The subject of these lectures is the nature of religion, and my main concern has been to show what it has professed to be, and what it has undertaken to do. I have, however, diverged on occasion from the empirical standpoint; and in drawing to a close, I shall gather up the results of the inquiry, and briefly discuss the supreme issue of truth. As a fact, the study of the nature of religion yields a very important contribution towards the settlement of its truth. It should seem obvious that we must know what religion is before we discuss whether it is true—though this has been overlooked by some who have attacked it most violently, and also by some who have defended it most zealously. Moreover, the nature of religion, when it is understood, is its best apology. One of the weightiest of the arguments in support of the truth of religion is that which is founded on the consideration of its aims and provisions, and especially of the nature of the doctrine which has been transmitted to the later generations as the harvest from the spiritual history of mankind.

I

We may sum up by saying that the study of the religions of the world makes, in the first instance, a bewildering impression of diversity and incoherence, but that the historical process is found to have been controlled and guided by unifying principles, and that the age-long occupation with God and divine things issued in conclusions which have a claim to finality.

1. Throughout untold centuries, and in every division of the human race, there has welled up in human experience an abounding spiritual life which, in accordance with the habitual behaviour of life, has found expression in a lavish variety of forms and activities. At every stage of our journey the rich manifoldness of the phenomena has been forced on the attention. At the outset we distinguished five capital types of the religious subject, representing very different degrees of equipment and insight, and we have also recognised important variations of the individual and the collective subjects. The psychological material was found to be extremely complex—not merely showing the customary interplay of thought, feeling and volition, but exhibiting these elements in the most diverse combinations, and also betraying the influence of more recondite elements that stir and strive in our mystic frame. In the greatest of the religious subjects the ordinary powers and capacities were quickened and reinforced, and these interpreted the experiences as due to the inpouring of a supernatural life into the creaturely vessels, and the shining of light from on high. Thereafter I sought to reach the heart of our subject by putting three questions—what has man sought in religion? whence has he sought it? how has he sought it? And the answers to each seemed to plunge us into a hopeless medley of aims, beliefs and methods. As regards the end sought, it appeared that, according to the most general and most persistent intention, religion has been the quest and the foretaste of some kind of salvation; but it was observed that other aims have blended with the practical purpose in the highest forms of religious experience, and that each of these could assert its independence, and in certain periods or among particular classes had even claimed to be preeminent or exclusive. One important variation, we found, is the obligational type, in which piety has been cast in the mould of the dutiful recognition of the rights and the laws of God, and with this was coordinated the emotional type, which has felt the spell cast on the soul by the beauty of a divine object, and which has made the response that is native to love. And again, as there are those to whom it has seemed that there is nothing better under the sun than to explore some field of nature or some chapter of human history, so has there been an important religious type which has chiefly sought to know what might be known about God and His ways, and which has chiefly rejoiced in the prospect of the beatific vision, and of the disclosures of the land of unclouded light. The diversity and the dissonance have been not least marked in regard to the idea of God, which is the presupposition or the goal of every considerable form of religious aspiration and striving. The Divine Being, as we saw, has been conceived as an inanimate object, as a living creature, as an invisible energy, as an impersonal Spirit, as a personal Spirit, and finally as a mysterious and unknown entity; and each of the positive conceptions of Deity has been framed on the mean, the mediocre, and the sublime scale, and has been filled with a content drawn from every province of the external world, and from every department of the human constitution and of human experience. And yet again, there has been great diversity of theory as to the procedure to be followed in the cultivation of relations with the Divine Being. The method has varied in accordance with the special motive that was dominant in any particular phase of the religious life, and also in accordance with the different conceptions that were entertained of the nature of the Divine Being. In examining this question we chiefly restricted our view to the religious type which has looked to God for a salvation, and we found that man has sought divine aid in the most diverse ways—sometimes by seeking to force Him into his service, sometimes by conciliating His favour, sometimes by keeping His moral laws, and sometimes by committing himself trustfully to His goodness and mercy.

But if the field of religious history has the appearance of a spiritual jungle, it is only on a superficial view that any jungle is a chaos, and an order of some kind certainly underlies the confusion in which the spiritual life of the race seems to have run riot. Religion has at least had the unity of a vital process. There has been much debate as to the factors, natural or supernatural, by which the religious development was initiated and promoted, and it is uncertain how far the chronological succession of the stages has coincided with the morphological classification; but it is not open to question that the religious history of the race had the character of a movement towards an end at which a particular view of existence was carried to the pitch of ideal perfection. Religion has had a life-history similar to that of the tree—or rather perhaps of the orchard in which trees of different species were planted, came to maturity, and bore their fruit in its season, and which at a particular stage reached its highest point of value and productiveness. In the history of religion we may also detect the intellectual unity of a process of reflection in which a matter has been thoroughly thought out, as when we draw a logical conclusion, or make an all-round application of accepted principles. It also exhibits progressive improvements in instruments and method. According to the Christian interpretation, as was observed, the process has also had an ethical unity, as in the discipline that is planned by the parent or the teacher for the development of the mental powers of a child and the formation of his moral character.

The unity of the religious history of mankind may be affirmed in at least two vital particulars—that there is a scheme of thought which may be called the religious conception of existence and of human life, and that in the course of human progress this scheme was progressively elaborated and was finally brought to perfection. The general position for which the consensus gentium may be claimed is that man is entitled to the defence and the furtherance of his highest interests, and that for this he is dependent on the favour and the protection of a Divine Being. Agreeably with the chief end and postulate of religion, the central line in the historical movement has been that of the advance towards the richest conception of the nature of salvation, towards the doctrine of God as the almighty, the all-wise and the all-good, and towards the ideal theory of the terms on which the favour and the protection of God are enjoyed. The idea of the content of salvation, as was observed, has passed through three main stages in the progress towards the matured and final doctrine. On the lowest level the idea of salvation practically coincided with the mundane hope of prosperity and security; at the second level it became the ascetic ideal of the blessedness that is achieved by flight from the world; and the great climax was the Christian vision of a plenary salvation which, while primarily spiritual, comprehends every element of good in time and eternity that can enrich and ennoble the estate of the redeemed soul and of the regenerated society. The idea of the Divine Being was similarly purified, elevated and expanded, and it found a firm lodgment in the mind of the race as the idea of the all-perfect Being. The evolution of the idea of God has indeed been a complicated and obscure process. We found that there have been at least four radically different conceptions of the nature of Deity, and that each of these took many different shapes, and was finally formulated in impressive shape as a theological or philosophical doctrine. Each route led to a summit, and the commanding peaks have been four—Materialism, Agnosticism, Pantheism, and Theism. When, next, the matured types of theological doctrine were tested by the criteria immanent in religion, the superiority of Theism seemed incontestable, inasmuch as it alone has proclaimed a God who can be wholly trusted to sympathise with the distress of man, and to possess the power as well as the will to save him. In the Christian gospel this assurance was made more assured by the doctrine that God shined upon the world in the face of Jesus Christ, and that all the might and the wisdom of the Infinite Being are at the disposal of a divine love which has its mirror and its measure in His ministry of loving service, and in the spirit of the sacrifice of Calvary. As regards the conditions of salvation—the other integral part of the religious system of thought—it was shown that the four main methods which have been practised in the different ages viz., compulsion, ingratiation, obedience and faith, form an ascending scale in respect of their degrees of spiritual dignity and efficacy. The way of faith, which is represented by the Christian gospel, was maintained to be the ideal provision, inasmuch as it proposes terms of salvation which, despite the guilt and the spiritual weakness of man, are easy of fulfilment, at the same time that they support the interests of morality by giving the promise and the guarantee of a new obedience. And while the programme of salvation was thus brought to perfection, a full provision was also made for the satisfaction of those spiritual types for which religion has been primarily an affair of duty towards God, or of love to God or of enlightenment about God and divine things. The reverence for the Highest which is native to man, and which is linked with the disposition to obey the highest that he discerns, has been imperiously claimed by the infinite Being whose majesty is enthroned in holiness, and whose omnipotent will is also a righteous and beneficent will. The love of which man has offered many tokens to very imperfect representatives of Deity has been claimed with a unique appeal by the infinite God who loves even as Christ loved, and by the Son in whom the Father was revealed. And finally, it has been a marked feature of the history of religion that it undertook to satisfy the yearning for light, and that at the highest stage it appeared with the character of the progressive revelation which shone more and more unto the perfect day.

