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THE ANGUS LECTURESHIP

VIII

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION ANDITS VERIFICATION

1912


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BY THE SAME AUTHORLife and Letters in the Fourth CenturyThe Conflict of Religions in

THE Early Roman EmpireVirgil


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THECHRISTIAN TRADITIONAND

ITS VERIFICATIONBT

T. R. 9LOVERFELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITY LECTURER IN ANCIENT HISTORY

METHUEN & CO. LTD.36 ESSEX STREET W.C.LONDON


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T";; 1

First Published in igij


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PRELIMINARY NOTE'T^HE Angus Lectureship has its origin in a^ Fund raised as a Testimonial to the Rev.Joseph Angus, M.A., D.D., as an expression ofthe sense entertained by the subscribers of hischaracter and services as President of theBaptist Theological College, formerly situatedat Stepney, and now at Regent's Park,London. Dr. Angus having intimated hisdesire that the Fund should be devoted tothe establishment of a permanent Lecture-ship in connection with the College, a Trusthas been constituted for that purpose; itsincome to be "administered and applied bythe College Committee for the establishmentand maintenance of a Lectureship, to becalled ' The Angus Lectureship,' in connectionwith the said College, for the delivery ofperiodic Lectures on great questions con-nected with Systematic, Practical, or Pastoral

V

285458


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vi THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONTheology, or the Evidences and Study of theBible, or Christian Missions, or ChurchHistory, or Kindred Subjects."

It is further provided that the College Com-mittee, in conjunction with the Trustees, shallonce in two years, or oftener (should excep-tional circumstances render it desirable),"appoint and engage a Lecturer, who shallordinarily be a member of the Baptist denomi-nation, but who may occasionally be amember of any other body of EvangelicalChristians, to deliver a course of not morethan eight Lectures, on some subject of thenature hereinbefore mentioned."

In accordance with these provisions, theRev. Dr. Angus delivered, at Regent's ParkCollege, in the year 1896, a Course of SixLectures on ** Regeneration," afterwardspublished.The Eighth Course, delivered at Regent's

Park College in the year 191 2, is containedin the present volume.

Note.The sentences above marked as quotations are fromthe Deed of Trust, executed March, 1896.


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PREFACET N the first book of The Faerie Queene,^ Spenser's heroine is Una, who is Truth.Her beauty is spiritual, and we see it tamethe lion and soften the '* salvage-men "andthis at first sight. Yet it is not till the end ofthe book that the Red Cross Knight realizesher beauty. He forsakes her; he is entrappedby Duessa, who is Falsehood ; he is imprisonedin the Castle of Pride, and from this bondageit is Una that rescues hhn. Despair wouldhave him kill himself; and she again rescueshim, and leads him to the house of Caeliaand on to Charissa, who is Grace, and thenceto the hill of Contemplation. Then at lasthe is fit to slay the Dragon. The tendernessand healing power of Truth have rarely beenso well drawn. On through repentance andforgiveness to the heavenly vision. Truth hasbrought her knight. Yet it is not till after

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viii THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONthe desperate three days of battle with theDragon that the Red Cross Knight sees Unawithout her veil.

The blazing brightnesse of her beauties beame,And glorious light of her sunshyny face,To tell were as to strive against the streameMy ragged rimes are all too rude and baceHer heavenly lineaments for to enchace.Ne wonder; for her own deare loved knight,All were she daily with himselfe in place.Did wonder much at her celestial sight.Oft had he seen her faire, but never so fair dight.

" Our sage and serious poet " Spenser hasgrasped the fact that, while Truth capturesus in the first instance by its beauty, we neverrealize that beauty till we have learnt in ex-perience how much Truth can do for us, andhow much we can do for Truth and can sufferfor Truth. And in the allegory Una is notmerely Truth, but the Christian Religion.The old allegory stands ; and it is a pity

that men and women do not read the wonder-ful poem more than they do. There are thosewho can decide about Truth at first glance,or even without a first glance on a priorigrounds, but Spenser knew better.


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PREFACE ixThe drift of this little book is briefly this.

In all modern study the emphasis falls onverificationon insistent reference to fact thatcan be tested and relied on. No other methodis going to show the significance and valueof the Christian religionthat greatest of allour traditions. Experience alone will tellus what it means. Here, I hope in ascientific spirit, it is urged that we familiarizeourselves with the mass of experience theChurch of Jesus Christ has had of Him;and I believe that such a course willlead us on to experiment, and that whenwe, like the Red Cross Knight, have foundwhat life in Truth is, we too shall share hiswonder at the unsuspected beauty of thefuller vision.


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CONTENTSPAGELECTURE I I

The Challenge to Verification.Modern thought and its factors, p. 3.

1. Natural Science p. 5.(a) Its actual contributions to knowledge as

disturbances to Christian tradition, p. 6.(b) Its effect upon our habits of thought viz.,

partial investigation, failure of imagina-tion, and lack of philosophy; yet animpetus given to verification, p. 12.

2. Social and Economic ScienceThe study ofenvironments, p. 16.

3. HistoryRace problems and world movements,p. 19.

4. Comparative Study of Religion, p. 22(a) Carlyle on MohammadZoroaster, Buddha,

the Bab.(b) Folklore, p. 25.

5. Study of the origins of Christianity, p. 26.6. The other knowledge of the Poet, p. 27.

The twofold call to feeling and verification, p. 31.LECTURE II 33The Use of Tradition.

The challenge to verification is met by the question as tothe use of history, of tradition.We have to study

1 The value and place of Tradition in sound thinking.2. How to discriminate between Traditions, p. 35.Discussion as to Dogma and Tradition in relation toReligion, p. 36with a caution as to the use of theorythe contrast between use made of theory in scientific workand in the Church, p. 39.

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xii THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONThe strength of Tradition, p. 43.The combination of Inherited Experience and Individual

Experiment is the key, p. 45illustration from the boat-builder, and its application to the sphere of Relig-ion, p. 46.The principles which may enable us to judge betweenone set of Religious Traditions and another, p. 53.The Christian Tradition to be considered with reference

PAGE

A/tAVX?^^>>A/lmjl5^ () The world outside Christ, p. 60.(b) The Christian Society, p. 64.(c) The historical Jesus and His person and ideas,

p. 66.LECTURE III 71

The Significance of the ChristianChurch.

The problem of its growth, continuity and permanence,p. 71. The endeavour to discover the source of its strength,p. 72its weakness an index to unsuspected greatness, p. 74.

1. The way in which the Church holds its main doctrinesits intellectual right to do so, p. 78. The Sanity of theChristian Church, p. 79(a) Resting on the value of experience, p. 79.(b) Tested by the criticism of the World, p. 81.(c) And by the Church's attempts at compromise,

p. 83.{d) The fact before the explanation, p. 87.

2. The conviction of the Church resulting from itsexperience, p. 88(a) The serious view of evil, p. 88.(b) The inexorable character of law, p. 91.(c) The high value of the human soul, p. 03.(d) The significance of Jesus Christ, p. 90.

3. The application to life, p. 97(a) The Church is the one body incapable of

despair, p. 97.^ C\ (^) Its clear method, p. 97. The three great types^f^^^Tll , , of religion, p. 98.(c) Its reliance on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ,

p. 100.4. Its justification in results, p. loi.


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CONTENTS XlllPAGELECTURE IV 103

The Experience of the Early Church.The early Christian literature and its demands upon the

student to understand it, p. 104.1. The autobiographical element in early Christian

writings to be a guide for us to the experience behindthem, p. 105. Norden on St. Paul, p. 107

(a) St. Paul, p. 109.(b) The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,p. 113.(c) The author of the Fourth Gospel, p. 114.(d) The first doxology of the Apocalypse, p. 1 16.(e) The first " Harrowing of Hell," p. 122.

2. The experiences and convictions shared by all theseearly Christian writers, p. 125

A. The New Life, p. 125.(a) The contrast of the old life and the new, p. 125.(b) " Photisthentes "the enlightenment, p. 126.Clement to the Corinthians, p. 129,(c) The " arrhabon," and the fruits of the Spirit,

p. 129.B. The overcoming of national and social barriers,

p. 132C. " Before the foundation of the World," p. 135.

LECTURE VJesus in the Christian Centuries.

141

The study of the Belief in Jesus as itself a historicalforce

(a) The power of the name, p. 143. Daemons,p. 144.

