Appendix II
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APPENDIX II.
RECENT GERMAN WORKS ON APOLOGETICS.
An article by Prof. Smith in the " Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review," October, 1876.
It is only within a generation that Apologetics has become recognized as a distinct department of theology, and treated as an organized whole. And it is chiefly in Germany that its distinctive nature and definition, its method and relation to other branches, have been fully discussed. Planck, in his Introduction to the Theological Sciences* first assigned to it a definite place in the sphere of theology, putting it, however, strangely enough, under the head of exegetical theology.
Schleiermacher, in his epoch-making treatise, entitled A Short Exhibit of Theological Study, published in the first volume of his Complete Works, f first assigned to Apologetics the leading place in the organism of the different departments of theology— as a preparatory discipline for all the rest, and having
* Planck, Einleitung in die theologischen Wissenschaften, Vol. I. §§ 271-362.
t Schleiermacher, Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums: Sammtl. Werke, Abthlg. I., Bd. I., § 39.
to do with the fundamental principles of theology. In this sense it is equivalent to fundamental theology, and has for its object the investigation of all the ideas, facts, and truths which logically or historically precede the system of theology proper, or Christian dogmatics, strictly so called. This is a broad and comprehensive view of the subject; but, as thus defined, it neglects too much what has always been considered as the chief object of Apologetics, that is, the specific defense of religion, especially of the Christian religion, against objections—the vindication of the absolute and final authority of Christianity as the highest and best system of truth for man. Accordingly, few have followed Schleiermacher in giving so wide a scope to Apologetics; though almost all recent writers find a specific position for it in the encyclopaedia of theology. Tholuck (in his Vermischte Schriften, Bd. I., p. 149, sq.) and some others denied that it could be treated fully, as a whole, by itself; for the general reason, that all the doctrines, facts, and truths of both natural and revealed religion, have, and must have, their apologetic side; they can all be assailed, and must all be defended; but this, they say, should be done in detail, rather than by grouping all together. In any case, the materials with which Apologetics has to do must be taken from some or all of the other departments of theology. And if its office be to reply in detail to all the specific objections, and to establish the truth of the assailed positions, of course it is an endless work, and would defy all attempts at a proper classification. But it is not to be, nor has it been, so understood. Very generally stated, it may be said that Apologetics comprises what has previously been published under the two great heads of natural theology, on the one hand, and of the evidences of Christianity on the other. And the chief problem and question has been to bring these two under one department, or under one definition; also including the general principles and questions that come up in the modern philosophies of history and religion, as well as the substance of the investigations contained in the introductions to the Old and New Testament. The facts of ethnology, and of primaeval and prehistoric history—even the investigations of natural science, and the principles of anthropology, and of ethics, have also come to constitute a part of the materials of which Apologetics must make use. So that we have here manifestly a pretty broad field; and the question is, whether it can be fairly and profitably cultivated with a scientific unity of idea and design.
Another, though a somewhat secondary question, is, to which division of the general encyclopaedia of theology shall Apologetics be allotted? Nobody would now think of following Planck in putting it under exegetical theology. Only a part of its materials can be claimed as giving it a position under historical theology; but it comprises much more than this, especially when we bring into view the modern and urgent conflicts of Christianity with materialism and pantheism. It must then come under either systematic or practical theology, or have a place by itself.
Dr. Delitzsch,* in his System of Apologetics, assigned it to practical theology, since it has to do with the practical work and progress of the church (as has preaching). It cannot well be put under any one department. But Dr. Delitzsch's own treatment of the subject is quite like that of a work on systematic theology; it is made up almost wholly of dogmatic material.
Dr. Diisterdieck.t in his able articles on this question, also contends for practical theology as the proper rubric under which Apologetics is to be put, on the ground that Apologetics, etymologically, is the theory of apology, just ashomiletics is the theory of sermonizing, and so comes under the head of practice and art, rather than of system or theory. But this seems to be too narrow a view of its nature and functions. It does not merely tell us how all vindication is to be conducted; how Christianity is to be scientifically defended; but it also defends it; and not only defends it, but tries to establish its truth and authority. As Baumstark (Apologetik, p. 29) well remarks: "Apologetics, as the scientific proof of the absolutism of the Christian religion, as a whole, cannot be assigned to a single division of the system of theology, but is to prepare the ground for the whole of theology. Hence it has its place in the introduction to the whole system, as proposed by Schleiermacher." It is treated of by Pelt in his En
* System der christlichen Apologetik, 1869.
f In Jahrbtlcher fur deutsche Theologie, 1866, on the Idea and Encyclopaedic Position of Apologetics.
cyclopaedia under the general caption of the " Doctrine of Theological Principles; or, Fundamental Theology." The objection to this is, that its materials are so largely taken from church history, exegesis, etc., that it must needs come after these. It would seem, then, that we must either make a distinct head for it, introductory to all the departments of theology, or else assign it a place (as Hagenbach does) introductory to systematic theology. The latter is, perhaps, the most convenient arrangement for teaching, even though it be not free from all logical objections.
To return to the general idea of Apologetics. It was denned* by Sack* (in the first really important and systematic work on the subject after Schleiermacher's scheme was propounded) as that branch of theology ("theological discipline ") " which treats of the ground of the Christian religion as divine fact." He distinguishes between the ideal and real sides of Christianity; and assigns the former (the ideal) to systematic theology, while the latter (the real) is the proper subject of Apologetics—having to do with the actuality of Christianity; so preparing the way for dogmatics. This seems (as Baumstark says, p. 2) to separate the ideal and the real too much; and Apologetics, as a matter of fact, has to do with a good deal more than the external history of Christianity. And Sack himself concedes, that "the ideal side, or the doctrine, can never be considered without relation to the real, historical basis; and that, in Apologetics, though the main subject-matter be the real
* K. H. Sack, Christliche Apologetik. Hamburg, 1829. 2d ed., 1841.
side of Christianity, yet this can never be treated without reference to the ideal element." His further treatment of the materials of Apologetics is, in fact, rather doctrinal than historical; for his chief headings are " Redemption," "Life," and "Perfection;" and these subjects are taken from Christian theory and life, rather than from Christian history.
The Roman Catholic divine, Drey,* in his work, entitled Apologetics as the Scientific Evidence of the Divinity of Christianity in its Manifestation, defines Apologetics as "the Philosophy of the Christian Revelation, and of its History." He is the representative of a class of German Catholic divines who felt the influence of the philosophy of Schelling, in its later form, in its opposition to the Hegelian logic; and who were led to lay the chief stress on the positive historical elements of the Christian system. Christianity, they said, is primarily historical fact; and theology should also be historical and positive in its fundamental character. Yet it cannot be merely historical; it is rather a philosophy of the history—a scientific shaping and defense of the Christian church and religion. To this definition and treatment of the subject it has been well objected, that it brings the whole of Apologetics under the head of the philosophy of religion; it ceases to be a part of theology, and becomes a branch of philosophy. As a philosophy of religion, Drey's work contains valuable materials, shaped with learning and
* Apologetik als wissenschaftliche Nachweisung der GOttlichkeit des Christenthums in seiner Erscheinung. Mainz, 3 Bde., 1844-47.
ability. It handles a part of the theme, but does not give a clear and full view of the whole of the science. Apologetics includes, to a certain extent, the philosophy of religion; but it has also a wider as well as a more specific scope.
Of the Christian Apologetics on an Anthropological Basis, by Pastor Christian Edward Baumstark,* only the first volume has been published. It differs from the other works on this subject chiefly in its method, as indicated by the title. The author takes the ground (on the Method of Apologetics, pp. 30-36), that while the historical method has been chiefly followed, the psychological is the only satisfactory and final one. The historical method tries to show that the Christian religion is, and by its history is proved to be, the true religion for man. The psychological method, on the other hand, starts with the individual, and shows that Christianity completely corresponds to the religious capacity and the religious needs of man. It is a merit of Baumstark's work that it emphasizes the latter point, and vindicates its necessity. But the fact is, that every apologetic work must, in some way, more or less consciously combine both methods. Even in the oldest apologetic literature, as Baumstark concedes, we have examples of both—-the Prceparatio Evangelica and Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius, and the De Civitate Dei of Augustine, standing more on the historical ground; while the psychological method predominates in
* Christliche Apologetik auf anthropologischer Grundlage. Bd. I. Frankfurt a. M., 1872.
Tertullian's treatise, De Testimonio Animal naturaliter Christiana, and in the Clementine Homilies.
On this psychological basis, the general scheme of Apologetics, as propounded by Baumstark, is the following: First of all, in opposition to materialism and pantheism, he proposes, by " anthropological investigations," to evince and exhibit man's native religious capacities and endowments; then to show how far this natural religious basis reaches, and where this development has its limits, which require to be supplemented by a special revelation. Thus the foundation is secured which bears up all the rest. In the second part he reviews the history of the non-Christian religions—those "outside of" Christianity—to see whether, and how far, this native religious bias is manifested in them, and whether they can, and do, satisfy man's religious cravings. The third part is to give the proof, that man finds in Christianity alone the full satisfaction for his religious needs. The first two parts are well and fairly treated in the first volume of this work; the third part is-not yet published. The utmost that seems to be possible, or accomplished, by this "anthropological method," is to prove that man is a religious being; that religion is a necessity of human nature; and that in the Christian religion man's religious longing and needs find their highest development and satisfaction.
