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Bible, or in antiquity, or was more conformable to common-sense and order. These are comparatively innocent and unexciting propositions. The distracting thought lay in the conviction that one or other was absolutely perfect, and was alone essential to the Christian religion. It is for the rectification of this misplaced exclusiveness that we owe a deep debt of gratitude to such men as Hooker in England and Leighton in Scotland. There is much to be said for Presbyterianism; there is much to be said for Episcopacy. But there is much more to be said for the secondary, temporary, accidental character of both, when compared with the general principles to which they each minister; and in the light of these principles we shall view more justly and calmly the real merits and demerits both of bishops and of presbyters, than is possible for those who, like your Scottish or my English ancestors, upheld the constitution of either Church as in all times and under all circumstances irrevocably indispensable. What is true with regard to those two leading distinctions is still more applicable to all debates on Patronage, Ecclesiastical Courts, Vestments, Postures. There is a difference, there is, if we choose so to express it, a right and a wrong, in each case. The appointment by a multitude may be preferable to the appointment by a single individual; the appointment by a responsible layman may be preferable to the appointment by a synod; a black gown may, in certain circumstances, be superior to a white one, or a white one to a red one. But far more important than any of these positions is the persuasion that, at most, all of these things, the nomination, the jurisdiction, the dress, the attitude of ministers, are but means towards an end -very distant means towards a very distant end. And in measure as we appreciate this due proportion, scandals will diminish, and the Church of the future will leap forward on its course, bounding like a ship that

has thrown over its super-charge of cargo, or quelled an intestine mutiny.

Or take a yet graver question-the mode of regarding those physical wonders which are called miracles. There is no doubt an increasing difficulty on this subject a difficulty enhanced by the incredulity which now besets educated sections of mankind, and by the credulity which has taken hold with a fresh tenacity on the half-educated. It is a question on which neither science nor religion, I venture to think, has yet spoken the last word. It is a complex problem, imperatively demanding that careful definition of which I spoke before, and the calm survey of the extraordinary incidents not only of biblical but of ecclesiastical history, whether Catholic or Protestant. the true aspects of such physical portents as have been connected with the history of religion, there is much to be argued. But on, these arguments I do not enter. The point on which I would desire to fix your attention is this that whatever view we take of these "signs and wonders," their relative proportion as grounds of argument has altogether changed. There is a well-known saying, like other famous axioms of Christian life, erroneously ascribed to St. Augustine"We believe the miracles for the sake of the Gospels, not the Gospels for the sake of the miracles." Fill your

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1 It fell to my lot two years ago to track out the story of another famous maxim, which had been really the maxim of Rupertus Meldenius, an obscure German divine of the 17th century, but in like manner, falsely ascribed to Augustine, "In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas." See "Address on Richard Baxter," in Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1876. The saying in question is sometimes quoted as Augustine's, but Augustine's, but on inquiry I find that there is no ground for ascribing it to him. The nearest approach to it is the passage from the treatise De Unitate Ecclesiæ, c. 19, quoted in Archbishop Trench's work on the Miracles. 66 Quaecumque talia [i.e. the Donatist Miracles] in Catholicâ [Ecclesiâ] fiunt, ideo sunt approbata, quia in Catholicâ fiunt; non ideo manifestatur Catholica, quia hæc in eâ fiunt." This, however, is a very inadequate statement of the principle, if indeed it be not

minds with this principle, view it in all its consequences, observe how many maxims both of the Bible and of philosophy conform to it, and you will find yourselves in a position which will enable you to treat with equanimity half the perplexities of this subject. However valuable the record of extraordinary incidents may be in other respects, however impressively they may be used to convey the truths of which they are confessedly the symbols, they have, in the eyes of the very men whom we most desire to convince, become stumbling blocks and not supports. External evidence has with most thinking men receded to the background, internal evidence has come to the front. Let

us learn by experience to use with moderation arguments which, at least for the present, have lost their force. Let us acknowledge that there are greater miracles, more convincing miracles, than those which appeal only to our sense of astonishment.

