Though the word “theology” is sometimes employed in dogmatic writings to designate that single department of the science which treats of the divine nature and attributes, prevailing usage, since Abelard (A. D. 1079-1142) entitled his general treatise “Theologia Christiana,” has included under that term the whole range of Christian doctrine. Theology, therefore, gives account, not only of God, but of those relations between God and the universe in view of which we speak of Creation, Providence and Redemption.

John the Evangelist is called by the Fathers “the theologian,” because he most fully treats of the internal relations of the persons of the Trinity. Gregory Nazianzen (328) received this designation because he defended the deity of Christ against the Arians. For a modern instance of this use of the term “theology” in the narrow sense, see the title of Dr. Hodge's first volume: “Systematic Theology, Vol. I: Theology.”But theology is not simply “the science of God,” nor even “the science of God and man.” It also gives account of the relations between God and the universe.

If the universe were God, theology would be the only science. Since the universe is but a manifestation of God and is distinct from God, there are sciences of nature and of mind. Theology is “the science of the sciences,” not in the sense of including all these sciences, but in the sense of using their results and of showing their underlying ground; (see Wardlaw, Theology, 1:1, 2). Physical science is not a part of theology. As a mere physicist, Humboldt did not need to mention the name of God in his “Cosmos” (but see Cosmos, 2:418, where Humboldt says: “Psalm 104 presents an image of the whole Cosmos”). Bishop of Carlisle: “Science is atheous, and therefore cannot be atheistic.”

Only when we consider the relations of finite things to God, does the study of them furnish material for theology. Anthropology is a part of theology, because man's nature is the work of God and because God's dealings with man throw light upon the character of God. God is known through his works and his activities. Theology therefore gives account of these works and activities so far as they come within our knowledge. All other sciences require theology for their complete explanation. Proudhon: “If you go very deeply into politics, you are sure to get into theology.” On the [pg 002]definition of theology, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 1:2; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Theology; H. B. Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 44; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., 10, 7, 4; 11, 6, 4; and Lactantius, De Ira Dei, 11.

In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science does not create; it discovers. Theology answers to this description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it does not create them. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 141—“Schiller, referring to the ardor of Columbus's faith, says that if the great discoverer had not found a continent, he would have created one. But faith is not creative. Had Columbus not found the land—had there been no real object answering to his belief—his faith would have been a mere fancy.” Because theology deals with objective facts, we refuse to define it as “the science of religion”; versus Am. Theol. Rev., 1850:101-126, and Thornwell, Theology, 1:139. Both the facts and the relations with which theology has to deal have an existence independent of the subjective mental processes of the theologian.

Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and explication of the relations between these facts, and the synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts + relations; Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I, Introd., 43—“There may be facts without science, as in the knowledge of the common quarryman; there may be thought without science, as in the early Greek philosophy.” A. MacDonald: “The a priori method is related to the a posteriori as the sails to the ballast of the boat: the more philosophy the better, provided there are a sufficient number of facts; otherwise, there is danger of upsetting the craft.”

President Woodrow Wilson: “ ‘Give us the facts’ is the sharp injunction of our age to its historians ... But facts of themselves do not constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation, of what things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings of facts as suggest meanings.”Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 14—“The pursuit of science is the pursuit of relations.”Everett, Science of Thought, 3—“Logy” (e. g., in “theology”), from λόγος, = word + reason, expression + thought, fact + idea; cf. John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.”

As theology deals with objective facts and their relations, so its arrangement of these facts is not optional, but is determined by the nature of the material with which it deals. A true theology thinks over again God's thoughts and brings them into God's order, as the builders of Solomon's temple took the stones already hewn, and put them into the places for which the architect had designed them; Reginald Heber: “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung; Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.” Scientific men have no fear that the data of physics will narrow or cramp their intellects; no more should they fear the objective facts which are the data of theology. We cannot make theology, any more than we can make a law of physical nature. As the natural philosopher is “Naturæ minister et interpres,” so the theologian is the servant and interpreter of the objective truth of God. On the Idea of Theology as a System, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 126-166.

Any particular science is possible only when three conditions combine, namely, the actual existence of the object with which the science deals, the subjective capacity of [pg 003]the human mind to know that object, and the provision of definite means by which the object is brought into contact with the mind. We may illustrate the conditions of theology from selenology—the science, not of “lunar politics,” which John Stuart Mill thought so vain a pursuit, but of lunar physics. Selenology has three conditions: 1. the objective existence of the moon; 2. the subjective capacity of the human mind to know the moon; and 3. the provision of some means (e. g., the eye and the telescope) by which the gulf between man and the moon is bridged over, and by which the mind can come into actual cognizance of the facts with regard to the moon.

President E. G. Robinson: “Every man has as much theology as he can hold.” Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose. “Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.” Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt ‘to give account of things,’ as Plato said, ‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’ ” Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us: “Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.” See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.

Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge. Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] = “increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant; cf. 3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” For texts which represent truth as nourishment, see Jer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”; Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”; 1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”; Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.” Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see 1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.

Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.” Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.” Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?” The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle: “It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.” George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”

The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from “Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to “the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.

Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie: “One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.” The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman: “The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.” Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss. [pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.” Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has. 2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”

The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy: “What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.” Coleridge: “He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.” Mrs. Browning: “Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and ‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’ (Ps. 104:16).”

Bose, Ecumenical Councils: “A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.” Dorner: “The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.” Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.” Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”

Professor Howard Osgood: “A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.” Yet we must remember that creeds are credita, and not credenda; historical statements of what the church hasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the church must believe. George Dana [pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.” Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green: “We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?” George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.

As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”

Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than to God himself?”Von Baader: “To know God without God is impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime source of knowledge.” C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8—“God reveals truth in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.” F. H. Johnson, What is Reality? 399—“The teacher intervenes when needed. Revelation helps reason and conscience, but is not a substitute for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine to see the stars with our own eyes.” Schurman, Agnosticism, 178—“The Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But it is useless when you put your eyes out.”

We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118—“The word ‘authority’ is derived from auctor, augeo, ‘to add.’ Authority adds something to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element of witness. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church, Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.” Gore, Incarnation, 181—“All legitimate authority represents the reason of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to it.... Man is made in God's image: he is, in his fundamental capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully, through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better reason,—to use Plato's beautiful expression, he can salute it by force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give intellectual account of it.”

Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 332-337, holds that there is no such thing as unassisted reason, and that, even if there were, natural religion is not one of its products. Behind all evolution of our own reason, he says, stands the Supreme Reason. “Conscience, ethical ideals, capacity for admiration, sympathy, repentance, righteous indignation, as well as our delight in beauty and truth, are all derived from God.” Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 1900; 718, 719, maintains that there is no other principle for dogmatics than Holy Scripture. Yet he holds that knowledge never comes directly from Scripture, but from faith. The order is not: Scripture, doctrine, faith; but rather, Scripture, faith, doctrine. Scripture is no more a direct authority than is the church. Revelation is addressed to the whole man, that is, to the will of the man, and it claims obedience from him. Since all Christian knowledge is mediated through faith, it rests on obedience to the authority of revelation, and revelation is self-manifestation [pg 026]on the part of God. Kaftan should have recognized more fully that not simply Scripture, but all knowable truth, is a revelation from God, and that Christ is “the light which lighteth every man” (John 1:9). Revelation is an organic whole, which begins in nature, but finds its climax and key in the historical Christ whom Scripture presents to us. See H. C. Minton's review of Martineau's Seat of Authority, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Apr. 1900:203 sq.

Job 11:7—“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” Rom. 11:33—“how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Every doctrine, therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning of Tertullian's sayings: “Certum est, quia impossible est: quo absurdius, eo verius”; that of Anselm: “Credo, ut intelligam”; and that of Abelard: “Qui credit cito, levis corde est.” Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World: “A science without mystery is unknown; a religion without mystery is absurd.” E. G. Robinson: “A finite being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.” Hovey, Manual of Christ. Theol., 7—“To infer from the perfection of God that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;—all these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.” See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.

We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a single point of truth as two. We see God and man, divine sovereignty and human freedom, Christ's divine nature and Christ's human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at once in its little hand. Negro preacher: “You can't carry two watermelons under one arm.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 1:2—“In nature's infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.” Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34—“Man's progress in knowledge has been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all [pg 035]human history before.” And yet we may say with D'Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 248—“Man's position in the universe is eccentric. God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.” William Watson, Collected Poems, 271—“Think not thy wisdom can illume away The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things clear.”

1 Cor. 2:13—“not in words which man's wisdom teacheth”; 2 Cor. 3:6—“the letter killeth”; 12:4—“unspeakable words.” God submits to conditions of revelation; cf. John 16:12—“I have yet many things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Language has to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they “stagger under their weight of meaning”—e. g., the word “day,” in Genesis 1, and the word ἀγάπη in 1 Cor. 13. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on 1 Cor. 13:12—“now we see in a mirror, darkly”—in a metallic mirror whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect speech—“but then face to face” = immediately, without the intervention of an imperfect medium. “As fast as we tunnel into the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless mine.”

Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott, Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: “I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.”Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet we still need to offer the prayer of Ps. 119:18—“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” On New Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 334-336.

Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic virtues, governmental corruption. “Jesus was in heaven at the revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of man, or death as the result of Adam's sin; and he says little of departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.” It was better to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them. His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would not divert men's minds from pursuing the one thing needful; cf. Luke 13:23, 24—“Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul's silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John Foster spent his life, “gathering questions for eternity”; cf. John 13:7—“What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter.” The most beautiful thing in a countenance [pg 036]is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well must omit well. Story: “Of every noble work the silent part is best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.” Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9—“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him”; Deut 29:29—“The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children.” For Luther's view, see Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine Silence.

John 3:3—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,—witness the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay's transl.), 514—“Science is much under the influence of the will; and the truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the will.” Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, with the result of producing “atrophy of that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.” But a similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: “We are very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the professors' chairs are all filled.”

Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr. Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood spoke of Dr. Johnson's “Contradictionary,” which had both “interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through fifty-five years: that word is failure; I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether, electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered by enforcing some 'via media.' Truth lies rather in the union of opposite propositions, as in Christ's divinity and humanity, and in grace [pg 037]and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity; Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a larger appropriation of it.”

The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not man's creation of new planets, but man's discovery of planets that were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles: “Originality is a habit of recurring to origins—the habit of securing personal experience by personal application to original facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature, Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal experiences which arise from contact with these facts.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48—“The starry heavens are now what they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe, except that which comes through the increased power and use of the telescope.” We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to steer, said he had “sailed by that star.”

Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493—“Metaphysics, so far as they are true to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always is.... It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.” Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79—“True conservatism is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So Jesus came not ‘to destroy the law or the prophets’; he ‘came not to destroy, but to fulfil’ (Mat. 5:17).... The last book on Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.” John Milton, Areopagitica: “Truth is compared in the Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.” Paul in Rom. 2:16, and in 2 Tim. 2:8—speaks of “my gospel.” It is the duty of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon at Ajalon.” We do not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.

Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet Evolveable from the whole: evolved at last Painfully, held tenaciously by me.” Teachers and students may be divided into two classes: (1) those who know enough already; (2) those wish to learn more than they now know. Motto of Winchester School in England: “Disce, aut discede.”Butcher, Greek Genius, 213, 230—“The Sophists fancied that they were imparting education, when they were only imparting results. Aristotle illustrates their method by the example of a shoemaker who, professing to teach the art of making painless shoes, puts into the apprentice's hand a large assortment of shoes ready-made. A witty Frenchman classes together those who would make science popular, metaphysics intelligible, and vice respectable. The word σχόλη, which first meant ‘leisure,’then ‘philosophical discussion,’ and finally ‘school,’ shows the pure love of learning among the Greeks.” Robert G. Ingersoll said that the average provincial clergyman is like the land of the upper Potomac spoken of by Tom Randolph, as almost worthless in its original state, and rendered wholly so by cultivation. Lotze, Metaphysics, 1:16—“the constant whetting of the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with it.” “To do their duty is their only holiday,” is the description of Athenian character given by Thucydides. Chitty asked a father inquiring as to his son's qualifications for the law: “Can your son eat sawdust without any butter?” On opportunities for culture in the Christian ministry, see New Englander, Oct. 1875:644; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 273-275; Christ in Creation, 318-320.

Vinet, Outlines of Philosophy, 39, 40—“If I do not feel that good is good, who will ever prove it to me?” Pascal: “Logic, which is an abstraction, may shake everything. A being purely intellectual will be incurably sceptical.” Calvin: “Satan is an acute theologian.” Some men can see a fly on a barn door a mile away, and yet can never see the door. Zeller, Outlines of Greek Philosophy, 93—“Gorgias the Sophist was able to show metaphysically that nothing can exist; that what does exist cannot be known by us; and that what is known by us cannot be imparted to others” (quoted by Wenley, Socrates and Christ, 28). Aristotle differed from those moderate men who [pg 039]thought it impossible to go over the same river twice,—he held that it could not be done even once (cf. Wordsworth, Prelude, 536). Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 1-29, and especially 25, gives a demonstration of the impossibility of motion: A thing cannot move in the place where it is; it cannot move in the places where it is not; but the place where it is and the places where it is not are all the places that there are; therefore a thing cannot move at all. Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 109, shows that the bottom of a wheel does not move, since it goes backward as fast as the top goes forward. An instantaneous photograph makes the upper part a confused blur, while the spokes of the lower part are distinctly visible. Abp. Whately: “Weak arguments are often thrust before my path; but, although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword.” Cf. 1 Tim. 6:20—“oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called”; 3:2—“the bishop therefore must be ... sober-minded”—σώφρων = “well balanced.”The Scripture speaks of “sound [ὑγιής = healthful] doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:10). Contrast 1 Tim. 6:4—[νοσῶν = ailing] “diseased about questionings and disputes of words.”

Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics: “Mein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie über's Denken gedacht”—“I have been wise in never thinking about thinking”; he would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 296-299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1-18; also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 sq. Many a theological system has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: “No difficulty arises in theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.” N. W. Taylor: “Give me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in theology.”President Samson Talbot: “I love metaphysics, because they have to do with realities.”The maxim “Ubi tres medici, ibi duo athei,” witnesses to the truth of Galen's words: ἄριστος ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος—“the best physician is also a philosopher.” Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: “Science has not invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has modified the statement of many.... Physical Science will undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the sooner the better.” There is great advantage to the preacher in taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said, “like iron into the blood.”

Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue, when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E. G. Robinson: “Language is a great organism, and no study so disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.” Chrysostom: “This is the cause of all our evils—our not knowing the Scriptures.” Yet a modern scholar has said: “The Bible is the most dangerous of all God's gifts to men.” It is possible to adore the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon connecting phrases, as for example, the διὰ τοῦτο and ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in Rom. 5:12. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813-1853, said to his pupils: “One of the best preparations for death is a thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.”The youthful Erasmus: “When I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after that, some clothes.” The dead languages are the only really living ones—free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage. Divine Providence [pg 040]has put revelation into fixed forms in the Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330—“To be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.”On the true idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 302-313.

Ps. 25:14—“The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him”; Rom. 12:2—“prove what is the ... will of God”; cf. Ps. 36:1—“the transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an oracle.” “It is the heart and not the brain That to the highest doth attain.” To “learn by heart” is something more than to learn by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Faithful does not go through the Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair. “Great thoughts come from the heart,” said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle: “The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.” Pascal: “We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.” Hobbes: “Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.” Macaulay: “The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.” Nordau, Degeneracy: “Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”

Lord Bacon: “A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe: “As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.” Fichte: “Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.” Neander's motto was: “Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.” John Stirling: “That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson: “Never study theology in cold blood.” W. C. Wilkinson: “The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.

1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.” Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.” Professor Beck of Tübingen: “For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.” As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the “new commandment” illustrated by the death of Christ is only an “old commandment which ye had from the beginning” (1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations [pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth; Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.

Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.

By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called “The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.” But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.

Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the [pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word “symbol,” from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.

Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from “dog,” as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that “dogmatism is puppyism full grown,” but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term “Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that “Glaubenslehre” should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that “dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.” While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world. Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides” = there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.

To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.

It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology. “Speculative theology starts from certain a priori principles, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.” Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.” Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies “instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.

The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.” Science asks: “What do I know?” Philosophy asks: “What can I know?” William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing [pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.” Aristotle: “The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.” With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks: “Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.” Novalis: “Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.” Prof. DeWitt of Princeton: “Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.” W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”

Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal, e. g., God and the soul.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.” Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy = doctrine of knowledge (is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) + doctrine of being (is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”

Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology: “Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusively analytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothing a priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusively static, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological [pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.” On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

Ignatius († 115—Ad Trall., c. 9) gives us “the first distinct statement of the faith drawn up in a series of propositions. This systematizing formed the basis of all later efforts” (Prof. A. H. Newman). Origen of Alexandria (186-254) wrote his Περὶ Ἀρχῶν; Athanasius of Alexandria (300-373) his Treatises on the Trinity and the Deity of Christ; and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia (332-398) his Λόγος κατηχητικὸς ὁ μέγας. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 323, regards the “De Principiis” of Origen as the “first complete system of dogma,” and speaks of Origen as “the disciple of Clement of Alexandria, the first great teacher of philosophical Christianity.” But while the Fathers just mentioned seem to have conceived the plan of expounding the doctrines in order and of showing their relation to one another, it was John of Damascus (700-760) who first actually carried out such a plan. His Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου Πίστεως, or Summary of the Orthodox Faith, may be considered the earliest work of Systematic Theology. Neander calls it “the most important doctrinal text-book of the Greek Church.” John, like the Greek Church in general, was speculative, theological, semi-pelagian, sacramentarian. The Apostles' Creed, so called, is, in its present form, not earlier than the fifth century; see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:19. Mr. Gladstone suggested that the Apostles' Creed was a development of the baptismal formula. McGiffert, Apostles' Creed, assigns to the meagre original form a date of the third quarter of the second century, and regards the Roman origin of the symbol as proved. It was framed as a baptismal formula, but specifically in opposition to the teachings of Marcion, which were at that time causing much trouble at Rome. Harnack however dates the original Apostles' Creed at 150, and Zahn places it at 120. See also J. C. Long, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892: 89-101.

Though Systematic Theology had its beginning in the Eastern Church, its development has been confined almost wholly to the Western. Augustine (353-430) wrote his “Encheiridion ad Laurentium” and his “De Civitate Dei,” and John Scotus Erigena († 850), Roscelin (1092-1122), and Abelard (1079-1142), in their attempts at the rational explanation of the Christian doctrine foreshadowed the works of the great scholastic teachers. Anselm of Canterbury (1034-1109), with his “Proslogion de Dei Existentia” and his “Cur Deus Homo,” has sometimes, but wrongly, been called the founder of Scholasticism. Allen, in his Continuity of Christian Thought, represents the transcendence of God as the controlling principle of the Augustinian and of the Western theology. The Eastern Church, he maintains, had founded its theology on God's immanence. Paine, in his Evolution of Trinitarianism, shows that this is erroneous. Augustine was a theistic monist. He declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,” and regards God's upholding as a continuous creation. Western theology recognized the immanence of God as well as his transcendence.

Peter Lombard, however, (1100-1160), the “magister sententiarum,” was the first great systematizer of the Western Church, and his “Libri Sententiarum Quatuor” was the theological text-book of the Middle Ages. Teachers lectured on the “Sentences”(Sententia = sentence, Satz, locus, point, article of faith), as they did on the books of Aristotle, who furnished to Scholasticism its impulse and guide. Every doctrine was treated in the order of Aristotle's four causes: the material, the formal, the efficient, the final. (“Cause” here = requisite: (1) matter of which a thing consists, e. g., bricks and mortar; (2) form it assumes, e. g., plan or design; (3) producing agent, e. g., builder; (4) end for which made, e. g., house.) The organization of physical as well as [pg 045]of theological science was due to Aristotle. Dante called him “the master of those who know.” James Ten Broeke, Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-26—“The Revival of Learning showed the world that the real Aristotle was much broader than the Scholastic Aristotle—information very unwelcome to the Roman Church.” For the influence of Scholasticism, compare the literary methods of Augustine and of Calvin,—the former giving us his materials in disorder, like soldiers bivouacked for the night; the latter arranging them like those same soldiers drawn up in battle array; see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 4, and Christ in Creation, 188, 189.

Candlish, art.: Dogmatic, in Encycl. Brit., 7:340—“By and by a mighty intellectual force took hold of the whole collected dogmatic material, and reared out of it the great scholastic systems, which have been compared to the grand Gothic cathedrals that were the work of the same ages.” Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274), the Dominican, “doctor angelicus,” Augustinian and Realist,—and Duns Scotus (1265-1308), the Franciscan, “doctor subtilis,”—wrought out the scholastic theology more fully, and left behind them, in their Summæ, gigantic monuments of intellectual industry and acumen. Scholasticism aimed at the proof and systematizing of the doctrines of the Church by means of Aristotle's philosophy. It became at last an illimitable morass of useless subtilities and abstractions, and it finally ended in the nominalistic scepticism of William of Occam (1270-1347). See Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.

The Lutheran Theology.—Preachers precede theologians, and Luther (1485-1546) was preacher rather than theologian. But Melanchthon (1497-1560), “the preceptor of Germany,” as he was called, embodied the theology of the Lutheran church in his “Loci Communes” = points of doctrine common to believers (first edition Augustinian, afterwards substantially Arminian; grew out of lectures on the Epistle to the Romans). He was followed by Chemnitz (1522-1586), “clear and accurate,” the most learned of the disciples of Melanchthon. Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), called “Lutherus redivivus,”and John Gerhard (1582-1637) followed Luther rather than Melanchthon. “Fifty years after the death of Melanchthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of Melanchthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait of the great Reformer, and trampled it under foot in the presence of the assemblage” (E. D. Morris, paper at the 60th Anniversary of Lane Seminary). George Calixtus (1586-1656) followed Melanchthon rather than Luther. He taught a theology which recognized the good element in both the Reformed and the Romanist doctrine and which was called “Syncretism.” He separated Ethics from Systematic Theology, and applied the analytical method of investigation to the latter, beginning with the end, or final cause, of all things, viz.: blessedness. He was followed in his analytic method by Dannhauer (1603-1666), who treated theology allegorically, Calovius (1612-1686), “the most uncompromising defender of Lutheran orthodoxy and the most drastic polemicist against Calixtus,” Quenstedt (1617-1688), whom Hovey calls “learned, comprehensive and logical,” and Hollaz († 1730). The Lutheran theology aimed to purify the existing church, maintaining that what is not against the gospel is for it. It emphasized the material principle of the Reformation, justification by faith; but it retained many Romanist customs not expressly forbidden in Scripture. Kaftan, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:716—“Because the mediæval school-philosophy mainly held sway, the Protestant theology representing the new faith was meanwhile necessarily accommodated to forms of knowledge thereby conditioned, that is, to forms essentially Catholic.”

