It is not in the anthropoid ape that we may hope to find the origin of man, and it is not in the terror of the savage cowering before the majesty and mystery of nature that we are likely to find the genesis of his religion. Even if anthropology succeeded in proving that savagery was the first type in which humanity was expressed, and that its bestial rites inspired by terror was the first form of human religion, it would not then have accounted for their origin. The gulf between the religious savage and the non-religious speechless ape would remain as vast as ever. The first manifested beginning of a work may be rude enough, “as is the rough block which receives the first stroke of the sculptor who has designed to produce a statue; but the real beginning,” as we have been eloquently reminded, “is in the plan of the artist, and to perceive his ideal we have to wait for the final result.”[[48]] It is in the end therefore that we may be said to find and understand the author. So the origin of man, and the genesis of his religion, is more likely to be indicated by that divine fiat which one of the ancient authors of Genesis has dared to formulate, “Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness.” According to that conception, man is a creature, neither equal with, nor perfect as the Being who conceived him, but having affinity with his Creator, and from the very first manifesting capacity and potentiality of indefinite progress to be gained by the divine education to which he is everlastingly subjected.
It is not in the plan of our lecture to discuss these momentous questions, or to enter the lists against the representatives of the sciences of Anthropology or Religion. Anthropology is not sufficiently advanced to scatter the mystery that surrounds the cradle of the human race: and it would be rash for the apostles of the other science to maintain that they have succeeded in tracing the lines of that process, out of which Christianity or even Buddhism is alleged to have evolved from the shapeless superstitions of the primitive savage, before they confront us as facts in the history of human thought. Observation and experience alike seem to counsel greater caution in making our deductions and drawing our inferences. Indeed there seems to be almost as much evidence in favour of the theory of degradation as there is in favour of that of evolution. There is no inherent tendency in human society to pass ever on and ever up to something better and nobler. No race, by its own inherent strength, seems to have raised itself from barbarism into anything that can be called true civilisation; but we have abundant proof in the Aztecs of former generations, and the negroes of the Black Republic in the present day, that races can terribly decline. A state of civilisation is very difficult to keep, as well as difficult to gain.[[49]] And so far as observation goes, savage life and religion appear to be “not the dawning of a society about to rise, but the fading remains of one sinking in storms, overthrown and shattered by overwhelming catastrophes.” Humboldt and Niebuhr, quoted by Whately in his lecture on the Origin of Civilisation, both protest as strongly as he did himself against those who profess to find in the wreck of the civilised and religious man his original representative,[[50]] and our best authority in the science of religion assures us that Fetichism, far from being the initial of an upward course, marks the very last stage in the downward course of religion.[[51]] It should content us, in the present state of our knowledge, to find that humanity is capable both of development and degradation. Savagery and civilisation are not separated from each other by impassable barriers: savagery is at least a possibility to a civilised race;[[52]] civilisation is not beyond the reach of the savage. On the surface of the very highest civilisation many things appear which are also to be seen in the lowest: and just as in the lowest organisms certain rudimentary traces are found of members which are perfected in organisms above them, so the very lowest savagery seems to exhibit an upward tendency. In the same way the very purest religions have clinging to them traces of the lowest superstitions. Not in Buddhism only, but even in Christianity, we find forms of Animism and Fetichism; but the question whether both religions first manifested themselves in these lower forms, with which they are still partly incrusted, must not be held to be settled in the affirmative because these traces of them exist. Instead of being survivals which they have not yet sloughed off or outgrown, they may be parasitical growths indicating degradation and disease.
Though the researches hitherto prosecuted have not resulted in the discovery of a law regulating the development of religion,[[53]] they all point to a common religious faculty peculiar to man, and indicate that the religious instinct is co-extensive with the human race. Nothing, it is true, in the nature of things forbids the discovery of tribes absolutely without religion; but as matter of fact, no such have been found. And as Tylor remarks, “those who assert the contrary disprove their theories by the facts which they allege in support of them.”[[54]] Now, if we find in all sections of humanity, even far apart from each other, the same groping after an Author and Governor of our being, and the same forecasting of our destiny, though in most contradictory, and, alas! often fearfully perverted ways, we may safely infer as a fundamental truth that humanity, though broken up into many fragments, is really an organic unity, and that the Christian dogma simply expresses a scientific fact, “that God hath made of one all nations on the face of the earth.”
