"LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY."
[To THE EDITOR OF THR " SPROTATOR."1
'Si,—In asking you to allow me space for HOMO reply to the article in your last impression entitled, "Dr. Abbott on Liberal and Conservative Christianity," I have not the common excuse of the reviewed, that the reviewer evinced want of apprehension, still less, of appreciation ; but the true definition of "worship" is so important, and likely to become during the next few years so increasingly important, that I would gladly be permitted to justify my definition of it, which is, that worship consists of love, trust, and reverence. You*dispute this, grounding your denial upon the fact that -" worship involves acts of will ;" hence you say, "Worship is not a mere compound of love, trust, and reverence." But do not love, trust, and reverence themselves—at least, in the out- set, while we are forming these habits—involve acts of will P And if so, is there anything inconsistent in supposing that wor- ship—at least, in the lower stages of the formation of the habit —may involve acts of will, and yet nifty be "a mere compound of love, trust, and reverence ?"
Take 'trust," for example. We all know the picture which -vividly represents the conflict between the stronger and. higher nature, claiming trust, and the weaker nature, in poise, unable .as yet to make the necessary effort to satisfy the just claim,— Trust me." And who does not recognise the truth and natural- ness of the conflict between distrust and trust, culminating in the victory of the latter, when the heroine, in a play now being performed in one of our London theatres, exclaims to her lover at last, after a long struggle, "I win trust you, I do trust you P" These and a hundred other incidents in fiction and real 'life (even without reference to the " I believe, help thou mine 'unbelief" of the Gospels), must Surely show that trust con- stantly involves (except in little children, and in those highest human natures which have regained the natural trustfulness of 'little children), some conscious effort of the will. Again, as regards love, almost all who have been long and .peacefully happy in mutual affection must know by experience that some little "voluntary turning of the mind" to the good -points rather than to the bad points of those whom we love is, if not necessary, at least highly conducive to prolonged and increasing affection. I will not take up your Vete by proving that acts of the will are also involved in the formation of the habit of -reverence. By parodying !and malignantly criticising, we can, 'if we like, impair and almost destroy our power of reverencing ; by humility, and by studying the works of the great, in prefer- once to those of the petty, we can increase and strengthen reverence. Thus love, trust, and reverence alike involve acts of will ; and the acts of will involved in worship are amply recognised by the definition of it as "a combination of love, trust, and reverence."
But then, you will say, this is inconsistent with my state- ment elsewhere, that "the highest and purest worship of 'Christ " is to worship him instinctively, not as the result of a syllogism, but as the result:of spontaneous feeling,—" not be- cause of thirteen texts of Scripture, but because we cannot help it." In answer to this, you say, and with great apparent force, "We can help worshipping anything,—either God or man." I admit it, and perhaps I ought to have stated some- what more clearly that, although this instinttive and spon- taneous worship is the ideal at which we should aim, yet we must always fall short of it. 'Nevertheless, I think it is no over-statement to say that this, the natural worship of Christ, as compared with the syllogistic worship, not only from the first partakes of the nature of an instinct, but also grows in strength, so as to become at last an irresis- tible instinct, whereas the syllogistic worship stands still. And I could go farther, and say that if children and youths were trained from the first, without reference to the miracles, to love, trust,' and reverence, Christ, as the Healer of the souls of men, the past Alleviator and future Destroyer of all the miseries and sins of humanity, then, instead of shaking off the worship of Christ as soon as they come of age, they would find that worship a grow- ing and precious instinct in their hearts, to be cherished and strengthened as their life matured, till at last they would give as their reason for worshipping him the very reason I have alleged above,—" because we cannot help it." But the mischief is that children and youths are at present taught to worship Christ not for himself, but for his miracles, or" because of thirteen texts;" and this kind of worship being purely mechanical, and not being a part of our life, must necessarily be shaken off as life dere- lopes, or if it remains, it remains as a fetter.