The most important and, on the whole, the ablest of these recent German works is the treatise of Dr. J. H. A. Ebrard,* Apologetics; The Scientific Vindication
* Apologetik. Wissenschaftliche Rechtfertigung des Christenthums, von J. I}. A. Ebrard, Dr, phij. et theol. 2 Theile, Gtltersloh, 1874-5. of Christianity, 2 Parts, 1874-5. The author is best known outside of Germany by his Scientific Criticism of the Evangelical History (3d edition, 1868, 1241 pages), at first written in reply to Strauss's life of Jesus, but afterward extended in scope so as to exhibit the unity and harmony of the four Gospels in a thorough and satisfactory manner. Bleek assigns it a very high place among the works on that subject. Ebrard's Dogmatics, too, in two volumes, gives a comprehensive outline of systematic theology, chiefly from the Reformed point of view, though his Calvinism is of a moderate caste. It is one of the more useful works for students of theology, and has been used as a text-book in some of the Reformed institutions. His Apologetics has still higher claims to attention, as showing the results of wide and protracted studies, and making an excellent attempt to collect the somewhat heterogeneous materials of this new disciplina into a systematic form. He says in the preface to the first part:
"For several years I have had a growing conviction that the coming ministers of the gospel must enter more thoroughly into the investigations, questions, and principles of the natural sciences, if they would be in a condition to contend victoriously against the anti-Christian tendencies of the times." "These considerations determined me, in the winter of 1872-3, to deliver a course of academic lectures, to which I gave the only partially adequate name of Apologetics, in order to fit it into the Schema of the traditional departments of theology. My hearers were theological students. I could, likewise, have wished that there might have been an equal number of students of medicine ; for I well know the severe internal struggles through which a young man, educated as a Christian, must pass when he enters upon the study of medicine or the natural sciences." He adds, that though he has always to some extent pursued the study of the natural sciences, yet for the purpose of these lectures he engaged in renewed investigations, and he claims that in the present work he stands upon the basis of the assured results of present scientific investigations—distinguishing between what is certain and what is merely hypothetical; and examining with special critical care the consequences drawn from these hypotheses in respect to supersensuous or supernatural subjects. He further claims, that this criticism of the hypotheses of naturalists is not made from the standpoint of an abstract, a priori, metaphysics. "Whoever will take the pains," he says, "to read my book, will at once discern that my philosophical method is realistic throughout; I start from observed facts, and go forward step by step with painstaking care; I endeavor to lay at the basis of my investigation the complete series of the facts."
In the introduction to this work, Dr. Ebrard proceeds to an examination of the main preliminary questions as to the nature, scope, and place of Apologetics as a scientific vindication of Christianity. To bring these questions fairly before our readers, we cannot do better than to give a translation, with slight abridgments, of the whole of this introduction.
INTRODUCTION TO EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS. § I. Apologetics or Apology.—In giving this work the title of Apologetics, according to the modern usage, and not Apology, as the fathers of the church called it, I am not without justification. And yet, before we ask, What is Apologetics? we must examine and decide the previous question, Whether there is such a science as Apologetics? According to the verbal interpretation, Apologetics is the science of the anoXoyeladai, that is, the science or disciplina, which examines the nature of defense (or vindication), that is, the essential characteristics of the apologetic procedure, and thence deduces the correct method. According to this, Apologetics is related to Apology as is theory to practice; that is, it is a relation analogous to that of homiletics to preaching, of liturgies to worship, of catechetics to catechising, etc. But here we encounter a fact which makes us hesitate, and demands a more thorough analysis. For while in the above-named theoretical departments of theology we always sharply distinguish between theory and practice, doctrine and application, so that homiletics never goes over into homilies, nor liturgies into liturgies, we never, on the other hand, see, nor can we conceive of, an Apologetics which does not go right over into and become an Apology. In the military art the theory of the defense (e. g., of a country or a fortress) is clearly distinguished from the act of defending; in the sphere of Christian theology, Apologetics is never limited to the theory; it does not merely tell us what the defense should be, but it is the scientific vindication itself.
§ 2. Apologetics a Science.—It is not difficult to see the reason of this. The above noted separation of theory and practice has no place whatever excepting in the sphere of ecclesiastical action, where theology becomes a practical art. The rules of such ecclesiastical action are derived from theological science, but they cannot, without practice, be so appropriated as to become a capacity or an art. It is wholly otherwise in the defense of the truth of Christianity. It may, indeed, find a place within different branches of church activity—for example, we may have Apologetics in sermons and pastoral care, in catechising, in the work of foreign and domestic missions, but Apologetics as such does not come under any of these ecclesiastical acts, it forms no part of church action, but it is essentially a scientific work.
It is only a scientific vindication of the truth of Christianity which deserves to be called a defense (an Apology), for the last end or aim of the so-called Apologetics is not to impart a capacity for action, but knowledge, viz., a recognition (knowledge) of the truth of Christianity. The name Apologetics does not seem to be exactly fitted, or it is only half fitted, to denote this. What the word exactly denotes, that is, the science of defense in general, would be only a very empty and formal discipline. For as to defense in the abstract, nothing more can be said than what might be embraced in a very few formal and general conceptions. Every defense is determined by the character of the object to be defended; a fortress is to be defended otherwise than a chessman, a mathematical theorem otherwise than a philological thesis, and both of these in a different way from an ethical postulate. Christian Apologetics, now, has for its object the defense of Christianity; for, according to usage, by Christian Apologetics we do not understand instructions as to how any given object may be defended in a Christian way, but instruction in the way in which Christianity is to be defended. "Christian" here designates the object and not the quality; "Christian Apologetics" is equivalent to "Apologetics of Christianity," that is, it is the Science of the Apology of Christianity.
§ 3. Nature of Apologetics.—And thus we are led to conclude that there is, at least, a relative justification for retaining the designation " Christian Apologetics." Between it and a mere "Apology" there still remains a difference, though a flowing one. For, Apologetics considered as the science of the defense of Christianity is to be distinguished from a mere Apology as such, in both its principles and method. There are apologies, oral or written, which are designed to reply to some definite objections made against Christianity, each of which may require something special in the method; thus Justin Martyr directed both of his Apologies against a series of definite single attacks. Such a defense may be admirable as an Apology, and on this very account, one-sided and inadequate as Apologetics. Christian Apologetics must then be distinguished from mere Apology by the fact, that its procedure and method are not determined by casual attacks made at some particular time, but by its deriving its method of defense, and consequently the defense itself, from the essential nature of Christianity. Every Apologetics is Apology, but every Apology is not Apologetics. Apologetics, in fine, is that science which infers from the inmost nature of Christianity what classes of attacks are in general possible, what different sides of Christian truth are liable to be attacked, and what false principles are at the basis of these attacks. Apologetics is the Science of the Defense of the Truth of Christianity.
Note.—Hiinne\l(StudienundK'riti&en, 1843, 3) defines Apologetics as " the science of the common ground of the church and of theology," but this is no definition, for this ground is Christ, and Apologetics would then be the science of Christ. The definition of the Roman Catholic theologian, Drey (in the work above cited), represents Apologetics in a way which is formally false, as the '' Philosophy of the Christian Revelation and of its History." Philosophizing about some given object (as about revelation in general), and even about an object of faith, is, indeed, possible (this is indirectly denied by Baumstark— see below), and it can also take on an apologetic character, and every true Apologetics must also proceed philosophically, not empirically, so that for substance Drey's definition is not so far from the mark ; but in form (formally) it is incorrect, because instead of developing the idea of Apologetics, it only names one of the means of which Apologetics has to make use. Lechler's definition is better, viz.: '' The scientific proof that the Christian religion is the absolute religion." (Ueber den Begrijf'der Apologetik, Studien und Kritiken, 1839, 3.) Only this says too little, for Apologetics is not merely the evidence, but the science of the evidence of the truth of Christianity. Then, too, the idea of the " absolute religion" introduces something foreign to the object, just as in the title to Drey's work the phrase " divinity of Christianity" is too specific. For the question is simply this: Is what Christianity says of itself true or false? If this is decided, everything else about its absoluteness or divinity follows of course. Chr. Ed. Baumstark (" Christl. Apologetik auf anthropologischer Grundlage," Frankf. a. M., 1872) contests the position that "Apologetics is the science of Apology," and defines it as " the scientific defense of Christianity as the absolute religion." Apologetics, as we have seen, comes to this, and I have, therefore, put the two as equivalent in the title of my book, but this is not a definition. Baumstark himself afterward recognizes the fact, that Apologetics, in distinction from an Apology, has to defend Christianity not merely on one or another side, but on all conceivable sides. This can be done only when Apologetics deduces from the very essence of Christianity the possible attacks upon it, and thus becomes the science of the defense of the truth of Christianity.