The Reformed Theology.—The word “Reformed” is here used in its technical sense, as designating that phase of the new theology which originated in Switzerland. Zwingle, the Swiss reformer (1484-1531), differing from Luther as to the Lord's Supper and as to Scripture, was more than Luther entitled to the name of systematic theologian. Certain writings of his may be considered the beginning of Reformed theology. But it was left to John Calvin (1509-1564), after the death of Zwingle, to arrange the principles of that theology in systematic form. Calvin dug channels for Zwingle's flood to flow in, as Melanchthon did for Luther's. His Institutes (“Institutio Religionis Christianæ”), [pg 046]is one of the great works in theology (superior as a systematic work to Melanchthon's “Loci”). Calvin was followed by Peter Martyr (1500-1562), Chamier (1565-1621), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605). Beza carried Calvin's doctrine of predestination to an extreme supralapsarianism, which is hyper-Calvinistic rather than Calvinistic. Cocceius (1603-1669), and after him Witsius (1626-1708), made theology centre about the idea of the covenants, and founded the Federal theology. Leydecker (1642-1721) treated theology in the order of the persons of the Trinity. Amyraldus (1596-1664) and Placeus of Saumur (1596-1632) modified the Calvinistic doctrine, the latter by his theory of mediate imputation, and the former by advocating the hypothetic universalism of divine grace. Turretin (1671-1737), a clear and strong theologian whose work is still a text-book at Princeton, and Pictet (1655-1725), both of them Federalists, showed the influence of the Cartesian philosophy. The Reformed theology aimed to build a new church, affirming that what is not derived from the Bible is against it. It emphasized the formal principle of the Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture.

In general, while the line between Catholic and Protestant in Europe runs from west to east, the line between Lutheran and Reformed runs from south to north, the Reformed theology flowing with the current of the Rhine northward from Switzerland to Holland and to England, in which latter country the Thirty-nine Articles represent the Reformed faith, while the Prayer-book of the English Church is substantially Arminian; see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, Einleit., 9. On the difference between Lutheran and Reformed doctrine, see Schaff, Germany, its Universities, Theology and Religion, 167-177. On the Reformed Churches of Europe and America, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 87-124.

First Division. Rationalistic theologies: Though the Reformation had freed theology in great part from the bonds of scholasticism, other philosophies after a time took its place. The Leibnitz- (1646-1754) Wolffian (1679-1754) exaggeration of the powers of natural religion prepared the way for rationalistic systems of theology. Buddeus (1667-1729) combated the new principles, but Semler's (1725-1791) theology was built upon them, and represented the Scriptures as having a merely local and temporary character. Michaelis (1716-1784) and Doederlein (1714-1789) followed Semler, and the tendency toward rationalism was greatly assisted by the critical philosophy of Kant (1724-1804), to whom “revelation was problematical, and positive religion merely the medium through which the practical truths of reason are communicated” (Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:397). Ammon (1766-1850) and Wegscheider (1771-1848) were representatives of this philosophy. Daub, Marheinecke and Strauss (1808-1874) were the Hegelian dogmatists. The system of Strauss resembled “Christian theology as a cemetery resembles a town.” Storr (1746-1805), Reinhard (1753-1812), and Knapp (1753-1825), in the main evangelical, endeavored to reconcile revelation with reason, but were more or less influenced by this rationalizing spirit. Bretschneider (1776-1828) and De Wette (1780-1849) may be said to have held middle ground.

Second Division. Transition to a more Scriptural theology. Herder (1744-1803) and Jacobi (1743-1819), by their more spiritual philosophy, prepared the way for Schleiermacher's (1768-1834) grounding of doctrine in the facts of Christian experience. The writings of Schleiermacher constituted an epoch, and had great influence in delivering Germany from the rationalistic toils into which it had fallen. We may now speak of a

Third Division—and in this division we may put the names of Neander and Tholuck, Twesten and Nitzsch, Müller and Luthardt, Dorner and Philippi, Ebrard and Thomasius, Lange and Kahnis, all of them exponents of a far more pure and evangelical theology than was common in Germany a century ago. Two new forms of rationalism, however, have appeared in Germany, the one based upon the philosophy of Hegel, and numbering among its adherents Strauss and Baur, Biedermann, Lipsius and Pfleiderer; the other based upon the philosophy of Kant, and advocated by Ritschl and his followers, Harnack, Hermann and Kaftan; the former emphasizing the ideal Christ, the latter emphasizing the historical Christ; but neither of the two fully recognizing the living Christ present in every believer (see Johnson's Cyclopædia, art.: Theology, by A. H. Strong).

Besides Bellarmine, “the best controversial writer of his age” (Bayle), the Roman Catholic Church numbers among its noted modern theologians:—Petavius (1583-1652), whose dogmatic theology Gibbon calls “a work of incredible labor and compass”; Melchior Canus (1523-1560), an opponent of the Jesuits and their scholastic method; Bossuet (1627-1704), who idealized Catholicism in his Exposition of Doctrine, and attacked Protestantism in his History of Variations of Protestant Churches; Jansen (1585-1638), who attempted, in opposition to the Jesuits, to reproduce the theology of Augustine, and who had in this the powerful assistance of Pascal (1623-1662). Jansenism, so far as the doctrines of grace are concerned, but not as respects the sacraments, is virtual Protestantism within the Roman Catholic Church. Moehler's Symbolism, Perrone's “Prelectiones Theologicæ,” and Hurter's “Compendium Theologiæ Dogmaticæ”are the latest and most approved expositions of Roman Catholic doctrine.

Among the followers of Arminius (1560-1609) must be reckoned Episcopius (1583-1643), who carried Arminianism to almost Pelagian extremes; Hugo Grotius (1553-1645), the jurist and statesman, author of the governmental theory of the atonement; and Limborch (1633-1712), the most thorough expositor of the Arminian doctrine.

The works of Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew, Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) constituted the beginnings of modern Unitarianism. Laelius Socinus was the preacher and reformer, as Faustus Socinus was the theologian; or, as Baumgarten Crusius expresses it: “the former was the spiritual founder of Socinianism, and the latter the founder of the sect.” Their writings are collected in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. The Racovian Catechism, taking its name from the Polish town Racow, contains the most succinct exposition of their views. In 1660, the Unitarian church of the Socini in Poland was destroyed by persecution, but its Hungarian offshoot has still more than a hundred congregations.

Some of the best British theology is Baptist. Among John Bunyan's works we may mention his “Gospel Truths Opened,” though his “Pilgrim's Progress” and “Holy War” are theological treatises in allegorical form. Macaulay calls Milton and Bunyan the two great creative minds of England during the latter part of the 17th century. John Gill's “Body of Practical Divinity” shows much ability, although the Rabbinical learning of the author occasionally displays itself in a curious exegesis, as when on the word “Abba” he remarks: “You see that this word which means 'Father' reads the same whether we read forward or backward; which suggests that God is the same whichever way we look at him.” Andrew Fuller's “Letters on Systematic Divinity” is a brief compend of theology. His treatises upon special doctrines are marked by sound judgment and clear insight. They were the most influential factor in rescuing the evangelical churches of England from antinomianism. They justify the epithets which Robert Hall, one of the greatest of Baptist preachers, gives him: “sagacious,” “luminous,” “powerful.”

Owen was the most rigid, as Baxter was the most liberal, of the Puritans. The Encyclopædia Britannica remarks: “As a theological thinker and writer, John Owen holds his own distinctly defined place among those titanic intellects with which the [pg 048]age abounded. Surpassed by Baxter in point and pathos, by Howe in imagination and the higher philosophy, he is unrivaled in his power of unfolding the rich meanings of Scripture. In his writings he was preëminently the great theologian.” Baxter wrote a “Methodus Theologiæ,” and a “Catholic Theology”; John Howe is chiefly known by his “Living Temple”; Thomas Ridgeley by his “Body of Divinity.”Charles H. Spurgeon never ceased to urge his students to become familiar with the Puritan Adams, Ambrose, Bowden, Manton and Sibbes.

Of the Scotch Presbyterians, Boston is the most voluminous, Dick the most calm and fair, Chalmers the most fervid and popular.

Of the Methodists, John Wesley's doctrine is presented in “Christian Theology,”collected from his writings by the Rev. Thornley Smith. The great Methodist text-book, however, is the “Institutes” of Watson, who systematized and expounded the Wesleyan theology. Pope, a recent English theologian, follows Watson's modified and improved Arminianism, while Whedon and Raymond, recent American writers, hold rather to a radical and extreme Arminianism.

As Jesus, the preacher and reformer, preceded Paul the theologian; as Luther preceded Melanchthon; as Zwingle preceded Calvin; as Laelius Socinus preceded Faustus Socinus; as Wesley preceded Watson; so Fox preceded Barclay. Barclay wrote an “Apology for the true Christian Divinity,” which Dr. E. G. Robinson described as “not a formal treatise of Systematic Theology, but the ablest exposition of the views of the Quakers.” George Fox was the reformer, William Penn the social founder, Robert Barclay the theologian, of Quakerism.

The English church has produced no great systematic theologian (see reasons assigned in Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 470). The “judicious” Hooker is still its greatest theological writer, although his work is only on “Ecclesiastical Polity.”Bishop Burnet is the author of the “Exposition of the XXXIX Articles,” and Bishop Pearson of the “Exposition of the Creed.” Both these are common English text-books. A recent “Compendium of Dogmatic Theology,” by Litton, shows a tendency to return from the usual Arminianism of the Anglican church to the old Augustinianism; so also Bishop Moule's “Outlines of Christian Doctrine,” and Mason's “Faith of the Gospel.”

Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest of metaphysicians and theologians, was an idealist who held that God is the only real cause, either in the realm of matter or in the realm of mind. He regarded the chief good as happiness—a form of sensibility. Virtue was voluntary choice of this good. Hence union with Adam in acts and exercises was sufficient. Thus God's will made identity of being with Adam. This led to the exercise-system of Hopkins and Emmons, on the one hand, and to Bellamy's and [pg 049]Dwight's denial of any imputation of Adam's sin or of inborn depravity, on the other—in which last denial agree many other New England theologians who reject the exercise-scheme, as for example, Strong, Tyler, Smalley, Burton, Woods, and Park. Dr. N. W. Taylor added a more distinctly Arminian element, the power of contrary choice—and with this tenet of the New Haven theology, Charles G. Finney, of Oberlin, substantially agreed. Horace Bushnell held to a practically Sabellian view of the Trinity, and to a moral-influence theory of the atonement. Thus from certain principles admitted by Edwards, who held in the main to an Old School theology, the New School theology has been gradually developed.

