II

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY1

AND GOD SAW EVERYTHING THAT HE HAD MADE, AND, behold, IT WAS VERY GOOD.-Genesis i. 31.

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WHATSOEVER IS SOLD IN THE SHAMBLES, EAT, ASKING NO QUESTION FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE: FOR THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S, AND THE FULNESS THEREOF."—I Corinthians x. 25, 26.

1. MAINLY the world into which Christianity was born was divided between polytheists and dualists, that is, between idolaters and philosophers, those who worshipped many gods, and those who worshipped one god, but conceived of him as limited in his power by the existence of a material universe independent of his will in origin and progress. I state the case in the broadest and simplest terms, for it makes nothing for our present purpose that we should use any other. The Jews, who possessed but little aptitude for philosophy, held a simple doctrine of creation, and acquiesced with compara

1 Preached in Durham Cathedral on the second Sunday in Lent, March 19, 1916, at Evensong.

tive facility in the unsolved problem which experience presented to their creed. When Christianity, with its inherited Jewish belief in the CREATOR, passed outside the Jewish sphere, and began to win its way among the non-Jewish populations of the Empire, it found itself confronted by a multitude of religious and philosophical systems which proceeded on different assumptions. Men were (as they must always do) applying their creeds to their conduct, finding in their religion some key to life. Asceticism based on a dualistic belief was widely distributed, and bore heavily on the new converts, who had been led by their discipleship to a far graver view of evil than was common in pagan society. In the Epistles which ST. PAUL addressed to the non-Jewish or partially-Jewish Churches of Corinth and Colossæ, we find him evidently dealing with various tendencies which, whether ascetic or antinomian, seem to have

sprung from current dualism. Accordingly he

rebukes them by pointing his converts to the primal and fundamental truth which the Church had received from the Synagogue-the belief in GOD as CREATOR of all things. Take such a passage as the following, directed to the practical question of partaking of such meats as according to current pagan usage had been associated with idolatrous worship: "CON

CERNING THEREFORE THE EATING OF THINGS SACRIFICED TO IDOLS, WE KNOW THAT NO IDOL IS ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, AND THAT THERE IS NO GOD BUT ONE. FOR THOUGH THERE BE THAT ARE CALLED GODS, WHETHER IN HEAVEN OR ON EARTH; AS THERE ARE GODS MANY AND LORDS MANY: YET TO US THERE IS ONE GOD, THE FATHER, OF WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, And WE UNTO HIM." And in the text, he quotes and applies to his practical purpose the language of the xxivth Psalm: "WHATSOEVER IS SOLD IN THE SHAMBLES, EAT, ASKING NO QUESTION FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE : FOR THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S, AND THE FULNESS THEREOF.'" He bases Christian liberty on the first article of the Apostles' Creed.

2. The bearing of the Creed on the practical question at stake is not hard to see. Is the material world to be accounted good, or evil? Is the physical nature with its insistent appetites to be respected, or suppressed? Is it right to indulge the æsthetic emotions? Ought a Christian man to cultivate the mind? Nothing less is involved than the whole point of view from which the external world is to be regarded, and the mingled nature of man interpreted. Finally it is the point of view which will determine

the type of character and conduct which the Christian accepts as legitimate and requisite. In his extremely valuable Gifford Lectures on "THEISM AND HUMANISM" MR. BALFOUR has shown how vital is the influence of Theistic Faith on the whole process of human civilization:

My desire has been to show that all we think best in human culture, whether associated with beauty, goodness, or knowledge, requires GOD for its support, that Humanism without Theism loses more than half its value.

MR. BALFOUR refuses to limit his argument. Not morality only, but science and art also are the beneficiaries of Religion :

Right conduct is much, but it is not all. We not only act, but we know, and we admire; nor could I be quite content with any form of Theism which did not sustain in every essential part the full circle of human interests (pp. 248-9).

The cultured British Philosopher clearly adopts the same attitude towards his creed as that which ST. PAUL confessed when he pointed to the truth of Creation as providing the basis for Christian liberty in the use of created things. "FOR EVERY CREATURE OF GOD IS GOOD, AND NOTHING IS TO BE REJECTED, IF IT BE RECEIVED WITH THANKSGIVING: FOR IT IS SANCTIFIED THROUGH THE Word of GOD AND PRAYER.”

3. But was there not danger of placing too high an estimate on the external world? Would not the notion grow in the mind that physical appetites carried their own title to satisfaction? Might not the Flesh be given a kind of Divine Right to selfassertion ? It is precisely in view of such considerations that we have to remember what the Jewish doctrine of creation was. In those first chapters of Genesis the record of the Creation pauses significantly at Man, and indicates a difference in his case, which marks him off from the rest of created beings. "GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE, IN THE IMAGE OF GOD CREATED HE HIM." That IMAGE OF GOD" was moral, not physical: and it revealed itself within the man himself as the true principle of his conduct. Accordingly, the Hebrew Prophets built their teaching on the assumption that the highest Law for Man was not certified to him from below but from above, not from without but from within, not found in external Nature nor in his Flesh which bound him thereto, but always in a spiritual witness, ineffable yet audible and authoritative, which set limits to his bodily desires, and marked out for him the way of his duty: "HE HATH SHEWED THEE, O MAN, WHAT IS RIGHT: AND WHAT DOTH THE LORD REQUIRE OF THEE,