REVIVAL.
THE Hibbert Journd is always interesting. The mere fact of its existence is a remarkable sign of the times, and nowhere can the religious temper of intellectual England be better studied. It is a pulpit from which every shade of belief and of doubt is preached with all gravity and courtesy. Roman Catholics and Rationalists, Mystics, Modernists, and orthodox Anglicans, occupy the rostrum by turns ; and perhaps the Apostolic injunction to instruct with meekness them that oppose themselves was never so nearly carried out in the world of polemics as it is between the covers of this quarterly review of religion, theology, and philosophy. In the current number appear two articles, one by Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson declaring that the Christian Creed is now untenable by thoughtful men— is, indeed, but an old wine-skin which is being stretched to bursting-point by an infusion of new wine—the other by Dr. Forsyth maintaining with passionate earnestness its "self- recuperative power," and arguing from history and from experience that the Eternal Word has indeed dwelt among us. Dr. Forsyth does not deny—no reasonable man can deny—that the present state of religious thought is one of confusion. Modern Protestantism is, he says, composed of two streams which take their rise in two different sources. The one source he calls the Reformation, the other the Illumination. "The one emphasises a divine redemption, the other human goodness and its substantial sufficiency." "The direct legacy of the Reformation," be writes, "laid funda- mental stress upon the sense of guilt, and the action of grace, the legacy of the Illumination laid stress on native goodness." For the one, he goes on, "man was the lost thing in the universe, and the greatness of his ruin was the index of the dignity of his nature ; for the other, man was the one saving thing in the universe, and the greatness of his success in subduing the world to his thought and will was the badge of his heroic divinity, soiled perhaps, but indelible." "For the one Christ is the object of our faith, for the other He is the Captain of our faith, its greatest instance. In the one case we trust our whole selves to Christ for ever, in the other we imitate Him." Dr. Forsyth throws in his lot with those Christians who emphasise the Redemption, impelled thereto by the fact of his own conversion, which lie analyses with exceptional reticence and great psychological power. He holds that the divergence between these two branches of the Church is great, and will become greater, though both agree that the hope of the world lies in Christ. The divergence' is,
we think, admirably pictured. The necessity of trying to keep the two movements from mutual opposition is, to our min4, pressing. What can unite the trends of thought ? Perhaps a common opponent.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson and the school whom be represents oppose both sections of Christian thinkers in a manner to force them to stand together. Not only, he maintains,' is it the case that few men now "are really aware of any sueh personal relation to Jesus Christ as the Christian religion presupposes," but "how many," be asks, "if they told the honest truth, really hold him to be even the ideal man?" In this last sentence he strikes at the root of the Christian faith. If he can substantiate his thesis, Christianity is dying. Arr. Dickinson is no materialist. He belongs, he pleads, like Goethe, "to the sect of the faithful." But he wants a new faith to fit the new ideals, a faith which shall exalt righteousness and eschew iniquity, which permits the hope of immortality and pours scorn on the service of Mammon, but a faith without Christ. But what should exclude our Lord from such a religious society as Mr. Dickinson would like to see founded ? Its aims are surely in harmony with those of the society founded by Christ Himself. Mr. Dickin- son's wine is not new enough, we think, to burst any bottle. When we analyse it, it bears a remarkable likeness to what was distilled nineteen hundred years ago. While it is impossible not to sympathise with the constructive side of his paper, what interests us most is the negative sentence about the character of Christ. It sets us wondering what are the aspirations of to-day which clas'a with that unwritten yet fundamental article of the Christian Creed that in our Lord we have the perfection of human character, that He repre- sents the moral goal of the race.
