Theological Essays/XI

It is a favourite practice among some writers and thinkers of our day to contrast the vulgar, low-minded animal Jew, with the refined, imaginative, spiritual Greek. The comparison is dwelt on especially by those who wish to deliver us from what we have been used to call the facts, from what they call the legends, of the New Testament. All these, they say, had an ideal truth for the old Greeks, and furnished them with the hints of a thousand beautiful stories. The hard, definite forms in which they have obtained currency throughout Christendom, they owe, we are told, to the intellects of a few Galilæans, below even the average of their countrymen in cultivation, beyond them in coarseness and superstition.

This charge applies more or less directly to all the records of our Lord's life in the Evangelists—to all the articles of the Creed which I have been considering in my recent Essays. But it bears most strongly upon the words, "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty." "Here," it is said, "we have a great idea sensualised and mate​rialised. Humanity is continually longing and striving to ascend above itself. There is always a mysterious heaven which it desires to reach. Ever and anon it feels that it has actually gained a vision of the Infinite towards which it aspires. The Greeks, possessing the creative faculty, had various modes of expressing this truth. The people rejoiced in the symbols; the wise men, indifferent to them, perceived that which was latent in them. The poor Jew could think only of an actual body ascending into some actual Heaven. The Christian Church, unable to divest itself of the same dry habit of mind, has accepted the Jewish dogma. But she has felt the restraint which it imposes. The notion of a present Christ alternates in her teachings with that of One who has gone away. The doctrine of Transubstantiation has represented and perpetuated the contradiction. Protestants have tried to rid themselves of it. They will not do so," these teachers continue, "till they are content to receive the kernel without the shell, to take the idea of the Ascension, and to cast away the story of it."

I have ventured already to encounter the idealists in some of their favourite positions; I can have no wish to shrink from a fair examination of these. I should be taking a very strange course if I denied that the Galilæans were the most ignorant part of a race which was especially inclined to animal worship, which had exhibited that tendency throughout all its history. The Scriptures tell us so; as I accept their testimony, I must believe that it was so. Nor can I make any exception in favour of the fishermen from whom our Lord chose His Apostles. If I did, I should contradict their own repeated statements. No doubt they were ​immeasurably less imaginative than the Greeks, very little able to conceive of a world beyond the range of their senses, or to people it with bright forms. Not only had they little natural capacity for this kind of creation; it was restrained in them by laws, institutions, traditions. They were told that the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, had chosen their fathers to know Him, and to spread abroad the knowledge of Him. They were told that they must not think of Him as being like anything in heaven, or earth, or under the earth. They had a great hankering to do so. It was very hard to help such thoughts. What could He be like if He were not like some of these things? From time to time they were ready to fancy Him like the meanest of them; foreigners might suggest that He was like the worthiest, like a man; they were not insensible to the suggestion; still they clung to the law of their fathers.

Were they never to have any knowledge of this Being except what they got from their books and their traditions? How strange and sad it was to read the books, to hear the traditions, if that was the case! For all whose stories were related to them had spoken of actually knowing His name for themselves, of taking refuge in Him, of delighting in Him, of finding Him a high tower from the face of their enemies. Was all this changed? Was He removed to an infinite distance from them,—He who had seemed to promise that the ages to come should know Him better than those to whom He spoke; who had encouraged the fathers to hope that they should leave a richer legacy to their children than any that had come to them, and that it would go on increasing for their heirs?

At times they felt that this could not be; at times ​they knew that it could not be. What times were these? Were they hours of some special freedom from their ordinary cares and dulness, when the peasant was for an instant transfigured by the sight of some glorious sunset, when the fisherman looked into another world below the lake, and heard voices tempting him to come down and behold its wonders? No! it was not then; it was in hours of special toil, sickness, oppression; it was when the child or the friend was taken away; it was when sorrow for the past, doubt in the present, terror of the future, were griping them fast; it was then that the conviction dawned upon them, "He still is;" "He may be known by us," "We may find in Him a refuge, even as David or Isaiah did." And then they perceived how it was that He must be known, if the knowledge was to do them any good, to bring them any comfort; that their hearts, not their eyes, were crying out for the living God; that with their hearts they must perceive Him, if they were ever to throw off their burden and enter into rest.

It was but for a little while they retained that confidence, and that clear understanding; they tried perhaps to keep both alive by asking aid and instruction from some scribe or doctor of the law. He might give them words which would sink into their memories and their hearts, to come up again at some other day; he might give them rules which would bind them with heavy chains, from which afterwards they would struggle in vain to break loose, because they were rules for fitting them to seek that intercourse into which they must enter before they could be fit for it; or rules which bound them to those earthly things and those shameful recollections from which they wanted to be set free.

