that it is common to all religions. Granted. I will not contend that Christ was the only channel of this influence, though he has been the channel for most of us; nor do Buddhism, Brahminism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, exhaust the category of religions more or less efficient in this particular. In islands of strange worship, amid savages of unclean life, the same enthusiasm for the spiritual as dominating the material is felt; for it is a part of the truth of God, and is limited to no age or creed. And in countries which by superficial outsiders are said to have no religious faith it is to be found. The Japanese soldier throws away his individual life by the thousand, in order that his nation may take a noble place in the world and begin its destined work of civilising Asia; yet when he is dead what is Asia or his country to him? He must be dominated by a living faith, in perhaps he knows not what. He may not be able to express it, but his faith may be none the less efficient for lacking the outward precision of an Athanasian formula.

But whatever be the case with other religions, the sacrifice of Christ has convinced the Western world of sin to a unique degree, of its reality and dire consequence, of its unreasonableness, its aspect as a disease which must be cured-with the knife if need be, but cured; we have learnt that it is foreign to the universe, it is not the will of God, it is not due to his caprice, or amusement, or dictation, or predestination, or pagan example; it is something which gives even Him pain and suffering; it is something to be rid of, and there is no peace or joy to be had until unity of will is secured and past rebellions are forgiven. The sin of the creature involves suffering in the Creator: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout. This is the element of truth in the vicariousness of suffering, and in extension of suffering to the Highest; but it is not vicariously penal, nor is it propitiatory.

The orthodox doctrine of the Atonement implicitly maintains that God cannot forgive sin, unless and until He has

exacted an adequate penalty somewhere. This does embody a kind of truth, for an eddy of conduct, good or ill, can only disappear by expending its energy in producing some definite effect. In one sense, therefore, a penalty must follow every inharmonious action: a penalty not falling on the wrong-doer alone, but involving the innocent likewise, and bringing needless pain into existence. Perception of this may be part of the punishment, for there can hardly be a fiercer feeling than remorse; but the sting will not be fully felt till the spirit has become broken and contrite and open to the healing influences of forgiveness. There is no agony like that of returning animation. Forgiveness removes no penalty: it may even increase pain, though only that of a regenerative kind; it leaves material consequences unaltered, but it may achieve spiritual reform.

Divine forgiveness is undoubtedly mysterious, but it must be real, for we are conscious that we can forgive each other. It should be an axiom that whatever man can do, God a fortiori can do also; meaning by "man" not merely any poor individual man, but the whole highest ethos of the race, including saints, apostles, prophets, everybody, and including Christ himself. How does Christ ask God to forgive sins? As we forgive others. This does not solely mean, as it is usually taken to mean, because we forgive others, nor in so far as, nor on condition that, we forgive our fellows, but it means after the same fashion as we forgive or should forgive them. And the reason given is a luminous one; it has nothing to do with propitiation, it makes no reference to sacrifice or vicarious penalty, nor to the merits of any mediator; no, the reason given is a noble and sufficient one, and it is simply this:"For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, for ever." What more can we add but the word " Amen "?

OLIVER LODGE.

THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN

SIR OLIVER LODGE AND THE

BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

PROFESSOR J. H. MUIRHEAD.

It may seem presumptuous in one who is neither a man of science nor a theologian to intrude in the controversy which Sir Oliver Lodge has opened in the Hibbert Journal. But watchers are often said to see most of the game, and it has struck me to ask whether the two distinguished men who have taken the chief part in it do not stand, in what they have recently written, for opposite sides of a larger truth which embraces the contentions of both.

It is now many years since Matthew Arnold made us familiar with the distinction between Hebraism and Hellenism as the two great factors in the moral and religious life of modern peoples. More recently the Master of Balliol has pointed out1 how the distinction here indicated goes even deeper into the nature of religious consciousness than its author supposed; while on the other hand the elements distinguished stand to each other in no such sharp antithesis as he believed, but are already on the way to reconciliation in the higher truth represented by Christianity.

The question of the foundation of religion is far too large a one to be raised here, but among philosophical writers the theory of which the above-quoted work is probably the

1 Evolution of Religion, ii. p. 14.

completest and most eloquent exposition may be said, in one form or another, to hold the field at the present time. Stated shortly, it is that human consciousness, both theoretical and practical, consists in a relation between subject and object, a mind or self, and a world of things or other selves; but that, underneath the consciousness of these two worlds, as different and often sharply antagonised, there is the consciousness of a unity which embraces both and contains the promise of their ultimate harmony. In ordinary life this underlying consciousness shows itself familiarly as belief in the validity of our practical and theoretic ideals; it rises to religion when, in moments of insight or emotion, this belief develops into a lively assurance of the existence of an all-embracing truth and goodness in which our imperfect efforts find their attainment, our knowledge is completed, our will made perfect in a form of being and experience of which our own is only a broken reflection.

While the sense of the Infinite which is implied in all finite consciousness is thus the ground of all religion, it appears in nations and individuals in a variety of forms which fail to express its essential character. To Glaube the imperfection of human apprehension adds Aberglaube, not only in the sense of imaginative accretions, but in the sense of omissions and partialities which substitute a fragment of its essence for the whole. Of these defects two stand out as typical, not only appearing as characteristic of particular ages and peoples in the history of the world, but marking stages in national development, dividing nations into sects, and even occupying the same individual consciousness at different times and dividing it against itself.

1. There is what has been called the objective attitude. There is, of course, a sense in which all religion is objective, in that it carries us beyond ourselves, reaching out to a reality which transcends the merely individual and personal. But if the above account of human consciousness is true, this reality is not something other than ourselves, as seems to be implied in

Matthew Arnold's well-known definition, but the source of all that is truest and most real within us. The attitude here indicated is that of contentment with the world as it exists. The Infinite is sought for in the finite, as that reveals itself on the one hand in the world of objects which lie open to the senses, and on the other in the established system of national life. Not that these objects and relations are accepted simply as they are for the highest realities. Even here there is on the one hand selection: some objects are more divine than others, e.g. the human than animal forms-and on the other hand idealisation: the human form, to take the same illustration, is raised to a higher perfection, in order to be a more adequate symbol of the divine. What is characteristic of this stage is that there has as yet risen no deep-going division between the world and the human soul. Man's natural life, with the activities to which it summons him, seems adequate to his needs. As a strong man he rejoices to run his race. There are toils set him by an evil principle in things-perhaps by the gods themselves-but he feels himself sufficient for his day. He even has a surplus of valour wherewith to assist the gods themselves in their combat with evil.

The classical expression of this attitude is to be found in the life of the Greeks; but, as already said, it is one that is constantly reappearing, and at the present time, among those who cherish the modern ideals of purposefulness and efficiency— clear thinking in a world opening up new vistas of conquerable truth-courageous action in a society ready to appreciate and appropriate new ideals is here and there in splendid evidence. How we should ever get on without it is difficult to see, yet history and deeper reflection on human life prove how impossible it is to get on with this alone. For the circumstances of life, both outward and inward, can only momentarily fail, whether in the nation or in the individual, to give rise to deeper problems. Among the Greeks themselves Mr Gilbert Murray has recently brought home to us by his brilliant studies of Euripides how the optimism of the earlier dramatists