admitted that Christianity is not the property of scholars or critics,
but the gift of God to all men; and yet, with a remarkable
inconsistency, it was added, that “the all men” to whom Christianity is
the gift of God, must find in it the doctrine of the Trinity, else they
are no Christians at all. That is, Christianity is the gift of God to
those who, by the aids of interpretation and criticism, become
Trinitarians, and to all those who, following their leaders, accept this
doctrine; but is not the gift of God to Unitarians, who, though loving
Jesus as their Light on Earth and their Forerunner amid the skies,
cannot so read either the written Gospel or the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as to collect from them
the doctrine of a Trinity. If Trinitarianism is Christianity
exclusively, then Christianity _is not_ the gift of God to all men; for
many, in all ages of the Church and in the first century, perhaps,
without exception, have accepted Christ, but knew no Trinity. If
Trinitarianism is Christianity exclusively, then Christianity is the
property of critics and scholars, for that doctrine is not a
self-evidencing Truth, it does not shine out from the Gospels so that no
honest mind and pure heart can fail to receive it, and, if capable of
being proved at all, it can only be proved by a most technical and
subtle logic, by far-fetched inferences from disconnected texts, every
one of which is open to a hostile criticism, and by a most scholastic
and indirect system of interpretation, which is a task, and that a most
painful one, for plain men to comprehend. My audience will be enabled to
judge of this matter for themselves when I tell them that one of the
strongest reliances of modern Trinitarians, until proved to be
completely fallacious, was the power of the Greek article; and that one
of the texts long used in this controversy, and still used,[134] owes
its whole importance to an accident so minute as this, whether the
letter O was written with a central dot, or without the dot; so that the
chance touch of a transcriber might put in or put out one of the
principal proofs of the doctrine of the Trinity. Now I further declare,
that all the strongest evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity is
exactly of the same critical nature—that the only text of the slightest
difficulty, cited in Christ Church on Wednesday evening, owes its whole
force to a question of punctuation; and that the best critics and
scholars, and they Trinitarians, for true scholars never degrade their
high calling, nor enter the solemn sanctuary open to them alone, to
falsify the oracle, give many authorities against the Trinitarian, and
in favour of the Unitarian, Interpretation.[135] Now will any man tell
me that the doctrine of the Trinity, which, if true, is the most awful
Truth that ever bowed down the heart, that the God of Heaven walked this
earth, a partaker of our sufferings and our sorrows, and lived our life,
and died our death, would be left to be proved by evidence of this
nature, by a controversy nearly two thousand years after the Revelation,
about the force of the Greek article and the punctuation of a Greek
manuscript? Is this the light that lighteth every man that cometh into
the world? There could have been no difficulty in revealing this
doctrine, in words at least, if it was intended to be revealed. The
Athanasian Creed is at least explicit enough, and leaves us in no doubt
of the purpose of its Author. Now I conclude that if Trinitarianism
alone is Christianity, and if such are the processes of criticism and
interpretation by which alone that doctrine can be proved, then
Trinitarianism _is the property of Critics and Scholars, and those who
implicitly trust them_; and Christianity requiring us either to be
Critics or to prostrate ourselves before Critics, not agreed among
themselves, is not the free “gift of God to all men.” The rightful
privileges of critics and scholars are large enough, and let no man
disown them; but I do disown this literary Hierarchy arrogating to
themselves sole access to the oracles of God, and limiting Christ’s free
approach to the souls of the people to long processes of inferential
reasoning and the winding ways of a syllogism. I entreat them to stand
aside, and let the living Jesus come into communication with the living
heart, and not place themselves, like the multitude who threatened the
blind beside the way, between the ready mercy of the Heavenly Teacher
and the humblest follower who seeks his face, that a ray of the light
that shineth there may fall upon eager and wistful, though dimmed and
earth-stained, eyes. “And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto
Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way-side begging. And hearing
the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that
Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus thou son of
David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he
should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David,
have mercy on me. And Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto
him: and when he was come near he asked him, saying, What wilt thou that
I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.
And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.”
