In religion, we have seen, even as man has coveted the highest blessings, so has he hoped to obtain them by the help of the Highest. In every faith, accordingly, there are provisions which are directed to the establishment of friendly relations with the divine powers on which man feels himself dependent for protection and blessing. The lower religions have sacred rites which serve this purpose, and the higher religions have their scheme of the conditions of salvation and of auxiliary means of grace. A doctrine of the means of salvation has in fact been fundamental in every great religious movement. The S.O.S. call of humanity has been, as Bosanquet says, ‘What must I do to be saved?’, and the responses were naturally discussed with the earnestness of the voyagers who fear that their ship is foundering. A theory of the means of salvation, besides, becomes interwoven with institutional and professional life, and any innovating or reforming doctrine has always had the provocative aspect of a menace to vested interests. It is therefore not surprising that the soteriological issue has been the occasion of some of the fiercest controversies that have convulsed the religious world. And at the outset some account may be given of the four protagonists—viz., the magician, the priest, the prophet and the sage.

The antagonism of the priest and the magician has been dramatically pictured by Sir James Frazer.

‘The haughty sell-sufficiency of the magician,’ he says, ‘his arrogant demeanour towards the higher powers, and his unabashed claim to exercise a sway like theirs, could not but revolt the priest, to whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration in presence of it, such claims and such a demeanour must have appeared an impious and blasphemous usurpation of prerogatives that belong to God alone. And sometimes, we may suspect, lower motives concurred to whet the edge of the priest’s hostility.’1

Doubtless it is true that, as Marett has pointed out, the magician often mixes with his incantations an element of priestly invocation, and gives to his spell the appeal of a prayer. In the post-Vedic development of Indian religion the priest reverted to the compulsory method after he had been taught better, and he applied it with unqualified arrogance to the control of the heavenly powers as well as of the things of earth. ‘While in the Vedic Hymns,’ says Oldenberg, ‘the priest had implored the help of the gods, in the later sacrificial code of the Brahmanas he appears in the character, not of the servant of the gods, but of the sorcerer.’2 In the great religions, however, the distinction has generally been drawn and acted on. The sorcerer has been prosecuted as a social pest or ridiculed as an impostor. And if the priest thought he could lay some constraint on God, it was because he believed, with or without good reason, that God had appointed certain forms, and had annexed promises to their due observance.

The conflict of the priest with the prophet underlies the most important chapters in the history of religion. The two have had enough in common to make co-operation desirable and practicable. They have shared the conviction that the way of access to God is by some form of conciliation, and they have been at one in the endeavour to minister the blessings of salvation to their brethren. Each, moreover, has been debtor to the other. The priest has been dependent on the prophet for enlightenment; and the prophet has been dependent on the priest for organisation and propaganda. The priest has had the credit of giving currency to as much of a prophetic message as he was able to appreciate, and of introducing it as a leaven into the life of communities. In the history of Israel the characteristic contributions of the two classes were eventually combined in a larger synthesis, and in the collection which finally received the canonical stamp the writings of Amos and Isaiah came to equal honour with the Priestly Code. A similar working synthesis was effected by the medieval Church, and more recently by the comprehensive Church of England. At the same time the differences between the two types of mind have been somewhat radical. In some periods the distinction has been that the priest knew no religion but ritual, and the prophet none but righteousness. In the higher religions the priesthood has made itself the guardian of morals as well as of worship, but it has been identified with commonplace morality, while the prophets have dared to revise and heighten the ideal. The prophet has stood for the categorical imperative, while the priest has felt bound to consider the adaptation of a doctrine to the capacities and limitations of human nature, and to pay regard to practical consequences as the criterion of the good. Finally, a priesthood is constitutionally conservative, and while this has its advantages it has also disposed it to resist the truth when it appeared with the character of novelty. The Old Testament priesthood did not really feel at ease with the prophets until they were in their graves and it had taken over the duty of administering the prophetic legacy. And the pact was suspended when the later Jewish Church had to do with Him who was the last of the prophets as well as the burden of prophecy. The enmity against Jesus is doubt-less explained in part by the fact that the darkness hates the light, but it would appear that the most resolute and merciless of his adversaries were actuated by the belief that His teaching was unsound and prejudicial to morality. For the accepted theory was that the man who would phase God must live a holy and righteous life; and when Jesus proclaimed the forgiveness of sins to all who should repent and trust in the mercy of the Heavenly Father, and when further He flouted recognised rules of sanctity by companying with disreputable folk, it is not wonderful that good and safe men should have been suspicious and indignant. Nor were they conciliated by the fact that in another way Jesus raised the demands of the Law, for the requirement of the pure heart and of the passive virtues could seem to prejudice the moral code by making it impracticable. The Reformation was due to the dispute between a prophetic school and an essentially sacerdotal organisation concerning the content of the Christian salvation and the terms on which it is to be appropriated. When Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms, he said that the matters in question were the greatest in the world—to wit, the Word of God and the salvation of souls; and in the Augsburg Confession the soteriological article of justification by faith was put in the forefront as the essence of the Christian revelation. The Roman Catholic Church formulated its alternative doctrine in the Decrees of the Council of Trent, and launched its anathemas against the gainsayers. And the tumult and the strife become entirely intelligible when it is considered that the two great questions at issue were how the sinner may hope to be forgiven, and how a bad man is to be made good, and further, that the Protestant doctrine had a polemical bearing on satisfactions and indulgences which made it tantamount to a proposal for the partial disendowment of the Church.

The collision of the sage with the priest has been a feature of more than one famous period. For the sage, contemplation is the chief means of blessing, and he has therefore been disposed to reject the external forms of religion. This attitude was represented in ancient India by saintly thinkers of the Upanishads, and again in the Hellenic age of reason. During the Christian era the relations have altered more than once. In the first phase, which prevailed in the Middle Ages, it may be said that the sage was in the custody of the priest. Following upon the Reformation he was allowed to cultivate Science and Philosophy, without being held responsible to an ecclesiastical tribunal. In the third phase he has on occasion claimed the custody both of the priest and of the prophet, giving his opinion freely as to the things of the priesthood, and embodying in philosophies of religion only as much as he conceived to be true in the teachings of the prophets. But on the whole the sage has been conciliatory. He has not much cared for the office of the reformer, and the greatest of the modern masters set the example of looking for a rational kernel in every dogma, if not for edification in every practice, that has won general acceptance.

The conception of knowledge as a means of salvation, or as itself salvation, has already been discussed and in the present context we shall confine our attention to the practical forms of appeal to the Divine Being. The methods have been four, which may be distinguished as the way of coercion, the way of ingratiation, the way of obedience and the way of faith.

I

The way of coercion had much to commend it to the natural man as a likely method of procuring benefits from the higher powers. For there are many situations in which the human being gets what he wants simply by insisting on getting it. The infant confidently makes demands for the supply of its wants, which as a rule are promptly and liberally complied with; and its first theory doubtless is that its puny will controls the order of things in which it finds itself alive. And the method of constraint continues to accomplish a great deal in the business of the later years. It is by the method of force, aided by the prudence which is another form of power, that the individual carries out many of the plans by which he advances his material and temporal interests. Not least is this the experience of the savage: he has to make or to steal things—as raiment, tools and weapons—if he is not to go without them; he has to put forth his strength and his cunning in hunting his prey and fighting his enemies; and it is by force that he manages his wives, his children and his slaves. King Richard, accustomed to find that his word was law, ordered the earth to withhold her sweet comforts from his enemies, and assail them with her poisons.3 It was therefore not unnatural to think that a Divine Being also might be concussed into the service of man.