Religion, then, has advanced towards a goal, and the goal has been a many-sided fulfilment of the spiritual aspirations of mankind. And it is because Christianity is the meeting-place of the fourfold aspirations, and has undertaken to satisfy them fully, that it rises high above all rival modes of faith, and has taken its place in history as the absolute religion. It is, indeed, another question whether any one of the historical forms which Christianity has assumed has a title to finality. Of the great syntheses that have been effected—Patristic Christianity, Greek Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism—each may be held to have been the best or the most useful version of Christianity that could be elaborated by the Church in a given historical situation, but doubtless each has been one-sided, and has embraced in its doctrinal system, along with assured truths of Christianity, a large amount of matter which was of secondary importance, and was precariously grounded. And it must be thought possible that another influential ecclesiastical form will arise, embodying the best results of the travail of Protestantism, which, while as authentically Christian, will differ as much from each of its predecessors as these differed from one another in the proportion and perspective of the doctrinal system. On the other hand, it is inconceivable that religious genius should be able to improve upon the essence of the faith which exhibits the perfect realisation of the religious idea in all its essential elements and in all its vital bearings. Nor is it to be feared or hoped that mankind, knit as it is to the Divine Being by many cords, should cast away after possessing it the substance of the religion in which the most treasured blessings are promised to sinners of mankind on terms of pure grace, and also guaranteed by the power and the goodness of the God who unites all the might of infinite Godhead with all the tenderness and the sympathy that were revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

2. If this general view of the nature of religion and of the essence of Christianity be correct, the reality has been larger and more complex than has usually been made to appear in the theories of the philosophical and scientific schools.1 When a theory is formed about life, and especially about the life of spirit, it seems to be fated to be framed on narrower lines than the phenomena which it seeks to systematise and to interpret. In the first period of the philosophical discussion the usual procedure was to patronise one or other of the lesser religious types, and to find in this the key to the nature of religion and the goal of religious history. In the eighteenth century the idea of salvation was little congenial to the higher culture of the Western world, and thinkers naturally looked in other directions for the chief end of religion and the substance of Christianity. One line which was taken was to define morality as the substance of religion, and to disparage the theoretical and emotional elements which are not obviously comprehended in the moral life. In accordance with this principle the path of religious progress was traced in its gradual approximation to morality, and Christianity was praised as the highest religion in respect of the purity and the nobility of its ethical code, while it could be anticipated that, when that which was perfect was come, nothing would be left of religion save allegiance to the moral law and faith in the moral order. But this was to make the obligational type the one legitimate representative of the many-sided reality, and in doing so to give the preference to the debilitated variety in which duty towards God is reduced to a mere sense of duty which dispenses with God. It is as unjust and unintelligent to resolve religion into morality as it is to make morality the substance and the sole criterion of the Fine Arts. The second line which was taken was to explain the purpose of religion, and to interpret the Christian system, from the point of view of the emotional disciple. This was done in the famous theory of Schleiermacher, who gave the primacy to devout feeling, and distinguished the religions as representing an ascending series of admirable pious states—the lowest being the general sense of dependence, the second the experience associated with the troubled conscience, and the third the sense of blessedness and emancipation that is enjoyed through faith in Jesus of Nazareth. The theory has a certain justification in the fact that one of the most distinctive features of religious experience is the uniqueness of the sentiments which it nourishes; and it is quite an effective plea for religion that to be devoid of piety is to be wanting in an important element of insight, taste and refinement. But piety has flourished so abundantly in the past because it has been believed to be a great deal more than an emotion; and if it should come to be supposed that it was only a mode of feeling, counting for no more than the feeling for the sublime and beautiful in nature, it is certain that it would play a very modest part in the life of the generations that are to come. The third of the one-sided interpretations is that which has found the essence, if not the whole, of religion in its theoretical content. This view has naturally found much favour with the class of disciples who pursue the learned vocation. The most famous version of the theory is that of Hegel, and a summary statement of his construction may be conveniently quoted from Schwegler:

The burthen of all religion is the inward exaltation of the soul to the Absolute as the all-comprehending, all-reconciling substance of existence, the knowing of himself on the part of the subject as in unity with God. All religions seek the unity of the divine and the human. The rudest attempts in this direction occur (1) in the natural religions of the East. God in them is still natural power, natural substance, before which the finite, the individual, disappears as a nullity. A loftier idea of God we find (2) in the religions of spiritual individuality, in which the divine is regarded as subject—as sublime subject full of wisdom and might in Judaism, the religion of sublimity; as galaxy of plastic divine forms in the Greek religion, the religion of beauty; as absolute political purpose in the Roman religion, the religion of the understanding or of expediency (means to an end). Positive reconciliation of God and the world is only attained at last, however, (3) in the Revealed or Christian religion, which, in the person of Christ, contemplates the Godman, the realised unity of the Divine and human, and apprehends God as the self-externalising (self-incarnating) idea that from this externalisation eternally returns into itself—that is to say, as the Triune God.2

The human race, to express it otherwise, started with a dim and confused idea of the Divine Being with whom it has to do; thereafter it embraced the pantheistic doctrine which identified God with the universe; at the next level it adopted the deistic doctrine of the personal God who exists above and outside the world; and finally it reached the Panentheism which affirms the spirituality of God, magnifies the divine immanence, and proclaims the reality and the necessity of an Incarnation. Agreeably with this, man felt at the first stage that he was helplessly dependent on God, at the second that he was practically independent of Him, while at the final stage he acquired the insight that God and man are interdependent.

