THE fundamental difficulty which meets us in regard to evil is, as we have seen, to reconcile its existence with the conclusion that the world is the manifestation of infinite goodness. So great does the difficulty seem that some thinkers have cut the knot by maintaining that we must admit the limitation of the power of God in order to preserve the infinity of his goodness. Moreover, if man's nature is in its essence identical with that of God, how are we to explain the origin of evil in it? And, on the other hand, if man has by nature a bias to evil, how are we to account for this bias without ascribing it to the Creator of man? Nor does it get rid of the difficulty to attribute the existence of evil to some malign external influence, for this influence could not operate unless there were something in the nature of man that caused him to succumb to temptation.

These difficulties have perplexed the religious, and especially the Christian, consciousness for centuries. One method of solution, first definitely put forward as a solution by Augustine, is to say that God created man morally pure and good, endowing him with absolute freedom of choice between good and evil, and that sin had its origin in the transgression of the first man, who, as representative of the whole race, misused his freedom to will evil, and so introduced that bias to evil which has vitiated the whole race.

While the form in which this theory is stated is open to grave objections, it contains this element of truth: that no individual is free from the influence of the ideas, customs, laws and institutions which constitute the spiritual atmosphere in which he lives; indeed, were he absolutely unaffected by such influences, all progress would be inconceivable. The conception of a first man, it is true, created absolutely perfect and yet capable of willing either good or evil, is a fiction which the progress of modern thought has made incredible. The further we go back in the history of man, the less developed spiritually we find him to be. The process of history exhibits, not the descent from an original state of perfection, but a gradual evolution, in which the later, speaking generally, is higher spiritually than the earlier. But, while this is true, it is none the less true that the development of spirit, in all its forms, is only made possible by the combined reason of the race. Society is from the first the condition of morality in the individual, because morality itself is meaningless except as expressing the relations of individuals to one another. On the other hand, it is only because the individual is capable of comprehending the essential nature of society that the foundation and development of society is possible at all. There is no society except in so far as the individual recognizes, with more or less consciousness, that he is a member in a whole, for which it is his duty and the fulfilment of his nature to work. Thus, on the one hand, society is essential to the spiritual life of the members composing it, and, on the other hand, the individual must recognize his social obligations to be reasonable, or society cannot exist. Society at once imposes its obligations on the individual and is constituted by the individual. Now, the true element in the Augustinian doctrine is the recognition of this union of the individual and the race. No doubt the individual is not a mere passive medium of society, but no individual can become self-conscious without recognizing himself as under obligation to conform his actions to the ideal of which society is an embodiment. Moreover, society is not constituted once for all, but is the slow growth of a more and more rational comprehension of what a truly organic society is. Thus we may say that the progress of the race is the condition of the progress of the individual. Each stage in that progress brings to light wider and closer bonds of union between the members of society, and, in proportion as society embodies these higher ideas in its structure, the members of which it is composed come to have a higher conception of their duty. On the other hand, as no form of society is a perfect realization of the ideal, it inevitably has an evil side as well as a good. The savage is moral, in so far as he has learned that in subservience to the customs in which his moral ideas are embodied consists his true life; but the very act of obedience to those customs leads to the commission of acts which from the ideal point of view are evil. And so in all other actual forms of society: in none is there realized that perfect organization which is the fulfilment of the social ideal. In this sense we may say that the individual is good or evil, just in so far as humanity is good or evil. At the same time, we must not forget that each stage of morality involves the free response of the individual, and indeed it is this response which gives it meaning; so that when the individual has outgrown the existing form of society, the advance to a new stage is inevitable.

From what has been said, it is obvious that moral evil is in no sense something that can be imposed upon the individual from without: it exists only in so far as the phase of morality embodied in society is accepted by its members and conceived to be an expression of their true life. We may therefore say that every stage of society is good, in the sense that it expresses the highest ideal reached at the time. It is only by reference to a more developed standard that it can be called evil. We condemn savage morality as evil because we contrast it with the more developed morality of civilized life; but, in doing so, we do not mean that it was possible for the savage to anticipate the morality of the civilized man. In this sense we may say that evil is necessary. Each stage of morality is the condition of the succeeding stage, and it is only by a process of abstraction that we think of the individual of a given age as capable of a higher conception of morality than that to which he has actually attained. The spiritual development of man is a process which is as inevitably determined by his spiritual nature as the process of the physical world by the laws operative in it. Therefore, evil is inseparable from the development of society. To suppose that absolute good could be attained at any given stage in the evolution is to suppose that the human spirit could overleap its limits, and anticipate the gradual process by which it learns to understand the world and so to understand itself. Man cannot be said to have been created either as good or evil, because morality exists only as willed by a rational subject. Discarding this obsolete mode of thought, what we must say is, that the spiritual nature of man is the product of a gradual process of evolution, each phase of which is a fresh conquest of the good as compared with that from which it has emerged; while from the point of view of a more advanced stage it is evil. Evil is therefore not the abstract opposite of good, but a lower stage of good. It no doubt at first gives an unpleasant shock to our developed moral consciousness to think of the savage as displaying the highest morality of which he was capable in the torture of the conquered enemy of his tribe; but this is because we are judging him as if he were perversely contravening the recognized morality of civilized society. That what we call his evil act was the condition of good seems less paradoxical when we consider that he was expressing the solidarity which seemed to him, and at that stage was, essential to his existence and to the discharge of his duties as a member of the tribe. We in our own day do not regard ourselves as immoral, when in war we shoot down the public enemy, because we conceive our act to be essential to all that makes for the highest good of our own nation and indirectly of the world. This fact may reconcile us to the seemingly paradoxical statement, that evil is the condition of good; not indeed evil recognized as such, but evil that from the point of view of reason is the opposite of good.

