Chapter IV: Part 4

In the moral world we have to do with something far different from a clock; nor are we in the presence of a machine constructed, regulated, once for all; the law of Order, that is to say, the moral law, is incessantly in contact with man's free agency; man does homage to the law which he is yet at liberty to accomplish or to violate; the law is a manifestation of the supreme legislator, of whose thought and will it is the expression. God moral sovereign, and man free subject, are both contained in the fact of the moral law. In this fact alone Kant found God; he erred in not also finding God elsewhere; but it is nevertheless true that it is in the moral law, the rule of human Liberty, that God shows himself to man most directly, most clearly, most undeniably.

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Just as the moral law, without a sovereign legislator to impose it upon man, is an incomplete and inexplicable fact, a river without source, just so the moral responsibility of the free agent man, without a supreme judge to apply it, is an incomplete and inexplicable fact, a source without outlet, which runs and loses itself no one can tell whither. Just as the moral law reveals the moral legislator, just so does moral Responsibility reveal the moral judge. Just as the moral law is no law of human invention, just so human judgments, rendered in the name of moral responsibility, are hardly ever the judgments perfectly true and just which such responsibility expects and calls for. God is contained in the moral law as its primal author, and in moral responsibility as its definitive judge. The moral system, that is, the empire of the moral law, is incomprehensible and impossible if there is no God there, not only to establish it in a region above and paramount to man's free agency, but to establish it when troubled by man's conduct as a free agent.

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Thus the moral truths, inherent in and proper to the human nature--that is, the distinction between moral good and moral evil, moral obligation, moral responsibility, moral merit and demerit,--are necessarily and intimately connected with the truths of Religion; for instance, with God moral legislator, God moral spectator, God moral judge. Thus morality is naturally and essentially connected with religion. Morality is, it is true, a thing special and distinct in the ensemble of man's nature and of man's life, but it is in no respect independent of the ensemble to which it belongs. It has its particular place in that ensemble, but it is only in that ensemble that its existence is reasonable, thence only that it derives its source and its authority.

Morals may, in the order of science, be separately observed and described; but in the order of actuality morality is inseparable from Religion.

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What would be said of a physiologist if he maintained that the heart is independent of the brain, because those two organs are distinct, organs which are closely united and indispensable to each other in the unity of the human being?

The spectacle of the world leads us to the same result as the study of man, and reads us the same lesson. History confirms Psychology. What is the great action which makes itself most remarkable upon the stage of human societies? The constant struggle of good with evil, of just with unjust. In this struggle what shocking disorders! What iniquity perpetrated! How frequent an interregnum in the empire of the moral law and of justice, and what vicissitudes there! At one time the moral decree is expected in vain, and the human conscience remains painfully troubled by the successes of vice and of crime: at another time, contrary to all expectation, and after the most deplorable infractions of the moral law, the moral judgment comes. {77} "In vain," said Chateaubriand fifty years ago, "does Nero prosper; Tacitus already lives in the empire; he grows up unnoticed near the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just providence has left in the hands of an obscure child the fame of the master of the world." Chateaubriand was right: Tacitus was the avenger of the moral law outraged by the masters of the Roman Empire; he was the judge of their triumphs; but in that very Empire the most victorious of its masters, Marcus Aurelius, after having consecrated his life to the search after and the practice of the moral law, dies in profound sadness beneath his tent on the banks of the Danube; sad on account of his wife, sad on account of his son, and of the future of that world which he had governed, and which was only to be renewed, and regenerated, by those Christians whom he had persecuted. Everything is incomplete, imperfect, incoherent, obscure, contradictory, in this vast conflict of men and actions called History; and Providence, the personification of eternal wisdom and justice, sometimes manifests itself there with _éclat_, and sometimes remains there, inert and veiled, beneath the most sombre mysteries. {78} Is such the normal, definitive state of the universe? Shall truth, shall justice, never assume there more space than they now occupy? When shall light dawn upon the darkness? Who restore order to this chaos? Man evidently is insufficient to the task; in the world, as in individual man, the moral principle is still mutilated, and too infirm for its mission, unless it is intimately united to the religious principle. Morality can as little dispense with God in the life of the human race, as in that of the individual man.

