It was established to meet this growing scepticism, and with a due
recognition of the causes which have just been specified. It was not
started, as has been sometimes said, with a little irony, for the
purpose of restoring a belief in Christianity, but for the purpose of
meeting argument with argument, and of supplying the many that are
now fluctuating between belief and no belief with sober answers and
valid arguments drawn forth anew from the great treasury of Christian
evidences. This is the true design and object of the Society. Its mode
of carrying out this design has hitherto been threefold--first, by
means of lectures addressed to the educated; secondly, by the formation
of classes under competent class-leaders, for the instruction of those
in lower grades of society who are exposed to the thickening dangers
arising from that organized diffusion of infidel principles which
is one of the saddest and most monitory signs of the present time.
Thirdly, the Society is endeavouring to stimulate private study by the
circulation of useful tracts, and by the offer of prizes to such as may
be willing that their private study should be tested by competitive
examination. All these three modes of carrying out its work have been
adopted during the present year; and, so far as can be inferred from
the work that has been done, and from the various expressions of public
opinion, with considerable success. Popular attention has naturally
been directed more especially to the first of the modes specified--the
lectures to the educated; but it is satisfactory to state, ere we pass
at once to our explanatory comments on the plan of these lectures, that
the formation of classes has answered even beyond expectation, and
that, from the amount of the competition for the prizes that have been
offered, examination in Christian evidences will form a large and most
interesting portion of the future work of the Society.
II. We may now turn our attention to the lectures that are included in
the present volume--our first year's work.
The number of the lectures was twelve. One of these, the lecture on
the Internal Evidence of the Authenticity of St. John's Gospel, is
unfortunately not included in the present volume, owing to the desire
expressed by the learned writer that it should not be published. The
absence is much to be regretted; first, on account of the value and
importance of the lecture; and, secondly, on account of the partial
break which has thus been caused in the sequence of the lectures.
The lectures were not delivered in the order in which they are here
presented to the reader. The convenience of the active as well as
distinguished men who consented to act as lecturers, had naturally to
be consulted; adjustments had to be made, and interchanges of days of
lecturing acceded to, so as to secure the continuous delivery of the
lectures on the days specified. In this collective edition, however,
the proper order is restored, and may now be briefly explained, as
some criticisms have been passed on the subjects of the lectures,
which would certainly have been modified if the whole series had been
delivered in the order originally designed.
The first three lectures were designed to be preparatory and
prelusive. They were directed against the three systems which are
now more especially, in different ways, coming into collision with
Christianity--Materialism and its theories, Pantheism, and Positivism.
It was judged by those who sketched out the plan of the lectures,
that until these subjects were shortly dealt with, and until the
objections against Christianity, founded upon them or derived from
them, were briefly noticed, the evidences for Christianity could hardly
be expected to have a fair hearing. The internal arguments in favour
of the leading truths of the Christian religion could scarcely be
fairly estimated if there were to be antecedent objections of a grave
and general character left wholly unnoticed and unanswered. Hence
the three opening lectures: The first of these breaks ground by the
consideration of some leading materialistic opinions, and especially by
an exposition of the argument from design. It thus prepares the reader
more fully to accept the deep truth so well and succinctly stated by
Bishop Martensen,[167] that the "world has not merely a cosmogonic but
also a creational origin," and that the mysterious problem of creation
and life can "never be solved in a merely natural way, but demands
a supernatural solution, that is, a solution through a _creative
teleology_."
The second lecture very suitably follows by a clear exposition of
that great system which has of late been found to exercise such a
fascination over thoughtful and cultivated minds that it becomes,
to far more than we may suppose, the conclusion of all controversy.
