of our national inability to enforce good administration even in our public departments. The registration of midwives was only won after a long struggle with the prejudices of a portion of the medical profession and the indifference of the public. To obtain the registration of nurses the same battle will have to be fought, though on this occasion we may probably expect more sympathetic support from the medical profession; for the object of this scheme is not to fit nurses to perform any of the duties of a doctor, but rather to make them more efficient subordinates, so that the forward strides now being made by medicine and surgery may not be hampered and retarded by want of skill and knowledge in those to whom the observation of illness, the enforcement of scientific cleanliness, and the superintendence of remedial processes are so largely entrusted.

HELEN MUNRO FERGUSON.

Vol. LV- No. 324.

Y

RELIGIOUS APOLOGETICS

THERE is an old saying about 'slaying the slain.'

It was scarcely worth while to expend so many pages of clever argument and so many quotations from bishops and others to prove that the standpoint in theology (as in all departments of thought) is not the same in England now as it was sixty years ago. How can it be? Every succeeding generation presents to itself its thoughts about things invisible with a different environment, as the waves of advancing knowledge overtake one another. We are not at the end of the process yet. After all, if that which is essential and vital remains, the environment matters not very much. Indeed it is gain, if, as is the law in the evolution of things, the standpoint shifts continually more and more from the innocent wonderment of childhood to a more intelligent appreciation. The able disputant about religious apologetics in these pages proves easily enough that the authority of Paley and Butler is not what it was in their own period. Has he shown, or does he wish to show, that Christianity is therefore exploded?

1

Let me in passing observe that it would be, to say the least, a rather hasty way of generalising to class Butler with Paley as an 'Old Bailey advocate' for Christianity. Butler's reasoning is built too much on 'natural religion,' which is certainly an insecure foundation, although not so regarded by Butler's opponents, the Deists. Still, with this limitation, Butler's is quite another kind of argument than Paley's way of putting the Apostles into the witnessbox and cross-examining them, in order to extract the truth from their lips. Perhaps there is rather too much of the Old Bailey advocacy' in the peremptory demand for eyewitness of the Resurrection and the Incarnation.

The truth, that is what every honest thinker wants to find. But there are two meanings of the word, and it is of importance not to confuse them nor to put the lower before the higher. I am not speaking of the subjective meaning of the word, which is what we call 'sincerity,' but of truth objective so far as man can grasp it. There is truth concrete, and there is truth ideal. We want Plato

Walter R. Cassells-October 1903.

again among us, to remind us which of these two aspects of truth is to take precedence. The mere archeologist will probably say, Give me facts, figures, names. Those with a deeper insight and a wider survey of man and his capacities know that the truths which transcend others are not ponderable nor measurable, nor can be tested by the fallacious, treacherous experience of the senses. Try to ascertain precisely what took place on any occasion, in private life or public, and even from trustworthy witnesses you get statements conflicting one with another. But the fundamental laws of right and wrong have a general, if not a universal, consent, which even a Pyrrhonist cannot put aside as of no account. To know the exact distance of our planet from the sun is like the answer to an amusing riddle. To know that it is worse to cheat than to be cheated is a step onward in the growth of a race or of an individual. Unless the controversies about religion start from ethical principles, they are merely beating the air.'

Before taking for granted that 'miracles are discredited' and that the supernatural' must be ruled out of court, it is well to define what is meant by these terms. Probably there are very few educated persons now who regard an alleged 'miracle' as an arbitrary interruption of a law of nature. The word itself tells its own story; it is something wonderful. The same phenomenon which nowadays is clearly explained by physical causes may be a wonder, a sign, a portent to men in other ages or in other countries. It served its purpose if it startled the careless and fixed their attention on what might otherwise have been disregarded. So far as a 'miracle' is the outcome of an extraordinary combination and adjustment of ordinary forces-as when in an emergency the east wind drives back the waters-it is objectively as well as subjectively a miracle, for to effect this combination and adjustment is beyond the power of man. But obviously the thing is quite as truly 'miracle' if at the time and in given circumstances it seems inexplicable, although it shall be resolved into the operation of natural laws as physical science moves on.

'dis

In this sense it would be rash to say that miracles are credited,' or to prophesy that they ever will be. Wonders never cease.' The horizon recedes as science advances. That the miracle no longer holds so prominent a place in the thoughts of believers in Christianity as in patristic, medieval, post-Reformation periods-is a truism. When a missionary lands on a far-away island, hitherto unvisited by Europeans, the fact that he comes across the ocean in a ship commands the reverence of savages. He seems miraculous, and they are predisposed to hear him. But this is only the preface to the book. What he has to tell them must appeal to the conscience, which responds, however faintly, in everyone to such an appeal. So

2 Those who prefer it can read Plato now in Jowett's translation.

it is, so it has been in the history of the world. It is the Message itself that concerns mankind. The credentials of the messenger are merely prefatory.

