The answer to this question comes with great readiness from a host of those who tell us that the meaning of Christianity is summed up in a code of ethical principles. The endless strife of theological tongues has led weary souls to take refuge in the apparent simplicity of the moral law; the stress of the modern social problem has prompted others to fix their exclusive attention upon the Christian rule of conduct as offering the final solution. And so we hear from all sides the many voices that unite in the swelling chorus, whose burden is the lofty ethical precepts of the Sermon on the Mount or the noble utterances of the Hebrew prophets as the sum and substance of all essential Christianity: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”; “Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God,”—Christianity means this and nothing more.

The assertion of an essentially moral Christianity comes to us backed with the authority of high scholarship. In the Hibbert Journal of October, 1908, in an article entitled “How may Christianity be Defended Today?” Professor McGiffert tells us that “to promote the reign of sympathy and service among men was the controlling purpose of Christ Himself,” that “modern study of Jesus has made this very clear, and we are recognizing with a unanimity never reached in other days that it was for this Jesus labored and for this He summoned men to follow Him.” The fact that this article, in spite of its confused reasoning and its inconclusiveness, is said to have been translated into several foreign languages, proves the strong hold which the moral interpretation of Christianity has obtained.

It is the purpose of the following pages to examine this view. We ask: What do the records teach? Do they permit the interpretation of Christianity as a set of moral laws? or do they imply something else, the religious or spiritual?

Educated but uncritical thought finds the notion of miracle increasingly burdensome. Many reject it outright and others would gladly be rid of it. The current conception with such persons may be fairly described as follows: There is an order of nature from which it is hard, if not impossible, to show a departure. There may be apparent departures from the accustomed order, but they are always expressions of a deeper order and hence are natural. For instance, the freezing of water by the application of heat seems like a violation of the familiar laws of physics, but it is really an illustration. The science of today makes us familiar with many facts, which would once have been thought miraculous, but which we now see to be outcomes of law. Comets and eclipses were cases of this kind in the middle ages, and epidemics also were similarly regarded; but all of these things have been brought under the reign of law. The aëroplane and wireless telegraphy, and even the trolley car, would have been signs and wonders beyond ordinary thaumaturgy three hundred years ago, but they are not miraculous. The facts of witchcraft, faith healing, cures at shrines, were long denied because they seemed to affirm spiritual agencies of some sort; now we admit many of the alleged facts, but deny their supernatural character by including them under the head of hypnotism, suggestion, influence of mind on body, and so on. Considerations of this kind are making us increasingly hospitable to strange facts which once would have been thought miraculous, and increasingly indisposed to admit their miraculous character. Thus the realm of nature and the realm of mystery are both extending, but the sphere of miracle seems to be approaching the vanishing-point.

It is related that Dr. Everett was once asked by the professor of systematics in another institution what subjects he found it possible to discuss in a non-denominational school of theology. The question was a silly one, for it assumed that in such a school no teacher gives utterance to the particular views which determine his own denominational affiliations, whereas, in Harvard at any rate, each instructor expresses without hesitation or reserve his entire thought, not seeking to present a composite picture but trusting that his instruction will blend with that of his colleagues to impress upon the minds of his students, whatever distinctive features they may finally adopt, the deep common lines of Christian faith. Characteristically, however, Dr. Everett did not point out the false presupposition of the question, but mentioned some of the principal topics considered in his lectures,—the nature of religion, the thought of God as Absolute Spirit, and the like,—to which the inquirer replied in some surprise, Why, we take all those things for granted. Dr. Everett answered mildly, I wish we could. It was a thoroughly characteristic remark not only because of the humor of its gentle rebuke, so gentle that probably the victim did not realize that his head was off, but also on account of its utter fidelity to his own theory and practice. He did not take fundamental things for granted; hence it was that while students in other theological schools were articulating a body of divinity, Dr. Everett's pupils were searching into the deep things of the spirit. For he was, first of all, a philosopher whose religious nature made him a theologian. The twenty-fifth chapter, of the thirty-five which make up the recently published volume upon Theism and the Christian Faith, begins with the words, “It may seem as though we were only now beginning our examination of the content of Christian faith.” Doubtless it would have seemed so to most of his contemporaries in theological chairs, but it was precisely in the relation between the Christian faith, as he conceived it, and the profound metaphysics of the preceding chapters, that Dr. Everett found the supreme worth of Christianity and the assurance of its absoluteness. The heart of a worshipper made the mind of a philosopher that of a Christian theologian.

