fatherhood among men? Unquestionably there is. Love in the form of
mere goodness is far from the noblest and most distinctive quality in
a human father's heart; nay, there is no true fatherliness of heart
at all in a man in whom there is nothing better than that. One can,
by an effort of imagination, indeed, conceive a man to have children
so absolutely innocent and happy, and so perfectly guarded from all
possibility of evil and suffering, that love in the form of goodness
or kindness would be the only kind of love he could show them; but
would his fatherly love be ever really tested in that case? Could he
ever show the deeper, the truly distinctive feelings of a father's
heart--those we so often see manifested in the toils, the hardships,
the dangers, the sacrifices of wealth, comfort, and even life, which
parents undertake and endure for their children? Certainly not. Apply
this to God. In what sense is He a Father? In what sense has He
fatherly love? Among the angels this question could have no place, for
they were such perfectly innocent and happy children that love in the
form of goodness was all they required--all that could be shown to
them. And it would have been the same with men also, if they had not
fallen. But as soon as sin, suffering, and death invaded earth, and
seized on man's body and soul, and help or healing there was none for
him in any creature, the most awful of questions for the human race
came to be, whether or not God was a Father in the full meaning of that
term, or, in other words, whether or not He had a love which, in order
to save men, would submit to humiliation, suffering, sacrifice?
Now that is what I say creation and providence cannot prove. Point to
anything in creation or to anything in ordinary providence which you
can show to have _cost_ God anything. You can easily point to thousands
and thousands of things and events which you may justly conclude to be
signs or gifts of God's goodness; but can you point to one thing in
creation, one event in ordinary providence, which you can seriously
maintain to come from a self-sacrificing love such as a father
displays when he rushes into a house in flames, or throws himself
into a raging flood, to save the life of his child at the risk of his
own? If you cannot, you fail to prove God a Father in the sense I
mean. And in that sense, which is the true sense, there seems to me no
possibility of proving God a Father from creation and providence, apart
from redemption.
Wherein is it that both fail? Obviously in this, that they can show
no traces of sacrifice on God's part. But it is just here that the
revelation of redemption comes in. God, in the unspeakable gift of His
Son, shows us a power of sacrifice infinitely above anything known
among men--an intensity of tenderest fatherly affection of which
the strongest fatherly affection on earth is but a pale and feeble
reflection; and Christ in His incarnation, life, sufferings, and death,
reveals to us not merely the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God,
but the very depths, if we may so speak, of His heart as a Father,
enabling us to feel without a doubt that now indeed are we the sons
of God. Nothing but a special revelation, however, could thus unveil
and disclose God. The natural reason could not thus discern Him by its
unaided power. And yet it is only in the knowledge of God as a Father
that the soul can either discern or realise its true destiny.
There are many other precious truths set before us in the Gospel which
we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human
guidance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. We shall not,
however, dwell on them or even enumerate them. The entire problem of
our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution.
The light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot
show man a way of reconciliation to God. No man by mere human wisdom,
by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find
that out. Mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be
wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the
powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the
wisdom of God--or, in other words, to accept Christ, who is the wisdom
of God to us for salvation, who is God's solution of the problem of our
salvation. The only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very
nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own
wisdom. If he say, I shall solve this awful problem for myself, without
help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose
folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own
folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge
the wisdom of God and acquiesce in His plan of salvation, then, in the
very act of confessing himself foolish he is made wise, for Christ is
made wisdom unto him.
The oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Socrates
could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the
oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in
order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than I am," or at least
to find out what the oracle meant. He went to many, but he found that,
while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they
thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to
convince them of their ignorance. So that at last Socrates came to
recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to
use nearly his own words,--"He left them, saying to himself, I am wiser
than these men; for neither they nor I, it would seem, know anything
valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; I, as I
really do not know, so I do not think that I know. I seem, therefore,
to be in one small matter wiser than they." Now it is only the kind
of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in
Socrates--it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which
concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto
salvation. The most ignorant person, provided he only know that he must
renounce his own wisdom as foolishness--which on subjects pertaining
to salvation it really is--and accept what is disclosed in Christ as
to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who
trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from Christ's revealed work and
will. Both of them are foolish and ignorant; but the one knows it, and,
in consequence of knowing it, accepts Christ's plan of salvation, and
is made a partaker of infinite wisdom--the other does not know it, and,
thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and
must bear its punishment.
And now I bring this course of lectures to a close. I trust that they
may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of
Him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if
humbly rendered to Him. I should rejoice to think that I had helped
any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more
intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith
must rest. Amen.
APPENDIX.
NOTE I., page 6.
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.
