A preacher cites a lecture of mine, delivered nearly half a century ago, a part of which has had the honour of being embalmed in the work of that most eminent theologian, the late Dean Westcott, on "The Historic Faith." I turned rather nervously to the lecture to see what it was that I had said. Not that I should have been much shocked had I found that my opinions had even been completely changed. Since that lecture was delivered science and criticism have wrought a revolution in theological belief, likely, as it appears to me, to be regarded hereafter as the most momentous revolution in history. With the whole passage cited by Dean Westcott I will not burden the columns of The Sun, but part of it is this:—

"The type of character set forth in the Gospel history is an absolute embodiment of love, both in the way of action and affection, crowned by the highest possible exhibition of it in an act of the most transcendent self-devotion to the interest of the human race. This being the case, it is difficult to see how the Christian morality can ever be brought into antagonism with the moral progress of mankind; or how the Christian type of character can ever be left behind by the course of human development, lose the allegiance of the moral world, or give place to newly emerging and higher ideals. This type, it would appear, being perfect, will be final. It will be final not as precluding future history, but as comprehending it. The moral efforts of all ages, to the consummation of the world, will be efforts to realize this character and to make it actually, as it is potentially, universal. While these efforts are being carried on under all the various circumstances of life and society, and under all the various moral and intellectual conditions attaching to particular men, an infinite variety of characters, personal and national, will be produced; a variety ranging from the highest human grandeur down to the very verge of the grotesque. But these characters, with all their variations, will go beyond their sources and their ideal only as the rays of light go beyond the sun. Humanity, as it passes through phase after phase of the historical movement, may advance indefinitely in excellence; but its advance will be an indefinite approximation to the Christian type. A divergence from that type, to whatever extent it may take place, will not be progress, but debasement and corruption. In a moral point of view, in short, the world may abandon Christianity, but it can never advance beyond it. This is not a matter of authority, or even of revelation. If it is true, it is a matter of reason as much as anything in the world."

I went on to dwell on the freedom of the Christian type of character as embodied in the Founder of Christianity from peculiarities of nation, race, or sex which might have derogated from its perfection as a type of pure humanity. In those days I believed in revelation. But my argument was not from revelation, but from ethics and history. The undertaking of Christianity to convert mankind to a fraternal and purely beneficent type of character and enfold men in a universal brotherhood, baffled and perverted although the effort has been in various ways, appears to have no parallel in ethical history. There is none in the Greek philosophers or the Roman Stoics, high as some of them may soar in their way. Aristotle's ideal man is perfect in its statuesque fashion, but it is not fraternal; it is not even philanthropic. Nor does the Christian character or the effort to create it depart with belief in dogma. Do not men who have totally renounced the dogma still cultivate a character in its gentleness and benevolence essentially Christian?

Theory, I have none. I plead, on a footing with the nine thousand correspondents of the Daily Telegraph of London, for thoroughgoing allegiance to the truth, emancipation of the clerical intellect from tests, and comprehension in the inquiry not only of the material, but of the higher or spiritual nature of man, including his aspiration to progress, of which there cannot be said to be any visible sign in brutes, whatever rudiments of human faculties and affections they may otherwise display. But though I have no theory, I cannot help having a conception, and my present conception of the historical relation of Christianity and its Founder to humanity and human progress does not seem to me to be so different from what it was half a century ago as when I came to compare the two I expected to find it. It seems to me still that history is a vast struggle, with varying success, toward the attainment of moral perfection, of which, if the advent of Christianity furnished the true ideal, it may be deemed in a certain sense a revelation. Assuredly it may if in this most mysterious world there is, beneath all the conflict of good with evil, a spirit striving toward good and destined in the end to prevail. If there is not such a spirit, if all is matter and chance, we, can only say, What a spectacle is History!

January 20th, 1907.