Letter IX. Christian Mysteries and Miracles

The Sixth Lecture.—Christian Mysteries.—the Trinity.—Nature of the Apology.—Effects of It.—the Approaching Crisis.—the Two Natures.—Miracles.

My dear Sir,

The sixth Lecture of Mr. Mansel is occupied (1) with a discussion of the Christian Mysteries, the Trinity, and the Union of two Natures in Christ; (2) with the questions of a Special Providence and of Miracles. The following passage will explain to you the method of the whole Lecture.

“The Principle of Causality, the father, as it has been called, of metaphysical science, is to the philosopher what the belief in the existence of God is to the theologian. Both are principles inherent in our nature, exhibiting, whatever may be their origin, those characteristics of universality and certainty which mark them as part of the inalienable inheritance of the human mind. Neither can be reduced to a mere logical inference from the facts of a limited and contingent experience. Both are equally indispensable to their respective sciences: without Causation, there can be no Philosophy; as without God there can be no Theology. Yet to this day, while enunciating now, as ever, the fundamental axiom, that for every event there must be a Cause, Philosophy has never been able to determine what Causation is; to analyze the elements which the causal nexus involves; or to show by what law she is justified in assuming the universal postulate upon which all her reasonings depend. The Principle of Causality has ever been, and probably ever will be, the battle-ground on which, from generation to generation, Philosophy has struggled for her very existence in the death-gripe of Scepticism; and at every pause in the contest, the answer has been still the same: ‘We cannot explain it, but we must believe it.’ Causation is not the mere invariable association of antecedent and consequent: we feel that it implies something more than this. Yet, beyond the little sphere of our own volitions, what more can we discover? and within that sphere, what do we discover that we can explain? The unknown something, call it by what name you will, power, effort, tendency,—still remains absolutely concealed, yet is still conceived as absolutely indispensable. Of Causality, as of Deity, we may almost say, in the emphatic language of Augustine, ‘Cujus nulla scientia est in anima, nisi scire quomodo eum nesciat.’”—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 172, 178.)

Thus, you see, these awful subjects are to be treated as questions between the Philosopher on the one side, and the Christian Theologian on the other. Mr. Mansel holds a brief for the latter. If any objection is alleged by the Philosopher against any doctrine of our Creeds, it is to be answered by saying, “There is a similar objection which applies just as strongly against you.” Mr. Mansel does not shrink from the most startling statement of his design. “The belief in the existence of God is to the Theologian what the belief in the existence of Causality is to the Philosopher.” Each demands the respective belief for his respective science; each—this is the inference—is equally baffled when he pretends to know anything of that which he demands. It is well to understand and remember that the question of the Being of God is thus treated, because we shall be better prepared for that which follows.

The controversy respecting the Many and the One, I need not tell you, has been a wearisome enough controversy in the Schools. But need I tell you also that these words express a profound difficulty to the wayfarer? Every man who finds himself the member of a family must grapple with it. He must speak of his family as One; he must feel it to be One; you contradict his conscience and his reason if you tell him that it is not one; you make him do unloving and lying acts if you persuade him to act as if it were not one. Yet he knows and feels continually that he is a distinct man, that he has a life of his own, a responsibility of his own; you contradict his reason and conscience if you tell him that his personal existence is swallowed up in the existence of his family, or that his brother’s is, or his sister’s, or his father’s, or his mother’s. You lead him into vile acts if you tempt him to act upon this maxim, or if you sanction him in requiring the other members of his family to act upon it. Here is the problem of the One and the Many thrust upon every man, woman, and child. The more we know of families, the more we know of ourselves, the more we know what a problem it is; what the effort of solving it is; how it springs up afresh at every turn and corner of our history; how little it has to do with distinctions of wealth and poverty, of learning or ignorance. Moral evils mingle with this problem, and add fresh complications to it. But no mere denunciation of those evils in others can settle this question; the triumph over them in ourselves only contributes to that result by making us less rash and impatient in assuming our first conclusions to be right, more willing to await the discoveries that may scatter them and satisfy us.

This problem of the Many and the One, which is thus forced upon us by our earliest domestic experience, becomes again the problem of our life as citizens of a State. Mr. Mansel and the Logicians have a short and easy way of settling it in this form, by assuring us ex cathedra that the State or the Nation is merely a conception of ours; it is not a reality at all. When they have settled what reality is—when they have put it “under its proper notion,”—we may be glad of their help. At present we must be content to believe, as our fathers believed before us, as those men who are called patriots believed, that a Country, or Nation, or State, is something, which it is worth while to live for and suffer for. And if that is so, if the Unity of the Nation is not a fiction, but the very reverse of a fiction,—then to know how that Unity may co-exist with the distinctions of the different persons of whom the Nation consists,—rather, to find how it comes to pass that one is essential to the other, that without a set of distinct persons, there is not and cannot be a living united Nation, while yet that distinctness, that personality, seems always threatening to break up the Unity,—this must be the great practical problem, not only for the Statesman, not only for the Historian, but for the inhabitant of every land such as ours professes to be.

