original impetus, unless there were an equivalent persistent force. It has no self-generating power, but is nurtured from without; and the abstraction of the conditions of growth is a virtual abstraction of moral energy.

It is not otherwise with the second element Christianity. Whatever has been contributed by the spiritual to the moral life is not once and for all contributed, but, if it is to be effective, must be continually supplied. We cannot morally, any more than physically, live upon the food our fathers consumed. If we are to nourish our bodies we must find food and eat it for ourselves; and if our moral nature is to grow, we must have fresh nutriment and not mere husks or symbols of nutriment. The bare report of an industrial movement, that vehemently stirred the lives of our ancestors twelve hundred years ago, could not produce any, or only the very slightest perceptible, effect upon the society of the present day. And no more can the record, that eighteen hundred years ago a new influence, in the form of the spirit of Jesus, entered into European life, purifying and ennobling it in many ways, purge and elevate the characters and impulses of the men of the present. With regard to industrialism, we require the actual conditions in order that the answering feelings may be experienced. It is presumably the same with regard to the spiritual life through Christ. That it had once been a factor in the moral and social life of man is not enough. If it is to act effectively along with other moral and social forces, it must remain a factor. If there were not continual reappearings of Christ, in men who imbibe His spirit by living in intimate relationship with the unseen like Him, this spiritual force would be wholly inoperative on our present social life. The mere idea of it, apart from the influence radiating from a living relation to the person and life of Jesus, would be without effect. "Ye are the salt of the earth," Christ said; lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" pect industrialism could not do it, nor do I as yet see any spirit working in men that could do it. I fear, that were morality divorced from the abiding influence that comes to it through a pure, vigorous spiritual life in Christ, morality itself would not only lose much of its power in controlling men's actions, but it would be deprived in time of its grander conceptions, its finer feelings, and more delicate sentiments. All morality would not, of course, vanish: it is far too complex and varied in its origin for any such result to happen, but the flower of it would disappear.

"but if the salt have

I know not; I sus

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RELATION OF THE BIBLE TO THE SPIRITUAL LIFE AND RE

LIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.

"We boast our light, but, if we look not wisely on the sun, he smites us into darkness. The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but to discover by it onward things more remote from our knowledge."

It is very often taken for granted, by those who are termed advanced thinkers, that the Bible, and the type of life manifested in it, and produced by its teaching, have attained their last result-that the spirit of Christianity has worked itself out, and like other exhausted phases of culture must give place to the new faith, whatever that may be. We have even received the names of individuals who are regarded as apostles of the new faith and coming order of things -men of large thought, of earnest mind, who devote themselves to the good of their fellow men. All must admire the men, at least all who can be attracted by goodness and unselfishness. The world sadly needs their best efforts; but an acknowledgment of these efforts must as little blind us to the error of their method, as our convictions, that their opinion of the old faith is erroneous, should hinder us from recognising the value and importance of their work for the general well-being. It is, from the Christian standpoint, an extreme opinion, in a large degree the outcome of an opposite extreme, which considers the Scripture revelation, and often along with that, forms interpretations of the significance of its teaching, as the last word on religious matters.

Between these two extremes of wholesale rejection of the past history of religious life and feeling, and indiscriminate acceptance of it with all its natural accretions, I am persuaded there is a position, which approves itself to the reason of man and his spiritual instinct as well. It is the position of Christ Himself in relation to the past. His attitude was one of wise criticism. The teaching of the New Testament, where it may be said to teach anything on the subject, is to prove all things. Assent without proof is no more to be commended, than dissent without reason, and is equally mischievous to the individual. The mere external adhesion to a thing, no matter how good that thing be in itself, can never extract the

goodness from it. The contrary result is more usual. It for ever prevents such beneficent effects. Only by incorporating the good, through its realisation in ourselves, and making former experiences our own by living them, do they ever become a personal possession. This, in the case before us, can hardly ever come to pass so long as Christianity is uncritical and spiritual consent merely nominal. uninquiring soul is no more likely to be enriched by the preserved treasures of other souls in former times, than an uninquiring mind by that accumulated wealth of the past to which the philosophic temperament falls heir. You must prove your title to both, and to each in the same way, viz., by experience. It is of very little moment in the mental history of the mass of mankind that Socrates or Plato, that Shakspeare or Goethe, lived and taught. It is the prime moment in the history of all thinkers. The mass, however, reveres these great teachers, and cherishes their memories, and probably purchases their works; but it is a reverence and a regard that spring not from individual knowledge and conviction, but from mere hearsay and convention.