Robert Hall called Edwards “the greatest of the sons of men.” Dr. Chalmers regarded him as the “greatest of theologians.” Dr. Fairbairn says: “He is not only the greatest of all the thinkers that America has produced, but also the highest speculative genius of the eighteenth century. In a far higher degree than Spinoza, he was a 'God-intoxicated man.'” His fundamental notion that there is no causality except the divine was made the basis of a theory of necessity which played into the hands of the deists whom he opposed and was alien not only to Christianity but even to theism. Edwards could not have gotten his idealism from Berkeley; it may have been suggested to him by the writings of Locke or Newton, Cudworth or Descartes, John Norris or Arthur Collier. See Prof. H. N. Gardiner, in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596; Prof. E. C. Smyth, in Am. Jour. Theol., Oct. 1897:956; Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 16, 308-310, and in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1891:767; Sanborn, in Jour. Spec. Philos., Oct. 1883:401-420; G. P. Fisher, Edwards on the Trinity, 18, 19.

Old School theology, in its view of predestination, exalts God; New School theology, by emphasizing the freedom of the will, exalts man. It is yet more important to notice that Old School theology has for its characteristic tenet the guilt of inborn depravity. But among those who hold this view, some are federalists and creationists, and justify God's condemnation of all men upon the ground that Adam represented his posterity. Such are the Princeton theologians generally, including Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and the brothers Alexander. Among those who hold to the Old School doctrine of the guilt of inborn depravity, however, there are others who are traducians, and who explain the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity upon the ground of the natural union between him and them. Baird's “Elohim Revealed” and Shedd's essay on “Original Sin” (Sin a Nature and that Nature Guilt) represent this realistic conception of the relation of the race to its first father. R. J. Breckinridge, R. L. Dabney, and J. H. Thornwell assert the fact of inherent corruption and guilt, but refuse to assign any rationale for it, though they tend to realism. H. B. Smith holds guardedly to the theory of mediate imputation.

On the history of Systematic Theology in general, see Hagenbach, History of Doctrine (from which many of the facts above given are taken), and Shedd, History of Doctrine; also, Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:44-100; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:15-128; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 24-52. Gretillat, Théologie Systématique, 3:24-120, has given an excellent history of theology, brought down to the present time. On the history of New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions and Essays, 285-354.

See Calixtus, Epitome Theologiæ; Leydecker, De Œconomia trium Personarum in Negotio Salutis humanæ; Martensen (1808-1884), Christian Dogmatics; Cocceius, Summa Theologiæ, and Summa Doctrinæ de Fœdere et Testamento Dei, in Works, vol. vi; Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants; Boston, A Complete Body of Divinity (in Works, vol. 1 and 2), Questions in Divinity (vol. 6), Human Nature in its Fourfold State (vol. 8); Chalmers, Institutes of Theology; Rothe (1799-1867), Dogmatik, and Theologische Ethik; Hase (1800-1890), Evangelische Dogmatik; Thomasius (1802-1875), Christi Person und Werk; Fuller, Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation (in Works, 2:328-416), and Letters on Systematic Divinity (1:684-711); Ursinus (1534-1583), Loci Theologici (in Works, 1:426-909); Dannhauer (1603-1666) Hodosophia Christiana, seu Theologia Positiva in Methodum redacta. Jonathan Edwards's so-called History of Redemption was in reality a system of theology in historical form. It “was to begin and end with eternity, all great events and epochs in time being viewed ‘sub specie eternitatis.’ The three worlds—heaven, earth and hell—were to be the scenes of this grand drama. It was to include the topics of theology as living factors, each in its own place,” and all forming a complete and harmonious whole; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 379, 380.

An attempt has been made, in the list of text-books given above, to put first in each class the book best worth purchasing by the average theological student, and to arrange the books that follow this first one in the order of their value. German books, however, when they are not yet accessible in an English translation, are put last, simply because they are less likely to be used as books of reference by the average student.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1:17—“Intelligi necesse est esse deos, quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cogitationes habemus.” Origen, Adv. Celsum, 1:4—“Men would not be guilty, if they did not carry in their minds common notions of morality, innate and written in divine letters.” Calvin, Institutes, 1:3:3—“Those who rightly judge will always agree that there is an indelible sense of divinity engraven upon men's minds.” Fleming, Vocab. of Philosophy, art.: “Innate Ideas”—“Descartes [pg 054]is supposed to have taught (and Locke devoted the first book of his Essays to refuting the doctrine) that these ideas are innate or connate with the soul; i. e., the intellect finds itself at birth, or as soon as it wakes to conscious activity, to be possessed of ideas to which it has only to attach the appropriate names, or of judgments which it only needs to express in fit propositions—i. e., prior to any experience of individual objects.”

Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 77—“In certain families, Descartes teaches, good breeding and the gout are innate. Yet, of course, the children of such families have to be instructed in deportment, and the infants just learning to walk seem happily quite free from gout. Even so geometry is innate in us, but it does not come to our consciousness without much trouble”; 79—Locke found no innate ideas. He maintained, in reply, that “infants, with their rattles, showed no sign of being aware that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” Schopenhauer said that “Jacobi had the trifling weakness of taking all he had learned and approved before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the human mind.” Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 5—“That the rational ideas are conditioned by the sense experience and are sequent to it, is unquestioned by any one; and that experience shows a successive order of manifestation is equally undoubted. But the sensationalist has always shown a curious blindness to the ambiguity of such a fact. He will have it that what comes after must be a modification of what went before; whereas it might be that, and it might be a new, though conditioned, manifestation of an immanent nature or law. Chemical affinity is not gravity, although affinity cannot manifest itself until gravity has brought the elements into certain relations.”

Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:103—“This principle was not from the beginning in the consciousness of men; for, in order to think ideas, reason must be clearly developed, which in the first of mankind it could just as little be as in children. This however does not exclude the fact that there was from the beginning the unconscious rational impulse which lay at the basis of the formation of the belief in God, however manifold may have been the direct motives which co-operated with it.” Self is implied in the simplest act of knowledge. Sensation gives us two things, e. g., black and white; but I cannot compare them without asserting difference for me. Different sensations make no knowledge, without a self to bring them together. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, lecture 2—“You could as easily prove the existence of an external world to a man who had no senses to perceive it, as you could prove the existence of God to one who had no consciousness of God.”

Mansel, Metaphysics, 52, 279—“To describe experience as the cause of the idea of space would be as inaccurate as to speak of the soil in which it was planted as the cause of the oak—though the planting in the soil is the condition which brings into manifestation the latent power of the acorn.” Coleridge: “We see before we know that we have eyes; but when once this is known, we perceive that eyes must have preëxisted in order to enable us to see.” Coleridge speaks of first truths as “those necessities of mind or forms of thinking, which, though revealed to us by experience, must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience possible.” McCosh, Intuitions, 48, 49—Intuitions are “like flower and fruit, which are in the plant from its embryo, but may not be actually formed till there have been a stalk and branches and leaves.”Porter, Human Intellect, 501, 519—“Such truths cannot be acquired or assented to first of all.” Some are reached last of all. The moral intuition is often developed late, and [pg 055]sometimes, even then, only upon occasion of corporal punishment. “Every man is as lazy as circumstances will admit.” Our physical laziness is occasional; our mental laziness frequent; our moral laziness incessant. We are too lazy to think, and especially to think of religion. On account of this depravity of human nature we should expect the intuition of God to be developed last of all. Men shrink from contact with God and from the thought of God. In fact, their dislike for the intuition of God leads them not seldom to deny all their other intuitions, even those of freedom and of right. Hence the modern “psychology without a soul.”

Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 105-115—“The idea of God ... is latest to develop into clear consciousness ... and must be latest, for it is the unity of the difference of the self and the not-self, which are therefore presupposed.” But “it has not less validity in itself, it gives no less trustworthy assurance of actuality, than the consciousness of the self, or the consciousness of the not-self.... The consciousness of God is the logical prius of the consciousness of self and of the world. But not, as already observed, the chronological; for, according to the profound observation of Aristotle, what in the nature of things is first, is in the order of development last. Just because God is the first principle of being and knowing, he is the last to be manifested and known.... The finite and the infinite are both known together, and it is as impossible to know one without the other as it is to apprehend an angle without the sides which contain it.” For account of the relation of the intuitions to experience, see especially Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 39-64, and History of Philosophy, 2:199-245. Compare Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introd., 1. See also Bascom, in Bib. Sac., 23:1-47; 27:68-90.

Instances of the professed and formal denial of first truths:—the positivist denies causality; the idealist denies substance; the pantheist denies personality; the necessitarian denies freedom; the nihilist denies his own existence. A man may in like manner argue that there is no necessity for an atmosphere; but even while he argues, he breathes it. Instance the knock-down argument to demonstrate the freedom of the will. I grant my own existence in the very doubting of it; for “cogito, ergo sum,” as Descartes himself insisted, really means “cogito, scilicet sum”; H. B. Smith: “The statement is analysis, not proof.” Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 59—“The cogito, in barbarous Latin = cogitans sum: thinking is self-conscious being.” Bentham: “The word ought is an authoritative imposture, and ought to be banished from the realm of morals.” Spinoza and Hegel really deny self-consciousness when they make man a phenomenon of the infinite. Royce likens the denier of personality to the man who goes outside of his own house and declares that no one lives there because, when he looks in at the window, he sees no one inside.

Professor James, in his Psychology, assumes the reality of a brain, but refuses to assume the reality of a soul. This is essentially the position of materialism. But this assumption of a brain is metaphysics, although the author claims to be writing a [pg 056]psychology without metaphysics. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 3—“The materialist believes in causation proper so long as he is explaining the origin of mind from matter, but when he is asked to see in mind the cause of physical change he at once becomes a mere phenomenalist.” Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 400—“I know that all beings, if only they can count, must find that three and two make five. Perhaps the angels cannot count; but, if they can, this axiom is true for them. If I met an angel who declared that his experience had occasionally shown him a three and two that did not make five, I should know at once what sort of an angel he was.” On the criteria of first truths, see Porter, Human Intellect, 510, 511. On denial of them, see Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:213.

(a) See Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 10; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:117; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“A revelation takes for granted that he to whom it is made has some knowledge of God, though it may enlarge and purify that knowledge.” We cannot prove God from the authority of the Scriptures, and then also prove the Scriptures from the authority of God. The very idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes belief in a God who can make it. Newman Smyth, in New Englander, 1878:355—We cannot derive from a sun-dial our knowledge of the existence of a sun. The sun-dial presupposes the sun, and cannot be understood without previous knowledge of the sun. Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:103—“The voice of the divine ego does not first come to the consciousness of the individual ego from without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already this inner one; there must echo out from within man something kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized and accepted as divine.”

Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 21, 22—“If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed [pg 063] ‘an original atheism of consciousness.’ Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man,—it must be implanted from without.” Schurman, Belief in God, 78—“A primitive revelation of God could only mean that God had endowed man with the capacity of apprehending his divine original. This capacity, like every other, is innate, and like every other, it realizes itself only in the presence of appropriate conditions.”Clarke, Christian Theology, 112—“Revelation cannot demonstrate God's existence, for it must assume it; but it will manifest his existence and character to men, and will serve them as the chief source of certainty concerning him, for it will teach them what they could not know by other means.”

(b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for “tradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated” (Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies—that very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally from reasoning—an explanation which we consider further on. On the traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86-96; Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos., 312-322.

Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of man's belief in God: “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor”; Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible? What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships, merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it. There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact that belief in God's existence gets a wider hold upon the race with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear; indeed, “the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10).