§ 4. The Twofold Office of Apologetics. — Christianity, according to its own original and documentary declaration in the Holy Scriptures, is the redemption of man by the eternal, living, and personal God, achieved in time and ever advancing to completion; it is man's redemption out of an abnormal state and relation to God, opposed to the will of God, and the true nature and destiny of man himself, and into a normal condition and relation to God, corresponding with the divine will and man's nature and destination. Thus Christianity, according to its own testimony, is (a) not a relative truth, or stage in the knowledge of the truth, having only a relative worth, but it is eternal and absolute truth, yet it is this truth, (b) not in the form of mere teaching or doctrine, but in the form of fact, of actual realization. Christianity is an historical act of redemption in time; it is historical fact, but it is act and fact, having eternal and absolute contents. In the person of Christ " the truth" (r/ a\ijdeia) appeared personally; in history " the life" (77 B,oorj); in Christ's passion and resurrection, the eternal normal relation between man and God is reinstated in and by a temporal act; and so, too, the conversion of the individual to Christ, and faith in Christ, are the filling of the soul in time with an eternal substance. If Christianity now be such an intimate union of temporal historical acts with the eternal substance of truth, it follows directly—that the attacks upon Christianity must be aimed either against its eternal substance of truth, or against the temporal facts. That is, either the eternal truths in Christianity can be assailed, or its historical character.
Note.—The definition of Apologetics given by Sack {Christl. Apologetik) is one-sided, viz.: "That branch (disciplind) of theology which shows that the ground of the Christian religion is a divine fact." In accordance with this he goes on to say that the office of Systematic Theology is to develop " the ideal side," or the eternal truth of Christianity, while Apologetics treats of Christianity as actual fact. Sack was probably led to this one-sided definition by the fact, that when he wrote this work, the attacks (of De Wette, and then of Strauss) were almost exclusively made against the historical character of Christianity. Had he written in reply to the modern assaults of materialism upon the existence of life, of soul, of personality, of design (teleology), and of God himself, his definition could hardly have been so partial. But yet he might have remembered the French Encyclopaedists! But his chief error consisted in his starting out from the attacks for the moment in vogue, instead of deducing the idea of Apologetics from the essential nature of Christianity.
§ 5. A. Defense of the Eternal Truth of Christianity. Difference between Apologetics and Polemics.— The eternal contents of Christianity are attacked when the truths which it teaches or takes for granted are denied, and represented as falsehoods. The attacks which Apologetics has here to repel are directed against these truths as such, and thus Apologetics is distinguished from Polemics. The office of Polemics is that of contending against tendencies which do not deny the truths as such, but only call in question the connection of these eternal truths with the facts of Christianity, or present them in a perverted form.
Note.—The Rationalismus Vulgaris, as well as Socinianism and Pelagianism (like Ebionitism before them), do not deny the historical character of Christianity, do not declare it to be a myth ; nor do they deny such eternal truths as that there is a God, that there is a law of God, a moral law for man, and that the transgression of this law is sin. Nor do they deny that Christ came to deliver men from sin— that is, to redeem mankind.
But they call in question that mode of conjoining the historical facts with the eternal truths which are taught by revelation in the primitive documents of Christianity. Thus they deny that the eternal substance of truth was in Jesus Christ personally made manifest ; that 'he freed men from guilt by his expiatory sacrifice, and that deliverance from guilt must precede deliverance from sin, etc. They reduce salvation to mere teaching or example, to a sharpening of the law. This is a perversion of Christianity, ai'pedtS, not a direct denial.
Analagous to these Ebionitistic tendencies, only in the opposite direction, are the Docetic heresies; analogous to the legal heresies are the Antinomian—they are perversions. The office of Polemics, as well as of Dogmatics, is to contend against and to refute these perversions of Christianity.
On the other hand, Apologetics has to establish the truth of Christianity against such assaults as have grown up in those systems of speculation which are outside of Christianity, or are opposed to it, arid which attack and deny the eternal truths of Christianity as such. When, for example, materialism maintains that the soul and thought are mere functions of the ganglia of the brain; when materialism and pantheism maintain that there is no immortality, neither eternal happiness nor eternal misery, and that consequently the whole presupposition of the necessity of redemption is from the outset deception or superstition; or when these systems maintain that the freedom of the will is a mere seeming, and that every man at every moment acts from necessity as compelled by his nerves and the ganglia of the brain, etc., that the difference of good and evil is determined only by custom and convenience, that there is no ethical law binding in itself, and hence no sin ; or that there are in nature and in the order of the world no works of design, and consequently that there is no Creator:—all of these cases are denials of Christian truth as such; here the ground is taken away from under the feet of Christianity, and it is about these questions that Apologetics is to be employed. It has for its office to investigate such attacks in a philosophical manner, and to inquire how they are to be scientifically refuted.
§ 6. Illustrations and Limitations.—It is a matter of course that Apologetics cannot bring to these investigations any axioms borrowed from revelation and theology, but can only appeal to the facts of selfconsciousness and of native rational knowledge belonging to man as man. We do not prove idem per idem; this were illogical and objectionable. To take for granted a knowledge of Christian truth, to presuppose a. consciousness shaped by Christianity, and then to analyze that consciousness, this is not Apologetics. Considered on its practical side, the object of Apologetics is to give instructions to the practical theologian, to the minister of the church, and in general to every Christian and member of the church, how he is to defend the truths of Christianity against those who still stand aloof from the faith, against non-Christians and gainsayers. Not as though an unbeliever or scoffer can be converted to Christianity by means of deduction and proof (somewhat as Pastor Blendinger, in Franconia, tries to compel the Jews to see the truth of Christianity by demonstrations inserted in the Niirnberg /Correspondent). Repentance alone leads to true Christian faith, such repentance as comes home to the anguished conscience from an inward conviction of the holiness of God's law, and as leads one to ask, what must I do to be saved? But besides scoffers and unbelievers, there are also those who are weak in the faith and wavering, and who are in danger of being led wholly astray by such audacious foes; and for their sakes it is necessary to oppose the fallacious arguments of unbelief, and to do this on such grounds and with such evidence, that these opponents can have nothing to say in reply. Consequently it is necessary to come down to their ground, to their arena, to ignore all axioms borrowed from Christianity itself, so as to lead the objectors e concessis ad absurdum; to make it evident that their own assumptions and inferences are false and perverse even on the ground of their own //remises. For this reason the Apologetics of Christianity in its first division, where it defends the eternal truths of Christianity, has to begin wholly with the general facts of human consciousness and the assured results of the study of nature. It has to ask whether those truths and doctrines which are presupposed by Christianity agree or are in conflict with the facts of nature and of natural consciousness, viz.: Such truths as the existence of a living holy God, the reality of a moral law, and the freedom and responsibility of the will; the fact that man is in a state of opposition to the law, and his incapacity to save himself. The subject then of the first part of Apologetics may be thus stated: The eternal truth of the substance of Christianity, as measured by the facts of nature and of human consciousness.
§ 7. B. Defense of the Historical Character of Christianity.—The other side of Christianity is its historical character. The redemption through Jesus Christ is a fact which occurred nearly two thousand years ago in the land of Judea. The assaults of anti* Christianity are also directed against the historical character of Christianity, especially against its historical documents—the biblical writings. The foremost attack is against the historical character of the contents of these writings, of which (as Strauss says, in his "Life of Jesus for the German People," 1864, Preface, p. xiv) we must get quit; next, against the credibility of these writings ; and then—as the means of contesting their credibility—against their genuineness and their antiquity. The investigation of these points, under the unfitting name of "Introduction," or under the more fitting title of " Criticism of the Writings of the Old and New Testaments," forms a special part of theology—a very extended and comprehensive branch, which, taken strictly, is throughout of an apologetic character. But yet, in all its details, it does not properly come under Apologetics. Not merely for the reason of convenience, since its very comprehensiveness would carry it far beyond the proper limits of this science, but for another— an internal reason, viz.: that such a "criticism" properly makes an " apology" (see § 3), and is not Apologetics, because it necessarily has to follow up and examine the objections, views, and hypotheses made at special times.
§ 8. Historical Character—continued.—Apologetics also examines the historical character of Christianity, and the attacks upon it, but in another way, under broader and more general points of view. It must inquire into the possible points of attack, and develop the mode of defense in accordance with certain general principles. The historical fact of redemption presupposes the reality of another historical fact, viz.: of a rebellion, in time, of the will of the creature against the eternal moral law and will of God. Christianity—biblical, revealed Christianity—stands and falls with this preamble. The exact opposite of biblical Christianity, on this point, is found in pantheism and materialism. Pantheism looks upon moral evil, not as the opposition of the creature's will to God; not as a fall and corruption—in a word, not as sin ; but, like its father, the devil (Gen. iii: 5), as a lower good—a process of development not yet completed, and even as a necessary means of transition to the good itself; and consequently holds that no Saviour is needed, excepting humanity redeeming itself; and the same is true of materialism, which teaches that humanity is developed out of an apish state. According to pantheism, we find, in the history of mankind, only a constant progress from mere undeveloped to developed, and hence better, conditions. Whether this be really so is to be determined by investigating the History of the Race. As, in the first division of Apologetics, we appeal to the facts of nature and of consciousness, so, in the second part, our subject-matter is the General History of Culture and Religion, as well in civilized nations as in savage tribes, in order to find an answer to the question, whether it is a fact, that in the history of the human race there is a constant progress from the lower to the higher, or whether it is not historically established, that there is an incessant counter-tendency, viz.: a constant lapse and degeneracy from a higher to a lower state.
