debate, and that if doubtful things cannot be revealed, then
Christianity itself is not a Revelation. To this I reply, that
Christianity is a matter of debate chiefly because Christ himself is not
offered to the hearts of men, because controversialists thrust forward
their own doctrinal conceptions as the essentials of Christianity,
presenting _themselves_, and not Jesus to make his own impression on the
heart. If not creeds, but Jesus the Christ was offered spiritually to
the souls of men, unbelief would be soon no more. No earnest and pure
mind would reject from its love and faith the serene and perfect image
of the living Jesus. Men can deny metaphysical doctrines: but they could
not deny the spiritual Christ. The spirit of God in every man would bear
witness to _him_ who was the fulness of that spirit, and would recognize
the heavenly leadership of the Son of God. If the essentials of
Christianity had not been made by Divines and Theologians to consist in
disputed doctrines, if it had been offered to faith on the ground of its
inherent excellence, its ample attractions for our spiritual nature, how
readily, how universally would it have been received by all who felt
that it had echoes within the soul, and that Jesus was indeed the
brightest image of God, and the very ideal of humanity! Who would not be
a Christian, if to be a Christian required faith only in such truths as
these:—that the holy and affectionate Jesus was the human image of the
mind of God, and that the Universal Father is more perfect and more
tender than his holy and gentle child, by as much as Deity transcends
humanity; that the character of the Christ is God’s aim and purpose for
us all, the result at which He desires each of us to arrive through the
discipline and sufferings of earth;—that traces of Immortality were upon
that heavenly mind; that his profound sympathy with the Spirit of God,
the surrender of his own immediate interests for the sake of the
purposes and drift of providence, the identification of himself with the
will of God, the constant manifestation of a style of thought and action
drawn on a wider scale than this present life, and that placed him in
harmony with better worlds,—that these marked him out as a being whose
nature was adjusted to more glorious scenes, whose soul was out of
proportion to his merely earthly and external lot, and whose appropriate
home must be the pure Heaven of God? Would any one refuse admission to
these spiritual views as they are given off to our souls from the pure
life of Jesus, if he was permitted to receive them from Christ himself,
and not obliged on his way to that Heavenly Image of grace, liberty, and
truth, to stoop his free neck to the yoke of Churches and of Creeds? But
men preach themselves, not Christ. They embody their own conceptions of
Christianity in formulas, and pronounce these to be essentials, instead
of suffering Jesus to make his way to the heart, and stamp there his own
impression. Hence the origin of unbelief. I quote the words of an
eminent Unitarian, himself converted from orthodoxy chiefly by the force
of the argument I am about to state: “Settle your disputes (says the
unbeliever), and then I will listen to your arguments in defence of
Christianity. Both of you, Romanists and Protestants, offer me salvation
on condition that I embrace the Christian faith. You offer me a
sovereign remedy, which is to preserve me alive in happiness through all
eternity; but I hear you accusing each other of recommending to the
world, not a remedy but a _poison_; a poison, indeed, which, instead of
securing eternal happiness, must add bitterness to eternal punishment.
You both agree that it is of the _essence_ of Christianity to accept
certain doctrines concerning the manner in which the Divine Nature
exists; the moral and intellectual condition in which man was created;
our present degradation through the misconduct of our first parents: the
nature of sin, and the impossibility of its being pardoned except by
pain inflicted on an innocent person; the existence or non-existence of
living representatives of Christ and his apostles; a church which
enjoys, collectively, some extraordinary privileges in regard to the
visible and invisible world; the presence of Christ among us by means of
transubstantiation, or the denial of such presence; all this, and much
more, some of you declare to be contained in, and others to be opposed
to, the Scriptures; and even here, there is a fierce contention as to
whether those Scriptures embrace the whole of that Christianity which is
necessary for salvation, or whether tradition is to fill up a certain
gap. I am, therefore, at a loss how to account for the invitation you
give me. To me (the unbeliever might continue) it is quite evident that
the ablest opponents of Christianity never discovered a more convincing
argument against REVELATION in general, than that which inevitably
arises from your own statements, and from the controversies of your
churches. God (you both agree), pitying mankind, has disregarded the
natural laws fixed by himself, and for a space of four thousand years,
and more, has multiplied miracles for the purpose of acquainting men
with the means of obtaining salvation, and avoiding eternal death,
_eternal death_ signifying almost universally, among you, _unending
torments_. But when I turn to examine the result of this (as you deem
it) _miraculous and all-wise plan_, I find it absolutely incomplete; for
the whole Christian world has been eighteen centuries in a perpetual
warfare (not without great shedding of blood), because Christians cannot
settle what is that faith which alone can save us. Have you not thus
demonstrated that the revelation of which you boast cannot be from God?
