Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, / 10th Edition, 1890

by Unknown

Again, there is a progressive tendency observable in the religions of the world; but the progress is of a particular kind, and largely counteracted by degeneracy. Individuals elevate, masses degrade religion. There is no progress by insensible modifications; no improvement of a religion in committee. Councils like those of Asoka or Chosroes can only sift and popularise and publish what it needed a Buddha or Zarathustra to create. And so religion is handed on, from one great teacher to another, never rising above the level of its founder or last reformer, till another founder or reformer comes; while in the interval it is materialized, vulgarized, degraded.

And from the nature of this progress, as the work of great individuals, another consequence has historically followed; viz. that all the pre-Christian religions have been partial, have emphasized, that is to say, unduly if not exclusively one requirement or another of the religious consciousness, but never its complex whole. For the individual teacher, however great, cannot proclaim with prophetic intensity more than one aspect of a truth; and his followers invariably tend to isolate and exaggerate this aspect, while any who attempt to supply its complement are regarded with suspicion. Hence the parties and sects and heresies of which religious history is full. The simplest illustration of this is the fundamental distinction between Theism and Pantheism, or the transcendence and immanence of God; the one often said to be a Semitic, the other an Aryan tendency of thought. But however this may be, both these principles must be represented in any system which would really satisfy the whole of our religious instincts; while, as a matter of fact, they were separated by all the pre-Christian religions, and are separated by Mahometanism and Buddhism, the only two religious systems which compete with Christianity to-day.

These, then, are a few broad results of our comparative survey of religions. That religion, however humble the mode of its first appearing, is yet universal to man. That it progresses through the agency of the great individual, the unique personality, the spiritual genius; while popular influence is a counter-agent and makes for its decay. That its various developments have all been partial, and therefore needed completion, if the cravings of the human spirit were ever to be set at rest.

And all this is in perfect harmony with our Christian belief in a God Who, from the day of man's first appearance in the dim twilight of the world, left not Himself without witness in sun and moon, and rain and storm-cloud, and the courses of the stars, and the promptings of conscience, and the love of kin: and Who the while was lighting every man that cometh into the world, the primaeval hunter, the shepherd chieftain, the poets of the Vedas and the Gathas, the Chaldaean astronomer, the Egyptian priest, each, at least in a measure, to spell that witness out aright; ever and anon when a heart was ready revealing Himself with greater clearness, to one or another chosen spirit, and by their means to other men; till at length, in the fulness of time, when Jews were yearning for one in whom righteousness should triumph visibly; and Greeks sighing over the divorce between truth and power, and wondering whether the wise man ever would indeed be king; and artists and ascetics wandering equally astray, in vain attempt to solve the problem of the spirit and the flesh; 'the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.' The pre-Christian religions were the age-long prayer. The Incarnation was the answer. Nor are we tied to any particular view of the prehistoric stages of this development. We only postulate that whenever and however man became truly man, he was from that moment religious, or capable of religion; and this postulate deals with the region that lies beyond the reach of science, though all scientific observation is, as we have seen, directly in its favour.

In short, the history of the pre-Christian religion is like that of pre-Christian philosophy, a long preparation for the Gospel. We are familiar enough with this thought in its Jewish application from the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But it seems to be often forgotten that the principles laid down in that Epistle admit of no limitation to any single race of men. They are naturally illustrated from Hebrew history in a writing addressed to Hebrews. But their scope is universal. They compel their own application to every religious history, which the growth of our knowledge brings to light. And from this point of view the many pagan adumbrations of Christian doctrine, similarities of practice, coincidences of ritual, analogies of phrase and symbol, fall naturally into place. The fathers and early missionaries were often perplexed by these phenomena, and did not scruple to attribute them to diabolic imitation. And even in the present day they are capable of disturbing timid minds, when unexpectedly presented before them. But all this is unphilosophical, for in the light of evolution the occurrence of such analogies is a thing to be expected; while to the eye of faith they do but emphasize the claim of Christianity to be universal, by shewing that it contains in spiritual summary the religious thoughts and practices and ways of prayer and worship, not of one people only, but of all the races of men.