(b) Pro quo Christus mortuus est, p, 155. .(c) The progressive training of conscience and the ii . ^Ji^.^^ *^^new impulse, p. 162. ,^/lf-V^^-{d) The Great White Throne, and Christian self-

criticism, p. 168.


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xiv THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONPAGE

The Love of Jesus in History, p. 172(a) The victory over disorder, p. 172the contri-

bution to sanity, p. 175the place of prayer,p. 176.(b) The new attitude to pain, p. 177.(c) The hfe of joy, p. 179Richard Rolle, p. 181Wordsworth on " The deep power of joy,"

p. 184personal centre, p. 185.(d) The sure hope, p. 187.

Fact and word ; if the facts of the Church be sure, andthe speech erroneous, can we find the right language ?But we must not, in so doing, lose any of the facts, p. 190.

LECTURE VI 193The Criticism of Jesus Christ.

All turns in the study of Christianity upon the centralfigure, p. 193.Why some judgment upon Christ is inevitable, p. 195.His historicity is certain, p. 196Contrast between JesusChrist and Zoroaster, Buddha, etc., p. 198.What is the real value in it all ? The ethics or some-thing else ? p. 200.The contribution of Jewish criticism on this point, p. 201.The necessity of some judgment upon Jesus Christ forthe serious student of history and society, p. 205.The qualifications for such a judgment (with two pre-liminary cautions as to the difficulty of criticism, and of

reconstructing a personality), p. 208.1. Knowledge of the historical facts, p. 213.2. The historical imagination, p. 217.3. Sympathy with the fundamental ideas and feelings

of Jesus, p. 210;(a) His passion for the redemption of men, p. 221.(b) His attitude to God, p. 222.

The sense of insufficiency, p. 222.'he re-action of a profounder study upon the critic,p. 227.^,


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THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONAND ITS VERIFICATION

LECTURE IThe Challenge to VerificationIT is a very long time since it was firstpointed out that the Christian faith is

untenable. There it standsbelief castinto the form of dogma, implying a unifiedview of the world, of all time, and all exist-ence, and setting before men statements ofthe most amazing scope with reference to Godand man and their relations to all eternity.But, in some particulars, it is not satis-factory, we are told; it goes outside whatman can in any case know, and it restson the preconceptions of a day that hadneither criticism nor science; its terminologybears the stamp of its origin and proclaimshow obsolete it all is. We are so consciousof the value of our own additions to know-ledge, that a faith which seems to jar with them

T I


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2/' '- ' THE : CHRISTIAN TRADITIONis at once untenable. But this is not peculiarto us at all. We have only to go back to theeighteenth centuryto what Gibbon in hismagnificent way called "the reason andhumanity of the present age"to find thesame attitude to the Christian Church and itscreeds ; and yet what seemed then a sufficientaccount of life to replace Christianity has byto-day a starved lookit seems a hard andlow-pulsed sort of gospel or philosophy forany really human being.A critic of some humour has suggested thatthe authentic words spoken by Adam to Eve,as they stepped through the gate of theGarden in Eden, were: "We live in timesof transition." The habit has never beenlost; we still live in times of transition. Wehave left the eighteenth century behind, and,it is urged, the first century a great dealfurther behind. The days are past when ourfathers and mothers, in their quiet, easy way,could hold, unvexed by problems, the oldChristian faith. Of course, such talk isfrankly absurd. There never was a timewhen the Christian faith was unchallenged.By every sort of critic it has always been ques-


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TRANSITION 3tioned, and there never was a day when it waseasy to believe the Christian gospel* or to livethe Christian life. The contribution of theChurch to mankind would have been less if itsventure into the unseen had been limited bythe views of its critics.

We are still confronted in earnest with theChristian faith, whether we accept it or rejectit. There are many who would welcome itsfinal disappearance; there are many morewho, while they think it may disappear, arenot eager to see it go till they know betterwhat is to take its place ; some believe there isnothing to take its place at all, and deeplydread its going. And again, there are thosewho have not the least fear about the Churchremaining and becoming a still greater forcein human life.- But are we sure about the new factorsoperative more and more to-day in humanthought? It is to these that I wish to givemy first lecture. In the next two we shalldiscuss the place of tradition in sound think-

* My friend, Professor D. S. Cairns, quotes Principal Rainy'sremark in his presence : " God never meant it to be an easy thingto believe." Life of Rainy, ii., 117.


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4 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONing, and the general sanity of the Churchin its methods of reaching truth and in itsprinciples of verification. Then we shall turnto the actual experience of the Church, inthe endeavour to learn what it really hasbeen, to see what happened or happens still,and what has been the effect for mankind ofthe great tenets of the Churchparticularlyof its attitude to its Founder. The FounderHimself will be in our thoughts throughout,and in the last lecture an attempt will be madeto lay down the lines toward a sounderrealisation of His significance.The Church never had a monopoly in

shaping the thoughts of men, however nearit may seem to have come to it in certainages. To-day it seems further from it thanever. Into the great inherited body of thoughtthat makes the atmosphere in which we liveand move and think, and which conditions usand our thoughts in ways past finding out,new forces have come. There have beenchanges of the most momentous kind in thebackground of our thinking, in the nature ofour thoughts, and in the very minds with whichwe think. The preconceptions with which we


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CHANGES IN THOUGHT 5Start have been changed, and in a number ofdifferent ways.

First of all there is Natural Science, whichhas imposed its methods and its conclusionsupon us, and has had as large a share in thenew movements of our times and our fathers'as anything else. There has been unsettle-ment, uncertainty and fear. For there is atype of scientific mannot so common now,perhaps, as formerly, certainly not in the frontrankswho has rather a loud way of speak-ing, and speaks at times with insufficientrecognition of other branches of study; andhe has fairly done his part in emphasising,not merely the difference between scienceand religion, but his own strong opinion thatreligion is obsolete. Long ago Plato spokeof "a certain old quarrel between poetry andphilosophy,"* and this is another of the samekind. The material to be studied is different,and the methods are different, as is neces-sarily the case when different aspects ofreality have to be investigated; and the con-servative instinct in man is always impatient of. Republic, 607, B.


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6 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONforeign method. The same intolerance, whichis sometimes shown by students of sciencetoward religion, is also shown, in measure,toward history, philosophy, and art, and itmeans no more than unfamiliarity. But thisis not all; for, from time to time, great ac-quisitions of knowledge have been made, andsecurely made, which clash with particularstatements long maintained with great con-fidence by the Church; and the question isasked whether (to take a simile from the sea)the Church's doctrine is in watertight com-partments, and, even if so, whether enough ofthem have not been injured so badly as tosink her.The first great change is associated with the

name of Copernicus. It was understood thatthe Church was committed to the dogma ofa flat earth and seven or more spheres. Theyhad stood for twenty centuries, and Coper-nicus did away with them. Milton's worksare, in English literature, a landmark of thechange. He speaks of his visit to Italy:" There it was that I found, and visited thefamous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to theInquisition, for thinking in Astronomy other-


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THE STARS AND THE ROCKS 7wise than the Franciscan and DominicanHcensers thought." In Paradise Lost he re-curs several times to the problem, leaning tothe Copernican system, and leaving thePtolemaic to Satan, who uses it naturally. Itis clear that the Roman Church felt that some-thing was at stake in spherical astronomy.With it the Neo-Platonists had connected theirtheory of the soul and its descent from Godto earth; and with it was still bound up thedestiny of the soul in a local heaven to whichChrist had ascended.

After this came the geological troubleand the question as to whether Moses and hisGenesis squared with the testimony of therocks; and strange attempts were made toreconcile them. If such attempts are nolonger made, it is because Christian thinkershave become content to do without the recon-ciliation.

