The distinction between fact and phenomenon has never been better explained than by that very interesting philosopher, Rudolf Eucken. The essential function of a fact, he says, is to yield its living meaning to the present in some imperishable form, and therefore the fact must itself first own and exercise the life which it communicates. No atomic conception of a 'fact' is possible. The 'fact' must be what Eucken calls a Lebens-system, a systematised whole of life. Isolated events are not facts, but abstractions from them. The "fact" must have a certain independence and capacity for development according to its own nature. If it has less than this, it is only a mutilated and fractional fact. A fact of history must be some historic movement with at least a beginning and a middle, even if it lack a finish. So understood, a historical fact is a true historical unit, and the essential significance of "unit" is "unity." A historical fact is a historical unity. Such unities do not lie on the surface of life. . . . It requires spiritual insight to pass from phenomenon to fact.' It is, then, a false abstraction to isolate the events of three or thirty years as is sometimes done. So isolated, they are degraded from a fact to a phenomenon. The plan of the Incarnation was to initiate a movement which in its entirety was to constitute a theophany in the life of humanity itself. The Christian revelation embraces, or rather is, the whole of that movement, by far the greater part of which is, for us, in the unknown future.

1

It appears to me, then, that this attempt to isolate the records of the Galilean ministry as closing for ever the revelation of God to man, is only another example of the tendency which we have found in other cases, to arrest the natural development of Faith at a certain point, in order to gain the convenience of an unchangeable standard of belief and conduct. It is nearer the truth than belief

1 Boyce Gibson, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life, p. 41; and cf. Eucken's latest book, The Life of the Spirit.

in an infallible Pope or an infallible Bible; but it is open to very grave objections, which I hope I have made clear to you.

In practice, it may lead to an uncritical appeal to this or that precept in the Gospels, and, on the other hand, to a regretful repudiation of Christ's authority, on the ground that some of His precepts are manifestly inapplicable, if taken literally, to present conditions. Our Lord unquestionably used hyperbole in His teaching. He was accustomed, like other teachers who wish to impress their points on a popular audience, to make without qualification statements which need qualification, and to supply the necessary correction on another occasion. In plain words, they occasionally contradict themselves; and such formal contradictions occur in the Gospels. It follows that in order to understand them we must use reason and common sense, and consider particular sayings in the light supplied by the teaching as a whole. This, and not the attitude of a suppliant consulting an oracle, is the proper way to consult the authority of Christ. We have also to face the possibility that we have not got always the exact Greek equivalents of the words used by the Divine Speaker; and the strong probability that some of His sayings are out of their places, placed by His biographers in a wrong setting, or, in a few cases, perhaps, even wrongly put into His mouth. All this would be disquieting if the Christ of the Gospels were our sole primary authority. It is not disquieting if we may interpret particular words by the known drift of His teaching, by the witness of His Spirit in our hearts, and, to some extent, by other sources of revelation.

Lastly, I am not following those modern Roman Catholic apologists who depreciate the authority of the earthly Christ in order to exalt that of the Church speaking in His That is an error which we have already considered and rejected. The Church is to grow up into Christ in all

name.

things, not out of Him into something very different. He

is

very much more than the historical Founder of a great institution with a very chequered record. Nor could we possibly confine His activities since the Ascension to the supervision of one religious body, however august. But the Catholic apologetic has this great advantage over the Protestant that it accepts development, and looks forward. It does not worship a dead Lord.

I have now finished that part of my course which deals with authority. I have shown, I hope, that external authority, in whatever form, cannot be a primary ground of Faith, and that the authority of Jesus Christ, for the well instructed Christian, is not external, but is a voice which speaks within us as well as to us. The complete autonomy of the human spirit would be identical with perfect obedience to Christ; His service, as the Collect says, is perfect freedom.

As a matter of experience, this way of thinking about Christ does not dehumanise Him into a cosmic principle. Rather, we find with Robert Browning, that

That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,

Or decomposes but to recompose,

Become my universe that feels and knows.1

That face, explained the poet to a friend, is the face of Christ.

1 Robert Browning, Dramatis Personae, Epilogue.

CHAPTER IX

FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL

In my last lecture I considered the proper place of authority in matters of Faith, and came to the conclusion that no authority can claim to be primary except the clear affirmations of Faith itself-those spontaneous assertions of the basal personality which religion calls the voice of God within us, and which philosophy, in more cumbrous phrase, might describe as the self-revelation of the objective in our subjectivity. This voice, as I have said, speaks through, rather than to, the human heart and conscience and intellect, nor is it possible to separate the divine and human elements in any act of Faith. To-day I pass to another branch of our subject, one of great interest and importance. We have resisted the temptation to arrest and fix the development of Faith in the region of undifferentiated feeling. We have found that reliance on external authority, of whatever kind, is at best only a makeshift, a substitute for a full and manly Faith. We have decided that Faith must operate through our natural faculties. But which of our faculties is the chosen organ of Faith? Is it the will, or the intellect, or that specialised feeling which creates æsthetic judgments? We must consider the claims of these faculties in turn. And first, What is the relation of Faith to the will? Is Faith simply and solely a moral postulate, an act of choice? Is the ground of Faith our moral decision to believe ?

The proverb that the wish is father to the thought assuredly calls attention to a fact which we cannot afford to forget. People do, as a matter of fact, believe things because they wish to believe them. Hobbes declared that even the axioms of geometry would be disputed if men's passions were concerned in them'; and we have only to contrast a page of Euclid with a political or theological harangue, in order to realise how differently we reason when we are dealing, not with mathematical symbols having a fixed connotation, but with living ideas and disputable values. People believe what they wish to be true, both voluntarily and involuntarily. They will say without shame, 'I like to think so and so,' as a reason why they do think so. And they will not change their opinions because they are beaten in argument.

He that complies against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

Moreover, without intending it, we often listen to the flattering tale which hope tells. Charlatans of all kinds trade on this weakness of human nature. Without it, a great many popular follies, such as betting on horse-races, and gambling at Monte Carlo or on the Stock Exchange, would come to an end. The dry light of reason would generally convince the gambler that he stands to lose; but he throws his desires into the scale, and vaguely hopes that ' luck will be on his side.'

In matters of practice, when any end is being pursued, the advantages of a sanguine temperament are so obvious that men look very indulgently on the self-deceptions which it produces. If you do not hope,' said Heraclitus, 'you will never find that which is beyond your hopes.' In many cases, a strong will has the power to bring about the realisation of that which it desires, and the refusal to limit hopes by the evidence of probability brings its own reward and justification.