{A Lecture delivered before the Summer School of Christian Philosophy, 19th

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July, 1881.']

BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D.

E have come into an epoch in which the fundamental truths of Christianity are being called in question; an epoch in which the faith of not only a few but of many is being shaken if not overthrown; a time when it behooves us to inquire into the very foundations of the Christian faith; into that on which the our faith is based, and out of which our faith grows. The scepticisms of today are not like the ripple on the surface of the water; the great waves plow deep, though the Christian believes there is in religious experience, as in the waters of the ocean, a line below which the waves do not go, where there is a deep and abiding peace; and it behooves us to find out where this line is, and wherein consists the power of this deep and abiding peace. The questions that are perplexing the minds of the people today are not respecting the details of religious belief or ceremonial; these questions have been cast aside altogether. It is no longer a question whether God exists in three persons or not, but whether there is any personal God; not whether men shall pray by the prayer-book or by extemporaneous prayer or by silent aspiration, but whether there is any such thing as prayer; or whether that ladder reaching from earth to heaven,

The Rev. Dr. Abbott's address was delivered extempore. The report here furnished was phonographically reported by Miss Charlotte Reeve.

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on which innumerable angels are ascending, carrying our prayers up to God, and descending, bringing answers of peace, is but the ladder of a dream from which we are to awaken to find our heads pillowed on the stone. These are the questions which unbelief is asking to-day, and which we must be prepared to answer. Nor is this unbelief confined to those who rejoice in unbelief and make war upon Christianity. It is an atmosphere that is pervasive. There are signs of it in the church, in the Sunday-school, in the home circle, in the religious press, in the form and fibre of religious teaching. You find men who are rejoicing to throw away the sanctions of religion, yet you also find men, and not a few of them, who long to hold with tenacious grasp the faith of father and mother, and yet find it slipping away from them. Religious experience seems to them like a delicious dream; but they are awakening from it and they cannot go to 'sleep and dream it again if they would. There are ten such sceptics where there is one rejoicing unbeliever. We need in such a time as this to re-ask ourselves the question, Why do we hold to the Christian belief? What is the rock foundation on which it is based? And we need to ask it the more because the quest of the age is a quest after a more sure foundation than that which has been recognized in times past.

Up to the sixteenth century the church was regarded as the foundation of Christian belief by the great mass of the people. They believed the doctrines of Christianity because the motherchurch told it to them. But the church is with the great mass an authority for Christian faith no longer. We refuse to accept the truth simply because the mother-church tells it to us. The human race has grown too large, too strong, too independent in its thinking to take the declaration of pope, or presbytery, or council, or church as the foundation of faith. You might better pluck the blossom off the tree and attempt to crowd it back into the bud, or catch the eagle that flies in heaven and attempt to put it back into the shell, or take the full-grown man and put him in long clothes and rock him in his mother's cradle, than attempt to put this nineteenth century back into the clothes, or shell, or bud of the sixteenth. There was truth

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in the sixteenth century, but we will not hold it simply because the church declared it. When the church was swept away as the basis of Christian faith men began to take the Book, the Bible, as the foundation on which to build. For many years men were content to go back to the Book and say, 'It is true because the Book says it." Now, whether you may be glad or sorry, that period is passing away and we cannot prevent it. The Bible is not the foundation of faith that it was a hundred years ago. Then when a minister was preaching a doctrine, all he had to do was to cull his proof-texts from the Bible to support it. To-day the enlightened minister can no longer quote his proof-texts to show that his doctrine is true. The mere citation of texts will no longer carry conviction as it did then. The ancients believed that the world rested on an elephant; and when asked what the elephant rested on, they answered, a tortoise. For a long time men believed that the world rested on the church; and when the question was asked, What does the church stand on? the answer was, "On the Bible." Now men are beginning to ask, What does the Bible stand on? Deep down beneath both book and church there is some solid foundation, and we must find out what it is. The Brooklyn bridge rests on two immense stone piers, and the child looking at it says the bridge depends upon these two abutments. But the man knows that deep down below the river-bed is the solid foundation-rock on which the abutments are built. So the Christian faith is supported by these two abutments, church on one side and Bible on the other, yet deep down below these lies the rock-foundation on which these are built. What is that foundation?