When Goethe said, "Light, more light," he gave expression to the most modern form of aspiration. A great rebellion has taken place against obscurantism. We want to ,know all that can be known, to face facts however distasteful. We refuse to place our minds under the shadow of absolute authority or under the shadow of the past, and we desire to illumine the dark places of the earth by turning upon them the searchlight of public opinion. The man who lives in wilful ignorance is despicable in our eyes. The man who wilfully keeps others in ignorance is criminal. We can no longer admire the oppressor for his strength, nor the slave for his obedience, and the man who endeavours to chain the public conscience to an ideal lower than the highest because it was that of his fathers we regard as a fool struggling to keep back the tide of God by the instruments of men. All these aspirations are more keenly felt by us than by our forefathers. Yet do they not find expression in the words and acts of the Christ, the end of whose coming to the world was to bear witness to the truth ? Did He not condemn every man who hindered another in the pursuit of knowledge. Did He not force His hearers to realise, to their intense discomfort and indignation, that: we must take the justice of God on trust, and not seek to prove it by means of what we call judgments and providences ? The Galileans' blood was mingled with their own sacrifices, yet they were no worse than many who lived out all their days. The signal help vouchsafed to the widow. in the time of Elijah offered no proof, He said, that others as good did not go without. Did He not declare that the instinct of every evildoer led him to concealment, while every man with a good conscience sought the light? Moses's regulations concerning vengeance and his law of divorce might be time-honoured, He said, but they were not ideal. They fell below the highest conceptions of godliness and purity, and their antiquity could not save them. They must go. His Disciples must beware, He warned them, how they called any man on earth master, for were they not all brethren ?
Our Lord's suggestion on the subject of authority brings to our mind another intense aspiration of.. to-day,—the desire for liberty. All barriers are breaking down, and all privilege .is threatened. Is this, so long as it is brought about without violence or theft, out of keeping with the teaching of Christ ? It was said by St.. Paul, as typical of His teaching, that with Him there was no respect of perscins ; aiid truly we cannot read of His dealings with His 'environment and doubt St. Paul's words. Priests, soldiers, Governors, and the Populace are all treated alike, and to the prophet who ridiculed the undue pretensions of birth and race, asking the children of Abraham if they supposed God incapable of
instantly creating their equals without their lineage, He gave His emphatic approval.
One of the most distinctive marks of modern idealism is the value given to sympathy. There are critics who think that so far as physical suffering is concerned the virtue is being over- done. The character of our Lord illustrates this virtue at its height, without weakness and without limit. The Disciples could only say that He knew what was in man, divining their thoughts before they spoke. His doctrine of forgive- ness makes sympathy an essential of Christian character, and granting for the sake of argument the whole rationalist position with regard to miracles, it remains evident that He gave so much skill and labour to the relief of physical distress that ignorant people imagined His success miraculous. It is at least a remarkable testimony to His power of sympathy that those who had once loved Him believed themselves ever afterwards blessed by His companionship in the most terrible crises of their lives, and those crises involved the loss of all their worldly goods and the voluntary risk of death by torture. The best men nowadays are painfully conscious of the disparity of human lots. To find such a consciousness in the past we most go back to the Gospel. As to the virtues of courage and sincerity, which keep their place for ever in the moral scale, a greater courage than was displayed at the Crucifixion is, we venture to assert, unthinkable; and is there any other than Christ through whose life and conversation sincerity shines with a surer light, or whose faith was more free of superstition? But it may be said : Other ages with other thoughts and other hopes have also found their ideal in Christ. True. But the contention of Christianity is that Christ is the Son of man, that in the fulness of His stature we recognise the ultimate possibilities of the race, not the production of a given age, or the pattern for a given time. The over-civilised Roman exclaimed " Ecee homo ! " So did the uncivilised barbarian. So in effect does the world of to-day, despite the present confusion of superstition and doubt.
So far from believing that the character of Christ is ceasing to fulfil and concentrate the moral and religious aspirations of the time, we believe that in the fact that it does perfectly fulfil them lies the hope of a Christian revival,—a new evangelicalism bent not upon oblation but obedience. Ever since the days succeeding the Crucifixion there have been moments when some Disciples of our Lord doubted whether or no He was gone for ever. Hitherto such times of depression have been succeeded by a revival of faith. The Church has been restored to health by the breath of the Spirit, and the thinking world has once more, to use St. Paul's bold metaphor, "risen with Christ" to "seek those things which are above."
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