In these days more than ever morality has need of God. I am far from thinking ill of my country or of my age; I believe that they progress, that they have a future; but humanity is now-a-days exposed to a rude trial. On one side we have been witnesses to events of the most contradictory character: everything in the world of opinion has been questioned; everything in that of facts has been shaken, overthrown, raised up again, left tottering. {79} Oppressed by this spectacle, what remains to men's minds more than feeble convictions--dim hopes? On the other side, in the midst of this universal shock of minds, science, and man's power over the surrounding world, have been prodigiously extended and confirmed; light has shone more and more brightly upon the material world, at the very moment when it was becoming paler and paler, declining more and more, in the moral world. We have plucked and are still plucking, more actively than ever, the fruit of the tree of knowledge; whereas the rules of human conduct, the laws of good and of evil, have become indistinct in our thought. Man remains divided between pride and doubt; intoxicated by his power, and disquieted by his weakness. Man's soul, how perturbed! human morality, how endangered!

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Thus far I have treated the subject with far more reserve and indulgence for the opinions of others than I intended. I have limited myself to the bounds assigned to the question by the advocates of the theory of independent morality themselves. I have done nothing more than set in broad daylight the intimate, natural, and necessary connection of morals with religion; of man, moral being, with God, moral sovereign. I am only at the threshold of the truth. It is not merely to religion in general that morality pertains; it is not merely the idea of God of which it has need; it requires the constant presence of God, his unceasing action upon the human soul. It is from Christianity alone that morality can now derive the clearness, force, and security, indispensable for the exercise of its empire. And it is not for her practical utility, it is for her truth, her intrinsic value, that I hold Christianity to be necessary to the human soul, and to human societies. It is because she is in perfect harmony with man's moral nature; and because she has been already tested in man's history; that Christianity is the faithful expression of the moral law, and the legitimate master of the moral being.

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The first and the incomparable characteristic of Christianity, is the extent, I should rather say the immensity, of her moral ambition. The moral system established by Christ has often been contrasted with the reforms aimed at by great men whose endeavour it also was to fix moral laws for man's conduct, and to secure their empire over him. Jesus has been compared to Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Cakia-mouni, Mahomet. The comparison is singularly inappropriate and superficial. The wisest, the most illustrious, of these moral reformers, even the most powerful, understood and accomplished at best but a very limited and incomplete work; sometimes they only sought to place in a clear light the rational principles of morality; sometimes they gave to their disciples, addressing themselves to these alone, rules for conduct in conformity with rational principles of morality; they taught a doctrine or established rules for discipline; they founded schools or sects. {82} The Christian work was something quite different. Jesus was not a philosopher who entered into discussions with his disciples, and instructed them in moral science; nor a chief who grouped around him a certain number of adepts, and subjected them to certain special rules which distinguish, nay sever, them from the mass of mankind: Jesus expounds no doctrine, sets up no system of discipline, and organises no particular society: he penetrates to the bottom of the human soul, of every soul; he lays bare the moral disease of humanity, and of every man; and he commands his disciples with authority to apply the cure, first to themselves, and then to all men:--"Save your soul, for what would it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul?" "Go and preach to all nations."

What philosopher, what reformer, ever conceived an idea so ambitious, so vast? ever undertook to solve so completely, so universally, the moral problem of man's nature and man's destiny?

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And this was no chimerical ambition; the mission of Christ has been pursued, and is still being pursued in the world, its onward movement often crossed, interrupted, altered, never hopelessly arrested. And during the first three centuries of Christianity, it was in the name and solely with the arms of Faith and of Liberty, that she commenced her enterprise of vanquishing man and the world. And in these days, after the lapse of nineteen centuries, in spite of the intermixture of error, of crime, and evil, it is with the same arms, and with them alone, that Christianity, in the name of Faith and of Liberty, and exposed to fresh and violent attacks, resumes in the moral world the same task, and promises herself fresh success.

Without attempting, indeed, to sound them to their depths, let me at least indicate the causes of this indomitable vitality of the Christian Religion, and show why the hope is well founded which she entertains in the midst of her trials.

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Of the moral philosophers, almost all are either bitter censors, cold observers, or flatterers of human nature. Some of them proclaim that man is naturally good, and that his vices are solely due to the bad institutions of society. Some, again, regard self-interest and self-esteem as the only springs of human actions. Others describe the errors and foibles of man with a careful sagacity, and yet a sagacity that does not indispose them to jeer and mock at them, as if they were actors in a drama, both amused themselves and amusing the spectators. How different the regard and the sentiment of Jesus when contemplating man: how serious that regard! how profound, how pregnant with effect that sentiment! No illusion, no indifference with respect to the nature of man; full, he knows it to be, of evil and at the same time of good; inclined to revolt against the moral law, at the same time that it is not incapable of obeying it; he sees in man the original sin, source of the troubles and of the perils of his soul: he does not regard the evil as incurable; he contemplates it with an emotion at once severe and tender, and he attacks it with a resolution superior to every discouragement, and prepared for every sacrifice. {85} Why should I not simply employ Christian terms, the most genuine of any, as well as the most impressive? Jesus lays bare the sin without reserve, and without reserve devotes himself to the sinner's salvation. What philosopher ever comprehended man so well, and loved him so well, even whilst judging him so freely and so austerely?

