place, viz. a i-eturn to 
tho present no lal bod^ but not a transformation of this 
molt^l flesh into a jloiijiel body Besides, our critics main- 
tain thit these laismijs of the dead were myths or deceptions, 
and theiefoie cannot have been the source of this behef. The 
same is the case with the hist ly of our Lord's transfiguration, 
which Stiauss derives fiom the opinion of the Jewish Chris- 
tnm thit Moses was a type of ChiM (pp. 516 et ss.). "The 
belief in the rapture and heavenly life of Enoch, Elijah, or 
Moses, was rather a hindrance than otherwise to the applica- 
' WeizaaekeT, uli sap. p. 671. 



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^•''^ THE EESUKEECTION OF CHRIST. [LECT. YII, 

fcion of such notions to a man of the present age, especially 
one who had been seen to die " (Weizsacker, ubi mp.). Whence, 
then, could the idea of a glorified' body, with these apparently 
irrecoucdahle attributes of sudden disappearance and palpable- 
ness, proceed ? Our opponents have not as yet answered even 
these preliminary questions. 

^ With regard to the psychical possibility of visions, hallu- 
cinations, or phantasms, medical science teaches us,^ that in 
consequence of a strong excitement of the imagination, and of 
the cerebral activity thereby caused, the organs of sense may 
be affected in such a manner as to make the subject believe 
that it hears or sees an external object corresponding to the 
internal impression thus produced. There are impressions on 
the senses— piwceeding entirely from internal causes, without 
any corresponding external object— by which the ner\'es of 
sense aie affected precisely in the same manner as by an 
external perception ; the pei-son who has such impressions errs 
only in referring the image produced by them to some outward 
cause. However, these visionaries themselves do not always 
consider the image they see to be objective realities. But 
though self-deception in consequence of a vision is not im- 
possible, yet it must be remembered that a vision is always 
caused, in part at least, by some abnormal condition of the 
body. And how soon must a rnhjective image of this hind 
mnish lefore any attempt ai definite permial iriiercoiirse, accom- 
panied by conversation and touc-h ! 

Some upholders of the "visionary" hypothesis, without 
giving up the subjective ' character of these appearances, are 
willing to grant that influences without or from above—" a 
personal workmg of the departed spirit of Christ upon- His 
disciples"- may have helped to produce them. Is this any 
more conceivable than an appearance of the risen Saviour 
Himself? Or is a vision thus magically produced within the 
disciples more comprehensible than the resurrection ? Are 
not words and sounds (if they do not proceed from an illu- 
sion), without an actual appearance, more marvellous tlian the 
appearance itself? Do such explanations carry us a step 
beyond the nuraculous ? They are but one more proof of 

' Cf. ftmong others, Job. Miiller, Lehrbuch der Phydologie, voL ii. pp. 663 



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LECT. Vil.] FAILUEE OF THE "VISIONAEY" I1YP0TKE3I9. 493 

Eothe's maxim, that " without miracles the divine revelation 
must infallibly degenerate into magic." 

Our opponents are compelled further to suppose that the 
passionate imagination of the disciples stretched out its feelers 
after their indispensable Master. Instead of this, we see that 
on each occasion He appears to His followers qtiiie unex- 
pectedly ; so much so, that at first they will not believe, and 
He has to rebuke their unbelief. From this it is clear that 
they were not prepared for the immediate reappearance of 
Jesus, especially in the shape of a resurrection from the dead. 
Here the psychological precondition of visions is vianting. The 
deep dejection on account of their Master's shameful death 
could scarcely give wings to a new and joyous faith. We see 
the poor shepherdless sheep in fear of the Jews, in doubts 
and conflicts respecting theic Messianic hopes, in perplexity 
as to the future. These are not the frames of mind from 
which ecstatic visions might be expected to proceed, but 
rather the contrary. Por in other parts of the New Testament 
we see visions come upon tliose who are seeking for a deeper 
knowledge of God by means of tranquil contemplation, still 
communion, firm faith, and earnest prayer and fasting. 

And finally, the mental and physical impossibility of visions 
by so many people at once. Critics may talk of a chain of 
spiritual sympathy which can bind down whole assembKes at 
once. But in the New Testament, visions presuppose a certain 
moral and religious effort and frame of mind in the individual 
who has them, and cannot be shown to be "infectious." In 
this case, too, there would always be one who began and drew 
the others after him ; whereas, in various appearances of our 
Lord, many, ay hundreds, at once and simultaneously perceived 
Him. We do not deny that science can tell us of eases in 
which visions were seen by whole assemblies at once ; but 
■where this is the case, it has always been accompanied by a 
morhid excitement of the mental life, as well as by a morbjd 
bodily condition, especially by ner^^ous afiections. Now even 
if one or several of the disciples had been in this morbid state, 
we should by no means be justified in concluding that all 
were so. They were surely men of most varied temperament 
and constitution. And yet one after another is supposed to 
have fallen into this morbid condition; not only the excited 



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^Ji THE liESUJUlECTION OF CHEIST. [LECT. VII. 

women, but even Peter, that strong and hardy fisherman who 

was assuredly as far from nervousness as any one, — James, 

the two on their way to Emmaus, and so on down to the sober 
doubting Thomas, — ay, all eleven at once, and even more than 
five htindred brethren together. All of these are supposed 
suddenly to have fallen into the same self-deception, and that, 
be it remarked, at the most different times and places, and 
during the most varied occupations (mourning by the grave, 
in conversation by the wayside, in the confidential circle of 
friends, at work on the lake), ia which then- frames of mind 
mtist assuredly have been very varied, and their internal ten- 
dency to visions most uneven. This latter point especially is 
important in considering the psychological possibility of such 
simultaneous visions. 

And could they all of them have agreed to announce these 
visions to the world as bodily appearances of the risen Christ ? 
Or had they done so, could it have been pure self-deception 
and not intentional deceit ? Surely some one or other of them 
must afterwards seriously have asked himself whether the 
image that he had seen was a reality. Schleiermacher says 
most truly: "Whoever supposes that the disciples deceived 
themselves and mistook the internal for the external, accuses 
them of such mental weakness as must invalidate their entire 
testimony concerning Christ, and malre it appear as thou"-h 
Christ Himself, when He chose such witnesses, did not know 
what was in man (John ii. 2 5). Or if He Himself had willed 
and oi-dained that they should mistalre inward appearances for ■ 
outward perceptions, He would have been tJie author of enor, 
and all moral ideas would be confounded if this were com- 
patible with His Jiigh dignity." 

Here we must again refer to the great distinction between the 
appearances of the risen Saviour and the real visions related in 
the New Testament. How entu-ely different wastlie vision of 
dying Stephen, who saw Jesus in heaven, and not upon earth ! 
how different the vision of St Peter, who was " in a trance " 
(Acts X. 10), and did not see Jesus at all! how different the 
ecstatic condition in which the early Christians spoke in 
different tongues, but did not see anything ! how different, as 
we saw, the visionary trance of St. Paul ! (2 Cor. xii,) The 
'■' visions of the Lord" mentioned here are not " brauf ht into 



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LECT. VIL] failure OF THE " VISIOSAUY " HYIOTHESIS. 41)5 

any connection -whatever with appearances of the risen Christ " 
(Keim), either by St. Paul or by his opponents. If, then, the 
New Testament writers well know what visions and ecstatic 
conditions are, why do they always depict the appearances 
of Christ quite differently ? why do they never say of the 
disciples, to whom these were vouchsafed, that they " fell into 
a trance " ? Clearly, because the early Church considered 
those appearances as distinct and separate from the later 
visions. 

Hence it is not possible to assume that those later visions 
were a continuation of the first appearances of Clirist But if 
the latter soon ceased, a new difliculty arises i'or the visionary 
hypothesis (cf Keim, uU sup. pp. 136 et ss.). Why should 
these visiom of Christ have lasted only for aftwweeks and no 
longer ? " If the visions passed like electric shocks through 
rank and file, through the twelve and the five hundred ; if they 
continued day by day and week by week ; then psychological 
science would teach us to expect an uninterrupted communica- 
tion of these impulses, — a continuous intensification of mutual 
infection in the great vibrating body, — an indolent life of 
visionary self-gratification in imaginary intercourse with the 
indispensable Master; but not a diminution, stoppage, and 
transition to healthy energy." The enigma would remain to 
be solved, how the Church cotiid so quickhj sober down from her 
visionary condition ; since thus much at least is certain, that 
she by no means boasted herself of continued appearances of 
her risen Lord. 

From ail this we see how little the belief of the disciples 
in the resurrection can be explained by means of visions, and 
how little likelihood, or even possibility there is, psychologi- 
cally speaking, in their case for the development of visionary 
conditions of mind or body. But there ai'e still more import- 
ant circumstances which cannot be explained except by the 
fact of Christ's bodHy resurrection. 

We have seen that all the biblical accounts agree in stating 
that the Lord arose " on the third day." Strauss himself feels 
(p. 316) that it is hard to assign an unhistorical origin to this 
definite date. For it cannot be denied that the resmTection 
must fiom the very beginning have been regarded by the 
disciples as an event which took place on the third day ; for 



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4»b THE KESUERECTION OP CHRIST. [lECT, VII. 

we find in the Christian observance of Sunday a lituigical fruit 
of this belief, and one -winch can lie proved to have been extant 
as early as the apostolic age. Hence the visions, too, must 
have begun on the third day. Strauss is well aware that (he 
developinent of a vtsioiiary condition absolutely demands a mudb 
longer space of time tJuin « dai/ and a half, after which short 
period the violent death of Jesus was in fres.h remembrance. 
So he tries, as we saw, to get out of the difficulty by saying 
that St. Paul teUs us that Christ rose on the third day, but not 
that He appeared then. But the two cannot be separated. 
How could the disciples know that Jesus rose on the third 
day if He did not then appear to them, or seem to do so ? 
Had the visions, as Strauss maintains, not begun till later 
on in Galilee, what reason could the disciples have had for 
fixing the thii-d day as the date of the resurrection ? It could 
not have been in order that Christ's former prophecy might 
be fulfilled, for Strauss does not recognise prophecies. And 
assuredly they would have been far more likely to change the 
prophecy according to its fulfilment than vice versa. In these 
straits Strauss has recourse to a desperate evasion. He says 
that the third day " would seem in a measure to have been 
the proverhial designation of a short tmie, meaning that a 
matter should be carried through without impediment" (p. 
317), i.e. it means "after some time." This is a discovery 
for which Strauss may claim the sole credit, since there is no 
trace of it either in the Old or Kew Testiment For Hosea 
vi 2 is a typical prophecy which was fulfilled, or began to be 
fulfilled, in the resurrection of Christ on the thud day ; and 
in Luke xiii. 32, the true rendering is not "the third day I 
shall le perfected, " but, " the third day / shall finish," viz. my 
work in this region, and is to be taken literally, 

Such subterfuges are vain. Even a critic \i\e Hilgenfeld 
lias lately confessed that the one distinct and unanimou.s 
testimony for " the third day " is, for the reasons above stated, 
of itself sufficient to overthrow the visionary hypothesis. We 
have already seen how untenable and arbitrmy are the attempts 
of Sti'auss, by means of -wresting the biblical accounts, to show 
tliat the first appearances of the risen Saviour took place in 
Galilee. If the testimony for the third day is sure, then it is 
clear that the telief in the resuiTection could only have arisen 



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LECT. VXI.] FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOTHESIS. 497 

at Jei-usalem, and that the first appearances must have taken 
place there. Tor it is self-evident that the disciples could 
not have been in GaHlee as early as the third day, even had 
the intervening day not been a Sabbath. Therefore Strauss 
supposes the disciples to have been in Jerusalem on that 
day. 

But if Jerusalem became the ciadle of belief in the resuiTec- 
tion so soon after the death of Christ, u-Jiat would have been 
easier for the emmies, when this was announced as a fact to the 
people, than to confute the apostles by &£Mming the corpse of 
their Master ? 

This IS another great difficulty which lies in the way of our 
opponents : IVJuit became of the body oj Jesus ? The visiomiy 
hypotlmis cannot explain the fact of the empty grave, which even 
Sehenkel acknowledges as undeniable. Strauss is of opinion 
that when, at the fea'^t of Pentecost^ Christ, was announced as 
havmg risen, neither His followers nor the Jews probably 
knew any longer which was the place of His burial, nor would 
they, on account of their honor of corpses, feel inclined to 
search after the body. " Jesus had perhaps been hastily in- 
terred, along with others who had suffered capital punishment, 
in some dishonourable spot; and when the apostles after a 
considerable time appeared with the announcement that he 
had risen, it must have been difficult ior their opponents to 
produce his corpse in a condition recognisable enough to afford 
proofs against them" (p. 312). If the resurrection, we 
answer, had been only a visionaiy deception, the evangelists 
would certainly have been obliged to take care that Jesus 
should appear to have been buried in some unknown spot, in 
order that a search should be difficidt. But what do they 
relate ? That Jesus was openly and honourably buried in a 
place quUe near to Golgotha, well known not only to the 
disciples, but to the Jewish councillors and the Eoman magis- 
trates ; and even that the Sanhedrim had the grave sealed, 
and put a watch before it, so that the burial-place of " the' 
king of the Jews " must doubtless have been known through- 
out the town. Shall we then, it has been well said, suppose 
that none of Chrisfs followers, not even tlie possessor of the 
garden, was so dislnistful or curious as to go to look at the grave 
himself when the women told of the appearance of Jesus ? 



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493 THE EESURRECTION OF CHBIST. [LECT. VII. 

Sliall we imagine that no one out of the great number of His 
enemies was prudent enough to examine the tomb, and have the 
corpse, which assuredly would have still been in some degree 
recognisable even after weeks, brought out, since it must have 
been of the utmost importance to them openly to convict 
Christ's followers of a falsehood ; while, as regards their horror 
of corpses, there were doubtless enough Gentile menials in 
Jerusalem whom they could have employed ? Instead of this, 
we are told that they preferred to confess the fact of the gi'ave 
being found emptj', in oi-der. to saddle the disciples with the 
accusation of stealing the corpse ! The " criticism " which can 
make such statements as these, itself needs criticising very 
much. 

Others have thought to evade the question by supposing 
that some unknown adorer of Christ took away the coi-pse 
without the knowledge of the apostles,— thus basing this 
world-wide and world-ruling belief on an accident or a fraud ! 
Are not such fancies as these signs that our critics are in 
despair ; that, in the consciousness of having exhausted all their 
sagacity in textual criticism, in psychology, and philosophy, 
on the vain attempt to overturn the rock of our Christian faith, 
they are now reduced to substituting the windiest hypotheses 
for the liistorical testimonies which they reject ? The empty, 
open tomb, with its loud question : Where is His body ? puts 
all their attempts to shame. 

