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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the
+Times, by John Tulloch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times
+       Preached in the Parish Church of Crathie, fifth September
+       and in the College Church, St Andrews
+
+Author: John Tulloch
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #26035]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGION AND THEOLOGY: A SERMON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gerard Arthus and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION AND THEOLOGY
+
+A SERMON FOR THE TIMES
+
+
+PREACHED IN THE
+
+PARISH CHURCH OF CRATHIE, 5TH SEPTEMBER
+
+AND IN THE
+
+COLLEGE CHURCH, ST ANDREWS
+
+BY
+
+JOHN TULLOCH, D.D.
+
+PRINCIPAL AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, ST MARY'S COLLEGE, IN THE
+UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS, AND ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S
+CHAPLAINS IN ORDINARY IN SCOTLAND
+
+
+SECOND EDITION
+
+
+WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+MDCCCLXXV
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+I.
+
+HISTORY OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY
+
+AND
+
+CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND
+
+IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+Second Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, L1, 8s.
+
+    Edinburgh Review.
+
+    The pleasure with which Principal Tulloch explores this
+    comparatively unknown field communicates itself to his readers,
+    and the academic groves of Oxford and Cambridge are invested
+    with the freshness of a new glory.
+
+
+    Athenaeum.
+
+    It is rich in pregnant and suggestive thought.
+
+
+    Saturday Review.
+
+    Here we must take our respectful leave of this large-minded,
+    lively, and thoughtful work, which deserves to the full the
+    acceptance it cannot fail to receive.
+
+
+    Spectator.
+
+    Every thoughtful and liberal Englishman who reads these volumes
+    will feel that Principal Tulloch has laid him under obligations
+    in writing them.
+
+
+    British Quarterly Review.
+
+    Ample scholarship, well-disciplined powers, catholic sympathies,
+    and a masculine eloquence, give it a high place among modern
+    contributions to theological science.
+
+
+    Nonconformist.
+
+    From his lively portraits they will learn to know some of the
+    finest spirits England has produced; while from his able and
+    comprehensive summaries of the works they left behind them, any
+    reader of quick intelligence may acquaint himself with their
+    leading thoughts.
+
+
+II.
+
+THEISM:
+
+THE WITNESS OF REASON AND NATURE TO AN ALL-WISE AND BENEFICENT
+CREATOR.
+
+Octavo, 10s. 6d.
+
+    Christian Remembrancer.
+
+    Dr Tulloch's Essay, in its masterly statement of the real nature
+    and difficulties of the subject, its logical exactness in
+    distinguishing the illustrative from the suggestive, its lucid
+    arrangement of the argument, its simplicity of expression, is
+    quite unequalled by any work we have seen on the subject.
+
+WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION AND THEOLOGY.
+
+2 Cor. xi. 3.--"The simplicity that is in Christ."
+
+
+There is much talk in the present time of the difficulties of
+religion. And no doubt there is a sense in which religion is always
+difficult. It is hard to be truly religious--to be humble, good, pure,
+and just; to be full of faith, hope, and charity, so that our conduct
+may be seen to be like that of Christ, and our light to shine before
+men. But when men speak so much nowadays of the difficulties of
+religion, they chiefly mean intellectual and not practical
+difficulties. Religion is identified with the tenets of a Church
+system, or of a theological system; and it is felt that modern
+criticism has assailed these tenets in many vulnerable points, and
+made it no longer easy for the open and well-informed mind to believe
+things that were formerly held, or professed to be held, without
+hesitation. Discussions and doubts which were once confined to a
+limited circle when they were heard of at all, have penetrated the
+modern mind through many avenues, and affected the whole tone of
+social intelligence. This is not to be denied. For good or for evil
+such a result has come about; and we live in times of unquiet
+thought, which form a real and painful trial to many minds. It is not
+my intention at present to deplore or to criticise this modern
+tendency, but rather to point out how it may be accepted, and yet
+religion in the highest sense saved to us, if not without struggle
+(for that is always impossible in the nature of religion), yet without
+that intellectual conflict for which many minds are entirely unfitted,
+and which can never be said in itself to help religion in any minds.
