Theological Essays/XII

There is no question which exercises the minds of moralists and politicians so much as the question of responsibility. How are you to make ministers of state, legislators, judges, responsible? To whom are the highest officers in every state responsible? Are they to be practically ruled by those whom they profess to rule? Is the sovereign a sovereign only in name? Is the ultimate authority vested in those who, by a fiction, are called his subjects? Or is he governed only by some code written in letters which he has himself the power of interpreting, with which he may even at times dispense? Or is he an autocrat, whose own will is the last court of appeal, that to which all must not only in name, but in deed, do homage? We all know in what an infinite variety of forms these questions present themselves, how they force themselves upon us in the business of everyday life.

The notion which prevails mostly among ourselves is, I think, something of this kind. In a civilised country,—above all, in one which possesses a free press,—there is a certain power, mysterious and in​definite in its operations, but producing the most obvious and mighty effects, which we call public opinion. If this can be brought to bear upon the acts and proceedings of any functionary, we suppose that there is as much security for his good behaviour as can be possibly obtained. He lives under the conviction that his acts, as a public servant, are open to a vigilant and suspicious scrutiny; experience assures him that no nice or accurate line will be drawn between this part of his life and that which he might wish to claim as private—his domestic relations, his opinions on the different topics which interest his fellow-men. Thus his whole existence is in a great measure exposed; his sphere of independent action or judgment is very limited. Though the right of thinking for himself may be one which he is anxious to assert,—nay, which the habits and rules of the times require him to assert,—the actual power of thinking for himself can only be exercised under strict conditions; practically, the circle in which he moves, or the world at large, or those, be they who they may, who direct the world, think for him.

When public opinion has been for some time deified in this manner, there comes a strong recoil. "Is it possible," men ask, "to live honestly upon such terms as these? Has the progress of civilisation, as it is called, not brought us into greater freedom, but only into more hopeless slavery? If we are to have masters, should we not know who they are? Should we not, at least, know what is their right over us? Should they not have some claim to our reverence, if they have no hold upon our affections? What can be so ignominious as this subjection to judges whom we do not in our hearts believe to be wise, to whom in ​secret we attribute little sincerity or truth; who are the sport of a thousand accidents and influences, as vulgar as any of those which could pervert our own judgments if we were left to ourselves? Is it not the business of a man to shake off such a yoke as this, to say that he will not have his deeds or thoughts moulded by this opinion, that he will not bow down and worship an image, which has been set up he cannot tell when or by whom, but which exacts devotion to itself under the heaviest penalties? Should not a minister of state, a legislator, a judge, hold himself responsible to some other tribunal than this? Must he not do so, if the words which go forth from his lips, if the deeds which he performs, are ever to be of any worth to ages to come, even to his own?"

These complaints are uttered. In youth, many strong resolutions are often founded upon them,—many bold and eccentric courses are taken in pursuance of them. But again and again the man is driven into the old rut. He finds that the world was right in saying that self-will is a perilous and fatal guide. He thinks in vain where a substitute for this strange force of opinion is to be found; how wicked men are ever to be curbed, if it is not held up to them as an object of fear; how well-disposed men are ever to be kept in an even course, if they have not some hope of its protection. "It is vague, indefinite, intangible enough, no doubt; but is not that the case also with all the powers which affect us most in the physical world? The further men advance in the study of nature, the more of these uncontrollable, invisible forces seem to make themselves known. If we think with awe of mysterious affinities, of some mighty principle which binds the elements of the universe together, why should not ​we wonder also at these moral affinities, this more subtle magnetism, which bears witness that every man is connected by the most intimate bonds with his neighbour. and that no one can live independently of another?"

