"In defining as above the position which Christ assumed, we have not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course this, but also every other, account of him falls to the ground.

There is no point more powerfully brought | ent slavishness of human ignorance, and the out in Ecce Homo than the absolutely regal undermining of which is the great desideracharacter of Christ's spiritual legislation, the tum of our day. Now, that Christ's legisinfinite height from which it descends upon lation is not of the first kind, no one who the hearts of His disciples, searching their has the faintest insight into it will dream of most secret motives, and yet, though with an asserting,-assuredly no one who reads the entire absence of any visible machinery for delineation of it given in Ecce Homo :frightening or bribing them into compliance, having an unparalleled success in revolutionizing the morality, and at least as completely the religion, of ages. Mahomet, indeed, as our author points out, established a faith quite as successful, and no doubt a faith not without grandeur and truth; but then he began by founding a dynasty,-that is, by the use of influences a thousand times more vulgar, to rivet his hold on the imagination; and he attempted, even with this aid, infinitely less; never putting forward any of Christ's imperious claims to purge the secret thoughts and hearts of His disciples, by spiritual principles the most subtle and the most universal. Christ commenced a reign infinitely more powerful in practical life than that of any dynasty of kings, or all the dynasties of all the kings of earthly empires, by the mere unsupported assertion of His authority during a year or two of obscure life. His word established itself, and this for centuries after His ignominious death. The question is to what to ascribe this wonderful reign of one, who, if the sceptics are right, without any pretence to supernatural power, proceeded on a false method, and asserted an illegitimate claim. "The improver of natural knowledge," says Professor Huxley, in the name of men of science, "absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such." And he labours to show that all that is solid in our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life, is built up on a gradual experience of facts, and a temper that vehemently challenges authority (moral no less than intellectual), and will accept nothing which it has not proved for itself. In other words, Professor Huxley maintains

that the method of the inductive sciences is the only method by which any human creature can arrive at any sort of truth. If he is right, there are but two alternatives for explaining the power of Christ's inward legislation. Either it must have been legislation only in name, and be really the result of a series of accurate moral experiments, which our Lord only appeals to other human beings' experience to confirm,-experiments on the practical value of mercy, justice, purity of heart, the power of prayer, and the negation of these (for no inductive experiment can be of any force till it has tried both alternatives),—or it must have been a misleading power, succeeding by the inher

"When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the execution and results of it, three things strike us with astonishment. First, its prodigious originality, if the expres sion may be used. What other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, 'I will build up a state by the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men together-unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship. I will make laws for my state which shall never destruction' that are at work in the world to be repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destroy what I build?'

"Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the scheme was carried out. The reason why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes preworld have said, 'I will work my way to susuppose. Some of the leading organizers of the preme power, and then I will execute great plans.' But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, I am your king.' He did not struggle forward to a position in which he could found a new state, but simply

founded it.

"Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of divine society, than it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years,

that it has extended over a

large and most highly civilized portion of the earth's surface, and that it continues full of vigour at the present day."

Nor is this method, whether true or false, unique. Certainly the application of it by our Lord is infinitely bolder and more successful than in any other era of human history; but it seems probable that all great

constitutive and organizing influences spring But if the half-savage Greek could share our into life in the same way, by the aid of an feelings thus far, it is irrational to doubt that i authority coming more or less from above; he went further, to find, as we do, that upon that nations are born out of the moral im that brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow, the little light of awakened human intelpulse given by a single commanding personligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss ality, instead of being joint-stock companies of the unknown and unknowable; seems so voluntarily associating for civil purposes; insufficient to do more than illuminate the imthat civilisations are crystallized, fixed, and perfections that cannot be remedied, the aspibroken up through the vibration of a single rations that cannot be realized, of man's own wave of moral conviction; in a word, that nature. But in this sadness, this consciousness societies are governed, as societies, not by of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secret which he cannot penetrate, lies the esscientific generalizations from particular exsence of all religion; and the attempt to emperience, but by subduing moral principles, body it in the forms furnished by the intellect that, once uttered, seize upon the conscience, is the origin of all theology.” and inform the body politic with a living spirit. It seems nearly certain that all great past revolutions are traceable, not to correct inferences duly tested, but to discoveries of a higher life (whether human or superhuman), which is no sooner discerned than it brings the heart into captivity, and justifies itself, not "by verification," but "by faith."

