DR. DRUMMOND'S HIBBERT LECTURES ON CHRISTIANITY.* THIS is both a
learned and a modest book. The head of Manchester College, Oxford, is conscious not only of the difficulty of determining what "Christianity in its most simple and intelligible form" really is, but also of the difficulty of determining whether "the most simple and intelligible form" in which divine revelation presents itself to the human intellect, is also the truest form. When a mind infinitely above our own seeks access to our own, we might expect surely that it would leave on our own the im- pression not only of great intensity and great authority, but of our own great inadequacy to decipher the whole import of its teaching, and of the probability that the attempt to grasp the whole drift of its meaning would strain the human faculties. Dr. Drummond feels this, and in spite of his rooted preference for the most "simple and intelli- gible form" in which the essence of Christianity can be pre- sented, he indicates in plenty of passages his consciousness that the simplification of Christianity is by no means neces- sarily a token of success in the attempt to reach the very centre of its essential teaching. For example, in the most distinctively Unitarian page of this book, he says :—
"We must now pass to some details of the Christian repre- sentation of God. In doing so, we must first make the general remark that Christ's direct teaching about God occupies a sur- prisingly small part of his recorded utterances. There is, indeed, always the implication that human life and duty rest on .a divine ground. Jesus assumes a few great doctrines, as he was entitled to do among those whom he addressed ; but he introduces them in answer to questions, or by way of moral and spiritual appeal, and not as a teacher of theology. Nothing can be more -unlike his method than that which prevailed among the dog- matists of a later time; nothing more remote from what he laid down as essential than that which controversialists bound as a yoke upon the intellect; nothing more contrary to his spirit than the enforcement of metaphysical confessions by penal statutes. With the subtilties which have plunged the Church into schism, persecution, and bloodshed, he had nothing to do ; and things which have been held up as fundamental dogmas of Christianity are conspicuously absent from his teaching. Bearing this in mind, we may notice the grand ideas which he assumes, or on which he insists. He takes for granted the great Jewish doctrine of the Unity of God. When asked by one of the Scribes which was the first commandment of all, he answered : "Hear, 0 Israel ; the Lord our God, the Lord is one ; and thou shalt love -the Lord thy God with all thy heart." In this grand utterance of the ancient Law the Unity of God ceases to be a matter of abstract speculation, and becomes the basis for an undivided moral allegiance. It is this which secures it such a fundamental place in the teachings of primitive Christianity. No man can serve two masters ; and polytheism not only involved a want of due reverence towards the Creator, but broke the moral unity of man, and gave a sort of religious sanction to the foulest practices. The Unity of God implied for the individual the 'single eye,' which gazed at the simplicity of truth and righteousness ; for the Church, the possession of one spirit, pervading its multifarious operations, and binding its various members into 'one body ;' for the nations, the acknowledgment of a human brotherhood, since the one God must be God of Jew and Gentile alike. We must further observe that this doctrine of the Divine Unity is nowhere qualified or guarded against the interpretation which a Jew, or indeed any plain man, would have put upon it. It is impossible within our limits to discuss the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity. We need not necessarily regard that doctrine as false, even if we fail to find it in the primitive records of Christianity, for certain implications of spiritual truth might require centuries to impart to them the clear outlines of an intellectual system. But if we attempt to judge the New Testament as we would the original documents of any other religion, we cannot but be struck with the fact that the very phraseology which is necessary to express the doctrine of the Trinity is absent, that such statements as that 'there is one God and Father of all' are made without any reserve or explanation, and that at most there are a few passages which might be explained as references to this doctrine if we knew upon other grounds that it existed when these writings were composed ; and we are forced to the conclusion that, whether it be true or not, it formed no essential part of the primitive Gospel, and that in its whole form and complexion it stands in marked opposition to the kind of teaching which Jesus himself preferred. But there is hardly anything which official Christendom has valued less than the teaching of its Master." (pp. 189-92.)
Even in this passage, and still more in his last lecture, Dr. Drummond indicates his hesitation in acquiescing in the
• Via, Verita4, Vita Lectures on Chriatianity in its most Simple and Intel- Zigible Form. Delivered in Oxford and London, its April and May, 1894. By James Drummond, M.4., LL.D., Hon. Litt.D., Principal of Manchester College, Oxford. London ; Williams and Norgate.
