But Christianity tends to progress not merely by the high ideal it sets before us, but by its power over men's sympathies. This (lower resides mainly in the human nature of Christ, but only when viewed in its relation to his Godhead. As the great proof of the Father's love to man, it does arrest our feelings, dwell upon our imagination, and inspire our conduct with motives such as no other supposed manifestation of the Deity to man has ever produced. Christ incarnate in the tlesh is not merely the realization of the high standard of Christianity, and the model for our imitation, but acts also as a motive power, by which men are aroused and encouraged to the attempt to put into practice the prin- ciples of the religion which Christ taught.
If there be a <iod — and the man who denies it con- tradicts the intuitions of his own nature — it is religion, and revealed religion only, that gives us adequate knowledge of his nature and attributes. If there be a future— and the very instincts of our nature testify that there is — again it is revealed religion only that tells us what the future life is, and how we may attain to it. Yet necessarj' parts as both these beliefs are of our nat- ure, men may bring themselves to deny them. For a time they can put away from them both the future and a God. But if there be a present— and this is just the one thing in which the 19th century does thoroughly believe — even then, granting only this, if this present is to have any progress, and is to move onwards to any- thing better; if there is to be in it anything of health- ful and vigorous life, this, too, is bound up with the one religion, which has satisfactory proof to give that it is revealed; proof that it did come really from (iod; and proof that it is the one motive power of human ])rogress. If the light of nature hitherto has been in- sufhcient to secure virtue or raise men towards it, tliat light will not suffice now, even though it has been fed and strengthened by centuries of Christian teaching. In asserting this, Kant asserted too much. Neither Christians nor Christian communities have as yet risen to anything like a high general standard of morality, to say nothing about holiness ; remove the high iileal and the strong motives supplied by the religion of Christ, and there would result, first stagnation, and then decay. An •' enlightened self-love" never yet successfulh' resist- ed any carnal or earthly passion. Christianity lias ef- fected much: the contrast between heatlien and Chris- tian communities is immense: but it lias not raised men yet to its own standard, nor even to a reasonably fair standard of moral excellence.
Now, grant but the possibility of there being a God; grant but the (lossibility of there being a future, as there must iicceswarily be a connection between man's future and his present, and as our idea of (iod forbids our excluding any existent thing from connection with him, then at least a revelation would be useful, and as God must be good, there is no antecedent improbability in his bestowing upon man what would be t)f use and benclit to him. You must get rid of tJod- must resolve him into a sort of nebulous all-pervading ether, with no attributes or iiersonal force or knowledge (the Tantlie- ists do this beautifully, and call God cosmic J'ofce) — you
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must get rid of a future life, and account yoursolves simiilephenomena, like the monkey, and ascidian jelly- bags, from which you are supposed to be descended, with no connection with the past, no reason for your present existence, mere shooting-stars in the realms of space, coming from nowhere, and going nowhither, and so only, by the extirpation of these two ideas from your nature, can you make a revelation improbable. Even then your position is open to grave doubt. We can under- stand the law of evolution ; and if the law be proved, though as yet it is unproved, it would involve me in no religious difficulties, provided that evolution really worked towards a solid end. Accustomed everywhere else in nature to see things fitted to their place, and all things so ordered that there is a use for everything, I could understand the meanest thing in creation rising upwards in the scale through multitudinous forms and infinite periods of time, if finally there were some pur- pose for all this rising. The plan is vast and marvel- lous. It can be justified only by some useful end. And such an end there would be if, after vast ages of devel- opment, the tiny atom ended in becoming a reasonable and responsible creature, with some purpose for all this vast preparation, because capable of still rising upwards, and of " becoming partaker of the divine nature." But if the law of evolution stops at man without a future, then its product is not worthy of it, and so purposeless a law, ending in so mean a result — for what is there meaner than man without Christ? — falls to the ground as too grand in its design for so bare and worthless a result.
Yet even this is but part of the argument; the evi- dences in favor of Christianity have a collective force, and it is upon them as a whole that one fain rests se- cure. But we may well contend that if Christianity is necessary for our present well-being ; if the advance of society ; if the removal of the bad, the vile, and the sor- rowful in our existing arrangements; if the mainte- nance and strengthening of the noble, the earnest, the generous, and the pure, is bound up with Christianity, as being the only sure basis and motive towards prog- ress, then, at all events, religion can show cause enough for existence to make it the duty of men to examine the evidence which it offers in its proof. Nineteenth- century men may decline to listen to arguments Avhich concern only things so remote as God and the future. Have they not built railways, laid the Atlantic tele- graph, found out the constituent elements of the sun through the spectrum, and gained fortunes by gambling on the stock exchange? What can men want more? Well, they want something to bind society together: even the worst want something to control in others those passions to which they give free play in them- selves. No man wants society to grow worse, however much he may do himself to corrupt it. But the one salt of societj', the one thing that does purify and hold it together, is religion.