THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF REVELATION.

Evening Star, Issue 6054, 7 August 1882, Page 2

THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF REVELATION.

There was a large attendance at the Queen’s Theatre last evening, when the Rev. Df Roseby delivered an admirable lecture on the above subject. He said that one of the most noticeable features of the modern scientific movement wars the new importance which it had led us to attach to the phenomena of growth, and ono of the most noticeable facts about Holy Scripture and its revelation of the kingdom of God was the prominence that was everywhere given to the same principle. The fact that the Sacred Rook came into our hands as a single volume was apt to mislead us as to its character. It was not ono book, but a library of books. The Sacred Volume presented in its variety a striking analogy to God’s other great book, the World of Nature. The analogy had always struck him (Dr Roseby) as affording one of the best evidences that they were both works of the same hand. The characteristic methods of the Divine working were conspicuous in the one as in the other. The point that ha was desirous of emphasising yag tpe continuity and progress which the Revelation displayed. It \.as one, but its unity was like the unity of a living organism ; it was the unity of growth. It was a unity wherein we traced the nurture, the education, the discipline of the Divine Providence and Grace through all the ages of the world’s history, childhood, youth, manhood. The Bible 'was unscientific. It concerned itself not at all with such questions as fell within the sphere of the physicist, the geologist, and the astronomer. Why ? Because those tilings were not its brininess. Its business was not to teach men the stratification of the earth, hut how to behave themselves upon its surface, and how to find their way to heaven. It did not handel the scalpel of anatomy over man’s dead body ; its business was with the living soul. This was the greatness ot tho Bible and the secret of its stability. If the hook' had been at all like many of the comments upon it we should have had a very different tale to toil. But there was no dogmatic science in the Bible, and therefore fcckncc was never under tho necessity of contradicting it. It held itself high above the conflict of theories alike in science and in philosophy. The living, loving God; man's probation' and responsibility ; the sin of men ; our need of a Saviour 5 the principle of tho vicarious sacrifice; the power and grace of the Holy Spirit of God ; the law of righteousness ; the law of love ; the catena of Christian virtues—these great facts ami principles remained in entire independence of any questions about the age of the world or tfie succession of Ijfe upon its surface, tho method of creation, or tho antiquity of man. The testimony of John Stuart Mill, a man for whose memory the lecturer had a profound respect, whose

perfect candor was, he believed, steadily drawing him in the direction of Christian faith, iu so much that some of his latest published utterances startled his sceptical friends as much as they surprised the Christian world—his testimony was: “It is the Cod incarnate more than the God of the Jews or of Nature, who, being idealised, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken from us by a rational criticism, Christ is still left an unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of His teaching.” Another eminent sceptic had a>,id: “ Surpassing in His sublimes! simplicity and earnestness the moral grandeur of Chakya Moirui, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied, though generally admirable, teachings of Socrates and Plato and the whole round of Greek philosophers, Christ presented the rare spectacle of a life, as far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble, so that the ‘ Imitation of Christ’ has become almost the final word in the teaching of His religion.” The above words were those of the author of “ Supernatural Religion,” and might readily be taken for the words of Canon Liddon. After citing a number of instances of distinguished unbelievers who had recanted their sceptical opinions, and returned to Faith, Dr Roseby concluded as follows : “My subject is the progrsssiveness of revelation. I have sought to show that tho crown and consummation of all God’s prior dispensations is Christ. Surely I could allege no more striking proof of this than the fact that some who thought they had got beyond Him have come back to Him, that some who thought they could improve on His revelation have made haste to retrace their steps to kneel at His feet, to renew their fealty, to own Him not only, as before, their Alpha, hut now also as their Omega. And when in the estimation, honest but mistaken, of some there is a promise in the wonderful and glorious progress of science—a progress which I hail and share—a promise of something in advance of Christianity ; in the face of such an expectation let me cite a fact like this; Tho latest addition to the French Academy—the greatest scientific man France could find most recently within her borders on whom to bestow her highest recognition of genius and attainment, Monsieur Pasteur—has just given to the world ins views on the subject of religion. Wo know what the views of our own countryman, the venerable and distinguished naturalist last laid in Westminster Abbey, wo know what his views were—that there was nothing in advanced science really at variance with faith. And what is the deliverance of tho new* member of the French Academy. VI. Pasteur? He frankly, nay, passionately owned his faith in God and the indestructibleuess of religion. ‘ He who proclaims,’ says M, Pasteur, ‘the existence of an Infinite—and nobody can evade it—asserts more of the supernatural in that affirmation than exists in all the miracles of all religions; for the notion of the Infinite has the twofold character of being irresistible and incomprehensible. When this notion seizes on the mind there is nothing left but to bend the knee.’ That is the last word—the last as yet—of the highest science—‘bend tho knee.’ Fear not, brethren, for the perpetuity of our Christian faith. Christ, whose life and heart and love, whose testimony, deeds, and Cross are the real Gospel—whatever else will die, His name shall live, and men shall be blessed iu Him.”