At a low stage man has hoped to bring some pressure to bear on the supernatural powers by the use of ordinary methods. On occasion he has pitted himself against them, and has sought to overpower them by force or to circumvent them by craft. Under Poly-daemonism there are many practices which have the purpose of deceiving and outwitting the ghosts and demons. Care is taken to withhold information from evil-minded spirits, and to mislead them by false information. It has been the custom of some tribes to keep a day of mourning on the occasion of a birth, and this has been thought to be the confession of a pessimistic philosophy, but the better explanation is that it has been deemed prudent to conceal from envious spirits the real state of the parental feelings. The offensive measures undertaken against supernatural beings have been of almost every kind that is suggested by mundane experience. The simplest plan was to chastise the fetish in which a spirit had its lodging. When the venerated spirits were supposed to be dependent on offerings for necessaries and comforts, the economic sanction could be applied and an attempt made to starve them into submission. And it could proceed to actual fighting. When a babe is being born in an African kraal, an armed warrior may be found stationed at the door of the hut with a view to keep at bay the swarming spirits that seek the young child’s life. It is an old and widespread idea that an eclipse is due to the attack of a demon on the sun or the moon, and it has often been sought to intimidate the monster by shouting battle-cries, brandishing weapons and discharging arrows.4 Orestes received from Apollo a bow with which to fight the Erinyes. And we hear of a King of Nepaul who, incensed at the sickness and death of a beloved queen, mobilised his army, brought his artillery into action, and continued the cannonade ‘until not a vestige of the deities remained.’

As the child orders its parents about long before it has any inkling of the philosophy and the machinery of fairy tales, it may be that in the infancy of the race reliance was placed on ordinary methods for influencing the higher powers before there was any theory and practice of magic. But, if so, many must have grown sceptical. For the spirits were invisible—not being really identical with the fetish; they were not easily approachable; and it was difficult to be certain that the measures taken in regard to them really reached their objective. It must therefore have been a welcome hypothesis that there was a mysterious force by which, provided he could control it, man might make his will prevail beyond the range of his arm and of his wit. This need was met by some doctrine of mana, and it was exploited by the art of magic.

The means employed in magical practice were of two types—the magical word, commonly known as the spell, and the magical art, which may conveniently be called the charm. They could be used separately, but they were often combined as natural complements, or with a view to greater efficacy. The oral rite was felt to be highly charged with the mysterious energy. ‘The uttered must,’ as Marett observes, ‘is the very type of a spiritual projectile, for nothing initiates an imperative more cleanly, cutting it away from the formative matrix of thought and launching it on its free career, than the spoken word, and nothing finds its way home to another’s mind more sharply.’5 The manual rites were devised to operate in various ways. They were chiefly based on the theory of sympathetic magic, and have been classified by Frazer under the two heads of homoeopathic or imitative magic, and contagious magic. The principle of homoeopathic magic is that like produces like—as in ‘the attempt to injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him.’ The principle of contagious magic is that ‘things which have once been conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite dissevered from each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other.’6 This is illustrated by the fear of the savage that, if an enemy comes into possession of a portion of his person, such as a lock of his hair, or even his photograph, he can subject him to his malicious will.

The spell and the charm when applied to divine objects acquired the dignity of religious rites. The religious consciousness has always been specially sensitive to the power of ‘the spiritual projectile.’ If at its highest Theology could find no greater name than the Word for the instrument of God in Creation and Providence, it is not surprising that the word of the sorcerer was deemed the very quintessence, as well as the vehicle, of his compelling power. The manual rites used to influence divine powers were based on the ideas of imitation and of contact. The imitative method is exemplified by the Chinaman who in sweeping out his house gives it the character of a ritualistic act, adding, ‘Let the devil of poverty depart,’ and by the South Sea Islander who launches the disease-boat, crying, ‘O sickness, go from here.’7 The idol at least provided the worshipper with something connected with the divine object on which he could operate, and for the same reason it has been supposed that to know the name of a Divinity was to acquire power over him. Though the original motive of sacrifice can only be guessed, there was a stage at which it was construed as procuring a divine presence and extorting a divine blessing after the manner of a charm. As to how it effected the union different ideas have prevailed.8 To the Totemist it has seemed that the end could be achieved in a direct and thorough fashion by What Frazer calls ‘eating the god.’ It is an article of the savage philosophy that the strength, the courage and the wisdom of the creatures are appropriated by devouring them, and it was a natural corollary that by slaying and eating objects of its sacred species the tribe was able to increase its vitality and to augment its powers. With higher ideas of the Divine Being the magical interpretation took a more refined turn—as that a God and his worshippers met at the same table, and that the elements of the meal knit them together in vital union. Apart from this circle of ideas it was doubtless felt that blood—the sight of which sends an unwonted thrill through the human frame—was itself an utterly uncanny thing, which was the very substance of life, and which could be reckoned on to stir and sway the powers above, even as on earth it cast over things a mantle of holiness, or spread among them an infection of uncleanness.

In the religious field magic has been used for two purposes—first and chiefly, to overpower, restrain and counteract the evil-minded or capricious beings that were regarded as the source of sickness, death and other ills; and secondly, to gain protection and blessing from those that might be indifferent. Under Animism use is made of the spell and the charm in fighting the spirits. The religion of Babylonia had its magical texts which enabled the priests ‘to control and exorcise, or in some way to break the malign influence of the ghosts of the dead, gruesome spirits, half-human or half-demon, and fiends and devils.’9 The same ideas governed the popular religion of Egypt. Even the devout worshipper of the Vedic Age could hope to get Indra into his power, ‘as the hunter runs down his quarry or the fowler takes the bird in his snare,’10 and in the later period the popular faith could be summed up in this creed—‘the whole universe is subject to the gods, the gods are subject to the spells, the spells are subject to the Brahmans, therefore the Brahmans are our gods.’ 11 The lofty Scandinavian mythology had a magical framework: Wodan was himself the mightiest of the wizards, and the gods of Valhalla could be deceived and baffled by spells that were woven by the powers of darkness and their initiates. While our knowledge of Celtic religion is disappointingly meagre, one assured fact is that ‘the method of dealing with the troublesome spirits and with the unseen world generally was by means of magic formulas and incantations.’ 12

II

The second method, if it may be so termed without prejudice, was the way of ingratiation. The term seems suitable to embrace the rites which have been thought to bring the worshipper within the sphere of divine grace. As a member of society man is subject to severe restrictions, and the general experience is that well-being depends less on force than on the Cultivation of sympathetic relations with one’s fellow-creatures. Throughout the pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave we are dependent on the ministrations of others for the supply of our wants; and measures which may be entirely consistent with self-respect, but which may also sink to sycophancy and servility, are being constantly taken with a view to bespeak the good will of our fellow-creatures. And this has its parallel in the means that have been taken to conciliate the divine bowers. The chief means have been the prayer, the offering and the sacrament. These rites are based on ideas which are natural and legitimate. And if at the lowest they can be called blandishments, when spiritualised they have been sovereign means of grace.