It may easily be admitted that a reflection of this kind is suggested when we meditate upon public opinion,—the insignificance of the agents by which it works, and the greatness of its results for good or for evil. But I apprehend no one is able to derive this lesson from it, or at least to turn it to any practical use, till he has risen in some measure above the terror of it; any more than he can estimate the sublimity of a storm, while he is trembling lest it should in a moment destroy him and all that are dear to him; or than he can think of all the hallowed associations which a churchyard at night-time might call up, while he is dreading lest he should be pursued by some pale spectre. If we could learn the secret of overcoming this power, of acting as if we were indeed responsible to some other and more righteous one; if that conviction could be as present to us as the thought of the judgment which our fellow-creatures pass upon us; if our whole lives were moulded by the one belief as much as they are wont to be moulded by the other,—we should be able to understand what the world's judgment can do for us as well as what it cannot do; the very same principle which keeps us from obeying it would keep us from despising it; we should be saved from setting up our own tastes, caprices, nay, our own most deliberate judgments, against the tastes, caprices, judgments of our own or other ages; just because we should have courage to say to them, one and all, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye."

​Divines have thought that the words, "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," might be so taken into the hearts of men, and become such a strong abiding conviction there, that all the opinions of contemporaries, all fear of popular assemblies—even of the most august earthly tribunals—should shrink and dwindle before them. They have, therefore, presented to their disciples the picture of a great assize, to which all ages and nations shall be summoned. What has been the effect of such descriptions? We feel ourselves at leisure to analyse our own emotions in listening to them; to compare the methods in which the subject is treated by different artists; to criticise their skill. We observe how much more powerful and judicious Jeremy Taylor is than others, because he has gathered together distinct groups, such as "those whom Cæsar Augustus did tax," instead of trusting to vague, cloudy abstractions. Surely this is proof sufficient that the preacher has failed of his purpose. He has not given us some mighty conviction before which we must bow,—which will go with us where we go, and stay with us where we stay. The fabric of this vision, raised by however noble an architect, fades more surely, more rapidly, than that of any of the earthly temples which he tells us are perishing. As it departs, it leaves the impression on our mind that the vulgarest, pettiest motives, which act upon us in the bustle of the common world, are more efficient than the most magnificent anticipations of that which is to be, in some far-off period. We may mourn that it should be so; we may utter some commonplaces about the weakness or depravity of human nature; but in some way or other we reconcile ourselves to the discovery.

Have earnest, devout men, then, deceived themselves ​in this matter? Were they wrong in supposing that the belief in Christ's judgment ought to be a mighty belief for mankind? Was it not a mighty one for their own hearts? I am sure they were not deceived. The thought of Christ's judgment was their strength in prosperity and in calamity. It saved them from floating with the current of their times when it was gentle,—from being swept away by it when it was strong. But I do not conceive they would have derived the least support from the anticipation of standing before Christ in some distant day, if they had not believed they were standing before Him in their own day. They were sure that for them the judgment was already set, the books were already opened; that they were every hour of their lives in the presence of One who knew the intents of their hearts, and who was calling them to account for these and for the acts to which they gave birth. It is for the efforts which they have made to ground us in the same habitual persuasion that we are chiefly beholden to them. Whatever light they have thrown on the Scripture doctrine of a judgment to come has proceeded from the light in which they were continually walking. If they have ever darkened that doctrine, or coloured and distorted it by their fancy, we may trace the error to their forgetfulness of that truth which the writers of the New Testament never suffer us to forget,—that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

Perhaps you will say, "After all, these descriptions which you represent as so ineffectual, even when the ability displayed in them is greatest, are only the ex- pansion and realisation of the words in the Creed; 'From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' If one is weak, the other must be weaker; if ​the picture which tries to embody the fact is of such small worth, what can be the use of merely repeating a bare announcement of it?"