It is, now, a defensible view that the central movement in religious history has been the development of the idea of God, or the self-disclosure of God. If there be one element in the synthesis that is more important than the others, It is the idea of God which is the presupposition and the conclusion of the religious scheme of thought and aspiration, and the source of its moral dynamic. But the knowledge of God is not the whole fabric; and Christianity, as has been maintained, ranks as the goal of the development and the perfect religion, not merely because of the fulness and splendour of its vision of God, but also because it promised the plenary salvation, and opened up the new and living way of access to God. And even if we limit our attention to the theological aspect of the evolution of religion, it cannot be said that Hegel reported accurately on the preparatory stages, or that he did justice to the doctrine of the Christian Theism which he accepted as final. As to the nature of the Divine Being, it was rightly observed that there was a grand progression of thought from God as object or natural substance to God as subject or conscious spirit; but it is a very questionable position that the mind subsequently rose to a higher conception of God than the idea of a subject, and it is certain that, if there be a greater conception. Christianity does not stand sponsor for it. The notion of God as subject or personal being is the highest that can be grasped by the human mind; and if it make the attempt to rise higher, it seems to me that, instead of attaining to greater insight and knowledge, It declines to the affirmation of an unknown or an unintelligible mode of being. In the general movement of theological thought it was and continued to be common ground that the Divine Being is a subject, and the principal stages to be distinguished are those in which the conception of a personal Deity was progressively elevated and perfected. There is, therefore, reason for preferring the old scheme, according to which the lowest stage was idolatry or Polydaemonism with its innumerable and essentially unethical spirits; the next Polytheism, in which, as there were many gods, Deity was limited in power, wisdom and goodness; and the highest Monotheism, in which God is held to be one, the personal mode of being is conjoined with infinitude, and the divine attributes are expanded into eternity, omnipresence and omnipotence, perfect righteousness and self-sacrificing love. When Hegel, on the mere ground that the religion of the Old Testament represented God as a subject, placed it in the same division with Greek and Roman Polytheism, he must be thought to have judged much less intelligently than was done by the ancient Church when it maintained against Mareion that the God of Moses and the prophets was essentially the same with the God of Christ and the apostles. For the God of the New Testament is as truly a subject as the God of the Old Testament in that He knows and feels and wills, and enters into personal relations with His children. The most characteristic difference, as Paul taught, was that in the old dispensation witness was chiefly borne to the righteous God who had placed mankind under a legal discipline with its sanctions of rewards and punishments, while in the new dispensation the emphasis was laid on the self-sacrificing love of God, and on the gospel of His spontaneous grace. The sequence of dependence, independence and interdependence, in which Hegel saw the ascending scale of the religious relationship, is a generalisation which does more to misrepresent than to elucidate the historical facts. Pantheism is, of course, accompanied by a sense of entire dependence, but it was a comparatively late theoretical development, while it has never pretended to dominate the mind of the human as a whole. The deistic stage of the independence of God and man, or of pure subjectivity, for which the Old Testament is said to be typical, is in reality very poorly represented by the religion of Israel at its highest. The God of the prophets was not the God of the latter-day Deist. He was present in all places, He was the power in the storm, He ruled the waves of the sea, He caused the grass to grow on the mountains and filled the valleys with corn, He made bare His arm in the history of the nations and in the ordering of the individual lot, and above all He enlightened His servants with knowledge and upheld them by His free spirit. And no less a protest must be made against the attempt to identify the Christian doctrine of salvation with the Hegelian tenets of the unity and the interdependence of God and man. While Hegel conceived, after the fashion anticipated by the Hindu sages, that we are saved when our eyes are opened as to the essential and permanent relations of God and man, the Christian doctrine is that in order to salvation new works of God were done among men in the person and work of Christ. Again, it is Christian doctrine that man only attains to self-realisation, or becomes what he is capable of becoming, by self-surrender to God—when he is enriched by the self-communication of the God who was incarnate in Christ, and who as the Holy Ghost makes His dwelling in believing souls. But it is a perversion of history to make it appear that Christ and the apostles, or any considerable section of the Church, have been responsible for the tenet which I take to be the other half of the Hegelian position—viz., that the Infinite God is also dependent on finite beings like man, and that not merely for a temple in which to dwell, but also for the opportunity and the means of becoming a conscious and ethical Spirit.

During the nineteenth century, as was noted, there was a growing recognition that religion has been directed to a practical end. The practical interpretation, which in some periods had been a commonplace of Theology, and which has usually seemed self-evident to the multitude, obtained a philosophical vogue through the influence of Kant, who conceived that the chief function of faith had been to place on God the responsibility of ensuring to man the eventual attainment of the summum bonum. This view has been widely accepted in principle, though with much difference in detail, by the later generations of philosophers, and the same general finding has also been commonly endorsed by the historian and the anthropologist. But it cannot be said that the full content of the idea of salvation has been understood, or that, when understood, it has been generally appreciated. Kant supposed that the hope of salvation could be reduced to the expectation of heavenly bliss and security; while Bosanquet, though he gloried in a present salvation of the kind which Christianity promises, treated the doctrine of personal immortality as a questionable and negligible element. Höffding cut down salvation to the maintenance of values, and did not even make it appear that it can be trusted for the conservation of the best of the values which man comes to possess as the reward of his earthly efforts and struggles. And if injustice has been done to the content of the religious idea of salvation, injustice has also been done to the context of the idea. It has been overlooked that a hope of salvation is inextricably bound up with the idea of a Divine Being who is adequate to the task of fulfilling the hope. I quoted from Bradley and Bosanquet striking tributes to the depth and the efficacy of the Protestant conception of the way of salvation, but they have not equally dwelt on the grandeur of the doctrine of God which was its presupposition; and it may be said that the way of justification by faith only commended itself as it did to awakened consciences and anxious hearts because it was conjoined with the doctrine of the living God who is able and willing to save sinners, and who also embraces the soul in the individualising love of the Heavenly Father. In regard to the anthropological school it may be observed that, since the practical aim of religion came to be generally recognised, there has been a disposition to lay a one-sided emphasis on the self-regarding intention, and to ignore the other operative motives. It is therefore very necessary to enforce and illustrate the proposition which has been maintained in these lectures—viz., that in his religious life no less than in other departments of experience, and more than in almost any other, man has not merely pursued his real and imaginary interests, but has been moved by the call of duty, by the emotion of love, and by the hunger and thirst after light.

II

The truth of religion may be affirmed in three senses. Religion has its first principles or axioms which underlie the faiths that have governed the spiritual life of mankind, and the defence may take the form of a vindication of this general scheme of thought. Again, we may take religion to be represented by its highest form, as is done in parallel cases—when, for example, a judgment is expressed on the truths of Natural Philosophy or the value of Medicine and Surgery. When religion is taken to mean religion at its best, the question of truth resolves itself into the issue of the essential truth of Christianity. And further, as in Christianity everything depends on the validity of the idea of God, the issue may even be concentrated into the question of the truth of the Christian idea of God. It does not fall within the scope of this book to make an elaborate contribution to theological Apologetics, and to the system of Christian Evidences; and I must content myself with outlining the cumulative argument in which I find a rational justification of my faith.

1. There is, in the first place, a strong presumption from analogy that the principles of religion are valid, and that the outcome of the historical process has been good and trustworthy. To put it at the lowest, religion must have served a useful function in the experience of the human species. It has been a universal factor in the life of nations, and when one form has decayed it has revived in another form; and this seems to be conclusive evidence that it has at least been advantageous to man in adapting him to his environment, and seconding his efforts after self-protection and self-expansion. Species of animals have come to be provided with hair and fur that keep them warm, and with offensive and defensive armour, while there are dens and caves of the earth in which they find shelter and security; and the beliefs and practices of the religious life must at least have helped to prevent human souls from being chilled to death by the cruel blasts that sweep their world, furnished them with useful weapons for the unceasing warfare of their lot, and made them to feel that in God there was a dwelling-place and a city of refuge. If counsel could have been taken with the utilitarian he would have bad grave misgivings as to the expediency of endowing man with a religious nature. It would have been urged that it would darken and weaken man’s spirit by the haunting fears which it fostered, and create a misplaced confidence in extraneous support for which the penalty would be paid in manifold failures and disasters, while it would also entail much loss of time, and the unremunerative expenditure of wealth which man had painfully won in the sweat of his brow. It appears, however, that there must have been a decided balance of advantages even of the material kind—due in part to the circumstance that religion filled man with courage, gave him the sense of being more able to deal with a very difficult situation, and made him feel more at home in the oppressive terrestrial surroundings. Obviously also it has been useful in helping the human race towards the attainment of the higher values which were included in the programme that it was destined to realise; for it has made a large contribution to the aesthetic and the moral life, and has also done much at certain stages to stimulate the energies of the intellectual life of mankind. And this specially holds of the influence which Christianity has had, as the perfected form of religion, in leavening the life and quickening the mind of the Western world.