Do you believe, and do you wish me to believe, that when God had decreed
to make a _saving truth_ known to the world, he failed of that object,
or wished to make Revelation a snare?”[133]
Now not believing that Revelation has failed of its object, or that it
is a snare, and believing that under all the so-called Essentials, which
we regard as mere human additions, there is yet a true and universal
impression received from the spirit of Jesus, believing, in fact, that
our Controversies are about accidentals, and that under all our
differences there is, deeper down, the untroubled well of Christ
springing up into everlasting life, I would proceed to expose those
errors in the Trinitarian conception of Revelation which have laid it
open to the charge of _not being a Revelation_, of dividing mankind by
Controversies instead of uniting them by moral Certainty,—and to
contrast this Trinitarian Conception of Revelation with what, for the
following reasons, we hold to be the _true one_; because it represents
God as accomplishing what, from the very nature of a Revelation, he must
have intended to accomplish, namely, the communication of moral and
spiritual knowledge: because it removes the materials for doctrinal
strife and controversial rancour which never could have been God’s
object in sending a Revelation, but which are inseparable from
Trinitarian ideas of Revelation; and because it would realize that union
for which Christ prayed and Apostles intreated, a moral oneness with God
as revealed in Jesus, a unity _of spirit_ in the bond of peace.
Let us suppose, then, God having the design to send a Revelation to
Mankind. There are two methods, either of which He might adopt in the
execution of that intention. He might send them a written Revelation in
the form of a Book: or He might send them a living Revelation in the
form of a Man. He might announce to them His Will through _words_: or He
might send to them _one of like nature with themselves_, who would
actually work the Will of God before their eyes; one who, passing
through their circumstances of life and death, would show them in his
own person the character which God intended this present discipline to
create; and who, appearing again after death, morally unchanged, and
passing into the Heavens, would reveal to them, by these his own
destinies, the unbroken spiritual connection of the present with the
future, and the immortal home which God has with Himself for the spirits
of those holy ones who are no more on Earth. In the first case, then, we
suppose God to send a verbal Message to men, a communication by words
teaching doctrines, spoken first, and afterwards committed to writing:
in the second case we suppose that a pure and heavenly being,
manifesting the will and purposes of God through his own nature, which
is also our nature, is _himself the divine Message_ from our Father; one
who walks this earth amidst our sorrows and our sins,—transfiguring the
one and reclaiming the other—and gathering up into his own soul the
strength that is to be derived from both; who enters our dwellings,
sheds through them the divine light of heavenly love, plants the hope of
immortality in the midst of trembling, because loving and dying, beings,
and binds together the perishing children of Earth in the godlike Trust
of imperishable affections which Death can glorify but cannot kill; who
places himself in our circumstances of severest trial, and shows us the
energy of a filial heart, and the unquenchable brightness of a spirit in
prayerful communion with the God of Providence; who, that he might be a
revelation of a heavenly mind amidst every variety of temptation, passed
on his way to death through rudest insults, and showed how awful a thing
is moral greatness, how calm, how majestic, how inaccessible, how it
shines out through aggressive coarseness, a mental and ineffaceable
serenity, a spirit that has its glory in itself, and cannot be
touched;—who, having showed man how to live and to suffer, next showed
him how to die;—who in the spirit and power of Duty subdued this garment
of throbbing flesh to the will of God, and in the death agonies was
self-forgetful enough to look down from the cross in the tenderest
foresight for those he left behind, and to look up to Heaven, presenting
for his murderers the only excuse that heavenly pity could
suggest,—“Father forgive them! they know not what they do;”—and who
having thus glorified God upon the earth, and finished the work given
him to do, was himself glorified by God; taken to that Heaven which is
the home of goodness;—thus showing the issues to which God conducts the
tried and perfected spirit, that His Faithfulness is bound up with the
destinies of those that trust Him, and that His providence is the
recompense of the just, who live now by Faith.