Add to all these grounds for the reality of our Lord's 
resurrection the last and weightiest, viz. tJie immeaswrable effect 
exercised hy this helief on the disciples and on the world. Take, 
first o£ all, the sudden revolution in the frame of mind and in 
the hehaviour of the disciples, which can no more be explained 
as the result of visions in their case than in that of St. Paul. 
Before the resuri'ection we see the disciples so fearful ; they 
scatter when the Master is bound ; the most courageous of 
them denies his Lord before a servant-girl; only secretly do 
they dare to meet with " doors shut for fear of the Jews ;" — 
and afterwards, though holding their lives in their hands, they 
step forward so fearlessly before the whole nation, before the 
judges and murderers of their Master, and preach His resurrec- 
tion with a joyousness that cannot be intimidated by any 
tlireats or ill-usage. Beforehand, they are so shaken and 



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lECT. VII.] FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOTHESIS. 499 

broken down by the sudden death of their Messiah, that their 
hope in Him as the Eedeemer of Israel is vanished, their own 
lutnre and that of their faith enveloped in impenetrable dark- 
ness ; and suddenly a light of hope is kindled in them which 
even the most violent storm of persecution cannot extinguish. 
All at once they are clearly conscious of their vocation ; an 
intrepid, joyous faith, a holy zeal, a consciousness ot victory, 
fills their hearts, and impels them to go to Jews and Gentiles 
to conquer the world for their Master, and upholds and com- 
forts them in tribulation and death. And this new faith finds 
an entrance everywhere ; only becomes stronger and more 
firmly rooted through opposition and persecution; can be 
damped by no power, either of the sword or of science ; in a 
stupendous revolution it conquers the world, and regenerates it 
morally and spiritually; it embodies itself in a living and 
growing Church which has penetrated to all nations, and al- 
ready lasted for eighteen centuriea Are we, then, to believe that 
the imptUse to these immeaswraUe effects proceeded from msions 
and nervous convulsions ; from the visionary or epileptic con- 
stitution of hysterical women and weak-nerved men ; that the 
disciples derived the clear knowledge of their extensive task 
from a fleeting vision ; that the light of the Christian Church, 
the sobriety and truth of its spirit, and the earnestness of its 
moral energy, came from over-excited nerves ; ay, that the 
moral regeneration of the world proceeding therefrom had its 
origin in error and self-deception ? Are we to believe that the 
gi'eat Fact which has afforded a suflicient explanation of the 
history of the Church and the development of the world up to 
this present moment, in the end dwindles down to the phan- 
toms of a diseased imagination or " la passion d'une hallu- 
cinde " ? Believe that who will ; call it what you please, only 
not rational or natural ; and be sure that it will never stand 
before the Judgment-seat of history or of conscience. 

Ko ; tJte enormous weight of tliese historical effects produced hy 
the hdief in the resurrection, must crush every effort to derive it 
from anything tut the fact thai Jesus Christ, the great Hedeetner 
of the world, actually did hwrst the bonds of death by rising on 
that Easter momin-g. Who is unacquainted with the law of 
the sufficing reason ? In view of the facts enumerated, we 
must say that, if anywhere, this law is lost sight of in the 



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OfU THE RESURRECTION OP CHRIST. [LECT. VII. 

visionary hypothesis. Pi-oeeeding, as it does, from a desperate 
desire to get rid of the miraculous at any price, this theory 
shares the fate which we have seen pertains to every such 
undertaking. Wishing to do away with the supernatural, it 
falls into the unnatural, unhistorical, irrational. For eighteen 
hundred years Christ's hody, the Church, has heen living and 
conquering ; and should her Head not he fully living, hut half 
remained in death ? Of a truth, unheHef believM what is 
most incredible. 

What, then, is fki result of our investi'gatwn ? It is this : 
that both the proofs demanded by Strauss to substantiate the 
feet of the resurrection are niost fidly ftirnished, viz. tlie his- 
torical eredibilUy of the records, and the necessity of this event in 
order to explain other indahitaUy certain facts. The historical 
testimonies for the resurrection as an outward fact ai-e firmly 
established ; they are equal to anythuig which may be de- 
manded of a sure record of ancient times ; and, as regards the 
Epistles of St. Paul, they are unimpugned by any criticism, 
nor can they possibly be interpreted as mere internal events. 
And a series of indubitable events subsequent to the death of 
Christ,— facts of spiritual and external experience in the history 
of the apostles ; indeed, the entu^ development of the Chris- 
tian Church,— all these form an inexplicable enigma without 
the fact of the resurrection. 

On the other hand, the task that Strauss has set himself 

to make us comprehend the belief in the resurrection without 
miracles, or else to give up his entire undertaking as a failure 
—has in no case been accomplished without open violence 
and arbitrariness. Sis explanatory attempts, as well as those of 
all other anti-miracfiilous critics, are entangled in an endless 
chain of enigmas and difficulties. Difficulties exsgetical : there 
is the clear testimony of St. Paul, and the great distinction 
made by New Testament writers between the description of 
visions and the narratives of our Lord's appearances. Diffi- 
culties psychological : all likelihood is wantmg for the supposi- 
tion that so many and such differently constituted persona 
should, even by hundreds at a time, have been simultaneously 
predisposed to see visions ; there is the sudden and thorough 
change ia the disciples' frame of mind, especially, too, the 
sudden conversion of St. Paul ; and finally, the speedy cessation 



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LECT. Vri.] FAILURE OP THE " VISIONARY " II Y I' U THESIS. 501 

of our Lord's appe<aranees. Difficulties dogmatical: arising 
from the questiou, "Whence should the idea of an isolated 
individual reaurrection, hitherto foreign to their belief, arise 
in the minds of the disciples ? Difficulties chronological : 
unanimous historical evidence points to " the third day," and 
thia leaves no space for the gradual development of visions, or 
for the translocation of the first appearances to Galilee. Diffi- 
culties topographical : there, in a \veII*known spot, stands the 
empty tomb, with its loud question. Where is the body ? 
■which neither Jew nor Eoman attempts to answer, though 
investigation would have been easy. Difficulties historical : 
there is the firm and immovable belief of the disciples in their 
Lord's resurrection, their preaching so full of victorious joy 
and martyr's courage, which not even their most bitter enemies 
dare on this point to gainsay ; there is the Christian Sunday, 
a continual celebration of the first Easter victory ; there is the 
Christian Church, founded and victoriously growing on the 
rock of her belief in the crucified and risen Saviour. And 
finally, difficulties moral : there is the entire moral regenera- 
tion of the world which proceeded from the preaching of the 
apostles ; there we see the kingdom of truth coming, and are 
told to believe, as has been well said, that at first it was 
false, afterwards it constantly became more true, and at length 
" developed " into the sublimest truth ! 

The critic is not yet bom who could overcome all these 
obstacles. Where the supernatural so palpably intrudes into 
history as in the resurrection of Christ, reason would be far 
more prudent, humbly and thankfully to mount this rock 
which " stands as the mountain of God," and thus continuously 
to increase her range of vision, than to expose one weak point 
after another by making futile efforts to undermine it. 

A word to my readers ! After the foregoing investigation, 
I may well utter the conclusion, that if any one among you 
imagines himself to be justified in his unbelief by the criticism 
of Strauss or Eaur, he is greatly deceived. In his earlier days 
(when still a believer in the Bible), Baur once said, " Aa 
assuredly as the origin of the Christian Church can only be 
accounted for by a firm belief in the risen Saviour, so certain 
is it that this belief in its turn could rest upon no other 
ground than that of the historical truth of Christ's resurrec- 



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502 THE RESUBEECTION OF CHEIST. [lect. TIL 

tion ;"* nor did all the labours of Baur's later years suffice to 
overthrow this position. 

But in addition to these more negative grounds of defence, 
consider, too, the positive counlerproofs of the neeessiti/ of the 
remirectt&tt, — this most comforting and hope-inspiring fact ia 
tlie -whole history of humanity ; proofs which are not only of a 
historical, but also of a dogmatic nature. They proceed, as we 
hinted at the outset, from the nature of Christ's Person . As 
the sinless and holy Son of God, He could not see corruption ; 
death could not hind Him continuously, since He had life in 
Himself; and in laying down His life He manifested Himself 
as eternal Love, which must live eternally because itself is life. 
They proceed from the omnipotence and justice of the divine 
government, which would have been annihilated had it left 
the Holy One of God — in whose crucifixion sin and the power 
of darkness had celebrated their greatest triumph — to corrupt 
in the grave ; had it not crowned Him, who for our sakes was 
forsaken on the cross, with glory and honour. They proceed 
from the work of Christ, the crown of which would be wanting 
unless through His resurrection He confirmed His death as 
beintr a sacrifice for us, and not for Himself, and thereby over- 
came the last enemy — even death. They proceed from the 
presence of the Holy Ghost, whom Christ imparts, and sends in 
consequence of His resurrection and ascension (John xv. 26, 
XX. 22 ; Acts ii. 33) ; and from the personal experience of 
believers, who through that same Holy Ghost constantly expe- 
rience the sanctifying and beatific influences of the Saviour's 
resurrection-life (Rom. vi. 4 ; Col. ii. 1 2 et ss., iii 1 et ss. ; 
1 Pet. i. 3) ; because the Lord is not only the risen One, but 
also the Eesurrection and the Life (John xi. 25). They pro- 
ceed from the internal coherence in the history of God's kinfjdom, 
— for with the resurrection of Christ the second spiritual period 
of man's history begins, which will be fully realized at the end 
of this age,-— and hence, too, from the idea of the world's con- 
summatim ; the resurrection and transformation of Christ being 
the divine pledge of that general resurrection and transforma- 
tion in which, as its aim and end, the history of mankind, as 
well as that of nature, is eventually to be merged, when this 
earthly sphere shall be transformed into a heavenly, Con- 
' BaBgel's ATcIaiifS.T Tlieologie, iroL ii. part 3, p. 715. 



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LECT. VII.] FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOinESlS. 503 

sider, I pray you, all these grounds together, and then I think 
that the q^nestion of the resurrection on which your whole 
belief and your whole hope depends, will no longer cause you 
doubts. 

The enemies of Jesus once placed a watch at His grave, 
that the body might not be stolen. Now, we ourselves stand 
before His empty tomb, to guard it with these arguments, and 
with the experimental proof of His resurrection-power working 
in our lieai'ts, that none may again bury the Lord of glory. 

Now if the resurrection be an established fact, we must 
remember that, according to Strauss' own confession, his entire 
undertalring is a failure, and the inadequacy of the purely 
natural human view of the life of Christ ia proved (p. 288). 
JFor if this great central miracle of the resurrection stand firm, 
so does all that precedes and follows it : the miraculous deeds 
of Christ, the truth of His redeeming death. His ascension and 
the outpouring of the Holy Ghost ; yes, even His miraculous 
birth and divine Sonship ; for if the consummation of His life 
were such a miracle, may we not fairly conclude that its 
beginning was also miraculous ? By raising Christ from the 
dead, God Himself has testified and confirmed that He is what 
the Church has ever maintained and worshipped— His only- 
begotten Son. Thus our belief in Him is, in every essential 
particular, shielded against the attacks of criticism and 
mythicism, and those words remain true in which the Lord 
has comprehended the entire miraculous history of His 
Church : " Pear not ; I am the First and the Last : I am He 
that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for ever- 
more" (Kev. i. 17 and 18), 



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EIGHTH- LECTURE. 

THE MODERN CRITICAL THEORY OP PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 

IK the preceding Lecture we adduced the origin of the 
Christian Church, and the moral regeneration o£ the world 
which sprang therefrom, as a principal argument for the 
reality of our Lord's resurrection. But what if the formation 
■ of Christianity, its life and its doctrines, should prove to be 
merely the natural historical result of a necessary process of 
development ? Clearly, if this, the greatest phenomenon in 
the world's history, can be shown to be a merely natural link 
in the chain of events, then the miraculous and all supernatural 
revelations from God are absolutely eliminated from the 
history of mankind. The Tubingen critical school has led 
the van in this last and most comprehensive attempt, made 
under an inward compulsion by modem criticism, to exclude 
God from history. For as long as men could not help re- 
garding Christianity, at least in respect of its doctrim, 
as lying beyond all analogies of human wisdom, it w'as in 
itself, in the uniqueness of its spiritual purport, an actual 
proof for the truth of supernatural revelation, — an immediate 
attestation of its Founder's divinity. Nor was it then of 
much use to quarrel about the external history and its miracu- 
lous or natural origin. Only if the fundamental ani essential 
ideas ot Christianity can be fully connected with natural and 
human factors already extant, and shown to he their intrinsi- 
cally necessary development, would the battle be thoroughly 
and once for all decided in favour of the modern anti-mii-acu- 
lous view ot history. For this reason the chiet efforts of the 
critical school have been directed towards the elucidation of 
primitive Christianity and its internal formation, towards the 
proof of a connection between its doctrines and the elements 
of spiritual culture which were abeady extant, and especially 
towards the investigation of its records. 



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LECT. VIII.] PKIMITIVE CHEISTIANITY, 605 

Our entire research into the existence of the supernatural 
and of the miraculous can, therefore, only be completed by an 
examination of the modem critical theory as to primitive 
Christianity. We have gained a firm foothold for this under- 
taking by our discussion of the resurrection,-— as being the 
most decisive epoch in the history of Christianity, tlie corner- 
stone on which the entire edifice of Christian teaching was 
erected, — and also by our consideration of St. Paul's con- 
version. If our opponents should, nevertheless, succeed in 
eliminating the supernatural element from the growth of 
doctrine in the apostolic age, wc should find it difficult to 
retain this factor even in the Pei-son of Christ. If, on the 
contrary, we can prove to them that it is absolutely impos- 
sible to explain the origin and growth of Christianity from 
merely natural and historical sources, without acknowledging 
the interference of a supernatural factor, then they can have 
no rational ground for denying the miraculous in general, 
but will he compelled to acknowledge the interposition of 
supernatural divine power's in all periods of the world's 
history. 

But there is another reason yet why the discussion of this 
question should form the conclusion of our investigations. 
Of all modem opponents of our old faith, we now stand be- 
fore the greatest, whom hitherto we have only mentioned 
cm-sorily. Writing as he did, only for the learned world, his 
name is less known to the public at large than those of Strauss, 
Eenan, and others, but it will remain inscribed in the history 
of modern theology when that of many others, now known to 
every one, will have long since been eifaced. Dr. Ferdinand 
Christian von Baur, professor of theology at Tubingen (died 
2d December 1860), was one of the greatest, if not the 
greatest, theological scholar of this century ; after the death of 
Neander, the most notable historian of the Church and her 
doctrines, not only in Germany, but in the world ; the most 
indefatigable of investigators, especially as regards the history 
of primitive Christianity, in the elucidation of which he has 
deserved well of theology. He stands a head and shoulders 
above all other modem opponents of the miraculous. From 
him they all learn and draw their supplies ; they are fain to 
appropriate the fruits of his enormous diligence it they wish 



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506 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. [lECT. Vin. 

not merely to beat the air, bat methodically to storm tbe 
citadel of our Christian iaith. Strauss himself, in the presence 
of this man, confesses his backwardness : " I expected," says 
he, " with the presumption of youth, to storm the fortress by 
a single assault ; but it remained for my greater master to 
undertake a scientific siege, before -which its walls must fall" 

And, in truth, if human power, human diligence and acute- 
ness, could ever bring about the overthrow of our faith, this 
man would have accomplished it But our present theology 
is daily becoming more convinced that he was incompetent to 
this task, and that, in spite of all his unutterable exertions, 
he did not succeed in proving the merely natural origin of 
Christianity. This is one of the surest signs that the rock 
upon which our faith is founded is absolutely indestructible. 
To impress you with this conviction is the last aim of these 
lectures. 