If the organic unity of humanity be granted, the organic unity of language and of religion too would seem to be deducible from it as simple corollaries. But we must be careful in defining wherein this organic unity consists. We may assume that in regard to language it does not consist in a perfect primitive speech, broken up at later times into numberless forms to be used richly and copiously by some civilised, but scantily by barbarous peoples.[[55]] In regard to religion it does not mean a complete compendium of truth supernaturally given to the fathers of the human race, from which, while all men have erred more or less, some have fearfully fallen away. Such a view, though held generally once, would be condemned by Christian theologians now as irreligious in principle, for it would seek for the roots of religion not in the nature of man, but in some external enactment, and would make religion, which is essentially spontaneous, to be something mechanical or compulsory in action.[[56]] The unity of language does not consist in a common vocabulary, but in a common faculty which all men have of expressing their feelings and their thoughts; and the unity of religion does not consist in a number of fundamental beliefs which all men have in common; but in the universal instinct to believe in, and reverence and obey, a power higher and better than ourselves. The faculty, the instinct in each case is one; yet it has been developed, if we are to use that word, in very different degrees. In some tribes the faculty of reckoning is so weak, that they have numerals only to five, and their vocabulary is so poor as to express only objects around them or their own sensuous wants. In the same way in some peoples the religious faculty is so stunted as almost to be amorphous. It exists as it were in embryo; in other peoples it perplexes us by the monstrosities in which it is expressed, but the monstrosity, as we are reminded,[[57]] may mark a further growth which also points onward to something more complete, and may be in itself a type of things not seen as yet. Observation therefore seems to detect a religious tendency in process of evolution, and if so, the only question is as to whether that tendency develops by its own inherent power, or by a process of education intelligently conducted; in other words, whether man grows into his religion, or whether he is instructed in it by the revelation of a mind higher than his own.
The New Testament writers, while proclaiming the organic unity of humanity, proclaim as clearly that the organic development of religion proceeds under Divine control. The phrase “organic development of religion” may only be a modern way of designating that long continuous process by which God reveals His mind and will for the education of the human race, which culminated when He “who at sundry times and in divers manners,” in various ways and in different measures, “spake unto the fathers by the prophets,” spoke unto us by His Son. Holy Scripture from first to last is consistent in its teaching as to this. It tells of a Divine Spirit not operative only in one race or in one part of the world during a few centuries of its history, but striving with human souls always and everywhere. It tells us that God never left the world without a witness of Himself; it reminds us of prophets—certainly not all of the one nation—who, trained to grasp and to proclaim moral and spiritual truths, were sent to lead among their fellow-men lives so pure and unselfish as profoundly to affect the moral progress of the whole human race. In a word, it reveals Deity not as apart from man and uninterested in him, but as an everlasting agent in human history,—working out an eternal purpose hid as a mystery from all ages, but now manifested in the last times to us; the purpose of gathering together not only the scattered and alienated nations, but “all things which are in heaven and which are on earth in One,” even in Christ.
The proclamation of this universality of the Divine purpose is one of the chief distinctive characteristics of Christianity. Its canonical Scriptures from beginning to end contradict the Jewish heresy, that God, though He has made of one all nations, has only taken one or two under His protection, and has no care for the rest. They tell us that God cares for the sparrow that flits over the heads of the most degraded of the human race, and for the worm that crawls under their feet; and by implication they warn us that to assert that He who has provided for the wants of the reptile and the bird has made no provision for the spiritual wants of those whom He is said to have made in His image, is blasphemy more heinous than ever heathen or atheist has uttered. “The same Lord over all is rich in mercy unto all,” and “He is not far from any one” of them. He has left none “without a witness.” Though He has given some more than others, He has left no one without something. The religious instinct in some He has specially trained and illuminated, not because He regards them as favourites—for He is no respecter of persons—but because through them He would work out His beneficent plan for all. A few are indeed chosen, but that many may be called, and when one individual or one people is selected and peculiarised, it is that through them all nations may be blessed.
St. Paul, quoting to the Athenians from one of their own poets, reminded them that “we are all His offspring,” and as such we are all divinely cared for. It is true that He does not deal with all after the same fashion, and His dealings will always be perplexing if we apply to them only the standard of man and the measures of time; but if we remember that “He is God, and not man,” that “His years are throughout all generations,” and that we “can see only a portion of His ways,” we may trust that by-and-by He will show that He has wasted neither His own patience nor His creatures’ strength. For though He may not be dealing with us after the same fashion, He is dealing with all toward the same blessed end, the end which He has revealed in Christ, through whom, and by whom, and in whom, all men and things are to be reconciled.
