title: Primary convictions...
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V •' • ^ A* *' • ^ ^ ••uir* ^ r ^ ^ *Wlto V ^ * % ^fe&*. t V^ - vyX'-SK*^ jr* .j^i'\ c»*.^8ii% A«^t\ o»*.^ ^^^ ,^ : .^P». : j* * vl ^Columbia College Xectures ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY PRIMARY CONVICTIONS BEING DISCUSSIONS OF WHICH THE GREATER PART WERE DELIVERED IN THE CHURCH OF THE HE A VENLY REST, BEFORE THE PRESIDENT, FACULTIES, AND STUDENTS OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK / BY WILLIAM ALEXANDEK, D.D. Hon. D.C.L. OXON., Hon. LL.D. DUBLIN LORD BISHOP OF DERRY AND RAPHOE The fountain light of all our day A master light of all our seeing " new yo: /0 7 RK ARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS M DCCC XCIII Copyright, 1S93, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. J TO THE KIGHT REVEREND THE BISHOP OF NEW YORK THE HON. SETH LOW, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE JOSEPH WESLEY HARPER, Esq. AND THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN THE CITY OF NEW YORE THIS VOLUME 1fs 5)eDfcatec- WITH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT Palace, Londonderry December 10, 1892 PREFACE It may be well to state the occasion from which this volume sprang and the object at which it aims. In the summer of 1891 the author received a graceful letter from the Bishop of New York, in- viting him to visit that city in the Lent of the fol- lowing year. The Bishop wrote as the representa- tive of the Trustees of Columbia College. It was their wish to give renewed effect to an old founda- tion of that celebrated school of science and learn- ing, by endowing a series of Conferences or Dis- cussions, primarily addressed to the students of the college, upon subjects connected with the Evidences of Christianity, to be delivered in some suitable and convenient church. The greater number of these Discussions were ac- cordingly spoken in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Best, New York, in March, 1S92. They were preceded by brief services of prayer and praise — perhaps the sweetest and most spiritually harmo- nious at which the preacher ever assisted. No detail seemed too irksome for the wise and loving care of the Eev. D. Parker Morgan, D.D. jSone who were present can ever forget the rapt appearance of the great congregations ; or the harmony of purpose imparted by the preliminary devotion, which pre- pared the worshippers to become hearers and sus- tained the preacher in his arduous work. The ad- dresses were delivered from notes ; but the preach- er often derived his inspiration from the moment, and he fears has been unable to recover some thoughts which seemed to awaken interest at the time. It should be added that a few of the Discussions comprised in the present volume were not delivered in New York. Those upon " a literary evidence of the Resurrection of our Lord " and upon the Con- version of St. Paul in its evidential bearing were spoken in the Chapel of the Protestant Episcopal Theological School in Harvard University upon the invitation of the Rev. William Laurence, Dean of the School, for whose boundless hospitality these words are but a poor return. Two others are added for the sake of giving something like com- pleteness to the course.* The last discourse is a * The writer, of course, feels that there are still two large gaps in this volume — " The Church " and " The Forgiveness of Sius." He feels that he could not attempt them without another volume. "Kamsden Sermon," preached before the Univer- sity of Cambridge immediately after the writer's re- turn from America. It is added mainly from a de- sire to show what his feelings were to the sister Church of America while the impression made upon him by contact with her Bishops, Clergy, and Laity was still fresh. II It is much more important to state precisely the object at which the author aimed. When he considered seriously how he should best prepare to meet the wishes of the distant friends who had laid upon him so high a task, it appeared to him there were two departments of the field of Christian Evidences to one or other of which he might profitably turn. The cumulative character of the Evidences of Christianity was a favorite topic with thoughtful Christians in the Oxford of his youth — rather more than forty years ago. It was derived from a preg- nant sentence in the " Analogy " — " Probable proofs, by being added, not only increase, but multiply, the evidence." The meaning is this : If that which we are concerned to prove has one strong circumstance or principle of apparent truth, the reasoner succeeds in constituting one improbability of falsehood. But if he succeeds in exhibiting two or three or more such circumstances or principles, a process goes on beyond simple addition of two or three or more improbabilities of falsehood. The improbability of the simultaneous co-existence of so many characters of truth is something' quite different from the sepa- rate existence of one or more of these characters of truth. Let us suppose that there are seven great heads of probable evidence for the truth of Christianity — prophecy, miracles, the morality of the Gospel, the propagation of the Gospel, the existence of the Church, the character of Jesus, the moral and intel- lectual character