1. The most obvious step to take in seeking some boon is to ask for it. The request may be felt to create some obligation to comply with it, and it may also be necessary in order to make a want known. It is thus that the child argues, and a friend incurs the reproach of a friend for neglecting to inform him of his needs. And so man has felt in regard to the petition and the intercession. The other kinds of prayer are rooted in higher motives, but they could also serve to strengthen the appeal of the petition. In adoration and thanks-giving the worshipper exhibits the heartfelt devotion that bespeaks the favour and the good offices of the benefactor. In confession the petitions are reinforced by the appeal of humility.13

2. The offering is a natural accompaniment of the application for help. The gift plays many parts in life: it can have the base use of a bribe, and the sordid use of a quid pro quo, but it can also have the gracious use of the token of affection or reverence, and the disinterested character of a sympathetic response to poverty or suffering. And religion at its various stages—alike when man has thought meanly, and when he has thought sublimely, about the objects of faith—has seen reason to incorporate the offering in the dealings with the Divine Being. For this purpose the sacrifice has been widely employed. It is certain that the gift-theory has filled a large space in religious thought from Animism upward to Polytheism, and that with the help of a spiritual interpretation it was enabled to survive the downfall of Polytheism. The savage who believed that a dead chief or father was still alive and near would be disposed to do what was in his power to relieve their distress by suitable presents—and this both because he was sorry for them, and because he desired to be on friendly terms with them. The polytheist has generally conceived of the sacrifice as a gift to the gods, which might be expected to be well repaid. ‘Accept these offerings,’ so the appeal to a divinity often runs in the Vedas, ‘and then apply thy mind to bestowing upon us an abundant recompense.’ The currency of the idea among the Hebrews pears from the fact that sacrifice bore the name of a gift.

3. The third way of procuring the good will of a benefactor is to become so closely identified with him as to be in a manner a part of himself. So the king may think of his subjects, the master of his servant, the kinsman of his kinsmen, the father of his children, the husband of her who is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Similarly there is a class of sacred rites which have been based on the idea that God bears a peculiar favour towards His own, and which have been directed to uniting man and God by a special tie. These rites, which may be called sacraments, are distinguished by the different degrees of intimacy which it has been sought to establish between man and God. The removal of disqualifications could be attempted by rites of purification. In this connection sacrifice has served two functions: the sacrificial blood has been supposed to convey a holy character, and the expiatory sacrifice has been supposed to remove obstacles which prevented or interrupted communion with God. A closer degree of intimacy is represented by the claim of Israel to the status of chosen people, which was recorded to have been constituted by the peculiar sacramental rite of a covenant-sacrifice (Ex. xxiv. 6). Another degree was represented by the special title to the divine favour which was claimed by the Israelite in that he was of the circumcision, and thus wore God’s badge. A closer form of union was aimed at in the peace-offering which expressly invited the presence of the divine guest, provided the forms of a mystic fellowship, and cemented the union of the worshippers and the worshipped by the gracious influences of the table-bond. The highest conceivable form is the achievement of essential union with the Divine Being, and this has been sought, both on very low and on very high levels, by partaking sacrament ally of a divine food.

III

The third of the capital theories is the way of moral obedience. This doctrine also could be suggested by familiar experience. The child soon discovers that if he is to be on the best terms with his superiors he must do what he is told; while in the relations of master and servant, the most important consideration is the efficiency with which the underling does his work, and his faithfulness in the things which have been committed to his trust. And when man has believed in supernatural powers akin to himself, it must have seemed probable that a condition of pleasing them was to do what they enjoined, and to leave undone what they forbade.

The requirements of the higher powers have usually been understood to include some measure of good conduct. Animism is on the whole indifferent to morality, and it does much to foster sensuality and cruelty, but it has commonly been believed that ancestral spirits resent departures from the good customs of the fathers, and give their support to the ethical code of a tribe. The Polytheism of antiquity was far from treating conduct as irrelevant to piety. The Egyptian mind was even obsessed by the idea of a future state of rewards and punishments. The divinities of the Vedas and of the Sagas were very imperfect characters, and the honour of Olympus was deeply stained by earthly passions and vices, but the greater Gods had at least the virtues of the warrior and the statesman, and in their official capacity they acted as guardians of the moral and social order.

The universal religions, and also the great national religions, have included in their message a high moral ideal, and have lent the weight of their authority, with the addition of special sanctions, for the enforcement of ethical demands. Under Brahmanism the tendency of the pantheist was to lay the greater stress on the efficacy of meditation, of the theist on the necessity of good works, but it may be said that an earnest attempt was made by both to join religion and morality in a vital union. To each caste there was prescribed a moral code which was worked out in minute detail, while a powerful sanction was added from the doctrine of metempsychosis, which gave promise that every good action would bear good fruit, and that every sin would eventually come home to roost. It was also argued that if obedience was pleasing to God, extra-obedience must be doubly pleasing, and thus one might surely hope ‘to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.’ The Buddha enjoined the mode of life which comprehends the cardinal virtues, and is beautified by self-denying graces. So the requirements were presented in the popular message:

To cease from all wrong-doing,

To get virtue,

To cleanse one’s own heart,

This is the religion of the Buddha.

Five commandments were made obligatory upon every Buddhist:

One should not destroy life.

One should not take that which is not given.

One should not tell lies.

One should not become a drinker of intoxicating liquors.

One should refrain from unlawful sexual intercourse.

It was added that a man should maintain his father and mother in a just manner, and should practise a just trade. Three additional precepts which exemplified the simple life were recommended to the pious layman:

One should not eat unseasonable food at nights.

One should not wear garlands or use perfumes.

One should not sleep on a mat spread on the ground.

Religion and morality were brought by the Hebrew prophets into the closest and most solemn alliance, Micah gave its classic formulation to the way of obedience: ‘Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the most high God? … He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’ (vi. 6–8). The virtues on which the prophets chiefly insisted were temperance, justice and benevolence. The Decalogue was obviously framed for the purpose of making Israel think of good conduct as the chief branch of divine service. Mohammed’s message had a similar content; and if his ethical doctrine was less rich and pure, he made some reparation by his confident proclamation of a future judgment in which God would render to every man according to his works. ‘On that day,’ he says, ‘the Kingdom shall of right belong to the merciful, and the unjust person shall bite his hands for anguish and despair and say, “Oh that I had taken the way of truth with the apostle.”’14

When moral obedience was thus declared to be an essential condition of salvation, it became a burning question as to what was to be made of the ancient forms of ceremonial religion.

1. The central position was that rites without righteousness are useless and worse than useless, but that they have a place and a use in ethical religion. Such was the familiar message of the Hebrew prophets. The nation was laden with iniquity, and its zeal in the matter of religious observances was only an aggravation of its guilt. God, says Isaiah, will have none of their worship. ‘Who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts?’ (i. 12, 13). Language could be used about prayer which resembled the language of the scoffer—‘Is such the fast that I have chosen, to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?’ (lviii. 5). Jeremiah made light of the badge that the Israelite wore as God’s man. ‘Behold the days come,’ it was declared, ‘that I will punish all them which are circumcised in their uncircumcision, for all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart’ (ix. 25, 26). Most of all was the prophet moved to indignation by the sacrifices of the sinful nation. ‘The Lord,’ said Amos, ‘hated and despised their feasts.’ Isaiah declared that God was ‘full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts,’ and bade them ‘bring no more vain oblations’ (i. 11–13). This invective was not, of course, directed against worship as such. The position of prayer cannot be said to have been seriously threatened, for the prophet has ever wrestled in prayer, and indeed has taught the peoples what to pray for and how to pray. The position of sacrifice was more precarious. In the first instance there were voices which condemned it outright, and when it was tolerated it was depreciated in comparison with prayer. ‘Will I eat the flesh of bulls,’ said a psalmist, ‘or drink the blood of goats? offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving’ (1. 13–14.) It was next valued as itself a form of prayer, by which a man testified homage, gratitude and self-sacrifice, and which could seem to be more expressive than the uttered word. There are traces of this idea in the Old Testament, and it was congenial to the philosophical mind of Philo. It was as a form of prayer that sacrifice was usually defended by the devout Greek in the enlightened age. It was, said Euthyphro, a way of conveying to the gods ‘the gifts of reverence, honour and gratitude.’