The objection would be most reasonable if the words, "He shall come to judge the quick and dead" could be separated from all that has gone before,—if no pains had been taken to tell us who He is. But if the Creed has been declaring Him to be the Son of God our Lord; if it has been exhibiting Him, first, in the closest relationship with God, secondly, in the closest relationship with man,—this relationship not being created by any acts which are recorded afterwards, but being the ground and explanation of those acts; not being the consequence of His Incarnation, or Death, or Resurrection, or Ascension, but the cause of them;—then, I apprehend, the practical difference be- tween the dry statement and the brilliant translation of it is immeasurable. According to the one, it is impossible, without violating the law of my being, the eternal order and constitution of things, that I should separate myself from Christ. He is the Lord of my own self, of my spirit; whether I confess Him or not, I must continually hear His voice, be open to His reproofs. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, He must be there; He must be the standard of my acts; the right in them must be that which has originated in Him,—the wrong must be the revolt from Him. No present or possible condition of our being can change this order. Death, it has been proved, does not dissolve our relation to Him; He has entered into it for us. The Resurrection from the dead is a resurrection for us as well as for Him; it has vindicated man's true condition, not subverted it. The Ascension, if we admit it to be a fact,—not a mere idea,—proves, as ​I urged in the last Essay, not that we are divided from Him, but that place cannot divide us; that we are spirits; that when we act as if we belonged to the bodies which we are meant to rule, we stoop knowingly, and are condemned by our consciences. Such a doctrine, I said, so far from being at variance with the facts of history and the laws of the physical universe, is confirmed by both. History shows how confident men have been in all times that they were meant to ascend above their earthly conditions, and to have fellowship with an unseen world; their noblest dreams have had this origin,—their wildest and most degrading superstitions have arisen from their incapacity to claim what they felt was their right. Physical science shows how many violations of true and divine laws men commit when they become slaves of their bodies, and into what ignorance they fall when they accept the testimony of their senses as determining those laws; in either case they are evidently not obeying reason, but setting it at nought. What follows? This exclusion of Christ from the eyes of sense is not, as men fancy, an interruption of that judgment which He, as Lord of their spirits, is continually pronouncing; they are not less in His presence, open to His clear, all-penetrating vision, now, than if He were walking in their streets. The disciples who accompanied Him when He journeyed from Galilee to Jerusalem, and sometimes were amazed at the mystery of His being, and at His knowledge of their thoughts, understood first when He was parted from them how entirely independent that being and that knowledge were of the accidents which then surrounded Him,—how much these accidents had interfered with their recognition of Him. As long as they had any notion that they stood to ​Him only in the peculiar relation of disciples to a Master, as long as that relation seemed to them an external fleshly relation, they wanted the real awe and check, as well as the real help and support, of His presence. It was when they understood that this relation was common to them with a multitude of persons nowise bound to them by kindred, occupation, race; it was when they learnt that the real bond between a disciple and a Lord is not a visible, but an invisible one, that they exercised themselves to have consciences void of offence, being certain that all things were naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom they had to do, and that to be reproved by Him was a far more serious thing than to be reproved by Sanhedrins or Proconsuls. The Creed, then, affirms, for you, and me, and mankind, first of all this discovery of theirs,—that Christ, ascended on high at the right hand of God, is our Judge, the Judge of the living and the dead. I do not say that this is all which the words signify; I do not think so; but I say that whatever else they signify, they signify this, and that we never can enter into the other part of their signification if we do not acknowledge this as the groundwork of it. And though this meaning may be latent in our popular discourses on a great judgment day,—and I have no doubt it is,—I cannot think that the hearers or readers of those discourses commonly detect it, they suppose that they are, at some distant, unknown period, to be brought into the presence of One who is far from them now, and who is not now fulfilling the office of a Judge, whatever other may be committed to Him.

