Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity [pp. 250-294]

1852.] The German Philosophy.-Schleiermacher.
conveyed to the moral nature of the soul by the vehicle
of language, or imagery, or symbols, or whatever means
he may see fit to employ, through the medium of the understanding.
Mr. Morell does not hesitate to avow broadly his indebtedness to Schleiermacher, for every characteristic feature of his
Philosophy of Religion. He apprehends fully and adopts implicitly, in the main, the psychology of Schleiermacher,
expounding it with beautiful and taking clearness; and then
builds upon it a philosophy of revelation and religious experience, not differing in any essential particular, from the mysticorationalism of his theological guide.
The system of Quakerism as applied to the theory of Inspiration, if we may call it a system,-" rudis, indigestaque
moles," certainly, when compared with the polished theological architecture of the accomplished German mystic-rests
upon substantially the same foundations.
"The germinal principle of the system of Schleiermacher
and Morell, as applied to revelation, is the fundamental and
ultimate identity of the human and divine." The personality
of Christ is a perfect ideal human nature, flowing down pure from
the divine fountain; and so becoming a new and divine lifeprinciple to the race, in contradistinction from, and subversion
of, the earthly life derived from Adam. Religion is not the
empirical conformity of the heart and life to the principles and
precepts of the gospel; it is not pardon and new obedience due
to the objective righteousness of Christ, but participation in
the divine life of Christ, which flows down into humanity
through the channels of the Church. The highest Christianity
conceivable, is perfect likeness to Christ, in point of religious
consciousness. Thus there is opened in the emotional consciousness of the individual soul, a living fountain, from whence
the streams of absolute religious truth are continually flowing.
Revelation is a purely subjective process, though it may be
supernaturally conducted; and the truth revealed has its
source, not in God but in the religious life of the individual,
reacting upon the surrounding world.
The spirituality and loftiness of the revelation, therefore,
depends upon the purity, the depth and the enlargement of
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