But, serious as Copernicus and the geolo-gists had seemed to orthodox thinkers, worsewas to follow when Darwin and Huxley taughtmen to think in terms of evolution. A greatepoch was made; but, as happens at suchtimes, the great gains were misapplied because


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8 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONof recklessness in their use. Everybodytalked evolution who had a fancy for beingenlightened or abreast of the times. Every-thing was referred to evolution, whether ithad any relation with the sphere of Darwin'sinvestigations or not. Wherever a progresscould be observed, it was at once put downto evolution. Great play was made withheredity and environment and the rest of theterminology. I have even heard a womanexplain that with modern girls tight-lacingwas practically involuntary, because it wasan inherited acquired instinct. What men ofscientific mind thought of all this reckless talkwe can guess. Nothing less scientific could beimagined. Darwin, after long investigationand thought, suggests a theory to explaincertain things in Biology; and a horde ofpeople seize it and apply it, without anythingapproaching Darwin's care for truth, to themost disparate matters in fields of study aswidely removed as could be from thebiological. Thought, morals, religion, wereall suddenly discovered to be products of anevolution, apparently involuntary and in-evitable. Developments could be observed in


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EVOLUTION 9these spheres of life, and that was enough.How those developments came is, however,a matter of history, to be studied with refer-ence to the evidence ; and the virtual abolitionof effort, and, incidentally, of personality, wasprecipitate.*When, after a number of years, a sugges-

tion of the Bavarian abbe, Gregor Mendel,was revived, and deliberate experiments weremade in the careful breeding of plants, birds,and animals, in order to ascertain, by de-finite and recorded steps, what changes arepossible in the development of species, therewere some further examples of swift thinking.Roughly speaking, the experiments haveshown that the results obtained in breedingare not, if a wide enough range be taken,irregular or freakish, but may be more or lessaccurately reduced to mathematicsin short,that what you put in, you get out, re-com-bined variously, but symmetrically. You

* Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in his Club of Queer Trades, p. 236,wittily sums the matter up in the sweeping- assertion that "theDarwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, exceptthat, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, theynow talk unscientifically about science."


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lo THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONcannot, perhaps, predict the character of theoffspring of a particular pair of mice, for somemay die or other unnoticed factors may comein, but the general law seems roughly estab-lished. From this point one conspicuousexponent of Mendelism stepped by an appar-ently easy transition to a sweeping re-assertionof Determinism. So difficult it is to keep thescientific outlook steady, even when a man'swork is so essentially a matter of close andexact verification as that of the Mendelists.

Meanwhile, in Psychology a very brilliantbook caught the reading public, and we beganto learn a new language. *' Uprushes " and"the subliminal self" and "auto-suggestion"became terms as familiar and as precise as" justification " and " sanctification " had beenthree centuries before. Religion was ex-plained at onceit was a matter of auto-suggestion. Certain questions, however, maybe asked here, such as: How much is de-finitely known as to auto-suggestion? or is itreally a splendid guess? Can there be auto-suggestion without reference to external factswith which the mind of the person concernedis more or less acquaintedin other words,


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THE VALE OF BEAVOR nhas the idea to be suggested to the autos, ordoes the autos suggest it to itselfwhich waydoes evidence point? Why should auto-suggestion, when it takes the form or directionof the Christian religion, work so uniformlytoward sanity and morals: is there anythingsignificant in the uniformity? and, lastly.What is autos^one of the oldest of philo-sophical difficulties? A solution of the pro-blem of the nature of religion, which raises somany other problems at the first breath, doesnot take us very far.

All these new factors, however, are in theair, and the combined effect of them is verygreat. They make us feel once more and ina new way the "great Cloud " that came overGeorge Fox in the Vale of Beavor, when " itwas said; All things come by Nature ; And,*'he adds, " the Elements and Stars came overme." Some of us have to " sit still under it andlet it alone" a good deal longer than he had,before " a living Hope " rises in us and " a trueVoice," to tell us; " There is a living God, whomade all things.'' There are so many morestars in three hundred years, and so manymore elements, and so much stranger ones;


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12 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONspace is more vast to-day than ever Foxdreamed; and we are challenged more seri-ously than ever on the fundamental questionas to whether man " comes by Nature," and isa mere product, or whether he has anyspiritual freedom at all.But there is more to be said, for the chief

effect of the modern study of Natural Sciencehas not been so much to challenge us withdefinite and established knowledge, or withtheories of high probability and great bril-liance, as to affect our habits of mind and ourmethods in thought. The scientific man isoccupied in an investigation which avowedlyaffects only one small part of the area ofall knowledge ; his research is partial, he has aspecial subject, and his affirmation on his ownsubject is apt to be tentative and provisional;indeed, as he grows to be a master in his owndepartment, it often happens that he is moreand more reluctant to hazard any statement ofscope or range concerning it without inter-minable qualifications. This habit of mind haspassed over into other studies, and we havein common the weaknesses that go with it.The passion for accuracy is a noble one, but


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REACTION OF SPECIALIST STUDIES 13if it be cramped in a very small sphere, apartial investigation, it results, unless a manis on his guard against it, in a certainfailure of the imagination. This is not un-common among specialists. The mind losespowers by perpetually dwelling on one subject"that way madness lies," as Lear said.The atrophy of faculty does not make a manmore competent to speak in his own depart-ment, still less of matters that lie outside it.But we constantly find a type of specialist whois contemptuous of studies and interests ofwhich he is ignorant. With the best men it isvery different.Another weakness which we all share, as

knowledge grows from more to more, is alack of synthesis. One feature of ElizabethanEngland, as of Periclean Athens, was whathas been called the '^integrity" of the period.The same man touched all knowledge andall activity ; he could write a poem, sail a ship,beat a Spaniard in fight or a Papist in argu-mentthe world had a unity for him. Forus the world is hardly a unity, except by logicit is a series of bits, the relations of whichwe do not readily grasp. There is lack of


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14 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONknowledge and lack of intelligence ; in a word,lack of philosophy. Now the philosopher, aswe know, is liable to err, and to err verybadly An innocent mind, but far astrayhe is liable to be very dogmatic, and todomineer with a truculence little short of thatof the man of science at his worst. But to becontent to lack philosophy is surely to abdi-cate manhood ; yet we do it. We do not framesystems of thought for ourselves ; we avowedlyrefrain from it; and yet, in a subtle andinsidious way, they frame themselves for us;and such un-thought-out systems of thoughtare very dangerous, especially if we are peopleof books and laboratories, a little remote fromordinary life. But religion implies a certainamount of deliberate philosophyit involvesan ordered world, or a world getting movedin the direction of order, and a God at thetop of it or in the heart of it, interested effec-tively in it, somehow; and it further impliesa relation between this God and the man.Even to such a rudimentary philosophy acertain class of scientist is contemptuous again,and again for the same reason. It lies out-


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THE NEED OF PHILOSOPHY 15side him, and it implies an energy of thoughtfor which he has not braced himself. It runscounter to the presuppositions, the un-thought-out system, into which he has slidden.

This is the experience of very many of uswe have lost the sense of the whole in thefascination and interest of the part. Words-worth, in his Ode on Intimations of Immor-tality, gives a picture of some such auto-biography : how the vision splendid fades intothe light of common day, as Earth, the homelynurse, doth all she can to make her foster-child forget the glories he hath known. Andthen, in the great stanzas that follow, wherehe speaks of "obstinate questionings ofsense and outward things," the poet touchesthose experiences which challenge the narrowdogmatism of common sense and partialknowledgewhich we can almost abolish ifwe give our minds to it, and the abolition ofwhich will ruin us. Yet plenty of men seem tobe imprisoned almost hopelessly in the zest ofinterests that frankly cover the smallest arc ofthe circle of life. The excuse is, of course,the vast range and difficulty of scientific worka. confession, in so miany words, of failure.


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i6 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONOn the other hand, there is a noble

contribution which the scientific mind ismaking to the religious, a keen and quickenedsense of truth and a passion for verification.And it is a curious situation when the manof science says to the disciple of Jesus ofNazareth: "Make sure; be sure that youknow; look to it for yourself; verify." It isthe method of Jesus Himself, and it will giveus again "the deep and firm sense of reality,"which, as Matthew Arnold pointed out,*characterises the thinking of Jesus; for"theory," as Arnold elsewhere says, "Jesusnever touches, but bases Himself invariablyupon experience. "t If we are to do anythingwith religion, the first thing is to be done withpreconceptions (as far as that is possible forman) and to learn what can be from what hasbeen and what does occur. To this we shallhave to return in the next lecture.

Let us pass on to another branch of studya study full of the enthusiasm of youth andnew methodsSocial Science, as it is called.

* Preface to God and the Bible.t Literature and Dogmcix ch. 7.


