BOOKS.

DR. WACE ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE.* Du. Wact is one of the most thoughtful of those believers who do not clip and pare Christianity of what is most characteristic in it before he accords it his hearty faith. The creed in which he believes is the same as that of the first century, without fanciful reconstruction or modification ; but his mind is a mind of this century, and he sees all the difficulties of the present day from modern points of view, so that he can really discuss the embarrassments which we feel in the way most useful and interesting to us. For example, the second lecture must produce on all candid minds a very deep impression of the historical uncertainty of the grounds assumed by the negative critics. In it Dr. Wace shows us how hard even the steadiest unbelievers find it to reject the authority of our Gospels, and how they vibrate on the subject even when they do reject it; how M. Renan accepts the authorship of Luke for the Acts of the Apostles, as well as for the Third Gospel, and upholds the historical character of the First and Second Gospels, and even with regard to the Fourth, finds in it the most convincing evidence that its writer was in close con- tact with the facts of Christ's life ; how Strauss himself, after assuming as a certainty the unauthentic character of the fourth Gospel, declared, in the third edition of the Leben Jean, that he was beginning to doubt his doubts away, and to be- lieve that, in spite of all its supernaturalism, it was the work of John the son of Zebedee,—a conviction which again faded from his mind; how Dr. Karl Hase, who had held all his previous life by the authenticity of John's Gospel, renounced it in 1875, with the candid admission that he might very pro- bably return later to his old belief in it. And Dr. Wace does more than show the wavering character of the negative criticism, for he attacks, in a very impressive passage, the attitude assumed by the great mass of modern unbelievers, when they tell us that the Apostles and early Christians were indeed genuinely convinced of the supernatural character of the facts which they announced, but were, in that conviction, subject to pure hallucinations :—

"But allowing that the anthers of our Four Gospels were incapable of untruth, were they capable of hallucination? That, no doubt, is a possibility which it is necessary to take into account. But here, again, the answer may well be similar to that offered to the last objection. Not only were these men disciples in the greatest school of trutlifultiese the world has ever seen ; they were disciples not less in the school of the sternest realities the world has ever seen. At the risk, and in many cases at the actual cost, of a death like that of their Master, a death of torture and of ignominy, they declared them- selves to be in possession of the secret of salvation for the world, of truths by which mankind might be regenerated; and they proclaimed *themselves the servants of a Lord who was destined to rule the hearts of men: If any beliefs would have seemed more like hallucination than any other to the men of that day, it would have been these cardinal elements in the belief of the Evangelists and Apostles. St. Paul's message was equal foolishness in the eye of a Jew and of a Greek. To a Jew it seemed incredible that the Gentiles should become heirs of all the spiritual education of his forefathers ; to the Greek or Roman it seemed a ridiculous conception that he should submit his wisdom, his art, and his power to the authority of a cruci- fied Jew. There, as I have said, might have seemed hallucinations, if you will. But these very beliefs, the most incredible of all at that time, we know to have been founded in truth, and we see the verifica- tion of them before our eyes. The two Apostles in whose daily com- pany St. Luke and St. Mark lived, and the other two Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. John, have laid down the moral principles on which the whole fabric of the highest civilised society now reposes, and in which every thoughtful man sees the germs and the guarantee of the future progress of our race. Now consider to what this amounts. It shows that wherever we are able to put to the proof, not merely the truthfulness, but the sobriety, the practical insight, the moral and spiritual penetration, of the Evangelista and Apostles, their possessicn of these qualities is vindicated by experience on the largest possible scale. In these Gospels and Epistles a sun suddenly appeared in the spiritual heaven of mankind, which eclipsed, by the intensity of its illumination, all lesser lights in the moral firmament. This is the phenomenon which places the testimony of the Evangelists and Apostles on so different a footing from that of any other evidence to events at all similar in character. To quote instances of legends attaching to the origin of other religions is beside the mark, until an instance can be produced of such legends being associated as in this case with supreme truth, wisdom, purity, and goodness. Pat- ting out of sight for the moment the question of miracles, there appears a general agreement of the most thoughtful men of all schools that there is not. one sentiment, or even one word, for which the Evangelists or their Master are responsible which does not bar- • The Gospel and Ifs Witnceres. Some of the Chief Facts in the Life of Our Lord, and the Authority of the E‘angelical Narrative. Consideled in Leoturos chiefty Preached at St. James's, Westminner. By Henry Wage, B.D., D.D. .Zsondon: John Hurray. monise with the highest conoeivable ideals of all that is good and true. Now, would not such uniform and ideal perfection be itself a miracle of the most perplexing and distressing kind, if it were combined with the hallucination which is attributed to the Evan- gelists by rationalistic criticism ?"