I trust that you will perceive now the essential distinction between a
Revelation by words, of doctrines, and a Revelation by a living being;
between the uncertain meaning that is arrived at by the interpretation
of language, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining
on the face of Jesus Christ. In the one case we have a statement of
doubtful doctrines in written words; in the other we have a living
Character. In the one case we have the dead letter; in the other we have
the “word made flesh.” In the one case we have the Mind of God stated in
propositions; in the other we have the Image of God set up in our
hearts, and the purposes of God for man, both while on earth and beyond
the grave, realized before us, to be seen of all men. If Christianity is
a scheme of doctrines in a written communication from God, then of
course it is subject to all the necessary ambiguities of language; and
expositors will be busy upon it, to draw out of it all the meanings it
can possibly contain; and every fresh interpretation will be regarded by
some as part of the Revelation from Heaven, and never will men rest lest
there should be some lurking sense in it that they have not reached, and
every interpreter will thrust in the face of the world, _as the
essential and saving meaning_, his own reading of the document. And as
language is a thing that is never fixed, but is always gathering fresh
imports from the developments of Time, this is a process that must go on
for ever, and the document will speak a new Message to the men of every
age, and the Doctrines that constitute Salvation will be always the
subject matter of a controversy. But if Christianity, instead of a form
of written words, is a character sent to us by God, to manifest his will
in the flesh, and to reveal living Truth in a living being; if Jesus
himself is the record we are to study; if it is not an inspired Book but
an inspired Life that is the gift of God; if his works of Power and
Love, his actions and his sufferings, his holy living and dying, are the
full and spiritual Scriptures imprinted on humanity by God’s own hand,
then the whole work of a Christian is to understand and love that
Character,—then is the Revelation like a light shining in a dark place,
“a salvation prepared before the face of all people,” “a light to
lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people Israel,” a ray
of God’s light shining into the heart of man, touching the mountain tops
of humanity and piercing the deep valleys, that all flesh may see it
together.
It is in remarkable consistency with these views that very little is
said in the popular systems of Christ’s character. The doctrinal ideas
respecting Jesus are all in all: the moral and spiritual ideas are
looked upon as not peculiarly Christian. A vast deal is said about his
Rank, his Merits, his Mediatorial Distinction: very little is said about
his Life, his Example, his Revelations of Duty and of Destiny. The
Trinitarians taunt us with having no use for Christ in our system.
Certainly we believe in a God who does not require their Christ. We do
not speak of Atonement therefore. But we might retort, that if we
neglect their metaphysical Christ, they neglect our moral and spiritual
Christ. They speak little of his character, his life, his example, as a
model for humanity: nor could they in consistency with their system.
Jesus, as God and man, is powerless as an exhibition of what man may be.
He is no revelation of Humanity to Humanity. Humanity with Deity
attached to it, or indwelling, is Humanity no more.
If Christianity is a system of doctrines to be deduced from words, and
if our salvation depends upon the certainty of our deductions, then is
it not clear that God would be requiring an absolute Truth of
Interpretation which he has not given us the means of attaining, and
that the Revelation, even to “Critics and Scholars,” would be an
_uncertain property_? But if Christianity is an inspired Life, the
Duties and the Destinies of Man shown forth on the Son of God, the word
made flesh, the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, a
character perfectly reflecting the purposes of Providence, and preserved
for us, in faithful narratives that still enable us to have the image of
Jesus formed within us, then is it not clear that the Revelation is
perpetuated in our hearts, and that the Christ with us still, the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, is the gift of God to all men? “Lo,
I am with you always, to the end of the world.” Now this is Christ’s own
account of himself as a Revelation. “I am the Light of the world.” “I am
the Resurrection and the Life.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the
life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye
should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him and
have seen him.”[136] “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.”[137] “Whoso hath seen me hath seen the Father also.”
And to crown all this scriptural evidence, this is God’s own account of
his Christ as a Revelation, authenticating him at the opening of his
Mission, and repeated again as His seal upon its close, “This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
I have shown that there is no doctrinal certainty in Christianity
considered as a _written_ Revelation: but neither is there _any moral
certainty_ as to the Will of God and his practical requirements conveyed
by mere words. When God tells me in words to love Him and to love my
neighbour, I do not know what practical forms these feelings are to
assume, neither do I know how all the influences of my present life are
to control me in the exercise of these affections. But I understand what
God means when I see Jesus interpreting for me this will of God by his
own character, and combining in his own life, through all circumstances,
the perfect love of God and Man. Now I maintain, that no system of
Doctrine could be a Revelation to me of the purposes and ends of life.
It is a practical question, and practically must it be solved. He who
will work out for me on this scene of things the great designs of my
being, and show to me, in action and in suffering, in sympathy and in
struggle, in the throbbings of life and in the hushed sublimities of
death, the right attitudes of my nature, the fitting dignities of
enlightened and heaven-bound man,—he who is not the Prophet merely of
divine Truth but the Impersonator of his own views, who stands
successively in each practical position and robes himself in the living
glories of duty,—he alone can pretend to be a Revelation of character,
as God wills it, having stamped upon his views illustrations of Reality.