+
+The words which I have taken as my text seem to me to suggest a train
+of thought having an immediate bearing on this subject. St Paul has
+been speaking of himself in the passage from which the text is taken.
+He has been commending himself--a task which is never congenial to
+him. But his opponents in the Corinthian Church had forced this upon
+him; and now he asks that he may be borne with a little in "his
+folly." He is pleased to speak of his conduct in this way, with that
+touch of humorous irony not unfamiliar to him when writing under some
+excitement. He pleads with his old converts for so much indulgence,
+because he is "jealous over them with a godly jealousy." He had won
+them to the Lord. "I have espoused you," he says, "to one husband,
+that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." This had been
+his unselfish work. He had sought nothing for himself, but all for
+Christ. That they should belong to Christ--as the bride to the
+bridegroom--was his jealous anxiety. But others had come in betwixt
+them and him--nay, betwixt them and Christ, as he believed--and
+sought to seduce and corrupt their minds by divers doctrines. "I fear,
+lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty,
+so your minds should be corrupted from _the simplicity that is in
+Christ_."
+
+What the special corruptions from Christian simplicity were with which
+the minds of St Paul's Corinthian converts were assailed, it is not
+necessary for us now to inquire. Their special dangers are not likely
+to be ours. What concerns us is the fact, that both St Paul and
+Christ--his Master and ours--thought of religion as something simple.
+Attachment to Christ was a simple personal reality, illustrated by the
+tie which binds the bride, as a chaste virgin, to the bridegroom. It
+was not an ingenuity, nor a subtilty, nor a ceremony. It involved no
+speculation or argument. Its essence was personal and emotional, and
+not intellectual. The true analogy of religion, in short, is that of
+simple affection and trust. Subtilty may, in itself, be good or evil.
+It may be applied for a religious no less than for an irreligious
+purpose, as implied in the text. But it is something entirely
+different from the "simplicity that is in Christ."
+
+It is not to be supposed that religion is or can be ever rightly
+dissociated from intelligence. An intelligent perception of our own
+higher wants, and of a higher power of love that can alone supply
+these wants, is of its very nature. There must be knowledge in all
+religion--knowledge of ourselves, and knowledge of the Divine. It was
+the knowledge of God in Christ communicated by St Paul that had made
+the Corinthians Christians. But the knowledge that is essential to
+religion is a simple knowledge like that which the loved has of the
+person who loves--the bride of the bridegroom, the child of the
+parent. It springs from the personal and spiritual, and not from the
+cognitive or critical side of our being; from the heart, and not from
+the head. Not merely so; but if the heart or spiritual sphere be
+really awakened in us--if there be a true stirring of life here, and a
+true seeking towards the light--the essence and strength of a true
+religion may be ours, although we are unable to answer many questions
+that may be asked, or to solve even the difficulties raised by our own
+intellect.
+
+The text, in short, suggests that there is a religious sphere,
+distinct and intelligible by itself, which is not to be confounded
+with the sphere of theology or science. This is the sphere in which
+Christ worked, and in which St Paul also, although not so exclusively,
+worked after Him. This is the special sphere of Christianity, or at
+least of the Christianity of Christ.
+
+And it is this, as it appears to us, important distinction to which we
+now propose to direct your attention. Let us try to explain in what
+respects the religion of Christ is really apart from those
+intellectual and dogmatic difficulties with which it has been so much
+mixed up.
