ing co

Christian

and pro

to faith has taken possession of the Christian mind. "The ideal of the Church's life," it has been well said, "is not the predominance of the supernatural: but the intimate and complete union of the human and the Divine." The proof from Miracles' Au- The varygustine thought was not suited to every age, or to gency of all minds. On the large and important evidence evidences of Prophecy, which to the mind of Pascal,3 (as phecy. previously to that of Augustine and, as it would seem, of the earlier Fathers), superseded Miracles; it may perhaps be said that it still awaits a treatment in unison with the spirit of the time. At present I would only observe that there is nothing in its nature essentially contradictory to experience. On the contrary, it is consistent and according with expectation, so long as there is admitted a Divine superintendence of events passing insensibly into a continuous interposition, and acting in conjunction with fixed and general laws. It is a Their ful

1 Pressensé, Apostles and Martyrs, p. 16.

2 Util. Cred., c. xiv.; Ver. Rel., c. xxv. "Cur, inquis, ista (sc. miracula) modo non fiunt? Quia non moverent nisi mira essent: at si solita essent, mira non essent.”—Ut. Cred., c. xvi. He also argues that miracles are rather a proof to the ignorant than to the wise.

3 "La plus grande des preuves de Jésus-Christ, ce sont les prophéties."—Pensées, Art. X. “Hujus religionis sectandæ caput est historia et prophetia dispensationis temporalis Divinæ Providentia pro salute generis humani in æternam vitam reformandi atque reparandi."—August., Ver. Rel., c. vii. 13, xxv. See Pressensé, u. s., tom. ii. Lecky, H. E. M., I. 399. The teleological character of Christianity in relation to the history and prophecies of the Old Testament, as itself a fruit of "the fullness of the time," is a subject wholly in accord with recent philosophy.

filment a

matter of

fact.

The mys teries of Christian doctrine

not liable

explana

different question which has been sometimes asked, whether Christianity has in its career answered the expectations of the old prophecies respecting it. Thus, the kingdom of Christ is by no means as yet universal: "we see not yet all things put under Him:" nor in the history of the Church has Christianity shown itself a religion of peace. But it has been well replied,' that it has fulfilled Prophecy far enough to make the portrait like: and by predicting its own future, answers any such difficulties by anticipation. If destined to be universal, Christ's kingdom is still in a manner "not of this world." It is created and established, not by force, but by persuasion; and persuasion must be always gradual and often precarious. It did not engage to abolish sin and irreligion, even within its pale: the tares should still spring among the wheat. Its very progress was to be made through defeat it was to conquer by sanctity and suffering.

§ 10. Some elements, it must be admitted, when we are considering the progress and permanence of Christianity, within the circle of Christian docto physical trine must ever be expected to remain stumblingblocks to the naked intellect; more especially when it surrenders itself to the narrow dogmas of a purely physical philosophy. There are beings, as Bishop Butler has suggested, to whom the

tion.

1 J. H. Newman, Gramm. of Assent, p. 441.

2

2 Analogy, Pt. I. c. i.: "Nor is there any absurdity in supposing," &c.

scheme of Christianity in all its details may appear strictly natural. But to us it is not so. The coming of the Son of God in the flesh, the Absolute thus becoming relative, the Infinite finite, the Creator a creature; the spiritual import of death a natural phenomenon (lex non pœna mors); the relation of sin to its effects; the fall and corruption of man; the necessity of Redemption; the fact of its taking place in a single tiny world, lost as it were in the infinity of surrounding space crowded with kindred orbs; these are and must be accepted as mysteries, "clouds on the mercy-seat," capable perhaps of explanation, yet only of an imperfect one, unpalatable accordingly to a positive school of inquiry. Yet Mysteries are Mysteries the properties of all genuine religions, in regard to perty of all which the believer "walks by faith and not by sight." religions. Thus "the consciousness of a mystery," it has been rightly said," is traceable in the rudest Fetishism." The economy of Revelation in respect of them, it may be, differences Christianity favourably from other religions. But whatever may be thought as

1 Chalmers's discourses on this topic are well known. Comp. pp. 54, 98: Impossible that the concerns of this puny ball, which floats its little round among an infinity of larger worlds, should be of such mighty account in the plans of the Eternal," &c.