formed by Christianity. Certain great prophecies (e. g. the dispersion of the Jews) may, with some plausibility, be attributed to acci- dental coincidence or to anticipative sagacity ; but, after all deductions, a great deal remains quite un- accountable on any hypothesis but that of a miracle in writing. The miracles, or certain of them, may be attributed to successful craft or to the excite- ment of the uncritical Oriental imagination. But the central miracle of the Eesurrection has the ob- stinate tenacity of fact. It is a pearl which all the acids of criticism can never dissolve. Now, in the perfect and unblemished morality of the Gospel we have a performance of a totally different character. And it brings this difficulty to the objector : If the Resurrection were anything but a fact — whether the body were stolen, or the supposed death were but a swoon, or the alleged appearances were the PEEFACE ix passionate illusion of contagious fanaticism — in the long run the witness of the apostles and disciples (in the second hypothesis of Jesus himself) must have been a fraud. So that men not only suffered persecution and death for a lie, but went forth preaching a religion of whose morality truth was a prominent part with a lie upon their lips. The propagation of the Gospel, in defiance of learning and of power, is a new marvel. The Church, fore^ seen in her glory, in her trials, in her extension, is another standing miracle. Finally, the character of Jesus must have been drawn from a living model. If it were not, the inventors must have been even greater than their subject. The degree of probabil- ity arising from the simultaneous existence of all these seven departments is something different from, and calculably greater than, the seven sepa- rate characters of truth. "While the author writes, words come back to his memory from a great, but half-forgotten, thinker of the Oriel College into whose society Newman en- tered sixty years ago. " If man's contrivance, or if the favor of accident could have given to Chris- tianity any of its apparent testimonies — either its miracles or its prophecies, its morals or its propaga- tion, or, if I may so speak, its founder — there could be no room to believe, nor even to imagine, that all these appearances of great credibility could be united together by any such causes. If a successful craft could have contrived its public miracles, or so much as the pretence of them, it requires another reach of craft and new resources to provide and adapt its prophecies to the same object. Further, it demanded not only a different art, but a totally opposite character, to conceive and promulgate its admirable morals. Again, the achievement of its propagation, in defiance of the powers and the ter- rors of the world, implied more energy of personal genius and other qualities of action than any con- curring in the work before. Lastly, the model of the life of its founder, in the very description of it, is a work of so much originality and wisdom as could be the offspring only of consummate power of invention ; though, to speak more fairly to the case, it seems, by an intuitive evidence, as if it never could have been devised, but must have come from the life and reality of some perfect excellence of vir- tue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, the fictions of ingenuity. But the hypothesis sinks under its incredibility. For each of these supposi- tions of contrivance, being arbitrary, as it certainly is, and unsupported, the climax of them is an extrav- agance. And if the imbecility of art is foiled in the hypothesis, the combinations of accident are too vain to be thought of. The genuine state of the Christian evidence; is this : There is unambiguous testimony to its works of miraculous power ; there are oracles of prophecy ; there are other distinct marks and signs of a divine original within it. He was drawn to the selection of his subject by the following train of thought. 1. His own observation led him to the conclusion that not only young men — though they principally — are led into unbelief or haunted by most distress- ing doubts, not about the absolute /izcfo of the Gos- * Davison, " Discourses on Prophecy." t The verb is borrowed from the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Speaking of the vivid, dramatic, and personal charac- ter of the exhortation in Scripture in one place, he writes : rf/s napaKXrjaecos, fjns vyuv as viols StaXeyerat (Heb. xii. 5). Cf. "Dost dialogue with thyself?" ("Timon of Athens," act ii. sc. ii.). XU PREFACE pel, but by particular theories as to the how of those facts with which they have come to implicate the verities themselves. Iu this respect it is with the Gospel now as it has been in the past. There grows round the creed a great mass of traditional exposition, explanation, loose statement, pulpit catch-words, the slap-dash scholasticism of the public meeting, the railway car- riage, the dinner-table, the smoking-room. This is taken up in current teaching and incorporated with it even by superior minds. In the history of the Church it is not only " the doctrine of masses " of which certain things " are commonly said " which, probably, are " blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." The commentary edges out the text. The explanation of