An intelligent Christian accepts what is incomprehensible to him in Christianity because he has ethical reasons for giving credence to Christ, for trusting Him. He does not base his faith in Christ on miracles alleged of Him, though these may have helped to gain a hearing for the Gospel in the first promulgation of it. Satisfied reasonably of the trustworthiness of the Person who claims his allegiance, he is content to take on trust what he cannot explain. He believes in Christ's miracles, because he believes in Him.

The real question then is, Are the moral credentials of the Christ adequate? Do they justify the surrender of self to Him? By this test Christianity must stand or fall. This is a question which modern criticism even of the New Testament does not touch. The personality of Jesus is unique. It cannot have been invented. 'L'inventeur en serait plus étonnant que le héros.' Whatever uncertainty there may be as to the names and dates of the writers or compilers of the several narratives, whatever inaccuracies may be detected in this or that paragraph, the ethical character of the Teacher and of His teaching stands above these minutia. Of none else in the world's history could it be truly predicated, 'He hath done nothing amiss,' 'He hath done all things well,' 'No man ever spake like this Man.'

The objection, that we have only a portion, a fragment of His life, is hardly to be considered. As Owen or Cuvier could construct the extinct mammal from the foot only, or the thigh, so from what has been preserved in the record of Christ it is easy to see the rest. Indeed, the silence of the life preparatory to the ministry and the self-effacement in Nazareth, some thirty years, are more eloquent than words. Had He come into the world to assert Himself, it might have been otherwise. He came to save.

The old objection is repeated against the incidents of the swine in Decapolis and the barren fig-tree. The old answer might suffice, that those two incidents stand alone; that, as destructive, they are the notable exceptions to the law of beneficence exemplified in the dealings of Christ, and that by their very contrast they serve to emphasise the love which manifested itself on other occasions. It might be enough to leave these incidents unexplained and inexplicable on the ground that the confidence placed in the Christ (for valid reasons) is strong enough to justify so doing. In the case of a friend, who has proved himself in other ways worthy of our fidelity, we are not alarmed even though some things in his conduct seem inexplicable. The misgiving is outweighed and stilled by other prevailing considerations. But, surely, to those who realise what sin is, there is no need to go far in search of an explanation of this

apparent severity. In both Gadara and Bethany there is, for those who care to see it, an object-lesson, more telling than language, of the awfulness of submission to evil.

This it is which underlies all questions of the credibility of Christianity. Leave this out, and the Gospel is not, cannot claim to be, what the word denotes; the 'good tidings' are not worth having, the whole narrative is a tissue of impossibilities. But if anyone knows the need for forgiveness, if anyone hungers and thirsts to be set free from the tyranny of evil, then the appearance on earth of a 'Son of Man' altogether sinless who comes to rescue man from an evil power too strong for him unaided, is the master-key to problems of life otherwise insoluble; and if His presence on earth brings with it much that is to finite capacity incomprehensible, this is the inevitable accompaniment and sequence of His coming. The selfsacrificing life and death of Christ, the unselfish lives and deaths of those who really surrender their wills to Him, are practical evidence for the marvels of Bethlehem, of the empty Tomb, and of Mount Olivet.

Of course it is easy to cite other instances of high ethical teaching and, what is more, of high practice from other lives. The conscience of mankind, sometimes feebly remonstrating, sometimes upbraiding boldly, is for ever making its protest for right against wrong, ever aspiring upwards, a flame that cannot be kept down. But sin is selfishness, and the perfect unalloyed unselfishness of the Christ in life as in teaching is a thing different from the selfannihilation of Buddha or the self-elaboration for self's sake of the philosophy which culminates in the lofty ethics of M. Aurelius. Let it once be realised that self-seeking, however dressed up in almost countless disguises, is the essential quality of sin, and that selfsacrifice for others' sake is the training of man for his most complete development, and the enigma of life is solved. The pain and suffering on earth which seem superficially irreconcilable with a just and kind providence are the probation for perfection.

Nor is it only within the four corners of the New Testament that this moral testimony supports the claim of the Christ to be the 'Son of God made man.' The subsequent influence of Christianity on the world, what it has done and does in every age, in every land, must be counted in. Prescription by itself is nothing: it may be cited for any and every abuse; even the permanency in the world of Christianity, its endurance through all the vicissitudes of time, in spite, too, of monstrous inconsistencies in those who have professed it, cannot be insisted on as irrefragable. But the practical fruit of Christianity in the lives, however sparse, of those who have embraced it, really is an argument which cannot be resisted, so long as the antagonism is recognised between vice and virtue. Such a career as that of Saul of Tarsus is an evidence in itself for the truth of the