​But at last there came a Teacher, not removed from them like the Rabbis—a peasant, even as they were,—One who had grown up in their villages, and walked about in their cities,—One who went into all companies, but who seemed to care for no society so much as theirs. And He spoke to them as one having authority. He did not tell them of a God who had been in other days, with whom it was possible for Moses and the prophets to hold converse. He spoke to them of a Father who knew them, the fishermen of Galilee, and whom they might know. He spoke of having come forth from Him. He spoke of His kingdom as the kingdom of Heaven, and yet as one in which they, the meanest sons of earth, could dwell, the secrets of which they might understand, the powers of which they might exert, which they were to assure their own countrymen was at hand, the gates of which they would ultimately open to the world. As He interpreted to them the nature of this kingdom, they more and more felt that He was drawing them from a world which they looked upon with their eyes, into an unseen world which another eye that He was opening must take in; yet a world which was intimately united to the one they were walking in, which gave the forms of that world a distinctness they had never had before. When He wielded the powers of His kingdom, they felt more and more that He governed the secret heart of nature and of man; that spirits were subject to Him; that through them He was acting upon bodies; that all His influences proceeded from within, though at last they left the clearest marks upon that which was visible and outward. It was strange how they were continually striving against this education, trying to invert it, translating His words and acts of power into some low, ​material, ineffectual sense. But it was stranger still how His teaching met all their thoughts and anticipations, in spite of this opposition; how natural it seemed to be, how exactly framed and devised for them; how it harmonised with all they had heard in their Scripture of a righteous and invisible God, who cared for His creatures, and desired that they should seek Him and find Him; how it raised them above those animal inclinations of theirs; what a new feeling of humanity it kindled in them! But the Teacher Himself,—what was He? Might not he who was leading them out of all visible idolatry Himself become the object of it? Could they help regarding Him with such a reverence as interfered with the reverence for Jehovah? Did not the Pharisees continually reproach them with this sin, and Him with encouraging it? There was this danger. What was He doing to deliver them from it? When Simon Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," He said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father in Heaven." When Simon Peter said, "That be far from Thee, Lord, that Thou shouldst be rejected of the chief priests and scribes, and be put to death," He said, "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men." For a moment He was transfigured before them, and His face became bright and glistening; then a cloud covered Him, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is My beloved Son; hear Him;" and He began to speak of His passion, and He came down into the crowd about the boy who had fits. Thus a sense of inward glory belonging to Him, which spirit might apprehend, but the eye could not, was awakened in them; while they saw Him crushing ​and humbling all that they looked upon, all that they could make an excuse for idolatry. And at last the humiliation became complete. They saw Him in agony. The Jewish law sentenced Him as a blasphemer. The Gentile ruler gave Him up as an impostor, who pretended to the crown and the purple. He was not stoned, but crucified. Whatever could put contempt upon a Son of God, or a King, was poured upon Him. The night before His passion He spoke words,—so St. John tells us—which the Apostles could not at all interpret. "For a little while," He said, "they should see Him, and then a little while, and they should not see Him, because He went to His Father." "What is this," they said to themselves, "which He saith, A little while? We cannot tell what He saith." And then "when He saw they were desirous to ask Him," He spoke of a day of bliss to them, which should succeed a night of sorrow; a day when they should feel like the woman who remembers no more the anguish of travail, "for joy that a man is born into the world." That same night, we are told, "He took bread and blessed it, and gave it to His disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you;" and poured out wine, and said, "Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood, the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins." What such words signified they knew not, and could not know. His body was there; within a few hours it was taken down from the cross and laid in a sepulchre. That He would ever rise out of it, they say they had only the faintest dream, in spite of words which encouraged the belief. But, then, they add, that when He did rise, this seemed to them the explanation of all that He had done, and said, and been. They report words which they say they ​heard of Him: "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" If there was such a Son of God and Son of man, as He had led them to believe there was, then it seemed to them strange and monstrous that He should die, but natural and reasonable that He should rise. And soon they seem to have felt it scarcely less natural and necessary that He should ascend to Him from whom they believed that He had come. They relate in a few simple words how they arrived at that conviction, how He educated them into it. He appeared to them while they were met together, the doors being shut for fear of the Jews. He showed them His hands and His side; He ate with them; He vanished out of their sight; He breathed on them; He commanded them to go and baptize all nations: He said, " All power is given unto me in heaven and earth;" He said, "Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

