Part 8 (2/2)

was the homely expostulation of Benjamin Franklin with Thomas Paine, 'you are probably indebted to Religion for the habits of virtue on which you so justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank amongst {206} our most distinguished authors.

For among us,' continued Franklin satirically, 'it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.' The blows inflicted on Christianity come from unfilial hands and hearts, from hands and hearts which have been strengthened and nurtured on Christianity itself, from hands and hearts which, but for the lingering Christianity that still impels them, would soon be paralysed and dead.

The ideals which systems intended to supersede Christianity set before them are, to all intents and purposes, only Christianity under another name. Where the ideals go beyond ordinary Christian practice, they are only a nearer approximation to the Supreme Ideal which has never been fulfilled save in Jesus Christ Himself. Wherever there is truth in them which is not generally accepted, or which comes as a surprise, investigation {207} will show that it is an aspect of Christianity which Christians have been neglecting, that it is a manifestation of the mind of Christ, a development of His principles. Look where we will, the men that are making real moral and spiritual progress are those who are in touch with Him. Their beliefs about Him may not be accurate, their conception of His nature and work may be defective, but it is His Name, His Spirit, His Power, it is Himself that is the secret of their life. One part of His teaching has sunk into their hearts, one element of His character has mysteriously impressed them. They have touched the hem of His garment, the shadow of His Apostle pa.s.sing by has glided over them, and they have been roused from weakness and death. 'He that was healed wist not Who it was, for Jesus had conveyed Himself away.' So it happened in the days of His flesh: so is it happening still: they that are set free may not yet know to Whom {208} their freedom is to be ascribed. Now, as on the way to Emmaus, when men are communing together and reasoning, Jesus Himself may be walking with them, though their eyes are holden that they do not know Him.

John Stuart Mill, whose acute intellect, whose spotless rect.i.tude, whose public spirit, whose non-religious training naturally made him the idol of those to whom Christianity was a bygone superst.i.tion, came in his later days, not indeed to accept the orthodox creed, but yet to stretch out his longing hand to Christ, believing that He might have 'unique commission from G.o.d to lead mankind to truth and virtue.'

George Eliot, whose genius was ever labouring to fill up the void which the rejection of her early faith had made, consoled her dying hours, as she had inspired her most enn.o.bling pages, with the _Imitation of Christ_. Matthew Arnold, most cultured of critics, joins hands with the most fervid of evangelists in maintaining that {209} 'there is no way to righteousness but the way of Jesus.' The name of Christ--none other name under heaven given among men will ever prove a subst.i.tute for that.

Renouncing faith in Christ, is there life, is there salvation for man to be found in the doctrines, the names, the influences which are so vehemently extolled? Is there one of them which so satisfies the cravings of the heart, which enkindles such glorious hopes, which inspires to such holy living, which inculcates so universal a brotherhood, as Christianity? Is there one of them which, at the best, is more than a keeping of despair at bay, than a resolute acceptance of utter overthrow, than a blindness to the tremendous issues which are involved?[16] Will the culture which is devoted, and cannot but be devoted, exclusively to the outward, which imparts a knowledge of Science or Art or Literature, be found sufficient to {210} rescue men from the slavery of sin or from the torment of doubt? Will the progress which is altogether occupied with the material and the physical, with providing better houses and better food and better wages, produce happiness without alloy and remove the sting and dread of death?[17] Will the reiteration of the dogma that we are but fleeting shadows, that there is nothing to hope for in the future, that we are all the victims of delusion, tend to elevate and benefit our downcast race? Will the attempt to wors.h.i.+p what has never been made known, what is simply darkness and mystery, be more successful in raising men above themselves than the wors.h.i.+p of the Righteousness and the Love which have been made manifest in Christ? Will the attempt to supplant the wors.h.i.+p of Jesus Christ, in Whom was no sin, by the wors.h.i.+p of Humanity at large, of Humanity stained with guilt and crime as {211} well as illumined here and there with deeds of heroism, of Humanity sunk to the level of the brutes as well as exalted to the level of whatever we may suppose to be the highest, seeing that there is really no higher existence with which to compare it--will this wors.h.i.+p of itself, with all its baseness and imperfection, this turning of mankind into a Mutual Adoration Society, make Humanity divine? Will even the a.s.surance that far-distant ages will have new inventions, fairer laws, more abundant wealth be any deliverance to us from our burdens, any salvation from our individual sorrow and guilt and shame?

Can we to whom the likeness of Christ has been shown, can we imagine that any of these efforts to answer the yearning of mankind for deliverance from the body of this death will prove an efficient subst.i.tute for Him? And if we forsake Him, it must be in one or other of these directions that we go.

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VI

But the signs of the times are full of hope. In social work at home, in the progress of missions abroad, in revivals of one kind and another, in growing reverence for holy things, in a renewed interest in religion as the most vital of all topics, even in strange spiritual manifestations not within the Church, we have, amid all that is discouraging and depressing, indication of the coming kingdom. The cry, 'Back to Christ,' with all the truth that is in it, is only half a truth if it does not also mean 'Forward to Christ.' He is before us as well as behind us, and the Hope of the World is the gathering together of all things in Him. Should there be, as there has been over and over again in days gone by, a widespread unbelief, a rejection of His Divine Revelation, of this we may be sure--it will be only for a time. When the sceptical physician, in Tennyson's poem, murmured:

'The good Lord Jesus has had his day,'

{213} the believing nurse made the comment:

'Had? has it come? It has only dawned: it will come by and by.'

A thought most sad, though most inspiring. 'Only dawned.' Why is Christianity after all these centuries only beginning to be manifested?

It is at least partly because of the apathy, the divisions, the evil lives of us who profess and call ourselves Christians, because we have wrangled about the secondary and the comparatively unimportant, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, because we have so left to those beyond the Church the duty of proclaiming and enforcing principles which our Lord and His Apostles put in the forefront of their teaching. We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing {214} prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? For all sorts and conditions of men, for masters and servants, for rulers and ruled, for employers and employed, there is ever acc.u.mulating proof that only as they bear themselves towards each other in the spirit of the New Testament can there be true harmony and mutual respect; that only, in short, as the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will men in reality bear one another's burdens; that only as the Everlasting Gospel of the Everlasting Love prevails will all strife and contention, whether personal or political or ecclesiastical or national, come to an end; that only as men enter into the fellows.h.i.+p of that Son of Man Who came not to be {215} ministered unto but to minister and to give His Life a ransom for many will the glorious vision of old be fulfilled: I saw in the night vision, and behold One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages shall serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pa.s.s away and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

[1] In this Lecture are included some paragraphs from a sermon long out of print, _The Witness of Scepticism to Christ_, preached before the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale.

[2] G. Lommel, _Jesus von Nazareth_ (quoted in Pfannmuller's _Jesus im Urteil der Jahrhunderte_).

[3] Appendix XXIII.

[4] _Jesus in Modern Criticism_.

[5] H. Weinel, _Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_.

[6] Quoted in E. Naville, _Le Temoignage du Christ_.

[7] _First and Last Things: a Confession of Faith and Rule of Life_.

[8] Appendix XXIV.

[9] Appendix XXV.

[10] _Lux Hominum_, Preface.

[11] _Lux Hominum_, p. 84.

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