+
+
+I. It is so, first of all, in the comparatively simple order of facts
+with which it deals. Nothing can be simpler or more comprehensive than
+our Lord's teaching. He knew what was in man. He knew, moreover, what
+was in God towards man as a living power of love, who had sent Him
+forth "to seek and save the lost;" and beyond these great facts, of a
+fallen life to be restored, and of a higher life of divine love and
+sacrifice, willing and able to restore and purify this fallen life,
+our Lord seldom traversed. Unceasingly He proclaimed the reality of a
+spiritual life in man, however obscured by sin, and the reality of a
+divine life above him, which had never forsaken him nor left him to
+perish in his sin. He held forth the need of man, and the grace and
+sacrifice of God on behalf of man. And within this double order of
+spiritual facts His teaching may be said to circulate. He dealt, in
+other words, with the great ideas of God and the soul, which can alone
+live in Him, however it may have sunk away from Him. These were to Him
+the realities of all life and all religion. There are those, I know,
+in our day, to whom these ideas are mere assumptions--"dogmas of a
+tremendous kind," to assume which is to assume everything. But with
+this order of thought we have in the meantime nothing to do. The
+questions of materialism are outside of Christianity altogether. They
+were nothing to Christ, whose whole thought moved in a higher sphere
+of personal love, embracing this lower world. The spiritual life was
+to Him the life of reality and fact; and so it is to all who live in
+Him and know in Him. The soul and God are, if you will, dogmas to
+science. They cannot well be anything else to a vision which is
+outside of them, and cannot from their very nature ever reach them.
+But within the religious sphere they are primary experiences, original
+and simple data from which all others come. And our present argument
+is, that Christ dealt almost exclusively with these broad and simple
+elements of religion, and that He believed the life of religion to
+rest within them. He spoke to men and women as having souls to be
+saved; and He spoke of Himself and of God as able and willing to save
+them. This was the "simplicity" that was in Him.
+
+Everywhere in the Gospels this simplicity is obvious. Our Lord came
+forth from no school. There is no traditional scheme of thought lying
+behind his words which must be mastered before these words are
+understood. But out of the fulness of His own spiritual nature He
+spoke to the spiritual natures around Him, broken, helpless, and
+worsted in the conflict with evil as He saw them. "The Spirit of the
+Lord is upon me," He said at the opening of His Galilean ministry,
+"because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal
+the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
+recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
+bruised."[1] These were the great realities that confronted Him in
+life; and His mission was to restore the divine powers of humanity
+thus everywhere impoverished, wounded, and enslaved. He healed the
+sick and cured the maimed by His simple word. He forgave sins. He
+spoke of good news to the miserable. All who had erred and gone out of
+the way--who had fallen under the burthen, or been seduced by the
+temptations, of life--He invited to a recovered home of righteousness
+and peace. He welcomed the prodigal, rescued the Magdalene, took the
+thief with Him to Paradise. And all this He did by His simple word of
+grace: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
+will give you rest."[2] "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
+gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in
+heaven give good things to them that ask Him!"[3]
+
+This was the Christianity of Christ. This is the Gospel. It is the
+essence of all religion--that we feel ourselves in special need or
+distress, and that we own a Divine Power willing to give us what we
+need, and to save us from our distress. Other questions outside of
+this primary range of spiritual experience may be important. They are
+not vital. What is the soul? What is the divine nature? What is the
+Church? In what way and by what means does divine grace operate? What
+is the true meaning of Scripture, and the character of its inspiration
+and authority? Whence has man sprung, and what is the character of the
+future before him? These are all questions of the greatest interest;
+but they are questions of theology and not of religion. I do not say
+that they have no bearing upon religion. On the contrary, they have a
+significant bearing upon it. And your religion and my religion will be
+modified and coloured by the answers we give or find to them. We
+cannot separate the life and character of any man from his opinions.
+It is nevertheless true that our religious life, or the force of
+divine inspiration and peace within us, do not depend upon the answers
+we are able to give to such questions.