I repeat their story. If it sounds unnatural, inconsistent, grotesque to any, I certainly shall not make it less so by translating it out of their words into mine. But at all events this was clearly the effect of what they heard and saw, or fancied or pretended they heard and saw. They felt, "This Lord of ours is actually related to us now as He was before He was crucified. He is related to His Father now as He was then. His body is the very body which He had then. But we are not henceforth to see Him often in that body. Our intercourse with Him will not be helped or hindered by the eye. It will be, as it has always been, intercourse with a divine Teacher, with a Guide and Enlightener of our Spirits. It may be—must be—immeasurably more perfect than it has been, because He has been Himself cultivating and preparing us for it so ​long. But it must be, as He has always taught us to expect, intercourse with Him as the Head of a great kingdom, as the Lord of men, as One who has a work for us to do on behalf of men. It will be real and blessed if we enter into that work; if we do it as those whom He has called to do it; if we do not seek to appropriate Him to ourselves, to confine Him within our boundaries; if we remember that He is to fill all things, to bind earth and heaven in Himself. It must be—as He told us it would be—henceforth awful intercourse with the Father through Him, so that as in Him God has stooped to us, in Him we may ascend to God."

"We may ascend to God! Why, that is the ideal language. You are now translating Hebrew into Greek." If I am, I am doing what the Apostles did. Their minds—the minds of these dull Galileans—were idealised, spiritualised. It is what I wish you to observe; and I wish you to observe also the process by which this strange transformation was wrought. A person whom they had known, with whom they felt that they were inseparably, eternally united, had gone out of this world; to what place they knew not, nor cared to know; but certainly to His Father, certainly to Him with whom He had always been one, with whom He had come to make them one, whom He had declared and proved to be their Father, as well as His Father. It was the great witness and demonstration to them that they were spirits having bodies, that they were not bodies into which a certain ethereal particle, called spirits, was infused. That which conversed with God was not something accidental to them, but their substance. And this too was that by which they held converse with each other. Without this there was no ​possibility of their feeling together, suffering together, hoping together. With this, it was possible to feel, suffer, hope with all men, with the whole universe. But was it necessary to forget that Christ had a body in order that they might enter into this fellowship with His Father and with His brethren? If they did forget that, the fellowship would cease, and their spirits would fall again into their old slavery. For this is the pledge of their union to Him; His victory in the body, over the body, for the body, is theirs also. They could claim the dignity of spirits, because they were one with Him who had redeemed the body and made it spiritual. They could have fellowship with all sufferers in the body, because He had suffered and died, and was the common Lord of all. They could rise to communion with the Father of Spirits, because there was One in a body who was His well-beloved Son, and who had offered Himself for them.

The disciples of Christ, having gained this learning, could enter into the force of those words spoken at the Paschal supper, which had been at first merely bewildering. They could remember how at Capernaum He had spoken of His flesh being meat indeed, of His blood being drink indeed; how He had said that His flesh would be given for the life of the world; how, when some were offended, He said, "The spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing;" and how He had connected these apparent contradictions with the question, "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?" And now, as they ate the bread and drank the wine, according to His commandment, they could receive these tokens as the surest pledges that they were risen with Him; that they were in His presence as much as ever; that they had ​no life in themselves; that the life of the world was in Him; that His flesh and blood were indeed the bond between the creatures and the Creator, between the creatures and each other.

You see, then, how careful the Apostles are to impress us with that fact, which wise men, who do not in general consider them trustworthy authorities, are also so anxious to impress us with, that they were very stupid people—on a level with the most stupid. Thus they show that the great experiment of what man is and what he is meant for, was made in corpore vili; so that none could say, "This lesson is not for me; I cannot claim to be a spiritual being, and to be risen and ascended with Christ."

These Galileans, not being men of any gifts of soul, not men whose race or general culture led them to magnify the soul above the body, yet came to such an apprehension of the spiritual condition and glory of man,—to such a practical apprehension of it,—as no sages in any country had ever reached; I say of Man; for this was necessarily involved in the discovery that they were not better than the worst of their countrymen, and that Christ had cared for the worst and taken their nature. Though, as their mission was to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, all they needed, generally, to proclaim was, that the silliest of those sheep,—the one who had wandered farthest,—had an interest in the sufferings and triumphs of the good Shepherd.