"The

greatest of miracles," as a venerable statesman has observed, is the character of Christ. The world was converted, in the first instance, not by appeals to physical, but to moral prodigies. Let us recognise that the preternatural is not the supernatural, and that, whether the preternatural is present or absent, the true supernatural may and will remain unshaken.

IV. And what is the true supernatural? What are those essentials in

merely the polemical and untenable assertion that, whatever miracles are wrought by heretics for that very reason go for nothing-the exact opposite of our Lord's words, Mark ix. 38.

The substance of the sentiment, however, has been repeatedly expressed by writers, who, if less famous than Augustine, have penetrated far more profoundly into the root of the question. Not to mention Coleridge, Arnold, and Milman, it may suffice to quote from the work of Archbishop Trench to which reference has just been made. "Miracles,' says Fuller, the swaddling clothes of the infant Church ;' and, we may add, not the garments of the full-grown.' (Trench on the Miracles, 51.) "It may be more truly said, that we believe the miracles for Christ's sake, than Christ for the miracles' sake." (Ibid. 103.)

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religion which have been the purifying salt of Christianity hitherto, and will be the illuminating light hereafter; which, raising us above our natural state, point to a destiny above this material world-this commonplace existence The great advance which, on the whole, theology has made in these latter centuries, and which it may be expected still more to make in the centuries which are to come is this, that the essential, the supernatural elements of religion are recognised to be those which are moral and spiritual. These are its chief recommendations to the reason of mankind. Without them, it would have long ago perished. So far as it has lost sight of these, it has dwindled and faded. With these, it may overcome the world. Other opportunities will occur in which I shall hope to draw out at length both the means by which these spiritual elements of Christianity may be carried on from generation to generation, and also the characteristics which distinguish them from like elements in inferior religions. It is enough to have indicated that in the supremacy of these, and in their supremacy alone, lies the hope of the future. To love whatever is truly lovable, to detest whatever is truly detestable, to believe that the glory and divinity of goodness is indestructible, and that there has been, is, and will be a constant enlargement and elevation of our conceptions of it-furnishes a basis of religion which, whilst preserving all the best parts of the sacred records and of Christian worship and practice, is a guarantee at once for its perpetuity and for its growth.

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Observe also that in proportion to our insistence on the moral greatness of Christianity as its chief evidence and chief essence, there accrues an external weight of authority denied to the lower and narrower, but granted to the higher and wider, views of

1 In the two sermons preached in the College Church and in the Parish Church of St. Andrews on the following Sunday, March 18th.

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religion. When we look over the long annals of ecclesiastical history, we shall often find that it is not within the close range of the so-called orthodox, but from the outlying camp of the so-called heretic or infidel, that the champions of the true faith have come. Not from

the logic of Calvin, or the rhetoric of Bossuet, but from the great scholars and philosophers of the close of the last century and the beginning of this, have been drawn the best portraitures of Christianity and its Founder. A clearer glimpse into the nature of the Deity was granted to Spinoza, the excommunicated Jew of Amsterdam, than to the combined forces of Episcopacy and Presbytery in the Synod of Dordrecht. When we cast our eyes over the volumes which, perhaps, of all others, give us at once the clearest prospect of the progress of humanity, and the saddest retrospect of the mistakes of theology-Mr. Lecky's History of European Morals and of Rationalism-when we read there of the eradication of deeply rooted beliefs which, under the guidance of ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical rulers, were supposed to be essential to the existence of religion-witchcraft, persecution, intolerance, prohibition of commercial intercourse-if for one moment our faith is staggered by seeing that these beneficent changes were brought about by States in defiance of Churches, by philosophers in defiance of divines, it is revived when we perceive that the end towards which those various agencies worked is the same as

1 This statement would be justified by a comparison of the best sayings of Spinoza with the best sayings of the Synod of Dort. The former are still read with admiration and instruction, even by those who widely differ from Spinoza's general teaching. The latter are but little known, even to those who most firmly agree with the theory propounded by the Synod.

