But, even with all these guards and cautions, the doctrine of development, when applied within the sphere of moral action, is a perilous one. Any theory of the history of man which leaves out of the case his tree agency, must end either in Fatalism or in Panthe- ism. Dr. T. H. Skhmer, Jr., in the Baptist Quarterly Review for January, 1868, while vindicating Dr. Shedd's theory of development from the charge of Pantheism, endeavors to show that it runs into Fatalism. " Dr. Shedd does not discriminate development frtmi ne« cessity. From the scheme of realistic development, neither a true and Just human responsibility, nor a true divme moral government of free agents, can be educed." If it be true, as Dr. Shedd says, that the same law of organic sequence prevails in the sphere of mind and of freedom that works in the kingdom of matter and necessity, then necessity rules the one sphere as it does the other, and rules under the same law.
2. As applied to doctrine, the Christian view of de- velopment is that there has been a gradual progression in the manifestation of the divine plan to man, both in revelation and in history. This doctrine is well set forth and illustrated, so far as the N. T. is concerned, in Bernard's Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament (Bampton Lecture for 1866 ; Boston, Gould & Lincoln, 1867). The Bible, beginning with Genesis, gives the exposition, not of a revelation completed, but of a rev- elation in progress, and expanding into greater fulness and clearness ftt>m the beginning until its final com- pletion in the Apocalypse, at the close of the Canon. After this, the Church has never held to any advance in diffine teaching; all growth, subsequent to the apos- tolical age, has been growth in man's apprehension of divine truth, not in God's revelation of it. The Holy Spirit is stUl a divine guide to all seekers after truth ; not in the way of new revelation, however, but of ** reminding" men of the truth once given, and of il^
DEVELOPMENT
1U
DEVELOPMENT
luminating the truly believing inqnirer in Us secroh into the meaning of revelation. The body of Chris- tian truth, both (act and doctrine, is revealed and re- corded, once for all, in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament; and these Scriptores constitute, in every age, the norm of doctrine, and the criterion by which all new exhibitions of doctrine are to be tested. No new truth can be developed any more than a new man can be created. But it is very clear that there may be, and has been, development of Christian doc- trine in the sense of clearer apprehension of it on the part of the Church. The science of theology implies the application of human reason to the given f!ict8 and doctrines of Christianity ; first, the application of rea- son to Scripture (exegesis), to find out what its doc- trines are ; and, secondly, the use of reason in co-ordi- nating these doctrines into scientific form (system). It wiU be observed that the *' development of doc- trine,'* as thus stated, is very different from the the- ory that the Bible gives only the " germs" of doctrine, out of which, by a necessary organic law, the doctrines themselves are " developed. " This image of a * * germ' * is very apt to mislead. Even if a dochine were a liv- ing thing such as a germ is, " it is to be remembered that even a germ is developed by attracting and as- similating to itself many foreign elements which are around it. It is by additions from without, and differ- ent from itself, that it grows" (Donaldson, BuUny of Ckrittian Literature, i, 5).
In doctrine, however, as in history, development is not always syncmymous with improvement. Human apprehension of divine truth is sometimes wrong, as well as sometimes right; and the history of doctrines, while implying development in its very idea, yet in- cludes variations of rise and fidl in human statements of the one divine truth. A right theory " of the de- velopment of Christian theology by no means implies that each later age must necesMrily have a fUUer and deeper knowledge of divine things than its predeces- sors, either as spread abroad through the body of the Church, or as centred in its chief teachers. Were this a consequence of this theory, this alone would be fatal to it, the very reverse having notoriously been often the case. But even in science, which is so much less dependent on moral influences, and with which the varieties of character and feeling have so lit- tle to do, the progress has never been uniform and uninterrupted ; while in poetry, in the arts, in philos- pphy, where the understanding is greatly swayed by moral afi^Bctions, and derives a main part of its suste- nance and energy from them, man's course has been so irregular that nothing like a law of it has been as- certained. So, too, must it needs be in theology, where the subject matter is divine truth, wliich cannot be received intellectually unless it be also received morally, to the pure reception of wliich all corrupt feelings of our nature are opposed, and which they are perpetually attempting ta sophisticate and distort Thus it has often come to pass that the inheritance left us by one age has been squandered, or wasted, or forfeited by its successor, so that it by no means fol- lows firom the theory of the development of Christian truth that even the later system of theology must be the better. For the world is always wrestling to draw men away from the truth, and will often prevail, as Jacob did over the angel ; and when faith is at a low ebb, when the visible, and the immediate, and mate- rial predominate in men's hearts and minds over the invisible, the ideal, and the spiritual, theology must needs dwindle and decay. But when there is a re- vival of fiiith, if this revival coincides with, or is suc- ceeded by a period of energetic thought, a deeper or clearer insight will be gained in certain portions of truth, especially appropriate to the circumstances and exigencies of ^e age, and which have not yet l)een "«t forth in their fulness. Thus, to dte the two most 'orable examples, the true doctrine of the Trinity