For this purpose, we will first make ourselves acquainted 
with the principles of Eaur and his school, and their repre- 
sentation of primitive Christianity thereupon founded ; and 
ieconS,, we will endeavour to give a critique of their theory. 



L THE PEIHCIPLES OF THE TUEBISGEN SCHOOL. 

Eaur once blamed Strauss for venturing to write a critique 
of the gospel history without a preceding critical investigation 
of the Gospels ; and we ourselves have seen that Strauss passes 
over this point too lightly, even in his new edition of the Lif& 
of Christ. It is this gap which the Tiibingen School endea- 
vours to fill up. The weak point of Strauss is the strong 
point with these critics, or at least that to which they devote 
their chief attention. Their maxim is, that we must recur 
from the criticism of history to ihat of the kistoriml writings. 
Ko certain conclusions as to the history of the life of Christ, 
or the origin of the Christian Church, can be arrived at until 
we have discovered by whom, under what influences, and 
with what tendency the different books of the New Testament 
were written. Thus the chief importance of the Tiibingen 
School — i.e. of Baur and his followers, Schwegler, E. Kostlin, 
ZeUer, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, etc. — lies in the critical investigi- 



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LECT. VIIL] the PEIKCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL. 507 

timi into the origin of the New Testament, and the history of (lie 
apostolic and post-apostolic age, with its peculiarly constituted 
parties. 

In order to comprehend the motive principle of these inves- 
tigations, we must remember that the zenith of this school's 
development coincides with tliat of the Hegelian philosophy 
at Tubingen. The whole of Baur's conception of history is 
accordingly pervaded by the Hegelian philosophy. Though he 
may gradually have overcome much of its onesidedness, he was 
to the last governed by its fundamental idea, viz. the imma- 
nence of God and the world, according to which the relation 
of the divine and human spirit must be conceived as essential 
unity, not as personal distinction and intercourse.^ God does 
not live and reign above the world and its changes ; He is 
only realized in and with it, and tlie history of the world is 
the process of absolute Being, which developes with an iron 
necessity according to natural laws. All that appears in 
nature and history is a revelation of the eternal Idea. But 
the latter is never fuUy reahzed in a single individual, only 
in the general development taken as a whole. The individual, 
as such, always stands in a certain contradictory relation to 
the universal Idea, negatives it, and must therefore itselt" be 
negatived. This eternally restless and aimless process is the 
continuous negation of a negation in which one phenomenon 
always calls forth the next, so that each can he connected 
with the preceding one and explained from it. In this mono- 
tonous path the world's history, and likewise the history of the 
Church, as of all religious development, is ever marching on. 

Witli this fundamental view, Banr could not but consider 
the doctrines " of an eternally self-periected personality of 
God, of a spontaneous creation of the world, of ain and moral 
perversion originating from the freedom of man, of man's per- 
sonal immortality, as imperfect notions of religious belief. 
But above all he must, if consistent, reject the doctrines of a 
truly supematiiral revelation, and of a miraculous, unique union 

' Fot until kter, when Baur's historical principles had heen long since 
settled, did ho appear to raeognise the personality of God Bomewhatmore fully ; 
when, e.g., he says: " If God be troly conceived as a Spirit, theneither Hemust 
he as such immediately personal, or else it is not evident what the attribute ef 
piirsonality can contrihute to the conception of God ok (he absolute Being." 



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50S PRIMITIVE CHKISriANITr. [lect. VIII. 

of Go J and 11 m in Chist and of "Sinless peifectuii in tlie 
hi'-tji (,il Chiist IS thp Fedeempr and SjMOur of Lhe ^voild 
These lie raut,t trinsmute into the idea of the es&entiil unity 
of the divme and human bpmt ani of & continuous nccessiiy 
reeoncihition and union of both which must he piincipTlly 
accomphshed hy the moral self de\ elopment of man ' 

iFioin tins it is evident thit on the standpoint of Pani the 
miraculous ts imposaiUe Eveijthmg talveb place m a neces 
sary natural development in which one phenomenon he^ietb 
anothei and m which theiefoie nothing can foim an ahsoh tely 
new hegmnmg (which la the natuie of a miiacle viit, p 293) 
but all IS onlj the lesult o£ geims and canoes alread} extant 
Not even Ghnstiamty may foira any evce^tion to this abso- 
lutely valid law It mnat theiefore illow of bem^ included 
Ob a histon-al phiiw 7161101} in the untieibal deiehpTiuiii vf the 
lomld bj bemg consideied as a peiiod m the general develop- 
ment of reh^ious consciousness It hod no niinculous begin- 
nino. nor ha.~, theie appeared m Chiist any absolutely new 
principle which could have been the sudden and unmediated 
commencement of a new development Chndiamty ts ily 
the natural miity of all "pie Chiibtzan schonh 0/ thotglit the 
iipe truit ot all the higher loUj^m^s tfiat had hitheito stiiied 
amou^&t all branches of the gieit human family Baai will 
not acknowledge an) othei view of history as entirelj un- 
biassed or //"te from ft psup^ositwas as he likes to call it. 
Foi liim a strictly scientihc xeseaich is onlj that which 
ex ludes all supematunl mteifeience of God in 1 istoiy and 
seel s to deiive eveij ^hencmenon fiom puielj natural causes. 
Hence to this day the peculiar fashion prevalent d,mon<>&t the 
opponents of all po itive belief of acknowledging as saentific ' 
only those theories which tend to deny the supernatuial i,nd 
of accusing all others of being " biassed by dogmatic presup- 
positions " and " unscientific :" as if a belief in the supernatural 
must exclude strict logic, and did not rather improve it ; as 
if it darkened our rational knowledge, and did not rather 
enlighten and extend it. 

Baur maintained these anti-miraculous principles to the last, 

' Lunderer, Wot'le der Ermnertaig art F. C. v. BaUT, p, 3S. Cf. tins pam- 
phlet also for tha following jiages. 
' Sti'auss, Leben Jean, p. 167. 



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LECT, THI,] THE PEIHCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGES SCHOOL, 509 

" Wlioevei he wutea^ can see m the lnc^m■^tlOIl cf tl e '^ou 
of God notluUo but an ib^olute iinacle must theielygj\e 
up all hiatoncal conne tion The miraculous is an il olute 
beginning "inl the n ore thii heg nnirg is the jiecond tnn of 
all that follows the moie must the whole Eenes f phen n pnt 
which belong to the re^icn oi Lbiiotiinit> bear the imprest, of 
the same minculous t-hii'icter It it the fiist point tl e hi 
torieal continuity is lent asunder then i similar interruption 
is possible it e^ery sueceeling sta^e It it. therefore very 
natural that historical investigation should m its own interest 
"seek to include the imt acle of the absolute bbgitim.mg m tfteonehis 
torieal conneeiion, and dissolve it as far as possible into its ncitural 
elements." Similarly he remarks in another passage : * "It ia 
undeniable that tJie tendeney of historical consideration must be 
to bring down the supernatural and . miraculous, which consti- 
tutes the specific character (?) of Christianity, to an absolute 
minimum; nor can it, from its very nature, have any other 
tendency. Its taak ia to investigate what has happened in 
the connection of its causes and effecta ; but the miraculous, 
in its absolute sense, deatroys the natural connection." So 
only that can be historical investigation which tries to get rid 
of the miraculous as far as possible. But what if the miracu- 
lous itself were historical ? 

Thus Baur from the outset declares war gainst the miracu- 
lous ; but he employs a peculiar method in getting rid of it. 
We have already seen how, for this purpose, the Nationalists 
make use of the " natural," i.e. nniiatural explanation of iso- 
lated miraclea: how Strauas and Eenan class miracles iu general 
under the head of legends and fabrications. Baur, on the 
other hand, does not engage in many akirmishes about isolated 
miracles ; though, where he does so, he assumes either that 
they were legends of unintentional origin, or still oftener, 
didactic fabrications. His chief endeavour ia to divest the 
2>bxno7iU7wn of Christianiti/ as a wlwle of its miraculous cha- 
racter.; and this he does by deriving the elements oi the Chris- 
tian religion as much as possible from conceptions and ideas 
already extant in Judaism and heatheniam, and by connecting 
them with these, as though they were the products of a natural 

' Daa Ghriateat! vnl « l-nd-U JakrhundeHe, 2d ed. p. 1, 
"Die TaHnger Schiile, p. 14. 



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510 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. [lECT, VIII. 

development. The substance of history, as extracted by his criti- 
cism, — bvit often, too, invented by it.— is of its own accord to 
show the fiupeifluousness and impossibiUty of miracles. The 
means by wbich he seeks to eliminate the miraculous, is, in 
short, the demonstration of historical analogies and points of 
contact between the pre-Christian and the Christian view of 
the world and of God. 

How, then, does Eaur discover these ? He looks for certain 
views which are common on the one hand to the nature of 
Christianity, and on the other to the general character of that 
age. " The more decidedly such common points of connection 
appear, the clearer is the light which they cast upon the his- 
torical origin of Christianity itself." ^ Such, e.g., is the idea 
of universalism. This was derived by Christianity from the 
world-wide Koman empire. " In its universahsm Christianity 
stood upon the same level to which the Roman State had raised 
itself by its world-wide monarchy. . . . The universalism 
of Christianity never could have penetrated into the general 
consciousness of the nations had not the way been prepared 
for it by political universalism. In its essence, Christian 
universalism is the general form of consciousness to which the 
development of mankind up to the appearance of Christianity 
had attained." 

Christianity became the absolute religion on account of its 
purely spiritual character, since it is more free from all that is 
merely outward and sensuous than any other rehgion, and 
more deeply founded on the principles of moral consciousness, 
laiowing no other worship of God than that which takes place 
in spirit and in truth. The specifie pre-eminence of Chris- 
tianity in its character as the absolute religion, is based upon 
the fact, that in it man becomes conscious of himself as a moral 
subject. " That which exalts Christianity, as against all other 
belief, to the dignity of the absolute religion, is in the last 
instance nothing but the purely moral character of its facts (I), 
doctrines, and recLuirements." * This aspect of Christianity is 
connected with the Greek philosophy/, through which, since the 

• Daa ClirisUtUltvim der ersten drei Jolirliunderte, pp. 2-22, 
' Die Tiihiager Sdade «. iJtre Stellang zur Oei/eaioarl (2d ed. pp. 30 et sa.). 
Cf. witt what followa, Beokh, "Die TUbiiiger historisohe Schule," in tho Ztit- 
tehriftfUr Proleslaittismita «. Kirdie tor Match and April 186*. 



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LECT. VIII.] THE PEISCIPLES OF THE TUEBIKGES SCHOOL. 511 

time of Socrates, men had become acquainted with the concep- 
tion of the mhjeci. The philosophy of Plato, more especiiiUy, 
is very nearly related to Christianity, even in its ideal gronnd- 
Tvork, His doctrines respecting a Creator of the world, the 
immortality of the soul, the essential affinity between man and 
God, of man's need of communion with God,— the way in which 
he recognises the dependence of man on a higher world, from 
which alone he can receive instruction as to divine things, — 
all these are so many points of contact with Christianity, 
Other tendencies of thought, at least negatively, paved the way 
for Christianity, since by their errors or onesidedness they 
called forth a revulsion of the religious consciousness in the 
opposite direction. Thus, e.g., the haughty self-contentment 
of the Stoic formed as great a contrast to Christianity as did 
the voluptuousness of the Epicurean to Christian self-denial. 
The more onesided the suijedive character of philosophy in 
the sceptical systems which despaired of attaining to any cer- 
tainty of truth, the more must the necessity of an oijjactive 
foundation tor the truth become clear to men. There naturally 
followed a revulsion of consciousness from the subjective to 
the objective, from philosophy to religion, from mere specula- 
tion to the belief in actual revelations of God- 
But the chief factor to which attention must be directed in 
considering the origin of Christianity is Judaism. Christianity 
is nothing but Judaism spiritualised. And this spiritualization 
of Judaism was made way for in the Old Testament by the 
prophets. Their writings " already contain the elements of a 
religion which only needed to be brought into a more general 
form of consciousness in order to become Christianity." As 
for the national impress and the particularism of the Jewish 
rehgion which is opposed to Christianity, it had broken through 
these bounds in the religious philosophy of Alexandria — this 
Hellenic Judaism— by the allegorical inteiyretation of the Old 
Testament. In this way a means had been discovered of 
extending at pleasure the scope of the Old Testament, and 
hence there originated " a more universal form of the religious 
consciousness which already possessed something of the spirit 
of Christianity." ..." In fact, we constantly find germs of 
Christianity wherever Judaism or heathendom returns witliiu 
itself. As often as this happens, a more universal and seli- 



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512 PKIIIITIVE CHRISnANITT, [LECT. Till, 

dependent form of religious consciousness is in process of 
development." The ascetic aspect of Christianity iinally, its 
renunciation of the possessions and pleasures of this life- and 
Its =iefiiation from the woill stand in close relaticnslip with 
the sects of the Thenjeuteb and Es^enes who withdrew fi m 
the conuption of the v, orld into still communities wherp with 
all thm^s m common they li% ed the most simple and lab aious 
Iile apart from all w orldly del ^hts 

In this manni.r Baui ^^l \ cs at the concl sion that the 
geims ot a new cle^tlDn Uv doimmt m the disa lition of the 
oil world and only needed to be centre 1 m one focus in 
ordei to raise the rehgious consciousness to the level of Chria 
tiinitj Chistiamti/ therefore, w onlj the naiurd nmij of aH 
tl ikme h It contiins nothing which is not c nd tioned 
by a preceding series of causes and effects ; nothing which had 
not long before been prepared in different ways ; nothing which 
had not already been vindicated either as a result of rational 
thought, or as a need of the human heart, or as a requirement 
of the moral consciousness." * But that these existing elements 
of a new religious growth " should convei^e in one special point, 
and in this one special individual, this is the wonder in the 
origin of Christianity which no historical reflection can further 



According to Eaur, the true kernel of Christianity a 
in all those points on which Jesus insisted when He appeared 
as the Befomier of the Jewish rdiyion. The pure elements of 
this religion formed the motive principle of His religious work. 
He did not come to destroy, but to fulfil ; and the law was 
talfiUed by Him, inasmuch as He recurred from the merely 
outward ceremonial service to tbe internal disposition. The 
tendency of the most important of Christ's didactic discourses 
was to refer man back to himself, to caU his attention to all 
that may he learned from the wants of his moral nature, 

' Das Christeaihum dtr ersfen S Jakrhmtderte, p. 31. Further on lie (uJcIs, 
somewhat ambiguously, that the Christian doctrines woiiM liouMeas have heen 
relegated into the ranks of so many other sayings of the wise men of old, whieh 
hare long since been foi^tten, "had they not in the mouth of the Foun'Ier 
heEome v^rds ''f etemid life" (pp. 35, 36). We hare already seen (p. 389) that 
Strauss in like manner refers the true humanitarian tendency in Christ to a 
Hellenic origin, and considers His purely spiritual and moral conception of God 
R8 aa Old Testament heiiloom. 