Now the first thing that will strike you in comparing these two possible
methods of a Revelation is, that the written communication containing
doctrines is cold, formal, indistinct and distant, when contrasted with
the living presence of a pure and heavenly being, who places himself at
our side, enters into our joys and sorrows, shows us in action and in
suffering the will of God reflected on every form of life, and works out
before our eyes the vast idea of perfection. No message, no written
document, no form of words, could leave such distinct impressions or
quicken such sympathy and love, as the warm and breathing spirit who
entered into communication with us, whose influences we felt upon our
trembling souls, whose eye penetrated and whose voice melted us, and who
took us by the hand and showed us how children of God should prove their
filial claim, and through the vicissitudes of a Father’s providence pass
meekly to their Home.
Such a living Revelation could of course be preserved for _posterity_
only through the medium of written records, but then these records would
be chiefly descriptive; and their grand purpose would be faithfully to
convey to the men of other times the true image of that heavenly being;
to re-create him, from age to age, in the heart of life; to introduce
the Son of God with the power of reality into the business and the
bosoms of men; to impress upon the silent page such graphic characters
that they give off to the mind animated scenes, and bring the living
Christ before the gazing eye; and the written Revelation would perfectly
fulfil its mission, when by vivid and faithful narrative, without
comment or reflection of its own, it had placed us in the presence of
Jesus, and left us, like the disciples of old, to collect our
impressions of the Christ as we waited upon his steps, and watched the
spirit working into life, and caught the tones of living emotion; when
we walked with him through the villages of Galilee, and saw him arrest
the mourners, and touch the bier, and restore the only son of the
widowed mother; when we retired with him to the lone mountain, and
witnessed how the spirit ascended to God before it entered into the
conflicts of temptation; when we stood with him in the Temple Court, and
beheld how much more noble than the Temple is the Spirit that sanctifies
the Temple, and how the Priest in his strong hold quailed and trembled
under the thrilling tones and simple majesty of Truth; when we followed
him to his home, not neglecting to observe how his eye, that was never
cold to goodness, fell upon the widow and her mite as he left the
Temple; when we leaned with the loved disciple on his bosom, and watched
his last offices, and listened, with hushed hearts, for his last words;
when we saw him kneel at the disciples’ feet, that the spirit of
equality and brotherhood might enter into their hearts; and break the
bread of remembrance and distribute the parting cup,—that bound up with
such symbols of self-sacrifice, he, the living Christ, might come back
in moments of severe Duty, and pour his own spirit of self-denial
through deathless memories; when we listened to his last prayers and
consolations, and observed that, in that awful pause between life and
death, he was the comforter; when we watched with him in Gethsemane’s
garden, and beheld the tears of nature, the holy one and the just,
beneath the awe of his mission, trembling and melted before God; when we
stood by him in Pilate’s hall, and saw the moral greatness of the
unassailable spirit unobscured by bitterest humiliation; when we drew
nigh to his cross, and witnessed the crown placed upon a glory that in
mortal form could rise no higher—“It is finished.” To place us by its
vivid descriptions in such communication with Jesus himself, is the
great purpose of the historical record of Christianity; and in
proportion as it makes this intercourse real and intimate, does the New
Testament become to us the instrument and vehicle of a Revelation.
Without this reproduction in our hearts of Jesus, the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever, the Scriptures are but a dead letter, barren
symbols, perverted to mere verbal and logical uses, that awake no life,
and serve no spiritual purpose.