+
+It is the function of theology, as of other sciences, to ask
+questions, whether it can answer them or not. The task of the
+theologian is a most important one--whether or not it be, as has been
+lately said,[4] "the noblest of all the tasks which it is given to the
+human mind to pursue." None but a sciolist will depreciate such a
+task; and none but a sceptic will doubt the value of the conclusions
+which may be thus reached. But all this is quite consistent with our
+position. The welfare of the soul is not involved in such matters as I
+have mentioned. A man is not good or bad, spiritual or unspiritual,
+according to the view he takes of them. Men may differ widely
+regarding them, and not only be equally honest, but equally sharers of
+the mind of Christ. And this is peculiarly the case with many
+questions of the present day, such as the antiquity of man, the age
+and genesis of the earth, the origin and authority of the several
+books of Scripture. Not one of these questions, first of all, can be
+answered without an amount of special knowledge which few possess; and
+secondly, the answer to all of them must be sought in the line of
+pure scientific and literary inquiry. Mere authority, if we could find
+any such authority, would be of no avail to settle any of them. Modern
+theology must work them out by the fair weapons of knowledge and
+research, with no eye but an eye to the truth. Within this sphere
+there is no light but the dry light of knowledge.
+
+But are our spiritual wants to wait the solution of such questions? Am
+I less a sinner, or less weary with the burden of my own weakness and
+folly? Is Christ less a Saviour? Is there less strength and peace in
+Him whatever be the answer given to such questions? Because I cannot
+be sure whether the Pentateuch was written, as long supposed, by
+Moses--or whether the fourth Gospel comes as it stands from the
+beloved apostle--am I less in need of the divine teaching which both
+these Scriptures contain? Surely not. That I am a spiritual being, and
+have spiritual needs craving to be satisfied, and that God is a
+spiritual power above me, of whom Christ is the revelation, are facts
+which I may know or may not know, quite irrespective of such matters.
+The one class of facts are intellectual and literary. The other are
+spiritual if they exist at all. If I ever know them, I can only know
+them through my own spiritual experience; but if I know them--if I
+realise myself as a sinner and in darkness, and Christ as my Saviour
+and the light of my life--I have within me all the genuine forces of
+religious strength and peace. I may not have all the faith of the
+Church. I may have many doubts, and may come far short of the
+catholic dogma. But faith is a progressive insight, and dogma is a
+variable factor. No sane man nowadays has the faith of the
+medievalist. No modern Christian can think in many respects as the
+Christians of the seventeenth century, or of the twelfth century, or
+of the fourth century. No primitive Christian would have fully
+understood Athanasius in his contest against the world. It was very
+easy at one time to chant the Athanasian hymn--it is easy for some
+still; but very hard for others. Are the latter worse or better
+Christians on this account? Think, brethren, of St Peter and St Andrew
+taken from their boats; of St Matthew as he sat at the receipt of
+custom; of the good Samaritan; the devout centurion; of curious
+Zaccheus; of the repentant prodigal; of St James, as he wrote that a
+man is "justified by works, and not by faith only;"[5] of Apollos,
+"mighty in the Scriptures," who "was instructed in the way of the
+Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, spake and taught diligently the
+things of the Lord," and yet who only knew "the baptism of John;"[6]
+of the disciples at Ephesus who had "not so much as heard whether
+there be any Holy Ghost;"[7] think of all the poor and simple ones who
+have gone to heaven with Christ in their hearts, "the hope of glory,"
+and yet who have never known with accuracy any Christian dogma
+whatever,--and you can hardly doubt how distinct are the spheres of
+religion and of theology, and how far better than all theological
+definitions is the "honest and good heart," which, "having heard the
+Word, keeps it, and brings forth fruit with patience."[8]
+
+
+II. But religion differs from theology, not only in the comparatively
+simple and universal order of the facts with which it deals, but also
+because the facts are so much more verifiable in the one case than in
+the other. They can so much more easily be found out to be true or
+not. It has been sought of late, in a well-known quarter, to bring all
+religion to this test--and the test is not an unfair one if
+legitimately applied. But it is not legitimate to test spiritual facts
+simply as we test natural facts; such facts, for example, as that fire
+burns, or that a stone thrown from the hand falls to the ground. The
+presumption of all supernatural religion is that there is a spiritual
+or supernatural sphere, as real and true as the natural sphere in
+which we continually live and move; and the facts which belong to this
+sphere must be tested within it. Morality and moral conditions may be
+so far verified from without. If we do wrong we shall finally find
+ourselves in the wrong; and that there is a "Power not ourselves which
+makes for righteousness" and which will not allow us to rest in wrong.