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LECT. vm.] THK rciNCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGES SCHOOL 513 

" All that belongs to the truly moral purpoi-t of Christ's teach- 
ings, as contained in the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, 
etc., — his doctrine as to the kingdom of God, the conditions of 
its membsrship whereby man is placed in a truly moral relation 
to God;— all this constitutes the intrinsic essence of Chris- 
tianity and its substantial centre " {Die TuUnger SchuU, p. 30). 
In those didactic discourses we find a system of religious truth 
which imparts to Christianity the cliarader of the purest rational 
Q-di^ion. " What should there be supernatural in the fact that 
the eternal verities of reason were once pronounced in such a 
way that they only needed to be pronounced in order to en- 
sure their imiversal acknowledgment ? " True, even the most 
rational verities of religion will not meet with general accept- 
ance if they are not supported by the weight of a great per- 
sonality. But there is every reason to believe that Jesus was 
just such an extraordinary personalityj intellectually gifted in 
the highest degree, and morally grand. That, however, which 
gives His person the highest, its absolute significance, is only 
that in Him " first this free conception of the relation between 
God and man was cleared from all impurity, entered into the 
living consciousness of man, and found tliere its truest and 
most immediate expression " («Ei sap). 

In the miracles of Christ, and in the form that they have 
taken in tradition, we can only see an effect of the wonderful 
influence of Christ upon His contemporaries. No sooner had 
He made Himself conspicuous than men saw in Him the lonn- 
expected Saviour. The question is, whether Jesus was at once 
firmly convinced of His Messianic mission, or whether this 
idea only gradually gained ground in Him. We shall presently 
see that Eaur does not sufficiently explain to us how Jesus 
came to declare Himself to be the Messiah. Decidedly as He 
asserted the conviction of His Messianic mission. He was 
exceedingly reserved as to the political expectations of Hi^ 
people, and held entirely aloof from them, for He only wished 
to work by a spiritual reformation. Early in His career He 
had become convinced that the sacrifice of His life was neces- 
sary to the realization of His idea. After a lengthy stay in 
Galilee, He went to Jerusalem, in order to bring about the 
crisis which ended in His death. The heads of His nation 
condemned Him, under the infiuence .of the correct presentiment 



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514 PKIMITIVE CHKI3TIANITY. [LECT. VIII, 

that He had brought on the end of the old faith. His death 
cut off the last possibility of identifying the Messiah, whom 
He claimed to be, with the Jewish Messiah, who was to have 
erected another kingdom of David. Not until then did the 
Messianic idea which He had enunciated stand forth in all its 
purity, and now it could not but become the principle of a 
new religion different from Judaism. Christianity, therefore, 
gained its world-wide importance through the death of Jesus. 
His resurrection is merely the declaration, put in the form of a 
fact, that His person not only did not perish, but was even 
raised by death to the dignity which pertained to Him as being 
the living exponent of the new spiritual religion. " What the 
resurrection per se is," says Baur, with peculiar caution, " it 
does not lie within the province of historical research to deter- 
mine " (cf. p, 453). The conviction that His resurrection was 
an absolute necessity forced itself upon the disciples, and for 
tlwir consciousness it was a firm fact. Church history, there- 
fore, has for its starting-point, not the objective fact of the 
resurrection, but the hdief of the disdiiles in it. This belief 
was the commencement of the Christian Chm-ch. 

Tlius primitive Ohristianity, according to Baur, is a form of 
the devdopment of Judaism, to which, however, all the other 
more spiritual element-s of that age contributed. In virtue of 
the urgent efforts which He directed towards promoting an 
internal and spiritual perception of the law, Christ became the 
author of a religious and moral reformation of Judaism ; bat 
in all this He was a mere man, nor did He exceed the limits 
of what was purely natural either in His person or His work. 
And thus, moreover. He was regarded during the primitive 
Christian ^e. The first Christians were Jews, only they be- 
lieved in a Messiah who had already appeared, ■without, how- 
ever, ascribing to Him divine attributes. In this belief their 
entire doctrine consisted. To substantiate this, Baur appeal 
to the Ebionites, a party of Jewish Christians who held to the 
law of Moses, and denied the birth of Jesus from the Vii^in, de- 
claring Him to be a mere man. Primitive Christianity was, in 
fact,nothing but Ebionitism, — i.e.s. Jewish sectwhich afterwards 
developed into the universal Church, — not, however, because it 
successively drew conclusion after conclusion from its chief tenet 
tliat Jesus was the Messiah, but only because it was gradually 



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LECT. VIII,] TU3 rrjNCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEX SCHOOL. 515 

compelled to drop one piece of the old Judaism after another.' 
For these primitive Christians had as yet no idea that the 
kingdom of God was to be extended beyond the boundaries of 
Israel The Jewish-Chriarian party was predominant as far 
down as the beginning of the second century; hut before this 
another more free and unwersalid school had separated from it, 
chiefly through the teaching and work of the Apostle Paul. 
This body held Christianity to be the universal religion, released 
itself from the bondage of the law, and directed its attention 
chiefly to the heathen. Hence it gradually became the more 
numerous, and later on the dominant party. Amongst its 
members a higher conception of Christ— 'of His pre-existence, 
His unity with the Father, His Godhead— was gradually de- 
veloped during the course of the second century. 

The chief representatives of the former party are St. Peter 
and St, James ; that of the latter, St, Paul, Accoi-ding to Baur, 
the entire history of primitive Christianity is ruled by this 
opposition between Fetrinism and FauUnism, or between 
Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. There are traces 
of it in the New Testament. In Gal ii. we read of a dispute 
between St. Peter and St. Paul as to the relative positions of 
the Jewish and Gentile Christiana, In 1 Cor. i. we read of 
parties in the Corinthian Church who called themselves by 
the names of Paul, ApoUos, Kephas, and Christ In the 
Epistle of St, James we find a legal Jew setting up woriis as 
against mere faith. In course of time, however, men sounht 
to tnediate between these two opposites, and to reconcile them. 
All the iwoks of the New Testament owe their origin either to 
one or other of these parties, or to an attempt at mediation 
between them. 

For what follows from this view of primitive Christianity 
with respect to the genuineness of the books of the New Tes- 
tament ? First, that the boohs in which we find the doetrine of 
th ; Godhead of Christ already developed cannot have hcen com,- 
posed till the second centwry. For the Apostolic Church, and 
even St. Paul, had no such high conception of Christ. And 
second, that only those writings which distinctly express that 
opposition, i.e. which are either decisively Petrine or entirely 
Pauline, can be gmuinc ; whereas those in which the edge of 
' Cf, Schwegler, Dot nac/iajiostolisclie ZviUdter, i. p. 107, 



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■516 PEIHITIVE CHRISKAmTY. [lECT. Till. 

tills opposition is already blunted, and which are evidently 
trying to mediate between the two tendencies, must belong to 
that later age in which men were working at the reconciliation 
of both parties. It is presupposed that all the writings of 
primitive Christianity — those of the New Testament not ex- 
cepted — must have a tendency to exalt either the Jewish- 
Christian party of St. Peter, or the Gentile-Christian following 
of St. Paul, or else to reconcile both. From this characteristic 
of the Gospels we may explain their legendary miraculous 
contents. The more distinct the tendency of a gospel, the less 
can it be considered a reliable record. The more developed 
the doctrine of Christ's person, and the more conciliatory the 
tone of a book towards both parties, the more surely may we 
place it in a later age. 

In accordance with these principles, Baur considers that 
only five books of the New Testament are wndovhtedly genuine 
and apostolic, viz. one book of a Jewish-Christian tendency, 
the Eevelation of St. John, and four Epistles which represent 
the Pauline or Gentile-Christian tendency in its original form, 
one to the Jiomans, two to the Corinthians, and one to tlie 
Galatians ; whereas- those to the Ephesians, Colossians, and 
Phihppians have too high a view of. Christ's person, and the 
others bear other traces of later origin. Of the Gospels, that 
of St. Matthew is the most authentic documental record, be- 
cause it betrays least party tendency. Whilst this is Jewish- 
Christian, that of St., Luke is Pauline-universalist, that of ^S";. 
Mark mediatory. The latest of all, chiefly on account of its 
highly developed philosophical Christology, is the Gospel of 
St. John, which some unknown person wrote after 160,^ The 
boob which most clearly betrays a tendency to reconcile the 
Pauline and the Petrine school is the Acts of the Apostles, 
especially because in chap. xv. it tells of the agreement be- 
tween St. Peter and St. Paul in their resolution not to force 
the Gentile Christians to observe the Mosaic law, — a narrative 
which, no doubt, is diametrically opposed to Baur's entire con- 
ception of primitive Christianity, and must therefore be declared 
to be unhistorical. 

These are, in short, the views of Baur (somewhat modified 
;e tlieu made by the criticKl sdiool in ifganl 
IS ali'ead}' ttutiid. 



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LECT. VIII.] REFUTATION OP THE TUEDIKGEN THEOEY. 517 

hj his school, which at present has its eliief seats in Switzer- 
land, Fi-anee, and Holland) with respect to the origin of Chris- 
tianity, more especially of the New Testament. At present we 
cannot follow this criticism into details as to the origin of the 
single books. Here we are concerned only with the funda- 
mental views of the school in general, inasmuch as it repre- 
sents the greatest and most extensive attempt to do away with 
the supernatural element in the origin of Christianity. In 
order to See whether this attempt has succeeded, we will now 
proceed to examine successively the principles of the school, 
its attempt to connect Christianity with pre-Christian systems 
of thought, its conception of the person and the consciousness 
of Christ, the important position which it assigns to the 
Apostle Panl in the history of the primitive Church, and 
finally, the antitheses, the intensification and reconcilement of 
which is supposed to have fixed the character of the entire 
apostolic and post-apostohc age. 



n. — CRITIQUE AND KEFUTATION OF THIS THEORY, 

This school arrogates to its criticism a purely historical 
character. It claims to have approached the investigation of 
the Christian records without any other than a histtyrical in- 
terest, and to have studied primitive Christianity in the un- 
biassed spirit of true science, which alloios of no yresuppoBitions. 
Is this, I ast, even psychologically possible ? Can any one 
approach the investigation of a subject which so deeply aflects 
our own life as does Christianity, without any presuppositions 
whatsoever? Must there not be -some self-delusion in this 
matter \ A corpse may be dissected without sympathy, and 
merely in the interests of science, but never a living body. 
Only that which does not in the least affect us can be investi- 
gated entirely in an unbiassed spirit, and merely in the general 
interests of science. Even Strauss has raised this objection 
against Eaur. "With all due respect," he remarks {Lebcn 
Jesu, p. 1 3), " for what the learned gentlemen say, I must still 
confess that I consider what they lay claim to an impossi- 
bility ; nor, even were it possible, would it seem to me praise- 
worthy. True, the man who writes about the rulers of 



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518 PRIMITIVE CHKISTIANITT, [leCT. VIIL 

Nineveh, or tlie Egyptian Pharioha miv do so merely in the 
intei'esta of history. But Chri'^tianitj is such a h\iii4 power, 
and the question as to how it originated is fiaiight ^>ith such 
momentous issues for the present di-y, that the imestigator 
must he destitute of all sense if he should feel none hut a 
historical interest in it." 

But this " absence of presupposition" is not only a psycho- 
logical delusion, — it is hehed by the principles of the Tubingen 
School. In reality the investigations of this school are not 
" purely historical," but governed throughout by the philoso- 
phical axioms of Pantheism : they are nol free from presuppo- 
sitions ; on the contrary, as regards the chief question, viz. the 
possibility of the supernatural, they are previously decided. 
Baur maintains from the outset that the really historical and 
eaaential substance of Christianity can only he that which 
does not transcend our natural human standards, and which 
can be linked to other similar historical phenomena. Hence 
his constant ■endeavour to reduce the supernatural events 
which are recorded to merely natural dimensions. Their his- 
torical element must be purely natural. And why ? Because, 
according to his Hegehan views, an immediate divine inter- 
position in the course of history is impossible. What is this 
but approaching the investigation with a presupposition, 
whereby the main point is ah'eady decided ? For surely the 
most important question with respect to the origin of Chris- 
tianity is whether its supernatural beginning, as related in 
Scripture, is historical or not ? By adopting such strongly 
biassed principles, and yet claiming for them a purely scien- 
tiSc and historical character, Baur lays himself open to the 
chai^ of begging the question, just as Strauss also does. 
According to Scripture, all history, both of creation and re- 
demption, begins with miracles ; according to Baur, where 
miracles begin, history ends. He ought then to have proved to 
us that the miraculous itself cannot be historical. And since 
he did not do so, this fundamental principle of his is a mere 
presupposition. True, Baur tries to assign the nature of the 
records as the reason for his denial of the miraculous. But 
this is only a veil for the true reason, which lies in his 
Hegelian views. And this denial is fatal to his whole system. 
Thus we see that the absejic^ of presuppositions, of which 



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LECT. VIII.] EEEUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN TIIEOr.Y. 519 

this school vaunts itself so much, is in reality the greatest 
possible assiimpiimi ; that its apparently purely historical prin- 
ciples include the philosophical axiom that the miraculous ia 
impossible ; and that its historical criticism is in truth dog- 
matical, having for its fiindaraental article the dogma of Pan- 
theism. From this we may easily comprehend the motives 
for the attempt to link Christianity entirdy to pre-Christian 
systems of thought. 

Baur would be quite right in so doing if it were only we 
men, i.e. purely natural factors, which constitute history. But 
the greatest factor of all is the divine factor, which is super- 
natural, and therefore inexplicable, but none the less historical. 
The divine deeds, i.e. the miracles, are absolute beginnings 
which appear as something entirely new, and can therefore 
nener be completely linked to the old which already exists, 
or sufficiently explained from preceding events. But in their 
character of absolute beginnings they are not only ordinary 
history, but history in its most exalted sense ; they constitute 
the basis, the landmarks, and the internal mainspring of all 
historical development, Ko wonder, then, that Eaur's attempt 
has signally failed. 

In seeking for analogies to Christianity, Baur takes the 
essential nature of the latter as consisting in its universalism, 
its pure spirituality and genuine morality. But I have 
already endeavoured to show you (vide pp. 37—39) that these 
elements by no means constitute the specific nature of Chris- 
tianity, which consists, above all, in our having entered into a 
new relation to God, not merely by recurring to our own moral 
consciousness, but through certain historical facts and through 
a distinct historical personage, viz. Christ. Baur constantly 
emphasizes only one aspect of the historicEil development ; and 
by treating it as the essential one, he loses sight of the real 
essence and heart's core of Christianity, which is none other 
than the person of Christ. If Christianity be nothing but the 
purest, rational religion, which, upon closer inspection, dwindles 
down to a religionless morality, how poor and meagre is its 
essence, though we may exalt its moral truths ever so highly ' 
What an unmeaning phrase is it when Baur declares that the 
principle which makes Christianity the absolute religion ia 
this, " that man becomes conscious of himself as a moral sub- 



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020 PRIMITITE CHEISTUErrr. [lECT. VIII. 

ject!" Is this tho new, the distinctive essence of Christianity ? 
Even our first parents, I trow, had attained to the elevation 
of this standpoint when, in their conscionsness of being moral 
subjects, they were ashamed and hid themselves. Baur's defi- 
nitions, therefore, do not in the least touch the specifically 
new elements of Christianity ; nor can they do so, since for his 
standpoint there is nothing new, but everything necessarily 
follows from what has gone before. Hence, too, the points of 
contact so laboriously discovered are valueless, since they do 
not concern the root of the matter. 

