Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/171

 of such sort Jesus never appeals. Here is what characterises his teaching, and distinguishes him, for instance, from the author of the Fourth Gospel. This author handles what we may call theosophical speculation in a beautiful and impressive manner; the introduction to his Gospel is undoubtedly in a very noble and profound strain. But it is theory; externally it seems, at any rate, to deliver, with the forms of science, a theosophy not controllable by experience. And therefore it is impossible even to conceive Jesus himself uttering the introduction to the Fourth Gospel; because theory Jesus never touches, but bases himself invariably on experience. True, the experience must, for philosophy, have its place in a theory of the system of human nature, when the theory is at last ready and perfect; but the point is, that the experience is ripe and solid, and fit to be used safely, long before the theory. And it was the experience which Jesus always used.

Undoubtedly, however, attempts may not improperly be made, even now,—by those, at least, who have a talent for these matters,—to exhibit the experience, with what leads to it and what derives from it, in a system of psycho-physiology. And then, perhaps, it will be found to be connected with other truths of psycho-physiology, such as the unity of life, as it is called, and the impersonality of reason. Only, thus exhibited, it will be philosophy, mental exercitation, and will concern us as a matter of science, not of conduct. And, as the discipline of conduct is three-fourths of life, for our æsthetic and intellectual disciplines, real as these are, there is but one-fourth of life left; and if we let art and science divide this one-fourth fairly between them, they will have just one-eighth of life each.

So the exhibition of the truth: ' He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal,' in its order and place as a truth of