It would thus seem to be the very nature of man as a finite being that, in his imperfect apprehension of goodness, he should conceive as good that which from a higher point of view is evil. Starting from the conception of the finitude of man, it may therefore be argued that evil is merely another name for finitude. God, it may be said, is the source of all the positive good in the world, while evil is due to the inherent limitation of the finite. From the side of the infinite, therefore, evil has no positive reality, but is merely the absence of good.

Now, it may be pointed out, firstly, that if the finite, as is assumed, has no being, but is merely the absence of being, we must suppose that the only being is that which is infinite. But an infinite which excludes all finitude is simply the abstraction of pure being, and pure being, when we attempt to think of it in itself, apart from all the determinations that we have rejected as negations, is indistinguishable from pure nothing. Hence, if evil is to be regarded as simply the absence of good, the only good must be that which is absolute. But absolute goodness, as that which excludes all definite forms of goodness, is no more thinkable than an infinite which is the negation of all finitude. The attempt, therefore, to resolve evil into mere negation can only result in the entire destruction of goodness. Evil is essentially relative to good, and as such it is necessarily determinate. To identify the former with pure negation is at the same time to eliminate the latter.

The whole point of view which leads to the conception of evil as mere privation or negation is based upon an utterly false view of reality. Our knowledge, as we have already argued, does not grow by a process of abstraction, in which, as we advance to a more and more comprehensive notion of the universe, we gradually eliminate the differences of things. If this were a true account of the process, the ultimate object of knowledge would be that of a Being absolutely devoid of all determination; precisely the idea which, as we have seen, results from the conception of the finite as purely negative. But in truth the advance of knowledge at once consists in ever greater differentiation and more perfect unification; so that the infinite must be conceived as infinitely differentiated, not as completely dissolved into abstract being. When therefore it is said that evil is simply the absence of good, we are asked to believe that the good is that in which all the differences involved in evil are eliminated; and this, as we have seen, is the same as saying that the good is destitute of all definiteness. How inadequate such a view is may be seen at once, if we but consider that the less differentiated form of society is also that which is least moral. As civilization develops, so also does the specialization of functions, and at the same time it is just because of this increased differentiation that society becomes more perfectly unified. The ideal of society is that in which each individual shall have freedom and opportunity to develop his special capacities and talents, while yet he works in the spirit of the whole; and this differentiation of functions is the condition of an organized community in which all participate in the triumphs of each.

Any given stage of moral evolution, then, is evil only when contrasted with a higher stage, though it is never absolutely but only relatively evil. Nevertheless within each stage there is the contrast of evil and good. From this point of view, those acts are evil which contradict the ideal of good recognized by the individual; and only because man has an ideal does he condemn certain acts as evil. The ideal is the true real, and for the individual it expresses his consciousness of God. The wretchedness which is experienced when the ideal is violated is thus the indication of that higher self which expresses what man in his true nature is. Now, it has been held that this contrast of the ideal and the actual is the same contrast as that between action which proceeds from immediate impulse and action which is determined by reason. The former, according to Kant, is the result of natural propensities when they are allowed to operate mechanically; the latter alone is an expression of the free spirit. Thus evil is held to be due to the obstructive influence of the natural desires, whereas goodness consists in conformity to the absolute law of reason. The moral life of man is therefore supposed to be the result of the protracted and ever-renewed conflict of opposite tendencies.

The fundamental defect of this doctrine is its assumption that the natural desires as such can possibly constitute a motive to action. A purely natural desire is no more a motive to action than the external compulsion of physical force. Only as impulse is interpreted by consciousness, and conceived to be an end fitted to realize the nature of man, does it become a motive to action. No impulse can be the motive of a free agent except under this condition.