§ 9. Historical Apologetics—continued.—When we come to-the study of Christianity as a historical fact, in its organic connection with the general history of religion, we encounter two remarkable phenomena. On the one hand, there is the historical proof of a fall of the human will from the divine; of a perversion of development into degeneration, as is seen in the documentary evidence of a lapse from primitive monotheism into polytheism, and a tendency to an ever-increasing savagery. But, along with this, we also find the striking fact, that precisely in that Semitic race, in which sin was first raised to a satanic degree of corruption, and the relation of religion to morals was not only glossed over, but perverted into a gross and fearful immorality, the Godhead being worshiped by lasciviousness and murder—in the midst, now, of this very race, a single branch, notwithstanding all ks inclinations to the same corruption, did, nevertheless, manifest the very opposite tendency; so that we find in it a knowledge of the holiness, and consequently of the unity and personality, of God, as well as a clear recognition of the curse and misery of sin, and of the necessity of an expiation; and this, too, for hundreds, yea, thousands of years—after every time of disturbance breaking forth anew. The object of our investigation is to ascertain whether this historical phenomenon can be explained in the sense of pantheism, and with the factors of naturalism; or whether we are not obliged; with the Scriptures, to recognize and confess a series of revealed acts of the living God redeeming man from the debasing progress of sin and corruption. And when, in fine, among the same Semitic people, we find the historical ground upon which Jesus Christ appears as the Redeemer of the world, then too—apart from all special researches about the age and origin of the individual gospels—we have the double facts of the Lord's Supper and the Sunday observance, ever testifying to the historical reality of his death and resurrection; and also the testimonies of the Pauline epistles, bringing positive evidence of the supernatural character of his person. And further, Christianity can be tested in history, not merely by the advent of Christ and his entrance into the series of sinful humanity, but also by the effects it has produced upon history itself. It is not difficult to adduce the proof of the heavenly fruits of Christianity in history. And there is also the weighty fact, that every form of corrupt Christianity which has been drawn into the service of sin, and intertwined with lies, has produced much more abhorrent and pestilential corruption than were ever found in heathendom alone; and this, too, heightens the evidence for Christianity—just as the mouldering corpse of a man spreads much fouler taints than the carcass of a beast. Here, too, the history of religion, considered in the light of God, becomes, throughout, an apologetic—not of what is now and then called Christianity, but of what Christianity is in the Holy Scriptures. Hence the object of the second part of Apologetics may be given in the phrase—Christianity as a historical fact, in its organic connection with ifte general history of religion.
§ 10. As to the Form.—The character of Apologetics, in distinction from Apology, is secured when positive investigations are made the starting point, and the refutation of opposing theorems follows on after. This appears in the First Part of our division of the subject; here, in the First Book, we inquire after the facts of natural consciousness and of objective nature, in a systematic order; before, in the Second Book, we refer to the theories and systems opposed to Christianity, and expose their internal contradictions. In this Second Book of the First Part, too, where Apologetics manifestly becomes Apology (see above, § i), it is distinguished from a bare Apology (in the sense of § 3) by bringing within the sphere of its examination, not only such anti-Christian theories as spring up at the present time, but also all classes of theorems, in systematic grouping, which can be directed against any, or all, of the fundamental doctrines and presuppositions {prceambula) of Christianity, in all the forms in which these have appeared until now. The future shapes of these theories it cannot, of course, conjecture in detail; and so far forth Apologetics, like every human science, is not complete, but growing in and with the times. The last holds true also of the Second Part of Apologetics in our division. The materials here used for the history of religion have been chiefly collected, in recent times, by the labors of Max Miiller, Spiegel, Dunker, and others. Such an investigation as is given in this Second Part was not possible a generation ago. In ethnography, and the religious history of the savage races, our knowledge is still fragmentary. Here the first canon of investigation must be, not to fill up the gaps by airy hypotheses, but to restrict ourselves to deductions from what is surely attested. Thus the error will be avoided which is now so plainly in vogue on the side of the opponents of Christianity.
This Introduction to Ebrard's Apologetics gives a sufficiently full and fair view of the way in which this department of theology is now generally treated in Germany, and of the questions raised in relation to its extent and method. Understanding Apologetics in his sense and usage of the term, his treatment of the subject, in the body of his work, is full and able, more satisfactory on the whole than any other single treatise. We can give only a very general sketch. As already stated, the whole material is divided into two parts. The First Part, comprised in the first volume, is entitled The Eternal Truths of Christianity Measured by the Facts of Nature and of Human Consciousness. This is divided into two Books, the first of which contains the Positive Development the second, the Examination and Refutation of the Systems opposed to Christianity.
Under Book First, after some general statements as to the nature of Christianity, and what is presupposed in it, there are three divisions of the subjectmatter. (1) The Ethical Law and its Author, pp. 17-222; (2) On Sin, pp. 223-281; (3) Redemption and its Necessity, more concisely treated, pp. 282314. In the first division, the fundamental questions of ethics, of psychology, and of natural theology are discussed at considerable length. The facts of human consciousness, in respect to the world, to the human soul, and to the moral law are clearly analyzed and made the basis for the refutation of antiChristian theories and speculations. Man's dependence upon nature is fully granted, while his self-conscious independence is clearly vindicated. The whole of nature is viewed as a complex of laws filled with marks of design. Man's knowledge of God is shown to be natural and necessary. The author of the vast system of designs in nature must be a self-conscious being; there is no real contradiction between an absolute and a personal being. The correct form of proof of the existence of God is not to be found by asking "whether the Absolute exists, but rather by asking, In what form does the Absolute exist f Is it an abstract aboriginal unity, or an unconscious primitive force, or self-conscious Spirit?" (p. 199.) God, it is then shown, is essentially ethical; God is love; the moral law is the highest law.
In the Second Division the existence and nature of sin are considered. In opposition to the skeptical theories, it is shown that it is not physical but moral, not from necessity but by an act of freedom, involving the race, and also implying personal responsibility. Its origin is in the beginning of the race and the divine relation to it is one of permission and not of efficiency. It is all, however, subject to the divine disposal and government; nature itself, in fact/was arranged from the beginning in view of the possibility of sin.
Man, thus shown to be essentially a moral being, the subject of a moral law, and having transgressed that law, stands in need of redemption, which is considered in the Third Division. Man is unable to redeem himself, redemption comes only through the divine work of the God-man, which is grounded in the mystery of the internal relations of the persons in the Godhead. The Gospel is no human invention. The divine act of redemption corresponds to the human need. The incarnation and its miracles are conceivable and not irrational. The Second Book of the First Part is devoted to the examination and refutation of the anti-Christian systems of philosophy (PP- 3J5-443)- The author treats: 1, Of the mechanical system, or the denial of the organic lifepower; 2, Of the denial of final causes, design in nature (which he calls Aposkopiology); he here ably vindicates the teleological theory of the universe; 3, Of the Darwinian theory, which is thoroughly and acutely discussed; 4, Of the denial of the freedom of the will, and on moral statistics, where the positions and assumptions of materialism are candidly and fully exposed; 5,. Of the Pantheistic philosophy, examining the systems of Spinoza, J. G. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Von Hartmann, and Schopenhauer. He has evidently made a thorough study of these antiChristian theories, and shows their inconsistency not merely with Christian doctrines, but also with the recognized facts of nature and of human consciousness. This work is as thoroughly done as his limits would allow.
The Second Part of Apologetics in Dr. Ebrard's arrangement presents Christianity as a Historical Fact in its Organic Connection with the General History of Religion. It is divided into two Books, respectively entitled the Religions of Men, and the Revelation of God. The first of these occupies some five hundred pages of the second volume, while the Divine Revelation is sketched in sixty-eight pages. Perhaps the best and most thorough portion of the whole work is contained in the author's elaborate investigations under the former head, comprising, as it does, the results of the latest ethnographic and linguistic studies by the most eminent scholars of Germany and other countries. Dr. Ebrard, according to his own account, prepared himself by protracted and extended study for this most important and difficult task, going through the writings of W. voti Humboldt, Buschmann, Schott, Von der Gablentz, and others, collecting the facts from all attainable sources, and combining the whole in a narrative and argument of convincing force. We do not know where to find a more weighty reply to the assumptions and theories of those writers who persist in claiming, according to the unproved hypothesis of a merely naturalistic evolution, that the primitive religious state of mankind was the lowest and most debased form of polytheistic idolatry, and that the higher religions have been developed out of these base rudiments. Dr. Ebrard shows conclusively that the facts all lead to another conclusion, that gross idolatry is a degeneration of mankind from antecedent and purer forms of religious worship. He first treats of the civilized nations of antiquity, the Aryan and Indian religions, the Vedas, the Indra period, Brahmanism and Buddhism; then of the religion of the Eranians, the Avesta, and the Parsees; next of the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, and the heathen Semitic forms of worship, including Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. His Second Division is devoted to the half-civilized and savage races, in the North and West of Europe, in Asia and Polynesia (Tartars, Mongols, Malays, Cushites); then of America, including a minute examination of the relations of the different races here to the Mongol, Japanese, and old Chinese immigrations. This part of the work is of special interest, and contains many ingenious suggestions and speculations as to the connection between Asiatic and native American culture.