But they do not even sufficiently explain what Baur 
intends them to. What an infinite difference is there be- 
tween the universalism of the Iloman empire and that of 
Christianity ! — the former resting upon the power of the sword, 
built up by forcible conquests, and moreover very far from 
being actually universal ; the latter founded upon tiie idea of 
a physical, moral, and religious afUnity between all men, their 
common descent from the first Adam, and their common 
redemption through the second Adam.* What a difference is 
there between a dialogue of Plato's and the Sermon on the 
Mount; between the strugglings of Greek speculation and the 
iioly divine peace of our Saviour's consciousness ; between the 
confession of Socrates, that " he knew only this, that he knew 
nothing," and the testimony of Him who not only knew Him- 
self to, be in fuH possession of the truth, but could even say, 
" I am the Truth ;" between the moral fluctuations and errors 
even of the noblest Greek, and the sinless perfection of that 
One, who for this reason can attach the salvation of the world 
to His sole person ! 

And what a difference, again, is there between the asceticism 
of the Essenes, who shunned the world and renounced its 
society, and Christ's free and open intercourse with the world, 
prompted by His love, whieii was seeking lost humanity ' 
What a contrast, in fact, " between the painful narrow-minded- 
ness of Essene morality and the freedom peculiar to the spirit 

' It shoTild be remsmbered tliat onlyin the Holy Scriptures, i.e. on the gronnii 
of revelation, do we find tlie idea that all men lire descended from one pair 
(Gen. X. 32 ; Acts svii. 26). Couniai-e this with tho belier ot Hellenic hciithen- 
ism, that their nation was born from the aoil, and tlie contempt reaulling thers- 
from for all Uiat was foreign. 



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LECT. VIIL] EEFUTATIOH OF THE TUEBINGEN THEOKY. 521 

and woid of Je^ns 1 In the one case, man laboriously toiling 
at length to place himself in the true relationship to God; in 
the other, full and bh^isful harmony with the heavenly Father 
m the walk and word of Christ;" — in the one case, self-iso- 
lation , in the other, intercourse even with publicans and 
sinners ,-—m the one ease, secret doings ; in the other, our 
Saviour's command to preach upon the house-tops, etc. The 
most lecent investigations on the subject ot Essenism have 
iiTefutably proved that, in spite of isolated points of contact, 
" the doctrine of Jesus as compared with Essenism, both as a 
whole and in detail, shows less of agreement than of difference. 
The spirit of both is originally distinct." ' 

Moreover, how can it be historically proved that Hellenic 
culture and philosophy, or Alexandrine Judaism which was 
permeated by these, or even Essenism, had a direct influence 
upon the views of Christ, who was " not from below but from 
above," and who spoke as His Father had taught Him, not 
according to the doctrines of men ? (John viii, 23, 28.) Im- 
possible ; for " Christianity is an entirely independent formation, 
which came into existence without any connection whatever 
with these phenomena. They had no influence whatever on 
Jesus, and on the circle in which His cause at first developed " 
{Weizsacker, ubi sup.). To this Strauss objects {Leben Jem, 
p. 165), that "tliough the circumstances which were the 
originating causes of Christianity may be no longer known to 
us, this by no means proves that such causes did not exist ! 
But, we answer, so long as our opponents cannot show any 
sufficient natural cause for these effects, it is evident that no 
one can dispute our right to suppose that they had a super- 
natural cause ; and this all the more, inasmuch as such a 
cause in fact explains everything, whereas those merely natural 
influences explain nothing, since their difference frem Chris- 
tianity is always greater than their affinity to it. 

We might even go a step further in our proof for the 
existence of supernatural factors in history,' and say; H 

• Keim, Der guchkhtlkhe Christns, 8d ed. p. 15 ; Jeaa von Namra, L pp. 
282ets9.,806; Kbstlin, "Jesns gegeDiiberdeuPatteieu seines Volts," in Geker'a 
Frolaitanlifehe MonattbliUter for December 1865, pp. 363 et ss. ; Kleinett, 
Jesug im VerMUnks su den Parteien aeiner Zeit, 1865-; Weizaiicker, tinier- 
mdtwgmHtier die evangeUeehe Gesehichfe, p. 418. 



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522 rRIMITIVE CHKISTIANITT. [LECT. VUI. 

primitive Christianity is notliing but a development of 
Judaism, whence, tlien, does the latter come? Eaur does not 
give this question a consideration. But since Judaism claims 
to be a snpernatnrally revealed religion, and is so according 
to Christian views, this investigation -would assuredly have 
been most fitting as a test of Ms historical principles, which 
aim at assigning a natural cause for everything. Tme, the 
futility of his undertaking would have become patent at the 
very outset. For even the old covenant, with its doctrine and 
history, cannot possibly be explained as the fruit of a merely 
natural development. Whilst all the nations of the old world 
are under the curse of nature-worship, we find Israel alone 
adoring the one mpramundane God. "Whilst all the nations 
of the old world, " with backward longings after a vanished 
golden age, live hopelessly onwards into the ever-deteriorating 
fature," Israel alone looks hopefully forward to a future golden 
a"e of salvation. How is this t Can it be that this lelision, 
with those prophecies which are to be miraculously fullilled, 
ai-e a natural product of the popular spirit of Israel, which for 
so long a time rebelled against them, and needed a thousand 
years of the heaviest divine chastisements at last to get rid 
of its natural tendency to idolatry, and which even then 
appropiiated rather the husk than the kernel of these promises ? 
Even in this preliminary question the historical principles of 
the critical school are found wanting. 

The truth that underlies these deductions of Eaur, which 
it was his merit to bring to light, is simply this, that the 
spiritual tendencies which he regards as the generating causes 
of Christianity really were preparations and connecting links 
for it ; that they made way for its reception and spread, and 
hence attained an influence on the development of the Church 
which is not to be underrated. Not until the world was 
liistorically prepared by those elements of its outward and 
inward development, did Christianity enter it : " In the fulness 
of the time (when the time was fulfilled) God sent His Son " 
(Gal. iv, 4). But are we to conclude that because Christianity 
had its natural preparations and conditions, it is therefore 
essentially nothing but the natural unity of these historical 
conditions? In this case the preparatioiis for a rmiter are 
mn2>Uj confounded with the generative cause qfth£ matter itself; and 



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Ll-CT. VIII,] REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN TnEOKT. 523 

this is a fallacy which can only be perpetrated by the Hegelian 
view of history, with its aversion to the miraculous. When 
Christianity is onee in existence, like every other original 
phenomenon, it resembles the egg of Columbus, and may easily 
be comprehended in its intrinsic truth and its grand simpli- 
city, as the goal towai-ds which the preceding development in 
many ways wag distinctly tending. But for all that it remains 
an origiTial production, a truly creative, specifically new and 
■world-regenerating principle, which carries the sufficing cmcse 
of its existence in. itself alone. It is not, nor ever will be, pos- 
sible to compare the incomparable. Critics may draw parallels as 
they w II n e y d t on h t-w een i 01 tian and Christian 
truths, a i 1 aft tl 1 n t p p atory for Christi- 

anity ; J t al > tl e ]. h and ! t istic principle of 
Christi n ty 11 be w nt th d a f the unity of God 

and n n f n t tl j Ch t n orld. St. Paul's 
feeling f un 1 1 t y n 11 d n those preparatory 

element n tb ir disp rs tl 1 tl d ne plan of educa- 
tion ; b t he w 11 n t nt tl t the p iciple of Christi- 
tianity itstlf could result fiom the weak and beggarly 
elements of this world " (Gal. iv. 3, 9) ; it could only come in 
by a divine act, the sending of God's Son. 

Baur says ■ "Whit Ion-- lince in various ways was the goal 

of all tnlfftadf necessity forced itself upon the 

n unes fnnat sential purport," at length found 

t tip n n CI istianity. St Paul says : " Eye 

htlnt nn hrd neither have entered xTiio the heart 

f th th "s 1 b G d hath prepared for them that 

love Him: but God hath revealed them unto us by His 
Spirit" (1 Cor. ii. 9, 10). Eaur himself seems at length to 
have felt that in the face of this truth all attempts at a 
natural derivation are insufficient; for he says: "That the 
elements of a new religious development, which per se were 
already extant, should have concentrated themselves in the 
generation of a new life at one particular point and in one 
special individual,— this is the , wonder in the history of the 
origin of Christianity which no historical reflection can further 
analyse." And still more would this seem to be the case, 
when he tells us in another place that he too " acknowledges 
a certain supernatural character and a divine principle work- 



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524 PRIMITIVE CHKISTIAKITT. [LECT. nil. 

ing in an especial manner" in Christianity, only not an 
absolute miracle which should exclude all natural mediation. 

But we have already seen that real miracles do not 
absolutely exclude natural mediation; on the contrary, that 
they often are linked to that which is already extant. And 
this was the case with the miraculous entrance of Christianity 
into histoiy. That there was imder enough laid ready we 
willingly acknowledge, and thank the man who has pointed 
it out to us in detail But as long as we do not recognise 
the lightning apark of a supernatural vital principle as having 
actually touched the inert mass, we can never understand the 
fire which suddenly burst forth and set the whole ancient 
world in flames ; — we sbaU grope in the dark as long as we 
seek its origin below and not above. 

Moreover, the attempt to deny the creative action of God 
in the origin of Christianity, and to reduce the supernatural 
to the co-operation of merely natural factors, likewise involves 
(Ae greatest historkal difficulties and absurdities. If the world 
ai that time, we ask, ii^as pregnant with the neio spiritual 
religion, why did sJie so remorselessly persecute her men of spring ? 
How was it that all nations did not hail it with applause, and 
rejoice in the new acquisition ? How was it that Jews, 
Greeks and Eomans, especially the great and wise men of the 
world, for three centuries can-ied on the most embittered war- 
fare against' Christianity with all the available resources of 
their religion, their statesmanship, their culture, and science ; 
and all this in utter blindness, without seeing, what it was left 
for Baur to discover, that they were raging against that which 
was related to their own flesh and Hood, and had emanated 
li-om it by natural development t Roman universalism raises 
against its Christian counterpart with fire and sword. The 
cultivated Greek calls St. Paul a babbler. The thoughtful 
Eoman designates Christianity — this natural fruit of all past 
culture — as an odium generis humani, hated and abhorred by 
the whole world. How can this be explained from the stand- 
point ot the Tiibingen School ? Here, if anywhere, our lord's 
words are applicable : " 1/ ye were of Ike world, ike world 
would love Aw otpw," — had Christianity been a natural outflow 
of the spirit ot the age, that age must straightway have 
received it, — " but because ye are not of the world, but I have 



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LECT. VIIL] KEFCTATIOi' OF THE TUEUINGIN THEORY. E25 

chosen you out of the world, thei'efore the world hateth you " 
(John XV, 19). Herewe find an explanation of this hatred. 
The Tiibingen School can give us none. 

We obtain just as little satisfaction when we ask to be 
enlightened as to the Person of Christ and His characteristic 
consciousness. In this matter the historical school is very 
cautious and reserved ; and it is not without cause that 
Strauss reproaches Eaur with asking, " not what Jesus really 
did or said, but what the narrators make him do and say : thus 
he busies himself with the Gospels, hut leaves the Lord out of 
the question," However, we have already seen that thus 
much is evident, that Banr admits as the historical purport of 
the life of Christ nothing but a career entirely devoid of 
miracles, and likewise in His Person only such moral perfection 
as shall not exceed the measure of natural humanity. In 
order to carry out his views, the Tubingen critic is compelled 
to reduce all that is supernatural in the discourses of Christ 
to mere natural truths, and to change divine revelations into 
natural conditions of human moral consciousness. It is 
self-evident that the most arbitrary means must be used in 
order everywhere to prove the " purely moral " character of 
this doctrine, and especially that the importance of Christ's 
Person for the new redemption that had now appeared must 
be entirely ignored. Hence the passages in which salvation 
appears linked to this particular Person, and which cannot 
possibly be applied to the mere generahty of a moral relation- 
ship, must be attributed to the concepti fait ge, which 
influenced the pseudo-evangelist. W h fc 1 all ^ say, e.ff., 
when Baur explains the beatitudes t h ff t that they 
express " the still undeveloped pur n e fa need for 
redemption"? Just as if the pure sen f h ontained 

in itself all the reality of its appeasing ! Everything must be 
already extant, so that we may not have to acknowledge any- 
thing absolutely new or supernatural. , Even Baur's example 
plainly shows that all attempts to give a natural explanation 
of the supernatural must lead to unnatural or at least ambigu- 
ous expedients. 

If the essential substance of the self-consciousness of Christ 
consisted merely in general principles of human morality, then 
we find the same historical dilHculties, tli^ same unexplained 



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526 PEiMiTiVE ciiniSTUKiTY. [lect. viii. 

and inexplicable residuum, whicli, as we have already seen, 
form an insurmountable barrier for all the anti-miraciilous 
accounts of the life of Christ They amount to these two 
questions : How could these simple moral ma.vims bring about 
that universal revolution in the religious life and thought of the 
whole world ? And again, 1/ Jesus was cimscious of being a merely 
natural man, how cotdd the helie/ in Sis Messiahship arise either 
im Himself or His disciples ? Here Baur shows himself a true 
Hegelian. The Messiahship of Christ became a firmly estab- 
lished fact of His consciousness after others had " intuitively 
seen " in Him the Messiah, And bow so ? The universally 
tuoral and purely spiritual substance of the consciousness of 
Christ needed a distinct form, in order that " through the 
medium of Jewish national consciousness it might be able to 
expand into universal consciousness." ^ And this concrete 
form was the Messianic idea. Now, becausg the substance of 
Christ's consciousness was universal, but its form was affected 
with the partiality of Judaism, therefore the personality of 
Jesus is to be considered " in the light of a contradiction — as 
a developing process " — and an inward conflict, in wMch " the 
two opposing elements are related to each other as substance 
to form, as idea to reality, as universal humanity to Jewish 
nationality, as divine sublimity to human limitation." In 
answer to this monstrous conception, it has well been pointed 
out,^ that the effectiveness in the character and work of great 
men always consisted, not in a dualism, but in a harmonious 
uuison between substance and form ; and that classical natures 
have always been entire, complete, and self-contained ones 
. (cf pp. 367 et ss.). And how inconceivable is the way in which 
Eaur rends asunder form and substance of the self-conscious- 
ness, as though the form suddenly appeared and enveloped the 
substance, instead of each being generated in and with the 
other ! But it the form be original, that is to say, if the 
Messianic idea belong Jx) the essential and original substance 
of the seli-consciousness of Christ, how can this be reduced to 
mere human dimensions ? It is the old story ; the Hegelian 
must always have two aspects or factors in order to evolve 
from their unity and diversity the needful categoiies o f position 
and negation, idea and reality, etc. etc., as reels on which to 
> Vie TiiLinger Scliuk, 2d ed. pp. 80 et bs. ' Cf. Bockh, u6i »vp. 