This seems to us the strongest ground you can take. Here are- men subject, it is asserted, to hallucinations, who yet are so. free from hallucinations that they predict a triumph for the manifestation of our Lord's character as the fountain of truth and soberness for mankind over all the traditions of the Jews, and all the philosophy of the Greeks, and that triumph is actu- ally achieved. Can a pure hallucination bring about its own- fulfilment? In the midst of the hard facts of such a world as- the world of the Cassars, could any merely hysterical imagina- tion have predicted a triumph of this kind which was actually accomplished ? Could any imagination have predicted it, except under the guidance of the Divine Spirit?

Quite as impressive is the lecture on "The Miracles of Our Lord," in which Dr. Wace deals with the argument that the- conception of miracle is an anthropomorphic conception which does injustice to the Divine Mind, by recasting it in the form or an imperfect and finite human Will. His text is taken from the story of the centurion who argued that, as he could com- mand the various soldiers of his own military force and abso- lutely ensure their obedience, so our Lord could command the- agencies of Nature, and ensure with equal certainty their obedience :— "Now, that which forms the great and abiding wonder of the- faith of the Centurion is that, by one simple observation, he sup- plies the conclusive and permanent answer to all these doubts and denials. As Luther puts it, with his usual vividness, This heathen soldier turns theologian, and begins to dispute in as fine and Christian-like a manner as would suffice for a man who had been many years Doctor of Divinity.' He cuts the knot at once, by that bold reasoning by analogy from man to God, of which our Lord's teaching is so full, and which is involved in the- cardinal doctrines of the Gospel, such as the Divine Fatherhood and the forgiveness of sins. He says, simply, that the kind of action which men exhibit must be possible for God. It is impossible for- Him to be more restricted in His action than His creatures ; and if they are able, by subordinate agencies, to carry out their will, and to modify, by the interposition of that will, what would otherwise be the natural course of events, it is inconceivable that it should be impos- sible for Him to do the same. The force of this argument should be vattly enhanced to us by that development of science and civilisation which has been produced since the Centurion's time, and which is sometimes ungratefully used to obscure its trutfi. Let us realise how, in the present day, a single human will, at the centre of a great nation, or, rather, of a great empire like this, can make itself obeyed to the very extremities of the world, by means of a subtle electrical current, scarcely perceptible to the touch, and during a great part of its coarse buried in obscurity under vast oceans ; and with what reason can it be denied that the Creator of all these subtle forces, in- whose hands they all lie, can silently modify, by an act of His will, the course of any event in His universe, and that he can say to His servants, as we to ours, Do this, and it is done ? When we, with our utterly imperfect knowledge, can so modify the action of natural forces as to neutralise a disease by a little counter-poison, or revivify the nervous forces of life by galvanic currents, must it not seem the height-of all unreason to deny an infinitely superior, and at the same time, infinitely more mysterious and invisible capacity, to Him who- created at once these forces, and the human brain which makes use- of them ? The simple principle, in a word, to which the Centurion appeals may be stated in our more scientific way, by saying that what- ever forces there are in nature, must reside within the maker of nature, only in an infinitely enhanced degree; and the point on which it is more especially necessary to insist in applying this principle, is- that which the Centurion grasped—namely, that the powers of man, of man's intellect and will, must, above all things, be regarded as an example of one form of the divine action. The kind of things which man can do, God can certainly do; and if modern men of science can modify the operation of nature by methods which to men not so scien- tific, would be incomprehensible, and even invisible, certainly God can modify nature and control it by means which, even to men of science, are similarly incomprehensible and invisible. There seems, in fact, to. lurk an extraordinary sophism in the offence which is taken at so- called anthropomorphism. Men observe the operation of the inani- mate forces of nature, and deduce from them the methods of God's operation. There, they will say, you observe the course of His action ; and you notice its absolute regularity, and the absence of any indication that we can detect of its disturbance by personal action and will. But the moment the moralist, or the theologian, points to another sphere of nature—that of human nature, which is nature still—and argues from it in a similar manner, regarding it as a revelation of iiart, at all events, of God's method of action, we are denounced as anthropomorphk. Be it so. But What is the scientific conception but—if I may be allowed to coin the word—physico- morphism ? They see the likeness and reflection of God in nature ; we see the image and reflection of God in luau; and why not the one as well as the other ? The corruption of our moral nature creates, indeed, a gulf between us and Him. But considered from the point of view of a physical philosopher, man is not only a part of nature, but the highest and most completely developed part. By all means let us learn all that natural philosophers can tell us of the Divine