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SOCIAL SCIENCE 17though the name is a large one, and perhapsnot yet quite vindicated. We have beenbroughtand it is a good thing that we havebeen so broughtface to face in a new waywith poverty. The poor we have always withus, but we have not been earnest enough inasking Why ; and that we are now being toldwith vehemence, not unwarranted when menare so slow to listen. This is not the firstgeneration, if it may be said with modesty,that has felt the problem of poverty ; but menare probing more deeply into causes andfactors, with a new alertness for evidence.The mind of the social student dwells on en-vironment as the scientific man's on heredity,and the besetting sin of quick thinking, whichhaunts science and theology, is not unknownhere. The problem of evil has taken on a newform for the social researcher and the socialworker; and some of the evils they see areso obvious, and yet so much ignored, thattheir desperately quick remedies are intelli-gible. Delay is at the cost of life and mind andmoral being ; and the suggestion of the Church

that, by the SoulOnly, the nations shall be great and free,

2


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1 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONis scouted more fiercely than it deservesto be. The moral evils of destitution arefamiliar to the social worker; and, ifdestitution were abolished, they would mostlydisappear, he believes. It means once morethat man is a product of heredity andenvironment, the outcome of forces andfactors he cannot control; that the marginof spiritual freedom is extraordinarily narrow.That is very quick thinking. It is curious,too, tO' find such an approximation betweenthe modern reformer and old Cephalos, inPlato's Republic, who was glad that he hadbeen rich, because riches save a man from somuch sin. The Church has always had adeeper view of sin than this.Once again, the impression left on the mind

is that of an immense range of knowledge tobe explored and known. How many factorsare there in the problem of poverty ? how dothey work, and how are their workings inter-woven, and how are they to be measured?If History teaches anything here, it is theimperative need of the closest and most accu-rate thinking on the basis of the fullest know-ledgethat we must go slowly. Yes, say our


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HISTORY 19friends, History is far slower than death anddisease. Still, here again we are challengedto verification. Is it possible that the Chris-tian Church or its critics can have overlookedfactors of moment?But we have invoked History, and History

also is touched with the scientific spiritif itis not, as some severe students of it urge, ascience itself. The origins of the human raceand the growth of nations are being investi-gated with more reference to facts than inthe old days when, as the severe say, Historyflourished with Literature at her one elbowand Moral Philosophy at the other. What israce? Is Nature, after all, '* so careful of thetype " ? In some quarters we are assailed withlarge statements about tall fair men and littledark men, dolichocephalous and brachy-cephalous, breeds with great differences ofendowment; and we are warned that, ifeugenics be not carefully studied, that balancebetween the ethnic varieties may be lost whichmakes England what it is. It is not, however,historians who talk in this way. History is avery long story for them ; and they ask, quitehonestly, because they do not know^ whether


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20 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONa race is a fixed type or a shifting type;whether differences of climate and food overlong periods affect the cephalic index and thevarieties of endowment; whether Anglo-Saxons were really Anglo-Saxons for manymillennia before Julius Caesar studied theGermans? and other questions. If every-thing is a matter of raceif temperament,religion, morality, art, genius, and the rest,all depend on racethen let us be surewe know something about it; for, atpresent, unless brilliant guesses based onevidence, that would be valuable if its relationswere understood, be knowledge, we know verylittle about race.* It is another call toverification.Of course, in dealing with race, the historian

is defending himself against the popularbiologist, but he sometimes needs defenceagainst himself. There are the great world-movements in historic times whole agesdominated by certain types of thought, inwhich, if a man appear who reaches too farinto the future, he is useless, however truly he* A distinguished anthropologist tells me I should have said

that *' nothing " is known ^bout rage,


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HISTORY 21may anticipate the actual developments ofthought and life in generations after his own.At least, so it is said, and we do find men whowere, as we say, before their time, thoughoften, on closer investigation, it looks as iftheir anticipations were made rather by longjumps, and lacked the intermediate stepswhich make for real progress. Why is it thatman moves so slowly, and is so desperatelyin bondage to his own day ? One answer is thathe is not in fact nearly as much in bondageto his day as he seems in retrospect. Yetthe historian observes a relation betweenpolitical and social conditions and thoughte.g., under the successors of Alexander theGreat and under the early Roman Empire,under Turkish sultans and Indian rajahs,philosophy leans to fatalism, as if the experi-ence of arbitrary and incalculable governmenttook the initiative out of men's minds andturned them toward submission withoutaction. We find something of the kind inhistory, but we must be careful once moreabout sweeping statements. Men and peoplesare under the influence of the old and middle-aged more than we suppose, and move slowly,


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22 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONbut most of the talk about the unchangingEast (for example) is fortified by wide ignor-ance of Eastern history. The East doeschange, and man is no more the victim ofplace than of race, much as both influencehim. The historian insists, like other seriousthinkers, on much more earnest standards ofverification than the journalist or the amateur.A new factor in these generations is thecomparative study of religion. It offers amost fascinating field of work. The greatreligious systems of the world have beenstudied with new sympathy and new know-ledge, as their sacred books have becomeknown in the West. Carlyle's treatment ofMahomet is a familiar landmark here"asilent great soul; he was one of those whocannot bat be in earnest; whom Nature her-self has appointed to be sincere. Whileothers walk in formulas and hearsays, con-tented enough to dwell there, this man couldnot screen himself in formulas; he was alonewith his own soul and the reality of things.The great Mystery of Existence glared inupon him, with its terrors, with its splendours.**Zoroaster and Buddha have become more


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STUDY OF RELIGIONS 23familiar and intelligible figures; we see whatthey meant and how they came to mean it.There is Hinduism, too, more intelligible inits turn when we know something of itshistorynot unlike Neo-Platonism. We aretaught to realise the great elements in allthese systems. And among the great religiousteachers is Jesus of Nazarethbut here one ishalf tempted to quote TertuUian's sharp word" Here human curiosity ceases to be inquisi-tive." It would not be strictly true, and yethow many popular critics of religion havetroubled to give Him the full study that isneeded to understand Him?The problems raised by this comparative

study of religions are many. Thus and thus,again and again, the minds of men havemoved; monotheism and polytheism havebattled together; great teachers have risenlike Carlyle's Mahomet, and have been fol-lowed by disciples, and after a period ofadvance comes a decline. In one teacher andanother we find great resemblances : the highfaith, the ardent spirit, the tender and sym-pathetic heart; and there is a great likenessabout their teaching in the sphere of conduct.


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24 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONat least at first sight. We ask ourselves whatthese resemblances mean? Would it bepossible for us to find truth by taking whatthe Stoics called the consensus of mankind,the "greatest common measure" (if that oldarithmetical term survives) of all the religions ?Will it serve us best to take what is commonto all the great religious teachers, and toeliminate the rest, and to ask whether there isany difference between Buddha and JesusChrist and the Bab ? and, if there is, whetherit matters? This sort of question is beingasked, and a quick answer given. Yet, it ispossible to ask, also, whether it is not thedifference that chiefly signifies. Is Chris-tianity made by what it shares with Buddhism,however much that is ? As we get betteracquaintance with the two systems thecommon element seems trifling in comparisonwith the gulf between the two outlooks onlife and the world. Is what men have countedthe very gist and essence of Christianity amistakethe faith for which men have foughtand died and been martyred?We have here a fresh call to verification.We need to know vastly more about


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STUDY OF RELIGIONS 25Buddhism, and above all about the influenceof Buddhism on life, about the actual teach-ing of Buddha in relation to currentBuddhism, about the type of character thatBuddhism produces, not merely among itsascetics, but among the people whom theyinfluence or do not influence, and a greatmany more such matters.* Similarly, we mustgive ourselves to a fuller historical study ofChristianity, not so much with controversy asour object as intelligence.Of later years, the study of religion has

reached another phase. We have been takenback in the most fascinating way to origins,and move with delight and interest amonggolden boughs, and totems, and thunder-birds,and divine kings, and heavenly twins. Manyfamiliar conceptions have had their pedigreestraced back to very lowly spheres, and weare toldrather quicklythat most of ourreligious belief comes from magic and the like.

^ It is not altogether proven that it is so, nor* I should like to recommend here the book of Ekai Kawa-

guchi, a Japanese Buddhist monk, entitled Three Years in Tibet.There is an English translation, and it is a most interesting andilluminating work.