The first step into clearness in the bewildering total of the subjects of theological science would seem to be an agreement concerning the true perspective of faith. In some way or other the world of religious thought needs to be ordered in different degrees of worth. Some scheme involving a gradation of rank, valid for the religious human being, should be imposed upon the objects of religious concern. Relativity is the law of our being,—not the relativity which excludes, but that which is contained in, the absolute, as the planet in infinite space; and a deep and sure grasp of this law would seem to be of the utmost moment in theology. The story is told that Francis W. Newman, the radical, made a journey from London to Birmingham to discuss the profounder issues of religious belief with his brother, John Henry Newman, the Catholic; and when the question arose as to the axiom from which debate should begin, the Catholic proposed to the radical as the surest principle of faith the infallibility of the Pope. This story has, if not literal, at least symbolic truth. It serves admirably as an illustration of Cardinal Newman's sense of the perplexity and contradiction of his time, and his fine irony. It is almost needless to add that, while men are thus at variance concerning the relative security and value of the different interests of Christian faith, discussion can be nothing but a discipline in confusion.

The main conclusions that were widely accepted at the close of the last century with reference to the origin of our first three gospels have been confirmed by the investigations of the first decade of the new century. Thoroughgoing re-examinations of the whole problem, such as those of Wellhausen, Burton, and Loisy, have resulted in the reaffirmation of the so-called Theory of Two Sources. According to this theory Mark is the earliest of the Synoptic Gospels, and served, in some form, as a documentary source for each of the other two Synoptists, who had, besides Mark, another written source, made up to a large extent of the sayings and teachings of Jesus. The term Logia was formerly much used as a designation of this second source, on the supposition that it was to be identified with the writing to which the church father Papias applied that name, but there is now a general disposition to avoid this usage and to employ some more neutral symbol, like the letter Q (Quelle, “source”).

Fifteen years ago there appeared a volume of some four hundred pages, which bore the modest title, An Outline of Christian Theology. It had originally been prepared by the author, a professor in Hamilton Theological Seminary, for the use of his seminary classes, and, after circulating for some time in the form of typewritten notes, was privately printed for the greater convenience of the users. No attempt was made to advertise the book, but in due time it found its way into the hands of one and another who was interested in theological questions, and when in 1898 it was issued by the author through the ordinary channels, it received from the public an instant and hearty welcome.

In an essay entitled “The Scepticism of Believers,” Leslie Stephen remarks a common confusion between unbelief and contrary belief. The term “belief” is at any historical moment almost invariably used to denote the established belief, that is, the belief supported by authority or by the consensus of opinion; while the term “unbelief” is used to denote dissent from the established belief, even when, as is most often the case, this dissent is itself due to belief. The established belief resists change, and must be attacked, weakened, or destroyed, before it is possible for another belief to get a hearing; hence assenters come to regard dissenters as destructive in their primary intent, and are blinded to the fact that there is another belief at stake, which may be as affirmative and constructive in its own terms as that which prevails. Thus modern religious orthodoxy has condemned as unbelief a certain secular tendency, which really has arisen, not from a love of mischief-making, but from a most devoted confidence in the uniformity of nature, and in the power of man to save himself. It is not wholly unjust to assert, as Leslie Stephen does assert, that, in opposing the free advance of science and of individualism, defenders of “the Faith” have virtually sought to prevent or destroy that faith in the enterprise of civilization which has mainly inspired the progress of the last two centuries.

In the instrument providing for the endowment of the series of lectures which bears his name Judge Dudley directed that the third lecture should be for “The Detecting and Convicting and Exposing the Idolatry of the Romish Church, their Tyranny, Usurpations, Damnable Heresies, Fatal Errors, Abominable Superstitions, and other Crying Wickednesses in their high places; and finally that the Church of Rome is that mystical Babylon, that man of sin, that apostate Church, spoken of in the New Testament.”