We can only judge of His purpose by what of it has been disclosed. Humanity, essentially and fundamentally one, exhibits most manifold variety. While the unity of the race secures its sympathy with all its members, in its variety there is secured its indefinite expansion and progress. No family could always keep together in one spot: the differences of disposition and character among its members demand their separation as the condition of harmony. The family of man is a scattered one, not merely to prevent jealousy and hostility between its members, but to promote their education. The training of the race seems to proceed on principles somewhat analogous to those which we ourselves have adopted in the education of our children. We never could hope to educate a large number of children of various ages and mental capacities, by keeping them all in one class; so we break them up, and isolate, and grade them, and train some of them specially for the sake of all, that they may be their leaders and teachers. Even so, we find nations widely separated by natural barriers, that the characteristic energies of each may be developed, till the time comes when one or other of them is needed for the elevation or reformation of the rest. That the division of nations and the separate training of nations entered deeply into the counsels of Providence, may be learned by a glance at the configuration of the world, and the influences which are exercised by soil and climate and circumstance upon any single nation. The blessed effect of this division may be seen by the slightest survey of history in the corrective, educative, redemptive influence which they have exercised upon each other.[[58]] And yet a survey of the history of the last eighteen centuries will just as plainly indicate a Divine purpose of drawing the nations toward unity. Babel may mark the Divine purpose of the primeval economy, and Pentecost may be the sign of the present. The wonder in the plain of Shinar was, that through diversity of speech men were ceasing to understand each other. The wonder in Jerusalem was, that men of the most widely separate nationalities heard, each in their own tongue, Christian evangelists proclaim the marvellous works of God. Religion, which up till the coming of Christ, had proved a repellent and divisive force, began at that time to prove an attractive, harmonising, and transforming power. A new spring-tide dawned upon man’s religious conceptions, and truths after which all had been groping, but which none had attained to, emerged grandly into prominence. The Fatherhood of the One living and eternal God, the Divine Son, in whom all men are brethren, and the Holy Spirit, dealing with every man, working upon him and in him to conform him to the likeness of the highest and best, began to be revealed; and the more that revelation is accepted the more the reconciliation of the race advances.
It is not our interest, therefore, to sever Christianity from all connection with the manifold forms in which the religious instinct and faculty of man has found expression. If it could be proved that our religion stands in no relation to anything which men in other religions thought or believed, it would be discovered defective, and we would have to abandon the claim that it is the universal religion of humanity. To assert that all previous religious ideas must be expunged as erroneous or false, so that an entirely new message might be written, is to contradict the evangelical doctrine as to the nature of Christ and the purpose of His mission to the world. The New Testament writers assert that Christ is the source of all the truth that was ever uttered, the inspirer of all the goodness that was ever seen, and that He is the stimulator and educator of man’s every reaching out after God. The noblest thinkers, it is true, failed to comprehend the truth, and their highest religion failed to satisfy them; but we must not think of them as divinely permitted to fail to teach us the glory of Christ as the ultimate revelation of God. Here, as in all similar cases, failure was rather a partial success; for by the effort to reach it the mind was trained to receive and grasp the reality when it was disclosed. Some one has said that all pre-Christian religions are just Christ partially—very very partially—realised. Certainly they all point to Him, and but for Him they would have been abortive. They all suggest Him, in respect that they each claim something to satisfy and unite them. Christianity thus proves itself Divine, not in being absolutely different from, nor even in being vastly superior to, but in the fact that it harmonises and completes them. Instead, therefore, of being scared by the resemblances to Christianity which we meet in other religions, we should be thankful for their discovery. The early Apologists were not frightened when Celsus,[[59]] in the second century, submitted his alleged parallels to Christian doctrine and ethics, in order to prove that what Christians called revelation had already been attained by the unassisted efforts of heathen minds. Anticipating the language of the eighteenth century Deists, he proclaimed that “Christianity was as old as creation.” His parallels were often found to be defective, and many of them had only to be looked at to show the immense superiority of the Christian quotations. Augustine turned them against himself, when he showed that to claim entire originality for Christianity, to deny the existence of any light before Christ came, and the possibility of any silent universal revelation through reason and conscience, was to contradict His Messiahship. To ignore what God had done before, would have cut Him off from God and man. We would expect the Son of Man to confirm the deepest convictions of the human race. We would expect the Son of God to claim and utilise all the truth God’s Spirit had spoken in ages past. “Siquis vera loquitur, prior est quam ipse veritas? O Homo, attende Christum, non quando ad te venerit, sed quando te fecerit.”[[60]]
The more of Christian doctrine and ethics we find in other religions, the more Divine will Christianity appear. There is not a truth which has verified and sustained any other religion which is not found in Christianity, in fuller amount and in clearer form. Christianity differs from all other religions, not because it is a purer system of moral truth, but because it is the manifestation of a Divine life, and because in that life it reveals the power which alone can reconcile the knowing with the doing of duty. It professes only to have one original, one distinctive element; but how much is involved in that profession? for this original is Christ Himself, and all its doctrines and precepts are vital only because of their connection with Christ. Whole libraries of moral and doctrinal anthologies would not make up for the obliteration of His likeness from the religious consciousness of the world: “It would be like consoling ourselves for the loss of the sun by the kindling of ten thousand artificial lamps.”[[61]] He confronts the ages, as the One to whom all religions point, of whom all true prophets of the human race have unconsciously testified. They, like the Founder of this great religion, whose alleged resemblances will be found, as we examine them, to be rather point-blank contradictions and contrasts to the Christian doctrines and story, may have indeed been burning and shining lights, and men were willing for a season to rejoice in their light. They were “not that Light,” but as voices crying in the night for its arising they came to “bear witness of it”: the Light not of Asia only, nor yet only of Europe, but the “Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”