In summing up the results of these conscientious and prolonged investigations, the author claims that he has shown that there " is not anywhere the least trace of an upward and onward advance from Fetichism to Polytheism, and from Polytheism to a gradually dawning knowledge of one God; but that, on the other hand, it is definitely proved that among all the nations of the heathen world there has been a fall and degradation out of an earlier and relatively purer knowledge of God;" that even among the most abject and debased " there are reminiscences of an earlier worship of one invisible creator and ruler of the world." He also holds and maintains, that he has proved "the essential unity of the human race, and the unity of its primitive traditions, that is, the truth of its early history," as given in the Scriptures, and confirmed by the testimony of different races and nations. In their dispersion from the original centre of the race (the western part of Central Asia, in the Euphrates Valley), all the people and tribes " carried with them the memory of one God, who, in the beginning, revealed himself to man; of one sin of the first parents, in the eating of the forbidden fruit through the influence of the tempter upon the woman, and of the entrance of death as the consequence and punishment of sin; of the brother's murder, and of three brothers who invented the metallic arts, etc.; of a race of giants; of the flood; of the ark, and the mountain, and the birds sent from the ark; of the rainbow and the promise; of three sons from whom descended all the peoples; of a revolt against God, the building of the tower, the confusion of tongues, and the sundering of the nations."
But we must needs stop in our analysis and extracts from this very able, comprehensive, and timely work. It is a vigorous, learned, and high-toned contribution to our apologetic literature—well worthy of being reproduced in an English version. Before materialism and pantheism can win the day, they have got to disprove the positions and refute the arguments of such works as this. Their earth-born theory is of little avail against such an array of facts—facts of history, facts of nature, and facts of human consciousness.
In the concluding Book, headed " The Revelation of God," Dr. Ebrard sums up the results of all his investigations, and then treats, first, of the " Redeeming Acts of God," in his revelation under the old dispensation and in the incarnation; and, second, of the " Effects of Redemption" upon the individual, upon society, and upon races and nations. This is less fully treated than some other parts of his great theme, and leaves much to be supplemented. It might well be the subject of another volume.
The System of Christian Apologetics (1869), by Dr. F. Delitzsch, the eminent orientalist, of Leipsic, differs greatly from that of Dr. Ebrard, and is handled in an entirely original method. 8
APPENDIX III.
OUTLINE OF PROFESSOR SMITH'S INTENDED LECTURES ON EVOLUTION.
L
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Evolution is a great word: it is meant to cover the History of the Universe. It is the result of a great many words and of all the theories of the universe: Cosmogony, Emanation, Development, Progress, progressive organization, the ascent from the lowest to the highest, the whole space from the beginning to the consummation, the last aspiration of Metaphysics, the last results of Physics, the final term of Pantheism, of Materialism (Atheism), of Theism and also of Theology.
The history of the evolution theory is as old as human thought. Its materialistic forms were advanced and rejected in the dawn of philosophy. It is now newly formulated.*
In the Vedas we find the recognition of forces and organizing powers. Theism (at least, infinite Mind), Pantheism and Materialism are there. The " order
By Spencer more ably than any other.
170
of succession" is drawn out: from the substance of eternal being plants, animals, ether, and earth were separated.
To the Greek mind " atoms were the sacred home and shrine of Philosophy." Democritus assumed them as the origin and explanation of all things; Xenophanes conceived the original substance as ethereal; Anaxagoras demanded that to atoms should be added a shaping intelligence; and the complete reaction against the old materialism (and materialistic necessity), was expressed by Socrates and Plato, in the position that Necessity was not all or ultimate, but that Intelligence was more and higher. This comes out in a striking way in the Timaeus :* "Intelligence, superior to Necessity, persuades it (tg3 jteidnv avrrjv) to govern the most of what is evolved so as to lead to what is best, and thus the universe (to nav) was fashioned at the beginning because Necessity allowed itself to be persuaded by wisdom." Also :f "two kinds of causes" are discerned, " one necessary, one divine." Socrates, in Phedon,^ tells " how glad he was when he first heard that Anaxagoras had said that Intelligence was the cause of all, and he thought that Anaxagoras would tell how everything was arranged for the useful and the best design—how the physical was for the moral: and how disappointe'd he felt when he found that no use was made of Intelligence—that ether, water, and other things equally absurd were made the cause of all—the physical made to explain
the moral and the intelligent, and no account taken of the fair order of things."
In short, with Socrates and. Plato, the ethical view —the order and end of the universe—predominates. They find ideas a place in the creation—find thought in things. Here Teleology is born. There is nothing much better, even in modern science, than these utterances of Socrates : * "He who in the beginning made man gave him ears to hear, eyes to see, nostrils to smell, tongue for taste, eyebrows and eyelashes to protect the eye, light of day to distinguish objects, divisions of day and night, nourishment from the earth, water, fire, and air The gods love and cherish man, watch over him as their greatest care." \ "He who orders and governs the universe, in which are united all beauty and all good, and who, for our use, keeps the universe in eternal vigor and youth . . . . this god is seen accomplishing the most sublime works, but abides unseen in the government of the world." %
The sense of this is, that when we ask, What is the world (or universe) for ?—the question is not and can not be answered by propounding any mere mathematical, mechanical, or physical end or object: for if
* I do not find that the masters in modern physical research, with all their advantages, are yet qualified, either by the quantity or quality of their brains, or by their culture, to sneer at Socrates, to cast aside Plato as a " poet," or to patronize Aristotle by misunderstanding him. Many of these men are as far from Socrates and Plato—as far from Cicero and Seneca—even from Buddha and Zoroaster, as they are from Moses and the prophets and the apostles of Christ.
f Memorab. I,, iv. § 5.
% Ibid., IV., iii. § 13.
this were all, there would not be and could not be any man, any intelligent moral agent, or any God but Fate.
Merely physical agencies can never evolve a moral being and a moral-end. But these latter are found in fact, say Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.* The world is made "for good." Hence, besides Necessity, there must also be Reason, Intelligence—leading to some moral end—in the authorship (origination) of the world itself.
This was the impregnable and victorious position of the old Greek wisdom against the old Greek materialism. And when this is said the essential thing is said, the main point is gained. For, if a man be a moral being with moral ends, there must be in the First Cause—not power alone and mathematics— but Will directed by wisdom.f
* Lange (Hist. Materialism) knows too much to put Aristotle on the other side, as some English lecturers have done, though he puts Democritus and Lucretius above Plato and Aristotle.
f In Lange's History of Materialism, this form of philosophy is traced through all history ; its counterparts are exhibited, but the Materialism is represented as preeminent. Thus :—I. Ancient world: Democritus, Efhpedocles (ethical), Aristippus ; the Idealistic reaction: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ; subsequently, theoretical Materialism carried farther by Epicurus and Lucretius." II. Mediaval. Mohammedanism more favorable to Materialism (Averroes) than Christianity was. Scholasticism. Bruno, Bacon, Descartes. III. Seventeenth
a There was a debate between Origen and Celsus as to Man's place in Nature: Celsus advocating self-transformation in matter, saying that man is not the end of creation, that God cares for and punishes brutes, that elephants have moral qualities, signs of speech and knowledge of the divine. Origen admits spontaneous generation, as the work of God. See Aug. Kind, Teleologie und Naturalismus, in d. alt Chr. Ztschft., Jena, 1875.
As the question of Evolution now confronts us, we must recollect the difficulties of the subject in the general mind of the age. The Christian Faith, the simple Biblical Faith, is here assailed. The whole of modern German metaphysics, philosophy in its widest speculation—abroad and at home—is in array against Faith. In this country, the most powerful intellectual and investigating tendency of the time is against us, including multitudes of the young men in all the colleges and professions.* The question is: Is there as much evidence of the literal inspiration of the Scriptures as of the results of philosophical and scientific investigations? We have to meet that. We must be wary of our grounds.f We learn of the past: e. g. of astronomy, geology. In evolution, we must concede—and appropriate—all that is proved true, as we have Often done before. Those hurt the good cause who stoutly maintain the unbending literality of their own interpretation of the sacred text, and anathematize all who will not repeat their formulae. There are some who, if a Christian utters the word evolution, accuse him of playing into the hands of the infidel and the atheist. Those Evolutionists who are not Christians just want Christians to say that all evolution undermines the
Century. Gassendi's History, Bayle, Newton; Locke, Toland. IV. Eighteenth Century. English and French basis. Priestley, Bayle, Diderot, Robinet, de la Mettrie, d'Holbach, Cabanis. Reaction in Leibnitz and Wolf. V. Then general. Feuerbach, Moleschutz, etc., to the present, where we have Czolbe and Hackel advocating a doctrine of "ensouled atoms."