Further, when we consider religion in general, and in particular when we consider Christianity as the ideal outcome of the historical process, it seems certain that the experience has been in touch with reality, and has been based on sound principles. This inference is justified by what Butler called the analogy of the course of nature. The bird was the product of a biological process; as such it finds itself in possession of an apparatus which enables it to rise from the ground, to cleave the air in direct or circling flight, to poise itself on its wings, and to glide back to its perch; and when this machinery was investigated by rational man, he found that it was founded on mechanical principles, and that if he also was to fly he must take lessons from the bird, and supplement them by the study of the structure and the movements of the fish. And if the power which was operative in the production of living things, and in the equipment of the bird for the navigation of the air, is discovered to have made a successful use of the principles of Mechanics, it seems unlikely that when, in the historical process, the provision was perfected whereby the soul should traverse the spiritual sphere, and rise to communion with God, the mechanism should be found to be based on metaphysical principles which man, when his eyes are opened, must cast aside as palpable lies, or sorrowfully discard as groundless though comfortable illusions.

There is a further observation which may carry weight with those who have a healthy conviction of the rationality or trustworthiness of the general scheme of things. Religion, as was before observed, resembles the products of the biological realm in that it has moved towards an end that has the notes of excellence, beauty and utility, while it differs from them in that it claims to be also a scheme of truth; and the presumption is that, as it is of its nature to seek to lay hold of and show forth truth, its advance towards perfection has involved an increasing fulness and clearness of knowledge concerning God and divine things. It may therefore be held that there is a strong prima facie case for the truth of the Christian ideas concerning God and salvation, and the other forms of the divine relationship, which have been transmitted to us as the outcome of man’s age-long transactions with religion, and that it is a very reasonable view for a commonplace man to take, and even for a very able man, that more value is to be attached to the outcome of the historical process than to any judgment which he might be able to form for himself on the subject.

2. I observe in the next place that the sublimity of the doctrines in which religious thought culminated creates a well-founded prepossession in favour of their truth. Religious thought, like the universe, is on the grand scale. At its highest reach it has been a magnificent handling of a magnificent theme.

The idea of God in its matured form is a contribution to Theoretical Philosophy of the first magnitude. It is in fact the greatest idea which is at the disposal of the mind when it seeks to understand and interpret existence as a whole, and to build up an Ontology. For this purpose two other ideas are available—to wit, the world and the self; but the idea of God far surpasses both since it incorporates the elements to which each owes its dignity, and at the same time exalts them to the degree which is appropriate to the all-perfect Being. As personal spirit, God has the same attributes as those in virtue of which the self is conscious of an immeasurable superiority to the world; and as the infinite Being He possesses them in a measure which inconceivably transcends even the standards of immensity that are suggested by the scale and the processes of the boundless universe. The idea of God, moreover, makes it possible to embrace the totality of existence in a satisfactory view, and to organise the knowledge of its structure and contents by reference to one supreme principle. The world and the self are unable to account for themselves, while the infinite Spirit, which must be thought of as self-existent, unifies the system as the power by which the world and the self have been brought into existence, and by which they are maintained in existence, and supplied with strength for their labours. It may, indeed, be said that God is needed, not merely as the ground of the world and of the self, but also as a mediator to protect them against each other, and arrange for a modus vivendi. For when the idea of God has been dispensed with, the result has been either that the idea of the world has sought to destroy the idea of the self by the way of Materialism, or that the self has sought to get rid of the world by the way of Subjective Idealism. If the Theism of Berkeley did not protect the world against the self, at least it gave a tenable explanation of the objects of the phenomenal world as the products of the mind and will of the infinite Spirit; while the world is in a much worse case under a Subjectivist Philosophy which knows not God, as it then sinks to the intolerable position of a phantasmagoria that has been inexplicably flung off by the occult potencies of a group of finite minds, or even of one petty individual mind. While Theism has subjected the world and the self to God as the ground of their existence, of their conservation and of their operations, it has conceded to them a certain independence, not only in relation to God, but also to one another. It may be added that the idea of God is a contribution of supreme importance to a Philosophy of History. It may be that a Science of History will be developed that will command general recognition and respect, but I do not believe that it will be found possible to interpret the meaning of history, and to appreciate the course and the goal, i.e. to construct a Philosophy of History, unless account is taken of divine purpose, and of a divine will which, working for the fulfilment of an end, guided and overruled the plans and the strivings of the rulers and peoples of the earth. Nor is the idea of God any less needed for a luminous and credible interpretation of the meaning of the life of the individual human being, which in one point of view is so majestic and in another so insignificant—which reaches out to the eternities and the infinities and upward to visions of divine goodness and beauty, and yet keeps company with the beasts, and withers as a leaf.

Religion has also made a splendid contribution to the materials of Practical Philosophy. While it has sought to grasp and explain the totality of things, it has taken to do no less confidently with the moral ideal and the conduct of life. The great religions identified themselves with a doctrine of the chief end of man, gave instruction as to the heads of duty in the various relationships of life, and lent all their support to the authority of conscience. Religion has in fact been the chief instrument in the elevation and the enrichment of ethical ideas. This it did in one way by emphasising a special set of duties which man owes to God in addition to those which he owes to himself and to his fellow-men. But it is also very notable that when morality became an integral part of religion and the moral code was edited with faith in God, the conception of duty towards the self and to other selves was greatly deepened and expanded, and virtues and graces came to honour which bad been previously ignored or despised. The apostles of the great Indian religions persuaded the natural man to give a large place to self-denial and gentleness in his working-code of conduct. Inheriting the classical ideal which bad as its staple prudence, courage, temperance and justice, Christianity added to them brotherly love and the passive virtues of humility and meekness; and it thus provided the Western world with an ideal which has bad the approval of the general conscience, and which still has this approval in spite of the modern attempts that have been made to show that the Christian additions were either undesirable or impracticable, or neither desirable nor practicable. And if it be said that the Christian ideal has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance, it may be replied that it is the business of an ideal to rise high above average practice, and that it justifies itself if it produces an earnest of better things to be, and fosters the spirit of a divine discontent. Moreover, religion has done much to supplement the vague natural inclination to be good by a reinforcement of moral earnestness and power. In the modern world, indeed, there is an opinion that morality can be detached from religion, and the opinion is being acted on in national experiments of secular education. But this is an extremely hazardous venture. ‘At no time,’ says Lord Balfour, ‘has the mass of mankind treated morals and religion as mutually independent. They have left this to the enlightened, and the enlightened have (as I think) been wrong.’ He adds the important observation that faith in God is needed, not merely as a check on bad impulses, but also for guidance in the choice which we have often to make among good ends—that ‘when a man loves God he has found a moral end which reconciles other ends because it includes them, and the collision of ends for that soul loses all harshness.’3