+This constantly verified experience of a kingdom of righteousness is a
+valuable basis of morality. But religion could not live or nourish
+itself within such limits. It must rest, not merely on certain facts
+of divine order, but on such personal relations as are ever uppermost
+in the mind of St Paul, and are so clearly before him in this very
+passage. Moreover, the higher experience which reveals to us a Power
+of righteousness in the world, no less reveals to us the living
+personal character of this Power. Shut out conscience as a true source
+of knowledge, and the very idea of righteousness will disappear with
+it--there will be nothing to fall back upon but the combinations of
+intelligence, and such religion as may be got therefrom; admit
+conscience, and its verifying force transcends a mere order or
+impersonal power of righteousness. It places us in front of a living
+Spirit who not only governs us righteously and makes us feel our
+wrong-doing, but who is continually educating us and raising us to His
+own likeness of love and blessedness. We realise not merely that there
+is a law of good in the world, but a Holy Will that loves good and
+hates evil, and against whom all our sins are offences in the sense of
+the Psalmist: "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this
+evil in Thy sight."
+
+So much as this, we say, may be realised--this consciousness of sin on
+the one hand, and of a living Righteousness and Love far more powerful
+than our sins, and able to save us from them. These roots of religion
+are deeply planted in human nature. They answer to its highest
+experiences. The purest and noblest natures in whom all the impulses
+of a comprehensive humanity have been strongest, have felt and owned
+them. The missionary preacher, wherever he has gone--to the rude
+tribes of Africa, or the cultured representatives of an ancient
+civilisation--has appealed to them, and found a verifying response to
+his preaching. St Paul, whether he spoke to Jew, or Greek, or Roman,
+found the same voices of religious experience echoing to his call--the
+same burden of sin lying on human hearts--the same cry from their
+depths, "What must I do to be saved?" It is not necessary to maintain
+that these elements of the Christian religion are verifiable in every
+experience. It is enough to say that there is that in the Gospel which
+addresses all hearts in which spiritual thoughtfulness and life have
+not entirely died out. It lays hold of the common heart. It melts with
+a strange power the highest minds. Look over a vast audience; travel
+to distant lands; communicate with your fellow-creatures
+anywhere,--and you feel that you can reach them, and for the most part
+touch them, by the story of the Gospel--by the fact of a Father in
+heaven, and a Saviour sent from heaven, "that whosoever believeth in
+Him should not perish, but have eternal life."[9] Beneath all
+differences of condition, of intellect, of culture, there is a common
+soul which the Gospel reaches, and which nothing else in the same
+manner reaches.
+
+Now, in contrast to all this, the contents of any special theology
+commend themselves to a comparatively few minds. And such hold as
+they have over these minds is for the most part traditionary and
+authoritative, not rational or intelligent. There can be no vital
+experience of theological definitions, and no verification of them,
+except in the few minds who have really examined them, and brought
+them into the light of their own intelligence. This must always be
+the work of a few--of what are called schools of thought, here and
+there. It is only the judgment of the learned or thoughtful
+theologian that is really of any value on a theological question.
+Others may assent or dissent. He alone knows the conditions of the
+question and its possible solution. Of all the absurdities that have
+come from the confusion of religion and theology, none is more absurd
+or more general than the idea that one opinion on a theological
+question--any more than on a question of natural science--is as good
+as another. The opinion of the ignorant, of the unthoughtful, of the
+undisciplined in Christian learning, is simply of no value whatever
+where the question involves--as it may be said every theological
+question involves--knowledge, thought, and scholarship. The mere
+necessity of such qualities for working the theological sphere, and
+turning it to any account, places it quite apart from the religious
+sphere. The one belongs to the common life of humanity, the other to
+the school of the prophets. The one is for you and for me, and for
+all human beings; the other is for the expert--the theologian--who
+has weighed difficulties and who understands them, if he has not
+solved them.