the mode in which the fact is assumed to be brought about occupies the place which of right belongs to the fact only. Probably half the objections which perplex young minds and seem to them unanswerable — nay, which, in many instances, really are so — come from this source. They are arguments — sharp, fierce, resistless — against a par- ticular explanation, or an assumed mode, of the fact — none whatever to the fact itself r * Few more singular illustrations of this can be found than in "The Corruptions of the Church," by Dr. Homeric — a -writer of singular perspicuity and general logical power. See espe- cially § iv.," The Resurrection'' (pp. 20-24), where tico theories It seemed to the writer that he might, by God's grace, do something useful on this side for young men in connection with the Evidences of Christian- ity. He might lead them to ask, whenever they find something which is alleged to be an article of our Creed attacked, what that point of Christian belief is and what it is not; whether the oppo- nent's refutation is not of an imaginary error. Even more remarkably is the Atonement travestied by being- identified with certain theories concerning the mode in which it takes effect {idem, § ii. pp. 11, 12). truth itself \ Darwinism, so far as it has advanced beyond theory — the Higher Criticism, so far as its net results are not crumbling away by constant friction with discoveries of texts and monuments — may then assume a different and less terrible as- pect. The comet which threatened to collide with our world of faith is not a compact material struct- ure, but a less than nebulous extension through whose perspicuous tenuity we can see the stars shining. 2. In carrying out this conception it evidently be- came necessary (a) to consider where we are to look for the depository of these essential, irreducible cre- denda ; and most instructive (b) to inquire what form and degree of assent is to be given to such di- vine facts, apart from human theories about their mode. To the first of these (a) the author's reply is the two great creeds of the undivided Church, the sim- ple, profound, sublime, spontaneous utterance of Christendom*; to the second (b) that a mere ineli- * It is proper that the writer should here refer to "The Foundations of the Creed," by the late Bishop of Carlisle, a book worthy of the manly faith and robust intelligence of its beloved and venerated author. The present writer had inde- pendently arrived at much the same conclusions about portions of Pearson's work many years ago, and believes that this volume would have been written very much upon the same lines with- out it. As it is, he has derived much profit and delight from nation towards the theory of the mode of a Divine fact is an opinion, while an assent to the Divine fact is a conviction. It was on these lines that the plan of these dis- cussions was drawn in the draft laid before the au- thorities of Columbia College. Some Discussions, not delivered in the Church of the Heavenly Best were afterwards added to give something of com- pleteness to the volume ; that the central fact of Christianity, the Eesurrection of Jesus, and its cen- tral dogma, his Divinity, might not appear to be omitted. These sheets must not leave their author's hand without an expression of thankfulness to the many American friends, within and without his own com- munion, who made their visit so full of pleasure to himself and to the companion of his voyage. They can never cease to think of the gracious hospitality of American homes and of the tender warmth of American hearts. For himself America has proved to him that it is a libel upon human nature which tells the man over sixty years of age that he can never make a new friend. May this volume tend in some degree to deepen the Bishop of Carlisle's pages — especially pp. 1, 28, 31, 91, 341, 361. He might have improved his notice of omissions in the creeds if he had read, before drawing it up, the bishop's Intro- duction, pp. 12-19. XVI PREFACE convictions, at once truly sacred and truly rational, in the hearts and minds of inquirers ! May the Holy Spirit of truth pardon something that may be erroneous, much that must be imperfect in it, and quicken it by his heavenly influence for Jesus Christ's sake ! CONTENTS Discussion Page I. Convictions . 1 II. First Primary Conviction 35 III. Second Primary Conviction ..... 63 IV. Third Primary Conviction. ..... 91 V.  substance in the Church of the Heavenly Eest, Sunday, March 13th, 1892 PREFATORY " II faut que les verites s'incorporent a nous, et nous penetrant longtemps ... II y a une penetration lente de chaque jour, une intussusception de la verite . . . qui fait que cette verite de- vient a notre ame ce que la lumiere du soleil est a nos yeux, qu'elle eclaire sans qu'ils la cberchent." — Maine de BmAN. CONVICTIONS " Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. 