2. The left wing, as we may call it, of the ethical school took up the ground that the specifically religious exercises are superfluous, and are even injurious to the moral life. In primitive Buddhism, in which the living God was lost to view, prayer and sacrifice were naturally thought to be pointless. In the Upanishads it is intimated that sacrifice is a stupid practice, but that the Devas and the priests, who had their living by the altar, did not wish the truth to be known. How far the philosophical saint could go in mockery may be gathered from the passage cited as ‘the udgitha of the dogs’:

Vaka Dalbhya went out to repeat the Veda (in a quiet place). A white (dog) appeared before him, and other dogs gathering round him said to him, ‘Sir, sing and get us food, we are hungry.’ The white dog said to them, ‘Come to me tomorrow morning.’ Vaka Dalbhya watched. The dogs came on, holding together, each dog keeping the tail of the preceding dog in his mouth, as the priests do when they are going to sing praises. After they had settled down, they began to say: ‘Om, let us eat! Om, let us drink! Om, may the divine Varuna, Pragapati, Savitri, bring us food. Lord of food, bring hither food, bring it, Om!’15

The older Hebrew prophets attacked the sacrificial system with arguments which seem those of the abolitionist—as that God had no need of offerings, and that sacrifice had been in abeyance during the wanderings in the wilderness (Amos v. 25). In Greece we are told, sacrifice was regarded as a commercial transaction between gods and men, and Socrates is represented as attacking this view with the familiar weapon of the Old Testament prophet:

But now will you show me what benefit accrues to the gods from the gifts we give them? What they give us is plain to every one, there is no good thing we have that is not their gift. But what they get from us—how do they benefit from that? 16

In antiquity the case against ceremonial religion was strengthened by the fact that the central rite was a bloody sacrifice which offended the aesthetic sense, and which could utterly revolt the moral sense by the horrors of human sacrifice. That piety should have been supposed to require the father to give up his daughter to the sacrificial knife was the most impressive point made in the Lucretian indictment of religion. Lucian did not know whether to laugh or to weep at the tragic folly of it all—the festal days, the fervent petitions and vows, the disappointed hopes, and the cost to the deluded mortals.17

3. There was also a right wing, in which the sacred rites, and notably sacrifice, came to new and greater honour. The need of a supplement to obedience came to be felt both in Israel and in Greece. The doctrine that the approval of God is to be won by obedience to the moral law is a brave and honest theory which conscientious and self-respecting men are predisposed to accept. But there are two drawbacks to its efficacy which have been widely and keenly realised. One has been the problem of how to dispose of the guilty past. The nation may be polluted, the individual may have behind him a tale of years that the cankerworm has eaten, or that have been stained with vice and crime; and it has been the obstinate habit of conscience to raise the question whether even if a reformation were effected the culprit would not still be under condemnation and liable to punishment. The second question is whether the future of the penitent will be an improvement on his past. The religious teachers of Israel saw the necessity of a spiritual transformation if a corrupt and stiff-necked people was ever to render a full and acceptable obedience; and the remedy was promised in the Messianic age, when God would give a new heart to Israel, and even pour out His spirit upon all flesh (Joel ii. 28). But in the present the chief emphasis was laid on the necessity of the expiation of guilt. It has been thought a strange inconsistency that while the older prophets disparaged sacrifice, if they did not desire to abolish it, succeeding generations, with the approval of the prophetical school, multiplied the sacrifices, and even made it appear that everything depended, as Wellhausen puts it, on offering the right sacrifice at the right time, in the right place, by the right hands and in the right way. But the truth is that the importance attached to sacrifice in the later period was a natural consequence of the ethical ministry of the prophets; inasmuch as their message produced a deepened sense of the heinousness of sin and a fearful looking-for-of judgment, and when the sinner trembled before the menace of the unfulfilled law it may well have seemed that he had to look to sacrifice—if there was anything to look to at all—to supply what was lacking. As to the manner in which the Old Testament sacrifices were supposed to influence God there has been infinite debate: it is certain that no single theory of the modus operandi pervades the whole system, and evidence can be collected in support of several theories; but it is at least clear that the chief end for which the sacrifices were employed was to cover or expiate the sins of the nation and of individual transgressors, and to make it possible for them to draw near to a holy God.

The moralisation of Hellenic religion had a like sequel in the rise of the Greek Mysteries, in which sacred rites were similarly requisitioned for the satisfaction of deep spiritual needs.18 Some of the famous mystery-cults, including Mithraism, were of Oriental origin, but the Eleusinian and the Orphic Mysteries were at least revised and enriched by the ethical and religious spirit of Greece. The rites were of the kind to which the general name of sacraments has been given. The common features of the ritual are summarised by Professor Percy Gardner as follows:

The entry into any of the societies or θιάσοι was through certain rites of purification. Sometimes the purification was accomplished by baptism in water; sometimes there was a more repulsive baptism by blood. The blood-purification of which we hear most was the taurobolium. A more ordinary purification was that by the blood of a sacrificed pig. Communion with the deity was accomplished by a sacred meal, such as many societies in Greece celebrated on fixed days at the tombs of founders of families and clans. At Eleusis the drinking of the draught called κυκεών was one of the most solemn acts of the festival.19

If the Jewish mind dwelt chiefly on the awful penalties of sin, and magnified the sacrifices as the means of atonement, it would seem that the devout Greek mind was rather oppressed by a sense of human weakness and mortality, and was attracted to the mystic rites as the means of vivifying union with a Divine Being. It cannot indeed be said that the Greek mind overlooked the need of expiation. Plato mentions that the stewards of the Orphic Mysteries ‘claimed to have a power at command which they procured from heaven, and which enabled them, by sacrifices and incantations performed amid feasting and indulgence, to make amends for any crime committed by the individual himself or by his ancestors.’20 Tertullian says that the Devil in ‘vying with the sacraments of God, baptised some, and promised the putting away of sins by a laver of his own.’21 But one gets the general impression that what the Greek sought in the Mysteries was rather the establishment of communion with a Divine Being resulting in an infusion of the divine life. The sense of fulness of life can be experienced in many forms, and doubtless there were those, described by Plato as inspired, who found it in spiritual exaltation, while those whom he calls the wand-bearers found it in the externals of the ceremonies and even in the stimulus of the wine-cup.