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LECT. Vin.] REFUTATION OF THE TUEBIKGEN THEORY. 527 

spin the threads of historical derelopment. How useless these 
are, even from a psychological point of view, we have here seen. 

Just as little, on the other hand, is the hdief of the disciples 
explained. How came the Messianic idea to be applied to 
Clirist if He was a mere man and did no miracles ? "Whence 
the entire oiigin of the new religion if it had no particular 
/ads, but only general moral discourses for its foundation ? 
" If a religion do not begin with an original fact, it cannot 
bef^in at all " says Schleiermicher {Eeden vher die Religion) ; "for 
tl e e niu tie s n e comn on reason fo tl e ake of which a 
ce t n rel o elen ent a esj e illy pi asized, and this 
r a on c n ly cons st n a f a t "When arose the belief 
of the d sc pies n tl e 1 \ ne '^on h p of f h st ? And if it 
■ne e a ne e dea i later concept on vl ence ts transmutation 
nto f ts n tl e shape of so n a y n ulous narratives 1 
"W 1 nee— s we h e al eady isked tl out receiving a 
s t i ct J nswer-^tle bel e£ of tl e liscilea in the resur- 
rection of Christ, if this was not a fact ? Whence St. Paul's 
testimony to it, even in the Epistles which Eaur recognises as 
genuine 'i Whence the sudden imcard change in Saul if the 
risen Saviour did not meet him in the way to Damascus ? We 
have seen that it is impossible to explain away this event as 
a merely inward vision. Eaur is here, in great straits, and 
feels what a large unexplained residuum is left after aU his 
attempts at natural explanations. Hence the confession in his 
last book, that the conversion of St. Paul was a " wonder," and 
that " no analysis, either psychological or dialectic, can clear 
up the mystery of that act in which God revealed His Son in 
Paul." 

Finally, we come to Eaur's theory, that it was St. Paul who 
liberated Christianity from the limitations of Judaism and 
raised it to the dignity of the universal religion ; because in 
him first " the principle of Christianity became purely and 
absolutely predominant" (Der Apostel Pwiilus, p. 512). If, 
then, he was in fact the founder of Christianity as a world- 
wide power, Juyw comes he constantly to refer all his teaching 
and all his knowledge to the crucified and risen Christ ? (" I 
determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified," 1 Cor. ii. 2,) Whence his plain 
declaration, " We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jestis the 



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528 PRIMITIVE CimiSTIANITT. [lEUT. VIll. 

Jjird " (2 Cor. ir. 5) ; and that, " Other foundation can no man 
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ " ? (1 Cor. iii. 1 1.) 
How can we account for his testimony that he had hecome 
what he was only through Christ, and had only begun his new 
course after having been apprehended hy Him ? (Phil, iii 7-14, 
iv. 13.) How is it that he constantly puts hack his own 
personality behind tliafc of Christ, that He only may be 
preached (Phil i. 18), and is ever looking forward to the day 
of Christ? Surely the apostle who (GaL i. 8) pronounces 
even an angel from heaven accursed if he preach any otiier 
gospel than Uiat of Christ, would have declined the honour 
of being regarded as the inventor of a new Christianity ; nay, 
rather would have indignantly repelled the reproach of having 
disfigured, or at least essentially altered, the gospel of Christ 
by bis doctrine. What, then, is St. Paul without Christ ? Why 
are we now Christians and not Faulinists f And why did not 
the apostles and primitive Christians, if they were nothing 
but Jews, not remain such ? 

Clearly, the chief motive which impels Baur to refer as 
much as possible of primitive Christianity to the authorship 
of St. Paul, is again only his aversion to the miraculom. For 
in him he has a purely human actor, and has no need, step 
by step, to explain away the supernatural element which 
shines forth so strongly in the person and work of Christ. 
The more he can put upon St. Paul, the less remains for 
Christ, and the easier is it to draw Him into the current of 
universal human development Even Eenan remarks on this 
subject : " Since we know infinitely more of Paul than of the 
twelve; since we possess his authentic writings and original 
records, we make him of the tirst importance, almost more 
than Jesus. This is a mistake. Nothing can be more false 
than the fashionable notion of our day, that Paul was the 
author of Christianity. The true founder of Chx'istianity was 
Jesus." * 

' The Aposlki, p. 3. We do not, however, for a moment mean to compare 
thia miserable prodnctiou of Eenaa's with the investigationa of Baur, which will 
ever continue to he of the greatest seientiiie value. For Eenan immediately pro- 
ceeds to exhibit hia utter incapacity for historii^al infiight into the real nature of 
primitive Christianiiy, by adding : " St. Paul cannot he compared either with 
Jesus or his immediate diseiplca (not even with the apostles then !). The ^rit 
placet (after Jesus) must be reserved lot those gieat companions of Jesns, and 



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LECT. VIII.] EEFDTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEOKY. 529 

In view of all these unsolved difficulties, one can hardly 
escape the conclusion, that tlie " construction" of history iy the 
critical school makes historical enigmas instead oj e^laining 
them. This is confirmed by Baur's account of the apostolic 
age and its antitheses. 

If primitive Christianity was only a species of Judaism, its 
historical development presents a series of insoluble enigmas. 
This will become evident from a consideration of the two 
fundamental suppositions on which Baur's entire criticism 
rests, viz. that a sharp rivalry msted hetween the Petrine and 
tlie Pauline party, and that the primitive Christians did not 
believe in the Godhead of Christ. 

We first consider the former of these suppositions. Did 
this antithesis between Jewish and Gentile Christianity really 
govern the whole Church ? If this was the case, that is to 
say, if the development of primitive Christianity consisted of 
a struggle between contraries, which were for long engaged in 
an irreconcilable conflict, and did not coalesce until towards 
the latter part of the second century, then it is an enigma that 
they should ever have coalesced at aU. Had so important a 
difference of principles existed within the apostolic Church, it 
must assuredly have separated into two distinct parties, which 
would never again have united. The Petrine party would 
always have appealed to St. Peter, the Pauline to St. Paul, 
just as to this day, three centuries and a half since the Piefor- 
mation, the Lutherans appeal to Luther, and the Calvinists to 
Calvin, altliough their doctrinal differences as to the pi-esence 
of Christ in the sacrament, etc, are far less important than 
was the matter in dispute between St. Peter and SL Paul, viz. 
whether the Jews who became Christians should be compelled 
to be circumcised, and therefore to teep the whole law, or not. 
History often teaches us tlud what was originally one, may 
separate into various parts (as, e.g., the Baptists and the Metho- 
dists have split into various distinct denominations), but not 
vice versa, that cmnmunities which were originally separated by 

those pamUmately moved and failhfnl ummen (amies) wlio, in spite of denth, be- 
Leved on him ! ! " Assuredly linnr's tlieoiy is gimid ooinpared with such non- 
sense (IS this, according to which Mmy Mngilalene is gn;ater, and has done moi'e 
for Christianity, than the apostle of the Gentiles t 



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530 PRIMITIVE ciiiasTUNiTY. [lect. ■viii. 

reason of the different principles of their founders should 
afterwards coalesce into one body. 

It was perfectly natural and necessary that Jews and 
Gentiles who were converted to Christianity could not all at 
once discard the influences of their past history, and that some 
time must elapse before they could stand on equal terms with 
each other. It was also very natural that differences should 
occur in the apostolic treatment of the Gentiles. Nor is this 
at aU concealed by the Acts and Epistles.^ But distindmis 
are not antitheses^ and there are weighty testimonies contained 
in the New Testament which go to prove tliat these distinc- 
tions were amicably adjusted in Irotherly iirvity as early as the 
apostolic age. In Acts xv. the whole assembly at Jerusalem, 
consisting of Peter and Paul, together with James and all the 
other apostles and elders, agi-ee together " to lay no greater 
burden " upon the Gentiles who were baptized by requiring 
them to keep the law of Moses. Eaur gets over this difficulty 
by declaring the Acts to fee a spurious hook, written with the 
intention of mediating between the opposed parties. But he 
cannot get rid of the passage (ii 9) in the confessedly genuine 
Epi.stle to the Galatian wl ere St Paul says that James, 
I'etcr, and John, i.e. the 1 ead of the Jewiah-Chi-istian party, 
" when they perceived tl e a e that was given unto me, gave 
to me and Barnabas tl r ht h nds of fellowship, that we 
should go unto the he hen nltl unto the circumcision." 
Does this betoken rival j I tl Iv unity % True, St. Paul 
is obliged severely to lep ove St I t r, because at Antioeh he 

'Cf. especially Gal. ii 12, Hhich tcll= how St, Peter allows himself to be 
moved for a time to deny liis lormer mteicourse witli the Gentiles by the arrival 
of " certcun that came from James, " i. e. legalJewish Christiana from the church 
at Jerusalem. 

' Not even the simply praotiod teaching of St. James's Epistle exhibits a 
fundamentally diflorent conception of Christianity from that of St. Paul. The 
conviction is becoming more and more widespread, fJiat St Jamea, having other 
opponents, was obliged to emphasize a diflerent aspect of the Christian life to 
that priiieipally described by St. Paul in his doctrine of jnstifi cation, hut that 
both of them clearly distinguish between the inward reconciliation with God by 
His grace tlirough faith (attainment of the righteousness which is by taith), and 
the outivard veriftoation of this faith by means of decisive proofs (works). The 
diflcrence lies in the languane used by each, inasmuch as what St. Paul usually 
lieaignatcs as "being saved" (rcljirfe,, e.g. Eph. ii. 8), is expressed by St. 
James in the word which St. Paul generally applies to the first act of the Chris- 
tiao course (to be justified, JuauMJai). 



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LECT. Vm.] BEFCTATION OP THE TUEBMGEN THEORY. 531 

hypocritically gave himself the appearance of one who avoided 
intercourse with the Gentiles, whereas he had long since 
can-ied it on. But St. Paul evidently speaks of him as one 
who was hitherto of the same opinion with himself, and had 
now become untrue to his convictions ; and for this very 
reason St. Peter could not answer him. St. Paul says (Gal. 
ii. 14 and 18), " If thon, being a Jew, livest after the manner 
of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the 
Gentiles to live as do the Jews ? . . . Por if I build again 
the things whioh I destroj ed, I make myself a tmnsgressor." 
These words evidently presuppose that at first St. Petei took 
up tfie same position- in regaid to the Jews as Si. Paul, and that 
only in this single instance iiom a lear of man wliich he more 
than once evinces he weikly gave way to the Jewish Chris- 
tians who had come from James, and inconsistently withdrew 
from intercouise with the Gentiles. But on two previous 
occasions (Acts \i. 4 et ss. and xv. 7 et sa.), he had openly 
delended this mteri^ourse and maintained the equality of Jews 
and Gentiles m viitue of the one laith. 

We willingly admit thit the opmion of the oldest Jewish 
Christian chuicbea ind of then leideis St Peter and "^t 
James, may have xmdeigone Tiiious mod ficaitons For clearly 
the position which ftr ■some time seeiub to ha\e been tiken 
up by St. Peter thit the Jewish Chiistims weie to keep the 
law, whereas the Gentiles were ficed fitm it was undecided 
if not confused. It miy be th^t ifter the apostolic (.ouncil 
related in Acts xv., a ceitain reiction was brouj,ht about by 
the strictly legal partv so that many repented of the conces 
sion made to their Gentde brethien an I that this cm ed a 
wavering in the behaviour of Petei ind TT,mes Por we have 
indications elsewhere of a vuiety of paities amomirst the 
Jewish Christians, whpieas theie za not a trace :n the whole 
New Testament of sects piopeily "o cilled % e ot ecclesiiotictil 
schisms, nor yet of a heretical Jewish Christianity. But, on 
the supposition that these different tendencies existed, the 
behaviour of the Jewish apostles as related in GaL ii. may 
very well be reconciled with the position taJien up by them 
iu Acts XV.' These very fiuctuations prove that there was no 



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532 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. [lECT. VUL 

fundami'.ntal contradiction between tliem and St. Paul, and 
that it is false to represent the senior apostles as occupying an 
entirely Jeioish standpoint. For how could they then have 
formally acknowledged St. Paul as the apostle of the Gentiles, 
endowed with apostolic gifts, and in consideration of this have 
given him " the right hand of fellowship " ? Surely this 
would have been mean hypocrisy. And how could they have 
quietly looked on whilst St. Paul converted the heathen in a 
way so at variance with their convictions ? And St. Paul 
himself, too, who on other occasions (as ejj. in the Epistle to 
the Galatians) opposed the extreme Judaists so vigorously, 
would assuredly not have been silent had the other apostles 
been essentially on a level with them. And how could this 
inimical rivalry be reconciled with the influence of ike Holy 
Ghost, who was to lead the apostles into all truth ? Or, as 
the critical school does not acknowledge His action, we ask 
how, on the same supposition, can we explain the constant 
communion which St. Paul kept up with the church at Jeru- 
salem, and the faithful care for their wants which be cease- 
lessly exercised by frequent collectiom for Jerusalem amongst 
tite Gentile Christian churches? (GaL ii. 10 ; Eom. x. 25 et ss. ; 
1 Cor. xvi ; 2 Cor. viii. and ix. ; Acts xi. 29, 30, xii. 25.) 
When we see the Gentile Christians in Antiocb, Macedonia, 
Greece, ministering joyfully, and often " beyond their power " 
(2 Cor. viiL 2-4), to the wants of the church in Jndtea, does 
this betoken fundamental differences, or brotherly love and 
unity ? 

Jewish and Gentile Christianity are two forms of the same 
spirit which supplement each other ; tbey make up a unity 
which soon enough was definitely exhibited in the persons of 
the chief apostles, though after certain fluctuations. Aot- does 
the question as to the treatment of Geiitile Christians constitute 
an original and /undamental contrariety within the apostolic 
circle ; they are essentially unanimous upon ike suh/'ect. Only 
St. Paul and the GentUe-Christian party made more rapid, pro- 
gress in the direction of a Jree wniversalism than did the Jewish 
Christians, especially St James and the church in Jerusalem, 
which, as long as the temple stood (in which Christ Himself had 
taught), continued to pray there, and to take part in the Mosaic 
worship. It was therefore qiiite another thing for them to tear 



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LKCT. VIII,] EEFLTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEOKY. 533 

themselves away from Judaism than for the Gentile Christians, 
who had no temple and no Jewish history to look back upon. 
Hence the deielo-pmmt of primitive Ghristianity progressed not 
in cmiiiandiLS but m stejn, ' whilst one part soon went for- 
ward more liuicKlj tlie other slower one tenaciously clung to 
a lower step, until at length, through the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and the abnihilation of the temple, even the blindest 
eyes were opened. 