The third impressive feature of the religious view of existence is the optimistic outlook. It is true, as was observed, that the foundations have been laid in Pessimism, but the structure has tended to the heights of an all-conquering optimism. In the Christian gospel great and precious promises were made—first to the individual, secondly to the Church, lastly to the race. To the individual it offered a present deliverance from the guilt and the power of sin and from the miseries which sin brings in its train, and to this was added the victory over death, which is to be crowned by the perfected purity and bliss of eternal life. To the Christian Church there was promise of participation in the power and the glory of its exalted Head, and to the nations of the blessings which flow from the rise and progress within the world of the Kingdom of God. For the fulfilment of these hopes, moreover, adequate security was offered: expectations that would otherwise be deemed arrogant and unreasonable were made to seem reasonable in consideration that man is made in the image of God, and that the responsibility for fulfilling them is placed upon the God who is infinite in power, in wisdom and in goodness. It may also be deemed an optimistic feature of the religious scheme of thought that the conditions under which the divine favour is extended to man are known and are capable of fulfilment; and this conception assumed its boldest form in the Christian doctrine that salvation is the gift of God, and that in order to appropriate it nothing more is needed than a childlike trust in the divine mercy. Christian Theology has indeed shrunk from indulging a boundless optimism. There has always been a school which was prone to believe that, notwithstanding the leaven of the Kingdom of God, the world grows more and more evil, has reached the state of spiritual bankruptcy, and is ripe for judgment and doom. And the Church has strenuously affirmed the existence of an eternal Hell in which a multitude of human souls that no man can number will be plunged, along with the hosts of fallen angels, into hideous and hopeless ruin. This limitation of Christian optimism was felt to be imposed by the general teaching of the New Testament. And it was also felt to be required by respect for morality. Perhaps the greatest tribute that was ever paid to the majesty of the moral law was that which is implied in the doctrine that the breach of the moral laws of God, and even of one commandment, will be justly requited by eternal torments. It was felt, moreover, that one of the strongest restraints on evildoing would be removed if it came to be the popular opinion that whether a man served God or the Devil in time, it would be well with him in eternity. But these considerations are not conclusive. ‘I have yet many things to say unto you,’ it is written in the gospel, ‘but ye cannot bear them now’ (John xvi. 12); and one of these may have been said by the apostle when he declared that God will put all things in subjection under His feet, and that in the end God will be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 27–8). The prudential argument has lost much of its force in the latter-day Protestant world, which has, on the whole, taken upon itself to think that the doctrine of eternal punishment is negligible; and it is probable that more effect would be produced if the Church gave earnest warning of a temporary Hell which the worldly-minded and the carnally-minded have every reason to expect, than it does by clinging in theory to the doctrine of an everlasting Hell which few ministers have the courage to preach. It is quite likely that the Christian Theology of the future will allow a wider range to its instinctive optimism, and will hold that it will be brought about by the divine wisdom and love that in the end God will be all in all—and that in the sense not of the conqueror who has forcibly beaten down all opposition, but of the King who has come to reign in the hearts of devoted subjects.

3. The next step in the argument is that the truth of religion is vouched for by the self-evidencing power with which it has laid hold on the human mind. The most obvious reason why religion has been believed by man is, as Coleridge put it, that it found him, or, in Bosanquet’s phrase, that he felt that this was the real thing. And the reason was a good one. The ground on which, as matter of psychological fact, religion has been believed to be true is a valid reason for holding that it is true.

The general scheme of religious thought—with its optimism based on faith in the Divine Being—has been accepted by mankind as authenticating and justifying itself. Religion has its first principles, of which it may be said, in the language of Reid, that ‘if they do not admit of a direct proof, neither do they need it; for they are such as all men of common understanding know, or such at least as they give a ready assent to as soon as they are proposed and understood.’4 It may not, indeed, be said that ‘the common principles ‘of religion command the universal assent which is yielded to the laws of thought, and to the axioms and postulates of Mathematics, but as with the maxims of morality a lesser range of assent is sufficient. ‘The one real question,’ as Professor A. E. Taylor remarks in this connection, is ‘not what certain persons are unable to feel the necessity of searching for, but what those who do seek find, Sed quid invenientibus?’5 When, again, we consider religion as represented by its highest form, it seems certain that the reason why Christianity became the religion of the peoples of the Western world was that it apprehended the spiritual class as shining by its own light, and that it made a vague impression of a similar kind on the mind of the masses. No doubt a great variety of motives came into play in the propagation of Christianity, but in the last resort the explanation of its triumph was that its doctrine of God was immeasurably superior to any other, and that it gave the promise and the foretaste of a salvation which was richer in content, and also better guaranteed, than that which was offered by any competing system. In the third century of our era, it is said it was an open question whether Christianity or Mithraism was to prevail; but as Mithraism had staked everything on the ability of a legendary and semi-ethical being to give victory to the imperial arms, everything was lost when it failed to keep its promise; while Christianity had resources in its vision of God, in the self-attesting Christ, and in its moral ideal, which enabled it to maintain its hold on the mind through periods of national disaster and individual misery. In some epochs the sense of the intrinsic excellence of Christianity has been weakened, and it has even been obliterated in considerable groups, and in numerous individuals, but to this there has been an offset in the stated recurrence of the revival of spiritual experience, which was accompanied by a renewal of the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. In such periods, as notably at the Reformation, Christian Apologetic has fastened on the self-evidencing virtue of Christianity, interpreted it as the inward witness borne by the Holy Spirit, and relied on this as the palmary proof of the truth of the Christian Revelation. And I am disposed to think that the best reason which the Christian Church or the Christian man has for believing his religion to be true is that, made as he is and seeing in it what he sees, he is constrained to believe it to be true. To this reliance on the self-authenticating power of religion it is naturally objected that it proves too much. Other religions have also been heartily greeted as ‘the real thing’ and as these contain tenets concerning God, and the content and the way of salvation which conflict with the Christian doctrines, it may be said that the inward assurance has no evidential value. But the assurance of the heathen world is explained in part by the fact that they hold what have been called the first principles of religion, and in part by the particular elements of truth and goodness which are embodied in every faith that has been an influential factor in the spiritual history of the race. The religious assurance fostered in Hinduism is largely due to the fact that it makes man Godcentred instead of self-centred, and the assurance of the Moslem to the fact that he knows and acts upon very important truths concerning God. And a similar observation may be made in regard to the discord and the divisions of Christendom. The good Roman Catholic has an assurance of the truth of his system which is at least as strong as that felt by the good Protestant, and it may be said that a criterion of truth is worthless which seems to give equal support to two parties that obstinately and violently differ from one another. But as a fact the assurance of both rests to a large extent on the same grounds. In both cases it is partly due to the self-evidencing character of the first principles of religion; but chiefly to the efficacy of the substance of Christianity which, to the extent of at least two-thirds, they are at one in holding against all gainsaying.

The element of the Christian system which may be most confidently held to shine by its own light is its doctrine of God. This was put in the front, with great effect, in the apologies of the Patristic Church. In the most convincing form of the ontological argument the starting point of the argument has been that the mind necessarily believes in God. It was the general doctrine of the Scottish School that the idea of God, when known and understood, lays a compulsion on the mind to believe it. Kant held that it was a necessary idea of reason, though he added that it could not be trusted for knowledge. But it is a very probable view that what man, as such, has felt compelled to believe when he has sympathetically grasped it, has been believed because it is true.