1 ' — Heb. xiii. 8, 9. I Two German friends once stood and gazed up- ward inside the Cathedral of Amiens. They paused for a while in speechless admiration of a strength like that of giants associated with an industry like that of dwarfs. One of the two friends (his name is of high distinction in circles which assuredly are not theological — Heinrich Heine) looked at his com- panion and said, " You may see here the difference between opinions and convictions — opinions cannot build such cathedrals ; convictions can !" There are few who do not instinctively feel that Heine's witness is true. If we are Christians there is so much building to be done. JSTot only cathedral building ; not only outward works and organizations — the building up of ourselves, the building in of oth- ers — and this "building up of ourselves" must be "on our most holy faith." Faith is the foundation. Strong must be the stones on which such a fabric is to rest. There are so many opinions, so few convictions. "When we consider thought not as comprising all processes and products of mind, but those of inves- TKIMAKY CONYICTK »"S ire four degrees in tl propositions which we question in regard to the measure of acceptance which we accord to them. (1) We have two opposite alternatives as to which the mind is in absolute equipoise, absolutely neutral. The symbol of this mental condition is Montaigne's pair of scales, with the motto, " Que scais-je V' This is a state of suspended speculation, and the name psychologically of such a state is doubt. (2) In many cases, however, there is a very slight turning of the balance one way or the other, instead of the previous equilibration. Something like a dawn be- gins to whiten in the doubtful sky. This state of thought is suspicion. (3) One of the two alterna- tive propositions advances further. It appears to have a distinct surplus of evidence. The doubt has practically disappeared ; suspicion is an inadequate term. The proposition, instead of being pale and shadow}^ in the background, is flushed with the glow of passion or reduplicated in the imagination by the applauding voices of party. Yet, in calmer and more judicial moments there is a voice which warns the intellect to beware of deception — that there is an unknown something which may turn the scales ; that somewhere or other a resistless refutation may lie in wait. This state of thought is opinion. (•i) But beyond opinion there is something higher and stronger. There is a conclusion which takes possession of the mind at once forever and will not allow itself to be gainsaid. Such are mathemat- ical truths or principles logically derived from certain premises or received upon authority from PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 5 which there is no appeal. Such, again, are the moral and spiritual principles which gain possession of every avenue of the soul. They not only take the reasoning faculties captive as in necessary sub- ject matter. Their possession is a triumph and sets itself to a manifold music. They cannot be more proved than mathematical truths, but they are 'bet- ter proved in a certain sense. These propositions are the objects of faith ; they are convictions. The three first classes of propositions are incomplete thoughts without absolute assent. But he who is convinced, who believes, thinks with absolute assent. In the spiritual sphere he is convinced by divine authority. The will is touched by that authority and moves the intellect in the same direction.* For the Christian the conviction is a psychological fact. A moment comes when his thought rests, though it does not sleep. We have seen what we mean by conviction. On what subjects of belief is conviction necessary and authorized ? f * " Ojnnio . . . cogitatio informis absque firma assensioue. Pro- prium est creclentis ut cum assensu cogitet . . . per auctoritatem di- vinam, propter irnperium voluntatio moventis intellectual " (St. Tbom. Aquinas, " Sumraa Theol." 2 a 2" e Quaest. I. Art. 4). The reader who wishes to see how the philosophy of conviction, sound in its own region, breaks down when applied logically to establish the infallibility of the Church of Rome, will do well to read Mr. Cape's account of his melancholy experience. 1 1 am quite aware that I have used the word conviction, con- victions, with some logical laxity. But by conviction I generally understand the attitude of the mind thinking, by convictions the several propositions which it formulates. PRIMARY CONVICTIONS \Ve of our Church should observe that the Apos- tles' Creed is emphatically the layman's creed. Nothing else is absolutely required of him at Bap- tism or at Confirmation ; nothing else when he is visited in the hour of sickness or approaching death. In the plain, simple, stately declaration of the American bishops it is said, " Holy Scripture and the Nicene Creed are inherent parts of the sacred deposit, sufficient statements of the Christian faith." * But the Xicene Creed, we are told, is too much. " The so-called Christian Church," one said in Lon- don last season, " has spent the best of its energy in discussing subjects almost unintelligible and al- together un practical. For centuries ecclesiastics fought like tigers over the question whether Christ's substance was ofioovcrios or 6[xolov<tlo<; — i. e. the same as the substance of the Father, or only similar. The two words differ only by a letter, and that the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet ; and the size of the letter about corresponds to the importance of the distinction." One would think that it does not require much logic to perceive that the intellectual and moral moment of propositions is not to be measured by the comparative length of the letters or syllables