Jesus does not occupy himself less with man's futurity than with man's nature. At the same time that he lays down, in all its rigour, the principle of the moral law, the pure accomplishment of duty, he forgets not that man has need of happiness, and thirsts after happiness, after a happiness pure and lasting; he opens to virtue the prospect of its attainment, he holds out a hope, foreign to all worldly objects, hope of an ideal happiness inaccessible to the curiosity of man's mind, but apt to satisfy the aspirations of his soul, and not, as it were, a conquest to be effected by merit, nor the acquittal of a debt, but a recompense to be accorded to the virtuous efforts of man by the equitable benevolence of God. {86} The Christian Religion, at the same time that it compels man during this life to constant and laborious exertion, has in store for him, if only he labour in accordance to the law, "the kingdom of God" and "the promises of eternal life."

Thus, Jesus knows human nature entirely, and satisfies it; he keeps simultaneously in view man's duties and his necessities, his weaknesses and his merits. He does not allow the curtain to fall upon the rude scenes of life, and the sad spectacles of the world, without any _dénouement_. He has a prospect, and a futurity, and a satisfaction for man, superior to his trials, and superior to his disappointments. In what manner does Jesus attain this result? How does he touch all the chords of man's soul, and respond to all its appeals? By the intimate union of morality with religion, of the moral law with moral responsibility: sole view, complete at once and definitive, of the nature and destiny of humanity; sole efficacious solution of the problems which weigh upon the thought and life of man!

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I say the sole efficacious solution. Efficacy is, in truth, the peculiar, the essential characteristic of Christianity. However high-reaching the ambition of philosophy is, it is infinitely less so than that of religion. The ambition of philosophers is purely scientific. They study, observe, discuss; their labours produce systems, schools. The Christian Religion is a practical work, not a scientific study. At the base of its dogmas and of its precepts there is certainly a philosophy, and, in my opinion, the true philosophy; but this philosophy is only the point from which Christianity departs, not its object. The object is to induce the human soul to govern itself according to the divine law; and to attain this object it deals with man's nature as it is, in its entirety, with all its different elements, all its sublime aspirations. There, to borrow the language of strategy, we see the basis of operation of Christianity; the basis upon which it enters upon its moral struggle, and upon which it undertakes to ensure the triumph in man of good over evil, and to procure the salvation of man by his reformation.

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When I published, two years ago, the Second Series of these Meditations--the subject of which is the actual state of the Christian Religion--I essayed to characterise therein the fundamental errors of the different philosophical systems which combat it. I sent, according to my custom, the volume to my companion in life, and my _confrère_ at the Institute, M. Cousin, with whom, notwithstanding our differences of opinion, I maintained always very friendly relations. On the 1st June, 1866, he wrote to me from the Sorbonne the following letter:--

"My dear Friend,

"As soon as I received your book I hastened to read it, and I
tell you very sincerely that I am very content with it. The
little difference between our opinions, which you have not
pretended to conceal, are inevitable, because they are the
consequence of a general dissimilarity in the manner in which
we form our conceptions of the nature of philosophy and of the
nature of religion.
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These two great powers may and ought to be in accord, still
they are different. To Religion belongs an influence of an
elevated and universal kind; to philosophy an influence more
restricted, and still very elevated. The one addresses itself
to the entire soul, comprising in it the imagination; the other
only addresses itself to the reason. The first sets out from
mysteries, without which there is no religion; the second sets
out from clear and distinct ideas, as has been said both by
Descartes and by Bossuet. This distinction is the foundation of
my philosophy and of my religion; and this distinction is also,
in my view, the principle of their harmony. To confound them
is, I think, an infallible mode of confusing them each by the
other, as Malebranche has done. To absorb philosophy in
religion gave, in Pascal, the result of a faith full of
contradiction and of anguish; to absorb religion in philosophy
is an extravagant enterprise, of which sound philosophy must
disapprove. To admit them both, each in its place, is truth,
grandeur, and peace.

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"Hence you perceive the reason of our differences of opinion,
which are no more hurtful to our union, than they are to our
old and sincere friendship."