Most especially does the problem of the One and the Many appear in all its fearful significance, in all its fullness of promise and hope, to the Churchman, to him who has to deal with the Unity of Human Society, as composed of different tribes, and tongues, and nations. The problem meets us in the upper room of the Temple on the day of Pentecost; it pursues us through the Apostolical History and the Apostolical Epistles; it starts forth full-armed in the Apocalypse; it is the problem which the Roman Eagle and the Cross discussed in words and at stakes in the first ages; it is that which the armies of the Cross and the Crescent debated through the medieval period; it has been the question of Imperial and Papal rulers; of both with the Protestant nations. Papists, Imperialists, dogmatic Protestants, are wrestling about it now with those who speak of a Humanity that is to supersede Families, Nations, Churches, and to create a God out of itself; and with those who say that the Union of the Father and the Son, in One Spirit, is the foundation of Families, Nations, Churches.

There having been in all ages, there being pre-eminently in our own, this profound meaning in that question of the Many and the One for human creatures, any indication on the part of Philosophers, that they are occupied with it, that they cannot evade it, should be welcomed as a proof that they are coming into contact with our actual necessities, and that they cannot merely think and speak as Schoolmen. And if they not only give this promising sign, but confess that they cannot find the solution which they want of the human problem, without venturing into the region of the divine,—that there must be a passage from one to the other,—surely this should be hailed as one of the proofs that the occupation of the Theologian is not gone; that those who have affirmed such a connection, have not followed a cunningly devised fable. And might not the Theologian himself gain something from the discovery that he is not engaged with phrases and formulas; that he also stands in a direct relation with the life and needs of man? If he perceives that the Philosopher is trying again to find a mere formal explanation of a real perplexity, he will be right to point out the vanity of that experiment; that so he may explain more clearly how the divine principle which he is maintaining, is the substitute for that explanation.

Read over and consider the following passage:—

“From the fundamental doctrine of Religion in general, let us pass on to that of Christianity in particular. ‘The Catholic Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.’ How, asks the objector, can the One be Many, or the Many one? or how is a distinction of Persons compatible with their perfect equality? It is not a contradiction to say, that we are compelled by the Christian Verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord; and yet are forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords.

To exhibit the philosophical value of this objection, we need only make a slight change in the language of the doctrine criticized. Instead of a Plurality of Persons in the Divine Unity, we have only to speak of a Plurality of Attributes in the Divine Essence. How can there be a variety of Attributes, each infinite in its kind, and yet altogether constituting but one Infinite? or how, on the other hand, can the Infinite be conceived as existing without diversity at all? We know, indeed, that various attributes exist in man, constituting in their plurality one and the same conscious self. Even here, there is a mystery which we cannot explain; but the fact is one which we are compelled, by the direct testimony of consciousness, to accept without explanation. But in admitting, as we are compelled to do, the coexistence of many attributes in one person, we can conceive those attributes only as distinct from each other, and as limiting each other. Each mental attribute is manifested as a separate and determinate mode of consciousness, marked off and limited, by the very fact of its manifestation as such. Each is developed in activities and operations from which the others are excluded. But this type of conscious existence fails us altogether, when we attempt to transfer it to the region of the Infinite. That there can be but one Infinite, appears to be a necessary conclusion of reason; for diversity is itself a limitation: yet here we have many Infinites, each distinct from the other, yet all constituting one Infinite, which is neither identical with them nor distinguishable from them. If Reason, thus baffled, falls back on the conception of a simple Infinite Nature, composed of no attributes, her case is still more hopeless. That which has no attributes is nothing conceivable; for things are conceived by their attributes. Strip the Infinite of the Attributes by which it is distinguished as infinite, and the Finite of those by which it is distinguished as finite; and the residue is neither the Infinite as such, nor the Finite as such, nor any one being as distinguished from any other being. It is the vague and empty conception of Being in general, which is no being in particular:—a shape,

“If Shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or Substance might be called, that Shadow seemed,
For each seemed either.”

The objection, ‘How can the One be many, or the Many One?’ is thus so far from telling with peculiar force against the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity, that it has precisely the same power, or want of power, and may be urged with precisely the same effect, or want of effect, against any conception, theological or philosophical, in which we may attempt to represent the Divine Nature and Attributes as infinite, or, indeed, to exhibit the Infinite at all. The same argument applies with equal force to the conception of the Absolute. If the Divine Nature is conceived as being nothing more than the sum of the Divine Attributes, it is not Absolute; for the existence of the whole will be dependent on the existence of its several parts. If, on the other hand, it is something distinct from the Attributes, and capable of existing without them, it becomes, in its absolute essence, an absolute void,—an existence manifested by no characteristic features,—a conception constituted by nothing conceivable.

The same principle may also be applied to another portion of this great fundamental truth. The doctrine of the Son of God, begotten of the Father, and yet coeternal with the Father, is in no wise more or less comprehensible by human reason, than the relation between the Divine Essence and its Attributes. In the order of Thought, or of Nature, the substance to which attributes belong has a logical priority to the attributes which exist in relation to it. The Attributes are attributes of a Substance. The former are conceived as the dependent and derived; the latter as the independent and original existence. Yet in the order of Time, (and to the order of Time all human thought is limited,) it is as impossible to conceive the Substance existing before its Attributes, as the Attributes before the Substance. We cannot conceive a being originally simple, developing itself in the course of time into a complexity of attributes; for absolute simplicity cannot be conceived as containing within itself a principle of development, nor as differently related to different periods of time, so as to commence its development at any particular moment. Nor yet can we conceive the attributes as existing prior to the substance; for the very conception of an attribute implies relation to a substance. Yet the third hypothesis, that of their coexistence in all time, is equally incomprehensible; for this is to merge the Absolute and Infinite in an eternal relation and difference. We cannot conceive God as first existing, and then as creating His own attributes; for the creative power must then itself be created. Nor yet can we conceive the Divine Essence as constituted by the eternal coexistence of attributes; for then we have many Infinities, with no bond of unity between them. The Mystery of the Many and the One, which has baffled philosophy ever since philosophy began, meets it here, as everywhere, with its eternal riddle. Reason gains nothing by repudiating Revelation; for the mystery of Revelation is the mystery of Reason also.” —(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 174-178.)

