Two objections may be taken in limine to the course I propose to follow, and it is proper at this stage that I should give them some attention.

I. The first objection is taken from the standpoint of the theology of feeling, and amounts to a denial of our right to speak of a Christian "Weltanschauung" at all; indeed, to assume that Christianity has a definite doctrinal content of any kind.1 This class of objectors would rule the cognitive element out of religion altogether. Religion, it is frequently alleged, has nothing to do with notions of the intellect, but only with states and dispositions of the heart. Theories and doctrines are no essential part of it, but, on the contrary, a bane and injury and hindrance to its free development and progress. Those who speak thus sometimes do so in the interests of a theory which would seek the essence of religion in certain instincts, or sentiments, or emotions, which are supposed to be universal and indestructible in the human race, and to constitute the imperishable and undecaying substance of all religions--the emotions, e.g., of awe or wonder, or reverence or dependence, awakened by the impression of the immensity or mystery of the universe; while the and beliefs connected with these emotions are regarded as but the accidents of a particular stage of culture, and as possessing no independent value. They are at best the variegated moulds into which this emotional life of the spirit has for the time being poured itself--the envelopes and vehicles through which it seeks for itself preservation and expression. All religions, from this impartial standpoint, Christianity included, are Divine and equally equally human. But even those who recognise a higher origin for the Christian religion sometimes speak of it as if in its original form it was devoid of all definite doctrinal content; or at least as if the doctrinal ideas found in connection with it were only external wrappage and covering, and could be stripped off--altered, manipulated, modified, or dispensed with at the pleasure of the critic--without detriment to the moral and spiritual kernel beneath.1 Christianity is not given up, but there is the attempt to refine and sublimate it till it is reduced to a simple state of sentiment and feeling; to purge it of the theoretic element till nothing is left but the vaguest residuum of doctrinal opinion. Agreeing with this party in their aversion to doctrine, yet occupying a distinct standpoint, are the ultra-spirituals, whose naturally mystical bent of mind, and fondness for the hazy and indefinite in theological as in other thinking, predispose them to dwell in the region of cloudy and undefined conceptions.

It scarcely falls within my province to inquire how far this theory holds good in its general application to religion, though even on this broad field it might easily be shown that it involves a number of untenable assumptions, and really contradicts the idea of religion. For what is meant by the assertion that religion consists only in sentiment or feeling, and has nothing to do with doctrinal conceptions? Not, surely, that religion can subsist wholly without ideas, or cognitive apprehension, of some kind. Religion, in the lowest as well as in the highest of its forms is an expression of the relation of the soul to something beyond itself it involves, therefore, not one term, but two; it points to the existence of an object, and implies belief in the reality of that object. The element of idea, therefore,--or, as the Germans would say, "Vorstellung,"--is inseparable from it. No religion has ever been found which did not involve some rudiments of an objective view. We may learn here even from the pessimist Hartmann, who, in an acute analysis of the elements of religion, says, "How true soever it may be that religious feeling forms the innermost kernel of religious life, nevertheless that only is a true religious feeling which is excited through religious representations having a character of objective (if only relative) truth. Religion cannot exist without a religious "Weltanschauung," and this not without the conviction of its transcendental truth."1

Nor, again, can it be contended that, while a cognitive element of some kind must be conceded, religion is indifferent to the character of its ideas--that these have no influence upon the state of sentiment or feelings. The religion of a Thug, e.g., is a very different thing from the religion of a Christian; and will any one say that the ideas with which the two religions are associated--the ideas they respectively entertain of their deities--have nothing to do with this difference? In what do religions differ as higher and lower, if not in the greater or less purity and elevation of the ideas they entertain of the Godhead, and the greater or less purity of the sentiment to which these ideas give birth?

