A RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT, NOT OF THE LETTER. 11

inward holiness and love which belong to the children of God.1 Christianity, then, is, as St. Paul declared, a religion of the spirit, not of the letter; and, though Christendom is still so blind to its own real glory, this is its grand and distinctive mark. "Spirit" and "life" are among the great words of the New Testament; and these do not suggest a dead deposit which, like a sacred mummy, must be wrapped in swathing bands, and guarded from attack, but vivid forces which find ever new expression in activity and thought, and reach their highest development by freely mingling in the progressive movement of mankind.

If this view be correct, it is clear that we cannot regard Christianity simply as a truth or a system of truths, which, as Theodore Parker said, would be just as true if Herod or Catiline had taught them, and which, like the truths of astronomy or biology, when once discovered become the property of the race, resting exclusively on their own evidence, and leaving to the discoverer, some religious Newton or Darwin, only an historical or antiquarian interest. He who

1 See a very striking description of his own change quoted from Cyprian, Ep. i. ad Donatum in Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 15: Bohn.

discovers a truth of science hands it over as an impersonal gift to mankind, and the value of the truth has no connection with the life of him who first propounded it. He might sink into as complete oblivion as the great astronomers of Chaldea; but the science would remain with unimpaired vitality and value. But a special type of religious life cannot be so easily detached from him in whom it was first enshrined. It cannot be taught like a lesson in mathematics or chemistry, but must enter as a refining power into the mind, transmuting its dross into fine gold, and cleansing that inward eye by which spiritual truth is discerned. It spreads, not by the calculable process of the intellect, but, as it were, by a holy contagion of exalted feeling; and hence he who introduces it into the world becomes at once its inspirer and its norm, giving life through the communion of faith and love, and restoring that life to pristine purity when it has strayed into extravagance and error. If conscious sonship be the essence of Christianity, then he to whom that sonship was such an absorbing reality that he made it a reality to the world, must stand in an undying relation to that spiritual movement of which he is not only the ancient source, but is still the source in multitudes

NOT CONFINED TO THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 13

of hearts; and those who are within that movement cannot come to him with the cold curiosity of historians, but with the veneration and love of disciples. Nevertheless, as disciples they desire not so much to receive, on his authority, some truth of the intellect, as to be imbued, through his influence, with the same spirit.

These remarks will enable us to answer the question with which we started. Christianity, as a living spirit in the world, does not begin and end with the oral teaching of Jesus himself, but must embrace the total specific effect of his life and teaching upon the human soul. We may expect, indeed, to find the fundamental principles of his religion enunciated in his recorded discourses, and we may apply these principles as a test to various ecclesiastical developments; but we have no right to expect a completed system of thought or a final judgment upon the various questions to which, in the course of time, his own teaching necessarily gave rise. His own teaching was couched in the language of the day, and addressed to the wants of the day; and succeeding ages had their own problems, which had to be solved, not by the express words of the Master, but by his spirit working through

the imperfect intelligence and knowledge of the several periods. An excellent example is furnished by the earliest controversy which arose within the Church. Were the Gentiles to be admitted without imposing on them the observance of the Jewish Law? Here was a question which was vital to the future of Christianity, and yet it was impossible to appeal to the decision of Jesus, for the question had not arisen in his time. St. Paul decided it by his clear perception of the spirit of Christ, in which the solution was virtually involved. His arguments, when stripped of their temporary form and colour, amount to this: that the spirit of Christ, the spirit of sonship, exempted men from subserviency to the Law, not by the lowering of duty or the abolition of moral distinctions, but by lifting them into the righteousness of God, where the eternal requirements of moral obligation were fulfilled with a spontaneous freedom and completeness that were not possible at any lower stage. To be in Christ was ipso facto to be independent of the Law, and therefore to impose it on the Gentiles was practically to deny the faith. Here, then, was a momentous theological decision, which went clearly beyond the express teaching of Jesus. All will now admit that it

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

15

was a grand and wise decision, and that Paul, in stepping boldly forth into the freedom of the spirit, interpreted correctly the true genius of Christianity, rather than those who shut themselves up in the oldness of the letter, and maintained that a dead Christ, whom they had known after the flesh, had nothing more to teach the world. So to others likewise the Spirit may have spoken words of truth, and some of the profound sayings of the Fourth Gospel, even if they were not actually spoken by the mortal lips of Jesus, may have been breathed in the interpreting soul of a genuine seer, and be a true expression of his doctrine. And when the aged seer closed his dying eyes, the Spirit did not die, but continued, and still continues to bear witness; and never has it been more active than in our own day, when it is engaged in the solution, not of speculative, but of practical problems.

We are now prepared to deduce the idea of the Christian Church. In the view which we have taken, it is a question of comparatively small importance whether Jesus himself founded and constituted a Church or not; for a distinct society, with suitable organization, grew necessarily out of the movement which he