The next observation that could not fail to strike you in contrasting
the two methods of Revelation which I have supposed, a written
communication containing doctrines, and a living character representing
the will of God, is the great uncertainty and liability to _various_
interpretations of the written method of Revelation when compared with
the acted Revelation, the will of God embodied in Christ Jesus. Nothing
is so unfixed as the meaning of words; nothing is so fixed as the
meaning of actions. Nothing is so vague as language; nothing is so
definite as character. You may fail to collect the exact ideas of a
written communication; but you _cannot fail to understand_ a living,
feeling, acting, suffering, and dying man, who, on his own person, works
out the will of God before your eyes; and, instead of communicating with
you through writing, communicates with you through a character that can
have no two meanings, and that requires no doubtful application of
scientific rules of interpretation to make it plain. Place me in the
presence of Christ, and the Revelation is impressing itself on my
answering heart, and exhibiting itself before my living eyes. Place me
before some lengthened statement in words, and I may draw from them a
variety of senses, and perhaps fix upon, as their true sense, one that
their Author did not intend. Who will protect me from error in all my
applications of the difficult science of interpreting words? How, for
instance, shall I be certain that I do not impress my own limited
conceptions upon the most solemn and inspired language? How shall I rise
through words, which are mere symbols, to conceptions, which, not being
in my own soul, mere words do not suggest? If I saw a living being
embodying these sublime conceptions before me, or read a description of
him that brought him vividly before the soul, then the words would be no
longer clothed with my poor meanings, but would bring before me the
living forms of goodness and of greatness into which they expanded when
represented by that heavenly mind. To illustrate my meaning by a single
instance: Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Now how poor would be my
conception of that duty, if I had only these words, if I had not his own
acted interpretations of their fulness, if I could not stand by his
cross, and witness his own exhibition of this heavenly spirit. The
precept would be narrowed to my own littleness if I had not the
illustration of the living Christ. It is possible to put a limitation
upon the revelation of mercy as it is written in the dead words: it is
not possible to put any limitation on “the word made flesh,” the
Revelation of Mercy breathing from the dying Jesus. Such then is the
greater clearness, and freedom from uncertainty, of the meaning of God,
when that meaning is revealed on the person of a living being, than when
it is a statement of Doctrines expressed through a medium so indefinite,
so susceptible of a variety of interpretations, as written language.
That there is a distinct branch of study called the Art of
Interpretation; that its principles are derived from the profoundest
acquaintance with the Mind; that it is in fact a practical Metaphysics,
which even, when most fully understood, requires, for its correct
application to ancient writings, the most varied and extensive
knowledge, and the utmost natural acuteness, disciplined by long
practice,—these things, which every one knows, scholar or no scholar,
are standing and undeniable proofs of the inherent ambiguity of
language, of the variety of meanings, which no skill in the use of words
can possibly prevent, and out of which we have to make a selection of
some one, when we apply ourselves to interpret a document. Now were I to
enter into a full enumeration of the considerations that should
determine an interpreter of the New Testament, and out of all the
possible meanings direct his selection of that one which he adopts, I
should have to present you with a disquisition on perhaps the most
profound and difficult department of literary inquiry. I should have to
speak of Archæology and original languages, themselves even in their
most general character, the study of a life; I should have to speak of
one form of those original languages, peculiar and a study in itself,
the Hellenistic Greek, in which the New Testament is written, and in the
interpretation of which we are left without the aid that is derived from
the usages of language by other authors: I should have to speak of the
particular writer whose words we were examining, of the character of his
mind, of the peculiarities of his style, whether he wrote oratorically
or scientifically, whether we were to tame down his metaphors, or
whether we were to regard them as literally descriptive; I should have
to speak of the age and country in which he lived, of the state of
opinion and philosophy in his times, of the colourings which his words
or thoughts were likely to adopt from the then prevailing theories, of
the particular purpose for which he was writing, and of the particular
minds, their circumstances and states of knowledge to which the writing
was addressed; and after all this I could not allow any man, however
erudite, to be a competent Interpreter who was not richly endowed with
that noble but most rare Faculty which can re-create the past and place
us in the heart of a by-gone world, that Historic Imagination which
throws itself into the sympathies of Antiquity and re-produces the
living forms of Society that kindled the very thoughts and modified the
very language now submitted to our minds; and in addition to all this I
should demand, also, as an essential requisite for an Interpreter, a
mind emptied of all prejudice, a calm and sound judgment.
