Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

of choice

to all

religion.

which consecrates selfishness by enthroning it in the struggle for existence above wisdom and virtue; and which views, alike unmoved and powerless of consolation, the agonies of remorse, the isolation of bereavement, and the yearnings of the saint after communion with Divine holiness? Only if free to Freedom choose, is man capable of duty in any sense of the necessary word which is not simply nominal but worth practical retaining. But, if capable of duty, he is capable of religion. He is still, though conscious of sin, nobler than the tame creatures of a dull uniformity, the ready vassals of a law they can never break. In those unreasoning creatures, devoid of abstraction, idealization, reflection, yet from which it is now the fashion to derive all the properties of man, the will is absorbed in the law. "The law is their nature." In the original purity of a rational being, the uncorrupted will is one with the law of his nature. And so it will be hereafter.

Mind and soul according well,

Shall make one music as before,
But vaster.

If man, it has been finely said, "be no higher in his destinies than the beast or the blade of grass, it might be better to be a beast or a blade of

Man supe animals in

rior to the

his capa

grass bility and

1 See Coleridge, A. R., p. 233. The fine lines of Juvenal will be readily remembered :—

Principio indulsit communis Conditor illis

Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, &c.

consciousness of sin.

991

than a man.' But it is not so, brethren. The stork in the heavens may know her appointed times; the turtle, the crane, and the swallow may observe the time of their coming; and when they wing their flight may leave without remorse their unfledged young to die." They run their allotted course. But man, even though he perish, though sin becomes the law of his nature, and evil clings about him like a robe, is great in the ruin of his fall. He knows why he perishes, and worships, in the bitterness of his soul, the purity, the nobleness, the love which he has forfeited for himself for ever.

1 Prof. Goldwin Smith, Lectures on the Study of History, p. 12. 2 See Mr. Darwin, Descent of Man.

"Quando autem melior homo et pecoribus præponendus? Quando novit quod facit."-August. de Ord., II. xix.; and again, Civ. D., xxii.: "Sicut cæcitas oculi vitium est, et idem ipsum indicat ad lumen videndum oculum esse creatum, ac per hoc etiam ipso vitio suo excellentius ostendit ut cæteris membris membrum capax luminis (non enim alia causa esset vitium ejus carere lumine): ita natura quæ fruebatur Deo, optimam se institutam docet etiam ipso vitio, quo ideo misera est, quia non fruitur Deo." Compare Chateaubriand, Génie du Christ., I. 208. "Pourquoi le bœuf ne fait-il pas," &c. Strauss, Leben Jesu, II. 697, admits that while animals are but races, men have the knowledge that they are a Hence arises the possibility of history with all its consequences. Cf. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Th., II. 370.

race.

LECTURE III.

OBJECTIONS TO THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY CONSIDERED.

Καθόλου, ὡς φημὶ, δύο πάσης γενέσεως αἰτίας ἐχούσης, οἱ μὲν σφόδρα παλαιοὶ θεολόγοι καὶ ποιηταὶ τῇ κρείττονι μόνῃ τὸν νοῦν προσέχειν εἵλοντο, τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν ἐπιφθεγγόμενοι πᾶσι πράγμασι.

Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ ̓ ἐκ πάντα πέλονται.

Ταῖς δ ̓ ἀναγκαίαις καὶ φυσικαῖς οὐκ ἔτι προσῄεσαν αἰτίαις. Οἱ δὲ νεώτεροι τούτων καὶ φυσικοὶ προσαγορευόμενοι τοὐναντίον ἐκείνοις τῆς καλῆς καὶ θείας ἀποπλανηθέντες ἀρχῆς, ἐν σώμασι καὶ πάθεσι σωμάτων, πληγαῖς τε καὶ μεταβολαῖς καὶ κράσεσι τίθενται τὸ σύμπαν.-PLUTARCH, Defect. Orac., c. xlviii.

LECTURE III.

"Wherefore should they say among the people,- Where is their God?"Joel ii. 17.

§ I.

IT

of a Divine

Provi

dence es

the being

manence of

T would be but futile to build any argu- The truth ment upon the past or the future of the Faith of Christ, were the fundamental truth denied sential to of the controlling Providence of God. As religion and peritself is a thing not worth contending for, when religion. free-will in man is given up, so Christianity, devoid of a special and personal relation to the Almighty in His work of grace (which may be said to be in respect of all Pagan religions its cardinal and characteristic doctrine), is a shadow without substance. It becomes, then, of the first importance to inquire on what grounds the belief in a special Providence is held to be in course of being sur

1 "Si Dei Providentia non præsidet rebus humanis, nihil est de religione satagendum.”—August., Util. Cred., cxvi. "Deum nisi et esse et humanis mentibus opitulari credimus, nec quærere quidem ipsam veram religionem debemus.”—Ib., c. xiii. Comp. Lactant., Instit. Div., VII. c. vi. See Waterland, Discourse of Fundamentals (Works, V. 80). "The theory of Providence," writes Mr. Hutton, Essays, I. 88,“ is one which, unless harmonized with general moral and physical laws, can assuredly stand no longer; and yet it is one which has exerted so profound an influence over every Christian mind from the earliest Christian ages to our own, that to part with it would be to give up the very life of religion."" Point de religion sans prière'a dit ce même Voltaire. Rien de plus évident; et par une conséquence nécessaire, point de prière, point de religion."-De Maistre, Soirées, p. 158.

I

« ElőzőTovább »