One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 2. John Williamson Nevin

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СКАЧАТЬ human substance beyond it, from which it takes root, and derives both quality and strength. The idea of redemption then, in his case, implies of necessity far more than any deliverance that can have place for his life separately regarded. As it must lay hold of this as such in an inward way, in order to become outwardly actual, so also to do this effectually it must have power to reach and change the general substance of humanity out of which the individual life is found to spring. In other words, no redemption can be real for man singly taken, or for any particular man, which is not at the same time real for humanity in its collective view, for the fallen race as a whole. Hence it is that christianity, which challenges the homage of the world as such a system of real redemption, can never possibly be satisfied with the object of a simply numerical salvation, to be accomplished in favor of a certain number of individual men, an abstract election of single souls,39 whether this be taken as large or small, a few only or very many or even all of the human family. The idea of the true necessary wholeness of humanity is not helped at all by the numerical extent of any such abstraction. It stands in the general nature of man, the human life collectively considered, as this underlies all such distribution, and goes before it in the order of existence, filling it with its proper organic force and sense in the constitution of society. Here especially comes into view the full form and scope of the work, which must take place intensively in the life of the world before the victory of the gospel can be regarded as complete. Humanity includes in its general organization certain orders and spheres of moral existence that can never be sundered from its idea without overthrowing it altogether; they enter with essential necessity into its constitution, and are full as much part and parcel of it all the world over as the bones and sinews that go to make up the body of the outward man. The family, for instance, and the state with the various domestic and civil relations that grow out of them, are not to be considered factitious or accidental institutions in any way, continued for the use of man’s life from abroad and brought near to it only in an outward manner. They belong inherently to it; it can have no right or normal character without them; and any want of perfection in them, must even be to the same extent a want of perfection in the life itself as human, in which they are comprehended. So again, the moral nature of man includes in its very conception the idea of art, the idea of science, the idea of business and trade. It carries in itself certain powers and demands that lead to these forms of existence, as the necessary evolution of its own inward sense. Humanity stands in the activity of reason and will, under their proper general character. Take away from it any interest or sphere which legitimately belongs to such activity, and in the same measure it must cease to be a true and sound humanity altogether. No interest or sphere of this sort then can be allowed to remain on the outside of a system of redemption, which has for its object man as such in his fallen state. If christianity be indeed such a system, it must be commensurate in full with the constitution of humanity naturally considered; it must have power to take up into itself not a part of this only but the whole of it, and by no possibility can it ever be satisfied with any less universal result.

All this we say falls to the inner mission of christianity, its destination to raise humanity inwardly considered to a higher power, a new quality and tone, as well as to take possession of it by territorial conquest from sea to sea and from pole to pole. And it needs to be well understood and kept in mind, that the first object here is full as needful as the second, and belongs quite as really to the cause of the world’s evangelization. “The field is the world,”40 we may say with quite as much solemnity and emphasis in this view, as when we speak of it under the other. As the kingdom of God is not restricted in its conception to any geographical limits or national distinctions, but has regard to mankind universally; so neither is it to be thought of as penetrating the organization of man’s nature only to a certain extent, taking up one part of it into its constitution and leaving another hopelessly on the outside; on the contrary it must show itself sufficient to engross the whole. Nothing really human can be counted legitimately beyond its scope; for the grand test of its truth is its absolute adequacy to cover the field of human existence at all points, its catholicity in the sense of measuring the entire length and breadth of man’s nature. Either it is no redemption for humanity at all, or no constituent interest of humanity may be taken as extrinsical ever to its rightful domain. It will not do to talk of any such interest as profane, in the sense of an inward and abiding contrariety between it and the sacredness of religion; as though religion might be regarded as one simply among other coordinate forms of life, with a certain territory assigned to it and all beyond foreign from its control. What is really human, a constitutive part of the original nature of man, may be indeed profaned, by being turned aside from its right use and end, but can never be in itself profane. On the contrary, if religion be the perfection of this nature, all that belongs to it must not only admit but require an inward union with religion, in order to its own completion; and as christianity is the end and consummation of all religion besides, it follows that such completion in the case of every human interest can be fully gained at last only in the bosom of its all comprehensive life. The mission of christianity is not to denounce and reject any order of life belonging to primitive humanity as intrinsically hostile to God (that would be a species of Manichean41 fanaticism); nor yet to acknowledge it simply as a different and foreign jurisdiction; but plainly to appropriate every order to itself, by so mastering its inmost sense as to set it in full harmony with the deeper and broader law of its own presence. Art, science, commerce, politics, for instance, as they enter essentially into the idea of man, must all come within the range of this mission; and so far as it falls short of their full occupation at any given time with the power of its own divine principle, it must be regarded as a work still in process only towards its proper end; just as really as the work of outward missions is thus in process also, and short of its end, so long as any part of the world remains shrouded in pagan darkness. It is full as needful for the complete and final triumph of the gospel among men, that it should subdue the arts, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, &c., to its sceptre, and fill them with its spirit as that it should conquer in similar style the tribes of Africa or the islands of the South Sea. Every region of science, as it belongs to man’s nature, belongs also to the empire of Christ; and this can never be complete, as long as any such region may remain unoccupied by its power. Philosophy too, whose province and need it is to bring all the sciences to unity and thus to fathom their deepest and last sense, falls of right under the same view. Some indeed pretend, that christianity and philosophy have properly nothing to do with each other; that the first puts contempt on the second; that the second in truth is a mere ignis fatuus42 at most, which all good christians are bound to abhor and avoid. But if so, it must be considered against humanity to speculate at all in this way; whereas the whole history of the world proves the contrary; and it lies also in the very idea of science, that knowledge in this form should be sought as the necessary completion of it under other forms. To pronounce philosophy against humanity, is virtually to place science universally under the like condemnation. And so to treat it as profane or impertinent for the kingdom of God, is in truth to set all science in similar relation; the very result to which fanaticism has often shown itself prone to run. But what can be well more monstrous than that or more certainly fatal in the end to the cause of christianity? Philosophy, like science and art in other forms; is of one birth with man’s nature itself; and if christianity be the last true and full sense of this nature, it is not possible that it should be either willing or able to shut it out from its realm. We might as soon dream of a like exclusion towards the empire of China; for it is hard to see surely how the idea of humanity would suffer a more serious truncation by this, than by being doomed to fall short of its own proper actualization the other way. The world without China would be quite as near perfection, we think, as the world without philosophy. Its full redemption and salvation, the grand object of the gospel and so the necessary work and mission of christianity among men, includes it is plain both interests, and we have no right to magnify the one ever at the cost of the other.43

Such being the general nature of this missionary work intensively taken, we may see at once how far it is still from its own proper end even in the case of the nominally christian world СКАЧАТЬ