4. Christian history has been a long series of endeavours to realize the full meaning of the Di^iiie presence. First it was caught into Jewish preconceptions, and projected into the doctrine of the Parousia. This had its effect on the iimiost circle of Christian writers with the exception of St. John, and on most of the early Fathers except for the school of Alexandria. With all its inspiration of hope, it must have tended to obscure the truth that God is present through the working of His Spirit in the individual and in society, in the unfolding of truth and the emplo^^nents of love.
Under the influence of Greek thought in the Gentile world, the Divine presence has been treated as a metaphysical sub- stance, and at last identified with the elements of the Lord's Supper (see Art. ii.), after consecration. This sacerdotal view was virtually accepted by the time of Cxprian, who wrote (Ep. Ixiii. 17): 'The passion of the Lord is the sacrifice we ofifer.' The doctrine of 'Transubstantiation became the keystone of the ecclesiastical edifice, and was maintained as a theory, by means of the prevalent philosophy of Realism, whose greatest ex- ponent was Thomas Aquinas. As far as English thought is concerned, it crumbled under the dialectic of John Wyclif
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(Lechler, Life of WycUjf'e, p. 351), and by the discovery made by simple men, during the next two centuries, of the spiritual presence mediated through the NT in their own experience.
The Docetic views of Christ's Person, however, which through- out the Middle Ages invested Him with apocalyptic splendof.rs at the coj-t of all human sympathies, called for still other means of allaying the hunger of the religious imagination. 'The remedy was found in the reverence of the image, in the sub- stitution of the symbol for reality. Gradually that Clmrch, which had tried to centre its affections on an absent Lord, found that its affections must be rekindled by the mediation of some earthly form. It had dismissed from its thoughts the idea of a spiritual presence ; it must regain that presence through the intervention of material agencies. It nmst find it in the water of Baptism, in the bread and wine of Communion, in the act of ordination, in the relics of saints, in the tombs of the martjrs, in the heart of monasteries, and in the walls of con- secrated cathedrals. It nuist see it in the figure of a visible cross, in the monuments raised to a celestial hierarchy, in the observance of festivals in memory of the sainted dead,' above all in apotheosis of the Virgin Mother (Matheson, op. cit, i. 322). In the meantime, as aj^plied to the working of the H0I3' Spirit, the doctrine of the presence stamped infallibilitj' upon the Councils, and finally upon the Pope. While with J. H. Newman it signified the \ alidity of ecclesiastical development throughout the centuries, ' being the germination, growth, and perfection of some living or apparent truth in the minds of men during a suHicient period' {Development of Doctrine, p. 37).
But while the popular religion found the presence in the images and relics, and ecclesiastical speculations discovered it in the Conciliar assemblies and the Sacrament of the Supper, there was a parallel movement known as Mysticism, which foun<l the real presence in the soul. To the French mystics, greatest of whom was St. Bernard of the 12th century, the presence of God was the obverse side of their own absence from the world. The Germans Eckhart and Tauler, the Dutch Thomas k Kempis, and others took up the theme, and wove it into a kind of new Stoicism, by way of purification, illumina- tion, and union. ' They taught (following Thomas Aquinas) that the soul can even here upon earth so receive God within itself as to enjoy in the fullest sense the vision of His being, and dwell in heaven itself '(Harnack, Outlines of the Hist, of Dogma, p. 440). This ' practice of the presence of God ' (Brother Lawrence) was the religious side of the prepaiation for Luther and his gospel for the people. He taught that Christianity was not a matter of consent to doctrine, as with the scholastics ; or a method of losing oneself in the eternal, as with the mystics ; but realizing the Divine presence as found through faith in Christ in ' the freedom of a Christian man.' Luther, commenting in his pointed way on Gal 2'6, says : ' Faith is, if I may use the expression, creative of Divinity, not, of course, in the substance of God, but in ourselves.' And again: 'When we truly say that He is Christ, we mean that He was given for us, without any works of ours, has won for us the Spirit of God, and has made us children of God ... so that we might become lords of all things in heaven and earth — that is faith ' (Erl. ed. 13, '251 ; Herrmann, Communion with God, p. 125). The primary authority of the inward witness thus established by Luther has been most fully apprehended for practical purposes by George Fox and his followers. A bright example was John Woolman (b. 1720), who, in taking his stand against prevailing customs sanctioned by the Church, records in his diary (ch. 4): 'The fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made easier than I expected.' And this independent standpoint, for the sake of humanity, has found poetical expression in Lowell, Whittier, and, in a fashion, Whitman. John Wesley, too, coming from his earlier devotion to Mysticism to his doctrine of assurance, repeated the experience of Luther, and, by means of an evangelical theology, helped men to see that humanity is the proper organ of the Divine presence. This has been the inspiration of modern reformers and philanthropists, but the full bearings of this truth have not yet been realized by the churches. A new vindication of the soul's authority in matters of faith has been undertaken by A. Ritschl and his disciples— Harnack, Herrmann, and the rest. With them the Divine Man Jesus, separated from every ceremony, doctrine, or dream, vouches for the inward presence of God to the soul that believes. By their theory of value-judgments they throw the whole proof of the presence of God upon the faculties of the soul.