There is another difference, not less radical and essential, which, I think, we must all at times have perceived, if not when we were repeating this article ​of the Creed, at least when we were reading those parts of the Scriptures which most illustrate it. What is this office of a Judge? If we follow the popular representations of the great Assize, we should conclude that it was fulfilled when certain persons were subjected to an infinite penalty for their transgressions, and certain others were absolved from that penalty,—perhaps acquired by some means an infinite reward. It is obvious that those who make these statements intend to accommodate themselves to the ordinary maxims of men—to those which are recognised in earthly jurisprudence. They rightly assume that there must be an analogy between the divine procedure and that which we own to be righteous here. "The difference of degree," they would say, "does not prevent the inspired writers, and ought not, therefore, to prevent us, from resorting to the same language to represent both." I fully accept this statement, and, therefore, I would put it to any English jurist, whether such an account of the function of a judge as this satisfies any conception that he has formed of it? Would not he say at once, "It is a very secondary part of this function to assign penalties or rewards: that, in a majority of cases, is done already by the law which the judge announces. But to discern who is right and who is wrong; amidst a multitude of shifting, distracting appearances, to find out the fact; to detect the lie which is hidden under the plausible, coherent story; to justify the true and honest purpose which may have got itself bewildered in a variety of complications and contradictions,—hic labor, hoc opus; here is, indeed, a sphere for the exercise of that judicial faculty which we all esteem so highly,—scarcely any of us enough." And I am ​certain we shall find that, when the Scriptures speak of a divine judge, it is this correspondence, this analogy that they mainly suggest to us. You hear of the Word of God, who is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword; who divides asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, who is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. You hear St. Paul declaring that though he is not conscious of anything against himself, he does not judge himself, but He that judgeth him is the Lord. You find him using, in the same passage, the remarkable expression which occurs again and again in his writings, and to which I shall have to refer presently for another purpose—that it is a very little thing for him to be judged by a human day.^[1] Such an expression, so strikingly denoting the kind of light which men were able to throw upon the secrets of the heart, is a key to thousands of others in the New Testament—nay, I will be bold to say—a key to the language of the Bible, wherever there is an allusion to the judgments of God, or to Christ as judge. Everywhere the idea is kept before us of judgment, in its fullest, largest, most natural sense, as importing discrimination or discovery. Everywhere that discrimination or discovery is supposed to be exercised over the man himself, over his internal character, over his meaning and will. Everywhere the substitution of any mere external trial or examination for this, is rejected as inconsistent with the spirit and grandeur of Christ's revelation.

Nowhere is this difference more remarkably brought out than in the words which we have translated, "For we shall all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." ​When we hear these words without examining them or their context, we are likely enough to say, "Here is the old story of Minos and Rhadamanthus again; St. Paul knew that it was familiar to the ears of the Corinthians. He altered it, and adapted it to his Christian notions." I am far indeed from denying that St. Paul was anxious to preserve the eternal truth which lay hid in those legends. He would have been most grieved if he had, in any one point, made the Greeks, to whom he proclaimed a faith, unbelievers. It was his duty to avail himself, as far as it was possible, even of the forms of language,—especially if they were not merely Greek, but human forms, appealing to the feelings and consciences of men in all countries,—which had been associated with old convictions. To this extent I am ready to admit that the word "judgment-seat" or "tribunal" was intended to remind the Corinthians both of the courts with which they were familiar in their own city, of the more solemn Areopagus, and of those which their imaginations had fashioned, on the model of these, for the pale spectres in the world below. But if this were his object, mark what the process of transformation is. In the first ten verses of this chapter, and several of the preceding, he has been working out the doctrine that man stands in a twofold relation—to an earthly visible tabernacle which is dissolving; to an invisible Lord. The dissolution of that perishable tabernacle will not, he says, involve homelessness, nakedness. There is a new clothing provided for him—a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here there is much groaning; the body bears the signs of suffering and death. He longs to put on one which shall be free, living, immortal, "that mortality may ​be swallowed up of life." He believes that God is working in him to produce such a renovation, and has given His Spirit as an earnest of it. He is confident, therefore, and had rather be absent from the body which is making such demands upon him, that he might be present with the Lord of his spirit. For we walk," he says, "by faith, not by sight." We do not see Him to whom we are united; we only believe Him and trust Him. And whether that vision at any time is strong or weak, whether we are crushed by the external tabernacle, or are rising above it, we are still ambitious to be well-pleasing to Him, "For we must all"—not appear—but "BE MADE MANIFEST before the tribunal of Christ." A time will come when it will be clearly discovered to all men what their state was while they were pilgrims in this world; that they were in a spiritual relation just as much as they were in relation to those visible things of which their senses took cognisance. That which has been hidden will be made known; the darkness will no longer be able to quench the light which has been shining in the midst of it, and seeking to penetrate it; each man will be revealed as that which he actually is, that every one may receive the things done in the body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."^[2]

This language is, I think, strictly and beautifully consistent with all that the Apostle has taught us of Christ as the Redeemer and Justifier—with the whole purpose and method of His Gospel. But it certainly suggests to us the thought that the tribunal of Christ ​is one which is not to be set up for the first time in some distant day, amidst earthly pomp and ceremonial, but that it is one before which we, in our own inmost being, are standing now, and that the time will come when we shall know that it is so, and when all which has concealed the Judge from us will be taken away.

