'Und wo wahre Wissenschaft ist, da ist auch für den Glauben Platz.' PROFESSOR ADICKES, Kant contra Haeckel, p. 128.

'With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of benevolence-dare I also add the Buddhist idea of pity?—will expand into the Christian conception of love. The profit and loss philosophy of utilitarians and materialists finds favour among logic-choppers with half a soul. The only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with utilitarianism and materialism is Christianity, in comparison with which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick" which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench, but to fan into a flame. The domineering, self-assertive, so-called, mastermorality of Nietzsche, itself akin in some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.'

PROFESSOR NITOBÉ, Bushido, the Soul of Japan, pp. 186, 190, 191.

'Nothing will do except righteousness; and no other conception of righteousness will do, except Jesus Christ's conception of it-His method, His secret, and His temper. Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and the imposing and impressive attestation of it, if we could but worthily bring the thing out, is here: in that immense experimental proof of the necessity of it, which the whole course of the world has steadily accumulated, and indicates to us as still continuing and extending. The kingdom of Christ the world will have to become, it is on its way to become, because the profession of righteousness, except as Jesus Christ interpreted righteousness, is vain.'

MATTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma, cheap edition, pp. 114,1115. 'No man can run up the natural lines of evolution without coming to Christianity at the top. One holds no brief to buttress Christianity in this way. But science has to deal with facts, and the facts and processes which have received the name of Christian are the continuations of the scientific order, as much the successors of these facts and the continuations of these processes-due allowances being made for the difference in the planes, and for the new factors which appear with each new plane-as the facts and processes of biology are of those of the mineral world. We land here, not from choice, but from necessity. Christianity—it is not said any particular form of Christianity-but Christianity, is the Further Evolution.'

HENRY DRUMMOND, The Ascent of Man, p. 439.

IX

MONISM AND CHRISTIANITY

It must be manifest, even to those least accustomed to consecutive thought, that the matters considered in previous chapters have most important bearing alike upon creed, character, and conduct. One cannot wonder, therefore, that the Monistic champion should provide a chapter upon 'The Ethic and Religion of Monism.' How Monism can with any propriety be said to have, or be, a religion, is a riddle indeed. But so far as relates to ethics, its attitude is clear and uncompromising. It is unequivocally and necessarily committed to the modern determinism' which reduces man to the mechanical product of his heredity and environment. But in face of all the problems, social, civic, and national, as well as religious, which are bound up with this question, it is far too great and complex a matter to be satisfactorily discussed in any single chapter. It will, therefore, be fairly and fully considered elsewhere.1

As much of these themes as is necessary for our present purpose, will be included under the relations of Monism to Christianity.

In a separate volume, to be shortly announced.

Here it might seem as if the trenchant brochure of Dr. F. Loofs, which is now open to the perusal of every English reader, would save us the trouble of any further consideration. Apart, however, from the greatness of the theme, the criticisms of Dr. Loofs have been in such truculent popular fashion criticized by Haeckel's champion, that it becomes an essential part of our unwelcome task, to face to the uttermost this latest joint onslaught upon Christian verities.

When we have dismissed-after the briefest consideration consistent with faithfulness-the dogmatisms, misrepresentations, errors, and personalities, which are thus presented in the name of Monism, five themes will demand as careful scrutiny as can be accorded to them in few pages. These are (i) The Gospels in modern light; (ii) the origin and character of Christ Himself; (iii) the essentials of Christian doctrine; (iv) the facts of Christian history; (v) the truth concerning the Christian outlook. Each of these is confessedly rather the subject for volumes than for paragraphs, but we may at least point in the directions in which further study will avail to rebut Monistic allegations.

In no portion of his works are the unmeasured dogmatisms of Professor Haeckel, which his advocate meekly denominates 'matters of opinion,' so

1 Anti-Haeckel, an Exposure of Haeckel's Views of Christianity, published by Hodder & Stoughton (for the original, Verlag von Max Niemeyer, Halle). Dr. Friedrich Loofs is Professor of Church History at Halle.

pronounced as in his references to Christianity. Of these the famous 'seventeenth chapter' of The Riddle is the chief though by no means the only expression. It is a light matter for him to write in this strain:

Religious faith always means belief in a miracle, and as such is in hopeless contradiction with the natural faith of reason.' -The whole field of theology is incredible, whilst as regards the religion of the New Testament, equally with the religions of India or Egypt-the truth which the credulous discover in them is a human invention: the childlike faith in these irrational revelations is mere superstition.'

After this, it would seem that there was no more to be said. But Monism knows the value of reiteration. So we read again and again, ad nauseam, that 'all Christian dogmas contradict pure reason'; that all 'the so-called revelations on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest results of modern science': in short, that all 'progress in the aesthetic enjoyment of nature' and all higher mental development' imply advance ' in the direction of our monistic religion.''

1 Riddle, p. 107.

2 p. 109.

Perhaps the crowning instance of this dogmatic assumption of infallibility is given us by his champion, who suggests (pp. 82, 84,) that when a man has reached a conviction that God is a myth, he is neither logically nor morally expected to ask himself seriously whether Christ or Christianity is divine.' So that For Haeckel, it is legitimately a foregone conclusion that Jesus was a human being, born in a normal manner.' Of course in such a case the falsity of all Christian doctrines is no less 'a foregone conclusion.' The calm assumption of infallibility wherewith thus to sweep away, at a stroke, every single consideration comprised under the general notion of Christian evidences, is truly Monistic.

Weightless, however, as are these mere assertions, they take on a character which cannot but be offensive to impartial minds, when we find them continually associated with gross misrepresentations and indefensible errors. We may well ask, for instance, what is to be said concerning this Monistic representation of Christianity:

And it is this Universal Father who has himself created the conditions of heredity and adaptation, in virtue of which the elect on the one side were bound to pursue the path towards eternal bliss, and the luckless poor and miserable on the other hand were driven into the paths of the damned.'

The italics are his own. They serve well to emphasize the mendacity of such a representation.' The system that requires for foundation such a distortion of the truth, is really unworthy of further consideration. Unfortunately it is but a specimen of others continually recurring. Here is another:

As Christianity depreciated this life, and said it was merely a preparation for the life to come, it led to a disdain of culture and of nature; and as it regarded man's body only as the temporary prison of his immortal soul, it attached no importance to the care of it.3

Quotation is unnecessary to show how the New Testament gives the lie direct to this slander also.

1 Riddle, p. 74.

2 Mr. McCabe waxes indignant (p. 82) at the use of this term. Yet on the very same page he tells us that Haeckel 'decides to cast a critical glance' at Christianity. So that the above monstrous cartoon did not arise from ignorance.

3 Wonders, p. 483.

• Although these pages are certainly not written from the standpoint of the Romish Church, yet one cannot but protest also against the indiscriminate and reckless calumny that the aim of Romanism is to-day, as it was a thousand years ago, to dominate and exploit a blindly believing humanity.'