The fundamental article of the rationalistic creed is that we get all our knowledge through the senses; that we know only what we see, hear, touch, smell, and what we deduce by the reason from the facts that are testified to by the senses. The fundamental article of the Christian faith is that our profoundest, more trustworthy knowledge, comes not from observation, nor from deductions of the reason; that we arrive at it, not by perceiving, nor by conclusions from what we perceive, but immediately and directly. We know the higher truths by personal

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experience. The evidence of them is immediate and in our own consciousness.

A farmer and his daughter go out to walk in the field; she gathers a handful of daisies and, holding them up, says, "Are they not beautiful?" and the father says, "Tush! child, they are mere weeds; I wish I could get them all out of my field.” How shall the child, who is wiser than the father, demonstrate that there is beauty in the daisy? Is there any argument by which the child, who sees the beauty, can demonstrate it to a leaden-headed man who does not see it? You go to a philharmonic concert and you hear one of Beethoven's magnificent symphonies rendered by the orchestra; you listen till your whole soul is filled with the beauty of the music; you turn to the companion at your side and say, "Is it not exquisite ?" He replies, "Well, yes, I suppose it is for them that understand it; but I never could enjoy classical music." By what argument can you demonstrate to him the grandeur of the music? No mechanical or scientific or argumentative process, or any other process known to men, can make him see music which is not echoed in his own soul.

As with our knowledge of æsthetic truths so with our knowledge of moral truths; they cannot be demonstrated to us; they are matters of deduction; they are matters of instantaneous perception. How do you know that there are such things as truth, honor, justice, purity, love? Did any one ever see them? did any one ever smell them or touch them? Are they hard or soft? Do they weigh so many ounces? Can you bray them in a mortar? Can you analyze them? Can you test them by any scientific tests? Why, if a politician says, with Walpole, " Every man has his price," you cannot prove patriotism to him, but you will not vote for him. If a man says, "I do not believe there is any such thing as love," you cannot prove to him that love exists, you can only look pityingly upon the man who has never known a mother's love, and who has been left without one genuine friend. When a man says, "I do not believe in honesty," you do not stop to debate the question; you keep your hand on your pocket-book till you are out of his presence; for a man who does not believe in honesty is already a

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thief. The moral truths are recognized by the moral perception instantaneously. If a man does not recognize them it is because he lacks the moral sense.

Now that which is true in the æsthetic and in the moral realm is true also in the spiritual realm. The foundation of our belief in them is our personal experience of them. We know them. How do we know there is a God? From the existence of design you may conclude that there was a designer; but argument never demonstrated to any one the existence of a God who is a Father, who exercises compassion and tenderness towards his children, and who loves them, and whom they may love. You know scientists tell us that the phenomena of light indicate that the whole universe is full of a subtle ether; no man has ever seen it; no man has ever analyzed it; but they conclude that the universe is full of this ether, the vibrations of which produce light, because this hypothesis is the best explanation of the phenomena of light. By and by some scientist may arise and offer a better explanation, and then the old hypothesis of either will vanish away. So long as a man only concludes that there is a God because God is the best explanation of all phenomena around him, he is resting on no sure foundation, and he who will bring him a better explanation will take his God away from him.

We believe in God not because argument has proved him, but because we have in ourselves the consciousness of his presence. He has been our comfort in sorrow, our strength in weakness, our light in darkness. We believe in God because we have felt in our own life a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness. Why do you believe in mother? Because you have seen your mother? I beg pardon; you have never seen your mother. You have seen the face, the eye, the brow, the lips, the form; but that does not make mother. If it does, then why, when the form lies prostrate on the bed, and you look down on the eyes that never before refused to look into yours, and you press your lips to those that never before refused to press on your lips the kiss, and you call the name that you never called on before without getting the response, why is it that the tears gather in your eyes and the grief surges

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