4. Belief in the truth of Christianity, while it primarily rests on the excellence and the efficacy of the doctrine, has been greatly strengthened by the observation of the extraordinary setting in which the doctrine was first published and propagated. The message which was delivered as the truth about God and salvation was bound up in an impressive synthesis along with the other values which the human spirit has coveted and treasured as of cognate dignity with truth. The elements that were thus linked with it were power, wisdom, goodness, and the beauty of holiness. The older Apologetic laid the greatest stress on accompanying marks of superhuman power as authenticating the teachings of the Gospel. The Scriptures report cycles of signs and wonders in connection with the great epochs of the Old Testament dispensation, while the miraculous series rises to its climax in the gospel narratives of the mighty works of Christ and of His resurrection from the dead; and these events were interpreted as manifestations of supernatural power whereby the divine seal was set on the laws of Moses and the oracles of the prophets, and especially on the teaching of Christ and His apostles. At the present day it is a common opinion that miracles are antecedently impossible, that for the historian biblical wonders dissolve into myths and legends, and that even if prodigies had been performed they would have been irrelevant to the issue of truth. But the traditional argument may not be so summarily disposed of. On the question of historical fact it is obvious that the biblical writers did not clearly distinguish between miraculous and providential acts of God, and I conceive it must also be admitted that the Old Testament contains a considerable deposit of mythical and legendary elements. But there is still good reason for believing that in the golden ages of religious history, when the experience of God reached its highest known level, there were displays of power in the spiritual realm, and also in the contiguous spheres of experience, such as do not occur, or at least in the same degree, in the ages of silver and iron. As regards the evidential value, it would be granted by the normal thinker—unless he were writing a polemical treatise—that if a prophet or an apostle was really endowed with supernatural powers he was thereby accredited as a messenger from the supernatural world. And the argument has certainly wrought conviction; for one of the reasons why the Church came into existence was that it was believed that Christ had wrought works which no man could do except God was with him, and especially that He had been declared to be the Son of God with power by resurrection from the dead. Evidences of a supernatural wisdom have also been relied on as authenticating Christianity to the reasoning mind. In the patristic period and again in the eighteenth century the argument from prediction was often put in the forefront—the contention being that those who had a knowledge of the future were thereby accredited as witnesses to God. In recent times this argument has fallen into the background—partly because a prediction might be explained as the expectation which was formed on the ground of what one believed God to be, partly because it was found that much that had been written about the Old Testament predictions and their fulfilments was dependent on unscholarly exegesis. But while it is certain that the Scriptures do not give us chapters of detailed history written before the event, it is still a very tenable view that the prophetic vision of the course and the goal of human history, and of the means and the manner of the establishment of the Kingdom of God—running counter as it did to the pessimistic outlook which prevailed in the ancient world—was due to an extraordinary insight into the purposes and the ways of the God of history which was given to those who lived in a unique intimacy with the God of salvation. There are fashions in Apologetics, because of the changing fashions of the age to which it has to address itself, and it is quite possible that the argument from prophecy will be rehabilitated. If the future, as is commonly held by the theist, lies naked and open to God, it must be possible for His thoughts about it to find some entrance into finite minds; and that this actually happened can be affirmed on the grounds that the thinking of the prophets about the future had the note of majesty, and that their general view of the trend and the goal of history has been confirmed. And there are other fields in which it has seemed that religion owed a debt to a higher intelligence. The Christian doctrine of man, it has been held, is so profound and illuminating, while in its teaching about sin it rises so far above natural ways of thinking, that it is difficult to suppose that it has been evolved by the wisdom of this world.

Most striking and significant of all, however, was the way in which, at the culminating stages of religious history, the doctrine was bound up with goodness. It was a vital note of the religion of the Old Testament that the speaker for God was also the representative of the noblest morality. The claim to the knowledge of God, and the immovable certitude with which the claim was advanced, were combined with a moral passion of extraordinary intensity which continued unabated in the school of the prophets through several centuries. And if the universe be a system in respect of the greater things as well as of the lesser things, it is difficult to suppose that among the products which it flung off there were minds which in their thoughts about duty and its sovereign claims were sublimely right, but which in their thoughts about God and in their piety were pitiably in the wrong. It is more credible that the reason why the religious message and the unique moral fervour were joined together in their experience was that truth and goodness are essentially akin, and delight to dwell together. And this consideration, as I think, grows into a compelling argument when we consider Him who said that ‘no man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him,’ and whose title to be believed was supported by stainless purity and self-sacrificing love as well as by the compelling beauty of holiness. Apart even from the prepossessions of faith, our sense of the fitness of things may well dispose us to think it incredible that the universe could have confronted us with the dilemma of having to choose between being deceived about divine things in the school of Jesus and Paul, or of being wise in the company, say, of Voltaire, or Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. The Christian Church, we may feel sure, has not judged unreasonably when it has held that He whom it supremely revered and loved because of His perfect goodness could also be trusted to be the revealer of the mind and the heart of the Eternal.

5. The idea of God which is the basis of the Christian Gospel, and may even be said to be its substance, is supported by rational proofs founded on the manifestations of the Divine Being in the works of Creation and Providence. The Christian doctrine, as has been said, is in possession, and it came into possession in a legitimate and convincing way. When we inquire how it obtained the position which it has held for centuries in the mind of the Western world, it appears that it was a legacy from the people which was distinguished as the elect repository of religious genius, that it was welcomed by every type of the religious subject and specially by the types which have the leadership in spiritual things, that it prevailed over every other conception of the Deity which had emerged in the heathen faiths or which had been propounded in the philosophical schools, and that it has been the accompaniment and to a large extent the inspiration of the richer development of the moral life, not to speak of the intellectual and aesthetic life, of the nations which during the last two thousand years have been in the van of the progressive civilisation. And it is in similar fashion that the idea got established in the mind of the believing individual of our race and age. It came to him by way of inheritance as the most sacred element of his spiritual patrimony; he was asked to believe it on the authority of the family, of the community, and of the ancient and worldwide society which is the witness to divine things; it bespoke credence by its self-evidencing power and by the satisfaction which it gave to the religious instinct; and it was probably also commended by the observation that God meant most to those in whom otherwise one had found most to revere. And with this went the experience that to do good was to be near God, and that to do evil meant to depart from Him or to be driven from His presence. While, however, this idea of God was not the product of reflection and inference, and while it has not to any great extent been propagated by argument, after it was in possession it was weighed in the balances of reason, and was found to be abundantly capable of vindication on distinctively rational lines.

The ratiocinative mind has done much work in the religious field in the discharge of its office, and much of it has been critical and destructive. The paths and the bypaths of history are strewn with the debris of religious systems which reason undermined and defaced, and rendered unfit for human habitation. Under the reign of Christianity there have been epochs when reason was fettered and silenced; but during the first three centuries of the Church’s existence its doctrine lay open to the assaults of the ancient schools of Philosophy, while the modern world has conceded untrammelled freedom of criticism and speculation, and has even crowned with undying fame the thinkers who made the most courageous use of their intellectual liberty. In the course of the discussions a number of anti-theistic theories have been propounded and defended in the name of reason; and at different periods, and notably in recent times, these have influenced wide circles of the world of culture, while the cruder forms have had some success in popular propaganda. It is noteworthy, however, that there has been no agreement as to the alternative doctrine by which Theism was to be replaced. For while the theistic doctrine is burdened with problems, it has been obvious to all save to partisans that still greater difficulties are raised by every other theory of the ultimate reality, and of its relation to the world and man; and when it has been proposed to end the controversy by shelving Metaphysics and being content with a world of phenomena, it was generally felt to be unworthy of man, and inconsistent with the lofty vocation which is otherwise so strongly attested, that he should seek deliverance from the intellectual travail in the ignoramus el ignorabimus of Agnosticism. On a long view of intellectual history it may be affirmed that the Christian conception of God and the world has been supported by the representatives of rational thought. On the whole, Philosophy has accepted the idea of God as the Infinite Spirit, almighty, all-wise and all-good, has employed it as the foundation and the crown of the ontological system, and has vindicated it by collecting proofs from every division and aspect of the cosmos, and from every element and activity of the spiritual constitution of man. It is true that there has been much difference in the judgments formed as to the cogency of the various forms of theistic proof; but there has been general agreement that the conclusion was sound, and that, if one argument or set of arguments had to be discarded, the defences could be strengthened in other ways and made impregnable. And even those who, following Kant, have declared that all proofs were fallacious, have also frequently agreed with him in declaring that, if the theoretical reason failed them, the practical reason was able, as the custodian of the interests of the moral life, to lay a sure foundation for faith in God. And this witness from history is of great weight as against the pretensions of any anti-theistic school to obtain credit as the representative of enlightenment. It is well to exercise private judgment, and to think out matters, if we can, to the bottom; but the most self-reliant thinker ought to feel suspicious of his conclusions if he has been led to embrace a metaphysical or anti-metaphysical doctrine which has only had a sectional and temporary vogue, and which is in conflict with the general finding of the successive generations of ‘the masters of them that know.’