We allude to the system of Pantheism, into which of late many noble
spirits have seemed willing to merge all their hopes and all their
fears. Swayed to and fro, unable to accept Law for their God, and yet
equally held back from the blessed truth that the God of the universe
is a PERSON, thousands fall back upon the subtle and fascinating system
which supplies a moving Principle, but withholds the blessed idea of
a holy Will; which discloses to them a _natura naturans_, but denies
the existence of a loving Creator and a personal God. It was thus very
properly provided that the lecture on this subject should follow the
lecture on Design in Nature, as exhibiting the true characteristics of
that modified Atheism which only too often becomes the refuge of men
whose minds have been shaken by the inferences of pure materialism,
or who may have been drawn towards the disguised forms of it which
lurk in many of our popular treatises on the origin and evolution
of Man. After a careful study of these two lectures, the thoughtful
reader will be enabled to recognize the true nature and force of the
argument from design, and so will be led the better to appreciate the
enduring validity of that great _natural_ foundation for our belief in
a personal God. Of the four great arguments by which man is permitted
to rise to the knowledge of God, the argument from design, or, as it is
technically called, the teleological argument, is the most important,
as it, in fact, includes the moral argument, which, properly estimated,
is only its subjective aspect. Apart from revelation we rise to the
knowledge of God in two ways, by the consideration of ourselves, and by
the contemplation of the world around us; what the moral argument is
in the former method, that the teleological argument is in the latter.
Hence the importance to the general reader of having an argument of
such validity clearly set before him on different sides, and from
different points of view.
The third lecture, on Positivism, completes the first group, and forms,
as it were, a kind of useful appendix to the other two. Here we have
the investigation of a special system,--a system that professes to be
based on positive and observed phenomena, and claims to extricate the
mental study of man from metaphysics and abstractions, and to place
it in the realm of the realizable and the positive. Such a system,
though neither now prevailing to any extent, nor ever likely to become
prevalent or popular, is still worthy of attention, as it stands in
close connection with current materialistic conceptions, and suggests
some instructive contrasts to Pantheism. In the latter system we have,
at any rate, some idea of pervading Deity; but in Positivism, if we
understand the system aright, God, and all conceptions of God, are not
so much denied as simply and entirely ignored. If Pantheism be deemed
fascinating, Positivism will appear to most minds utterly repellent:
still it is a system that claims some distinguished men among its
professed exponents, and perhaps a larger number than we may suppose of
conscious or unconscious adherents. It may therefore well claim from us
investigation, and, in the position it occupies in the order of these
lectures, may fairly be considered to be in its right place.
We have dwelt upon the first group of the lectures, as both the
position and the importance of the subjects considered in it have
seemed to require a fuller notice. On the remaining groups we may speak
more briefly, as their connection and the special subjects on which
they treat are much more self-explanatory.
The first three lectures having, as it were, cleared the ground, and
having demonstrated, as we believe, successfully the untenable nature
of the systems that have been placed in competition with Christianity,
the two next lectures, which form the second group, deal with the chief
difficulties arising from the supposed conflict between science and
the Holy Scriptures. The first of these two lectures, that on Science
and Revelation, enters into the subject generally, by showing how,
on scientific considerations, a revelation was to be expected, and
how, consequently, the evidences of Christianity have a strong claim
upon the attention of every right-thinking man. The second of these
two lectures is confined to a special but prerogative case, in which
science and religion are supposed to be more particularly in opposition
to each other,--viz., the case of miracles. Here it is necessary, not
only to investigate generally the nature of the miraculous evidence
to Christianity, but fairly to face the antecedent question, whether
miracles, however defined, are not in themselves impossible. In facing
that question, however, attention is rightly called to the nature
of the weapons that are used in the conflict, and especially to the
fact, so often overlooked, that all the assaults on the miraculous
that can in any degree be deemed worthy of consideration, are carried
on only with metaphysical weapons. The whole question really turns
upon the belief in a personal God: if it be conceded that this belief
is just and reasonable, then, as the writer of the lecture rightly
observes, the presumed impossibility in reference to miracles at once
melts away. The very idea of a free-creating God carries with it the
possibility of new manifestations of the Divine will, whether in
history or nature. The sustaining power of God, which we recognise in
the form of law and orderly progress, changes whensoever it shall have
seemed good to His holy will for it to pass into the creative; His
immanent workings are then seen in the realm of the transcendental,
and the result is that which Pantheism, Naturalism, and all similar
systems must, if consistent, regard as impossible, a new movement from
the Divine centre, an epiphany of a creative and overruling will, a
wonder, a miracle. When Spinosa said that God and nature are one from
eternity to eternity, he was quite consistent in adding that there is
no transcendental beginning, and that miracles are impossible; but for
any one who believes in a personal God, or who believes nature to be
what it is,--not a system eternally fixed, but a system passing through
a development characterised by design,--to deny the possibility of
miraculous interpositions, reason and consistency must certainly, in
this particular, be suspended or sacrificed.
