I have been trying to lead you to a view of Revelation which recognizes the existence and the importance of those exceptional religious minds to whom is due the foundation and development of the great historical Religions, while at the same time we refuse, in the last resort, to recognize any {152} revelation as true except on the ground that its truth can be independently verified. I do not mean to deny that the individual must at first, and may quite reasonably in some cases throughout life, accept much of his religious belief on authority; but that is only because he may be justified in thinking that such and such a person, or more probably such and such a religious community, is more likely to be right than himself. Rational submission to authority in this or that individual postulates independent judgement on the part of others. I am far from saying that every individual is bound to satisfy himself by personal enquiry as to the truth of every element in his own Religion; but, if and so far as he determines to do so, he cannot reasonably accept an alleged revelation on any other ground than that it comes home to him, that the content of that Religion appeals to him as true, as satisfying the demands of his intellect and of his conscience. The question in which most of us, I imagine, are most vitally interested is whether the Christian Religion is a Religion which we can accept on these grounds. That it possesses some truth, that whatever in it is true comes from God—that much is likely to be admitted by all who believe in any kind of Religion in the sense in which we have been discussing Religion. The great question for us is, 'Can we find any reason for the modern man {153} identifying himself in any exclusive way with the historical Christian Religion? Granted that there is some truth in all Religions, does Christianity contain the most truth? Is it in any sense the one absolute, final, universal Religion?'
That will be the subject for our consideration in the next lecture. But meanwhile I want to suggest to you one very broad provisional answer to our problem. Christianity alone of the historical Religions teaches those great truths to which we have been conducted by a mere appeal to Reason and to Conscience. It teaches ethical Monotheism; that is to say, it thinks of God as a thinking, feeling, willing Consciousness, and understands His nature in the light of the highest moral ideal. It teaches the belief in personal Immortality, and it teaches a Morality which in its broad general principles still appeals to the Conscience of Humanity. Universal Love it sets forth as at once the central point in its moral ideal and the most important element in its conception of God. In one of those metaphors which express so much more than any more exact philosophical formula, it is the Religion which teaches the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. And these truths were taught by the historical Jesus. No one up to his time had ever taught them with equal clearness and in equal purity, and with the same freedom from other and inconsistent teachings: {154} and this teaching was developed by his first followers. Amid all aberrations and amid all contamination by heterogeneous elements, the society or societies which look back to Christ as their Founder have never in the worst times ceased altogether to teach these truths; and now they more and more tend to constitute the essence of Christianity as it is to-day—all the more so on account of the Church's gradual shuffling off of so many adventitious ideas and practices which were at one time associated with them. Christianity is and remains the only one of the great historical Religions which has taught and does teach these great truths in all their fullness.[2] These considerations would by themselves be sufficient to put Christianity in an absolutely unique position among the Religions of Mankind.
I have so far been regarding our Lord Jesus Christ simply as a teacher of religious and ethical truth. I think it is of fundamental importance that we should begin by regarding him in this light. {155} It was in this light that he first presented himself to his fellow-countrymen—even before (in all probability) he claimed to be the fulfiller of the Messianic ideal which had been set before them by the prophets of their race. And I could not, without a vast array of quotation, give you a sufficient impression of the prominence of this aspect of his work and personality among the earlier Greek Fathers. Even after the elaborate doctrines of Catholic Christianity had begun to be developed, it was still primarily as the supremely inspired Teacher that Jesus was most often thought of. When the early Christians thought of him as the incarnate Logos or Reason of God, to teach men divine truth was still looked upon as the supreme function of the Logos and the purpose of his indwelling in the historical Jesus. But from the first Jesus appealed to men as much more than a teacher. It is one of the distinctive peculiarities of religious and ethical knowledge that it is intimately connected with character: religious and moral teaching of the highest kind is in a peculiar degree inseparable from the personality of the teacher. Jesus impressed his contemporaries, and he has impressed successive ages as having not only set before man the highest religious and moral ideal, but as having in a unique manner realized that ideal in his own life. Even the word 'example' {156} does not fully express the impression which he made on his followers, or do justice to the inseparability of his personality from his teaching. In the religious consciousness of Christ men saw realized the ideal relation of man not merely to his fellow-man but also to his heavenly Father. From the first an enthusiastic reverence for its Founder has been an essential part of the Christian Religion amid all the variety of the phases which it has assumed. The doctrine of the Christian Church was in its origin an attempt to express in the philosophical language of the time its sense of this supreme value of Christ for the religious and moral life of man. As to the historical success and the present usefulness of these attempts, I shall have a word to say next time. Meanwhile, I would leave with you this one thought. The claim of Christianity to be the supreme, the universal, in a sense the final Religion, must rest mainly, in the last resort, upon the appeal which Christ and his Religion make to the moral and religious consciousness of the present.
LITERATURE
See the works mentioned at the end of the next Lecture, to which, as
dealing more specially with the subject of Lecture v., may be added
Professor Sanday's Inspiration, and Professor Wendt's Revelation and
Christianity.
[1] Throughout his writings, but pre-eminently in the Theoetetus.
[2] If it be said that Judaism or any other Religion does now teach these truths as fully as Christianity, this may possibly apply to the creed of individual members of these Religions, but it can hardly be claimed for the historical Religions themselves. I should certainly be prepared to contend that even such individuals lose something by not placing in the centre of their Religion the personality of him by whom they were first taught, and the communities which have been the great transmitters of them. But in this course of lectures I am chiefly concerned with giving reasons why Christians should remain Christians, rather than with giving reasons why others who are not so should become Christians.
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