warmth, and beauty-when we are told to do right because it is the will of God. And even that principle is brought far nearer us-speaks with a human voice-leads us with human guidance with 'bands of a man'—when we are bidden do right because Christ has redeemed us. Yet all these principles are the same—barer and fuller statements of the same thing; and, being men, we must translate our thoughts backwards and forwards from one to the other, if we are to think truly and wisely. Duty meets us in developed forms in the mutual offices of a Christian society, quickened and stimulated by Christian faith. But what meets us is always essentially duty.

History declares only too plainly the insufficiency of this type of Christianity. Such obsolete forms of error as sacramentarianism push it aside with the promise of a more many-sided though not a healthier life. Ethical motive is not supplied by it; young Evangelicals go to Carlyle, go to George Eliot, go to Ruskin, for stronger food than the wonted milk-and-water'sincere' milk, let us grant, so far as the milk goes, but sadly blue. I cannot think Jesus Christ meant His Church to be a little walled-in province of the moral world, where they keep up old, graceful customs, and let the gadding world go its own way. I cannot think Jesus Christ meant to found an asylum for priests and women, while the active moral service of mankind should be done by outsiders. We have a new type of Christian life yet to see a new idea of Christian service yet to form. Christians ought to be at the front of the column, in the heart of the battle.

And therefore, while it would be impiety and irreverence to disown the truths of evangelicalism—while it would be a crime against the brethren as well as against God to speak lightly of sin or lightly of forgiveness-it would be perhaps greater impiety and grosser irreverence to narrow ourselves to that fragment of Christian life which has found room in the Church, or in the revival. The secularities of modern lifethe very scepticisms of modern thought—are at least as full of Christ's influence as much that calls itself faith and piety.

In Christ's name, we lay claim to the whole truth, and break through the barriers of the evangelical tradition. It is individualist; Christ's Gospel is social. It is too often sentimental; Christ's Gospel is moral.

(4) For the half-Christianity of the emotions I may refer to Ritschl's account of the German Aufklärung. According to his searching and fundamentally just criticism, that movement erred in regarding as truths of natural religion, truths which were really revealed in the work of Christ; but yet the Aufklärung had the merit of making these truths more prominent. We may add that such piety does not feel its true connection with the moral or redemptive process. Doubtless the principle is true, in a high and transcendental sense, that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But this is a truth for me only if I am yielding myself to God's guidance, and, along with my fellows, am doing my best among the grave evils of this actual world. And Christ is the synthesis of my faith and my obedience the source of strength in either.

(5) We now reach redemption, or the region of duty. Here it is to be expected that we should find many schools devoting themselves to corners of truth which are recognisably Christian. Without trying to be systematic, let us look at several of these schools.

(a) It will not surprise any thoughtful reader that I should again refer to Matthew Arnold's position. For he is peculiarly the man, among sceptics, who is devoted to the moral teaching of Christ. Never was there a misbeliever or half-believer to whom Jesus Christ meant so much,-never one to whom the Bible was so dear. We might almost say of Arnold, that, while denying the truths of natural religion, he believed in a special revelation of moral and spiritual truth made through Israel and perfected by Jesus Christ. He cut off, under the name of Aberglaube,' the supernatural in all its forms; denied, with mockery, the personality of God; denied the possibility that we should be assured of a life after death. But, having thus cut into the quick of Christianity again and

6

again, he assured us that the mangled remains in his hands were infinitely precious-far more precious than all the world besides far more precious than the unmutilated Gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God. Though he will not believe in the God of providence and grace, yet Arnold believes in providence, or grace, as an objective influence— traces its working in history-hails it as his God. Thus there is in him a certain religious sense of dependence; nor is this, as with the Pantheists, a merely notional thing; it is a moral thing. Granted he must be a sceptic, Arnold's tour de force is honourable to his heart, and honourable to the serious qualities of the English race. His positive teaching is truth-is Christian truth-suggestive, helpful, edifying so far as it goes. He 'thought clear' and 'spoke true,' if he did not always 'feel deep'; for his was a sweet and pure, though not a very profound or spacious, moral nature. We cannot wonder that minds, tired of the big empty words of declamatory apologetics, tired of hearing men beat the air with arguments meant to support foregone dogmatic conclusions, should turn with relief to Arnold's sincerity, paying the price even of scepticism in order to escape from conventionalities and exaggerations.