I replied to him on the 13th of June:--

"I count, as well as you, my dear friend, upon our
dissentiments not being hurtful to our old and sincere
friendship; and I feel the more pleasure in so counting,
because, independently of our particular and petty
dissentiments, there is, as you say, between us a general, a
profound difference of opinion. I think, as you do, that
philosophy is not to be confounded or absorbed in religion, nor
religion in philosophy. I regard them both as free in their
manifestations and in their influence; but I do not found their
distinction or their accord upon the same grounds as you do.
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To me, philosophy is but a science, that is the work of man,
limited in its sphere and reach, as is man's mind itself.
Religion, in its principle and its history, is of divine origin
and institution. The one springs from man's avidity of
knowledge; the other is the light coming from God, 'which
shines upon every man that comes into the world,' and which God
continues to maintain and to shed over the world, according to
his impenetrable designs, by the act, general or special, of
his free will.

"I will not say more. We know, both of us, how far our opinions
are in the same road, and where is the point of divergence."

I had left Paris when I received M. Cousin's letter. He was at Cannes when I returned to Paris. We never saw each other afterwards. He has preceded me to that region where light is shed upon the mysteries of this life. But in our last correspondence we had each touched in a few words upon the knot of the whole question. {92} It is this--What are the points of resemblance, and what of difference, between Religion and science, between Christianity and philosophy? Although M. Cousin and I agreed as to the reciprocal rights of these two influences to liberty of action, we entertained different sentiments as to their origin and their nature, and consequently as to the boundaries of their empire, and the character of their mission.

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Third Meditation.

Christianity And Science.

It is the faith of Christians, and the point from which Christianity starts, that the Scriptures, which render an account of its origin, its dogmas, and its precepts, are divinely inspired. Not that Christians understand by these words that divine action upon the mind of man so often called inspiration, and of which Cicero said, "No one has ever been a great man without some divine inspiration;" [Footnote 17] and of which Plato was thinking when he said, "It is not by art that they make these noble poems, but because a God is in them, by whom they are possessed. ... They do not speak so by art, but by divine power." [Footnote 18]

[Footnote 17: Pro Archià, c. 8.]

[Footnote 18: I have translated the Greek text literally,
which M. Cousin has rendered with his accustomed elegance.
(Jon., vol. iv. p. 249, et passim.) Note of author.]

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The inspiration of the holy book of Christianity is quite a different thing: it is special and supernatural. There is divine inspiration in all the great works of man; these books are a work directly and personally inspired by God: they affirm this themselves. The language used by Jesus in the Gospels incessantly implies it; and, in numerous passages, the epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, declare it positively. [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: In his History of Christian Theology in the
Apostolic Age, M. Reuss acknowledges it: "This inspiration,"
says he, "was regarded as something unlike any other, and
reserved to a few individuals chosen by Providence, and only
to them upon special and solemn occasions;" and he refers to
the different texts of the New Testament which prove his
assertion. (Vol. i. p. 411, ed. 1860.)]

This Christian principle of the special and divine inspiration of the Scriptures was not originally taken in so narrow an acceptation as in later times. {95} In the first ages of the Christian era, the Christians of the school of Plato, whilst carefully distinguishing the inspiration of the sacred volumes from the inspiration of the great poets, strove to determine the process common to these two kinds of inspiration, and to explain one by the other--"It is not by any effect of nature nor by any human faculty," says St. Justin, "that it is in the power of men to know things so grand and so divine; it is by the grace which descends from on high upon the saints. They have no need for any art to be revealed to them; pure themselves, they must offer themselves to the action of the divine spirit, in order that the divine bow, descending itself from heaven and making use of the just, in the same way as the musician does of the chords of a harp or lyre, may unfold to us the knowledge of things divine." "I think," says Athenagoras, "that you are not ignorant of Moses, or of Isaiah, or of the other prophets, who, being turned aside from any process of individual reasoning, and moved by the spirit of God, proclaimed aloud that which echoed within them, the holy spirit employing them and attaching itself to them as the player adds to his flute the breath which makes it discourse its music."