'In the whole of our Christian faith,' says Thomassin, 'there is nothing which does not in the highest degree harmonize with that natural philosophy which Wisdom, who made all things, infused into every created mind, and wrote upon the very marrow of the reason; so that, however obscured by the foul pleasures of the senses, it never can be wholly done away. It was this hidden and intimate love of the human mind, however marred, for the incorruptible truth, which won the whole world over to the gospel of Christ, when once that Gospel was proclaimed[213].'

But when all this has been said, there is a lingering suspicion in many minds, that even if the details of the doctrine of development are not inconsistent with Christianity, its whole drift is incompatible with any system of opinion which claims to possess finality. And if Christianity were only a system of opinion, the objection might be plausible enough. But its claim to possess finality rests upon its further claim to be much more than a system of opinion. The doctrine of development or evolution, we must remember, is not a doctrine of limitless change, like the old Greek notion of perpetual flux. Species once developed are seen to be persistent, in proportion to their versatility, their power, i.e. of adapting themselves to the changes of the world around them. And because man, through his mental capacity, possesses this power to an almost unlimited extent, the human species is virtually permanent. Now in scientific language, the Incarnation may be said to have introduced a new species into the world—a Divine man transcending past humanity, as humanity transcended the rest of the animal creation, and communicating His vital energy by a spiritual process to subsequent generations of men. And thus viewed, there is nothing unreasonable in the claim of Christianity to be at least as permanent as the race which it has raised to a higher power, and endued with a novel strength.

III. But in saying this we touch new ground. As long as we confine ourselves to speaking of the Eternal Word as operating in the mysterious region which lies behind phenomena, we are safe it may be said from refutation, because we are dealing with the unknown. But when we go on to assert that He has flashed through our atmosphere, and been seen of men, scintillating signs and wonders in His path, we are at once open to critical attack. And this brings us to the real point at issue between Christianity and its modern opponents. It is not the substantive body of our knowledge, but the critical faculty which has been sharpened in its acquisition that really comes in conflict with our creed. Assuming Christianity to be true, there is, as we have seen, nothing in it inconsistent with any ascertained scientific fact. But what is called the negative criticism assumes that it cannot be true, because the miraculous element in it contradicts experience. Still criticism is a very different thing from science, a subjective thing into which imagination and personal idiosyncrasy enter largely, and which needs therefore in its turn to be rigorously criticised. And the statement that Christianity contradicts experience suggests two reflections, in limine.

In the first place the origin of all things is mysterious, the origin of matter, the origin of energy, the origin of life, the origin of thought. And present experience is no criterion of any of these things. What were their birth throes, what were their accompanying signs and wonders, when the morning stars sang together in the dawn of their appearing, we do not and cannot know. If therefore the Incarnation was, as Christians believe, another instance of a new beginning, present experience will neither enable us to assert or deny, what its attendant circumstances may or may not have been. The logical impossibility of proving a negative is proverbial. And on a subject, whose conditions are unknown to us, the very attempt becomes ridiculous. And secondly, it is a mistake to suppose that as a matter of strict evidence, the Christian Church has ever rested its claims upon its miracles. A confirmatory factor indeed, in a complication of converging arguments, they have been, and still are to many minds. But to others, who in the present day are probably the larger class, it is not so easy to believe Christianity on account of miracles, as miracles on account of Christianity. For now, as ever, the real burden of the proof of Christianity is to be sought in our present experience.

There is a fact of experience as old as history, as widely spread as is the human race, and more intensely, irresistibly, importunately real than all the gathered experience of art and policy and science,—the fact which philosophers call moral evil, and Christians sin. It rests upon no questionable interpretation of an Eastern allegory. We breathe it, we feel it, we commit it, we see its havoc all around us. It is no dogma, but a sad, solemn, inevitable fact. The animal creation has a law of its being, a condition of its perfection, which it instinctively and invariably pursues. Man has a law of his being, a condition of his perfection, which he instinctively tends to disobey. And what he does to-day, he has been doing from the first record of his existence.