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26 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONis it shown that, if a religious usage originatedin a magical practice, or if a religious beliefwas at first no more than a superstition of thegrossest kind, no development is possible, butthat religion remains as it began, essentiallymagical. We have to remember the innateconservatism of our race, and how we loveto associate the new with the old as if theywere one. If the trellis is clearly magic, mustthe vine be magic ? In ancient Italy the vinegrew up a living elm : is this our analogyof religion and magic? Or is it safe to playwith analogies ? Is it certain that the ram's-horn of Folklore (to borrow a simile from thepreface of a great work) will bring down thepicturesque and ivy-clad walls of the Jerichowe call religion ? Is it not just possible thatsomething escapes the student of Folklore, andthat things are not so easy as the man of onesubject comes to think? Once again, achallenge to verification.But if we are to study origins, we shall have

to look again at Christian origins. It isnotorious that, for people who are in a hurryabout their thinking, the Higher Criticism,as applied to the Old Testament, has shaken


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RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 27the Christian faith, whether they are pleasedwith the result or unhappy about it. It willbe more serious when they learn what it isdoing with the New Testament. Yet thegeneral principles of the Higher Criticismare sound and scientific, though this does notimply that every result produced by thosewho apply these principles to Old or NewTestament, is finally true, even if many criticsagree in afiirming it. It is clear that wrongresults from sound principles will not survivesound application of those principles. Here,as elsewhere, the remedy for wrong thinkingis strong thinking, deeper thinking, and plentyof it, with constant reference to fact.So far we have been dealing with thei

criticism of the Christian religion from thescientific side. The whole of it is open tothe suggestion that there is too much of thelaboratory and the study about itit is toolike Morphology as opposed to Biology; itdoes not come near enough to life and theliving thing. Side by side with the man ofscience lives another type of man altogether,who does not understand him, and doesnot very much wish to understand him.


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28 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONHe is not interested in Chemistry orGeologyEnough of Science and of Art;

Close up these barren leaves;Come forth, and bring with you a heartThat watches and receives.

He knows the world in another wayaltogether, and he cannot believe that anyoneknows it as well as he does, for no one enjoysit so much.

The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the taU rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms, were then to meAn appetite: a feeling and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm,By thought supplied, or any interestUnborrowed from the eye.

He lives in the beauty of the world, and, whenyou walk beside him and talk to him aboutyour system, economic or philosophic, helistens in a way with the ear next you,but he sees something quite different. Thegrey willow against the copper beechhe seesthese, and they both speak to him in voices toostrong, too clear, and too truthful to let himcare about anything elsenot even if it is


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THE POET 29a system of the universe that explains them.He feels, and he cannot help feeling, thebeauty and the magic of a world of colour,the movement and the life of it; and thesethings come into his own life with a powerand an intensity of which you do not dream,and yet you think you have them in yoursystem. He cannot reply to your questions;he cannot give you a reasonable answer, orargue with your tools: his major premiss issomething irreducible to formal logic, and hisconclusion reaches to infinity and leaves outeverything that you think should be in. Asfor your system, of what service is a systemwhen a man only knows a dozen or two thingsin the world, and they baffle him because,however well he knows them, every now andthen they break out into new doxologies;there is no end to their inexhaustible fertilityof meaning and joy. Which of you knowsthe world? You with the system and thepedestrian mind, or he in rapture ? He knowsit in all its joyThe beauty and the wonder and the power,The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,Changes, surprises,and God rriade it all I


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30 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONYour system is a Christian scheme of things,perhaps, and he does not care about it; youdo not see into the heart and life of things,he says; they move dimly for you, in a mist;they bum for him, and blaze and are brightyes, painful sometimes, but it is worth it.You talk about shadows; and he handlesrealities.He too turns critic, and, like a splendidpagan, is magnificent in denunciation of adrab and lack-lustre Christianity, a ChristianChurch that cramps and confines the spirit,that deadens everything it touches, that isafraid of this and of that, that dares not trylife, does not realise, and does not know. Hehas reached the same point as the scientificman, and makes the same reproach. Ourstandards of truth and knowledge are too lowand too dull, they both tell us. "You mustgo back to life," he cries, "until you knowit from within, till it lives and moves againfor you, if anything you say is ever to beworth listening to." He has put the sameproblem of verification before us in anotherway, the vast, wide range of reality, the awful^nd wonderful complex of things which we


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VERIFICATION 31must discover by feeling them, by living inthem. Verification in earnest.Attacked on two sides, by those who tell

him that he does not know and by those whotell him that he does not feel, the Christianturns ruefully to his Master to see what hasbecome of Him in all this. ** We have be-lieved what you told us; we have quoted it;and they sweep it aside and tell us we neitherknow nor feel ! " And I think that if we couldsee His face, there would be something of asmile upon it a. suggestion of some kindlyamusement at such anxiety. ** Did I not tellyou the same?" He asks, **That you mustsearch and know, and feel, and judge foryourselves?" For Jesus Christ is not ateacher to be quoted, I think. If we quoteHim, we use Him amiss. His words arenothing till they come somehow out of ourown hearts again, as they did from Peter'slong ago; they are not dead; they live. Ourcritics are bringing us back by their challengesto know Him Whom we have believed. Theyare bidding us test and examine and knowourselves and Him, and get our lessons fromlife and fact. It is His own method after aJL


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32 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONIn the lectures that follow, that is to be our

task. Brokenly and strugglingly, we are totry all the same to get some glimpse, someidea, of what things are. Not results orconclusions are to be our immediate aim, buta method, an approach that will bring us intothe real and to the Master of it.


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LECTURE IIThe Use of Tradition

IN the previous lecture we tried to face thegreat challenge made to the Christiancommunity by modem thought andmodern learning. We saw that our religion is

challenged along many lines. The man ofscience, the economist, the historian, the criticof the Bible, the poet^all bring against usan accusation that we do not take painsenough to verify what we tell them so easilywe believe. ** How much of what you assertdo you know?'' asks one school of critics."How much of it do you feel?'' asks theother. We are driven back upon a freshstudy of the facts.What are the facts, then, upon which we

rest? What are the facts in religious ex-perience ?Whether there be truth in the Christian

religion or not, our first fact is a world-widesociety, with a history of nineteen centuries.It touches every part of life, conditions and

3


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34 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONsuggests our thoughts, shapes us, and makesa background for us^and all this in waysthat are beyond our reckoning or our under-standingso that we can hardly think ofourselves apart from the fact of the ChristianChurch and its influence. As we look at it,we are challenged again with a series ofquestions. Are we to dismiss all this ? Isthere nothing for us in the long story of theChristian community ? Is it possible that nine-teen centuries of human experience havenothing to say to the heir of all the ages ?

The souls of now two thousand yearsHave laid up here their toils and fears,And all the earnings of their pain,Ah, yet consider it again!

There the great fact of the Christian Churchstands, and we have to ask ourselves if weknow what it means. We shall not knowwhat it means till we have grasped how itcame into being, and what is the inmost sig-nificance of its doctrines and its faith; tillwe understand the mind of its great sons anddaughters, till we realise something of theirindividuality, who they are that have heldthe Christian faith, and how they have held


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THE FACT OF THE CHURCH 35it. We have to think out our attitude to theChristian past, remembering that, if we decidethat it means nothing, the decision carrieswith it extraordinary consequences. For itwill be hard to say what can mean anythingto us if nineteen centuries of the intensestlife of the most living part of the world areto go for nothing. We have to study theChurch till we discover how the Christiancommunity has historically reached its presentposition, and not only that, but how it stillcan hold it as it does. Have Christianthinkers after all never felt the improbabilitythe incredibilityof what they say? Whatis it that has brought men to this, and stillbrings them? Why do men lean so to theGospel ? Why do they love it as they do ?

This means that we have to begin byturning to the past and studying its contribu-tion the inherited element in religiousthought. There are other religions besideChristianity; and, if we are to be sure of ourresults, we shall have to go further and con-sider what canons we have for judging be-tween one religion, or one body of religiousbelief, and another.


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36 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONThe term ** religion" is used with some

ambiguity of meaning. It may connote chieflyritual or cult; but with these we are notprimarily concerned for our present purpose.It may, again, suggest a more or less orderedbody of belief ; or it may mean only and solelythe experience that men actually have of Godtheir contact with Him, direct or indirect,and their consciousness of Him as a factorin life. These two latter senses of the wordtouch one another very closely. The Chris-tian Church rests, deliberately and consciously,upon its own experience of God in Christ, andit has embodied this, so far as it could, inits creeds and dogmas. And these, withoutrefinements in the ecclesiastical way, we maygroup, at least for the present, as the Christiantradition. The term, then, will be used inthis general and larger sense of the wholebody of essential Christian belief, as com-monly held by all sections of the Christiancommunity, and pointing to the full volumeof Christian experience.