Thus it is only sub ratione boni that man can act at all. What is called the conflict of sense and reason is really the conflict between a lower and a higher mode of self-realization. Evil, therefore, cannot be ascribed to the predominance of sensuous desires, but only to the will. There is no struggle between impulse and reason, but only between those ends which falsely claim to be, and those which really are, rational. In the proper sense of the term the only action—as distinguished from mechanical movements—is that which proceeds from willed ends or motives; and motives are the same thing as the rational subject in action. “Nothing in the world,” says Kant, “is absolutely good but a good will;” to which we must add “nor absolutely evil but an evil will.” Good and evil are predicates which express the character of the will. The negation of natural desire is not good, or its affirmation evil: good lies solely in the will; and whether the immediate end of a natural desire is good or evil must be determined by its place in the whole spiritual life of man. The unity of the family has a natural basis, but out of this spring “the tender charities of husband, son and brother.” Industrial and political life grow out of the natural desires, but in the civil community and the State they are transformed and spiritualized.

Evil, then, has its origin in the will, and the will is undoubtedly the expression of the character. The good will is therefore that in which the ideal or true end of humanity is realized. This does not mean that in realizing the ideal self man is selfish, for the ideal self is that which is inseparable from the social self. In self-realization the subject experiences self-satisfaction, but it is the self-satisfaction which is inseparable from the rational will. The only permanent satisfaction is that which comes from willing the good, and though the willing of the good brings satisfaction, it is not willed simply as a means of satisfaction, but as an end in itself. The attempt to make the pleasure which results from willing the rational self the object of the will cannot possibly yield the satisfaction aimed at, because it makes the motive of action, not the ideal self, but a self that seeks to be satisfied without realizing the ideal. The philanthropist undoubtedly finds satisfaction in making the good of his kind the object of his will, but if he makes the pleasure that accrues from unselfish devotion the motive of his action, he must necessarily fail in his object, because the satisfaction of philanthropy cannot be secured without being philanthropic, and no man is so who makes philanthropy the means to another end, namely, that of securing pleasure. No act can possibly be attributed to an agent that is not an expression of his will; and therefore to eliminate the relation of the act to the will is to empty it of all moral significance. But though a moral act must be the act of a self, it does not follow that it is a selfish act. Every act involves the conception of self, of an end to be realized, and of determination by the self; and the distinction between a good and a bad act is that between a self which seeks for self-realization in accordance with the rational nature and one which wills a self that is irrational.

The good self is therefore that which is in harmony with the rational will; in other words, that which consists in willing what is in consonance with the divine will; and this again means that which involves the perfect realization of all that is characteristic of man as a rational being. Self-realization does not, however, mean that every individual must perform precisely the same acts. While the self is essentially social, the social self is no abstraction, but that which in fulfilling its special function is contributing to the harmony and perfection of the whole. The scientific man, the artist and the social reformer are at one in seeking the universal; but the universal is a concrete ideal, which involves the performance of distinctive acts by each. The same principle is involved in every case. Every individual, however obscure or humble, has his own special function, and fills a place which can be filled by no one else. Nevertheless all good men are agreed in making the universal good their end, differ as they may, and do, in the specific way in which that good is by each sought to be realized. This unselfish devotion to the universal constitutes the religious point of view, for devotion to the good of humanity is at the same time the only possible way in which the finite spirit can be identified with God. Conscious identification with the whole is the only possible morality, and this consciousness, when it involves the willing of the good, with the accompanying idea that in so willing we are realizing the true end of man, is religion.

From what has been said it follows that evil consists in seeking for the satisfaction of our nature in particular, limited or selfish ends. Every evil act involves the willing of an end which is incompatible with the universal self; every good act in the willing of that which is in harmony with the universal self, the self which reason imposes upon the individual who views himself as a conscious agent of the universal good. The natural desires are evil when their end is made absolute; they are good when they are willed only as means to the attainment of universal ends. He who uses society as a means of self-gratification wills evil, and his acts recoil upon himself; for, in making his own separate good his end, irrespective of the injustice and wrong done to others, he shuts himself out from the blessedness that results from that unselfish devotion to the common good which alone is in harmony with the divine will. “He that saveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life shall save it.”

We have seen, then, that moral evil is in this sense the condition of good, that it is in and through the recognition of something as contrary to good that the consciousness of evil arises. It is therefore impossible that man can be wholly and irredeemably evil. A being who was absolutely evil would have no consciousness of evil, because he would have no consciousness of good. Nor would such a being be capable of the slightest progress towards good, for good is possible only for a being who possesses a rational will, and a being without the consciousness of good could not possibly will it. A being absolutely evil could never cease to be evil, no matter what external influence was brought to bear upon him, since nothing could give him the consciousness of good. No being can be either good or evil without self-determination, and therefore he cannot be externally acted upon. How then, we may ask, is the transition from evil to good possible?