But there came a time when a Jew of Tarsus felt that he was called to go forth and tell Greeks that they were possessors of the blessings of the children of Abraham. The blessings of the children of Abraham! What a message to bring to the most graceful and ​refined people on the earth, that they might share the privileges of those whom they accounted the most coarse and inhuman? To assure those who believed that they must be meant, in one way or other, to bear rule over mankind, because they had souls and the majority of men only an animal nature, that they might become what some of the least intellectual of that miserable majority already were! And yet this was the proclamation of the Jewish tent-maker. And instead of its seeming to him or to his countrymen a message which flattered their national pride, Saul declared that, until that pride was crushed in him by a revelation of Jesus the Son of God,—until he knew Him to be indeed the King of his own spirit, and the risen and ascended King of the whole earth, he could not endure the thought that the Greek was cared for by the God whom he worshipped, and was a member of the same body with himself. When he did with his whole heart acknowledge that truth, and was convinced that he had a commission to declare it, Greeks, who had been given up to dæmon-worship, and whose thoughts of that which was divine had found the most exquisite visible forms to clothe themselves in, turned with wonder and awe to the invisible Lord whom the poor Syrian tribe had for centuries been confessing; claimed Him as the common Father of them and the barbarians; owned that one perfect human image of Him had been manifested, and that all the images which they had formed must be cast away; believed that a way was opened into His presence for them and for all, through the Mediator who was in their nature at His right hand. On this ground a Church of men, taken out of all nations and kindreds, stood; this was the bond of their fellowship; this destroyed the divi​sions which locality, race, individual temperament, old traditions, private judgments, had established among them. And when they met, as St. Paul told them they were to meet, and kept that feast which Christ had instituted the same night that He was betrayed; they met to have fellowship with a Lord who had ascended in that body which He had offered up, and which death could not hold; they met in the assurance that they were risen with Him and brought into His presence; they met to realise their union with the whole family in heaven and earth, which was named in Him the elder Brother of it; they met to give thanks in Him, to the Father who had made them meet to be partakers of an inheritance with the saints in light.

But St. Paul discovered in each one of these churches tendencies which were threatening the existence of this communion, and were bringing back all Judaism, all idolatries, all local divisions, the materialism of old traditions, the spiritual conceits of those who had not been taught to suspect themselves, and to know that they knew nothing. He encountered each of these tendencies as he saw it rising; traced it to its source; pointed out the habits that were akin to it, and that were fostering it. Among the Corinthians he discovered the love of faction and party leaders, which was so specially Greek; among the Galatians, the influence of teachers who persuaded them that the Jew had still a position higher and diviner than that of the other men, and that they must become Jews if they were to have God's favour; in the Colossians, speculations about angels, dæmons, emanations; all that constituted the philosophised mythology of Orientals or Greeks. There is something peculiarly adapted to this ​last habit of mind in the words which we find in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." He wished to remind the philosophers who were trying to scale heaven by their theories, that they would be baffled, as all the giants of former days had been. He wished to show them that what they called spirituality was not that at all; that it was merely the exaltation of the soul at the expense of the body, of the sage at the expense of the common man, and that it led by a very direct road to the degradation of Humanity. He wished them to see how—not the soul of the sage—but the man, had been exalted in the exaltation of Christ; how the whole body, and not some of its choice members, might claim to be risen with Him; how impossible it was for any one to rise who tried to rise by himself, or to set himself in anywise apart from his brethren. But though there is this special appropriateness in the words, they are generally applicable to all conditions of the Church which St. Paul discovered then, or which he expected might exist hereafter. They point out, I think, what would be the source of various diseases, and what would be the one remedy for them.

When we hear the words, "If ye be risen with Christ," our first inclination is probably to say, "It is not an actual rising, of course, which he means; the language is metaphorical. We are to rise, as one of the collects expresses it, in heart and mind." Now, Paley, who had a broad, simple, English nature, who was a utilitarian by profession, and who had as little tendency to mysticism as any one who ever lived, was struck especially by the business-like quality of St. ​Paul's mind. You may say, Paley was an advocate; he held a brief for St. Paul. No doubt; but he need not have chosen that peculiar merit for his panegyric; there were a thousand stereotyped commonplaces about devotion, intrepidity, self-sacrifice, which would have done as well. He would certainly have resorted to them, and not to this phrase, if he had thought Paul was in the habit of using metaphors when he was writing on grave practical topics. No man of business would do that, and therefore Paley, whatever construction he might have put on, or have abstained from putting on, such passages as these, which are so familiar to every reader of St. Paul, so characteristic of his style and of the man, certainly must have concluded that they were not pieces of fine writing, not flourishes of rhetoric; that they were unlike those expressions of poets or philosophers, which are far from being unmeaning or nonsensical, but which he would have deemed so, about the wings of Psyche, or the ascent of the divine in man into its native element. Our Archdeacon must have perceived, with his shrewd northern common sense, that St. Paul, though very unlike him in most respects, was just as substantial as he was, just as little of a dreamer or a sentimentalist; that there was a connection between what he said of spirit and "business."