I have not curtailed this extract, long as it is, because I would not have you, or any reader, derive your notion of the course of argument from my statement. The remarks I have to make upon it are very obvious; after what has been said on the former Lectures, they will occur to you at once. But I must set them forth fully, that you may not accuse me of being merely an objector.

Consider then that the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, is the Name into which an immense majority of all the children in Christendom, for at least fourteen centuries, have been baptized. Consider how it has entered into all the thought, the speech, the laws, of the most civilized nations. Consider how it was debated for centuries, and how the debates about it affected the condition of the whole Roman Empire, in the West and in the East. Consider the facts which illustrate this conflict, as they are set forth to us, not by some ecclesiastical historian, but by Gibbon. Consider how the belief in the Trinity affected and determined the whole life and thought of the centuries which compose what we call the Middle Ages. Consider how it became the subject of debate after the Reformation as it had been before, in Geneva as it was at Rome. Consider what questions it has engendered in our own land; how, in spite of the forms of our Church—which are constructed upon the acknowledgment of it, which connect it with every old psalm and modern prayer,—it almost ceased to be believed in the last century, both among Churchmen and Dissenters. Consider how that great revival of conscious faith to which I have alluded before, brought back this belief with it, and changed the character of religious feeling in England. Consider how that conscious faith nevertheless was always apt to regard this theological principle chiefly in relation to its own movements, so that it seemed as if the Divine Being were living to accomplish certain blessings for certain of His creatures. Consider what a reaction there has been against this antitheological temper, not in Germany more than in England, not among Rationalists more than among ecclesiastical Dogmatists. Consider how, after all this conflict for sixteen or seventeen centuries, the most accomplished advocate for orthodoxy in Oxford stands forth to plead that this doctrine has not left the problem of the Many and the One in greater perplexity than former ages have left it; that if the theologian compels us to receive it, the philosopher may compel us to receive something quite as strange and monstrous! Is it really come to this? Is this the best hope that is left for those who have to fight their way through the world,—for those who had believed that there was an everlasting Name in which they could rest when they could fight no longer?

Surely the disbelievers in the doctrine of the Trinity never can have felt as much satisfaction in any of their own arguments as in this elaborate refutation of them! When they have spoken scornfully of battles about an iota,—when they have affirmed that we have substituted an unintelligible formula for great moral principles, and have forced men’s assent to it, by the sacrifice of them,—when they have appealed to all the bitter persecutions that in different ages have been waged by Athanasians against Arians, by Arians against Athanasians, as evidence that the Gospel of Peace and Goodwill has suffered from our Creed, and that mankind would have been better without it,—they have had a secret misgiving that there was something behind of which they had not taken account, some other facts besides these which are quite as pregnant of meaning. They have been forced to say to themselves, ‘Yes! but how has the faith stood in spite of the formalism of doctors, the fury of persecutors, the apparent interest of nations, the obvious inclination of many Protestant Churches,—for a long time of the English,—to throw it overboard as a troublesome badge which might be exchanged for some other much less perplexing? Why have experiments for this purpose not been successful? Why was Unitarianism more popular and triumphant in the last century than in this? Why has it been shaken not merely by a more fervid belief, but by the great political and philosophical movements which seemed likely to establish its ascendency? Why are we less satisfied with our own traditions now, when the general dislike of dogmatism might seem to promise them a reception,—more uncertain about the solidity of our own negative reasonings when they can be propounded without peril, and when there are so many discontented hearts ripe for shaking? May there not be some moral principle, may there not be some social principle involved in what has seemed to us a mere logical contradiction? Is there not a region above logic,—a region not of shadows but of realities,—a region where all these relations which exist among us in imperfect forms have their archetypes; where the full meaning of them is satisfied? Might not Revelation of God be the discovery of them to us? May not that which we have deemed an exclusive opinion reconcile actual beliefs that have been possessing men in all ages? May it not point to a Unity deeper than the one which we have made our watchword?’

Such questions do present themselves to serious men whose education and habits of mind put them most out of sympathy with our confessions. Amidst the hot and cold fits which alternate in the experience of every man who is occupied by them, how certainly will these Bampton Lectures be received by him as a great witness in favour of his early conclusions, as a peremptory check upon all the doubts that had been awakened in him as to their possible soundness! ‘Here is the orthodox authority, the latest Apologist—charged with a weight of Oxford and Edinburgh learning,—bringing us the last result of both. He has put forth a defence of the Trinity, which satisfies equally the doctors of the English Sorbonne and the representatives of public opinion in the religious newspapers and magazines. And how does he contemplate the doctrine? Not the least as involving any great moral principles; principles that satisfy the reason, he says we must dispense with. Not the least as connected with the life or history of Mankind. Simply as an opinion; very startling and puzzling, no doubt, but not more startling and puzzling than certain opinions of philosophers. Our fathers at least taught us to believe in a God, and to call him Father. This Oxford schoolman appears to cut the ground even for that faith from under our feet; but he urges us to accept a certain theological tenet respecting the Being we worship, because we really can know nothing of Him; because as He is infinite, and we finite, it is impossible for us to say that this representation of Him may not be as near the truth as any other. Certainly there was need of persecution or bribes to persuade people of the duty of accepting a doctrine which by the showing of its defender could attach itself to no deep or inward conviction! If bribes and persecution should both fail, what will become of it?’