The ^rst stage in the development of primitive Christianity 
may be considered to extend from the feast of Pentecost down 
to the persecution to which Stephen fell victim. At this 
time t]ie great body of the Church consisted of baptized Jews. 
Doubtless, however, there were among these many Hellenists 
(Greek Jews, called in the Authorized Version " Grecians," 
Acts VI 1) , even the seven almoners (ibid.) all having Greek 
nimes During this first period the opposition against the 
Phinsees then the ruling Jewish party, had developed most 
Mgorously withm the Church, as we see from the speech of 
Stephen. E^en at this stage Christianity is by no means 
meielv i form of Judiism. Baur admits that the first Chris- 
tians recognised Jebus as the Messiah. In conjunction with 
thib we mn=!t believe that all the wondrous fulness which to 
the Jew hj in the idea of the Messiah was transferred to Him. 
This one point tiie belief in the Messiah who had already 
a] J eiied i\as sufficient to make the disciples in every respect 
diilcrent from oidinary Jews. The Messianic expectation was 
the culminating point of their religious consciousness as Jews ; 
and it ^n alteiation took place in this climax, then their re- 
ligious consciousness must have \in depone an essential change 
m every way Eaur himself admits that by their acknow- 
lei3gment of Jesus as the Messiah, even after His death on the 
cross, they had substantially broken through the limitations of 
Judaism, — an admission, however, which he does not care to 
follow out. A church that has been baptized by the Spirit, 
in the name of the triune God, and which, Jo the great 
annoyance of the Jews, confesses a crucified Messiah, is 
assuredly no longer a mere development of Judaism, but some- 
thing specifically new. 

' Thiis the First Epistle of St. Peter clearly indicates a progress in M» 
stauilpoint. Eveii that ot St James is no longer specifically Jnilaiatic. 



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534 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAKITT. [LECT. VHL 

The geTm=! too jf % catholic concepticn cf the Church were 
not wanting amongst the fii'it Jewish Chii'^tniis : on the con- 
trary, they showed sfieit M^oir from the %ery bugioning, 
though afteiw irds for a time somewhat pushed into the back- 
ground. Thib cin only be denied bv th &e who reject the 
history of the feai,t 0/ Pentecod relited in Acti ii, as without 
historical foundation E\ en on this the daj of her institntion 
the Christian CI uich show* herself is a mmonary Church, 
which is commissioned to proclaim the gi-eat deeds of God to 
all nations (Acts ii, 9-1 1). Wherefore should not the idea 
that the kingdom of God was to be extended far beyond the 
boundaries of Israel have been introduced before the appear- 
ance of St. Paul ? Had not our Lord commanded the eleven, 
and that long before the conversion of St. Paul, " Go ye and 
teach all nations" ? Indeed, from the very beginning He had 
spoken of them as " the salt of the earth " and " the light of 
the world" (Matt v. 13 and 14) ; He had told them that He 
had other sheep who were not of this fold (John xv.) ; He had 
testified to the Jews that men should " come from the east 
and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit 
down in the kingdom of God " (Matt. viii. 1 1 ; Luke xiii. 29) ; 
indeed. He had even roundly declared to them that the kingdom 
of God should be taken from them and given to the Gentiles 
(Matt. xxi. 43, etc.). . Did not all this cleaily enough indicate 
the world-embracing nature 0} the kingdom of God ? Had He 
not even gone amongst Samaritans and into heathen border- 
lands (Matt. iv. 15, XV. 21), although He was primarily sent 
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ? Could not 
such conduct on the part of their Master have implanted 
germs of a wider idea of the divine kingdom in the hearts of 
the first disciples ? Nay, moi-e. Had not long since innu- 
merable sayings of the prophets predicted the reception of the 
heathen into the kingdom of God? (Micah iv. 1-4; Isa. ii. 
2-4, xix. 18-25, Ix.— IxvL etc.; Ps. xxii. 28 et ss., Ixxxvii. 
xevi. xcvii. etc.; cf, Luke ii. 32, Matt, ii 1 et ss., xii 21.) 
Are we to suppose that all these were lost upon the first 
Jewish Christians ? By whom else were they to he fulfilled than 
by the Messiah and His kingdom ? and Him they believed to 
have come. Not only is the idea of a universal kingdom of 
God older than St, Paul, but even than the Koman empire to 



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LECT. Vill.] REFUTATION OF THE Tl'EBIMCES THEORY. 535 

which Baur wishes to bind it down. This idea is a necessfiiy 
eon sequence of Monotheism, and, like it, has sprung up on the 
soil of divine revelation. 

Tims we see that the germs of Christian universalism were 
extant from the very outset. But the apostles had received 
the command to hegiu their preaching at Jerusalem (Luke 
xxiv. 47 ; Acts i. 8), and it was therefore necessary that they 
should first fulfil their mission for Israel 

The secotid stage includes the period from the death of 
Stephen to the appearance of St. Paul. Foreigners are ad- 
mitted to the Church ; many SamaiHtans helieve through the 
preaching of St. Pliilip ; St. Peter baptizes the Pionian Cor- 
Tidius and his house after he had been convinced by the 
vision of the clean and unclean animals (Acts x 11 et ss.), 
that "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh 
righteousness is accepted with Him ; " the gospel penetrates 
to Antioch, from ■which place the name of Cliristiaa is spread 
abroad. In this period the Church became aware that the 
Gentiles were now already called to share in Christ's salvation, 
and that without becoming Jews by circumcision. 

In the third stage we see the Church acting out this con- 
viction with more and more decision, and endeavouring to 
develope her \inity and self- dependence by reconciling her 
internal differences. The chief part in this work was reserved 
for the spirit that rose from the ashes oi Stephen. St. Paul 
looks at the distinction between the Old and the New Covenant 
i-ather as one of kind than one of degree, as the other apostlfs 
at first conceived it. He considers this difference m the hj,ht 
of an aniitkesis, and contrasts Christ ^Mth Moses, as liemg the 
new and the only way to the lalfilment of the law, — indeed, 
as " the end of the law." He teaches clearly and pointedly 
that salvation is now to be found m the gospel of Jesus 
Christ alone, and not in the law , and that because this salva- 
tion is granted only through grace, it is destined fur the Gen- 
tiles as well as the Jews, although it must first be proclaimed 
to the latter (Acts siii. 46). Heie, then, the full umicjsahd 
standpoint of Christianity was attamed 

This view of primitive Christianity has been successfully 
defended against Baur by our present historical and exegetical 
theology; and you can easily see how naturally ever^tinng i8 



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536 PRIMITIVE CniilSTIASITY. [lECT. VIH 

here developed. True, no development can take place -with- 
out the tension and reconciliation of contrarieties. This is the 
truth of Baur's fundamental axiom. But it ia not fair to 
exaggerate the differences, and still less to introduce dissm- 
sions of later date into the apostolic age. Now Baur is guilty 
of so doing, for he has simply transferred the party divisions 
of the second century back to the Jirst. This is a fundamental 
error both in his views as to primitive Christianity and in his 
criticism of the New Testament writings. After the death of 
■the leading apostles, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem 
and the erection of a Eomish colony (jElia Capitolina) in its 
place, Jewish Christianity lost its original pre-eminence, and 
was gradually separated from the current of development. 
Then, and not tiU then, did it begin to fall into heresy and 
aepai-ate itself from the Catholic Church, whereupon it soon 
split into different sects through the influence of the extreme 
party mentioned in Acts xv. 5, Gal. ii. 4. But during thei 
liletime of the apostles, the milder party of Jewish Christians 
had been in the ascendant (Acts xv. 22 et ss.), and had come 
to an agreement on the principal question, viz the position of 
Gentile Christians with respect to the law ^ A breach amongst 
the apostles on account' of this mattei would assuiedly h'ne 
exercised a most paralysing influence on the development of 
Christianity. But instead ot this, we find that, when they 
leave the scene, the Church had alreadv grown so strong that 
the subsequent separation of Jewish sects was unable percep- 
tibly to impede the universal progress of Christianitj 

History everywhere teaches us that each great new truth 
needs some time before it can make its way and scatter the 
old prejudices. In this case, moreover, the emancipation fiom 
the Jewish law must needs be all the more gradual, inasmuch 
as the new religion was also the fulfibnuiit of the old one If 
we keep this in mind, we shall peifectly well be able to com- 
prehend the development ot the primitive Christian Chuich, 
nor will there be any need for us to lend asundei into hostile 
parties that pious compaii) for «hom the Lord Himself Ind 
prayed that they might be one, even as He was one with the 
Father. 

We come to the second axiom of Baur's criticism, which 
' Cf. the article oft "Ebionitos " in Herzog'a Sealentijclopadk, iii pp. 621 et asL 



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LECT. VIII.] KEFUTATIOS OF THE TUEBIKGEN THEOET. 537 

m ta th b th ^>n ( Ch tnj,dlwthlcv th 
G U i ) Cln t Uh t th f 11 tl w t in th 
N w T t t wl h t tl It 1 1 ly 1 

Iplf i'P dfptptl 

T th tht^ tIfihIhhB 

I llj J J6 (P m 1 t d 2d C nnth G 1 
t dE It ) d not ly tl be ) h he Ji ^ t 

! I td t J i pe i {Eyh Ph 1 1 p 

CI dp lly th 1 1 f St J hn) t a 

pt of 01 ist wl icf I ft H m t ly h th I I f 
d 2l S P f ^h 2 I ii'O^ ' i' ' 

God. It is impossible to set up an impassable barrier between 
the Christology of the former and that of the latter set of 
writings, or to prove that the latter represent an essentially 
new, and therefore later standpoint. This is proved, in the 
first place, by all the predicates applied to Christ in the 
uninipugned epistles : " the Son of God " (Eoin. i. 3 and 4) ; 
the "one Lord, by whom are all things" (1 Cor. viii. 6) ; the 
" spiritual Kock " which followed Israel through the wilder- 
ness, and hence existed before His incarnation (1 Cor. x. 4) ; 
" the Lord from heaven " (1 Cor. xv. 47) ; " the Lord of glory " 
(1 Cor. ii. 8) ; " the Image of God " (2 Cor. iv. 4) ; He " in 
whom" God was (2 Cor. v, 19); whom " God sent in the 
likeness of sinful flesh " (Eom, viii. 3) ; the Euler of the 
world, under whose feet God hath put all things (1 Cor. xv. 
25-27) ; the Judge of the world before whose judgment-seat 
we must all appear (2 Cor. v, 10 ; Eom, xiv. 10) ; yea, " who is 
over all, God blessed for ever " (Eom. ix. 5 ; cf. p. 249). Again, 
it is proved by the way in which these writings everywhere 
represent Christ as the risen, and exalted Lord, as the centre 
of salvation for the whole world, and hence 83 One who is 
higher than men (" not of men, but by Jesus Christ," Gal. i. 1), 
while placing Him in a uniquely close relationship to God 
(2 Cor. xiii. 13 ; 1 Cor. xii. 4-6 ; Eom. xi. 36; cf. pp. 255 et ss.). 
And finally, even the Book of Eevelation points to the same 
conclusion, with its representation of the divine majesty of 
Him who is "Alpha and Omega," the "Pirst and the Last," 
the living One who hath "the keys of hell and death" 
(i. 8-18), the "Word of God" (xix. 13), who is worshipped 
by the saints (v. 11-14, etc.). Can any one who hus con- 



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538 PEIfflTlVE CHEISTIANIIT. [lECT. VIII. 

sjdered all this believe that St. Paul and St. John, the indii tit- 
able authors o£ these writings, held an inferior view of Christ's 
person, or believed Him to be a mere man ? 

And is there such a great gulf between these views and the 
doctrine of Christ's person as contained in the later epistles 1 
No ; for their doctrinal tenets may be traced, either as gerias, 
or even word for word, in the five earliest books. Compare, 
for instance, the following passages :— 2 Cor. iv. 4, " Who is 
the image of God," and Col, i. 15, "Who is the image of the 
invisible God" (also Heb. i. 3) ; 2 Cor. v. 19, "God was in 
Christ, " and Col. ii 9, " la Him dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily" (also 1 Tim. iii 16); 2 Cor. viii. 9, 
" Who, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor," 
and Phil. ii. 6, " Who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputa- 
tion ; " Eom. viii. 3, " God sent His Son in the likeness of 
sinful flesh," and PhiL ii 7, He " took upon Him the form of 
a servant, and was made' in the likeness ot men ; " 1 Cor. viii. 
ti, " One Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by 
Him," and Col. i. 16, " By Him were all things created," etc. 
(cf. Eph. iil 9 and John i. 3) ; Eom. ix. 5, " over all, God 
blessed for ever," and Heb. i. 8 and 9, " Unto the Son He 
saith. Thy throne, God, is for ever and ever" (also Tit. ii. 
13) ; Eev. i 5, " the Pirst-begotten of the dead," and Col. i. 
18, "Who is the Beginning, the First-bom from the dead" 
(also Acts xxYi. 23); Eev. xix. 13, "His name is called. The 
Word of God," and Jolin i. 1 et ss., " The Word was with 
God," etc.; 1 Cor. ii. S, "Lord of glory," and CoL i. 27, 
" Christ, the hope of gloiy " (also Acts iii. 15); and numerous 
other passages.^ 

Is it possible, I ask, in the face of these parallels to main- 
tain that essentially different views of our Lord's person are 
taken in the unimpugned writings and in the others ? No ; 
the distinction is merely this, that the foi-mer in most cases 
merely Mnt at what the otliers purposely discuss in all its 
bearings. This may be very simply explained from the fact, 

' As, e.g., 1 Cor. L 24,' 30, with CoL ii. 3 ; I Cor. viii. 9 with 1 Thess. iiL 
13, V. 23, 24 ; 1 Cor. x. i with John Tiu. 58 ; Col. i. 17, Eph. i. i, 1 Tim. 
i. 9, 1 Cor. xii. 4^8, with Eph. iv. 4-6 ; 2 Cor. xiit. 13 with 1 P«t. i. 1, 2 ; 
Kev. i. 4, 5, with Matt, xxviii. 19. 