What is needed is that the conception of God should not remain a mere conception, but should be actually expressed in a concrete form; and that form, as we have seen, is for us the human. We cannot indeed say that the ideal of a perfect humanity contains all that is implied in our idea of God, but we may undoubtedly say that it is the highest embodiment of the divine that we can make the principle of our action. Moreover, the idea of humanity is not a mere abstract conception, formed by elimination of the differences of one man from another, but that of a concrete spiritual being, containing all the perfections of which individual men are capable. Such a conception has been elaborated by the Church in the person of Christ, and in devotion and love for this concrete realization of the ideal may be found the living principle by which the evil of human nature can be transcended. In this divine figure is gathered up and concentrated that comprehensive sympathy and love for all men, which is fitted to awaken a corresponding sympathy and love. Here we have at once the combination of absolute love and of absolute righteousness. When the individual man is possessed by the spirit of which Christ is the perfect embodiment, he is lifted above himself and made one with God. The Christ which operates in and through the spirit of individuals is God himself, present now, as he has ever been, in the souls of all men, revealing himself in all that makes for the perfect life. Christ after the flesh, the historic person, has passed away, but the Christ of the spirit remains forever, for he is one with that ever-growing life of humanity which consists in the progressive conquest of evil by the living power of goodness. The history of man bears witness to the undying power of this divine spirit, which can never cease to be the indwelling spirit of God shaping human destiny to ever nobler ends. It cannot cease, because it is the end “to which the whole creation moves.”

The doctrine of the Incarnation must therefore be understood as implying the indissoluble unity of God and man, not in any external and artificial sense, but as an expression of the essential nature of both. It is but another expression of the principle that God is at once immanent and transcendent. It brings to light the divine element which is involved in the nature of man, and the human element inseparable from the nature of God. If we start from an abstract or dualistic opposition of God and man, there is no possibility of reconciling the one with the other. It is no solution of the problem to say that as a finite being man is the opposite of God, and therefore that the union of God and man is a mysterious and inexplicable dogma which we must accept on the basis of some external authority. If this were true, the union would not only be inexplicable, but self-contradictory. The limits of our knowledge are only too obvious, but whatever they are, they can never make credible the combination of two ideas, one of which is the negation of the other. If there is no infinite element in human nature, the doctrine of the Incarnation must be pronounced a mere fiction of the pious imagination. The history of this doctrine is full of significance. The understanding, with its exclusive categories, conceives of God and man as possessing absolutely antagonistic natures—God being infinite, man finite; God absolutely holy, man absolutely evil; and many attempts have been made to perform the impossible feat of showing that after all the union of these opposites is not impossible.

The different views of the Incarnation which have been advanced correspond to the various conceptions of God which we have already examined. In the first place, we have the deistic view, which rejects the conception of a Christ whose nature is fundamentally different from our own, and therefore, while admitting that there is a very real and intimate relation of the mind and will of Christ to the mind and will of God, denies that Christ is identical in nature with God. A kindred view is that which seeks to bring God nearer to man by holding that the eternal Logos, or Son of God, by an act of self-limitation took upon . himself a real and veritable human nature. There is also a modification of this view, according to which it is held that God, without surrendering his divine nature, veiled it under the form of humanity. In contrast to these theories, which seek to make the union of the divine and human natures in one person conceivable by approximating the former to the latter, stands the doctrine that in Christ the divine spirit informed a human organism.

None of these theories really does anything to solve the initial difficulty, that the divine nature is conceived as the abstract opposite, and therefore as necessarily exclusive of, the human. But this abstract opposition, as we have argued, is itself untenable. Man and God are not in their essence contradictory of each other. Unless the human spirit is capable of union with the spirit of God it cannot realize itself. This union must not be conceived as in any sense the abolition of the distinction between God and man. Nothing exists for a self-conscious subject except in so far as he brings to consciousness that which is implicit in his own nature. Now, we have seen that this is possible only because both in nature and in man the divine spirit is immanent. Apart from God neither has any reality, and therefore man, in comprehending the laws of nature and in coming to the consciousness of himself, at the same time comes to the consciousness of God. In our ordinary mind we think of identity as mere self-sameness; but, as we saw in considering the sense in which we can speak of our own self-identity, this is an utterly inadequate mode of conception. True identity is unity in difference. Hence to speak of the divine and human natures as identical by no means abolishes the distinction between them. Man is identical with God because he is a rational subject, not because the immanence of God in him abolishes his individuality. Under the imperfect conception of creation we think of man as projected out of God, or as formed out of a pre-existent material by the shaping activity of God, as the sculptor shapes a block of marble. But, when we discard this inadequate mode of conception, we find that for this external productive or formative activity must be substituted the idea of God as present spiritually in the soul of every man, and therefore as capable of being comprehended by every man. Thus, we must conceive of the relation of man to God as one which involves the independent individuality of each, but an individuality which implies the distinction and yet the unity of both. Man is most truly himself when he recognizes that in all things he is dependent upon God, and that he can only truly comprehend his own nature by conceiving it as in essence identical with that of God. In the conscious recognition that only in God is man truly himself; that only in giving up his divisive will and living in the spirit of God can he realize his ideal self; in this conscious identification of himself with God, man transcends his finite personality and lives a divine life. To the infinite intelligence and will of God man can surrender himself, because in God he finds that perfection and completeness which in all his thought and action he is striving to reach. Here there is no blind surrender to an external authority, but a conscious identification with the highest and best of which he is capable. Thus the religious life consists in the conscious identification of man's thought and will with the thought and will of God. On the other hand, this identification would be impossible, were it not that God is present in our spirit as its deepest essence. On any other supposition, there would be no possibility of man rising to the consciousness of God. The union of man and God is therefore not something accidental and arbitrary, nor does it obliterate human freedom and individuality. Man is not the passive medium for the display of the divine power; if he were, he would no more be an agent than the stone that falls to the earth in accordance with the law of gravitation. It is only so far as, through union with God, he realizes the true purpose of his being, that man comes to a full recognition of his own nature. Perfect union with God is no doubt an ideal only imperfectly realized, a goal towards which humanity is slowly advancing; nevertheless it is no fiction, but a fact to which nature and history unerringly point. This ideal the Church has embodied in the doctrine of the Incarnation of God in Christ, in whom the perfect union of divine and human is held to be embodied, thus expressing as realized that which is only in process of realization; and the Church has ever refused any compromises that have been suggested on the basis of the essential antagonism in nature of God and man.