Perhaps this is a result which Mr. Mansel may contemplate with more philosophical indifference than I can. Is he prepared also for another? Has he reflected on the kind of feelings with which the young Churchmen he was addressing would henceforth be tempted to regard the Name with which they were sealed in their infancy, in which they have declared their belief day after day? Can one imagine anything sadder than the dreariness of heart which will come to some devout student, who has thought that the Creed must be everything or nothing, that it must declare what are the pillars of his own being and of the Universe, or else be a mere school quibble, when he finds that it is to be maintained and held fast precisely because by the constitution of our minds we are incapable of refuting it? Yes, I can imagine something sadder still. Jeremy Taylor says, after his wonderful catalogue of the ills that flesh is heir to, “But a careless, merry sinner is worse than all that.” I believe that among Mr. Mansel’s auditors there will have been not a few on whom his words will have acted as a most soothing lullaby; who will have wrapped themselves in comfortable thankfulness that they were not Rationalists, Spiritualists, or even as that German; who will have rejoiced to think that they did not trouble themselves about eternal things which are out of men’s reach, like Puritans and Methodists; who will proclaim that they accept Christianity in the lump, and so are not impeded by any of its little details in thinking and doing what they list. Such men, I believe, do more to lower the moral tone and moral practice of England than all sceptics and infidels together. As far as they themselves are concerned, I should think their self-contentment was worse than all that pain and restlessness which some of their companions will have experienced as they listened to these logical demonstrations.

But the more gloomy these consequences appear to me, the more certain I feel that they will only be temporary, and that good, even the highest good, is to come out of a course of reasoning which in itself I regard as pernicious. If there has been, as nearly all of us feel that there has been, a fearful amount of hardness and cruelty in the methods by which Churchmen in all ages have pleaded for their Creeds; if this hardness and cruelty seem to have been always closely connected with the feeling that they were their Creeds, the utterance of their opinions, which were therefore to be defended by such weapons as they could call into play, swords when they could be had, the bitterness of words when these were wanting; if one finds—mixed with this belief that no schemes for vindicating the doctrines of the Creed were too savage—a belief that the Name which the Creed uttered was the expression of the Perfect All-embracing Charity; if with that zeal for our opinion has been combined a rooted conviction that it was not an opinion at all for which we are fighting, but for Him before whom the angels veil their faces, for Him who knoweth our thoughts long before, for Him whom we are permitted to know because He has Himself removed the veil which conceals Himself from us, and has met us in that Son, by whom He created the world, in whom all things consist, who is the Light of every man; if there have been these anomalies, practical not logical anomalies, in the life of Christendom, in the life of each one of us,—must there not come a time of sifting and separation, a time when God will burn up our chaff with unquenchable fire, that he may gather His wheat into the garner? Mr. Mansel is the last, the ablest, the most ultra defender of the Trinitarian dogma simply as a dogma. No one before him has so completely exhausted the air about it; no one has so completely reduced it to a formula. Unless some one had appeared to do that, some one to startle us with the question, ‘Is that what you mean? Is that what you believe in?’ we might have gone on for some time longer halting between the most opposite feelings and convictions. Now—thanks be to God!—we shall be obliged to speak. I say for one, ‘I am certain Athanasius did not fight against the world for a Dogma; I am certain I was not baptized into a Dogma. I am certain that Christ did not send forth His disciples to baptize all nations into a Dogma. Athanasius said that he wrestled for the Name of the Living God, which the Logicians would contract into a notion, robbing the poor and needy of that which had been revealed to them. The minister said that he baptized me into that Name. Our Lord bade His Apostles baptize all Nations into that Name. I believe it to be the Name on which I stand as a Member of the Universal Family in Heaven and Earth. I believe it is the Name which sustains that Universal Family. I thank Him in whom I believe that He has given different ages such a sense of the sacredness and importance of that Name. I thank Him that He has allowed it to be a subject of such infinite controversies, since so it has seemed good in His sight. I am sure they have all contributed to the discovery of His truth and the exposure of our falsehood and ignorance. I confess to Him that as the Israelites sinned against that name of the God of Abraham, and that name of the I Am, which was revealed to them, not owning Him to be the ground and ruler of their Family and their Nation, not obeying His laws and being the instruments of His purposes, but setting up gods of their own, gods after their own likeness, and making them their lords—afterwards, when this sin had been grievously punished, using his own Holy Name and the covenant that they were to be a blessing to all the families of the earth as an excuse for self-exaltation, and for contempt of all families of the earth but their own,—so have we, the members of the Universal Church, sinned more grievously, first, in setting up creatures of our own race and visible things as objects of the reverence and honour which are owing to Him in whom we live and move and are; then turning His all-uniting, all-loving Name, which we were to proclaim to all people, into an excuse for the glorification of our own opinion. Which evil if He winked at in the ages that are past, I am sure He is now calling us all everywhere to repent of, because He is giving clear tokens that He will judge us by that Son of Man whom He has set over us; that He will call us to account for the knowledge we have possessed and the privileges we have abused; and that if we have been found unfaithful stewards of His mysteries, He will discover them to other tribes of the earth, who cry for that revelation of the Unseen and Eternal which we have made light of, and at last have denied that we possess.’