It is upon this topic that I am to speak this evening. The times have changed since the lectureship was founded in 1750. Many of the animosities of the fathers are no longer felt by us, and particularly in religious matters union has taken the place of division, sympathy of hostility, coöperation of rivalry. We are interested in other things. Our sense of proportion has changed. We are farther away from the days of persecution, and less nervous about many movements and institutions that our fathers dreaded unspeakably. The spirit of toleration has taken hold upon us all, and Protestants can think and speak kindly of men of other faiths, and can coöperate gladly and heartily with them as opportunity offers for the promotion of good ends dear to them all.

With this spirit I am myself in cordial sympathy, and it is as an historian, not as a polemic, that I shall treat the subject assigned me. I wish to consider as dispassionately as possible the great system that still remains essentially unchanged, in spite of all the vicissitudes that have overtaken the affairs of men since Judge Dudley made his will a hundred and fifty years ago.

In the year 1794 Charles François Dupuis brought out his Origine de tous les cultes, ou religion universelle, a work that made a great stir in its day. His object, he explains, was not to express his own religious views, but simply to describe the opinions of the ancients. The religion of antiquity he represents as the recognition of the divinity of the universe, the heavenly bodies playing the chief rôle; all ancient cosmogonies, with heaven and earth, all the apparatus of religion (ritual, processions, images), and all myths were derived from sun, moon, planets, and constellations. The beast-forms and plant-forms of the Egyptian deities, for example, were copied from the constellations into which men had divided the starry sky; the zodiac was associated with the sun as a cause of mundane phenomena, and the division of the sky into twelve parts gave vogue and sacredness to the number twelve among Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks; the sun was the chief god—it was called the right eye of the world, and the moon the left eye; from the victory of the sun over darkness and winter sprang the idea of a Restorer of the world, a Saviour. He remarks also that the ancient Chaldeans were distinguished for their achievements in astronomy, and that from them the knowledge of these sciences was carried to the West. They taught that the heavenly bodies controlled mundane destinies, and, according to Diodorus, that the planets were the interpreters of the will of the gods.

As our buildings today bear the impress of Greek genius in architecture, and our law in great measure holds the form that was given it under the Roman Empire, so do religion and morals with us still feel the influence of the Jew. Through Christianity that strain of spiritual life which had been nurtured under a great line of Hebrew prophets was taken over to and planted in the new soil of Graeco-Roman life: so that its heroes finally displaced the heroes of classical antiquity and its forms of thought, in part at least, superseded those which belonged by natural inheritance to pagan faith. The beginner of the movement which accomplished this change was Jesus of Nazareth, who thus made himself one of the foremost figures in the world's affairs.

As part of this process of getting itself rooted in a new habitat, and by way of adaptation to alien conditions, Christianity underwent considerable modification of form. First it was worked over into somewhat different shape in the mind of Paul. Petrine Christianity, no doubt, was held strictly within Judaic lines, and was designed only for “home consumption.” The Pauline form introduced changes which better fitted it for a “foreign market.” A later and more profound change was made by those influences which our fourth gospel represents. In this new guise it was such a different thing that it became thenceforth, almost of necessity, a stranger in the house of its birth. These modifications of it, innocently assumed to be its original shape, have lived on till our own day.

And now a new force is being brought to bear upon it whose ultimate effect we cannot wholly measure. The new science of historical criticism has come into this field, possessing an equipment and a determination which blind tradition will be unable to resist. One of the first facts to attract its attention was that change of form which Christianity had undergone in getting itself transformed from Eastern to Western life; and one of its first problems was to retranslate these later versions of its message back into a primitive gospel.

Opinions as to the nature and origin of Christianity have been profoundly modified during rather recent years by the increased attention that has been given to the circumstances of the society within which its work was to be done. It is fortunate that these inquiries have been undertaken by scholars whose primary interest has not been to defend Christianity, but only to understand the conditions that necessarily determined its forms both of organization and of faith. Into their studies Christianity entered only as one element among many others, and it is this fact that gives to their results their peculiar value for the history of Christianity itself.