Sin, it has been held, can only be forgiven after the punishment inexorably demanded by the transgression of divine law has been undergone. This punishment took the form of the sufferings and death of Christ, and thus the way has been opened up by which man may receive the divine forgiveness by appealing to the satisfaction of divine justice undergone with a view to his salvation.

The main defect in this doctrine is its confusion between sin and crime. These are in their nature fundamentally different. Crime, as I have already argued,1 is a violation of the personal rights of another, and as an offence against the external order of the State, it must be expiated by an external punishment. No doubt that punishment is at once preventive, educational and retributive. It tends to prevent the commission of unjust acts by awakening in men the consciousness that they are all members one of another, and bringing home to them the idea that crime is worthy of punishment, while it is also a vindication of the higher social self against the lower individual self. But the State cannot by means of punishment transform the inner being of the citizens, creating in them a new heart; all that it can do is to vindicate the majesty of the law, and forcibly prevent the commission of crime or lead to its voluntary diminution. Sin, on the other hand, is not merely a violation of rights, but a desecration of the ideal nature of the sinner, the willing of himself as in his true nature he is not. Since, therefore, external punishment may not lead to the transformation of the inner nature of man, it is an ineffective weapon in the conversion of man to a real consciousness of himself. What is required is the creation in him of a new consciousness, well called a “new birth,” a consciousness which reveals to him the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the blessedness which springs from a realization of the higher life. In man, by virtue of the divine principle which is one with his deepest self, the consciousness of God is bound up with the consciousness of himself, and he cannot do violence to the one without doing violence to the other. Hence God is not a judge, allotting punishment according to an external law, but the perfectly Holy Being, by reference to whom man condemns himself. The aim of religion is not simply the preservation of the social order, but the regeneration of the individual soul; it deals with the inner nature of man, not merely with the result of his act upon society and hence, unless it transforms and spiritualizes him, it entirely fails of its end. God cannot be properly conceived as a sovereign who lays down laws the violation of which brings punishment, but only as a Being of infinite love. It is his very nature to communicate himself to his creatures, whom he loves with an infinite love, and in whom only He can realize his own blessedness. Man can only be saved from sin by realizing in his life the self-communicating spirit of God. In taking upon himself the burden of the race, he lives a divine life. The destruction of all those selfish desires which are hostile to his true nature, and the unreserved surrender of himself to the good of all, is the secret which Jesus expressed and which he realized in his life. Nothing that belongs to a man—neither capacities, talents, opportunities nor even life itself—is his to be used for individual ends; and in the practical realization of this faith consists the religious life. A devotion to the service of infinite goodness, which springs from the consciousness that only in the life of self-sacrifice does man realize his ideal nature, is the true atonement; and complete acceptance of this principle, with the consequent condemnation of a life polluted by the least taint of sin, is the genuine mark of piety. Sin cannot be atoned for by another, because no one can create a new heart in another by discharging the obligations which the other has failed to fulfill, and the salvation of man is not possible without the complete surrender of the individual to God. The very essence of the religious life is incompatible with the idea of an external transference of goodness from one being to another. Regenaration cannot be thus arbitrarily conferred upon man; its very essence is the transformation of the whole man into the likeness of Christ. Man can be reconciled with God in no other way than by an absolute surrender of himself to a life in God. To assimilate this spiritual act to a commercial or a legal transaction is to destroy the very idea of the life of the religious life, which consists in active participation in the life of love. No doubt the results of this life are good even from the lower point of view o the benefits which follow in its train, but these are not the motives of that life, which can only exist when it is by itself the sole and absolute end. It is true that under the moral order in which we live, the innocent suffer for the guilty. This, however, is not the same thing as saying that moral purity or moral guilt can be transferred from one person to another. No action can be attributed to an agent which does not proceed from his will. Whether the action is good or evil, its moral quality belongs entirely to the agent. Hence the necessity of “faith” and the meaning of the doctrine of “justification by faith”. No mere belief in goodness can be of any avail in effecting a transformation of our life. Such a faith involves the entire surrender of the self to a life of love. If we are right is holding that the self-conscious recognition of God is essential to a true recognition of one's self, it is obvious that faith is an indispensable element in the religious life. Not even God can forgive sin in the case of a man who has not repented of his sin and actively entered upon the path of goodness. It is true that man cannot demand as a right the forgiveness of sin, for no merit accrues from doing what is demanded by the spiritual nature; yet faith is not separable from the love of God, but essentially correspondent to it. No amount of suffering can be bartered for forgiveness, which must be an act of “free and unmerited grace” in this sense, that it can be bestowed only on the man who discards all pretence of giving an equivalent for sin, and throws himself upon the love of God. Nor can a man by mere wishing bring himself into the frame of mind which leads to forgiveness; he can only have faith by rising to the full consciousness of the nature of God. As this consciousness implies the identification of the individual will with the ideal of goodness, there is no real faith which does not issue in good acts. It is not possible to transfer goodness in any external way; for that would mean that by some magical process a man was forgiven without any change of heart. Faith is therefore identification with the principle of goodness, a complete surrender of the soul to God, renunciation of all selfish interests, and the persistent endeavour after the ideal of the perfect life. The complete transformation of the self, as involving the abandonment of all merely private interests, is the essence of the religious consciousness; and though this ideal is never completely realized, it is ever in process of realization by him whose life “is hid with Christ in God.” This principle of faith is the “promise and potency” of the consummately holy life, a principle which must ultimately subdue to itself all the selfish desires which war against the ideal. Thus, in the midst of conflict, and even in the agony of a temporary relapse from goodness, the religious man is lifted above the storm and stress of a growing moral life, and experiences the blessedness and peace of perfect reconciliation with God.