‘The great step that Orpheus took,’ says Miss Harrison. ‘was that, while he kept the old Bacchic faith that men might become a god, he altered the conception of what a god was, and he sought to obtain that godhead by totally different means. The grace he sought was, not physical intoxication, but spiritual ecstasy; the means he adopted not drunkenness, but abstinence and rites of purification.’22

The fuller life that was sought in the Mysteries by the finer spirits was of the nature of a regeneration, This was prominent in the cult of Dionysius Zagraeus—the god who was said to have been killed by the Titans, and who after his heart had been eaten by Zeus—a sacramental feature of the life of the immortals—was restored to life. The human race, it was taught, was formed of dust of the Titans, into which Zeus breathed the spirit of the martyred divinity, and the rites were supposed to enable a man to throw off the influence of the monstrous ancestry by entering into a vital union with the god to whom he owed the divine part of his being.23 The symbol of the fish, so widely vouched for in the monumental remains of Orphism, seems to have preached the necessity of regeneration, though it is difficult to be sure of the connection of ideas which made it seem appropriate. The Mysteries specially fostered the hope of immortality; and just as popular Christian thinking has made much more of Heaven than of conversion, so may the initiated fellowship have made much more of the hope of Elysium than of the necessity and the obligations of the new birth. We gather from Plato that Heaven and Hell were pictured with a realism like that of the Divine Comedy. ‘Those who instituted the Mysteries,’ he says, ‘teach that whosoever comes to Hades unexpiated and uninitiated shall lie in the mud, while he that has been purified and initiated will dwell with the gods.’24

IV

To the great question, ‘What doth the Lord require of thee? ‘yet another great answer has been given. The theory that the friendship of God may be won by keeping His commandments was open to the objection that the best men feel that they are unable to keep them, and that ordinary people, though usually quite satisfied to be no worse than their neighbours, have moments of insight in which they realise that in many things they offend, and that in all they come short. And as regards the ministry of sacraments, it was very credible that a true atonement and a vital union with God would avail, but it must have been a question whether the rites that were practised were able to fulfil the expectations that were built on them. There was therefore room for a doctrine which would make salvation easier and also more secure, provided always that this could be done without prejudice to the hallowed alliance with morality. And this was offered in the theory which we have called the way of faith.

The principle of the way of faith is to appeal to God by trusting Him. It is taken for granted that He is waiting to be gracious, and salvation is viewed not as a reward that has to be painfully and doubtfully striven for, but as a gift that may be confidently claimed and gratefully accepted. And here again there were persuasive analogies in common experience. It is a condition of success and happiness in life to have the habitude of making ventures which are inspired by faith in the rationality and friendliness of the general order of things, in the inherent strength of good causes and the weakness of bad causes, in the nobler side of human nature, and in the possibility of becoming master in some sense of every situation in which a man may find himself. The friend instinctively trusts his friend, and does better to trust him than to bespeak assistance by paying him polite attentions or by placing him under obligations. Especially does faith play a large part in the life of the family. Conjugal love rests on faith. The child lives by faith in the power, the wisdom and the good will of his parents, and in general it is his experience that the parental care works for his welfare and happiness, not as a response to deserts, but rather according to the measure of his wants and his need of help. Whenever, therefore, the Divine Being was believed to be benevolent as well as powerful, it was a probable view that He was willing and waiting to bestow His best gifts, and that nothing is so pleasing to Him as that His children should confidently trust Him and humbly depend on His spontaneous favour.

1. The way of faith was adumbrated in the earlier history of religion. Something of it was seen in Polytheism when the worshipper gave his heart to one of the splendid and gracious divinities. When a Brahmanical saint found salvation in the contemplation of the Infinite Being and, believing that God and the self were one, felt that he was secure against all the menace of apparent evil in time and eternity, he made a venture which, however it may offend a humbler piety, at least ranks as a stupendous act of faith. In the theistic school of Hinduism, and notably in the cult of an incarnated god, the condition of salvation was bhâkti, which is defined as ‘an affection fixed upon the Lord’ and this is the soul of Vishnuite Hinduism, which is said to be professed at the present day by one-third of the population of India. Buddhism, as already observed, was accommodated to the popular need and capacity by encouraging loving devotion to the founder as a promising beginning, if not also a short and easy way, to the fulfilment of the terms of deliverance. The Old Testament has a strain of teaching which magnifies grace and faith; and Paul declared that this had been the method of the religion of Israel before the interpolation of the legal system. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. But while the theory of salvation by faith was an appanage of other religions, in Christianity it was made central and vital. The other universal religions share with Christianity the ethical note, Islam shares with it the monotheistic note, but it may be said that its specific difference, which also is its power and glory, is the evangelical note.

It is the general doctrine of the New Testament that faith is the primary condition of the Christian salvation. This faith involved belief, or the assent of the mind, but it was essentially trust in the gracious God who was revealed by Christ, or in the Christ in whom God was revealed. In the teaching of Jesus faith and repentance were commonly joined together as the conditions of entrance into the Kingdom; and repentance could be made more prominent and more appealing, as in the Parables of the Pharisee and the Publican, and of the Prodigal Son. But the greatest promises were made to faith; and faith could also be required as the one thing needful, inasmuch as the change of heart had its root and symbol in the trustful self-surrender to God. St. Paul lays all the stress on the evangelical aspect in his summary definition of the Christian system—‘by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God’ (Eph. ii. 8). He conceived of Heathenism as the religion of the rebel, of Judaism as the religion of the servant, of Christianity as the religion of the son. In the Epistle to the Romans he depicted the distress of man as under the dominion of sin, alienated from God and made liable to all the evil that is comprehended in death; declared that the law of duty, instead of giving relief, had brought sin to a head and bred despair; proclaimed as the essence of the gospel that God set forth His Son ‘to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, that He might be the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus’ (Rom. iii. 25–6); and supported the doctrine of justification by faith by anticipatory testimonies of the Scriptures, by the witness of the Spirit of God with his spirit, and by the evidence of accompanying signs of moral and miraculous power. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews reinforced the Scriptural argument by the reminder that faith had given their family likeness to the heroic figures of the sacred history, and was the secret of their victory over the hostile forces of the world. In the Fourth Gospel everything was made to depend on trusting faith; and the demand was heightened on the intellectual side by the requirement of belief in the doctrine of the Word made flesh, and on the emotional side by the prominence given to the love of the disciple for his Lord.

The doctrine of justification by faith as formulated by St. Paul was the core of the evangelical tradition which passed into the keeping of Ambrose and Augustine, and which was republished with power at the Reformation. The distinctive positions of the Reformers were that the cardinal religious boon is justification in the sense of acceptance with God and the remission of sins, that the condition of acceptance is a faith which, while involving assent to revealed truth, is essentially an act of self-renouncing trust in the mercy of God in Christ, and that it is through this faith alone that the sinner is justified.

‘Also they teach,’ says the Augsburg Confession,’ that men cannot be justified (obtain forgiveness and righteousness) before God by their own powers, merits or works, but are justified freely (of grace) for Christ’s sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into favour, and their sins forgiven for Christ’s sake, who by His death hath satisfied for our sins. This faith doth God impute for righteousness before Him.’25

In the Thirtynine Articles the Church of England was definitely made sponsor for the doctrine of Justification sola fide, which was regarded in the sixteenth century as the hallmark of Protestantism.

During the last two centuries the doctrine of justification by faith alone has had a chequered history. It was contemptuously criticised by the Rationalism of the street, which has commonly taken for granted that faith is nothing but assent to a creed, and has found it easy to ridicule the theory that salvation depends entirely on a man’s religious opinions. In modern Theology the defence of the doctrine has often been half-hearted, while some influential teachers have thrown over the tenet of sola fide, and reverted in principle to the Roman position. Nor can it be said that the modern evangelical pulpit gives to the doctrine the same prominence as the Confessions, and proclaims it with the exultant confidence with which it was preached by Luther as the staple of his sermons, and expounded by Hooker in the Discourse of Justification. As an offset to this some philosophers have rediscovered the importance of the theological tenet, and it has been declared to be, in its substance, a supreme contribution to religious and ethical theory. The difficulty of man’s spiritual estate, Kant observes, is that on the one hand the only object in which God can take pleasure is the perfect man, and on the other, that perfection is unattainable under earthly conditions and can only be reached as the goal of a long-continued moral development carried over into a future state of existence. If therefore a man is to hope now to please God, it is only by possessing the faith in which God, who sees the end from the beginning, finds the promise and the potency of the perfect life.26 The Anglo-Hegelian School has made less than Kant of the sinner finding peace with God, but it has magnified the doctrine as marking the difference between the bondage of morality and the freedom and tranquillity of the religious life.

