Chapter 5

The Religion of Humanity has numbered among its adherents, in part or in whole, several celebrated persons in this country, such as Richard Congreve, Dr. Bridges, Professor Beesley, Cotter Morison, George Eliot. But at present it has no more eloquent and earnest advocate than Mr. Frederic Harrison, who, in _The Creed of a Layman_, and several other recent volumes, has passionately proclaimed its principles. For more than fifty years he has been its apostle: 'every other aim or occupation has been subsidiary and instrumental to this.'[8] It {111} is true that in some points he has retained his independence, and while those outside accuse him of fanaticism, some of his fellow-believers suspect him of heresy.[9] But he himself is assured that in the worship of Humanity he has obtained the solution of his doubts[10] and the satisfaction of his spirit, and on his gravestone or his urn he would have inscribed the words, _He found peace_.[11] There is much that is marvellously elevated in thought as well as exquisite in expression, profoundly devout as well as brilliantly argued, in the narrative of his progress towards his present position. But when his vehement statements are carefully examined, it will almost inevitably be seen that all that is good and sensible in them is an unconscious reproduction of Christianity. His negations disappear: the affirmations which he makes are those which the Church has always {112} maintained. The faith of his childhood permeates and strengthens and beautifies the creed which he adopted in his maturer years. The unity of mankind, the memory of the departed, the necessity of living for others, these are no novelties in Christianity. It is in Christ that they have specially been brought to light, in Him that they find their highest ratification, without Him they remain unfulfilled, with Him they attain to consistency and power.

The Great Being, Humanity, is only an abstraction.[12] 'There is no such thing in reality,' Principal Caird reminds us, 'as an animal which is no particular animal, a plant which is no particular plant, a man or humanity which is no individual man. It is only a fiction of the observer's mind.' There is logical force as well as humorous illustration in the contention of Dean Page Roberts, that there is no more a humanity apart {113} from individual men and women than there is a great being apart from all individual dogs, which we may call Caninity, or a transcendent Durham ox, apart from individual oxen, which may be named Bovinity.'[13] Nor does the geniality of Mr. Chesterton render his argument the less telling: 'It is evidently impossible to worship Humanity, just as it is impossible to worship the Savile Club: both are excellent institutions to which we may happen to belong. But we perceive clearly that the Savile Club did not make the stars and does not fill the universe. And it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the Trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to worship a being who is ninety million persons in one God, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.'[14]

Can it be doubted that the Great Being, {114} the sum of human beings, is less conceivable, less worthy of worship than the Great Being, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?[15] Can it be doubted that the claim of Humanity to worship is less credible if we exclude the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus, from our view? Can it be doubted that the Positivist motto, 'Live for others,' gains a force and a meaning unapproached elsewhere from the Life and Death of Him Who said, 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His Life a ransom for many?' Humanity knit together in One, purified from every stain, glorious and adorable, is a lofty and inspiring idea, but nowhere has it been disclosed save in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made Flesh, the Brightness of the Father's glory and the Express Image of His Person.

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V

Dr. Richard Congreve owns that much of the Religion of Humanity exists already in the Christian Faith, but, in one respect, he asserts that the Religion of Humanity can claim to be entirely original. 'We accept, so have all men. We obey, so have all men. We venerate, so have some in past ages, or in other countries. We add but one other term, we love.'[16] That is what distinguishes this new religion and proves its superiority to the old: its votaries have attained this new principle and mode of life: they love one another. The boldness of the claim may stagger us. We turn over the pages of the New Testament. We see that Love is the fulfilling of the Law; is the end of the commandment; is the sum of the Law and the Prophets; is placed at the very summit of Christian graces; is the bond of perfectness; {116} is manifested in a Life and a Death which, after nineteen centuries, remain without a parallel. We recall the touching legend that in his old age the Apostle S. John was daily carried into the assembly of the Ephesian Christians, simply repeating to them, over and over, the words, 'Love one another. This is our Lord's command, fulfil this and nothing else is needed.' We recall that in early centuries the sympathy and helpfulness by which Christians of all ranks and races were united called forth from heathen spectators the amazed and respectful exclamation, 'See how these Christians love one another!' Recalling these things, we cannot but be startled that, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, a teacher should, with any expectation of being believed, have ventured to affirm that the great discovery which it has been reserved for the present day to make is that of loving one another. Ignorance of Christianity, misrepresentation {117} of Christianity, we may well call it: ignorance inconceivable, misrepresentation inconceivable: and yet, as we consider the state of Christendom, do we not see what palliates the ignorance and the misrepresentation? Have we not reason to confess that, if the commandment be not new, universal obedience to it would be new indeed? May the calm assurance that love is foreign to Christianity not startle us into the conviction that we have forgotten what, according to our Lord's own declaration, the chief feature of Christianity ought to be? 'By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'