Christendom does very much the same with the representative lives in its sphere as civilisation with the representative lives in the sphere of culture, and on very much the same grounds. The crowd pays most laudable homage, as it thinks, to the Founder and leaders of the new kingdom; their utterances are regarded with a sort of awe and reverential worship that paralyse thought and criticism, and leave room only for absorbing adoration. And yet, the record of Christ and His teaching, as a constant moment in the spiritual life of the masses of Christendom, is at times scarcely appreciable.* Whatever influence it has upon them is like the influence of the great thinkers I have mentioned, secondary and derivative merely. Thus far the parallel is as complete as parallels usually are, but it will not admit of being drawn to its full limits. The untutored masses of modern culture feel, when they reflect upon the matter at all, that their perception of Plato and the others is defective, and that their regard for them is based merely on, what they consider, competent external authority, and not on the internal witnessing of their own mind, so to say. Accordingly, they cheerfully give place to men who have made these masters their study, and who, in study, have acquired their method, and thoughts, and

* It may sound strange to some, but I am persuaded that Christianity has yet to be expounded. Its social influence is a thing of the future.

drunk deeply of that more subtle influence which we call their spirit -who have lived over again the master's thoughts, pondered them frequently, until they have become their own as well.

The unspiritualised masses* of modern Christendom behave in an exactly contrary manner. They, too, in reality ground their respect for the Scripture revelation on authority external to themselves— the authority of tradition in one shape or another, and not on intimate personal experience and a genuine vital assimilation of its spirit and teaching, which is the only legitimate test of its doctrines, as well as the only mode of acquiring any knowledge of them worthy of the name. But, so far from yielding to those who have thus known the mind of Christ, the philistian spirit of Christendom, for the phrase is fully more applicable in this connection than in the sphere of culture, claims for its perception of scriptural truth a degree of exactness which, in the parallel case, would plainly appear to themselves, as it does to others, to be wholly unfounded. This would be a matter altogether unworthy of notice did it end here. But the masses sometimes enforce their claims as the true interpreters of a spiritual life which they have not experienced but only heard of, and at the same time disown, and in many cases repress, those who in their own spirits have lived this life, and are alone able and worthy to be its expositors. This traditionary extreme has had a most fatal influence on the development of Christian life and thought. The life has been dwarfed to a degree that, after eighteen hundred years' growth, is perfectly amazing. The thought has been blighted, and nearly killed. For long there was no thought properly and distinctively Christian, and at present among ourselves, when it shows itself, it is sickly, and apologetic for its intrusion, and, often as not, forced to retreat underground, being nipped because of its untimely shooting, or, what is the same thing, because of the ungenial atmospheric influences that press upon the tender exhibition of hidden vitality. The contemplation of these feeble efforts at growth and of their unfriendly reception fills one with much pity and pain,

* It is a very usual thing to charge one, who makes any reflection on classes of men as being without spiritual life and light, with spiritual arrogance, and especially with want of charity; but really the charge may sometimes be without reason. Those who make it have no hesitation in reflecting on larger classes as defective in culture and ignorant, which may be no less arrogant and uncharitable. A man of spiritual culture, I hold, feels when he is in the vicinity of spiritual darkness just as keenly as a man of literary or scientific culture is conscious of the proximity of ignorance.

while it serves, at the same time, to convince one of the hardy germ of thought that lies somewhere inextinguishable, notwithstanding the untowardness of its surroundings. This is nowhere else than in the spirit of that book, which, whether or not we may extend and help to complete, we can never entirely or to any great extent supersede. The attempt and the strong desire to deprive modern life and culture of the lessons that the Bible still has for us, is a not very unnatural consequence of the extreme traditionary manner of regarding it. Life in the present day is anything but frivolous and speculative; it is intensely earnest and practical. A man of any seriousness and sense of reality views with impatience a lazy leaning towards a past that has no manifest continuity with the life within him and around him; and traditionalism, which has assumed the name and all the external marks of Christianity, presents to his mind the excess of this backward attitude. Unhappily he does not always inquire for himself into the rights of the question, or, inquiring, is met by opposition and general execration, and as unhappily retires from contact with a cause with so unfortunate a following. But the man must have faith of some kind. He must still give utterance to the life within him, his spirit pants for an atmosphere in which to live and work, for in work is its life, and not in dull quiescence and comfortable entry into another's labours.

Thus arises the new faith with its conceptions of the common good, and its manful labours to get this by legislation and social amelioration of various kinds. A very noble faith, making ignoble much that passes for the old faith. It is a real thing and personal to a man-not merely conceptional for us in the present day, while actually belonging to men long since dead. It has an element susceptible of growth. Development, advancement, progress are its watchwords. And what ravishment does there not lie in such words for an energetic man filled with benevolence, burning with love for his fellow-men, consumed with the desire for their improvement? It is freedom itself and a kind of elemental existence for such a soul. But, to be in a sphere where growth has entirely ceased, where the watchwords are tradition and retrogression, is, to such a spirit as I have now spoken of, slavery itself with the clogging of aspiration and the stifling of life, that are ever the accompaniments of any kind of bondage. Who can wonder at some breaking loose from such conditions? I regret this sort of severance, both for the sake of the men and for the interests of society, as much as any one, but without being surprised at it. Every one must equally regret the