'How can we,' it has been well said, 'be asked to give the name of
Religion of Humanity to a religion that ignores the greatest human
being that ever lived, and the very source from which the Religion of
Humanity {118} sprang?'[17] Man in himself, man so full of
imperfections, man having no connection with any world but this, man
unallied to any Power higher, nobler than himself, is this to be our
God? Which is more reasonable: to set up the race of man, unpurified,
unredeemed, worthless and polluted, as the object of adoration, or to
maintain that 'Man indeed is the rightful object of our worship, but in
the roll of ages, there has been but one Man Whom we can adore without
idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus'?[18] The Religion of Humanity, so
called, would have us worship Man apart from Christ Whom yet all
acknowledge to be the glory of mankind, but we call on men to worship
Christ Jesus, for in Him we see Man without a stain, we see our nature
redeemed and consecrated, we see ourselves brought nigh to the Infinite
God. We adore Humanity, but Humanity {119} in its purity: we adore
Humanity, but only as manifesting in the Only Begotten Son the glory of
the Eternal Father. Thus we place no garland around the vices of the
human race: thus we abase, and thus we exalt: thus are we humbled to
the dust, thus are we raised to the highest heavens. Apart from
Christ, the magnitude of the creation may well depress and overwhelm:
apart from Christ the human race is morally imperfect instead of being
a fit object of blind adoration. Seeing Christ, we not only feel our
inconceivable nothingness in presence of the Infinite Majesty, but we
stand erect and unpresumptuously say, 'We wonder not that Thou art
mindful of those for whom that Son of Man lived and died, we are in Him
partakers of the Divine Nature. There thou beholdest Thine Own Image.'
Made in the image of God, such is the ideal of Man that comes to us
from the beginning of his history; and such is the ideal {120} that
once, and once only, has been realised. '_Ecce Homo_! Behold the
Man!' said Pontius Pilate, in words more full of significance than he
knew, pointing to the victim of priestly hatred and popular fickleness.
Behold the Man! man as he ought to be, the Image of God. Before that
Divine Humanity we reverently bow, to that Divine Humanity we humbly
consecrate ourselves, in fellowship with It alone we learn and manifest
the true worth and dignity of Man.
One writing frantically to exalt mankind and to depreciate
Christianity, tells us how he sat on a cliff overhanging the seashore
and gazed upon the stars, murmuring, 'O prodigious universe, and O poor
ignorant, that could believe all these were made for him!' but the
sight of a steamship caused him to rejoice at the triumph of Art over
Nature, and to exclaim, 'If man is small in relation to the universe,
he is great in relation to the earth: he abbreviates distance and time,
{121} and brings the nations together.' Then he saw that man is
ordained to master the laws of which he is now the slave; he believed
that if man could understand this mission, a new religion would animate
his life, and, in the strength of this revelation, the writer says that
he sang in ecstasy to the waters and winds and birds and beasts, he
felt a rapture of love for the whole human race, he resolved to preach
the New Gospel far and wide, and proclaim the glorious mission of
mankind.[19]
On the whole the Old Gospel will be found as ennobling, as inspiring,
as practical as the New. All that this new Gospel aims at, we, as
Christians, already believe: and we possess a Divine Token, a Sacred
Pledge which is foreign to it: we believe that a higher destiny is in
store for us than even the construction of wonders of mechanical
skill.[20] Stripped of all rhetoric, the conclusion of unbelief in God
and Immortality can only {122} be 'Man is what he eats': the conclusion
of Christianity, 'There is but one object greater than the soul, and
that is its Creator.'
One in a certain place testified, saying, 'What is man, that Thou art
mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou madest
him a little lower than the angels: Thou crownest him with glory and
honour, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put
all things in subjection under his feet.' For in that He put all in
subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But
now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see JESUS Who was
made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honour. We see Him Who is our Brother and our
Forerunner within the veil; and in His Exaltation we behold our
own.[21] No vision of the future can surpass that which the Christian
Church {123} has cherished from the beginning, that we shall all 'come
in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto
a Perfect Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ
... from Whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by
that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in
the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the
edifying of itself in love.'
[1] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 67.
[2] Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_.
[3] Thomas Carlyle.
[4] _Man's Destiny_, p. 31,
[5] Aubrey de Vere.
[6] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 76.
[7] Frederic Harrison, _Creed of a Layman_.
[8] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 14.
[9] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 15.
[10] Appendix XIV.
[11] _Creed of a Layman_.
[12] Appendix XV.
[13] _Some Urgent Questions in Christian Lights_.
[14] _Heretics_, p. 96.
[15] Appendix XVI.
[16] Appendix XVII.
[17] E. A. Abbott, _Through Nature to Christ_.
[18] Frederick William Robertson, _Sermon on John's Rebuke of Herod_.
[19] Winwood Reade, _The Outcast_.
[20] Appendix XVIII.
[21] Appendix XIX.
{126}
V