‘We cannot be saved as we are,’ says Bosanquet; ‘we can only be saved by giving ourselves to something in which we remain what we are, and yet enter into something new. Mere morality says, “You ought to be equal to the situation” religion is different and says, “You can be good though you are not good.”’27

The same thing had been said in still more emphatic terms by F. H. Bradley:

‘You must believe,’ he wrote, ‘that you are one with the divine, and you must act as if you believed it. In short, you must be justified not by works but by faith. This doctrine which Protestantism to its eternal credit has made its own, and sealed with its blood, is the very centre of Christianity; and when you have not this in one form or another, then Christianity is nothing but a name.’28

There are, in truth, strong reasons for holding that the doctrine of justification by faith is the ideal solution of the religious problem of the reconciliation of sinful man with God. It has the qualities of a gospel in that it makes salvation at once easy and assured. While duty is difficult and perfection impossible, it is easy to believe that God is good, and to trust in His pardoning mercy; and a door of hope was thus opened even to such as the woman in the city that was a sinner, and the dying thief on the cross. And if the way of faith proposes easier terms, it also gives a better ground of confidence. ‘If thou shouldst mark iniquity, who shall stand? ‘There is a great mass of humanity which Dante conceived to be undeserving of Hell and unqualified for Purgatory, and which was therefore ‘scorned alike by mercy and justice’ and while there are many who may be called good rather than bad, and also a moral élite which the Bible knows as the righteous, these have not as a rule advanced any great claim of merit when they looked on their life in the light of the Lord. Rather has it been felt that it is good to be able to base the confidence, not on one’s poor self, but on something divinely perfect—as the mercy of God or the merits of a Saviour with whom the sinner is made one by the living bond of faith. This comfortable aspect of the doctrine was strongly emphasised in the witness of the Reformation.

‘This doctrine,’ says the Augsburg Confession, ‘doth wholly belong to the conflict of a troubled conscience; and cannot be understood, but where the conscience hath felt the conflict. Formerly men’s consciences were vexed with the doctrine of works, they did not hear any comfort out of the Gospel. Whereupon conscience drove some into the desert and into monasteries, hoping there to merit grace by a monastical life. Others devised other works whereby to merit grace, and to satisfy for sin. There was very great need, therefore, to teach and renew this doctrine of faith in Christ; to the end that fearful consciences might not want comfort, but might know that grace, and forgiveness of sins, and justification are received by faith in Christ.”29

2. But while the doctrine of justification by faith was thus a gospel of consolation, it had also to prove itself propitious to the interests of the moral life. The religion of obedience worked directly and effectively in the interest of morality, and the religion of grace had to take over in full the ethical liabilities. And in particular, Christianity made itself so entirely responsible for morality, that it has been possible to overlook the fact that it is fundamentally a system of redemption, and to think that its sole purpose is to give good advice in the matter of conduct. The moral Ideal was raised, and new motives were brought into play. The faith which Jesus required was a decisive act which worked the revolution of a change of heart; while faith in Himself meant that a soul bowed in reverence and devotion before the highest that it had found on earth, and was thus on the way to be filled with the Spirit, and to be remade after the pattern of a higher humanity. Again, Jesus recognised a strain in human nature which can make an astonishing response when a man has been treated with unexpected generosity, and has been made to feel that he is trusted; and He expected those to love much, and to abound in gratitude, who had tasted of the grace of God in the free forgiveness of the sinner’s immeasurable debt. And finally, a pledge for obedience was given in the doctrine of the Last Judgment which taught that the reality of faith would be tested by the fruits of charity which it had borne. The apostolic writers gave the same pledges for the sanctification and the good works of the believer. The change of heart which Jesus associated with faith was described as the miracle of regeneration (2 Cor. v. 11; John iii. 3 ff.). The influence of the Master on the disciple took the higher form of the presence of the indwelling Christ, or of the inhabitation of His Spirit, which spontaneously utters itself in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Gal. v. 22–23). After his exposition of the content of the great salvation, and its source in the grace of God, Paul felt that gratitude could be reckoned on as the inspiration of a new life; and he exhorted those who know the mercies of God to present themselves a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God (Rom. xii. 1). And the warning was added that they which continue to do the works of the flesh shall not inherit the Kingdom of God (Gal. v. 21).

This was a wonderful conception of the basis of character and life—with the notes of originality, profundity and spiritual daring—which was entitled to rank as a masterpiece of ethical genius, if it had not made the higher claim to be revealed truth. But there was ground for apprehension that it would prove to be too high-pitched for common use. The doctrine was rooted in the experiences of a great spiritual epoch; and it was a question as to how it would work when the Church came to include Christians of every grade, from the saints and the converts down to the veriest babes in Christ, with the addition of much of the common clay of an unregenerate humanity. In these circumstances a modification seemed to be called for to make it more level to the common intelligence, and also to make Christianity a more effective instrument for the enforcement of the cardinal virtues, and the encouragement of the works of Christian charity. This tendency began among the Jewish Christians, and is in evidence in the Epistle of James; it was confirmed by the Apostolic Fathers, who had learned little in the school of Paul; it was furthered by the Greek Fathers in consonance with their views as to freewill and spiritual ability; it was developed by the practical sense of the medieval Church, and it received its mature formulation and the authoritative stamp from the Council of Trent. It has been charged in Protestant polemics that the motive for the modification was the aggrandisement of the priesthood and the enrichment of the Church, but it would be nearer the truth to say that the Roman Catholic Church paradoxical as it sounds—took the rationalistic line of attempting to effect an improvement on Christianity which was suggested by common sense as likely to increase its influence on morals. The leading idea of the modified scheme was to appeal more effectually to self-interest by making it more obviously to the advantage of the Christian to perform particular duties, and more obviously to his detriment to commit particular sins. Loyalty was indeed still professed to the doctrine of faith and grace:

‘We are justified by faith,’ it was declared, ‘because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and the root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God, and to come into the fellowship of His sons; but we are therefore said to be justified freely because none of those things which precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification.’30

There was, however, a marked change in the proportion of doctrine. Faith was reduced to intellectual assent—the ‘believing those things to be true which God has revealed and promised’—and a faith of the kind which can be credited to the devils necessarily dropped into a secondary position as the means of salvation. Justification was held to be ‘not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner man’ in both aspects it was declared to be progressively attained; and the extent to which the remission of sins was granted was made to be dependent on the extent to which the sinner had become just and had performed good works. In the sacrament of baptism he received the instalment of justification called the first robe, and that on terms of pure grace; but after ‘the shipwreck of grace lost’ he had a ‘second plank ‘to cling to—to wit, ‘the sacramental confession of the said sins, sacerdotal absolution, and likewise satisfaction by fasts, alms, prayers and the other pious exercises of the spiritual life.’31 The scheme was rounded off by the doctrine of Purgatory, which provided a sphere in which, prior to the attainment of the perfected bliss of Heaven, rewards and punishments could be meted out with the most discriminating and rigorous justice.