VI

'How can we,' it has been well said, 'be asked to give the name of Religion of Humanity to a religion that ignores the greatest human being that ever lived, and the very source from which the Religion of Humanity {118} sprang?'[17] Man in himself, man so full of imperfections, man having no connection with any world but this, man unallied to any Power higher, nobler than himself, is this to be our God? Which is more reasonable: to set up the race of man, unpurified, unredeemed, worthless and polluted, as the object of adoration, or to maintain that 'Man indeed is the rightful object of our worship, but in the roll of ages, there has been but one Man Whom we can adore without idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus'?[18] The Religion of Humanity, so called, would have us worship Man apart from Christ Whom yet all acknowledge to be the glory of mankind, but we call on men to worship Christ Jesus, for in Him we see Man without a stain, we see our nature redeemed and consecrated, we see ourselves brought nigh to the Infinite God. We adore Humanity, but Humanity {119} in its purity: we adore Humanity, but only as manifesting in the Only Begotten Son the glory of the Eternal Father. Thus we place no garland around the vices of the human race: thus we abase, and thus we exalt: thus are we humbled to the dust, thus are we raised to the highest heavens. Apart from Christ, the magnitude of the creation may well depress and overwhelm: apart from Christ the human race is morally imperfect instead of being a fit object of blind adoration. Seeing Christ, we not only feel our inconceivable nothingness in presence of the Infinite Majesty, but we stand erect and unpresumptuously say, 'We wonder not that Thou art mindful of those for whom that Son of Man lived and died, we are in Him partakers of the Divine Nature. There thou beholdest Thine Own Image.'

Made in the image of God, such is the ideal of Man that comes to us from the beginning of his history; and such is the ideal {120} that once, and once only, has been realised. '_Ecce Homo_! Behold the Man!' said Pontius Pilate, in words more full of significance than he knew, pointing to the victim of priestly hatred and popular fickleness. Behold the Man! man as he ought to be, the Image of God. Before that Divine Humanity we reverently bow, to that Divine Humanity we humbly consecrate ourselves, in fellowship with It alone we learn and manifest the true worth and dignity of Man.

One writing frantically to exalt mankind and to depreciate Christianity, tells us how he sat on a cliff overhanging the seashore and gazed upon the stars, murmuring, 'O prodigious universe, and O poor ignorant, that could believe all these were made for him!' but the sight of a steamship caused him to rejoice at the triumph of Art over Nature, and to exclaim, 'If man is small in relation to the universe, he is great in relation to the earth: he abbreviates distance and time, {121} and brings the nations together.' Then he saw that man is ordained to master the laws of which he is now the slave; he believed that if man could understand this mission, a new religion would animate his life, and, in the strength of this revelation, the writer says that he sang in ecstasy to the waters and winds and birds and beasts, he felt a rapture of love for the whole human race, he resolved to preach the New Gospel far and wide, and proclaim the glorious mission of mankind.[19]

On the whole the Old Gospel will be found as ennobling, as inspiring, as practical as the New. All that this new Gospel aims at, we, as Christians, already believe: and we possess a Divine Token, a Sacred Pledge which is foreign to it: we believe that a higher destiny is in store for us than even the construction of wonders of mechanical skill.[20] Stripped of all rhetoric, the conclusion of unbelief in God and Immortality can only {122} be 'Man is what he eats': the conclusion of Christianity, 'There is but one object greater than the soul, and that is its Creator.'

One in a certain place testified, saying, 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels: Thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.' For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see JESUS Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. We see Him Who is our Brother and our Forerunner within the veil; and in His Exaltation we behold our own.[21] No vision of the future can surpass that which the Christian Church {123} has cherished from the beginning, that we shall all 'come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a Perfect Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ ... from Whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.'