With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke's “tabula rasa” theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas for their cause. To his statement: “Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz replied: “Nisi intellectus ipse.”Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source of any other knowledge. The German Gottesbewusstsein = not “consciousness of God,” but “knowledge of God”; Bewusstsein here = not a “conknowing,”but a “beknowing”; see Porter, Human Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.

Fraser, Locke, 143-147—Sensations are the bricks, and association the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 47—“Develope language by allowing sounds to associate and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of sensation....52—One [pg 064]who does not know how to read would look in vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to help his failure by using strong spectacles.”Yet even if the idea of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 132—“There is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason; between those who attribute the development of the germ to mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that everything in nature is immediately intended rather than predetermined.” All these may be methods of the immanent God.

Martineau, Study, 2:26—“Nature is as worthy of trust in her processes, as in her gifts.” Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163, 164—“Are we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all truth must be declared impossible.” See also Harris, Philos. Basis Theism, 137-142.

Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death, referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: “Can we trust to the convictions of a monkey's mind?” We may reply: “Can we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?” Bowne, Ethics, 3—“The genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in astrology.... 11—Even if man came from the ape, we need not tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any psychological theory.... 159—We must not appeal to savages and babies to find what is natural to the human mind.... In the case of anything that is under the law of development we can find its true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by studying the finished outcome.” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution, 13—“If the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere chance and unreason?” Even though man came from the ape, there is no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: “A man 's a man for a' that.”

We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes, Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth, Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals from the artist's sense of beauty to the child's. Higher mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was first felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things.... A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245—“Evolution simply gave man such height that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth which had previously been below the horizon. This is very different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted products of the experiences of utility.... The germ of the idea of God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon as he became man,—the brute's gaining it turned him into man. Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.” Sir Charles Lyell: “The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great truth.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine: “Securus judicat orbis terrarum,”and tells us that the intellect is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103—“To Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural history, and force is supreme. To Christianity nature is only the beginning, and man the consummation. Which gives the higher revelation of the life of the tree—the seed, or the fruit?”

Newman Smyth tells us that feeling comes first; the idea is secondary. Intuitive ideas are not denied, but they are declared to be direct reflections, in thought, of the feelings. They are the mind's immediate perception of what it feels to exist. Direct knowledge of God by intuition is considered to be idealistic, reaching God by inference is regarded as rationalistic, in its tendency. See Smyth, The Religious Feeling; reviewed by Harris, in New Englander, Jan., 1878: reply by Smyth, in New Englander, May, 1878.

We grant that, even in the case of unregenerate men, great peril, great joy, great sin often turn the rational intuition of God into a presentative intuition. The presentative intuition, however, cannot be affirmed to be common to all men. It does not furnish the foundation or explanation of a universal capacity for religion. Without the rational intuition, the presentative would not be possible, since it is only the rational that enables man to receive and to interpret the presentative. The very trust that we put in feeling presupposes an intuitive belief in a true and good God. Tennyson said in 1869: “Yes, it is true that there are moments when the flesh is nothing to me; when I know and feel the flesh to be the vision; God and the spiritual is the real; it belongs to me more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence,—I could believe you; but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal Reality, and that the spiritual is not the real and true part of me.”

Whately, Logic, 290-292; Jevons, Lessons in Logic, 81; Thompson, Outline Laws of Thought, sections 82-92; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 60-69, and Moral Philosophy, 238; Turnbull, in Bap. Quarterly, July, 1872:271; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 239; Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 21. Sir Wm. Hamilton: “Departing from the particular, we admit that we cannot, in our highest generalizations, rise above the finite.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The human mind turns out larger grists than are ever put in at the hopper.”There is more in the idea of God than could have come out so small a knot-hole as human reasoning. A single word, a chance remark, or an attitude of prayer, suggests the idea to a child. Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that there was a God, but that she had not known his name. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 119—“It is a foolish assumption that nothing can be certainly known unless it be reached as the result of a conscious syllogistic process, or that the more complicated and subtle this process is, the more sure is the conclusion. Inferential knowledge is always dependent upon the superior certainty of immediate knowledge.”George M. Duncan, in Memorial of Noah Porter, 246—“All deduction rests either on the previous process of induction, or on the intuitions of time and space which involve the Infinite and Absolute.”

By inference, we of course mean mediate inference, for in immediate inference (e. g., “All good rulers are just; therefore no unjust rulers are good”) there is no reasoning, and no progress in thought. Mediate inference is reasoning—is condensed syllogism; and what is so condensed may be expanded into regular logical form. Deductive inference: “A negro is a fellow-creature; therefore he who strikes a negro strikes a fellow-creature.”Inductive inference: “The first finger is before the second; therefore it is before the third.” On inference, see Martineau, Essays, 1:105-108; Porter, Human Intellect, 444-448; Jevons, Principles of Science, 1:14, 136-139, 168, 262.

Flint, in his Theism, 77, and Herbert, in his Mod. Realism Examined, would reach the knowledge of God's existence by inference. The latter says God is not demonstrable, but his existence is inferred, like the existence of our fellow men. But we reply that in this last case we infer only the finite from the finite, while the difficulty in the case of God is in inferring the infinite from the finite. This very process of reasoning, moreover, presupposes the existence of God as the absolute Reason, in the way already indicated.

Substantially the same error is committed by H. B. Smith, Introd. to Chr. Theol., 84-133, and by Diman, Theistic Argument, 316, 364, both of whom grant an intuitive element, but use it only to eke out the insufficiency of reasoning. They consider that the intuition gives us only an abstract idea, which contains in itself no voucher for the existence [pg 067]of an actual being corresponding to the idea, and that we reach real being only by inference from the facts of our own spiritual natures and of the outward world. But we reply, in the words of McCosh, that “the intuitions are primarily directed to individual objects.” We know, not the infinite in the abstract, but infinite space and time, and the infinite God. See McCosh, Intuitions, 26, 199, who, however, holds the view here combated.

Schurman, Belief in God, 43—“I am unable to assign to our belief in God a higher certainty than that possessed by the working hypotheses of science.... 57—The nearest approach made by science to our hypothesis of the existence of God lies in the assertion of the universality of law ... based on the conviction of the unity and systematic connection of all reality.... 64—This unity can be found only in self-conscious spirit.” The fault of this reasoning is that it gives us nothing necessary or absolute. Instances of working hypotheses are the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the law of gravitation, the atomic theory in chemistry, the principle of evolution. No one of these is logically independent or prior. Each of them is provisional, and each may be superseded by new discovery. Not so with the idea of God. This idea is presupposed by all the others, as the condition of every mental process and the guarantee of its validity.

Plato said, for substance, that there can be no ὅτι οἶδεν without something of the ἁ οἶδεν. Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism, 208—“By rational intuition man knows that absolute Being exists; his knowledge of what it is, is progressive with his progressive knowledge of man and of nature.” Hutton, Essays: “A haunting presence besets man behind and before. He cannot evade it. It gives new meanings to his thoughts, new terror to his sins. It becomes intolerable. He is moved to set up some idol, carved out of his own nature, that will take its place—a non-moral God who will not disturb his dream of rest. It is a righteous Life and Will, and not the mere idea of righteousness that stirs men so.” Porter, Hum. Int., 661—“The Absolute is a thinking Agent.” The intuition does not grow in certainty; what grows is the mind's quickness in applying it and power of expressing it. The intuition is not complex; what is complex is the Being intuitively cognized. See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 232; Lowndes, Philos. [pg 068]of Primary Beliefs, 108-112; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 157—Latent faculty of speech is called forth by speech of others; the choked-up well flows again when debris is cleared away. Bowen, in Bib. Sac., 33:740-754; Bowne, Theism, 79.

Knowledge of a person is turned into personal knowledge by actual communication or revelation. First, comes the intuitive knowledge of God possessed by all men—the assumption that there exists a Reason, Power, Perfection, Personality, that makes correct thinking and acting possible. Secondly, comes the knowledge of God's being and attributes which nature and Scripture furnish. Thirdly, comes the personal and presentative knowledge derived from actual reconciliation and intercourse with God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 208—“Christian experience verifies the claims of doctrine by experiment,—so transforming probable knowledge into real knowledge.” Biedermann, quoted by Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 18—“God reveals himself to the human spirit, 1. as its infinite Ground, in the reason; 2. as its infinite Norm, in the conscience; 3. as its infinite Strength, in elevation to religious truth, blessedness, and freedom.”

Shall I object to this Christian experience, because only comparatively few have it, and I am not among the number? Because I have not seen the moons of Jupiter, shall I doubt the testimony of the astronomer to their existence? Christian experience, like the sight of the moons of Jupiter, is attainable by all. Clarke, Christian Theology, 113—“One who will have full proof of the good God's reality must put it to the experimental test. He must take the good God for real, and receive the confirmation that will follow. When faith reaches out after God, it finds him.... They who have found him will be the sanest and truest of their kind, and their convictions will be among the safest convictions of man.... Those who live in fellowship with the good God will grow in goodness, and will give practical evidence of his existence aside from their oral testimony.”

On Rom. 1:19-21, see Weiss, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 251, note; also commentaries of Meyer, Alford, Tholuck, and Wordsworth; τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ = not “that which may be known” (Rev. Vers.) but “that which is known” of God; νοούμενα καθορᾶται = are clearly seen in that they are perceived by the reason—νοούμενα expresses the manner of the καθορᾶται (Meyer); compare John 1:9; Acts 17:27; Rom. 1:28; 2:15. On 1 Cor. 15:34, see Calderwood, Philos. of Inf., 466—ἀγνωσίαν Θεοῦ τινὲς ἔχουσι = do not possess the specially exalted knowledge of God which belongs to believers in Christ (cf. 1 Jo. 4:7—“every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God”). On Eph. 2:12, see Pope, Theology, 1:240—ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ is opposed to being in Christ, and signifies rather forsaken of God, than denying him or entirely ignorant of him. On Scripture passages, see Schmid, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 486; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:62.

E. G. Robinson: “The first statement of the Bible is, not that there is a God, but that ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1). The belief in God never was and never can be the result of logical argument, else the Bible would give us proofs.”Many texts relied upon as proofs of God's existence are simply explications of the idea of God, as for example: Ps. 94:9, 10—“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct, even he that teacheth man knowledge?”Plato says that God holds the soul by its roots,—he therefore does not need to demonstrate to the soul the fact of his existence. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 308, says well that Scripture and preaching only interpret what is already in the heart which it addresses: “Flinging a warm breath on the inward oracles hid in invisible ink, it renders [pg 069]them articulate and dazzling as the handwriting on the wall. The divine Seer does not convey to you his revelation, but qualifies you to receive your own. This mutual relation is possible only through the common presence of God in the conscience of mankind.”Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:195-220—“The earth and sky make the same sensible impressions on the organs of a brute that they do upon those of a man; but the brute never discerns the ‘invisible things’ of God, his ‘eternal power and godhood’ (Rom. 1:20).”

Our subconscious activity, so far as it is normal, is under the guidance of the immanent Reason. Sensation, before it results in thought, has in it logical elements which are furnished by mind—not ours, but that of the Infinite One. Christ, the Revealer of God, reveals God in every man's mental life, and the Holy Spirit may be the principle of self-consciousness in man as in God. Harris, God the Creator, tells us that “man finds the Reason that is eternal and universal revealing itself in the exercise of his own reason.” Savage, Life after Death, 268—“How do you know that your subliminal consciousness does not tap Omniscience, and get at the facts of the universe?”Savage negatives this suggestion, however, and wrongly favors the spirit-theory. For his own experience, see pages 295-329 of his book.