It inay also be well to record, over against the anathemas which have been levelled at his name, the epithet by which his humbler acquaintances called him immediately after his death, "The blessed Spinoza," and the description given of him by Schleiermacher, "He was a man full of religion and of the Holy Ghost."

that desired by the best of the theologians; that what Mr. Lecky calls the secularisation of politics is in fact the Christianisation of theology. That view of man, of the universe, and of God which by a recent able writer is called "Natural Religion" is in fact Christianity in its larger and wider aspect. The hope of immortality, which beyond any other belief of man carries us out of the world of sense, was eagerly defended by Voltaire and Rousseau, no less than by Butler and Paley. Paley. The serious view of duty, the admiration of the heroic and the generous and the just, the belief in the transcendent value of the spiritual and the unseen, are cherished possessions of the philosophers of our generation, no less than of the missionaries and saints of the generation that is past. The Goliath of the nineteenth century, as was once well observed by a Professor of your own, is not on the opposite side of the valley-he is in our midst; he is on our side: he is not to be slain by sling and stone, but he is if we did but know it-our friend, our ally, our champion. there is a constantly increasing tendency, as Mr. Lecky says, to identify the Bible and conscience, this is in other words, as he himself well states the case, a tendency to place Christianity in a position "in which we have the strongest evidence of the triumph of the conceptions of its Founder," a position in which by the nature of the case the doubters will be constantly diminishing and the intelligent believers constantly increasing.

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It is indeed one hope not only for the solution, but for the pacific solution of our theological problems, that in this, more than in any previous age, in our country more than in most countries, the critical and the conservative overlap, interweave, and shade off into

1 See a series of most instructive articles in Macmillan's Magazine, on "Natural Religion," between February, 1875, and April, 1877. 2 Professor Campbell.

3 History of Rationalism, i. 384, ii. 247, 385.

each other-"Ionians and Dorians on both sides." The intelligent High Churchman, the moderate Free Churchman, melts almost imperceptibly into the inquiring scholar. The generous Puritan or Nonconformist is more than one third a Latitudinarian, perhaps even half a Churchman. Few philosophers have so entirely parted with the natural feelings of the human heart, or the natural aspirations of the human mind, as to be indifferent to the sane or insane direction of so mighty an instrument for good or evil as the religious instinct of mankind. And thus the basis of a reasonable theology,even if shaken for the moment by the frenzy of partisans, has intrinsically become wider and more solid. The lines drawn by sects and parties do not correspond with the deeper lines of human nature and of history. A distinguished theological statesman some time since drew out what he called a chart of religious thought. But there was one school of thought which was noticed only to be dismissed. And yet this school or tendency is one which happily runs across all the others and contains within itself, not indeed all, but many of the finest elements of Christendom-the backbone of Christian life, the lamp of Christian thought. We often hear of the reconciliation of theology and science. The phrase is well intended, and has been used as the title of an excellent book. But it does not exactly describe the case. What we need is the recognition that so far as they meet, Theology and Science are one and indivisible. Whatever enlarges our ideas of nature enlarges our ideas of God. Whatever gives us a deeper insight into the nature of the Author of the universe gives us a deeper insight into the secrets of the universe itself. Whatever is bad theology is also bad science; whatever is good science is also good theology. In like manner, we hear of the reconciliation of religion and morality. The answer is the same; they are one and indivisible. Whatever tends to elevate the virtue, the

purity, the generosity of mankind, is high religion; whatever debases the mind, or corrupts the heart, or hardens the conscience, under whatever pretext, however specious, is low religion, is infidelity of the worst sort. There are, according to the old Greek proverb, many who have borne the thyrsus, and yet not been inspired prophets. There are many also who have been inspired prophets without wearing the prophetic mantle, or bearing the mystic wand; and these, whether statesmen, philosophers, poets, have been amongst the friends, conscious or unconscious, of the religion of the future; they are citizens, whether registered or unregistered, in the Jerusalem which is above, and which is free.