The Hindus regard the Vedas, the Parsees the Zend-Avesta, and the
Mohammedans the Koran, as having been immediately and specially
inspired. This means that they believe the spiritual truth contained
in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it in reality
is merely a portion of natural religion. The Greeks and Romans could
not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith,
because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. Without special
revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained,
however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most
precious religious truth. In all ages of the Christian Church there
have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles
of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few
patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a
knowledge of God and of His attributes and of His relations to the
world which might be the object of a science distinct from, and
independent of, revelation. This is quite consistent with what is also
a fact--namely, that the vast majority of Christian writers have always
acknowledged that "the light of nature and the works of creation and
providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God," and that
this general revelation is implied in the special revelation made at
sundry times and divers manners and recorded in the Scriptures. The
'Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturum' of the Spanish physician,
Raymond de Sebonde, who taught theology in the University of Toulouse
during the earlier part of the fifteenth century, was, so far as I
know, the first work which, proceeding on the principle that God has
given us two books, the book of nature and the book of Scripture,
confined itself to the interpretation of the former, merely indicating
the mutual relations of natural and revealed religion. Faustus Socinus
was one of the first distinctly to maintain that there was no such
thing as natural religion--no knowledge of God attainable except from
Scripture: see his 'De Auctoritate Scripturæ Sacræ.' A conviction
of the importance of natural theology spread very rapidly in the
seventeenth century. This contributed to awaken an interest in the
various religions of the world, and thus led to the rise of what may
be called Comparative Theology, although more generally designated the
Philosophy of Religion. Its origin is to be sought in the attempts made
to prove that the principles of natural theology were to be found in
all religions. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's 'De Religione Gentilium,'
published in 1663, was one of the earliest and most characteristic
attempts of the kind. From that time to the present the study of
religions has proceeded at varying rates of progress, but without
interruption, and has at length begun to be prosecuted according to the
rules of that comparative method which has, in the words of Mr Freeman,
"carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which
before were shrouded in darkness and confusion."
The eighteenth century was the golden age of natural theology. The
deists both of England and France endeavoured to exalt natural theology
at the expense of positive theology by representing the former as
the truth of which the latter was the perversion. "All religions in
the world," said Diderot, "are merely sects of natural religion."
The prevalent opinion of the freethinkers of his time could not have
been more accurately expressed. It was just what his predecessors in
England meant by describing Christianity as "a republication of natural
religion," and by maintaining that it was "as old as the creation."
The wisest opponents of the deists, and thoughtful Christian writers
in general--the adherents of the moderate and rational theology
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--strove, on the other
hand, to show that natural theology was in reality presupposed by
revelation, and that it should carry the mind onwards to the acceptance
of revelation. But there were some who undertook to maintain that
there was no such thing as natural theology; that reason of itself
can teach us absolutely nothing about God or our duties towards Him.
The Hutchinsonians, for example, whose best representatives, besides
the founder, were Bishop Horne of Norwich, and William Jones, curate
of Nayland, believed that all knowledge of religion and morals, and
even the chief truths of physical science, ought to be drawn from the
Bible. Dr Ellis, in his treatise entitled 'The Knowledge of Divine
Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature' (1743), laboured
to prove that neither the being of a God nor any other principle of
religion could be legitimately deduced from the study of the phenomena
of the universe. He argued on the assumption that the senses are the
only natural inlets to knowledge. The late Archbishop Magee adopted
his views on this subject. One of the most widely known expositions
and defences of the theory is that contained in the 'Theological
Institutes' (1823) of the eminent Wesleyan divine, Richard Watson. In
order to establish that all our religious knowledge is derived from
special revelation, he employs all the usual arguments of scepticism
against the proofs of theism and the principles of reason on which
they rest. In the Roman Catholic Church, scepticism as to reason and
the light of nature has often been combined with dogmatism as to the
authority of revelation and the Church. In the system of what is called
the theocratic school may be seen the result to which attempts to
establish the certitude of authority by destroying the credit of human
reason naturally lead. It is a system of which I have endeavoured to
give some account in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,'
pp. 139-154.
The fact on which I have insisted in the latter part of the
lecture--the fact that theism has come to mankind in and through
revelation--has caused some altogether to discard the division
of religion into natural and revealed. They pronounce it to be a
distinction without a difference, and attribute to it sundry evil
consequences. It has led, they think, on the one hand, to depreciation
of revelation--and, on the other, to jealousy of reason: some minds
looking upon Christianity as at best a republication of the religion
of nature, in which all that is most essential and valuable is "as
old as the creation;" while others see in natural religion a rival of
revealed religion, and would exclude reason from the religious sphere
as much as possible. The distinction is, however, real, and the errors
indicated are not its legitimate consequences. If there be a certain
amount of knowledge about God and spiritual things to be derived from
nature--from data furnished by perception and consciousness, and
accessible to the whole human race,--while there is also a certain
knowledge about Him which can only have been communicated through a
special illumination or manifestation--through prophecy, or miracle, or
incarnation,--the distinction must be retained. It is no real objection
to it to urge that in a sense even natural religion may be regarded as
revealed religion, since in a sense the whole universe is a revelation
of God, a manifestation of His name, a declaration of His glory. That
is a truth, and, in its proper place, a very important truth, but it
is not relevant here: it is perfectly consistent with the belief that
God has not manifested Himself merely in nature, but also in ways which
require to be carefully distinguished from the manifestation in nature.