* —" tua res agitur cum proximus ardet."
t It is easy to argue with believers ; the business is with unbelievers. Bible, and that every form of Darwinism is Atheism. But, to say that species are entirely arbitrary, that there is no sort of physical connection or descent between them, is to advance a purely scientific, not a religious or Christian, theory. There are three theories of Evolution. (1) The Materialistic. (2) The Pantheistic.* (These two may be combined. What is to be marked in respect to both, or to the two combined is—their insufficiency as regards (a) motive power, (b) organizing power—mind.) (3) The Theistic and Christian. This contains all of fact and truth which is found in the others, and supplies their defects, in the recognition of a personal, conscious intelligence.
We are not to deny continuity of growth, as far as shown. We are to consider that it is not shown at the great joints and crises.f that is—
Between atoms and primordial forces, Between life and mechanics, Between the soul and the vegetable, Between man and the animal. But, even at these crises we are not to deny the use of the antecedent in the new. "The Lord God
* " One part of the Christian world worships a Jew, another, a Jewess," and it might be added that the modern pantheistic world celebrates in another Jew, Spinoza, the worship of genius.
t The Scientific Doctrine of Continuity, by Professor Leebody, Brit, and For. Ev. Rev., October, 1876, advocates continuity, " with three exceptions: (1) eternity of matter, (2) life, (3) man's place," etc. But, the exceptions prove that the principle of continuity is not enough to explain things, without a higher power, at crises: and why not recognize such higher power all along, like sap from tap-root to cone?
formed man out of the dust of the ground." We are to assert that—
All the mechanical laws are in vital products—and something more,
All the vegetable in animal products—and Ynore,
All the animal in man—and more,
All of man in history—and more.
And the question is : Whence and what this More?
We are to urge that mathematical demonstration is great in its way, but that that is a narrow way: it deals with few attributes, masses, numbers, motions, planetary orbs—all very well in their place, all grand in a sense, but comparatively barren and meagre. To say that this is the highest knowledge, and the highest way of knowing is perfectly absurd.* Things that cannot be weighed and measured and chemically worked up—are immensely more valuable and interesting. A scrap of life, a speck of sensation, a mote of vision is worth more individually than all that mathematics and mechanics ever did or can do! If the sun could see and feel, it would be worth something ;f if it could only see itself, if it only knew that it was burning up for our comfort, it would be immeasurably advanced in the scale of being.
We may wonder that the world should be led by such a pretense of wisdom as the theories of the day exhibit,:}: but we are none the less to consider that it
* "Philosophy, which leaned on Heaven before,
Sinks to her second cause—and is no more."
Concluding lines of The Dunciad. f Intrinsically, i. e., would be an "end in itself" and not a mere means.
X '' Quantilla sapientia homines regnantur."—Oxenstiern.
is thus led and influenced, and that the interests at stake are most vital.
It is true that such ponderous platitudes were never used to cover a more superficial system {e.g. Spencer's definition: "Homogeneous becomes heterogeneous—differentiates," etc.), that we have here mere hollow phrases to express an empty law. But it is also true that these high, dim, shining abstractions and glittering generalities, harmless and distant as they may seem, and much as we may deride them or gaze with blank wonder, have an immense practical power. They are meant to give us the code of the universe, the laws of being, the seeds of all life and growth, the organic principle of nature and the spirit, to remodel laws and institutions, to shape philosophies, to build the state after new patterns, to reshape social law and order, society and life, the family, the state, the church.
The difficulty as well as the importance of the discussion arises from the fact that it is border-lands which are now the fields of conflict—the border-lands between mind and matter, between force and life (and life is a form of force), between the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Hence also the strife is between materialism and spiritualism, atheism and theism, science and philosophy, and philosophy and faith.*
The discussion may be conducted in the following order:
*" There is a border-land between philosophy and science. The questions raised by science are answered by philosophy." See T. K. Becker, Die Grenze zwischen Phil. u. exact. Wissensch. Berlin, 1876.
After I. The Introductory and General Considerations.
II. The Metaphysical Background assumed for Evolution.*
III. The Scientific Achievement^
IV. The Bearing on Theology. The Adjustments between Evolution and Theology in general. (This on the supposition that there is a view of Evolution which (a) grants design and (b) is theistic.)
V. The Bearing on Scripture. Evolution and the Bible. (Raising the questions (a) of geology, (b) of the order of creation.)
It should be added that the subsoil of all the hypotheses with which we have to deal is in the old question: Is the universe to be viewed sub specie mundi, or, sub specie ceternitatis? Are we e. g. to bound our view of all organisms with " the four organogens," carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen? This is the battle of Armageddon, and here we encounter the Anti-Christ.
II.
THE METAPHYSICAL BACKGROUND.
It used to be considered something of a task to make a world; most people pondering the subject, have gladly taken refuge in mystery and omnipotence.:}: But now almost everybody fresh from the
* The strength of Evolution thus far is in the metaphysical theory which it advocates, and not in its inductions.
t This has not met the metaphysical assumptions even half way. X Fichte was a notable exception."
retorts can tell us, if not how it is done, at any rate how it must be done if done at all.* This, at least, the investigator has ascertained : that if he had been present at the upspringing of life in the world, he would have seen with his mortal vision, mechanical forces becoming vital—and still remaining mechanical; life appearing and really being nothing new—no life there, in fact. The substance of the reason given for this confident assertion respecting the origin of life is that as we approximate to "protoplasm" in our experiments, we can see no difference between it as mere material, subject only to chemical and mechanical laws, and as "vitalized " or endowed with the laws of life. But, having no instrument to detect the differ, ence, why should we expect to see it? The intimation is that the difference is infinitely small, is equal almost to zero. But here the " infinitely small " becomes the infinitely great. Every thinker would rather know the heart of a molecule than know all astronomy. In the little, the unseen, the invisibilia, the mystery of creation slumbers. The theorist says, "If I had been there I should have expected to see the mechanical-chemical change into the living." But with what instrument of vision? How would he "see" an atom ensouled, or, perchance, a mechanical law changed into a living force? He would only see some of the atoms differently arranged and showing new properties, viz. : a live-centre, a sac, a cell wriggling about, thrusting dead atoms out of the way,
* " He had first matter seen undrest
And took her naked, all alone,
Before one ray of form was on."—Hudibras.
using them, feeding, disgorging, fighting, using the organs of nutrition and assimilation, finally reproducing something just like itself and giving up its imperceptible ghost.
This could be seen, and nothing else: the existence of a new being, with new properties and functions, and its little life then expiring. But it would never be seen that mechanics and chemistry did this. It would be seen only that they were there, but under new conditions. Even if no new principle of life be admitted, the new conditions, which cannot be derived from physics and mechanics', must be.* Aristotle says: ev rol? eidssiv, Tois aiaOntoi?, ra vorjra cart. In sense is'intellect. The investigator of protoplasm does not " see" the mechanical and chemical powers of matter, otherwise than with the mind; he needs only the mind to "see" life when it arises ;t
* Spencer, First Princ. 192, says: "The sole truth which transcends experience by underlying it is thus the persistence of force. To this an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this a rational synthesis must be built up." Again, p. 195, "Uniformity of Nature " is only "persistence of relations among forces." Tyndall, Frag. Sc. 110, declares that "no matter how subtle a natural phenomenon may be, whether we viewit in the region of sense, or follow it in that of the imagination, it is in the long run reducible to mechanical laws." Yet he says (Belfast address—see N. Englander, Oct. 1876): "To explain evolution without creation must radically change our notions of matter." "Taught, as we have been, to regard these definitions" (which give us its purely physical and mechanical properties), "as complete, we rightly reject the notion that out of such materials any form of life could possibly arise." So Du Bois Raymond: "It is a mistake to see in the first introduction of life on the earth anything supernatural, or indeed anything more than an extremely difficult problem in mechanics."
t "Copernicus had no telescope."
i. e. to discern that entirely distinct phenomena have presented themselves, for which the mind—the organ of vision in the case—demands a distinct cause or source.*
It is the position of our antagonists that Force is all. But this very word, Force, connotes, not a phenomenon, but its cause. The phenomenon is discerned only through and by motion; and this motion again is never discerned—and no man can define it, except by a paradox—something which both is not, and is. So true it is that the roots of phenomena are in the noumena—of the unintelligible in that which is discerned only by Intelligence, an Idea of Reason.
Moreover, by every law of psychology, of logic, and of philosophy, Mind is what we know nearest, most and best. All else is comparatively inaccessible. The thing-in-itself, the substance which we know, and alone directly is—Mind.