It is precisely this connection which I have been endeavouring to trace, and which marks out St. Paul as "a Hebrew of the Hebrews." The Teacher whom the other Apostles had known after the flesh trained him, by discipline not less regular, mysterious, and severe than theirs, to know that the spirit is the substantial part of man; that he is, because he is made in the image of God, who is a Spirit; that he is in a ​fallen, anomalous condition, when the senses which connect him with the earth are his rulers, and he judges what he is from them; that he is in a restored, risen, regenerate condition, when he is able to assert his glory as a spiritual being by asserting his relation to God. Believing, therefore, that God had regenerated and restored Humanity in Christ, that He had called men to claim their relation to the Father through the Son, he could say boldly, "You are risen with Christ." "It is not a metaphor or fancy that you are; you will be always in a region of metaphors and fancies, always shaping some dream of a nobler life out of the coarse material of your earthly existence, until you take up this position. Then all becomes simple and real. There is no more a straining after some high ideal; the most quiet, reasonable life you can lead is that of creatures who are raised into union and fellowship with a higher nature; who are continually looking up to Him, in weakness and dependence leaning upon Him, confident that He can lift you, and is lifting you, above all the things which He has put in subjection to you, and is giving you the power to use them as your ministers, and to consecrate them to Him. And because you know how these things have corrupted you, and enslaved you, and become your idols, therefore as risen creatures, as regenerate sons of God, seek the things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Claim your portion in the eternal Truth and Love and Righteousness which He has manifested to you, and of which He has made you heirs; have done with all earth-born phantoms, superstitions, conceits, fears. They will cling about you, as all grovelling lusts and filthy imaginations will likewise. But give entertain​ment neither to one nor to the other. You can disengage yourselves from them. For you are members of Christ's body, and Christ is at the right hand of God. And if you say, 'But the earthly attraction is too mighty, and the sense of past evil and slavery recurs continually, and the moment we seem to rise we are fallen again, and when we seek to be united to our brethren, then come in all low, petty thoughts about ourselves; and when we want to rule the world for God, the world gets the mastery, and rules us for the Devil;' then, I say, remember the words, 'My flesh is meat indeed, my blood is drink indeed.' Be assured that He who is at the right hand of God is not merely a spiritual being separated from you: He is in your nature, He has taken your flesh; He has redeemed it, glorified it! Come, then, brother man, not as a fine, dainty, selfish epicure, to seek some special and solitary blessings for yourself; but come as one of a family, to seize a common food which is given to all, a sacrifice which has been offered for all. Come, and eat it in haste, with your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand, as a man who has a journey before him and work in hand—as a pilgrim, not as a philosopher. But again: eat it, all of you, as risen men, as spiritual creatures; not as those who are peeping into the ground and muttering, to ask the aid of some familiar spirit; not as those who come with cowardly prostration before a dæmon whose favour they are bribing; but as those who have their habitation and their polity with Christ, their Representative and Intercessor."

If the Greeks, with their high spirituality, had anything to produce which was more spiritual than this,—if, with their Humanity, they had anything ​which was more human,—it is a pity they did not bring it forth in those three centuries when they were struggling, with every possible advantage, against the Christian Church. But I think the more we look into the history of that Church in those centuries, and in all that have succeeded them, the more we shall perceive that it has become earthly, debased, superstitious, inhuman, just in proportion as it has lost hold of this truth of Christ's actual ascension; just in proportion as it has substituted a mere symbolical or ideal ascension for that; just in proportion as the Greek notion of men rising and ascending by dint of high gift of soul into gods, has superseded the notion of the fishermen and the tentmaker, that they and the humblest men are risen with Christ, and may therefore seek those things that are above.

My readers will perceive at once that this is a natural and direct inference from the doctrine I maintained in my last Essay. I showed then how many of the mischiefs and abominations which had tormented the Church, and made her the oppressor of mankind, arose from her disbelief in Christ as the Regenerator of man. There are some special applications of this statement which belong to the subject I am now considering.