+
+
+III. But again, religion differs from theology in the comparative
+uniformity of its results. The ideal of religion is almost everywhere
+the same. "To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God."[10]
+"Pure religion" (or pure religious service) "and undefiled, before God
+and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their
+affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."[11] Where
+is it not always the true, even if not the prevalent type of religion,
+to be good and pure, and to approve the things that are excellent?
+"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
+things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue,
+and if there be any praise, think on these things" and do them, says
+the apostle,[12] "and the God of peace shall be with you." Christians
+differ like others in intellect, disposition, and temperament. They
+differ also so far, but never in the same degree, in spiritual
+condition and character. To be a Christian is in all cases to be saved
+from guilt, to be sustained by faith, to be cleansed by divine
+inspiration, to depart from iniquity. There may be, and must be, very
+varying degrees of faith, hope, and charity; but no Christian can be
+hard in heart, or impure in mind, or selfish in character. With much
+to make us humble in the history of the Christian Church, and many
+faults to deplore in the most conspicuous Christian men, the same
+types of divine excellences yet meet us everywhere as we look along
+the line of the Christian centuries--the heroism of a St Paul, an
+Ignatius, an Origen, an Athanasius, a Bernard, a Luther, a Calvin, a
+Chalmers, a Livingstone; the tender and devout affectionateness of a
+Mary, a Perpetua, a Monica; the enduring patience and self-denial of
+an Elizabeth of Hungary, a Mrs Hutcheson, a Mrs Fry; the beautiful
+holiness of a St John, a St Francis, a Fenelon, a Herbert, a Leighton.
+Under the most various influences, and the most diverse types of
+doctrine, the same fruits of the Spirit constantly appear--"Love, joy,
+peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+temperance."[13]
+
+All this sameness in diversity disappears when we turn to theology.
+The differences in this case are radical. They are not diversities of
+gifts with the same spirit, but fundamental antagonisms of thought. As
+some men are said to be born Platonists, and some Aristotelians, so
+some are born Augustinians, and some Pelagians or Arminians. These
+names have been strangely identified with true or false views of
+Christianity. What they really denote is diverse modes of Christian
+thinking, diverse tendencies of the Christian intellect, which repeat
+themselves by a law of nature. It is no more possible to make men
+think alike in theology than in anything else where the facts are
+complicated and the conclusions necessarily fallible. The history of
+theology is a history of "variations;" not indeed, as some have
+maintained, without an inner principle of movement, but with a
+constant repetition of oppositions underlying its necessary
+development. The same, contrasts continually appear throughout its
+course, and seem never to wear themselves out. From the beginning
+there has always been the broader and the narrower type of thought--a
+St Paul and St John, as well as a St Peter and St James; the doctrine
+which leans to the works, and the doctrine which leans to grace; the
+milder and the severer interpretations of human nature and of the
+divine dealings with it--a Clement of Alexandria, an Origen and a
+Chrysostom, as well as a Tertullian, an Augustine, and a Cyril of
+Alexandria, an Erasmus no less than a Luther, a Castalio as well as a
+Calvin, a Frederick Robertson as well as a John Newman. Look at these
+men and many others equally significant on the spiritual side as they
+look to God, or as they work for men, how much do they resemble one
+another! The same divine life stirs in them all. Who will undertake to
+settle which is the truer Christian? But look at them on the
+intellectual side and they are hopelessly disunited. They lead rival
+forces in the march of Christian thought--forces which may yet find a
+point of conciliation, and which may not be so widely opposed as they
+seem, but whose present attitude is one of obvious hostility. Men may
+meet in common worship and in common work, and find themselves at one.