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Questions soon began to be agitated in Christendom as to which of the religious books in circulation were really inspired, and as to which did not possess this divine characteristic. Hence proceeded disputes in respect to the Apocryphal books, and the formation of the Canon, or collection of the Holy Scriptures. But even in the very books, received by all as divinely inspired, great Christian doctors, not merely Origen, but St. Jerome and St. Augustin, discovered grammatical errors and faults which it was impossible to attribute to divine inspiration; and they distinguished, with greater or less exactness, the inspiration of God from the imperfection of man. St. Jerome points out solecisms in the Epistles of St. Paul; and St. Augustin says, in speaking of St. John, "I venture to say that John perhaps has not spoken of the thing as it really was, but only as it was in his power to speak; for he is a man, and he speaks of God. {97} Inspired, no doubt, by God, but still a man. ... When we meet with such diversity of expressions--although not in themselves contradictory--used by the Evangelists, we should regard, in the words of each, only the intent with which the words are pronounced, and not, like wretched cavillers, attach an idea of truth to the external form of the letter; for we must seek the very spirit, not only in all the words, but in everything else which serve as symptoms of the manifestation of the spirit."

It was in the presence and in spite of these discussions, of this explanation and of this free criticism, that the divine inspiration of the Scriptures was nevertheless upheld in the fourth century as the common and positive faith of Christians.

I pass by the twelve following centuries: a long period; full of darkness, but yet with flashes of light; silent yet full of uproar, full of liberty and oppression: period beginning with the invasion of the Barbarians and terminating with the Renaissance; that period in short which, taken together, is called the Middle Age.

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I transport myself at once to the sixteenth century, that epoch of political struggles, when men reduced to systems, and reasoned upon, the different elements of moral and social institutions; for they had, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, been fermenting pell-mell in Europe, which, although so small, was yet destined to conquer and civilize that globe, termed by us the world.

Striving to discover what, after the lapse of so many years and events, had become of the principle of the divine inspiration of the sacred books, that base of the religious faith and rule of Christian societies, I find that this question had received two solutions: one in the name of the Church of Rome, by its representative the Council of Trent; the other in the name of the Protestant churches, by their great founders and teachers. The Council of Trent "receives all the books both of the old and of the new Testament, since the same God is the author of each; surrounds them with the same respect, and with an equally pious reverence;" inserts in its decree the complete catalogue of these books, and "anathematises whoever does not accept as sacred and canonical those books, with all that they contain, just as they are in use in the Catholic Church, and as they exist in the ancient Latin edition known as the Vulgate." [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: Le Saint Concile de Trente, translated by the
Abbé Chanut, pp. 10--13. Paris, 1686.]

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The founders of the great Protestant Churches, although they began to apply the right of historical criticism to both texts and manuscripts, proclaimed nevertheless the absolute and complete inspiration of the holy volumes, in form and sense, narrative, precepts, and words. The Bible, all the Bible, the old, the new Testament, were, according to them, written at God's dictation to serve as the law of Christian Faith.

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The Decree of the Council of Trent remains the Rule of the Church of Rome in the nineteenth century as much as it was in the sixteenth century; and in our days a Protestant Divine, justly respected for elevation of thought as much as for the energetic sincerity of his Faith, in maintaining the principle of the complete and divine inspiration, and of the absolute infallibility, of the Bible, has been driven so far as to make this strange assertion: "All the expressions and all the letters of the ten commandments were certainly written by the finger of God, from the Aleph with which they begin, to the Caph with which they end;" a few pages further on he says: "The Decalogue, we repeat, was written entirely by the finger of Jehovah upon the two stone slabs." [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: Théopneustie. By M. Gaussen.
2nd ed., 1842, pp. 225, 242.]

"Be on your guard," said Bossuet, "you assign to God arms and hands; unless you strip these expressions of all that savours of humanity, so as to leave nothing of arms and hands but their action and their force, you err. ... God does everything by command; he has no lips to move, neither does he strike the air with his tongue to draw forth sounds from it; he has only to will, and his will is accomplished." [Footnote 22]

[Footnote 22: Elévations sur les Mystères, vol. ix. pp.
66-68, 85, 109; and the Sixiéme Avertissement sur les lettres
de Jurieu, vol. xxx. pp. 57, 134.]

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The empire of circumstances, both in the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, has had much to do with the adoption of these two doctrines, thus conceived and expressed. The Council of Trent, in order to cut short all controversies with the Reformers, took the Scriptures, and the interpretation of the Scriptures, under the guardianship of the supreme and infallible authority of the Church of Rome. The Reformers, in their turn, found their fixed point and a basis, firm in the midst of the movement to which they were giving the impulse, in the infallibility of the Bible, itself divinely inspired. And at the present time, on the one side the Church of Rome in its new dangers, and on the other side the Protestants, sincere in their ardent zeal to awaken that Christian Faith which is languishing, have pushed the two doctrines,--the former of ecclesiastical authority, the latter of biblical infallibility,--to their extremest verge: in my opinion each beyond the limits of right and of truth. History explains errors, it does not justify them. {102} I resume, briefly: those with which I reproach the two doctrines referred to,--they severally infringe, the one the rights of religious liberty, the other those of human science. In both cases they greatly endanger that Christian Religion which they have, in these respects, severally ill understood.

