23 



is owing to their being so mixed up with worldly, selfish, or 

 sinful motives and feelings, works not done in faith are said 

 in the Articles to " have the nature of sin." 



Now, Mr. Spencer's way of representing this teaching would 

 make Christianity answerable for the absurd assertion that 

 works intrinsically good are to be looked upon as intrinsically 

 sinful ; whereas its true teaching is that no human works are 

 intrinsically good, but that such of them as are done in faith 

 have a goodness imputed to them which does not actually 

 belong to them, and so are rendered acceptable to God for the 

 merits of His Son. 



We may observe the contrast between the mode of expres- 

 sion adopted in the Article and that made use of by Mr. 

 Spencer. The Article adopts as mild a form of words as could 

 well be thought of. It does not say that the works of which 

 it speaks (works done previous to justification) are actually 

 sinful, much less intrinsically so, but merely that " they have 

 the nature of sin " (Latin, "peccati rationem habere "). Mr. 

 Spencer, on the contrary, intensifies the assertion by the 

 addition of the adverb " intrinsically," leaving no stone un- 

 turned whereby religion might be made to appear absurd in 

 the eyes of his readers. 



The fifth and last of the misrepresentations (I do not say 

 intentional ones) comprised in the comprehensive paragraph 

 quoted near the commencement of this paper is, "that 

 conduct is truly good only when it is due to a faith whose 

 openly-professed motive is other-worldliness." 



The gist and force of this lies in the rather unusual word, 

 " other- worldliness." As worldliness i.e., a regard to our 

 well-being in this world is generally looked upon as a low 

 motive to action, the imputation of o/ie?*-worldliness has the 

 appearance of implying that a regard to our well-being in the 

 world to come is a low motive also. Now, no Christian looks 

 upon a regard to our welfare, whether in this world or the 

 next, as the highest motive ; but neither is it to be looked 

 upon as a wrong one. To excite a prejudice against Chris- 

 tianity, some unbelievers have called it selfishness, and pro- 

 nounced it immoral, while they at the same time erroneously 

 represent it as the only motive held out by the Christian 

 system to those who believe in it. Thus they would have the 

 world to suppose that the whole of Christianity rests on an 

 immoral foundation. It might seem that a charge so absurd 

 as this might well be left to refute itself. But it is so often 

 urged in the present day, and that by writers whose eminence 

 in other departments than that of religion imparts to them a 

 factitious influence over the minds of the unthinking, that it 