[1] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 67.

[2] Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_.

[3] Thomas Carlyle.

[4] _Man's Destiny_, p. 31,

[5] Aubrey de Vere.

[6] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 76.

[7] Frederic Harrison, _Creed of a Layman_.

[8] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 14.

[9] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 15.

[10] Appendix XIV.

[11] _Creed of a Layman_.

[12] Appendix XV.

[13] _Some Urgent Questions in Christian Lights_.

[14] _Heretics_, p. 96.

[15] Appendix XVI.

[16] Appendix XVII.

[17] E. A. Abbott, _Through Nature to Christ_.

[18] Frederick William Robertson, _Sermon on John's Rebuke of Herod_.

[19] Winwood Reade, _The Outcast_.

[20] Appendix XVIII.

[21] Appendix XIX.

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V

THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST

'Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 1.

'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 6.

'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'--S. JOHN xiv. 9.

'Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'--ACTS iv. 12.

'He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.'--2 S. JOHN 9.

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V

THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST

By Theism without Christ is not meant a system like Judaism or Mohammedanism, but a modern school which maintains that faith in God becomes weakened and impaired by being associated with faith in Jesus. There are those who cling with tenacity to the first article of the Apostles' Creed, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty,' but who reject with equal fervour the second article of the Creed, 'And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.' They resist with horror the suggestion that the world is under no overruling Providence, or that the humblest human being is not regarded with the tender love of the Infinite God: they rival the most {128} mystical worshipper in the ardour of the language with which in prayer they address the Father in Heaven, but they refuse to bow in the Name of Jesus: they go to the Father, as they think, without Him: they assert that to look to Him is virtually to look away from God. They are as hostile as we can be to the Substitutes for Christianity which we have been considering. They have no sympathy with those who loudly deny that there is a God, or with those who say that it is impossible to find out whether there is a God or not, or with those who think that the Creator and the Creation are one, that the universe is God, or with those who, not believing in any Unseen and Eternal God, insist that the proper object of the worship of mankind is man. In the proclamation of the existence of an All-Wise and All-holy Being, in the proclamation that He has made the world and rules it to its minutest detail, in the proclamation that {129} there is a life beyond the grave, they are the allies of the Christian Church. But then they go on to argue, For those who hold these doctrines, Christ is quite superfluous: to hold them in their purity Christ must be dethroned and His name no longer specially revered. Some may still wish to speak of Him as among the Great Teachers of the world, but some, in order to preserve these precious truths unmixed, decline in a very fanaticism of unbelief to assign Him even that position.

I

The declaration of our Lord, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' has been a chief stumbling-block and rock of offence. Are we to believe, it is asked, that only the comparatively few to whom the knowledge of Jesus Christ has come can possibly be accepted of the Father? When the words were spoken the number of His disciples was exceedingly small. Did he mean that the {130} Father could be approached only by that handful of people, that all beyond were banished from the Divine Presence and must inevitably perish? That this is what He meant both the friends and the foes of Christianity have at times been agreed in holding. The friends have imagined that they were thereby exalting the claim of Christ to be the One Mediator. It may be a terrible mystery that the vast majority of the human race should have no opportunity of believing in Him, should be even unacquainted with His Name. We can only bow before the inscrutable decree, and strive with all our might, not only that our own faith may be deepened, but that the knowledge of Christ may be diffused over all the earth, so that some here and there may be rescued. There is little wonder that such a view should have given rise to questionings and opposition, should have been rejected as inconsistent with mercy and with justice. It is an {131} interpretation on which hostile critics have laid stress as incontestably proving the narrowness and bigotry of the Christian Creed.

If we bear in mind Who it is that is presumed to say, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' the misconception disappears. It is not merely an individual man, separate from all others, giving Himself out as a wise and infallible Teacher. He Who makes the stupendous claim is One Who by the supposition embodies in Himself Human Nature in its perfection, Who is identified with His brethren, Who says, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' The Life which He manifests is the Life of God. He is set forth as the Way to the Father: in mercy and in blessing the Way is disclosed in Him: it is not in harsh and rigid exclusiveness that He speaks, debarring the mass of mankind: it is in tender comprehensiveness, inviting all without distinction of race or circumstance, opening a new {132} and living way for all into the Holiest. It is the breaking down of all barriers between man and man, between man and God, not the setting up of another barrier high and insurmountable. When Christ declares 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' He is not declaring that the way is difficult and impassable, He is pointing out a way of deliverance which all may tread. So far from laying down a hard and burdensome dogma to be accepted on peril of pains and penalties, He is imparting a hope and a consolation in which all may rejoice.