The idea of God, I have said, is in possession with an excellent title; and this fact ought to be recognised as the presupposition of the rational debate. In consideration of the grounds on which it came into possession, and has remained in possession, the just view is that it should continue to be believed unless it can be demonstrated to be false, not that it should be disbelieved unless it can be demonstrated to be true. And certainly it has not been shown to be false. When the theistic proofs have been rejected it has usually been either because the demonstration demanded was of a kind that is inappropriate to the subject-matter of the investigation, or because an argument which supports part of the case does not prove the whole case. If, on the other hand, it be granted, as was forcibly urged by Flint, that particular heads of the doctrine may be separately established, and the separate findings combined in the final verdict, and if it be further granted, as Butler contended, that we should be satisfied with the degree of assurance known as moral certainty, it may be confidently said that the rational arguments strongly confirm the doctrine of God which was enshrined in the Christian religion, and which took captive the mind of the dominant division of the human race.

The rational tests of the theistic doctrine are two. The first question is whether it is self-consistent. The fundamental moments of the idea are infinitude and personality. And these, it has often been urged, are contradictory: if God be infinite He is not a person, if He be a person He is not infinite. The argument is of a kind for which I cannot feel great respect. The same kind of reasoning may very well be employed by a school of thought in some remote province of the universe in order to prove that the report of the existence of such a being as man is unfounded, where it may be deemed an inherent impossibility that a being should exist who has both a spiritual nature and a material body. There are good grounds for affirming that God is the Infinite Being, and also for affirming that He is a Personal Being; and if we find it impossible that He should unite the two characters, the likelihood is that it is our intelligence that is at fault, and also that the imperfections of the instrument of language have some responsibility for the objection. The objection seems to me to be much less convincing than the observation of Lotze—that infinitude, so far from being inconsistent with personal being, is rather the condition of personality being raised to its highest power, and realising the perfection of its idea.

The second rational test is to inquire whether the theistic doctrine is consonant with the facts of the universe and of human life. The doctrine is that there exists a Divine Being clothed with natural, intellectual and moral perfections; and the question is whether this is supported or contradicted by the relevant evidence from the fields of nature and history in which it is believed that God lives a great part of the divine life, and performs most of His works. When this procedure is followed it is found that there is evidence which supports each of the heads of the theistic doctrine, and that the different lines of evidence combine to form a powerful cumulative argument.

The existence of a Supreme Being of some order, to begin with, is an obvious inference from the general character of the scheme of things. Unless we resolve on principle to recognise nothing but phenomena, we find ourselves compelled to think of an ultimate reality which, whether it be of the nature of matter, or energy, or spirit, or different from all, is the ground of the universe and of all that it contains. Again, as the universe is a cosmos, in which law and order prevail, from the realms of the infinitely great to those of the infinitely little, the belief that the Deity is one God is put beyond reasonable doubt. On the same ground, and with equal confidence, it can be maintained that the Supreme Being is omnipresent. Further, the fact that something now exists makes it certain that something has always existed—since otherwise there would have been a point at which beings that as yet were not had been able to bring themselves into existence; and it must be supposed that this Eternal Being is identical with the Supreme Being. Again, one of the most obvious and most impressive facts about the universe is that there operates in it a power which is immeasurable in its might as it is boundless in its sweep, and this power we cannot but attribute to the Being that is supreme, one and eternal. At the next stage we reach the crucial question as to whether the evidence from the universe and its contents confirms the religious belief that the Deity is a spiritual Being, and that the stupendous power has been employed with knowledge, and under the guidance of wisdom. This was the conclusion of the teleological argument, which interpreted the order and adaption traceable in every department of existence as due to the operations of a divine mind. The prestige of the argument has indeed considerably declined since it was contended by Kant that the understanding cannot reach so far with its categories, and especially since it was made to appear that the results could be reached without intelligence through the mechanism of cosmical and biological evolution. But when we reflect on the mechanism as a whole, on the results which have been produced by it, and on the ends which it has served, it appears to me to be as certain as on the hypothesis of immediate creation that it presupposes a divine intelligence, and that the universe remains the embodiment and the handiwork of reason. If the evolutionary doctrine be true in its main features—and we have passed the stage at which it is possible to offer any objection save that a naturalistic doctrine of evolution is not the whole truth—it may well be thought that we have more cause than ever to bow in adoring reverence before the wisdom of the Supreme Being. It is, further, an important piece of evidence that man is himself an intelligent being, as it is unlikely that the Supreme Being should be inferior in point of dignity to His late and lowly creature. And the evidence is similar in regard to the moral attributes. The thesis of the Old Testament prophets still holds that the power which rules in history is on the side of righteousness—that, when long views are taken, the history of the world is seen to be the judgment of the world. And, as before, it is natural to bold that the sovereign Power which, when it brought man into being, endowed him with a moral nature, and gave him a vision of duty and a conscience, cannot have raised up a censor to despise or arraign a sub-moral or immoral Creator, but must rather itself be the prototype of goodness. As regards the general attribute of infinity, it cannot be said that the doing of God in a universe which is probably finite proves that the Divine Being is infinite in power, in wisdom and in goodness; but His attributes are at least made to appear so great that they are presumably infinite, and in addition the mind of man has been so constituted that necessity is laid upon it to believe that, in respect of every attribute, God is all-perfect. There remains a branch of evidence which, though it has scarcely figured in the rational discussion, is of the highest importance—I mean the verification of the doctrine which has taken place in experience. That there is a living God who is mighty, wise and good is a theory which is being constantly put to the proof, and with the result that those who habitually base their lives on it tend to become ever more assured of its truth, while the most confident testimony to the wisdom and the love of God has been received from those who were of the number of the destitute, the afflicted and the tormented. ‘The lives of the saints,’ says Professor A. E. Taylor, ‘are the real answer of Theism to the last insistent perplexities of the doubter who lurks in all of us.’6 And it is not only the saints who rejoice in the corroboration. Some of us who are far from being saints have found that, as the outcome of the chequered experiences of this mortal life, we had a growing conviction of the existence of a God who by His providence besets us behind and before, who deals with us with mingled mercy and judgment, and who not least gives ground for believing in His wisdom.