The resurrection and ascension of Christ having been taken by a great portion of the Church as merely extraordinary, anomalous events,—not as events which could not have been otherwise, which exhibit eternal laws, which vindicate the true order and constitution of human existence,-while, at the same time, there has been an assurance that they were necessary to men, and that they must in some way be pattern events—examples of that which men were to be and to do,—a series of acts, attesting the power of spirit ​over body, the capacity of men to overcome the powers of nature, the possibility of rising into communion with the Infinite, has been imagined. These have been considered strange exceptions in the order of the world; and being such, the whole inventive power of the human spirit has been employed in decking them out, and connecting them with the life of some favourite saint or hero. By degrees it has been discovered that a number of these triumphs may be referred to ordinary principles and laws which govern the human frame and the course of nature; that other portions of the stories are traceable to mistake, confused reporting, or direct fraud. Still, not merely the affections of men, but their consciences, have clung to these instances of an actual connection between the spiritual and the external world, and of the dominion of the first over the second. In vain you produce the clearest evidences of imposture; in vain you talk of natural causes. The heart of man says, "Here are signs of a faith which was not false, but true; here are tokens of that which is not natural, but supernatural." And now a new change is evidently taking place. Science itself is becoming dynamical rather than mechanical; powers and agencies are discovered in nature itself not less mysterious than those which miracle-workers spoke of. Man is able, through science, to exercise such powers as seem to attest the dominion of spirit over nature more completely than any signs they wrought. The victories of the old artist over the marble, the mysterious energy by which he compelled it to express the thoughts and emotions of living beings, are leading many whom these facts do not impress, in the same direction; the legends of Greece are received as strik​ing commentaries on the powers of her sculptors and poets. The Romish priests, as teachers of youth, see that a movement is going on very like that which the Popes rashly encouraged at the revival of letters. Some of them cry out that it must be checked. "Let us have as little science as we can. The old notions about the sun are safer than the new. They must be restored, if possible. Let us banish the classics from our schools. The Greek legends are corrupting our youth. They and profane art must be proscribed." It is impossible not to see that many in Protestant England, who hate these priests on other grounds, would be ready to join them in their prohibitions. There are those among us who think that the facts of science, unless they are well sifted and sorted by religious men, and mixed with religious maxims, are likely to disturb the faith of the people, and that the beautiful forms of Greek sculpture, especially if they are not clothed, and made unnatural, must corrupt their morals. I shudder at these notions, but I do not wonder at them. It seems to me that the Romish protesters are wise in their generation. If their disciples are to learn fictions, it is better they should not be able to compare them with facts; it is not well that they should know how many of their stories are borrowed from Pagan sources, and how much less pure the copies are than the originals. On higher grounds they may be right in thinking that those who are not allowed to read the Scriptures in their simplicity and breadth have no standard for judging of what is good and evil in other literature, and had better be kept from it altogether. The existence of such feelings amongst us is far less excusable. Our education in the Bible ought to have taught us to believe in ​a God of Truth; to reverence facts, because they must be His facts; to long that laws should be discovered, because they are His; to fear nothing but what is false—that being certainly of the Devil. Our Bible culture ought to have made us understand that nothing is impure save the corrupt and darkened conscience and will, and that that may convert all things, even the holy words of inspiration, into its own nature. The breadth, simplicity, nakedness of the Scripture language should have taught us to dread what is disguised and dressed up for the purpose of concealment as immoral and dangerous; to regard the study of forms as they came from the divine hand, with the beauty which He has impressed upon them, as safe and elevating. Such has been the effect of the Bible upon the daughters of England; if her sons manifest it less, the Greek legends are not to blame. Those, like Milton, who have been most deeply penetrated by the meaning of these, if their minds have had a sound Hebrew root, have been the purest and the bravest. I do not believe any single man of us can look back and say, "It was this culture, or my diligence in seeking it, which has done me injury." It was a want of zeal and sincerity somewhere else. It was that the words the boy heard in church, or was compelled to learn about the religion of his countrymen, did not present themselves to him as connected with those which he was reading in his Greek or Latin form. One did not illustrate the other; they seemed to be mere contradictions, intended for different creatures. If the heart acknowledged a fellowship and sympathy with the one, it seemed as if the other was frowning disapprobation. The Hebrew Scriptures, and the Creed and Catechism, were taken to be set​ting forth a theory about God. The Greek world was human. And what had the human and divine to do with each other? Yes!—let the words be rung in the ears of our divines till they have taken in the full force of them—our youths ask, What have the divine and human to do with each other? in a country which receives as the cardinal tenet of its theology that Jesus Christ is very God and very Man.