And he alone can pretend to have unravelled the mystery of our
Discipline, who himself passes through our trials, and transmutes them
into the nurseries of Power, the pregnant schools of Character—who shows
us the outward circumstance, as a torch to the Spirit, lighting up the
energies of Duty’s inviolable will,—who moves amid the evil that is in
the world, and is not overcome by it, but overcomes it with good,—who
encounters sin and sinners, and treats them with the pity of a brother,
yet with the holiness of one whose Father is the spiritual God,—who
stands amid baffled purposes of good, the broken projects of benevolence
in the unquelled trusts of Faith, seeing, though afar off, the Harvest
of this unpromising Spring,—in whom the worst aspects of Humanity only
draw out the unselfishness of Charity; and the clouded countenance of
God, veiled to sight though not to Faith, the perfect peace of a filial
Spirit. He who passes for us through all this variety of mortal
circumstance, and exhibits each, even the most dark and unpromising, as
full of the materials of our Education, contributing to the formation of
that perfect mind which is the end and heaven of our being, is indeed a
perfect Revelation, “unimproved and unimprovable,” though improving _us_
to the end of Time, an embodied Scripture, the word made flesh and
dwelling amongst us.
Christianity will be a matter of controversy so long as men look to it
for what they are _to think_, and not for what they are _to trust in and
be_. Creeds will divide the world, so long as Christianity is regarded
as a Revelation of Doctrines, and not as a Revelation of Character, of
Practical Interests, of Destinies and of Duties. In the one case it will
be the “property of Critics and Scholars,” held by an uncertain tenure;
in the other case, it will be “the gift of God to all men.” Strange that
all Protestants do not feel the force of this argument! And as for Roman
Catholics, if we had any controversy with them, the argument has only to
take another step to hold them too in its grasp.
And now I shall be obliged to speak of Critics and Scholars in a way
that Critics and Scholars should never expose themselves to be spoken
of. I have a most painful duty before me, very different from the one I
had been led to expect,—which I had hoped would have been to answer
calm, learned, judicious reasonings, instead of simply to resist
pretension, a task, which if much easier, is yet one that neither
elevates nor instructs. Nothing could justify me in using in this place
the language of grave remonstrance, but the consciousness that thereby
instead of indulging I am wounding my own feelings, and the conviction
that, in this case, Duty to Truth and to the Public requires it from me.
Every one must have felt that the declaration before the world, of “the
Unitarian Interpretation of the New Testament, based upon defective
Scholarship, or on dishonest or uncandid criticism,” ought to have been
amply supported, or never made. To fail in the proof was to pass not
only intellectual but the severest _moral_ condemnation on such a
statement. I know of no abuse of Power and Place more immoral, than when
a Scholar uses his Scholarship to libel others before the unlearned,
than when a Preacher uses his sacred and elevated standing to make
assertions that are taken upon his word, but which are not correct, and
of which nothing but the _certainty_ that they were correct could
justify the utterance. If I cannot take example from what I witnessed in
Christ Church on Wednesday evening, let me at least take warning. I will
not pray to be preserved meek and truthful, and then regard my prayer as
an indemnity for unlicensed speech. I will not commit here the
disrespectful impropriety of quoting Greek. Neither will I pay this
audience the false compliment of pretending to make such subjects
intelligible and interesting to them, but I will make some statements
that shall go forth to the world, and there find fitting judgment. There
are some points, however, to which I shall have to advert, of which
every one may judge.
1. It was stated by the Preacher that he could not himself believe the
mysterious statements of the New Testament unless he first believed in
their inspiration, and that this alone could command his faith. Now
there was great candour in this, but no Scholarship. You cannot prove
the Inspiration of the Bible except by first proving the truth of the
Bible, for there are no proofs of Inspiration except what the Bible
itself contains. To believe in the truth of the Bible, because it is
inspired, and then to prove it inspired because it is true, is an error
in reasoning inexcusable in the divines of the Church of England, for an
eminent Bishop of their own Church, Bishop Marsh, has abundantly exposed
it.