6. The idea of salvation, which is also an integral part of the religious scheme of thought, and notably of the final religion, has had a considerable measure of support from the rational side. It is based on the optimistic principle; and optimism has had the general support of the philosophical schools, as well as the instinctive support of the masses of mankind. It is only in times of extraordinary calamity, or again in times of unusual prosperity, luxury and security—as in the latter half of last century—that any large measure of favour has been shown for the pessimistic doctrine that existence as such is a curse. Further, the doctrine of immortality, which is a very important part of the doctrine of salvation, has been generally favoured by Philosophy. And though belief in personal immortality has undoubtedly weakened in the modern civilised world, this doctrine may still be said to be an article of the universal creed. On the other hand, it cannot be said that the intellectual school has shown much appreciation of the specific elements of the Christian doctrine of salvation. ‘By grace are ye saved through faith,’ said Paul, ‘and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God’ and there has seemed to be more truth in the Aristotelian tenet that the just shall live by habits, and in the dictum of Epicharmus that labour is Heaven’s price for all good things.7 Nor has there been much appreciation of the Christian boons of redemption, reconciliation and the regenerating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. In recent times, moreover, there has been a marked decay of the sense of sin, with the consequence that little need is felt of any deliverance on the heroic scale of a redemption; while even the genuine religious experience is not of such a depth as to make it appear to be the earnest of a great salvation. Besides, the extraordinary achievements of modern man have predisposed him to self-sufficiency even in the spiritual sphere. He has accomplished such marvellous things by his genius and industry for the improvement of his condition, that it has been natural to suppose that it lies with himself to do everything that is possible for the promotion of human well-being and happiness, and that what he cannot do for himself is not likely to be done at all. It is therefore not surprising that there has been a marked decline of the old evangelical type of piety, which made so much of the nature and conditions of salvation; and that religion has tended to run into the two forms which I called obligational and emotional, in which it is able to survive without any great hope in God, and also without much light about God. There is undoubtedly a great deal of the religion of obligation, represented by a vast company of unpretending men and patient women, who accept duty as the supreme law of their Maker, and whose piety is attested by faithfulness in their calling, and by brave endurance of the grim decrees of Heaven. Also, the world is full of a love for things bright and beautiful and good, which according to St. Thomas is an indirect love of the Giver; and there is also much love of holy things and Christlike people, while mankind uniquely loves, and will continue so to love, the Son of Man. And it is a welcome observation that religion is able to maintain itself under unfavourable conditions by assuming diverse forms which, if they fall short of the fulness of the idea, serve the end of keeping souls in touch with God, and preserving a certain receptiveness for divine gifts of life and light.

It may, however, be considered certain from historical precedents that a different spiritual situation will supervene. It is an outstanding feature of history that the period of extraordinary secular achievement has alternated with the period of extraordinary religious intensity. In the one phase, a nation or an age has felt a great access of self-confidence, and has put forth its powers with astonishing energy on the tasks and the problems of this world; in the other, man has deeply realised his insufficiency in presence of the greatest of his tasks as well as the worst of the evils of his estate, and he has cast himself anew on the compassion and the help of God. The secular effort was splendidly illustrated in the epoch of classical antiquity which on the theoretical side gave rise to the Philosophy and the Science of Greece, and on the practical side built up the Roman Empire; while the religious experience was represented by the reawakening of spiritual life which occurred in the later centuries of the Roman Empire, and which had its chief monument in the rise and the triumph of the Christian religion. In the early Middle Ages there was a new secular effort when the youthful nations which had come on the scene threw themselves into adventure and conquest and the building of States; and in the later Middle Ages there followed a period of disillusionment and world-weariness when many of the noblest fled to the cloister, and it seemed even to the multitude for a season that religion was the one thing needful. In the Renaissance there was a revival of the spirit of classical antiquity, while at the Reformation the religious mood reasserted itself, and persisted in strength to the seventeenth century. During the last two centuries the race has put forth its powers in its crowning endeavour to establish its intellectual and practical dominion over the world; and at the same time its outlook has been preponderantly secular—save for the reminder which was given, as in the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford Movement, of the postponed needs and the slumbering potencies of the spiritual life. And the two phases have not only alternated: each has prepared the way for the other. It is probable that in the period of intense religious experience there was generated a new supply of spiritual energy by which a nation was equipped for fresh ventures and labours, and which it could turn to account in many spheres. It has been observed in the history of families that the piety of one generation often flowers in the next in intellectual talent and even in physical prowess, and this would seem to be a parable of the life of nations. The golden age of Greece may have its explanation in the religious revival of the preceding period; and the brilliant modern age owes more than it suspects to the deepening of its spiritual life which took place in the Middle Ages, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the other hand, a period of magnificent human effort is naturally followed by some exhaustion and weariness, as well as by a sense of disappointment at the spiritual results attained, and at the oppressive evils that remain in the ravages of sin, sorrow and death. And so mankind realises anew its need of God, and is ready for a baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire. It is therefore to be expected that another Sabbath will come round in the midst of the centuries when there will be a general turning to God for comfort and refreshment of soul. And when it takes place, the general mind will again make the more courageous ventures of faith, whereof the most characteristic is to believe that God is the author of a great salvation, and that they who put their trust in Him shall never be confounded. Further, this will be accompanied, as in the past, by a fresh experience of the self-witness of God, and of the self-evidencing power of the truth.

Our hearts, if God we seek to know,

Shall know Him, and rejoice;

His coming like the morn shall be,

Like morning-songs His voice.

A revival of religion will also be welcome for the reinforcement of the moral energies of the race. The world owes an incalculable debt to the Church, whose faith has moulded many of the best men and women who take part in the work of each generation, and has inspired countless forms of Christlike ministration to the children of affliction. Every quickening of the religious life of Europe has increased these contributions, and even more may be expected when next the Spirit is poured out on all flesh. For every great religious period has had something distinctive; and it is probable that the distinction of the next will be the extent to which the energies generated by faith in the God of salvation will be devoted to the service of God in the service of man. It is inconceivable that any great spiritual movement of the future should be bound up with what was called the fugitive ideal of salvation. Rather will it build on the foundation laid by the Reformers, and work for a Kingdom of God which puts first the spiritual blessings of the gospel, but also includes the highest ideal of human culture and the noblest programme of social well-being. And at the present stage it is difficult to think of a better gift that could be made to the world than to raise up a great body of men who, believing in God with all their minds, should make it the governing and passionate purpose of their lives that God’s Kingdom may come, and His will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven. And further, if such a generation should arise under the banner of religion, it will be felt that Heaven has again set its seal to the truth of religion.

In this chapter I have referred to many branches of evidence bearing on the validity of the religious view of existence, on the claim of Christianity to be the final religion, and on the truth of the idea of God, And the fact that there is so much evidence from so many different fields is of itself a very weighty proof. But for the same reason it is only the few who can profess to undertake an exhaustive investigation, and to offer a reasoned judgment on the whole case. The overwhelming majority, if they have to render a reason, necessarily fall back on some authority—as the faith of their fathers, the doctrine of their Church, or, at some points, the consent of the race, and the consent of the sages. And it is well that there are authorities which represent matured collective judgments; and on the whole it is wise, as in other spheres, to trust the best authority which is in sight. But, on the other hand, it is the peculiarity of the highest religion that it appeals for personal conviction, and also that it can be subjected to certain important tests which are carried out by persons with very ordinary attainments and opportunities. They can search the Scriptures, bring to them a receptive mind, and treasure as their peculiar possession those doctrines which they have found to shine by their own light and which have laid a spell upon their souls. They can test in their experience the offers of pardon and peace and victory over sin which are made in the name of God, and also the promise of Him who said, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’ They can verify the assertion that God is the hearer and the answerer of those prayers which seek the glory of God and the highest good of His children. And they can make trial of the method of confirmation which was proposed in the gospel when it was written that if any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.

• 1.

  This criticism does not apply to Pfleiderer’s treatment of the great subject, as represented by Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Gruundiage,³, 1909. It was characteristic of Scottish Theology from Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man to Flint’s Theism to hold that religion has engaged the personality in the whole range of its powers, and has not been an affair merely of the intellect, of the heart or of the will. This position has been maintained and developed in the important contributions of Principal Galloway—Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, 1904; The Principles of Religious Development, 1907; The Philosophy of Religion, 1914.

• 2.

  History of Philosophy, ¹¹ (Eng. tr.), 1868, P. 343.

• 3.

  Theism and Humanism, 1915, pp. 126 ff.

• 4.

  The Intellectual Powers, vol. i. chap. xi.

• 5.

  Art. cit.

• 6.

  Op. cit.

• 7.

  τῶν πόνων πωλοῦσιν ἡμῆν πάντα τἀγάθ ’οἱ θεοή Xenophon, Mem., II. 1. 20.