Let it be considered how much a materialistic evolutionist must take for granted: He has space and time, with no beginning nor end. In them, atoms,f practically infinite; yet space and time could not generate atoms, nor atoms space and time. Force is the movement of atoms, yet the force can
* The law of this vision is: Respice, Aspice, Prospice. Look from phenomenon to cause, view phenomenon as caused, grasp the future effect in the present cause.
f They show us an atom, and say, the fair world was built of such —and it may in part be true—just as true as that the Parthenon was built of blocks of marble, or that a brick is a specimen of a house; but something more is needed—and the best part, too.
not be deduced from atoms, nor atoms from force, nor either from space and time. Then the atoms and forces, in space and time, must form all the planetarysystems, proprio motu—according to the laws of mathematics!
In fine, the metaphysical assumptions may be briefly stated from the work of Lange. There is no thing-in-itself, only phenomena: of which the human organization is the centre: all is found here (even Causality, II., p. 45); Ethics is Egoism—and sympathy (not absolute); Religion is the impulse to the unknown and unknowable ideal; in man there are realistic and idealistic Triebe. The Ideal is seen in Art, Religion, Philosophy. Art is confessedly only ideal: Philosophy will always have a place in human thought: only we must not confound its imaginations with realities! Religion* is sifted until naught is left: it remains only as an aspiration. He doubts whether Christianity can survive, if myths are given up: one of these myths is the idea of God. Yet he speaks of the hold which religion has against all arguments, f and would not give up the sacrificial death of the Son of God—of course, in his sense.:):
It seems necessary then only to state the question in its breadth. Does man, does this our world, revolve around God—or does God (all the God there is) revolve around man? Is man everything and God perchance nothing? Is man's knowledge § all, and
* II. 547, 8. t II. 495. t II. 528.
§ Atheism, on its intellectual side, is simply the shallowest system of philosophy that the mind of man can possibly devise. It is made up of the two hardest, driest notions: Atoms, Force: out of those all. is there no omniscience? Is man's faith all a delusion, and has no voice, no Incarnate Word, pierced the darkness of the night, and taught man the lessons of eternal wisdom? Are all the questions of man's nature and destiny to be dismissed with the sarcasm of "human knowledge?" Have the race been lunatics, and have we just found it out? Is Theology a set of opinions, Natural Theology an exploded series of hypotheses. Conscience the bugbear of childhood, Man the head of the animal kingdom, Force—unconscious and with no object—that which works its will in the heavens above and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth? Is Sin a name for ignorance—Redemption a process of matter—Christ an ideal—God equal to zero—and Eternal Life a fiction of a dreaming brain ? *
The contrasts should be presented:
Theism—or Force and Casualty,!
Theism—or Nihilism and Nescience.
If Theism and Creation receive their recognition, then the Supernatural is recognized: the miracle of creation is admitted: an omnipresent Deity: first and second causes, all along the line.
There will be given as the result—Natural Theology.
That given: then so deep and perplexing are the problems, the disorders, the evils, the riddles, the
* Any and all the differences between the Greek, the Latin, and the Reformed churches are slight, compared with those between the whole of Christianity and the whole of Skepticism.
t Casualty explains nothing; it is a name for our ignorance—for caprice.
sphinxes,* the hidden and revealed God, the God we find in nature alone, and the God whom we are formed to adore—that the cry must be for a REVELATION, f
We are to assert, then, against all vain assumptions, the true Metaphysical Background: the reality of the Supernatural:—that which is above and before the whole complex of natural finite phenomena, especially such phenomena as are subject to the senses. That there is such a mode of being, viz., which is infinite, eternal, causal, yea incomprehensible—is attested by reason, and conceded by modern science. Reason asserts itself in asserting it: denies itself in denying it. You may say—not known; but it is known in its effects—for all we know in experience we know radically as effect.
Or, to adopt the common division:
The Ontological (a priori) argument—gives Ultimate Being, with its universal and absolute attributes —in distinction from above and before, the changing and finite.
* Bacon sees in CEdipus and the Sphinx, the allegory of science: every man, every race has his enigma to decipher. And how eternally indifferent is the sphinx.
f The modern doctrine of God may be thus summed up:
God has been, is, and will be;
God is that which is—pure absolute Being;
God is Transcendent, and also Immanent;
God is the Real—ens realissimum.
God is the Ideal, ever to be, to be realized, and never so! This is the latest position: that of Lange, Tyndall, Huxley, Renan, etc. This makes God the product of pure imagination. The concessions, however (as against the old atheism), are noteworthy: The Ideal is—is necessary to man—is ever to be.
The Cosmological:—on the idea of cause (admitted by Mill, etc.)—that the finite and changeable has its ground and cause in the infinite and absolute Being. (The language of modern philosophy—all forces are from and of one absolute force.)
The Teleological:—on the idea of design:—that in the finite world there are adaptations, designs, everywhere. Hence the causal power which produces (" evolves") the finite and changeable must be rational—i. e. conscious spirit.
III.
THE SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT.
From estimating this all but professed scientists are solemnly warned off. It used to be said by church inquisitors, scientific men must not touch the Bible; now, the tables being turned, the cry is: Believers in the Bible must not say anything about science: it is so high that they cannot attain to it.* The cry will not deter any thoughtful man from forming his own conclusion as to the actual achievements of science, and distinguishing between proof and the intimations of what certain ardent minds regard as the possibility of proof. Science has its honors and glories
* Are there not some zealous evolutionists who are not zealous scientists; who accept all the theories on mere authority, and are as unable as the "divines " are supposed to be, to read the facts ?" Physicists," says Beale (Phys. Life, p. 436), "without having studied the wonderful effects wrought by vitality, have tried hard to represent it as a slave of force, but it has proved and will ever prove its master."
which are well deserved. It has its martyrs, too. As with love—nothing unto it is common, nothing unclean. It has its matins, its vespers, and its vigils: it lights its fires while others sleep. Its strength is in facts and inductions. Its weakness is in metaphysics and in morals. Where it is weakest it is most apt to boast. Science, by itself, unchecked is and must needs be of aristocratic tendency—must give birth to a class who say, in an arrogant, dictatorial spirit, " Stand by, for I know more than thou." (E. g., Renan in his Dialogues.) Science is not directly duty or love, especially if it goes back into Force and Forces—merely physical—of which morals and religion are vanishing forms, like waves, like leaves, like the flowers, like a song.
The proposition to be maintained against materialistic evolution is—that nothing which science has as yet established contravenes, invalidates, or hardly even touches the doctrine of Creation—none of its evidence; the arguments for creation are just as strong and good (in some respects stronger, e. g.t Design and Adequate Causality), as ever, and no established scientific principle or fact is in their way.
The concessions of materialistic evolutionists may be adverted to. Lange says, " How the external nerve movement gives rise to the internal [contents of sense] is wholly inexplicable."* "How unity of physical image is gained out of the variety of elements is also wholly inexplicable."t Yet "all must be physiological."^:
Evolution needs to establish the essential oneness of the movement in mechanical (and chemical) and " vital " combinations, and this by "spontaneous generation." It is confessed that here nothing has been achieved.
It is necessary for evolution to show the essential identification of Reason and Instinct, of the Spiritual and the Animal, and to show how instinct arises on its theory of life. But here nothing has been accomplished. There is an extreme tenuity in the experiments and suppositions of the advocates of " uniformity,"* reminding one of Webster's words (Dartmouth College Case, p. 280, Farrar's Report): " But this is only another instance of that habit of supposing extreme cases, and then of reasoning from them, which is the constant refuge of those who have to defend a cause which upon its merits is indefensible." All that has been suggested turns upon a misapplication of the notion of habit. Habit only means, that as a creature is, so it does. It gives no account of the is, nor of the to-be, but only says the is becomes the to-be. Habitus from habeo. It is purely a statement of facts in a general form.f In every case the instinct which is propagated must at first have somewhere been original. Lemoine (L'Habitude et L'lnstinct, Paris, 1875,—an able work) says (as Aristotle said), " Habit is second nature." But what led to
* The term which Lewes prefers.
f So, in Psychology, Association of Ideas is merely a phrase for an orderly series of facts. It is no law and embodies no principle. It is not even a generalization, but only a general statement of a sum of particulars.
the first acts which became habit? Instinct. The habit presupposes instinct. The common definition of Instinct stands; it has been well given by Bain: "an aptitude—not acquired—to do all sorts of acts, especially those necessary or useful to the individual" [better: "to the species "].
Nothing has been achieved by instituting a false analogy between development in the moral and in the physical spheres. In both nature and history there is doubtless a law of development, a process of growth, a progress toward some end. But there is also a marked difference between the two. In nature, considered as comprising the material elements and structure of the globe, and its vegetable and animal forces and forms, the developing process (so far as we know) has spent its productive energies, so that no new species or genera of vegetable or animal life are any longer brought into being. Thus the development we speak of in nature is of a plan already completed, and perpetually repeated. The existing forces and forms may be combined and applied by human skill: but so far as nature itself is concerned, nothing new is engendered out of the hiding-places of its power.
But development in history, in the history of the human race, is something different and higher. No new species or races are brought into being, but the race as a whole, under the guidance of Divine Providence, is moving on, subduing nature to its use, and taking on new forms of social, political, aesthetic, and even moral and religious life. Even here there are not, strictly speaking, any new elements or forces, or even ideas, but there are larger and more diversified applications of the old, so as to form new conditions and phases of human life, and introduce a higher order of society. In this consists human progress— towards an end not yet realized, and to be reached by successive stages and stadia.