‘If any one saith that, after the grace of justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven can be opened (to him), let him be anathema.’32

The Reformers, on the other hand, were content to rely for moral results on the dynamic forces which attended on the experience of justification by faith.

‘Ours teach,’ says the Augsburg Confession, ‘that it is necessary to do good works, not that we may trust that we deserve grace by them, but because it is the will of God that we should do them. And because the Holy Ghost is received, our hearts are now renewed, and so put on new affections, so that they are able to bring forth good works.’33

The Westminster Confession sums up the motives as follows:

Good works are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, and by them believers manifest their gratitude, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the Gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are in Christ Jesus, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.34

When tested by the religious criterion the Protestant gospel of justification by faith seems to be superior to the modified form of justification by works which has been elaborated in Roman Catholicism. It promises an unmutilated salvation, it offers the full and immediate possession of the greatest things in the Christian salvation, and it gives the more solid ground of assurance in that the penitent sinner is bidden to put aside all thoughts of his own poor merits and strivings, and to build his hopes on the perfections and the mercies of God. As tested by the ethical criterion, both systems have had a large measure of success and of failure. Under the Roman Catholic scheme the sinner may be said to be put on probation and paid by results; under the Protestant scheme he is treated with magnanimity, and put on his honour to make a due return; and as in the affairs of this world, so in the spiritual sphere, one method has produced the more satisfactory results with one class of persons and the other with another class. The Roman Catholic Church has exercised an extensive and penetrating influence on conduct by means of its definite scheme of threatened penalties for evildoing, and of promised recompense according to effort and desert. No doubt the heroic virtues of its saints are rather to be set down to motives of love and gratitude, reverence and loyalty; but the specific features of the system appealed to the general body of the Christian society, which it fortified against the more heinous sins of the flesh and of the spirit, while it gave a notable stimulus to works of mercy. It is also observable that the Roman Catholic Church—and this doubtless because of the adaptation of its doctrine to elemental modes of thought—wields considerable influence among the derelict masses at the bottom of the social and intellectual scale in the modern civilised world. Of the Protestant system it may be said in general that it has not been so widely or directly influential, but that where it has succeeded the results have been better. It has had its failures. In the Protestant lands there is a great multitude which is as sheep without a shepherd, which seems to owe nothing to the Church, and which has the vaguest ideas as to what it asks it to believe and to do. The chief Protestant Churches, further, contain a large proportion of members and adherents who have no comprehension of the distinctive gospel of the Reformation, and who in any case have not the spiritual experience which is needed to ensure the due response of gratitude and of consecrated service. On the other hand, it is matter of history and observation that the evangelical message has moulded a type of character which has well justified the expectations of the Reformers, The good Protestant type has not been inferior to the good Catholic type in heartfelt piety, it has at least equalled its liberality in the support of philanthropic enterprises and of Christian Missions, and it has surpassed it in the spontaneity and robustness of its ordinary morality, and in its services to society in the economic sphere. There has, moreover, been a great indirect contribution to the moral life of the Protestant peoples from the religious philosophy of justification and sanctification; for it established a point of view and diffused a spirit which became in large measure common property in the form of the greater trustworthiness of conscience, the sense of duty for duty’s sake in the matter of purity, truth and honesty, the recognition of the importance of the home and calling as spheres of the highest service, and the disinterested response to the cry of suffering and wrong. Probably also it is because England had a Reformation and a Puritan period that its literature has been much cleaner than that of France. And these things make a large offset to the restraints that have been imposed on the sinful heart by the menaces of Purgatory.

3. The second great problem was what the religion of faith was to make of the hallowed forms which piety had used as the means of communion with God. When justification by faith has dominated religious thought the chief value has naturally been ascribed to the means which imparts knowledge of the God in whom the sinner is invited to trust. So the Shorter Catechism gives the first place to the Word in the list of the means of grace, and declares that ‘the Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.’ As regards prayer, the evangelical scheme at many points reinforced the view that it is a solemn duty and a high privilege. For prayer is both a fruit of faith and an aid to faith. He who has faith is moved to adore, to confess, to supplicate and to intercede, while, on the other hand, he prays that his faith may be increased. The offering has been easily incorporated in the Christian system in a variety of forms—as the prayer of thanksgiving, the contribution to the treasury of the temple, and above all the giving of the self, and the service of the dedicated life. The chief question has been as to the place and use in Christianity of the institution of sacrifice, and of sacramental ordinances.

(a) Sacrifice was abolished in one way in Christianity, but in another it was conserved, and it was even entrenched at the centre of Christian Theology in the form of the doctrine of the atonement. The interpretation of the death of Christ as a sacrifice is common to every type of New Testament teaching; and while the prominence of the sacrificial idea was partly due to the apologetic necessity of expounding the Christian message in the contemporary modes of thought, there was also felt to be a religious necessity arising out of the sense of human guilt and weakness. For this a remedy had been sought, it was observed, in certain sacred rites, notably of the sacrificial kind, as the means of expiation and vivification, and the death of Christ was set forth as the sacrifice by which those ends had been perfectly and securely attained. The conception of the Passion of Christ as a piacular sacrifice was emphasised by the Latin fathers; it was developed, with the governing idea of sin as debt, in the Anselmic theory of the Atonement; and it was embodied as the theory of penal substitution in the orthodox systems of the Lutheran and Reformed Schools. The necessity of the renewal of human nature through contact with the divine is the central thought of the famous treatise of Athanasius, Di Incarnatione, and it was doubtless in his mind that those of his race who had sought life in the Mysteries would find all and more than all that they had sought in the incarnate Logos. Abelard attributed the efficacy of the sacrifice to its power to kindle in the breast of the sinner the flame of divine and selfless love from the heart of the Crucified. Modern Theology has tended to magnify the quickening power of the great sacrifice, rather than its expiatory virtue, and it has had good reason for the change of emphasis. It was no doubt made easier for the repentant sinner to trust God for the forgiveness of sins when he believed that Christ had suffered a merited punishment in his room; but the assumption on which the doctrine of penal substitution was based, viz., that the nature of God makes it impossible for Him to forgive sins without a satisfaction of vindicative justice, is an unproved and unprovable hypothesis. On the other hand, it is incontestably true that sinful man needs to be renewed in heart and mind; and it is an indubitable fact of history that the Christ who was lifted up on the Cross has drawn all men to Him, and that a virtue has gone forth from His sacrifice for the quickening of dead souls, and for the healing of the nations. And it may be said that the sacrifice of Christ—of which the matter is God manifest in the flesh, and the action that of the faith which lays hold on the divine in the sacrifice—is the Christian sacrament proper, which has fulfilled the ancient and deep-seated hope of participation in the divine life through some form of union with the divine. ‘Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it—hoc est magnum sacramentum’ (Eph. v. 25 ff.).

(b) There are in addition two sacraments in the narrower sense, which have been observed as an institution of Christ since the apostolic age, and there has been much conflict of opinion as to their place and use in the economy of the Christian salvation. Three main positions have been taken up in accordance with the law of changing valuation which was already observed as governing the ecclesiastical administration of its spiritual deposits.