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LECT. VIU.] REFUTATION OF THE TUEEINGEN THEORY. 539 

that in course of time the gi-owih of heresies made it increasinghj 
nceesmn/ to treat the doctrine of the person of Christ more in 
ileiail, and that the apostles themselves had gradually to grov> 
in their knowledge of Him, 

The case is similar as regards the relationship of St. John's 
Gospel to the three preceding ones. Because it surrounds 
Jesus with the eternal glory of His divine Sonahip, and em- 
phasizes His pre-existence, therefore its Christology is siip- 
posed to be specifically different from that of the Synoptics, 
and a sure proof of its later origin. But it is impossible to 
deny that even the three first Gospels- contain a far higher 
than merely human view of Jesus ; they, too, ascribe to Him 
so many superhuman, nay, divine attributes and works, that 
we cannot in this respect make a fundamental distinction be- 
tween their teaching and that of the fourth Gospel. Passing 
by the history of His conception through the Holy Giiost, of 
His baptism. His miracles, His transfiguration, resurrection, 
and ascension, we would point especially to the relation in 
which Christ places His person to the Old Covenant (" But 1 
say unto you," Matt, v.: His representation of Himself as the 
Fulfiller of the law ; as greater than the temple, as Lord of the 
Sabbath, as Forgiver of sins, etc.; cf. pp. 246 et ss,), as also to 
the world, in which He alone can relieve the weary and heavy 
laden, whose future Judge He represents Himself to be, to 
whom is committed all power in heaven and in earth (cf. uM 
sup. and Matt, xxviii. 18). But above all, Christ, even in the 
Synoptics, represents God as Sis Father in a unique sense 
(ef. p. 246), whom no one knows but the Son, and who alone 
knows the Son ; ^ so that in the baptismal command (Matt, 
xxviii. 1 9) He may insert His own name between that of the 
Father and the Holy Ghost as one of equal dignity. In all 
this we cannot but recognise a distinct premonition of St. 
John's Christology exhibiting the germs of the doctrine ex- 
plicitly taught in the fourth Gospel, — genus, too, which pre- 
suppose the pre-existence of Christ as maintained by St. Jolin. 
The critical school is here labouring under the same optical 

' Cf. lUM. si. 27ct and John iii. 35, xiii 3 ; Luke x. 22, Matt. xi. 276, 
and John vi. 46, xvii. 25, xir. 6 et sa., X7, 21; Matt, sxvili 18 and John 
ivii. 2 ; Matt, xxviii. 20 and John xiv. 18 ; eren John x. 30 and Matt. x. S7j 



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540 PRIMIITVB CHEISIUNITY. [lECT. Vni. 

illusion as we pointed out in tlie case of Straoss. Eeciaiise 
the higher knowledge of Christ only gi-adually developed in 
the Chiireh, it supposes that the Church must have evolved 
these higher elements from her own consciousne£.3, or horrowed 
them from Hellenistic philosophy. 

Moreover, we would point out what peculiar and evidently 
untenahle conclusions result from this hypothesis, that the 
great majority of the Wew Testament writings originated in 
the endeavour to mediate hetween the Petrine and the Pauline 
party, and were therefore composed by unknown authors in 
the second century. Even the tendency which these writings 
are supposed to betray is by no means demonstrable, not even 
in the Acts ; indeed, it is so Kttle proven, that every new critic 
discovers a fiesh " tendency." Were we to enter upon an 
analysis of the various writings, we might thus even dispute 
the presuppositions of this crjticism. But apart from this, how 
very strange it would be if not a single apostle out of all the 
eleven had left behind him any writings, with the exception 
of the one Pievelation of St. John, which does not even cate- 
gorically affirm its own authenticity ! How inconceivable that 
this immense though gradual revolution from the most nanow- 
minded Jewish primitive Christianity to Pauline universalism, 
which changed a Jewish sect into the Christian Church xmi- 
yersal, should have been guided entirely iy tlie works of anony- 
mous wfiiers, who concealed their names under the cloak of 
apostolic authority, without one of their contemporaries remark- 
ing, or at least thinking it worth his while to make a note of 
the pious fraud ! Unknown authors write the Gospels, more 
especially the " mediating " Gospel of St. Mark and the 
" sublime " Gospel of St. John ; an unknown personage com- 
poses the "conciliatory" Acts; unknown forgers fabricate the 
Epistles to the Epliesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, 
the Epistles of Sfc. Peter, St. John, St. James, and St. Jude ! 
In fact, the entire movement through which Christianity be- 
came itself is braught about by unknown persons. Every trace 
has vanished even of the " gi-eat nameless One," as Eaur styles 
the author of the fourth Gospel, The apostles live in the ,/lrsi 
century, but they attain their reputation as writers during the 
second through the services of others. There, •nien appear, but 
without writings ; here, u^-itin^s come to light, but without 



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LECT. VIII,] EEFLTATION OF THE TUEBIKGEN THEOEY. 541 

men ! How unnatural thus to tear asiinder the men and their 
writings '^ 

. In other eases we invariably find thst an age which is fertile 
in literary productions is followed hy a conservative period, in 
which the productions of the foregoing are collected and 
digested, — first the classical, then the post-classical period. 
Here we should have exactly the reverse, — the first century 
conservative, in the main keeping to Judaism, with scarcely 
any productions ; the second century progressive and fertile in 
great, but alas ! unknown writers. Bui does the second century 
in other respe^ds bear the impress of a. productive classical penod 
o/liUrature ? On the contrary : its undoubted products breathe 
a spirit which bears the same relation to that of the New 
Testament writings as does the tenor of a post-classical age to 
that of the preceding classical. IHd these writings, espedallt/ 
the Go^l of St. John, belong to " unknown" authors, they would 
he a perfectlp inexplicable phenomenon as compared with all the 
other products of that period. It has been well said, that it 
were no less absurd to ascribe the most inspiriting writings of 
Luther to the spiritless period of the Thirty Tears' War, than 
to transfer the Gospel of St. John to the middle of the second 
century. For, notwithstanding their warm Christian life, the 
writings of the second century evince such a remarkable dearth 
of new ideas, that one plainly sees how, after the spiritual flood- 
tide of the first century, the ebb had set in,^ Hence, as we 
have seen, negative critics have been compelled again to raise 
the age of the G ospels, and to place them rn the apostolic age, 
between 50 and 100 a.d. 

All this compels us to assert; that tlie fundamental views of 

' Cf, "Banco, die Tiibinger Soliale, " in 'H.eizog's Bealencyclopadie,sx. pp. 762 
et E9. Hence Kitschl, too, conaidere the Gospel of St Jolm as genuine, "beoanse 
the ilenjal ofitaanthenticity is a, source of far grenier difficulties than lis acknow- 
ledgment," 

' Compare, e.j., the clear and soher-miudcd spirit cf the Uow Testament 
epistlea, or the quiet sublimity of the Gospel of St. John, with the Epklles of 
Igaalias, the enthusiasm of which degenerates into a well-nigh fanatic desire for 
martyrdom; or with the Pastor oj Hemim, and the value ascribed by him to 
ascetic rigour ; or with the epistlea written (in the first century) by Clement of 
Borne, which tell the fable of the Phcenix as a fact ; or again, with the BpisUe of 
Barnabas, which delights in insipid allegories, and gives the most absiird typical 
interpretations of the Old Testament, justifying Neander's remark, that " here 
we encounter quite another spirit thauthatof an apostolic man." — Eccl. History, 
i 3, p. 1100. 



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542 PRIMITIVE CHKISTIANITY. [lECT. VIII. 

Bawe entirely confuse and overturn, the history of primitive 
Christianity and its records. Having rejectecl the miraculous 
beginning of Christianity for the sake of bis philosophical pre- 
suppositions, Baur is fated constantly to see his " purely his- 
torical commencement " melt away beneath his touch. It is 
a heginning without a beginning ; everything is already extant. 
Principles of thought which already exist are concentrated in 
Christ. He only introduces them into the consciousness of 
men, as the principle of a purely spiritual and perfectly moral 
religion. But by mixing up this principle with the Messianic 
idea He brings about Hia death, and with this the first begin- 
ning has failed. Tlie essential essence of Christianity is no 
longer developed in connection with its Founder. Now Chris- 
tianity has need of a new historical beginning, and this is 
furnished by the belief of the disciples in the resurrection, i.e. 
not by a fact, but merely by the notion of a fact. But since 
the disciples confine themselves to tbe exclusive national 
element of Christ's consciousness, this beginning also threatens 
to subside in the sand ; Christianity is mere Ehionitis^n, and 
remains essentially on the Judaistic standpoint. At length 
tbe real beginning of Christianity appears in St. Paul, who, 
in the involuntary impulse of his dialectic consciousness, gains 
the day in favour of Christian universalism. But this truly 
Christian Pauline beginning is in danger of perishing through 
Petrine opposition. Happily there appears (or rather does not 
appear) in the middle of the second century the author of the 
fourth Gospel, " the great nameless One," with his free " com- 
position guided only by the idea," but not in the least his- 
torical Here, at last, is the final beginning, after which we 
cannot conceive any other, although Baur, if he were consistent, 
ought to maintain that pure Christianity (i.e. morals without 
dogma) was only discovered by the modern age. 

Here once more we see how the " natural explanation " of 
Christianity accumulates enigmas instead of solving them. 
Aversion to the miraculous must and ever will be punished in 
this way. It denies the existence of a specifically divine factor 
in Christ, which is the sole thing that can make the historical 
origin of Christianity and its immense effects conceivable, and 
degrades the superhuman form of One " upon whose shoulder 
is the government," and who alone can have been tbe primary 



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LECT. VIIL] refutation OF THE TUEBINGEN THEOF.Y. 543 

ciii'p }f si ijreit a nio\tinent Tliui it is thit the anti 
niuacuh'.ts aie compelled in oidfi to expltin tliese e-veuf^ 
to postuUte reasons winch crumble away on examination be 
cause they are utterly insufficient to sustain the weight of such 
a gigantic superstiucture HaMng degraded the supemituril 
to the le\el of the natuial thej are fun to intensity the Utter 
supumatumlly bj asciibing to it foices and efiects which it 
cannot po'^'^ibh have noi evei his hid 

The tailure of thi? attf-mpt is quite analfgous to that of 
modem natuiil science m its endea^ouis to bieik djwn as 
much aapossille the original ftrrahiiiiers lietween the niious 
species and genera of plants and animals, and finally to prove 
the origin of man from the species next below him ■without 
the inQuence of a higher principle. Darwin, and still more 
the materialistic members of his school, are aiming at the same 
end in the region of natural science, as Baur and his followers 
in that of history. Both of them bring confusion into history. 
Both of them convert oi-derly development into a chaos of strife 
and enmity. Both of them, especially, are desirous to eliminate 
the miraculous as far as possible, by proving that all intervals 
bridge themselves over naturally. And both cannot attain 
their end for the same reason : because they overlook the fact 
that nature as well as Mstory often vuyves forward in leaps ; i.e. 
although its progress is constantly mediated, yet this often 
takes place through such imperceptible transitions that the 
leap is concealed from our e3'es. Now we must maintain, 
and that on specifically moral grounds, that every heroic deed, 
as the fruit of a moral resolve, is something new and original, 
which cannot be entirely derived from what preceded it. 
Much more, then, must we derive the doings of Him who is 
the primal Cause of all that has ever taken place, not from 
tlie past, but from His supramundane essence. In other words, 
we must believe it to be a miracle ; and therefore we may not 
deny its supernatural interposition in history, whereby new 
beginnings are brought about, if we are not to lose the last 
key to the comprehension of the most important historical 
phenomena. Eothe will ever be in the right as against the 
anti-miraculists, when he thus addresses them ; " Look to 
yourselves, and see whether you can intei-pret history without 
miracles, — whether you can put them aside and yet give a 



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544 PKIMITIVB CHEISTIANITT. [lect. VIII. 

pragmatic explanation of established historical results, the key 
to which we who believe in miracles already possess. I, for 
my part, assuredly do not believe in miracles from dogmatio 
cupidity, but in the interests of history, because I cannot dis- 
pense with them as historical explanations o£ certain indubit- 
able historical facts. / do not find that tliey make rents in 
history ; bid, on the contrary, that hy their aid alone am I able 
to get over its gaping chasms." 

Certainly the supematural origin of Christianity in its 
divine aspect is not to be explained : We who believe in the 
Bible, from the outset renounce any such pretensions. But we 
do make bold to prove that the " natural " beginning offered to 
ua in its stead by the critical school and the Eationalists — or, 
indeed, any other attempt at a natural explanation- — -is far 
more incomprehensiUe ; that it results in far greater enigmas, 
and must therefore necessarily fail. According to our view of 
the matter, the beginning itself, i.e. the Divine Sonship of 
Christ, is an enigma, but all the rest is fully comprehensible, 
and may be deduced fram it in the most simple, natural, and 
rational manner. The critical school, on the contrary, give us 
what is apparently a natural beginning, but really none at all : 
everywhere end nowhere ; melting under our touch ; and 
miking all that follows one great incomprehensible riddle, 
liiat this 18 m fact the dilemma, may be proved by a recent 
utteiance of Professor Zeller's ^ (one of the few perfectly faith- 
ful and consistent followers of Baur). According to him, the 
essence of Christianity is not fuUy represented in its primitive 
form but ' everywhere, if you will, or nowhere :" it can only 
be known fully from the sum-total of its historical phenomena, 
but least of all from its dogmas, which are constantly changing, 
and must do so, since they are merely subjective (?). So 
Christianity is nothing but a portion of the world's history, the 
substance of which is perpetually changing, whose real essence 
can only be determined when once the drama of history is 
played out, and of which we never can say what it is, but only 
what it has heen ! What a comfortless idea, that would lead 
us to despair of all objective truth ! The entire gain from the 
history of the Christian dogma during eighteen hundred years 
has dwindled down to zero. Though Baur does not openly 
• In Varlrdge v. Abkandlwngen geacliiddUcheit MiaU*. 



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LECT. Via] EEFOTATIOS OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY. 545 



8 it, yet this is, in fact, the logical sequence of his views. 
For, supposing his moral philosophicia conception of Cliristi- 
anitj to be correct, what that is permanent has its long de- 
velopment really added to the general ethical principles of the 
Sermon on the Mount, if it is, properly speaking, only our own 
age— shall wa say, since Kant ?— that has returned to this 
pure conception of Christianity? But if, daring this long 
period, the Christian faith has really made no true progresj 
nor in any way suhstantially enriched itself, could we theti 
expect much from its future development, or entertain any hops 
of a happy dettimtim / ' Nc; fir as urn m the dimne orifin 
of ChnstianUy is dont amj toith, its final aim ia abo atin- 
guislu!cl : these two poles are inseparable. Since it is « every- 
where and nowhere," it has neither beginning nor end, and 
hence no true development, no real history. A development 
that results in nothing is merely apparent. Thus we arrive at 
the logical sequence of Pantheism (cl p. 2 7), th.at there is no 
leinff, but only a iccomiiiff; and hence, since there is no real 
being, the becoming also must be only apparent Is not this 
a comfortless view ? 

Here we sec what is the final fate of every mere mom! 
conception of Christianity. Instead of alfonling a permanent 
mcitement to mans moral vigour, it ends (though we say this 
without in the least wishing to derogate from the intense 
moral earnestness with which Baur struggled after tnith) in 
a world -T.icw wU-h thmmfghly paralyses all his moral and 
irMkdual energy For why should we exert ouKtelves if we 
can hope for no real results ? 

If we wish to escape these sad consequences, then — in view 

of the re,il and historical character of the miraculous we 

must take heart and eiiktrge the narrovmess o:f mir loykal eon- 
eiplion, to meet the greatness of divine deeds, instead ol 
endeavouring to cramp the latter to suit our smaU conceptions 
and reducing them to mere vanishing magnitudes just as it 
plejises us. He who takes the latter course eanmt help turn- 
ing history upside down, as we have seen that Strauss and 
Baur do. They suppose the miraculous facts to have been 
produced by the belief in the Messianic dignity of Christ, 

' Cf, Uhlliorn'? nrticle on the TiiWngen School in the JaltrbUclier fUr JeutectM 
Tlieoloi/tf, ToL iii. pp 316-327. 



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