GENERAL INTRODUCTION

need of our day, for only such can save us from much fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a sober and sane reason.

Theology is less a single science than an encyclopædia of sciences; indeed all the sciences which have to do with man have a better right to be called theological than anthropological, though the man it studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its way of viewing man is indeed characteristic; from this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a goodly sisterhood; the dreams may be represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the will of God on the other. But even this will cannot make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with grace, it would cease to be sin.

These books then, -which have all to be written by men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light, -though without having either their eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility, are intended to present God in relation to Man and Man in relation to God. It is intended that they begin, not in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a Theological Encyclopædia which shall show the circle of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, though all will be viewed as related to its central or main idea. This relation of God to human knowledge will then be looked at through mind as a communion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship

with concrete man. On this basis the idea of Revelation will be dealt with. Then, so far as history and philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, who is also a divine, views them; in other words, the Old and New Testaments, regarded as human documents, will be criticised as a literature which expresses relations to both the present and the future; that is, to the men and races who made the books, as well as to the races and men the books made. The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European families which gave to it the quality of the life to which they have attained. But Theology has to do with more than sacred literature; it has also to do with the thoughts and life its history occasioned. Therefore the Church has to be studied and presented as an institution which God founded and man administers. But it is possible to know this Church only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines it holds, the characters and the persons it forms, the people who are its saints and embody its ideals of sanctity, the acts it does, which are its sacraments, and the laws it follows and enforces, which are its polity, and the young it educates and the nations it directs and controls. These are the points to be presented in the volumes which follow, which are all to be occupied with theology or the knowledge of God and His ways.

PREFACE

THE main objects of this volume are threefold. Firstly, to vindicate for religious Faith its true dignity as a normal and healthy part of human nature. Next, to insist that Faith demands the actual reality of its objects, and can never be content with a God who is only an ideal. Lastly, to show in detail how most of the errors and defects in religious belief have been due to a tendency to arrest the development of Faith prematurely, by annexing it to some one faculty to the exclusion of others, or by resting on given authority. The true goal is an unified experience which will make authority no longer external. This scheme has compelled me to state, far too briefly and dogmatically, my grounds of disagreement with certain religious opinions which are widely held, such as the infallibility of the living voice of the Church,' and the finality of the appeal to Holy Scripture, and also with those religious philosophies which make religion exclusively an affair of the will, or the intellect, or the æsthetic sense. My criticisms of these various theories are all intended to show the errors which result from a premature synthesis. Faith claims the whole man, and all that God's grace can make of him. If any part of ourselves is left outside our religion, our theory of Faith is sure to be partly vitiated by the omission; and conversely, an inadequate theory of Faith is likely to be reflected in one-sided or distorted practice.

When we try to analyse the contents of Faith, after claiming for it this very comprehensive range, we must

V

be prepared for the criticism that we have given only bare outlines, or else that we have left rival constructions side by side in the form of patent inconsistencies. For we cannot hope to understand and co-ordinate all the highest experiences of the human spirit. And our own generation, it seems to me, is not called upon even to attempt any ambitious construction. We must be content to clear the site for a new building, and to get the materials ready. The wise master-builder is not yet among us. 'Revivals' are only a stop-gap; they create nothing. They recover for us parts of our spiritual heritage which were in danger of being lost, and having achieved this, they have done their work. The words Catholic and Protestant are much like the words Whig and Tory in politics. They are the names of obsolescent distinctions, survivals of old-world struggles. When the next constructive period comes, it will be seen that the spiritual Latin empire and the Teutonic revolt against it belong to past history. Already the crucial question is, not whether Europe shall be Catholic or Protestant, but whether Christianity can come to terms with the awakening self-consciousness of modern civilisation, equipped with a vast mass of new scientific knowledge, and animated for the first time by ideals which are not borrowed from classical and Hebrew antiquity.

The great danger in our path, I venture to think, comes from the democratisation of thought, which has affected religion, ethics, philosophy, and sociology-in fact, almost every department of mental activity except natural science. We see its results in hysterical sentimentalism, which is the great obstacle in the way of using organised effort for social amelioration. We see them in the frank adoption of materialistic standards, such as the pleasure and pain calculus, as soon as we leave the region of abstract speculation. And in philosophy it is impossible to miss the connection between the new empiricism, with its