"We accept that tenet, certainly, in a sense." Yes, and, in the name of my countrymen, of our faith, and of God, I demand in what sense? Is it a real sense? Is it a fundamental sense? Is it one which explains the facts of Humanity, or leaves them unexplained? Because if it is, be assured people will get their explanation elsewhere. The Greek legends, all feeble as they are, because they interpret God by human measures, and do not bring men to a divine measure, will yet be preferred to a mere doctrine which puts God at an infinite distance from man, and makes Him an object of dread, not of confidence, to the creatures who are declared to be formed in His image, and who are craving for the knowledge of Him.

These thoughts must press heavily on the heart of every one who studies the condition of England,—especially of her young men,—at this time. The struggle between the tendencies which incline them to regard Christianity as utterly hopeless,—as convicted of incapacity for giving any relief to the efforts of human beings after a higher state, and to accept a Christianity which guarantees the salvation of their souls if they will abjure all such efforts, and surrender to a system that which their consciences tell them they can only surrender to God, this struggle is more tremendous than any of us know. Their English ​hearts solemnly protest against either alternative; but it is impossible for men whose minds are awake to live in a perpetual see-saw; nothing, they feel, is less English, less manly, than such a position. What evil may not be awaiting us, if all the sounds which reach such perturbed spirits are loud ravings against Rationalism and Romanism, while nothing is offered them but what looks less sincere and hopeful than either! But oh! what good, beyond anything I can think of or dream, may God be preparing for us through this conflict! What a day of joy may succeed a night of travail, if the message is indeed brought to us, "The Man is born into the world!" And is not this the message which is contained in the old story of Christ's ascension to the right hand of God, if we take that story not as a legend, but as the fulfilment of all legends; not as an idea, but as the substantiation of an idea in a fact? With what delight might we then trace the unfolding mysteries of science, believing that each new fact is revealing some step in an ascending scale of creatures, the lowest of which is an object of creating and redeeming love, the highest of which is in communion with the Son of God! How the triumphs of art would then be felt as witnesses for the subjection of all things to man, a subjection accomplished in Him who has gone through death and has ascended to His Father! What joyful testimony would every mythological story then bring in, not to the wishes and aspirations of men only, but to God's satisfaction of them! Why may not the countrymen of Bacon, and Shakspeare, and Milton, aspire thus to declare to all mankind the significancy of science and art, the essential and practical connection of earth with heaven, of the human and the divine?

​But they have still a higher work to accomplish, which perhaps must precede the other. I have alluded more than once in this Essay to that feast which the Galilean fishermen were told to keep when they sat at the Paschal supper; which St. Paul said that he was commanded to perpetuate in the churches which were gathered by the preaching of his gospel from the different tribes of men. For eighteen centuries Christendom has kept this feast; there has been no other like it in the world. It has spoken of the union of rich and poor, of men of all races, kindreds, educations, opinions, with each other, and with a divine Lord who had died for them. All the sections of Christendom have kept up some form of it, save the Quakers, and they affirm that they keep it in a higher sense. All the sections of Christendom have made it the symbol of their separation from the rest. That which was to unite all men, of every kind and degree of intellect, has been made the subject of the most subtle, intellectual distinctions. That which was to deliver men from the bondage of sense has been made the minister of the senses. The doctrine of Transubstantiation has gathered up all idealism and all materialism into itself, is a compendious expression of all the contradictions in the hearts and understandings of human beings. Yet what hold it seems to have upon those hearts! How it defies the skill of Protestant divines, the wit of Protestant scoffers! How it mixes itself unconsciously with their theories! How mightily it has stood its ground against all notions that the bread and wine were but the memorials of an absent Lord, or that the believer created a Presence which, but for his faith, would not be! How it is strengthened by all Quaker experiments to make spiritual feelings and ​notions, which appertain to the few,—the expression of which is intelligible to still fewer,—the media of intercourse, instead of those symbols which speak of food and life for mankind! My dear countrymen are puzzled by all these observations which their experience forces on them. They are impatient of theories, unskilful in forming them. Yet it seems to them as if they must have a theory, either compounded of all theories that have ever existed, or the negation of all:—some grains of Paschasius, a few globules of Luther, an infusion of Zwingle, shaken together, and plentifully diluted with the aqua pura of George Fox. Then, tired of a mixture which must be either tasteless or nauseous, this man plunges into Romanism; that exchanges sacraments for some transcendental exposition of them; another, who discovers the flimsiness of the exposition, flies to the open worship of Mammon, to his sacraments, in which the outward sign and the thing signified are so perfectly consubstantiated. Oh, brethren! must we, being such blockheads as our German and Gallic brethren consider us, and as we know ourselves to be, in all metaphysical conceptions, always try to rival them? Is it not possible God may have some other work for us, not so satisfactory to our pride, but, on the whole, if we perform it faithfully, not less serviceable to mankind, or less to His glory? Has it struck you that we are not merely countrymen of Bacon, Shakspeare, or Milton, but also of some millions of men, living on our own soil and in our own day, speaking our tongue, who work with their hands, and who have, besides those hands, senses which converse with this earth, sympathies that should unite them to each other, spirits that might hold converse with God? I do not know that they want theories ​about transubstantiation or consubstantiation, Romanist dogmas or transcendental dogmas, Le Maistre or Schelling. But I do know that they want occupation for these senses, these hearts, these spirits. And I do know that you can, if you will, say to them, one and all, "Brothers, here are the pledges that we have a great Elder Brother, who was a suffering peasant here on earth, who died and rose again, and who is at the right hand of God. These tell us that we are one with Him where He is. We need not ascend into heaven to bring Him down; we need not go down into the deep to bring Him up again. You may hold converse with Him where He is. He has proved you to be spirits. He has given you this bread and this wine,—these common things which belong to us all alike,—that we may claim a participation in that body and that blood which were as real as yours, which were given for you, raised from death for you, glorified at God's right hand for you. Take, eat; receive this New Testament in His blood. Confess your selfishness, your divisions, your heart-burnings. Claim the unity which belongs to you. Go your ways: work like men; till the earth, and subdue it for God; make it bring forth corn for the sower, bread for the eater. In due time it will be all God wants it to be. Meantime you have a city that hath foundations; a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