"But if that is the sense of St. Paul's words, why do we speak in the Apostles' Creed of His coming thence to judge the quick and dead? Why do we say in the Nicene Creed that He shall come again in glory? These questions are so important, and they connect themselves with so many thoughts which are occupying and agitating men's minds in the present day, that I am most anxious fairly to consider them.

If I read the words, From thence He shall come, following immediately upon the account of an ascension into heaven, which is described as a great triumph for Him and for mankind, I do not think my first notion would be that they implied that He would descend from that state—that He would assume again the conditions and limitations of the one which He had left. The favourite scriptural analogy of the sun coming forth out of his bridal chamber, after the dark night, would present itself as, at all events, much more obvious. No doubt a great many considerations might induce me to reject this sense and accept the other. I might find that express words in the New Testament, or a general current of meaning, obliged me take up with the more difficult hypothesis. But, in fact, express words and the current of sense force me out of the difficult hypothesis into the natural one. When St. Paul wishes to teach us about the coming or the judgment of Christ, the word he most commonly uses is ἀποκάλυψις, or unveiling." He looks forward to the unveiling of ​Christ. He bids his disciples in all the Churches live in the expectation of it. Or else he speaks of φανέρωσις—"a manifestation"—as in the passage I referred to just now, and as in that celebrated passage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where he describes the whole creation as looking forward to deliverance from its travail at the manifestation of the sons of God. Each of these words, especially the first, receives the greatest illustration from the Apostle's own history. Whenever he gives the story of his conversion, he describes it as an unveiling of Christ to his bodily eye; when he lays open the principle and meaning of his conversion, he represents it as the revealing or unveiling of Christ in him. This idea, in these two different aspects of it, therefore possessed his whole mind, and penetrated his teaching. His Gospel to men was a manifestation or revelation of Christ to them, as one who had proved Himself to be their Lord, by entering into their death, and by redeeming them from their tyrants. His assurance to each man was, that if he yielded to his Deliverer, and struggled against all that were trying to enslave him, Christ's power and presence would be revealed to him more every day. His hope for the world was, that Christ would in due time reveal Himself completely as its Conqueror and King, and would bring all men to see that His universe was built on truth and righteousness. In strict accordance with this teaching, he uses "day" to express the coming or revelation of Christ; day" being taken, as the reader will perceive if he turns to the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, or to the fifth chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in opposition to night. Hereby he explains that the use of the words "human day," to ​which I referred before, as expressing the judgment passed by men upon himself; hereby he brings forth the full force and intention of that phrase which recurs so continually in the prophets of the Old Testament—"The day of the Lord."^[3]

And there is this further—I think, quite unspeakable—benefit arising from his use of this form of expression. Instead of allowing us to dream of a final judgment, which shall be unlike any other that has ever been in the world, he compels us to look upon every one of what we rightly call "God's judgments as essentially resembling it in kind and principle. Our eagerness to deny this doctrine,—to make out an altogether peculiar and unprecedented judgment at the end of the world,—has obliged us, first, to practise the most violent outrages upon the language of Scripture, insisting that words cannot mean really what, according to all ordinary rules of construction, they must mean. Secondly, it has obliged us to treat with most especial contumely that solemn discourse of our Lord with His disciples when they showed Him the buildings of the Temple, and almost to deny His assertion that that generation should not pass till all the things He spoke of were fulfilled; though He adds to it a sentence which might have made us serious in our belief of Him, if anything could:—"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away." Thirdly, as I hinted when I was alluding to this subject in connection with the doctrine of the Resurrection, it has driven us into ​the perilous notion that we are only using metaphors when we speak of God as coming forth to judge the world in any crisis of war or revolution. Certainly the Bible justifies that language, as not metaphorical, but most real. It speaks of all such crises as "days of the Lord."