With the ultimate purpose of helping to clarify thought on the subject of the supernatural, the present essay is a study of usage mostly in Christian history and particularly of today. It therefore notes the meanings which seem to be assigned to the word and to its synonyms and associates; and it includes some criticism of usage, according to the accepted laws of thought, such as may contribute to the purpose of clarification.

During the last five hundred years there has been taking place throughout the world a fundamental revolution in government,—first as to its actual condition, and secondly as to its theory; for that and not the reverse is always the order of development. Up to that time in each community the mass of people, with rare exceptions, had been governed by a few, with one man at their head. The change, which came slowly, consisted in the rise of the governed from passive acquiescence into active participation, the recognition of this as rightful, and the growth of ability among the people for governing. This up-swelling tide, surging everywhere, has been defined by one of its ablest exponents as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In 1866 a certain clergyman in New York wrote a discourse to which he gave this characteristic title: “Christian Education the Remedy for the Growing Ungodliness of the Times.” The production won in its day sufficient fame to be preserved as a pamphlet in the Harvard Library; but there it has long remained unsought, its presumptions of finality dependent at last, for even a bare reading, on some whim of historical curiosity. One need not so much as glance at the discourse to know why it lies, with many a like effort, quite forgotten. The title tells the story of its dogmatic temper, its easy ignorance of ends and means, its lack of insight into childhood. The point of view is naïvely, comfortably, loftily external: it recognizes no great problem in its subject, no need for new data, new thought, new purposes. Discourses of that sort are not written now—or, if written, not preserved.

With every year, to be sure, far more is printed on the same general topic than was ever printed in the sixties. Even the inattentive lay reader cannot escape contemporary discussion of religious education; but the modern discourses are of a new kind. The Poole's Index list of magazine articles under Religious Education shows this growth and change with striking concreteness. Beginning in 1802, the Index for eighty years includes only fifteen references to the subject, all of which are serenely general in character. “Religious Education for the Masses”; “The Religious Education of a Family”; “The Religious Education of Children,” these titles fairly represent the kind of treatment which this topic inspired during the nineteenth century. The record in the Index for the four years beginning in 1902 offers a sharp contrast. There are thirty references under Religious Education, and of these a large majority bear titles which show that they are scientific in temper. They are intensive studies in the history or the principles of religious education, or formulations of definite problems in its theory or practice. These titles are characteristic: “Religious Education before the Reformation”; “The History of Religious Education in the Public Schools of Massachusetts”; “The Need of a Professional Consciousness in Religious Education”; “The Philosophy of the New Movement for Religious Education”; “The Place of Action in Religious Education;” “Scientific Aspects of Religious Education”; “The Relation of Religious Education to Science.”

In considering the present religious conditions and prospects in Germany, the main problem appears to be this: Can the church, which up to the eighteenth century had been the chief promoter and embodiment of culture, remain and be preserved over against a culture which has now become independent, or is this independent modern culture destined to sweep the church away? And if the latter be the case, what then will become of religion? This problem of the prospects of religion and church in the modern world has nowhere more significance than in Germany; for there, as nowhere else, an immensely rich and highly developed intellectual culture stands absolutely independent over against a strong and living church. Neither in France nor in England nor in America is the issue so burning as in Germany. In France secular culture faces no strong church filled with profound spiritual forces, but an outgrown institution governed by Roman spiritual tyranny; and therefore it has triumphed over the church. In England and America secular culture has not developed in opposition to the church, but is in the main friendly to it. In Germany, however, national culture since the eighteenth century has stood outside of the church and in a certain opposition to it; Goethe, who in his own person embodies our national culture, took a cool und unsympathetic attitude towards the church, and so have in a greater or less degree the other creators of our modern thought,—Kant and Schiller, the Darwinists and Karl Marx, the Naturalists and Nietzsche, the Liberals of 1848 and Bismarck. On the other hand the church made very great progress in the nineteenth century. German theologians—Schleiermacher, Strauss, Baur, Ritschl, Harnack—utilized for the church the best spiritual results of modern culture, and gave to German theology undisputed leadership in the Protestant world; piety in the church was profoundly deepened and enriched by Schleiermacher, Claus Harms, Löhe, Wichern, von Bodelschwing, Stöcker; while the external power of the church increased greatly in consequence of the restoration movement, the political leadership of the pious Hohenzollerns, and the establishment of a new and more democratic ecclesiastical constitution with synods and presbyteries.