C. M. Barrows, in Proceedings of Soc. for Psychical Research, vol. 12, part 30, pages 34-36—“There is a subliminal agent. What if this is simply one intelligent Actor, filling the universe with his presence, as the ether fills space; the common Inspirer of all mankind, a skilled Musician, presiding over many pipes and keys, and playing through each what music he will? The subliminal self is a universal fountain of energy, and each man is an outlet of the stream. Each man's personal self is contained in it, and thus each man is made one with every other man. In that deep Force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all psychical and bodily effects find their common origin.” This statement needs to be qualified by the assertion of man's ethical nature and distinct personality; see section of this work on Ethical Monism, in chapter III. But there is truth here like that which Coleridge sought to express in his Æolian Harp: “And what if all of animated Nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all?” See F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality.

Dorner, System of Theology, 1:75—“The consciousness of God is the true fastness of our self-consciousness.... Since it is only in the God-conscious man that the innermost personality comes to light, in like manner, by means of the interweaving of that consciousness of God and of the world, the world is viewed in God (‘sub specie eternitatis’), and the certainty of the world first obtains its absolute security for the spirit.” Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philosophy, synopsis in N. Y. Nation: “The one indubitable fact is the existence of an infinite self, a Logos or World-mind (345). That it exists is clear, I. Because idealism shows that real things are nothing more nor less than ideas, or ‘possibilities of experience’; but a mere ‘possibility’, as such, is nothing, and a world of ‘possible’ experiences, in so far as it is real, must be a world of actual experience to some self (367). If then there be a real world, it has all the while existed as ideal and mental, even before it became known to the particular mind with which we conceive it as coming into connection (368). II. But there is such a real world; for, when I think of an object, when I mean it, I do not merely have in mind an idea resembling it, for I aim at the object, I pick it out, I already in some measure possess it. The object is then already present in essence to my hidden self (370). As truth consists in knowledge of the conformity of a cognition to its object, that alone can know a truth which includes within itself both idea and object. This inclusive Knower is the Infinite Self (374). With this I am in essence identical (371); it is my larger self (372); and this larger self alone is (379). It includes all reality, and we know other finite minds, because we are one with them in its unity” (409).

The experience of George John Romanes is instructive. For years he could recognize no personal Intelligence controlling the universe. He made four mistakes: 1. He forgot that only love can see, that God is not disclosed to the mere intellect, but only to the whole man, to the integral mind, to what the Scripture calls “the eyes of your heart”(Eph. 1:18). Experience of life taught him at last the weakness of mere reasoning, and led him to depend more upon the affections and intuitions. Then, as one might say, he gave the X-rays of Christianity a chance to photograph God upon his soul. 2. He began at the wrong end, with matter rather than with mind, with cause and effect rather than with right and wrong, and so got involved in the mechanical order and tried to interpret the moral realm by it. The result was that instead of recognizing freedom, responsibility, sin, guilt, he threw them out as pretenders. But study of conscience and will [pg 070]set him right. He learned to take what be found instead of trying to turn it into something else, and so came to interpret nature by spirit, instead of interpreting spirit by nature. 3. He took the Cosmos by bits, instead of regarding it as a whole. His early thinking insisted on finding design in each particular part, or nowhere. But his more mature thought recognized wisdom and reason in the ordered whole. As he realized that this is a universe, he could not get rid of the idea of an organizing Mind. He came to see that the Universe, as a thought, implies a Thinker. 4. He fancied that nature excludes God, instead of being only the method of God's working. When he learned how a thing was done, he at first concluded that God had not done it. His later thought recognized that God and nature are not mutually exclusive. So he came to find no difficulty even in miracles and inspiration; for the God who is in man and of whose mind and will nature is only the expression, can reveal himself, if need be, in special ways. So George John Romanes came back to prayer, to Christ, to the church.

On the general subject of intuition as connected with our idea of God, see Ladd, in Bib. Sac., 1877:1-36, 611-616; 1878:619; Fisher, on Final Cause and Intuition, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:113-134; Patton, on Genesis of Idea of God, in Jour. Christ. Philos., Apl. 1883:283-307; McCosh, Christianity and Positivism, 124-140; Mansel, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., vol. 14:604 and 615; Robert Hall, sermon on Atheism; Hutton, on Atheism, in Essays, 1:3-37; Shairp, in Princeton Rev., March, 1881:264.

It is to be noticed that this argument moves wholly in the realm of nature. The argument from man's constitution and beginning upon the planet is treated under another head (see Anthropological Argument). That the present form of the universe is not eternal in the past, but has begun to be, not only personal observation but the testimony of geology assures us. For statements of the argument, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn's transl.), 370; Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 8:34-44; Bib. Sac., 1849:613; 1850:613; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 570; Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 93. It has often been claimed, as by Locke, Clarke, and Robert Hall, that this argument is sufficient to conduct the mind to an Eternal and Infinite First Cause. We proceed therefore to mention

Hume, Philos. Works, 2:411 sq., urges with reason that we never saw a world made. Many philosophers in Christian lands, as Martineau, Essays, 1:206, and the prevailing opinions of ante-Christian times, have held matter to be eternal. Bowne, Metaphysics, 107—“For being itself, the reflective reason never asks a cause, unless the being show signs of dependence. It is change that first gives rise to the demand for cause.” Martineau, Types, 1:291—“It is not existence, as such, that demands a cause, but the coming into existence of what did not exist before. The intellectual law of causality is a law for phenomena, and not for entity.” See also McCosh, Intuitions, 225-241; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 61. Per contra, see Murphy, Scient. Bases of Faith, 49, 195, and Habit and Intelligence, 1:55-67; Knight, Lect. on Metaphysics, lect. ii, p. 19.

Flint, Theism, 65—“The cosmological argument alone proves only force, and no mere force is God. Intelligence must go with power to make a Being that can be called God.” Diman, Theistic Argument: “The cosmological argument alone cannot decide whether the force that causes change is permanent self-existent mind, or permanent self-existent matter.” Only intelligence gives the basis for an answer. Only mind in the universe enables us to infer mind in the maker. But the argument from intelligence is not the Cosmological, but the Teleological, and to this last belong all proofs of Deity from order and combination in nature.

Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 201-296—Science has to do with those changes which one portion of the visible universe causes in another portion. Philosophy and theology deal with the Infinite Cause which brings into existence and sustains the entire series of finite causes. Do we ask the cause of the stars? Science says: Fire-mist, or an infinite regress of causes. Theology says: Granted; but this infinite regress demands [pg 074]for its explanation the belief in God. We must believe both in God, and in an endless series of finite causes. God is the cause of all causes, the soul of all souls: “Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!” We do not need, as mere matter of science, to think of any beginning.

So with the whole series of causes. The materialist is bound to find a cause for this series, only when the series is shown to have had a beginning. But the very hypothesis of an infinite series of causes excludes the idea of such a beginning. An infinite chain has no topmost link (versus Robert Hall); an uncaused and eternal succession does not need a cause (versus Clarke and Locke). See Whately, Logic, 270; New Englander, Jan. 1874:75; Alexander, Moral Science, 221; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:160-164; Calderwood, Moral Philos., 225; Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 37—criticized by Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 36. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:128, says that the causal principle is not satisfied till by regress we come to a cause which is not itself an effect—to one who is causa sui; Aids to Study of German Theology, 15-17—Even if the universe be eternal, its contingent and relative nature requires us to postulate an eternal Creator; Diman, Theistic Argument, 86—“While the law of causation does not lead logically up to the conclusion of a first cause, it compels us to affirm it.” We reply that it is not the law of causation which compels us to affirm it, for this certainly “does not lead logically up to the conclusion.” If we infer an uncaused cause, we do it, not by logical process, but by virtue of the intuitive belief within us. So substantially Secretan, and Whewell, in Indications of a Creator, and in Hist. of Scientific Ideas, 2:321, 322—“The mind takes refuge, in the assumption of a First Cause, from an employment inconsistent with its own nature”; “we necessarily infer a First Cause, although the palætiological sciences only point toward it, but do not lead us to it.”

We cannot therefore infer an infinite cause, unless the universe is infinite—which cannot be proved, but can only be assumed—and this is assuming an infinite in order to prove an infinite. All we know of the universe is finite. An infinite universe implies infinite number. But no number can be infinite, for to any number, however great, a unit can be added, which shows that it was not infinite before. Here again we see that the most approved forms of the Cosmological Argument are obliged to avail themselves of the intuition of the infinite, to supplement the logical process. VersusMartineau, Study, 1:416—“Though we cannot directly infer the infinitude of God from a limited creation, indirectly we may exclude every other position by resort to its unlimited scene of existence (space).” But this would equally warrant our belief in the infinitude of our fellow men. Or, it is the argument of Clarke and Gillespie (see Ontological Argument below). Schiller, Die Grösse der Welt, seems to hold to a boundless universe. He represents a tired spirit as seeking the last limit of creation. A second pilgrim meets him from the spaces beyond with the words: “Steh! du segelst umsonst,—vor dir Unendlichkeit”—“Hold! thou journeyest in vain,—before thee is only Infinity.”On the law of parsimony, see Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 628.

On the whole argument, see Flint, Theism, 93-130; Mozley, Essays, Hist. and Theol., 2:414-444; Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 148-154; Studien und Kritiken, 1876:9-31.

Etymologically, “teleological argument” = argument to ends or final causes, that is, “causes which, beginning as a thought, work themselves out into a fact as an end or result” (Porter, Hum. Intellect, 592-618);—health, for example, is the final cause of exercise, while exercise is the efficient cause of health. This definition of the argument would be broad enough to cover the proof of a designing intelligence drawn from the constitution of man. This last, however, is treated as a part of the Anthropological Argument, which follows this, and the Teleological Argument covers only the proof of a designing intelligence drawn from nature. Hence Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn's trans.), 381, calls it the physico-theological argument. On methods of stating the argument, see Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:625. See also Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 155-185; Mozley, Essays Hist. and Theol., 2:365-413.

Hicks, in his Critique of Design-Arguments, 347-389, makes two arguments instead of one: (1) the argument from order to intelligence, to which he gives the name Eutaxiological; (2) the argument from adaptation to purpose, to which he would restrict the name Teleological. He holds that teleology proper cannot prove intelligence, because in speaking of “ends” at all, it must assume the very intelligence which it seeks to prove; that it actually does prove simply the intentional exercise of an intelligence whose existence has been previously established. “Circumstances, forces or agencies converging to a definite rational result imply volition—imply that this result is intended—is an end. This is the major premise of this new teleology.” He objects to the term “final cause.”The end is not a cause at all—it is a motive. The characteristic element of cause is power to produce an effect. Ends have no such power. The will may choose them or set them aside. As already assuming intelligence, ends cannot prove intelligence.