Nor, finally, can it be held that it is a matter of unimportance whether these ideas which are connected with a religion are regarded as true--i.e. whether they are believed to have any objective counterpart. For religion can as little subsist without belief in the reality of its object, as it can dispense with the idea of an object altogether. This is the weakness of subjective religious theories like Feuerbach's, in which religion is regarded as the projection of man s own egoistic consciousness into the infinite; or of those poetic and æsthetic theories of religion which regard the ends of religion as served if only it furnishes man with elevating and inspiring ideals, without regard to the question of how far these ideals relate to an actual object. Ideas on this hypothesis are necessary to religion, and may be ranked as higher and lower, but have only a fictitious or poetic value. They are products of historical evolution,--guesses, speculations, dreams, imaginings, of the human mind in regard to that which from the nature of the case is beyond the reach of direct knowledge, probably is unknowable. They are therefore not material out of which anything can be built of a scientific character; not anything that can be brought to an objective test; not anything verifiable. Their sole value, as said earlier, is to serve as vehicles and support of religious feeling.1 But it is obvious that, on this view, the utility of religious ideas can only last so long as the illusion in connection with them is not dispelled. For religion is more than a mere æsthetic gratification. It implies belief in the existence of a real object other than self, and includes a desire to get into some relation with this object. The mind in religion is in too earnest, a mood to be put off with mere fancies. The moment it dawns on the thoughts of the worshipper that the object he worships has no reality, but is only an illusion or fancy of his own, the moment he is convinced that in his holiest exercises, he is but toying with the creations of his own spirit,--that moment the religious relation is at an end. Neither philosopher nor common man will long continue bowing down to an object in whose actual existence he has ceased to believe.2 Nor is the conclusion which seems to follow from this--that the illusion of religion is one which the progress of knowledge is destined to destroy--evaded by the concession that there is some dim Unknowable, the consciousness of which lies at the basis of the religious sentiment, and which the mind can till please itself by clothing with the attributes of God. For what is there in this indefinite relation to an Unknowable, of which we can only affirm that it is not what we think it to be, to serve the purpose of a religion? And what avails it to personalise this conception of the Absolute, when we know, as before, that this clothing with personal attributes is only objective illusion?

No objection, therefore, can fairly be taken from the side of the general "Science of Religions," to the supposition that a religion may exist which can give us a better knowledge of God than is to be found in the vague and uncertain conjectures and fancies of minds left to their own groping after the Divine. If such a religion exists, furnishing clear and satisfying knowledge of God, His character, will, and ways, His relations to men, and the purposes of His grace, there is plainly great room and need in the world for it; and the consideration of its claims cannot be barred by the assumption that the only valuable elements in any religion must be those which it has in common with all religions--which is the very point in dispute. The only question that can be properly raised is, Whether Christianity is a religion of this nature? And this can only be ascertained by actual inspection.

Turning next to those within the Christian pale who would rule the doctrinal element out of their religion, I confess I find it difficult to understand on what grounds they can justify their procedure. If there is a religion in the world which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of Jesus Christ. It has been frequently remarked that in pagan religions the doctrinal element is at a minimum--the chief thing there is the performance of a ritual.1 But this is precisely where Christianity distinguishes itself from other religions--it does contain doctrine. It comes to men with definite, positive teaching; it claims to be the truth; it bases religion on knowledge, though a knowledge which is only attainable under moral conditions. I do not see how any one can deal fairly with the facts as they lie before us in the Gospels and Epistles, without coming to the conclusion that the New Testament is full of doctrine. The recently founded science of "New Testament Theology," which has already attained to a position of such commanding importance among the theological disciplines, is an unexceptionable witness to the same fact. And this is as it should be. A religion based on mere feeling is the vaguest most unreliable, most unstable of all things. A strong, stable, religious life can be built up on no other ground than that of intelligent conviction. Christianity, therefore, addresses itself to the intelligence as well as to the heart. It sounds plausible indeed to say, Let us avoid all doctrinal subtleties; let as keep to a few plain, easy, simple pro positions, in regard to which there will be general agreement. But, unfortunately, men will think on those deep problems which lie at the root of religious belief--on the nature of God, His character, His relations to the world and men, sin, the means of deliverance from it, the end to which things are moving, and if Christianity does not give them an answer, suited to their deeper and more reflective moods, they will simply put it aside as in adequate for their needs. Everything depends here on what the Revelation of the Bible is supposed to be. If it is a few general elementary truths of religion we are in search of, it may freely be conceded that these might have been given in very simple form. But if we are to have a Revelation such as the Bible professes to convey, a Revelation high as the nature of God, deep as the nature of man, universal as the wants of the race, which is to accompany man through all the ascending stages of hi development and still be felt to be a power and inspiration to him for further progress,--it is absurd to expect that such a Revelation will not have many profound and difficult, things in it, and that it will not afford food for thought in its grandest and highest reaches "Thy judgments are a great deep."1 A religion divorced from earnest and lofty thought has always, down the whole history of the Church, tended to become weak, jejune, and unwholesome; while the intellect, deprived of its rights within religion, has sought its satisfaction without, and developed into godless nationalism.