To this issue, I believe, Mr. Mansel’s apologies are helping to bring us, and therefore I cannot but trust they will do an important service for the Church, though not, perhaps, exactly what their author or his admirers have looked for. I am less anxious to follow him into the second topic of the sixth Lecture, the Union of the two Natures in Christ,—because I have spoken so much on the subject already, directly in my fourth Letter, incidentally in every other. But I have a special reason for quoting the following passage, which I am sure is a favourite one with Mr. Mansel’s disciples.

“Let Religion begin where it will, it must begin with that which is above Reason. What then do we gain by that parsimony of belief, which strives to deal out the Infinite in infinitesimal fragments, and to erect the largest possible superstructure of deduction upon the smallest possible foundation of faith? We gain just this; that we forsake an incomprehensible doctrine, which rests upon the word of God, for one equally incomprehensible, which rests upon the word of a man. Religion, to be a relation between God and man at all, must rest on a belief in the Infinite, and also on a belief in the Finite; for if we deny the first, there is no God; and if we deny the second, there is no Man. But the coexistence of the Infinite and the Finite, in any manner whatever, is inconceivable by reason; and the only ground that can be taken for accepting one representation of it, rather than another, is that one is revealed, and another is not revealed. We may seek as we will for a ‘Religion within the limits of the bare Reason;’ and we shall not find it; simply because no such thing exists; and if we dream for a moment that it does exist, it is only because we are unable or unwilling to pursue reason to its final consequences. But if we do not, others will; and the system which we have raised on the shifting basis of our arbitrary resting-place, waits only till the wind of controversy blows against it, and the flood of unbelief descends upon it, to manifest itself as the work of the ‘foolish man which built his house upon the sand.’”— (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 182, 183.)

This passage is a reply to a treatise of Kant, or rather to the title of a treatise of Kant, ‘Religion, within the bounds of mere Reason.’ I need hardly say, that the ordinary Englishman would attach very little sense to this title. He would not know what Kant intended by the pure reason. He would only have a vague, hazy impression of what Kant intended by Religion, possibly of what he intends by it himself. But he would have little doubt that he understood Mr. Mansel’s first sentence perfectly. If he were an earnest, devout man, a man with a strong “religious consciousness,” he would probably exclaim, ‘I am sure the Lecturer is right. I am sure that when I believe in Christ, I rise above my reason, my thoughts, myself. I leave the appearances and fantasies which have deluded me in the world; I enter into converse with divine realities; my faith brings me directly into contact with them. Does the German philosopher deny this? How little he can have known of the Scriptures, or of the powers of the unseen world!’ Such a person, you see, this religious Englishman, will admire Mr. Mansel’s language, and sympathize with it, because he gives it that sense which the Bampton Lectures are written to prove is an untenable and impossible sense. Our old English poet says,—

Except he can Above himself erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

The moral of the Bampton Lectures is, ‘If he tries by one means or another above himself to erect himself, what a fool is man!’ I am not now arguing the point, Which is right? I am merely showing that Daniel expressed what is the ordinary conviction among pious people who are not philosophers; I am showing how much Mr. Mansel will owe the character which he obtains among English believers, as a defender of the Faith against Germans, to an entire misapprehension of his object; how far more they would disagree with him than with Kant, if they understood the purpose of either.

So the same Englishman would respond as eagerly to the second sentence in this extract, even if he could not construe satisfactorily every phrase in it. “What do we gain by that parsimony of faith which strives to deal out the Infinite in infinitesimal fragments, and to erect the largest possible superstructure of deductions, upon the smallest possible foundation of faith?” ‘That sounds very grand language,’ the reader will exclaim. ‘And surely it is miserable parsimony not to trust a Being who has made known His Name to us, who has shown himself to be our Protector and Deliverer, righteous in all His ways, holy in all His works. If we do not trust Him, we shall be thrown back upon a trust in what is not true, not trustworthy,—in enchanters and miracle-workers, in notions of our own minds, in finite and feeble creatures like ourselves.’

How painful to Mr. Mansel must be such approbation as this! He is aware that the faith for which he is contending, is not to be parsimonious, simply because it is beyond the region of all knowledge, because “the coexistence of the Infinite and the Finite in any manner whatsoever, is inconceivable by the reason,” and because, since “Religion” demands their coexistence, faith is to admit it ungrudgingly, in any manner whatsoever.