With this in the main we agree, and count it a valuable help to the statement and understanding of the argument. In the very observation of order, however, as well as in arguing from it, we are obliged to assume the same all-arranging intelligence. We see no objection therefore to making Eutaxiology the first part of the Teleological Argument, as we do above. See review of Hicks, in Meth. Quar. Rev., July, 1883:569-576. We proceed however to certain

Janet, in his work on Final Causes, 8, denies that finality is a primitive conviction, like causality, and calls it the result of an induction. He therefore proceeds from (1) [pg 076]marks of order and useful collocation to (2) finality in nature, and then to (3) an intelligent cause of this finality or “pre-conformity to future event.” So Diman, Theistic Argument, 105, claims simply that, as change requires cause, so orderly change requires intelligent cause. We have shown, however, that induction and argument of every kind presupposes intuitive belief in final cause. Nature does not give us final cause; but no more does she give us efficient cause. Mind gives us both, and gives them as clearly upon one experience as after a thousand. Ladd: “Things have mind in them: else they could not be minded by us.” The Duke of Argyll told Darwin that it seemed to him wholly impossible to ascribe the adjustments of nature to any other agency than that of mind. “Well,” said Darwin, “that impression has often come upon me with overpowering force. But then, at other times, it all seems—;” and then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to indicate the passing of a vision out of sight. Darwinism is not a refutation of ends in nature, but only of a particular theory with regard to the way in which ends are realized in the organic world. Darwin would begin with an infinitesimal germ, and make all the subsequent development unteleological; see Schurman, Belief in God, 193.

(a) Illustration of unpurposed order in the single throwing of “double sixes,”—constant throwing of double sixes indicates design. So arrangement of detritus at mouth of river, and warming pans sent to the West Indies,—useful but not purposed. Momerie, Christianity and Evolution, 72—“It is only within narrow limits that seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced by chance. And therefore, as the signs of purpose increase, the presumption in favor of their accidental origin diminishes.”Elder, Ideas from Nature, 81, 82—“The uniformity of a boy's marbles shows them to be products of design. A single one might be accidental, but a dozen cannot be. So atomic uniformity indicates manufacture.” Illustrations of purposed order, in Beattie's garden, Tillotson's blind men, Kepler's salad. Dr. Carpenter: “The atheist is like a man examining the machinery of a great mill, who, finding that the whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from a brick wall, infers that the shaft is a sufficient explanation of what he sees, and that there is no moving power behind it.” Lord Kelvin: “The atheistic idea is nonsensical.” J. G. Paton, Life, 2:191—The sinking of a well on the island of Aniwa convinces the cannibal chief Namakei that Jehovah God exists, the invisible One. See Chauncey Wright, in N. Y. Nation, Jan. 15, 1874; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 208.

(b) Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 231-247—“Law is method, not cause. A man cannot offer the very fact to be explained, as its sufficient explanation.” Martineau, Essays, 1:144—“Patterned damask, made not by the weaver, but by the loom?”Dr. Stevenson: “House requires no architect, because it is built by stone-masons and carpenters?” Joseph Cook: “Natural law without God behind it is no more than a glove without a hand in it, and all that is done by the gloved hand of God in nature is done by the hand and not by the glove. Evolution is a process, not a power; a method of operation, not an operator. A book is not written by the laws of spelling and grammar, but according to those laws. So the book of the universe is not written by the laws of heat, electricity, gravitation, evolution, but according to those laws.” G. F. Wright, Ant. and Orig. of Hum. Race, lecture IX—“It is impossible for evolution to furnish evidence which shall drive design out of nature. It can only drive it back to an earlier point of entrance, thereby increasing our admiration for the power of the Creator to accomplish ulterior designs by unlikely means.”

Evolution is only the method of God. It has to do with the how, not with the why, of phenomena, and therefore is not inconsistent with design, but rather is a new and higher illustration of design. Henry Ward Beecher: “Design by wholesale is greater than design by retail.” Frances Power Cobbe: “It is a singular fact that, whenever we find out how a thing is done, our first conclusion seems to be that God did not do it.” Why should we say: “The more law, the less God?” The theist refers the phenomena to a cause that knows itself and what it is doing; the atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself and what it is doing (Bowne). George John Romanes said that, if God be immanent, then all natural causation must appear to be mechanical, and it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing to prove it due to natural causation: “Causes in nature do not obviate the necessity of a cause in nature.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 47—Evolution shows that the direction of affairs is under control of something like our own intelligence: “Evolution spells Purpose.” Clarke, Christ. Theology, 105—“The modern doctrine of evolution has been awake to the existence of innumerable ends within the universe, but not to the one great end for the universe itself.” Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 274, 275, 307—“The [pg 077]teleological and mechanical views of the universe are not mutually exclusive.”Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics: “Intelligence stands first in the order of existence. Efficient causes are preceded by final causes.” See also Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 199-265; Archbp. Temple, Bampton Lect., 1884:99-123; Owen, Anat. of Vertebrates, 3:796; Peirce, Ideality in the Physical Sciences, 1-35; Newman Smyth, Through Science to Faith, 96; Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 135.

The evidences of order and useful collocation are found both in the indefinitely small and the indefinitely great. The molecules are manufactured articles; and the compensations of the solar system which provide that a secular flattening of the earth's orbit shall be made up for by a secular rounding of that same orbit, alike show an intelligence far transcending our own; see Cooke, Religion and Chemistry, and Credentials of Science, 23—“Beauty is the harmony of relations which perfect fitness produces; law is the prevailing principle which underlies that harmony. Hence both beauty and law imply design. From energy, fitness, beauty, order, sacrifice, we argue might, skill, perfection, law, and love in a Supreme Intelligence. Christianity implies design, and is the completion of the design argument.” Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:168—“A good definition of beauty is immanent purposiveness, the teleological ideal background of reality, the shining of the Idea through phenomena.”

Bowne, Philos. Theism, 85—“Design is never causal. It is only ideal, and it demands an efficient cause for its realization. If ice is not to sink, and to freeze out life, there must be some molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of an equal weight of water.” Jackson, Theodore Parker, 355—“Rudimentary organs are like the silent letters in many words,—both are witnesses to a past history; and there is intelligence in their preservation.” Diman, Theistic Argument: “Not only do we observe in the world the change which is the basis of the Cosmological Argument, but we perceive that this change proceeds according to a fixed and invariable rule. In inorganic nature, general order, or regularity; in organic nature, special order or adaptation.”Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 113-115, 224-230: “Inductive science proceeds upon the postulate that the reasonable and the natural are one.” This furnished the guiding clue to Harvey and Cuvier; see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, 2:489-491. Kant: “The anatomist must assume that nothing in man is in vain.” Aristotle: “Nature makes nothing in vain.” On molecules as manufactured articles, see Maxfield, in Nature, Sept. 25, 1873. See also Tulloch, Theism, 116, 120; LeConte, Religion and Science, lect. 2 and 3; McCosh, Typical Forms, 81, 420; Agassiz, Essay on Classification, 9, 10; Bib. Sac., 1849:626 and 1850:613; Hopkins, in Princeton Review, 1882:181.

(a) Design, in fact that rivers always run by large towns? that springs are always found at gambling places? Plants made for man, and man for worms? Voltaire: “Noses are made for spectacles—let us wear them!” Pope: “While man exclaims ‘See all things for my use,’ ‘See man for mine,’ replies the pampered goose.” Cherries [pg 078]do not ripen in the cold of winter when they do not taste as well, and grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer when the new wine would turn to vinegar? Nature divides melons into sections for convenience in family eating? Cork-tree made for bottle-stoppers? The child who was asked the cause of salt in the ocean, attributed it to codfish, thus dimly confounding final cause with efficient cause. Teacher: “What are marsupials?” Pupil: “Animals that have pouches in their stomachs.”Teacher: “And what do they have pouches for?” Pupil: “To crawl into and conceal themselves in, when they are pursued.” Why are the days longer in summer than in winter? Because it is the property of all natural objects to elongate under the influence of heat. A Jena professor held that doctors do not exist because of disease, but that diseases exist precisely in order that there may be doctors. Kepler was an astronomical Don Quixote. He discussed the claims of eleven different damsels to become his second wife, and he likened the planets to huge animals rushing through the sky. Many of the objections to design arise from confounding a part of the creation with the whole, or a structure in the process of development with a structure completed. For illustrations of mistaken ends, see Janet, Final Causes.

(b) Alphonso of Castile took offense at the Ptolemaic System, and intimated that, if he had been consulted at the creation, he could have suggested valuable improvements. Lange, in his History of Materialism, illustrates some of the methods of nature by millions of gun barrels shot in all directions to kill a single hare; by ten thousand keys bought at haphazard to get into a shut room; by building a city in order to obtain a house. Is not the ice a little overdone about the poles? See John Stuart Mill's indictment of nature, in his posthumous Essays on Religion, 29—“Nature impales men, breaks men as if on a wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them with the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.” So argue Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.

The doctrine of evolution answers many of these objections, by showing that order and useful collocation in the system as a whole is necessarily and cheaply purchased by imperfection and suffering in the initial stages of development. The question is: Does the system as a whole imply design? My opinion is of no value as to the usefulness of an intricate machine the purpose of which I do not know. If I stand at the beginning of a road and do not know whither it leads, it is presumptuous in me to point out a more direct way to its destination. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 20-22—“In order to counterbalance the impressions which apparent disorder and immorality in nature make upon us, we have to assume that the universe at its root is not only rational, but good. This is faith, but it is an act on which our whole moral life depends.” Metaphysics, 165—“The same argument which would deny mind in nature denies mind in man.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 264—“Fifty years ago, when the crane stood on top of the tower of unfinished Cologne Cathedral, was there no evidence of design in the whole structure?” Yet we concede that, so long as we cannot with John Stuart Mill explain the imperfections of the universe by any limitations in the Intelligence which contrived it, we are shut up to regarding them as intended to correspond with the moral state and probation of sinners which God foresaw and provided for at the creation. Evil things in the universe are symbols of sin, and helps to its overthrow. See Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 264, 265; McCosh, Christ. and Positivism, 82 sq.; Martineau, Essays, 1:50, and Study, 1:351-398; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 599; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 366-371; Princeton Rev., 1878:272-303; Shaw, on Positivism.

There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality. National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8—“Plant the ship-builder's skill within the timber itself, and you have the mode in which nature [pg 079]produces.” Here we see a dim anticipation of the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation from without. Neander: “The divine work goes on from within outward.” John Fiske: “The argument from the watch has been superseded by the argument from the flower.” Iverach, Theism, 91—“The effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent rational principle.” Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350—“Theism is in no way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world ... nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give it externality.”

Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62-80—“The universe exists in some all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building, adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new locomotives in their turn.” So nature in its separate parts may seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not “disown a directive power,”—only this power is “behind the mechanism as its final cause ... it must be teleological.”

Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light of evolution, we must still hold that nature alone cannot prove that this intelligence is personal. Hopkins, Miscellanies, 18-36—“So long as there is such a thing as impersonal and adapting intelligence in the brute creation, we cannot necessarily infer from unchanging laws a free and personal God.” See Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 576-578. Kant shows that the argument does not prove intelligence apart from the world (Critique, 370). We must bring mind to the world, if we would find mind in it. Leave out man, and nature cannot be properly interpreted: the intelligence and will in nature may still be unconscious. But, taking in man, we are bound to get our idea of the intelligence and will in nature from the highest type of intelligence and will we know, and that is man's. “Nullus in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus.” “We receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live.”

The Teleological Argument therefore needs to be supplemented by the Anthropological Argument, or the argument from the mental and moral constitution of man. By itself, it does not prove a Creator. See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 26; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos., bk. 9, chap. 6; Foundations of our Faith, 38; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 215; Habit and Intelligence, 2:6, and chap. 27. On immanent finality, see Janet, Final Causes, 345-415; Diman, Theistic Argument, 201-203. Since righteousness belongs only to personality, this argument cannot prove righteousness in God. Flint, Theism, 66—“Power and Intelligence alone do not constitute God, though they be infinite. A being may have these, and, if lacking righteousness, may be a devil.” Here again we see the need of the Anthropological Argument to supplement this.