In some respects, Arnold ought to be our teacher. At his disbelief in the personal God-whom Scriptures call 'the living God'—we can only express our sad amazement. That any one should deny our Father in heaven with a light heart and a flippant tongue, is strange and sorrowful. But Arnold's rebuke of our 'insane licence of affirmation' is too well deserved. It is true and important that the Bible is literature, not science, though that is not the whole truth; and for calling us back to experience-for bidding us verify what we believe-Arnold deserves our warm thanks. But, as a whole, his doctrine is a tour de force-a whim. 'Morality' was not 'given' in Israel without 'Aberglaube'; it was given as a message from Jehovah; it was 'new-given' as a message from our Father. The Christian ideals which Arnold loved draw their strength from supernatural beliefs. In the midst of

་

Aberglaube,' it may be possible to form a sect of cultured minds who shall aspire after the practical ideals of the Gospels, while denying the theories implied in them. But either a too complete victory of his own opinions, or a more earnest morality awaking the sense of sin, or a deeper spirit of religion awaking the soul's thirst for God, would destroy Arnold's school. He himself, I strongly suspect, harboured the 'Aberglaube' of the hope of immortality. And his finesse will never touch the masses of the people.

(b) The study of sociology makes another contribution to our ideals of conduct; and it too, I think, should be claimed as a half-Christianity. I do not refer to the detail of practical theories. The Gospel has not committed itself to any special social arrangements. It explicitly leaves them to our own management, holding us responsible for the application of Christian principles to all the details of practice. But sociology does rest upon a moral principle, and therefore ultimately on Christian faith, the guardian and champion of the moral consciousness. Sociology presupposes the subordination of the individual to society. Even the theory of laissez faire is advocated in the interest not of the individual, but of the social organism. Now the supremacy of the public weal is a moral postulate. It does not appear on the face of things that society is an organism; the moral consciousness within us leads to the discovery. And, if society be not to us a moral organism, embracing morally sacred individuals, our sociology will prove a corrupting and not an antiseptic influence. But, if we keep morally right, then I think it is an eminently Christian service to teach the dependence of each man upon the social whole; and all detailed discoveries in sociology will help us in doing our Christian duty. Society is the sphere of God's working; His Holy Spirit makes us love one another, and live one in the other. This is nothing else than Christianity upon its social side. If only we do not take God's sphere of working for God Himself-deny the Deity because we have found His empty temple!

(c) Another half-Christianity is that which fastens on the Christian law of self-sacrifice for the individual, as if that were coincident with the whole of the Gospel. We have already seen how far that position is true,-viz. that a complete spiritual ethic came first from Christ, and that human ethic, when fully developed, necessarily involves self-sacrifice. Besides this, the Christian's attitude of submission towards God's will in providence is a further self-denial. But the effort made by Hegelianism to ground the law of self-sacrifice on the alleged dialectic law of progress is a very dubious matter. Even in logic, the alleged progress by negativity is ill made out. And, in ethics, what does it mean? It means much to us, no doubt --because we have a moral consciousness within us, and because we have Christian teaching without us. Hence we interpret the maxim die to live' by what we know of actual moral realities, and of our duty in regard to them. The very exaggeration of the phrase may make it more impressive, and in so far a better phrase. All parable, all metaphor, all poetry in the service of morals, is due to this human expediency of alloying truth with error to make it work better. First-rate men usually speak thus-freely and without danger. They know that their pictures are only types. But alas! the second, third, and fourth-rate men come on the scenes-get caught in their predecessors' tropes-treat pictures au grand sérieux— and produce Calvinisms, Natural Laws in the Spiritual World,' and Principles of Negativity. What could the maxim die to live' do for a learner? It might possibly lead him to a Japanese happy despatch-to Christian self-denial it could not lead him. This law of duty must not be separated from the moral consciousness, which enunciates and interprets it. And the moral consciousness, in its healthy normality, turns out to be the Christian consciousness.

X.

(6) There is yet one other element in the Christian ideal. I do not know that any system of half-Christianity appropriates