This principle is affirmed in the next clause of the sentence. “The only ground that can be taken for accepting one representation of it rather than another, is that one is revealed, and the other not revealed.” This statement also, taken by itself, would at once receive the applause of those who feel as English Christians generally feel. They would say, ‘Unless God had revealed Himself to us in His only-begotten Son, how could we have discovered the relation which exists between us and Him? We might have dreamt that we had a Father; we could never have known that we had access to that Father, that He felt to us as children, if there had not been the revelation of the Son of God and the Son of Man, in whom He knows us, and in whom we may know Him. Yes, as Mr. Mansel says, it must be all revelation.’ But the agreement here is even more hollow than in the other cases; the difference between those who use the common phrases is wider. The ordinary British Christian accepts the Bible with unbounded thankfulness, as discovering to him the ground upon which he actually stands, the relation between the eternal Father and His family on earth, which existed in the Person of the only-begotten Son before the worlds were, and which was manifested in the fullness of time, when that Son, who was the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His Person, took flesh and dwelt among men, and when having by Himself purged our sins He sat down at the right-hand of the Majesty on high. Am I wrong in saying that this is the inmost, deepest faith of those who grow up under the influence of our prayers and sacraments, and who find in the Scriptures their daily food? Am I wrong in saying that they would feel the most utter revolting if they were told that any representation of the union between the Infinite and the Finite is just as suitable to the human constitution, is in itself just as reasonable, as that which they have believed to be the ground of all things in earth and heaven?

Mr. Mansel will say, however, ‘I am not writing for simple Christians, but for those whose minds have been perplexed by philosophical doubts and speculations.’ I apprehend that what is truth for the one is truth for the other. The union of the two natures in our Lord is either a mere notion or dogma contained in a book, or it is the deepest reality. It is either a mere representation of the union of the Finite and Infinite, to be accepted because we can know nothing about that union; or it is the actual discovery of what the Eternal Being is in the Person of a Man. Again and again I must repeat this proposition; again and again I must affirm that for every common wayfarer it is a question of life and death. But I am quite willing to start from the other ground. These statements are expressly intended for those who are perplexed with doubts about the Christian faith, with doubts even about the Being whom they are to worship, or whether there is any such Being. Shall I trace the rise of some of these doubts? For Mr. Mansel has not stated them; he is apparently ignorant of them. He has attributed a number of expressions which he has quoted from English writers of our day to a craving for the license of German Rationalism, to an impatience of faith, when I am well persuaded that they have sprung from the impatience of a very hard Rationalism in which they have felt themselves pent up, from a desire for something which they can believe.

I endeavoured to show you in my last Letter how some of those who had felt their own personal reliance in Christ most strongly, who had owned Him as their Deliverer and Reconciler, had perceived the need of a foundation for that consciousness which was liable to many fluctuations, and which could never be its own foundation. The most vigorous of these men became stern Calvinists. That which remained the same amidst all their changes of feeling was the absolute will and purpose of God; to rely upon that was to be at rest. They did rely upon it. They did find rest in it. Yes; and they derived from it the power to act bravely and nobly. How did they find out what this Will or purpose was? That which made them righteous they were sure must be righteous. That which raised them out of their sin must be the foe of sin. So long as they were only accounting for what they found in themselves, here was, it seems to me, a grand and a safe theology. But when they passed beyond themselves, the theology had to undergo terrible alterations. That Will which chose men in Christ before the worlds were, to be holy and unblamable in love, became emphatically a Self-will. Its absolute right to choose some and reject others was more and more regarded as its fundamental characteristic. When the first generation of those excellent men to whom this theology was really an interpretation of what they had experienced had passed away,——when it was transmitted as a formal bequest to men who cared for it chiefly as an interpretation of the condition of the world,—it assumed a horror which must be felt before it can be described. And yet the attempts to mitigate it by feeble Arminian or semi-Calvinistical statements, were equally offensive to the logical intellect and the practical conscience. They were felt to be poor compromises that could never clear away any actual difficulty, or be any source of action. Men might acquiesce in them just because they did not care for them; because they found a real principle upon which they could stand, and which had the smallest possible connection with the notion that pretended to represent it.

Those who could not acquiesce in these middle ways, these nothings of popular or scholastic dogmatism, began to ask whether there was not some basis to be found somewhere that was not merely arbitrary, or, as Mr. Mansel expresses it more diffusely, “not raised on the shifting base of an arbitrary resting-place.” Possibly that basis might be found in a religion within the bounds of the pure reason. It was surely worth while to inquire. I believe, as far as I understand what that religion is, that they will not find what they seek there, that they will never be satisfied with any religion at all, or aught save a living God; that they will find the pure reason to be the purified eye of the spirit which sees Him, and that they will not desire to enclose Him within its limits more than they would enclose the sun within the limits of the bodily eye. Nevertheless I rejoice that they should make a trial which I believe will lead to this result; I rejoice that they should ask whether there is not a Will and Purpose to all Right and Good. I am sure that when they perceive there is, they will be more in harmony with their old and revered fathers than ever they were. I dare not doubt that those fathers are themselves, in various ways unknown to us, aiding them in the search. I rejoice also that they should feel that this Will to all good must stand in the closest and most intimate connection to the good will that is in them, in most direct opposition to the evil will that is in them. And seeing that I find this perfect manifestation of the Will to all Good, of the Light in which is no darkness at all, of the eternal, unchangeable, perfect Being, of the Father of our spirits, in Him who was made of a woman and died upon the cross, seeing in the union in Him of the divine nature with the human, I perceive the full relation which must exist between the Infinite and the Finite, the good in God and the good in man,—seeing that I find here a ground for each man’s goodness and salvation from evil to rest upon, and at the same time a ground for all humanity to rest upon—I do believe that through all perplexities and confusions, after all attempts to eliminate the idea from the fact or to take the fact without the idea, God will bring these questioners back to the old, childlike faith in the divine humanity of Christ, and will show them and will show us that that is a rock which will not be shaken, which will prove its strength by every ‘wind of controversy that blows against it and every flood of unbelief that descends upon it.’