Diman asserts (Theistic Argument, 114) that all the phenomena of the universe must be due to the same source—since all alike are subject to the same method of sequence, e. g., gravitation—and that the evidence points us irresistibly to some one explanatory cause. We can regard this assertion only as the utterance of a primitive belief in a first cause, not as the conclusion of logical demonstration, for we know only an infinitesimal part of the universe. From the point of view of the intuition of an Absolute Reason, however, we can cordially assent to the words of F. L. Patton: “When we consider Matthew Arnold's ‘stream of tendency,’ Spencer's ‘unknowable,’ Schopenhauer's [pg 080] ‘world as will,’ and Hartmann's elaborate defence of finality as the product of unconscious intelligence, we may well ask if the theists, with their belief in one personal God, are not in possession of the only hypothesis that can save the language of these writers from the charge of meaningless and idiotic raving” (Journ. Christ. Philos., April, 1883:283-307).

The ancient world, which had only the light of nature, believed in many gods. William James, Will to Believe, 44—“If there be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her, cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there; and (as all the higher religions have assumed) what we call visible nature, or this world, must be but a veil and surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen, or other world.” Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 234—“But is not intelligence itself the mystery of mysteries?... No doubt, intellect is a great mystery.... But there is a choice in mysteries. Some mysteries leave other things clear, and some leave things as dark and impenetrable as ever. The former is the case with the mystery of intelligence. It makes possible the comprehension of everything but itself.”

John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Theism, 168-170—“In the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of causation by intelligence.” Ladd holds that, whenever one being acts upon its like, each being undergoes changes of state that belong to its own nature under the circumstances. Action of one body on another never consists in transferring the state of one being to another. Therefore there is no more difficulty in beings that are unlike acting on one another than in beings that are like. We do not transfer ideas to other minds,—we only rouse them to develop their own ideas. So force also is positively not transferable. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 49, begins with “the conception of things interacting according to law and forming an intelligible system. Such a system cannot be construed by thought without the assumption of a unitary being which is the fundamental reality of the system. 53—No passage of influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf, so long as the things are regarded as independent. 56—The system itself cannot explain this interaction, for the system is only the members of it. There must be some being in them which is their reality, and of which they are in some sense phases or manifestations. In other words, there must be a basal monism.”All this is substantially the view of Lotze, of whose philosophy see criticism in Stählin's Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, 116-156, and especially 123. Falckenberg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 454, shows as to Lotze's view that his assumption of monistic unity and continuity does not explain how change of condition in one thing should, as equalization or compensation, follow change of condition in another thing. Lotze explains this actuality by the ethical conception of an all-embracing Person. On the whole argument, see Bib. Sac., 1849:634; Murphy, Sci. Bases, 216; Flint, Theism, 131-210; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:164-174; W. R. Benedict, on Theism and Evolution, in Andover Rev., 1886:307-350, 607-622.

The common title “Moral Argument” is much too narrow, for it seems to take account only of conscience in man, whereas the argument which this title so imperfectly designates really proceeds from man's intellectual and emotional, as well as from his moral, nature. In choosing the designation we have adopted, we desire, moreover, to rescue from the mere physicist the term “Anthropology”—a term to which he has attached altogether too limited a signification, and which, in his use of it, implies that man is a mere animal,—to him Anthropology is simply the study of la bête humaine. Anthropology means, not simply the science of man's physical nature, origin, and relations, but also the science which treats of his higher spiritual being. Hence, in Theology, the term Anthropology designates that division of the subject which treats of man's spiritual nature and endowments, his original state and his subsequent apostasy. As an argument, therefore, from man's mental and moral nature, we can with perfect propriety call the present argument the Anthropological Argument.

This argument is is part an application to man of the principles of both the Cosmological and the Teleological Arguments. Flint, Theism, 74—“Although causality does not involve design, nor design goodness, yet design involves causality, and goodness both causality and design.” Jacobi: “Nature conceals God; man reveals him.”

Man is an effect. The history of the geologic ages proves that man has not always existed, and even if the lower creatures were his progenitors, his intellect and freedom are not eternal a parte ante. We consider man, not as a physical, but as a spiritual, being. Thompson, Christian Theism, 75—“Every true cause must be sufficient to account for the effect.” Locke, Essay, book 4, chap. 10—“Cogitable existence cannot be produced out of incogitable.” Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:258 sq.

Even if man had always existed, however, we should not need to abandon the argument. We might start, not from beginning of existence, but from beginning of phenomena. I might see God in the world, just as I see thought, feeling, will, in my fellow men. Fullerton, Plain Argument for God: I do not infer you, as cause of the existence of your body: I recognize you as present and working through your body. Its changes of gesture and speech reveal a personality behind them. So I do not need to argue back to a Being who once caused nature and history; I recognize a present Being, exercising wisdom and power, by signs such as reveal personality in man. Nature is itself the Watchmaker manifesting himself in the very process of making the watch. This is the meaning of the noble Epilogue to Robert Browning's Dramatis Personæ, 252—“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows.” “That Face,” said Mr. Browning to Mrs. Orr, “That Face is the face of Christ; that is how I feel him.”Nature is an expression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an expression of my mind and will. But in both cases, behind and above the face is a personality, of which the face is but the partial and temporary expression.

Bowne, Philos. Theism, 104, 107—“My fellow beings act as if they had thought, feeling, and will. So nature looks as if thought, feeling, and will were behind it. If we deny mind in nature, we must deny mind in man. If there be no controlling mind in nature, moreover, there can be none in man, for if the basal power is blind and necessary, then all that depends upon it is necessitated also.” LeConte, in Royce's Conception of God, 44—“There is only one place in the world where we can get behind physical phenomena, behind the veil of matter, namely, in our own brain, and we find there a self, a person. Is it not reasonable that, if we could get behind the veil of nature, we should find the same, that is, a Person? But if so, we must conclude, an infinite Person, and therefore the only complete Personality that exists. Perfect [pg 082]personality is not only self-conscious, but self-existent. They are only imperfect images, and, as it were, separated fragments, of the infinite Personality of God.”

Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination in view of moral ends. The brute has intelligence and will, but has neither self-consciousness, conscience, nor free-will. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:76 sq. Diman, Theistic Argument, 91, 251—“Suppose ‘the intuitions of the moral faculty are the slowly organized results of experience received from the race’; still, having found that the universe affords evidence of a supremely intelligent cause, we may believe that man's moral nature affords the highest illustration of its mode of working”; 358—“Shall we explain the lower forms of will by the higher, or the higher by the lower?”

See Bishop Butler's Sermons on Human Nature, in Works, Bohn's ed., 385-414. Butler's great discovery was that of the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man: “Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.” Conscience = the moral judiciary of the soul—not law, nor sheriff, but judge; see under Anthropology. Diman, Theistic Argument, 251—“Conscience does not lay down a law; it warns us of the existence of a law; and not only of a law, but of a purpose—not our own, but the purpose of another, which it is our mission to realize.” See Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 218 sq. It proves personality in the Lawgiver, because its utterances are not abstract, like those of reason, but are in the nature of command; they are not in the indicative, but in the imperative, mood; it says, “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” This argues will.

Hutton, Essays, 1:11—“Conscience is an ideal Moses, and thunders from an invisible Sinai”; “the Atheist regards conscience not as a skylight, opened to let in upon human nature an infinite dawn from above, but as a polished arch or dome, completing and reflecting the whole edifice beneath.” But conscience cannot be the mere reflection and expression of nature, for it represses and condemns nature. Tulloch, Theism: “Conscience, like the magnetic needle, indicates the existence of an unknown Power which from afar controls its vibrations and at whose presence it trembles.” Nero spends nights of terror in wandering through the halls of his Golden House. Kant holds that faith in duty requires faith in a God who will defend and reward duty—see Critique of Pure Reason, 359-387. See also Porter, Human Intellect, 524.

Kant, in his Metaphysic of Ethics, represents the action of conscience as like “conducting a case before a court,” and he adds: “Now that he who is accused before his conscience should be figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd representation of a tribunal; since, in such an event, the accuser would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to itself always some other than itself as Judge, unless it is to arrive at a contradiction with itself.” See also his Critique of the Practical Reason, Werke, 8:214—“Duty, thou sublime and mighty name, that hast in thee nothing to attract or win, but challengest submission; and yet dost threaten nothing to sway the will by that which may arouse natural terror or aversion, but merely holdest forth a Law; a Law which of itself finds entrance into the mind, and even while we disobey, against our will compels our reverence, a Law in presence of which all inclinations grow dumb, even while they secretly rebel; what origin is there worthy of thee? Where can we find the root of thy noble descent, which proudly rejects all kinship with the inclinations?” Archbishop Temple answers, in his Bampton Lectures, 58, 59, “This eternal Law is the Eternal himself, the almighty God.”Robert Browning: “The sense within me that I owe a debt Assures me—Somewhere must be Somebody, Ready to take his due. All comes to this: Where due is, there acceptance follows: find Him who accepts the due.”

Salter, Ethical Religion, quoted in Pfleiderer's article on Religionless Morality, Am. Jour. Theol., 3:237—“The earth and the stars do not create the law of gravitation [pg 083]which they obey; no more does man, or the united hosts of rational beings in the universe, create the law of duty.” The will expressed in the moral imperative is superiorto ours, for otherwise it would issue no commands. Yet it is one with ours as the life of an organism is one with the life of its members. Theonomy is not heteronomy but the highest autonomy, the guarantee of our personal freedom against all servitude of man. Seneca: “Deo parere libertas est.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 272—“In conscience we see an ‘alter ego’, in us yet not of us, another Personality behind our own.” Martineau, Types, 2:105—“Over a person only a person can have authority.... A solitary being, with no other sentient nature in the universe, would feel no duty”; Study, 1:26—“As Perception gives us Will in the shape of Causality over against us in the Non-Ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of Authority over against us in the Non-Ego.... 2:7—We cannot deduce the phenomena of character from an agent who has none.” Hutton, Essays, 1:41, 42—“When we disobey conscience, the Power which has therein ceased to move us has retired only to observe—to keep watch over us as we mould ourselves.” Cardinal Newman, Apologia, 377—“Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, when I looked into the world.”

Feuerbach calls God “the Brocken-shadow of man himself”; “consciousness of God = self-consciousness”; “religion is a dream of the human soul”; “all theology is anthropology”; “man made God in his own image.” But conscience shows that man does not recognize in God simply his like, but also his opposite. Not as Galton: “Piety = conscience + instability.” The finest minds are of the leaning type; see Murphy, Scientific Bases, 370; Augustine, Confessions, 1:1—“Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless till it finds rest in thee.” On John Stuart Mill—“a mind that could not find God, and a heart that could not do without him”—see his Autobiography, and Browne, in Strivings for the Faith (Christ. Ev. Socy.), 259-287. Comte, in his later days, constructed an object of worship in Universal Humanity, and invented a ritual which Huxley calls “Catholicism minus Christianity.” See also Tyndall, Belfast Address: “Did I not believe, said a great man to me once, that an Intelligence exists at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.” Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1:505,506.