Christianity, it is sometimes, said by those who represent this view, is a life, not a creed; it is a spiritual system, and has nothing to do with dogmatic affirmations. But this is to confuse two things essentially different--Christianity as an inward principle of conduct, a subjective religious experience, on the one hand, and Christianity as an objective fact, or an historic magnitude, on the other. But can even the life be produced, or can it be sustained and nourished, without knowledge? Here I cannot forbear the remark that it is a strange idea of many who urge this objection in the interests of what they conceive to be a more spiritual form of Christianity, that "spirituality" in a religion is somehow synonymous with vagueness and indefiniteness; that the more perfectly they can vaporise or volatilise Christianity into a nebulous haze, in which nothing can be perceived distinctly, the nearer they bring it to the ideal of a spiritual religion.1 This, it is safe to say, was not Paul's idea of spirituality--he by whom the distinction of "letter" and "spirit" was most strongly emphasised. The region of the spiritual was rather with him, as it is throughout Scripture, the region of the clearest insight and most accurate perception--of full and perfect knowledge ( e0pi/gnwsij ). His unceasing prayer for his converts was, not that their minds might remain in a state of hazy indistinctness, but that God would give them "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of (their) heart enlightened," that they might grow up in this knowledge, till they should "all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."2

An objection to the recognition of doctrine in Christianity may be raised, however, from the side of Christian positivism, as well as from that of Christian mysticism. Christianity, it will be here said, is a fact-revelation--it has its centre in a living in Christ, and not a dogmatic creed. And this in a sense is true. The title of my Lectures is the acknowledgment of it. The facts of Revelation are before the doctrines built on them. The gospel is no mere proclamation of "eternal truths," but the discovery of a saving purpose of God for mankind, executed in time. But the doctrines are the interpretation of the facts. The facts do not stand blank and dumb before us, but have a voice given to them, and a meaning put into them. They are accompanied by living speech, which makes their meaning clear. When John declares that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, and is the Son of God,3 he is stating a fact, but he is none the less enunciating a doctrine. When Paul affirms, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,"4 he is proclaiming a fact, but he is at the same time giving an interpretation of it. No writer has laid more stress on the fact, and less on the doctrine, in primitive Christianity than Professor Harnack, yet he cannot help saying, "So far as the God and Father of Jesus Christ is believed in as the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth, the Christian religion includes a definite knowledge of God, of the world, and of the world-aim."1 This concedes in principle all that I maintain. It affirms that the facts of Christianity, rightly understood and interpreted, not only yield special doctrines, but compel us to develop out of them a determinate "Weltanschauung." This is precisely the assertion of the present Lectures.