of which they are composed. " There is one God" is just one letter longer than " There is no God." Between ofioovcrtos r.nd o/aoioihtio? there * "Proof is production of evidence that satisfies the require- ments of scientific logic" (Professor Huxley). — "Belief is the assent of the mind to the hypothesis most in accordance with observed facts" (Mr. Jennings, in the Times of Jan. 13th, 1S92). PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 7 is, indeed, just one letter ; but that letter is God. That " one Iota," though the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, shall not pass away from the Creed until heaven and earth pass away. In these discussions I propose to take the two Creeds as abstracts and collections of primary con- victions. I shall deal with some of their principal contents : "With the belief in the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ; in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ ; in one sense of the Judg- ment ; in the Holy Ghost as speaking by the proph- ets ; in the Resurrection of the body. It will be my object to state each of these primary convictions in its irreducible minimum, so to speak ; in its divine simplicity apart from all particular theories upon the subject, however popular or prevalent they may be. Such a statement, if successful, and its proof cannot fail to contribute something to the evidences of Christianity. II Let me remind you of the character of the Creed which is so often overlooked. That which is vital and eternal in the Apostles' Creed has for centuries been so overlaid with the loads of learning flung upon it, so weighted with what after all are accessories and not its substance, that average Christians often fail to understand its purport and characteristics. I shall not discuss its origin, nor the various forms which it may have as- sumed in different Churches. I shall not deal seri- ously with the assumption that before separating 8 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS upon their mission, each of the twelve Apostles con- tributed his article to the "symbol and contessera- tion of faith." I shall attempt to bring before you those articles with which I deal in their proper form, separated from the temporary accretions and changing scholasticisms with which they have be- come associated. I shall avoid, as far as I can, en- trenchment behind defences which have proved un- tenable. An unsound defence is only a danger. The outlying villages which give shelter to an en- emy had better be burned. The Kicene Creed is absolutely one in substance with the Apostles' Creed. Only it gives us the truth about the Divine Personality as it was fused under the fires of controversy. It affords a clue by which we may escape from the mazes of erroneous speculation which unhumanize or undeify the God- Man. And it does so more effectually, because it gives these truths in an uncontroversial form. Dog- ma reposes in the Nicene Creed like the couchant lion, who rests in the attitude from which he can spring with his maximum of power. Ill The text directs us to the true characteristics of the Christian Creed. Every accuracy is to be respected because it is of the noble family of truth. The punctuation of the passage which stands at the head of this discussion is of capital importance. The previous verse must be so translated and stopped as to avoid all excuse for supposing that "Jesus Christ" is in apposition PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 9 with " the end of their conversation." The sacred writer speaks to the Hebrew Christians of the duty of remembering their dead leaders in the faith. " Eemember them that have the rule over you, be- ing such as spake the word of God to you, of whom surveying the issue of their conversation imitate the faith." Then there is a full stop, a marked pause followed by a reflection. From all changing priests the writer's spirit rises to the unchanging High Priest.* The sigh of memory is changed for the af- firmation of a fact. The Bock of Ages is under his feet. The brief " Oraison Funebre" is followed by a Creed which is also an " Elevation." Through the "yesterday" of the dead rulers; through the "to- day " of the stormy present ; through the " forever " of the undying soul and of the eternal Church, "Jesus Christ" is the great "the Same" of the psalm quoted in the first chapter f — aye, and to the ages. Then w T e have four creed principles. (1) The sub- ject of it is a Person, not a congeries of speculative doctrines. (2) The aim of him who rightly holds it is outside self, right forward. Christ is the fixed pole in the whirl of speculations. " Be not carried aside"; allow not yourselves to be drawn off to side issues.:}: (3) As to the structure and substance. Not a collection of curiously tessellated opinions ; not patchwork or piebald. (4) As to language and thought. Not Aristotelian or Platonic ; not Kantian ; Heb. xiii. 7, 8. to Avros, Heb. i. 12 ; Ps. cii. 27. I /xri irepicpepecrde, Heb. xiii. 9. 