I have already expressed my views upon this subject. [Footnote 23]

[Footnote 23: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity.
Sixth Meditation. Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, pp.
145-146. London, 1864.]

Fervent and learned men maintain "that all, absolutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely inspired--the words as well as the ideas, all the words used upon all subjects--the material of language, as well as the doctrine which lies at its base. In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion, leading to profound misapprehension both of the meaning and the object of the sacred books. It was not God's purpose to give instruction to men in grammar, and if not in grammar neither was it his purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy, geography, or chronology. {103} It is on their relations with their Creator, upon duties of men towards Him and towards each other, upon the rule of faith and of conduct in life, that God has lighted them by light from heaven. It is to the subject of religion and morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of the Scriptures is directed."

I have read the Holy Scriptures scrupulously, and over and over again, with a view neither to criticise nor defend, with the sole object of familiarising myself with their character and sense. The more I advanced in this study, the longer I had lived in the Bible, the more did the two facts seem clear to me, the Divine truths and the human faults at once profoundly distinct and in intimate contact. I meet at each step in the Bible with God and with man: God, Being real and personal, to whom nothing happens, in whom nothing changes, Being identical and immovable in the midst of the universal movement, who gives of himself the unparalleled definition, "I am that I am:" on the other side man, Being incomplete, imperfect, variable, full of deficiencies and of contradictions, of sublime instincts and gross desires, of curiosity and ignorance, capable of good and of evil, and perfectible in the midst of his imperfection. {104} What the Bible is incessantly showing us is, God and Man, their points of connection and their contests,--God watching over and acting upon man; man at one time accepting, at another rejecting, God's influence. The divine person and the human person, if the expression is permissible, are in each other's presence, each acting upon the other and upon events. It is the education of man after his Creation: his education as a religious and moral being, nothing less and nothing more. God does not, in thus educating man, change him: he created him intelligent and free: he enlightens him as to the religious and moral law with light from heaven; in other respects he leaves him absorbed in the laborious and perilous exercise of his intelligence and of his liberty as a free agent. {105} At each epoch, in every circumstance, during his continuous action upon man, God takes him as he finds him, with his passions, vices, defects, errors, ignorance; just such a being as he has made himself; nay, every day is making himself, by the good or bad use of his intelligence and of his freedom of action. This is the Biblical account, and the Biblical history of the relations of Man with God.

What a strange contrast, and still what an intimate and powerful connection exists, in this history, between those whom--how shall I dare to permit myself to call the two actors! God does not appear so elevated, so pure, so strange to imperfection, so untroubled by any human nature, so immutable and serene in the plenitude of the divine nature, so really God, in any tradition, invention of poetry, or in any mythology, as he is presented to us in the Bible. On the other hand, in no nation, in no historical narrative or document, does man show himself more violent and ruder, more brutal, more cruel, more prompt to ingratitude, and more rebellious to his God, than he is amongst the Hebrews. {106} Nowhere else, and in no history, is the distance so great between the divine sphere and the human region, between the sovereign and the subject. Still, Israel never entirely separates itself from God; and, in spite of vices and excesses, Israel returns to God, and recognises his law and empire, even whilst incessantly violating them. Nowhere, on the other hand, does God appear, in his turn, so occupied with man, does he at once exact so much from him and yet evince so much sympathy for him: he does not change him suddenly, by any act of his sovereign will; he is a witness to all his imperfections, all his weaknesses, and all his errors; nevertheless, he abandons him not; he holds ever steadily before him the torch of Heavenly Light, and never omits to interest himself in his destiny. The religious and moral idea is ever present and dominant; nowhere else have the business and labour of human science held so small a place in man's thoughts and man's society. God, and the relations of God and man, are the only subjects which fill the Holy volumes.

{107}

In what do those relations consist? By what results does this continuous action manifest itself, of God upon man; this incessant dialogue between God and man? By laws, precepts, and commands, religious and moral--God proposes these to man; he enjoins nothing more; he speaks to him of nothing else; demands nothing from him but obedience to his Law. God does not teach, he commands; God does not discuss, he warns. And the organs of God's speech, the men whom he takes for his interpreters and his prophets, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, do neither less nor more. Although superior to most of their contemporaries by reason of possessing certain attainments, they are no professors of human sciences: just as they speak the language of the common people whom they address, just so do they share most of their ignorance and errors respecting the objects and facts of the finite world, in the midst of which they are living. {108} When they are made the medium for the religious and moral precepts and warnings of God, it is then that they are no longer mere men of their time; it is then, only then, that the light of divine inspiration descends upon them, and that they diffuse it to all around them.