We have seen, then, that moral evil is in this sense the condition of good, that it is in and through the recognition of something as contrary to good that the consciousness of evil arises. It is therefore impossible that man can be wholly and irredeemably evil. A being who was absolutely evil would have no consciousness of evil, because he would have no consciousness of good. Nor would such a being be capable of the slightest progress towards good, for good is possible only for a being who possesses a rational will, and a being without the consciousness of good could not possibly will it. A being absolutely evil could never cease to be evil, no matter what external influence was brought to bear upon him, since nothing could give him the consciousness of good. No being can be either good or evil without self-determination, and therefore he cannot be externally acted upon. How then, we may ask, is the transition from evil to good possible?

What is needed is that the conception of God should not remain a mere conception, but should be actually expressed in a concrete form; and that form, as we have seen, is for us the human. We cannot indeed say that the ideal of a perfect humanity contains all that is implied in our idea of God, but we may undoubtedly say that it is the highest embodiment of the divine that we can make the principle of our action. Moreover, the idea of humanity is not a mere abstract conception, formed by elimination of the differences of one man from another, but that of a concrete spiritual being, containing all the perfections of which individual men are capable. Such a conception has been elaborated by the Church in the person of Christ, and in devotion and love for this concrete realization of the ideal may be found the living principle by which the evil of human nature can be transcended. In this divine figure is gathered up and concentrated that comprehensive sympathy and love for all men, which is fitted to awaken a corresponding sympathy and love. Here we have at once the combination of absolute love and of absolute righteousness. When the individual man is possessed by the spirit of which Christ is the perfect embodiment, he is lifted above himself and made one with God. The Christ which operates in and through the spirit of individuals is God himself, present now, as he has ever been, in the souls of all men, revealing himself in all that makes for the perfect life. Christ after the flesh, the historic person, has passed away, but the Christ of the spirit remains forever, for he is one with that ever-growing life of humanity which consists in the progressive conquest of evil by the living power of goodness. The history of man bears witness to the undying power of this divine spirit, which can never cease to be the indwelling spirit of God shaping human destiny to ever nobler ends. It cannot cease, because it is the end “to which the whole creation moves.”

The doctrine of the Incarnation must therefore be understood as implying the indissoluble unity of God and man, not in any external and artificial sense, but as an expression of the essential nature of both. It is but another expression of the principle that God is at once immanent and transcendent. It brings to light the divine element which is involved in the nature of man, and the human element inseparable from the nature of God. If we start from an abstract or dualistic opposition of God and man, there is no possibility of reconciling the one with the other. It is no solution of the problem to say that as a finite being man is the opposite of God, and therefore that the union of God and man is a mysterious and inexplicable dogma which we must accept on the basis of some external authority. If this were true, the union would not only be inexplicable, but self-contradictory. The limits of our knowledge are only too obvious, but whatever they are, they can never make credible the combination of two ideas, one of which is the negation of the other. If there is no infinite element in human nature, the doctrine of the Incarnation must be pronounced a mere fiction of the pious imagination. The history of this doctrine is full of significance. The understanding, with its exclusive categories, conceives of God and man as possessing absolutely antagonistic natures—God being infinite, man finite; God absolutely holy, man absolutely evil; and many attempts have been made to perform the impossible feat of showing that after all the union of these opposites is not impossible.