I come now to a point of difference between us that per- plexes and startles me. I mean the Spectator's conception of the "divine power" essential for the production of that " trust " which is an integral element in worship. Your words are these,—" What we find missing in Dr. Abbott's conception of an object of worship—namely, divine power—is absolutely necessary to perfect trust." Of course it is. But where have I denied it ? I have always attributed to Christ divine power,—power enough to redeem a seemingly falling world ; to introduce and make current among men the hitherto non-existent or latent faculty of forgiveness ; to discern the deepest needs of human society, and the fittest and most natural means for satis- fying them ; to foresee and plan the triumph of life over death by self-sacrifice, of righteousness over sin by repentance ; and to purify by his Spirit not only the comparatively insignifi- cant fraction of mankind called the Christian Church, but ultimately the whole human race. If this is not "divine power," will the Spectator tell us what is P Is it a more " divine power" to foretell the convenient latency of a stater in a fish's belly, and to enable a follower to catch that particular fish, or at a word to blast a fig-tree, or to drown three thousand swine P Surely, to every right-minded Christian, it must be a relief that the Gospel seems likely to be speedily purified from such excrescences as these specimens of so-called "divine power." Not, of course, that we must reject them as a priori impossible. But, if we can show that the evidence for them is insufficient, if we can even in our own Gospels, chronologically arranged, trace a gradual development of the miraculous element, and if, —putting ourselves in the position of an early Christian at Jerusalem, Antioch, or Ephesus, and realising not only the in- fluence of Old-Testament miracles and prophecies upon New- Testament traditions, but also the universal (Gentile as well as Jewish) acceptance and expectation of miracles—we succeed ultimately in exhibiting the whole process of the growth of the miraculous element in the New Testament, and in demonstrating that it is indeed an excrescence, what, I ask, -will Christians lose as the result of such a demonstration p Surely nothing, ex- cept narratives which the revelations of science and history have now converted from props into encumbrances, and from steps into stumbling-blocks, at which thousands of our youth, year by year, now stumble, and consequently fall away from the worship of Christ.
But the Spectator anticipates a decay, or even death, of wor- ship, from the removal of the miraculous element,—" If the belief were ever to fail mankind that God can mould nature at his will, we do not think that worship, in its true sense, could possibly survive it long." But surely this is not a fair statement of the case P No one, of course (if at least he believes in God), denies that God can mould nature at his will; but what we assert is, that so far as we can discover, his will has ever been to "mould nature" in accordance with what we call the laws of nature, but might call the laws of God. We believe that God could have stopped the sun (or the earth), that he could have made an ass speak like a man, and that he could have made an axe float ; but as a matter of fact and history, we believe that God did not do any of these things, and hence we infer that it was not his will to do them. In the same way, we believe (in a sense) that Christ
could have turned the stones to bread, just as we may believe (in a sense) that Christ could have listened to the voice of the Tempter ; but, as a matter of fact and history, we believe that he did not thus "mould nature," and hence we infer that it was not his will to do so. Perhaps we may go still further; and say that as he could not commit sin, so neither could he mould nature contrary to Nature's recognised laws.
But what is there in all this that should lessen our trust in Jesus P You say, and very truly, that if we are to worship him, "our trust in him ought to be practically unlimited and absolute." I admit it ; (our trust in him should be as absolute as our trust in God himself. But, in order to have an absolute trust in God, is it really necessary that we should believe that he stopped the sun at the bidding of Joshua P and so, in order to have an absolute trust in Christ, is it necessary to believe that he drowned swine and blasted fig-trees at a word ? You say a man cannot worship Christ unless he is ";sure that Christ had not only the perfect love requisite to redeem him, but also the perfect power requisite to guide, and discipline, and educate, and illuminate him ? And this, we suppose, is a question not of feeling at all, but of fact." With every word of this I heartily concur, but what are the " facts " that make us feel sure that Christ has this power to guide, discipline, and illuminate P You say (appar- ently, though I can hardly believe it) such " facts " as the withering of a fig-tree, and other exhibitions of the power to "mould" material nature ; but I say that the " facts " are of an altogether different kind,—not material at all, but spiritual.
There is no cause whatever for Christians to fear the applica- tion of criticism to the miracles of the Gospels. Just as God will remain the Creator of the world, even though it pleased him to work through atoms or protoplasm, and just as God will remain the guide and shaper of Israel, even though he guided and shaped that great nation in strict accordance with that part of his revealed will to which we have given the name of the laws of Nature, so will God also remain, incarnate in Christ, the guide and shaper of that Church which is ultimately to embrace the world, even though it should be demonstrated to-morrow, that lie shaped the minds of his first followers in Syria, as he is shaping our minds now, not by "moulding nature" unnaturally, but by using nature according
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