How much comfort these inquirers will derive from Mr. Mansel’s assurance that they can find out nothing about the Infinite and the Eternal, that the Ruler of all may be the mere sovereign they have been told He is, that the Incarnation of Christ affords no clue to His inmost Nature, I leave you to judge. He will answer, perhaps, that he never dreamed of giving them comfort, he wished to teach them their absurdity. No doubt; but what I contend is that it is our absurdity as well as theirs. It is the absurdity of our English faith, of our English education. It is the absurdity of our Prayers and our Creeds; it is the absurdity not of the German national character,—of that which is said to be ‘savage in reason’ and to ‘feed on chimeras,’—but of that character which is the most indifferent to theories, the most contemptuous of chimeras, under the sun. This is a point upon which I must dwell a little longer, because it connects this subject with the one which comes next under Mr. Mansel’s review.

While I was tracing the steps by which men whose minds are especially Christian have been led to seek for a Divine and Eternal Will, as the root of their faith and hope, I could not help suspecting that some would say, ‘There are such persons, assuredly; we have met with them; they form a remarkable element in modern English society. But we cannot say that they are characteristic of England; their faith and experience, though most real, and touching at certain points on what we all are or would wish to be, we suspect are alien from our national habits. John Bull did not look kindly upon them formerly. Even now he welcomes them rather surlily; he accepts them as the antagonists of another class of feelings which he dislikes more. He is willing to encourage the Methodist or the Calvinist against the Romanist; that is all that can be said.’

Such statements as these have a meaning, though it is one which is liable to great perversion. The purely Christian movement of the last century—I mean that which led to the sense of the individual relation of men to Christ—unquestionably encountered a tremendous opposition, not only from the unbelief but from the faith which had been existing in the land previously. I use the words advisedly. There was a faith in God as a Creator, a faith in Him as the God of Righteousness and Order, which if not always deep, was real. It was shaken by a collision with the new thoughts which seemed to start from a different ground, to begin from the sense of personal evil and the need of personal forgiveness. Those old convictions easily passed into a mere Physico-Theology, or into a thin modification of Unitarianism. They took no hold of actual sinners; of human beings who wanted to find out a Father of themselves, not a Creator of the Planets. But they were convictions. They eagerly welcomed those arguments from Design and Adaptation which came in to confirm their own weakness. Those who held them were glad to acknowledge the Gospels as setting forth the character of a Man who must have been sent from a divine Being, must have been His chief messenger, because He was so good. They were glad to think that He had brought adequate attestation of His mission by doing very good and wonderful works. The further proofs that those persons who spoke of Him were not likely to deceive or be deceived, harmonized all with their previous dispositions. A people used to discriminate by practical tests rogues from honest men, valued such proofs when they were skilfully drawn out. The direction of the thoughts of Englishmen towards physical and mechanical studies favoured what I may call the less human side of this Theology; their domestic habits redeemed it from mere coldness, and led them gladly to think of God as a Parent, even when their arguments pointed to little more than an Opifex mundi.

Before I speak of the way in which this faith in a God of Truth and Order which our fathers cherished may be reconciled with that which appeared to strive with it and contradict it, and how each may contribute to our moral strength, I must show you that Mr. Mansel is as effectually undermining the one as the other. If the man of individual conscious faith, when he seeks for some foundation for that faith in a Righteous Will which is the eternal ground of things, is met by the announcement that he has no faculties wherewith to take cognizance of such a Being, the man who starts from the assumption of such a Being and thinks that he discovers corroborative evidence of His existence in Nature, is equally thrown aback by being told that his thoughts have taken an unlawful spring; that for his finite mind to pretend even to make plausible guesses about the Infinite is monstrous. And no discourses respecting ‘the personal life of Jesus’ can in the very least degree fill up the void which you have created in this man’s soul. It is the belief of an Unseen God that he has clung to amidst all difficulty; a God exhibited to him, in some degree, in the Order of the Universe, in some degree in the Order of human Life. His knowledge of Him may be imperfect, but such as it is, he clings to it as the best thing he has, and he hopes for more. Mr. Mansel, coming fresh with Kant’s evidence that the arguments from Nature prove nothing but only confirm a conviction already existing, casts away with scorn and indignation Kant’s assurance that the conviction itself is of infinite value, that that is worth all the arguments in the world. He strips the man bare of that upon which he might ground a faith in the God-Man, in Him who reveals the God of Order and Righteousness. He refuses him the opportunity of considering whether that God of Order and Righteousness could have made Himself known to a creation intended to exhibit the image of His Order and Righteousness in another way than this. He will not let him ask himself whether, if this Perfect Man is the standard of good to man, he has not erred and strayed from that standard, and whether he does not want a Spiritual Restorer and Renovator. He cuts the ground from under the feet of the Naturalist as well as of the Humanist. If each is in some way confessing a God and feeling after Him, the orthodox believer prays him with the most vehement urgency to desist; he is wasting his time; his business is to acquiesce in everything that is told him, and to take it for granted that he can know nothing. I must say the words with all solemnity: the confirmed, self-satisfied atheist is the one person who can receive such tidings without a protest, with perfect complacency.