I do not wish to limit myself to a general summary only of what I regard as the essential character of the Holy Scriptures,--the simultaneous presence of the divine element and of the human element; the one in all its sublimity, the other in all its imperfection; God revealing to man in a certain place his religious law and his moral law, but without conveying elsewhere the divine light; God taking man as he finds him, in the points of time and of space in which he is placed, with all his barbarism and imperfections. I proceed, therefore, to consider some of the particular examples presented by the Scriptures, which make this great truth so evident as to be incontestable.

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I open the book of Genesis and read:--

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here
I am.

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him
there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of.

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass,
and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and
clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went
unto the place of which God had told him.

Then on the third day Abraham lift up his eyes, and saw the
place afar off.

And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the
ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come
again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it
upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and a
knife: and they went both of them together.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father:
and he said, here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire
and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?

And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a
burnt-offering: so they went both of them together.
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And they came to the place which God had told him of; and
Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order; and
bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to
slay his son.

And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and
said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I.

And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou
any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God,
seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind
him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went
and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in
the stead of his son."

A man who, by his enlightened views, and the elevation of his mind, as well as by his faithfulness as a follower of Christ, is an honour to the church which he serves, Dr. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, explains and characterises in these terms the Biblical truths to which I am referring.

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"There have been," he says, "in almost all ancient forms of religion, and also in some of more modern date, two strong tendencies, each in itself springing from the best and purest feelings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other and with its own highest purpose. One is the craving to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate with the powers above us, by surrendering some object near and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased, or propitiated, or approached by any other means than a pure life and good deeds. On the exaggeration, on the contact, on the collision of these two tendencies, have turned some of the chief difficulties of evangelical history. The earliest of them we are about to witness in the life of Abraham. ... {112} The sacrifice, the resignation of the will in the father and the son was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. The great principle was proclaimed that mercy was better than sacrifice,--that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. ... We have a proverb which tells us that man's extremity is God's opportunity." [Footnote 24]

[Footnote 24: Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church.
By Arthur P. Stanley, D.D. Vol. i. pp. 47, 48, 50. London,
1867.]

Abraham was upon the point of accomplishing an act which, even in the presence of virtuous motives and a divine command, has been forbidden, and is held accursed by the subsequent Revelation and the sentiments of all whom it has enlightened. At this moment the hand of Abraham is stayed, and patriarchal religion is saved from the antagonism of a conflict between the rigour of the Hebrew law and the merciful dispensation of the Gospel.

The sentiment which Dean Stanley expresses has my full concurrence; but I go still further, and maintain that there is in the pathetic narrative of Abraham's sacrifice something more than he points out. {113} This interposition of God in order to arrest the very act which he has required is in accord with the general doctrine of the Bible, expressly condemning human sacrifices; [Footnote 25] but Abraham's as well as several other examples prove how such sacrifices continued to exist in the ferocious traditions and manners, not only of several nations of Semitic origin, but even of the Hebrews themselves. God's intent is to try Abraham, and he pauses as soon as Abraham's obedience to the divine order is beyond doubt. Abraham does not hesitate to execute the divine command; he expresses no surprise at it. The sacrifice of Isaac is prepared, and very nearly consummated, as an event almost of course. Here we have man in the grossest and blindest condition of barbarism, in the presence of God, in whom as sovereign he believes, and whose sovereignty it is not his purpose to dispute.

[Footnote 25: Leviticus xviii. 21; Deuteronomy xii. 31;
Ezekiel xx. 26. This question is treated and conclusively
solved in the Theologische Encyclopedie of Herzog, art.
Sacrifice, vol. x. p. 621.]

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It would be easy for me to multiply these examples, and to show, in many other passages of the Bible, the following fundamental characteristic of Biblical History: the thought and word of man, although constantly in presence of the divine law and of the divine action, yet in contact and contrast with the thought and word of God. I prefer seeking for proofs in support of my conviction in a comparison of the Old and New Testaments, and in the light which Christianity sheds upon the Hebrew Revelation, which it does not contradict, but to which it applies a movement of progress.