The different views of the Incarnation which have been advanced correspond to the various conceptions of God which we have already examined. In the first place, we have the deistic view, which rejects the conception of a Christ whose nature is fundamentally different from our own, and therefore, while admitting that there is a very real and intimate relation of the mind and will of Christ to the mind and will of God, denies that Christ is identical in nature with God. A kindred view is that which seeks to bring God nearer to man by holding that the eternal Logos, or Son of God, by an act of self-limitation took upon . himself a real and veritable human nature. There is also a modification of this view, according to which it is held that God, without surrendering his divine nature, veiled it under the form of humanity. In contrast to these theories, which seek to make the union of the divine and human natures in one person conceivable by approximating the former to the latter, stands the doctrine that in Christ the divine spirit informed a human organism.

None of these theories really does anything to solve the initial difficulty, that the divine nature is conceived as the abstract opposite, and therefore as necessarily exclusive of, the human. But this abstract opposition, as we have argued, is itself untenable. Man and God are not in their essence contradictory of each other. Unless the human spirit is capable of union with the spirit of God it cannot realize itself. This union must not be conceived as in any sense the abolition of the distinction between God and man. Nothing exists for a self-conscious subject except in so far as he brings to consciousness that which is implicit in his own nature. Now, we have seen that this is possible only because both in nature and in man the divine spirit is immanent. Apart from God neither has any reality, and therefore man, in comprehending the laws of nature and in coming to the consciousness of himself, at the same time comes to the consciousness of God. In our ordinary mind we think of identity as mere self-sameness; but, as we saw in considering the sense in which we can speak of our own self-identity, this is an utterly inadequate mode of conception. True identity is unity in difference. Hence to speak of the divine and human natures as identical by no means abolishes the distinction between them. Man is identical with God because he is a rational subject, not because the immanence of God in him abolishes his individuality. Under the imperfect conception of creation we think of man as projected out of God, or as formed out of a pre-existent material by the shaping activity of God, as the sculptor shapes a block of marble. But, when we discard this inadequate mode of conception, we find that for this external productive or formative activity must be substituted the idea of God as present spiritually in the soul of every man, and therefore as capable of being comprehended by every man. Thus, we must conceive of the relation of man to God as one which involves the independent individuality of each, but an individuality which implies the distinction and yet the unity of both. Man is most truly himself when he recognizes that in all things he is dependent upon God, and that he can only truly comprehend his own nature by conceiving it as in essence identical with that of God. In the conscious recognition that only in God is man truly himself; that only in giving up his divisive will and living in the spirit of God can he realize his ideal self; in this conscious identification of himself with God, man transcends his finite personality and lives a divine life. To the infinite intelligence and will of God man can surrender himself, because in God he finds that perfection and completeness which in all his thought and action he is striving to reach. Here there is no blind surrender to an external authority, but a conscious identification with the highest and best of which he is capable. Thus the religious life consists in the conscious identification of man's thought and will with the thought and will of God. On the other hand, this identification would be impossible, were it not that God is present in our spirit as its deepest essence. On any other supposition, there would be no possibility of man rising to the consciousness of God. The union of man and God is therefore not something accidental and arbitrary, nor does it obliterate human freedom and individuality. Man is not the passive medium for the display of the divine power; if he were, he would no more be an agent than the stone that falls to the earth in accordance with the law of gravitation. It is only so far as, through union with God, he realizes the true purpose of his being, that man comes to a full recognition of his own nature. Perfect union with God is no doubt an ideal only imperfectly realized, a goal towards which humanity is slowly advancing; nevertheless it is no fiction, but a fact to which nature and history unerringly point. This ideal the Church has embodied in the doctrine of the Incarnation of God in Christ, in whom the perfect union of divine and human is held to be embodied, thus expressing as realized that which is only in process of realization; and the Church has ever refused any compromises that have been suggested on the basis of the essential antagonism in nature of God and man.

Sin, it has been held, can only be forgiven after the punishment inexorably demanded by the transgression of divine law has been undergone. This punishment took the form of the sufferings and death of Christ, and thus the way has been opened up by which man may receive the divine forgiveness by appealing to the satisfaction of divine justice undergone with a view to his salvation.