The third group of lectures, which may be regarded as subdivided into
two portions, naturally connects itself with, and follows, the subjects
just specified. After the general consideration of difficulties
connected with religion and Christianity, the attention of the reader
is now directed to the more special difficulties connected with the
Holy Scriptures. In the first portion of the group the subject of the
Gradual Development of Revelation, or, as the title was re-defined
by the lecturer, the Gradual Nature of Divine Revelation, properly
occupies the first place. It is followed by a lecture in which there
will be found a careful consideration of some special instances of
difficulty connected with the historical portions especially of the
Old Testament. These two lectures were to have been followed by
a consideration of the moral difficulties that have been felt in
reference to some parts of the Old Testament; but for this subject,
which, if properly treated, would have probably claimed a large share
of attention, the Committee were not able to secure the services of a
lecturer for the present year. This is to be regretted, as there is
no subject connected with the Holy Scriptures which at the present
time more requires a candid and sober consideration; no discussion
which, if fairly conducted, would do more to remove many honestly felt
difficulties, and to many minds to bring probably lasting reassurance.
Without presuming to enter, however slightly, into such a subject in
a discursive paper like the present, we will venture to make this
general remark, which perhaps may be found helpful, viz., that in
dealing with all such difficulties we must carefully distinguish
between those connected with Divine workings, and those connected with
human actions. The former are, in their real nature, utterly beyond
the finite judgment of man. All that we may presume to consider is the
way or manner in which they are brought before us by the writer, and
all that we can either safely or wisely subject to criticism are the
aspects or colouring under which they are presented. We really are
not competent to sketch out theories of Divine government, even in
the simplest matters, and with all the advantages of contemporaneous
knowledge; nay, in the lives of ourselves and those around us, there
are, as has been wisely observed, innumerable events of sorrow, and
countless circumstances of suffering, of which the economic purpose
cannot even be guessed at in our present state of knowledge, and of
the exact purposes of which no sober or reverent thinker ever dreams
of attempting to form any estimate whatever. It is thus utterly out of
the question to attempt to consider the difficulties connected with the
Divine workings, except as to the manner of their representation by
the human narrator, whose human powers were the instruments by which
God was pleased to communicate the outward facts of those workings
to the children of men. In regard of the Divine workings themselves,
especially when they come before us in the general forms of judgments
on individuals or nations, all we may presume safely to do is to
regard them as manifestations of Divine righteousness in judicial
relations or contradistinctions to the sins or transgressions of men.
In reference, however, to the moral difficulties connected with
recorded human actions, we may venture to go farther, and to take into
consideration the fact already referred to of the gradual nature of
God's revelation, and all the modifying thoughts which such a fact
brings with it.
It is thus not only right, but necessary, to accept as our guide
in all such investigations or discussions this sober spiritual
principle,--that the Old Testament must be interpreted from the
stand-point of the New Testament, and under the fuller light which is
afforded by the later dispensation. If we cling to these two great
truths--first, that the history of the past, as we find it in the Old
Testament, ever involves a reference to final purposes; and, secondly,
that every attempt to realize the deeper significance of that history
must use Christianity as its basis--we shall probably find our way
in this difficult domain of speculation as far and as safely as the
finite powers of man can be deemed capable of advancing; we shall
see as clearly as we can be permitted to see, when poor human reason
is endeavouring to survey the adorable mysteries that surround the
recorded workings of the manifold wisdom of God.