The "coming" of the Apostles' Creed, and the "coming again" of the Nicene Creed, must both indicate, if we derive our interpretation of them from the Scriptures, not that Christ will resume earthly conditions, or will take a throne in some part of this earth, but that He will be manifested as He is. The Nicene phrase, "coming again in glory," which is taken from our Lord's own words, "The Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, and of the holy angels," seems expressly intended to guard against the notion that He should be invested with some of those vulgar ensigns of royalty which the sense-bound Jew supposed were needful to make Him a King, while he proved Himself to be one by healing the sick and casting out devils. In our day, many of those who are most busy in the study of prophecy complain of the Creeds because they do not set forth distinctly their notion of a second coming of Christ to reign on the earth, but only speak of a judgment of quick and dead. I can sympathise to a considerable extent with their feelings, though I am convinced that the Creeds are right, and that they are wrong.

If the belief of a judgment takes the form which it certainly has taken in the minds of many of us; if we look upon it only as something exceedingly terrible, which we are to set before our readers when all ordinary resources of argument and rhetoric have failed,— when we can no longer move them by any testimonies ​we bear concerning the mercy of God or His redeeming Love; if the thought of Christ as a Judge is one which we are to shrink from, though we may find satisfaction in thinking of Him as a Saviour;—then it is, indeed, utterly unintelligible why the writers of the Old Testament should so continually call upon God to rise and judge the earth; why this should be the great burden of their prayers, the ultimate point of their hopes; and why the writers of the New Testament should exhort their disciples to lift up their heads, and to desire, above all things, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. To escape from this amazing contradiction, it has been natural for men to invent a theory and say, "He is coming, but not only for this end, not first for this end. He is coming to reign over His saints,—to give them rest from their enemies; then the judgment of the world will follow." It is better, I think, that men should cherish this belief than that they should contemplate Christ as one who has saved heretofore, but is coming hereafter only to punish and condemn. For though some connect no better thoughts with this faith than the expectation of their own supremacy,—and from the supremacy of those who can indulge so dark and selfish a dream, good Lord! deliver Thy bleeding earth-no tyranny that has ever existed upon it would be so godless and so intolerable;—there are numbers of true-hearted Millennarians who rejoice in it only because it is identified in their minds with the victory of Christ over what is evil, with the establishment of His gracious dominion over all people. Such men felt themselves tied and bound by the notion of the religious world, that Christ had taken the nature of man and died on the Cross only to save a few elect souls. They were sure that He must intend to bless ​mankind, to redeem the earth. Most glorious conviction, which no Creeds that men have ever framed must tempt us to part with, for the Bible witnesses of it in every page; the truth and love of God are involved in our holding it fast! But the Creeds differ in one respect from the supporters of this pre-millennial Advent. They teach us that 1800 years ago, He who was crucified under Pontius Pilate asserted and proved that He was the Lord of man; that while the Jews were confounding a real king with an emperor clothed in purple, He demonstrated wherein kingship consists, and what are the highest powers which belong to it. A Creed that speaks of a Son of God and a Son of man has no need to tell us—could not tell us without contradicting all its other statements—that at some distant day He will assume an authority which He has never exercised yet. But it may tell us—it should tell us—that He who sat as a King, and judged as a King, when the city and Temple of Jerusalem fell, and the old world passed away with a great noise;—He who sat as a King, and judged as a King, when the mightiest empire the world had ever seen was broken in pieces by a stone cut out of the mountain without hands; He who has been confessed as a King by all the most civilised nations of the Western world; in whose Name kings have reigned and decreed justice; He who has been proving that the powers which they used were His, by sweeping away dynasties, and putting down nations, the cup of whose iniquities was full; He from whom all that has been righteous, gracious, gentle, orderly, civilised in the economy of nations, families, churches, has come; He against whom all that has been cowardly, cruel, slavish, superstitious, in that economy has been rebelling, ​will most assuredly be manifested, not in some little obscure corner of the earth, where pilgrims may go to look for Him, but as the lightning shineth from the one end of heaven to the other; will be manifested, not changed and shrivelled from the crucified, risen, ascended Lord, to the miserable Cæsar the Jews fancied Him to be; but "coming as He went," in the glory of His Father, so that every eye may see Him, so that every king and judge and priest who has professed to rule or teach by His authority or for Him, shall be forced to own to himself and to the universe whether he has been serving truth or a lie; whether he has been serving Christ or Mammon or himself; whether he has bowed down to the judgment and opinion of any public, religious or secular, or has walked as a child of the day in that light which lighteth every man who does not choose the darkness. Surely a sound Creed should tell us this, and should therefore convey to us the needful assurance and comfort that all events have been working under a divine guidance to a divine issue; that nothing which has been good can ever perish; that nothing which is evil can abide in that kingdom of righteousness and truth and peace, which is the kingdom of God and of His Son, and therefore can have no end.