^

It is, of course, obvious that, here as else-where, experience and the formulation, ex-pression or explanation that it receives, are


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EXPERIENCE AND THEORY 37distinct thingsthat is, however closely theygo together, we can think of them apart, andit is also clear that one of them is more im-portant than the other. The one is concernedwith action primarilywith what a man doesin daily life, with the spirit in which he livesand in which he prays, in which he manageshis dealings with man and God. The other ismore closely connected with speculation. Ofcourse, it is here as in other spheres ; practiceand theory act and react on each other;dogma and religion affect each other. Whata man believes conditions what he does ; whathe does conditions what he believes. Actionis impossible without some working theory,and this very fact drives earnest men intospeculation. Even the man of science isnever without some kind of tentative workinghypothesis, even when, in the most dis-interested and objective way, he is in-vestigating fact; he is looking for something,and that directs his search. We cannot takethe tradition of the Christian Churchitsbody of belief and dogma^apart from itsexperience, however distinct the two thingsmay be.

,


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38 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONAt the same time we have to remember that

the spheres of action and speculation are stilldifferent. Very often in all the affairs of lifewe find that the man who is master in the onesphere is helpless in the other; and so it iswith religious life and thought. Many a manhas the power and has the life, who can giveno account of it, or who can only accountfor it in borrowed terms, crammed withmetaphorterms more or less intelligible tothose who understand the metaphors, andhopelessly dark for others. Similarly, men maybe adepts in the speculative treatment ofreligion, and have little enough of the realthing in the way of power or life. One partof our task, then, will be to make sure of the

j relation between the tradition and the ex-perience behind it, for it may be that thejChurch has not quite managed a perfectaccount and explanation of its own life.The Christian Church, in its history as in

all its daily transactions, is conscious of alife related in a peculiar way to the historicalfacts given in the Gospels. Of this life it hasto find some account; and this account mustbe given "with reference to its whole knowledge


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DOGMA 39of the world. Otherwise it remains more orless imknown and unintelligible. This is thecommon instinct of men. Speculation isnative to us"the un-examined life," Platosaid, *' is un-live-able for a human being."* Weare always seeking to bring the whole of ourexperience into relation with itself, that wemay grasp the whole of life and the universe,so far as they touch us, with some unity andinward coherence ; and it is never a merelyacademic task, the impulse of an idle curiosity.It is intensely practical. The Church in itsdogma endeavours to formulate its experiencein the religious sphere in connection with itsgeneral experience of life and the universe,and of the laws of life and the universe, takenas a whole, and it does this with the practicalaim of proceeding thereby to some largerworking theory of the divine order, on whichto base action.

In common life, however, there is a curioustendency to be remarked here, in strikingcontrast with the ways of the scientific world.The man of science frames hypotheses to

* Apology, 38 A.


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40 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONaccount for the facts he has observed, andto enable him to proceed further; but he iswedded to no hypothesis. When new facts or old ones better known falsify hishypothesis, he abandons it for a new one,which in turn will condition his work, give anew direction to it, and call his attentionsteadily to some group or type of facts. Butwhatever theory he forms must be more orless immediately verifiable by experiment.Now, though the description may seem fanci-ful, experiment, one might say, is essentiallylistening to the voice of Naturesometimesby long, still, and silent observation, by simplewatching, as the modern student of birdswatches them alive and at liberty ; while some-times the experiment takes the form of puttingquestions to Nature and then carefully catch-ing the answer. It is a helpful thing here thatone may put the same question to Nature asoften as one pleases; and, if it is the samequestion, she will give the same answer. Shewill not tire of giving the answer, as some-times happens when you put the same questionto the same person an infinite number oftimes. Thus it is possible to be sure of her


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THE USE OF THEORY 41answer; and, when a great many people putto her the same question, it is possible to verifyit. Thus by repeated and intelligent listeningScience comes into possession of a body ofestablished facts.The results of scientific experiment are

patent to sense. Of course, the values ofthese results are not so patent. They requiresometimes a vastly higher power of intellectto grasp them in their relation to one another,and to the whole body of established fact, thanis required to make the experiments fromwhich they are gained. But in the main theresults of scientific experiment are patent andclear, and they lead to the establishment offacts which any competent person can verify.In this field theories are theories admittedlyworking hypotheses to use or discard as servesbest. A clear distinction is drawn betweenfacts established by experiment and what areavowedly theories; and that distinction per-mits a considerable freedom in the use ofhard facts, and makes the progress of Sciencepossible in virtue of clear thinking.But now let us turn to the other side and

look at religion. Here we step into a region


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42 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONof great difficulty, for we have to do with theinnermost secrets of human nature. Wereally know very little yet even of the familiarfive senses; still less can we claim anysatisfactory knowledge of the secrets ofpsychologywill, feeling, emotion, impulse,perception, attention; and there are elementsin human nature still more perplexing andstill less explored. Of the great spiritual ex-periences, such as love or sorrow, it is hard togive even an approximately true account,except perhaps in poetry. Somewhere, deepamong the innermost things of our being, is thehome of what we call religionin a regionwhere experiments seem hardly possible, and,even when they are possible, the results arepeculiarly difficult to understand and torelate to one another. Some measure ofexperiment is, of course, possible here; buthere more than elsewhere we require theintelligent working of independent witnesses,independent investigators, correcting them-selves and correcting one another, by inde-pendent results taken over long periods andwide areas, if we are to eliminate accident anderror. Yet precisely in this sphere we find


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THE USE OF THEORY 43sometimes the most careless use of theory andfact as if they stood on the same footing.There are those who freely use their owntheories in this way; and there are those wholay an emphasis on the authority of theChurch, which seems as alien to scientificthinking. To the former class we scarcelyneed to attend, but we have to consider thestress laid on Authority and to ask how farit is legitimate.One reason lies ready to hand. It is partly

because of the great difficulty of the problemthat lies before the individualbecause ofthe vast issues bound up with it and the shortspace within which it has to be solvedbecause he feels so acutely his limitations.He stands in a world of many minds, noneof them quite rigid, however rigid they mayseem^all of them in reality played upon byshifting currents of thought and feeling, andconditioned by sterner variations in ex-perience. Nothing that he can see standsimmovable and immutable, and he asks forsomething that is permanent. For he realisesthat he is face to face with a practical problem.He has a life to live which is hurrying past#


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44 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONhim faster and faster a, life which he wouldlike to call his own, but, as he thinks of it, heseems to himself more and more to be a merespectator, so quickly life goes, and so littledoes it leave. He is hindered from developinghis opportunities by failure within himself.Evil round about him is challenging hisenergies, but they are thwarted and deadenedby evil within; and meantime he is sweptdown-stream, more and more conscious offailureyes, and of ignorance of himself andhis own nature. How is he to use life, toovercome the inner weakness that makes theoutward inefficiency^in short, to be what hefeels dimly he should be, and might be,somehow, if he only knew how?The difficulty of life lies, after all, not so

much in the region of speculation as of actionthat is, unless a man is content to driftthrough his days and nights, eating, sleeping,and thoughtlessly putting his hand to whatoccurs, without purpose or outlook. Theremay be perhaps an art or science of waror perhaps Socrates would call it, like rhetoricand cookery, a mere knack. In the last resortmany arts and sciences have a larger element


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46 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONinherited experience of mankind, scarcelyformulated, and reduced to no very valid rules,is invaluable to the real artist, who absorbsit he cannot tell how or when. It saves himfrom gratuitous mistakes, from waste of mind,from eccentricity, from disastrous side-tracks,and by its gentle pressure turns him in thatdirection where, if he follow his genius, hewill instinctively know when to overstep con-vention and so to extend the experience heinherits, and to enlarge in a permanent andtrue way the faculties of the race. In fact,much as the individual is^and at times hein his turn seems to be everythinghe ismost when he realises and uses the solidarityof human experience in that sphere in whichhe has to work.The experience of the race and the freedomof the individualthese, then, are the two

great things for the man who takes lifeseriously in any sphereneither without theother, but the combination of individualexperiment with inherited experience.