And now, with all this cloud of witnesses, what is our duty in this interval of waiting, of transition? What is our duty and what is yours, O students of St. Andrews, O future pastors of the famous Church of Scotland, O rising generation of that strong Scottish nation which in former times was the firmest bulwark of a national, Protestant, reasonable Christianity? You, no doubt, in this secluded corner of our island, feel the breath of the spirit of the age. How are you to avoid being carried about with every gust of its fitful doctrine? How are you to gather into your sails the bounding breeze of its invincible strength? There is nothing to make you despair of your Church. It may have to pass through many transformations; but a Church which has not only stood the rude shocks of so many secessions and disruptions, but continues to gather into its ranks the most liberal tendencies of the nation, is too great an institution to be sacrificed to the exigencies of party, if only it be true to that fine maxim of Archbishop Leighton's, of leaving to others "to preach up the times," and claiming for itself "to preach up eternity." The principle of a national Establishment, which Chalmers vindicated in the interests of Christian philanthropy has in these latter days more and more commended itself in the interests of

Christian liberty. The enlarging, elevating influence infused into a religious institution by its contact, however slight, with so magnificent an ordinance as the British commonwealth; the value of resting a religious union not on some special doctrine or institution, but on the highest welfare of the whole community;--these principles are not less, but more appreciated now than they were in a less civilised age. It is the growing conviction of all reflecting minds that there is no ground in the nature of things or in the precepts of the Christian religion for the sharp division which divines used to draw between the spiritual and secular, for the curious fancy which represented all which belonged to ecclesiastical matters as holy, all which belonged to the state as worldly. In proportion as those larger and nobler hopes of religion, of which I have been speaking, penetrate into all the communions of this country, the provincial and retrograde distinctions which have been stereotyped amongst us will fade away; and the policy of improving and reforming institutions, instead of blindly destroying or blindly preserving them, will regain the hold which as late as the first half of this century it retained on the intelligence and conscience of the nation.

There is perhaps a danger which threatens the Church of Scotland, in common with all the Churches of Christendom-the apprehension which we sometimes hear expressed, that the more gifted and cultivated minds of the coming generation shrink from the noble mission, because of the supposed restraints of the clerical profession. Far more dismal than any secession of Old Lights or New Lights would be the secession of the vigorous intellects and nobler natures which of old time made the Scottish Church, though poor in wealth, rich in the best gifts of God. But it is precisely this tendency which it is in your own power to cure or to prevent. The attractions of the Christian ministry, the opportunities which it offers of untried usefulness, are not

less but greater, in proportion as the questions of religion involve a larger and deeper sweep of ideas than when they ran within the four corners of the Confession of Faith. Nor is there any reason in the constitution of your Church, or in the prospects of your country, why that Confession should be an obstacle to the expanding forms of religious life amongst you. I am not here to criticise or disparage that venerable document, which, born under my own roof at Westminster, alone of all such confessions for a short time represented the whole national faith of Great Britain. If it has some defects or exaggerations, from which our own Thirty-nine Articles are free, on the other hand it has soared to higher heights and struck down to deeper depths. Each views theology from a limited experience; and through the colour of the atmosphere, political, philosophical, and military, in which the framers of each were moving.

To

compare the failings and the excellences of the two Confessions, and to illustrate from them the condition of our respective Churches, would be, if this were the time or place, a most interesting and instructive task. Still, even the Confession of the Westminster Assembly is not the essential, is not the best characteristic of the Church of Scotland, any more than the Thirty-nine Articles are the essential or the best characteristic of the Church of England. Nor are the present forms of adhesion to it more sacred than the ancient forms of adhesion to the English standards, which a few years ago, by the timely intervention of the Imperial Legislature, were largely modified, and might at any moment, without any loss to the Church or the State, be altogether abolished.

These however are merely passing and external difficulties, to be surmounted by patriotic policy, by mutual forbearance, by courageous perseverance. Neither for us nor for you are any such restrictions worth a single gifted 1 See Essays on Church and State, 212.

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