2 See Mr. Herbert Spencer, First Pr., p. 99: "En articles de foi," it has been beautifully said, “il faut se crever les yeux pour voir clair.” "La raison," writes Vinet, "a sa foi; la foi a sa raison."

3 Viz. by confining them to truths answering to the deepest wants of our spiritual frame. "Ce qui en nous est contraire aux mystères, n'est pas la raison, ni la lumière naturelle l'enchaînement des vérités; c'est

the pro

genuine

Understanding not the

ineasure of belief.

to this, they are at least no new difficulties, no new grounds of objection. Nothing about them requires to be given up in the present stage of our knowledge as the creed of an ignorant and bygone age. We are still far from the axiom that nothing can be true but what we can fully understand.' Rationalism and Mysticism are, indeed, opposite extremes, between which it may well be the human mind will always continue to oscillate, meeting, however, in one common point. Mysteries are not contradictions to reason or to fact. We should else be holding our religious faith on sufferance of ignorance or error. In effect, the old adage, "omnia exeunt in mysterium" is even now the outcome of a philosophy of experience, the justification of a system of nescience. "The world," said Hume, "is a mystery:" and beyond all that science makes Rational known to us lies the mysterious unknown.' But mysticism So again the latent error of Mysticism in religion respec- is the aiming at a comprehension of transcendental truth, at the fruition of a mental certainty which it is not given us to acquire or possess;

ism and

tively erro.

neous.

corruption, c'est erreur ou préjugé, c'est ténèbres."-Leibnitz, Théod., p. 496. Paley has some good remarks on this point, Evid. II. ii., contrasting the reserve of the Bible with the redundance of the Koran.

1 Comp. Comte, Phil. Pos., V. 66. It is true that there is an exactly opposite error in which Revelation itself is confounded with Mystery. "Times," says Dr. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Th., II. 255, “unfruitful in theological knowledge, are ever wont to fall back on mystery, and upon the much abused demand of taking the reason prisoner to the obedience of faith." 2 See Herbert Spencer, First Princ., p. 223.

just as in practice it is realized in the abandonment of free-will in its devotion to a pre-assumed will of God. It thus really involves the assumption of mental independence, and runs up into the Schoolmen's postulate that reason ultimately obliges to believe all that faith receives.' The difficulties occurring in the system of Christianity form part of the Divine administration, the proper subjectmatter of Revelation, being confessedly beyond the reach of human investigation. Of these, therefore, we are no judges; yet the existence of them is recognized in itself to be necessary by the limits of our natural knowledge.

laws not in

with the

sequence

§11. Nor is the growing conviction that Reli- Natural gion itself falls within a natural order, and may to compatible a certain extent be treated as a positive phenome- historical non, determined by the mental faculties and the of relihistory of their development, any real stumblingblock to the acceptance of the Christian faith. The criticism of some modern schools of thought,"

1 "It is an error to suppose Mysticism as the perpetual antagonist of Scholasticism; the Mystics were often severe logicians: the Scholastics had all the passions of Mystics.”—Milman, Lat. Christ., VI. 263. See Gieseler, III. 292, and IV. 188, E. T., ed. Clark. Lacordaire speaks of "la certitude mystique et translumineuse." In all Mysticism we must distinguish between an intellectual and an ethical tendency. Comp. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Th., I. 52. There is a tendency in Mysticism towards what has been termed Monopsychism, the belief in the mere existence of a single soul. Such a view is the correlative of pure Materialism.

2 See Mr. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, p. 61, and Dr. Farrar, Critical Hist. of Free Thought, pp. 122, 392. Comp. Hegel, Phil. d.

gions.