+The same faith may breathe in their prayers, and the same love fire
+their hearts. But men who think can never be at one in their thoughts
+on the great subjects of the Christian revelation. They may own the
+same Lord, and recognise and reverence the same types of Christian
+character, but they will differ so soon as they begin to define their
+notions of the Divine, and draw conclusions from the researches either
+of ancient or of modern theology. Of all the false dreams that have
+ever haunted humanity, none is more false than the dream of catholic
+unity in this sense. It vanishes in the very effort to grasp it, and
+the old fissures appear within the most carefully compacted structures
+of dogma.
+
+Religion, therefore, is not to be confounded with theology, with
+schemes of Christian thought--nor, for that part of the matter, with
+schemes of Christian order. It is not to be found in any set of
+opinions or in any special ritual of worship. The difficulties of
+modern theology, the theories of modern science (when they are really
+scientific and do not go beyond ascertained facts and their laws),
+have little or nothing to do with religion. Let the age of the earth
+be what it may (we shall be very grateful to the British Association,
+or any other association, when it has settled for us how old the earth
+is, and how long man has been upon the face of it); let man spring in
+his physical system from some lower phase of life; let the Bible be
+resolved into its constituent sources by the power of modern analysis,
+and our views of it greatly change, as indeed they are rapidly
+changing,--all this does not change or destroy in one iota the
+spiritual life that throbs at the heart of humanity, and that
+witnesses to a Spiritual Life above. No science, truly so-called, can
+ever touch this or destroy it, for the simple reason that its work is
+outside the spiritual or religious sphere altogether. Scientific
+presumption may suggest the delusiveness of this sphere, just as in
+former times religious presumption sought to restrain the inquiries of
+science. It may, when it becomes ribald with a fanaticism far worse
+than any fanaticism of religion, assail and ridicule the hopes which,
+amidst much weakness, have made men noble for more than eighteen
+Christian centuries. But science has no voice beyond its own province.
+The weakest and the simplest soul, strong in the consciousness of the
+divine within and above it, may withstand its most powerful assaults.
+The shadows of doubt may cover us, and we may see no light. The
+difficulties of modern speculation may overwhelm us, and we may find
+no issue from them. If we wait till we have solved these difficulties
+and cleared away the darkness, we may wait for ever. If your religion
+is made to depend upon such matters, then I do not know what to say to
+you in a time like this. I cannot counsel you to shut your minds
+against any knowledge. I have no ready answers to your questions, no
+short and easy method with modern scepticism. Inquiry must have its
+course in theology as in everything else. It is fatal to intelligence
+to talk of an infallible Church, and of all free thought in reference
+to religion as deadly rationalism to be shunned. Not to be rational in
+religion as in everything else is simply to be foolish, and to throw
+yourself into the arms of the first authority that is able to hold
+you. In this as in other respects you must "work out your own
+salvation with fear and trembling," remembering that it is "God which
+worketh in you." You must examine your own hearts; you must try
+yourselves whether there be in you the roots of the divine life. If
+you do not find sin in your hearts and Christ also there as the
+Saviour from sin, then you will find Him nowhere. But if you find Him
+there, Christ within you as He was within St. Paul,--your
+righteousness, your life, your strength in weakness, your light in
+darkness, the "hope of glory" within you, as He was all this to the
+thoughtful and much-tried apostle,--then you will accept difficulties
+and doubts, and even the despairing darkness of some intellectual
+moments, when the very foundations seem to give way--as you accept
+other trials; and looking humbly for higher light, you will patiently
+wait for it, until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Luke, iv. 18.
+
+[2] Matthew, xi. 28.
+
+[3] Matthew, vii. 11.
+
+[4] Mr Gladstone, 'Contemporary Review,' July, p. 194.
+
+[5] James, ii. 24.
+
+[6] Acts, xviii. 24, 25.
+
+[7] Acts, xix. 2.
+
+[8] Luke, viii. 15.
+
+[9] John, iii. 15.
+
+[10] Micah, vi. 8.
+
+[11] James, i. 27.
+
+[12] Philippians, iv. 8, 9.
+
+[13] Galatians, v. 22, 23.
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Religion and Theology: A Sermon for
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