Chapter I: Front Matter

The Kernel and the Husk

THE KERNEL AND THE HUSK

Letters on Spiritual Christianity

BY

EDWIN A. ABBOTT

THE AUTHOR OF
“PHILOCHRISTUS” AND “ONESIMUS”

London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1886

_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._

TO
THE DOUBTERS OF THIS GENERATION
AND
THE BELIEVERS OF THE NEXT

TO THE READER

The time is not perhaps far distant when few will believe in miracles who do not also believe in an infallible Church; and then, such books as the present will appeal to a larger circle. But, as things are, the author would beg all those who worship a miraculous Christ without doubt and difficulty to pause here and read no further. The book is not intended for them; it is intended for those alone to whom it is dedicated, “the doubters of this generation.”

For there are some who feel drawn towards the worship of Christ by love and reverence, yet repelled by an apparently inextricable connection of the story of Christ with a miraculous element which, in their minds, throws a doubt over the whole of His acts, His doctrine, His character, and even His existence. Others, who worship Christ, worship Him insecurely and tremulously. They assume that their faith must rest on the basis of the Bible miracles; and at times they cannot quite suppress a thrill of doubt and terror lest some horrible discovery of fresh truth, resulting in the destruction of the miraculous element of the Bible, may impair their right to regard Christ as “anything better than a mere man.” It is to these two classes—the would-be worshippers and the doubtful worshippers of Christ—that the following Letters are addressed by one who has for many years found peace and salvation in the worship of a non miraculous Christ.

Not very long ago, but some years after the publication of a work called _Philochristus_, the author received a letter from a stranger and fellow-clergyman, asking him whether he could spare half an hour to visit him on his death-bed, “dying of a disease”—so ran the letter “which will be fatal within some uncertain weeks (possibly however days, possibly months). No pains just now, head clear, voice sound. And mind at peace, but the peace of reverent agnosticism..... Now I have read and appreciated _Philochristus_. It would comfort my short remainder of life if you would come and look me dying in the face and say, ‘This theology and Christology of mine is not merely literary: I feel with joy of heart that God is not unknown to man: try even now to feel with me.’”

Of what passed at the subsequent interview nothing must be said except that the dying man (whose anticipations of death were speedily verified) expressed the conviction that one reason why he had fallen into that abyss of agnosticism—for an abyss he then felt it to be—was that he had been “taught to believe too much when young;” and he urged and almost besought that something might be done soon to “give young men a religion that would wear.” These words were not to be forgotten; they recurred again and again to the author with the force of a command. The present work is an attempt to carry them into effect, an attempt, by one who has passed through doubts into conviction, to look the doubting reader in the face and say, “This theology and Christology of mine is not merely literary. I feel with joy of heart that God is not unknown to man. Try even now to feel with me.”

The author does not profess to clear Christianity from all “difficulties.” If a revelation is to enlarge our conceptions of God, it must involve some spiritual effort on our part to receive the larger truth; if it claims to be historical, it may well impose on some of its adherents the labour needed for the judgment of historical evidence; if it prompts, without enforcing, obedience, it must excite in all some questionings as to the causes which led the Revealer not to make His revelation irresistibly convincing. Even the explanations of the mysterious phenomena of motion, light, and chemistry, involve “difficulties” in the acceptance of still more mysterious Laws which we cannot at present explain. Nevertheless we all feel that we understand astronomy better in the light of the Law of gravitation: and in the same way some may feel that Christianity becomes more spiritual, as well as more clear, when it becomes more natural; and that many of its so-called “difficulties” fade or vanish, when what may be called its celestial and its terrestrial phenomena are found to rest upon similar principles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

_Letter_ _Page_

1 _Introductory_ 1

2 _Personal_ 5

3 _Knowledge_ 20

4 _Ideals_ 29

5 _Ideals and Tests_ 40

6 _Imagination and Reason_ 47

7 _The Culture of Faith_ 59

8 _Faith and Demonstration_ 72

9 _Satan and Evolution_ 80

10 _Illusions_ 97

11 _What is Worship?_ 111

12 _The Worship of Christ_ 125

13 _What is “Nature”?_ 134

14 _The Miracles of the Old Testament_ 142

15 _The Miracles of the New Testament_ 158

16 _The Growth of the Gospels_ 170

17 _Christian Illusions_ 185

18 _Are the Miracles inseparable from 201
the Life of Christ?_

19 _The Feeding of the Four Thousand and 212
the Five Thousand_

20 _The Manifestation of Christ to St. 225
Paul_

21 _The Development of Imagination and 233
its bearing on the Revelation of
Christ’s Resurrection_

22 _Christ’s Resurrection regarded 240
naturally_

23 _Faith in the spiritual Resurrection 246
is better than so-called knowledge of
the material Resurrection_

24 _What is a Spirit?_ 258

25 _The Incarnation_ 267

26 _Prayer, Heaven, Hell_ 281

27 _Pauline Theology_ 298

28 _Objections_ 310

29 _Can Natural Christianity commend 320
itself to the masses?_

APPENDIX

30 _Can a believer in Natural 339
Christianity be a Minister in the Church
of England?_

31 _What the Bishops might do_ 354

DEFINITIONS 369