Now it is most evident that a result depending on so many qualifications
will be necessarily uncertain; that in every separate man who comes to
the study of the New Testament, according as these instruments of
interpretation exist in different degrees of perfection will they derive
various meanings from the written document; and that consequently, since
nowhere do these requisites for a perfect interpretation exist in
perfection, there is no one of the contested meanings that can be relied
upon with an absolute confidence. It is also to be noticed, that this
uncertainty attending the meaning of words does not attach to the
_narrative_ or _historical_ portion of a document, but is very much
confined to that portion of it which contains doctrinal ideas,
philosophical theories, or metaphysical statements. The descriptive
portion of an ancient writing (and especially when, as in the case of
Christ, the description is of a moral nature, and is addressed to the
affections and the soul, which are the same in all ages,) will convey a
uniform and universal impression, whilst the didactic portion of the
very same writing will suggest as many meanings as there are varieties
of intellectual texture and complexion in the minds that read it. The
character of Jesus shines out from the Gospels to be seen of all men,
full of grace and truth. No one mistakes that. It does not depend upon
the skilful application of the science of Interpretation. The symbols of
language that reveal the living Jesus are of universal significance, and
finding their way at once to every heart, stamp upon it a faithful image
of the Christ. But doctrinal conceptions cannot be conveyed in this way:
there is no universal and unchanging language for metaphysical ideas—and
consequently it is impossible that any written communication on such
subjects should be free from a variety of interpretations. And
especially must this be so, when, as is the case with the Trinity, the
doctrine is nowhere expressly stated in the document, but is only
inferred by connecting together into a system a number of ideas which it
seems to contain. Let me give you an illustration that was lately
brought before me of the impossibility of a Revelation of doctrines
being made to man, by means of written language, upon such subjects as
the Trinity, the modes in which the essence of the Deity enables him
personally to subsist. I heard it stated on a late occasion by Dr.
Tattershall, that the Trinity existed as one nature in three
personalities; and that to ask how three could be one and one three, was
to ask an unmeaning and irrelevant question, because that the Trinity
was three and one in different senses, three in Person but one in
Essence. I turn now to Dr. Sherlock, and I find these words: “To say,”
says Dr. William Sherlock, “that there are three divine persons, and not
three distinct infinite minds, is both heresy and nonsense.” “The
distinction of persons cannot be more truly and aptly represented than
by the distinction between three men; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
are as really distinct persons as Peter, James, and John.” Here then we
have Dr. Tattershall charging Sherlock with polytheism; and we have
Sherlock charging Dr. Tattershall with Heresy and nonsense. That is,
neither of these Trinitarians regards the other as having the true
faith. Is it not evident then, that the doctrine of the Trinity, seeing
how Trinitarians themselves charge one another with heresy, cannot be a
doctrine of _Revelation_, cannot be a part of that universal Gospel
which was preached to the poor, and revealed unto babes?
It was stated in Christ Church, by the Rev. Mr. Byrth, that the
controversy between us was solely a question of Interpretation. It is
so, because in the case cited, our dispute is about doctrines. The
question of _Unitarianism_ or _Trinitarianism_ must be decided by
Interpretation after Criticism has fixed the Text to be interpreted; but
I deny, altogether, that the question of _Christianity_ or
_No-Christianity_ is to be decided by any such imperfect and doubtful
instrument. Though no one honours Scholarship more, or has a profounder
veneration for its noble functions, and altogether renouncing the
vulgarity of depreciating its high offices, and maintaining, wherever I
have influence, especially for our own Church and in our own day, the
necessity for a learned Ministry, able to refresh their souls at the
original wells and unfrighted by confident dogmatism to give a reason
for the faith that is in them, I yet declare, that Christianity is a
religion for the people; that the Gospel was originally preached to the
poor; that Christ is manifested to the heart and soul of every man whom
he attracts by heavenly sympathy; that when not many wise, not many
learned were called, the lowly but honest in heart, recognized the
divine brightness, and sat at the feet of Jesus docile and rejoicing;
and I protest altogether against any learned Aristocracy, any literary
Hierarchy, any priestly Mediators, having more of the true light that
lighteth every man than the humblest of their brethren, who has taken to
his heart the free gift of God, and loves the Lord Jesus with sincerity.