The main defect in this doctrine is its confusion between sin and crime. These are in their nature fundamentally different. Crime, as I have already argued,¹ is a violation of the personal rights of another, and as an offence against the external order of the State, it must be expiated by an external punishment. No doubt that punishment is at once preventive, educational and retributive. It tends to prevent the commission of unjust acts by awakening in men the consciousness that they are all members one of another, and bringing home to them the idea that crime is worthy of punishment, while it is also a vindication of the higher social self against the lower individual self. But the State cannot by means of punishment transform the inner being of the citizens, creating in them a new heart; all that it can do is to vindicate the majesty of the law, and forcibly prevent the commission of crime or lead to its voluntary diminution. Sin, on the other hand, is not merely a violation of rights, but a desecration of the ideal nature of the sinner, the willing of himself as in his true nature he is not. Since, therefore, external punishment may not lead to the transformation of the inner nature of man, it is an ineffective weapon in the conversion of man to a real consciousness of himself. What is required is the creation in him of a new consciousness, well called a “new birth,” a consciousness which reveals to him the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the blessedness which springs from a realization of the higher life. In man, by virtue of the divine principle which is one with his deepest self, the consciousness of God is bound up with the consciousness of himself, and he cannot do violence to the one without doing violence to the other. Hence God is not a judge, allotting punishment according to an external law, but the perfectly Holy Being, by reference to whom man condemns himself. The aim of religion is not simply the preservation of the social order, but the regeneration of the individual soul; it deals with the inner nature of man, not merely with the result of his act upon society and hence, unless it transforms and spiritualizes him, it entirely fails of its end. God cannot be properly conceived as a sovereign who lays down laws the violation of which brings punishment, but only as a Being of infinite love. It is his very nature to communicate himself to his creatures, whom he loves with an infinite love, and in whom only He can realize his own blessedness. Man can only be saved from sin by realizing in his life the self-communicating spirit of God. In taking upon himself the burden of the race, he lives a divine life. The destruction of all those selfish desires which are hostile to his true nature, and the unreserved surrender of himself to the good of all, is the secret which Jesus expressed and which he realized in his life. Nothing that belongs to a man—neither capacities, talents, opportunities nor even life itself—is his to be used for individual ends; and in the practical realization of this faith consists the religious life. A devotion to the service of infinite goodness, which springs from the consciousness that only in the life of self-sacrifice does man realize his ideal nature, is the true atonement; and complete acceptance of this principle, with the consequent condemnation of a life polluted by the least taint of sin, is the genuine mark of piety. Sin cannot be atoned for by another, because no one can create a new heart in another by discharging the obligations which the other has failed to fulfill, and the salvation of man is not possible without the complete surrender of the individual to God. The very essence of the religious life is incompatible with the idea of an external transference of goodness from one being to another. Regenaration cannot be thus arbitrarily conferred upon man; its very essence is the transformation of the whole man into the likeness of Christ. Man can be reconciled with God in no other way than by an absolute surrender of himself to a life in God. To assimilate this spiritual act to a commercial or a legal transaction is to destroy the very idea of the life of the religious life, which consists in active participation in the life of love. No doubt the results of this life are good even from the lower point of view o the benefits which follow in its train, but these are not the motives of that life, which can only exist when it is by itself the sole and absolute end. It is true that under the moral order in which we live, the innocent suffer for the guilty. This, however, is not the same thing as saying that moral purity or moral guilt can be transferred from one person to another. No action can be attributed to an agent which does not proceed from his will. Whether the action is good or evil, its moral quality belongs entirely to the agent. Hence the necessity of “faith” and the meaning of the doctrine of “justification by faith”. No mere belief in goodness can be of any avail in effecting a transformation of our life. Such a faith involves the entire surrender of the self to a life of love. If we are right is holding that the self-conscious recognition of God is essential to a true recognition of one's self, it is obvious that faith is an indispensable element in the religious life. Not even God can forgive sin in the case of a man who has not repented of his sin and actively entered upon the path of goodness. It is true that man cannot demand as a right the forgiveness of sin, for no merit accrues from doing what is demanded by the spiritual nature; yet faith is not separable from the love of God, but essentially correspondent to it. No amount of suffering can be bartered for forgiveness, which must be an act of “free and unmerited grace” in this sense, that it can be bestowed only on the man who discards all pretence of giving an equivalent for sin, and throws himself upon the love of God. Nor can a man by mere wishing bring himself into the frame of mind which leads to forgiveness; he can only have faith by rising to the full consciousness of the nature of God. As this consciousness implies the identification of the individual will with the ideal of goodness, there is no real faith which does not issue in good acts. It is not possible to transfer goodness in any external way; for that would mean that by some magical process a man was forgiven without any change of heart. Faith is therefore identification with the principle of goodness, a complete surrender of the soul to God, renunciation of all selfish interests, and the persistent endeavour after the ideal of the perfect life. The complete transformation of the self, as involving the abandonment of all merely private interests, is the essence of the religious consciousness; and though this ideal is never completely realized, it is ever in process of realization by him whose life “is hid with Christ in God.” This principle of faith is the “promise and potency” of the consummately holy life, a principle which must ultimately subdue to itself all the selfish desires which war against the ideal. Thus, in the midst of conflict, and even in the agony of a temporary relapse from goodness, the religious man is lifted above the storm and stress of a growing moral life, and experiences the blessedness and peace of perfect reconciliation with God.