In a Theology governed by the doctrine of justification by faith the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper have an obvious place and a useful function. If faith be the condition, and the sole condition, of acceptance with God and the remission of sins, and also of the benefits which flow from these, the sacraments are needed to guide and strengthen faith. And this has been the general doctrine of evangelical Christianity. Calvin wrote much which darkened counsel as to the issues in the sacramental controversies, but he has stated this central principle with perfect clearness. ‘A sacrament,’ he says, ‘is an external sign, whereby God represents and testifies His good will to us, in order to sustain the weakness of our faith, which is so weak and exiguous that, unless it is under-propped and buttressed, it is liable to waver and totter.’35 The support, it was held, was given in two ways: the sacraments represented to the mind the essential truths and provisions of the gospel, and they were attestations or seals of its divine origin and trustworthiness, And in making the sacraments auxiliary to faith the Reformers reverted to the proportion of doctrine as it is in the New Testament. If they do the work of faith we need another New Testament than that which contains the record of the teaching ministry of Jesus, the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, and the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.

The stage of exaggeration was represented by the Roman Catholic development of the doctrine of the sacraments. The exaggeration took place along two lines. They were regarded, in the first place, as effecting an extension and continuation of the incarnation and of the sacrifice of Christ. He was in a manner reincarnated, it was taught, in every place in which the miracle of transubstantiation was wrought by the hands of the priest, and He was offered anew before the worshippers in the sacrifice of the Mass.

‘The Eucharist,’ it is declared, ‘is not a sacrament only, it is also a sacrifice, and the offering made by Christ on Calvary continues, and will continue to the end of time, to be renewed in the Christian Church, as often as holy Mass is said.’36

The second modification was that the sacraments, of which seven came to be recognised, were invested with an importance which made it appear that the chief function of the Church was to labour for the sanctification of sinful men by infusing grace into them through sacramental channels. It was held that they operated mechanically, and with the consistency of a physical process. As surely as the fire burns up the Combustible matter which it seizes, so surely was the virtue inherent in the sacraments held to purify the soul—though with the proviso that as fire is checked when the material is drenched with water, so sacramental grace is nullified by a resisting win. From this point of view the method of salvation practically consisted in submitting to a therapeutic treatment conducted be the Church, in which the cure was gradually effected by divine energies which were given entrance to the soul through things done on the body, and the greatest of all by a holy food which was partaken of after a corporal and a carnal manner. And it is not surprising that this development provoked a depreciation in which the sacraments were declared to be no more than pledges of a Christian profession, or held, as by the Quakers, to have ceased under the Gospel. There must, however, be some creditable reasons why such a theory came to be cherished by a great Christian communion, which is amply furnished with intelligence as well as with piety. A partial explanation of the place given to the sacramental system in Roman Catholicism is that the religious consciousness demands, as was said, that salvation be made easy and secure, and under this system the requirements were such as all could comply with, since it was guaranteed that he who lived and died in the communion of the Church—whatever punishment he might have to undergo under the law of retribution on earth and in Purgatory—would attain in the end to the perfection and bliss of Heaven. It remains, however, a question whether the Church, having first made salvation too arduous by reverting to a doctrine of merits, did not go on to make it too easy by the promises which it annexed to the observance of the sacraments. The further explanation may be that as the most urgent need of the human soul is to be knit to God in a vital communion, in which it is vivified and fortified by a divine energy, and as this has usually been experienced by baptised persons and often in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, it seemed a good inference that the effect was due to a special virtue inherent in the holy ordinances, and that the same virtue could be ascribed to a whole system of cognate rites. But it is one thing to believe that the soul may enter into a union with God and become a partaker of His life, and quite another to believe that there exists a divinely appointed system of ordinances for the stated infusion of divine grace into the soul, and that there is an ecclesiastical authority which has been entrusted with the function of dispensing the holy energy according to general and particular needs.

We thus find on a conjunct view of religious history that in the matter of the way of salvation there has been a movement towards a goal—the progressive stages being distinguished by reliance on the methods of compulsion, ingratiation, obedience and faith. The process in which man has thus sought after satisfactory relations with the Divine Being has an analogy in the ways in which he coped with the tasks and problems of the material world, first in the Stone Age, then in the Bronze Age and last in the Iron Age. Or perhpas there is a still closer parallel in the forms of power by which he has successively asserted his mastery over nature—as manual power, horse-power, steam-power and electrical power. The analogy is obvious in two leading particulars. As in the Bronze Age a use continued to be made of stone, and in the Iron Age of stone and bronze, so with the advent of the higher theory of salvation something was carried over from the earlier theory. And as there are parts of the world which are still in the Stone Age, so are there parts in which no better soteriological theory prevails than the way of coercion or the way of ingratiation. It has been more difficult in the spiritual field to advance to the higher method, and more difficult to maintain a better system after it had become known. While it has been very exceptional for a nation to lose valuable knowledge of the material sort which it had once acquired, it has been the rule rather than the exception that the community has declined from the higher to the lower spiritual and ethical levels. On the other hand, the human race has shown itself to be capable, when there has, been an exceptional stirring of the spiritual lite, of appreciating the superior doctrine, and of preferring it to that which was less worthy of God and man, or less efficacious for the attainment of the best elements of the good which are sought in the religious quest.

• 1.

  The Golden Bough, ³, Part I.; The Magic Art, i. p. 226.

• 2.

  Die Lehre der Upanishaden, 1915, p. 14.

• 3.

  King Richard II., Act III. Scene ii.

• 4.

  Tylor, Primitive Culture,⁵, 1903, i. pp. 328 ff. The idea of the hostile demonstration no doubt was influenced by the theory of sympathetic magic.

• 5.

  Quoted by Spencer, Sociology,¹³, 1887, p. 302.

• 6.

  Op. cit., p. 54.

• 7.

  The Golden Bough (abridged), chap, iii., ‘Sympathetic Magic.’

• 8.

  Golden Bough,³, pp. 83 ff.

• 9.

  King, art. ‘Babylonian Magic’ in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

• 10.

  Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 311.

• 11.

  Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, 1883, p. 201.

• 12.

  W. J. Watson, ‘The Celtic Church and Paganism,’ The Celtic Review, 1915.

• 13.

  As this preliminary reference to prayer is very slight, I may refer to my detailed study of the great subject in an essay in The Power of Prayer, 1917.

• 14.

  The Koran, chap. xxv.

• 15.

  Khandogya-Upanishad, S.B.E., i., 1890, p. 21.

• 16.

  Euthyphro, 14, 15.

• 17.

  De Sacrificiis.

• 18.

  The invaluable thesaurus of the literary materials is Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 1829. The reinvestigation of the subject has been undertaken on the basis of arehaeological research, interest in it being quickened by the parallels with the Christian sacramental system. P. Gardiner, The Religious Experience of St. Paul, 1911; H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, 1913. The importance of the Mithracult is demonstrated by Cumont, Texles et monuments figures relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, 1896–99.

• 19.

  Art. ‘Greek Mysteries,’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

• 20.

  Republic, A. Davles and Vaughan, 1888, p. 36.

• 21.

  On Prescription against Heretics, chap. 40.

• 22.

  Prolegomena to Greek Religion, 1903.

• 23.

  Lobeck, op. cit., i. p. 508.

• 24.

  Phaedo, 59 c.

• 25.

  Article V.

• 26.

  Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft.

• 27.

  What Religion Is, 1923.

• 28.

  Ethical Studies, 1876, p. 270.

• 29.

  Art. XIX., ‘Of Good Works.’

• 30.

  Decrees of the Council of Trent: ‘Of Justification,’ viii.

• 31.

  Ibid., xiv.

• 32.

  Of Justification, Canon XXX.

• 33.

  Art. XX., ‘Apology,’ chap. iii.

• 34.

  Chap. xvi., ‘Of Good Works.’

• 35.

  Institutio, iv. 14.

• 36.

  Hunter, op. cit., § 727. Decrees of the Council of Trent: ‘De Sacrificio Missae.’