And there is something besides, which perhaps we have forgotten. Though it has not pleased God to make us clever in building systems, He has seen fit to bestow on us an empire on which the sun does not set. He has committed to our care some hundreds of mil- lions of human beings who have certainly the same flesh and blood with us, and who show by the strange ​speculations which their sages (often rich in the gifts we are so deficient in) express in words, and which are for the people embodied in acts, that they are spiritual beings, and that they know they are. Most of our civil and military servants, though they have done some parts of their business admirably, and have taught those people to believe that there is truth and justice among men,—alas! they have often doubted and denied their own position,—have felt that with this part of their mind, though the most radical, though affecting their whole existence, they could not meddle. Missionaries have gone forth with the noblest aims; not seldom they have effected blessed results. Yet the officials say—nay, many of them say themselves—that the majority of the natives have only derived from their presence a vague impression that all they had held themselves is false; and that we could offer them in exchange the choice of some twenty different religions, manufactured in Europe, and belonging to white men. Suppose we could go to them and say, "There is an Advocate and Intercessor, not for Europeans, but for men, at the right hand of God; and here are the witnesses that you as men, having flesh and blood, and being, as you know, spiritual creatures, are one with Him, sharers of His nature, and, therefore, children of God, fellow - heirs with all men everywhere of His kingdom,"—does it not seem possible that the animal and the human sacrifice, the fearful invocation to Kali, the prayer-machine of the Buddhist, might disappear more quickly, than while we merely argue with them for opinions respecting which we are divided as well as they?

These are thoughts which I have addressed speci​ally to English Churchmen, who, if they heeded them, might, perhaps, in due time, first bring the sects in their own land to meet them in a common sacrifice and a common Lord; secondly, might reconcile Protestants and Romanists abroad, instead of hovering uneasily between them, or showing a contempt which is amply returned, towards both.

I now lay these same thoughts before my Unitarian brethren of both sections. What I have said of Paley may show those whom the younger school stigmatise as materialist or utilitarian, that I do not feel separated from them; that I do not think it is needful for them to go through an initiation in any German or American school, before they can understand St. Paul or St. John. Good manly sense seems to me so precious and noble a gift, that I am afraid I often speak intolerantly of those who put spiritualism and philosophy in place of it. But I have no right to do so, for I have felt that temptation strongly; and if I have also felt the punishment for having indulged it, and the reaction against it, I should be the last to cast stones at any offender. Most earnestly, therefore, do I call upon all of the spiritual school to join with those from whom they are in part alienated, and with me, in believing that there is One ascended on high, and on the right hand of God, who is our Mediator and theirs; who claims us as spirits now, and can change the body of our humiliation to the body of His glory, by that power whereby He is able to subdue even all things to Himself.