10 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS or Hegelian ; not scholastic, Roman, or reformed. " Theology," a celebrated French academician has contemptuously said, " is a patois, not a language." Hut the Creed speaks the sweet patois of the hills of God and the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem.. Humboldt has told of an old Mexican parrot which chattered sentences in the language of a tribe which had become extinct, and of which no senile living soul knew one word. The true language of Chris- tian theology will not be obsolete in heaven itself. Then the Creed is not to be merely argumentative, or metaphysical, or of speculative opinion. The course which it impels and directs is not that of the butterfly wavering from flower to flower, but of the arrow between the string and the butt. Its lan- guage is not to be of tessellated colors or of exotic growth — it is to breathe the sweet majestic simplic- ity of home. " Be not carried aside with doctrines which are of foreign growth as well as diverse." * The Creed is to be one perfect whole, not a thing of showy tags and aggregated fragments ; but one as the flower in nature is one, as the bell must be fused in one if it is to give out harmonious resonance. A developed Creed is a big bell, but the quality of a bell's tone depends upon its metal. A bell of pew- ter, however big, is pewter still ; a bell of silver, however small, is silver still. IV This Creed of the Primary Convictions of Chris- * AiSa^cus noiKikais kci\ £(vais, II ob. xiii. 9. PRIMARY C0XYICTI0XS 11 tenclom is a creed of facts, or of expectations based upon those facts. All thoughtful persons must hare noticed that there are remarkable omissions in both Creeds — more especially in the earlier — omissions of much significance in any formula which is to be regarded as a summary of the Christian faith. Some of the principal of these may be briefly mentioned. The Christian Church presents herself to the nations with a book, or " library " of books, in her hand. In the Apostles' Creed not a syllable is said about the book. In the Nicene Creed, no doubt, there are two references to it, both, however, to one portion of it, the Prophets. Justification by faith is a wholesome and comfortable doctrine, but it is not explicitly mentioned. The existence of angels and archan- gels is a verity of revelation, soothing and magnifi- cent for a believer. Not a word is said about these exalted beings in either of the Creeds, unless they are to be included in " the all things invisible " of which God the Father Almighty is the Maker. Sac- raments are necessary for the very existence and sustenance of the Church. In the Apostles' Creed neither is mentioned. In the Kicene Creed Bap- tism is splendidly summarized, " One Baptism for the remission of sins." But even in it the Eucharist finds no place; though the hearts of the redeemed then and ever murmured round it, like bees round the flowers. The special miracles of Jesus (one of the two main pillars of Christian evidences) are not adverted to in either Creed ; the Creed is so busy with the Miracle which Jesus is that it cannot now 12 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS look even to the miracles which Jesus did. Chris- tians believe that there is such a thing as final sep- aration from God ; neither is that directly and dis- tinctly mentioned in either Creed. The great and good Bishop Pearson, " the very dust of whose writ- ings is gold," most unfortunately, as I venture to think, connected this awful subject with the "life everlasting" at the close of the Creed, thus hope- lessly confusing the Scriptural conception of " life " with mere chronological duration. Y These Creeds of Primary Convictions are so dis- posed as to be throughout Creeds of facts (or of ex- 2>ectations based upon those facts) and Creeds of joy. " I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." God created the world. The question between faith and science even now is not tchether the uni- verse was created by Mind. If it requires Mind to construe the universe, could mindlessness have con- structed it? The Nicene Creed goes further. It speaks of that whereof we find traces as we are brought into contact with purposes which are anal- ogous to our own ; of which St. Paul and St. John are full. " I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made." Yes ! " He is the image of that God who is not, cannot be seen, the First-born of all creation ; for in Him was created the whole sum of things that are in the heavens and upon the earth ; and He is before all things, and in Him all things collectively cohere into system, who PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 13 is Beginning." Or to refer to the no less splendid Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews — " The effulgence of the Father's glory, and the stamped copy of his substance, and so bearing on the whole sum of things by the utterance of His power" ; not merely an Atlas -^bearing, but a Mind and Will on- bearing.