Let us take an easy illustration. Man'sstruggle with Nature began far earlier thanany date to which historians can take us back


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THE BOAT-BUILDER 47and long after it began, and yet long beforewe have anything we can call History, thefirst boat was made. We have to use con-jecture here, but we have some evidence. Theman who made it was one who watchedNature. The tree trunk floated, he saw, whilethe stone sank; and he took in these factsand thought he might use them. But thetrunk had to be cleared of its branches, andafter a while it occurred to him that if it werehollow he might convey himself and hisbelongingshuman and otherwith moresafety and at least drier. So he thought out anew application of firethat treasured dis-covery of his race, so hard to get, soimportant to keep; and then, after a longseries of failures perhaps, with fire and stonehe made his dug-out, and launched it with theaid of his friends. And then, to their greatamusement, the tree trunk, afloat and free,turned over and resolutely floated upsidedown. But the man would not be beaten. Hehauled the wretched trunk out of the water,and at last, by a heart-breaking course ofthought and experiment and disappointment,achieved a new and a great thing a. tree


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48 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONtrunk hollowed within and shaped without tojust those curves and just that build (to use alater word) that would enable it to stay rightside up and hinder its own progress least.Human life might depend upon both thesequalifications. So rose the most wonderfuland fascinating of human trades, to whichman was to owe some of his most amazingvictories over the world. The man who madethe first boat in any tribe was of the typeto which mankind owes mostthe listener tothe voice of God in fact and Nature. He wasdone with anticipating; he would have thefact, and he put himself to the pains of lettingthe fact assert itselfpatient enough tO' askagain and again till he understood whatNature meant, and then using it gloriously.Back to him and his boat we can trace thestory of shipbuilding, and from him againdownwards to our Mauretanias and Olympics;and at no stage has the past with its triumphsbeen irrelevantnothing once gained waslost, and it is only as men build their shipstrue to the discoveries made all the way alongfrom the first dug-out that they build aright.The past is superseded indeed ; the Mauretania


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THE BOAT-BUILDER 49is worth many dug-outs, but in her the dug-out lives still in a more glorious life. It isthe combination of experience and experi-ment.

So, too, when, at a later day, seas were tobe navigated, the sailor did the same thing.The quiet man who would watch and listenlearned how to shape his course. Withoutchart or compass, without even an anchor,how was he to know where he was, to findhis way, to save his ship? He looked ^and helistened. The stars spoke tO' him, and hewent to his journey's end and came backagain because he had the genius to listen tothem^and to sea and winds and coastlinesand currents. The moods of the sea and theface of the sky were never idle for him; andwhat he learned, he taught, and navigationdeveloped. "A new boat and old rocks,"says the grim Highland proverb. The oldperils remain, but the sting is drawn fromthem if you will use what your father toldyou. Once more it is the experience of therace and the experiment of the individual.When we turn to the sphere of religion, itis natural to expect that the same method will

4


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THE GROWTH OF RELIGION 51of the great Environing, as they watched howthought re-acted on life, and life on thought.The real progress has been made by attentionto fact. This and that, men said, their fathershad told them, but quite other was the voiceof life; God was not what was said, but whatHe showed Himself to be, what He revealedin the growth of moral and social ideas andideals. Thus in Homer the traditional godsare clearly on a lower moral plane than theheroes men made from their experience oftheir fellow-men. It is plain to us in lookingback that Homer's gods were outgrown andmust yield their place sooner or later. Theattack made by Xenophanes, Euripides, andPlato on traditional religion in the light ofnew experience of righteousness is the greatinstance in Classical literature and history ofthe progress made by those who inherit andexamine and reflect. God was re-interpretedin the light of life. Strange that what menare is so often a better guide to the natureof God than what they say about Him!

Progress in the spiritual region depends onthe result reached by the individual, when hejs not merely an individual but a joint-heir


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52 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONof the race, and will use his inheritance with-out losing his personality. Robinson Crusoeon his island is hardly a type of the humansoul. We are too individualistictoo apt toforget that Robinson Crusoe had an axe anda number of other fascinating things broughtfrom England, all of which implied humanity,and the long history of civilisation. He hadalso a Bible in English, we may remember,which again implied a long history ofreligion. The individual inherits all thishe is made by it; it is in him; and soundthinking requires the recognition of this factalso, as well as all other relevant facts, in thefulness of its meaning. Without the religioushistory of the race behind us, not one of usis likely to achieve anything, either in his ownreligious life or in his thinking. If he startsafresh, he is most like an artist who beginswithout perspective, and ignores all that hasbeen learned and felt of colour. Not evengenius could thrive on such a plan; and itis perhaps worth while remarking that oneof the most significant factors in genius, andone of those least recognised, is its infinitecapacity for learning in patience and humility.


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EXPERIENCE AND PROGRESS 53however high it may soar afterwardsitspower of combining docility with indepen-dence. Independence without that docility isthe mark of the fool, though he does notalways recognise it. First-hand experienceof life, of course, we ask of poet and painter,and of the man of religion, but in the firstinstance within the limits of the inheritance.When we speak of our religious andspiritual inheritance, we must think not merelyof those who say they have the Voice of God,but of some who make no such claimnotmerely of one Church, but of many, and ofmany that no Church at all will recognise. .The whole spiritual history of man is the background on which we have to work.There are the great historic religions of theworld, and within Christendom the greatChurches and societies and movements^and |none of all these is irrelevant. For, after all,"the Church" is essentially the tradition, andthe tradition has to be transcended ; while '1to the man who is in earnest, every tradition 1is of value, and none is finally binding. * 'Church or no Church, it is to the highestexperience in the sphere with which we are


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54 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONconcerned that we have to look, and it isnot till we have found that, that we maydismiss anything as irrelevant, and even thenwe must not dismiss it too abruptly. Formost of us to-day there is little question that itis in the area of Christian thinking that thehighest results in thought and character areto be observed; and, when we find these,we are rightindeed, we are boundto askhow they have been developed. It is, ofcourse, true that this conclusion is questioned.Other standards of morality, by which totest character, are proposed, but they arerarely as new as those who advocate themimagine; often they are obsoleteblindalleys long since labelled and known to leadnowhere.To recapitulate the three points we havereached, we have remarked, first, the soli-

darity of the race, and the dependence of thepresent, and with it of the future, upon thepast and its experience. In the next place, wehave seen that progress depends upon theright and wise use of the inherited experienceby the individual, conscious of his respon-sibility at once to maintain and to advance


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RECAPITULATION 55what he has inherited ;* and, at the same time,that in every sphere of human activity it isthe highest achievement that counts, and mustbe our starting-place for further progress;that, if to ignore experience is always folly,it is still more folly to ignore the highestexperience available. In the third place,embodied in the tradition of the ChristianChurch or Churches, and in the teaching anddogma of the non-Christian religions, we havea mass of religious experience which may beof the highest value to us, if we take thepains to understand it; for here we touchthe life of the human race at its very highestand most intense. The great religions expressthe most earnest minds among those racesof man which are most endowed withinsight and most trained in variety of life.They come not from the backward peoples,but from the races with long histories, embody-ing every interest that race or nation can

* The Church, wrote Principal Rainy in 1867, " is compelled tosubmit afresh to the cross-questioning of the ever-changing, ever-moving, Providence of God. She is obliged to let drop the merehabits of her history, which suffice no longer. . . . The Churchof Christ has no liberty to become the slave even of its own his-tory." {Life, i., pp. 176. 177.)


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56 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONknow, and in every one of the great religionsthe signs are manifest which tell of roots deepin the past. In each case the highest thoughtof a gifted race has been turned upon whatsupremely matters to every man. For thosewho know it bestwho know it from withinthe Christian faith stands apart from all otherreligions in a place of its own, with a futureand a future which, we believe, will notbe a mere repetition of the past. The restof this lecture will be devoted to a short dis-cussion of principles which may enable usto judge between one set of religious traditionsand another, and (I hope) to see some groundfor the preference given to the Christian faith.There are three questions which we may

ask about any religionquite simple ques-tions. What will it do for you? What willit do to protect other people against you?How far does it hold open the door for thefuture ?