Surely those cannot, who have been taught in their infancy that the Absolute and Eternal God has taken them to be His own children, the members of Christ, the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. Surely that old English education is based not upon notions, but upon the assumption that we are actually united to the Father of all in His Son; that He is actually guiding us by His Spirit to a consciousness of our own wants: at last, to a knowledge of Him who is the satisfier of them. Such education assumes an actual relation to be the ground of all consciousness of it; an Actual and Living Being to be the ground of the relation. That assumption brings our common human life into harmony with our life as connected with the Kingdom of Heaven; each illustrates the other. The relation to the father and the mother precedes all consciousness of it; the father and the mother have a life of their own, besides their relation to us. Their feelings to us are discovered first; then we seek to be acquainted with themselves, to know their minds, characters, purposes. That relation to a Heavenly Father, which is the ground of our relation to them, is unfolded to us, in like manner, amidst the consciousness of disobedience, distrust, wilfulness, forgiveness. As the common education is pursued, we rise to the awful perception of a personal self—of a personal existence which is not merged in our existence as brothers and sisters. The sense of a law binding our acts is awakened; the sense of laws also which bind our speech, and which bind the things about us,—laws that we and they did not create. With that information, comes the discovery of social bonds, of ties to our fellows which our self-will is always ready to break. The higher spiritual lessons interpret these. We have ties to other men, because there is a Son of Man who unites us all together; we begin to perceive that the Lord of us and of our family must be the Lord of Nature. Then comes the rite of Confirmation, the witness of a Spirit guiding our spirit. When we are no more under the guidance of apparent, visible teachers, we are assured of the Presence of a Spirit, who will awaken our human sympathies, show us the root of them in the Will and Mind of God, who will bring us into awful communion with that Loving, Just, Self-sacrificing Will, the ground of all Love and Justice and Self-sacrifice among us.

I am not speaking of this education to those who despise it, but to those who wish us to preserve our English institutions, and to withstand all foreign innovations. To those, I would say, ‘See whether it does not contain the greatest and most serious protest that can be borne against Mr. Mansel’s teaching. See whether it does not lead us at every step from the notional to the actual, from phenomena to things, from rules to principles. See whether it does not lead us to seek our interpretation of the difficulties of the finite and the human, in the Infinite and Divine. See whether it does not treat the union of the infinite and the finite, the divine and human in Christ, as the foundation of our practical life.’¹

The last subject discussed in this last Lecture, is the relation of special Interpositions to general Laws. The text of Mr. Mansel’s observation, is a passage from Mr. Greg’s ‘Creed of Christendom,’ in which he speaks of a belief in the efficacy of Prayer as incompatible with a deeply grounded belief in a God of Order. It would not be easy to express how much I differ from Mr. Greg’s conclusion. It would not be easy to express how important I feel his premiss to be. The blank in an Englishman’s mind when the sense of Order is taken from it, when he ceases to associate Order with the Being he worships, is greater than we can dream of. Atheism must enter in and take possession of that empty house. But I will speak especially in reference to the particular topic under discussion. I should have no hopes of ever leading a man who had been robbed of this anchor of his soul, to feel what Prayer is, or why we are permitted and commanded to pray. For prayer is surely a cry to the Judge of the earth against the disorders of the earth,—to the Father of our spirits, against the disorders of our spirits. Because we believe that God is the enemy of such disorders, and that it is His purpose to remove them,—because we believe that man is both the cause of them, and is intended to be God’s instrument in removing them,—because we believe that the Son of Man has come into the world to redress disorders, and that in His name we have access to Him who upholds order, therefore we have a warrant and encouragement to pray without ceasing. And secondly, I could never hope to convince any one whom I had robbed of this faith in a God of Order, of the end and intent of the acts revealed in Scripture, which we call miraculous, especially those which are attributed to our Lord, or of the difference between them and any miracle spoken of in any Pagan, or medieval, or modern legend. For, as I have endeavoured to show in a sermon which accompanies these Letters, the characteristic of our Lord’s acts appears to be especially this, that they are acts for the restoration of order, not for the disturbance of it,—precisely such acts as would show Him to be the King of Men, the source of Life and Health to Men.

Not starting from this idea of Christ’s Incarnation,—viewing it simply as a strange dogma to be received as any other representation of the relation between the finite and infinite might be received,—Mr. Mansel naturally cannot regard the miracles of our Lord in this light. And therefore it is very consistent in him to think that the more difficulties and perplexities he can throw in the way of a believer in divine Order, the more he is promoting the interests of Christianity. It is that unhappy opinion which gives his arguments all their danger. Stripped of their attraction as apologies,—exhibited as mere pleas for scepticism,—any man, with a hundredth part of Mr. Mansel’s ability, would be able to expose their fallacy; the study of Butler would beget a love of Order, a belief in a Source of Order, which would make them powerless. But men whose minds are trembling in a balance, may be determined by them either to reject the Gospel as false, or to accept it as coming from some other God than Him of whom it testifies. And those who are only wanting excuses for an acquiescence that will demand of them no exercise of faith, disturb them in no evil course, rouse them to no duty, may be cast by such pleas for Christianity as these, into a deep mesmeric trance from which nothing will rouse them but the thunders of the Last Day.

Truly yours,