In spite of my conflicts with the Idealists in my last Essay, I am quite prepared to hear the charges that I have now been defending an ideal, and not an actual, judgment day, and that I confound the spiritual kingdom of Christ with His reign over the earth. I can only answer, as I have answered before, that I have found the current notions of a judgment, not exactly ideal, but exceedingly fantastic, figurative, inoperative, and that I have tried to ascertain whether ​Scripture does not give us the hint of something more practical and more substantial. If the popular notion on this subject is thought necessary to produce terror in the minds of thieves and vagabonds, I own that I am ideal enough to think the constabulary force a more useful, effectual, and also a more godly, instrument. That does assert the existence of an actual present justice; that does awaken in the consciences of evil men the sense of a law which never loses sight of them, and may find out their darkest deeds; that holds out to their merely animal nature, which requires such discipline, the prospect of a sure and speedy punishment. If, again, the popular notion on this subject is wanted as an influence to act habitually on the lives of ordinary worldly men,—and it is alleged that I have substituted for it the notion of a mysterious judgment, of which it is impossible that such men can make any account,—then I reply, that it is precisely this kind of mysterious judgment which these men do recognise, and to which they pay habitual homage under the name of Public Opinion. But if you require this popular notion for the sake of religious men, or of those who are looking forward to some great improvement in the constitution of the world, then I say it is quite clear that such men are not in the least satisfied with it, but are inclined rudely to discard it. Such men demand for themselves an habitual government, inspection, judgment, reaching to the roots of their heart and will; such men demand for the earth some complete deliverance from all that defiles it and sets it in rebellion against a true and righteous King. The religious men must have a kingdom over their own spirits; do not they see that only such a kingdom can be of any worth to any human ​being whatsoever? Has not Christ claimed to be King over both the spirits and bodies of men? over their bodies, because over their spirits; over all things whatsoever, because over the creature to which all things are put in subjection. Do we need a return to the lowest Judaism, the lowest Heathenism, in our notions of the relation between spirit and matter, the eternal and the temporal? Do we not require a redemption of all that is human from its changeable accidents—a judgment and separation, which shall come from the revelation of Him who has redeemed and glorified our whole humanity, between that in us which is His, and that which we have contracted by turning away from Him? Do we not ask for a day in which all the scattered limbs of Christ's body in heaven and earth shall be gathered together in Him, for a day in which light and darkness, life and death, shall never be mingled or confounded again? Is there any one who seriously believes that it is a day of twenty-four hours in duration which we are thus expecting? Is it not one which has dawned on the world already? which our consciences tell us we may dwell in now? which therefore Scripture and reason both affirm must wax clearer and fuller, till He who is the Sun of righteousness is felt to be shining everywhere, and till there is no corner of the universe into which His beams have not entered?

I do not intend these Essays as a commentary on either of our Creeds. We have, I suspect, more commentaries on them than we want. In most cases I have preferred to take my titles from popular and recognised names of doctrines, not to express them in ​the words of our formularies. I have spoken of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, of Justification by Faith; not of Christ being conceived by the Holy Ghost, or born of the Virgin Mary, or suffering under Pontius Pilate. For my object has been to examine the language with which we are most familiar, and which has been open to most objections, especially from Unitarians. Respecting the Conception, I have been purposely silent; not because I have any doubt about that article, or am indifferent to it, but because I believe the word "miraculous," which we ordinarily connect with it, suggests an untrue meaning; because I think the truth is conveyed to us most safely in the simple language of the Evangelists; and because that language, taken in connection with the rest of their story, offers itself, I suspect, to a majority of those who have taken in the idea of an Incarnation as the only natural and rational account of the method by which the eternal Son of God could have taken human flesh.^[4]

But I have deviated from this practice in three cases. I have used the express words of the Creed as the text of my remarks upon the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Judgment. I have done so, perfectly well knowing that I am laying myself open to the displeasure, not only of the Unitarians, but of the other Dissenters, who would have a much better opinion of me if I had defended the same principles without appealing to what they consider dry and worn-out documents.