In answering such questions two ways maybe taken. We may go to sacred books, andcompare the precepts of the great religiousteachers and the proverbs bearing on moralmatters that are current among the various


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THE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 57peoples. Or we may go to the people them-selves and study their lives and see how farthe religion is practically operative therewhat it gives them, what it does to protectthe weak from them, what it does to safeguardthe future^and with what force and powerit does these things. We shall find sometimesthat the popular proverb has more vitalitythan the religious aphorism or principle, andyet that even so a proverb has often enoughto do to maintain its own life, without dynamicto spare to guide and quicken the lives ofmen and women. We must keep always inclose contact with actual life, and work outour problem with progressively intense studyof individual character, without neglecting,on the other hand, the notes of the largeror more organised society. We must makeit our concern to go slowly about our workespecially when we reach the stage of makingstatementstill we have grasped the fulnessof the fact. In religion a fact is extremelyhard to convey in its fulness by any wordsavailable; and then we have to realise thatother people use the same words and meansomething very different. The content of the


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58 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONword varies immensely. Even when we takeso simple and obvious a word as (let us say)"blue," no one can tell what its exact valueisit makes all the difference whether it isapplied to a blue-bottle fly, the summer sky,or a preparation for the laundry. The word"Father "is applied to God in many religions,and its compass varies as widely as "blue"in the three instances I have suggested. Itis clear that we have to go beyond what peoplesay, and study what they mean, and how muchthey mean it.Some little time ago, Professor Gilbert

Murray, of Oxford, said that the great dangerin literature was reading " with a slack imagi-nation." This is always the danger, whetherone is criticising a book or dealing withhuman character in any form or race. Know-ledge, to be anything at all beyond conceit anddelusion, must be a thing of passion andintensity. It is not easy to understand anyman in his fulnesscharacter is so com-plicated to begin with, and in the next placeit is never finally fixed. If we are to study anauthor, there is only one way, and this Carlylesummed up in writing of Novalis for an


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THE TRUE WAY IN CRITICISM 59English public very doubtful about suchforeigners

" The most profitable employment any bookcan give them is to study honestly someearnest, deep-minded, truth-loving Man, towork their way into his manner of thought,till they see the world with his eyes, feel as hefelt and judge as he judged, neither believingnor denying, till they can in some measureso feel and judge."*When we have taken such a course withany religious teacher, our acceptance or re-jection, our belief or denial, will at least bedefensible. Is it too much to suggest thatsuch measure is only seldom given to thatwonderful series of ''earnest, deep-minded,truth-loving Men" who have ma.de theChristian Church, and handed down to us itstraditionthe embodiment of the religiousexperience of the peoples and of the men innineteen centuries who were best qualified

* Dr. Edward Caird, in a lecture on Carlyle, said much thesame thing : We must " let his way of thinking [a great author's]permeate into our minds, until it becomes part of their very sub-stance " ; till then, our criticism " will be wanting in sympathy,and it will rather tend to defend us against his spirit than enableus to appreciate it."


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SOCIETY WITHOUT CHRIST 6inevertheless, with the continual correction ofa Christian background. There are men andwomen leavening these societies in whombums a passionate devotion to the person ofJesus Christ and His ideals for mankind andfor the individual. There is the public recog-nition (whatever it is worth) of religion, andthere is in all educated persons some slightknowledgevery vague and inaccurate as itmay beof the principles of that religionwhich touches their lives, if nowhere else,in most of their weddings and funerals. Butimagine the background removed, and in-dustrial enormities, flagrant cruelty, and openuncleanness, continuing unchecked, and gain-ing rather than losing in volume, as theywould. Even with the assistance of LeopoldII. and his Belgians, it will be hard for any-one without special knowledge to imaginewhat things were tolerated in ancient societyor are tolerated in Indiain civilised com-munities, that is^and in neither case withmuch disapproval. Some things are ignored,and others are defended; and that makesan unspeakable difference. Good natures andkind hearts there ^yere in the ancient world,


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62 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONbut it is remarkable how little influence theyhad.* Classical scholars and modern mission-aries rarely tell all they know about pagansociety. Few ask about the condition ofslaves, for instance, in the mines of Atticawhile Pericles was the chief man of the Stateand the terrible want of mercy that casteinvolves is not understood. If you know thequestions to ask of returned missionaries, theywill tell you. Sometimes they tell you thingswithout noticing that they are doing so, andsuch evidence is always significant.Then we must think about religion without

Christ. Here, of course, we meet people whogo at once to the Diary of Marcus Aurelius orSir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asiadocumentsof very different value. But there are sounderworks on Buddha, with less glamour, whileMarcus Aurelius was in any case an ex-ceptional man. Plutarch's book On Isis andOsiris is a much better guide to the real ideasof ancient religion. Two features stand outin most non-Christian religionsthe world'squarrel with God, and the awful touch of

* Think of the gladiatorial shows and the kind and humane(Y}en who gave them.


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66 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONsocieties to-day, a man well worth our atten-tion. He is of the type that does not meanto be convertedtoo candid to take thingswithout examination, too true to move quicklyand then, like the Pearl Merchant in theparable, after all his experience of the beauti-ful and true, he finds something that goesbeyond allhe gets outside his own oldrange, finds a new joy; and life, without hisintending it or expecting it, is a new thing.But if we are to understand him, it will notbe with the slack imagination.Above all, we shall have to consecrate our-

selves to a new and special study of JesusChristHis ideas and principles, and, whatis vastly more. Himself and His personality.

Is His a religion that closes the door tothe future? Or does it not rather hold thedoor open? In a great passage, St. Paulspeaks of "Christ as being God's "Yes""however many," he says, "the promises ofGod are, in Him is the Yes." The Christianreligion is a religion of Yes, and all otherreligions, in last resort, are religions of No.Paul sees in Him the fulfilment of all God'spromisespromises written in the books of


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68 THE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONever a larger and deeper measure. The nine-teenth century, it was said, was nearer Christthan the second was. Let us pray that thetwentieth come nearer still. "Where thespirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," wrotePaul; and there is indeed liberty thereto goabout the Father's house and to see everythingbelonging to the Father. The locked doorsare few^and in some the keys stand waitingtill we learn to turn them, while, as to others** Knock, and it shall be opened to you." But,in general, it is: "Behold, I have set beforeyou an opened door."

It is curious, too, to remark how, when aman is really under the influence of JesusChrist, such influence does not, as betweenman and man, narrow or limit, but broadenhim. The Holy Spirit, it is promised, is toguide us into all truth. We find, whereverJesus Christ has been in reality, men haveconceived of everything in a progressivelylarger and nobler wayhave framed greaterideals of personal, social, and nationalrighteousness, and achieved a new intellectualfreedom.

But eventually our subject of study is Christ


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THE VITALITY OF THE CHURCH 73believe in one another. When one thinksof the great philosophic schools of the pasthow small their numbers have been in spiteof their great influencehow they dis-integrated and disappeared, as the Stoics, forinstance, did after the reign of MarcusAureliusone realises the contrast in theChurch. Its numbers have been vast^theyare greater to-day than ever; its divisionshave been more acu,te and more cruel thanthose of any philosophic school; and yet itlives. We shall have to ask in virtue of whatit lives, and to see that we reach an adequateanswer. What is it that revives the Churchagain and again? What is the meaning ofthe great movements associated with suchnames as Luther, Tyndale, and Wesley^allthese, men of the academic habit, who studiedin Universities and read Greeknot at allour common idea of leaders of mass-move-ments ? There is no secret at all about thesemen^they were fallible like ourselves, liableto the charges of anger and narrowness ofview and mistaken judgment, what you willbut they have this also in common, that theyall lived in the power of a renewed realisation


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THE STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH 75love and the loyalty of men and women, inearnest with themselves and with truth, andcan affect through them the whole course ofhuman history^we believe, for good; but,if our critics will not let us say so at once,we will ask only, To what does a body soconspicuously worthless owe its influence ?

Let us take an illustration from ordinaryhistoryJulius Caesar. We will read theworst that is to be said about him; we willdraw him as Shakespeare drew him, fromNorth's Plutarch^a man of conspicuouserrors and defectsepileptic, deaf, ambitious,vacillating, arrogant^falling far short in somematters of ordinary standards of conduct. Orwe will take Martin Luther, and, for themoment, try to believe every foul calumnythat the meaner partisans of the Papacy andof modem culture have heaped on him. Andthen we have a problem indeed. We havenow to explain how such a Caesar and sucha Luther were capable of such great thingsas they actually achieved. They changed thecourse of human history. We will allow allthat sense will tolerate to tendencies of thetimes, as people tell us to do to-daypeople,


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THE STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH 77forcethat carry men so farare neverwaked by anything weak and trivial; andthere is no hatred and no love in humanhistory equal to those which the Church haswaked. Why ? We have seen the weaknesswe have to see the strength.

It is a commonplace in criticismor itshould be so by nowthat the beginner isquicker to see what is wrong thati what isright. The critics, as Disraeli said in a famouspassage, are the men who have failed; andhe is rightthe best of them are men whowould have created if they couldwould havemade the poem or painted the picture, butthey did not. The man who does, criticises inanother waywith an incisiveness far beyondtheirs, and a tenderness and sensitiveness theycannot reach. But, in the main, the taskof criticism for most of us^at least, when weare measuring ourselves against great thingsin art, or literature, or history, and it is wiserand kinder to leave the rest aloneis to findout what is right, how and why the thingis right, and what makes it rightwhat givesit its appeal^where its power lies. The criticwill be better trained in the National Gallery


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THE CHALLENGE 83it w

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