nature, and methods, and power, from the inanimate and irrational crcation; but let them not refuse to take into account what we can tell them, or rather what their own hearts can tell them, respecting God's nature, His power and the method of His action, as exhibited

in the mind and will of man Argue from nature exclu. sive of man, and you may acquiesce in the hard mechanical views which alone it suggests to you. Argue from nature with man, and man's actions, and man's will included within it, and you will agree with Luther that the Centurion was a great Doctor of Divinity."

That is an argument as perfect in form as it is sound in sub- stance. Those who really object to miracle as the mere reflex of an anthropomorphic idea of God, themselves disbelieve it on the strength of a physico-morphic idea of God which is poorer and less adequate.

In his last lecture, Dr. Wace has dwelt on an argument for the supernatural character of Christianity on which sufficient stress has never been laid, and on which, indeed, even Dr. Wace himself, though he makes it the point to which his whole book leads up, might still have insisted even more emphatically than he has done,—we mean the argument that the first growth of the Christian Church, being reserved entirely for the period which followed our Lord's departure, can only be rationally ascribed, as he himself by anticipation ascribed it, to that sending of the Holy Spirit by which, as Christ himself assured

his Disciples, they would be enabled to do far greater works than he himself, while he lived, had ever done. We see, as Dr. Wace

remarks, the immediate followers of our Lord as a little group of ignorant, wavering, insignificant men, with views so narrow that they were not even exalted into spiritual- insight by our Lord's resurrection from the dead, but were still centred in the notion that he would at once restore the kingdom to Israel,—we see them, moreover, suddenly deprived of the main stimulus to which they had been accustomed to look for initiative of every kind, by our Lord's disappearance from earth ; yet, notwithstanding this, within a day or two of that great privation, we find the first great shoot of the

Christian Church making its appearance with every promise of vigorous growth ; a totally new power appears in it; and the 41 greater works" which our Lord had predicted, come into being, and soon eclipse altogether all that the Master had himself achieved while be remained on earth. Mohammed fairly began the great military career which his lieutenants continued, but Christ can hardly be said to have done more than prepare for the spiritual work which was commenced on the Day of Pente-

cost. Is it reasonable to ascribe that work to the power of a mere memory, however great ? Is it not infinitely more reasonable to ascribe it to the living influence which our Lord promised to send after he had been taken away, and which, according to the unanimous testimony of the whole -Church of that period, he actually did send, and _send at the moment promised, than to attribute it to the power of a memory,

though the human centre of that memory had wielded no similar magic while Christ remained on earth ? Dr. Wace insists most justly in his lecture on the Resurrection that the Evangelists and Apostles who refer to that Resurrection never refer to it as the end and goal of the Christian revelation. They use it only as the explanation of the new power which had since descended

-onthe Church, a power of which that Resurrection was the pledge. It is not the Resurrection itself, but the subsequent gift of the Spirit, of which the Resurrection was the guarantee, which is the -end and aim of the Christian revelation. It is not the rising from the dead, but the receiving of power from on high, which

renovates all things. The mere fact that, according to the universal testimony of the Church, our Lord's stay in -this world ended without even gathering in a single great

harvest of souls,—that he left to an impersonal influence to accomplish what he himself had doubtless intentionally refrained from accomplishing, recognising that he was too strong and

the multitude too weak for him to accomplish it in person without more or less effacing the individual life of the new

community,—ought to attest in a manner not to be mistaken the reality of that gift of the Spirit which alone accounts for the life of the Church. The heroic theory of great crises is all very well, while the hero is there to do his work ; but when the hero is gone, if he be a mere hero, his personal influence does not grow, but dwindle, as the Memory of him slowly fades away. It is different with him who can send down a Spirit able to effect far more than anything effected in his own lifetime,—and this is the difference between Christianity and all other human in- fluences. It is because Dr. Wace has kept this fact so con- tinually before us throughout his lectures, that they seem to us so fall of value and significance for all who read them.