I do not know whether I can find a better opportunity than this for addressing myself directly to the ​feelings of Unitarians on this point. They have a great horror of a Creed. But tenets they must have. The other Dissenters have a great many. Their list, they boast, is reasonably small. The tenet of a Judgment to come, or Resurrection of the just and unjust, however, is included among them. I do not know whether they very distinctly define their opinions on this subject; but a respectable, well-conditioned Unitarian would be very sorry if his orthodox neighbour supposed they were widely at variance upon it. I conclude, therefore, that the same vague, superstitious apprehension, which I have said that we derive from Heathenism, he must have derived from it also. The sense of a judgment to come is so kindred to our nature, so rooted in our nature, that we must hold it under one form or another. The old Minos form, or one that is akin to it, will be the form which this tenet assumes so long as it is merely a tenet. What I contend is, that it assumes a higher, nobler, more practical form when, ceasing to be a tenet, it becomes part of a Creed. When it is viewed as one of the acts of a living Person, a Son of man and a Son of God, then its coating of superstition falls off from it: it becomes identified with the greatest triumphs that humanity has yet won; with its present struggles, with its most glorious hopes. I submit this remark to the earnest consideration of all classes of Unitarians, but especially of those who are becoming discontented with the tenets of their forefathers. They very naturally argue in this way,—"We cannot bear the yoke which is upon our necks already. You would put a heavier one upon them. We have been beaten with rods: you would beat us with scorpions." The other Dissenters press ​the same argument upon their disciples: "You complain of us for compelling you to accept dogmas which you do not feel to be reasonable,—nay, even for preventing you from appealing to Scripture against them, because, after a congregation or school has accepted a certain interpretation of Scripture, it is bound by that. What would become of you, then, if you were connected with a Church which formally and avowedly holds its members to a certain Creed?" I am not careful to answer this argument. I am a very bad proselytiser. If I could persuade all Dissenters to become members of my Church to-morrow, I should be very sorry to do it; I believe the chances are, they might leave it the next day. I do not wish to make them think as I think. But I want that they and I should be what we pretend to be, and then I doubt not we should find that there is a common ground for us all far beneath our thinkings. For truth I hold not to be that which every man troweth, but to be that which lies at the bottom of all men's trowings—that in which those trowings have their only meeting-point. But what I cannot and would not do, I believe the experience of a great many Dissenters will do for them. They will be driven to Creeds by their weariness of tenets. They will find that they are at the mercy of every tyrannical congregation, of its wealthiest member, of every dogmatist who rules a school, of the public opinion of the sect which rules him. They will be compelled to ask, "How does this happen? Is there no escape from these oppressive judgments of human beings,—no escape but into absolute doubt and denial? Not even an escape into them,—for what intolerant dogmatists there are among doubters and deniers!" If they want freedom for ​their reason and wills, the old Creeds speak of One who came to deliver them. If they feel that the language of Scripture cannot be tied down by the language of a formula, Creeds oblige us to look out of themselves to some book which shall unfold the person and the acts of Him of whom they are bearing witness. They never can put themselves in the place of our reason or of Scripture till their words are perverted, and the sense of them contradicted. Why there should be such documents in the world I can explain no more than I can explain why any part of the order of Nature should exist, or why it should be in harmony with any other part. I find it so. I find it so. I give God thanks that it is so. I hope, in the day when He is revealed, and we are all called to answer for the use or abuse we have made of His gifts, that He will enable us to enter more fully into this and many other mysteries of His government, which I understand most imperfectly, but which have helped me to understand myself.