154 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



convincing even to those who have not experienced the 

 power of Christianity. 



It must be admitted that the decline into this way of 

 looking at theology is from one point of view so easy 

 and natural that we need not be surprised that many 

 men conceive that in upholding it they are true to the 

 principles of the Reformation. And yet it is an historical 

 fact that this way of thought first sprang up in an age 

 which had ceased to be absorbed in the great problem of 

 the Reformation the problem of realising experimentally 

 in the individual consciousness and in all the functions 

 of social and Church life no less than in the schools what 

 true Christianity is. Nor, indeed, could it be otherwise. 

 So long as the Church of the Reformation was rejoicing 

 in the discovery that forgiveness of sins and all the 

 privileges which Christ bought for His Church are not to 

 be applied to men in a magical manner by a privileged 

 caste which alone can say whether the application is 

 effectual, but that fellowship with God in Christ is a living 

 personal fellowship of which we can be as fully assured as 

 of fellowship with our fellow-men ; so long as it was 

 understood that the consciousness of this fellowship with 

 God is no mere subjective feeling but the consciousness 

 of a life far more true than the natural life which no 

 man dreams of doubting a life which is not bounded by 

 the circuit of my own subjectivity, but in which I am 

 linked together with all my fellow-believers with the 

 whole Church and its glorious Head a life which is hid 

 with Christ in God, but which is not so hid that it does 

 not manifest itself even now as a real life in, though 

 not of the world, absorbing into itself my whole earthly 

 life ; so long as all this was felt, it was impossible for the 

 Church to turn away from the assurance of its calling 

 in Christ which it bore within itself and base the scientific 

 exposition of its position as a Church and to be such 

 an exposition is the aim of Protestant theology on mere 

 grounds of natural reason and probability. 