2. It was stated that every Unitarian Minister in England was as much
bound by the Improved Version, as every Clergyman of the Establishment
was by the Articles of the Church. The Preacher has written his name
beneath those Articles; as long as he remains in the Church he has, to
use Milton’s expression, to those Articles subscribed “Slave;” he has
entered into a vow to preach nothing contrary to them; he belongs to a
body of men organized to prevent all dissent from those Articles, and
pledged to oppose and avenge every attempt to break up the dogmatical
principle of their Church Union, and yet he stated solemnly before an
assembled multitude that no Clergyman of the Church was more bound by
the Articles of the Church than was every Unitarian Minister by a Book
which one man edited on his sole literary responsibility, and which
other men contributed to publish, simply because they expected from it
some valuable scriptural aid. Now when a man is capable of making such a
statement, when his judgment will allow him to do so, his credibility as
a witness to facts I do not dispute, but _his opinion_ on any question,
merely as coming from him, I cannot feel deserving of my confidence. I
might quote passages of contemporary Unitarian criticism reflecting on
the Improved Version; I might quote Dr. Carpenter in his answer to
Archbishop Magee, ascribing the whole responsibility to Mr. Belsham; I
might quote Mr. Yates in his able answer to Mr. Wardlaw, exposing the
false impression made by Dr. Magee, that the Improved Version was the
Unitarian Version: but I cannot so misuse your time. The Unitarians,
most of whom never saw the work, and whose pride it is that their
Ministers study the Scriptures freely, and lay before them the results,
will smile at the idea of these Ministers being as much bound by the
Improved Version as the Clergy by the Articles of the Church, though in
a graver spirit they must morally condemn an assertion so recklessly
made. It was stated that all Protestant Christians were satisfied with
the received Version up to the time of the Improved Version, and, to
advance no other proof of the ignorance displayed by such a statement,
in the next breath it was declared that the Improved Version was on the
basis of Archbishop Newcome’s Translation, the title of which is this,
“An Attempt towards revising our English Translation of the Greek
Scriptures.” But what means this attempt to fasten us down to the
Improved Version? Is it not clear that these clergymen wish us to fight
the battle upon a disadvantageous ground? Is it not clear that they wish
us to take up some weak position, and defend that, rather than meet us
in the strongest positions that criticism and scholarship enable us to
assume and to maintain? Is not our controversy between Unitarianism and
Trinitarianism, and what can be more unworthy of critics and scholars
than to conduct that controversy on any ground but that of the original
Scriptures? We do not think of fixing _them_ down to any particular
critic of their own church, many of whom we could advance who abandon
almost every position they maintain; we freely give them advantage of
the best criticism and the best scholarship they can anywhere obtain;
and we do confess that we hold it very uncandid towards us, and very
unconfiding in their own strength, and very disloyal towards Truth, to
tell opponents, I wish I could say fellow inquirers, that they are not
to defend their cause by the best arguments known to them, but by a
certain set of arguments published in a certain book more than thirty
years ago, and before some of _us_ now engaged in this controversy were
born. Our controversy is not about the Improved Version, but about the
Greek Testament; and I must certainly regard any attempt to intercept us
in our appeal to the original Scripture, by thrusting any other Version
in our faces, as a sign either of great weakness or of great unfairness.
Where would the Lecturers at Christ Church have got matter of indictment
against us, if it had not been for this Improved Version?
3. It was stated that minute examination of the Scripture Evidence for
Trinitarianism hardly influenced the result, for so thoroughly were the
Scriptures imbued with its doctrines, that if but a fragment of them
remained, the mysterious truths that pervade the whole would be found in
that fragment. Now I doubt not that men can say these things sincerely,
and yet methinks they ought to ask themselves before they mislead a
multitude, is there Reality in these statements? Now I can not only
mention fragments, but whole books, in which Trinitarians themselves
will confess that there is not a trace of these doctrines; the whole
Gospel of St. Mark; the whole Gospel of St. Luke, for the portions
respecting the miraculous generation cannot be proof of the Deity of the
person so generated; the whole of the book of Acts; and very many of the
Epistles. We have the Gospel which the Apostle Peter delivered to the
Gentiles, when he gave them his exposition of Christianity, and we find
from it that Cornelius and the Gentiles might have believed _all_ that
the Apostle taught them, and yet, according to the Trinitarians, be lost
everlastingly from the scantiness of their faith. Here then is the
Gospel which Peter delivered to the Gentiles, containing the whole
account he gave them of the doctrine of Christ: “Then Peter opened his
mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the
children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of
all:) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all
Judæa, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached;
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power:
who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the
devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he
did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem: whom they slew and
hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him
openly: not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God,
even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.
And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is
he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him
give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth
in him shall receive remission of sins.”[138] Now you will know what
weight, what measure of calm and considerate truth attach to the
assertions made at Christ Church, when you compare this account of
Christianity by the Apostle Peter, with the bold statement that if only
a fragment of the New Testament remained, it would contain and show
forth the mysterious doctrines of Trinitarianism.