Now, compare this with Professor Huxley's teaching, and we may gain some glimpse into the true attitude of Christian faith towards the spirit of modern science. Mr. Huxley states his own view very clearly. All knowledge, he says, is of one sort, proceeding from the observation of natural facts to a study of their order, and breaking into what he calls religion at the point wherever (for the time, that is) the effort of the mind to pass the bounds set to natural knowledge fails:

Here then we have the strongest possible contrast of methods. The historical student of Christ's life, entering on his work, as he tells us, without having formed any clear conception of the significance of the subject he was to study, cannot avoid seeing the assumption of an amazing legislative authority over the most secret attitudes of the wills and affections of men, enforced either by no visible power at all, or by no visible power that the modern scientific man will admit; embodied in no written code, and proceeding from lips which had scarcely uttered the new law when they were closed in death; yet he sees that this legislative authority was not nominal, but real,-that it spread from conscience to conscience and heart to heart, till it undermined the Roman power, founded institutions which all over the West are potent still, and changed the "I cannot but think that the foundations of secret motives and the spiritual beliefs even all natural knowledge were laid when the reamore than the outward actions of those on son of man first came face to face with the facts of nature; when the savage first learned whom it laid its grasp. The scientific stuthat the fingers of one hand are fewer than dent, on the other hand, tells us that doubt those of both; that it is shorter to cross a-the rejection of this sort of authoritystream than to head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that it drops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and go with the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animals grow and die; that if he struck his fellow-savage a blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get a blow in return, while, if he offered him a fruit, he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange. When men had acquired this much knowledge, the outlines, rude though they were, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, and political science, were sketched. Nor did the germ of religion fail when science began to bud. To use words which, though new, are yet three thousand years old:

When in heaven the stars about the

moon

Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart.'

is in all cases, and every department of life, "the highest of duties;" the keenest scepticism the highest of virtues; that moral knowledge, like all other, is the product of a careful study of the consequences of different kinds of conduct; and that religious knowledge, properly so called, does not exist at all, religion being properly only a tone of feeling, a name for the humility which wise men feel towards the Unknown and Unknowable.

The contrast seems to us as instructive as

it is strongly marked: science reproaching history with being founded on a tissue of fable; history ignoring science through the necessity which obliges it to follow those great streams of organizing and constitutive social principles which always originate in sources above the analysis of the scientific understanding. Professor Huxley is committing the very same mistake, on behalf of the scientific principle, which Christians of

all reeds, but most of all the Roman Cath- mind higher than our own in these respects olic Church, have committed on behalf of no sooner stirs us than we recognise its rank, the theological principle. Recognising the nay, much as he dislikes the word, acknowlinherent divinity of the revelation which at edge its authority. His highest of virtues, once humiliates and elevates, refines and "doubt," would, if applied to all departenlarges, saddens and rejoices, the heart of ments of life, the moral and spiritual as well man, Christian theology has always been in as intellectual, soon do more to render the danger of annexing to its province those ac- world uninhabitable than science can ever do cidentally connected fields of thought, by to populate it. Imagine the child doubting the aid of which its truths have been ex- whether it ought to trust, and the woman pressed and illustrated. As lawyers assume whether she ought to love, till scientific that a grant of land includes a grant of all habits of mind had verified the credentials the tower of space above it up to the very of the mother or the brother; imagine love zenith, so theologians have assumed that the exactly measured out in proportion to hubreadth of heaven measured by a Divine man deserts; imagine the moral influence of revelation must carry with it all the depths character repelled on the very highest scienbeneath, down to the very earth illumined tific principles till some social anthropomeby its light. And the Roman Church has ter had been applied to it to verify its effigone further still, and maintained, with Dr. ciency; imagine establishing scientifically Newman, a principle of development which that loving resignation is a better state of claims "preservative additions," as bulwarks mind than stoical endurance, and gratitude of the ground already won, until, as in our than proud aversion to receive the favours Indian Empire, State after State is annexed, of others; in short, imagine any condition to insure the safety of what had been an- of society in which the mysterious and innexed before; and the theological principle stantaneous authority of moral and spirituhas exiled every other from the realm of al qualities should be undermined, and a human nature. The blunder which theolo- scientific doubt, demanding demonstration gians have thus made, the men of science are that they were good, instead of freely acnow retorting upon them. They have estab-knowledging their influence, in its place, and lished their principles firmly on the earth, and are now proceeding to push them up to the highest heavens, branding everything as unknown and unknowable which they cannot make known by their own method. Instead of "preservative additions," these thinkers really ask for "preservative subtractions,"-negations, that is, of every other principle of knowledge,-in order that science may be left alone in the field, with a desert spreading around it on every border. Yet how would Professor Huxley propose to establish, on the scientific method, the "knowledge" that purity of heart is one of the highest of virtues? Would he make his savage "try" both alternatives, and embrace that which he found to be, "by verification," the most successful as a principle of living? How would he propose to make it clear even that the love of pure scientific knowledge, on which he is so wisely eloquent, is one of the nobler principles in the human heart, and infinitely more worthy, as he justly remarks, than that love of the mere utilitarian results of knowledge-of such useful "toys" as the pump and the steamengine with which he complains of its being confounded? We suspect that in an swer to either question he would be compelled to say that the intrinsic nobility of purity of heart, and of disinterested intellectual passion, as of all other noble principles, is appreciated as soon as distinctly felt; that a

you imagine an anarchy that no conceivable familiarity with the order of nature could convert into organization and harmony. But once grant the principle of the spiritual authority of character, and you grant in ef fect the rule of the Holy Spirit, which alone can teach us that one spirit is lower than another spirit; that a spirit of which we have made no trial, which scientifically we could neither approve nor condemn, and which is soliciting us to make trial of it, is beneath and not above us; that another spirit, equally untried as yet, is above and not beneath us; which alone, in short, can lead our steps aright in the thicket of spiritual influences which make up human life.