If I refer for a moment in this connection to Schleiermacher, who may be named as the most distinguished representative of the theology of feeling it is because I think that the position of this remarkable man on the question before us is frequently misunderstood. Schleiermacher's earlier views are not unlike some of those we have already been considering, and are entangled in many difficulties and inconsistencies in consequence. I deal here only with his later and more matured thought, as represented in his work, Der christliche Glaube. In it also piety is still defined as feeling. It is, he says neither a mode of knowing nor a mode of action, but a mode of feeling, or of immediate selfconsciousness. It is the consciousness of ourselves as absolutely dependent, or, what comes to the same thing, as standing in relation with God.2 In his earlier writings he had defined it more generally as the immediate feeling of the infinite and eternal, the immediate consciousness of the being of all that is finite in the infinite, of all that is temporal in the eternal, awakened by the contemplation of the universe.3 But along with this must be taken into account Schleiermacher's view of the nature of feeling. According to him, feeling is the opposite of knowledge than that pure, original state of consciousness--prior to both knowledge and action--out of which knowledge and action may subsequently be developed.1 In Christianity this law material of the religious consciousness receives, as it were, a definite shaping and content. The peculiarity in the Christian consciousness is that everything in it is referred back upon Jesus Christ, and the Redemption accomplished through Him.2 This moving back from the religious consciousness to the Person of the sinless Redeemer as the historical cause of it is already a transcending of the bounds of a theology of mere feeling. Theology is no longer merely a description of states of consciousness, when it leads us out for an explanation of these states into the region of historic fact. But an equally important circumstance is that, while describing the Christian consciousness mainly in terms of feeling, Schleiermacher does not deny that a dogmatic is implicitly contained in this consciousness, and is capable of development out of it. His Der christliche Glaube is, on the contrary, the unfolding of such a dogmatic. His position, therefore, is not offhand to be identified with that of the advocates of a perfectly undogmatic Christianity. These would rule the doctrinal element out of Christianity altogether. But Schleiermacher, while he lays the main stress in the production of this consciousness of Redemption in the believer on the Person of the Redeemer, and only subordinately on his teaching, yet recognises in Christian piety a positive, given content, and out of this he evolves a clearly defined and scientifically arranged system of doctrines. It is to be regretted that in the foundation of his theology--the doctrine of God--Schleiermacher never broke with his initial assumption that God cannot be known as He really is, but only as reflected in states of human consciousness, and therefore failed to lift his theology as a whole out of the region of subjectivity.

A chief reason probably why many entertain a prejudice against the admission of a definite doctrinal content in Christianity, is that they think it militates against the idea of "progress" in theology. How does the matter stand in this respect? Growth and advance of some kind, of course, there is and must be in theology. It cannot be that the other departments of knowledge unceasingly progress, and theology stands still. No one familiar with the history of theology will deny that great changes have taken place in the shape which doctrines have assumed in the course of their development, or will question that these changes have been determined largely by the ruling ideas, the habits of thought, the state of knowledge and culture, of each particular time. The dogmatic moulds which were found adequate for one age have often proved insufficient for the next, to which a larger horizon of vision has been granted; and have had to be broken up that new ones might be created, more adapted to the content of a Revelation which in some sense transcends them all. I recognise therefore to the full the need of growth and progress in theology.1 Bit by bit, as the ages go on, we see more clearly the essential lineaments of the truth as it is in Jesus; we learn to disengage the genuine truths of Christ's gospel from human additions and corruptions; we apprehend their bearings and relations with one another, and with new truths, more distinctly; we see them in new points of view, develop and apply them in new ways. All this is true, and it is needful to remember it lest to temporary points of view, and human theories and formulations we attribute an authority and completeness which in no way belong to them. But it does not by any means follow from this that therefore, everything in Christianity is fluent, that it has no fixed startingpoints, no definite basal lines, no sure and moveless foundations, no grand determinative positions which control and govern all thought within distinctly Christian limits,--still less that, in the course of its long history, theology has achieved nothing, or has reached no results which can fairly be regarded as settled. This is the exaggeration on the other side, and so far from being helpful to progress in theology, it is in reality the denial of its possibility. Progress in theology implies that there is something to develop--that some truths at all events, relating to God and to Divine things, are ascertainable, and are capable of scientific treatment. It is easy to speak of the attempt to "limit infinite truth within definite formulæ"; but, on the other hand, unless some portion at least of this infinite, truth can be brought within range of the human faculties, theology has nothing to work on. It is a pseudo-science, and to speak of progress in it is idle.