The second portion of this third group is more especially devoted to
difficulties connected with the New Testament, the first place being
naturally reserved for the questions relating to the life of our Lord
and the Gospel narrative. The first lecture is thus directed to a
consideration of the Mythical Theories of Christianity; the second
to the Evidential Value of St. Paul's Epistles. As has already been
mentioned, the lecture on St. John's Gospel, which would have occupied
a position between the two just specified, owing to the request of the
writer, has not been published, and the series in this part of it has
in consequence suffered.
The two remaining lectures, viz., that on Christ's Teaching and
Influence on the World, and that which follows it, on the Completeness
and Adequacy of the Evidences of Christianity, form the last group,
and worthily conclude the interesting series. A third lecture on the
additional strength which is brought to the evidences of Christianity
by the convergence of various lines of independent testimony, was
intended to have been added to this group, but for this important and
comprehensive subject, as in the case of another subject recently
mentioned, the Committee were not able to procure a lecturer.
The series, as above described, is now commended to the thoughtful
reader. It will be found to be marked throughout with learning,
candour, and we believe also with gentleness and sympathy. On this
last characteristic we ourselves lay great stress. If we would reclaim
the wandering, or confirm the wavering, it is not by hard words and
unkindly imputations, but by the expression of that love and gentleness
which an apostle reminds us are numbered among the fruits of the
Spirit. We must regard ourselves as far as possible in their places,
endeavour to see as they see, and feel as they feel, and then it may be
permitted to us to return from our charitable quest, bringing back the
friendly wanderers with us, and ourselves sharing some portion of that
holy joy which is felt in heaven and in earth when the doubter is led
back to belief, and the lost is found. This rightful characteristic of
all true Christian controversy is not, we believe, anywhere wanting in
this volume, and we thus, with fullest confidence, commend it to the
consideration of all who love the truth, and humbly seek it in history,
science, and theology.
Lastly, we may call attention to the encouraging fact, that in this
great work good men have agreed to forget minor differences. Among the
distinguished men whose independent lectures are now, for convenience,
gathered together in a common volume, are members of the Church
of England and members of other religious communities. It is long
that this co-operation has existed in the circulation of the Holy
Scriptures; it is recently that it has again appeared in the effort to
present those Scriptures in their most accurate form to the English
reader; it is now again happily exemplified in the present attempt to
defend and maintain the truth as it is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
These things are of good augury. Though there may be dissensions, sad
and pitiful, within the Church, and assaults made upon it from without,
often sadly characterized with the marks of political strife, yet we
may thank God that in efforts such as the present, and in the calm and
serenity of studies such as those which this volume commends, a true
union has been felt and acted on. Yes, it is a cause for thankfulness
and rejoicing that the love of Christ is more and more binding us
together in companionships of high duty and gentle sympathy, and that
reverence for His Holy Word, His Word of Life and Truth, is making
us feel that our work is a common one, and that as we have in common
freely received, so it is a blessed thing in common freely to give.
We may humbly pray then that God's gracious favour may rest on this
Course of Lectures, and may be permitted to bear a blessing to those
that read it. May they feel anew convinced in heart and spirit that
we have not "followed cunningly devised fables," but that in the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament there is light and truth, even
because they bring us nearer to Him who is the Truth, as He is the Way
and the Life, for evermore.
C. J. GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL.
_July 19, 1871._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences."
[2] Mr. Wallace, in the "Anthropological Journal," 1864; see also
Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," last chapter.
[3] Moleschott, "Circulation of Life:" Letter XVIII., with Liebig's
opinion there quoted.
[4] Kant, "Metaphysics of Ethics."
[5] See, for example, Renouvier, "Science de la Morale," 1869.
[6] "Limits of Philosophical Enquiry." 1868.
[7] Nehem. ix. 6.
[8] See Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law."
[9] Job xxvi. 14.
[10] Plutarch, "De Justitia."
[11] Buchner.