view that the simplest and most intelligible view of primitive Christianity is necessarily the truest. "Certain implications of spiritual truth might require centuries to develop ; " and in his last lecture he shows us plainly enough how before the time of Christ questions as to the perfect simplicity and, as we might fitly say, the loneliness of God, had arisen amongst the greatest of Jewish thinkers, and had been resolved in language tending in a direction not by any means con- sistent with the absolutely unqualified singleness of the Divine Nature. The true question is whether there was or was not anything in the deepest teaching of Christ that pointed to the justification of this view, and even assumed it as the basis of his teaching. Of course, the unity of God was the starting-point, but was a qualified or unqualified unity the goal P No one feels more keenly than Dr. Drummond that this is a serious question. He is evidently by no means pre- pared to acquiesce unhesitatingly in that rejection of the authenticity of the fourth Gospel which so many of his col- leagues in Manchester College, Oxford, have contended for. He habitually quotes it as having more or less authority, though with an accent of hesitation as to how much authority should be assigned to it. And of course he is fully aware that in all the Epistles which have the highest authority, there is a very different mode of referring both to the Son and the Holy Spirit from that which we should expect, if the absolute simplicity as well as unity of the Divine Nature had been unquestionably accepted in the primitive Church. We should have supposed that to the Unitarian it -would have been a matter of the utmost wonder that the Son and the Spirit should ever have been regarded as needing separate mention and confession in the baptismal formula, if they had no essential portion in the life of God ;—and that the gift of the Holy Spirit should ever have been treated as needing any indi- vidual record as distinguished from the presence of the Father himself. Dr. Drummond sees that before the time of Christ, Jewish thinkers had been occupied with the problem as to the perfect simplicity of the divine nature, and had begun to impersonate Wisdom as dwelling eternally in the nature of God, much as Christians afterwards impersonated the divine Son and Spirit. Moreover, this language grew, and grew naturally, with every attempt to bring out Love as of the essential nature of God. For if love were of his essence,
it was impossible not to ask towards whcnn, this eternal
love had been eternally manifested. And when Christ came to announce "I and the Father are one," or even, if the Synoptic Gospels alone are to be trusted, "No man knoweth the Son bat the Father, and no man knoweth the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him," it became hardly possible to doubt that an eternal object of this divine love was being revealed to man.
In fact, Isaiah had anticipated the teaching as to a divine intercessor by whose stripes we were to he healed, who was to bear the sorrows of men and to suffer for their sins, and for that very reason was the eternal object of the Father's love, many centuries earlier. And it was natural enough that when the time came for revealing that the righteousness of God was most vividly seen in this eternal love, the complexity of the divine nature should be so revealed as to give a glimpse of the object of that eternal love. Dr. Drummond does not discuss the subject at any length, but he is evidently perfectly aware that "the most simple and intelligible form of Christianity" will not be regarded by all his most careful readers as the truest form of it. It would indeed be a singular thing that such letters as St. Paul's and St. John's should have been the first products of the new faith, if the unmodified simplicity of the Judah" doctrine were to be reaffirmed and even emphasised in Christianity.
In other passages of his interesting lectures, Dr. Drummond comes on the same problem, and solves it in the game fashion, though never with any excess of dogmatism, as for example in the fifth lecture, that entitled, "The Christian Doctrine of God" :—
" How far Jesus anticipated the feelings of his disciples, and announced himself as the revealer of the Father, involves a diffi- cult question of criticism, and the answer must depend largely on the degree of authenticity which we attach to several of the sayings in the Fourth Gospel—a problem on which it is impossible for us to enter here. But one or two general observations bearing on the spiritual aspects of the subject may be permitted. From one point of view, a claim of this kind on the part of Jesus would be regarded as an evidence of extravagant preemption and self- conceit. This charge seems to me to depend for its validity on the conception of man as an individual complete in himself, out off from the universal life, and drawing all his greatness and goodness from certain resources of his own. If a man take this view, and then proclaim his own splendid character and ability, he is undoubtedly a boaster, for his thoughts are centred on him- self, and he is seeking his own glory. But supposing that Jesus took a different view, and felt that man's true life was found only in the inflowing of the universal and eternal Life,—supposing that the consciousness of the Divine Spirit in his heart had reached an unexampled clearness and power—that the words and tones which thrilled the multitudes surprised and awed his own soul— that the love which he felt for the sinful and the sad seemed to flood his inward being from a source other than himself, —could he refrain from telling his disciples, at once with glowing faith and with unaffected humility, that he could do nothing of himself ; that the love in which they rested their weary hearts was the love of God; that the righteousness which they revered was the righteousness of God; in a word, that in proportion as they saw what was deepest and most commanding in him, they saw, not the transient frailty of a mortal, but the eternal life of God P If we cannot penetrate thus far into the consciousness of Jesus, I fear that the meaning and power of his life are beyond our ken." (pp. 185-87.) We do not ourselves see how, from any point of view, it can be denied that if Christ were not personally conscious of a perfect union with God, he could have used the language to which Dr. Drummond refers, nor how, if he were so conscious, it is possible to place him on the same plane with other men,— while it is quite certain that none of the writers of the most authoritative of the epistles ever did so place him. But while Dr. Drummond maintains a reading of the Scriptures which seems to us, E0 far as this question is concerned, quite un- tenable, he never for a moment conceals from his readers how much there is which makes for a quite different reading of them ; and in his general analysis of the spiritual and ethical teaching of Christ, he is a sound and careful critic. No one can read these lectures without appreciating fully Dr. Drummond's care, learning, candour, and simple force.
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