In a discussion of the great christological passages of the Synoptic Gospels we have seen that the messianism of Jesus was pre-eminently ethical and religious. His attitude toward current expectations of Israel's redemption resembled that of the prophets in being critical rather than originative. He ethicized and spiritualized a hope which in its origins and in its undisciplined popular manifestations had little to differentiate it from the expectations entertained by heathen worshippers of their tribal or national divinities.

That a coöperative commonwealth is on the way, it would be rash to assert; but that forces tending in such a direction are gathering strength is even more evident in England and on the continent of Europe than with us. While discussions of socialist theory on economic and political lines increase and multiply another line of thought suggests itself to people preëminently interested in the spiritual rather than in the economic conditions of the race. Supposing a socialist organization of society realized, what would be the reaction on the ethical and religious consciousness,—on creed, on worship, on conduct?

It is the purpose of this paper to suggest a few points on the second of these themes,—the probable future of religion under socialism. The subject is less remote from present interests than appears: hypothetical though it be, the attitude of many people toward socialism itself will depend on their conclusions on this point.

The theory now for many years held by most critical students of the Old Testament is that the early narratives from Genesis to Kings are composite, and, further, that the sources from which they were compiled belong to different periods in Hebrew history, having been produced by authors, or schools of authors, occupying various points of view, but so related to one another that their contributions, when arranged in chronological order, reflect the course of events for many successive generations and the progressive development of ethical and religious culture among the Chosen People.

In order to establish a negative answer to this question, one would simply have to show either that pragmatism itself is not tenable, or else that it can afford theology no adequate support. To establish the affirmative, however, it would be necessary to show in the first place that pragmatism is in itself tenable, and in the second place that it is compatible with and gives some real support to theology. But for the would-be theological pragmatist himself neither of these positions can be readily accepted as established without the other. On the one hand he cannot say that pragmatism supports theology unless it is itself tenable, for, if untenable, so far from being the philosophical basis of theology, it cannot be a real basis for anything. On the other hand the person who finds religion essential cannot, on pragmatic principles, accept pragmatism, if it is not at least compatible with the fundamentals of religion and theology—unless, indeed, he needs pragmatism more than he needs religion. While beginning, then, by inquiring whether pragmatism is tenable or not, it must be recognized that a final affirmative answer cannot be given until we have considered the question of the bearing of pragmatism upon the essential affirmations of religious faith.

The provisions for the fourth of the series of Dudleian Lectures are as follows:

“The fourth and last lecture I would have for the maintaining, explaining, and proving the validity of the ordination of ministers or pastors of the churches, and so their administration of the sacraments or ordinances of religion as the same hath been practiced in New England, from the first beginning of it, and so continued at this day. Not that I would in any wise invalidate Episcopal Ordination, as it is commonly called and practiced in the Church of England; but I do esteem the method of ordination as practiced in Scotland, at Geneva, and among the dissenters in England, and in the churches in this country, to be very safe, Scriptural and valid; and that the great Head of the church, by his blessed spirit, hath owned, sanctified, and blessed them accordingly, and will continue to do so to the end of the World. Amen.”

The topic of Sacerdotalism is naturally involved in the terms of this Foundation.

The term “Sacerdotalism” has been defined as “the doctrine that the man who ministers in sacred things, the institution through which and the office or order in which he ministers, the acts he performs, the sacraments and rites he celebrates, are so ordained and constituted of God as to be the peculiar channels of His grace, essential to true worship, necessary to the being of religion, and the full realization of the religious life.”