[12] See Mill on Comte, p. 62, _seq._
[13] Paroles de Philosophic Positive, p. 54.
[14] Janet refers to Nysten's Dictionnaire de Médecine, etc., by Littré
and Robin.
[15] Paroles de Philosophie Positive, p. 53.
[16] Harris's Highlands of Œthiopia, vol. iii. p. 63.
[17] While these sheets were passing through the press, I read in the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ for April 24th, as follows: One of the Communist
papers, the _Montagne_, writes: "Education has made sceptics of us;
the Revolution of 1871 is atheistic; our Republic wears a bouquet of
immortelles in her bosom. We take our dead to their homes, and our
wives to our hearts without a prayer. Priests! throw aside your frocks,
turn up your sleeves, lay your hands upon the plough, for a song to the
lark in the morning air is better than a mumbling of psalms, and an ode
to sparkling wine is preferable to a chanting of hymns. Our dogs that
used only to growl when a bishop passed will bite him now, and not a
voice will be raised to curse the day which dawns for the sacrifice
of the Archbishop of Paris. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the
world. The Commune has promised us an eye for an eye, and has given us
Monseigneur Darboy as a hostage. The justice of the tribunals shall
commence, said Danton, when the wrath of the people is appeased; and he
was right. Darboy! tremble in your cell, for your day is past, your end
is close at hand."
[18] I use this word because if the value of faith and virtue consists
in their being a discipline, while this implies the existence of
difficulty, it also limits the degree of the difficulty.
[19] "Rudiments," so far from disproving, prove this. A rudiment shows
that nature might have given more, but has not done so. Why? Because
the further gift would have been useless, for instance, man would not
have been benefited by being able to feel with his eye-brows. (See
Darwin, "Descent of Man," i. 25.)
[20] Professor Huxley's words are, "In these groups there is abundant
evidence of variation--none of what is ordinarily understood as
progression; and if the known geological record is to be regarded as
even any considerable fragment of the whole, it is inconceivable that
any theory of a necessarily progressive development can stand, for the
numerous orders and families cited afford no trace of such a process."
(p. 245.)
[21] Darwin, "Descent of Man," i. 205.[175]
[22] It is a curious fact that these Ascidians possess a heart and a
circulation, but that after the heart has beaten a certain number of
times it stops, and then beats the opposite way, so as to reverse the
circulation. (Lay Sermons, p. 95.) In what stage of its progress did it
so degenerate as to lose this remarkable power?
[23] Darwin, "Descent of Man," i. 22.[176]
[24] There is something of this in animals just as, on the other hand,
man is not altogether devoid of instincts. I should have expected this
from the teaching of the first chapter of Genesis, which represents men
not as a distinct creation but as the last act of creation.
[25] Physically the monkey is man's superior. Anatomists assure us that
they can find no very great difference between his brain and ours. His
larynx also is as well fitted as ours to produce articulate sounds.
So far we are equal. But he has four hands, and we have but two. Read
Sir C. Bell's "Bridgewater Treatise upon the Hand," and you will
see at once that a vast superiority is implied in this. I can never
believe that when, by natural and sexual selection, a creature had been
attained possessed of four hands, nature could so degradate in her work
as to fall back upon two. No well-bred monkey would have mated with one
so deformed.[178]
[26] Lartet, quoted by Darwin, "Descent," i. 51.
[27] The body politic is in fact very much like the natural body. There
is a constant waste and a constant repair. The waste may be greater
than the repair--and in that case the body dwindles--but the repair may
be greater than the waste, in which case there is growth, progress. In
both alike real growth can only be by assimilation. The new must be
taken up into the old, and become part with it. That which is losing
vitality must be put away; but that which is to take its place must
become one with the old. After a certain time, however, natural bodies
lose their powers of assimilation, and old age and death are the
result: I cannot enter into the question how far this is also the case
with political bodies.[179]
[28] Animals brought into contact with man attain some small share in
this power. The influence of man over domesticated animals is most
remarkable. I should doubt whether a wild animal was at all capable of
making such a distinction.