I say progress,--progress immense, infinitely grander than man's imagination could ever have conceived,--and at the same time the character of the divine work remaining absolutely the same. It is no longer, as in the Old Testament, the stormy combat, the continuous struggle of God and of man in the events of the world and in the life of the people. God no longer interposes in the New Testament to warn or direct, to raise up or humble, to recompense or to punish man in this world; he decides no longer directly the issue of battle or the destiny of states. {115} It is still God, God in Jesus Christ, with all his sublimity: He, and He only, occupies and fills the place. He appears there under a different aspect. In his human form, He is weakness itself, intended and destined to become the very type of humility and of suffering; the voluntary victim, who expiates man's sin; the victim of man's fall. But in the midst of His miseries it is God, God as He was for Israel in all the splendour of His power. Christ's own knowledge of this appears throughout. He says it, He manifests it unceasingly by actions and by words; sometimes by natural effects, sometimes by miracles. And yet how different! what a range in the object and the bearing of His actions and of His words! In the Old Testament the scene concentrates itself upon a corner of the world, a single people, a petty nation, separated by God from the rest of the world, in order to withdraw it from the contagion of idolatry;--but now it is for the whole world, for all nations, for future as well as for living generations, for the Gentile as well as for the Jew, for the barbarians of Malta as well as for the Greeks of Athens, that the God of the New Testament manifests Himself and speaks; it is over the whole of humanity that He spreads His light and orders His servants to extend His empire.

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He does more, much more. That divine light which Jesus comes to spread over the whole world, although it continues to emanate from the same fountain, becomes more complete and more pure. Jesus is the first to recognise the fact that the ancient law, although issuing from God, bears here and there traces of human errors and passions. "I am not come," says he, "to abolish the law, but to fulfil it." How fulfil it? By removing the errors with which it had become intermixed owing to the imperfect nature of the men, of the time, and of the place, at which it appeared, and by filling up the gaps which that imperfection had entailed. He disentangles the ancient law from every human element, and brings it back to its one divine element, its one pure and perfect source. I refrain from all argument or commentary. I will not cite anything in proof of this grand fact but those very texts of the Ancient and of the New Testament which embody their most essential precepts.

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I read in Exodus, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." [Footnote 26] Jesus effaces this _lex talionis_. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." [Footnote 27]

[Footnote 26: Exodus xxi. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 27: Matthew v. 43, 44.]

It is said in the book of Deuteronomy: "When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house." [Footnote 28]

[Footnote 28: Deuteronomy xxiv. 1.]

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I read in the New Testament: "And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? ... And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: Mark x. 2-9; Matthew xix. 3-9.]

The Mosaic law condemns to death every adulterer: "If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel." [Footnote 30]

[Footnote 30: Deuteronomy xxii. 22.]

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Jesus is called upon to pronounce upon the very case: "And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery; in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: John viii. 3-11.]

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The Mosaic law is full of minute ceremonial regulations, and of rigorous conditions, which attach to the performance of certain external acts, in certain appointed places, the duty of adoration and of prayer. Not only does Jesus object to the Scribes and Pharisees that they place all their faith and their piety in the acts alone; he does more; he gives his disciples personally a lesson of striking simplicity by teaching them the Lord's Prayer; and when the Samaritan woman, whom he meets near the well of Jacob, says to him: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. ... Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, ... the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." [Footnote 32]

[Footnote 32: John iv. 20, 21, 23, 24.]

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Thus Jesus, not to abolish but to accomplish the ancient law, and to make it harmonise with the new and universal work which he is about, separates from the law that which the imperfection of man had introduced in it in other times, and for a more limited work; he leaves in it nothing but the divine element in all its purity and empire. He only leaves to the divine element its religious and moral empire, for it is in its name alone that he speaks; the religious and moral law is the only law revealed by Jesus, and extended over the entire world; no other thought mixes itself with his doctrine, no other motive influences his action; political science, human science, have absolutely no place at all in the New Testament; Jesus does not think of satisfying either social ambition or intellectual curiosity; he desires to make neither kings nor doctors; as soon as he finds such pretensions advanced, he sets them aside; {122} "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's." "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [Footnote 33]

[Footnote 33: Matthew xxii. 21; xi. 25.]

Jesus occupies himself with man's soul alone, with the human being in his native simplicity; the relations of man, of every man, with God; the state and destiny of the human soul, of every human soul, in the present and in the future: this is the sole idea, the sole mission, of the New Testament. Jesus knows that when once accomplished this will bring with it its own salutary consequences: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." [Footnote 34]

[Footnote 34: Matthew vi. 33.]

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