One of the marked differences in these two orders of development (which we may call the natural and moral, or the physical and human) is, that in the former, or the natural growth, everything proceeds under the dominion and law of a fixed sequence or necessity, while in the latter the element is that of moral freedom. In the former there is no real progress, because there is no possibility of education: in the latter, it is a constant process of education. In the one there is only the life and death of successive individuals: in the other there is the instinct of immortality, the vital consciousness that the capacities with which man is endowed are susceptible of an indefinite range and development.
So far is it from being true, as some physicists affirm, that there is progress only in the sphere of the natural sciences, and none at all in the sphere of morals—that, on the contrary, taken strictly, there is no real and continuous process of development (but only repetition) in nature, while in the moral, intellectual and religious history of mankind there is real and perpetual advance towards some higher end not yet attained.
The suggestion that vital synthesis is simply the "reversal" of chemical analysis carries no weight. Tyndall (Vitality, p. 463) says, "every particle of every animal body may be reduced to purely inorganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process of reduction would carry us from the inorganic to the organic, and such a reversal is at least conceivable." Dr. Elam rightly calls this * " a most marvelous conception," and asks if the same would be true of a manuscript burned to ashes. How can there be a transition, in the nature of the case, between the not living and the living? The living can become not living, but the converse cannot be. Tyndall says.t Trace back line of life " to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil, suspended in alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Hackel, in which we have a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen, only by its finely granulated character." The reply is just: Life is new, totally different from chemical action.:]: "If it is a chemistry, it is a chemistry unknown in our laboratories: producing effects exactly the reverse of most of the chemistry with which we are acquainted."
It need, perhaps, only be added, that the bold attempt of evolutionists to suggest a scheme of worldorigination fails to present a self-coherent speculation. (See F. Plitt, Entstehung der Welt- u. Naturgesetze, 1876, 37 pp. Cf. Hertling, Die Grenzen d. mechanische Naturerkl'g., in Theol. und Lit. Zt'g, No. 19, 1876.) Suppose (on the Kantian-LaPlace view) the original gas, infinite in extent. How could it be set going by known powers? Not by outside press
ure, for there is no outside to the infinite. Not by gravitation, for all is equal and balanced. Not by chemical affinities—for all is infinite thin gas—dissociated. Not through lower temperature, for where could the escaped heat go? So there would be a limit at the first end. There would be another at the last end. The ether, retarding all and lessening the tangential force, would cause all, at last, to roll together. So, too, the gradual loss of heat would bring all to an end. There would be a general tendency to rest and indifference.
IV.
THE BEARING ON THEOLOGY.
It is striking how Infidelity plays into the hands of Orthodoxy. For example, the new positions on Heredity, asserting a common descent, laws of transmitted qualities and liabilities, character, etc., point directly to the great Christian doctrine of Original Sin. The extreme views of individualism are thrust back by the new doctrines. Then, too, Innate Ideas come round again. Force, power, law, are asserted, in 'the physical sense chiefly, it is true, but they cannot be confined to that sense, when once evoked. Moreover, while unbelievers used to know all about God, now it is declared that He is incomprehensible of essence.
The proposition can be maintained, that modern science, so far from setting aside the ultimate question which philosophy propounds and Christianity answers, has in fact made them grander than. ever. Never did the Universe (so far as known) so much demand the knowledge of God. The points will become more numerous on which the new science defers to the old theology. Heredity, as we have seen, is obliged to open new ground for reverence of the doctrine of Original Sin; Pessimism emphasizes the truth that the race is under a moral condemnation; Indestructibility is a shadow of the doctrine of Immortality; Evolution paves the way for the view of Man's higher destiny; the doctrine that the end of the world must come, and that by fire, finds new illustration in our latest science.
The movement (progress) of Theology and the movement of Thought go on together. They are not separate, in different planes or tangents, not even parallel, but interlocked. There is one centre for both—God: and one circumference—the universe. Even their conflicts ultimately result in the adjustment of boundaries. We must have philosophy, science, and religion—these three, but the greatest is, and ever will be, Religion. And in fact materialism is now busier about the religious question than about any other. Lange and Tyndall divide all truth and reality for us into two parts—empirical and ideal. Lange concedes that the ideal is the highest, which it certainly is. We use the results of the empirical for ideal ends, virtue, beauty, thought. Then, this deserves more, is worth more, is needed more. Both are impulses in us. We may pursue one as well as the other. But it is said, the one is merely ideal, viz., Religion. How so? Religion is not only internal, but has its historical truths and facts—to be investigated, criticised, but not denied—any more than empirical facts.
In respect to the great ultimate ideas of Force and Cause a remarkable advance by modern scientists is to be noted. All the great naturalists now agree on two points: (1) The universality of the law of cause and effect, (2) That this is to be traced to an Ultimate Force—the source (cause) of all phenomenal forces and changes. Cause is viewed not as mere antecedent or sum of antecedents, but as Force—and this ultimately one. This clears up a good deal of ground. For example, 1st. Any given effect is—all its antecedents (and only these) in another form. Whatever is in the effect must then pre-exist—there is nothing absolutely new: e.g. Wisdom, intelligence, etc., must be in the antecedents. 2d. A First Cause is conceded, i. e. the Infinite, Real, Unknowable Force. Men cannot then ask any longer, What is the cause of God? without also asking, What is the cause of the Absolute Force? An absolute ground, basis, beginning, is conceded.
Finally, it comes more clearly to view, that the common ground for all theories is in the facts of man's evil, misery, sin. Christianity did not make these facts: the denial of Christianity will not remedy them. Christianity recognizes original sin—as a fact —to be fought against, and has fought against it, to overcome the dread consequences of the great apostasy. Its doctrines are not sad nor debasing, as the materialistic and pantheistic positions are. These lead to Pessimism, Christianity to Optimism of the highest kind.
V.
THE BEARING ON SCRIPTURE.
[Only the following is found upon this point. The paragraph appears to be the statement with which the author intended to close his course of lectures.]
One thing is certain—that Infidel Science will rout everything excepting thorough-going Christian Orthodoxy. All the flabby theories, and the molluscous formations, and the intermediate purgatories of speculation will go by the board. The fight will be between a stiff, thorough-going Orthodoxy, and a stiff, thorough-going Infidelity. It will be, e. g. Augustine or Comte, Anthanasius or Hegel, Luther or Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill or John Calvin. Arianism gets the fire from both sides: so does Arminianism: so does Universalism.
HENRY BOYNTON SMITH:
His Life And Work.
EDITED BY HIS WIFE.
With A Fine Portrait On Steel, By Ritchie. One Vol., 8vo, 500 Pages. Cloth, $2.50. {Copies sent by mailt post-paid, on receipt of price.)
This Memoir of the lamented Prof. Smith, gives a faithful picture of his character and public career. The story is deeply interesting, and while it fully justifies his reputation as one of the most accomplished scholars and theologians, it also shows him to have been a man of very rare personal attractions. The volume is enriched with recollections of him by Prof. Park, President Seelye, of Amherst; Prof. A. S. Packard, of Bowdoin; Rev. Dr. Withington, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, Prof, Park, of Andover; Prof. F. A. March, of Lafayette, and the Rev. Drs. T. H. Hastings and M. R. Vincent, of New York. Rev. Dr. Goodwin, of Philadelphia, and Rev. Dr. Prentiss have assisted in the preparation of the work.
EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THE MEMOIR.
Philadelphia Presbyterian says: "Dr. Smith's life is here narrated largely in his own language. His letters are frank, bright, full, and frequent. These give to the book much of the interest of an autobiography—all the more interesting because he did not consciously compose it."
N, Y. Tribune: "This book is a picture of a character, and not of an intellect merely—others besides scholars may profitably read it—the beauty of Prof. Smith's character fully answered to the strength of his intellect and the richness of his culture—as the record of a scholarly career he had few equals on this side of the Atlantic." j
N. Y. Evangelist: "The book is indeed one of the most attractive pieces of religious biography that we have ever read. The character of the departed scholar is outlined with great delicacy by the loving hand of her who knew him best."
N. Y. Christian Union: "This account of the man himself has a permanent value. The life was worthy of noble monuments and lasting fame, and no one can read this book without an impulse to higher effort and purer living; and this will be more pleasing to the ransomed spirit—more in harmony with the wishes of his life here than sculptured marbles."
iV. Y, Observer : " Dr. Smith's life was full of incident and adventure. His education was splendid. Foreign travel in youth broadened his view, enlarged his acquaintance with universities, with men, books, and life. The brightest intellects discerned his greatness. As a pastor, preacher, teacher, lecturer and professort as a reviewer and editor, he always made the mark of a first rate workman, doing everything well. The loving hand of the wife has fitly held out to the eyes of the world, and bound up in this bundle such evidence of his greatness and worth, that the present generation and posterity will know something of what the Church lost when this light went out before eventide."
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway, New York.