But, once granting that there is this distinct source of knowledge, for knowledge of the most valuable kind, if knowledge at all, it undoubtedly is, and we have a clue by which to settle the true relation of theology to science. As this sort of knowledge, by its very nature and essence, comes down upon us from above, and convinces us of the existence of something higher than ourselves, which has a natural authority over us, we may trust those who tell us of such knowledge as having entered their own minds, to give us its upward history, as we may call it,-to show us whence it descended upon them, and what was the precise spiritual conviction which it brought. Thus we may trust profoundly the genuineness of such a

testimony as Peter's: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life," -for what did it mean, except the most sincere, specific, and definite piece of testimony of which perhaps the human mind is capable, that from a certain source new moral life had been flowing in full streams into Peter's own mind, and that he knew and recognised that source? So too, with still more profound conviction, we may accept that higher testimony which said, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do;" "I am not alone, for the Father is with me;" "All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, nor any man the Father but the Son, and he to whom soever the Son shall reveal him;" and which, in sayings far too numerous to quote, ascribed to the eternal union with the Father all those deeds and words which men wilfully call so "original," but the true power of which, according to our Lord's own mind, lies precisely in their not being original, but derivative, the faithful reflection of eternal filial love. We take it that on no point is the mind of man capable of more accurate testimony than of the origin of its own higher life. The moment, and the source, whether human or divine, whence a new and higher influence has descended upon us, are always memorable, and almost always of that precise and distinctly outlined character, that, however inward, is properly historic. That this is so, is doubtless one of the causes of that mischievous and exacting demand for a dateable "conversion" with which some theologies pester their disciples. It is true, however, that every new and great influence from above us, whether it dates itself accurately in time or not, and whether it is of that peculiar and sometimes morbid kind known popularly as conversion or not, does bring with it the distinctest knowledge as to its mode and source. But though the upward history, as we may call it, of genuine spiritual influence, human or divine, is almost always authentic, it is by no means necessary, or even true, that the downward history of revelation, the history of its actual conquests and human successes, should include only the history of authentic Divine influence, and of its legitimate victories. The difference between scientific knowledge and this kind of spiritual knowledge, which is of the essence of revela tion, is, that in the former there is always the strictest possible equivalence between the premises and the conclusion into which they are "developed;" in the latter, as with all practical moral influences, the actual development is apt to be very much wider

We

indeed than is warranted by the principle
from which it springs. The early Church,
from its knowledge of God, got a great deal
of practical human authority in other mat-
ters which was often wisely and often un-
wisely used. It became an authority in all
matters of philosophy and law, and annexed,
as we have said, province after province of
human life and thought to the field over
which it claimed authority, till scarcely any
was left out of the reach of its lateral ex-
tension. Yet a great deal of this lateral
extension was of course illegitimate.
have not yet nearly got rid of the pernicious
effects of the assumption of revelation to
decide questions of history, science, and
general expediency. The downward growth
of revelation is a history of graftings of
new principles upon the spiritual and moral
authority of a revelation which simply claims
to link us to God through Him who had
lived both an eternal life with God, and in
human history also. Revelation is an or-
ganizing force, and, as such, assimilates
plenty of temporary material. All revela-
tion, all downward-streaming light, in pass-
ing through stratum after stratum of our
thick human atmosphere, falls upon, and
touches with its own beauty, human means
and instruments and temporary expedients
of human energy, useful for a time perhaps,
but not useful for eternity; and many dreams,
fictions, and errors which are not useful in
themselves even for a time, but only seem
to become so when they catch the gleam of
a Divine influence; and, lastly, earnest hu-
man thoughts, whether wholly or only par-
tially true, which revelation has kindled and
illuminated, but with which it is not to be
identified. When we come to compare the
scientific principle of thought, therefore,
with the theological or unveiling of the Holy
Spirit to men, we find the two absolutely in
different planes, and unable, properly com-
pared, to clash with each other. But this
is by no means the case with respect to
the temporary materials which the theolog-
ical principle has frequently embodied, and
for a time successfully embodied, with itself,
by virtue of the great prestige of its spirit-
ual authority. The scientific principle has
most useful work to do in disentangling again
from revelation elements which have been
imported into it without really belonging to
it, and reclaiming them for their own proper
province. Only, in attempting this, science,
as we have said, is under a great temptation
to mistake what it can do more fatally than
theology has ever mistaken what it could do.
Instead of annexing to its own fields those
border lands of thought over which it neither
has nor pretends to have any right, it lays