* We live in the midst of discordant voices of spec- ulation. Over theories of the mist and of the mud the splendid song of the great triumph of faith rings out in the first article of the Creed, the first Primary Conviction of the children of God. It is an act of thought quickened by the touch of the inspiration which is called faith. "By faith we make it think- able f that the worlds are adjusted by a word of God, with the result that the sum total of things vis- ible is not in existence from an origin in visible phe- nomena. Belief in a Creator, in the creation, is ra- tional as well as spiritual, an act of the mind as well as of the soul. The first article of the Creed lets us see that Ag- nosticism is a malady of thought. There are three great postulates of reason — the existence of self, of the world, of God. It was tokl of a Scotch philos- opher that, when a young man came to enter his class, the professor would ask the youth whether a doubt of his own existence had ever laid hold of his mind ; and if not, would assure him that he nev- er could be a philosopher. He who never doubts * Coloss. i. 15-18 ; Heb. i. 3 (<fiep<ov re ra ndvTa). t Iltcrret, voovfiev, k.t.X., Heb. XI. 3. 14 primary convictions may never be a metaphysical man, but he who al- ways doubts these primary postulates of thought will never be a man at all. lie will never have the virility of the soul, the pith and grip of intellectual and moral manhood. Hence the sad metaphysician, wandering about like a day-dream. Hence the young faces elongated like a ladder, but a ladder with no angels ascending and descending. The first article of the Creed is the article of the three splendid pos- tulates. The believer pronounces the great words, I, heaven and earth, God ; his own personality, the existence of the world, the Personality and Father- hood of God. With his face turned eastward he as- serts his postulates before man and God. He who can go so far is strong and happy. He bathes him- self in the dew of heaven and is strong with an ev- erlasting strength. He sees all things in a new light. He is made free of nature and finds poetiy a possi- bility. He sickens not at the glory of the peacock, nor is saddened by the diminished solemnity of the primeval forest, nor wearies of the ideals of art and song, He finds not folly in Shakespeare, nor hum- drum in Handel, nor a measurable quantity of none of the cleanest water in the glory of Niagara. Thought is not for him a secretion of the brain, nor modesty an invention of ungraceful women. He sees nature at once working and sleeping with those splendid dreams upon its lifted face. He hears with opened ears the light motion of the everlasting- fingers that ply the loom of God. In its first part, then, our Creed is a Creed of sun- shine. PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 15 The second part of the Creed contains the belief in Jesus Christ. What belief ? A belief in facts. His divinity (" our Lord, very- God from very God"), His Humanity, Conception, Incarnation, His suffering life at a deiinite period of human history before His Passion, His Death, His Kesurrection " according to the Scriptures," His As- cension and session at God's right hand, and our expectation founded upon these facts that " He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead." Of the evidence for these primary convictions it will be my duty to speak again. I now ask you to consider what general impression is here conveyed of the whole character and manifestation of Jesus ? It is the impression stamped upon Christendom. It is not the monastic or Calvinistic Christ,- the Christ of the " Institutes " or the " De Imitatione," only. It is the Jesus of the Gospels, for all His majesty so sweet and pathetic. It is He who, knowing that He came from God and went to God, took a towel and girded Himself ; not disdaining to wash every foot that is stained with life's dust or stabbed with life's thorns. Ever with God and God ; " measur- ing with calm presage the infinite descent" from the songs of heaven to the sorrows of earth — to the Virgin's womb, to the cradle and the cross; return- ing gloriously to the home from which he came. This Christ of the Creed is the Christ of the Gos- pel, of Christendom, of the human heart. No doubt there is more behind and below. The great English Cardinal was not altogether wrong who saw the judge in the Crucifix. The Creed is 16 1TJMAEY CONVICTIONS like a great mountain which has deeps of gloom as well as " visionary majesties of light." But the voice which speaks to us through it says again, "Come unto Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto } T our souls." " Him that Com- eth unto Me I will in no wise cast out." The mot- to to be inscribed over it is, " The epiphany of the sweet-naturedness and philanthropy of God our Sav- iour." * The " vox humana " is the sweetest stop in the organ of the Creed. From the centre of a hu- man heart He feels round the whole vast circumfer- ence of human sorrow. In their second as in their first part the Creeds are Creeds of sunshine. The third part of the Creed is concerned with the Holy Ghost ; with some consequences of His exist- ence and divinity— viz. the prophetic Scriptures and the Holy Catholic Church; and with certain tri- umphant corollaries of the whole Creed—" the for- giveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." Every child of man has three original wants. He is born into a society dislocated and divided by self- ishness and passion, with no unity and no moral ideal — he wants a higher form of society. He is born with a nature rebellious to its own higher principle, and full of transgressions against its own rightful law — he wants forgiveness. He is exposed to suffering and is fatally bound to die — he wants We. * ore Se 7; xprjiTTOTtjs Koi rj (pi\avdpci)Trla (Trecfiiivrj tov (rurijpos, k.tX (Titusiii.4). 