In like manner, the distinction is not really touched by showing that
revealed religion has embodied and endorsed the truths of natural
religion, or by proving that even what is most special in revelation
is in a sense natural. These are both impregnable positions. The Bible
is to a large extent an inspired republication of the spiritual truths
which are contained in the physical creation, and in the reason,
conscience, and history of man. But this does not disprove that it is
something more. The highest and most special revelation of God--His
revelation in Jesus Christ--was also the fullest realisation of the
true nature of man. But this is no reason why we should not distinguish
between the general and the special in that revelation. We can only
efface the distinction by reducing Christ to a mere man, or confounding
God with man in a pantheistic manner.
It has been further objected to the division of religion into natural
and revealed that it is unhistorical, that natural religion is only
revealed religion disguised and diluted--Christianity without Christ.
It never existed, we are told, apart from revelation, and never would
have existed but for revelation. But this very objection, it will
be observed, implies that natural religion is not identical with
revealed religion--is not revealed religion pure and simple--is not
Christianity with Christ. Why is this? Is it not because revealed
religion contains more than natural religion--what reason cannot read
in the physical universe or human soul? Besides, while the principles
of natural religion were presented in revelation in a much clearer form
than in any merely human systems, and while there can be no reasonable
doubt that but for revelation our knowledge of them would be greatly
more defective than it is, to maintain that they had no existence or
were unknown apart from revelation, is manifestly to set history at
defiance. Were there no truths of natural religion in the works of
Plato, Cicero, and Seneca? Is there any heathen religion or heathen
philosophy in which there are not truths of natural religion?
The belief in a natural religion which is independent alike of special
revelation and of positive or historical religions has been argued
to have originated in the same condition of mind as the belief in
a "state of nature" entertained by a few political theorists in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This can only be done by
confounding natural religion with an imaginary patriarchal religion,
which is, of course, inexcusable. Natural religion is analogous, not to
the state of nature, but to the law of nature of the jurists. Natural
religion is the foundation of all theology, as the law of nature is the
foundation of all ethical and political science; and just as belief in
the law of nature is perfectly independent of the theory of a state of
nature, so the belief in natural religion has no connection whatever
with any theory of patriarchal or primitive religion.
There is a well-known essay by Professor Jowett on the subject of this
note in the second volume of his 'St Paul's Epistles,' &c.
NOTE II., page 9.
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON MORALITY.
The assertion of Mr Bentham and of Mr J. S. Mill that much has been
written on the truth but little on the usefulness of religion, is quite
inaccurate. Most of the apologists of religion have set forth the proof
that it serves to sustain and develop personal and social morality;
and, from the time of Bayle downwards, not a few of its assailants have
undertaken to show that it is practically useless or even hurtful. But
Bentham may have been the first who proposed to estimate the utility
of religion apart from the consideration of its truth. The notion was
characteristically Benthamite. It was likewise far too irrational to be
capable of being consistently carried out or applied. The work compiled
by Mr Grote from the papers of Mr Bentham, and published under the name
of Philip Beauchamp--'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on
the Temporal Happiness of Mankind'--and Mr Mill's 'Essay on the Utility
of Religion,' are, in almost every second page, as well as in their
general tenor, attacks not merely on the utility but on the truth of
religion.
The former of these works is an attempt to show that natural religion
has done scarcely any good, and produced no end of evils--inflicting,
so runs the indictment, unprofitable suffering, imposing useless
privations, impressing undefined terrors, taxing pleasure by the
infusion of preliminary scruples and subsequent remorse, creating
factitious antipathies, perverting the popular opinion, corrupting
moral sentiment, producing aversion to improvement, disqualifying the
intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life, suborning
unwarranted belief, depraving the temper, and, finally, creating a
particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of
humanity. The author makes out that religion is responsible for this
catalogue of mischiefs, by two simple devices. First, he defines
religion as "the belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom
pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and
future state of existence," or, in other words, he so defines religion
as to exclude from the idea of God the thought of moral goodness,
righteousness, and holiness. He even insists that the God of natural
religion can only be conceived of as "a capricious and insane despot,"
and bases his argumentation on this assumption. Dr Caselles, who has
translated the treatise into French, and prefaced it by an interesting
introduction, informs us that the argumentation is not applicable
to the new, but only to the old theism. It is historically certain,
however, that the "old" theism of Jeremy Bentham and his friends never
existed outside of their own imaginations. It is likewise certain that
a lamb would acquire a very bad character if it were by definition
identified with a wolf, and credited with all that creature's doings.
The second device is "a declaration of open war against the principle
of separating the abuses of a thing from its uses." The only excuse
which can be given for this declaration of a most unjust war is, that
Mr Bentham was able completely to misunderstand the obvious meaning of
the principle which he assailed. That a book so unfair and worthless
should have produced on the mind of Mr J. S. Mill, even when a boy of
sixteen, the impression which he describes in his Autobiography would
have been inexplicable, had we not known the character of his education.