If we believe Him to be the Word of God made Flesh, if we see in Him the Brightness of the Father's glory, it becomes a truism to say that only through Him can life and healing be imparted to mankind. When He Himself says, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,' it is natural for Him to add, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' It will {133} be granted by all who believe in God that, apart from God, no soul of man can have life eternal. The most strenuous advocate of the salvation of the virtuous heathen will grant that their salvation does not descend from the idol of wood and stone before which they grovel. It is from the True God, the Living God, that the blessing proceeds. It is His touch, His Spirit, His Presence which has consecrated the earnest though erring worship of the poor idolater. No one who believes in the Infinite and Eternal God could possibly say that the monstrous image whose aid is invoked by the devout heathen is itself the answerer of his prayer, the cause of his deliverance from sin, the bestower of immortality upon him. The utmost that can be said is that in the costly sacrifices, the painful penances, the passionate prayers which he presents to the object of his adoration, the Almighty Love discerns a longing after something nobler and better, {134} and accepts the service as directed really, though unconsciously, to Him.

The feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened.[1]

But it is the hand of God that they touch. It is from the One Omnipotent God that every blessing comes: it is the One Omnipotent God Who turns to truth and life and reality every sincere and struggling and imperfect attempt to serve Him on the part of those who know not His Nature or His Name.

And what is true of God is equally true of Christ, the manifestation of God. Only grant Him to be the Incarnate Word of God, and it becomes plain that salvation can no more exist apart from Him than apart from the Father. This Word of God is the Light that lighteth every man. Whatever truth, whatever knowledge of the Divine, anywhere {135} exists is the result of that illumination. The sparks which shine even in the darkness of heathendom betoken the presence of that Light, not wholly extinguished by the folly and ignorance of man. That is the One Sun of Righteousness which gives light everywhere, though in many places the clouds are so dense that the beams can scarcely penetrate. Now, if that Word has become Flesh, if that Light has become embodied in Human Form, we are still constrained to say, There is no true Light but His, it is in His Light that all must walk if they would not stray, there is no Guide, no Deliverer, save Him. Christ discloses, brings to view, all the saving health which has ever been, all the power of restoring, cleansing, healing, which has ever worked in the souls of men. The one Power by which any human being, in any age or in any land, has ever been fitted for the presence of the All Holy God, is made manifest in Christ. 'Neither is there {136} salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'

We need have no hesitation in asserting that all who in any age or in any land, or in any religion, have come to the Father must have come through the Son of Man, the Eternal Word made Flesh. We do not contend, as has too frequently been contended, that beyond the limits of Christianity, beyond, it may be, the limits of one section of Christianity, there is no truth believed, no acceptable service rendered. We hail with gratitude the lofty thoughts and the noble achievements of some who do not in word acknowledge Christ as Lord. In the vision of the Light that lighteth every man, we see

How light can find its way To regions farthest from the fount of day.[2]

'Now,' as is well said by the present Bishop {137} of Birmingham, who will hardly be accused of any tendency to minimise the claims of Christianity, 'this is no narrow creed. Christianity, the religion of Jesus, is the Light: it is the one final Revelation, the one final Religion, but it supersedes all other religions, Jewish and Pagan, not by excluding, but by including all the elements of truth which each contained. There was light in Zoroastrianism, light in Buddhism, light among the Greeks: but it is all included in Christianity. A good Christian is a good Buddhist, a good Jew, a good Mohammedan, a good Zoroastrian; that is, he has all the truth and virtue that these can possess, purged and fused in a greater and completer light. Christianity, I say, supersedes all other religions by including these fragments of truth in its own completeness. You cannot show me any element of spiritual light or strength which is in other religions and is not in Christianity. Nor can you {138} show me any other religion which can compare with Christianity in completeness of light: Christianity is the one complete and final religion, and the elements of truth in other religions are rays of the One Light which is concentrated and shines full in Jesus Christ our Lord.'[3]

II